The Many Lives of John Stone Read online

  * * *

  Martha cores each apple and removes the peel in a continuous spiral. She is fast and accurate; John Stone takes longer to chop each one into quarters. But then, he is studying Martha’s reaction. She is struggling to cope with the enormity of his announcement. Her eyes are glassy as she focuses her attention on the rotating fruit.

  “We have entertained Friends in the past, Martha.”

  “Mais presque jamais ils ne sont restés la nuit—”

  Fragments of another persona reveal themselves when Martha speaks in French—the angle of her jaw and the way she arches her eyebrows. He gets a sudden picture of a very different Martha from the current, homely incarnation that she has cultivated at Stowney House.

  “Can we not accommodate one young guest in this large house? It will only be for a few weeks. Just until she gets to know us a little.”

  Each time John Stone has answered her in English and taken care to imbue his expression and tone of voice with warmth and reassurance.

  “Is she a Friend?”

  “I hope she will be. It is why I have invited her.”

  John Stone sees the disbelief in Martha’s eyes. “But she understands about us?”

  “She is young. I want her to get to know us first. If she helps us I’d prefer the first move came from her—”

  “Bent u gek?”

  “I’m not out of my mind, my dear Martha! Please don’t make more of this than it deserves. When have I ever let you down?”

  It has been an age since Martha has confused her languages in this way—which can only be a bad sign, as if the domesticated creature she has become at Stowney House does not have the words to cope with such distress. First French and now Dutch. Although he knows little of her experiences in Holland, he gathers that her time there was a particularly wretched chapter of her life. Not for the last time is he grateful that he has always been careful to remain himself. A life of multiple exiles is hard enough without changing your identity at the same time.

  “Once you’ve met the girl, you will understand why I’ve invited her to Stowney House. There is something about her—”

  “Oh, John . . .” Now Martha is wringing her hands and shaking her head from side to side. He grabs hold of her hand.

  “Can’t you trust me? It’s for you and Jacob that I am doing this. The world is changing so quickly—”

  “But why now, John? Why must you be so hasty? And why a girl? Did you not tell us you were hoping a bright young man might be a Friend to us? You said you thought he’d do well in the world.”

  “Daniel? He is in America.”

  Martha withdraws her hand from his and tucks her hair behind her ears.

  “How old is she?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You’re putting your trust in a girl of seventeen!” The last word becomes a wail but she clamps both hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry, John. It’s the shock of it.”

  “Martha—I need you to remain calm. All will be well. Have I ever lied to you?”

  Martha shakes her head. Now is not the time to reveal that she has met Spark before and that he is almost certain of another connection. Does that count as a lie?

  “Can I count on you to welcome Spark into our house?”

  Martha nods. John watches Martha sitting rigid, bracing herself, and wants to wail himself. “Please don’t look so anxious. You haven’t always been a recluse. You will enjoy the company—and you can try out all your best puddings on her.”

  Martha tries to smile. “I owe you everything, John. If this is what you want—”

  “You owe me nothing, as I grow exceedingly tired of telling you. What family do we have if not each other? And now, my dear Martha, I am off to break the news to Jacob.”

  “John—let me tell him.”

  John Stone squeezes Martha’s hand. “It is my decision and my responsibility. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle with him.”

  The corners of Martha’s mouth start to curl upward. “John, it is not Jacob I am concerned about.” Suddenly she starts to laugh, and the relief of it sets John Stone off too. Martha dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief: “But for the love of God, John, don’t tell him she’s seventeen!”

  Tree Walking

  June, Suffolk.

  They always bury their dogs here. John Stone is careful not to trip over the hardwood markers that Jacob lovingly carves for them and that soon become hidden under piles of dry leaves. He comes to a halt and bends over, hands resting on knees, heart thumping against rib cage. Martha is right: The city has made him soft. John Stone fancies he smells decay, and death—and renewal. Images form in his mind of maggots burrowing through corpses and roots curling, tendril-like, around bone. He listens to the sound of his lifeblood pulsing in his temples and cannot believe that there will come a time when this old heart will actually cease pumping.

  “Come back, Jacob! Things cannot stay the same forever! You don’t need me to remind you of that.”

  Presently he rises, reaching out to steady himself against the beech tree’s rough bark, and peers upward. Pinpricks of shimmering sunlight pierce its dense canopy. Is he up there? John Stone searches for a flash of wheaten hair, for a glimpse of a dun-colored trouser leg, or for the white of Spark’s letter snatched from his grasp.

  “Jacob!” he shouts, regretting the tone of anger and frustration, which he has failed to disguise. “I won’t deny that there is a risk, but I have the measure of her. She is of good character.”

  But John Stone’s words leave in their wake a silence broken only by the drone of the green metallic flies that hover above the woodland floor. He is a fool: He should have let Martha accompany him. This has been a timely reminder that a man apt to go berserk can always command a certain level of respect. His ears are still ringing.

  “Jacob,” he calls up, this time in a softer tone. “Jacob. My friend.”

