Out of the Sun (33 page)

Death, he understood in the aftermath of his own son's, was not merely extinction, but erasure. The broken pillars still stood, the hollow helmets still echoed. But the thousands of names and the thousands of people they had once been vanished, sooner or later, beneath the lichen of utter forgetfulness. The memorials outlasted the memories. They alone remained, in this petrified forest of cere monied mortality.

He ground out the cigarette beneath his heel on a lower step and tackled the complicated task lighting another had become on account of a broken thumb. As he did so, he thought fondly of the day he could throw away the lighter he had recently bought and revert to honest-to-goodness matches.

A figure, he noticed, had appeared far off along the central avenue that led from the chapel towards the east gate. A sightseer, he surmised, for there were always more sightseers than mourners,

though few of either on days as cold as this. Strangely, however, this one did not seem to be interested in the memorials lining the path. He or she kept up a steady pace in Harry's direction, looking neither to right nor left and becoming, somewhere near John St. John Long's Grecian monument, identifiably female. She was a slim slightly built woman dressed in jeans and a dark coat with a hood, carrying a bag of some kind over her shoulder. By the time she had passed George Birkbeck's mausoleum, Harry knew who she was.

"Hi, Harry," said Donna as she reached the foot of the steps. "Good to see you." She gave him a faltering smile that was somehow the more moving because of its uncertainty. "Mind if I join you?"

"Be my guest."

"Your landlady told me where to find you." She climbed to where he was and sat down beside him. "She said you'd been spending quite a lot of time here lately."

"Well, none of the residents object to Greek tobacco, you see. Can't say that of many places these days."

"Don't joke about it." She squeezed his arm through the sleeve of his coat. "I know what you must be feeling."

"But that's the point, Donna. A joke is what I feel. Or the butt of one. I plod around here trying to see the funny side of it. But laughter seems in short supply. Plenty of weeping angels. But not a grinning one to be found."

"I came as soon as I could."

"But not sooner than was safe, I hope."

"Haven't you read about it in the papers?"

"Mrs. 'I said there was something. But I ... couldn't seem to face the chapter and verse. What have they done? Turned the story into a major theatrical production with Lazenby as the villain of the piece and a discreditable bit-part for David?"

"Something like that. The Washington Post went for it in a big way. Now all the media have joined in. Globescope's closed its doors and Lazenby's gone into hiding. Pretty ironic, given that we've just come out of hiding."

"You're sure he won't try anything?"

"He'd be crazy to. I mean, Newsweek are assassinating him in print, film crews are besieging his house, Globescope's clients are taking out law suits against him and his senior staff are probably trying to set up book deals to compensate for the redundancy money they won't be getting, but it's all so much less excruciating than he deserves. Criminally, he's fireproof. None of the deaths fall under US jurisdiction and I doubt the British, French, Canadian and Danish authorities have the basis of a case between them, let alone adequate grounds for extradition. If Lazenby sits tight and keeps his hands clean, he can't be touched. And by the same token .. ."

"You can't be touched either."

"Exactly."

"I'm glad my efforts achieved that much, Donna. Really."

"We wouldn't have got out of this without you, Harry. You know that, don't you?"

"Well, you wouldn't have got into it either, would you? Ultimately."

"You can't take responsibility for David's actions. He was his own man."

"But what sort of man would he have become if I'd raised him as my son, eh? That's the real question. And the answer? I can't help wondering. Dead and disgraced at thirty-three? I don't think so. I'd like not to think so, anyway."

"I reckon you're probably right. He would have been better for having you as his father."

"Kind of you to say so."

"I happen to believe it. David had so many gifts so early he was blind to his own fallibility."

"Well, I could certainly have taught him about that." He held up his plastered hand. "I've never made much of a fist of anything, have

I?"

That's garbage. You saved me, Harry. Makepeace and Rawnsley too. We owe you our lives. As for David .. . God, I'm sorry they let him die, even though I don't suppose Sandoval could have done much for him. Talking of whom, Iris didn't seem to know anything about him. How come you didn't mention him to her?"

