"Well?"
"A bit of touching up maybe," he said diplomatically.
Lexy examined her hands again. "God! Just look at the time!"
She stared round in sudden panic. "It's even starting to get dark—and I've been blethering on—and Jilly's supper's still in the oven! We must get back, David."
Roche didn't want the blethering to stop. "But Steffy—"
"Damn Steffy!" She turned away, down the hillside.
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"And you were just getting interesting—"
"About David Audley?" She flung the name over her shoulder as he plunged after her. "Don't waste your time trying to understand David— nobody does! It'd take a lifetime, and I'm certainly not volunteering for the job—" Her voice faded as she drew away from him. "I don't have a lifetime to spare, anyway—"
And neither did poor bloody Roche, thought Roche.
Depending on how much lifetime he had left, of course . . .
X
"WE'RE NOT GOING to wait for Steffy," announced Lady Alexandra. "I'll just get my bag, and then David can escort us through the Wild Wood by the short-cut. With him along we shalln't have to worry about those swarthy rapists."
Roche frowned at her. "What rapists?"
"No rapists," said Jilly. "Honestly, Lexy—you're the limit!"
"Well, they could be rapists for all you know."
"Rapees, more like, if you have anything to do with them!"
Jilly turned with a shake of her head from Lexy to Roche.
"There are these gypsy-types we've spotted in the wood—"
"Saw them again yesterday, too—skulking up behind the old dovecote, down towards David's place," said Lexy firmly.
"And I've seen them further afield, too."
"They won't be the same ones," snapped Jilly.
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"They were the same ones. It was when Steffy and I were collecting the bread. I saw them." Lexy didn't budge.
"And they were following you?"
"That I can't say, they were stationary at the time. But they were the same ones, because they've got an old motor-bike and a couple of battered old pop-pop mopeds they swan around on."
Jilly sighed. "Well, they're a bit slow, getting down to the job then! We've each been on our own here often enough!"
"They're casing the joint," said Lexy airily. "I think we ought to tell La Peyrony—or, better still, David Audley. He'll sort them out!"
"I've no doubt he would! And you're the sort of person who gets innocent youths lynched during the sorting process."
Jilly turned to Roche again. "They look about sixteen years of age, and they're about half Lexy's size put together—and a quarter of David Audley's—and a hundredth as dangerous.
And they're probably from down south, just looking for casual work and living rough meanwhile, poor kids."
Another thing about Jilly, thought Roche, was that she didn't scare easily. Although she hardly came up to Lady Alexandra's shoulder, it wasn't Jilly who needed protection, it was Lexy.
But it was also Lexy for whom he was supposed to be making a play, although he had not done much with his opportunities so far, he remembered.
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He looked around the area of the cottage with a suitably protective air. The steep-pitched dark-grey slate roof of the Peyrony mansion could be seen through the trees to its left, but otherwise it was enclosed by thick woods on either side of the roadway. As a holiday-house it had a Perrault fairy-tale look, with its browny-pink pantiles and tiny windows set in dormers and thick stone walls. But as a refuge for three pretty girls in a foreign country, with strange young males in the woods roundabout, it had its disadvantages: other than the Peyrony place, there didn't seem to be another house in sight.
"You are rather isolated, aren't you?" he said gently, trying not to take sides too obviously.
"Oh no, David darling," said Lexy lightly. "We're within easy screaming distance of Madame Peyrony, who is not a day older than seventy . . . and old Angelique . . . and there's Gaston, who undoubtedly remembers Waterloo, if not the battle of Agincourt—"
"Gaston's as tough as an old boot, and as strong as an ox,"
protested Jilly.
"Gaston?" queried Roche.
"La Peyrony's wrinkled retainer—old Angelique's antique brother," explained Lexy sweetly.
"Younger brother," corrected Jilly. "He's Madame's handyman-gardener—"
"Younger . . . meaning he was a hero of Verdun, or dummy5
somewhere, in the First World War, darling."
"That's right! And with a chestful of medals—David Audley says he was the finest trench-mortar-man in the whole French Army— and the Cross of the Liberation too." Jilly turned to Roche. "Back in 1944 he sat on the ridge above Brivay and held up a German column for six hours with his mortar, David says."
"Yes. And he's still got his private arsenal up in the stable, above his bedroom," Lexy mocked her friend. "But now he's got a gammy leg and he's rather short of breath with his asthma, and you have to shout at him to make him hear . . .
But there's always little Gaston, his grandson—or maybe great grandson—little Gaston can always let him know when we start screaming. So we've got nothing to worry about....
Not that I really care, anyway. What's a fate worse than death between friends?"
"They're just boys, Lexy—"
"Okay—so they're just boys! Innocent little nut-brown boys!"
Lexy shrugged. "At least let David here escort us while we've got him. Just let me get my bag, and we'll go."
"No," said Jilly.
"Why not? I don't see why we should kick our heels until Steffy deigns to put in an appearance, for heaven's sake! Just because she's gone out on the tiles again—"
"It's not Steffy." Jilly shook her head in despair. "You've clean forgotten why I sent you to go and get your new David dummy5
already, haven't you? It's because Madame has summoned him to her boudoir, that's why." Jilly switched apologetically to Roche. "And I'm afraid you must go, David—if only to improve our image with her, to lend us a touch of respectability, let's say—and she will give you a drink, too."
Roche didn't have to pretend to look unwilling. He didn't want to waste any more time before getting to 'The Tower', where the action must be; and he didn't want to jump through any hoops for another version of Madame Goutard, anyway; and he certainly didn't want another drink, of any description.
"I'm afraid you must go," repeated Jilly.
"Well, I'm jolly well not going!" exclaimed Lexy. "Not even to improve my image, darn it!"
"And just as well, Lady Alexandra," said Jilly severely. "What you're going to do is to go to the bathroom and improve your image there. You look like something out of the black-and-white minstrel show pulled backwards through a hedge."
"Oh God! Do I?" Lexy put her hand to her face, and then to her hair, and then studied the hand with dismay.
"David ..." For the umpteenth time Jilly returned to Roche.
". . . she's an old woman, and she's lonely. . . and Lexy and La Goutard have sold you to her as the English d'Artagnan between them .... It would be a kindness just to have one drink with her—just one drink. She loves Englishmen, because of the war; and she's still trying to love them, even dummy5
after Suez, and the way we seem to have let down her nephew in Algeria. So it really would be a kindness."
Put like that it was an order. "Because of the war?"
Jilly nodded. "She was on an escape line. It was Limoges-Brive-la-Gaillarde-Toulouse when things were going well.
But it was Limoges-Château Peyrony-Toulouse when things became difficult. She may be an old witch, but she's an old witch who can wear the MBE alongside her husband's Croix-de-Guerre."
Put like that it wasn't an order, it was an honour.