They had reached the road before Lucy said, ‘All right, let’s have the rest of it, whatever it is.’
‘How do you know there’s more to come?’
‘By not being blind or deaf. Come on, Uncle — shoot.’
‘Very well, here goes. One. Colonel Orion Procope, MC. When I told you I’d never heard of anybody called that, I was speaking the truth. But I’d only to catch sight of him to be pretty certain I’d seen him before, and in some kind of sinister context. Nothing more specific than that till this morning when I woke up remembering who he was and where I’d seen him. I still couldn’t remember his original name, and I knew it wasn’t him in the flesh I’d seen, just a few photographs, which did nevertheless belong to a sinister context.
‘Two. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Do they mean anything to you, Lucy?’
‘Not much. Weren’t they Communist spies, years ago?’
‘Eleven years ago to be precise, in 1951. At any rate, that was when they were exposed and fled to Russia, where they still are.’
‘Oh yes, our security coppers made a frightful boob.’
‘Not really. It was the weekend and they couldn’t get hold of anyone to sign the warrants for the arrests. Respect for the law.’
‘Something pretty boobish about that.’
‘I agree it could never have happened in Russia.’
‘M’m. I accept the rebuke,’ said Lucy. ‘But how did you know about the warrants?’
‘It’s not a secret. But the answer to your question takes us to Three. Edward Saxton, D. Litt. Where’s this pub I’ve heard so much about?’
‘You can see it from here.’
‘So I can. Before we get there, let me just say that about that time I did a bit of work for MI5, to be known henceforth between you and me simply as the company, if you follow me. I’m not in your league as an unfolder of mysteries, but I won’t tell you the rest till I’ve a glass of beer in my hand.’
It was cool, dark and quiet in the saloon bar. Edward and Lucy took their drinks over to a window that gave a view of an unfrequented stretch of road and a green hedgerow with woodland beyond it, all with their colours sharpened by the mild sun. No petrol fumes lingered, only country scents. Edward sipped beer appreciatively.
‘One can get tired of drinking wine day in and day out,’ he said. ‘Though not very soon, I suppose. Now, let me go on briefly. Years ago I helped the company a bit over the matter of defective patriotism among former Cambridge men — you may remember that both Burgess and Maclean had been undergraduates at that university. There were others never or not yet brought to book, half a dozen of them, among whom was the man now known as Colonel Procope, who escaped prosecution for lack of evidence. Nothing could have been proved either against his close friend, perhaps more than close friend, whom I knew as Green, but evidently Green was up to something our side didn’t know about, because he cleared off to Russia too, just three weeks after good old Guy and Donald. Green read English at Cambridge, which isn’t exactly incompatible with an interest in literature, though I agree—’
‘I take it Green is still in Russia. But if he gets the colonel’s message he’ll soon be on his way back.’
Edward frowned and looked worried. ‘I wish we could do better, but I don’t think we can at the moment.’
‘So what’s our next step?’
‘I don’t honestly see we’ve got one. What we have is surmise, and nobody seems to be even contemplating anything illegal, I’m sorry to say. It would be interesting to have a tap put on Procope’s telephone, but also out of the question. All we can do is keep our eye on the paper.’
‘Would it help if we knew how he got them to print that stuff?’
‘I’ll have a word with the company. About that and other matters.’
Lucy looked at Edward, who held her gaze. She said, ‘I’d never have taken you for a…’
‘Careful.’
‘… tradesman as well as an expert on Gray.’
‘Tradesmen come in all sizes and shapes. What time is lunch?’
As they were on their way out, the landlord nodded politely to Edward and said to Lucy, ‘How’s my old friend Boris?’
‘Oh, he’s fine, thank you, Mr Littlejohn.’
‘Have you taken him on a proper excursion yet?’
‘I thought next week, perhaps.’
‘He’d enjoy it,’ said the landlord, who with his neat suit and generally scrubbed appearance looked like the citified person he was not. Laying a polished horseshoe on the counter, he said, ‘Anyway, here’s a present for him.’
‘Oh, he’ll absolutely love that. I’ll nail it on his stable door.’
II
Revision, especially of the Metaphysicals, and bad weather combined to put off the day on which Lucy ceremonially nailed the horseshoe to Boris’s stable door. But when that day came it was so clear and bright and the forecast so promising that she planned a proper excursion for him and her on the morrow.
She was up at six and, with her old tweed coat over her nightdress, fetched the horse to his stable facing the kitchen and put chaff and corn in the manger for him. A heavy dew sparkled on the grass, the sky was a slightly veiled but cloudless blue, and there was the kind of hush everywhere that she had noticed before at the start of a fine hot day. She got more or less ready before cooking herself a substantial breakfast of fried egg, bacon and tomatoes, no more than sensible before a day’s riding. By this time the paper had arrived and she glanced at it as she ate.
Her eye was caught by a short item saying that the supposed additional stanzas of Gray’s Elegy, the discovery of which was recently reported, had been shown to be a modern forgery. The finder’s request for continued anonymity was being respected. This information revived Lucy’s almost-lapsed interest in the matter, and even brought her a mental picture of Colonel Orion Procope being completely indifferent to the news, but she dismissed it and him from her mind in the course of making sandwiches with fresh Cheddar, chopped onion and plenty of sweet pickle. This done, she prepared a thermos of tea, leaving enough tea over to take up to her parents’ bedroom with some arrowroot biscuits she privately considered dead boring.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck eight; time for grooming and saddling up. Lucy’s saddle, a birthday gift, was of army pattern, which meant among other things that it had plenty of hooks on which to hang a haversack with her provisions, a nosebag with Boris’s stuff, her black fisherman’s sweater and a blanket of his. She was ready, and of course he knew it at once and made for the outdoors. A minute later she was walking him down towards the road, quite a striking figure in her twill jodhpurs and man’s shirt, hair drawn back under a dark-green scarf, with the upright posture Edward had noticed.
As the sunshine grew stronger, the two of them were making good time, mostly over grassland or greenwood floor, so good that Lucy began to think she would fulfil her hope of reaching the coast before turnabout time and showing Boris the sea, perhaps taking him for a gallop along the sands if the tide was right, for a paddle if not. She had been talking on and off to him since they started, and when she mentioned these possibilities he turned his ears back to listen, but on being asked how he felt about them he simply took no further interest.
From earlier outings with Virginia, Lucy was confident that somewhere along their line of march she would find a good place for a rest, and sure enough not long after one o’clock they came to a shady spot with a patch of turf next to the road and a culvert over a stream, only a little one but enough to water Boris and wash the dust off his feet. Then, having loosened his girth, she put on his nosebag and he munched contentedly, swishing his tail against flies. She ate sandwiches, drank half her tea and read a chapter of her paperback copy of Dr Zhivago. Before they moved on she got into the saddle and let him crop grass for a few minutes.