The Kings of Eternity (6 page)

He saw the fat Englishman before he actually noticed him; the man was an awkward blur of beige in the periphery of his vision, somehow spoiling the composition of the exhibition like a fly trapped in the tesserae of a kaleidoscope.

He caught another glance of the man, and at that second his brain registered his presence and alerted him.

Langham felt at once angry at the man and annoyed at himself for feeling this unwarranted anger. The man was dogging his steps, and he had no right to invade this private showing. He would have to ask Caroline if she had invited him.

Worse, the creep was not taking much notice of the paintings, but talking to people: no harm in that, except that he was less talking to them than questioning them. He was clutching a spiral-bound note-book and taking down what they said in the rapid shorthand of a seasoned reporter.

The man did not make the mistake of glancing at Langham - but the couple he was interviewing, with no need for duplicity, looked across at him and nodded at something the Englishman was saying. Langham knew the couple: they owned the hotel in town where he had stayed on arriving on the island. The bastard was scraping the bottom of the barrel for copy about the famous writer. Let him try!

The Englishman moved on, introducing himself and engaging locals in conversation. His Greek seemed to be up to the task.

Langham manoeuvred himself through the crowd and caught the eye of Alexis, the hotelier.

“Mr Langham,” Alexis said, beaming, “what brings you out?”

“I know the artist,” Langham said shortly. “What was the Englishman asking about me?”

“Oh, to be famous! He said he was writing a book about you, a - what do they call them? A biographical book?”

“A biography? About me?”

“That’s what he said, Mr Langham. He also said that you knew about it.”

“Well, the bastard was lying. Excuse my English. I’ve authorised nothing of the kind.”

Alexis touched his arm. “Don’t worry, Mr Langham, we reported no scandal or gossip about you!”

“Much appreciated. Excuse me, I must see about this...”

He left Alexis with a nod, then looked across to where he’d last seen the journalist. He turned in a circle, but the Englishman seemed to have vanished into thin air. He hurried to the exit and pushed through the double doors. A gaggle of children obscured his view of the square, and by the time he pushed through them the fat Englishman was squeezing himself into a tiny taxi - like a genie being sucked back into a magic lamp. Langham hurried down the steps, but the taxi was accelerating with its load away from the square.

He stood in the mellowing evening sunlight and fumed.

“Daniel? What’s the...? Is something wrong?”

It was Caroline, hurrying down the steps and across the cobbles towards him.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Daniel? Don’t tell me” - she was smiling - “has someone tried to steal a painting?”

He shook his head. “No, someone is trying to steal my life.”

She touched his arm and peered at him. “You’re shaking. Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine. No thanks to...”

“Look, let’s go and get that drink, and then you can tell me all about it.”

She linked arms with him and they walked across the square to the harbour. “I’m sorry,” he was saying. “I noticed this fellow loitering around the village a week ago.”

“What fellow?”

“From time to time I’ve had journalists come and try to interview me. They know I don’t give interviews, but that doesn’t seem to stop them.”

They came to the waterfront and a café bar called, appropriately enough,
The Oasis
. “Inside, or out here?” Caroline asked.

“Ah... why not outside, it’s a beautiful night, and soon the stars will be out.” He smiled. “They always seem to have a calming effect.”

They sat down at a table overlooking the water and ordered drinks, a beer and an orange juice.

From here he could see the entire majestic sweep of the coastline and, in the distance, hazed in the diffuse light of the setting sun, the peninsula on which his villa was a tiny white chalk mark in the olive groves.

All he could think about was the bastard racing away in the taxi; he wouldn’t put it past the man to break into his villa while he was away and rifle though his personal effects for scandalous information.

He was relieved that everything, scandalous or otherwise, was safely locked away.

“So tell me about the journalist,” Caroline said.

He took a long swallow of refreshing beer. “Do you know what he was doing at the exhibition? He had the cheek to go around quizzing the locals about me. It turns out that he isn’t just a journalist, oh no - something far worse.”

She peered at him, mock-shocked. “You mean, there’s something even worse than a journalist?”

“The bastard - I’m sorry - told Alexis that he was my official biographer, and that I’d authorised the book.”

“And did you?”

“What do you think?”

