Circles of Time (23 page)

“Think?”

“Seems to me there is. I'm not much for tools. I'm a driver, not a bleedin' mechanic.”

“Look, you can stand around and learn something or you can go back to the house and finish your tea.”

“You don't need me, then?”

“Not really, no. But thanks for your help anyway.”

“Think nothing of it,” Banes said as he started out. “My pleasure, I'm sure.”

Ross took off his jacket, undid his tie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He experienced a visceral pleasure when he opened the car bonnet and studied the great engine. There were some fine motorcars a man could buy in the States—Apperson and Duesenberg, Jordan and Stutz—but there was nothing built in the world to compare with the Rolls Silver Ghost.

He found the tool kit in the boot and began to remove the carburetor, working carefully, loosening each bolt a half-turn at a time. He was so intent on what he was doing that he did not hear someone calling until the name had been repeated twice.

“Banes—Banes—”

He straightened up with the spanner in his hand and looked toward the open end of the garage. A woman was standing there, silhouetted against the light. She took a step into the garage, and when she did he could see her face. There was no forgetting its loveliness.

“But you're not Banes,” Alexandra said. “You're—Ross?”

“That's right.”

“Good Lord, I don't believe it.”

“Well, it's true,” he said lamely.

“That's marvelous! I'm very happy to see you back, Ross. I'm glad father has a proper chauffeur for a change.”

“Well …”

“Is there anything the matter with the car?”

“The—carburetor needs some work.”

She gave him a radiant smile. “I'm sure you'll fix it, then. Do you think it'll be done by five-thirty?”

“I don't see why not.”

“Good. There's someone to pick up at Godalming station at six-fifteen. The London train.” She turned to go. “It is nice having you back. Really like old times again, isn't it?”

And then she was gone. He stood staring after her, watching her walk toward the house, then he turned back to the carburetor and removed it from the engine.

Old times. He thought about the
old times
as he cleaned the choke-valve assembly with kerosene and a small brush. Driving young Lady Alexandra around London had been one of his chores. The summer season, the earl's daughter party-mad and dance-crazy. Drive her here, drive her there—Chelsea to St. John's Woods … Mayfair to Knightsbridge, all in one evening, the back of the car crowded with her friends. The tango had been the craze the year of her seventeenth birthday and she'd danced it till dawn her birthday night. He'd stood beside the car in a Chelsea mews, gabbing sleepily with other chauffeurs while tango music throbbed through the dark street.

Now he heard the click of her high-heeled shoes as she came into the garage, and he looked toward her. She hesitated a moment and then walked slowly toward him, looking slightly abashed.

“I just saw my father. I do apologize, Ross. I feel an utter fool.”

“Do you?” He grinned at her. “There are worse things can happen to a man than being mistaken for a chauffeur.”

“I'm sure there are, but I—”

“Made an honest, and perfectly logical mistake.” He was holding the delicate mechanism of the step-up piston and spring between his fingers. “You might do me a favor. On the bench there—a very thin screwdriver.”

She found the screwdriver and handed it to him. He carefully transferred the tiny spring-lift piston to one hand, tightened a small screw and set the mechanism carefully inside the partially disassembled carburetor.

Alexandra watched him, intrigued by the procedure. “Very delicately done, Ross. I always thought that mechanics just slammed things with hammers.”

“That's one way.”

“Father told me that you live in San Diego, California. It must be a beautiful place.”

“It is. Actually, our factory is in San Diego and I live across the bay, on Coronado Island. The navy has an air base on the north end of the island and we test our seaplanes there.”

“Do you fly?”

“No. I don't like heights. I do all my testing with a slide rule. It's safer that way.”

Her closeness was disturbing. The smell of her perfume mingled with the raw odor of petrol and kerosene. An unlikely mixture, he was thinking. About as unlikely as her standing next to him talking about San Diego. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the soft curve of her neck. He tried to shut his mind to it and concentrate on the ticklish job of putting the carburetor back together. He dropped a small screw into one of the vents and had to fish it out with a piece of wire.

“We'd considered going to California,” she said. “My husband had been asked to spend a year at the American army hospital in San Francisco.”

“He should go. It's an interesting city.”

“He died a year and a half ago.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Thank you. Did you marry?”

“No. Haven't had the time to meet anyone. I will when things settle down. California's heaven for kids. Seems like a sin not to have any.” He made one final adjustment and put the screwdriver down on the workbench. “There. That does it.”

“Good as new?”

“Better, if I do say so.”

She held out a hand. “I must go in and dress. It's been pleasant talking to you, Ross—and the best of luck.”

He looked at her slim white hand and held up his own, amber with kerosene. “I'll not shake hands or you'll smell of solvent for a week. But it's been good talking to you as well. I hope we see each other again before I go home.”

It was the sort of thing one said in America. But why would they see each other again? What was there to see each other about? To talk of
old times?
He picked up the carburetor and took it back to the car.

“Perhaps we will,” she said.

He tested the car by driving it around the long, circular drive in front of the house, stopping every few yards to satisfy himself that it wouldn't die again from lack of enough fuel. When he brought it back to the garage, the earl was waiting there with a stony-faced Banes. The chauffeur was now dressed in uniform, black cap and leather gaiters, black gloves. At least he
looked
like a proper driver of motorcars.

“Thank you most awfully, Ross,” the earl said. “It sounds perfect now.”

