– Volume Two of the “Tom Purdue Trilogy,” Echoes in and out of Time –
This is, first of all, not another novel about "did Salieri kill Mozart?" though that is part of the overall plot. It is, basically, the continuing adventures of music detective and International Music Police Consultant Dr. T. Richard Kerr, his assistant Cameron Pierce, and Kerr's old school friend (as opposed to his old-school friend) as they try to solve a mystery that has plagued Purdue most of his adult life. How did they get here – read the introduction – and where will this take them, aside from places like London, Venice, Maine, and Iowa?
– PART ONE –
CHAPTER 1
Stepping into London's late-morning, early-spring gloom along Paddington Street jostled old memories: “Here I am, Dr. T. Richard Kerr, famous composer – (famous at least among my friends) – out to enjoy a long-delayed English holiday.”
The bustle of a big city used to invigorate me, energy inspiring energy; lately, the countryside was better for my concentration. What I really wanted to do today was work on this new composition, but sometimes reality intrudes and I freely admitted reality and I had lately became more like distant cousins rarely in touch.
As usual, I needed to get my bearings, years out of familiarity with this neighborhood and never very good with directions. With an hour to kill, maybe a stroll through that park would help. I was acutely aware of two different people always struggling inside me; now, younger memories rubbed up against more recent actualities.
Formal gardens, well-planned and neatly trimmed, used to excite the intellectual in me, but how refreshing to turn 'round a corner and find something gone slightly wild, a dash of color outside the expected. When I was younger, everything had to be spontaneous, full of natural variety and striking contrasts, no matter where you looked. There was always something you could discover in this jungle of the self, those emotional worlds reflected deep within our souls.
Henry James Joyce helped me discover these worlds – and now he was gone.
Stephen Haines had called me with the news and arranged to meet at a well-known London pub. The last time I'd seen him was maybe ten years after he'd finished his doctorate at Faber. A Golden Boy in his day, he'd been Henry Joyce's most brilliant student, his very potential beaming from brilliantly blonde hair. I admitted I felt nervous about meeting him after all these years; would he still be so cock-sure of himself? Eventually we'd both achieved only modest success, nothing particularly golden about either of us.
My reminiscences were interrupted by the soft chirping of my phone – Cameron had shown me how to set its “timer” function – reminding me it was time to head over to the Muse & Squirrel. I'd heard the pub was popular with artists and artist-watchers in the area; perhaps a modest libation would not go amiss.
Stephen motioned me over to a table near the back of the place, stood up to shake my hand once I'd navigated my way through the crowd – I smiled, seeing he was now totally bald – and admitted surprise I should be in England at the moment he'd sent out his message and I'd immediately responded. We hadn't been particularly close, Stephen and I – Haines, seven years older, overlapped with me for a year before he'd graduated – so there wasn't much in common to bother with lots of small talk. One of Faber's more successful graduates, at least for a while, it was natural he'd kept in touch with his teacher, but what I knew of Stephen's career I knew largely from alumni newsletters. I had kept in touch with Prof. Joyce sporadically, particularly during his “Post-Faber” life, but avoided other fellow students, especially Haines.
“J.P. asked me to contact a few of Henry's old” – and he put, I thought, undue emphasis on that word old – “Faber contacts to let them know before he'd send out a mass e-mail. I didn't know where you were – in fact, where are you, these days? – so imagine my surprise to meet you face-to-face.” One benefit of e-mail and cell phones was this ability to connect people around the world or in the next room. It might've been weeks before I'd find his letter waiting at Conan Drive.
Over cups of overly strong tea, Stephen eventually got to the point, how Henry was, after all, “94, for Christ's sake,” a heart attack but otherwise in good health, his mind still perfectly sharp. Emergency surgery'd been a success but he hemorrhaged in recovery and it was too late once all the alarms went off.
“Hell, J.P.'s my age now – well, I guess he always was. Can't imagine that handsome young man's now in his mid-70s!” (Did Stephen's “handsome young man” refer to Prof. Joyce's partner or to himself?)
“Funny,” I said, “how even 94 seems 'too soon' now, a shock even though who wouldn't expect something by that age.” He was such a gentle, supportive presence even after I was a student. There was the usual sense of guilt for not having kept that closely in touch; but at least he wasn't lonely.
