select if scattered network of friends and colleagues all across the Middle East, to lend him a hand if required. And on his last known move obviously still in full control of his actions. A taxi had dropped him and his luggage at the main railway station, he had walked in through the entrance with a porter in attendance; and that was that.
On the face of it, a man about whom the whole world knew, whose life was an open book—no, a succession of books. But what did she really know about him? She roamed back thoughtfully into childhood memories, hunting for the little clues her mother and grandmother had let fall about him, and the sum of them all was remarkably meagre. A handsome, confident man, who had managed to retain his friends without ever letting them get on to too intimate ground. No wife ever, and (as far as anyone knew!) no children anywhere, but all the same, his kinswomen had spoken of him tolerantly, even appreciatively, as an accomplished lady-killer, evading marriage adroitly but finding his fun wherever he went. An eye for the girls at sixty no less than at twenty; and silver-grey temples, blue eyes and a Turkish tan were even more dangerously attractive than youth. He played fair, though, her mother had said of him generously. Not with the husbands, perhaps, but with the ladies. They had to be more than willing, and as ready as he to part without hard feelings afterwards. Doubtful if he ever dented a heart; more than likely he gave quite a number of hearts a new lift after they’d imagined the ball was over for them.
It seemed she did, after all, know a few significant things about him. He lived as he chose, one foot in home comforts, the other shod for roaming. She understood now what Mr Stanforth had meant by describing him as a man who had deliberately evaded certain responsibilities and involvements, and even kept his affairs in scrupulous order mainly to avoid being badgered, or giving anyone a hold on him. And she thought suddenly, with a totally unexpected flash of dismay and sympathy: My God, you overdid it, didn’t you? You were so successful at it that in the end you could vanish without leaving a soul behind sufficiently concerned about you to kick up a fuss—only a solicitor worried about the legal hang-ups, and especially the money!
Sympathy, of course, might be misapplied here. For all she knew, so far from being lonely and deprived at this moment, he might well be taking his mild pleasures in his usual fashion, with some lady chanced upon by pure luck in the wilds of Anatolia. In which case he would surface again when it suited him. All the same, the image of his isolation remained with her, and made her feel uneasy and even guilty towards him.
So it was partly out of an illogical sense of obligation that she began to read his book on Aurae Phiala. Eighty or so acres of Midshire by the river Comer, close by the border of Wales. A recreation city, apparently, for the officers of the garrison at Silcaster, and the legions tramping the long course of Watling Street. The account he gave of it was detailed, detached and distinctly unenthusiastic. A place of historical interest in its small way, especially for its sudden death at the end of the fourth century, after the legions that were its life and its protection had been withdrawn. But otherwise a site very unlikely to repay much further examination, and hardly worth spending money on, while so many more promising sites waited their turn to snatch a crumb of the meagre and grudging funds available. In plan after plan and page after page, Doctor Morris amended the estimates even he had given in articles previously published, and disputed various claims made for Aurae Phiala by other authorities. Their aerial photographs he subjected to destructive scrutiny, the light crop lines they detected under the unbroken fields he dated several centuries later than the sacking of Aurae Phiala, the dark crop marks emerging so strongly in contrast he refused to consider as early Roman military lines, but set well back into pre-Roman settlement. (A light, sandy sub-soil, Charlotte learned, provided a first-class ground for crop-marks, since crops growing over ancient foundations tend to ripen and show yellow while the rest of the field is still green. And the crop marks that show dark instead of pale are likely to lie along the lines where timber walls stood, prior to the stone.)
In short, Doctor Morris was bored with Aurae Phiala, and succeeded in making it slightly boring for his readers. Charlotte found herself intrigued by his handling of some of his colleagues who took views different from his own. His deference, while he refuted their conclusions, was careful and considerate. Even, perhaps, a little cagey? She felt almost sorry for Professor M. L. Vaughan, who was obviously in the same rank as her self-confident great-uncle, and differed from him on almost every point.
She would have been completely convinced, but for that limpid, lovely photograph on the book’s cover, so serene, and pure, and gracious in its emptiness of man, a tragic landscape recognised and captured.
It was one of those cosmic accidents which are no accident, that the next day, when she called in at a bookshop to look for some more Morris titles, she should find on the same shelf the total output of Professor M. L. Vaughan; and among the rest his:
She bought another of her uncle’s books, but she bought, also, Professor Vaughan’s; and his was the one she began to read, in the train to a modest concert engagement in Sussex.
Experts do differ, of course, even experts of equal eminence. And yet they were writing about the same place, and both of them knew it intimately, and had known it for years. Every indication Alan Morris rejected, Professor Vaughan accepted and expounded. He gave the city not eighty or so acres of ground, but more like two hundred and twenty, he burned to have the funds to take up lovingly every acre of those two hundred and twenty, and tenderly brush away the dust of centuries from every artifact he expected to recover; and his expectations were high. It was all very odd, very attractive, very mystifying.
Charlotte got back into London rather late that night, and rather tired, but hooked beyond redemption upon Aurae Phiala. It was the last preoccupation of her kinsman before his exit from England, and it was a strangely appealing bone of contention between him and several of his peers. Charlotte lay stretched upon her bed, waiting to relax enough for her bath, reviewing her evening’s performance with merciless austerity—the oboe is a tyrannical instrument, and demands lofty standards—and confronting her odd, challenging, unknown English great-uncle, unexpectedly lost before she had ever become aware of him. He was beginning to threaten her personal security, her conviction of her own integrity. He was a ghost—a figure of speech, of course, she was in no doubt of his irrepressible re-emergence—whom she had to placate and exorcise.
She knew, then, that she was going to Aurae Phiala, to look at that charged, controversial, emotional ground- site for herself. It was a gesture without any wider significance, she knew that; she was exorcising and placating no one but herself. But at least she would be treading in his footsteps, and somewhere along the way a clearer picture of him might emerge. The move to Midshire even made economic sense; she had several modest school recitals in Birmingham and the Black Country during the next month, and it would be cheaper to move up there and find a furnished room somewhere, rather than spend the intervening time here in town.
She left by train for Comerbourne the next morning.
CHAPTER TWO
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She paid her ten pence at the glass cage of the entrance booth, to a young man who could not possibly be the custodian, Great-Uncle Alan’s contemporary, but was clearly something rather more scholarly than a mere gate-keeper. He had a long, agreeable, supercilious face, dark eyes which dwelt upon his latest customer appreciatively but not offensively, and a general style that hovered oddly between the fastidious and the casual. His long hair stopped neatly at the level where it curved most attractively, but his shave was indifferent. Either that, or he had only yesterday decided to bow to fashion and grow a beard. His slacks and sweater were well-styled and good, but he managed to wear them as if they were about to fall off him. His aim had been either hopelessly inaccurate, or else capricious of intent. He
