by Charles Wilkinson

“Alas, my membrum virile is no longer in active service.”

Silence. Not even the clink of a spoon on a coffee cup or the waitress washing up and coughing in the kitchen. Diffuse sunlight, with its entire color leached, is falling from a sky that is such a pale blue it could almost be part of an ice cap. At least it has stopped raining for the first time in five days. As is so often the case on Friday mornings, the friends, if that is what they are, are seated at the large round wooden table by the café window. Haverford is disappointed that his revelation has evoked no response from his companions. There was a time when he used to make everyone laugh. Are they perhaps unfamiliar with the Latin phrase? Some sort of reaction, even disgust, or derision at his parading of a classical education, would have been preferable to this stolid indifference: all expressions erased and not one face turned toward him. After a minute, their discussion on pills, and their side effects, is picked up at the point just before Haverford’s interruption.

“They’ve put me on two of the yellow ones and one of the green. It doesn’t seem to be making the slightest difference, and I’ve told them so,” says Harris.

“I’ve been on the red ones for over a month now,” Hamilton adds, staring at the sodden teabag slumped in his saucer. “I can’t remember what they’re called.”

The desultory conversation has been dragging on for half an hour, never moving far from the assorted maladies and medical grievances that too frequently form the backbone of their conversations. Haverford thinks that he, too, has taken the red ones in his time. Perhaps he should tell Hamilton this. Just as he’s about to speak, it occurs to him that the man he’s been thinking of as Hamilton as in fact Hendry. He glances from one to another. Very alike, and both in their seventies with gray hair, both with a widow’s peak, they are wearing shapeless, popcorn-colored jackets. Is Hamilton the one in the mauve shirt – or is that Hendry? It’s a little worrying. He’s known them since he retired to the small town in the Midlands, which must be over five years ago. He studies them more carefully, but there is something about the texture of the light that is smoothing out the lines on their skin, as if their features are stones that have spent hundreds of years at the bottom of a fast-flowing stream. At least he is sure that Harris is indubitably Harris. He is still wearing a tie in hideous purple and sickly green stripes that is an indication of membership of the local golf club. Haverford glances around the café, which is empty apart from an ill-looking man with soft, worn features the shade of pumice. Everything about them appears to be eroding, slowly being worn away by the invisible waves immanent in the light. This seems to be a place where even the air is attritional. He stands up.

“What – are you off already, Haverford?”

Somewhere far above a cloud shifts, finessing the fall of sunshine, smudging the man’s face, converting his crown of white-gray hair to a silver aureole. Hendry or Hamilton?

“Yes, I’m expecting a phone call. I’ll see you next Friday, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Hendry.”

“Yes, of course … Hendry. That’s what I meant.”

Outside, the street is oddly quiet for a Friday morning. There are only a few cars by the curb, many of them parked at strange angles, as though they have been abandoned in a hurry. Someone is standing frozen still in the window of the clothes shop. As Haverford draws level with the frontage, he turns to see the man staring at him, unblinking, mannequin-eyed. The figure moves, as if it has just thawed out: the assistant who served him last month when he bought a new suit. The moment he reaches the crossroads, a man wearing a yellow carnation in his lapel passes him.

Haverford lives in a small, nineteenth-century house with one mullioned window; it looks as if it were once the lodge to a Victorian manor house before being taken down brick by brick and rebuilt among the semi-detached villas in an unremarkable street. As soon as he opens the front door, the telephone rings, transforming the lie he’s told Hendry to truth.

“Yes.”

He never gives his name first now. Increasingly, landlines exist to facilitate the tricks of fraudsters.

“It’s me … I’m fine, but …”

The dry, rasping voice of someone who has still not shaken off his hangover. His son. And he will not be “fine.” He never is.

“What is it this time?”

“I was thinking of coming up to stay with you … for a few days. If that’s all right.”

“Why an earth should you want to do that? Have you been thrown out of your flat again?”

