How to Stop Time(52)

I took a big gulp of wine. ‘I can’t do this, Hendrich, I can’t do it.’

‘Cecil, please.’

‘I am sorry I went to Dr Hutchinson. Seriously, I am. But I want my old life back. I just want to be me again.’

‘I am afraid that is, as they say, impossible. Time moves forwards. We have the luxury of time but we still can’t reverse it. We can’t stop it. We are one-way traffic, just the same as all these mayflies. You can’t simply cut away from the society any more than you can be unborn. You do understand that, don’t you, Tom? And what about your daughter, Tom? We are going to find her. We will.’

‘But you haven’t.’

‘Yet, Tom, we haven’t yet. I sense she is out there, Tom. I know she is out there. She is there, Tom.’

I said nothing. I was angry, yes, but as was so often the case with anger, it was really just fear projecting outwards. The society was nothing – it had no physical presence in the real world, there was no stone plaque outside a grand building announcing its existence. It was just Hendrich and the people who had faith in him. And yet . . . Hendrich was enough. His aptitude. Indeed, maybe it was that aptitude that caused him to reel me in again with just the right words. Maybe it wasn’t just words, either. Maybe he actually could sense she was out there.

But then a thought. ‘If your aptitude is so good, then why didn’t you know? Why didn’t you know they could have killed me?’

‘They didn’t kill you. If they had killed you then, yes, I would have made a terrible mistake. But the fact is that you are a survivor, and I knew that, and it has been proven. Obviously, we are all survivors. But you . . . I don’t know. There is something special about you. You have a desire to live. Most people who get to your age feel like everything is behind them. But when I look at you I see a thirst for the future, a yearning for it. For your daughter, yes, but for something else too. The great unknown.’

‘But what kind of life is it? Having to change who you are every eight years?’

‘You had to change who you were before. What is the difference?’

‘The difference is that I could decide. It was my life.’

He shook his head, and smiled solemnly. ‘No. You were in retreat. You were hiding from life. You were hiding, if I dare say, from yourself.’

‘But that’s what the society is for, isn’t it? To hide?’

‘No, Tom, no. You misunderstand everything. Look at us. In the centre of the most famous restaurant in a sunlit city everyone wants to visit. We are not hiding. We are not tucked away in St Albans pulling metal out of a forge. The aim of the society is to provide a structure, a system, which enables us to enhance our lives. You do the occasional favour, a spot of recruitment, and you get to live a good life. And this is how you thank me.’

‘I have just spent eight years on a farm in Albuquerque with nothing but three cows and some cacti for company. It seems the society works better for some than it does for others.’

Hendrich shook his head. ‘I have a letter for you, from Reginald Fisher. You remember? The man you recruited in Chicago?’

He handed me the letter and I read it. It was a long letter. The one line that stood out was this one, near the end. I would have betrayed God to finish myself if you had never come and seen me, but I feel so happy now, knowing I am not a freakish specimen of humanity, but part of a family.

‘All right, Arizona was a mistake. But not everything has been. Lives are lost in wars but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t ever be fought. You had a piano, Tom. Did you play it?’

‘Five hours a day.’

‘So how many instruments can you play now?’

‘Around thirty.’

‘That’s impressive.’

‘Not really. Most of them no one wants to hear any more. It’s hard to play Gershwin on a lute.’

‘Yes.’ Hendrich ate the last of his fish. Then he stared at me earnestly. ‘You are a murderer, Tom. Without the society’s protection you would be in a very vulnerable place right now. You need us. But I don’t want you to stay out of sheer necessity, Tom . . . I hear you, I hear you. I do. And I will never forget the people whose lives you have saved by bringing them into the society. So, from now on I am going to be a little more considerate of your needs. I am going to allocate a few more resources to finding Marion. We’ve got some new people. Someone in London. Someone in New York. One in Scotland. Another in Vienna. I’ll get them working on it. And, of course, I will fund those needs. I am going to listen. I am going to help you as much as I can. I want you to thrive, Tom. I want you to find not just Marion but the future you are waiting for . . .’

A group of four men entered the room and were escorted to a table. One of them had the most recognisable face on the planet. It was Charlie Chaplin. He spotted Lillian Gish and went over and spoke to her, his calm expression punctuated by the occasional quick nervous smile. She laughed gracefully. I had breathed the same air as Shakespeare, and now I was breathing the same air as Chaplin. How could I be ungrateful?

‘We are the invisible threads of history,’ Hendrich told me, as if reading my mind. Chaplin saw us looking and tipped an invisible bowler hat in our direction.

‘See. Told you. He loves this place. Must be the soup. Now, what do you want to do with your life?’