“. . . and all the clouds that lower’d upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean, buried . . .”
“When were our brows bound?” yelled the audience.
“Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,” continued Richard, ignoring them completely. We must have been to this show thirty times and even now I could feel myself mouthing the words with the actor on the stage.
“... to the lascivious pleasing of a lute...” continued Richard, saying “lute” loudly as several other members of the audience gave alternative suggestions.
“Piano!” shouted out one person near us. “Bagpipes!” said another. Someone at the back, missing the cue entirely, shouted in a high voice “Euphonium!” halfway through the next line and was drowned out when the audience yelled: “Pick a card!” as Richard told them that he “was not shaped for sportive tricks . . .”
Landen looked across at me and smiled. I returned the smile instinctively; I was enjoying myself.
“I that am rudely stamp’d . . .” muttered Richard, as the audience took its cue and stamped the ground with a crash that reverberated around the auditorium.
Landen and I had never wanted to tread the boards ourselves and had never troubled to dress up. The production was the only show at the Ritz; it was empty the rest of the week. Keen amateur thespians and Shakespeare fans would drive from all over the country to participate, and it was never anything but a full house. A few years back a French troupe performed the play in French to rapturous applause; a troupe went to Sauvignon a few months later to repay the gesture.
“. . . and that so lamely and unfashionable, that dogs bark at me...”
The audience barked loudly, making a noise like feeding time at the dogs’ home. Outside in the alley several cats new to the vicinity momentarily flinched, while more seasoned moggies looked at each other with a knowing smile.
The play went on, the actors doing sterling work and the audience parrying with quips that ranged from the intelligent to the obscure to the downright vulgar. When Clarence explained that the king was convinced that “. . . by the letter ‘G’ his issue disinherited shall be . . .” the audience yelled out:
“Gloucester begins with G, dummy!”
And when the Lady Anne had Richard on his knees in front of her with his sword at his throat, the audience encouraged her to run him through; and just before one of Richard’s nephews, the young Duke of York, alluded to Richard’s hump: “Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me; because that I am little, like an ape, he thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders—!!!” the audience yelled out: “Don’t mention the hump, kid!,” and after he did: “The Tower! The Tower!”
The play was the Garrick cut and lasted only about two and a half hours; at Bosworth field most of the audience ended up on the stage as they helped reenact the battle. Richard, Catesby and Richmond had to finish the play in the aisle as the battle raged about them. A pink pantomime horse appeared on cue when Richard offered to swap his kingdom for just such a beast, and the battle finally ended in the foyer. Richmond then took one of the girls from behind the ice-cream counter as his Elizabeth and continued his final speech from the balcony with the audience below hailing him as the new king of England, the soldiers who had fought on Richard’s side proclaiming their new allegiance. The play ended with Richmond saying: “God say Amen!”
“Amen!” said the crowd, amid happy applause. It had been a good show. The cast had done a fine job and fortunately this time no one had been seriously injured during Bosworth. Landen and I filed out quickly and found a table in a café across the road. Landen ordered two coffees and we looked at one another.
“You’re looking good, Thursday. You’ve aged better than me.”
“Nonsense,” I replied. “Look at these lines!—”
“Laughter lines,” asserted Landen.
“Nothing’s that funny.”
“Are you here for good?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t know,” I answered. I dropped my gaze. I had promised myself I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving, but—
“It depends.”
“On?—”
I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“—on SpecOps.”
The coffee arrived at that point and I smiled brightly.
“So, how have you been?”
“I’ve been good,” he said, then added in a lower tone, “I’ve been lonely too. Very lonely. I’m not getting any younger, either. How have you been?”
I wanted to tell him that I’d been lonely too, but some things can’t easily be said. I wanted him to know that I still wasn’t happy with what he had done. Forgive and forget is all very well, but no one was going to forgive and forget my brother. Anton’s dead name was mud and that was solely down to Landen.
“I’ve been fine.” I thought about it. “I haven’t, actually.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m having a shitty time right now. I lost two colleagues in London. I’m chasing after a lunatic who most people think is dead, Mycroft and Polly have been kidnapped, Goliath is breathing down my neck and the regional commander at SpecOps might just have my badge. As you can see, things are just peachy.”
“Compared to the Crimea, this is small beer, Thursday. You’re stronger than all this crap.”
Landen stirred three sugars into his coffee and I looked at him again.
“Are you hoping for us to get back together?”
He was taken aback by the directness of my question. He shrugged.
“I don’t think we were ever truly apart.”
I knew exactly what he meant. Spiritually, we never were.
“I can’t apologize anymore, Thursday. You lost a brother, I lost some good friends, my whole platoon and a leg. I know what Anton means to you but I saw him pointing up the wrong valley to Colonel Frobisher just before the armored column moved off. It was a crazy day and crazy circumstances, but it happened and I had to say what I saw!—”
I looked him squarely in the eye.
