One More River, page 1
Also by Nicolas Freeling
The Seacoast of Bohemia
You Who Know
Flanders Sky
Those in Peril
Sand Castles
Not As Far As Velma
Lady Macbeth
Cold Iron
A City Solitary
No Part in Your Death
The Back of the North Wind
Wolfnight
One Damn Thing After Another
Castang’s City
The Widow
The Night Lords
Gadget
Lake Isle
What Are the Bugles Blowing For?
Dressing of Diamond
A Long Silence
Over the High Side
Tsing-Boum
This Is the Castle
Strike Out Where Not Applicable
The Dresden Green
The King of the Rainy Country
Criminal Conversation
Double Barrel
Valparaiso
Gun Before Butter
Because of The Cats
Love in Amsterdam
One More River
Nicolas Freeling
It is evident that this script, once edited and readied for printing, will show a good deal of variation from the disjointed notes of the original. The decision whether or not to publish will also depend on a formal clearance from this lady and her brothers, John’s heirs. Speaking for myself I believe that both ‘Cathy’ and ‘Christian’ have indeed found worthwhile tributes to my old friend.
London, 1998
Prologue
This book, which is what it is, came as the saying goes ‘into my hands’. The italics denote an initial unease, because in fiction, and John was primarily a fiction writer, the phrase introduces a ploy or device, much employed in the nineteenth century; that of the tale told through letters or diaries, arranged with interpolations by a suppositious friend or relation who purports to ‘edit’ this material for public consumption.
John would not have allowed that. He would have been ribald. A good craftsman, he would have found other, simpler means of presenting this material. To my own mind it is a clumsy method. But I have no choice.
My name is Jonathan Wade; I am a literary agent. For twenty years I have handled the work of John Charles; he was one of ‘my’ writers, and a writer speaks of ‘his’ agent. The possessives are shorthand for a less simplistic relation which often includes friendship, trust, a certain intimacy. I appear in these pages, briefly, in an episode John would probably not have kept in a finished script. The detail shows that I am none too happy about accepting this task, which is mine by friendship. Many of these pages made painful reading.
They were ‘the shape of a book’. At the start John took a new notebook; he used German desk-diaries of quite an elaborate nature, because they have a format suitable for slipping in to the ‘sacoche’. I use this, John’s own word, since ‘handbag’ has to the English ear an effeminate, even a Lady Bracknell sound, misleading to all who did not know him. It held a clutter of papers and several pens, for John was never without ‘the notebook’; he was a compulsive writer. (Another of my authors, of a similar cast, finding himself in jail, wrote the first ten thousand words of a book on lavatory paper. John would have approved.)
It arrived by the ordinary post. A literary agency gets ‘books’ by every mail, in every shape and form, some wildly dotty in their search for novelty and their effort to catch the eye. Apart from the German postmark my secretary saw at once that this was out of the ordinary run.
The notebook is full of other writers, of reminders and citations, often of quotes direct from memory. John lived, as writers do, inside his own books, for they were his reality rather than the day to day humdrum of our own. His acceptance of reality came late. Too late, for others as well as himself.
I have spent many weeks with it. John’s small squiggly handwriting was familiar to me, and his characteristic ellipses appeared also in his prolific letters, and even in his conversation. Eyestrain apart, this shorthand was not much more difficult than that of his admired and frequently cited Mr Pepys. To turn this into printable shape has been an often puzzling and exasperating but largely a mechanical chore, and also a labour of love. John was a writer of acknowledged distinction, with an individual prose style. After my long experience of his work, I feel that this is probably a fair version of his voice. Indeed much of this is a literal transcription of his 300 closely written manuscript pages. The often rambling thought, the dislocated syntax, the occasional bad grammar are his own. As are the frequent words of French or German: in the heat of the moment these came to him quicker than English now and then. Some of these have been kept; more would have been unnecessarily irritating.
Lastly, as will be seen, he varies from one paragraph to another between a first- and a third-person narration. He would have of course corrected this while writing a book. I have kept largely to his original, since I think it throws light upon the nature of his personality. He was a deeply divided man. Many have said ‘a rift right down the middle’. This habit throws the undeniable fact into sharper relief. He was himself fond of the Kipling quotation about ‘two sides to his head’. Certainly, he got them badly confused. It should be remembered that he was an old man and under much strain.
There are naturally other problems. One is to get clearance from his children. ‘Jaimie’ I do not know, and he seems to have little interest in his father’s work. I must talk with Alan and with Cathy; they are not just mentioned in the script but given textual lines of dialogue. Likewise ‘Brigitte’ must be consulted, while such people as ‘Kollo’ might be sensitive to questions of libel! Sibylle, whom I knew and respected, is now free. Or I should have closed the notebook after the first few pages, and sent it to her with the briefest word of explanation as to how it came into my possession.
The major difficulty is the boy Christian himself. The last fifty pages of the notebook are in his attractively readable hand, square and black, unmistakably German. I should like to meet him. I do not feel sure that he would wish it I think that legally speaking his sending me the notebook constitutes permission to print. A meeting could be arranged, with a little detective work such as he—and John—had done. I feel pretty sure that he intended a tribute to both his grandparents: to John also, after some thought, as well as to the beloved Sibylle.