Black silence. Haverford wonders whether the call has been dropped, although he’s heard no click of the phone returning to its cradle.

And then: “I am your son. Your son, Dougal. That a son should wish to visit his father … that’s hardly abnormal, is it?”

“As a general proposition, that’s a truth I can accept, but in your case, we know that any visit from you will have its consequences, not of all which will be normal.”

This time the phone is put down, slammed back into the receiver.

Haverford can’t help being pleased with himself. The last spark of paternal affection died long ago, and he really doesn’t see why he should permit this man to presume on a biological connection any longer. He’s also taking some pride that, given his mental confusion during the morning, he’s managed to address Dougal with a fluent authority that has sometimes eluded him. The drawers in the living room are filled with photographs of Dougal: as a baby, an infant at primary school, at his boarding school, at his comprehensive, on holiday and during his first and only year at university. Until his wife’s death two years after Haverford’s retirement, they’d been on every windowsill and mantelpiece in the house. It had been a relief to take them down. Now he simply must get round to disposing of them altogether.

• • •

The public library’s few remaining books have been corralled at the back of the room, well away from the rows of computer consoles and the children’s play area. In order to reach the issue desk, Haverford has had to weave his way through brightly colored building blocks, artfully positioned beanie bags, wooden toys created by the local craftswomen’s collective and a terror of soft velvet tyrannosaurs. There’s one man ahead of him in the queue.

“Gumilev, you say you don’t have anything at all by him on your shelves, let alone the work I’m looking for?”

The assistant, a middle-aged woman in a loose cardigan and spectacles with bone-colored frames that have an oddly permanent appearance, as though they have been fixed onto her face at birth, is staring at a computer screen and shaking her head slowly from side to side. “No, nothing as far as I can see. What did you say his first name was?”

“Lev. He’s a highly significant thinker. A university in Kazakhstan is named after him.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Whiteacre. I can try the other branches if you wish.”

“Yes, please do. It would be scandalous if there is nothing by Gumilev available anywhere in the county library system.”

The assistant’s fingers move deftly across the keyboard. Haverford shifts uneasily from foot to foot; he has reached the stage in life where standing still for too long is painful. He would like to sit down, but he cannot risk losing his place in the queue. It’s a while before the assistant exhausts all the available avenues. “No, there’s nothing here by Lev Grimilev …”

“Gumilev! The name is Gumilev.”

There’s another pause, but shorter this time. “No, sorry there’s nothing by him either. I can order a copy if you like. But you’ll have to fill in this form.”

“Thank you,” says Whiteacre, whipping a gold pen out of his jacket pocket.

Haverford does not mean to sigh but he does: a sound made by a kettle after it has come off the boil. In front of him, the man’s shoulder shifts as if he’s about to swing round, but he continues writing. As pain flashes through his right knee, Haverford stumbles round the side of the man and places a hand on the issue desk for support. Whiteacre puts his pen away and turns toward Haverford, who for a moment thinks that he will apologize for having kept him waiting, but instead he stares at him with an expression of pronounced antipathy. He’s a tall man, in late middle-age with iron-gray hair brushed back from a high forehead. His goatee beard is neatly trimmed; a yellow carnation burns with a heliacal blaze on the lapel of his black suit. By the time Haverford has collected his book, the man has left the building.

It’s several days before he next comes across Whiteacre. As he’s on his way to his Friday meeting, he spots a man in a black suit crossing the road, his long stride loping yet at the same time relaxed, a silver wolf moving effortlessly after its prey. He flaunts the same cut flower in his buttonhole. Haverford follows him into the café. For a moment, he pauses, nonplussed. The table by the window is not occupied by his friends, if that is what they are, as it has been at this hour for several years. Instead, there is another group of men, all dressed in dark suits and blazers, every one of them sporting a yellow carnation.

