Here Be Monsters (33 page)

Elizabeth cracked. ‘And if everything isn’t all right?’

‘Long-short-long … if I’m lucky.’ He signalled and slowed to leave the main road. ‘Dead silence if I’m not. Okay?’

Elizabeth craned her neck to try to take in the terrain of St Servan-les-Ruines, but too late, because of listening to Peter Richardson: the huddle of the village was already lost behind a screen of trees, and she had lost the shape of everything. But it was still so peaceful that the whole charade was utterly unreal, anyway.

‘Here we go, then,’ said Richardson, in a voice so suddenly-serious, like a fighter pilot making his low-level run, that she was jolted from unreality to reality.

It was larger than it had seemed, on that first uninformed look, when it had been just another village: there was a street, and another street, with shops in it—even a shop with dresses in it, which no English village would ever have possessed; but then no English village she knew of still had a baker’s shop—a butcher’s shop—never mind a two-star
auberge —

The Fiat swung sharply, through 180 degrees, under a cliff of ancient stonework, towards a tiny fortified gateway, under a cascade of flowers which reminded her insanely of old Mr Willis’s cottage far away in soft green England, which was so near in time, but so desperately and helplessly far away in miles.

‘Where are the ruins?’ She heard her own voice almost with surprise, it was so sharp and confident.

‘What ruins?’ Richardson slowed to negotiate the gateway.

‘St
Servan-les-Ruines?
’

‘Search me.’ He changed gear once he was through. ‘It all looks fairly ruined to me. I never thought to ask.’

Just as unexpectedly as they had arrived in the village, they were unexpectedly out of it again, into an area of stunted old oaks and scrubby vegetation, but with an equally sudden view of a fertile and well-cultivated valley below, bathed in hot sunshine.

Yet not quite out of it after all, maybe: the narrow road fell gently towards a final huddle of houses perched on a flat shelf in the hillside amid a cluster of shade trees.

‘Prepare to abandon ship,’ said Richardson. ‘Dale’s people will have their eye on you from up there.’ He pointed up the hillside, to a modern house almost on the crest of the ridge, not unattractive, but sited with fine (and presumably French) disregard for an otherwise unspoilt landscape. ‘He was lucky to pick that up, it overlooks the old dog’s kennel perfectly … They’re supposed to be a honeymoon couple. But I won’t tell you any more, just in case the worst comes to the worst.’ He twisted towards Elizabeth as he slowed down. ‘Honeymoon couples inspire a certain delicacy even in the worst and most nosey of people, Andy Dale reckoned, Miss Loftus. And they keep themselves to themselves.’

Where had she heard that before, just recently—?

‘Out,’ said Richardson, just as she remembered. And the remembrance of Haddock Thomas and his bride here all those years ago, and in the very year which mattered, was a cold and desolate thought, quite unwarmed by its irony.

But Audley was already out of the car, and had skipped round to open her door with uncharacteristic good manners.

‘Good luck—‘ Richardson’s glasses were black in the glare ‘—to us all, Miss Loftus.’

The house was very old, and not very large though unnaturally high for its size, but sturdily restored up to the iron water-spouts under its pantile roof.

The car accelerated away, leaving Audley standing somewhat irresolute before the choice of a front door and the wrought-iron gate in a shoulder-high garden wall. Then he resolved his irresolution simply by peering over the wall on tip-toe, and choosing the gate for her.

There was a little shady garden, under a pergola of some sort of vine, with all the light and colour concentrated on the edge of a terrace, where a man in a panama hat sat amidst a blaze of red flowers and scatter of books and newspaper pages, with a glass in his hand and a puff of blue-grey tobacco smoke above him.

But the gate had squeaked, and the man changed the picture as it fixed itself, turning towards her.

‘Dr Thomas?’

‘Hullo there—?’

Slow, gravelly voice, the sound filtered through many years and many bottles. But years of what else? wondered Elizabeth: just many years of
hie, haec, hoc
, and Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
? Or many years of
treason
?

She felt Audley’s large presence at her back, pushing her forward, overawing her from behind even in the shadow. And in that instant she steeled herself against disappointment. For, whatever he was, and whatever he had been, Haddock Thomas could only be an anti-climax in the flesh, innocent or guilty.

‘Hullo there?’ He peered towards them over his spectacles, which had slipped far down his nose.

