Johnny’s eyes slid my way. ‘With this boyfriend she’d be all right. He gets sick in harbour.’
Jossie nodded. ‘Feeble.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Be my guest.’
We went back through the office and into the taxi, and Johnny waved us goodbye.
‘Any more chums?’ Jossie said.
‘Not this trip. If I start on the aunts, we’ll be here for ever. Visit one, visit all, or there’s a dust-up.’
We drove, however, at Jossie’s request, past the guest house where I’d lived with my mother. There was a new glass sun lounge across the whole of the front, and a carpark where there had been garden. Tubs of flowers, bright sun-awnings, and a swinging sign saying ‘Vacancies’.
‘Brave,’ Jossie said, clearly moved. ‘Don’t you think?’
I paid off the taxi there and we walked down to the sea, with seagulls squawking overhead and the white little town sleeping to tea-time on its sunny hillside.
‘It’s pretty,’ Jossie said. ‘And I see why you left.’
She seemed as content as I to dawdle away the rest of the day. We crossed again in the hovercraft, and made our way slowly northwards, stopping at a pub at dusk for a drink and rubbery pork pie, and arriving finally outside the sprawling pile of Axwood House more than twelve hours after we’d left.
‘That car,’ Jossie said, pointing with disfavour at an inoffensive Volvo parked ahead, ‘belongs to the detestable Lida.’
The light over the front door shone on her disgruntled face. I smiled, and she transferred the disfavour to me.
‘It’s all right for you. You aren’t threatened with her moving into your home.’
‘You could move out,’ I said mildly.
‘Just like that?’
‘To my cottage, perhaps.’
‘Good grief!’
‘You could inspect it,’ I said, ‘for cleanliness, dry rot and spiders.’
She gave me her most intolerant stare. ‘Butler, cook, and housemaids?’
‘Six footmen and a lady’s maid.’
‘I’ll come to tea and cucumber sandwiches. I suppose you do have cucumber sandwiches?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thin, and without crusts?’
‘Naturally.’
I had really surprised her, I saw. She didn’t know what to answer. It was quite clear, though, that she was not going to fall swooning into my arms. There was a good deal I would have liked to say, but I didn’t know how to. Things about caring, and reassurance, and looking ahead.
‘Next Sunday,’ she said. ‘At half past three. For tea.’
‘I’ll line up the staff.’
She decided to get out of the car, and I went round to open the door for her. Her eyes looked huge.
‘Are you serious?’ she said.
‘Oh yes. It’ll be up to you... to decide.’
‘After tea?’
I shook my head. ‘At any time.’
Her expression slowly softened to unaccustomed gentleness. I kissed her, and then kissed her again with conviction.
‘I think I’ll go in,’ she said waveringly, turning away.
‘Jossie...’
‘What?’
I swallowed. Shook my head. ‘Come to tea,’ I said helplessly. ‘Come to tea.’
16
Monday morning, after another night free of alarms and excursions, I went back to the office with good intentions of actually doing some work. Peter was sulking with Monday morning glooms, Bess had menstrual pains, and Debbie was tearful from a row with the screw-selling fiancé: par for office life as I knew it.
Trevor came into my room looking fatherly and anxious, and seemed reassured to find my appearance less deathly than on Friday.
‘You did rest, then, Ro,’ he said relievedly.
‘I rode in a race and took a girl to the seaside.’
‘Good heavens. At any rate, it seems to have done you good. Better than spending your time working.’
‘Yes...’ I said. ‘Trevor, I did come into the office on Saturday morning, for a couple of hours.’
His air of worry crept subtly back. He waited for me to go on with the manner of a patient expecting bad news from his doctor: and I felt the most tremendous regret in having to give it to him.
‘Denby Crest,’ I said.
‘Ro...’ He spread out his hands, palms downwards, in a gesture that spoke of paternal distress at a rebellious son who wouldn’t take his senior’s word for things.
‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘I know he’s a client, and a friend of yours, but if he’s misappropriated fifty thousand pounds and you’ve condoned it, it concerns us both. It concerns this office, this partnership, and our future. You must see that. We can’t just ignore the whole thing and pretend it hasn’t happened.’
‘Ro, believe me, everything will be all right.’
I shook my head. ‘Trevor, you telephone Denby Crest and tell him to come over here today, to discuss what we’re going to do.’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ I said positively. ‘I’m not having it, Trevor. I’m half of this firm, and it’s not going to do anything illegal.’
‘You’re uncompromising.’ The mixture of sorrow and irritation had intensified. The two emotions, I thought fleetingly, that gave you regrets while you shot the rabbit.
‘Get him here at four o’clock,’ I said.
‘You can’t bully him like that.’
‘There are worse consequences,’ I said. I spoke without emphasis, but he knew quite well that it was a threat.
Irritation won hands down over sorrow. ‘Very well, Ro,’ he said sourly. ‘Very well.’
He went out of my room with none of the sympathetic concern for me with which he had come in, and I felt a lonely sense of loss. I could forgive him anything myself, I thought in depression, but the law wouldn’t. I lived by the law, both by inclination and choice. If my friend broke the law, should I abandon it for his sake: or should I abandon my friend for the sake of the law? In the abstract, there was no difficulty in my mind. In the flesh, I shrank. There was nothing frightfully jolly in being the instrument of distress, ruin, and prosecution. How much easier if the miscreant would confess of his own free will, instead of compelling his friend to denounce him: a sentimental solution, I thought sardonically, which happened only in weepie films. I was afraid that for myself there would be no such easy way out.
Those pessimistic musings were interrupted by a telephone call from Hilary, whose voice, when I answered, sounded full of relief.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
‘Nothing. I just...’ She stopped.
‘Just what?’
‘Just wanted to know you were there, as a matter of fact.’
‘Hilary!’
‘Sounds stupid, I suppose, now that we both know you are there. But I just wanted to be sure. After all, you wouldn’t have cast me in the role of rock if you thought you were in no danger at all.’
‘Um,’ I said, smiling down the telephone. ‘Sermons in stones.’
She laughed. ‘You just take care of yourself, Ro.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
I put down the receiver, marvelling at her kindness; and almost immediately the bell rang again.
‘Roland?’
‘Yes. Moira?’
Her sigh came audibly down the wire. ‘Thank goodness! I tried all day yesterday to reach you, and there was no reply.’
‘I was out all day.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t know that. I mean, I was imagining all sorts of things, like you being kidnapped again, and all because of me.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind, now that I know you’re safe. I’ve had this terrible picture of you shut up again, and needing someone to rescue you. I’ve been so worried, because of Binny.’