The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (29 page)

“No,” I replied, honestly enough. “My parents are both dead, a few years back now. I never had any brothers or sisters.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. They must have been very proud of you, though?”

“I think so. I hope so. They were good people, but with me working over here, and them living over there… You know how it is.”

“Can’t say I do, Harry, but I guess I can understand. You from London?”

A good, American question. If in doubt, assume the Brit is a Londoner. “No, further north. Leeds.”

“Can’t say I know it.”

God, but he lied beautifully; it was a masterclass. If I hadn’t been concentrating so hard on my own deceit, I would have stood up and applauded. I shrugged, the half-shrug of the restrained Englishman in no great hurry to talk about difficult things, and he recognised the signal and had the good sense to move swiftly on.

I worked several more jobs for Vincent, on the side.

Trips to odd companies, interviews with potential “investors”. The pattern was clear to see, and with each new venture I allowed myself to sink just a little deeper into his pocket. In many ways the techniques he used to corrupt me were the mirrors of techniques I had used in my previous life to corrupt others: a dinner became a weekend away, a weekend away became a regular meeting at his local health club. We dressed in not-quite-matching white shorts and T-shirts and played squash like the rapidly middle-ageing men society expected us to be, and had coffee with other members of the club after, and talked about news, and politics, and whether cold fusion would be the way forward. The day a group of Lebanese radicals finally unleashed a chemical bomb on Beirut, I sat with Vincent in the recreation room of the health club and watched journalists in gas masks hiding behind their armoured trucks as the living and the dying crawled out of the smoke-stained killing ground of the city, and I knew we had done this, we had unleashed this technology on the world, and felt the cold hand of
inevitability on my back. In 1975 I bought my first mobile phone, and by 1977 was writing articles on telephone scams, computer hacking, fraudulent emails and the corruption of the modern media. The world was moving forward too fast. My time with Vincent offered an idyllic retreat from it all, as he invited me to attend parties at his grand mansion in the heart of Maine, away from the chaos and the rapidly rising body count. He never mentioned his research, his work, and I never enquired.

His father, the mysterious source of his wealth, turned out to be a real individual who had died in 1942, a hero in the Pacific war. His grave was conveniently unmarked and untraceable, but I had little doubt, as I trawled quietly through Vincent’s records, that even if there was a body to examine, it would show about as much genetic connection to Vincent as my DNA did to the mysterious Mr and Mrs August of Leeds. It would take more–much more–to spin Vincent’s point of origin out of him.

In 1978, the year the Berlin Wall fell and the first attempt at the Channel Tunnel caused a cave-in beneath the sea which killed twelve men and briefly stalled European attempts at economic recovery following the bursting of the dot.com bubble, I was invited, as I had now grown accustomed to being, to another party at Vincent’s mansion. The invitation, trimmed with gold, was clearly to a large social affair, but large social affairs served my purposes, for the repetition and volume of the lies Vincent was forced to tell at such gatherings only made it easier to detect the anomalies in his reporting. Nothing was said as to the occasion, but a handwritten note at the bottom of my card told me to “
Hang on to your pyjamas!
”

He enjoyed toying with me, and, in my way, I enjoyed being toyed with. The years had led him to relax a little in my presence, perhaps to believe that I was as harmless as I claimed–Harry August, limited memory, dubious reputation–and hell, but he knew how to hold a party.

I arrived in the evening down the familiar gravel drive to the familiar old grand red-brick mansion which he called his “April–May, August–October” home, finding these the
seasons when Maine was at its most pleasing. Where he spent November–March and June–July was anyone’s guess, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he wore a radiation badge while there. If a Geiger-Müller counter could have done anything more than confirm my suspicions, I would have packed one beneath my dinner jacket, but as it was I needed nothing more than my own awareness of the same to let me conclude that Vincent was still working on the quantum mirror. I wondered how far ahead he’d come.

Five lives, Harry. Five more lives and I think we’ll have it!

Those words had been spoken to me two lives since. Was he still on schedule?