Elizabeth advanced. Just for this brief moment she might be as beautiful as Helen of Troy for all he knew, and that wouldn’t do at all.

‘Dr Thomas?’ She whipped off her dark glasses and entered a shaft of sunlight which cut through the canopy above.

‘Yes.’ He placed his glass carefully on the table beside him, rose to his feet, and finally removed his panama. ‘Once upon a time, anyway.’

The light had half-blinded her for an instant, but her next step took her into shadow again.

Nothing very special, indeed: neither horns nor halo, neither Caliban nor Hyperion in retirement. Just another old man.

‘Forgive me, Dr Thomas.’ In that moment of half-blindness she had missed his first reaction to her. Now she saw only that he wanted to recognize her, from his gallery of wives and sisters of long ago, but couldn’t do so. ‘Elizabeth Loftus, Dr Thomas.’ Just another old man: younger than old Mr Willis, but much taller and thinner, and sun-browned (sun-browned with perhaps a hint of dear Major Birkenshawe’s whisky-flush, maybe), leathery-tanned by age and sun and alcohol. ‘We haven’t met.’

‘Until now.’ He smiled the correction at her, and pushed his spectacles up his nose with his index finger. And then smiled again, without embarrassment at what was in sharp focus at last.

‘But
we
have met,’ said Audley from behind. ‘Back in the deeps of time, Haddock.’ Haddock Thomas stared past her, frowning slightly, but only with the effort of memory, with no outward hint of any emotion. Yet then, if he wasn’t what he had seemed all these years, he would be good, thought Elizabeth bleakly. Too good, in fact.

‘Don’t tell me, now.’ For the first time there was the very slightest hint of Welshness beneath the gravel. ‘My eyes are not what they were—‘ The eyes, faded china-blue, came back to Elizabeth ‘—too much staring into the sun, you see, Elizabeth Loftus. Long ago it was a matter of life-or-death to look into it—“The Hun in the Sun” behind you was very likely to be the last thing you ever saw, with no need to worry about old age. But from this terrace I have watched the sun over too many cloudless days, and the moon rise over starlit nights of dreams—Axel Munthe was right, he knew the price of sinning. But, of course, he also knew that the price was worth paying, for the sin. And that’s one of the world’s troubles today: the crass belief that we have a right to something for nothing. When, in fact, we have no
rights
at all—and even
nothing
is expensive. Indeed,
nothing
may prove to be the most expensive commodity of all -even more costly than the sun itself.’

‘He was always like this, Elizabeth,’ said Audley. ‘Or, perhaps not quite so philosophically pompous when he was younger. But quite bad enough, as I remember.’

Haddock Thomas continued to look at her. ‘It’s the voice, you see, Miss Loftus—Mrs Loftus—?’

‘Miss, Dr Thomas.’
She mustn
’
t like him: they had all succumbed to him
—
his pupils, his equals, even his interrogator and the friend whose girl he had taken
—
they had all liked him
.

‘Miss Loftus. The eye can be a great deceiver. Not merely in the present—not merely the picture which lies, or the quickness of the conjuror’s hand—it deceives memory too.
Smell
is much better, perhaps best of all, so long as it lasts. But
sound
now … “a
tinkling piano in the next apartment
”
and the cry of John Peel’s hounds, and the leather on the willow … ’ He placed his cigar on an ash-tray beside his glass and then offered her his hand. ‘And now I believe they’ve proved that every voice has its print, as unique as every finger, Miss Loftus.’

Audley loomed in the corner of her vision, in full sunlight.

‘And David Audley?’ He relinquished her hand and offered it to Audley. ‘”Dr Audley, I presume?” should I say?’

Audley said nothing for a moment, as the sound of a car, close but invisible, rose from below the terrace wall.

Beep-baaarp-beep!

‘Haddock.’ The two men measured each other for changes. ‘It’s been a long time. But you look well.’

‘A long time, indeed. So do you. still doing the same job? Much higher up, though?’

‘The same job, Haddock,’ said Audley gently. ‘I follow my destiny.’

‘Still on The Wall?’ Haddock Thomas looked at Elizabeth. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Loftus. An old joke—a very old joke, indeed.’

She mustn’t let them patronize her. ‘But they say the old jokes are the best ones, Dr Thomas. May I share it?’

‘I don’t know that you will find it very amusing.’

