I opened my window and yelled down to her.
‘Hi,’ she shouted back. ‘Can I come in?’
‘I’ll be straight down.’
I leapt down the stairs and opened the door for her.
I said, kissing her cheek, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come to hop into bed?’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Come in for a drink, then.’
She took the less dramatic invitation for granted and followed me into the house. The state of the sitting-room opened her mouth.
‘Wow,’ she said breathlessly. ‘All of Pixhill’s heard about this, but I never... I mean...’
‘The thoroughness,’ I said dryly, ‘is impressive.’
‘Oh, Freddie!’ She sounded truly sympathetic and gave me a hug. Too chaste, however. ‘And your super car...’ She bent down and picked up one of the chopped photographs, sharp pieces of glass falling in a cascade from an old soaring flight over The Chair fence in the Grand National. ‘How can you bear it?’
‘Without tears,’ I said.
She gave me a swift sideways glance. ‘You’re as tough as ever.’
What was tough, I wondered. Unfeeling? Yet I felt.
‘I was talking to the computer boy,’ Maudie said. ‘He described all this. He said if anyone had done this to him, he’d have taken an axe to him himself.’
‘Mm. But you have to axe the right person and he didn’t sign his name.’ Something flickered deep in my brain. Something about signing names. Flickered and vanished. ‘What will you drink?’ I asked. ‘There’s champagne in the fridge.’
‘If you really feel like it,’ she said doubtfully.
‘Why not?’
So we went into the kitchen and sat at the table there and drank from my best glasses, all unshattered inside a kitchen cupboard.
‘Michael was furious about our computer. That young genius who’s fixed it for us told us we hadn’t had the virus lurking inside there for more than a month. Betsy started using new floppy disks as back-up disks a month ago. The virus was on those, but it wasn’t on the back-up disks she’d used earlier. So the wizard says we didn’t have the virus then.’
I thought about it. ‘So Betsy hasn’t used the old back-up disks recently?’
‘No. No need. I mean, you only use back-ups if the computer itself goes haywire, don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The wizard says there are hundreds of these wretched viruses about. Michael’s on the point of returning to parchment and quill pens.’
‘Can’t blame him.’
‘Betsy says your Isobel’s told her they didn’t make back-ups, even, in your office.’
‘One lives and learns.’
‘But what will you do?’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘start on the parchment and quills, I suppose. I mean, all the records and figures in the computer are still around on paper. Rose kept paper copies of the bills she sent out. We’ve all the invoices for supplies coming in. The drivers’ log books still exist.’
‘Yes, but what a mammoth task.’
‘Infuriating,’ I agreed.
‘Why aren’t you snarling and gnashing your teeth?’
‘Doesn’t do any good.’
She sighed. ‘You’re amazing, Freddie, you really are.’
‘But I don’t get what I want.’
She knew what I meant. She almost blushed, then said, ‘No, you don’t,’ much too firmly, and drank her champagne. ‘I came to see if I could help you in any way,’ she went on, and before I could say anything added quickly, ‘and not in that way, don’t be a fool.’
‘Pity.’
‘Michael said to ask you to lunch on Sunday.’
‘Tell Michael yes, thank you.’
Tell Michael, Sandy had said, that his daughter, Tessa, had criminal potential. I looked at Maudie’s high cheekbones, at her fair eyebrows, her delicious mouth; looked at her good sense and generous spirit. How could one warn such a mother or such a father to look out for trouble in their daughter? Maybe a critical aunt could have managed it, but I certainly could not.
I had no right to do it and no inclination, and moreover I wouldn’t be believed and would lose a welcome friendship. I might privately suspect that Sandy was on target, but that was what the thought would remain; private. I could, on the other hand, alert Maudie to less nebulous dangers.
I said tentatively, ‘Have you come across one of my drivers called Nigel?’
The fair eyebrows rose. ‘We nearly always have Lewis.’
‘Yes. But... um... Nigel’s a sexy hunk, my secretaries say, and... um...’
‘Get on with it,’ Maudie urged.
‘I just thought... you might not want him seeing too much of Tessa.’
‘Tessa! Oh God. I thought it was Lewis she was keen on. She’s always whispering with Lewis.’
‘The pub landlord mentioned to me that Nigel was buying Cokes there for Tessa and Ed one evening. I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, but perhaps you should know.’
‘Stupid kids!’ She seemed basically unworried. ‘Coca-Cola in a pub!’ She laughed. ‘In my young days it was “my needle or yours” that had parents hopping.’
I refilled her glass. She frowned, not at the champagne, but at a sudden memory, and thoughtfully said, ‘You sent that Nigel to us last week to take Jericho Rich’s damned horses off to Newmarket, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Friday. But I won’t allocate him to your work any more.’
‘Betsy told me... He came too early, or something, and Tessa climbed into his cab and said she wanted to go with him, but Michael saw her and said she wasn’t to go.’
That version of what had happened sounded much more likely than the one I’d heard from Isobel, that Nigel had virtuously said he wouldn’t take her because of my ban on hitchhikers.
Maudie said, ‘Michael told me he couldn’t imagine why she wanted to go with Jericho’s horses when she said she detested the man, but if it was Nigel she wanted to go with, it makes more sense. Do you really think we might have a problem there?’
‘He’s unmarried and has powerful pheromones, I’m told.’
‘What a way of putting it.’ She was amused. ‘I’ll keep an eye on things. And thanks.’
‘I don’t like to tell tales.’
‘Tessa can be a bit of a handful, sometimes.’ She looked mildly rueful but forgiving. ‘Seventeen’s a rebellious age, I suppose.’
‘Did you rebel?’ I asked.
‘No, actually. I don’t think so. Did you?’
‘I was too busy riding.’
‘And here you still are, in your father’s house.’ She mocked me gently. ‘You never even left home.’
‘Home is wherever I am,’ I said.
‘Wow. How’s that for utter security!’
‘You wouldn’t care to leave Michael, I suppose?’
‘And four children? And an integrated life? And I’m older than you, anyway.’
The thing that made the game most worth playing, I thought, was the certainty that I wouldn’t win it. She finished her drink happily, my desire for her as pleasurable an intoxification as the bubbles. Casual consummation would have spoiled the future and she was too nice to allow it. She put down her glass and stood up, smiling.
‘If you need anything, let us know.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘See you on Sunday, then.’
I walked out to her car with her and got an affectionate, passionless kiss and a carefree wave as she turned her car and departed. Celibacy, I thought, returning to the house, could go on for too long, and too long, at that point, was a year. The older I grew, the more I saw consequences in advance and the more I cared, like Maudie, about not doing damage for the sake of a passing pleasure. I looked back over the years with horror, sometimes. After I’d lost Susan Palmerstone, I’d drifted in and out of several relationships without understanding that I might have awoken much deeper feelings than I felt myself; and I’d dodged a thrown plate or two and laughed about it. How dreadfully long it had taken me to stop grazing. All the same... I sighed.