A Future Arrived by Phillip Rock Read Free Book Online Page B

book on your English civil war?”
    Charles held his glass to the light and squinted at the stream of rising bubbles. “The two-volume history? Actually, no. Although I did write an article which was published in the Guildford Gazette . Some ass felt there should be a monument raised to commemorate the Battle of Abingdon. I pointed out that there had been merely a skirmish here, in what is now our orchard, between a Roundhead patrol and a troop of Prince Rupert’s horse. July, sixteen forty-two. A brave encounter but hardly worthy of a sixty-loot granite column supporting a bronze Cavalier. I squelched that ludicrous plan quickly enough, so my writing is not without worth.”
    â€œEverything you do has worth. They’ve even heard of Burgate House back in the States. A sterling example of the progressive-school movement, the New York Sun called it.”
    â€œDid they? Nothing quite so grand here, let me tell you. Radical and Bolshevik are the terms most used to describe us. A nest of little wild-eyed anarchists festering amid the Surrey hills!” He popped the cork of the second bottle. “Not that I pay much attention to critics. It’s results that count. Our bunch may not conform to the public-school mold, no ‘old boys’ or school ties, but we do turn out children who can think for themselves, are self-reliant and emotionally solid.”
    He drained his glass. “You should see the state of some of those kids when we first get them. Out-of-control little savages … or beaten down into a stupor. Just flailing about, trying to make some sense out of their lives. Not unlike myself when the Mastwicks took me on as a teacher. Groping for something solid to cling to.” He refilled Martin’s glass and his own. “I have been very … content there, Martin. I know Father would have preferred I … well, why go into that? Not important, is it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œA good life, really. Productive and challenging. I’ve been … happy. All things … considered.”
    It was the second bottle of champagne that finished Charles. He struggled to stay awake and required Martin’s help to get up the stairs to his room. His room, kept intact by Hanna for the rare times that he slept in it. The walls were lined with bookcases—books of his childhood, books from Eton and Cambridge. A tennis racket on the wall. A cricket bat. Amber-tinted photographs of boys in straw skimmers with a background of willows and the river at Windsor. An Edwardian room preserved. Martin made sure that Charles got into the bed and not under it and then turned out the light.
    Hanna maintained special rooms for special people in the forty-bedroom house. There were rooms for her children. Charles’s room, William’s and Alexandra’s. William lived on his horse farm in Derbyshire when he wasn’t on the racing circuit. Alexandra lived in La Jolla, California. The rooms stood waiting, dusted and polished. There was a room for Martin, although he might not use it from one year to the next. Hanna’s idea of sentimentality in giving it to him. The room he had stayed in when first coming to England in June 1914. And Ivy Thaxton had brought a vase of flowers and set it on a table. Slender and dark haired. Uptilted nose and violet eyes. Her maid’s uniform so heavily starched she rustled when she walked. Seventeen years old and as lovely as summer twilight.
    Christ!
    He wasn’t a champagne drinker, and God knows he wasn’t a cognac- and -champagne drinker, and he was feeling the effects of the mixture. He removed his shoes, curled up on the bed, and drew the eiderdown comforter around him. The lamp still burned but he lacked the energy to get up and turn it off. The wind was dying and the rain had stopped. Water dripped from the trees outside the window, plip-plopping to the ground as melancholy as tears.
    B RIGADIER F ENTON W OOD -L ACY had bitter