Days Without Number (6 page)

'Good. The others are already here.'

Since Nick was supposed to be the surprise package of the day, it had been agreed that they should arrive last. Andrew's Land Rover and Anna's Micra were standing next to each other in the lee of the barn. Irene pulled in behind them and stopped.

'Here we go, then.' She lowered the sun-visor and squinted into the mirror, primping her hair and checking her makeup. 'Over the bloody top.'

'We're not going into battle, Irene.'

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'Go on thinking that and you could end up as the first casualty.'

'There don't need to be any casualties.'

'OK.' Irene took a deep breath. 'I'll be calm and positive. And the soul of diplomacy. Will that do?'

'If you can keep it up.'

'Think I can't?'

'I'm not saying that. I just--'

'Come on,' she cut him short, opening the door and turning to climb out. 'Let's get on with it.'

Michael Paleologus at home among his children was as rare a spectacle as it was deceptive. He looked every inch the fond and doting parent, smiling and joking as they gathered round. He appeared both surprised and pleased when Nick came in with Irene and emphasized how it did his heart good to see them all together.

Only the addition of the words 'here at Trennor', accompanied by a knowing twitch of his smile, hinted at the argument they had come to present.

Nick's first impression was that Irene and Anna had exaggerated their father's frailty. True, he was rounder shouldered and thinner than ever, but no more so than the general ageing process could account for. This was a man, after all, born in the summer the Battle of the Somme had been waged, whose first memory of world events was, appropriately enough, Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. He still dressed much as he had sixty years ago - in baggy tweed and corduroy and a cardigan whose pockets sagged under the weight of pipe, matches and tobacco-pouch. Smoking, combined with the effects of sundry archaeological expeditions over the years to North African wadis and West Asian plains, had left his face creviced like a dried river-bed. His hair - of which he still had a fine head - was yellowy grey, his eyes blue-green and magnified by the lenses of his glasses, on which Nick noticed a blurring galaxy of fingerprints and grease smears.

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Only when the old man walked any distance - such as from the drawing room to the dining room - did his unsteadiness and shortness of breath reveal themselves. He clutched at chair-backs and door frames on the way, looking in such moments bewildered by his own feebleness. Then Trennor suddenly ceased to seem a place where he could be safely left to live out his days. The rambling layout and inadequate heating were bad enough. But there were also rugs curling at the edges and worn stair-carpet to be taken into consideration, not to mention the treacherously steep steps down to the cellar. Nick saw decrepitude wherever he glanced, in the sagging furniture and fraying curtains, in the dust laden display cases of Roman coins and pre-Roman skull fragments, in the faded photographs and oriental urns, in all the accumulated detritus of his family's past. Their very surroundings spoke of the need for change.

For some time, however, that need was to go unmentioned. They had assembled, after all, to celebrate Andrew's fiftieth birthday. Pru had baked a cake, laid the dining table, prepared some vegetables and put a joint in the oven. All the family had to do was eat, drink and be as merry as they could contrive. The birthday boy himself had done little in the way of smartening up. Nor, come to that, had Basil. But their sisters had put on their contrasting party clothes - Irene one of her more elegant pairings of skirt and blouse, Anna alarmingly tight white trousers and a poppy-red off-the shoulder sweater, with one or other bra strap constantly on view.

Conviviality prevailed before and during lunch, albeit conviviality of a brittle kind. Andrew put up a decent show of surprise at Nick's presence, pleasure at the presents he was given and general appreciation of the efforts being made to mark his mid-life milestone. Anna talked and laughed too much, Basil too little. Irene steered the conversation between rocks and shallows with considerable finesse. And Nick kept subtle watch on their father, who, it seemed to him, was keeping still more sutble watch on all of them.

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But Michael Paleologus was also drinking at a pace somewhere between steady and stiff. Whisky had been taken before the birthday champagne. He had not stinted himself on the wine with lunch. And, as the meal drew to a close, he broke out the port. By then his subtlety had faded. And his reticence had begun to loosen.

'We drank a toast to Andrew before lunch,' he announced. 'Now I'd like to propose another. Your mother was a good wife to me. I loved her dearly and miss her sorely.'

