meaning.
He held the card and read it a dozen more times, turning it over, then reading it again. The words were balm to the bruise she had left on his heart, but after the relief came another sensation: a bafflement that grew deeper by the moment.
Chapter Four
It sounded like a fusillade of gunfire, distant rather than deadly. The sun was high and James’s shirt was sticking to his back. He squinted against the brightness of a Spanish noon but he could not see where the noise was coming from. He was in the bombed-out ruin of what, he guessed, had once been a farmworker’s cottage. The walls still stood, though they were pocked by bullet-holes. Whole chunks of plaster were missing, exposing the brick underneath, like snatched glimpses of flesh. The windows had no glass, the doorways were empty arches. And when he looked down at his feet, he saw that the ground itself seemed to be sinking slowly. He was in a house that was crumbling before his eyes. And now the gunfire started again …
He woke with a start, his heart thumping. He looked around, confused. When he realized he was slumped in an armchair, he sat bolt upright, knocking over the bottle of whisky lodged at his side.
Damn
. It had soaked the top of his trousers, drenching his left thigh. And then came that rat-tat-tat again; not gunfire, but someone at the door.
James remembered after a moment of delay what had happened, the recollection landing like a deadweight on his chest. Harry and Florence were gone.
The knocking again. He stood up, aware of a chill draught in the house. Of course: the hole in the kitchen window, shattered by the candlestick.
‘Dr Zennor?’
Oh no. The voice, unmistakable, belonged to Virginia Grey. James encountered her most often as one half of the couple that together ran his college: her husband was Master. But that accounted for only a small part of their influence. Bernard and Virginia Grey were luminaries of the British intellectual Left. You couldn’t open a copy of the
New Statesman
without coming across an article by or about them, the latter usually reviewing a pamphlet or book they had produced either singly or together. They were a dominant force in the Fabian Society and, through that, the Labour party, their ideas and proposals constantly debated in the national press or taken up as policy. They hosted a high table that was regularly graced by Westminster politicians and the country’s most eminent theorists.
The Greys had taken Florence and James under their wing almost as soon as they had returned from Madrid, insisting that Florence transfer her doctoral work to the college, demanding they have their Spanish marriage blessed in the college chapel – where they had acted as if they were the parents of the bride. His own parents had sat polite, quiet and thoroughly overwhelmed through the whole event.
Now in their late sixties, the Greys had their doubts about James’s field, regarding psychology as new-fangled and experimental. They urged him to switch to political science instead – though, to his irritation, they always appeared riveted by Florence’s work on evolutionary biology. James suspected they rather fancied the Zennors might become the future Greys of the 1970s, seeing themselves in this ‘handsome young couple’; seeing too, perhaps, an opportunity to extend their influence beyond the grave. They had no children of their own.
Brushing crumbs of a half-eaten sandwich off himself and onto the wooden floor, he opened the door. ‘Good mor—’ He stopped, suddenly aware that he had no idea what time it was.
‘Thank heavens. I was beginning to wonder if you were
dead
! I’ve been knocking on your door for seven minutes.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Grey. I wonder if I could call on you later. Now is not—’
‘Are you unwell, James dear? You do sound a little off-colour.’ Her tone was bossily familiar, a mother talking to a recalcitrant child.
‘I am feeling a little under the weather, as
He held the card and read it a dozen more times, turning it over, then reading it again. The words were balm to the bruise she had left on his heart, but after the relief came another sensation: a bafflement that grew deeper by the moment.
Chapter Four
It sounded like a fusillade of gunfire, distant rather than deadly. The sun was high and James’s shirt was sticking to his back. He squinted against the brightness of a Spanish noon but he could not see where the noise was coming from. He was in the bombed-out ruin of what, he guessed, had once been a farmworker’s cottage. The walls still stood, though they were pocked by bullet-holes. Whole chunks of plaster were missing, exposing the brick underneath, like snatched glimpses of flesh. The windows had no glass, the doorways were empty arches. And when he looked down at his feet, he saw that the ground itself seemed to be sinking slowly. He was in a house that was crumbling before his eyes. And now the gunfire started again …
He woke with a start, his heart thumping. He looked around, confused. When he realized he was slumped in an armchair, he sat bolt upright, knocking over the bottle of whisky lodged at his side.
Damn
. It had soaked the top of his trousers, drenching his left thigh. And then came that rat-tat-tat again; not gunfire, but someone at the door.
James remembered after a moment of delay what had happened, the recollection landing like a deadweight on his chest. Harry and Florence were gone.
The knocking again. He stood up, aware of a chill draught in the house. Of course: the hole in the kitchen window, shattered by the candlestick.
‘Dr Zennor?’
Oh no. The voice, unmistakable, belonged to Virginia Grey. James encountered her most often as one half of the couple that together ran his college: her husband was Master. But that accounted for only a small part of their influence. Bernard and Virginia Grey were luminaries of the British intellectual Left. You couldn’t open a copy of the
New Statesman
without coming across an article by or about them, the latter usually reviewing a pamphlet or book they had produced either singly or together. They were a dominant force in the Fabian Society and, through that, the Labour party, their ideas and proposals constantly debated in the national press or taken up as policy. They hosted a high table that was regularly graced by Westminster politicians and the country’s most eminent theorists.
The Greys had taken Florence and James under their wing almost as soon as they had returned from Madrid, insisting that Florence transfer her doctoral work to the college, demanding they have their Spanish marriage blessed in the college chapel – where they had acted as if they were the parents of the bride. His own parents had sat polite, quiet and thoroughly overwhelmed through the whole event.
Now in their late sixties, the Greys had their doubts about James’s field, regarding psychology as new-fangled and experimental. They urged him to switch to political science instead – though, to his irritation, they always appeared riveted by Florence’s work on evolutionary biology. James suspected they rather fancied the Zennors might become the future Greys of the 1970s, seeing themselves in this ‘handsome young couple’; seeing too, perhaps, an opportunity to extend their influence beyond the grave. They had no children of their own.
Brushing crumbs of a half-eaten sandwich off himself and onto the wooden floor, he opened the door. ‘Good mor—’ He stopped, suddenly aware that he had no idea what time it was.
‘Thank heavens. I was beginning to wonder if you were
dead
! I’ve been knocking on your door for seven minutes.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Grey. I wonder if I could call on you later. Now is not—’
‘Are you unwell, James dear? You do sound a little off-colour.’ Her tone was bossily familiar, a mother talking to a recalcitrant child.
‘I am feeling a little under the weather, as
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