  He tiptoes to the other side of the tree trunk and a fleeting shape catches his eye. One of the branches springs back as an unseen foot is removed from it. Tree walking. It is an activity that Jacob has made his own—and one that promises a broken back if concentration is broken for an instant. When John Stone first suggested it to Jacob, he was drawing on his experience as a soldier during what it pleased him to call his wilderness years. The principle was simple. During times of great danger life becomes a question of staying alert, focusing on every sound and every movement. Nothing matters but the present moment—and the bullet that could be speeding toward you. Not a cure for sorrow, or regret—or, indeed, anger—but a temporary distraction, a way of letting go of the past by centering oneself in the present. Over time, Jacob has pruned these trees in such a way as to encourage lateral, weight-bearing branches. Now, if he is so inclined, Jacob can cross the whole wood undetected.

  So John Stone has no time to defend himself when Jacob drops, silently, onto his back, and floors him. When he cries out, Jacob—who loves him—presses his face into the dirt without mercy.

  “You are a fool!” says Jacob into his ear. “Little Stella will stir up memories and all Martha’s children will come back to haunt her.”

  John Stone groans and Jacob lets him lift his head a little. He spits out earth and fragments of dry leaves. “I didn’t tell you her name. . . .” As Jacob has steadfastly refused to learn how to read, John Stone is impressed by his powers of deduction. “How did you know?”

  Jacob slides her letter over his mouth and nose, and inhales. “I can smell her.”

  “She is almost a woman,” says John Stone as calmly as he can manage. “Martha isn’t going to want to mother a seventeen-year-old.”

  “Is that how you think of me?” It is Martha who speaks. She stands only a few paces away, in dappled shade, a dark silhouette. “Jacob,” she hisses. “You should be ashamed.” She spits out the last word so that it is barely audible. A wood pigeon flaps noisily skyward.

  John Stone feels the crushing weight lift abruptly from his spine and he hears Jacob climbing b
ack up into the tree canopy, scraping the soles of his boots against rough bark.

  “Change destroys as much as it saves, as you of all people should know,” calls down Jacob. “The girl will be careless with the life we have built here.”

  “And how long can we survive without change?” asks John Stone. But Jacob is already gone with a shiver of leaves.

  John Stone pushes himself up onto all fours. Martha offers him her hands. He takes them and she pulls him to his feet.

  “Best leave Jacob to me,” she says.

  “How much did you hear?”

  “That I am a woman not in full possession of her emotions—”

  “That is not so! If it were, I should not have suggested inviting Spark to stay with us. Martha?”

  “Yes, John?”

  He wonders if he should wait for a better moment to talk about Spark. No. Best to get it over with. “Do you recall the little girl who lived in the gatekeeper’s cottage before I had it demolished? The one who kept coming back—”

  “Little Stella, you mean?”

  “Spark and little Stella are one and the same—”

  “No!”

  “It’s true. Jacob has already worked it out.” John Stone observes Martha put her hand over her mouth. “And Daniel, the bright young man I’ve talked to you about, is Stella’s elder brother.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  John Stone sighs and watches a pale yellow butterfly pass through a shaft of sunshine behind Martha’s head.

  “Because it didn’t seem important. She was a little girl who’d wandered onto our grounds. Who was she to you? Her family moved away soon after the incident with the water mill. And, I admit, it was at Thérèse’s request that I have been helping the family.”

  Martha’s eyes widen. “Thérèse?”

  “Thérèse knew Spark’s late father. Quite well, by the sound of it. She owned the building where he ran a restaurant. She also allowed them to live in the gatekeeper’s cottage. I’d better warn you that I think it’s likely Spark is Thérèse’s child—”

  “Oh, John!”

  “When I saw the girl in New York I could have been looking at a young Thérèse. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “It must have been a terrible shock to see her like that!” says Martha.

  John Stone agrees that it was, indeed, very shocking. A fly buzzes in his ear. He brushes it away with the back of his hand.

  “How sure are you?”

  “I’ll tell you after I’ve seen Edward. Fifteen years ago, when he told me that Thérèse had died, he gave me a letter that she’d written to me. I need to look at it again. At the time I wasn’t in a fit state to give it the attention it deserved.”

  “Did that woman ever bring you anything but grief?”

  John Stone puts a finger to his lips.

  “Little Stella!” says Martha, shaking her head. “Life can play some strange tricks. Do you think she’ll remember her visits to Stowney House?”

  “She was very young,” replies John Stone. “I doubt it.”

  Dandelion Clock

  June, London.

  John Stone stares down at Lincoln’s Inn Fields from the high-ceilinged offices of Edward de Souza, his lawyer. Through the open window the smell of freshly cut grass reaches him. One should not be inside on a day like this. One by one John Stone’s instructions regarding his will are addressed and clarified. Edward, with his neatly manicured fingers, makes indecipherable notes in pencil in a notepad. John Stone distracts himself rearranging Edward’s paperweights, which pin down the fluttering paperwork. Sometimes the lawyer looks up at the sunlight dancing on the ceiling, then goes back to his notes and erases words with a pale green eraser.

