Wings of the Morning (4 page)

David Heaven made the most of his time at Oxford and loved all of it. He worked quite hard out of enjoyment as much as duty and took a creditable degree. He socialised, debated, became an
enthusiastic club man and was active if not outstanding in his chosen sports. He lived life to the full. He drank and dined and womanised. He became like a sponge in his eagerness to soak up the
benefits, the warmth and the experience of all the relationships which could be persuaded to come his way. He was making up for lost ground in earlier years. Very seldom did he feel any sense of
abiding commitment. He was fulfilled by just working his way around the smorgasbord of life. He was well spoken, but no snob: he had a bit of money, but was not flash with it: he was not bad
looking and was easy company: he had a sharp sense of humour and was apparently game for just about anything.

And so he flirted with everything which crossed his path, and in later life he thanked his stars and a rather remote God that he had not been irretrievably hooked or damaged by any of it.
Looking back, he could see that all the experiments with bookmakers and poker players, with dodgy booze and nameless drugs, with women both wanton and weary, and once, disastrously, with a cultured
chorister, all this frenzied activity had been as for a child on a first outing to the sweet shop.

David made four significant friendships at Oxford, one woman and three men.

First, there was Alexandra Labarre who was a little younger than the rest of them having come up early to university to escape the aftermath of a family tragedy which was never articulated.
Neither age nor gender could hold her back. Alexa — as she liked to be called — was of Anglo French birth and a most magical girl. She had stunning, ethereal looks and a most beautiful
figure, the highest quality wrapping for a razor brain and a diamond core. Being bilingual from childhood, it was perhaps too obvious that Alexa should be a language specialist but she nonetheless
distinguished herself. Her French father Joffrey travelled extensively in South America and spoke both Spanish and Portuguese whilst her English mother Elizabeth was an authority on the churches in
Venice and thus fluent in Italian. Alexa was competent to masterful in all these languages, but trumped her parents’ aces by taking Russian at Oxford. She was extremely talented but wore her
ability lightly and was ever marvellous company. David enjoyed a tide of laughter with her and endless, provocative debate on any subject. Never once did he look like winning either the arguments
or access to her bed, and perhaps he loved her all the more for it.

The three men batted in no particular order. Rupert Broke Smith, who came to be known to one and all as ‘Pente’, was a gentle giant of a man who entered the priesthood immediately
after leaving Oxford and abandoned forever the study of physics which had won him an exceptional degree. Pente had a background not dissimilar to David’s. He was the lonely, only child of
ageing parents who lived in a remote part of Herefordshire, eking out a living in the rare book trade. Pente was schooled locally, and had hardly been beyond Bristol until he surprised everyone by
gaining entry to Oxford in considerable style. He was the brightest of David’s contemporaries and would have succeeded in any subject. Pente was tremendous company too. A huge beer drinker
and an energetic party animal, he was an impressive rugby player reckoned to have missed a Blue only through insufficient training. But during one vacation, he vanished for six weeks into the Hindu
Kush and returned with the ‘call’ from which he never wavered. He was no Holy Joe, did not tax his friends with the strengths of his vocation and was in no way a lesser companion. He
may have been a little better behaved, but he still drank a great deal and laughed even more as he became overnight a man with a mission and a faith.

And the sobriquet? He won it at the seminary which he attended for an introductory course following his return from India and the story always warmed David despite his natural disregard for most
men of the cloth. It went that his fellow students suffered just so much of his fondness for mixing pickled onions and pints of bitter with explosive results to his digestion before they nicknamed
him ‘Pentecost’ to recall another rushing, mighty wind and of course, the abbreviated version became his for a lifetime.

Then there was Conrad Aveling, born to be the successful soldier which he duly became. Conrad was the youngest child of the four sons and two daughters produced by General Sir Anstruther and his
Lady Vivien Aveling. The family lived in baronial style in a vast and ugly mansion located in a village only just outside Oxford. On first acquaintance, Conrad seemed a bit quiet for David’s
taste, but it became quickly apparent that he was simply withdrawn from his overwhelming family. His mother was of towering personality, a physically dominant woman who was said to have given birth
to one of her brood only hours before returning to the hunting field. All the Avelings, boys and girls alike, were large and brave. Conrad was the exception in that he had a brain as well and with
it came a waspish sense of humour.

During their first year at Oxford, David was invited to spend a good deal of time, weekends and summer evenings, at the Aveling pile of Barrington Park and he grew increasingly to value
Conrad’s companionship. The rambunctious family atmosphere was so completely different from his own experience. There was always activity, sometimes close to chaos, but set against a
prevailing background of relaxation tinged with a faded elegance. Conrad’s siblings seemed to drift comfortably in and out of his life. Their father, the jovial General, had achieved war time
distinction and retired to manage his land from the draughty old house, but it was generally accepted that he was forcefully guided by his imposing wife. Lady Vivien could be a battle axe, but wise
and thoughtful too, as David learnt from his very first visit to the Park. Once she had recovered from mild astonishment that he had never sat on a horse or held a gun, Lady Vivien had managed to
draw from him more about his early life and distant family than he had ever previously confessed.

‘She’s a shrewd old bat, my Mum’, Conrad had spoken of her lovingly, ‘and we all owe her more than we can say or she would accept. She holds our team together, no
question’. David had found himself quite moved: this sort of family experience was completely new to him. It made a deep and lasting impression.

