'My dear fellow! I'm sorry. Nothing, really, but I can't help chuckling when I think of Blade knighting himself. Sir Blade! Heh-heh-heh-heh.'
Lord Leighton's laugh reminded J of a file in a lock.
J saw nothing amusing about it. 'He needed a title to impress those people. He took it.'
Lord L held up a hand. 'Do you know, J, a thought has just occurred to me. Why not get the boy on the next Honors list? I am sure I can arrange it. I can swing a bit of weight, you know.'
Sir Richard Blade! J pondered. Why not? They were handing them out to actors and jockeys and brewers and soon, God save us all, there would be a rock and roll singer dubbed Knight. He smiled then.
He shook his head. 'No. I think not. Call too much attention to Blade,, for one thing, and we don't want that. Another, and I am sure about this because I know Dick rather well, is that he wouldn't have any part of it. Dick Blade is a very real person, Leighton. He doesn't need a title to shore up his ego. He'd just laugh at us and think we were bonkers.'
Lord L chuckled again and shuffled crawfishlike to a chair and eased his old body into it. 'All right, man. No need to get testy about it. It was only a passing thought.' He took a sheaf of yellow paper from his pocket and began to cover it with cabalistics in a tiny hand.
J supposed that he had sounded testy. His relief at having Blade back safely was so great that he didn't quite know what to do with himself, laugh or cry or go out and get horribly drunk - a thing he hadn't done since Boat Race night in 1928.
Lord L looked at J with his lion eyes. He tapped paper with pencil.
'This second trip into Dimension-X has pretty well proved out my theory, J. God! I wish I could publish it. Heh- heh-heh-heh. Shock half of them into asylums and have the other half on me like vultures. A brand-new and contra-theory of the nature of the universe! There is not one universe, there are many. Dozens, hundreds, thousands! Each in its own dimension and perceivable only by brains attuned to it. God, J! When I think of it!'
Lord Leighton swung his arm about violently, cutting a swathe in empty air. 'There! You see that. I just swept my arm through an entire world, containing what, and peopled by whom? We cannot know, J, because our brains are incapable of seeing it. It cannot exist for us. But for Blade, ah! For the lad...'
J's pipe had gone out. He ignored it. Very quietly he said, 'We'll lose Blade one day, you know. Bound to. Law of averages. He just can't keep going out into Dimension-X time after time and expect to...'
Lord Leighton was paying no attention. He was making marks on paper again and mumbling, 'The thing was that the others were content to stop with the spacetime continuum, the fourth, and call it quits. Donkeys! The next logical step was inevitable, clear as bumf in the living room, but nothing is ever clear to fools and...'
'Leighton!'
The old man looked up, 'Sorry, J. What is it?'
'When can I see Blade? When are you going to release him?'
Lord L pulled out a ponderous old-fashioned watch. 'Soon now. He's all yours. Had all his tests, been cleared, fit as a fiddle except for those minor wounds in his leg and side. Hmmm, I've had him four days now, eh? Good. Fine. That's enough. Soon as he comes out of hypnosis and has a final check he's all yours, J. Give him a bonus, a whopping big one, mind you, and tell him to have fun. I won't need him for another six months or so.'
As J left the Tower he suddenly thought of Blade's girl, Zoe. Saucy little wench! Sticking her nose into things that didn't concern her. He had to smile as he tried to hail a taxi. The lass had pretty well blown the Whitehall cover thing, nosing about and asking questions and using her relatives and friends. J nodded reprovingly to himself as he stepped into a taxi. The Whitehall bit had been a little ramshackle and hastily set up. Have to change it.
Blade parked the MG off the lane and vaulted the stile leading to the cottage, thinking of the last time he had cleared it with Zoe in his arms. Zoe!
He had been trying to get in touch with her for two days now. Her family didn't know, or wouldn't tell, where she was. Everywhere he tried he was greeted by the same vague answers:
'Sorry, old man, haven't seen her lately.'
'No, Mr. Blade, I do not know where Zoe is.'
'Seems to me she said something about popping over to Paris for a week or so.'
'I heard she had a spot of work to do in Wales.'
'No, sir. Miss Cornwall hasn't been in her flat these past four days'85 Thank you, sir.'
He unlocked the cottage, went around raising windows, then got out because the scent of her was everywhere. His heart ached with a dull ache that both pained and angered him.
He wandered down to the cliff, to the Snuggery, as she called it, and stood looking out over the Channel. It was a day of mist and intermittent sun, and a mild swell was running in to break foaming on the shingle. Gulls circled in boredom and puffins investigated the wet black rocks far beneath him. Blade lit a cigarette and let the wind carry the match away.
They had been playing the quote game that evening. She had not responded, not at all.
Blade was in love and miserable. He admitted it. He was feeling sorry for himself, which was a crime to a man like himself. Okay. He was a criminal. Goddamn it, Zoe! Come back to me. I need you. I want you.
He had never cared for Wordsworth. He did not, especially, care for Wordsworth now. The line just popped into his head.
I wandered lonely as a cloud.
Which line would Zoe quote back to him? There was nothing of love in the poem.
Perhaps - And then my heart with pleasure fills?
