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Lucas Standish sat in the familiar chair in his study, gazing through the French doors into the garden. The late roses were losing petals, but still rich and sweet-smelling in the motionless air. The low sun made bright patterns on the carpet, showing where it was worn from years of pacing back and forth, thinking, waiting. The walls were lined with bookshelves and, of course, family photographs, so many of people who were gone now.
Toby, Lucas’s golden retriever, sat on his master’s feet, leaning hard against him. It was what Josephine called his “heavy disobedience.” Lucas put his hand on Toby’s head. “You’re too early,” he said. Toby thumped his tail on the floor and leaned even harder.
“Are you arguing with me?” Lucas asked.
Toby thumped again, then stood up and lifted one foot, preparing to climb onto Lucas’s lap.
“No!” Lucas said firmly.
Toby subsided, ears down, eyes reproachful.
Lucas rose to his feet. “Oh, come on, then. Doesn’t matter if we’re early. You can go and look for rabbits.”
Toby started to jump and dance around. He knew a lot of words, and “rabbits” was definitely one of them.
“Down,” Lucas said firmly. “Come on.”
Toby followed him into the kitchen to fetch his lead, turning round and round like a dancer pirouetting.
Josephine was standing by the sink, fitting flowers one by one into a vase of water, mostly early bronze chrysanthemums but also a couple of yellow roses. She looked up at Lucas and smiled. She was not a big woman, of average height and still slender. Her hair was now completely silver, but she had kept it long, as it had been when she was a girl, and she knotted it at the back of her head. It looked totally casual, but Lucas knew it was not. He still enjoyed pulling the pins out and watching it uncoil and slip loose.
“Just going for a walk,” he told her casually. “Toby’s keen…”
“Of course he is,” she agreed with a smile. “You’ve been watching the clock and fidgeting for the last hour. He can read you like a book, my dear.”
“He’s a clever dog, but he doesn’t read books.”
“Yo
u do, and no doubt you will tell him all he needs to know,” she replied, unperturbed. She found one red rose and put it into the left side of the vase and stood back to regard it. “Right, Toby?”
He barked sharply.
Lucas held him still for a moment and fastened his lead. “Come on, you’re getting too excited.” He touched Josephine lightly on the shoulder, then went back into the hall and out the front door to the car, where it stood beside the curb. He opened the door to the backseat and Toby sprang in and sat down immediately, shivering with anticipation. He had heard the magic word: “rabbits.” Anywhere was good.
Lucas got in behind the wheel and pulled the car out onto the road. He was going to meet Peter Howard, at Peter’s request. They met every so often at their favorite places in the woods at any time of the year, but especially when the bluebells were flowering; across the fields when the hawthorn was as thick as snow in the hedges or in the harvest fields when, as now, they were shaven gold, edges grazed with scarlet poppies, the stocks standing in barbaric splendor. No one needed an excuse to be walking, most of all a man with a dog.
Lucas was not as talkative as usual. He was happy with silence, apart from the rustle of the wind or the cry of birds. But he knew Toby liked to be spoken to, so every now and again he made a remark. He remembered when Elena was little. She, more than her sister, Margot, was always asking questions. What is that? What is it doing? Well, why? He smiled as he remembered her, aged about three, asking Josephine very seriously, “Well, if God made the world, what was he standing on when he did it?” It had taken Josephine a couple of moments of sober silence to come up with an answer. “God doesn’t need to stand on anything. He can fly in the air.” Elena had thought about this for a moment or two. “Oh…by himself?” When Josephine said, “Yes,” Elena had said soberly, “I wouldn’t like that.” Josephine had agreed, “Of course not, you would have to have somebody to talk to.” Elena knew that was funny, because Josephine had laughed, but she didn’t know why.
Elena had demanded Lucas’s love in a way that no one else had, and her constant interest in everything he said or did, her implicit trust that he loved her, had won his attention and kept it. She had listened solemn eyed to his explanations of war and peace, the nature of the stars, the logical perfection of mathematics, as if she understood all of it. That was when she was four. At twenty-eight, she probably didn’t remember any of this, but he was certain she still knew unmistakably that he loved her. And not just as his grandchild, but as a person.
Toby began to fidget and whine. They were nearly there. Lucas pulled the car onto the gravel patch under the trees and climbed out. He let Toby out of the back and put his lead on again.
“Just till we’re off the roadway,” he explained, as if Toby did not know. Together they walked along the path to the edge of the trees, through the gate and into the sun again, and across the broad sweep of the field. There were cumulus clouds towering up into the air, like mountains of light too dazzling to look at, casting occasional shadows on the land. The land was dull gold, with occasional dark, plowed fields here and there. All the flowers were gone from the hedges, but their places were taken by berries. He could not see them, but little flurries of birds told him where they were.
He removed Toby’s lead and the dog began following his nose around in circles. When he looked up and saw the figure of a man far away, on the opposite corner of the field, he stood rigid, then suddenly leaned forward and started to run as fast as his legs could carry him, leaping a few stalks of corn still standing, like a surfer riding the waves.
“Toby, you don’t even know it’s him!” Lucas called out, but Toby took not the slightest notice. Lucas shook his head, smiling, then walked round the edge of the field toward the corner, where they would meet. He had gone at least another hundred yards before he could clearly recognize Peter Howard’s figure, kneeling on the ground, arms around Toby, who was wriggling and jumping.
Then Toby saw Lucas again and turned and came careering back, Peter following after him. Peter was within a few yards of Lucas before Lucas noticed the pallor of his face and the lack of spring in his step. He did not immediately ask what had happened; Peter would tell him soon enough.
They started to walk gently up the slight slope of the ground. The wind carried the bleating of sheep from the distance. Other than that, there was silence. The skylarks belonged to the spring; this was autumn, the fulfilling of the year. Another month and the trees would begin to turn color, then one by one shed their leaves to stand with limbs naked against the sky. In some ways, Lucas found that the most beautiful time of all, the ever-enduring strength without the garment of leaves.
“The situation in Austria is getting worse,” Peter remarked. His voice was casual enough. The men could have been mere acquaintances at a cocktail party.
“Dollfuss?” Lucas questioned.
“He’s not up for this much pressure,” Peter replied. “He’s too new at the job, and he has no real grip on it. He’s there rather more by chance than design. He’s a very young man, and no one takes him seriously. It doesn’t help that he’s already beginning to be very ambitious with his authority. It’s a sign of weakness, and his enemies know that. They smell fear, as a dog does.”