In the past, Stephen sounded a bit dismissive of Henry, though good friends and remaining a champion of his music (what he'd already composed), regardless of his own misgivings about him as a teacher. Like many, he considered him a good coach but not much of a teacher determined to “knock some craft” into us. I didn't realize the same thing until several years later, when everything I tried to compose came up worthless, without any of that real “craft” to fall back on once the inspiration dried up.
Many of his students, whenever we'd run into each other and talk over old times, thought it a mystery Prof. Joyce had suddenly stopped composing, just given up, and wrote nothing since the mid-'80s. Even when he left Faber and he and his wife moved down South, it was for a theory job, not composition.
“Maybe he'd never been taught any craft himself,” Stephen suggested. “You can rely on your own native facility only so much.” This morning, he mentioned it'd been decades since he'd seen him in person.
“That time I ran into him in Boston back in the early-90s,” I said, “probably the last time I'd seen him, he described himself as a composer 'who had a brilliant future behind him.'”
“Not the first composer to write some good stuff, then just stop, is he? Did you know he'd begun writing again?”
Not long after he and J.P. settled in Venice, Henry bought an old upright piano – “painted lime green, of all things, J.P. said, very striking up against the faded cranberry red of the walls.” After a while, J.P. heard more than just Bach, Beethoven and Brahms coming from upstairs and figured Henry must be composing.
“All J.P. knew was suddenly Henry became much calmer and seemed so much happier. He never mentioned anything about it, you know – just put the stuff away in boxes he kept under the bed.”
Henry often told his students he'd sit down to “run through” favorite Bach Preludes and Fugues, especially Book I's C-sharp Minor, or maybe some Brahms' late piano pieces, playing them over and over. I imagined, once the family turmoil was finally in the past, he found the inspiration that had eluded him all those years.
“Now, I know I would've been very curious since he'd never said anything, but then J.P. was never one to pry. Henry'd finish one thing, then maybe a few days later apparently start another. I don't think Henry was ever that prolific even when he was teaching, and those years after Faber were completely fallow.
“But now J.P.'s found several boxes full of mostly complete manuscripts, all clearly written out, and he's started to catalog them. Whatever they were, it was a big secret.”
We sat in stunned silence.
I'd tried staying in touch with Henry after he'd moved to Louisiana, then more sporadically after that messiness with the divorce. I'd heard he and J.P. “fled” to Venice but it never really stifled the scandal or lessened particularly his daughter's enmity. Who could imagine being creative with all that nasty business still hanging on?
“Henry never once mentioned his renewed composing, but then I always felt awkward telling anybody about my own writer's block issues. He and J.P. still live there?” I asked, then corrected myself; “...lived there?”
“Yes,” Haines said, “someplace off the Grand Canal, though Henry wasn't big on company – never invited me to stop and visit. But I think it's not far from where Ezra Pound used to live.”
“Yes, Pound's lover was this violinist, Olga Rudge,” I mentioned, “championed Vivaldi early-on. Henry mentioned he'd met her in the neighborhood.”
The train left London and rolled through the gradually greening hillsides of the Mole Valley before I noticed we'd passed Dorking and I found my tattered copy of Sartor resartus had become more challenging. This was the over-wrought product of a struggling writer in his mid-30s inspired by models deemed too obscure or forgotten today. What would Carlyle's 70-year-old self have made of it, if somehow he'd waited and written this tale in his old age? (I'd have to check: did he make it to 70? I couldn't remember.)
I was close enough to that 70-year mark to wonder what I might do with a work abandoned in my twenties, that cello sonata Henry thought too forced, trying too hard to sound “intelligent.” Would my creativity benefit from retrospect if I'd had the fortitude to find answers for questions I'd failed to ask before?
It had started raining in London but the dreariness of a sodden March now gave way to a promising, inevitable spring, though there was, I knew, April to contend with and everything in between. “Soggy Old England” was not my ideal location, but vacations aren't always chosen and it had been a long, boring winter.
Once the village came into view, everything looked calm; more importantly, calming. The change was enough to refresh any snow-battered soul. The Victorian platform, nestled in trees, exuded tranquility. I'd always found England rejuvenating.
