She sat up straight, pulling free of my arm.
‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘Come back to the flat.’
‘I can’t. I can’t any more,’ I said.
She stood up and went over to the window and looked out. Minutes passed. Then she turned round and perched on the window-sill with her back to the light, and I couldn’t see her expression.
‘It’s an ultimatum, isn’t it?’ she said shakily. ‘Either I marry you or you clear out altogether? No more having it both ways like you’ve given me this past week...’
‘It isn’t a deliberate ultimatum,’ I protested. ‘But we can’t go on like this for ever. At least, I can’t. Not if you know beyond any doubt that you’ll never change your mind.’
‘Before last week-end there wasn’t any problem as far as I was concerned,’ she said. ‘You were just something I couldn’t have... like oysters, which give me indigestion... something nice, but out of bounds. And now’ — she tried to laugh — ‘now it’s as if I’ve developed a craving for oysters. And I’m in a thorough muddle.’
‘Come here,’ I said persuasively. She walked across and sat down again beside me on the hay bale. I took her hand.
‘If we weren’t cousins, would you marry me?’ I held my breath.
‘Yes,’ she said simply. No reservations, no hesitation any more.
I turned towards her and put my hands on the sides of her head and tilted her face up. There wasn’t any panic this time. I kissed her; gently, and with love.
Her lips trembled, but there was no rigidity in her body, no blind instinctive retreat as there had been a week ago. I thought, if seven days can work such a change, what could happen in seven weeks?
I hadn’t lost after all. The chill in my stomach melted away. I sat back on the hay bale, holding Joanna’s hand again and smiling at her.
‘It will be all right,’ I said. ‘Our being cousins won’t worry you in a little while.’
She looked at me wonderingly for a moment and then unexpectedly her lips twitched at the corners. ‘I believe you,’ she said, ‘because I’ve never known anyone more determined in all my life. You’ve always been like it. You don’t care what trouble you put yourself to to get what you want... like riding in the race last Saturday, and fixing up this fly-trap of a cottage, and living with me how you have this week... so my instinct against blood relatives marrying, wherever it is seated, will have to start getting used to the idea that it is wrong, I suppose, otherwise I’ll find myself being dragged by you along to Claudius Mellitt to be psychoanalysed or brain-washed, or something. I will try,’ she finished more seriously, ‘not to keep you waiting very long.’
‘In that case,’ I said, matching her lightheartedness, ‘I’ll go on sleeping on your sofa as often as possible, so as to be handy when the breakthrough occurs.’
She laughed without strain. ‘Starting tonight?’ she asked.
‘I guess so,’ I said smiling. ‘I never did like my digs much.’
‘Ouch,’ she said.
‘But I’ll have to come back here on Sunday evening in any case. As James has given me my job back, the least I can do is show some interest in his horses.’
We went on sitting on the hay bale, talking calmly as if nothing had happened; and nothing had, I thought, except a miracle that one could reliably build a future on, the miracle that Joanna’s hand now lay intimately curled in mine without her wanting to remove it.
The minutes ticked away towards eleven o’clock.
‘Suppose he doesn’t come?’ she said.
‘He will.’
‘I almost hope he doesn’t,’ she said. ‘Those letters would be enough by themselves.’
‘You won’t forget to post them when you get back, will you?’ I said.
‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘but I wish you’d let me stay.’
I shook my head. We sat on, watching the gate. The minute hand crept round to twelve on my watch, and passed it.
‘He’s late,’ she said.
Five past eleven. Ten past eleven.
‘He isn’t coming,’ Joanna murmured.
‘He’ll come,’ I said.
‘Perhaps he got suspicious and checked up and found there wasn’t any Mrs. Doris Jones living in the Keeper’s Cottage,’ she said.
‘There shouldn’t be any reason for him to be suspicious.’ I pointed out. ‘He clearly didn’t know at the end of that television interview with me last Saturday that I was on to him, and nothing I’ve done since should have got back to him, and James and Tick-Tock promised to say nothing to anyone about the doped sugar. As far as Kemp-Lore should know, he is unsuspected and undiscovered. If he feels as secure as I am sure he does, he’ll never pass up an opportunity to learn about something as damaging as pep pills... so he’ll come.’
A quarter past eleven.
He had to come. I found that all my muscles were tense, as if I were listening for him with my whole body, not only my ears. I flexed my toes inside my shoes and tried to relax. There were traffic jams, breakdowns, detours, any number of things to delay him. It was a long way, and he could easily have misjudged the time it would take.
Twenty past eleven.
Joanna sighed and stirred. Neither of us spoke for ten minutes. At eleven-thirty, she said again, ‘He isn’t coming.’
I didn’t answer.
At eleven-thirty-three, the sleek cream nose of an Aston Martin slid to a stop at the gate and Maurice Kemp-Lore stepped out. He stretched himself, stiff from driving, and glanced over the front of the cottage. He wore a beautifully cut hacking jacket and cavalry twill trousers, and there was poise and grace in his every movement.
‘Glory, he’s handsome,’ breathed Joanna in my ear. ‘What features! What colouring! Television doesn’t do him justice. It’s difficult to think of anyone who looks so young and noble doing any harm.’
‘He’s thirty-three,’ I said, ‘and Nero died at twenty-nine.’
‘You know the oddest things,’ she murmured.
Kemp-Lore unlatched the garden gate, walked up the short path and banged the knocker on the front door.
We stood up. Joanna picked a piece of hay off her skirt, swallowed, gave me a half-smile, and walked unhurriedly into the hall. I followed her and stood against the wall where I would be hidden when the front door opened.
Joanna licked her lips.
‘Go on,’ I whispered.
She put her hand on the latch, and opened the door.
‘Mrs. Jones?’ the honey voice said. ‘I’m so sorry I’m a little late.’
‘Won’t you come in, Mr. Kemp-Lore,’ said Joanna in her cockney suburban accent. ‘It’s ever so nice to see you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said stepping over the threshold. Joanna took two paces backwards and Kemp-Lore followed her into the hall.
Slamming the front door with my foot, I seized Kemp-Lore from behind by both elbows, pulling them backwards and forcing him forwards at the same time. Joanna opened the door of Buttonhook’s room and I brought my foot up into the small of Kemp-Lore’s back and gave him an almighty push. He staggered forwards through the door and I had a glimpse of him sprawling face downwards in the straw before I had the door shut again and the padlock firmly clicking into place.
‘That was easy enough,’ I said with satisfaction. ‘Thanks to your help.’
Kemp-Lore began kicking the door.
‘Let me out,’ he shouted. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘He didn’t see you,’ said Joanna softly.
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘I think we’ll leave him in ignorance while I take you into Newbury to catch the train.’
‘Is it safe?’ she said, looking worried.
‘I won’t be away long,’ I promised. ‘Come on.’
Before driving her down to Newbury I moved Kemp-Lore’s car along and off the lane until it was hidden in the bushes. The last thing I wanted was some stray inquisitive local inhabitant going along to the cottage to investigate. Then I took Joanna to the station and drove straight back again, a matter of twenty minutes each way, and parked in the bushes as usual.