What was he talking about now? She still had her smile pasted on her face,but although it suddenly felt out-of-place she didn't know what to do with it. 'Your age?'
'That's right. I thought I heard a car - he did telephone me, and he did say he might have someone with him. And there you were… and there he wasn't… But also I come from a generation which does have difficulty in acclimatizing itself to the fullest implications of the sexual equality revolution. Which is why I jumped to that most unfortunate - indeed, unpardonable - quite unpardonable - assumption.' He continued not to smile. 'Simply, when he said why he was coming, I expected one of his wary young men. You must be acquainted with the type. Perfectly respectful, even respectable. But always looking around, not to say over their shoulders, but noting everything just in case. Which I know, because for a brief space of time at the end of the war, I had something to do with their breed. Or different breeds. I used to divide them into foxes, ferrets and hounds, for convenience's sake: different animal for different job… Is it the hen-house you want raiding?
was what I used to say to myself. Or something fierce to put down a hole? Or is it a hunt, and the quarry has to be tracked and driven out of a field of kale or a briar-patch?' He studied her for a moment. 'But you don't look like any of those, my dear young lady. In fact… in fact, if I didn't know better -or worse, perhaps… I really don't quite know what I'd make of you.' The scrutiny continued, like the non-smile. 'But no doubt that is part of your stock-in-trade.'
Elizabeth became aware that she was still smiling. But there was an undoubted nuance of disapproval in what he had said, though of an entirely different sort from that in the look he had given her when he had taken her for the plainest playmate of all time. So perhaps she ought not to be smiling.
But the devil with that! He had served her with misunderstanding, and then good manners and the story of his daisy lawn, and with hock-and-Seltzer to come, only to give him time to study her at leisure. So she owed him nothing yet.
'Is that your complete apology? Or is there more?' She worked to improve her smile. 'I am a vixen? Or - I don't know the term for a female ferret.' He looked a bit like an elderly ferret himself, thin where he had once been wiry, but still sharp enough to catch the unwary. 'But with hounds I suppose the word is "bitch"?'
He sat up, and the canvas stretched dangerously under him. 'My dear Miss Loftus!' He blinked at her, pretending embarrassment. And then looked at her sidelong. 'Loftus…
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Loftus… Now, where did I read that name? Unusual name - ' He compressed his lips and stared at his daisies. ' Loftus?'
Audley appeared with a clink of glass and a somewhat disgruntled expression on his face.
In turn, he handed them tall, cool glasses, and took one look at the third deck-chair and decided against it, ending up standing, looking down on them as from a great height.
Elizabeth formed the impression that, after his initial pleasure in returning to a man whom he loved (and who returned that sentiment with interest), he was no longer quite so sure it had been a good idea.
He settled on her finally. 'Well, What have you told him?'
The old man sat back. 'Dear boy, she has hardly got a word in edgeways yet.'
'I can well believe that.' Audley buried his face in his beer.
'Loftus - of coursel' Mr Willis turned back to her, his hock-and-Seltzer still untasted. ' The Times obituary column! My favourite reading!' He beamed his delight at her. 'When you get to my age you'll be just the same, you know.'
'He knows he's still alive if he isn't in it,' murmured Audley.
'That's not too far from the truth.' Mr Willis nodded happily at Elizabeth. 'In your fifties you worry when your contemporaries die. In your sixties and seventies you shake your head sadly, for the way of all flesh. But after that it's a cause for secret congratulation -I am still here, in spite of everything, you say to yourself… But - Loftus - '
'Elizabeth Loftus. Miss Loftus to you, Willy,' said Audley.
'No, no - Captain Loftus, RN - and with that rare piece of purple ribbon, and that £10 per annum pension for valour - ?' It wasn't really a question, because he had read her face.
'Fought those German E-boats in the Channel - invalided out, and wrote history books?'
His expression amended itself hurriedly. 'Two or three years ago… he died?'
Three-and-a-half, corrected Elizabeth. Or three million? 'He was my father, Mr Willis.'
'There now!' He didn't try to disguise his old man's satisfaction with an undiminished memory. 'It must be a great comfort to you, Miss Loftus - to have that cross, with its ribbon.'
'She gave it to the Navy, Willy,' said Audley, almost casually.
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Audley knew that score, thought Elizabeth. But he didn't know it from her, because she had never added it up for him. And he wasn't flaunting his knowledge now to let her draw that conclusion, but only to put this difficult old man in his place. All she had to do was to hammer the point home.
'It wasn't my medal, Mr Willis,' she said meekly.
'Ah…' He nodded, equally meekly. But that was how it always was in the presence of Father's VC: everyone was a push-over in its shadow, somehow. And the fact that she hadn't sold it to the highest bidder - with the fact that she neither wanted to keep it, nor needed to sell it, carefully hidden - was always to her credit. So now she must cash in on that.
'But we're here on business, I'm afraid, Mr Willis. Of which my father would have approved.'
'Ah…' Something in him hardened unexpectedly. 'But… you mustn't go on addressing me as "Mr Willis", my dear. For then I must continue addressing you as "Miss Loftus".' He sipped his hock-and-Seltzer. 'I'm only "Mr Willis" to boys and tradesmen - and then only to my face. Behind my back… well, in pre-war days I was always "Willy" - sometimes even
"Little Willy", rudely.' He nodded. 'But in the war I became "Wimpy" for "J. Wellington Wimpy", because my brother-officers considered me somewhat loquacious. Which, compared with them, I was - since all of them were inarticulate, and some of them never spoke at all, so far as I remember. Except to order drinks from the mess waiters, anyway.'
He smiled at her again at last. 'But David here belongs to the earlier period. So, for convenience's sake, if you joined him… then I might perhaps address you less formally?
As "Elizabeth" - greatly daring?'
'Greatly daring?' Audley echoed him derisively. 'Huh! You can call her anything you like, just so you stop talking for a moment and start listening, Willy. Because we have some urgent questions for you.'
The old man looked up at Audley with a strangely mixed expression on his face, of affectionate distaste. 'Dear boy, I know - '
'I'm sure you don't - '
'Or I can guess well enough, more's the pity, from what you let slip on the telephone.'
Obstinacy joined the expression. 'Knowing what I know about you… and about other matters.'
'Other matters being Haddock Thomas.'
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'Other matters being other matters.' Mr Willis came back to Elizabeth. 'The decline of the nickname is a phenomenon I have observed in recent years. When I was a boy they were common. And in the army every "White" was "Chalky", or sometimes "Blanco", and
"Millers" were almost invariably "Dusty". But now it does not seem to be the rule - I wonder why?'
'Haddock Thomas, Willy,' said Audley.
' Doctor Thomas to you, dear boy. And to me,' corrected Mr Willis. 'Dr Thomas - yes? Or no, as the case may be?'