Barely taking a breath, the train, efficient as usual, dropped me off at the Snaffingham Station a whole minute early, the last passenger in my car, the only one from the train to disembark. Cameron had agreed to meet me but called a few minutes ago to say he'd probably be another five minutes late. I'd scanned the horizon as the train pulled away and noticed nobody else. As expected, the platform was empty, the next London-bound train an hour away, so it took me by surprise when, glancing back only a few seconds later, I noticed there was another person not ten feet away, as if he'd just materialized. I wondered first how he'd gotten there, then where he'd stepped up from. Subsequent thoughts included, “who was he,” or “why was he dressed like that,” or “had he been sent to meet me?”
I certainly didn't recognize him – honestly, I don't think I had ever seen anyone quite like him before – and apparently he hadn't recognized me, despite how intently he stared at me without any apology. Uncomfortable with his rude if unintentional familiarity, I turned away, pretended I hadn't noticed him, and hoped he'd leave me alone. Was there a new guest at Phlaumix Court, a new servant added to the staff I hadn't known about? A stranger? I should appear friendly, tell him he'd missed the train; tentatively, I nodded.
What should I mention first about his physical appearance, I wondered, since his physical presence had caught me so by surprise: his hair, short, curly, and brushed forward, was a deep, unpleasant orangey red; his skin, with the pallor of circus make-up, offset a badly trimmed goatee; his prominent aquiline nose had once been broken. I'm rarely good with details of people's dress but it was hard not to notice his, it seemed so strikingly outlandish, a heavy yellowish-brown striped cotton jacket with green and gray broadly checked pants.
In addition to an old-fashioned canvas backpack, badly stained, slung across one shoulder, he leaned against a ruggedly carved walking stick which gave his pose, despite all its studied carelessness, a pronounced, arrogant manner. He was no doubt a foreigner, undoubtedly from the continent, and out alone on a trek through the downs of Surrey.
He reminded me more of a street performer who'd seen better days – he was, as they say, “of a certain age” – eccentric in both appearance and demeanor as if that would excuse his behavior. Placing his knapsack and stick along with a broad floppy hat beside one of the posts, he began walking toward me. The stranger tilted his head and held up his hands in an awkward gesture I did not understand, and began talking. “Mi scusi, ma...” – ah, I thought, he's Italian: I have a fighting chance.
But with that, his voice, creaking of an age even deeper than he looked, tumbled forth in a torrent of unintelligibility. Alas, it had been decades since I'd used any of my self-taught Italian. All I could think of was holding my hands up to stop him: “Non ho per parlando a voi!” I stammered.
It did indeed bring him to a halt.
He cocked his head like a bird eying up a potentially unsatisfactory insect. His eyes, now considerably closer to mine, seemed more fevered than merely sleep-deprived, more intensely focused as they narrowed to slits, and – the worst I could imagine – more evil. I could smell his breath.
Was I about to be mugged or, worse yet, hauled off through some parallel universe's portal by a creature of Time? My eyes darted around hoping for an escape as his arm reached out.
The weird stranger resumed his incomprehensible chatter, all smiles and gracefully gesticulating hands, and urged me to take his battered business card produced from nowhere, its curlicued typeface and faded ink difficult to read: I only guess he'd added, “atta yo' sair-VEE-chay!”
Prof. Dionisio Ciapollo
compositore famoso e gran Maestro
“[something something] il divino afflato”
I'd barely had time to read over it, confused by that last line, when it burst into a small sulfuric flash. My reflexes, not quick enough, forced me to drop it as it disintegrated.
The man now lunged toward me with ferocious energy, spewing something nasty sounding – I heard words like pazzo, morirò, and Salieri! – before I could knock the man's hand away, too stunned to avoid him. Apparently, he held no weapon, at least none I could see. Was he about to rip my heart out by hand?
He did produce something, a pack of letters, just another cheap magician's trick, like pulling a coin from behind my ear, holding it triumphantly in front of me so I could admire his handiwork. Where had they come from; what were they? I had no such letters. They looked old, tied with faded red ribbon.
He thrust these letters within inches of my face where they burst into flames, then imperiously threw them at my feet, glaring at me with his scrofulous eyes bulging, his mouth distorted in rage.