“Harry!” He greeted me at the door, embracing me with a Frenchman’s charm and a Yankee’s enthusiasm. “You’re in the pink room–you are staying, aren’t you?”

“Your invite said to hang on to my pyjamas, which I could only assume was an invitation for the weekend.”

“Marvellous! Come inside, the other guests are already beginning to arrive. I apologise if I have to talk to them, you know how it is–contacts contacts contacts.”

The pink room in question was a small room in a tower projecting from one side of the building designed by an architect who’d decided that medieval was modern. It had its own tiny toilet and shower, and a picture on one wall showing a much younger Vincent proudly holding aloft the largest hunting rifle I’d ever seen, one foot on the carcass of a tiger. It had taken me a solid twenty minutes of analysis to determine that the image was in fact a fake, like so many images of Vincent sprawled around the house.

The chatter was indeed rising from downstairs, and as the sun settled below the horizon, the lawn beneath my room was striped with bright beams of tungsten light spilling out of the windows of every room of the house. A band struck up country tunes of a kind designed to rouse the soul, without necessarily inducing embarrassing deviations towards a “Yee-hah!” in a dignified environment. I donned my suit and headed downstairs.

There were some familiar faces in the crowd, men and women I’d been gradually introduced to over the years of my acquaintance with Vincent–Simon Ransome to all and sundry assembled. There were cordial handshakes and enquiries about mutual contacts, friends, family and, as increasingly began to happen at this time of life, health.

“God, I’ve taken to measuring my blood pressure at home–I go to the doctor and it just soars through the roof!”

“I’ve been told to watch my sugar.”

“I’ve been warned to watch the fat!”

“Cholesterol, cholesterol, how I dream of a little more cholesterol in my life.”

A few more years, I reflected, and my body would begin its usual course of shutting down from the bone marrow out. A few more years, and if I wasn’t any closer to learning the secrets of Vincent Rankis, would this life count as a waste?

A sudden tinkling of silver on glass and a burst of polite applause, and there was Vincent, standing by the now-silent band, drink raised and face smiling proudly upon all assembled.

“Ladies and gentlemen–” the beginning of a speech, God how I hated speeches “–thank you all for coming here today. I’m sure you’re wondering why…”

In my time I’ve attended eighty-seven weddings, seventy-nine funerals, twenty-nine bar mitzvahs, eleven bat mitzvahs, twenty-three confirmations, thirty-two baptisms, eight divorce tribunals as a witness for one side or another, thirteen divorce tribunals as a mutual friend to cry on, seven hundred and eighty-four birthday parties of which one hundred and eleven had involved a stripper, twelve of them involving, in fact, the same stripper, one hundred and three anniversary parties and seven remarriages after relationship difficulties, and of these I could think of maybe only fourteen speeches that were even remotely, even passably…

“… and so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the bride to be.”

I applauded because everyone else did, on automatic, and looked up to behold the linear mortal who Vincent had decided to occupy himself with this time. Would she be a Frances, chosen
to make an unseen Hugh jealous while playing tennis on the lawn? Or Leticia, perhaps, pretty but vacant; perhaps a Mei, adding that air of respectability as he went about his nefarious deeds, or a Lizzy, a companion in dark hours, a figure who was nine parts being there to only one part chemistry. She stepped to the front of the room, a woman with a hint of grey streaking the edge of her hair, dressed in a mermaid dress the colour of clotted cream, and she was

Jenny.

My Jenny.

Memory, moving too fast to process.

My Jenny, who I had loved and married, a surgeon in Glasgow at a time when women simply didn’t do that, especially not there. I had loved her and told her everything, and it had been too much. My Jenny, who I never once blamed for the fate that befell me, for Franklin Phearson and my death on the floor of his house, femoral artery slashed and a smile on my face. My Jenny, to whom in another life I had whispered, “Run away with me,” and she’d smiled and looked tempted, though she could probably not explain why.

My Jenny, and I had told Vincent about her. Back in Pietrok-112, a memory, a night playing cards, a little drunk on vodka, and he’d said…

“Damn it, Harry, I may not agree with the Cronus Club, but I do believe it’s only healthy for a man to indulge himself sometimes.”

