The House on the Strand (25 page)

I lay awake thinking of the hell I would give Magnus when he arrived. Nausea, vertigo, confusion, a bloodshot eye, and now acid sweat, and all for what? A moment in time, long past, that had no bearing on the present, that served no purpose in his life or mine, and could as little benefit the world in which we lived as a scrapbook of forgotten memories lying idle in a dusty drawer. So I argued, up to midnight and beyond, but common sense has a habit of vanishing when the demon of insomnia rides us in the small hours, and as I lay there, counting first two, and then three, on the illuminated face of the travelling clock beside the bed, I remembered how I had walked about that other world with a dreamer's freedom but with a waking man's perception. Roger had been no faded snapshot in time's album; and even now, in this fourth dimension into which I had stumbled inadvertently but Magnus with intent, he lived and moved, ate and slept, beneath me in his house Kylmerth, enacting his living Now which ran side by side with my immediate Present, and so the two merged.

Am I my brother's keeper? Cain's cry of protest against God suddenly had new meaning for me as I watched the hands of the clock move towards ten past three. Roger was my keeper, I was his. There was no past, no present, no future. Everything living is part of the whole. We are all bound, one to the other, through time and eternity, and, our senses once opened, as mine had been opened by the drug, to a new understanding of his world and mine, fusion would take place, there would be no separation, there would be no... This would be the ultimate meaning of the experiment, surely, that by moving about in time death was destroyed. This was what Magnus so far had not understood.

To him, the drug released the complex brew within the brain that served up the savoured past. To me, it proved that the past was living still, that we were all participants, all witnesses. I was Roger, I was Bodrugan, I was Cain; and in being so was more truly myself.

I felt myself on the brink of some tremendous discovery when I fell asleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I DID NOT wake up until after ten, and when I did Vita was standing by the bed with the breakfast tray of toast and coffee.

"Huh," I said. "I must have overslept."

"Yes," she said, and then, looking at me critically, "Are you feeling all right?"

I sat up in bed and took the tray from her. "Perfectly," I said. "Why?"

"You were restless during the night", she told me, "and perspired a great deal. Look, your pyjama top is quite damp."

It was, and I threw it off. "Extraordinary thing," I said. "Be an angel and get me a towel."

She brought me one from the bathroom, and I rubbed myself down before reaching for the coffee.

"Something to do with all that exercise on Par beach with the boys," I said.

"I wouldn't have thought so," she replied, staring at me, puzzled, "and anyway you took a bath afterwards. I've never known you perspire from exercise before."

"Well, it happens to people," I said. "It's my age-group. The male menopause, perhaps, striking me down in my prime."

"I hope not," she said. "How very unpleasant." She wandered over to the dressing-table and surveyed herself in the mirror as if that might hold the answer to the problem. "It's odd," she went on, "but both Diana and I remarked on the fact that you weren't looking yourself despite that suntan from sailing." She wheeled round suddenly, facing me. "You must admit you're not a hundred per cent," she went on. "I don't know what it is, darling, but it worries me. You're moody, distrait, as if you had something on your mind all the time. Then that funny bloodshot eye..."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," I interrupted, "give it a miss, can't you? I admit I was foul-tempered when Bill and Diana were here, and I apologise. We all had too much to drink, and that was that. Must we do a post-mortem on every hour?"

"There you go again," she said. "Always on the defensive. I hope the arrival of your Professor straightens you out."

"It will," I answered, "providing this inquisition on our behaviour doesn't continue through the entire weekend."

She laughed, or rather her mouth twitched in the way wives mouths are wont to twitch when they desire to inflict a wound upon the husband. "I would not dare presume to conduct an inquisition on the Professor. His state of health and his behaviour are no concern of mine, but yours are. I happen to be your wife, and I love you."

She left the room and went downstairs, and this, I thought, as I buttered my piece of toast, is a good beginning to the day—Vita offended, myself with the sweating sickness, and Magnus due to arrive some time in the evening.