I think I can do no better than reproduce his covering letter. This was in English.
Dear Mr Wade
I am sending you this book, enclosed, because I have found out that Mr Charles, my grandfather, would want you to see it. You might not know what happened because it didn’t get into the press much.
My Aunt Sibylle was very dear to me. I think it is a real and big tragedy that they did not understand each other better. I am very unhappy at the part I played in this disaster. I do not make excuses for myself. You will say that we Germans always do. I ask you please to believe that this is not so. When I found out the truth it was too late.
I think we do not stop blaming ourselves for the past. This leads us often to kill ourselves, but this I don’t believe has been anyone’s fault.
Yours faithfully.
This seems to me to call for a brief comment. First, that I have reproduced this because it belongs with the rest. At the end of the book will be found his own comment. ‘I am the future.’
Second, I do not subscribe to the boastful xenophobia still so widespread, for which everything German is spoken of as ‘Teutonic’ or ‘Prussian’. That mentality is as damaging as it is deplorable.
My belief, shared by others, is that we should bring this book on to the market. The technical difficulties are not great; a few liberties will be taken with names and places, to protect identities of people still living.
London 1997
PART ONE
‘A Green Flash’
It was what the weather people called ‘a regular autumn anticyclone’. Regular, yes; rare for it to be this strong and this long. Day after day of this still and sunny blessing. And this all across Europe. Elsewhere in the world there are daily earthquakes; hurricanes; volcanoes. One begins to ask what can we possibly have done to merit this, saying each day that it won’t last, and it does. Good, it’s the equinox any moment now, and that will mean storms.
Mists, yes. Gossamer; spiders showing great activity, which he found an improvement on wasps, slugs, and stinging flies, all thriving under modern conditions, which is more than one can say of people. Plenty of mellow fruitfulness, with a slight but nasty taint of diesel exhausts. Throughout Europe they’ve been getting the harvest in; a large one and of good quality. Was a time, they’d have gone to church to give thanks, because a good harvest meant a secure winter and seed for the spring. Now you hear only the computer, counting cash.
He had come home too, with some harvest. Stock it in the barn, and then go out in the garden, to enjoy. Refresh the tired soul, what! With
‘The bucking beam-sea roll
Of a black Bilbao tramp’?
Very nice, Mr Kipling, but he preferred the garden. Graham had got it down to a small and rather nasty flat in Antibes. One hadn’t Graham’s tastes, nor for that matter his talents. One had acquired instead, many years ago, this smallish but pleasant country house, and from time to time one lived here. All alone.
Fairly delectable, though. There are in France two places officially called ‘Belle-Ile’; en-mer, the island off southern Brittany, and en-terre in northern Brittany where the land is good. But there are plenty of places called by the local people ‘Bella Isla’ jokingly, but the reason is the same. This was one; upland, and all around there are sheltering mountains. Eroded, and the good soil has collected here in the valley. Too high for vines really, but on the southfacing slope the locals all have a patch. Ordinary years it makes a goodish, distinctive, drinkable white wine which you drink, but you wouldn’t write home to Mother about it. In years like this one they hold the grapes on the vine till late, getting small and wrinkly but storing sugar. A ‘Spätlese’, a ‘vin sur paille’ which is outstanding: which is little known and there’s not much of it. In the right frame of mind, Mr Peartree will offer him a glass. Made by his father; oh yes it will keep.
Just the other day, relishing a cutting phrase, a journalist in Lausanne spoke of the ‘obsolete little kingdom’. He was talking about nuclear-power-France. Not about here. When the père-Poirier speaks of the house he says ‘the new house’. Which was built in 1827. His own house, known as ‘the little farm’ is fifteenth-century, has its original walnut panelling, and he keeps a sharp eye out for termites.
So here he was. Sprawled upon the terrace. In a long chair. Yes, Monseigneur. Why not? This much anyhow was his, safe, certain. He had made himself a cup of tea. Extraordinary; you’d think it still summer: bumble bees and butterflies. Pull the chair out and stare into a clear deep madonna-blue sky. Well, hasn’t one earned it? Moments of peace are the greatest possible rarity.
Stimulated he sat up because the tea was getting cold. There was a plant, a perfectly common-looking scrubby plant but foliage of pretty cut, nice white flowers, bee thinks so too. There was also a tree, one of the maples that he loves the best, a leaf of wonderful design and now one can see that it is October, for the nerves are still green while the palm has become bronze and the sharp-pointed tips are an orange flame. It will take a moment as always for the eye to overcome its laziness, flex its muscles; see. He sees a Cézanne, pure colour in subtle juxtapositions: mm, brushstrokes by God who is an even better painter. His eye travelled along the garden and up the long swelling slope to the woodland beyond. A view in itself nothing wonderful, but by him and-none-other Cézanned, artfully landscaped with twenty and more maple varieties, perspectived singly or in groups to make the most of the painterly recession. One good job, anyhow, over these last thirty years. He had planted them all, himself, young subjects bought from the specialist in Somerset, and now that he’s too old for any serious gardening one comes here specially for these October days. And in spring of course for the azaleas.
