Part One

1

Hendricks says,

‘On the same latitude as what?’

‘Omsk,’ I tell him.

‘Anywhere else?’ he says.

‘A place I can’t pronounce,’ I add, ‘in Khabarovsk.’

I pause.

‘In North America, of course,’ I tell him, ‘Queen Charlotte’s Island … Goose Bay.’

‘And longitude?’ he says.

‘Saragossa. Cartagena. Oran in North Africa. Timbuctoo.’

Tall, fair-haired, with a fair moustache, attired in white shorts and a white sweater, in white plimsolls and short white ankle socks – folded neatly over at the top, immediately above the uniformly fastened laces – Hendricks leans back in his canvas chair. He’s drinking from a glass of lemonade which I’ve just brought him from the cafeteria further along the path of the municipal park. Behind us, the man who’s responsible for letting out the courts, for supervising the putting as well as the bowling greens, for raising and lowering the tennis nets, is locking up his shop.

The park now is almost deserted. The sun has begun to set, sinking down behind the trees to where the ducks still quack, the geese still honk, the pigeons in the municipal aviary still coo. The cafeteria too, it seems, is closing up. No doubt it’s already night in Omsk, and in that unpronounceable city in Khabarovsk. Ships in their respective oceans will be waiting for the sun to set, to rise, to grow stronger, to grow more faint. Together, Hendricks and I have watched it for an hour.

‘And all the while,’ he says, ‘we’re sitting here.’

‘Fifty-three degrees and thirty minutes north, one degree and thirty minutes west.’

I catch a glimpse of myself in the window of the hut behind, the dark hair cut short, the scarred, thick-boned brows projecting above dark and rather melancholic eyes, the broken nose. I have a rather listless look; my arms hang down, limply, over the edges of the chair. Rust, from the wire-netting fronting the courts, has stained my shirt; damp patches show beneath my arms and round my chest. I ease one leg, cautiously, across the other. The chair is altogether too small for my ample frame. It creaks.

The man emerging from the hut looks up.

‘Will you be finished here?’ he says.

‘Just about,’ I tell him. ‘Almost done.’

I get up quickly.

The chair, relieved of its burden, has suddenly collapsed.

Hendricks laughs.

‘What was the score?’ he says.

‘Two sets to one.’

‘I should think, for one thing, Freestone, you need more exercise,’ he says, and adds, ‘And as for another, a little more skill wouldn’t go astray.’

‘More skill. More exercise.’ I begin to fold the chair.

‘Walk back? Or do you want a lift?’ he says.

‘Walk, I think.’

I lean the chair up against the hut.

Hendricks stoops down: he fastens the string bag containing the tennis balls to the handle of his racket. He tightens up the screws on his metal press.

He seems altogether unmoved, in fact, by the scene before us, the darkening trees, the lengthening shadows, the faint mist which has crept up from the direction of the river. He folds up his chair, hands it to the waiting attendant, then, his racket in one hand and the now empty glass in the other, steps down to the path.

‘Sure about the lift?’ he says.

‘Sure,’ I say. I fasten my jacket. ‘Cooler now,’ I add. ‘And stiff.’

‘If you did it every day you’d feel much better.’

‘Sure,’ I tell him. ‘I think I would.’

He leaves the glass on one of the metal tables at the front of the cafeteria and walks on towards the gates. One or two other figures can be seen moving off beneath the trees. The nets in the court have already been lowered; the wooden gate leading to the bowling-green is locked. The jaw bones of a whale stand up in a pointed arch above the path.

Our faces, for a moment, fall in its shadow.

‘Cape Cod. Antarctica. Greenland’s icy shore.’

Hendricks is gazing off towards the gates where, in the shadow of the trees, his car is parked.

‘I suppose we ought to play again,’ he says.

‘Anytime,’ I tell him.

‘I’ll fix it up,’ he says.

He swings off the path, feeling in his pocket.

‘See you tomorrow, then,’ he says.

‘All being well,’ I tell him.

He waves.

Moments later a dark blue shape slips out from beneath the trees; a white clad arm is raised then lowered.

The path I’ve taken leads directly to a hill standing in the centre of the park. Its lower slopes are wooded; a belt of trees is drawn out in a thin arc around its summit. When I reach the intervening area of grass I can see the tennis courts and the bowling-green stretched out immediately below like panes of glass, smooth, their regular shapes half-buried now by shadow. Beyond stands the outer wall of the park itself, the retaining wall to the grounds of an old brick mansion whose tall black chimneys and blackened balustrade are visible, starkly silhouetted, over the furthest slope of an adjoining hill.

As I move higher up the slope the area beyond the park comes into view: hedged fields broken up by odd clumps of trees and the darker outline of isolated buildings rising, some distance off, to the line of hills that mark off the southern limits of the valley.

The mist has thickened; the shadows of the trees have been moulded into a single shape. A band of shadow rises, like water, across the contour of the hill.

I come out, finally, into an open space immediately below the summit. To my right, the valley broadens to a darkening vista of wooded plain and hill-land; to my left it narrows to a silhouetted gorge. Behind me, to the south, lies the shadowed area of tennis-courts and greens and, beyond those, the hedged fields lining the valley bottom. To the north, immediately ahead, appears the sun-lit, emblazoned outline of the city.

I’ve been conscious for some time of the strange, inferno-like presence of the hill above my head, of the bursting, sun-lit mass of trees, of the encroaching mass of shadow; then, suddenly, as if it might have sprung from the ground itself, I see immediately before me the flame-like structure of the town, the domes and steeples, the vast, brick-fronted towers, caught now by the last, horizontal rays, a glowing, reddened edifice shot here and there with sudden gleams and flashes and lit, along its crest, by a strip of golden light.

Even as I watch the light begins to fade. The darkness creeps up the separate blocks and towers. I feel the dew against my face, and the sudden chilling of the air as the hill itself falls into shadow.

Birds have settled in the trees. Odd shapes are flung up, briefly, against the silhouetted leaves and branches.

I start off down the hill. It’s as if an aperture has opened; odd sighs and groans come up from its furthest depths. Above, the last pinnacles of the town still catch the light, long, orange fissures let into the blueness overhead. As I reach the bottom of the hill they too begin to fade; new lights, with fresh shadows, spring up from the growing darkness. Soon only a faint glow, somewhere to the west, remains.