«What it once was,» said Reg, slowly shaking his white head, «I can hardly remember what it once was. But yes, you are very sharp to pick up such a detail.»
«And then there is the little matter,» continued Dirk, «of the questions that George III asked. Asked you.»
This seemed to catch Reg quite by surprise.
«He asked you,» continued Dirk, consulting a small notebook he had pulled from his pocket, «if there was any particular reason why one thing happened after another and if there was any way of stopping it.
Did he not also ask you, and ask you first, if it was possible to move backwards in time, or something of that kind?»
Reg gave Dirk a long and appraising look.
«I was right about you,» he said, «you have a very remarkable mind, young man.» He walked slowly over to the window that looked out on to Second Court. He watched the odd figures scuttling through it hugging themselves in the drizzle or pointing at things.
«Yes,» said Reg at last in a subdued voice, «that is precisely what he said.»
«Good,» said Dirk, snapping shut his notebook with a tight little smile which said that he lived for such praise, «then that explains why the answers were yes, no and maybe — in that order. Now. Where is it?»
«Where is what?»
«The time machine.»
«You're standing in it.» said Reg.
CHAPTER 26
A party of noisy people spilled into the train at Bishop's Stortford. Some were wearing morning suits with carnations looking a little battered by a day's festivity. The women of the party were in smart dresses and hats, chattering excitedly about how pretty Julia had looked in all that silk taffeta, how Ralph still looked like a smug oaf even done up in all his finery, and generally giving the whole thing about two weeks.
One of the men stuck his head out of the window and hailed a passing railway employee just to check that this was the right train and was stopping at Cambridge. The porter confirmed that of course it bloody was. The young man said that they didn't all want to find they were going off in the wrong direction, did they, and made a sound a little like that of a fish barking, as if to indicate that this was a pricelessly funny remark, and then pulled his head back in, banging it on the way.
The alcohol content of the atmosphere in the carriage rose sharply.
There seemed to be a general feeling in the air that the best way of getting themselves in the right mood for the post-wedding reception party that evening was to make a foray to the bar so that any members of the party who were not already completely drunk could finish the task. Rowdy shouts of acclamation greeted this notion, the train restarted with a jolt and a lot of those still standing fell over.
Three young men dropped into the three empty seats round one table, of which the fourth was already taken by a sleekly overweight man in an old-fashioned suit. He had a lugubrious face and his large, wet, cowlike eyes gazed into some unknown distance.
Very slowly his eyes began to refocus all the way from infinity and gradually to home in on his more immediate surroundings, his new and intrusive companions. There was a need he felt, as he had felt before.
The three men were discussing loudly whether they would all go to the bar, whether some of them would go to the bar and bring back drinks for the others, whether the ones who went to the bar would get so excited by all the drinks there that they would stay put and forget to bring any back for the others who would be sitting here anxiously awaiting their return, and whether even if they did remember to come back immediately with the drinks they would actually be capable of carrying them and wouldn't simply throw them all over the carriage on the way back, incommoding other passengers.
Some sort of consensus seemed to be reached, but almost immediately none of them could remember what it was. Two of them got up, then sat down again as the third one got up. Then he sat down. The two other ones stood up again, expressing the idea that it might be simpler if they just bought the entire bar.
The third was about to get up again and follow them, when slowly, but with unstoppable purpose, the cow-eyed man sitting opposite him leant across, and gripped him firmly by the forearm.
The young man in his morning suit looked up as sharply as his somewhat bubbly brain would allow and, startled, said, «What do you want?»
Michael Wenton-Weakes gazed into his eyes with terrible intensity, and said, in a low voice, «I was on a ship…»
«What?»
«A ship…» said Michael.
«What ship, what are you talking about? Get off me. Let go!»
«We came,» continued Michael, in a quiet, almost inaudible, but compelling voice, «a monstrous distance. We came to build a paradise. A paradise. Here.»
His eyes swam briefly round the carriage, and then gazed briefly out through the spattered windows at the gathering gloom of a drizzly East Anglian evening. He gazed with evident loathing. His grip on the other's forearm tightened.
«Look, I'm going for a drink,» said the wedding guest, though feebly, because he clearly wasn't.
«We left behind those who would destroy themselves with war,» murmured Michael. «Ours was to be a world of peace, of music, of art, of enlightenment. All that was petty, all that was mundane, all that was contemptible would have no place in our world…»
The stilled reveller looked at Michael wonderingly. He didn't look like an old hippy. Of course, you never could tell. His own elder brother had once spent a couple of years living in a Druidic commune, eating LSD doughnuts and thinking he was a tree, since when he had gone on to become a director of a merchant bank. The difference, of course, was that he hardly ever still thought he was a tree, except just occasionally, and he had long ago learnt to avoid the particular claret which sometimes triggered off that flashback.
«There were those who said we would fail,» continued Michael in his low tone that carried clearly under the boisterous noise that filled the carriage, «who prophesied that we too carried in us the seed of war, but it was our high resolve and purpose that only art and beauty should flourish, the highest art, the highest beauty — music. We took with us only those who believed, who wished it to be true.»
«But what are you talking about?» asked the wedding guest though not challengingly, for he had fallen under Michael's mesmeric spell. «When was this? Where was this?»
Michael breathed hard. «Before you were born» — he said at last, «be still, and I will tell you.»
CHAPTER 27
There was a long startled silence during which the evening gloom outside seemed to darken appreciably and gather the room into its grip.
A trick of the light wreathed Reg in shadows.
Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless. His eyes shone with a child's wonder as they passed anew over the dull and shabby furniture of the room, the panelled walls, the threadbare carpets. His hands were trembling.
Richard frowned faintly to himself for a moment as if he was trying to work out the square root of something in his head, and then looked back directly at Reg.
«Who are you?» he asked.
«I have absolutely no idea,» said Reg brightly, «much of my memory's gone completely. I am very old, you see. Startlingly old. Yes, I think if I were to tell you how old I was it would be fair to say that you would be startled. Odds are that so would I, because I can't remember.
I've seen an awful lot, you know. Forgotten most of it, thank God.