A honking horn distracted me, turning to see Cameron pull through the gate. When I turned back, the stranger had vanished! Where could he have gone? Fortunately, I noticed, even the smell had disappeared. There'd been a whiff of the South about him, Italy most likely; some invitation to impending adventures – more likely a warning.
But it could have been brimstone as much as garlic and cheese or the warmth of a brilliantly sunny Mediterranean beach. The stranger had left behind only a scorch mark on the platform floor.
As I hurried over to the car, I tried not to look rattled, checking my inside jacket pocket and finding nothing.
“Been waiting long?” Cameron asked.
“Did you see anyone else on the platform?”
“No, I was looking into the sun; all I saw was your silhouette. What are you saying – someone else was there?”
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
Last summer, we'd made the necessary arrangements to stay on at Phlaumix Court after Aunt Frieda's funeral, and as the spring approached, Cameron Pierce, my assistant, and I again made similar arrangements to return. He could monitor my bank account on-line and manage the utilities' automatic payments; I alerted local police and the post office. Mrs. Quigley, our next-door neighbor and local busy-body, happily “adopted” the cats for whatever length of time we might be away. It seemed more expedient than her going over to feed them every day.
With no obligations to tie me down to life in Doylestown much less the wider world beyond a few promised book reviews, I could be “retired” and still write anywhere and anytime I wanted. While it felt improper to regard this time as a vacation, a “creative holiday” in Frieda's honor was certainly not disrespectful.
As a composer, I'd hoped this down time would've been enough new ideas might find their way to start germinating, but their implications took longer than expected to realize and proved, as usual, frustrating. I'd long realized the whole creative process had become more like work, exposing additional challenges neither easily surmountable nor always enjoyable. This was the time to put it out-of-mind, on the proverbial back burner, and eventually let it work itself out subconsciously. Putting my feet up didn't look like work, but I'm not being lazy.
For Cameron, I also hoped it would give him time to think about where he wanted to go with his life, since graduating from college he'd become increasingly unsure of himself and lacked direction. A late-bloomer to music in general, his recent fascination with becoming a composer came even later and was not particularly realistic. Fortunately, his parents weren't around to browbeat him into an early defeat: his father'd thrown him out a long time ago. They would certainly have regarded this latest career choice as a colossal joke.
It was difficult for me to urge him on in the hope it would someday, somehow all magically fall into place; the ease Toni composed with struck him as more depressing rather than inspiring. She may have understood everything intuitively, but Cameron had begun to grasp the basics intellectually: if only he had her talent.
But if anything was unrealistic, our living at Phlaumix Court even for a few months was the most unrealistic of all, this grand pile of off-kilter asymmetry tucked away in Surrey south of London. Far too princely for my middle-class tastes, with servants waiting on us, it wasn't just my life-style that needed to adjust.
The house, built in the late-18th-Century and designed by the great Florentine architect Fillipo Nacci, it reflected the logic of Palladian symmetry as seen through the proportions of the Golden Section which dominated everything.
That nothing looked “centered” bothered many people, the ornateness too busy as well; and since everything was intended to dazzle the mind, everywhere you looked, despite its logic and elegance, it fatigued the brain. Every morning, I woke up wondering if it was rude to wish I could live in the simpler servants' quarters instead.
Built by the 7th Marquess in the 1790s, Phlaumix Court's architectural style was intended to “twit my neighbors' very noses out-of-joint.” Lady Vexilla – née Leighton, widow of Edgar Ravensmoor Allan, Burnson's father, and Sir Bognar “Bugsy” Regis, the late Baron of Snaffingham – inherited the house from her grandfather, Rudyard Leighton, the 11th Marquess of Quackerly. Contention remained high among the Leightons over the ownership of Phlaumix Court, especially whenever the present Marquess, Charles Leighton-Quackerly, was visiting. Certainly, I must've stepped onto the set of some posh TV costume drama.
One of three sons who never had a chance to inherit much of anything, all outlived by their father, Burnson's grandfather married a Bavarian heiress named Wilhelmina, a daughter of the old Falkenstein fortune, whose older sister, a young widow, accompanied her for the wedding, held in those dark early years of World War II. Frieda, even after her sister and brother-in-law died, stayed on in the house as an older, less fortunate relative in the role of companion and Maiden Aunt first to Vexilla, then her two children.
