‘Dear Viola, don’t worry. It’s only some game that Charles is playing, and I go along with him.’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘He warned me. He said that you were both going to lay a smoke screen and that I was on no account to say a single word in your defence the whole weekend. But it wasn’t true, was it? When I saw your face, when Charles said that about your poor mother, I knew you didn’t know what he was going to do.’
‘Was it so obvious?’ I said ruefully. ‘Well, I promise you I haven’t quarrelled with him. Will you just be a dear and do exactly as he asked? Don’t say a single word to any of them about… um… the more successful bits of my life history, or about my job at the agency, or about the shooting. You didn’t today, did you, on the trip to Oxford?’ I finished with some anxiety.
She shook her head. ‘I thought I’d talk to you first.’
‘Good,’ I grinned.
‘Oh dear,’ she cried, partly in relief, partly in puzzlement. ‘Well in that case, Charles asked me to pop in and make sure you would come down to dinner.’
‘Oh he did, did he? Afraid I’ll throw a boot at him, I should think, after sending me out of the room like that. Well, you just pop back to Charles and say that I’ll come down to dinner on condition that he organises some chemmy afterwards, and includes me out.’
Dinner was a bit of a triaclass="underline" with their smoked salmon and pheasant the guests enjoyed another round of Sid-baiting. Both the Krayes, egged on by Charles and the fluffy harpy beside him, had developed a pricking skill at this novel weekend parlour game, and I heartily wished Charles had never thought of it. However, he kept his side of the bargain by digging out the chemmy shoe, and after the coffee, the brandy, and another inspection of the dining-room quartz, he settled his guests firmly round the table in the drawing-room.
Upstairs, once the shoe was clicking regularly and the players were well involved, I went and collected Kraye’s attaché case and took it along to my room.
Because I was never going to get another chance and did not want to miss something I might regret later, I photographed every single paper in the case. All the stockbroker’s letters and all the investment reports. All the share certificates, and also the two separate sheets under the writing board.
Although I had an ultra-bright light bulb and the exposure meter to help me to get the right setting, I took several pictures at different light values of the papers I considered the most important, in order to be sure of getting the sharpest possible result. The little camera handled beautifully, and I found I could change the films in their tiny cassettes without much difficulty. By the time I had finished I had used three whole films of twenty exposures on each. It took me a long time, as I had to put the camera down between each shot to move the next paper into my pool of light, and also had to be very careful not to alter the order in which the papers had lain in the case.
The envelope of ten pound notes kept me hoping like crazy that Howard Kraye would not lose heavily and come upstairs for replacements. It seemed to me at the time a ridiculous thing to do, but I took the two flat blocks of tenners out of the envelope, and photographed them as well. Putting them back I flipped through them: the notes were new, consecutive, fifty to a packet. One thousand pounds to a penny.
When everything was back in the case I sat looking at the contents for a minute, checking their position against my visual memory of how they looked when I first saw them. At last satisfied, I shut the case, locked it, rubbed it over to remove any finger marks I might have left, and put it back where I had found it.
After that I went downstairs to the dining-room for the brandy I had refused at dinner. I needed it. Carrying the glass, I listened briefly outside the drawing-room door to the murmurs and clicks from within and went upstairs again, to bed.
Lying in the dark I reviewed the situation. Howard Kraye, drawn by the bait of a quartz collection, had accepted an invitation to a quiet weekend in the country with a retired admiral. With him he had brought a selection of private papers. As he had no possible reason to imagine that anyone in such innocent surroundings would spy on him, the papers might be very private indeed. So private that he felt safest when they were with him? Too private to leave at home? It would be nice to think so.
At that point, imperceptibly, I fell asleep.
The nerves in my abdomen wouldn’t give up. After about five hours of fighting them unsuccessfully I decided that staying in bed all morning thinking about it was doing no good, and got up and dressed.
Drawn partly against my will, I walked along the passage to Jenny’s room, and went in. It was the small sunny room she had had as a child. She had gone back to it when she left me and it was all hers alone. I had never slept there. The single bed, the relics of childhood, girlish muslin frills on curtains and dressing-table, everything shut me out. The photographs round the room were of her father, her dead mother, her sister, brother-in-law, dogs and horses, but not of me. As far as she could, she had blotted out her marriage.
I walked slowly round touching her things, remembering how much I had loved her. Knowing, too, that there was no going back, and that if she walked through the door at that instant we would not fall into each other’s arms in tearful reconciliation.
Removing a one-eyed teddy bear I sat down for a while on her pink armchair. It’s difficult to say just where a marriage goes wrong, because the accepted reason often isn’t the real one. The rows Jenny and I had had were all ostensibly caused by the same thing: my ambition. Grown finally too heavy for flat racing, I had switched entirely to steeplechasing the season before we married, and I wanted to be champion jumping jockey. To this end I was prepared to eat little, drink less, go to bed early, and not make love if I were racing the next day. It was unfortunate that she liked late-night parties and dancing more than anything else. At first she gave them up willingly, then less willingly, and finally in fury. After that, she started going on her own.
In the end she told me to choose between her and racing. But by then I was indeed champion jockey, and had been for some time, and I couldn’t give it up. So Jenny left. It was just life’s little irony that six months later I lost the racing as well. Gradually since then I had come to realise that a marriage didn’t break up just because one half liked parties and the other didn’t. I thought now that Jenny’s insistence on a gay time was the result of my having failed her in some basic, deeply necessary way. Which did nothing whatsoever for my self-respect or my self-confidence.
I sighed, stood up, replaced the teddy bear, and went downstairs to the drawing-room. Eleven o’clock on a windy autumn morning.
Doria was alone in the big comfortable room, sitting on the window seat and reading the Sunday papers, which lay around her on the floor in a haphazard mess.
‘Hello,’ she said, looking up. ‘What hole did you crawl out of?’
I walked over to the fire and didn’t answer.
‘Poor little man, are his feelings hurt then?’
‘I do have feelings, the same as anyone else.’
‘So you actually can talk?’ she said mockingly. ‘I’d begun to wonder.’
‘Yes, I can talk.’
‘Well, now, tell me all your troubles, little man.’
‘Life is just a bowl of cherries.’
She uncurled herself from the window seat and came across to the fire, looking remarkably out of place in skin-tight leopard printed pants and a black silk shirt.