It’s a moment before he spots Harris, Hamilton and Hendry, relegated to two tiny tables pushed together at the rear of the room. Hamilton, or is it Hendry, is waving to him. He threads his way forward, almost bumping into a waitress carrying a heavily laden tray.

“This is unprecedented,” says Hamilton. “I’ll have to reserve our table for next week.”

“I don’t think the management will oblige us, Mr. Hamilton,” Haverford replies, edging into a seat with little space between the table and the wall.

“My name’s not Hamilton,” replies the man.

Haverford peers at him. “Oh, yes … I’m sorry, Harris. The trouble is you’re not wearing your usual tie today.”

“Thank you, Haverford. It’s comforting to know that someone with whom I’ve been on easy terms for all of five years can only recognize me by my tie. I must apologize for having what must be, in your book at any rate, remarkably undistinguished features.”

An awkward silence. Harris has always been forthright, but has not previously been given to such bitter asperities, such aching irony. Once the conversation resumes, Haverford is content to contribute nothing and listen with only half an ear to an account of the conflicting opinions on the golf club’s committee. From time to time, he peers over Hendry’s shoulder, anxious to see if there are any signs that the window table will be vacated. Whiteacre is leaning forward slightly, addressing his companions with what appears to be controlled passion. Although his words are inaudible, his emphatic hand gestures would not be out of place in a public meeting.

“Boring you, are we?” says Hendry.

“No, not at all. I was merely hoping we could move back to our old table. It’s nothing like as comfortable here. And by the way, who are all those people with the yellow carnations. I saw one of them in the Library. His name’s Whiteacre, but that’s all I know about him.”

“His name is William Whiteacre. A world-class troublemaker, as far as I’m concerned,” Harris says. “I only came across him because he was lobbying the golf club not to take on any new members before all those who have family connections with the town, stretching back at least two hundred years, and wish to join, have been admitted.”

“He’d like to close us down altogether,” Hamilton adds. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard. Apparently, he regards golf as an activity that is alien to this town.”

Harris flushes, drums his fingers on the table with exasperation. “Ludicrous. I suppose we’ll have to prove that King Offa played golf … if we want to stay in business.”

Haverford glances once more at the window table. The men are drenched in morning light, every detail of their dress and lineaments lucid, as if etched. Even at a distance he can see them clearly, as if he is seated among them, instead of with his friends, if that is what they are, whose features are darkened by the umbrageous gloom at the back of the café.

“And why the carnations?”

“Don’t even ask!” Hendry snorts. “I had the misfortune to hear a lecture at The History Society given by Whiteacre. He’s got some extraordinary theory, which he’s cooked up from reading various obscure Russian academics, that people are entirely shaped by geographical location, which becomes encoded in them, so they become biologically similar and form what he calls an ethnos, and in some cases, a super-ethnos, a community that develops special powers – and here’s where it goes seriously bonkers – by absorbing energy from the sun, the earth’s magnetic core and from outer space.”

“Is this to do with Gumilev?” says Haverford.

“Yes, Gumilev. Whiteacre claims that’s he’s building on the research of this Gumilev. It all sounded beyond satire to me. I’m surprised it wasn’t laughed out of court, but the locals just sat there politely. Soaking it all up. How do you know about Gumilev?”

“I don’t. Whiteacre was ordering a book by him.”

“Whiteacre is a man of some standing in the town. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him, Haverford,” Harris says, fingering his shirt collar where the knot of his tie should have been. “He owns a big house on the edge of the town and a lot of land. Word has it that he’s doing a great deal of work there. Drilling for oil, a fellow in the club claimed. But I don’t think that can be right.”

When Haverford leaves the café, Whiteacre and his acolytes are still seated at the window table. He slows down sufficiently to catch their conversation.

“It’s to do with quants.” Whiteacre’s voice. “Small packets of energy from outer space.”

“Yes, I understood that. But waterways. You’re saying they can make excellent conduits for energy flows.”

