When the main party had broken up and gone, Gordon and Judith and I stayed to supper, first helping Pen clear up from what she described as ‘repaying so many dinners at one go’.
It had been a day when natural opportunities for touching people abounded, when kisses and hugs of greeting had been appropriate and could be warm, when all the world could watch and see nothing between Judith and me but an enduring and peaceful friendship: a day when I longed to have her for myself worse than ever.
Since then I’d seen her only twice, and both times when she’d come to the bank to collect Gordon before they went on to other events. On each of these times I’d managed at least five minutes with her, stiffly circumspect, Gordon’s colleague being polite until Gordon himself was ready to leave.
It wasn’t usual for wives to come to the bank: husbands normally joined them at wherever they were going. Judith said, the second time, ‘I won’t do this often. I just wanted to see you, if you were around.’
‘Always here,’ I said.
She nodded. She was looking as fresh and poised as ever, wearing a neat blue coat with pearls showing. The brown hair was glossy, the eyes bright, the soft mouth half smiling, the glamour born in her and unconscious.
‘I get... well... thirsty, sometimes,’ she said.
‘Permanent state with me,’ I said lightly.
She swallowed. ‘Just for a moment or two...’
We were standing in the entrance hall, not touching, waiting for Gordon.
‘Just to see you...’ She seemed uncertain that I understood, but I did.
‘It’s the same for me,’ I assured her. ‘I sometimes think of going to Clapham and waiting around just to see you walk down the street to the bakers. Just to see you, even for seconds.’
‘Do you really?’
‘I don’t go, though. You might send Gordon to buy the bread.’
She laughed a small laugh, a fitting size for the bank; and he came, hurrying, struggling into his overcoat. I sprang to help him and he said to her, ‘Sorry, darling, got held up on the telephone, you know how it is.’
‘I’ve been perfectly happy,’ she said, kissing him, ‘talking to Tim.’
‘Splendid. Splendid. Are we ready then?’
They went off to their evening smiling and waving and leaving me to hunger futilely for this and that.
In the office one day in November Gordon said ‘How about you coming over to lunch on Sunday? Judith was saying it’s ages since she saw you properly.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘Pen’s coming, Judith said.’
Pen, my friend; my chaperone.
‘Great,’ I said positively. ‘Lovely.’
Gordon nodded contentedly and said it was a shame we couldn’t all have a repeat of last Christmas, he and Judith had enjoyed it so much. They were going this year to his son and daughter-in-law in Edinburgh, a visit long promised; to his son by his first long-dead wife, and his grandchildren, twin boys of seven.
‘You’ll have fun,’ I said regretfully.
‘They’re noisy little brutes.’
His telephone rang, and mine also, and money-lending proceeded. I would be dutiful, I thought, and spend Christmas with my mother in Jersey, as she wanted, and we would laugh and play backgammon, and I would sadden her as usual by bringing no girl-friend, no prospective producer of little brutes.
‘Why, my love,’ she’d said to me once a few years earlier in near despair, ‘do you take out these perfectly presentable girls and never marry them?’
‘There’s always something I don’t want to spend my life with.’
‘But you do sleep with them?’
‘Yes, darling, I do.’
‘You’re too choosy.’
‘I expect so,’ I said.
‘You haven’t had a single one that’s lasted,’ she complained. ‘Everyone else’s sons manage to have live-in girl friends, sometimes going on for years even if they don’t marry, so why can’t you?’
I’d smiled at the encouragement to what would once have been called sin, and kissed her, and told her I preferred living alone, but that one day I’d find the perfect girl to love for ever; and it hadn’t even fleetingly occurred to me that when I found her she would be married to someone else.
Sunday came and I went to Clapham: bitter-sweet hours, as ever.
Over lunch I told them tentatively that I’d seen the boy who had tried to kill Calder, and they reacted as strongly as I’d expected, Gordon saying, ‘You’ve told the police, of course,’ and Judith adding ‘He’s dangerous, Tim.’
I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t think so. I hope not.’ I smiled wryly and told them all about Ricky Barnet and Indian Silk, and the pressure which had led to the try at stabbing. ‘I don’t think he’ll do anything like that again. He’s grown so far away from it already that he feels a different person.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Gordon said.
‘Fancy it being Dissdale who bought Indian Silk,’ Pen said. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Especially as he was saying he was short of cash and wanting to sell box-space at Ascot,’ Judith added.
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘But after Calder had cured the horse Dissdale sold it again pretty soon, and made a handsome profit, by what I gather.’
‘Typical Dissdale behaviour,’ Gordon said without criticism. ‘Face the risk, stake all you can afford, take the loot if you’re lucky, and get out fast.’ He smiled. ‘By Ascot I guess he’d blown the Indian Silk profit and was back to basics. It doesn’t take someone like Dissdale any longer to lose thousands than it does to make them.’
‘He must have colossal faith in Calder,’ Pen said musingly.
‘Not colossal, Pen,’ Gordon said. ‘Just twice what a knacker would pay for a carcass.’
‘Would you buy a sick-to-death horse?’ Judith asked, i mean, if Calder said buy it and I’ll cure him, would you believe it?’
Gordon looked at her fondly. ‘I’m not Dissdale, darling, and I don’t think I’d buy it.’
‘And that is precisely,’ I pointed out, ‘why Fred Barnet lost Indian Silk. He thought Calder’s powers were all rubbish and he wouldn’t lash out good money to put them to the test. But Dissdale did. Bought the horse and presumably also paid Calder... who boasted about his success on television and nearly got himself killed for it.’
‘Ironic, the whole thing,’ Pen said, and we went on discussing it desultorily over coffee.
I stayed until six, when Pen went off to her shop for a Sunday-evening stint and Gordon began to look tired, and I drove back to Hampstead in the usual post-Judith state; half-fulfilled, half-starved.
Towards the end of November, and at Oliver Knowles’ invitation, I travelled to another Sunday lunch, this time at the stud farm in Hertfordshire.
It turned out, not surprisingly, to be one of Ginnie’s days home from school, and it was she, whistling to Squibs, who set off with me through the yards.
‘Did you know we had a hundred and fifty-two mares here all at the same time, back in May?’ she said.
‘That’s a lot,’ I said, impressed.
‘They had a hundred and fourteen foals between them, and only one of the mares and three of the foals died. That’s a terrifically good record, you know.’
‘Your father’s very skilled.’
‘So is Nigel,’ she said grudgingly. ‘You have to give him his due.’
I smiled at the expression.
‘He isn’t here just now,’ she said. ‘He went off to Miami yesterday to lie in the sun.’
‘Nigel?’
She nodded. ‘He goes about this time every year. Sets him up for the winter, he says.’
‘Always Miami?’
‘Yes, he likes it.’