“Before going to the Crimea I thought that death was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. I soon realized it was only for starters. Anton died; I can accept that. People get killed in war; it’s inevitable. Okay, so it was a military debacle of staggering proportions. They also happen from time to time. It’s happened many times before in the Crimea.”
“Thursday!” implored Landen. “What I said. It was the truth!”
I rounded on him angrily.
“Who can say what the truth was? The truth is whatever we are most comfortable with. The dust, the heat, the noise! Whatever happened that day, the truth is now what everyone reads in the history books. What you told the military inquiry! Anton may have made a mistake, but he wasn’t the only one that day.”
“I saw him point down the wrong valley, Thursday.”
“He would never have made that mistake!”
I felt an anger I hadn’t felt for ten years. Anton had been blamed for the charge, it was as simple as that. The military leaders managed to squirm out of their responsibilities once again and my brother’s name had entered the national memory and the history books as that of the man who lost the Light Armored Brigade. The commanding officer and Anton had both died in the charge. It had been up to Landen to tell the story.
I got up.
“Walking out again, Thursday?” said Landen sardonically. “Is this how it will always be? I was hoping you would have mellowed, that we could have made something out of this mess, that there was still enough love in us to make it work.”
I shot a furious look at him.
“What about loyalty, Landen? He was your greatest friend!”
“And I still said what I said,” sighed Landen. “One day you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that Anton fucked up. It happens, Thursday. It happens.”
I stared at him and he stared back.
“Can we ever get over this, Thursday? I need to know as a matter of some urgency.
”
“Urgency? What urgency? No,” I replied, “no, no, we can’t. I’m sorry to have wasted your fucking precious time!”
I ran out of the café, eyes streaming and angry with myself, angry with Landen and angry with Anton. I thought about Snood and Tamworth. We should all have waited for backup; Tamworth and I fucked up by going in and Snood fucked up by taking on an enemy which he knew he was not physically or mentally prepared to face. We had all been flushed with excitement by the chase; it was the sort of impetuous action that Anton would have taken. I had felt it once before in the Crimea and I had hated myself for it then too.
I got back to the Finis at about one in the morning. The John Milton weekend was ending with a disco. I took the lift up to my room, the distorted beat of the music softening to a dull thud as I was transported upward. I leaned against the mirror in the lift and took solace in the coolness of the glass. I should never have come back to Swindon, that much was obvious. I would speak to Victor in the morning and transfer out as soon as possible.
I opened my room door and kicked off my shoes, lay on the bed and stared at the polystyrene ceiling tiles, trying to come to terms with what I had always suspected but never wanted to face. My brother had fucked up. Nobody had bothered to put it so simply before; the military tribunal spoke of “tactical errors in the heat of the battle” and “gross incompetence.” Somehow “fucked up” made it seem more believable; we all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice. If Anton had been a baker and forgotten the yeast, nothing would have been made of it, but he would have fucked up just the same.
As I lay there thinking I slowly drifted into sleep and with sleep came troubled dreams. I was back at Styx’s apartment block, only this time I was standing outside the back entrance with the upturned car, Commander Flanker and the rest of the SO-1 interview panel. Snood was there too. He had an ugly hole in his wrinkled forehead and was standing, arms crossed and looking at me as if I had taken his football and he had sought out Flanker for some kind of redress.
“Are you sure you didn’t tell Snood to go and cover the back?” asked Flanker.
“Positive,” I said, looking at them both in turn.
“She did, you know,” said Acheron as he walked past. “I heard her.”
Flanker stopped him.
“Did you? What exactly did she say?”
Acheron smiled at me and then nodded at Snood, who returned his greeting.
“Wait!” I interrupted. “How can you believe what he says? The man’s a liar!”
Acheron looked offended and Flanker turned to me with a steely gaze.
“We only have your word for that, Next.”
I could feel myself boil with inner rage at the unfairness of it all. I was just about to cry out and wake up when I felt a tap on my arm. It was a man dressed in a dark coat. He had heavy black hair that fell over his dour, strong features. I knew immediately who he was.
“Mr. Rochester?”
He nodded in return. But now we were no longer outside the warehouses in the East End; we were in a well-furnished hall, lit by the dim glow of oil lamps and the flickering light from a fire in the large hearth.
“Is your arm well, Miss Next?” he asked.
“Very well, thanks,” I said, moving my hand and wrist to demonstrate.
“I should not trouble yourself with them,” he added, indicating Flanker, Acheron and Snood, who had started to argue in the corner of the room near the bookcase. “They are merely in your dream and thus, being illusory, are of no consequence.”
“And what about you?”
Rochester smiled, a forced, gruff smile. He was leaning on the mantelpiece and looked into his glass, swirling his Madeira delicately.
“I was never real to begin with.”
He placed the glass on the marble mantel and flipped out a large silver hunter, popped it open, read the time and returned it to his waistcoat pocket in one smooth easy movement.
“Things are becoming more urgent, I can feel it. I trust I can count on your fortitude when the time comes?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain. I don’t know how I managed to get here or even how you managed to get to me. You remember when you were a little girl? When you chanced upon us both that chill winter’s evening?”
