'You can make up for it later. You can sleep all afternoon in the patio. There are several lilos in the boiler- room, and I envy you. London is sweltering in a heat-wave.'
'Cornwall isn't,' I replied, 'and the patio gives me claustrophobia. Did you get my letter?'
'I did,' he said. 'That's why I rang. Congratulations on your third trip. Don't worry about the aftermath. It was your own fault, after all.'
'It may have been,' I said, 'but the confusion was not.'
'I know,' he agreed. 'The confusion fascinated me. Also the jump in time. Six months or more between the second and third trips. You know what? I've a good mind to get away in a week or so and join you so that we can go on a trip together.'
My first reaction was one of excitement. The second, a zoom to earth. 'It's out of the question. Vita will be here with the boys.'
'We can get rid of them. Pack them off to the Scillies, or for a long day at the Land's End, scattering banana skins. That'll give us time.'
'I don't think so,' I said. 'I don't think so at all.' He did not know Vita well. I could imagine the complications.
'Well, it's not urgent,' he said, 'but it could be a lot of fun. Besides I'd like to take a look at Isolda Carminowe.' His flippant voice restored my jagged nerves. I even smiled. 'She's Bodrugan's girl, not ours,' I told him.
'Yes, but for how long?' he queried. 'They were always changing partners in those days. I still don't see where she fits in amongst the rest.'
'She and William Ferrers seem to be cousins to the Champernounes,' I explained.
'And Isolda's husband Oliver Carminowe, absent at yesterday's death-bed, is brother to Matilda and Sir John?'
'Apparently.'
'I must write all this down and get my slave to check for further details. I say, I was right about Joanna being a bitch.' Then, abruptly changing his tone, 'So you're satisfied now that the drug works, and what you saw was not hallucination?'
'Almost,' I replied, with caution.
'Almost? Don't the documents prove it, if nothing else?'
'The documents help to prove it,' I countered, 'but don't forget you read them before I did. So there is still the possibility that you were exercising some kind of telepathic influence. Anyway, how's the monkey?'
'The monkey.' He paused a moment. 'The monkey's dead.'
'Thanks very much,' I said.
'Oh, don't worry — it wasn't the drug. I killed him on purpose; I have work to do on his brain cells. It will take some time, so don't get impatient.'
'I'm not in the least impatient,' I replied, 'merely appalled at the risk you appear to be taking with my brain.'
'Your brain's different,' he said. 'You can take a lot more punishment yet. Besides, think of Isolda. Such a splendid antidote to Vita. You might even find that—'
I cut him short. I knew exactly what he had been going to say. 'Leave my love life out of this,' I said. 'It doesn't concern you.'
'I was only about to suggest, dear boy, that moving between two worlds can act as a stimulant. It happens every day, without drugs, when a man keeps a mistress round the corner and a wife at home… That was a major find on your part, by the way, landing on the quarry above Treesmill valley. I'll put my archaeological friends on to digging the site when you and I have finished with it.'
It struck me, as he spoke, how our attitude to the experiment differed.
His was scientific, unemotional, it did not really concern him who was broken in the process so long as what he was attempting to prove was proved successfully; whereas I was already caught up in the mesh of history: the people who to him were puppets of a bygone age were alive for me.
I had a sudden vision of that long-buried house reconstructed on concrete blocks, admission two shillings, car park at Chapel Down…
'Then Roger never led you there?' I asked.
'To Treesmill valley? No,' he answered. 'I strayed from Kilmarth once only, and that was to the Priory, as I told you. I preferred to remain on my own ground. I'll tell you all about it when I come down. I'm off to Cambridge for the weekend, but remember you have all Saturday and Sunday for self-indulgence. Increase the dose a little — it won thurt you.'
He rang off before I could ask him for his telephone number, should I want it over the weekend. I had hardly put down the receiver before the telephone rang again. This time it was Vita.
'You were engaged a long while, she said. I suppose it was your Professor?'
'As a matter of fact it was,' I told her.
'Loading you up with weekend chores? Don't exhaust yourself darling.' Acidity, then, was the morning mood. She must blow it off on the boys, I could not cope.
'What are you planning for today?' I asked, ignoring her previous remark.
'Well, the boys are going swimming at Bill's club. That's a must. We've a heatwave here in London. How's it with you?'
'Overcast,' I said without glancing at the window. 'A trough of low pressure crossing the Atlantic will reach Cornwall by midnight.'
'It sounds delightful. I hope your Mrs. Collins is getting on with airing the beds.'
'Everything's under control, I told her, and I've hired a sailing-boat for next week, quite a big one, with a chap in charge. The boys will love it.'
'What about Mom?'
'Mom will love it too, if she takes enough seasick pills. There's also a beach below the cliffs here, only a couple of fields to cross. No bulls.'
'Darling,' — the acidity had turned sweet, or at any rate mellow— 'I believe you are looking forward to our coming after all.'
'Of course I am,' I said. 'Why should you think otherwise?'
'I never know what to think when your Professor's been at you. There's some sort of hoodoo between us when he's around… Here are the boys, she went on, her voice changing. They want to say hullo.' My stepsons voices, like their appearance, were identical, though Teddy was twelve and Micky ten. They were said to resemble their father, killed in an air crash a couple of years before I met Vita. Judging by the photograph they carried round with them, this was true. He had, they had, the typical Teuton head, hair cropped close, of many American young. Blue eyes, innocent, set in a broad face. They were nice kids. But I could have done without them.
'Hi, Dick,' they said, one after the other.
'Hi,' I repeated, the phrase as alien to my tongue as if I had been speaking Tongalese.
'How are you both?' I asked.
'We're fine,' they said.
There was a long pause. They couldn't think of anything more to say. Neither could I. 'Looking forward to seeing you next week,' I told them.
I heard a lot of whispering, and then Vita was back on the line again. 'They're raging to swim. I shall have to go. Take care of yourselg darling, and don't overdo it with your pail and broom.'
I went and sat in the little summer-house that Magnus's mother had erected years ago, and looked down across the bay. It was a happy spot, peaceful, sheltered from all winds except a south-westerly blow. I could see myself spending a lot of time here during the holidays, if only to get out of bowling to the boys; they were sure to bring cricket stumps with them, and a bat, and a ball which they would continually hit over the wall into the field beyond.
Your turn to get it!
No, it's not, it's yours!
Then Vita's voice chiming in from behind the hydrangea bushes. Now, now, if you're going to quarrel there won't be any cricket at all, and I mean it, with a final appeal to me — Do something, darling, you're the only adult
