‘Here he is!’ proclaimed Toby, clarion-voiced, homing in on his elders with huge satisfaction. ‘The gaffer who put me away! But for Mr Felse you’d never have had the pleasure of my acquaintance, think of that!’
They were as pleased as he had known they would be. Sam was a large, clumsy, shy man with a simple face and a complex mind, clean-shaven, rosy and benign. Jenny was small and svelte and dark, possessed of a natural style that did wonders for mail-order clothes. They were both as proud of Toby as of their own single offspring, and showed it a good deal more openly, since he was not really theirs.
‘And what have you done with Bossie tonight?’ asked George. Bossie was James Boswell Jarvis, the one shoot of this promising stem, and approaching thirteen years old. ‘Heaven knows you couldn’t wish a baby-sitter on him, not without risk to life and limb, but I’ll bet there’s some sort of Praetorian guard hovering. How do you get round it?’
‘What can you do with an egghead like Bossie?’ demanded Jenny, between resignation and complacency. ‘Sylvia Thomas comes in as his guest, and plays him game after game of chess until we get home. Mostly he wins, but sometimes he gives her a game out of chivalry. He’s a bit sweet on Sylvia.’ Sylvia Thomas was a farmer’s daughter, eighteen and very pretty.
‘He’d have to be,’ agreed Toby positively, ‘or he’d mow her down in half a dozen moves.’
‘And what are you doing, these days?’ George wanted to know. ‘Playing, you said, but you haven’t said what or who. And as far as I can gather, it’s something that keeps you on the move.’
‘Oh, sorry, I forgot you couldn’t very well know about it. Thespis, that’s us! We’re a travelling theatre. We’ve got three wagons that put together into a rather ramshackle auditorium, but mostly we like to play outdoors, little festivals, all that sort of thing, and improvise according to what ground we can get. There’s seven of us to do everything. I’m general dog’s-body on lights, staging, scenery, whatever comes along, and sometimes I play, too. Mostly I do the adaptations, to get by with so few of us. Schools, as well. It’s all grist. After all, that’s where I got the bug.’ And he beamed upon Sam with so much satisfaction that George felt himself partaking of his friend’s justification. ‘I write plays for us, too. Bursting with social criticism, as if you wouldn’t guess! But funny, too, I hope. Blame Sam – I’ve gone legit!’
And blessedly, that was the plain truth. There went one danger to society, rapturously transmuted into a danger to nothing more precious than the establishment, which is quite a different thing. And funny, too! Nineteen, not yet out of the bud. George moved on dutifully to his next encounter, much encouraged. The only adverse note was Toby’s last remark, as he looked round the furious animation and expensive furnishing of the hall, and wrinkled his straight, fastidious nose, and knotted his mobile and mischievous mouth in a grimace of distaste at so artful a display of taste. ‘It does seem a pity,’ said Toby with detached regret. ‘We had some good times here. Nobody ever really minded us.’
George found himself brought up by a tide in the restless sea of the hall, close behind a pair of tweed-clad shoulders that topped his own by at least two inches, spare, wide and straight, carrying practically nothing but bone and sinew and leathery hide, and topped by a tall brown neck and bleached, straw-coloured head. The tweed jacket smelled of resin, fungus-bearing woodland, and late summer greenery. The head was reared and still, braced like a pointer on a spot across the hall, where Barbara Rainbow had just appeared, newly-primed glass in hand, and bare shoulders shaken free for the moment of all close attendance. In a crowded room she looked alone, however briefly, and it so happened that she was looking about her with the mane-tossing challenge of a lion – sex was irrelevant! – who has just shaken off the hunt.
From the anteroom behind her rose the first notes of a Chopin study. Rainbow was indeed demonstrating his abilities, and yes. Miss de la Pole had been right, the piano was splendid. Traffic in the hall thinned somewhat, as dutiful devotees flocked quietly towards the music. Barbara stretched and straightened and breathed deep, and looked about her with relaxed interest, assured of where her husband would be for the next quarter of an hour or so.
‘Hullo, William,’ said George into a sun-tanned, leathery ear. ‘I didn’t know you went in for parties.’
‘Hullo, George,’ responded Willie Swayne, with a brief but amiable smile, and returned his gaze at once to the sophisticated Romany across the room. ‘I don’t.’
‘Or got invited to them, these days,’ added George. Plenty of people had tried it in the past, but it didn’t take long to discover that William Swayne, known to the whole valley as Willie the Twig by reason of his solitary lordship of some ten square miles of new and old afforestation along the border, found nothing interesting in gatherings for social chit-chat, and preferred his deer and his setters to more garrulous company.
‘Oh, yes, everybody was invited this time, even me. “Forest warden” sounds pleasantly feudal, and who knows, he may want a haunch of venison some day.’ Part of Willie the Twig’s forest was plantation only a few years old, but part of it was very old indeed, and had supplied venison to kings of England ever since Edward III. ‘I just blew in out of curiosity, I’ve only met the fellow once. I thought I’d have a look round, and be civil, and then shove off to the “Gun Dog” for a pint.’ Judging by the distrait tone of his voice and the steady stare of his light, bright grey eyes this original plan was in process of being modified. And at that very moment Barbara Rainbow’s roving gaze had lighted upon him, and very thoughtfully halted there. George felt the slight, silent tensing of sinews, the almost imperceptible leaning forward, as when a pointer is about to surge out of his concentrated immobility into action.
‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ said George benignly.
‘On the contrary,’ said Willie the Twig, ‘being you, of course you wouldn’t, but if you were me you certainly would.’ And without further waste of time he strode across the room, swerving only sufficiently to clear such persons and objects as got in his way, and made straight for Barbara. Who, George observed before he drifted towards his next encounter, was neither surprised nor displeased, but stood and waited, reeling in on the dark and glittering thread of her glance the only fish that had so far engaged her interest, in all these hundred or so milling about her.
‘Hullo!’ said Barbara. ‘I’ve been noticing you for some time, and nobody’s told me who you are. I was wondering when you’d work your way round to me.’
‘I don’t work my way round,’ said Willie the Twig. ‘I go straight across. And my name’s Will Swayne. Warden of Middlehope Forest. I don’t know if you like forests?’
‘I never really met one,’ said Barbara. Her voice was low, deliberate and thoughtful. ‘On closer acquaintance I think I might get to like them very much.’
By the time the musical interlude ended, George had reached a little group gathered at an open window. Courteously silent until that moment, they fell into easy conversation after Rainbow had received his due acclaim. Two of them George knew well, Robert Macsen-Martel from Mottisham Abbey, down the valley, and his wife Dinah. Their half-ruinous property was in process of renovation under the guidance of the National Trust, and archaeological interest in the new acquisition was proving unexpectedly lively.