McCluskey continued: ‘When once assembled, ye band of venerable brothers shall, with due solemnity, convene a secret Order. And that Order shall ye name Chronos after he who was God of Time. Let ye Companions assemble in attire befitting your academic standing and the solemnity of the occasion. Feast you well so that you may be in good cheer. Open then the packages of papers which I do bequeath you and in the order I command.
‘Act then according to your conscience as all good men of Trinity have ever done and I hope ever shall.
‘Your servant,
‘Isaac Newton.’
McCluskey folded the parchment and put it back in the Toby jug. ‘Interesting stuff, eh?’
‘Well, if it’s true it’s bloody amazing,’ Stanton replied. ‘So what was in the papers?’
McCluskey smiled. ‘You wish to join the Order of Chronos?’
Stanton shrugged. ‘I presume you want me to join since you’ve brought me here and told me this much, and since I am a single man without dependants and therefore have clearly been picked to fit Isaac Newton’s requirements.’
Picked to fit Isaac Newton’s requirements?
He could hardly believe he was saying such a thing.
‘Well,’ McCluskey said, ‘let me tell you. Last January I did as Isaac told me, I chose my companions. All donnish, dust-covered sad acts like me, with no life but College. And I convened the dinner. Did it just as Newton said, with “due solemnity”: candles and prayers and some nice music and an excellent meal, and when we’d finished eating we opened his papers.’
‘Quite a moment,’ Stanton said.
‘Yes. Quite a moment.’
McCluskey put down her glass and fetched from a corner of the room a wooden box about the size of a piece of cabin luggage, dark oak and bound with steel bands. She placed it on the footstool between herself and Stanton.
‘The package of papers was in that?’
‘Yes, it was. Newton’s box, kept safe in the attic of this lodge for three hundred years.’
‘A lot of papers then?’
‘When you’ve heard what they describe I think you’ll agree he was astonishingly concise.’
Setting her pipe once more between her teeth and reaching down over her vast bosom, Professor McCluskey lifted the lid and drew out a second yellowing parchment.
‘The first thing we found was a question,’ McCluskey said, handing the parchment to Stanton. ‘A historical question, accompanied by a stern warning not to delve further into the papers until we’d answered it.’
Stanton looked down at the parchment. ‘The same question you asked me.’
‘Exactly. If we could revisit one moment from the past and change something, what would it be? Right up my street, eh? It’s almost like the old boy knew I’d be the one to get his letter.’
‘And did you come up with an answer?’
‘Yes, we did. Pretty quickly, as a matter of fact.’
‘And?’
McCluskey sucked her teeth for a minute. Stanton could see that she was absolutely revelling in the moment.
‘Well, it has to be a date of European significance, doesn’t it?’ she said eventually. ‘Or possibly American. Let’s face it, for better or worse the last half dozen centuries on earth have been shaped by what we like to call Western civilization. Do you agree?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Of course you do. I gave you a First, didn’t I?’
‘Two one.’
‘At any rate you’re not a complete idiot.’ McCluskey reached under the tails of her greatcoat and rubbed at her huge buttocks, which were no doubt getting extremely hot, positioned as they were right in front of the fire. ‘So tell me, Hugh. When did it all go wrong? When did Europe lose its way? When did its worst ideals triumph over its best? When did its wilful vanity and stupidity conspire together to destroy its beauty and its grace? When did it exchange its power and influence for decadence and decay? When, in short, did the most influential continent on the planet wilfully and without duress screw up on a scale unequalled in all history and in one insane moment go from hero to zero, from top dog to underdog? From undisputed heavyweight champion of the world to washed-up, penniless has-been, collapsed, bloodied and brain-dead in the middle of the ring having punched itself to death?’
The freezing rain outside was turning once more to hail. It came smacking at the windows in great flapping sheets, squall after dirty squall. There was lightning too, periodically illuminating the deep and gloomy clouds. Without a clock it would have been impossible to know what time it was. Or what season. Not that there were seasons any more.
‘You’re clearly talking about 1914,’ Stanton answered quietly.
‘I can’t hear you, Hugh, the storm’s too noisy.’
Hugh raised his voice, staring McCluskey in the face and giving his answer as if it was a challenge.
‘1914 is the year Europe screwed up.’
‘Exactly,’ McCluskey exclaimed. ‘History’s greatest single mistake and the one that could most easily have been avoided was the Great War.’
Stanton took his dirty teacup back from where McCluskey had stacked it and having rinsed it out with a soda siphon helped himself to another shot of cognac. It was Christmas after all.
‘We-ell,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Clearly it was an unprecedented world catastrophe, no arguing with that. But I’m not sure you can give it exclusive number-one status. There have been even worse bloodbaths since.’
‘Exactly!’ McCluskey cried out, doing a little dance on the rug. ‘And every one of them without exception was made inevitable by what happened in 1914. That was the watershed, the fork in the road. The Great War bequeathed us the terrible twentieth century. Prior to that point the world was an increasingly peaceful place in which science and society were developing towards the common good.’
‘You might feel differently about that if you were a Native American,’ Stanton suggested, ‘or an indigenous Australian. Or an African in the Belgian Congo—’
McCluskey actually stamped her foot in frustration.
‘Oh come ON, Hugh! I’m not saying anything was or ever could be remotely perfect. Nor am I suggesting that historical readjustment could ever change human nature. Men will always take what isn’t theirs, the strong will always exploit the weak – no amount of historical tinkering could ever stop that. What I am saying is that in the summer of 1914 the general tide of human brutishness appeared to be ebbing and an age of peace and international cooperation beginning. For goodness’ sake, they were having so many International Exhibitions they were running out of cities to host them! In 1913 they’d had one in Ghent, for God’s sake. A city that by 1915 would be pulverized into oblivion. This was the point at which European civilization, which had caused so much misery to itself and others, was just starting to get things right. Social Democracy was dawning; even the Tsar had his Duma. The vote was coming. Education, health, standards of living were all improving in leaps and bounds. The subject races of the great empires were setting up congresses and preparing themselves for self-determination. The flowering of arts and sciences in the capitals of Europe was more vibrant than at any time since the Renaissance. It was … beautiful.’
‘Well, I don’t know that I’d—’
But McCluskey was brooking no argument.
‘Beautiful!’ she insisted. ‘And then – suicide. The insane, perverse, wilful self-destruction of a collective culture that had been four thousand years in the making, smashed utterly almost overnight. Never to rise again, and giving way in its stead to a genocidal global hotchpotch of half-baked fanaticism from both left and right. The Soviet Union corrupting Marx’s great idea into a contagious global nightmare in which entire populations would be murderously enslaved. And the United States destined to take the worship of competition, consumption and excess to the current point of planetary extinction.’