Winter

by William Horwood

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  A fax came two months later. It read, ‘Sir, our honoured guest is walking to Oslo to talk with Mr K. Larsen.’

  It was a message that went round the world. Larsen was the secretive billionaire arms dealer whose group, it was said, supplied both sides of many conflicts with weapon systems of all kinds. Mister Boots decided to go and see him, choosing a roundabout route through some of the most dangerous war zones in the world, including Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East, several African states and three South American countries notorious for the power of their drug lords.

  Mister Boots perambulated through them all over a period of six years with a startling lack of concern for his personal safety and saying very little except that he would like to talk with Mr Larsen. What started as a little-known act of insane eccentricity ended up with the triumphal march of Mister Boots and nearly ten thousand followers, many wearing home-made boots and not much more, into the Moss suburb of Oslo, where Larsen had his heavily guarded home.

  A folk festival for peace took place on its doorstep and three days later the security gates opened to admit Boots. He and the billionaire had a vegetarian meal for two prepared and flown in by the Rap-Festone Group, an extravagance about which Boots mildly complained. But the astonishing outcome was the Larsen Group’s decision to diversify its activities towards building the infrastructures of peace, not sowing the seeds of war.

  The press-shy Larsen had nothing but praise for his nemesis and said, as others had before, that Mister Boots had seemed very fit after his long walk but ‘sad’, adding that, as he himself now knew, ‘There are some things money cannot buy and a cure for depression is one of them. This gentleman appears to be able to help everyone but himself.’

  To his relief the media lost interest in Mister Boots after this, apart from an occasional report of the kind that Jack had first seen in a German newspaper.

  The years passed and no more was heard of him until a year before Jack had arrived at Woolstone. An elderly vagrant was found wandering in a confused state in Digbeth, Birmingham whom somebody recognized as Mister Boots. A local reporter followed the story up and found him sleeping rough on Waseley Hill and saying, as often before, that he had lost something but he didn’t know what.

  ‘He would accept no help, nor was he able to say what he had lost,’ the reporter said. ‘He seemed quite unaware of the impact he had had on others and was grateful for the support the city of Birmingham had briefly given him but he felt it was time to move on. Asked why, he replied that there was much to see and do. “Mother Earth,” he said, “is full of infinite possibilities.” ’

  Jack, Katherine and Arthur looked at the image that went with the report. Mister Boots was old now, more stooped than he was in earlier pictures of him Jack had found.

  Two years after Jack arrived at Woolstone he and Katherine became lovers. Young though they were, it seemed the right and natural thing to do and Arthur was a pragmatist. Sleeping arrangements were altered in the house to give them privacy, but that was all.

  Then, one afternoon, Mister Boots arrived.

  Arthur saw him first, the other two having gone out and away across the Downs. In fact Arthur heard him humming, as he sat enjoying his tea by the Chimes. It was a tuneless, odd sort of hum, slightly otherworldly, and Arthur couldn’t work out what it was or where it came from. He got up a little nervously, searched about a bit, and eventually found a tall, white-haired man standing in amongst the trees between the two conifers, a shady place, a kind of sanctuary.

  Arthur knew him the moment he saw him.

  Mister Boots said, ‘Very fine, very fine! I wonder if I might have a glass of water?’

  ‘Better still,’ cried Arthur, ‘come and sit down and have a cup of tea!’

  ‘I am not sure,’ said Mister Boots. ‘I shall stand here and see what transpires.’

  ‘Well I . . . I mean we wouldn’t want . . .’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t go. At least until I have had the water, if I may. Not tea, if you please.’

  Arthur hurried off and hurried back, anxious lest Mister Boots had left. But he was still there, drank the water, stood awhile staring at the trees and said finally, ‘I think perhaps I would indeed like to sit.’

  Arthur took him to the garden chairs by the Chimes.

  ‘Sit in any one of them,’ he said.

  Mister Boots took a chair and after some hesitation placed it between the tomatoes and the Chimes and sat down.

