Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (21 page)

“Undoubtedly I would.”

He considered this a moment. Then suddenly he held out his hand. “Zack Cornelius,” he said.

“Ethan Hart.”

He was one of the few who didn't comment on the rareness of my name. I suppose his own was pretty seldom encountered. I remembered Zachary Scott, an American film star from my boyhood.

“
Ethan
?” he said. “Doesn't that mean ‘perennial'?”

“But I believe you're the first person I've ever met who's known that.”

And I felt touched by his courtesy. By his willingness to linger. We left Eliza Frink's grave (it was also her children's but there wasn't evidence of any husband) and followed a path meandering up the hill. On either side of it the grass was full of dandelions, which in the distance made big blurry clumps, decorative among the tombstones. We rounded a bend and saw a row of almshouses, surmounted in the middle by a clock tower. At this point there was an exit from the cemetery. “Canning Circus,” said the young man, “the crossroads where the suicides were buried. Could you fancy a beer?”

We went to the Sir John Borlase Warren (“An admiral at the time of Nelson,” replied my knowledgeable informant) and carried our pints through to its back yard, where I took off my sports jacket and we sat at a picnic table under a cherry tree. I offered him a cigarette.

But he didn't smoke.

“I wish
I
didn't. Yet my work is so dull I probably couldn't survive without.”

He asked the anticipated question.

“Advertising. Nowadays I'm astonished I ever thought it interesting. Though I suppose we all change. What about you?”

“Psychology.”

“Ah, then. That explains it. Why I've been unburdening myself so shamelessly to a stranger.”

“I think it's more a case of our operating on the same wavelength. Very rarely do you meet someone with whom you click immediately.”

If I'd been a girl, I could easily imagine falling in love with him. It wasn't just his blue eyes and his blond hair, his infectious grin. He had strength—charisma. You wanted to confide in him.

“But, Ethan, do you really feel so trapped?”

I gave a slow nod.

“By what, then?”

“Well…” I blew out smoke, deliberately. “A job I don't enjoy. A heavy mortgage. A stupid sense of resentment.” I didn't add a sterile marriage—at least I was capable of holding
something
back. “Will any of that do? Just for starters?”

But I hadn't reckoned on the note of hysteria. I'd kidded myself I could keep it casual. I reached for my glass and discovered my hand wasn't any steadier than my voice. “I think we'd better talk about something else.”

“Of course.” He momentarily touched my shirtsleeve, gave a reassuring smile. “So how about the weather? Or…well, let me see, now…what about euthanasia? Or time travel?”

“A broad choice,” I said. “But on a day like this I feel we ought to pick the weather.”

“It's glorious, isn't it?”

“Do you suppose it's going to last?”

I'd been waiting for him to finish his drink. It was he who'd bought the first round.

“Perhaps we can deal with euthanasia,” I suggested, “on my return?”

But he must have felt impatient. “Do you approve of it?” he asked. I was slightly bewildered.

“Well, yes, I suppose so. If the person's desperate and there's honestly no other way.”

I spoke for a moment about safeguards. As a form of small talk it seemed a little inappropriate.

“Forgive me,” he smiled. “Yes, you're right. It isn't something one should joke about.”

Not that we'd actually been joking.

I came back from the bar. “We appear to be running out of options,” I said. “I think we're only left with time travel.” I loosened my tie and undid the button at my throat. “So what period would
you
choose to return to?” I'd forgotten that time travel, for some, meant the future even more than the past.

“Oh, it's not so easy for me. I'd have to think about it.”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“But I assumed you'd already decided. To live your life again with memory intact.”

A ladybird landed on my grey trousers.

“Just put the clock back? Okay. I feel I could settle for that. If youth only knew; if age only could!”

“Yes—right,” he agreed.

I drew on my cigarette. “Next time round I shan't smoke!”