“Yes, it’s moving beyond anything Gumilev says, but I think …”

Outside, the day begins to brighten, bringing out hints of orange in the old redbrick of the Georgian frontages, warming the gray stone bank, drying the remnants of dark rain-gloss on the pavements. Haverford’s mood lifts momentarily, but he’s uneasy, nevertheless. He’s almost reached the turning that will take him home when he hears footsteps approaching from behind; a man barges angrily past him, not with sufficient force to make him fall, although it’s enough for him to jar his ankle and almost lose his balance. He catches a glimpse of a man’s profile, and a yellow carnation on a black lapel; then Whiteacre moves away, his long stride assured and magisterial, that of a commander en route to take control at the front. Haverford almost calls out to him: the pavement is not narrow, no one else is about – there’s nothing to excuse such behaviour. But in the end he remains where he is until he’s recovered sufficiently to hobble his way home.

• • •

A week later Haverford returns from shopping to find three letters on the mat in the hallway. He stoops down and sweeps them up. The hand is identical on all of them; his son’s writing, beyond a doubt, wilder than before, a desperate scrawl. He takes them into the kitchen with the intention of consigning them unopened to the bin, but then decides that it is just as well to know their contents. The excrescence could be planning a visit, in spite of the absence of an invitation. He examines the postmarks. Why send three letters simultaneously? For a moment he’s weighed down with weariness. For some time now, he’s found himself enervated; everyday tasks require more effort. Even washing the plates after breakfast seems to sap his will. He sinks down on the chair next to the kitchen table. When did this lack of vitality start? With the death of his wife? No, it was present since his earliest days in the town. He’d never had the energy to join anything apart from the local library. The only people he knows are his Friday friends, if that is what they are, with whom he isn’t even on first name terms and only meets in the café.

He squeezes each envelope in turn before slitting open the fattest one with a steak knife. It is as he expected: every grudge, grouse, grievance, grumble and gripe marinated in bad grammar, tasting of tautology and seasoned with spite after being baked in an oven of malice; a one-man choral society of complaints, the delivery atonal, repetitive, grating to the ear. Every paternal failing itemized: how the carrion crow landed on his pram and cawed in his baby face, and no one was there to clap their hands and scare it away; eviction to the ice-cold boarding school, where the bedside mug of water would be frozen by dawn, and not once did his father visit him, not a school match, play or Carol Service attended; his upbringing in the holidays delegated to a succession of au pairs, each one more ignorant of English than the last; the skiing trip over Christmas from which he was excluded and then not even sent to relatives but left behind with a nonagenarian nanny and an alcoholic Albanian cook; the most violent state school in London, where he was sent after his expulsion from boarding school; the failure to pay for a therapist who might have helped him to overcome the manifold addictions that ended his career at university; the refusal to help fund the start-up that should have resulted in a high-flying business career along with the idyll of luxury that he’d been robbed of in consequence; the dereliction of duty that was evident in a failure to attend the court case at which his only son had been convicted of fraud, a fate that might have been avoided if a brace of brilliant barristers had been hired. And on and on, right up to the present and the final indignity of being forbidden to visit Haverford in his new home, the cold heart and aversion to hospitality that this showed. Not one hug had he received from him; he’d tried his best to separate him from his mother, who was the only person who’d ever loved him; every present he’d ever been given was a piece of trash, a travesty of the term ‘gift.’

Haverford finds himself mentally composing a rebuttal to this monstrous jeremiad, his every sentence jostling with justification. Instead, he tears the letter into tiny pieces and puts it in the bin. The second letter is typed, complete with faulty punctuation and an idiosyncratic use of capital letters: Whether you Like it or not I will be visiting you, Father; Prepare Yourself, It is only Fair to Warn you that I am No Longer Completely myself. Yrs, without Love, yr Despised and Neglected Son. The final envelope contains nothing more than a photocopy of an engraving of a guillotine, quite a good one, especially in the way that, in spite of being in black and white, the glint of light on the blade is artfully suggested.

