A Future Arrived (19 page)

“Putting the day down on paper?”

“Just for practice, actually.”

“Don't stop on my account.”

“Oh, no, sir. I'm finished.”

“Enjoy yourself today?”

“Oh, indeed, sir … a super time. Lord Stanmore gave me a tour … rather like being in a museum. Did you know they have paintings by Constable, Reynolds, and Van Dyck? Crikey! And all those silver cups and things for riding. A very
nice
man, Lord Stanmore.”

“Yes, he is.”

“And I rather liked the brigadier. Quite different from what I imagined a military chap to be. Smashing daughters, by the way … but odd about twins. So identical in looks and so opposite in personality. Victoria is … oh, warm and friendly, while the other … well, I don't think she likes me at all.”

“Girls often go through a stage of not liking boys.”

“They're usually over that by fifteen, aren't they, sir?”

Martin drew slowly on his cigar. “Fifteen?”

“
Nearly
fifteen, Victoria said.”

“Ah, how time flies.”

T
HE DOOR LEADING
to the Amalfi suite was unbolted. Charles tapped lightly and stepped inside. Both the sitting room and bedroom were in darkness, but he could see Marian in the moonlight seated on a chaise longue facing open windows. She was still wearing her dinner dress.

“Woolgathering?” he said as he bent to kiss her forehead.

“A bit.” She took hold of his hand and drew him down beside her. “I had a long talk with your mother. Just left her rooms as a matter of fact. An honest and candid woman.”

“Yankee directness.”

“I admire that. I grew up calling a spade a spade.”

“And what did you discuss?”

“You … us. Your happiness as her main consideration. She feels I worked a miracle on you and is grateful for that. She also made it clear that the divorced wife of an actor would not have received her blessing, let alone your father's, before the war.”

“No. But then a great many things were different before the war … if one can remember such a misty past.”

“As she pointed out, I will no doubt be Countess of Stanmore one day, so she talked of practical matters … presentation at court being one. The approach, she said, would have to be handled with the utmost discretion.”

“Yes. Our beloved monarchs view divorce with incomprehension.”

“She believes she can manage it. Is she really a cousin of the queen?”

“Second or third cousin … through the German branch of the Rilkes … the von Rilkes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. When Mother has the will she will always find a way. Does the thought disturb you?”

“A little. So does the thought of being mistress of this house. I hope your parents live to be a hundred.”

He put his arms around her and hugged her close. “But you're not marrying this house. You're marrying a country schoolmaster.
That
thought would disturb most women these days.”

“Not when you're the schoolmaster. I love you very much, Charles.”

“And I love you. Rather a comforting coincidence.”

She rested her head against his shoulder and watched the slender branch of a plane tree, the leaves silver under the moon, move gently against the window. From somewhere in the house came the melodic chiming of eleven. “I shall remember this day …
always
.”

C
OLIN
M
ACKENDRIC
R
OSS
heard the sound of bells through the depths of his dream. He was with Elmer and some other boy. The other boy was lagging far behind and he kept yelling at him to hurry up, that there were hobos down in a jungle beside the railroad tracks … hairy, ragged men boiling coffee in tin cans, waiting for the northbound freights. And he was riding Gunboat up the trail through the yuccas toward Soledad peak and on the heights he could see the ocean forever and the U.S.S.
Saratoga
steaming out past Point Loma and the boy he could not place was running up the trail behind him … shouting, waving his arms … and the bells of the old mission were ringing … ringing … ringing …

D
EREK, UNCOMFORTABLE AND
hot in his clothes under the blanket, heard the tall-case clock in the downstairs hall chime eleven. He got out of bed and fumbled with his shoes in the darkness. There was only one other boy in his dorm, a fellow named Winslow whose father had a job in Kenya and left him in the school year round. There were only eighteen boys and girls in the school now—and one master, Mr. Wallis … not counting the headmaster. Matron had gone on holiday and Mrs. Mahon had assumed that function, but she slept like a log. He could go down the stairs and out the front door—but what if it were locked? He sat on the bed and laced his shoes. Of course it would be locked, he reasoned. Bound to be … as well as all the other doors. He could wake Winslow and ask him to help, but he was sleeping soundly, snoring gently through open mouth, a shaft of moonlight falling across his face. He walked to the window and looked down. There was a flagstone courtyard below. An awful long way and a terribly hard surface at the bottom. But there were any number of windows on the ground floor. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand at his stupidity.

His shoes creaked as he tiptoed down the hall toward the main stairs. He was so intent on being silent that as he crossed the corridor leading to the girls' dormitory wing he tripped over a carpet runner and went sprawling on his face with a loud grunt of surprise and pain.

A door opened down the passage and the slender beam of a flashlight wavered over him.

“Fat Chap!” Valerie's voice. “Are you running away?”

“Don't be daft,” he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his knee. “And turn off that ruddy light, can't you.”

She padded down the corridor in bare feet and squatted beside him, legs tucked under her long, white cotton nightdress. “If you're not running away, what are you doing then?”

“Meeting the Yank, if you must know.”

“Where?”

“None of your business.”

“Oh, do tell me,” she whispered excitedly. “Don't be a beast.”

“No.”

“I'll scream the place down if you don't. Really I will. I'll say I thought you were a burglar.”

He knew she would. It was just like the Pest. “All right. I'm meeting him at the stables at midnight … the stables at the Pryory.”

She clutched his arm feverishly. “Oh, let me come, Fat Chap … let me come.”

“No. It … it's too dangerous for girls.”

She stood up and turned toward her room. “I'll just get my gym shoes.”