As the Oxford years progressed, David became close to Connie Aveling. They had shared interests in sporting, carousing and the politics of the day. But while David was undecided on a future
career path, Conrad was entirely committed to the army, although unusual at the time in having opted for university rather than going straight from school into the army. Connie had a relaxed good
humour and a wry turn of phrase, but he kept a close counsel and it was hard to read where his thoughts were turning. This led David to an increasing concern that Conrad’s similarly lustful
pursuit of Alexa Labarre was more successful than his own, but Connie would give nothing away. And then again, it often seemed that her favourite was Pente, but at least he came to put himself out
of the chase. Whatever else, it was all a lot of fun.

When they came down from university, Conrad went to Sandhurst and then to take up his commission in the Rifle Brigade where his military career was soon to prosper. He and David kept in close
touch to further a friendship which built on the diversities of their interests and lifestyles. Conrad was a man of perception which he inherited from his mother and nurtured in the shabby grandeur
and windy corridors of Barrington Park.

The third man was an exception in every respect. Kingston Horace Offenbach was different in age, nationality, religion, politics and colour. An unusual man to be found at Oxford University in
the mid 1960’s, King Offenbach was born in South Carolina in September 1938. He had one brother less than a year older and their father abandoned his small family when Kingston was three
months old. His mother was left high and dry with two tiny children, no money and precious little support from her family. But she was an intelligent girl with guts, looks and the determination
that she would do right by her children. She managed to succeed, but not without further heartbreak. Her elder son had been a sickly little boy from birth, and she lost him to pneumonia just before
his third birthday at a point when she had no reserves of energy or money to buy him the drugs which might have saved him. She had retreated from his pathetic little grave, vowing that that she
would channel her every effort into raising his brother. King rewarded her by exceeding her wildest expectations, becoming in due time an outstanding student who worked his way through secondary
education and exhibited such promise that he was taken into US Government Service under which sponsorship he won an excellent degree and then was sent to the UK to do a postgraduate thesis at
Oxford. Now, at the age of twenty-six, this was the first time that he could not make his monthly visit back home to his mother’s small house in a small town.

King Offenbach was older than the undergraduates with whom he shared life at Oxford and he had little in common with any of them. In addition, he was a self-effacing man, much more inclined to
listen than to offer opinions. Despite his colour, King had a talent for melding into the background, present but not accounted for.

King’s course at Oxford was for one year, and David first met him one gloomy evening in November 1964. He was running late for an appointment with his tutor as he rounded a corner in his
college and collided with the unbending Offenbach frame. To make matters worse, David assumed him to be a tourist visitor or a new member of staff and had been less than polite.

From such an unpromising start can sometimes grow the strongest relationships. People would say of Offenbach that he stood a little apart from the rest of them by reason of his age and others
would cite his colour, his Deep South accent or his religious fervour. Or could it have been the ‘transatlantic flavour’ as one Don famously labelled a prejudice for which he could find
no other name.

It was Pente Broke Smith who became closest to Kingston Offenbach, and even he talked of deep and still waters. Pente remarked one day to David, ‘I know this is being pretty pompous, but I
reckon that on a spiritual level, King will always keep a bit back. He has this compulsion to hold onto his reserve. But of course that personality trait is cranked up further by his
profession.’

David looked at him with surprise.

‘What profession? He’s a student like the rest of us. Just a little more mature, that’s all. Oh, and a bit darker too!’

‘Dimwit’, rejoined Pente as they walked together, ‘no David, you’re missing it. Our Kingston is on the CIA payroll and has been since he was at school, I shouldn’t
wonder.’

‘Balls,’ said David, but he had his doubts even then.

David, Alexa, Pente, Conrad and King: a group of friends drawn into a coterie which was recognised by their many colleagues and contacts throughout the university — so much so that someone
dubbed them the ‘Oxford Five’, a collective which they were all happy to embrace and to retain down the years to come.

There was another man too, in his own way just as vital an ingredient, but he was not at Oxford and was about as different to David Heaven as could be imagined. Perhaps that’s why it
worked as well as it did. In the long vacation of David’s second year, he joined a party of bright young characters to spend a month on the Riviera near Menton. The arrangement was as might
be expected. One fellow undergraduate blessed with plenty of money and some good connections is keen to acquire a wider circle of friends and thus a house party is assembled.

They swam, sailed, caroused and gambled. Towards the end of the holiday, they were returning from a casino outing when one of the party’s cars, with David at the wheel, was in a minor
traffic jam collision with a sprightly sports car driven by a young man of about his age. Damage was minimal, there was no police involvement and hardly any delay. But the following day brought a
telephone call for David from the other party, politely asking him over for a quick drink to deal with some insurance questions. What the hell, David said to himself, and went. That was the
introduction to his first employer who was to become also his business partner, mentor and a much valued friend.

Unlike some of his companions in Menton, it troubled David not at all to sit down in the company of a Jew. Martin Kirchoff was also on holiday, and during the couple of hours they spent together
in the lobby of his smart hotel, they found an instinctive enjoyment in each other’s company. Martin had a sense of fun which he tried to keep under tight control but which David was able to
tease out of him. He was transparently entranced by the vision of an undergraduate lifestyle and presented himself as a sort of social thoroughbred yearning to escape from a commercial carthorse
existence — but only occasionally since he was so deeply committed to his business aspirations. For his part, David was stimulated by Martin’s status as an emerging entrepreneur. It
seemed to David that this guy was already embarked on life with a capital L, whilst his own existence was dilettante in comparison. It further appealed to David that Martin was in partnership with
his father. The image of a dynasty fired his imagination.

They concluded their form filling and exchanged contact details but parted without a plan to meet again. Yet each took away the firm expectation that there was more to come from this chance
encounter. They were right.