24

So…Monday 30^th March 1992…and naturally it was raining. Steadily. I got to the office at about ten. Even now, even towards the end of the phenomenon, I was still surprised at how things remained just as I remembered them. Yet perversely I was more surprised when they didn’t: small details present I’d forgotten, small details absent I must either have imagined or transposed.

I’d have liked to see the name on my own door. But here—from the reception area—it wasn’t quite possible.

Iris finished putting through a call to Mr Walters.

She looked up at me with her usual friendly smile. “May I help?”

Although I’d stood and watched for a few minutes in the sixties while this office block was being erected, it was ridiculous to think I hadn’t actually set foot inside it or exchanged pleasantries with any of these four young women for well over half a century. It felt more as if I’d been on just my annual break.

“I’m here to see Brian Douglas.”

“Mr Douglas? Oh—do you have an appointment, sir?”

“No. But I believe he’ll want to see me; may even be expecting me. My name is Hart. Ethan Hart.”

“I don’t think he’s come in yet.”

“You mean, he’s sick?”

“Well, it’s not like him to be late, so—yes—he may be. I’ll check with his secretary.”

“No, I was wondering in general. Does he have…does he have problems with his health?”

She laughed. “Not unless you count the odd hangover!” That laugh, so well remembered. “Oh, Debbie, there’s a Mr Ethan Hart in reception asking for Brian… What? Yes, I thought I hadn’t seen him. No, he hasn’t called in… Just a tick.” She looked back at me. “Is it something that his secretary can deal with?”

“No, thanks. That’s all right. I know where he lives.”

I’d have liked to stop and chat. But after I had passed comment on the weather I couldn’t think what else to chat about. It suddenly struck me it was a long time since I’d tried to savour my surroundings. I felt regretful as I said goodbye. A bit melancholy.

I travelled to Sneinton by bus. The bus was crowded. I sat beside a young woman with a baby on her lap and a wet umbrella she couldn’t decide what to do with. I took charge of the umbrella and was sorry when she finally got up. Hearing about her life with Jason, and even about the continuing disapproval of her parents, was preferable to merely sitting and becoming nervous; although otherwise I would have tried to pray. After she and Jason had gone, my prayer in fact began with them but then widened to include everybody on the bus. I nearly overshot my stop.

In the street where Brian lived there weren’t any women talking on the corner, nor was there any young lad pumping up his tyres. I guessed I was a little earlier than before. The rain hadn’t yet turned to a drizzle.

But the door was opened just as quickly. I hadn’t been looking forward to this moment: to seeing a face I had last seen when it was under water, to meeting eyes I had last met when they were either insentient and blank, or filled with such emotions as I might variously ascribe to them. For fifty-five years Brian Douglas had lived with me both day and night—become in a sense my most intimate companion. I’d wondered if out of all the people I had ever encountered in this life, always excepting Zack, Brian might be the one person who was going to recognize me. Despite the change in my appearance.

There was a change in his own appearance. It wasn’t simply that he wore a suit this time, a suit which I might—or might not—have seen at the office. His body underneath it looked more solid.

And, above all, I felt relief. It reminded me of what had happened once (or indeed twice) when I was young. I’d been standing by the graveside at my grandmother’s funeral—Granny’s not Nana’s—and then I’d been awoken by a tap on the door, and she had brought me in my breakfast.

The sheer joy I had experienced was something I’d never forgotten. Even though she had actually died less than a year later, I’d felt those nine-and-a-half months had come to me, on both occasions, as a treasured gift.

“Ethan Hart?”

“Yes.”

“Come in, sir, I was expecting you.”

He didn’t sound the same, either. This wasn’t a man who was dying or who was wanting to die. This wasn’t a man who was going to require any saving. My relief and my gratitude—if possible—intensified.

After he’d taken my umbrella and hung up my overcoat he led me into his living room. That certainly remained as I had first seen it. No emptied drawers or overset furniture.

I turned and faced him. “I don’t know why I’m here. Will you fill me in?”

“No, I’m sorry, sir. I’m not the person who can best do that.” He glanced at his watch. “But you won’t have long to wait. And in the meantime, Mr Hart, may I offer my congratulations?”

“I’d rather you didn’t call me sir. Nor Mr Hart. My name is Ethan. Congratulations on what?”

“On coming through.”

“You may do so with pleasure. But it seems to me I had no choice. Being invulnerable.”