'So do we, Dad,' said Anna.

'I know, my girl, I know. It's to her memory I'd like to drink. She'd be pleased by this . . . gathering. Pleased that the family's still drawn together from time to time, back here at Trennor.' If the last four words had been written down, Nick felt, they would undoubtedly have been italicized. 'To your mother.'

Glasses were clinked and port swallowed. Then Irene chimed in adroitly with a well-worn anecdote from her childhood. Andrew had taken her for a nerve-jangling spin on his motorbike one weekend, much to their father's horror. 'Good God, boy, what could you have been thinking of?' he was recorded as spluttering. Their mother had falsely insisted that she had given them permission, thus defusing the situation, though later she had taken them both severely to task. It was a familiar story, expertly told. But the events had occurred in Oxford, Nick reflected. Irene had chosen her tale carefully, pointing up as it did their mother's delicate management of the family and Andrew's lovable irresponsibility, as well as reminding them of their other home in Oxford, which they had abandoned readily and willingly when the time had come.

The moment passed, though not all of the tension. Irene had warned Nick that she meant to raise the subject of the Doom Window project over tea, when, according to her, everyone, especially their father, would be relaxed. But the old man was just as likely to be liverish and tetchy following an afternoon doze. Nick was not sure they should wait so

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long. Nor, however, did he wish to take the initiative himself. The next few hours promised to be anxious ones.

Lunch ended. Their father retired to the drawing room for a snooze by the fire. Irene and Anna set to in the kitchen, assisted by Basil. Nick accompanied Andrew on a stroll down the lane. The weather was grey and smokily chill: a January afternoon of thin light on bare trees, a moist breeze blowing in fitfully from the east, bearing the tang of river mud and the desultory shriek of gulls.

'Before you turned up,' said Andrew, 'Dad asked me if his grandson was likely to put in an appearance. Being my birthday and all.'

'Everyone would have been pleased to see him.'

'Yeah. I'm sure they would. Me especially. No such luck, though. Dad didn't say it in so many words, but he blamed me for Tom's absence. I could tell. Something in his eyes. It's always been there . . . for me. Contempt, that's what it is.'

'Come on, Andrew. That's not true.'

'Isn't it?'

'None of his grandchildren are here.'

'No. But Laura's a girl, and Zack's illegitimate. They don't count in Dad's scheme of things. Tom, now, he's different. Only son of his eldest son. Dad sees him as the torchbearer. Except that he doesn't see him. Any more than I do. It might be different if you or Basil had . . .' Andrew shrugged. 'Well, you know.'

'Married and had children?'

'Yeah. Especially sons. To carry on the name.'

'I expect Tom will manage that.'

'But will I know about it?'

'Of course. He's just . . . growing up. I wasn't exactly a model citizen at his age.'

'That's a fact.' Andrew cast him a knowing look.

'I don't suppose Dad was either,' Nick said levelly.

'Maybe not. But he's unlikely to volunteer any details. And

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it's not his past we have to worry about, is it? It's his future. And ours.' Andrew glanced back at the house. 'I could do with this going well. I really could.'

Michael Paleologus's study looked out over the lawn from the side of the house. There was also a door by which he could step straight out on to the grass without going round by the front. As Nick and Andrew wandered back past the hedge flanking the lawn, Nick caught some movement out of the corner of his eye that he thought might be the study door opening or closing. It was a double surprise, since not only had he assumed their father was still asleep but also the exit was never used in winter, when it was as likely as not to be blocked by a pile of books.

He could see no sign of anyone in the study, no stooped figure watching from the window. His father would surely need the light on if he was in there. His seated silhouette against the glare of the anglepoise desk lamp was a familiar sight from that side of the garden. But he was not at his desk, poring over an archaeological journal. He was not there at all, as far as Nick could tell.

They went in by the front door, to be met by Basil emerging from the kitchen.

'Ah, there you are,' he intoned. 'I've been sent to wake Dad. Irene seems to think he'll be in need of coffee.'

'We'll do that,' said Andrew. T'd prefer tea, by the way.'

'Coffee for me,' said Nick.

'I'll report back.' Basil grinned and beat a retreat with some alacrity.