Aunt Frieda married the conductor, Hans-Jörg Schnellenlauter, during the war, but it didn't work out; divorced, they decided to “remain friends” and stayed on the best of terms. He frequently visited her at Phlaumix. Back in the early-'80s, I'd known them both in New York City when Schnellenlauter was something of a mentor to me.
It had been a small world when I arrived in London for my childhood friend LauraLynn Harty's wedding and to hear a concert Schnellenlauter was scheduled to conduct only to find he'd been murdered. Even more amazing than discovering the man LauraLynn would marry lived in this incredible mansion was finding Frieda was his great-aunt!
I'd met LauraLynn during her family's holiday in Maine one summer, invited by her cousin Robertson Sullivan, my best childhood friend. Their families were very wealthy, far beyond my league, but we'd remained friends.
To make a long story longer, a child named Antonie Auvoir-duBois appeared in the middle of the investigation into Schnellenlauter's murder, a thirteen-year-old composer with a prodigious talent who'd written several promising works already. It seemed the maestro arranged for Toni to travel to Snaffingham because she was, speaking of small worlds, Frieda's long-lost great-great-granddaughter. The trail of her father's identity, given up as one of those chance meetings with life-long repercussions, had finally been unearthed. Schnellenlauter, indefatigable as usual, cracked the missing clue shortly before he was murdered.
Toni's adoptive parents having both been killed in a freak accident, Burnson and LauraLynn suggested they adopt her, and stipulated unconditionally, in order to appease Cousin Charles, she was not to inherit Phlaumix Court. As heir to Burnson's and LauraLynn's own personal fortunes, young Toni could still become a very wealthy composer, as composers went.
And then there was Toni's secret, one even she didn't know about. Cameron and I were sworn not to speak of it outside our select group, the Unsterblichesverein, and never to the subject herself. It was our role, this “Immortal Club,” to look after and protect her; with Frieda's death, there was now one less.
Frieda realized, doing her research, that a talent for composition only manifested itself matrilineally through the first-born but rarely to any degree of accomplishment, certainly not to any level that could be considered “genius.”
More surprisingly, she realized, having constructed the family tree laid out in Old Knussbaum's lengthy account, each first-born daughter was illegitimate just as she had been born out-of-wedlock and as Frieda's twins had been. The real secret was that Toni – and Frieda before her – descended from a chance encounter between Beethoven and his Immortal Belovèd.
When Beethoven's daughter was born in a remote village, an old gypsy, wandering into the celebration, prophesied a distant daughter of this child, descended from twins, would posses a talent to rival her father. It was scandal enough since only the mother knew the father's identity; the idea of incestuous twins only complicated the awkwardness.
When Schnellenlauter agreed to take on the task of finding whatever happened to Frieda's twins, she insisted he must report back in a convoluted code dating back to the days of Beethoven's long-lost lover.
Frieda explained, in those dark days following Schnellenlauter's murder, how the Guidonian Hand pursued Beethoven's Heirs to defend The Master's reputation, once Beethoven's daughter came under the care of Beethoven's young friend, Rainer Knussbaum; how from the very beginning Knussbaum and Dudley Böhm created an invisible shield meant to protect the Belovèd's descendents from scrutiny. Once Schnellenlauter discovered Antonie Auvoir-duBois was on the verge of realizing the gypsy's prophecy as the great-granddaughter of both Frieda's twins, Frieda became aware, should anyone uncover her secret, Toni was in grave danger.
And how have I been involved in this mystery, even before reconnecting with Frieda and meeting Toni over two years ago? Various clues led us to the grave of Beethoven's Immortal Belovèd, so it was only logical Fate eventually chose to knock on my door and induct Cameron and me into the Society of Watchers.
Last summer, around 9:00 one night, I'd received an unexpected text – not that any texts on my phone would be expected – sent from Frieda Erden's special encrypted account in her usual convoluted secret code. Since it must've been sent around 2am London Time, I assumed it would no doubt be important, perhaps even an emergency. With Cameron's help, I figured out the transpositional sequencing, unique to each message, and discovered I will “soon be needed to guide our friend” – code for Toni – “as previously agreed: it has become time.”
