‘I don’t think you’ve met Charles Goddard,’ said Robert, attenuated and lank and fair. ‘He’s advising on the work, we’ve been uncovering some rather good tiled floors.’ He was a little deprecating about saying ‘we’ now that he had agreed to surrender the place, but obviously he must be ploughing everything that was left of his family patrimony into endowing it, or the Trust would never have been able to accept the burden, however desirable. Robert worked in an estate office selling small new houses, in one of which he and his wife lived, and there was nothing left of the centuries of Macsen-Martels and their outworn glory except the decency and integrity contained within this desiccated and aloof exterior. Unless, perhaps, Dinah’s dress, loose from the shoulders, had been chosen for more reasons than fashion? Dinah was petite, rounded and dark, born into the ranks of honest toil, and with both small feet planted firmly on the ground, and what those two apparently incompatible and wildly devoted people would produce between them gave room for interested speculation. What was more, Dinah had already detected, the brief glance at her waistline, and was staring George out in sparkling silence, challenging him to ask or comment. Probably Bunty had already got all the answers.
Charles Goddard was large, impressive and grey, the silver of early distinction rather than encroaching age. He had the slightly waxen and heavy smoothness of the legal profession.
‘And here’s John Stubbs, who’s taken over as man-on-the-spot. Someone has to live on the premises, and John’s brave enough to inhabit the lodge alone, ghosts or no ghosts, and look after the whole place.’
This one was younger, dark, solid and taciturn, even dour. Perhaps partly because, while he murmured his perfunctory greeting, his real attention was concentrated upon a distant corner of the room, where Barbara Rainbow and Willie the Twig were perceptibly getting on rather well together. And now George realised that both these young men he was confronting had already caught his attention once this evening. They were the two who had been drawn half across the hall in bemused pursuit of Rainbow’s spectacular wife, like helpless sparks in the tail of a comet.
‘– and Colin Barron, who’s been an enormous help to me over a number of things I never realised were valuable assets until he briefed me. I owe Colin’s acquaintance to our host, as a matter of fact, and I’m grateful. I know absolutely nothing about the antiques market,’ owned Robert. ‘It’s salutary to discover that what you’ve been writing off as junk can realise a lot of money elsewhere, and be hailed as treasure.’
This was the fair one, who belonged on sight to Rainbow’s world. He was tall, and built like an athlete, but his features were urban and shrewd, his clothes, while tactfully unobtrusive, of the city and the fashion.
‘I’ve been a friend and rival of Arthur’s for a long time,’ he ‘said with an amiable but knowing smile, ’and learned a lot from him. Enough to know that any hare he starts is well worth coursing. When a chap like Arthur moves up into these parts, it pays to take a look at the territory and see what drew him there. I haven’t caught up with the real attraction yet, I suspect, but I did discover Mottisham Abbey. In time to be useful to Mr Macsen-Martel, maybe, but you may be sure it didn’t do me any harm, either. I like to be candid about it.’
‘I’m afraid we’ve been talking shop, even on this occasion,’ said Robert apologetically. ‘My fault, I don’t seem able to think of anything else at the moment. It really has become very interesting. Several schools and clubs have come into the act, and been doing splendid work, under Charles’s guidance. I never imagined there’d be so much enthusiasm. We’re being asked to allow party visits from so many bodies that we’re planning on beginning in a few weeks. Afternoons only, and while the work’s in progress they’ll have to be strictly guided tours, it would be too chaotic to have people straying everywhere among the plant and materials lying around there. You wouldn’t like to volunteer as a guide, would you, George? We’re open to offers!’
‘I doubt if I should be much of an asset,’ said George. ‘I could certainly improvise a stunning scenario for you, but the facts might cause less trouble. You seem to have recruited several competent candidates already. And there’s always Professor Joyce, if you can lure him away from his magnum opus.’
That was a joke strictly for local people, who were all well aware that Professor Emeritus Evan Joyce, happily retired at sixty-odd to a decrepit but spacious cottage up the valley with his books, was busily engaged in not writing his long-projected history of Goliard poets, and almost any distraction was enough to justify him in never getting it beyond the note stage.
‘I think he’d rather reserve his options at the moment,’ said Dinah, dimpling. ‘Haven’t you run into him tonight? He is here. Miss de la Pole has just told him she’s made up her mind to retire, and has broken the news to the vicar. We could lure him away from his Latin poets, all right, but we can’t compete with the organ and the choir, not a hope. He’s been waiting to get his hands on them for years.’
The Reverend Stephen Baines was young, earnest and good-looking, and as poor as his eighteenth-century predecessors here had been rich. He lived in a small bungalow, a bashful bachelor looked after by a widowed neighbour who cooked and cleaned, and nursed selective match-making plans for him, taking her time about both choice and tactics. He was as unaware of this as he was of many other practical proceedings that went on round him. He had some distressing proclivities, according to his parishioners, who were protectively fond of him none the less. He worried about the church’s image, and tended to try all sorts of new gimmicks to get nearer to people who felt, as it happened, very close indeed, the gimmicks notwithstanding. He was given to trying out new texts in the vernacular, and adopting attitudes which were hard work for him and a great trial to his long-suffering aides. Luckily he was sound on music, which he loved.
‘Isn’t it lucky,’ he said happily, ‘that there should be someone so able, just coming into our community at the very time when he’s needed? Providential, you might almost say. Indeed, I feel sure Mr Rainbow is going to prove a great asset in every way. We shall miss our dear de la Pole, how could we not? She’s such a stalwart, and has such a way with the boys. But they sometimes need a firm hand, you know, and then, Mr Rainbow is really an outstanding musician. I can hardly believe he’s really agreed to take over as organist and choirmaster. Do you know, he even volunteered? Such a busy chap, and yet willing to take on this further work in addition to everything else. And he’s offered his house and grounds for the harvest supper, too.’
‘Most generous!’ said George hollowly. What can you say. There was Evan Joyce across the room, talking to Bunty, unkempt, shaggy and endearing in his rusty black suit that must have served him for every formal occasion since his graduation, and here was this exasperating innocent who had just given away what Evan wanted most in this small chosen world of his, to a stranger, and one who showed signs of appropriating this, literally, in addition to everything else.
‘Isn’t it? He even intimated that he would be delighted to serve as churchwarden if there should be a vacancy. Willing workers are not so thick on the ground these days.’
This one, thought George resignedly as he moved on to confront the deprived professor and reclaim Bunty, shows every sign of being very thick on the ground indeed. A walking take-over bid for Middlehope, where he seemed to think there was a vacancy for a squire, if not a lord of the manor. He couldn’t be expected to know in advance that ‘squire’ was a dirty word in these tribal regions. But very, very soon someone would have to start instructing him.