‘An RAF joke?’ She watched him. ‘Or a Civil Service joke, perhaps? Or a schoolboy joke? Give me a clue.’

He measured her with a look. Actually, he had measured her already, but with an eye only on bust and waist, hip and leg, quite unashamedly. But this time the measurement was a different one. ‘It is a Kipling joke, Miss Loftus. A
Rudyard
Kipling joke.’ The Welsh was more pronounced. ‘Are you a reader of the great mart’s works?’

She dared not look at Audley. Paul always made outrageous fun of his obsessive weakness for Kipling, deliberately quoting back to him. But somehow she didn’t think this was that kind of joke. ‘I read him when I was a child, Dr Thomas.’

‘But not afterwards? A pity! Much of his best work is for grown-ups. But then the English have a blind spot there. Which is all part of their guilty misapprehension of their history, as well as of him. But no matter, eh?’ He was looking at Audley now. ‘I told him—oh, it must have been almost before you were born, I told him—that he would never gain preferment in his line of business … Or, that when it was offered to him, he would not want it—like Kipling’s Roman centurion … who was not a Roman at all, of course, for he had never seen Rome, nor known the heyday of Rome, but only lived with his legends and his illusions. But there! I told him he would gain no preferment, and receive no thanks, if he chose to serve on The Wall—the
Great
Wall—the wall which the Emperor Hadrian caused to be built, to keep out the dreadful barbarians, when he realized that the game couldn’t be won.’ He smiled. “The same emperor, my dear, who knew how small and defenseless and ephemeral was his soul—
“Animula vagula blandula, hospes comes-que corpora”
… But he would have none of it, for he knew the Roman’s reply: “
I follow my destiny
”
, he said. And off he went!’

‘
Harumph
!’ grunted Audley. ‘One of the things you must understand about the Welsh, Elizabeth, is that they are greater liars than rugger players. For this is the advice I gave
him
, not the advice he gave me.’

‘Is that so?’ Haddock Thomas glanced at Audley for a second. ‘Well, let’s say that we gave each other the same advice, then? And I took his advice—but he did not take mine, eh?’

Given half a chance they would go on sparring like this forever, thought Elizabeth. But if Peter Richardson was right they did not have forever left.

‘You had a visitor last week, Dr Thomas. An elderly American.’ She tried in vain to match Audley’s casual tone. ‘Can you tell us about him?’

Haddock Thomas measured her again as he smoothed his thinning hair and replaced his panama.Then he shook a little brass bell which had been hidden on the table and gestured Elizabeth to an empty chair. ‘Yes … yes, I wondered about that.’ He smiled at her again. ‘After what David’s said, I mustn’t be a Welsh liar, must I?’

She sat down. And she caught him admiring her legs as she crossed them carefully, the way she had been taught to do. ‘I beg your pardon—?’

He gestured towards Audley. ‘Get a chair, David … It wasn’t really just his voice, Miss Loftus: he’s been in the back of my mind for a week or so … when I can’t honestly remember recalling him these last ten—or even twenty—years or more.’ He watched Audley retrieve another chair from the shadows under the vines. ‘But that’s not true, either … It’s more like never
quite
forgotten, but never
quite
remembered.’ He cocked his head at her. ‘One day you will discover how very protective memory is, my dear: it tries to dignify us as well as soothing our pain, so that we can believe that we are the masters of our fate … at least, if we are satisfied with the outcome, anyway—eh?’ Once again he was watching. ‘Free will is always better than predestination, don’t you think?’

He was pushing her out of her depth, making her wonder how she had got here, to St Servan-les-Ruines, after all those years with Father.

‘The American reminded you of David?’ The memory of Father steeled her to the more important business in hand. ‘Major Parker?’

‘Major Parker—‘ For one fraction-of-a-second he looked clear through her ‘—Major Parker!’

‘Who saved your life?’

‘Is that the story now?’ Haddock Thomas looked past her. ‘Ah, Madame Sophie!’

A minuscule Frenchwoman deposited two glasses and another bottle on the table, swept away the half-full bottle with a hiss of disapproval, and was gone before Elizabeth could react.

Haddock Thomas shrugged at Elizabeth. ‘You didn’t knock at the front door, so she hasn’t looked you over—so she disapproves of you.’

‘But she’ll finish the bottle herself, nevertheless?’ said Audley.