Time and Time Again

3

‘I WAS SO very sorry to hear about your terrible loss, Hugh,’ Professor McCluskey said, pouring tea from the same china pot she had used during Stanton’s student days, ‘and I thought since neither of us has anyone to spend Christmas Eve with, we might as well spend it together.’

Stanton accepted the proffered steaming cup but declined to return the warm smile that accompanied it.

‘I’m not really interested in Christmas, professor,’ he replied. ‘Christmas doesn’t mean anything to me any more.’

‘Christmas means the birth of our Saviour,’ McCluskey remarked. ‘That means something, surely.’

‘The bastard never saved me.’

‘Perhaps he hasn’t finished with you yet.’

Stanton looked at his old professor long and hard. There were few people he respected more but there were limits.

‘I really hope you didn’t get me here to suggest I take comfort in religion,’ he growled.

‘Not in the slightest,’ McCluskey replied. ‘I don’t think religion should be comfortable. That’s where it all went wrong for the Anglicans, trying to be comfortable. Deep down people want fire and brimstone. They want a violent vengeful God who tells them what to do and smites them if they don’t do it. That’s why the Prophet Mohammed’s doing so well these days. I’ve occasionally thought about switching myself. At least Allah’s got a bit of fire in his belly. But you see I could never give up the turps. Speaking of which, drop of brandy? You’ve had a chilly ride.’

It was scarcely eight thirty in the morning and Stanton was about to refuse but McCluskey didn’t wait for a reply before reaching down for the bottle of cognac that was standing on the floor between her swollen ankles. She snorted at the large picture of a diseased liver that government statute required the bottle to display, then slopped a substantial shot into each teacup. ‘Quite frankly, when it comes to comfort I’ll take booze over faith every time.’

‘I don’t need booze. I’ve had plenty of booze. It doesn’t help.’

‘Still, since it’s Christmas. Cheers!’ The professor chinked her teacup against Stanton’s and, having blown loudly on the surface of its contents, drank deep, sighing with satisfaction.

‘All right, prof,’ Stanton said, ‘what’s all this about? Your email said you needed to see me urgently. Why?’

‘You’ve been in Scotland, haven’t you?’ McCluskey asked, ignoring Stanton’s question. ‘I spoke to your colonel.’

‘How the hell does he know where I am? He chucked me out.’

‘They keep tabs on you. Still think you might go blabbing about all your thrilling clandestine missions. You could make a lot of money.’

‘I don’t want to make a lot of money. I never did. They ought to know that. And anyway, even if the bastard does know where I am, what’s he doing telling you? I thought the Regiment was supposed to be discreet.’

‘Your colonel was a Trinity man. That sort of thing still counts for something even now.’

Hugh nodded. Of course it did. Even now. With the country torn apart by every kind of division society could produce, sectarian, religious, racial, sexual and financial, those ancient ties still bound. You had to be born to it to get it, and Stanton’s mother had driven a bus. Cambridge on an army sponsorship had been the first time he’d become aware of the shadowy workings of the Old Boy network and it still took him by surprise.

‘All right then, what do you want?’ he asked. ‘Why did you go looking for me?’

‘Getting there, Hugh, getting there,’ McCluskey replied with that touch of steel in the soft tone that had cowed so many generations of undergraduates. ‘But I’d prefer to come at it in my own way and my own time.’

Stanton bit his lip. Some things never changed. McCluskey was still the professor and he was still the student. You never grew out of that relationship, no matter what happened in later life. McCluskey had taught students who went on to become cabinet ministers, ambassadors and in his case a decorated soldier and celebrity adventurer. But they’d all be eighteen again sitting on that ancient Queen Anne chair with those wild, bloodshot eyes drilling into them from beneath the great tangled eyebrows. McCluskey’s Hedges they were called, now painted a quite ridiculous jet black. Stanton wondered why if she could be bothered to paint them she didn’t also trim them a bit. He took a sip of his tea. Even through the taste of cognac he recognized the leaf McCluskey always served. English Breakfast infused with strawberry. He hadn’t tasted it in fifteen years.

‘I’ve been in the Highlands,’ he conceded. ‘Up in the remote north-west. In a tent on the hills above Loch Maree.’

‘Chilly.’

‘A bit.’

