Circles of Time (30 page)

“Bad Scoot! … Bad, bad Scoot! …”

He smiled down at Colin who was scolding one of the terriers which had run back after a fruitless pursuit of rabbits.

“You can't blame him, Colin. He's just doing what he likes to do best.”

“No, Uncle Charles … no … bad Scoot!”

Charles sat down in the grass with his back against a fence post and took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. He patted the grass beside him. “Come, sit down. I think I have a toffee in my pocket somewhere.” He fished it out and handed it to the little boy. “Can you take the paper off? It's quite sticky.”

“Yes,” Colin muttered. He flopped down beside his uncle and began the studious task of unwrapping the square of toffee.

Charles lit his pipe and gazed off across the meadow toward the Gothic spires and dark limestone facade of Burgate House. Crows wheeled and cawed above the chimneys or stalked the derelict gardens. His sharpest pangs of memory came from looking at that empty house, and he knew that he would not be truly whole until he had reconciled himself to the fact that the house was indeed empty—shuttered and sealed—and that the woman who had lived there was living a quite different life now.

“Apples,” Colin said as he chewed on the toffee. “Apples, Uncle Charles … apples.”

It was part of the ritual of their morning walks together—the unpruned apple trees drawing Colin to the house as surely as memory drew him.

“All right. Piggyback?”

“Piggyback! Piggyback! …” He clambered onto Charles and locked his arms around his neck. “Giddy-up … giddy-up!”

Being on Charles's shoulders was the only way he could reach the apple boughs. The apples were small and green and not to be eaten, but he enjoyed plucking them from the stems and throwing them against the tree trunk or into the tall grass. On one of their walks Colin had seen the small, wild ponies that lived in the woods and meadows near Burgate Hill foraging for fallen apples under the trees. He threw the apples down for them.

“Here, horsey! Here, horsey!” he shouted. But the ponies never came.

“They're very shy.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, Colin. They just are. But they'll come after we're gone and find the apples.”

The sound of a car coming up the long drive startled Charles. He lifted Colin down and looked toward the house. The car came into view and then stopped in front of the house. A man and a woman got out and stood looking up at its soaring towers and spires for a few moments before slowly walking toward the front steps.

“Hello!” Charles called out.

The couple turned and looked at him curiously as he walked toward them out of the orchard holding Colin by the hand. They were middle-aged, the man tall and burly, the woman nearly as tall but very slender. The man held out a beefy hand as Charles reached them.

“Good morning. Mastwick's my name—John Mastwick—and this is my wife, Virginia.”

“Charles Greville. And this is my nephew, Colin.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Mastwick said. He shook Charles's hand and then pointed up at the looming house. “Bit of a monstrosity, isn't it?”

Charles smiled. “I'm afraid it is, yes. A mad duke built it during the reign of Queen Anne. His only son was killed in the French wars and he wanted the house to look like a cathedral—or a tomb. I'm not sure which.”

“He succeeded on both counts, if you ask me. Still, beggars can't be choosers. Lord Foxe has just given us the place—a ninety-nine-year lease at one pound per annum.”

“We're not exactly being overcharged,” Virginia Mastwick said with a thin little smile. “But, oh, Lord, it's going to take some doing to make it livable for the children.”

“How many children do you have?” Charles asked.

“Twenty-eight,” she said, “but we're expecting another twenty.” She saw the expression on his face and laughed. “We're turning the place into a school.”

“Moving our school here, to be more precise,” Mastwick said gloomily. “We have a wretched, crowded little place at present near Spilsby in Lincolnshire. Lord Foxe heard of our school and our plight and made us this gesture. One could hardly refuse. Still …”

“Oh, I don't know,” his wife said with a kind of forced cheerfulness. “A bit of paint and tidying up … We'll manage, John.”

“Yes, I suppose we will.”

“Is this the first time you've seen it?”

“No,” Mastwick said. “We were here yesterday afternoon with Lord Foxe's agent. He took us through the place and tried to explain its peculiarities. First-rate plumbing—I'll say that much.”

“What sort of school do you have?”

The Mastwicks exchanged glances. “It's a
different
sort of school,” Mrs. Mastwick replied. “A coeducational school for—well …”

“The type of child who doesn't fit into a conventional school,” her husband said. “Not disturbed children so much as unhappy ones. A school without uniforms, old ties, old ideas or rote. The children have as much to say about the rules and curriculum as we do. We've found that when children decide on their own codes they are less likely to break them, and when they study what interests them they're more likely to learn something. Classes are not compulsory, but after the novelty of
that
wears off we never have attendance problems. Children want to learn, you know. They're naturally curious and intrigued by knowledge. They are given no grades as such—and no punishment. Ignorance, we stress, is punishment enough.”

“It sounds fascinating,” Charles said. “It's certainly—different.”

“It's a concept that intrigued us for many years. An idea, actually, that I first had when I was a boy at Marlborough and had quite forgotten about until the war. I was captured at Aubers Ridge in 'fifteen and had a few years in prison camp to think about it.”

“My husband ran a school for fellow prisoners of war.”

“Yes, most of them were quite uneducated, and unorthodox methods were required to teach them anything. I enlisted in the army as a private, by the way. I'd never been in the cadet corps at either Marlborough or Oxford and didn't feel that being an old Marlburian or Oxonian automatically qualified me as a leader of men in battle. In fact, I found that most young officers who came direct to the battalion from public schools had nothing at all to qualify them for the task except an extraordinary, quite useless, and pathetic bravery. But we're drifting far afield. I take it you live near here, Mr. Greville?”