We'd discussed these arrangements months ago, certain details of her will: she would leave me sufficient money to pay a salary for my time, whatever kind of schedule we wanted to arrange, and I would become more a coach and mentor to Toni than her composition teacher, guiding her at least until she turned 21.
The next day, LauraLynn called to tell me Aunt Frieda had begun to fade and had accepted the inevitability of her mortality – “it's been long enough, don't you think?” – lying back as if exhausted. The next day, Cameron and I arrived at her bedside. She'd recognized us, smiled peacefully, and soon slipped into a coma.
A few days later, we adjusted our arrangements to stay after the funeral and, a week later, began Toni's “first semester.”
Now, with the springtime, we've returned for what Toni called her “second semester.”
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
“You've never seen him before?”
“I've never seen anyone dressed like him before!” I could tell Cameron was more than skeptical about it, given the strangeness of the man I'd encountered on the platform.
“Did he remind you of anyone, someone you'd seen before, wearing a disguise?”
“Why would he...? – well, he's nobody I remember.”
I knew he wasn't being argumentative: Cameron was always one to ask the kind of questions to help focus my mind.
“What one adjective would you use to describe him, your foreground reaction?”
“Malevolent.”
He laughed. “Right, you couldn't just say 'evil'? Okay, so why specifically 'malevolent'?”
“There's a qualitative difference,” I countered, looking out at the passing trees. The countryside was beautiful, but I wished more calming.
“Evil'd be more generic, part of his nature? 'Malevolent' means 'directed at you'?”
I nodded without realizing he's watching the road.
“Yes, basically. It was like a threat, whatever it was he actually said.” I needed to think about that, then write it down and translate it, once I'd calmed down and collected my thoughts.
“But you're positive he'd said something about Salieri? Frankly, that makes no sense...”
He made the turn into the long driveway.
The view was an improvement over our first visit when the taxi'd gotten stuck, the house nearly invisible in that blizzard. How striking it all looked, now, rising from the top of its knoll.
“So if he'd threatened you,” Cameron continued, “do you have any idea why?” He took the car around back and parked.
I sighed. “No – his card said he was a composer, a famous composer...”
“Maybe he was waiting for...,” then he stopped before turning off the ignition.
“Maybe,” I continued, “it wasn't me he'd threatened...?”
It struck both of us simultaneously: maybe his threat was aimed at Toni? “Maybe – he's a member of the Guidonian Hand?”
The Watchers' antithesis, they were out to destroy the descendants of Beethoven's Belovèd.
We hurried off to find Vector, the old butler, nominally retired but still in charge of the Watchers, and told him. He knew of no one who even remotely fit my “singularly odd” description.
“It would not surprise me,” Vector said, his voice a whisper, “so soon after Miss Frieda's death: we must remain vigilant.”
Headed for the library in search of a few minutes to “compose” myself, I met LauraLynn saying dinner would be late. Burnson, she explained, had gone to take a nap, only now waking up. “Yesterday was stressful at the office; he's complained about feeling tired all day. Poor man needs a vacation,” she added, smiling.
As she passed me on her way out, she looked over and said, “Seems like you've had a rough day, too. Is everything okay? Did something not go well at lunch with your friend?
“Oh, that,” I stammered, glad to find a way out, “yes, that's it.” I could hardly tell her about the stranger. She knew nothing of Toni's secret and I didn't want to alarm her.
LauraLynn knew me too well to lie, especially after our adventures in the Schweinwald (and we've never talked about that, either).
“Had I told you about my old mentor from back in grad school? Well,” I continued, “I've had some sad news.”
“Oh, no,” she said, immediately gesturing for me to sit down. “What happened?”
“It was a heart attack, initially. They got him to the hospital in time but while the surgery was successful, initially...”
I explained how something ruptured while he was in recovery and how he'd started bleeding out before they could reach him.
Silently, she grasped my hands.
“I mean, yes, he was 94, but still...”