‘Scourging and purging, eh?’

‘I just thought some serious physical discomfort might be a distraction.’

‘Which of course it wasn’t.’

‘No.’

‘Bloody stupid idea.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘If you’re going to mope about, you might as well do it with the heating on.’

‘I suppose I was kind of hoping I might die of hunger or exposure.’

‘Goodness gracious! Really? Then why don’t you just shoot yourself?’

‘I don’t believe in suicide.’

‘Ahh. In case there’s an afterlife. I understand. So you thought if you pitted yourself against the elements, Mother Nature might do the job for you and dispatch you to oblivion without a stain on your conscience?’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s what I had in mind.’

‘But unfortunately you’re “Guts” Stanton. The man nothing can kill. Too much edible lichen on the rocks. Still some sea trout beneath the ice for you to impale with a sharpened biro. Enough twigs and heather to weave a life-preserving windbreak. We all loved your shows here at College, Hugh. Terribly proud. Undergrads are always asking about you. I tell them you used to catch rats with your bare hands during lectures and eat them raw.’

‘I caught one rat,’ Stanton replied, ‘and I certainly didn’t eat it. That probably would have killed me.’

‘Well, you can’t help your legend growing. Guts Versus Guts. Brilliant show. I downloaded all of it. Even paid for it. Well, it was for charity.’

Stanton winced. Guts Versus Guts had been a good enough idea for a title. None of this Man against the Wild stuff, that was just bullshit. In Stanton’s experience Man was never against the Wild because the Wild didn’t care if you lived or died. When man tested himself against Nature that was exactly what he was doing, testing himself. Which was why Stanton had given his little video hobby the title that he had. But it had been stupid to use his old army nickname. It was all very well for your mates to say you were one crazy, fearless motherfucker and name you ‘Guts’, but it was just showing off to use the name in the title of a webcast.

‘Anyway,’ McCluskey went on in something slightly less than her usual booming volume, ‘just to say sorry and all that. About the accident. Commiserations … meant to write when I heard about it. Dreadful business.’

McCluskey was stirring extra sugar into her tea and looking very uncomfortable.

‘Accident? I don’t see it as an accident,’ Stanton replied. ‘It was murder.’

McCluskey looked up from her cup. ‘Murder, Hugh? Really?’

‘Well, what else would you call a mum and two kids getting wiped out in a hit and run? On a zebra crossing?’

‘Well, yes, put like that—’

‘As far as I’m concerned it was murder, and if I could I’d give each of them the death sentence and carry it out myself.’

‘And I’d hold your coat,’ McCluskey replied. ‘But they never found them? All four got clean away?’

‘Yeah. Back to whatever crack house or meth lab they came from.’

Stanton held out his mug. McCluskey splashed more brandy into it.

‘So you’ve just cut yourself off then,’ McCluskey asked, ‘from your previous life?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What about friends?’

‘I never had a lot of friends. In my job it was easier.’

‘Family then?’

Stanton eyed McCluskey with a hint of suspicion.

‘Is there a point to this?’

‘Just making conversation, Hugh.’

‘I don’t think you are. I think you want to know.’

‘In that case,’ McCluskey replied sternly, ‘you might do me the courtesy of giving me an answer.’

Amazing, she’d turned the tables and put him on the back foot in half a second. He’d faced down bears in the wild but he couldn’t face down McCluskey over a cup of tea. You didn’t get to be the first female Master of Trinity without knowing how to run a conversation.

‘I know your mother’s dead,’ she went on. ‘Ciggies, wasn’t it?’

‘Lung cancer, yes.’

‘Good for her. If you’re going to get killed might as well get killed by something you love. And you’re an only child, of course. Father still around?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t care. Never knew him. Now come on, professor, what is—’

‘And your wife’s family?’ McCluskey ploughed on, refusing to be drawn. ‘Surely they’d be your family too now. United in grief and all that.’

Stanton shrugged, no point fighting it.

‘Tact never was your strong point was it, professor? All right. Since you insist. No, I’m not close to Cassie’s mum and dad. They’re New Agers, hippies really. They never came to terms with their daughter marrying a soldier, particularly one from Special Forces, who they think are just terrorists in uniform. And the webcast thing pissed them off even more; thought I was encouraging yobbos to kill endangered species. They never liked me, and Cassie dying didn’t change that. I haven’t seen them since the funeral.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Excellent? Why excellent? Where’s this going, prof?’