  He didn’t talk at all but sat peacefully with a very slight smile on his face. He was indeed thin, he was certainly freckled, and his hair, though mainly white, had a reddish tinge here and there.

  Arthur did not know what to say but it didn’t matter.

  The sadness that everybody who met him had spoken of was there. But so was a kind of simple joy in the present moment which induced calm in Arthur, who soon stopped thinking about when Jack and Katherine were coming back. In their own time, no doubt.

  Mister Boots just sat.

  ‘It is a very long time,’ he said suddenly, ‘since I did nothing. If I may I will sit a little longer.’

  ‘Please . . . of course . . . I would like . . .’

  Jack and Katherine joined them twenty minutes later, laughing as they did so, calling out to Arthur and when he did not reply coming to find him.

  He looked at them mutely as if to say, ‘I have nothing to say. There is nothing to say. He is here.’

  Mister Boots looked at them and slowly stood up.

  ‘I have forgotten my name,’ he said very simply, ‘but people call me Mister Boots, though, as you see, I have a reasonably healthy pair of boots on my feet.’

  He didn’t offer his hand, nor they theirs.

  He just stood and stared at them.

  ‘I am rather tired,’ he said, ‘for I have walked a long way to get here. I . . . wonder . . . what are your names?’

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘Katherine.’

  ‘I realize,’ he said, swaying on his feet, ‘that I am more tired than I thought. I did not think it would take so long to get here. I had things to do, you see, and I have been looking for something which I once lost.’

  He paused for a little, frowning slightly, and added, ‘I cannot remember how long ago I lost it but I do not think I can find it now.’

  It was Katherine who knew what to say and do and it was not what she would normally have said at all. But then she had never in her life been in the presence of someone who had such a sense of innocence and goodness who had so clearly reached the absolute limit of all he could do physically, mentally and spiritually. Which he had done with grace, nobility and infinite courage.

  ‘Would you like to sleep?’ she asked him.

  ‘Sleep,’ he murmured as if it was not a word he had heard spoken, or considered the meaning of, or believed quite possible, for a very long time, ‘sleep?’

  ‘You’re with friends, Mister Boots,’ she said, ‘and you’re safe. You can sleep now, you can sleep.’

  ‘Sleep,’ he said, ‘is something I would very much like to do.’

  51

  THE CHIME

  Sometime then, in the weeks after Mister Boots came to live his last days at Woolstone House, Katherine fell pregnant. They knew when and where it happened: up there on the hill, amongst the long grass, one August evening. Though the White Horse had gone from the place to which it gave its name, it roamed still that lovely night as the stars came out above them and their child was made.

  While Katherine bloomed some days and felt sick on others through the months ahead, Boots slowly recovered from his journeying, able eventually to walk up the hill, he and Arthur together.

  He worried often about the important things he felt he still had to do, never able to remember what they were. When he got distressed Katherine, able to get closer to him than any of them, so much so that he would sometimes let her take his arm, would say, ‘Mister Boots, you have done more than enough in your long life.
Some say you saved the world.’

  ‘Do they? Did I?’

  ‘Many of us think so.’

  Then, too, he suffered sadness for what he felt he had forgotten and what he thought he had lost. Just once in a while he seemed to catch a glimpse of that other world he had convinced himself he once knew better than the present one.

  ‘I think, Arthur,’ he once said suddenly as they headed out of the garden down the private path that led to the bottom of the hill, ‘that there used to be a pilgrim road here which went all the way to Brum.’

  ‘A pilgrim road?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Brum? Where’s that?’

  ‘I don’t exactly know,’ he replied. ‘but I think it may be an old name for Birmingham.’

  It was when Katherine was very near her time, towards the end of April, that he remembered something else. Spring was in the air again, the old garden filled with early flowers and Katherine restless, walking up and down, sitting, standing, hands to her aching back.

  She sat down and found Mister Boots staring at her bump.

