“Twenty-eight.”
Got that wrong, then. Mind you, I only saw him through one eye. Only half-wrong. “You should meet my wife, Zoë,” Silk said. “She’s an MP. Lady Shapland.” He was in the grip of a paternal friendliness, searching for something to give a young American far from home. “I’m sure she’d love it. Does the notion appeal?”
“Sure. Is she here?”
“No, but we have a country house nearby. Not exactly a castle, although I think there’s an arrow-slit somewhere…” Stop! Silk told himself. Can the bullshit. “Why not spend a weekend?”
Captain Black said he’d like that very much. “We have a small ballroom,” Silk said. “You two could jitterbug. Or is that completely passé now?”
The storm blew over and they drove back to the base. Silk returned the automatic. “Keep it in your underwear drawer,” he said, and got another blinding smile. The man was wired for light.
Stevens, the under-butler, said that he believed her ladyship was walking in the estate.
“You know she never inherited that title,” Silk said. “She never uses it in her work.”
“Yes sir. But the staff like to think of her as Lady Shapland. Life is quiet here. We make our own entertainment.”
“I see.” Silk turned away, then stopped. “What do they call me? The Unknown Warrior?”
“Nothing so disrespectful, sir, I can assure you.”
“Pity. Ask them what they think of ‘Sir Jasper’. Tell them I’ll carry a horsewhip, if it helps.”
Silk went out into the sunshine. It was early afternoon, Friday; the crew had been stood down after a week of hard training, in the simulators and in the air. He had a free weekend. The lawns had been mown in a precise diagonal stripe that flared and dipped where the ground ran into bumps and hollows. “Bloody clever,” he said aloud. “Like a flag in the breeze.” Fifty yards away a gardener stopped doing something to a rose bush and took his cap off. “Talking to myself,” Silk told him and walked in the other direction. The Grange was as bad as RAF Kindrick. You couldn’t pick your nose without hiding in the bog.
The lawns ended with a ha-ha. Beyond it sheep grazed, or stopped grazing as he walked near. “Relax,” he said. “I haven’t rogered a sheep since the day the old king died.” They bolted. “Lots of girls would jump at the chance,” he called. “Double DFC and all that.” He went through a plantation of tall conifers, cool as a church, and out into the heat again, and looked down at a lake. In the lake was a punt and in the punt was Zoë, wearing so little it seemed pointless to make the effort.
“My stars,” she said. “A handsome stranger. Have you come to give me the thrill of a lifetime?”
“I don’t know.” He sat on a log. “What if your husband turns up?”
“Oh… You needn’t worry about him. He’s at sixty thousand feet, obliterating Olenegorsk.”
Silk was startled and tried not to show it. Olenegorsk was a Soviet strategic bomber base, on the Kola peninsula, near Finland. How did she know? “Not even close,” he said, carelessly. “Olenegorsk got obliterated on Tuesday. I know it was Tuesday, because the Mess always serves spotted dick for lunch on Tuesdays. Wednesday we annihilated Murmansk Northeast. Thursday we took care of Lvov. But you know all that, don’t you?”
She turned onto her side and propped her head on her hand. She tipped her straw hat over her ear. She smiled sweetly.
“You’re shag-happy again, aren’t you?” he said. “I don’t understand it. Why punts?”
“It’s a mystery, Silko. Don’t just sit there. Use your initiative.”
“It won’t reach.” He stood up. “I’m hung like a horse, but look: it’s thirty feet at least.”
“We’re drifting apart.” It was true; a breeze had caught the punt. “Dive. Swim.”
He undressed, and waded into the lake. The cold made him gasp. “If I get castrated by a sodding great pike, you’ll be sorry,” he said. He swam, kicking up a lot of foam, and heaved himself over the end of the punt. “You’re a cold, cruel woman,” he said, “and when my balls come out of hiding I demand satisfaction. Where’s the towel?”
There was no towel. They lay together and she gave him the warmth of her body. She could feel the heavy thump of his heartbeat gradually slow to normal. “This is special,” she whispered. “This is our first time in a punt, on a Friday, near Lincoln, in July.”
“It’s June, Zoë. June thirtieth.”
“Well… restrain yourself, Silko. Take it very, very slowly. Try to last until midnight.”
“Send for beer and beef sandwiches, my sweet, and I can guarantee you a thrill a minute until three in the morning.”
She moved her head. “Would you like mustard on the beef?” she asked. “Because I think I see Stevens waving to us.”
Silk cursed and sat up. Stevens was waving a large handkerchief. “Telephone message, Mr Silk,” he shouted. “From your squadron. A Mr Renouf, he said it was extremely urgent. He said it’s a Micky Finn, sir.”
“Renouf’s the Ops Officer,” Silk told her. “Micky Finn means –”
“I know what it means,” Zoë said.
He stood, dived, swam. Stevens turned his back while Silk dressed. Underwear clung. Feet resisted socks. His hair dripped into his shirt. He looked towards Zoë and offered a shrug. She gave back the smallest wave.
“The Citroën is waiting in the drive, sir,” Stevens said.
Silk jogged to the car, which turned out to be two cars. A jeep was parked next to it. Captain Red Black was waiting. Damn damn damn, Silk said to himself. Nothing goes bloody right. Well, Stevens will have to sort it out.
“I haven’t come on the wrong day, have I?” Black asked.
“No, no. Glad to see you. Sheer bad luck, we’ve got a squadron panic, bloody nuisance but… Look, Stevens will take care of you, and Zoë’s here, so… I’ll be back soon as possible. Just…make yourself at home.”
Black smiled. What else would he do? The Citroën started at once. Exit Silk.
Twenty minutes after Silk left, the breeze blew the punt to the bank. Zoë climbed out, put on her jeans and sweater and deck shoes, and looked up to see a man. One look was enough. Lust turned a switch and seemed to release a magnetic impulse. Nothing mattered except skin on skin. Her mother’s dead voice warned: You’re acting like an animal. And lust replied: I bloody well hope so.
“You must be Lady Shapland,” Captain Black said.
“Must I? Yes, I suppose I must. Everyone says so, it must be true. And you are the promised kiss of springtime that makes the lonely winter seem long.”
He laughed, which was a good start. The bank was steep. He gave her his hand, and she scrambled up. “Silko told me to expect you,” she said. “And here you are. I suppose I ought to show you around the estate.”
“I’m at your service.”
“Yes? Well, that sounds like a very good arrangement.”
They strolled across a meadow that was thick with buttercups. Behind them, Stevens was invisible in the gloom of the plantation. He got his binoculars in focus. Zoë had taken Captain Black’s arm. Stevens made a note of that.
She said she hoped he could stay for dinner. He thanked her. He smiled, and the old earth took a couple of whirls. “Back home, people used to warn me. Said the English were, uh, reserved. But now look at us. And we just met.”
“Well, sometimes friendship doesn’t take a year. Sometimes it doesn’t take two minutes. You’re not married, are you?”