There didn't seem much point."

"So you went easy on her, despite her broken promise. See what I mean? Not such a bad example to set. I tried to explain how grateful we all are to you, but I'm not sure she took much of it in. The publicity's hit her hard. It's one hell of an obituary. What with that and Ken Hewitt for a husband, her future must look pretty bleak. But I gather she's put a stop to your prosecution for assault, so she evidently realizes you're not to blame for what's happened."

"Really? I assumed Ken had withdrawn his complaint for fear of what I might say in court. But you're probably right. Iris isn't a malicious woman. In some ways, I wish she were. Then I might feel less sorry for her."

"Not to mention yourself?"

"Ah, self-pity. That's your diagnosis, is it?"

"You tell me. David's dead. That's a fact. He's dead, but not for the want of trying on your part. That's a fact too. There's plenty to regret, but nothing to be ashamed of. You don't seem to realize what an altogether remarkable man you are. I didn't go to bed with you just because you happened to be there at the time, you know."

Harry half-smiled and ran the fingertips of his right hand down her cheek, remembering as he did so the unbearable softness of her flesh. If only it were all as simple as what had happened that night. If only the ghost of his dead son and her abandoned lover did not stand between them, along with the small matter of more years than he cared to count. Then almost anything would seem possible. But to pretend such things could be set aside was the first step along a path leading to greater desolation than he already felt. He had pursued one fantasy in vain. He knew better than to chase another.

"What are you going to do, Harry?"

"Oh, this and that. The daily round. You know. Get on with life."

"Is sitting here in this mouldering necropolis what you call getting on with life?"

"I suppose so. Well, these people are as real as anyone else in this city, aren't they? Or they were. And since time is just a dimension like any other, that means they still are, doesn't it? Time is the only thing separating us. Maybe if I sit here long enough ... it won't."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"I know quite a lot about some of them," Harry went on, undaunted. "See that marble sarcophagus down there on the right?"

"Yes. What about it?"

"It's the tomb of Princess Sophia, daughter of George the Third. She had the sort of repressed royal upbringing you'd expect, then fell in love with a court equerry, General Garth. Got pregnant the only time they slept together. Gave birth in secret. Never told her father. Never lived with Garth. The son turned out a worthless scrounger. She went blind in old age and lived as a solitary recluse. Died nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. But nothing changes in human nature, does it? There are plenty of Garths in this world.

In a way, you're sitting next to one. Perhaps he got his comeuppance too. The guidebook doesn't say."

"For God's sake, Harry '

"Don't worry. They say things get easier to bear. With time."

"I'd like to help."

"You can." He swivelled round on the step to look at her. "Go home, Donna. Get on with your life. Start enjoying it again. Sign yourself up for a million-dollar book deal. Globescope, the full story. Should be a bestseller. Might even change the future. There's more chance of changing that than the past."

"But what about the past?"

"Forget it. It's over."

"This isn't the Harry I met in Chicago talking."

"No. Because I'm not the Harry you met in Chicago. Or the Harry who was happily frittering away his life just six weeks ago, unaware he had a son lying comatose in hospital."

"So what's Harry now?"

"A man with his eyes open. Looking into a mirror. And not much liking the view."

"Well I'm looking over your shoulder. And I don't reckon the view's so bad."

Harry managed a rueful grin. "Thanks."

"When all this is over .. . why don't you fly out to California .. . and stay a while?"

That's an invitation you might come to regret."

"I don't think so. What's the answer?"

The answer's maybe. You mightn't think it was such a good idea if it came to the point." He leant over and kissed her gently on the cheek. "Let's wait and see."

Harry walked Donna to Kensal Green station and waited with her on the southbound platform. She was heading for Heathrow and a flight to Copenhagen. Margrethe Hammelgaard was owed an explanation. Perhaps by Harry most of all. But he was happy to leave such matters to Donna. He had not even contacted Athene Tilson, as he had promised to do. What she had made of the affair he could not summon the energy to contemplate. The same applied to every other ramification of the Globescope scandal. His part in its exposure had left him drained and directionless, aware of little save the mockery David's death had made of his grand pretensions. He knew he had succumbed to self-pity. But he also knew that was preferable to accepting the pity of others. When he kissed

Donna goodbye, saw the doors slide shut behind her and watched the train accelerate out of the station, he was certain he would never take up her invitation. If he looked in the mirror now, there would be no-one smiling over his shoulder. It was not as he would have wanted. But it was as he had chosen.

