For Hugh that day passed as days did at the office. He dictated letters and received telephone calls. He lunched with a client in the Isola Bella, quite often he thought about his wife. Emily was unhappy because of everything that had happened. She felt, but had not said so, that he had let the Allenbys down. She felt that she herself had let the inmates of Golkorn’s home down. Hugh tried not to think about it; but in his mind’s eye he kept seeing her again, standing up at the meeting and saying that afflicted women have to live somewhere Like mongol children, she had said, stammering; or the blind. ‘That’s quite appreciated, Mrs Mansor,’ the Reverend Feare had murmured, and as if to come to her assistance Golkorn had asked if he might address the meeting. He had nodded his heavy razored head at Emily; he had repeated what she’d said, that afflicted women, like mongol children and the blind, have to go somewhere. He had smiled and spread his hands out, impatient with those who were protesting and yet oilily endeavouring to hide it. A woman present, he’d even suggested, might one day need the home he proposed for Luffnell Lodge. Hugh sighed, remembering it too clearly. He would take Emily out to dinner, to the Rowan House Hotel. He was about to pick up the telephone in order to ask to be put through to her when it rang. Odd, he thought as he picked up the receiver, that she had dreamed so strangely of butterflies.
‘It’s a Dr Golkorn,’ his secretary’s voice said. ‘On the other line, Mr Mansor.’
He hesitated. There was no point in speaking to Golkorn; at half past ten last night Golkorn had lost his case; the matter was closed. Yet something – perhaps just politeness, he afterwards thought – made him pick up the other telephone. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘It’s Golkorn,’ Golkorn said. ‘Look, Mr Mansor, could we talk?’
‘About the Lodge? But that’s all over, Dr Golkorn. The Allenbys –’
‘Sir, they agreed beneath all this pressure not to let me have the house. But with respect, is that just, sir? At least agree to exchange another word or two with me, Mr Mansor.’
‘It would be useless, I’m afraid.’
‘Mr Mansor, do me a favour.’
‘I would willingly do you a favour if I thought –’
‘I ask you only for ten minutes. If I may come to see you for ten minutes, Mr Mansor, I would esteem it.’
‘You mean, you want to come here?’
‘I mean, sir, I would like to come to your very pleasant home. I would like to call in at seven tonight if that might be convenient. The reason I am suggesting this, Mr Mansor, is I am still in the neighbourhood of the village. I am still staying in the same hotel.’
‘Well, yes, come over by all means, but I really must warn you –’
‘I am used to everything, Mr Mansor.’ Laughter accompanied this remark and then Golkorn said, ‘I look forward to seeing you and your nice wife. I promise only to occupy ten minutes.’
Hugh telephoned Emily. ‘Golkorn,’ he said. ‘He wants to come and see us.’
‘But what for?’
‘I really can’t think. I couldn’t say no.’
‘Of course not.’
‘He’s coming at seven.’
She said goodbye and put the receiver down. The development astonished her. She thought at least they had finished with Golkorn.
The telephone rang again and Hugh suggested that they should go out to dinner, to Rowan House, where they often went. She knew he was suggesting it because she’d been upset. She appreciated that, but she said she’d rather make it another night, mainly because she had a stew in the oven. ‘I’m sorry about that wretched man,’ Hugh said. ‘He wasn’t easy to choke off.’ She reassured him, making a joke of Golkorn’s insistence, saying that of course it didn’t matter.
In the garden she picked sweet-peas. She sat for a moment in the corner where she and Hugh often had coffee together on Saturday and Sunday mornings. She put the sweet-peas on the slatted garden table and let her glance wander over lupins and delphiniums, and the tree geranium that was Hugh’s particular pride. On trellises and archways which he’d made roses trailed in profusion, Mermaid and Danse du Feu. She loved the garden, as she loved the house.
At her feet the Sealyham called Spratts settled down to rest for a while, but she warned him that she didn’t intend to remain long in the secluded corner. In a moment she picked up the sweet-peas and took them to the kitchen, where she arranged them in a cut-glass vase. The dog followed her when she carried it to the sitting-room. Was it unusual, she wondered, to pick flowers specially for a person you didn’t like? Yet it had seemed a natural thing to do; she always picked flowers when a visitor was coming.
‘Ten minutes I promised,’ Golkorn said at seven o’clock, having been notably prompt, ‘so ten minutes it must be.’ He laughed, as if he’d made a joke of some kind. ‘No, no drink for me, please.’
Hugh poured Emily a glass of sherry, Harvey’s Luncheon Dry, which was what she always had. He smeared a glass with Angostura drops and added gin and water to it for himself. Perhaps there was something in the fact that he had rescued her, he thought, wanting to think about her rather than their visitor. Even though she loved the subject, she had never been entirely happy as a teacher of Classics because she was shy. Until she came to know them she was nervous of the girls she taught: her glasses and her strawberry mark and her dumpiness, the very fact that she was a teacher, seemed to put her into a certain category, at a disadvantage. And perhaps his rescuing of her, if you could so grandly call it that, had in turn given him something he’d lacked before. Perhaps their marriage was indeed built on debts to one another.
‘Orange juice, Mr Golkorn?’ Emily suggested, already rising to get it for him.
He waved a hand, denying his need of orange juice. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to beat about the bush. I want to come to the point. Luffnell Lodge, Mr Mansor. You’re a man of business, you know those people wouldn’t ever get that price. They’ll lose a lot. You know that.’
‘We’ve been through all of it, Dr Golkorn. The Allenbys do not wish to sell their property to you.’
‘They’re elderly people –’
‘That has nothing to do with it.’
‘With respect, Mr Mansor, it may have. Our elderly friends could be sitting there in that barracks for winter after winter. They could freeze to death. The old lady’s crippled with arthritis as it is.’