Circles of Time (52 page)

    Again left the land,

XV

    And, towering to seaward in legions,

    They paused at a spot

    Overbending the Race—

    That engulphing, ghast, sinister place—

    Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions

    Of myriads forgot.

XVI

    And the spirits of those who were homing

    Passed on, rushingly,

    Like the Pentecost Wind;

    And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned

    And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming

    Sea-mutterings and me.

The conclusion of the epic Greville family saga—while the dizzy gaiety of the Jazz Age fades, the younger generation of Grevilles come of age in a time of uncertainty, seeking to reconcile their past with hopes for the future as the shadow of war threatens again.

1

M
ARTIN
R
ILKE AWOKE
a few minutes before the alarm clock would have shattered sleep and nerves. Reaching out from under the covers he groped for the clock on the nightstand and depressed the alarm button. He fought the urge to sink back into the bliss of morning slumber and sat up with a groan. Six thirty. He wasn't used to getting up so early, but he had promised Albert he would take him to King's Cross. The 8:05 train to Peterborough. Plenty of time. He swung his legs out of bed and winced at the cold creeping along the floor.
For Let. Fully furnished. Elegant small house in Knightsbridge with fine view of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park.
There had been no mention of drafts in the advertisement. He stood up with a sharp intake of breath as though plunging into a cold pool. His heavy wool bathrobe was draped over a chair and he padded across to put it on. His carpet slippers were nowhere to be seen. Under the bed probably, but he didn't feel like groping for them.

A pale yellow light filtered through drawn curtains and he walked over to the windows in his bare feet and pulled the cord. A clear sky again, thank God. Perhaps winter was over at last. He stood for a moment gazing out across Kensington Road at the park. A thin, patchy mist drifted through the trees and clung to the ground. Emerging from it in blocks of dark gray came ordered ranks of horsemen, row after row at the trot along Carriage Road; the Horse Guards on an early morning exercise. It was the kind of enchanting sight that made London worth living in. Martin watched until the cavalcade passed Rutland Gate and then he turned away and hurried into the bathroom to bathe and shave.

He was thirty-nine, a man of medium height and stocky build. His body, viewed naked in the full-length mirror streaked with steam, was compact and sturdy, the chest large and the stomach reasonably flat. Rilke males were inclined to stoutness and Martin fought the proclivity by watching his diet and playing furious games of squash three afternoons a week at a club in St. James's Street. He gave his middle an approving slap and then stepped across to the washbasin. He sharpened and honed a Rolls razor in its silver-plated box and then whipped lather in a bowl with a badger-hair brush. The face in the mirror was youthful and unlined with a thin, high-bridged nose, wide mouth, and pale blue eyes. The hair, parted in the center, was thick and flaxen. It was a face that women thought of as “nice looking” rather than handsome.

Martin paid no attention to his face other than to shave it and pat his cheeks with cologne. When he went back into the bedroom, Mary, the young Welsh maid, had lit the fire in the grate—the coals spreading a meager warmth into the room. He thought of his apartment in New York, the good old Yankee know-how of double-glazed windows and central heating. A lot to be said for it, but he had never seen cavalry riding through the morning mist on West 64th Street.

He looked into the spare bedroom before going downstairs. The bed was made and his brother-in-law's small suitcase was packed and strapped and set on the floor. Albert, he assumed, was used to getting up at ungodly hours.

“Good morning, sir.”

Albert Edward Thaxton stepped out of the dining room into the hall as Martin was coming down the stairs. He was a tall, dark-haired boy of sixteen dressed in gray flannels and a school blazer.

“Good morning, Albert,” Martin said cheerfully. “Sleep well?”

The boy smiled, a smile that was so reminiscent of his sister's that Martin could not witness it without feeling a tug of the heart.

“Oh, yes, sir. They don't have beds like that at Morborne.”

“Hard, angry little cots, eh?”

“Well, not quite that bad, but jolly close to it.”

“Have your breakfast yet?”

“Rashers and eggs, fried bread and tomatoes. Super grub.”

Martin glanced at his wristwatch. ‘‘I'll just have some toast and coffee and then we'll grab a taxi and get you to the station.”

“May I sit with you and read the newspaper, sir?”

“Of course. And please stop calling me
sir
.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was pointless, Martin supposed. English boardingschool courtesy, drilled into the young like a multiplication table. He was a fine boy and he certainly could not fault him for being polite. Ivy would have been proud. She had only seen him when he was a babe in arms and now he was nearly six feet tall, captain of his school's cricket team—of the “eleven” as he called it—and had just completed the interviews and tests that would ensure him a scholarship at Oxford.

Mrs. Bromley, his cook-housekeeper, brought coffee, toast, and the newspapers. He gave Albert the sporting section of the
Daily Post
which he scanned eagerly.

“Oh, blast!”

“Anything the matter, Albert?”

“Rangers, sir. They lost to United . . . three to two. That's knocked them out of cup play.”