  Finally the lawyer takes two envelopes from a wire tray and slides them toward him. “The deeds to the gatekeeper’s cottage, as requested,” he says, tapping one, “and this is your late wife’s letter. I thought it best to reseal it.”

  “Thank you,” says John Stone, slipping them into his briefcase.

  “It’s rather a coincidence that after fifteen years you should choose to ask to look at them now. Only yesterday I was contacted by one of Thérèse’s lawyers, who required me to confirm that I am still acting for you—”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Apparently you can soon expect delivery of a second letter from Thérèse.”

  “Are you serious?”

  The lawyer shrugs his shoulders. “From what you’ve told me about your late wife, posthumous control over her estate might have appealed to her. There’s a legal term for it—‘in mortmain’—literally, ‘dead hand.’ I admit to being intrigued—”

  “And did her lawyers give any indication as to what this communication from beyond the grave is about? To inherit any more property would be irritating.”

  “Quite,” says Edward de Souza, smiling. “I did press her solicitor for further information. She refused to be drawn—either that or she didn’t know.”

  John Stone nods. “Thérèse was a woman incapable of doing anything that was not entirely on her own terms. As in life, so in death.”

  * * *

  Once their morning’s business is concluded the two men stand, face-to-face, at the door. “You were right to see me sooner rather than later,” says the lawyer. “Your affairs are becoming positively labyrinthine.” Edward gestures toward the far wall, lined with shelves bowing under the weight of box files.

  “What will be will be, my dear fellow,” says John Stone. “As we both know, life is full of surprises, some of them, alas, being more pleasant than others.”

  John Stone is touched to see a wave of distress pass over the lawyer’s normally composed features.

  “I cannot believe that the prognosis is as bleak as you suspect,” says Edward. “I wish you would consult a specialist.” John Stone shakes his head firmly. “I am certain we could find a doctor we could trust—”

  “No,” insists John Stone. “To take such a risk is unthinkable.”

  “You may find that you change your mind, and if you do—”

  “I won’t.”

  John Stone reaches into his bulging jacket pocket and presses an apple-size object wrapped in tissue paper into the lawyer’s hands.

  “There,” he says. “You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?”

  The lawyer’s face lights up. He weighs the gift appreciatively in his hands. “My word, this one’s heavy!”

  “You’ve never let me down,” says John Stone.

  “Of course not!”

  “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  “I hope this isn’t meant to be some kind of good-bye present.” The lawyer starts to tear off the paper but then stops. “I’ve always felt honored to be your Friend.” He pulls off the last layer of tissue and smiles. Cupped in his hands, safe from the winds of time, is a dandelion clock preserved forever in crystal.

  * * *

  John Stone buys himself a double espresso in High Holborn and escapes back into the green oasis that is Lincoln’s Inn Fields. A small reward after a morning of talk and high seriousness. Now he sits cross-legged, face tilted to the sky, sunning himself like a cat on the grass. Here, in this handsome square, society puts on its best face—grand, reassuring, civilized, benign. Of course, it is a beautiful lie. One only has to walk the streets nearby to see that.

  John Stone opens his eyelids a slit and frowns in the sunlight. Office workers in a state of semi-undress are scattered randomly on the lawns: texting, eating, making calls, working on their tans. There was a time when it was the homeless of London who used to congregate here. He always did what he could for them. But they were removed, as they always are, along with the rats that feasted on their leftovers, and then new railings were erected to keep them out. The noon sun beats down. John Stone slips off his jacket and lays it on the daisies. He gulps down his tepid espresso in one gulp; the hit of caffeine feels good.

  Now he flips open his briefc
ase and searches for Thérèse’s letter, which was delivered to him along with the news of her passing. John Stone does not even know where she was laid to rest. His estranged wife’s final wishes have denied him—to use a modern expression—a sense of closure.

  Edward has resealed the narrow vellum envelope with red wax. Fifteen years ago John Stone had come close to throwing it into the fire. Fifteen years. The notion that he holds an object touched by Thérèse’s hands unsettles him. He chases away a recollection of limpid blue eyes and the particular tilt of a chin, but her image continues to flicker in a dark recess of his mind. John Stone stands up abruptly. It is a sunny day; he will read it later. Walking away, he slips the letter into the inside pocket of his jacket—though not with any intention of keeping a vestige of her next to his heart.

  Leaving Holborn, John Stone lowers the tinted windows so that the smell and sound of the city streets can penetrate the bland luxury of his hired car. At length he removes Thérèse’s letter from its envelope, holding it as if it might spontaneously combust. He studies it without reading, observing the pressure and curve of her lines, the reality of her embedded in the unique flow of black ink. He feels the hairs rise at the back of his neck.

  My dear Jean-Pierre, I know that you will have mixed feelings when you see my hand—I can even picture a certain apprehension in your dark eyes.

  John Stone leans sideways to look at his reflection in the rearview mirror. It’s true that he looks apprehensive. Once Thérèse told him (it was long ago and she was holding a knife to his throat at the time) that for all his charm he had the eyes of someone who was lost. It occurs to him that there is no one left alive who would call him Jean-Pierre.