The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(99)

His father, the mysterious source of his wealth, turned out to be a real individual who had died in 1942, a hero in the Pacific war. His grave was conveniently unmarked and untraceable, but I had little doubt, as I trawled quietly through Vincent’s records, that even if there was a body to examine, it would show about as much genetic connection to Vincent as my DNA did to the mysterious Mr and Mrs August of Leeds. It would take more–much more–to spin Vincent’s point of origin out of him.

In 1978, the year the Berlin Wall fell and the first attempt at the Channel Tunnel caused a cave-in beneath the sea which killed twelve men and briefly stalled European attempts at economic recovery following the bursting of the dot.com bubble, I was invited, as I had now grown accustomed to being, to another party at Vincent’s mansion. The invitation, trimmed with gold, was clearly to a large social affair, but large social affairs served my purposes, for the repetition and volume of the lies Vincent was forced to tell at such gatherings only made it easier to detect the anomalies in his reporting. Nothing was said as to the occasion, but a handwritten note at the bottom of my card told me to “Hang on to your pyjamas!”

He enjoyed toying with me, and, in my way, I enjoyed being toyed with. The years had led him to relax a little in my presence, perhaps to believe that I was as harmless as I claimed–Harry August, limited memory, dubious reputation–and hell, but he knew how to hold a party.

I arrived in the evening down the familiar gravel drive to the familiar old grand red-brick mansion which he called his “April–May, August–October” home, finding these the seasons when Maine was at its most pleasing. Where he spent November–March and June–July was anyone’s guess, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he wore a radiation badge while there. If a Geiger-Müller counter could have done anything more than confirm my suspicions, I would have packed one beneath my dinner jacket, but as it was I needed nothing more than my own awareness of the same to let me conclude that Vincent was still working on the quantum mirror. I wondered how far ahead he’d come.

Five lives, Harry. Five more lives and I think we’ll have it!

Those words had been spoken to me two lives since. Was he still on schedule?

“Harry!” He greeted me at the door, embracing me with a Frenchman’s charm and a Yankee’s enthusiasm. “You’re in the pink room–you are staying, aren’t you?”

“Your invite said to hang on to my pyjamas, which I could only assume was an invitation for the weekend.”

“Marvellous! Come inside, the other guests are already beginning to arrive. I apologise if I have to talk to them, you know how it is–contacts contacts contacts.”


The pink room in question was a small room in a tower projecting from one side of the building designed by an architect who’d decided that medieval was modern. It had its own tiny toilet and shower, and a picture on one wall showing a much younger Vincent proudly holding aloft the largest hunting rifle I’d ever seen, one foot on the carcass of a tiger. It had taken me a solid twenty minutes of analysis to determine that the image was in fact a fake, like so many images of Vincent sprawled around the house.

The chatter was indeed rising from downstairs, and as the sun settled below the horizon, the lawn beneath my room was striped with bright beams of tungsten light spilling out of the windows of every room of the house. A band struck up country tunes of a kind designed to rouse the soul, without necessarily inducing embarrassing deviations towards a “Yee-hah!” in a dignified environment. I donned my suit and headed downstairs.

There were some familiar faces in the crowd, men and women I’d been gradually introduced to over the years of my acquaintance with Vincent–Simon Ransome to all and sundry assembled. There were cordial handshakes and enquiries about mutual contacts, friends, family and, as increasingly began to happen at this time of life, health.

“God, I’ve taken to measuring my blood pressure at home–I go to the doctor and it just soars through the roof!”

“I’ve been told to watch my sugar.”

“I’ve been warned to watch the fat!”

“Cholesterol, cholesterol, how I dream of a little more cholesterol in my life.”

A few more years, I reflected, and my body would begin its usual course of shutting down from the bone marrow out. A few more years, and if I wasn’t any closer to learning the secrets of Vincent Rankis, would this life count as a waste?

A sudden tinkling of silver on glass and a burst of polite applause, and there was Vincent, standing by the now-silent band, drink raised and face smiling proudly upon all assembled.

“Ladies and gentlemen–” the beginning of a speech, God how I hated speeches “–thank you all for coming here today. I’m sure you’re wondering why…”

In my time I’ve attended eighty-seven weddings, seventy-nine funerals, twenty-nine bar mitzvahs, eleven bat mitzvahs, twenty-three confirmations, thirty-two baptisms, eight divorce tribunals as a witness for one side or another, thirteen divorce tribunals as a mutual friend to cry on, seven hundred and eighty-four birthday parties of which one hundred and eleven had involved a stripper, twelve of them involving, in fact, the same stripper, one hundred and three anniversary parties and seven remarriages after relationship difficulties, and of these I could think of maybe only fourteen speeches that were even remotely, even passably…