‘Music is all well and good in its place,’ says Hariprasad, ‘but the main action here is Zen poker. You should come back some time and give it a try.’
‘Maybe when Noah’s a little older,’ says Lola. ‘Until then, wherever I go, you’ll be with me.’
‘And you’ll be with us,’ says Indira. Hariprasad gives Noah a wooden flute and she gives Lola a copy of Buddhist Wisdom Books.
‘I’m embarrassed,’ says Lola. ‘I’ve had a borrowed copy all these years and I’ve never read it.’
‘No matter,’ says Hariprasad. ‘Just hold it in your hands from time to time. Maybe not reading it is the same as reading it.’
‘My present for you isn’t much,’ says Lola. ‘It’s only my notation for the raga I’ve just played. Maybe it will remind you of our time together.’
‘This time with you was itself a gift,’ says Indira. ‘We thank you.’
Hariprasad gives Lola the CD, good-luck wishes are exchanged, and the years at Diamond Heart are almost at an end.
70 What Searching Eyes
November 2001. Lola and Noah take a last walk on Kirsty’s Knowe and smell the moonlit sea. Lola’s thinking about what she always thinks about when she notices someone else looking down at the sea. A woman, no one she recognises from the back. Dark shawl, long skirt. ‘Hi,’ says Lola. The woman turns. Only a girl, really, glimmering in the moonlight, almost not there. What a sad face. What searching eyes. Lola says, ‘Are you …?’
The other nods or perhaps not.
‘Am I going to drown?’ says Lola.
Did the other shake her head?
‘What are you trying to tell me?’ says Lola.
Was that a cloud passing over the moon? Lola imitates what she seems to be seeing and finds herself standing with both hands over her heart. ‘Your heart was broken,’ she says. ‘My heart was broken too. I took up the sarod.’
No answer. Nobody there. Lola standing with both hands over her heart.
‘What was that?’ says Noah.
‘What was what?’ says Lola.
‘Were you talking to somebody?’ says Noah.
‘Did you see anybody?’ says Lola.
‘No,’ says Noah.
‘Just talking to myself,’ says Lola. The E-type is packed. She’s given away whatever wouldn’t fit in the boot. Polaris in its case is tucked in snugly behind the seats and the Jaguar takes the road for the night journey to London.
71 Destiny’s Dentist
November 2001. Lola likes driving at night. She’s comfortable with the homeward road coming towards her under the headlights and vanishing beneath her wheels. It’s a Monday night, and at 11:40 there’s not much traffic into London. After a while she notices headlights in her rearview mirror that keep their distance and never try to pass. ‘I know who that is,’ she says. The presence of those lights is tiring, and at Heston Services she pulls in for a coffee. The other headlights pull in behind her.
Lola carries the sleeping Noah into the cafeteria with her and gets her coffee. When she sits down at a table she sees Geoffrey, the retro man, waiting for her. ‘Don’t say anything,’ he says. ‘I know that you’re a deeply troubled person and I know that I’ve been sent to watch over you. I’ll follow you into London just to see you safely home and I’ll always be around if you need me. I think I know what Lola wants, and whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.’
Lola shakes her head, says nothing. She drinks her coffee and goes back to the E-type.
72 Philip Nolan Lesser
November 2001. The years since Lola left have been like no other time in Max’s life. He keeps trying to understand what’s happened, trying to get his head around his life. On the walls of his workroom are pinned up photographs of Lola in London and on Mai Dun, words of hers that he’s written down, maps of London and Dorset, thoughts about her that he’s scribbled on bits of paper. It’s like what detectives do in the movies when they’re trying to get a fix on a murderer. After a time Max thinks no, that isn’t it. It’s what Philip Nolan did in The Man without a Country, by Edward Everett Hale. This story was written in 1863 to inspire patriotism in the Union during the Civil War. It was fiction, but so credible that many readers thought it to be fact.
Philip Nolan, a lieutenant in the western division of the army, was a disciple of Aaron Burr, and as such he was court-martialled in 1807 for his adherence to the man who was plotting to overthrow the government. ‘When the president of the court asked him at the close, whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy. “D — n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”’ The government took him at his word. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life on ships of the Navy where he would never set foot on the country he had disowned and never hear it mentioned. Transferred from one ship to another, he grew old in his exile. In his one chance at restoring his lost honour he took over the captaincy of a gun crew in a frigate battle with the English and so distinguished himself that the Commodore thanked him and gave him his own sword of ceremony to put on.
But the sentence was never rescinded, and Nolan died at sea on board the US Corvelette Levant. In his cabin were seen his pitiful efforts to reclaim what he had lost. There was a map he had drawn from memory of the United States as he knew it in 1807. There was a hand-drawn portrait of Washington draped with the stars and stripes. There was an eagle with lightning blazing from his beak and his foot clasping the globe. Nolan left a note that said:
Bury me in the sea, it has been my home and I love it.
But will not someone set up a stone for my memory at
Fort Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be
more than I ought to bear? Say on it:
‘In memory of
PHILIP NOLAN,
Lieutenant in the Army of the United States
HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY AS NO OTHER
MAN HAS LOVED HER; BUT NO MAN
DESERVED LESS AT HER HANDS.’
Max searches for and finds the story on the Internet and prints it out. He reads it with tears running down his face. ‘That’s how it is with me,’ he says. ‘Lola was my country and I am a man without a country.’
73 Her Name Was What?
November 2001. Although Lola has come in very quietly, her mother has heard her and has rushed downstairs to greet her and the sleeping Noah. ‘Even asleep he looks so clever!’ she says.
‘It’s a genetic thing,’ says Lola. ‘But he’s not at all pushy.’
‘You look different,’ says her mother.
‘Well,’ says Lola, ‘I’m four years older than I was four years ago.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ says Lady Bessington. ‘There’s something else.’
‘There’s a lot of something else,’ says Lola. ‘Things change.’
‘Of course things change,’ says her mother. ‘I’m aware of that even with my limited parental intelligence. The thing is to get your changes to connect with the changes around you.’
‘I’m working on it,’ says Lola. ‘I can’t really talk about it yet.’
Noah is put to bed. Lady Bessington, seeing that there isn’t going to be a heart-to-heart, settles for a meaningful hug and a goodnight kiss. Lola has a shower and falls into a deep sleep but wakes up around six and gets dressed. She takes the CD and her sarod and goes to her car. Why the sarod? She couldn’t say, she just feels better when it’s with her. She doesn’t look to see if the Kama Sutra van is nearby, she refuses to accord the dentist any further recognition.