THE SIXTH SENSE
Stephen McKenna
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Feb. 13, 2015)
I was walking towards the Coffee Room when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder and an incredulous voice gasped out—— "Toby, by Gad!" No one had called me by that name for fifteen years, and I turned to find a stout, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a red face extending a diffident palm. "I beg your pardon," he added hastily, as he saw my expression of surprise. "I thought for a moment...." "You were right," I interrupted. "Toby Merivale," he said with profound deliberation. "I thought you were dead." The same remark had already been made to me four times that morning. "That's not original," I objected. "Do you know who I am?" he asked. "You used to be Arthur Roden in the old days when I knew you. That was before they made you a Privy Councillor and His Majesty's Attorney-General." "By Gad, I can hardly believe it!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand a second time and carrying me off to luncheon. "What have you been doing with yourself? Where have you been? Why did you go away?" "As Dr. Johnson once remarked...." I began. "'Questioning is not a mode of conversation among gentlemen,'" he interrupted. "I know; but if you drop out of the civilised world for the third of a lifetime...." "You've not ordered yourself any lunch." "Oh, hang lunch!" "But you haven't ordered any for me, either." My poor story—for what it was worth—started with the plovers' eggs, and finished neck-to-neck with the cheese. I told him how I had gone down to the docks twenty years before to see young Handgrove off to India, and how at the last moment he had cajoled me into accompanying him.... Arthur came with me in spirit from India to the diamond mines of South Africa where I made my money, took part with me in the Jameson Raid, and kept me company during those silent, discreet months when we all lay perdus wondering what course the Government was going to pursue towards the Raiders. Then I sketched my share in the war, and made him laugh by saying I had been three times mentioned in despatches. My experience of blackwater fever was sandwiched in between the settlement of South Africa, and my departure to the scene of the Russo-Japanese war: last of all came the years of vegetation, during which I had idled round the Moorish fringe of the Desert or sauntered from one Mediterranean port to another. "What brings you home now?" he asked. "Home? Oh, to England. I've a young friend stationed out at Malta, and when I was out there three weeks ago I found his wife down with a touch of fever. He wanted her brought to London, couldn't come himself, so suggested I should take charge. J'y suis...." I hesitated. "Well?" "I don't know, Arthur. I've no plans. If you have any suggestions to make...." "Come and spend Whitsun with me in Hampshire." "Done." "You're not married?" "'Sir,'" I said in words Sir James Murray believes Dr. Johnson ought to have used, "'in order to be facetious it is not necessary to be indecent.'" "And never will be, I suppose." "I've no plans. You, of course...." I paused delicately, in part because I was sure he wanted to tell me all about himself, in part because I could not for the life of me remember what had come of the domestic side of his career during my absence abroad. He was married, and the father of a certain number of children before I left England; I had no idea how far the ramifications went. It appeared that his wife—who was still living—had presented him with Philip, now aged twenty-six, his father's private secretary and member for some Scotch borough; Sylvia, aged twenty-four, and unmarried; Robin, aged twenty-one, and in his last year at Oxford; and Michael, an enfant terrible of sixteen still at Winchester. I fancy there were no more; these were certainly all I ever met, either in Cadogan Square or Brandon Court. In his public life I suppose Arthur Roden would be called a successful man.