The Island Where Time Stands Still
Dennis Wheatley
Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones
For
CHRISTINA FOYLE
Who has given over a million copies of my stories to her Book Club subscribers; and as a small tribute, in their 50th year of business, to
WILLIAM AND GILBERT FOYLE
who in half a century of hard work, inspiration and enterprise have built up the biggest bookshop in the world.
From their affectionate friend
DENNIS WHEATLEY
My dear Dennis
,
I must admit that you have grounds for complaint; although, to me, it seems hardly credible that eight years should have slipped by since I last provided you with material for a book. I am all the more touched to hear that still, after all this time, a week seldom passes without some of your readers writing to ask what has happened to me
.
In self-defence, I would point out that you could have satisfied their kind interest at least to the extent of relating my activities up to the end of World War II: but you chose to terminate your account of them in December 1941. Moreover, you left your readers under the impression that Erika's husband had been liquidated by Grauber. Had Erika and I been less mentally exhausted after our nightmare crossing of Lake Constance, we should have realised that none of the Nazis in the boat was armed; and that, as we learned later, the shot we heard was fired from a Swiss patrol boat in an unsuccessful endeavour to prevent Grauber and his pals getting back to Germany
.
I think it rather a pity that you have not yet described for your readers how von Osterberg really met his death, my final round with Grauber, and those unforgettable last hours with Hitler in the bunker. But perhaps you are right about the public being temporarily surfeited with tales of how we got the better of the Nazis, and that they would arouse much greater interest after a lapse of a few more years, which would give them almost an historical flavour
.
As far as my activities since the war are concerned, it is true that I have been on a number of secret missions; but to give an account of any of them in detail would involve disclosing information which a foreign power would be very glad to have; so there can be no question of publishing these for the time being. However, although few people know it, I was recently written off as dead for the best part of a year. During that time I became involved in what might almost be termed a private enterprise of a âkill or be killed' nature; and, rather than disappoint your readers altogether, I am sending you my notes about it
.
The Pacific is a big place; the Chinese are a strange people: but love and greed don't vary much the world over, do they? You know how my mind works well enough by now for me to be confident that you will give a fair picture of my reactions during these strange events which nearly cost me my reason and did cost a lot of other people their lives. More power to your elbow
.
Yours ever
,
P.S
.
I still have a little of the Pol Roger '28 you sent me in return for my last batch of notes, and it is now so good I'm keeping it for very special occasions. This time I rather favour Louis Roederer '45, preferably in magnums, if you can find me some
.
G
.
P.P.S
.
I am hoping to be back in England shortly, and that will definitely be an occasion for us to knock off a bottle or two of the '28
.
G
.
6 Lured by Love or Victim of Lust?
13 Death in a Bed and Love in a Tree-top
14 The Merchant Prince's Story
18 The Arm-pit of the Tortoise
19 âThere is Many a Slip â¦'
24 The Three Wishes of Gregory Sallust
Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.
As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy's visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.
There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.
There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.
He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it's true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it's important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read âall his books'.
Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.
He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.
He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond's precursors.
The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I'm not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.
Dominic Wheatley, 2013
âIn the Midst of Life'
âThis,' thought Gregory Sallust, âis it!'
Another huge wave loomed above him like the side of a cliff, curled over, broke in a seething cascade of foam, and submerged him as though he was a rag doll drawn under the torrent of a mill-race.
He had been in many a tight corner before, and courage, quick wits, endurance, audacity, or some combination of them, had always saved him; but now, as hundreds of tons of water forced him fathoms deep into awful smothering blackness, he knew that even had he possessed the nine lives of a cat he would still be food for fishes long before morning. He was in the middle of the Pacific, a piece of human flotsam at the mercy of a raging tempest, and he had no chance whatever of being picked up.
At ten o'clock that night Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust's yacht had struck a submerged coral-reef. It had ripped a great hole in her bottom, and within ten minutes they had known that nothing could save her. As, with flooded engine rooms, she wallowed in the trough of huge seas they had striven to get out the boats. The big launch had hardly touched the water when it was caught up and smashed like an egg-shell against the ship's side. By then the yacht had been well down at the bows, so some of them had floated off on a cork raft from the fo'c'sle. Before they could distribute their weight evenly it had capsized and pinned several of them beneath it. Gregory was flung clear, caught on a wave crest and, in a matter of seconds, carried out of sight of his still-struggling companions. The moon was not yet up, only starlight lit the storm-tossed waters, as he struck out in a wild endeavour to rejoin them. His efforts
proved unavailing. Above the booming of the hurricane he caught a single despairing cry, then his last contact with the two beings he loved best in the world was broken.