‘All in good time, Hugh,’ McCluskey replied. ‘The weather’s dreadful and we’ve got all day. So where have you been living in general? I know you haven’t been home and you can’t have spent three months on Loch Maree. Even you couldn’t have survived the deep freeze we had last November.’

‘Oh, I’ve been here and there,’ Stanton replied. ‘Guest houses, travel lodges. Bit of sleeping rough. I find moving on passes the time.’

‘Passes the time until what?’

‘Till I die, I suppose.’

‘So you’re just giving up?’

‘What’s to give up? The world’s a mess, I’ve got no interest in it and I’ve got no interest in myself either.’

‘And what would Cassie think about that?’

‘Cassie isn’t thinking about anything. She’s dead.’

‘You’re a soldier, Hugh. Even if they did chuck you out. Good soldiers don’t give up.’

Stanton smiled. That wasn’t the sort of sentiment you heard a lot these days. Even in the army old-fashioned notions such as courage and honour were viewed with deep suspicion. Not ‘inclusive’ enough.

There was a knock at the door. Breakfast had arrived.

‘There you go, Sally,’ one of the caterers said as the professor signed for the food. ‘Enjoy, Sal.’

Stanton had never heard McCluskey addressed by her first name before, let alone heard it reduced from Sally to Sal.

‘Ah yes,’ McCluskey remarked once the caterers had left. ‘I’m Sal all right. There are no exceptions in the new cultural egalitarianism. But the funny thing is that no matter how many times everybody uses each other’s first name, the rich still get richer and the poor still get poorer and nobody actually gives a damn about anyone. Ain’t life grand?’

‘Look, professor,’ Stanton said, accepting a plate of fried breakfast, ‘are you going to tell me why you asked me here or aren’t you?’

‘I’m going to try, Hugh, but when you’ve heard me out I think you’ll concede that it’s not a simple thing to explain.’

‘Have a crack at it.’

McCluskey helped herself to some bacon and eggs, on top of which, to Stanton’s disgust, she drizzled honey. ‘I knew getting into this was going to be difficult,’ she said through a mouth full of food. ‘Let’s start with this. If you could change one thing in history, if you had the opportunity to go back into the past, to one place and one time and change one thing, where would you go? What would you do?’

‘Professor, you know bloody well I’d—’

‘Hugh, not you personally. You can’t go back to the street in Camden and stop your wife and children from stepping into the road. I want an objective not a subjective answer. This isn’t about you and your private tragedy. It’s about us and our global tragedy. About humanity.’

‘Screw humanity. I don’t give the whole stinking bunch of us more than a couple of generations and good riddance. The universe is better off without us.’

‘But surely we’re not irredeemable?’ McCluskey suggested.

‘Aren’t we?’

‘Of course not. No race that could produce Shakespeare and Mozart is irredeemable. We’ve just lost our way, that’s all. But what if you could give us a chance to do better? Just one chance. One single move in the great game of history. What’s your best shot? What would you consider to be the greatest mistake in world history and, more to the point, what single thing would you do to prevent it?’

‘All human history has been a disaster,’ Stanton insisted. ‘If you want to fix it, go back a couple of hundred thousand years and shoot the first ape that tries to get up and walk on two feet.’

‘Not good enough. I won’t accept lazy apocalyptic cop-outs. I want a proper answer, argued from the facts.’

‘Missing your students, prof?’ Stanton asked. ‘Can’t survive the holiday without one of your “What ifs”?’

‘If you like.’

‘I don’t much. I’m not really in the mood for games.’

‘You’re not in the mood for anything. You told me you were just passing the time till you die so clearly you don’t have anything better to do. What’s more, it’s Christmas and it’s minus ten outside. Why not indulge me? Eat your brekkie. Have another cognac and do a favour to a lonely old bitch who fancied a bit of company and knew you’d be free because you’re even more lonely than she is.’

