help Ruth–if I thought that could persuade you. You may think my quest is a folly, but for the love of God and the sake of that dear sweet child, won’t you indulge an old man and accept my offer? What have you got to lose? We’re the ones who stand to lose a great deal, if our Ruth doesn’t survive.’
Ben hesitated.
‘I know you have no family or children of your own, Mr. Hope,’ Fairfax went on. ‘Perhaps only a father, or a grandfather, can really understand what it means to see one’s dear offspring suffer or die. No parent should have to endure that torture.’ He looked Ben in the eye with an unwavering gaze. ‘Find the Fulcanelli manuscript, Mr. Hope. I believe you can. I’ll pay you a fee of one million pounds sterling, one quarter of that sum in advance, and the balance on safe delivery of the manuscript.’ He opened a drawer of the desk, took out a slip of paper and slid it across the polished wood surface. Ben picked it up. The cheque was for £250,000 and made out in his name.
‘It only requires my signature,’ Fairfax said quietly. ‘And the money’s yours.’
Ben stood up, still holding the cheque. Fairfax watched him intently as he walked to the window and looked out across the sweeping estate at the gently swaying trees. He was quiet for a minute, and then he breathed out audibly through his nose and turned slowly to Fairfax. ‘This isn’t what I do. I locate missing people.’
‘I’m asking you to save the life of a child. Does it matter how that’s accomplished?’
‘You’re asking me to go on a wild goose chase that you believe can save her.’ He tossed the cheque back across Fairfax’s desk. ‘But I don’t see how it can. I’m sorry, Mr. Fairfax. Thanks for your offer, but I’m not interested. Now, I’d like your driver to take me back to the airfield.’
In a large open field full of wild flowers and gently swaying lush grass, a teenage boy and a little girl were running, laughing, hand in hand. Their blond hair was golden in the sunshine. The boy let go of the little girl’s hand and dropped to his knees to pick a flower. Giggling, she ran on ahead, looking back at him with her nose crinkled in mischief and freckled cheeks rosy. The boy held out the flower to her, and suddenly she was standing far away. Beside her was a gateway, leading to a high-walled maze.
‘Ruth!’ he called to her. ‘Come back!’ The little girl cupped her hands around her mouth, shouted ‘Come and find me!’ and disappeared, grinning, through the gate.
The boy ran after her, but something was wrong. The distance between him and the maze kept stretching further and further. He shouted ‘Don’t go, Ruth, don’t leave me behind!’ He ran and ran, but now the ground under his feet wasn’t grass any more but sand, deep soft sand into which he sank and stumbled.
Then a tall man in flowing white robes was blocking his way. The boy’s head only reached as high as the man’s waist, and he felt small and powerless. He got around the man and made it to the entrance of the maze just in time to see Ruth flitting away into the distance. She wasn’t laughing any more, but crying out in fear as she vanished around a corner. Their eyes met a last time. Then she was gone.
Now there were other tall men in white robes, with black beards. They crowded round him and towered over him, blocking his way and his sight, jabbering at him in a language he couldn’t understand, eyes round and white in mahogany faces that loomed close up to him, grinning with gaps in their teeth. And then they grabbed hold of his arms and shoulders with powerful hands and held him back and he was shouting and yelling and struggling but there were more and more of them and he was pinned and couldn’t move…
He gripped the glass tightly in his hand and felt the burn of the whisky against his tongue. In the distance, beyond the heaving dark grey waves that crashed against the rocks of the bay, the arc of the horizon was slowly lightening to red with the dawn.
He turned away from the window as he heard the door open behind him. ‘Morning, Win,’ he said, managing a smile. ‘What are you doing up so early?’
She looked at him with concern, her eye flickering to the glass in his hand and the empty bottle on the table behind him. ‘Thought I heard voices. Everything all right, Ben?’
‘I couldn’t get back to sleep.’
‘Bad dreams again?’ she asked knowingly.
He nodded. Winnie sighed. Picked up the worn old photograph that he’d been looking at earlier and had left lying on the table next to the whisky bottle. ‘Wasn’t she beautiful?’ the old lady whispered, shaking her head and biting her lip.
‘I miss her so badly, Winnie. After all these years.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ she replied, looking up at him. ‘I miss them all.’ She laid the picture down carefully on the table.
He raised the glass again, and drained it quickly.
Winnie frowned. ‘Ben, this drinking–’
‘Don’t lecture me, Win.’
‘I’ve never said a word to you before,’ she replied firmly. ‘But you’re just getting worse. What’s wrong, Ben? Since you came back from seeing that man you’ve been acting restless, not eating. You’ve hardly slept the last three nights. I’m worried about you. Look at you–you’re pale. And I know you only opened that bottle last night.’
He smiled a little, leaned across and kissed her forehead. ‘I’m sorry if I snapped. I don’t mean to worry you, Win. I know I’m hard to live with.’
‘What did he want from you, anyway?’
‘Fairfax?’ Ben turned towards the window and looked back out to sea, watching as the rising sun touched the undersides of the clouds with gold. ‘He wanted me…he wanted me to save Ruth,’ he said, and wished that his glass weren’t empty.
He waited until just before nine, then he picked up the phone.
‘You’re reconsidering my offer?’ Fairfax said.
‘You haven’t found anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘In that case, I’ll take the job.’
Oxford
Ben arrived early for his rendezvous at the Oxford Union Society. Like many old students of the university he was a life member of the venerable institution that nestles off the Cornmarket and has served for centuries as a meeting-place, debating hall and members-only club. As he’d done in his student days, he avoided the grand entrance and went in the back way, down a narrow alley next to Cornmarket’s McDonald’s restaurant. He flashed his tatty old membership card at the desk and walked through the hallowed corridors for the first time in nearly twenty years.
It seemed strange to be back here. He’d never thought he would set foot in this place again, or even in this city again, with all the dark memories it held for him–memories of a life once planned, and of the life that fortune had made for him instead.
