him, you mean. Yes, oh yes. I thought it was . . . appropriate, perhaps, or rather, shall we say, suitable. No different, really, from an ordinary saint’s name, like yours, in that way.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean to embarrass you, I’m sorry. I just think that was a really beautiful thing to do. l want to tell you that.”
“Ah . . . yes. Yes, thank you. I don’t know if Mickey would agree. I intended it really as a gift of sorts.”
“A gift of God. Right.”
“Actually, I’m afraid, a gift from me. A gift from the past. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I had no title, you see, no coat of arms. Money, of course, but he could make that for himself.”
“But you’re English. That would be enough.”
“Ha! How nice of you to think so.”
“I do. Really.”
“We used to think so, too, we English. But never mind about that. I wanted to give him something he could carry with him, something, as I say, from the past, a thread of continuity, of something precious.”
She was letting him ramble, he realised, while she sat there with her lips parted and her pretty eyes huge and blank. He could run on and on, making a fool of himself, not that it mattered. But making his faith appear foolish, that was something else. That would never do. He added;
“Of course I could have laid down a case of claret, but 1956 was such a terrible year.”
She nodded in glum agreement.
“Right. I did a course in college, big years in history. Suez, Hungary. . . oh sure.”
“Ah, actually I was referring to the wine production. But you’re right, of course. An interesting theory, that the vines could respond to international events. I wonder what ’38 was like. Can’t remember.”
“You mean ’39?”
“No, no, Czechoslovakia, and the Anschluss, that was really the beginning. Yes, the Anschluss. I thought so, anyway.”
She hid her eyes in the notebook, clearly confused. Could he really see the words ‘wine production’ appearing there?
“Well, Elspeth, I think we ought to be settling down for the night. I’m sure we’ll have ample opportunity to talk further in Vienna.”
“Oh sure. OK. You want to go back?”
“I think we’d better.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep. I’m too excited! Do you ever have trouble sleeping?”
“From time to time, like everybody else. Some people count sheep. I count soldiers.”
He knew she wouldn’t understand, but she thought she did and wrote it down anyway.
In the other compartment Frances and Mickey were already stretched out in their seats. Frances was almost wholly concealed by her blanket, although the train was warm. Herbert pulled out the seat next to her, and took her hand. She squeezed his fingers, and smiled briefly with her eyes still closed.
“Mickey dear, would you turn out the light when you’re ready?”
“All right, Mother. Sleep well.”
“Goodnight, dear.”
Soon the compartment was dark and quiet, with the even hum and racket of the train deeper than true silence. It was a neutral sound that could be all the right chords to the simple refrain of a symphony in the mind, or a background of summer birdsong, or the chanting of a crowd, or the blare and clatter of midday traffic in a city long ago.
Herbert knew that he would sleep badly, but the memory that caught him was one he didn’t expect. He was tempted to curse his daughter-in-law, poor innocent fool that she was. Oh, how unfair, he thought, how very unfair. She couldn’t know, even if she were told. She could never see her husband, barely seven years old, using his turn on the telephone from an English prep school a hundred miles from home . . . Miles, little Miles Christie, Christie, M., sobbing and desperate, demanding to know why his parents had done this terrible thing to him. Suddenly Herbert had understood, had pictured perfectly the classroom in which he, too, had learnt his first words of Latin, the new vocabulary striking his small son like a cane, the bored schoolmaster on the look-out for cheap laughs, and the remorseless ridicule at which small boys excelled. Then Frances had put down the phone, and turned in distress to her husband, with a question made redundant by that far belated rush of intuition;
“Herbert, Herbert, why on earth didn’t you tell him?”
Until then he had believed that the name would be a source of pride, and a cherished gift, and now it would bring sorrow, perhaps for a terrible week or two, before the boy came home again. He would learn to cope, of course, but what would he think of his father now? Herbert closed his eyes, and opened them again to darkness. He still didn’t know the answer to that question. He had been sure, for a while, that his son was quieter, and talked to him less, but small changes were quickly lost in the rush of growth. He would never know, now, whether his gift had done more harm than good in the end; he would never really have known that. All he had done was to illuminate a difference between father and son, and the times of their growing up. For big, strong Herbert had suffered no bullying at a school still uncritically Christian, while his more bookish son had developed different, more subtle resources at the dismal dawn of a more sceptical age; and, within months of that awful day, everyone was to know him as Mickey Christie. The gift had been buried, perhaps for good.
Herbert turned, and stared unhappily into the darkness of his wife. Sometimes memory was just a random spin on a wheel of failure. And he couldn’t even trust the detail; buildings, weeks and conversations conflated in the press of a mind crowded by age. A moment’s pain could fill a night, but to relive a month might only take a fraction of a second’s dream. Yet he must pursue this mood, work it out, exhaust it. In the solitude of the night his life and his memory were the same. There was nowhere else to go, whether he slept or not.
3
Even before she opened her eyes Elspeth fully knew that she was awake, and that the morning had arrived. She stirred and looked about her. She had never before seen Frances asleep, and was struck by the resemblance between mother and son; both slept on their backs, maintaining the same expression of grumpy boredom through the night. Herbert was different, lying half on one side, brow furrowed, mouth open a little, but perfectly still. After a moment she remembered what it was that he evoked; the crusader killed in battle, preserved in stone above his own tomb in the English church where she was married. She must remember to write that down.
As quietly as she could, Elspeth slipped from her overcoat and let herself out of the compartment. No one else seemed to be moving yet, although the day was shockingly bright. The train was moving slowly, easing, perhaps, into its last stop before Vienna. Soon the adventure would begin in earnest. She decided to go to the end of the carriage for some fresh air, and found she wanted to skip along the corridor, giggling with childish excitement. This was nothing to be ashamed of; she laughed affectionately at herself, and walked, trailing her hands along the wall and the window sills, ready to laugh again at anything that happened