Stanton looked out of the window once more. There was a big storm brewing and even to a man who didn’t care if he lived or died, Christmas Eve in a Travelodge was an unpleasant prospect. McCluskey’s sitting room was warm and filled with lots of comforting-looking things, things that dated to a time before he or Cassie or the children had ever existed. Books, pictures, antiques. He closed his eyes and sipped his tea and cognac. It occurred to him that he was already slightly drunk. But it was a nice mellow sort of high, the first booze buzz he’d enjoyed since …

He shut the thought from his mind and focused on McCluskey.

‘All right, professor,’ he said, ‘since it’s Christmas.’

‘Then game on!’ McCluskey said, clapping her yellow, nicotinestained hands together. ‘Come on. Best shot. What is humanity’s biggest mistake? Its worst disaster?’

As if on cue, there was an alarming rattle at the window and a squall of heavy hail crashed against the glass, threatening to smash it in. The two of them turned to watch as icy stones the size of marbles began bouncing off the pane, which fortunately had been reinforced against what was becoming a common occurrence.

‘Well, there’s your answer, I reckon,’ Stanton said. ‘Climate change. Got to be the big one, hasn’t it? Earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods, tornadoes, mini bloody ice ages. The Gulf Stream gets turned off and suddenly East Sussex is Northern Canada. A couple more years of failed harvests and the whole world will almost certainly starve.’

‘Climate change is a consequence, Hugh,’ McCluskey replied sternly. ‘A consequence of global warming, which is also a consequence. A consequence of burning carbon, which among other things powers our cars. Would you uninvent cars?’

‘Not me, prof, I’m a petrolhead, you know that. I reckon a perfectly tuned V8 engine’s worth a couple of icebergs any time.’

‘Central heating then? Refrigerated food? Incubators for the premature? Stair lifts for the infirm? We don’t normally think of those things as disasters, do we? But they all contribute to global warming. Shall we uninvent them?’

Stanton felt a familiar sensation, one he hadn’t felt since he was twenty-one, the sense of McCluskey running rings around him.

‘Well, it’s a matter of scale, isn’t it?’ he said, struggling to hold his own. ‘Of course, there are lots of benefits, but the fact is that ever since the industrial revolution—’

‘Would you call that a disaster?’ McCluskey interrupted, pouncing gleefully. ‘Would you prevent it? That thing that brought health and plenty to untold billions? Cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap power. Levels of comfort delivered to entire populations that previously not even kings had enjoyed? Besides which, you couldn’t prevent it even if you wanted to. The industrial revolution wasn’t a single event, it was the result of any number of scientific and technological breakthroughs. No one thing began it, not even the Spinning Jenny, despite what was once taught in schools, and I’m only allowing you to change one thing. So, sorry, Hugh, no good, you’ll have to try again.’

Stanton actually laughed. He hadn’t laughed in over six months. It felt strange. But also liberating.

‘Come on then, professor, out with it.’

‘Out with what?’

‘It’s pretty obvious you’ve decided on your own answer. You’re just waiting to shoot me down in flames a few times before you tell me what it is. Just like you did to us when we were students. I could say anything. The invention of gun powder. Splitting the atom. Taking small pox to the New World and bringing back syphilis. The Romans coming up with decent plumbing then ruining it by using lead pipes. And you’d tell me they were all wrong because you know where this is heading.’

McCluskey drained her teacup and splashed another shot of cognac into it.

‘Well, you’re right and you’re wrong, Hugh,’ she admitted. ‘I do have the answer, but I certainly don’t know where this is heading, no one on earth could know that. But I know where it began. In this very room, as a matter of fact. Possibly in these very chairs. Two hundred and ninety-seven years ago.’

Stanton did the mental arithmetic.

‘1727?’

‘1727 indeed.’

McCluskey pushed away her half-finished plate and put her Nike-clad feet up on a little padded footstool. Then, with stubby brown-stained fingers she filled an ancient tar-coated pipe with tobacco, which she appeared to keep loose in the pocket of her greatcoat.

‘Don’t mind if I smoke while you’re still eating, do you? Illegal, of course, within fifty metres of a person or a building, but what’s the point being Master of Trinity if you can’t be master of your own sitting room?’

‘I don’t mind,’ Stanton replied. ‘I did two tours in the Mid East; everybody smoked, including me.’

‘Well, I do think you need a pipe to tell a good story.’

‘You’re going to tell me a story?’

‘I’m going to tell you the first half of one, Hugh. The second half hasn’t been written yet.’