He walked slowly out of the station and stopped by the entrance. Foxglove Road lay to the right, the cemetery straight ahead, the Stonemasons' Arms to the left. After a lengthy delay for the lighting of another cigarette, he turned left, quickening his pace as he went.

FIFTY-FOUR

December had always been Harry's mois noir. Dark, dreary and dominated by the familic frenzy of Christmas, it contained all the elements of Englishness he most hated. He had often suspected that the disruption of normality it entailed was a conspiracy to turn contented loners such as himself into suicidal depressives. His usual policy was to ignore it as far as humanly possible.

This December was different, however. It needed no conspiracy to lower his spirits. With no job to distract him, no responsibilities to discharge and no future worth looking forward to, he sank with little resistance into general despondency and occasional despair. The media hounding of Byron Lazenby largely passed him by. He glimpsed a harassed-looking photograph of him on a cover of Time, with the caption A PREDICTION TO DIE FOR: Globescope's Self-Destruct Message for the Millennium. And he was aware, because Mrs. Tandy told him, that the Fleet Street Sundays were delving gleefully into the affair, even to the extent of door-stepping Iris in Wilmslow. But she was saying little. And absolutely nothing about her late son's natural father. So Harry was safe from the news-hounds, if not from the black dog of hopelessness.

The creature was still on his trail when Christmas arrived with all its goodwill-laden inevitability. Mrs. Tandy departed, as was her wont, for a ten-day sojourn with her niece in learning ton Harry customarily spent the holiday with his mother in Swindon and could think of no acceptable reason to make this year an exception. He would have preferred to pass the festivities in glum solitude at Kensal Green, but to explain such a preference to his mother was quite simply unthinkable, so to 37 Falmouth Street, Swindon, the house he had been born in and sometimes feared he might die in, he obediently travelled on Christmas Eve.

It was unclear whether his mother noticed any deterioration in his appearance or state of mind. The plaster having recently been removed from his right hand, Harry was spared the need to explain away a broken thumb. He maintained a jovial front to the best of his ability, retreating to the Glue Pot Inn even more eagerly than usual, but no more frequently than she was used to. Globescope and the name David John Yenning meant nothing to her. And Harry was determined they never would. A scapegrace son was only what she had long known she had. But a dead grandson was a trick she did not deserve to have life play on her.

Three days after Christmas, Harry was soaking gently at the bar of the Glue Pot, trying to achieve the level of mild intoxication he deemed necessary for an afternoon of his mother's undiluted company, when just about the last person he ever expected to see on the premises walked through the door.

"Zohra! This is .. ."

"A surprise?"

"Yes. But a pleasant one, believe me." It was true. Zohra, who he thought of as a friend rather than the wife a legal fiction declared her to be, was looking not merely well but radiant. She had changed her hairstyle, swapped her glasses for contact lenses and acquired a more adventurous wardrobe since moving to Newcastle. The plum-coloured coat and matching Tudor hat she was wearing were outrageously elegant for their present surroundings. But the confidence to wear them was what stood out. She was no longer the insecure young woman Harry had rescued from deportation. She had gained a belief in herself along with a British passport. And it showed. "What, er, brings you to Swindon?"

"You do, Harry. Would you like to come out to tea with me? There's something we need to discuss."

Tea was taken beside a roaring fire in the cosy surroundings of the Castle and Ball Hotel, Marlborough. The smart little car Zohra drove there in was a further surprise to Harry. Clearly, life was treating her rather better than him. But he had never been prone to envy. He felt pleased for her. Doubly so because of the help he had once given her. It was much-needed proof that at least some things he did worked out for the best.