There was a card on the breakfast tray from him, as it happened, hidden by the toast-rack. I wondered if Vita had obscured it deliberately. It said he would be catching the 4.30 from London, arriving at Saint Austell around ten. This was a relief. It meant that Vita and the boys could go to bed, or at any rate only stay up for the courtesy of greeting the new arrival, and then Magnus and I could talk in comfort on our own. Cheered, I got up, and bathed and dressed with a determination to improve upon the morning's mood and abase myself before Vita and the boys.

"Magnus won't be here until after ten," I shouted down the stairs, "so there's no food problem. He'll dine on the train. What does everybody want to do?"

"Go sailing," cried the boys, who were hanging about in the hail in the customary aimless fashion of all children who are incapable of organising their own day.

"No wind," I said, with a rapid glance out of the window on the stairs.

"Then hire a motor boat," said Vita, emerging from the direction of the kitchen.

I decided to appease them all, and we set forth from Fowey with a picnic lunch and our skipper Tom in charge, this time not in the sailing-boat but in an ex-lifeboat of his own conversion with an honest chug-chug engine that forged along at about five knots and not a centimetre faster. We went east, out of the harbour, and anchored off Lanlivet Bay, where we picnicked, swam, and took our ease, everybody happy. Half a dozen mackerel caught on the homeward journey proved a further delight for Teddy and Micky, and a sop to Vita's culinary plans for the evening meal. The expedition had proved an unqualified success.

"Oh, do say we can come again tomorrow," pleaded the boys, but Vita, with a glance at me, told them it would depend upon the Professor. I saw their faces fall, and guessed their feelings. What could be more boring than to have to adjust themselves to this possibly stuffy friend of their stepfather's whom instinct told them their mother did not care for anyway?

"You can go with Tom", I said, "even if Magnus and I have other plans. " In any event, I thought, a let-out for us, and Vita would hardly allow them to go alone, even in Tom's charge.

We arrived back at Kilmarth about seven o'clock, Vita going immediately to the kitchen to see about the mackerel, while I had a bath and changed. It was not until about ten to eight that I wandered down the front stairs into the dining room and saw the piece of paper in Mrs. Collins handwriting propped up against the place where I usually sat. It read: 'Telegram came over the phone to say Professor Lane is I catching the 2.30 train from London instead of the 4.30. Arriving Saint Austell 7.30.'

God! Magnus must have been kicking his heels at Saint Austell station for the last twenty minutes... I tore into the kitchen.

"Crisis!" I shouted. "Look at this! I've only just seen it. Magnus caught an earlier train. Why the hell didn't he telephone? What a bloody mess-up!"

Vita, distraught, looked at the half-fried mackerel. "He'll be here for dinner, then? Good heavens, I can't give him this! I must say it shows very little consideration for us. Surely—"

"Of course Magnus will eat mackerel," I shouted, already half-way down the back stairs. "Brought up on it, very probably. And we've cheese and fruit. What are you fussing about?"

I tore out to the car, in half-agreement with her immediate reaction that to change his time of arrival, knowing we could easily be out for the day, showed small consideration for his hosts. But that was Magnus. An earlier train had suited his plans and he had caught it. If I arrived late to meet him he would probably take a taxi and pass me en route with a callous wave of the hand.

Ill-luck dogged me to Saint Austell. Some fool had driven his car into the side of the road, and there was a long queue of traffic waiting to get past. It was a quarter to nine before I drew up at Saint Austell station. No sign of Magnus, and I did not blame him. The platform was empty, and everywhere seemed to be shut up. Finally I routed out a porter on the other side of the station. He looked vague, and told me that the seven-thirty had been on time.

"I dare say," I replied. "That's not the point. The point is I was meeting someone off it, and he isn't here."

"Well, sir," he grinned, "he probably got tired of waiting and took a taxi."

"If he'd done that", I said, "he would have telephoned, or left a message with the chap in the booking-office. Were you here when the train came in?"

"No," he said. "The booking-office will be open again in time for the next down train, due at a quarter to ten."

"That's no good to me," I told him, exasperated. Poor devil, it wasn't his fault.

"I tell you what, sir," he said, "I'll open it up and see if your friend left a message."

We went back to the station and laboriously, or so it seemed to me, he fitted a key in the lock and opened the office door. I followed close behind. The first thing I noticed was a suitcase standing against the wall with the initials M. A. L. upon it.

