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She’d walked a little ahead. The meal had lacked conversation, no mention of the of the film we’d seen that evening, but its background music lingered. The sadness of ‘Watership Down,’ played through my head. “Bright eyes, burning in like fire. How could eyes that burned so brightly suddenly burn so dim, bright eyes?” Perhaps the tune set my mood. I had caught up with her and put an arm round her waist. “I’m sorry,” was the best I could muster. Across the lake in the bitter sharp night of an Alpine winter the great giants had their peaks under snow and slept on the lake. She followed my eyes and guessed my meaning. We clung, sobbing, and then, without a kiss, we walked in opposite directions.
    I phoned a line which rang and rang.
    My father, the chief analytical chemist with Imperial Tobacco in New York, and a forty a day man, died relatively young with lung cancer. Mother, as a beautiful young widow, stayed on in America and eventually married again. For all I knew there could be half brothers and sisters somewhere in the States. Although she was a first generation American, the mark of Highland blood showed in her strong, handsome face. I recall her expressive playing of the old Scots fiddle tunes. To childish amazement I’d watch a tear trickling down her cheek. Possibly because I was still quite young when they packed me off to boarding school, neither of my parents featured greatly in my affections. Was she still alive? I didn’t know.
    A week before Dad’s death she’d flown me out from school to see him. I stood beside his hospital cot. Sunlight through the window fell across a crumpled, yellow faced old man, all that remained of the virile father I’d known. I see yet the form of his face; broad, high forehead, a hooked nose, predacious in profile, but most strikingly, the clear blue eyes. That afternoon they shone out of his gaunt features with a peculiar light which penetrated through and beyond me.
    We had never been familiar but he caught my hand and the smile which always lurked behind his eyes appeared as he spoke, “All my life has been a search, a quest for that ultimate equation, the key to unlocking a mathematical pattern which is the pure and glorious template of infinity. Understand infinity and you strike the anvil upon which every force and particle of this universe and all other universes, past and future are forged. It’s the music of unending beauty.”
    His voice became a cough; he turned aside for some minutes, until, with a spark of the vigour which I remembered from childhood, he said, “I never found that equation. If you ever do, guard it with your life. It’s the key which unlocks the secret haven of eternal consciousness.”
    I looked out of his window. Sunlight played on the leaves of the aspen trees. They shivered in a breeze which highlighted their paleness. And in their yellow fluttering, the sun danced.
    He stirred a little, “Hector boy, I lie here dying. Tonight, tomorrow? The music is soaring, filling my head, taking away fear. I’m young again. There is no void, only these soaring notes of beauty. I hear them, as though from the heart of all creation. There is no death. Believe in beauty. Its melody is the key to eternity.”
    I was twelve. Those were his last words.
    The blue eyes remained staring.
    He was reaching for that key.

CHAPTER FIVE
Escape
    How long had I been in this single ward? Had I been identified? So far I hadn’t been asked to put any details on a form. That struck me as strange. No visitors, but then there was nobody I knew in London. Would my colleagues trace me? Unease continually affected my thinking. Never mind the contents of my briefcase. If the damn thing still existed, maybe I’d shown my contempt for the politicians too openly. So far no police to see me, but I was getting increasingly alarmed. Concern over being detained erupted. God, I must get out of this place.
    Weakness kept me chained. The horror of the tunnel burst again