She laughed, reached out and squeezed his arm. “I know, I know. I’m joking!”

“A biographer! Can you imagine what pile of lies a man like that would write about me?”

“A man like what, Daniel? You don’t even know him.”

“A man,” he said patiently, “who would sneak behind my back asking people about me and lying that he was doing it with my permission. That kind of man.”

She was watching him. “I’m seeing a different side to you from the side I saw last week. You struck me as Zen calm, unflappable.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that for years... Look, I hate publicity. I hate the lies they write about you. Modern journalism is shallow and reductionist. Two million people read the
Daily Mail
. Isn’t that a national tragedy?”

She took a long drink of her orange juice, watching him over the miniature parasol. She said, “Do you mind if I ask you why you’ve locked yourself away on the island?”

“I thought I’d explained. I detest publicity. I don’t want fame. Or the meretricious lifestyle that goes with it. I-”

“If you’ll let me finish, Daniel. I was about to say, I understand why you might shun publicity, but why do you shun people as well?”

That brought him up short. He retreated into his beer, wondering how to respond. He fondled the mereth in his pocket, and the gesture calmed him.

At last he said, “I’m a novelist. I need peace and quiet in order to work. I find that company spoils my concentration.”

She leaned forward, almost playfully. “I spot a contradiction. I thought novelists needed company, emotional involvement. Isn’t that the compost in which ideas take root and grow?”

“Very well put. Where did you get that from? Forster’s
Aspects of the Novel
or a gardening manual?”

She pouted, mock-disappointed at him. “You’re avoiding the issue. I can understand you wanting peace and quiet, but to shut yourself away like a monk for ten years, seeing no-one, hardly speaking to anyone...”

“Listen, I’ve had enough involvement in the past to last a lifetime or more. Now I’m writing about it.”

She was shaking her head. “It just seems a little strange.” She paused for a long time, watching him. “I read
Tangier
.”

He thought she had let him off the hook, and was relieved at the change of subject. “What did you think?”

“What’s the back cover quote from the
TLS
? ‘A beautifully written work of art possessing human insight matched only by its artistic integrity.’ I thought it enchanting, deep, moving, unputdownable, all the clichés. I marvelled at the way you made the characters so believable. They live with me still, Daniel. That’s a fantastic achievement.”

He nodded, murmured, “Thanks.”

“That’s what I meant when I said I knew what you were talking about back there. When I read
Tangier
and the
Penang Quartet
, I wanted to have that magical ability to wholly captivate and convince the audience.”

“I think you do it with your paintings.”

She ignored the compliment. “I read somewhere that you based your characters on real people.”

“Don’t all novelists, worth their salt? They’re mainly based on me.”

“What about the female characters?”

She was getting too close to home again. “Some were based on real people. Others were pure invention.”

“The male characters always seem unlucky in love.”

He said, “It’s a device of technique. Unrequited love drives conflict. Happy endings are anathema.”

“Don’t demean your art,” she said. “‘A device of technique’, indeed! Your books are written from the heart, with integrity. You’ve been through what you put your characters through, which is why your books are so convincingly truthful.”

She stopped. He thought that she was about to ask him to tell her about the loves of his life, his losses, and he was thankful that she had the sense, or the compassion, to desist.

She laughed. “Aren’t we getting awfully deep!” she said, and the awkward moment was broken. “What did you think of the exhibition, Daniel? I’d like to talk you through it at some point.”

He was sweating with relief that the interrogation was over, and that he could enjoy this strange woman’s company without fear or threat. “I was actually thinking that myself. I’d like to ask you about one particular painting. But first-” He indicated her empty glass. “Another?”

“If you’re having one.”

“Same again?”

She nodded. He signalled the waiter and ordered the drinks. The sun was going down over the bow of the distant horizon, and the breeze was a delight after the heat of the day.

“
Contemplating the Future
,” he said. “Tell me about it. When, where? What does it mean to you? Or do you think that doesn’t matter? Is what matters the viewer’s interpretation?”

“You’re right. A painting might mean something different to everyone, and what I think about it is no more valid than what anyone else thinks. Tell me, what does it mean to you?”

“It’s an incredibly optimistic piece of work,” he said. “I see three figures facing a beautiful landscape, maybe a desert, and night is bringing out the stars. It’s full of hope for the future.”