He no longer wants breakfast. How can he possibly eat after being subjected to such bile? A cascade of calumnies and half-truths. No, he had not visited his son at school, but that was because he’d been sweating in foreign countries, earning the money that was supposed to give the ingrate a better chance in life. He glances at his watch. A cup of coffee will suffice. No milk in the fridge.

After the cool of his house, it feels warm outside, unseasonably hot even. A dramatic change in the weather. Though it is not yet ten o’clock, there is a heat haze; the pedestrians appear blurred, the edges of their bodies almost undefined, as though at any moment they will merge with the strange sunlight and watch, for the last time, their shadows evaporating on the pavement. There is a queue in the convenience store. Voices … but he can’t see who is speaking.

“He’s going down even deeper, they say. I call that dangerous.”

“Will any of us see the benefit from it? That’s what I’d like to know. I gave a lot, I did.”

“So did I. I couldn’t really afford it. But I’ll tell you one thing. He’s strong for the local people, he is, always has been. Those who have the courage to go down will come up as new men. That’s what he says, and I believe him.”

“Especially if they do the climb as well.”

“Yes, that too. It is warming up nicely, so that should go well.”

Once Haverford has bought his milk, he steps back onto the street. It’s hard to guess what the people in the store were discussing. Was it connected to Whiteacre’s work on his land? Perhaps. But they are not wrong about the weather. A couple in shorts and yellow T shirts walk past him; the man, who has a goatee beard, meets his eye, his expression scornful.

Haverford rounds the corner only to be confronted by a procession coming in his direction. There are men, women, and children, all wearing yellow carnations, a few waving yellow flags. In the middle of the march, two men are holding a banner on which there is no writing, only the emblem of the carnation, flame-yellow on a blue background, the petals brightening, as if they might at any moment flash out with the force of solar flares. Haverford senses that the marchers will not move a millimeter to one side to let him through. It would be best to cross the road, but the traffic is quickening; at his age, it would be foolhardy to try to slink through the gaps. Apart from the thrum of their footsteps on the pavement, they are silent and stare straight ahead. The two men at the front are broad-shouldered and abreast, with cropped, bristling hair, canary-yellow suits and matching armbands. He glances once more at the road on his right: a lumbering lorry followed by a double-decker bus. Then the marchers are almost upon him. He pushes his left shoulder hard into a hedge, but he’s not in time to prevent someone from stamping on his right foot. Somehow, he manages to insinuate himself into the leaves and twigs. Something grazes his hand; warm blood trickles from his lower lip. With one eye, he watches them, hears their boots, now ringing in unison, on the pavement. Not one person turns in his direction.

• • •

The following Friday morning, Haverford has almost reached the café when he halts in the middle of the pavement, allowing the pedestrians to flow past him on either side. Does he want to socialize with his friends, if that is what they are? And if he does, will he be able to tell Hendry from Harris and Hamilton from Hendry? He tries to visualize them one by one, but can come up with nothing more than a memory of milk-white linen jackets, tweed in winter, the hideous stripes of Harris’s tie, gray, interchangeable hair. Did one of them wear glasses? No, they all did. Wouldn’t it be preferable to find somewhere else, a quiet, wood-paneled tearoom in one of the alleys not far from the church; a place where he could read a newspaper in peace, and without fearing another farcical faux-pas of mistaken identity. Then there is the risk of running into Whiteacre and his worshippers. Why taste sour resentment on his tongue if they are once again seated at the window table? He turns back, retracing his steps into the town center. It’s sultry. Far above, enormous weather systems are meeting: latent electricity, imminent friction in an unsettled atmosphere. From somewhere over the horizon, there’s a faint grating, a possible precursor of thunder.

