“Of course. Something wrong with the little girl?”
“What, Dinah?” Her surprise was genuine, and he was surprised himself to see that it hadn’t even occurred to her the call might be about her daughter. “No, it’s Bradford,” she said.
They started walking toward the house, she setting a brisk pace. He said, “It’s nothing serious, I hope.”
“We all do,” she said. “About three months ago, he had an attack. We were in California. Uncle Joe said — that’s his doctor.” She looked at him doubtfully. “You don’t know him, do you? Dr. Joseph Holt. He’s my uncle.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, he said it was what they call a little stroke. Not a real stroke, because it doesn’t do any permanent damage. He explained this all to me, but I’m afraid a lot of it just sank into my head and disappeared without a trace.” She was walking briskly and talking in hurried spurts, telling him this more out of a nervous need to talk than for any other reason. “He said there could be others like it,” she said. “Or Bradford could have a real stroke, and then God knows what would happen. He might even die.” Her voice grew suddenly faint on the word die, and he looked at her in alarm. Her face was white still, with patches of color on the cheeks, but she didn’t look as though she was going to collapse.
He said, “Is that what happened now? Another attack?”
“Yes. A little one, thank God, he was only unconscious for a very few minutes. In fact, I talked with him on the phone.”
“That’s good, then,” he said.
“Oh, if I lost him, too,” she said, but didn’t say any more, and when he glanced at her he saw that that had been the complete sentence. She was walking grimly, staring at the house as they neared it.
Sterling and Elizabeth were in the front room, and Robert stopped off with them while Evelyn went on. He said, “Evelyn told me about it.”
“It seems he had one once before,” Sterling said. He and Elizabeth both looked helpless and worried, and he imagined the same expression was on his own face.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “Do you suppose we ought to go?
“Not without saying goodbye,” Elizabeth said. “Brad wouldn’t like that at all.”
But then there didn’t seem to be much of anything to say. Sterling and Elizabeth sat in chairs near one another, occasionally saying a word or two to each other, but Robert found it impossible to sit. He went over to the window and looked out at the front of the house, Sterling’s Lincoln parked there next to Howard’s white Mercedes-Benz 280SE, the Mercedes sports car. Beyond the gravel driveway and the cropped lawn stretched the woods. Somewhere in there was the dead town, and he found himself regretting not having looked at the gravestones there, because he wanted to know if the names could still be read on them.
He heard Bradford’s voice say, “Here you are! Good God, don’t start a wake for me yet.” He turned around and Bradford had come in, with an anxious Evelyn beside him. Bradford was limping slightly, which Robert couldn’t remember having seen him do before.
Everyone tried to be cheerful, but no one’s heart was in it. Bradford was obviously tired, too, and he seemed a little confused once or twice in the conversation. It was clearly a relief to everyone when Sterling suggested it was time they start back.
Howard had joined them, and he too was leaving now. “Give me a call when you feel up to it,” he told Bradford. “And don’t worry about deadlines. I’d rather have a late book than a late Brad.”
On their way out, Bradford paused to take Robert’s hand and then hold it for a minute, studying him. It seemed to Robert the older man had forgotten something, was trying to remember something he’d meant to say or do, but then Bradford said, “You know the way now. Come back. I enjoyed talking with you.”
“Thank you, sir. I have the feeling I shot my mouth off, though, telling you what I think of international politics.”
“Don’t feel that way at all,” Bradford assured him. “Good minds are good to listen to, whatever the background. I do want you to come back again, don’t forget.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Robert shook hands with Evelyn, also, saying, “Thanks for the guided tour. If you ever get up to Lancashire, allow me to return the favor.”
“Thank you, I will.”
Howard drove away first, still in a hurry, and Sterling steered the Lincoln through his son’s descending dust out toward the highway.
Elizabeth half-turned in the seat so she could look back at Robert. “Well, what did you think of Bradford?”
“I was fascinated by him, I like him very much. I just hope he doesn’t think I’m some sort of big mouth.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t.” Then, too casually, she said, “And what did you think of Evelyn?”
Robert looked at her, and began to grin. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
Her innocent expression didn’t entirely work. “What’s the matter?”
“It was a set-up,” he said. “You were all in on it.”
“In on what? For Heaven’s sake, Robert, don’t be paranoid.”
“You didn’t get me down there to meet Bradford Lockridge, you brought me down there to meet Mrs. Evelyn Canby. You people are matchmaking!”
“How can you say such a thing?” But the indignation didn’t quite work either.
Robert laughed, saying, “The funny thing is, I was wondering if Bradford realized how much she’d buried herself out there with him, and if he was trying to do anything about it. And he is, isn’t he?”
“Sometimes,” Elizabeth said tartly, “it’s possible to be too smart for one’s own good.”
“I just hope Evelyn doesn’t find out,” Robert said. “She’d be very embarrassed.”
Sterling, keeping his eyes on the road, said, “I doubt Brad will make Elizabeth’s kind of mistake. He’s had more experience at international intrigue.”
Elizabeth could be seen to restrain an angry rejoinder. She finally shook her head and said to Robert, “The point is, she’s a very nice girl.” She kept looking at Robert, and a few seconds later insisted, “Isn’t she?”
“She is,” Robert said sincerely. “Very nice.”
“And that’s all that matters,” she said. “Not who arranged what, or said what, or did what. Isn’t that right?”
“Perfectly right,” he said, grinning at her.
She grinned back, trying not to. “We’ll see,” she promised, “we’ll see.” And faced front.
5
At lunch, Wellington called the CIA a “stalking horse,” and Evelyn looked at him in some surprise. She considered Wellington the most colorless person she knew, male or female, in or out of the family, and it was startling to hear him use a phrase even that vivacious. His normal conversation was about on a par with a stock prospectus.
They were six at lunch, one of those rare occasions when both of Bradford’s sons were at the house simultaneously. Plus the omnipresent Howard, here to begin pushing Bradford to work on The Coming of Winter, volume five of the memoirs. The Temporary Peace was finally complete, and scheduled to be published in October: late enough to get some of the Christmas gift buyers, as Howard had explained, but early enough not to be lost in the flood of Christmas books.
The sixth person present was Uncle Joe, here to reassure himself that the Paris trip would be all right for Bradford to take.
But it was Wellington who had suddenly come into the center of Evelyn’s awareness, and with some surprise she realized that one almost never saw Wellington. One was aware of his presence, of course, but not really. He was like a bland painting that has been hanging on the same wall for fifty years; no one ever really looks at it any more.