“On coming through, I mean, with such distinction.”

I pulled a face and shook my head. “But, anyway, thank you.” I gave him my hand and thought about the last time we had shaken hands: barely a minute before he had stepped into the bath.

I said: “I’m sorry I was forced to—no, I’m sorry that I chose to—”

He waited. I finished very lamely.

“I’m sorry for what I did.”

“And what was that?” He smiled. “But first things first. May I get you some coffee?”

“Good God!” I said. “You don’t remember?”

“Then obviously we have met before? I wondered.”

“Most certainly we have.” Though, unsurprisingly, I balked at revealing under precisely what circumstances. “You spoke about a certain dream you’d had.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me, not in the slightest! I know the dream you’re referring to. Old Chaos?”

“You didn’t use that phrase, but it was clearly what you had in mind.”

Old Chaos. The bottomless pit towards which—in theory—all of civilization was now being irresistibly drawn. Well, almost irresistibly drawn.

“Yes, I was obsessed by it!” And then he gave an exclamation. “In fact—hang on a tick—I think I am remembering! I said that if ever I had a son…? But now that sounds so incredibly presumptuous! Why should any son of mine…?”

He broke off; looked uncomfortable.

“And talking of presumption,” he added, “when I spoke of the Once and Future King I believe you mentioned Glastonbury. Is that right? And I have an idea I may have asked…”

“Go on.”

“Whether you thought that Arthur would simply leap onto his trusty steed and tear off down the motorway? No! Please tell me that I didn’t!”

“Well, if you did, I certainly don’t recall it.”

It must have been the first time in my life—in this second portion of my life—that I had ever, consciously, told a lie.

“Thank God for small mercies,” he sighed.

“But, in any case, why would it have been presumptuous?”

“Perhaps I used the wrong word. Discourteous? Disrespectful? Appallingly so. I know this can’t be seen as an excuse but plainly at the time I didn’t appreciate…” He stopped again.

“Yes?”

“About the dream.”

“What didn’t you appreciate?”

“That you were the one whom it involved.”

“You mean, because I tried so woefully to take it over? I only feel ashamed I couldn’t make it work.”

He stared at me.

“But didn’t you realize, sir?”

I waited.

“There was no question of your taking it over.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following you,” I said.

“At no stage did its focus even slightly shift.”

“I think I’m still being slow.”

“From first to last that dream was about you!”

He wasn’t to blame, of course. It could hardly have been his own fault if they hadn’t clued him in.

And only a second later I would have realized this.

But in the meantime I had snapped at him.

“Oh, for God’s sake, man! Talk sense! Do talk sense!”

He looked surprised. As clearly he had every right to. I struggled to retrieve my calm—and pretty soon apologized. “But you had just come out with something so monstrous! Worse than monstrous! Blasphemous if you but knew.”

“Blasphemous?” His expression had lost its air of startled hurt, yet he still appeared bewildered. “But why?”

“Oh, God! Have I really got to tell you?”

Despite the oath, however, I was speaking more calmly. More deliberately. Partly, this could have been because at the same time I was having to fight back an urge to vomit.

The shock had come too fast. How long had I known? Thirty seconds? Forty? Hardly more. It was the sheer immensity of his mistake—or, at least, what I had seen as his mistake—which had broken through the barrier. Had briefly unleashed my innate, if generally controlled, fierceness of temper.

“That dream,” he’d said, “was about you!”

But then, suddenly, it was as if I’d always known. Not always, no, but virtually from the moment I had opened my book to begin that troublesome essay for Mr Hawk-Genn; from the moment I had poured out that hugely awful first paragraph.

Now I swallowed, and cleared my throat, yet still couldn’t get my voice to sound quite natural.

“You talk of crisis and disruption,” I said. “You talk of the return of Arthur. And you talk about these things—”

At first I couldn’t even say it. I forced myself to say it.

“And you talk about these things to the benighted oaf who struck the Saviour on his way to execution.”

Brian Douglas didn’t flinch. He only said: “And who five centuries later found his way to Britain.”

“Oh, yes.” My laugh was bitter, brutal, full of self-loathing. “Didn’t you always know that Arthur was a Jew? Not just a Jew. A disgrace to every decent Jew who ever lived?”

He shrugged. “Well, to be honest,” he smiled, “I never heard it mentioned, one way or the other.”