"That's it," I said, "that's his case. But why did he leave it here?" The porter went to the desk and picked up a piece of paper. "Suitcase with initials M. A. L. handed in by guard on seven-thirty train," he read, "to be delivered to gentleman named Mr. Richard Young. You Mr. Young?"

"Yes," I said, "but where's Professor Lane?"

The porter studied the piece of paper. "Owner of suitcase, Professor Lane, gave message to guard that he had changed his mind and decided to get out at Par and walk from there. Told guard Mr. Young would understand. He handed me the scrap of paper, and I read it for myself."

"I don't understand," I said, more exasperated than ever. "I didn't think the London trains stopped at Par these days."

"They don't," replied the porter. "They stop at Bodmin Road, and anyone wanting Par changes there, and gets the connection. That's what your friend must have done."

"What a bloody silly thing to do," I said.

The porter laughed. "Well, it's a fine evening for a walk," he said, "and there's no accounting for tastes."

I thanked him for his trouble and went back to the car, throwing the suitcase on the back seat. Why the hell Magnus should take it into his head to alter every one of our arrangements beat me. He must be at Kilmarth by this time, sitting down to his mackerel supper, making a joke of the affair to Vita and the boys. I drove back at breakneck speed and arrived home just after half-past nine, furiously angry. Vita, changed into a sleeveless frock and with fresh make-up on, appeared from the music-room as I ran up the steps.

"Whatever happened to you both?" she said, the hostess smile of welcome fading as she saw I was alone. "Where is he?"

"You mean to say he hasn't turned up yet?" I cried.

"Turned up?" she repeated, bewildered. "Of course he hasn't turned up. You met the train, didn't you?"

"Oh, Jesus! What the hell is going on? Look," I said wearily, "Magnus wasn't at Saint Austell, only his suitcase. He left a message with the guard on the 7.30 train that he'd be getting out at Par and walking here. Don't ask me why. One of his bloody silly ideas. But he should have been here by now."

I went into the music-room and poured myself a drink and Vita followed, the boys running down to the car to fetch the suitcase.

"Well really," she said, "I expected more consideration from your Professor, I must say. First he changes trains, then he changes connections, and finally he doesn't bother to turn up at all. I expect he found a taxi at Par and has gone off to have dinner somewhere."

"Maybe, I said, but why not telephone to say so?"

"He's your friend, darling, not mine. You're supposed to know his ways. Well, I'm not going to wait any longer, I'm starving."

The uncooked mackerel was put aside for Magnus's breakfast, though I was pretty sure orange juice and black coffee would be his choice, and Vita and I sat down to a hasty snack of game pie, which she remembered she had brought down from London and had put at the back of the fridge. Meanwhile Teddy rang, or tried to ring, Par station, with no result.

"They did not answer. You know what," he said, "the Professor may have been kidnapped by some organisation in search of secret documents."

"Very likely," I said. "I'll give him half an hour longer and then ring Scotland Yard."

"Or had a heart attack," suggested Micky, "flogging up Polmear hill. Mrs. Collins told me her grandfather died walking up it thirty years ago when he missed the bus." I pushed aside my plate and swallowed the last drop of whisky.

"You're perspiring again, darling," said Vita. "I can't say I blame you. But don't you think it might be a good idea if you went up and changed your shirt?"

I took the hint and left the dining-room, pausing at the top of the stairs to glance into the spare-room. Why the hell hadn't Magnus telephoned to say what he was doing, or at least written a note instead of giving the guard a verbal message that had probably been garbled anyway? I drew the curtains and switched on the bedside light, which made the room look more snug. Magnus's suitcase was lying on the chair at the bottom of the bed, and I tried the hasps. To my surprise it opened. Magnus, unlike myself, was a methodical packer. Sky-blue pyjamas and Paisley dressing-gown reposed beneath a top layer of tissue paper, with blue leather bedroom slippers in their own cellophane container alongside. A couple of suits, a change of underwear beneath. Well, it was not an hotel or a stately home; he could do his own unpacking. The only gesture from host to guest—or was it the other way round?—would be to place the pyjamas on the pillow and drape the dressing-gown over the chair.