LauraLynn squeezed my hands and said how sorry she was I was going through this, especially so soon after Frieda's death, when Burnson wandered into the library as if he'd been looking for someone.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, rubbing his forehead, “sorry I'm down late for dinner. Where is everyone?” He looked tired.
She'd dropped my hands as if the topic, suddenly unwelcome, had been changed, mouthing something like “Don't tell him about it.”
Burnson poured us drinks and asked if I'd enjoyed my jaunt into London.
Not waiting for details beyond a simple “Yes,” he continued how we could all use a break from this gloomy weather – it had clouded over again – how, since the funeral, they'd never gotten away. After a particularly worrisome week in the office, he suggested taking a proper holiday, “maybe even visit Mamá at the bungalow.”
Lady Vexilla's “bungalow” referred to her “dowager's cottage” located somewhere in Provençe, a small mountain village above Nice and the Mediterranean. Officially called “Nevermoor,” it had belonged to her mother-in-law's family since the 1830s. Not one townhouse but three adjacent, interconnected townhouses, it was “a lot of room for one old woman and her staff.”
“We can talk about it over dinner,” LauraLynn suggested, moving toward the door, “but yes, you could certainly use a holiday.” She added with a nod, “I think we all could. It'll be fun.”
There'd been fewer guests since the funeral – among them, Burnson's sister Tabitha stayed a week in October; his mother, a month. A smaller gathering, we'd dined in the smaller, more intimate “Little Blue Salon.” Beneath enough paintings in gilded frames one could barely tell the walls were blue, the table was set for only five.
Cameron and Toni, in the Great Hall and talking about whatever young people discussed these days, had fallen in behind us. We sat down to what LauraLynn politely excused as a simple weekend meal.
After the soup, Burnson stood up to excuse himself. “I feel a tad light-headed – perhaps a lie-down in the library will...” As he pushed his chair back, he clutched at his chest and collapsed.
In the immediate commotion, Cameron yelled for someone, anyone, to call an ambulance.
“Hurry,” I shouted, “he's having a heart attack!”
Since the ambulance was on its way from the opposite end of the district, Cameron was told a local doctor outside Snaffingham, unfortunately without a functioning car at the moment, would be able to meet us at the Dog & Pony if we could get Burnson into the car and drive him into emergency ourselves. With the help of a hand truck, Sidney the butler and Cameron placed Burnson on a chair and, thanks to the recently installed elevator, wheeled him out through the downstairs kitchen into the garage.
Since the chauffeur was off, Cameron would drive the Rolls Phantom with Burnson and LauraLynn, Vector riding shotgun as the navigator, so Sidney could follow in the more sedate sedan with Toni and me. Outside the pub, we picked up Dr. Gravesend who'd called ahead to the hospital in Dorking, the closest, most direct one.
The drive into town, straight up the A-24, then a few blocks past Crawleigh Street, no matter how direct, took forever. Sidney did a quite respectable job keeping the Rolls' speeding taillights in view. A crew waited for us at the emergency entrance and as soon as we pulled in, they went into high gear. Transferred from the backseat onto a gurney, Burnson, greatly diminished, disappeared through the sliding gate down a long, garishly lit hallway. Our last view was of him surrounded by nurses with tubes and IVs.
Dr. Gravesend explained he'd stabilized and should be okay, getting him in so promptly. “The slightest delay could've been critical.” He guided us to a large waiting room which tried desperately to look soothing. Other people sat scattered around, awaiting news of their loved ones, disappointed, after looking up, we had no news for them.
LauraLynn tried to be supportive, thanking Cameron and Sidney for their quick action, and Dr. Gravesend for whatever magic he'd managed. I, meanwhile, wished I hadn't told her the news about Henry Joyce's death.
If our high-speed ride to the hospital felt endless, the long wait for news from the surgeon dragged on even more interminably. Vector called back to the house to update the other servants. Like others in the room, we found ourselves looking up at every entrance, then back down, disappointed that it wasn't for us.
“Perceptual hours” rolled by, hours we'd swear were really, truly hours, not fifteen minutes by the humming of the electric clock, as others received their news and we'd try to rejoice in their outcomes. Conversation, even whispering, was inconsiderate, flicking nervously through magazines potentially just as irritating; Vector dozed, Cameron meditated; everyone else stared blankly.
