But Willy wouldn ‘t—
He shook his head at another approaching sign-post— Branding 4—
he didn’t want to go to Branding—
Or Willy might not be, anyway—
Then he caught sight of the place-names on the other arm of the sign-post: Upper Horley 5… Steeple Horley 6½!
And, by God, Steeple Horley was Audley, David Longsdon— and he’d hardly even thought of Audley since he’d deposited the wretched Harvey on that damp station forecourt, protesting only half-heartedly that this wasn’t what Mr Jaggard had intended. But at that moment it had been exactly what Sir Thomas Arkenshaw had intended, Tom had thought with obstinate satisfaction at the time. Because he wasn’t going to turn up at Steeple Horley, to beard Audley in his den, with a driver who quite obviously wasn’t a driver (in both conversation and driving-ability) because the man drove like a spavined cart-horse but talked too casually about old treacheries, and dropped old names with them, as though he knew it all, had seen and met them all.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But that was where it had all gone wrong nevertheless, as he’d parked on the forecourt, with Garrod Harvey still talking—
There had been a girl—a very pretty girl, with a tip-tilted nose and breasts to match, such as he loved, and all the confidence of all three—there had been this girl about to cross the station forecourt entrance— God damn! he had stopped the car automatically, just to look at her… but, when he had looked at her, he had thought of Willy instead!
Only six-and-a-half miles—and he was still thinking of Willy. And, what was worse—what was much, much worse—he wasn’t thinking about the next time, if there was a next time: he was cursing Jaggard—Jaggard, and Ganod Harvey, and Audley, and bloody Panin—and wondering what Willy would do now, with the rest of her weekend—now this evening, now tonight and now tomorrow —
But this was foolishness—mere schoolboy foolishness—thinking about… not Audley, not Panin… but what Willy might be doing; tonight—
But she had said ‘ Goodbye, my love—take good care!’
The road curved more sharply than he had expected, and there was a great high downland ridge swinging away from him as he twisted the wheel, then swinging back into view, stark against the confused sky, which didn’t know whether it was winter or spring.
How much emphasis had she put on that? Had it been no more than a casual goodbye—a warning not to drive too fast? And why should that matter to her, anyway? Or to him?
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Even the bloody sun had come out now, suddenly hot through the windscreen, making him blink—when it had finally pissed down out of dark clouds over Ranulf’s bloody little ditches, and she had stood there watching him leave her in the lurch, and—
Oh shit! thought Tom. He had forgotten to pay the bloody hotel bill!
And there was another sign-post: Upper Horley that way, and Steeple Horley—
He had left her in the lurch, and soaking wet, and with the bill. And there was that naval attaché, clean-cut and crew cut, and a good Anglo-Saxon Protestant out of Annapolis and Polaris—or Trident
— whose father was a distinguished professor of something at Harvard, or Yale—
Of Scythian Archaeology, maybe—?
Tom gritted his teeth and jammed his foot on the brake simultaneously as he realized he was over-shooting the sign he’d been looking for, which was half-hidden in an overgrown tangle of hedge.
The car bucked and skidded slightly under him, on the loose gravel of a road which was only half-a-car’s width wider than a track. But mercifully there was nothing behind him to slam into his backside, only a distant cyclist he’d overtaken half-a-mile earlier. But… it had said The Old House, hadn’t it—?
It was very quiet, as much in the middle of a sudden sun-lit nowhere as he had been so happily this morning with Willy, under those rain-clouds. “Rain at first, followed by bright periods Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State spreading from the West” , the weather man had said on the radio this morning. But the truth was that ‘bright periods’ were all in the mind, not the sky.
He engaged reverse gear savagely, scattering the gravel again for an instant before remembering the lone cylist and jamming on the brakes again in panic, gripping the wheel convulsively as he squinted into the mirror.
But there was no cyclist in view now—
Tom frowned into the mirror, first relieved, then angry with himself for his carelessness, and then mystified, in quick succession. Where had the cyclist gone—?
He lowered the driver’s window and poked his head out of the car.
The high curve of the downland was still there, sharp against an outrageously blue sky—the last rearguard of this morning’s clouds were far to the east now. But… if this was Steeple Horley, there was bugger-all to it—not a roof in sight, let alone a steeple.
Then he saw the cyclist, watching from a gap in the hedgerow on the other side of the road, fifteen yards back, peering from behind a blackthorn tangle and a large pair of spectacles.
‘Is this—’ As Tom took a second breath to pitch his voice louder he couldn’t honestly blame the cyclist for taking cover from such a lunatic driver ‘—is this Steeple Horley?’ Manners! ‘Could you tell me, please?’
The head vanished instantly, but the rear wheel of the bicycle came into view just below where it had been, as though the cyclist—it had been a boy in an American baseball cap—was readying Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State himself for instant flight.
‘Steeple Horley, is this?’ Tom addressed the rear wheel.
The head appeared again, hesitantly and partially, and then nodded.
‘Yes.’
About ten years old, estimated Tom. And, as small boys must not talk to strange men, needing encouragement. ‘Where’s the steeple?’
The boy drew breath. ‘Sixteen-thirty—it fell down then.’
And ‘sixteen-thirty’ would be in the reign of King Charles the First, not at 4.30 yesterday afternoon: the spectacles somehow suggested precocious erudition to Tom, and encouraged him towards precision. ‘I’m looking for “The Old House”—where Dr David Audley lives—?’
The boy stared at him for a moment. ‘Why?’
That wasn’t at all what Tom had expected. But a straight question required a straight answer. ‘I have an appointment with him. He’s expecting me.’
‘Oh!’ The boy rose up on one tip-toe to apply his other foot to its pedal. ‘In that case… follow me! ’ Then he vanished again.
Tom backed the car obediently, until he reached the hedgerow gap again, and saw that he had been right the first time: the overgrown legend or the sign did indeed indicate that The Old House lay somewhere down the equally overgrown lane down which the boy had invited him. But of the boy himself, and the bicycle, there was no sign.
Twenty yards down the lane there was a gap in the great tangle of thorn and blackberry bushes on his left, revealing a tiny brick Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State cottage surrounded by apple-trees and an immaculately-tilled vegetable garden. But there was no boy and no bicycle waiting for him at its picket-gate. And there wasn’t any garage, or even a break in the brief ramshackle fence, and the lane continued beyond the gap; so did Audley have a son, then—and a wife—in this Old House of his? Harvey hadn’t said—Harvey must simply have taken it for granted that he knew, or that it was of no importance; or maybe Harvey had left him to stew in his own juice, on being dismissed; but he hadn’t thought to ask, anyway.