They pressed on into the drawing room. Michael was sitting where they had left him by the fire, but he was not asleep and Nick noticed his chest was heaving, like someone out of breath doing his poor best to disguise the fact.

'Are you all right, Dad?'

'As all right ... as I'll ever be ... Where is everybody?'

'They're just finishing up in the kitchen.'

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'Good.' He coughed, taking a moment to recover himself. 'Why don't you two sit down.'

They obeyed, perching together on one of the sofas. Half a minute or so passed, during which neither found anything to say. Michael took out his pipe and laboriously filled and lit it, studying them through the first puffs of smoke and seeming to smile faintly - unless it was merely the curl of his lips round the pipe stem.

'Caught that big cat yet, Andrew?'

'No, Dad.'

'Think you ever will?'

'On videotape, yes. Eventually.'

'And that'll be the proof you're looking for?'

'It'll be the proof everyone's looking for.'

'I doubt it. A skeleton's what you need. Tangible remains. Strange none have ever turned up. These creatures have to die ... if they live.'

'They live.'

'What do you think, Nicholas?'

The?' Nick had been hoping not to be asked for his opinion. He wondered if his father had realized that. 'Oh, I've got a pretty open mind on the subject.'

'An open mind? Well, that's an excellent thing to have in its way. Pity you've not put it to better use, but . . . there's still time, I suppose.'

'Tell us what you think, Dad,' said Andrew, so abruptly that Nick suspected he had intervened for his sake. 'About big cats.'

'What I think, my boy, is that people want to believe in them. Perhaps they need to believe in them. Myth can be as powerful as reality. That was one of the first lessons I learned as an archaeologist. Your grandfather and I assisted Ralegh Radford with his excavations at Tintagel in the nineteen thirties.' Nick and Andrew nodded in unison. This was, after all, a tale they had heard before. The first serious archaeological investigation of Tintagel, north Cornwall's famous clifftop version of Camelot, had begun in 1933, under

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the supervision of the subsequently celebrated director of the British School at Rome, C. A. Ralegh Radford. Godfrey Paleologus and his teenage son Michael had been among his amateur helpers. There was a photograph in the study of the pair of them on site with Radford in the summer of 1935. 'Those excavations revealed that the castle was constructed, probably in the twelve thirties, at the behest of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of King Henry the Third. There wasn't a trace of King Arthur. Not a splinter of the Round Table, nor a single shard of knightly lance. But do you think that stopped the Arthurian connection being peddled? Do you think that stopped people believing they beheld the ruins of Camelot? Of course not. They saw what they wanted to see. Well, much the same applies to your elusive big cats, I'm afraid. They--'

'Beverages ahoy,' announced Basil, propelling the door open with his foot and steering the tea trolley smartly through. 'Plus birthday cake, of course. We're all sybarites today.'

Basil was hardly to know it from the response he received, but Nick for one was grateful for his arrival. Their father's lecturing mode could easily segue into a rant, which would make even-tempered discussion of a delicate issue all but impossible.

Oddly enough, however, Michael did not seem to mind breaking off from his disquisition. He puffed at his pipe and spectated placidly as seats were taken, cups of tea or coffee distributed, slices of cake handed round. He even mumbled an endorsement of the tribute Irene paid to the absent Pru. He laid his pipe aside, nibbled at his cake and drank his tea, then asked for a second cup.

And then, after Andrew had given a vaguer answer to a vague question from Anna about how it felt to be fifty, he suddenly made his move.

'Which of you has been nominated to tell me I've got to go, then?' All eyes were suddenly upon him. He smiled, relishing the intentness of his audience. 'Have you perhaps been brought down specially to do the deed, Nicholas?'

Nick did not know how to respond. He felt his stomach

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tighten. 'It's not a question of . . .' He looked round helplessly at his siblings. 'I mean . . .'

'I was going to raise the subject of Mr Tantris's offer, Dad,' said Irene. She set down her cup. 'We didn't draw straws to decide. It's something we all agree has to be discussed.'

'So, let's discuss it.' Michael finished his tea and beamed at them. 'Tantris has offered me half a million pounds plus my fees at some de luxe old fogeys' home in Tavistock to get his hands on Trennor. Correct?'