There was an offer of a drink—which Ross turned down as nicely as he could—and then he was back in his own car and grateful to be there. It had been a strange few hours.

Our Ross.

He had not been patronized in any way. It was all his own failings, not the Earl of Stanmore's or his daughter's. The problem with being at Abingdon Pryory was that he felt like
our Ross.
The servant who had come back.

“Damn,” he muttered as he drove quickly down the long gravel road toward the gates. He hoped he would not see Alexandra Greville again. That wouldn't be her name now, of course—she had been married. But whatever her name was, he hoped he would not see her or be close enough to her to detect her perfume or notice the perfection of her face.

As he got out of the car to open the gates, he spotted the evening star, low and bright over the woods. A line of poetry popped into his head—a line learned at the chautauqua in Parma, Ohio.
She walks in beauty like the night....

She walks in beauty
.... He had never been able to associate that line with a living face before, but he could now.

“H
ELLO, DARLING.”
N
OEL
Edward Allenby Rothwell, Esq., got into the back of the car and planted a kiss on Alexandra's cheek. He sat beside her, holding her hand, while Banes saw to his luggage.

“And how was London all week?” Alexandra said.

“Lonely.” He raised her hand to his lips. “Frightfully lonely.”

She laughed. “But productive, I hope?”

“Oh, yes, but it was difficult to concentrate on the fruits of mammon. I found myself yearning for Saturday and four days of gracious living in company with a particularly beautiful lady.” He kissed her hand again, let go of it, and patted her knee. “And lo, it came to pass.”

“I think it was clever of you, Noel, to sneak four days.”

“Not sneak, my dear—demand.”

He settled back against the seat as the car pulled sedately away from the railway station. He felt blissfully content and very happy to be out of London. It had been a hectic week with signs of far more hectic ones to come. The financial world was in a state of flux that verged on the chaotic. Strikes in the Welsh coal mines, anarchy and civil war in Ireland, the crushing war debt were just a few of the ingredients in a pot that refused to stop boiling. And the French were not helping matters to simmer down. Their new premier, Poincaré, was determined to fly in the face of British and American opposition by tightening the screws on Germany another notch or two. Squeezing Germany until “the pips squeaked” was all very well when Lloyd George had said it during the heat of victory, but he had soon changed his mind. No one with a sense of history or a basic understanding of economics would deliberately drive a nation as large as Germany into bankruptcy and despair. International finance and trade were always in a perilous state of balance at the best of times. To destroy one country in order to bolster another, as Monsieur Poincaré appeared to be trying to do, could only result in wrecking that delicate balance beyond hope of recovery.

France felt justification, of course. The devastated land, the wrecked industry, the appalling loss of blood. But that blood could not be returned to France by trying to squeeze it out of German stones. Reparation payments had never made any sense. The draining away of German gold had only succeeded in turning the mark into a bitter joke, from twenty to the pound sterling to nearly four thousand to the pound—and inflating daily. Rubbishly bits of paper. The million and one wires that tied one nation to another through trade and finance were being cut away or tangled into a hopeless knot. What was happening in Hamburg and Cologne was starting to be felt in Glasgow and Coventry—and stocks reflected it. His week had been spent in trying to explain to bewildered clients why their portfolios were steadily shrinking in value. It was gratifying to be spending the next few days among people who, although they might have worries, certainly had no financial ones.

He looked through the window at the dark fields and hedgerows flashing past. Good English land. That's where the grand old families put the bulk of their wealth. Lord Stanmore as an example. Acres and acres of it, fields and farms and villages and more than just a few square blocks of London's West End. No sinking values there. He patted Alexandra gently on the knee again—an affectionate touch without a trace of crass familiarity.

“It's so
good
to be with you,” he said—and meant every word of it.

Candlelight gleamed softly on the long, highly polished walnut dining table. The footmen made their rounds with the silver salvers. The roast was carved. The wine decanted and poured.

“Well, Noel,” the earl said after the servants had left the room. “What do you think will happen in Ireland in this dogfight between the Republicans and the Dail?”

“No,” Hanna said with mock severity. “I forbid political discussions at dinner, if you don't mind.”

“But that's not politics, Hanna,” the earl said. “It's more like war, if you ask me.”

“Neither war
nor
politics has a place at the table.” She smiled across at Noel. “Tell me, Noel, did your mother enjoy Spain?”

“Very much, Lady Hanna. Madrid was freezing, but Malaga was delightful.”

“Yes, Andalusia is wonderful this time of year.”

After dinner, there were port and cigars to be endured, and his opinion of the Irish situation to be aired and discussed, as well as other worldly matters, man to man—and then he was free to be alone with Alexandra.

They had demitasse and brandy in the library, seated side by side on a wide leather couch.

“I'm sure you must get rather bored down here in the country, Noel.”

“Bored? How could anyone be bored being with you?”

“Is my company that exciting?”

“It most certainly is to me.”

“Why exactly?”

He took a sip of brandy and then placed the glass on the table in front of them. “Because I feel such a sense of—
completeness
when I'm with you. It's as though a part of me has always been missing until now. A hollow man. I never knew what caused that desolation until we met. It was love, Alexandra. I fell in love with you—an emotion I'd never felt before for any woman.” He turned to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “It's a moment like this when I wish I were a poet—to tell you how I feel. All I can say is that I love you very much.”