A fleck of debris hit the rusting fire-bell and left a faint note floating on the air.
AFTERWORD
by Jean-Pierre Trevor
I am high above the desert and the thermals created by the 115-degree heat pitch the 737 around. The prepare-for-landing tone sounds so I sit down and start slow breathing to calm myself. Flying makes me nervous.
From my window at 17,000 feet I can see where I'll be staying – an Arabian horse ranch down there in the baking desert. This is summer and the Arizona desert is one of the hottest places on earth. In a few minutes we will be landing at Phoenix Skyharbour International. About 200 miles south of here, buried in the sand dunes of Buttercup Valley, are the remains of the plane that was used for the film The Flight of the Phoenix. My
The turbulence increases as the plane slows. I jot some thoughts down, notice how clammy my hands are. I am also nervous because of what I am about to face. I pray it won't happen.
I am going to visit a dying man known to millions of people as Adam Hall, the creator of Quiller. He is also my father, Elleston Trevor.
Arriving at the ranch under burnt skies, I greet Chaille, my father's wife, who has been battling by his side during his illness for the past two years.
I go into the living room, the walls framed with book jackets, mostly of the Quiller series, and then into a darkened room. The only sounds are from a machine that keeps a special air mattress inflated, the humming of the air-conditioning and a bell tinkling in Katrina the husky's collar. Resting on a mound of pillows is my father.
Softly I say, 'Hello.'
His eyes open slowly. 'Hello, JP.'
I stroke his forehead.
Outside the summer storm clouds are gathering. I look at this spectacular display of power and think: Please heal my father. I pray for a miracle and a small voice inside me says: Let him go if that is his wish…
Yet he wants to live so much. And Quiller Balalaika is pages short and this weighs heavily on him. I offer to set up a laptop so he can write. He says yes. I sit on the bed next to him and we try for a few minutes but he is too weak. Part of me resents Quiller because he reminds me of the shield my father has had to keep in place all his life. Maybe if Quiller was vulnerable he wouldn't exist. And right now my father is the most vulnerable I've ever seen him, so I'm very confused.
The next day when I go into his room he looks like someone who has had a huge burden lifted from his shoulders. I take his hand. 'Hello, Papa.'
'I'd like to work on the book if I may, JP.'
'Of course. Just give me a minute, I'll get the laptop.'
Chaille tells me that for three hours early this morning they talked of his distress at being stuck between life and death. It has given my father the spirit to write more.
We begin. There are long moments of silence as he creates Quiller and I look at his etched face, backlit from the desert light. Sometimes whole minutes drift by when I feel I am holding a flame that has been burning for years and the slightest breath will extinguish it forever. Then a word or a sentence, then more silence. The nurses know he is writing and stay in the living room.
'That's it.'
My father speaks the words in a slow voice. He turns as I turn and we look at each other, a few inches between us, he on his throne of pillows, me with a shaking laptop on my knees.
I hold his hand and burst into tears, for the significance of the words – 'That's it' – is too great. There's only one person who could show such unimaginable restraint and wrap up a wholelife with those two words. I will never forget this moment.
I press some keys to shut down the computer and stare at thescreen, which has never looked so black. I mumble something, go into the living room and tell Chaille he has finished his book.
Later I go into his office. The floor is covered in research material, city maps from Russia, letters from the Pentagon. plot notes are stuck to the walls. I look around. His worn black karate belt on a hook. Incense sticks. A police and fire scanner. Paintings by Chaille. KGB Death and Rebirth on the floor. Two Boken martial-arts training swords on the wall. On his desk are quartz crystals and Fool's Gold from the Arizona mountains, a manual on interrogation, a small bowl of protein wafers, an acupuncture needle, Tibetan chimes and a spinning disc with prismatic colours. My father likes things that sparkle.
I sit at his desk for the first time. In front of me, on the shelves spanning the entire room, is his life's work.
On the desk is his typewriter which he will never use again. Dust is already gathering on the keys. This is too much and I sit here in a veil of tears. There is something so horribly final about this typewriter that will never form words again. And when I look at the awesome body of work in front of me – over a hundred novels, dozens of foreign editions, the awards, ten motion pictures – I see a labour of more than fifty years of creating worlds for other people to share. I realise I am looking at my father and I feel buried in grief.
I return to his room. All I want to do is take his weary head in my hands and hold it for a long time, but I don't. I lean forward, put my face next to his.
'I've always loved you,' I tell him.
'I've always loved you, too.'
It floods out of me.
'Go ahead, let it rip,' my father says while I hold him in my arms.
Chaille and I sit on his bed, my father between us. We talk about his leaving. In the Rembrandt light of the desert evening reflecting off the outside wall, I sit next to my father and time doesn't mean much anymore.
He slept better last night and wears his red kimono. His eyes are open and look at somewhere far beyond the walls. He might hear the wind chimes outside.
Slowly, over the following hour, my father turns his head slightly around and upwards, focusing on something not in this world. Chaille and I don't say much. Are words important now?
Just the three of us in this room. Waiting for a signal.
He stays looking up into his Universe, like Wednesday's child, shallow breathing, almost not visible, but still there.
Chaille and I are on either side of my father. There are almost no sounds – Katrina's bell collar, our breathing. I pray.
My father lies under a lake of pink blanket looking like a noble Tibetan monk. Charlie, the soft-toy bear I bought him, on his knee.
'It's safe, you're safe,' I say to him.
I briefly look at Chaille because I don't think I saw his last breath. She looks back, not certain.
Another breath.
I hold mine.
My father swallows twice, gently with no sound.
Chaille says something to me but I don't hear it.
Now it comes. The storm breaks loose in my body and I bury my face in his pillows.
Finally I understand the meaning of the last words of his last novel, Quiller Balalaika…
At 4.10 p.m. on July 21, 1995 my father spread his great wings and took his final flight.
On July 31, Chaille and I took my father's ashes in a beautiful casket to the top of a 7000-foot mountain in north east Arizona where we sipped Fernet Branca – Quiller's favourite drink.
Elleston Trevor
