THE THEME OF THE QUINTET.
There are certain men and women upon whose hearts and souls the world leaves the deepest scars, people who carry the memory of those happenings upon them like a cloud of invisible dust. And on their paths through life, unknown to them, that dust spreads into the eyes and ears and souls of some of those whose lives they pass through, others whose journeys then often take a different course. These paths may be long or short, passing between belief and the void, between redemption and nothingness... but in the end there is either only oblivion or a place of peace, a cold stone that belies the truth of the life and memory beneath it.
These five novels tell the story of such a life and such a memory, of its consequences, of the strange refractions and reflections as it passes in its many forms through the violent years of 1915 - 1960, the years when History and freedom collided and good and evil coalesced. In this turbulence the dust of the memory swirls its way between, carried on the fate of strangers and friends.
BOOK II:
1929 - 1930
"Maurice, I know the Captain is your friend... but... but be careful. I think he's a dangerous man to be too near," the Abbess said.
In 1929 Father Maurice Fairweather's life changed, he left the quiet hills of rural Scotland he loved so much and found himself on the quayside of an island port of a French concession in the South China Sea. Here the path of his life was to pass through that dust still spilling out into the world from the Brookeby house. On the islands he was to find himself surrounded by the confused echoes of good and evil and innocence and hints of the collision between past and future. And the people he meets - the Holy Sisters and the Legionnaires and the painter and Athena - each carries the sense of a battle, a philosophical and political battle that is coming. By the time he returns to Europe, that dust of 1915 on his body, in his name, personified in his companion, Father Fairweather begins to feel as though the new darkness of this old crumbling continent, the violent shadow cast by men's ideas and their will, is chasing him, that he and what he holds most dear are its prey.
"This is my work from those times," the painter said. " 'Black Monks'. My contribution to the shame, if you like.... '.... I made it to praise the Futurist spirit..." Father Fairweather stared uncomfortably at the picture. "I keep it here to remind me of... of my past errors... of the dark hair on the pretty neck."
The Captain's voice was suddenly louder. "Don't be a fool, Athena! This isn't a game any longer.... There are things beginning now that won't be stopped. It's not your time that's coming... it's mine and my kind and there'll be no compromises, it will be to the end...."
There are certain men and women upon whose hearts and souls the world leaves the deepest scars, people who carry the memory of those happenings upon them like a cloud of invisible dust. And on their paths through life, unknown to them, that dust spreads into the eyes and ears and souls of some of those whose lives they pass through, others whose journeys then often take a different course. These paths may be long or short, passing between belief and the void, between redemption and nothingness... but in the end there is either only oblivion or a place of peace, a cold stone that belies the truth of the life and memory beneath it.
These five novels tell the story of such a life and such a memory, of its consequences, of the strange refractions and reflections as it passes in its many forms through the violent years of 1915 - 1960, the years when History and freedom collided and good and evil coalesced. In this turbulence the dust of the memory swirls its way between, carried on the fate of strangers and friends.
BOOK II:
1929 - 1930
"Maurice, I know the Captain is your friend... but... but be careful. I think he's a dangerous man to be too near," the Abbess said.
In 1929 Father Maurice Fairweather's life changed, he left the quiet hills of rural Scotland he loved so much and found himself on the quayside of an island port of a French concession in the South China Sea. Here the path of his life was to pass through that dust still spilling out into the world from the Brookeby house. On the islands he was to find himself surrounded by the confused echoes of good and evil and innocence and hints of the collision between past and future. And the people he meets - the Holy Sisters and the Legionnaires and the painter and Athena - each carries the sense of a battle, a philosophical and political battle that is coming. By the time he returns to Europe, that dust of 1915 on his body, in his name, personified in his companion, Father Fairweather begins to feel as though the new darkness of this old crumbling continent, the violent shadow cast by men's ideas and their will, is chasing him, that he and what he holds most dear are its prey.
"This is my work from those times," the painter said. " 'Black Monks'. My contribution to the shame, if you like.... '.... I made it to praise the Futurist spirit..." Father Fairweather stared uncomfortably at the picture. "I keep it here to remind me of... of my past errors... of the dark hair on the pretty neck."
The Captain's voice was suddenly louder. "Don't be a fool, Athena! This isn't a game any longer.... There are things beginning now that won't be stopped. It's not your time that's coming... it's mine and my kind and there'll be no compromises, it will be to the end...."
