Read Online Harvest by William Horwood - Free Book Online

else who heard it, could
guess came from a world beyond. Perhaps, even, the Universe. How the Chimes first came to be there, or where they came from, he did not know. Their origin and nature was a mystery. They never made
the same sound twice, nor even, when he looked closely, did they ever seem to be the same chimes in quite the same places. But it was hard to tell. There were too many to remember and the
ever-shifting leaves and branches of the shrubs made them impossible to count.
    ‘What are they?’ he had asked when he first came to Woolstone House in his long-ago courting days. He was a physicist at Cambridge then, Margaret studying medieval literature at
Oxford. They met at a summer dig at an Anglo-Saxon site in Essex in the early 1960s.
    ‘What are the Chimes?’ she had repeated with a smile. ‘Better never to ask, Arthur. Some things are best left free of scientific inquiry.’
    ‘But not to ask is to negate my purpose in life, which
is
inquiry,’ he had replied a little pompously.
    ‘Trust me about the Chimes,’ she had replied, reaching her hand to his then-still-shaven chin, ‘and I will never seek to stop your inquiries on anything else . . .’
    It was, in her gentle way, a marriage proposal and he had accepted it with a smile, and had trusted her, always, as he did still.
    That single restraint had given him strange energy ever since. God, the Universe and Everything had all been fair game to his research but he let the Chimes be. They and the sound they made were
a sacred space. He accepted them without further questioning, though just occasionally he dared wonder what they were.
    Such thoughts, and the music of the Chimes itself, had been a comfort in the days since Margaret’s death. They were a comfort now as, opening the conservatory doors, a tray of tea things
in his hand, he headed into the garden and what he only then realized was a lovely, warm, sunny day.
    He placed his tray of tea and biscuits in the shade of the Chimes and let their music play around him as he sat in the chair he kept there. The sharp scent of his ripening tomatoes relaxed him
and . . .
    ‘Damn phones!’ he said aloud, the earlier ringing still jangling his nerves.
    He let the Chimes claim him. Peace descended, his earlier sadness all gone, his smile returned. He drank the tea until the pot grew cold. He got up, he made his way slowly back to the house, he
pottered about, not doing much as he continued to try to find his way through the straits of sadness and the thickets of loss.
    Occasionally he glared at the phone, or scowled at it. Twice he mouthed mock insults at it, making himself smile as Margaret would have done.
    ‘It’s a damn nuisance.’
    ‘It’s communication, Arthur, and it’s necessary, so stop swearing at it.’
    Yet, as, later, he sat brooding, his curiosity had been aroused. It was unlikely that different people were calling all at the same time. No, it was the same person. But who?
    Arthur suddenly remembered something Margaret had shown him but never tried: call back.
    Hmmm.
    Maybe not.
    Maybe just check the number?
    Maybe go and see if there was a message?
    Maybe just stay right where he was.
    The phone began ringing again. He was too late to pick up but he dialled the number to find out who had called. And he saw a message had been left.
    ‘Humph!’
    Frowning and reluctant, holding the phone a little way from his ear as if in disgust, he listened to the message.
    It was from the person in the world he least wished to speak to.
    A former student, Erich Bohr was now director of one of NASA’s research agencies in an area in which Arthur was a world authority. Bohr was also a Special Adviser to the President of the
United States in aspects of astronomy and the cosmos that might have military implications.
    Arthur knew perfectly well why Bohr was calling him so insistently here in the outback of Woolstone in England; he wanted something only Arthur had: access to the