The moment she was gone he scrambled to his feet and bolted down the stairs, across the main hall, and along a corridor to the classroom where Mrs. Halliday taught art. The windows there were wide and opened onto a tree-shaded stretch of ground that led to the upper meadows of Leith Common. He was through the window in a flash and running hard for the meadows. As he climbed a low stone wall he could hear a soft patter of footsteps coming up behind him.

“Wait for me, Fat Chap! Wait for me!”

He tried to ignore her and to think of ways to explain her presence to the Yank. And to top everything off she looked silly in gym shoes and nightdress. He felt mortified.

“Are you going to look at the horses for the pony rides?” she asked as she trudged along beside him across the meadow. “Are you? I love horses. I had my own once … I named her Angelica. I loved her dearly. That was when I lived with my father in Devon. He doesn't live there any longer … he lives in London and goes to New York all the time. Mother lives in Paris … or Monte Carlo … places like that. Father called her a tramp.”

Derek stopped walking long enough to glare at her. “Must you keep talking? You'll give the game away.”

“What game?” She went wide eyed. “Are you going to cop a horse? Sneak it from the stables?”

“Maybe.” He looked away from her. “It's the Yank's idea. I … I'm going to ride it.”

“Do you know how?”

“There's nothing to it.”

“Grab a saddle and bridle, too?”

“I … suppose so.”

“It's jolly hard to ride without a saddle, but I've done it lots of times on Angelica—but she was gentle and she loved me so.”

“Hush,” he said.

They had reached a long line of fence, the white-painted rails curving off across the meadow, enclosing pasture land. There were small signs at intervals—
DO NOT TRESPASS.
It was bright as day with the full moon and a cloudless sky. Going on at a crouch, they followed the fence toward the long, low outline of the stables, half hidden by elms. From far across the common came the sound of midnight church bells.

There was no sign of the Yank. Derek leaned back against a tree while Valerie sat on the ground. A dog barked fretfully and then another. A horse nickered in one of the stalls. Half a dozen ponies stirred in an open pen.

“Which one are you going to take?” Valerie whispered.

“I don't know.” They looked large to him in the dappled shadows, even menacing with the moonlight glinting from their eyes. There was an empty feeling in his stomach and his legs felt weak. He thought of his bed … of Winslow's placid snores. The distant church clock struck the half hour. The gravel path leading from the stables to the great, dark house lay deserted. “He's not coming.”

“Will you do it by yourself? I could help you.”

“No. I … I think we should go back. Don't you?”

“Whatever you say, Fat Chap.” She yawned and got stiffly to her feet. “I'm cold.”

He peeled off his sweater and gave it to her. The dogs began a frenzy of barking. A light snapped on in one of the stable buildings and a large man stumbled out into the yard cursing loudly. Slowly, very slowly, the two children moved away through the shadows of the trees and then ran along the line of fence into the meadow. Halfway to the school Derek's legs gave way and he flopped onto his back in the tall grass.

“Tired, Fat Chap?”

“No.”

“I am.” She slumped down beside him. “It was jolly good sport, though. Sorry you didn't get your ride, but it was clever to leave when you did. I don't think that man would have liked it.”

Laughter bubbled in his throat as elation replaced fear. He stood up and looked off across the fields. The thin white line of the fence could barely be seen.

“I was there, wasn't I? Right on the stroke.”

“You were and he wasn't. If I see him at the bazaar I'll jolly well tell him, too!”

“No, Val. It doesn't matter.”

He
had been there. That was all that mattered. In the darkness and the silence with the whole world in bed. He … Sir Derek of Ramsay who had ventured forth at midnight on a quest with his faithful squire. He helped the bedraggled girl to her feet and felt quite different than he had a mere hour before. Older … strong … immeasurably tall.

I
T BEGAN TO
rain as Martin crossed Green Park, the dark clouds rolling across what had been only minutes before a pristine August sky. He hurried along the path toward Piccadilly and the Ritz Hotel, one hand clamped on the top of his straw hat to keep it from skimming away in the wind. Lightning scorching the air and a clap of thunder sent people hurrying from their canvas deck chairs to the dubious shelter of the great trees. Martin began to run and reached the marble-and-gilt lobby of the Ritz a few steps ahead of a cloudburst.

He found Scott Kingsford in the bar, patiently trying to explain to the barman how to fix an American-style martini.

“A waste of my time and his,” Scott said as the man walked off. “You'd think a country that invented gin, for chrissakes, would know how to use it properly.” He held out a huge hand, callused as a sailor's. “Well, Marty, you're a sight for sore eyes.”

It had been over a year and a half since Martin had last seen him, and their meeting at that time had been cool, if correct. He had gone to Scott's office on the twenty-second floor of the CBC building on the corner of 64th and Madison Avenue in New York City to hand in his resignation—which had been accepted. An awkward moment for both of them. But that had been then. A great many things had taken place since that bleak February day in 1929. A world had changed, profoundly and forever.

T
HE COLLAPSE OF
Scott Kingsford's Consolidated Broadcasters Company in December 1929 had not come as any surprise. It had been a season for failure. Numbed investors who had once scrambled to purchase CBC stock for as much as 392½ had watched with morbid fascination as the value of their holdings sank within two months to less than 85¾ a share. Dying dreams linked to the pulsebeat of a ticker-tape machine.

Scott Kingsford went into the radio business because he was bored. By 1921, the year of his forty-seventh birthday, the wire service he had started twenty years earlier, International News Agency, had become second only to the Associated Press. He was many times a millionaire and INA ran like a well-oiled machine. He had hired the best journalists money could buy to head the various bureaus—John Hammet in the United States, Peter Overholt in Asia, Martin Rilke in Europe—and there was little if anything for him to do. He looked about for a new challenge and found it in a radio set.