She was watching him, twirling the miniature parasol between thumb and forefinger. “So the night, for you, is a symbol of optimism?” she asked.

“Not necessarily,” he said, “but the stars are.” He paused, watching her. “What does it mean to you? Do you see the night, rather than the stars?”

She shook her head. “I’m not telling. Maybe at some time in the future, okay? I’ll tell you then, perhaps.” So much of her conversation was playful, and it delighted him. He wondered, though, at the accuracy of his interpretation. What had she said? That everyone’s individual interpretation was valid? And her own? Was
Contemplating the Future
pessimistic, in her opinion?

She was nipping the brow of her nose, eyes screwed shut. “Damn. I think I’m coming down with a migraine. Exhibitions always bring them on. Do you think you could call a taxi?”

“Of course. Can I get you something?”

“I have pills at home. I should have brought them with me.”

Five minutes later they were riding home. Darkness was falling, and the massed stars were appearing overhead like a benison.

The taxi dropped them at the end of the track, and they were forced to walk the rest of the way over the uneven terrain. He was practised from many such treks back from the village, but she stumbled, stymied by migraine and unfamiliarity. At one point he took her hand to guide her, and it came to him how soft and warm human flesh seemed, after so long without touching any but his own.

Outside her villa, she squeezed his hand farewell. “And remember, Daniel, do call around at some point. Don’t leave all the socialising to me.”

He promised to call one afternoon, and made his way home in a daze.

He fetched a beer from the fridge, sat on the sofa and watched the stars for a long, long time.

They seemed incredibly bright tonight.

Chapter Four

Cranley Grange, February, 1935

Edward Vaughan was a tall, broad man, whose choice of dress ran to rough and ready tweeds, and he was never without a lighted pipe. His hair was grey and swept back in leonine profusion, his face craggy and weathered, fissured like some outcropping open to the depredation of the elements. It was an apt metaphor: although quiet and private, he had let slip, late one night after a succession of double malts had loosened his tongue, that he had known tragedy in his life. He had lost a brother in the Great War, and three years ago his wife had succumbed to cancer.

He was introspective, but amiable: on our first meeting he had praised a short story of mine published by Jasper Carnegie in
The Monthly Scribe
. In company he was thoughtful and somewhat reserved - though his reserve suggested not the suspicion that some taciturn men emanate, but a wealth of quiet understanding of the ways of the world.

He was standing beside his Austin 16 when I hurried along the pavement with my overnight bag, somewhat out of breath.

“Mr Vaughan!” I panted. “Forgive me. Late as ever! The ‘buses-”

He smiled around the stem of his pipe. “What’s five minutes, Jonathon? And please, call me Edward.”

He took my bag and stowed it in the back of the car, and I climbed into the passenger seat beside him. He pulled into the street and proceeded to drive through the city with a quiet attention and thoroughness I came to view as characteristic.

“What are you working on at the moment?” he asked, glancing my way.

I said that I was stalled on the latest novel and he smiled, nodding. “I know the feeling well,” he sympathised.

He puffed his pipe, and soon a pungent fug filled the car. He opened the quarter-light, murmuring apologies, and I breathed freely again.

Vaughan published his first novel in 1925, at the age of forty. It was much publicised at the time as being in the tradition of H.G. Wells - a Scientific Romance set thousands of years into the future of planet Earth. It was an odd choice of subject matter for a beginning novelist to pursue, and a practitioner with less literary skill and intelligence might have failed miserably. The book was an instant success, however, earning the plaudits of the crusty literary establishment for its undoubted stylistic merit and the breadth of its imaginative daring. He proceeded to write one book a year for the next ten years, all of them eschewing the more mundane subject matter of contemporary society and its manners and focusing instead on matters bizarre and frankly extraordinary. My favourite of his books,
Solar Equatorial
, posited a time in the distant future when the descendants of humankind possessed the technological wherewithal to construct great artificial habitats girdling the circumference of our fiery primary. His other books considered the possibility of life on other planets, of great civilisations that might have existed in our distant history. It was all heady stuff, and perhaps easily dismissed but for the literary quality he brought to bear on his subject matter, the depth of his characterisation, and the merit of his prose.