He can tell that the room has been used for logging, reviewing and filing. But what? He finds the TV remote control within reaching distance of the chair and turns the set on. Built into the wall beneath it are three shelves, one holding a chunky, near-industrial VHS player, one for a DVD machine and a bottom one that looks like a place to throw junk — cables, open tape boxes and loose coins.
The TV throws up a haze of broken white and black fuzz as it stirs itself. The DVD whirrs into life and fights for channel supremacy. Up on to the screen comes an out-of-focus, grainy picture. It’s a digital copy of old Super 16mm film by the look of it. It sharpens and shows his father reincarnated as a more youthful man, speaking confidently from the stage of a lecture theatre: ‘Stonehenge is a miracle of the ancient world. To build it today, with all of our machinery and mathematical know-how would be impressive. To have begun building it five thousand years ago, without computers, CAD packages, cranes and trucks and barges to carry those monoliths is beyond wonder.’
Gideon is bored already. His childhood had been littered with nonsensical theories about Stonehenge being a temple, a burial place for ancient kings, the world’s first astronomical observatory, a cosmic link to the pyramids in Egypt. And most ignorantly of all, the birthplace of the druids.
He turns off the film and fires up the old VHS machine. It clicks and clunks as the mechanical heads shuffle around and lock on a tape that has been left in there. A big close-up of a beautiful woman’s face appears on screen. Beautiful enough to suck the air from his lungs.
It’s his mother.
She is laughing. Holding her hand up to the camera and looking embarrassed that she’s being filmed. He finds the volume. ‘Turn it off, Nate. I hate that thing, please turn it off.’
Her voice makes him tremble. He can’t help but step forward and put his fingers to the screen.
‘Nate. Enough now!’
The shot pulls wider. Marie Chase sits on a gondola in Venice against a cornflower blue sky. She turns her head from the camera faking annoyance with her husband. Her hair is dark, long and thick — exactly the same texture as Gideon’s — and it is being made to dance on her shoulders by a light summer’s wind. In the background, St Mark’s bobs away as a stripe-shirted boatman punts them across the lagoon. The shot is wide enough now for Gideon to tell that she’s pregnant.
He stops the tape and looks away wet-eyed to the stacked shelves. They’re not all full of home movies, of that he’s sure. The last thing his father watched was his mother because he was reconnecting with happier times, probably the happiest of his life. It’s the kind of thing people do when they’re experiencing the worst of times, the worst of their lives.
Everything on the shelves was important to his father. Important enough to classify and to protect. But not as important as this precious memory of the only woman he really loved.
Gideon walks to the books. They are all red, leather-bound journals, the lineless type favoured by artists and writers. He tries to pull down a volume from the top left-hand corner but the covers are stuck together. He prises them apart.
He opens the book on the first page and reels from another emotional blow. It’s dated the day of his father’s eighteenth birthday.
The handwriting is the same but somehow hesitant:
My name is Nathaniel Chase and today is my eighteenth birthday, the day I come of age. I have made a promise to myself that from this instant onwards I will keep a meticulous record of what I hope will be a long, eventful, happy and successful life. I will record the good and the bad, the honourable and the dishonourable, the things that stir the soul and those that leave me indifferent. My tutors say that much can be learned from history, so perhaps as the years unfold I shall learn much about myself by keeping an honest record of the passing years. No doubt, if I am famous I will publish these small literary missives, and should I be a nonentity then at least in my winter years I shall gain some warmth from looking back and reflecting in the hot optimism of my youth. I am eighteen. A great adventure awaits me.
Gideon finds it too painful to read on. He glances along the rows. Is this stuff in all of them? Every event, emotion and detail of Nathaniel Chase’s great adventure?
He runs a finger along the red spines and counts off the years: his father’s twentieth birthday, his twenty-first, his twenty-sixth — the year he met his wife; his twenty-eighth — the same as Gideon is now; his thirtieth — the year Nathaniel Gregory Chase and Marie Isabel Pritchard married in Cambridge; and his thirty-second — when Gideon was born.
The fluttering fingers stop. He has entered his own space. His eyes drift down to the thirty-eighth year. The year Marie died.
His hands stretch to the slim volume and he begins to lever it out of the vice-like grip of those either side, but he cannot bring himself to remove it. Instead, he jumps on two years. To the fortieth of his father’s life.
He withdraws the diary. Two years after his mother’s death. He feels prepared for whatever the eighth year of his own life has to offer.
Only he isn’t.
It’s not written in English. It’s not written in any recognisable language.
It’s in code.
Gideon pulls out the following year’s book.
Code.
And the year after.
Code.
He rushes to the end of the room and stoops for the final volume. Again he freezes — this book will bear the last entries of Nathaniel Chase’s life.
His heart is like a raging bull butting his rib cage. He swallows hard, lifts the volume from its shelf and opens it.
20
She smells like cinnamon. And she’s high as a kite.
Jake Timberland notes these things as the beautiful American kisses him goodbye on the pavement. She’s maybe twenty-two at most. And it’s not a peck on the cheek. It’s a proper smacker. She holds his face between her manicured fingers and her lips gently touch his. But he lets her make the running.
And she does. A little brush of the tongue — just a glance against the underside of his upper lip. His eyes dance beneath closed lids. She moves back. ‘Bye.’ A smile and she steps away.
‘Wait.’
She smiles again as she folds herself daintily into the back seat of the limo. The black guy with the crocodile hands slams the door shut and shoots him a look that’s more than just a warning; it’s a declaration of war.
Fuck it. Jake squares his shoulders and approaches the tinted rear window. For the second time that evening, a massive hand explodes like a grenade in the middle of his chest, sending him sprawling. The bodyguard slips into the passenger seat and the limo is gone before Jake’s anywhere near getting to his feet. The most beautiful woman he’s ever met has just watched him fall on his butt. Not a good way to end the evening.
He gets a few strange glances as several couples slalom past into the depths of Soho. The pavement is soaked from an earlier downpour and his clothes are now wet. He brushes himself down and digs in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the mud and grit from his hands.
Something flutters to the floor. He bends and picks it up. It’s a bar mat, the advertising ripped off, and there’s a message in pen on it: ‘Call me tomorrow on number below x.’ Next to the kiss is a small squiggle of a padlock.