Something to be proud of? There was not much in his life he could feel proud of. Certainly he had never written a book to look at, later, with satisfaction.
Sibylle had never felt happy with his gardening mania—a very English passion. Had hated it, even.
“When you are standing there, it’s as though you shut me out. I feel your will there, daring me to come out and remind you of my existence.” Even now he has to make an effort, tighten his will into a deliberate refusal to see her there among the green massifs, a bit sweaty and hair untidy, flushed from bending, in one of her sudden furious attacks upon weeds. He picked up the tea things and walked resolutely into the house to wash them up and tidy them away.
When he came back the sun was setting; it was time for the green flash. There is a legend—some say it is true—that if one stands upon the cliffs at Etretat in Normandy while the sun is setting in the Channel, at the moment that the red disc sinks into the waves there will come a blink of green to fill the sky; the famous Rayon Vert. He does not know whether he believes in this or not: strangely enough, for he knows most of the corners of France, he has never been there. He supposes it might be so. The sky often is green after a sunset. The light on that coast is remarkable and has fascinated generations of painters. But a flash, a blink? One would have to question a meteorologist with local knowledge. It could hardly be aurora, could it? Said to be strongest in June.
Here, some hundreds of miles south, it is altogether different. An intense green that comes just before the twilight. And it isn’t a blink; it can last up to nigh a quarter of an hour, a great emerald glow. The azalea flowers, which have the same colouring as the maples in autumn, become magically unearthly. The green, a viridian Cézanne could not encompass since his palette was inevitably chemical, spreads right up to the state’s woodland crowning the brow of the hill, where it makes the recession into horizon-blue. And one will wait, suspended in magic, for the first cry of the owl. Still evening here has not a sober livery.
So that he had placed himself in the heart of the green, upon the fountain terrace. The water here pours over a large flat stone roughly the shape of an opened fan and drops in a thin pretty curtain to the pool below. But this—alas—is a mechanical device impelled by a hidden electric pump, and he switches it off at bedtime. One can’t have everything one wants.
Since, too, one is a permanently unsatisfied worrier, one was fussing about unwanted phenomena. The bracken was invading again. A nasty weed; one must tell le père Poirier to come with his syringe and inject some drops of poison into the roots (hideously tough and rebellious) of these offences. Ferns of several sorts thrive in the shady moisture here. It is murder, yes, but bracken cannot be tolerated.
He bent over worrying about this rose. A climbing rose; in fact two, cunningly intermingled: simple, pretty, old-fashioned things: indeed a classic marriage. ‘Nevada’ and ‘Marguerite Hilling’, both sadly given to black spot. Not in good shape. One must ask Father Peartree his opinion, diagnosis. Which will be the more solemn and sententious because really he knows nothing about roses. They do not do well here and one always wonders why.
As he straightened up there came a sort of whop. Would perhaps a thop describe it better?
There are night-flying things. Come out with the owls. Moths for instance. Moths are pretty silent. Do not, definitely, go thop. There are also larger, harder, carapaced sort of things. He is no entomologist, calls them Junebugs even in October. To the best of his belief they are harmless. They might blunder into one’s cheek, hard enough to make one rub it. They do not go thop; a short, dead, and yes, nasty sound.
Above all they do not, within one second, make a loud echoing and damnably sinister report. He didn’t stop to define this at all. Be it bang, crack, whack or whatever, instinct takes over from literature. Brief, crouching low, running-very-fast, he was across the terrace and down the five-six steps to the house level. You could say jack-robinson, whoever he was, once, twice, thrice, and he hadn’t turned on the terrace lights; of course not and just-as-bloody-well into the bargain. That thop and that bang—horribly magnified by these damned trees—that’s a rifle shot.
I write things down. Straight off, before they have time to cool. I write damn near anything down because the notebook is a writer’s raw material. One can never know what one might want, for a book. One doesn’t know when a book might suddenly start; taking one by surprise. Especially something like this, which is unusual: I hope it stays that way. I was interested in my own reactions. Dignified old gentleman running for a bus. London bus of course, leap on the platform and promptly drop dead. Or miss it and fall on the pavement; the Big Red One recedes mockingly. Noisy, pollutingly—one doesn’t care, dead there on the roadway. This is no moment to be funny; that was a bullet and it barely missed me. My heart is now banging loudly, making more noise than a bus. I had the impression that the collar of my shirt was ripped, and had to look, to be sure I’d imagined it. That close.
I slammed the terrace door. I don’t close the shutters as a rule before true nightfall, and then I often forget. This is a friendly house, and nothing in it worth stealing. We’ve never gone in for bars, bolts, and insurance companies.
Mr Charles is shaken, as well as greatly surprised at his mighty swiftness. Are there going to be more shots? Will one be frightened to put one’s head out?
