“I shall be fine, don’t worry. And give my love to Jennifer.”
“I already have.” She stood up. “Let us know where you are, and don’t hesitate to ask if you need somewhere to stay.”
I left the hospital a week later. I went with Charlie and, because I felt safe in his company, I told Harry to take away the police guard. Charlie drove me to his house where I limped upstairs and lay down on the bed. My legs still hurt like the devil, but, apart from the one ankle, the scarring would be minimal. I flinched when I thought of Jennifer, and the ordeal she faced, so that evening I phoned Comerton Castle and asked for Lady Buzzacott. Sir Leon came to the phone instead and told me his wife was with Jennifer in London. And where was I? he asked. I gave him Charlie’s number, there was a pause as I imagined him writing it down in his small leather-bound book, then he said he wanted to see me.
“Of course.”
“I want your approval for the arrangements I’m proposing for the Lady Georgina. Will tomorrow be convenient?”
I wasn’t certain I really felt fit enough, but nor did I think I could bear a day of Yvonne’s long face, so I said tomorrow would be fine.
“Shall I send a car?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to.” I was not only homeless, but penniless as well.
The car came in the morning. The driver took me to the Mendip Hills where, in a sheltered south-facing village, we turned into a long driveway which led to a large white-painted Victorian house. Sir Leon himself met me at the front door and introduced me to a fresh-faced man of about my age. “This is Doctor Grove,” Sir Leon said, “the medical doctor of Lovelace House.”
Sir Leon was touchingly anxious that I should approve of Lovelace House. “I had my staff do a great deal of research,” he told me, “and I assure you that Lovelace met our most stringent requirements.”
It was, so far as I could tell, ideal. Lovelace House was privately run, outrageously expensive, and self-evidently caring. Many such places, catering to the lunatic members of rich or titled families, are scarcely more than prisons, but at Lovelace each patient had a private suite, personal nurses, and as much freedom as their condition would allow them to receive. Whenever we met a patient in one of the airy corridors I was gravely and courteously introduced. A Marchioness enquired whether I had planted the banana tree yet, I replied no, and she told me my employment was in severe jeopardy. I bowed, then limped on to see the suite that had been reserved for Georgina. Wide French windows opened on to a terraced lawn, beyond which empty paddocks stretched to the wooded hillside. The view was not unlike that from the windows of Stowey, and I said as much. “Except for the horses, of course.”
“Is the Lady Georgina fond of horses?” Doctor Grove asked.
“She used to be. My sister wouldn’t let her ride, but a friend and I used to lead her round on a docile old mare. She was always very happy when we did that.”
Doctor Grove made a note. “I think perhaps we should explore that avenue. Thank you, my lord.”
“John,” I said automatically, “call me John.”
I dutifully inspected the kitchens, the drawing rooms, the communal dining room and the consultation rooms where, I was told, the best London psychiatrists came to weave their spells. If Georgina could be happy anywhere, I thought, then surely it was in this kindly place.
After the inspection, and after I had expressed my wholehearted approval to Doctor Grove, Sir Leon asked for a moment alone with me. He led me out to the southern gardens where a curious group of patients inspected his helicopter which stood with drooping rotors on the wide lawn. Sir Leon steered me away from the machine, preferring the solitude of a gravel walk. “My lawyers have already opened negotiations with the Lady Georgina’s trustees,” Sir Leon said in his precise and pedantic voice. “I think I can assure you that there will be no hindrance to her coming here.”
“Sir Oliver Bulstrode might not agree,” I suggested grimly.
“Sir Oliver, like all top London lawyers, will decide in favour of the richest party.”
I smiled to hear this dry little man confirm my own opinion of lawyers. I was beginning to feel quite fond of Sir Leon, which I thought was only appropriate considering how I felt about his stepdaughter. We paced on in silence for a few yards, then he shot me a very shrewd and rather unfriendly glance. “And what of your own future, my lord?”
Something in his tone alerted me. Perhaps I’d been too quick in my warm feelings. I’d thought it slightly strange that a man of his importance should see fit to show me round a high-class lunatic asylum, but now I sensed he had quite another reason for meeting me this day. “I haven’t thought much about my future,” I said casually, “and please do stop calling me ‘my lord’.”
“If you wish.” Sir Leon had noticed how walking pained me, even with the help of a walking stick that Charlie had found in his junk room, so now he stopped by an ornamental urn. “Forgive me asking, but was your boat insured?”
“No.”
He frowned severe disapproval. “That was imprudent, was it not?”
“Insurance companies won’t touch deep-water yachts. If you stick to cruising the Channel or the North Sea they’ll offer you a quotation, but if you sail beyond the sunset, and especially if you sail alone, they won’t look at you.”
“I see.” He stared down at the urn’s base, frowning slightly. “So, forgive me again, but what is the extent of your loss?”
“Ninety thousand pounds?” It was a guess.
He looked up sharply. “As much as that?”
“She was a good boat,” I said defensively. “She wasn’t a plastic tub tricked out with veneered chipboard. She was a deep-water steel boat with hardwood fittings. She was well equipped, Sir Leon. She was what a sailor would call a proper boat.” That, I supposed, was Sunflower’s obituary, and a good one too. She had been a proper boat, and I mourned her, but I don’t think the full extent of the loss had yet occurred to me. I might put a financial value on the hull and rigging and fittings, but there was an emotional loss that was incalculable. A boat becomes a companion, a person you talk to, a creature that shares the good times and helps you survive the bad. Sunflower had also been my home, and I’d lost her.
“I would take it as a great kindness if you would find yourself another yacht.” Sir Leon said it so softly that at first I thought I had misheard. “At my expense, of course,” he added just as softly.
“I’m sorry?” I said with incredulity. His manner in the last few minutes had been touched with a cold hostility, yet now he was offering me a boat? I warmed to him again.
“It’s quite simple.” He seemed irritated by my obtuseness. “I am offering to buy you another ocean-going yacht.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” I hoped to God he wouldn’t agree with me. Pride would make me protest, but not for long. I needed another boat desperately.
He offered me the ghost of a smile. “Not so ridiculous, my lord, as giving away a Van Gogh.” He was plainly determined to go on calling me ‘my lord’. “Of course,” he continued, “if you don’t want another boat, then I shall quite understand.”
“I do want one,” I said fervently. His equation of my gift of the Van Gogh with his present of a replacement boat made the transaction seem less astonishing and more acceptable. I had also decided that this was a man who liked to hide his kindnesses behind a pernickety façade.
Sir Leon stirred the gravel with a well-polished shoe. “I assume, my lord, that if you have another boat you will resume your wandering way of life?”