His family is waiting at the front door when he arrives: the silhouette of his mother, Rudyard to one side with a dog in his arms, scratching its ear. Anna pushes past her brother and comes running out to the car. Her breath is heavy and hot as she embraces him and he is surprised at his tears. She has lost weight and he lifts her from the ground with ease, pressing their damp cheeks together and spinning on the gravel of the courtyard.
He’s only here for four days — he and Goad will be broadcasting again on New Year’s Eve — but now, surrounded by his family, with Christmas to look forward to, the evidence of his success in the way his father steers him to the drinks cabinet, sits beside him on the sofa in the library, places his hand on Esmond’s as if to assure himself of his son’s physical presence, he feels weightless, joyous, grown.
On Christmas Eve, Mosley and Diana arrive, on their way to Wooton Lodge. Everyone seems to want to touch Esmond, to congratulate him, to hear from him some story of his time in Italy that can be theirs. Diana drinks too much at lunch and then sits very close to him on the sofa afterwards. — Kit is so frightfully chuffed, she whispers. This is what she calls Mosley. — Not just with the money, darling, but with the way you’ve made the British Union seem relevant and involved in the great matters of the Continent. She blows cigarette smoke towards him and laughs. She places a hand on his thigh, moving it in languorous strokes until it brushes the tip of his cock. He feels himself reddening, murmurs an excuse and goes to join Anna and Rudyard in the kitchen.
Mosley grips him by the hand as he leaves. They are all standing in the hallway and he speaks in loud bursts. — Bloody good stuff, Esmond. A man in his father’s image. Knows how to get things done. Make sure you keep it up. We’re all relying on you. Sir Lionel is looking at Esmond with a kind of evangelical glow. His mother comes up behind him and puts a gentle hand on his back. They go out into the courtyard, waving, as Mosley’s car disappears down the drive.
On Christmas morning they sit around the tree in front of the fire. The day seems to serve nostalgia, newly minted. As he watches his mother tousle Rudyard’s hair, his father unwrap his presents using his arm and his teeth, Anna open the purse he’d bought her on the via Calimala, he begins to miss and grieve for them, as if the picture were gently fading before his eyes. A Jack Russell and a Scottish terrier come bounding in, yapping and worrying the wrapping paper until Rudyard follows, chasing them out.
Esmond saves his present from Anna until last of all. It is large and square and carefully wrapped in brown paper. He opens a wooden frame around a collage of photographs of the family. He holds it in his lap, smiling, letting himself drift downwards into the scenes she has laid out for him: his mother and father by a piper at Loch Katrine, Anna and him in front of the beech tree at Aston Magna, Rudyard with blood-stained cheeks standing high in his stirrups. Anna comes to sit beside him — It’s simply ripping, old thing, he says. — Thank you.
He and Anna go for a walk that afternoon. The wind has picked up, shredding the clouds above, letting down barbs of winter sunshine. Three ducks bob on the canal’s glassy back. — How are you? he asks. A faltering of her eyes. — I’m marked for death, she says. Like a character in a motion picture. She laughs and he sees the red-ribbed roof of her mouth. They walk past glumly chewing horses, a pub with smoke drifting from its chimney, the slim elegance of a birch wood. — I live through you, she says. It’s not as sad as it sounds. Each of your letters, it’s like a clear breath. Keep writing them. They stop there and the wind leans into them. She shudders. — I love you, he says, and he realises it’s the truest thing he’s said, perhaps ever. They walk back in silence, arms linked.
In his room alone later, slightly drunk after an hour in the library with his father, he places the collage on his dresser and pulls up his chair to look at it again. His life appears, tessellated yet suddenly coherent. The three blond children crouched around the crease during a cricket match on the lawn at Aston Magna. Cook is at bat, a set expression on her face as she waits for Sir Lionel to bowl. Esmond and Anna on a carousel in Hyde Park. She must be four or five, her blonde hair spilling out from beneath the dome of a cloche hat. He is behind her on the horse, looking serious and responsible. A line-up of young Blackshirts, Esmond at one end, smaller and blonder than any of the others, his chest out, chin up. Esmond and Anna and Rudyard in the various arrangements of childhood, their father proudly with them, their mother more distant, always looking off as if keen to get on to some urgent appointment. Towards the bottom of the collage, more recent pictures: the pantechnicon van unloading in front of Welsh Frankton; Esmond in a straw boater by the river in Cambridge. In the very centre, the sun around which the other pictures orbit, is a large photograph of Esmond and his father in full British Union uniform, lightning flashes bright on their chests. They are on-stage at the Royal Albert Hall. It was 1934, Sir Lionel’s last great political speech. He’d chosen Esmond to stand with him on the platform beforehand in front of the thousands of faces. — This is my eldest son, he’d said, holding his good arm towards Esmond. — This is who I fought my war for. It’s why I’m here now. To build a future for young men like Esmond, a future in which there can never be another war like 14–18, a future where honest, decent folk who want to earn a living may do so. We are moving — he’d looked around at the massed ranks of Party members — towards a moment of reckoning. Choose the right side. He seized Esmond’s hand and lifted it into the air. Choose Esmond! The crowd let out a roar, Esmond had tried to force a smile, the camera flashed.
The next morning, his father comes into his room early. — We decided not to hunt, he says — Really? Esmond sits on the side of his bed. — I know you can’t bear it. You’re our guest of honour. Sir Lionel goes to look at the collage on the dresser. — We lost her for hours making this. Covered herself in glue. I’d forgotten that photograph, you and me at the rally. It’s rather good, isn’t it? He comes to sit beside Esmond on the bed. — Things aren’t as easy as they might seem back here, he says. I fear Mosley’s made some bad decisions. Circumstances are moving against us. Your mother and I— There have been rows. She’s been talking to Diana, to Mick Clarke, all of them helping to clarify my faults. I simply won’t have us allied with the Germans. Mosley’s still on my side, most days.
He’s looking down at his hand, frowning. — Your success, Esmond, it gives me the advantage in these negotiations for the future of the Party. That we can forge a future that is cultured, civilised, peaceful. I point to the fact that Radio Firenze is ten times more successful — in numbers and in contribution to Party funds — than these lunatic broadcasts coming out of Heligoland and Sark. He stands, ruffling Esmond’s hair. It also gives me hope, he says, to have you, my eldest son, out there, making a difference. It helps me believe there’s a future worth hanging around for.
They all come to see him off at the station. The collage, back in brown paper and string, is on the seat of his compartment. He presses his face to the upper window as the train moves off and he sees the four of them standing there, Anna with her arm around their mother, who is inexplicably crying, his father waving furiously, Rudyard kneeling down with a dog and looking on. It strikes him, as the train gathers speed and moves out of sight, that Rudyard’s eyes are the mirror of his own, identical in shape and shade. He sits down, pulls out The Brothers Karamazov, and begins to read.