The tearoom is busy and the only space available is on the large communal table, where three nondescript men are seated. Haverford asks if he can join them; one of them nods without looking his direction. He takes the most recent letter from Dougal out of his inside jacket pocket and opens it. There’s no salutation and no signature at the bottom, just a few lines written in black biro and bold capital letters: I AM NOT PROUD, I LOST FACE IN YOUR EYES YEARS AGO, TO GO ON IN MY PRESENT CONDITION WITHOUT YOUR HELP IS IMPOSSIBLE, I WILL BE WITH YOU WITHIN THE WEEK, PERHAPS SOONER.

He’s been only subliminally aware of the conversation at the other end of the table: something to do with golf, a topic that he has always found tedious, but then he hears the name Whiteacre.

“… the only surprising thing is that so many people not only believed in him, but paid good money to be part of his preposterous Festival of Passionarity.”

“I’ve never been clear what he meant by that.”

“It’s complicated, but it seems to be the notion that some people are capable of gaining an excess of vitality through interacting with the environment.”

“So their sun worshipping was …”

“Yes, it was all connected. Whiteacre’s shaft was meant to take people closer to a source of chthonic energy. It was nothing to do with drilling for oil. Of course, he was quite mad.”

Why are they talking about Whiteacre in the past tense? Haverford shifts his chair closer and cranes forward. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help but hear you mention Whiteacre. I came across him on a couple of occasions. Has something happened to him?”

“You could say that. He’s dead.”

“What happened?”

“You tell him, Harris.”

“I’m not Harris; I’m Hamilton.”

“I’m Harris. I’d better explain. The shaft Whiteacre constructed collapsed. He died … and a fair few of his followers with him.”

“How many?”

“I’m not sure. They’re still bringing up the bodies … you know,” he continues, turning back to his companions. “I think that Haverford might have been onto something when he recommended I should always wear a tie. Perhaps we should all do that. There’s seems to be an epidemic of face blindness at the moment. I can’t imagine what could be causing it. A virus?”

“Our lack of passionarity?”

“Don’t say that, Hendry… not even in jest.”

Haverford’s on the verge of announcing himself, even essaying a joke, a way of reviving a lost cordiality. But there is no point. They clearly haven’t recognised him, not even his voice. He stares down at the envelope: his son’s writing, without a doubt, but the postmark proves it was sent six days ago. What had it said in the note: ‘I will be with you within a week …’

In his hurry to get back to his house, Haverford almost forgets to settle the bill. His son could arrive at any moment. It’s important to head him off. He has a momentary vision of the man having somehow gained entrance to the house. He might arrive to find him gurning, his tongue lolling as he stares madly from the mullioned window.

When he arrives, breathless and sweating, there is no sign of any immediate problem. He goes inside, bolts the door, draws the chain across and retreats to the kitchen. The house is quiet; no sound except for a car being driven slowly along the lane beyond the wall at the back of the garden. He switches the radio on and takes the tea caddy down from the shelf. The kettle has just come to the boil when the hammering at the back door starts. The garden gate must have been left unlocked. He opens the drawer, rattles the cutlery around in search of a kitchen knife. The banging ceases. But now there are footsteps in the corridor. The back door could not have been shut either.

Then there it is: standing in the kitchen, it is dressed in normal clothes: gray blue jeans, a white shirt and trainers. It is the head that is the problem. It’s black, metallic, shiny and featureless; it’s as if an ebony light bulb has been plugged into the neck, something, which if switched on, might emit a dark radiance. As it raises its hands to whatever is doing duty for its head, Haverford wonders if the intruder is wearing a strangely shaped motorcycle helmet. His son’s signet ring glints on the creature’s left hand. It lifts the covering off – nothing, except a tangle of wires and the severed stump of the neck, the top of the spine, where the nape would have been, curiously clean, though the sticky dark blood around it is still drying. A mechanical voice speaks from somewhere: the mouthless helmet, or some hidden cavity in the body? “Father, I’m home!” Now steam rises from the severed arteries, collecting in what becomes a faint white cloud, which starts to turn to foam, and then slowly solidifies. A face is being formed, but not one that could ever be recognized.