His knuckles were yellow-white where they gripped the chair, his body still shaking now but not, I felt, with rage.
“There was a time,” I went on, calmer now, “when I wanted to know you. I wrote you a letter once, telling you about the horrors I’d seen, the sins I’d committed, the pain I was in. I needed a stranger who cared, someone who was obliged by the bond of blood between us to understand but not judge. I thought perhaps you could still be my father. You replied as one soldier to another, but I realise now I’ve never really been a son to you. An heir, perhaps, a bastard heir, a sign of shame, a reminder of your failings, a retribution in human form, but never really a son. I don’t think you’ve ever really had it in you to be what a father should.”
I picked up my bag, getting to my feet and turning to the door. “I thought for a moment,” I continued, “that you might be about to propose that I, as your blood, inherited Hulne House. I wondered if you believed that I might feel a fondness for the place, a desire to preserve it, that Clement lacks. Or if, with my humble origins, I might be so awed by the gift that I would somehow turn it into a monument to you and your name. As it is, I feel I should tell you that, were you to give me the house now and all its lands, and the home where I grew up under Patrick and Harriet’s care, I would raze it all to the ground, to the very lowest foundation stone, and transform it into… a pleasure centre for bankers and their children, or a casino for the quirky, or maybe I’d just leave the land barren, and let the earth reclaim its own.”
I turned to leave him.
As I got to the door he called after me, “Harry! You can’t… It’s your past, Harry. It’s your past.”
I walked away and didn’t look back.
Two lives later I did come into possession of Hulne House. The catalyst was, aged twenty-one, attending my grandmother Constance’s funeral. I had never been to her funeral before, never wanted to. Aunt Alexandra, who all those years ago had saved my life and insisted I was taken in, and who would always, in every life, save me, fell to talking to me by the graveside and we grew, in our way, close. She was the strongest of the family, saw the way the wind was blowing and let it carry her in its path. I never found out what she said to my father, but three months before his death he changed the will, and I inherited the estate. I kept it exactly as it was, not a brick changed, and turned it into a charitable trust for the treatment of mental illness. At my next death it was of course restored to its usual state beneath the watchful eye of Constance, but I liked to think that somewhere, in a world lost to my sight, Hulne House had finally made a difference.
Chapter 47
Vincent, walking by my side through a Russian military research base.
Mr Hulne, if only you could see me now.
He let me keep the gun as we walked through the belly of his facility. What was it to him? Killing him would gain me nothing, and killing myself at this precipitous time would also gain me nothing but the irritation of going through puberty again. People moved out of his way, their eyes flickering to me in doubt, but no one questioned him. In his shabby jacket and rolled-up socks, this young man was clearly in charge, clearly a source of reverence, and a wave of his hand opened every sealed door, cleared every armed patrol.
“I’m glad it’s you,” he remarked as we headed deeper down, until the air grew cold and heavy with moisture. “When I realised that a piece of my technology had made it on to the open market before its time, I rather hoped the Cronus Club would be too busy drinking to pay the matter any attention. I was surprised anyone even noticed–but pleased that of all the people to notice, it was you, Harry. Is it Harry at the moment?”
I shrugged. “Harry’s as good as anything else. What about you? How did you end up Vitali?”
A dismissive shrug. “I tried working through the American industrial complex for a few lives,” he grumbled, “but keeping any sort of technological innovation private in that environment is almost impossible. If it wasn’t businessmen or greedy scientists, it was army generals or State Department officials demanding to know how many I could produce, and how fast. Terribly crude nation, America. At least with the Soviets the culture is bred to secrecy.”
The further we went, the colder it grew, and the thickness of the trunking and cables in the corridor increased until the walls were almost entirely lost behind pipes and wires fatter than my arm. “How have you been since I saw you last?” he added airily. “Did you get your professorship?”
“What? Yes, eventually. Only after Fred Hoyle threatened to punch me though.”
“Dear me, what a violent academic career you had.”
“In fairness, you and Hoyle were the only two individuals in that entire life who came close to physical violence.”