Circles of Time Read Online Free PDF

anti-English.
    That was nonsense, but it would mean having to defend himself against malicious innuendo, explaining just what it was that he had written in 1917 that had caused his press credentials to be canceled. To do that, he would have to bring Charles Greville’s name into the courtroom, and the so-called antiwar tract he and Jacob had printed as a protest to the mindless butchery on the western front—Major the Honorable Charles Greville’s account of the horrors that had led to his mental breakdown. He had felt it was his duty at the time to publish his cousin’s words, not because Charles was a relative but because Charles was a kind and gentle man who had been shattered by an obscenity. He was still shut away in a war hospital in Wales, quietly forgotten except by his family and friends. The Grevilles would not be happy at the idea of his raking up the past in a court of law.
    â€œWell, Rilke, what’s your answer to the lawyers?”
    Martin continued to stare out of the window. The wind had shifted and the rain was no longer slanting against the glass; it was now swirling toward the buildings on the opposite side of the square. Four ragged men, driven from their shelter in a doorway, were running across the little park, stumbling and sliding in the wet. He remembered the way the Tommies had stumbled and slid in the mud at Thiepval as they pressed for the German trenches, and how they stumbled and fell when the machine guns caught them in front of the wire.
    â€œI shall tell them—very politely—to go to hell.”

II
    A NTHONY G REVILLE, NINTH earl of Stanmore, walked slowly across the gravel drive toward his car. The new Rolls-Royce, which had been covered with a patina of brick dust for the past few days, now gleamed like polished ebony as his chauffeur completed the task of washing it with buckets of water and a chamois-skin rag.
    â€œNicely done, Banes.”
    â€œThank you, m’lord. A bit difficult, I must say. That brick don’t ’alf stick.”
    The earl nodded, and wiped abstractedly at his old tweed jacket. “Gets into everything. Clothes, hair …”
    â€œThat’s a fact, sir.” The man rubbed a speck of dirt from the windscreen. “Is His Lordship ready to go?”
    â€œYes. You might just get my bag from the cottage.”
    â€œVery good, sir.” The chauffeur put the chamois in the boot of the car and then walked off down the path toward the caretaker’s cottage.
    The earl lit a cigarette and gazed back at the house. The south wing was still covered with scaffolding, but all the brickwork had been completed—crumbled bricks replaced, stained ones wire-brushed good as new. The other wings of the great house were finished and gleamed in the sun. Two years of work coming to an end—God and the contractor willing.
    There had been problems right from the start with a succession of indifferent or grossly incompetent contractors. The present one had been on the job for a year and had kept up nicely with the work schedule—so far. Hopefully, by the end of July it would all be finished and the landscape gardeners could move in and have the plantings completed before the winter frosts sealed the ground. Wishful thinking, he knew, but all things were possible.
    The contractor, a burly ex-footballer from Leeds, stepped outside the metal-roofed shed he used as an office and waved cheerily. Lord Stanmore waved back. Their relationship had not been without strain, but they had finally seen eye to eye on the little things, the details that the contractor had thought nit-picking and the earl important. He had finally impressed upon the man the fact that Abingdon Pryory was an old house being restored, not reconstructed to conform with modern architectural trends. On their very first meeting the contractor had been so insensitive as to poke fun at the fact that “Pryory” was spelt with a “y” where the