The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(94)
And then, without warning, there he was.
I was attending a talk on nuclear technology in the age of the extra-atmospheric long-range missile, which my editor hoped I’d write up under the tag line “Missiles in Space”. I found the idea rather unprofessional, as it implied a multiple exclamation mark at the end of the title and possibly an opening paragraph beginning, “There are some ideas too terrible…” before swelling to an oratorical climax. A card delivered to my hotel door invited me to discuss these issues further with the sponsor of this event, a Mrs Evelina Cynthia-Wright, who had added in a personal note at the end of the invite how terribly pleased she was to see the media taking an interest in these dire affairs.
With a sense of disappointment already well settled in my bones, I drove out to her house, a great white-walled mansion some three miles from the Louisiana river. The evening was damp, hot and chittering. The vegetation around the sprawling, overgrown estate hung down like it too could no longer bear the heat, while an air-conditioning system straight off the manufacturing line was blasting out steamy clouds from a device the size of a small truck, wedged up against one side of the otherwise venerable property like a technological leech on a historical monument. By the cars lined up around an entirely algae-covered pond, it was clear I was not the only guest, and a maid answered the door even before I could knock, inviting me to take an iced julep, a business card and hand-made peppermint for my pains. The sound of polite conversation and less polite, child-made music drifted out of what I could only call the ballroom, a great high-ceilinged place with wide windows that opened on to the rear garden, an even more excessively drooping jungle than at the front of the house. The music was being produced by a would-be torturer aged seven and a half and her violin of pain. Proud family and polite friends were sat in a small circle before the child, admiring her stamina. As if to prove that this at least was inexhaustible, she began in on another medley. Over eight hundred years of reasonable living had rather dented my adoration for the works of the young. Surely I could not be the only creature on this earth who favoured prolonged incubation as a safer method of development than puberty?
Mrs Evelina Cynthia-Wright was exactly what a grand dame of the Louisiana river should have been–extremely courteous, utterly welcoming and hard as the rusted nails which bound her great property together. Her research was clearly as up to date as her rather ineffective air-conditioning unit, for as I stood scanning the room, considering whether I had made enough of a necessary token appearance and wondering, not for the first time, if journalism was an appropriate response to the encroaching end of the world, she bore down on me like a melting glacier and cried out, “I say, Mr August!” I managed to suppress my flinch and crank up my smile, producing a half-bow to the hand offered to me by the wrist. Even fingers, it seemed, drooped in this weather. “Mr August, it’s so good of you to come. I’ve been such an avid follower of your work…”
“Thank you for the invitation, Mrs Wright…”
“Oh my, you’re British! Isn’t that charming? Darling!” A man three parts moustache to one part facial features responded to “Darling!” with the dutiful twitch of one who has chosen not to fight the inevitable. “Mr August is British, would you ever have guessed?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’ve read so many of your articles, but then I imagine writing in the American way must just come naturally to you.”
Had it? Was I permitted to say so? Was this a gathering where all modesty was false, all boasting insufferable? Where, I wondered, did speedy social victory and hasty escape lie?
“You absolutely have to meet Simon. Simon is such a dear and has been dying to meet you. Oh Simon!”
I fixed my smile in the locked position and, upon reflection, that was probably what saved the situation.
The man called Simon turned. He too was sporting a moustache that rolled out from his top lip like a crashing brown wave, and a smaller goatee, which ever so slightly mis-directed the user’s eye to his left collarbone. He held an icy glass in one hand and a rolled-up copy of the magazine I worked for in the other, as if about to swat a fly with it, and there were plenty of candidates for the honour. Seeing me, he opened his mouth in an expansive “O” of surprise, for this was a gathering where nothing short of expansive would do, tucked the magazine under his arm, wiped his hand off on his shirt, perhaps to remove the detritus of perished flying adversaries, and exclaimed, “Mr August! I’ve been waiting so long to meet you!”
His name was Simon.
His name was Vincent Rankis.
Chapter 69
I was not without my allies.
Charity Hazelmere was not dead.
It had taken me a while to find her, and not until the middle of my fourteenth life did I stumble on her, almost by chance, in the Library of Congress while trawling through a report on developments in modern science. I looked up from a particularly boring passage which had nothing to do with my perpetual investigation into Vincent and his activities, and there was Charity, old–inside, as well as out, leaning on a walking stick for the first time I’d ever known–staring at me from across the other side of the table, not sure if I was enemy or friend.
I looked from her to the rest of the library and, seeing no direct threat, closed my book, returned it carefully to its tray, pointed at the SILENCE PLEASE sign, smiled and walked towards the door. I didn’t know if she’d follow or not. I don’t think she knew either. But follow she did.