Memory, fast.

I’d been looking at Anna, the laboratory technician whose calibrations were fine unto the sixth sig fig, who smiled at me from over the top of her glasses and didn’t realise that this was a cliché which just made it all the more delightful. Vincent slapping my shoulder, muttering, “Christ, Harry, whoever said genius had to be tortured? Go for it, I say.”

I’d hemmed and hummed, worried about the politics of it, about the things people would say, and we’d played cards that night and drunk vodka as Vincent derided my concerns as being barely
worthy of a seventeen-year-old boy, let alone a man well into his twelfth, long life.

“You must have had some girls in your time, hey, Harry?”

“I’ve always been a little too preoccupied for true love–I’m sure you know how it is.”

“Nonsense,” he retorted, throwing his fist onto the table hard enough to make our cards bounce across the surface. “Even though I believe with the absolute conviction of my soul that this project, that the quantum mirror, is the greatest quest man can possibly undertake, to see the universe with the eyes of the creator, to answer the greatest questions posed by man; yet I also believe that single-minded dedication to just one thing, without rest, respite or distraction, is only conducive to migraines, not productivity. I have no doubt that the bureaucrats of this place had some statistic on it–a 15 per cent increase, say, in productivity if, every eight hours, a worker is allowed another half-hour for rest. Does the 15 per cent increase outweigh the loss of time spent away from the workplace? Absolutely.”

“You suggest… therapeutic sex?”

“I suggest therapeutic companionship. I suggest, as you yourself have so often pointed out, that even the greatest minds cannot spend every second analysing the mysteries of the universe, but must, indeed
must
also spend some time of every day wondering why the toilet is so cold, the shampoo so poor and canteen cabbage so lumpy. I do not expect my scientists to be monks, Harry, least of all you!”

“Do you have someone?” I asked. “I haven’t noticed…”

He dismissed the enquiry with a flick of the wrist. “I didn’t say that untoward, unpleasant relationships improve productivity–quite the opposite, in fact. I will not waste my time on pursuing some futile sexual object just because I feel like a little chemical stimulation! However, when I meet someone who I regard as…”

“The half-hour rest in your eight-hour day?”

“Quite so. You will be made aware of it.”

“Have you been married?” I asked. There was no great intent
to my question, merely curiosity as I threw down my cards, a polite discussion of friendly history.

“Once or twice,” he admitted, “when there seemed to be a suitable candidate available. Once, in my very first life, there was a woman who I thought… But retrospect is a marvellous thing, and upon my death I discovered I could live perfectly well without her. Occasionally I acquire someone for companionship. Old age can be tedious without a little loyalty. What about yourself?”

“Something similar,” I admitted. “Like you, I find that being alone… Its drawbacks outweigh its benefits, particularly in later life. It seems that, even when aware of the futility of the lie, the hollowness of the relationship, if hollow is what it indeed is, the urge to be together, with someone… is ingrained deeper than I had possibly imagined.”

And, without knowing why, I had told him about Jenny.

Jenny.

Naïve to say love of my life.

Love of a life, perhaps.

Foolish to suppose affection could last so long.

A delusion, formed from so many years of lying, of deceit, of being apart from all things because there is no choice. Apart from the Cronus Club for fear of being exposed, apart from Vincent for fear he would deduce my truths, apart from those who lived and those who died and remembered nothing of the same, apart from my family, adopted and true, apart from a world whose passage I could already describe, apart from…

Everything.

This racing of my heart.

This stopping of my breath.

This flushing in my cheek.

It is not love.

It is delusion.

Jenny.

Holding Vincent’s hand.

With her other she reaches out and slips the glass from between
his fingers, placing it on the black surface of the grand piano. This done, her fingers return again to the back of his neck, run through the thin hairs above his collar. She is almost the same height as him, but stands a little on tiptoe anyway, her weight pushing him back. She kisses him, and he kisses back, deep and long and passionate, and the room applauds and as they part his eyes flicker to me.

A second.

Just a second.

What did he see?

I applaud too.