Finally then, somewhere nearer to midnight, it was our turn and the doctor who'd been Burnson's surgeon, a young Indian fellow with more syllables to his name than I could catch, entered the room.
“Everything is fine – he will be okay.” Anything beyond the fact he'd been moved into recovery was lost in the blur. He added, “it could be a few more hours till he regains consciousness.”
There were relays of hugs traded around – even Vector appeared not to mind. By now, the waiting room was otherwise empty.
Greatly relieved, LauraLynn suggested Sidney should take everyone else home, but she, if nobody minded, would stay and wait. Cameron and I volunteered to remain at least until they transferred him to a room.
Vector, calling home with the news, added, “and if you would, please, put some left-overs out: I for one am famished!”
LauraLynn and I looked at each with guarded if muted optimism, both thinking back to my earlier news: that there could be no real relief until after Burnson's safely out of the recovery room.
Once we'd arrived at the hospital, LauraLynn called Burnson's mother, Lady Vexilla, who had reached Paris where her plans included a week's stay to visit old friends before returning to the south of France, followed by her sequestered retirement through the summer spent avoiding as many tourists as possible in as grand a way imaginable. By mid-morning, she swept into the hospital, demanding to see her son convinced he might never see her again, despite LauraLynn's subsequent calls after he'd been out of surgery and again released from recovery. It annoyed her Andropov the chauffeur had some days off and Sidney the butler (she detested having a butler named “Foote”), only half-awake, had to meet her at the airport in the sedan. Everything streaming from her mouth focused on the negative side of “What if...?” until the doctor proclaimed Burnson was under sedation.
LauraLynn was used to her mother-in-law's filiocentric universe, typical of old-fashioned aristocratic widows when, temporarily, the planets didn't revolve around her, especially when dealing with her son in what until recently was her house. That didn't mean, on certain occasions, LauraLynn wasn't capable of feeling the need to throttle her in her husband's best interest. But this wasn't her house, it was the hospital where the doctor was in charge, regardless how Vexilla viewed his role. And if the doctor decided Burnson needed his rest, then so be it.
This vacation in Provençe, specifically Tourrettes-sur-Loup, which Burnson wanted to discuss over dinner, was now, according to Vexilla, “un fait accompli,” one of the first things she mentioned in hushed conversations outside Burnson's room. Having her son there – “Oh, and you, too, dear,” reassuringly patting LauraLynn's arm – gave her the necessary control over his recuperation.
Granted, LauraLynn told me, the air, even the view, but mostly the change of weather and location would do him good. Getting away from stress at the office would be all the more helpful.
How, exactly, the build-up of inevitable tensions between his wife and his mother would help him recover remained to be seen, but LauraLynn would not be taking the challenge lightly, already planning her counter-strategies.
“You and Cameron must join us – and a nurse, to be in charge. I'll need all the allies I can get!”
The days dragged on but Burnson, impatience aside, improved gradually day by day, up and walking a little by Day Two, soon joking with the younger nurses about missing them when he'd be discharged. In five days, his medication succeeded in stabilizing his blood pressure – he had, Dr. Gravesend explained, been close to a stroke.
The greatest obstacle to Burnson's returning home would be the sheer boredom of lying around, “resting” when not doing his required exercises, working with his nurses and therapists, and eating only what was allowed.
He also had to deal with politics at work: even as the CEO, he feared being found unnecessary, no longer indispensable. LauraLynn lobbied for a leave-of-absence; Vexilla, meanwhile, said flat-out he should just retire. And so plans for an extended holiday in Provençe went ahead, Vexilla in her element as LauraLynn kept a cautious eye.
Dr. Gravesend set up schedules with two local nurses for the day- and night-shifts at Phlaumix Court once Burnson returned home, Marjorie Woods from Box Hill and Drusilla Pond from Walton-on-the-Hill, both respectably middle-aged. Whichever one most suited them, they should take to France: LauraLynn preferred the no-nonsense Nurse Woods; Burnson, the less-unattractive Nurse Pond.
Vexilla sent Crooks, her maid, over three days early to guarantee the bungalow's readiness, and took LauraLynn aside, eying me up: “the servants and nurses I can understand, dear, but why these two hangers-on...?”
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