And next time round I'd be more sportive. Swimming, skiing, tennis. I'd have liked to be a great dancer. Also, of course, I'd be a traveller. A bon viveur. (Why not a Don Juan? That's something I'd definitely missed out on.) The possibilities were endless. I'd only been considering them a moment.

I stopped myself. Felt foolish. I wasn't the sort who got carried away. Not any more.

He raised his glass. “Cheers!”

“Cheers! I find this subject fascinating. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Indeed there are. Consult Dr Einstein.”

“Or consult Dr Faustus.” I watched the ladybird walk across a corner of the table. “But no, on second thoughts, not
him
. Don't really want to jeopardize my soul.”

Zachary laughed.

“Ethan, it wouldn't be required of you. I give you my solemn word on that.”

2

“Come in. And please forgive the mess.” It was Ginette who normally said that but as she wasn't here (she managed a dress shop in the town) I found myself coming out with it instead. This was stupid, because there really wasn't any mess. What there was was shabbiness. The carpets for instance had come with the house and had looked worn even when we'd moved in, four years earlier. Likewise, the curtains. In that time, too, although we'd often spoken of the need to do things up, we'd never found the energy. Slothfulness again.

Now it didn't help that the sunshine was so bright.

But I needn't have worried. Zack was scarcely in at the front door before he was admiring a framed and blown-up photograph we had on the wall. This showed my grandmother when she was twenty—taken in the open air with her mother and her siblings. “You've plainly got a strong sense of family. You care about your origins.”

I pointed out, a fraction dryly, that they could have been my wife's origins.

“But they're not, are they? I'm right in thinking this one here is your grandmother?”

“Yes. I'm flattered. She was very beautiful, wasn't she?”

“And the older woman next to her…her mother?”

“Not so difficult,” I said.

“Oh, I'm only showing off! Could we have the light on? Now the sister sitting on her other side…Mabel?”

I stared at him.

“And this…Lilian? Julia? Ruth? Madge.” He left a pause of some five seconds between each name and kept on looking at my face.

“That's uncanny,” I exclaimed. “What kind of trick is that?”

“A small talent for telepathy?”

“Zack, I'm struck. But come on. What were the brothers called?”

This time he scarcely looked at me. “Frank…Howard…Stuart.”

That was even more striking since I'd then done my best to block him, by trying not to think of my great-uncles' real names and by searching frenziedly for false ones.

“My goodness, hardly a
small
talent! God, I shall start thinking things like, ‘I can't stand this man, I wish he'd go away,' not because they're true but because I know I mustn't.”

He laughed. “Oh no. It's not so bad as that, I promise. And even if it were I'd be extremely understanding.”

“Yes, I believe you would.” I led him into the kitchen and got out two tumblers; I'd bought more bitter on the way home. I began to prepare some salad and some snacks. Zack leant against the worktop with his beer beside him. For the first time, indoors and in the narrow confines of the sunny kitchen, I caught the subtle fragrance on his skin.

“Eternity,” he said.

“Smells good.”

“I ought to get you a bottle. Happy birthday, by the way. Many happy returns!”

“Is there a single thing that I actually needed to tell you this morning? I mean, that you couldn't have told me?”

“I saw those cards on the hall table.” He smiled at me, innocently. “Do you mind if I wander a little?”

The dining room adjoined the kitchen; the sitting room was on the other side of that. He was gone for several minutes.

“The things I enjoy looking at are people's books and records and photographs.”

“Sorry there aren't more photographs.”

“Yes, highly inconsiderate! So where do you keep them? In a box beneath the bed?”

“Zack, you're losing your touch. There's an album in the linen chest.”

I told him I'd fetch it later if he still wanted it, though privately I didn't think he would.

Apparently I had underrated his interest. After we'd eaten he asked again. We sat side by side in deckchairs.

“Ginette is very pretty. You make a handsome couple.”

Made
.

“Was Philip your only child?” He must have known he was; and this time he got the tense right.

Zack had opened the album at random. Now he went back to the beginning: babies and toddlers on both sides of the Channel.