“Sorry to hear it.” He had no interest in English soccer—or any other English sport for that matter. He sipped his coffee and read the leaders. The London Naval Conference winding down with a few concessions being made. Some limits on submarines and new battleship construction. Tonnage and gun calibers. All meaningless. Ramsay MacDonald to pay a visit to slump-devastated Yorkshire—to do no more, he felt certain, than show his handsome, kindly face to the unemployed. He put the paper aside and opened the Paris edition of the New York
Tribune
—which he received every morning, if a day late. He searched for the baseball scores.

“Bob Giffrow retired. Never thought I'd see the day.”

“A friend of yours, sir?”

“In a manner of speaking. He was a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs for eighteen seasons.”

That thought made him wince and feel old. He had seen the man's debut . . . Cubs versus Giants . . . the spring of 1912. Now he was stepping from the mound, his wicked, twisting “slew bobber” to confound batters no more. The Cubs still had Hack Wilson, who could slam them out of the park. And they had taken the pennant last year even if they had lost to Philadelphia in the series. But it had been Giffrow who had gotten them there, pitching with pain, his mighty arm like a gnarled and twisted oak. The great “Dutchman” walking away forever into the long shadows of a Chicago summer day. It didn't seem possible. He folded the newspaper with a sigh and shoved it behind the coffee pot.

“Now there's a game for you.”

“What game is that, sir?”

“Baseball.”

“Rather like our rounders, I believe.”

“No, Albert,” he said patiently, “it isn't anything at all like rounders.”

“It's played with a round bat and a ball, sir.”

“The similarity ends there. Believe me.” Not that he could explain the difference. How could he describe to the uninitiated the poetry of Jimmie Foxx? Tinker to Evers to Chance? Rogers Hornsby batting .424 for the 1924 season? The Babe . . . Lefty Grove . . . Walter “Big Train” Johnson . . . Ty Cobb sliding into second with his spikes glinting through the dust as deadly as a tiger's fangs? Impossible. ‘‘I'll take you to a baseball game one day.”

“Where, sir?”

“Why, in the States of course. Next summer when you leave school.”

“To America, sir? Do you mean it?”

“Sure I do.”

“Oh, I say, how super!”

“It'll be a good experience for you before you go on to Oxford.”

Albert's ecstatic expression paled. “I'm trying not to think about Oxford actually.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“The scholarship and all that.”

“I wouldn't worry about it. It's more than a year away. Plenty of time to get used to the idea.” He looked at his watch. “Better get your bag while I whistle down a taxi.”

Albert said nothing in the taxi until they rounded Hyde Park Corner and headed toward Oxford Street.

“My going to university means a great deal to Ned. That's natural, I suppose. I mean to say, he wants the best for his baby brother . . . all the things he didn't have.”

“He wants what's best for
you
,” Martin said. “As do I.”

“Balliol will be horribly expensive even with the scholarship, and you've given so much already.”

“I can afford it.”

“Perhaps. I'm rather wondering if I can.”

“I don't follow you.”

“What I mean is . . . well, some of the chaps at school look at things the way I do. This slump. Your American stock-market crash. A worldwide financial collapse. Did you know that thirty percent of the men in Birmingham are unemployed?”

“I'm aware of it,” he said dryly.

“Yes, of course. I mean, after all, as a journalist . . .”

“What are you trying to say, Albert?”

“That I don't want to study for a First in Greats. It seems so . . . pointless and esoteric somehow. Fiddling while Rome burns. Nothing practical. I could earn a degree and then do nothing more with it than teach Greek or Latin at some place like Morborne. I want more out of life than that.” He turned on the seat to face Martin. ‘‘I'd like to live the way you do. Travel about the world . . . witness and write about important happenings. I speak French . . . my German's coming along nicely . . . I seem to have a good ear for languages. I
know
I can write. I'm always top boy in school at composition.”

Martin smiled ruefully. “A newspaper man. Heaven help you.”

“It's made you rich and famous—although it's not money I'm thinking about. It's doing something worthwhile . . . something
important
.”

“I would say you've given a good deal of thought to this.”

“Yes, I have. I could go to the University of London . . . and I could get a job. Copyboy or something like that . . . on the
Daily Post
, say. Mr. Golden would hire me if you asked him. Don't you think?”

“Jacob would hire you if
you
asked him. He was very fond of Ivy. Best man at our wedding.”

“Work . . . take a few classes . . . share digs with a couple of chaps. I could do it on my own.”

‘‘I'm sure you could, at that.” He gave Albert's knee a pat. “But let's not discuss it now. You still have a year to go at Morborne. If you feel the same way then . . .”

“Oh, I will, sir . . . I know I will.”

“. . . I'll talk to Jacob. I'm sure he can do better for you than a copyboy job. Perhaps a cub reporter . . . on sports. You probably know more about cricket and soccer than any kid alive.”

It was the decision Ivy would have made, he thought as he watched Albert hurry down the platform toward his train. It was uncanny how much he resembled his sister. Not just in looks, the black hair and almost violet eyes, but in his zest for life. Ivy's education had been limited, but she had read everything she could get her hands on. Geography had been her passion. She had wanted to visit every dot on the globe. There were so many exotic lands and yet she was to see only France and a tiny, shell-torn strip of Flanders before she died.