The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(23)

Either way, did I care?

“You have caused us such a problem,” she sighed. “It’s not your fault of course, lambkin. I mean–look at you, of course, entirely understandable, such a shame! Now, when it’s all over you will be wanting post-traumatic stress counselling, although I understand how difficult these things will be to come by. You look… fifty, maybe? Which means you must have been born in the twenties–ghastly, so many Freudians in the twenties, so much wanting to sleep with your mother. There’s this wonderful little chap in Finchley though, very good, very understanding, no rubbish about cigars. Failing that, I always find local priests are handy, as long as you go to them in the form of a confessional. Scares the buggery out of them sometimes too! Now absolutely don’t, don’t.” She stabbed the table with her index finger, the little joint at the end bending backwards with the force of her determination. “Don’t tell yourself that just because you’ve been around a bit you’re not in a terrible state. You are absolutely in a terrible state, Harry dear, and the silent, noble number won’t get you anywhere.”

Now I couldn’t look away from her. Was this face–this old made-up face beneath its bouncing mass of sprayed hair–salvation? Was this woman with her great dangling purple sleeves and chiffon cardigan, with her clattering pendants and expanding belly, a creature of the mysterious Cronus Club? I found it hard enough to think, let alone apply higher reason to the problem.

“There’s no joining fee,” she explained as if reading my thoughts, “but you are rather expected to chip in for the next generation, good form and all that. Only one rule set in stone–you can do whatever you like so long as you don’t bugger it up for the next lot. So no nuking New York, please, or shooting Roosevelt, even if for experimental purposes. We just can’t handle the hassle. I’m going to assume you’re interested,” she added to my silence, “in which case I really feel we should have another meeting.”

She leaned across the table. I thought she was giving me a business card, but when her hand lifted there was instead a small penknife folded into a wooden handle. Her eyes glinted and her voice was low. “How would… 2 p.m., Trafalgar Square, July 1st 1940 work for you?”

I looked from the knife, to her and back again. She understood and stood up, still smiling. “I personally favour the thigh,” she explained. “A bath helps, but one must make do, mustn’t one? Tra-la, Dr August, so long and all that!”

So saying, she sauntered merrily away.

I cut open my femoral artery that very same night, and bled out in under four minutes. Regrettably, there wasn’t an easily available bath to use at the time, but after the first sixty seconds I didn’t really notice the pain and rather savoured the mess.





Chapter 21


Death holds no fear for us.

It is rebirth where the terror lies. Rebirth, and the lingering fear that no matter how much our bodies are renewed, our minds cannot be saved.

I was in my third life when I realised my illegitimacy, standing above the coffin of Harriet August, staring into the face of my father–my biological father–on the other side of the soil.

There was no outrage or indignation. I felt, perhaps out of grief as much as rational reasoning, gratitude to Harriet and Patrick for raising me, even as the revelation settled on my soul that I could not be blood of their blood. I studied my biological father coolly, as one might study any sample which one suspects of being a placebo rather than the cure. I wondered not why or how, but what. What if he was like me?

I must admit, my scrutiny was hardly informative. With Harriet dead and my adopted father retreating ever deeper into his loneliness and grief, I increasingly took over his duties, forsaking school altogether to become the all-purpose boy of the estate. The Great Depression was coming upon us and the Hulne family had not been wise in its investments. My grandmother Constance had a level fiscal head on her shoulders, but also a great pride which resulted in a conflict of interests. She hoarded coin on fuel and repairs to the grounds, pinched at every penny and derided any and all expense, yet would every year throw a feast for all relatives and distant friends of the Hulnes to come and hunt on the lands, which single event would easily consume two times the expenditure she had saved. Of my aunts, Alexandra married a pleasant if essentially bland civil servant, and her sister Victoria continued in a lifestyle of excess and scandal which my grandmother simply refused to acknowledge. The frost between my biological father and his wife kept both of them from any great expense. She wasted most of her time in London, an activity permitted on the basis that it was her own money or the money of her family that she wasted; he spent most of his days in the countryside or dabbling, unwisely, in local politics, and when the two shared a house or a bed they did so with the same stiff efficiency and impassioned rigour of my grandmother’s yearly feast. In this way the family declined, first by vacancies in the household not being filled, and then by servants being laid off altogether. My adopted father was kept on as much for pity for his position as the services he rendered the family; also, I began to realise, for a certain debt owed by the Hulnes to the Augusts for a child raised without complaint.

I earned my keep, as I had in my first life, and was in fact of rather more use now that I had so many years to draw upon. I knew the land almost better than my father, and had over the years also acquired skills such as fixing an engine, patching a pipe, tracing a faulty cable back to its home, which seemed at the time marvellously advanced technological skills, especially for a teenage boy. I went out of my way to ensure that I was everywhere and nowhere, indispensible and unseen, as much to avoid the monotony of my life as to observe what I now understood to be my biological family. My grandmother studied the art of ignoring me; Aunt Alexandra was rarely in the house to perceive me; Victoria ignored me without having to try; and my father Rory stared until he was caught staring, though whether it was curiosity or guilt which motivated his gaze I was at a loss to say.