But he didn't seem so interested in Ginette.

“How old were you here?”

I hadn't looked at these photographs in years. I found it, at best, a bittersweet experience.

“Eleven.” Sloppily, we hadn't always bothered to write captions.

“Primary school?”

“Prep school.”

“Here in Nottingham?”

“No. Amersham on the Hill. In Bucks.”

The snap showed three of us, Johnny Aarons, Gordon Leonard and myself. My mother had taken it outside the school. All at once I made an oddly disconcerting connection: forty-four years ago, to the very day! Almost to the very hour!

Oh God, I thought.

“How well do you remember that afternoon?”

“I don't. Not at all.”

Yet hardly had I said it before I realized I was wrong. I could almost
hear
my mother laughing. “Now, all of you please, no fidgeting this time, just watch the birdie!”

There was a pause as she again stared into the viewfinder.

“Come on, Ethan—and you, Johnny—let's have some really big smiles… Darling, I wish your socks weren't always round your ankles. Or that you'd sometimes have your cap on straight.”

“Oh, Mum, do hurry up. We feel silly standing here, with everybody watching.”

That was a slight exaggeration. The few stragglers who, from time to time, had still been coming out of the side entrance had merely called a quick goodbye.

My mother had suggested it: that instead of my having a birthday party she would collect me and my two best friends and take us to tea at Peg's Pantry: as many buns and pastries as we wanted—today no one would be counting—just so long as none of us was sick! Then we'd all go to the pictures; my father ran the only cinema in town. Happily, today's film was something we'd have chosen anyway.
The Three Musketeers
.

But I hadn't known she meant to bring her camera. And it seemed such ages until the shutter finally clicked and she professed herself satisfied. She was busy winding on the spool.

“Mum, can't you do that after? Gordon says he's starving.”

“Oh, you liar! When did I say that?”

But anyhow it was too late. We had known at any moment Teddy might see us. And now indeed the front door opened and he came limping down the steps, leaning on his walking stick. “Ah, Mrs Hart. Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Mr Dallas.”

“If I may be permitted to say so, how very well you're looking! What an extremely pretty hat!”

And I didn't simply recall all of this. I actually—literally—heard it.

Saw it, too.

For Zack and I weren't sitting in the garden any more. We were standing on the pavement opposite the school.

“Oh, my God! My God!” And then—how
woefully
inadequate: “My God, Zack! Can they see us?”

It had taken me fully a minute even to articulate that much.

“Yes. Or, rather, in a moment they'll be able to see
you
—they won't see me.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “But don't panic! Who's going to recognize you? Twenty years older than your mother, only five years younger than Edward Dallas…” He then asked if I'd like to speak to them.

“
No
!” I shook my head wildly. He seemed disappointed.

“Your mum's been dead for five years. I'd have thought at least you'd want to say hello. You were always fond of her.”

“I was fond of both my parents.”

Perhaps he couldn't gauge how absolutely
mind-blowing
this was? If I took the brief walk to the Regent I should now be seventeen years older than my dad. I could no longer blithely taunt him on his first grey hairs.

Zack laughed. “Even if you didn't go round to the Regent,” he corrected me.

Another few seconds went by. “I think I've changed my mind.” Could it be I was already starting to take it a little more for granted, this whole phenomenal situation?

“Fine. I guessed you would. But whatever happens don't let anyone sense you're more than just a passerby.”

I crossed the road before I had a moment's chance to reconsider—or be put off by the racing in my chest. I heard my mother say, “Yes, I like it too when Easter comes a little late. It gives the weather time to pull its socks up.” Then she added gaily, “Oh, do you think Ethan could be made to follow its example?”

She and Mr Dallas chuckled for rather longer than the joke deserved. I remembered my mother had always thought of herself as somewhat scatterbrained. She must have found it reassuring to see her son's headmaster so manifestly smitten. How in the past could I have failed to notice?