“Yes, just across the hill. I used to visit here often before the war.”

“A friend of Lord Foxe?”

“He was just plain Archie Foxe in those days. But, yes, I knew him well. I was married to his daughter.”

“You must drop by when we're truly settled in—although the Lord knows when that will be.” He reached down and patted Colin on the head. “And bring your young nephew as well.”

“By all means,” Mrs. Mastwick said. “We'll be more hospitable by then—jam tarts and tea.”

Charles started to turn away, and then impulsively looked back at John Mastwick and said, “We were divorced. Quite a long time ago. I'd been rather badly shell-shocked, you see.”

The schoolmaster stared at him for a long moment, searching his face. Then he nodded knowingly. “Virginia and I will be moving some of our gear in on Saturday. Drop by. We'll have a nice long chat.”

“I would like that.”

“Yes,” Mastwick said gently, “I can see that you would.”

A
LEXANDRA PARKED HER
little two-seater Vauxhall in a lane off High Street, puffed nervously on a cigarette, and kept glancing into the rearview mirror. When she saw his car enter the lane, she got out and waited for him.

“Good morning,” Ross said, leaning across and opening the door for her.

“Hello, Jamie.” She got in beside him and snuffed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

“Where's His Nibs?”

“With my brother today.”

“I'd thought we might go for a drive to the RAF field at Farnborough. He would have enjoyed that. There's an engineer I want to see. Chap's been experimenting with high-altitude blowers—superchargers, we call them. Sounds interesting.”

“Must it be today?”

“No.” He looked away from her and stared miserably ahead. “But I must see him before I—go back.”

“California,” she said dully.

“I can't stay much longer, Alex. I mean, the engines are coming off the line without any hitches. My partner—I told you about him, Harry Patterson—sent me a cablegram. I got it yesterday. They're having one or two problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Technical. The new engine weighs a good deal more than our plans had called for. That means shifting things about a bit to maintain the center of balance. Find a new spot for the fuel tanks, or even set the wings back a foot. Nothing that can't be solved, but he'd like me in San Diego as soon as I can get there.”

“When are you planning to leave?”

“A week from today,” he said quietly. “I booked passage on the
Mauretania.
Sails from Southampton next Wednesday.”

“I see.”

“There's not much I can do about it.”

“No, of course not.”

Her hand, gloved in pale yellow kid, was beside him on the seat. He took hold of it in his strong grip.

“And that will be the end of it. But I suppose it's all for the best.” Only his misery was convincing. “Just something that happened.”

She sat stiffly, looking down at his hand holding her own. “Take me to your house, Jamie.”

“Is that wise, Alex? It's only going to make it that much more difficult—at least for me.”

“I know it isn't wise, Jamie, but it's what I want.”

It was what he wanted, too. Their lovemaking had been intense since that afternoon in the tall grass of Box Hill when reason had totally fled and only a blind need had controlled them. It seemed incredible to both of them that it had happened with Colin only a few feet away, sound asleep under the warm sweater. An almost savage coupling with both of them nearly fully clothed. Fucking, she had thought wildly at the moment, like two inflamed animals. Afterward, they had lain spent, staring at the sky, their senses sharpened, hearing the distant call of birds and Colin's gentle breathing. They had said nothing to each other—for which they had both been grateful.

It was different now.

He stroked her thigh with a hard, callused hand and she kissed the lean, flat muscles of his chest.

“I'm sorry, Jamie.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For any pain this might cause.”

“I'll live through it. It couldn't go on forever, could it? I mean, I couldn't just pop around when whatsisname was off to the office, now could I?”

She kissed a nipple. “Couldn't you?”

“Be serious, Alex. I'm not that type of man.”

“I know you're not. You're a very decent—
sort of bloke.
”

“People have love affairs. I read about them all the time in penny-dreadful newspapers. Emancipated women. Vamps and sheikhs. High jinks in Paris.”

“You've never read a penny-dreadful newspaper in your life.”

“Christ! Today's morality. Read about it in the bleedin'
Times
!”

“Is that us, Jamie?” she asked quietly. “Just two sex-crazed people? A flapper and her sheikh?”

He was silent for a moment, looking down at her—white and pink and nakedly lovely cradled against him.

“Oh, God, Alex. I wish I knew what we were.”

H
ANNA SENSED SOMETHING
wrong, but was unable to fathom what it could be. A feeling—an intuition.

“I don't think Alex looks well,” she said over midmorning coffee on the terrace.

“Looks perfectly fine to me,” the earl said, eyes on his newspaper. “Damnedest thing about Lord Crewe. Surely a man can't simply disappear on the
Aquitania
—unless, of course …”

“She seems—oh, I don't know exactly—so quiet lately—so terribly introspective.”

“Prenuptial daydreaming, I expect. All women go through it. But hardly ill. Always dashing about in her little car—or walking all over the countryside. I wouldn't concern myself if I were you.”

“You don't suppose she's had a tiff with Noel, do you?”

The earl cleared his throat loudly and stood up. “I don't think it would be possible to have a tiff with Noel. He's the most
accommodating
fellow I've ever known.”

She stayed on the terrace, sipping coffee and looking out across the gardens. Charles and Colin could be seen, coming across the lawns from the direction of the stables, Colin running ahead, weaving in and out between plots of marigolds and daffodils. Playing at being an airplane, his tiny arms jutting out like wings.