  ‘He’s moving,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a she,’ replied Mister Boots without hesitation.

  ‘Would you like to feel . . . him, her or it?’

  He nodded, unable to speak.

  Katherine took his hand and placed it on the tight, round bulge that was her child. She held his hand there and waited until the baby moved. A foot, a hand, who knew? Across her belly it went, from one side to another, life moving across its Universe.

  ‘There! Did you feel it?’

  ‘I did,’ he said. And then without any explanation he said: ‘Her name is Judith. It always was.’

  She stared at him dumbfounded and held on to his hand. She knew he was right, but how and why?

  ‘Was that the name of the person who you once . . .’

  The baby moved again and he took his hand away.

  ‘Her name is Judith,’ he said again, ‘but more . . . I dare not say . . . but that is her name.’

  Then, though he did not weep, she had never felt so close to the vastness of his loss, whatever it had been; nor loved him so much.

  ‘Do you like the name Judith?’ she asked Jack later. ‘And do you?’ she added, looking at Arthur.

  Perhaps they replied, perhaps they didn’t. They didn’t seem to have to. It seemed that one way and another Judith was always going to be her name.

  She was born a fortnight later at home during the night of the season’s turn, at the start of May Day morning.

  Jack, standing at the window of their bedroom, looking out across the lawn, mother and baby sleeping, Arthur and Mister Boots, having been allowed to have a look, saw the fox come from out among the trees at first light, bold as brass, staring.

  ‘I’ve seen you before,’ said Jack softly.

  He didn’t know why, nor did he question it, but later, as the sun rose, he took the placenta across to the trees, went among them and put it on the ground right in their centre.

  ‘Why?’ asked Katherine later.

  ‘It felt like the right thing to do. Like calling Judith “Judith”.’

  Katherine had been right when she said others thought that Mister Boots had done enough and could rest now. In the following years of Judith’s growing, happy years for all of them, Arthur and Boots ageing, arguing, laughing, and Jack and Katherine maturing, the world beyond began to recognize what he had achieved.

  Letters came and gifts, most of which he gave away.

  The media sought him out and he would sometimes give them a little time.

  People came, a few who had met him in the past, many who never had but felt grateful or inspired by what he had done. He saw his visitors if he could, waving aside the frequent protestations of Katherine and Jack, listening graciously to what people said to him. Nodding his head, saying he was sorry he was not quite well enough to accept their invitations to visit them in their homes.

  ‘Thank you,’ he would say, ‘but I think I have journeyed enough and I must conserve my energy.’

  ‘For what, Mister Boots?’ they asked.

  ‘We all have one last journey to make and . . . well . . . I have something I must do and something I must find.’

  ‘You did everything, Mister Boots! What more could you do?’

  ‘Something,’ he would murmur, ‘but I don’t know what.’

  Little Judith loved him as she loved them all. As happy, as joyful and as beautiful as a child could ever be. Each year taller, each year exploring more.

  With Arthur she was all over the place, attacking his bulk with all she had and he laughing as he struggled more and more to pick her up.

  ‘Not because I’m getting older, which I am, but because you’re a pudding!’

  ‘I’m not!’

  With Mister Boots she was quite different. It was as if she understood he needed care.

  Arthur she pulled along, Boots she guided carefully.

  ‘Be careful! It’s steep! Don’t fall down!’

  She developed normally, year by year, until there came a time when she was five or so, when it was Judith who got them up the hill.

  Once in a while up there, sitting all together, they would see a passing walker hovering, too shy or nervous to say hello.

  ‘Er excuse me but . . . well . . . is he . . . ?’

  ‘Ask him yourself,’ Jack would say.

  ‘Are you Mister Boots?’

  ‘I am,’ he would reply, his smile warm, his gaze a little opaque. He was and he wasn’t, that was the truth. He was Mister Boots so long as he couldn’t remember his name.

  In those days, in the West, in Britain especially, there were no celebrities to speak of. People got on and did what they had to without expectation or favour. They did what was right to do.