I thought about the incident at Haworth all those years ago when I entered the book of Jane Eyre and caused Rochester’s horse to slip.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Not to me. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“Your intervention improved the narrative.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Before, I simply bumped into my Jane and we spoke briefly. If you had read the book prior to your visit you would have noticed. When the horse slipped to avoid you it made the meeting more dramatic, wouldn’t you agree?”
“But hadn’t that happened already?”
Rochester smiled.
“Not at all. But you weren’t the first visitor we have had. And you won’t be the last, if I’m correct.”
“What do you mean?”
He picked up his drink again.
“You are about to rouse from your sleep, Miss Next, so I shall bid you adieu. Again: I can trust in your fortitude when the time comes?”
I didn’t have time to answer or question him further. I was woken by my early morning call. I was in my clothes from the previous evening, the light and the television still on.
19.
The Very Irrev. Joffy Next
Dearest Mum,
Life here in theDELETED BY CENSORScamp is great fun. The weather is good, the food average, the company AOK. ColonelDELETED BY CENSORSis our CO; he is a cracking fellow. I see Thurs quite often & although you told me to look after her I think she can look after herself. She won the battalion ladies’ boxing tournament. We move up toDELETED BY CENSORSnext week, I will write again when I have more news.
Your son, Anton
Letter from Anton Next sent two weeks before he died
APART FROM one other person I had the breakfast room all to myself. As fate would have it, that one other person was Colonel Phelps.
“Good morning, Corporal!” he said cheerfully as he spotted me trying to hide behind a copy of The Owl.
“Colonel.”
He sat down opposite me without asking.
“Good response to my presence here so far, y’know,” he said genially, taking some toast and waving a spoon at the waiter. “You there, sir, more coffee. We’re having the talk next Sunday; you are still coming, I trust?”
“I just might be there,” I responded, quite truthfully.
“Splendid!” he gushed. “I must confess I thought you’d stumbled off the path when we spoke on the gasbag.”
“Where is it being held?”
“A bit hush-hush, old girl. Walls have ears, careless talk, all that rot. I’ll send a car for you. Seen this?”
He showed me the front page of The Mole. It was, like all the papers, almost exclusively devoted to the upcoming offensive that everyone thought was so likely there didn’t seem even the slightest hope that it wouldn’t happen. The last major battle had been in ’75 and the memories and lessons of that particular mistake didn’t seem to have sunk in.
“More coffee I said, sir!” roared Phelps to the waiter, who had given him tea by mistake. “This new plasma rifle is going to clinch it, y’know. I’ve even thought of modifying my talk to include a request for anyone wanting a new life on the peninsula to start filing claims now. I understand from the foreign secretary’s office that we will need settlers to move in as soon as the Russians are evicted for good.”
“Don’t you understand?” I asked in an exasperated tone. “There won’t be an end. Not while we have troops on Russian soil.”
“What’s that?” murmured Phelps. “Mmm? Eh?”
He fid
dled with his hearing aid and cocked his head to one side like a parakeet. I made a noncommittal noise and left as soon as I could.
It was early; the sun had risen but it was still cold. It had rained during the night and the air was heavy with water. I put the roof of the car down in an attempt to blow away the memories of the night before, the anger that had erupted when I realized that I couldn’t forgive Landen. It was the dismay that I would always feel the same rather than the dismay over the unpleasant ending to the evening which upset me most. I was thirty-six, and apart from ten months with Filbert I had been alone for the past decade, give or take a drunken tussle or two. Another five years of this and I knew that I would be destined not to share my life with anyone.
The wind tugged at my hair as I drove rapidly along the sweeping roads. There was no traffic to speak of and the car was humming sweetly. Small pockets of fog had formed as the sun rose, and I drove through them as an airship flies through cloud. My foot rolled off the throttle as I entered the small parcels of gloom, then gently pressed down again as I burst free into the morning sun once more.
The village of Wanborough was not more than ten minutes’ drive from the Finis Hotel. I parked outside the GSD temple— once a C of E church—and turned off the engine, the silence of the country a welcome break. In the distance I could hear some farm machinery but it was barely a rhythmical hum; I had never appreciated the peace of the country until I had moved to the city. I opened the gate and entered the well-kept graveyard. I paused for a moment, then ambled at a slow respectful pace past the rows of well-tended graves. I hadn’t visited Anton’s memorial since the day I left for London, but I knew that he wouldn’t have minded. Much that we had appreciated about one another had been left unsaid. In humor, in life and in love, we had understood. When I arrived in Sebastopol to join the 3rd Wessex Tank Light Armored Brigade, Landen and Anton were already good friends. Anton was attached to the brigade as signals captain; Landen was a lieutenant. Anton had introduced us; against strict orders we had fallen in love. I had felt like a schoolgirl, sneaking around the camp for forbidden trysts. In the beginning the Crimea just seemed like a whole barrel of fun.