Evan Pentelow and Madroledo were in another world.
When I got back, the boys were squabbling noisily over whose turn it was with the unbroken roller skates, and Charlie was making a cake.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Did you have a good ride?’
‘Great.’
‘Fine... Well there weren’t any calls, except Nerissa rang... Will you two be quiet, we can’t hear ourselves think...’
‘It’s my turn,’ Peter yelled.
‘If you two don’t both shut up I’ll twist your ears,’ I said.
They shut up. I’d never carried out the often repeated threat, but they didn’t like the idea of it. Chris immediately pinched the disputed skates and disappeared out of the kitchen, and Peter gave chase with muted yells.
‘Kids!’ Charlie said disgustedly.
I scooped out a fingerful of raw cake mixture and got my wrist slapped.
‘What did Nerissa want?’
‘She wants us to go to lunch.’ Charlie paused, with the wooden spoon dropping gouts of chocolate goo into the bowl. ‘She was a bit... well... odd, in a way. Not her usual brisk self. Anyway, she wanted us to go today...’
‘Today!’ I said, looking at the clock.
‘Oh, I told her we couldn’t, that you wouldn’t be back until twelve. So she asked if we could make it tomorrow.’
‘Why the rush?’
‘Well, I don’t know, darling. She just said, could we come as soon as poss. Before you got tied up in another film, she said.’
‘I don’t start the next one until November.’
‘Yes, I told her that. Still, she was pretty insistent. So I said we’d love to go tomorrow unless you couldn’t, in which case I’d ring back this lunch time.’
‘I wonder what she wants,’ I said. ‘We haven’t seen her for ages. We’d better go, don’t you think?’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
So we went.
It is just as well one can never foresee the future.
Nerissa was a sort of cross between an aunt, a godmother, and a guardian, none of which I had ever actually had. I had had a stepmother who loved her two previous children exclusively, and a busy father nagged by her to distraction. Nerissa, who had owned three horses in the yard where my father reigned, had given me first sweets, then pound notes, then encouragement, and then, as the years passed, friendship. It had never been a close relationship, but always a warmth in the background.
She was waiting for us, primed with crystal glasses and a decanter of dry sherry on a silver tray, in the summer sitting-room of her Cotswold house, and she rose to meet us when she heard her manservant bringing us through the hall.
‘Come in, my dears, come in,’ she said. ‘How lovely to see you. Charlotte, I love you in yellow... and Edward, how very thin you are...’
She had her back to the sunlight which poured in through the window framing the best view in Gloucestershire, and it was only when we each in turn kissed her offered cheek that we could see the pitiful change in her.
The last time I had seen her she had been an attractive woman of fifty plus, with young blue eyes and an apparently indestructible vitality. Her walk seemed to be on the edge of dancing, and her voice held a wise sense of humour. She came from the blue-blooded end of the Stud Book and had what my father had succinctly described as ‘class’.
But now, within three months, her strength had vanished and her eyes were dull. The gloss on her hair, the spring in her step, the laugh in her voice: all were gone. She looked nearer seventy than fifty, and her hands trembled.
‘Nerissa,’ Charlie exclaimed in a sort of anguish, for she like me held her in much more than affection.
‘Yes, dear. Yes,’ Nerissa said comfortingly. ‘Now sit down, dear, and Edward shall pour you some sherry.’
I poured all three of us some of the fine pale liquid, but Nerissa hardly sipped hers at all. She sat in a gold brocade chair in a long-sleeved blue linen dress, with her back to the sun and her face in shadow.
‘How are those two little monkeys?’ she asked. ‘And how is dear little Libby? And Edward, my dear, being so thin doesn’t suit you...’ She talked on, making practised conversation and looking interested in our answers, and gave us no opening to ask what was the matter with her.
When she went into the dining-room it was with the help of a walking stick and my arm, and the feather-light lunch which had been geared to her needs did nothing to restore my lost pounds. Afterwards, we went slowly back to the summer-room for coffee.
‘Do smoke, Edward dear... There are some cigars in the cupboard. You know how I love the smell... and so few people smoke here, nowadays.’
I imagined they didn’t because of her condition, but if she wanted it, I would, even though I rarely did, and only in the evening. They were Coronas, but a little dry from old age. I lit one, and she inhaled the smoke deeply, and smiled with real pleasure.
‘That’s so good,’ she said.
Charlie poured the coffee, but again Nerissa hardly drank. She settled back gently into the same chair as before, and crossed her elegant ankles.
‘Now, my dears,’ she said calmly, ‘I shall be dead by Christmas.’
We didn’t even make any contradictory noises. It was all too easy to believe.
She smiled at us. ‘So sensible, you two are. No silly swooning, or making a fuss.’ She paused. ‘It appears I have some stupid ailment, and they tell me there isn’t much to be done. As a matter of fact, it’s what they do do which is making me feel so ill. Before, it wasn’t so bad... but I have had to have X-rays so often... and now all these horrid cytotoxic drugs, and really, they make me most unwell.’ She managed another smile. ‘I’ve asked them to stop, but you know what it’s like... if they can, they say they must. Quite an unreasonable view to take, don’t you think? Anyway, my dears, that need not trouble you...’
‘But you would like us to do something for you?’ Charlie suggested.
Nerissa looked surprised. ‘How did you know I had anything like that in mind?’
‘Oh... Because you wanted us in a hurry... and you must have known for weeks how ill you were.’
‘Edward, how clever your Charlotte is,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do want something... want Edward to do something for me, if he will.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
A dry amusement crept back into her voice. ‘Wait until you hear what it is, before you promise so glibly.’
‘O.K.’
‘It is to do with my horses.’ She paused to consider, her head inclined to one side. ‘They are running so badly.’
‘But,’ I said in bewilderment, ‘they haven’t been out yet, this season.’
She still had two steeplechasers trained in the yard where I had grown up, and although since my father’s death I had had no direct contact with them, I knew they had won a couple of races each the season before.
She shook her head. ‘Not the jumpers, Edward. My other horses. Five colts and six fillies, running on the flat.’
‘On the flat? I’m sorry... I didn’t realise you had any.’
‘In South Africa.’
‘Oh.’ I looked at her a bit blankly. ‘I don’t know anything about South African racing. I’m awfully sorry. I’d love to be of use to you... but I don’t know enough to begin to suggest why your horses there are running badly.’
‘It’s nice of you, Edward dear, to look disappointed. But you really can help me, you know. If you will.’