  But he was a celebrity and people came to see him, and finding that sometimes they were not allowed to because he was too tired or simply poorly, they got into the habit of climbing the hill and looking down towards Woolstone House, where he was living out his ‘retirement’, quietly, without saying much. Then they stared across England and from there to the world.

  But some visitors he saw, some even stayed.

  Lance Rap, one of the most famous chefs in the world, flew in, his helicopter landing on the lawn and nearly blowing them all over.

  ‘Mon ancien ami!’ he cried in his ridiculous Franglais, ‘I ’ave come to cook for you! So, where is la cuisine! Mon Dieu! Disgusting! Please, ’elp, Katherine – is that your name? Et toi . . .’

  ‘Me?’ said Judith.

  ‘Oui, you. Carry zis outside!’

  Which Judith did, at the double.

  ‘To my friend!’ said Rap more normally, splendid in his whites and tall chef’s hat, ‘I propose a toast!’

  Mister Boots sipped the wine, a rare thing.

  He ate the food.

  He laughed.

  ‘Mister Boots laughed!’ said Judith surprised.

  ‘I can cry too,’ he replied.

  ‘Can’t!’ rejoined Judith, mildly outraged.

  ‘No,’ said Mister Boots softly and with an infinite sadness that eluded her. ‘No.’

  Honours continued to come and honorary degrees and boots, plenty of pairs of boots.

  But of all the gifts he received in those last years the one he liked best came along with the person who gave it, family and all. His name was Dorji and he arrived unannounced at Woolstone House.

  ‘Please to tell Mister Boots that Dorji is come from Thimphu, Bhutan, with a gift.’

  ‘Dorji is here!?’ cried Mister Boots with delight. ‘Well then, I must . . .’

  ‘He’s here but so are his family and there are quite a lot of them. In four cars. I will get them.’

  But Boots shook his head.

  ‘I will welcome them at the door, they have come a long way and that is the Bhutanese way.’

  Mister Boots went to greet them and, as it was the end of summer and warm, Dorji made his gift
outside, using the utensils he had brought with him.

  How busy his family and servants were, how colourful. How aromatic the gift he made.

  When he was ready Dorji put what he had made on a tray with a golden goblet, his children scattering petals, sweets and herbs all about.

  ‘First, please, for Mister Boots to give his testimonial of quality and perfection. Then we make more. Long time ago this kind gentleman teach Dorji how to make brew. Dorji said he will one day come to Mister Boots’s home and make brew for him. Here I am, here it is. Enjoy. My chillen will sing and dance!’

  As they sang and danced, with Judith joining in, Mister Boots supped the brew and pronounced it as good as any he had ever tasted.

  ‘That is good testimonial! It is already on the bottle! Look!’

  To their astonishment Dorji produced a bottle of Dorji’s Brew for each of them, on which was a picture of Mister Boots, smiling.

  ‘Now Dorji is rich and famous in Bhutan and northern India but he knows always for Mister Boots that money is not important. What do with it, important. Dorji gives it away with Mister Boots’s name on every wish and dream it makes! Like brew?’

  ‘The best,’ said Mister Boots, ‘the very best.’

  That summer was warm, the autumn beautiful and the harvests across England munificent, better than for years past.

  Down by the Chimes, where the tomatoes were small and ripe and their special scent good in the middle of the day, they sat as a family, remembering. But they lingered now on the rich memories of years just past, of being together.

  Arthur had less energy, Boots was quieter.

  Katherine and Jack were worried by the world, for the East was rising, threatening, and the West seemed to not have the spirit to fight back. For parents with a young child the times were darkening.

  ‘Leadership, that’s the thing,’ Arthur said. ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man, eh, Boots?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  ‘You could make some boots and set off and change the world again,’ said Arthur.

  Boots only shook his old head. The day was good, the sun warm, abundance and darkness were in the air together. The Chimes were quiet and getting quieter.