Courting couples occasionally tried the lane, which didn't look as if it was going anywhere when it left the main road. But nowadays the geese always intercepted them and drove them back. Yet this driver was not deterred; the headlights halted for two or three seconds near the glow of Mrs Clark's cottage, but then moved dummy4
forward again. It could only be coming to him now, thought Audley savagely, and it couldn't be a friend, since no friend of his would ever come calling casually.
The car finally emerged from the lane on to the broad expanse of cobbles, swinging round to stop precisely in front of the porch. It was a white Mini, a tiny toy of a car — nobody he knew drove such an object. But the driver seemed in no hurry to get out, and Audley dared to hope that the engine would start up again. Then the door opened and a tall, tweedy woman in glasses and headscarf climbed out.
Audley was halfway down the stairs to the front door before the bell clanged. If it was charity he would buy it off as quickly as possible, and if white elephants were required for some village occasion he would promise a whole herd of them.
He hardly ever used the main door, and was embarrassed to find that Mrs Clark, ever burglar-conscious, had shot both the huge iron bolts. And when he swung the heavy door open there was an agonised protest of ancient hinges which made him smile: it was altogether too like the opening sequence of a Hammer film, with himself as the ghoulish butler. The coming plea for Oxfam or jumble would be an anticlimax.
But his caller made no plea. She stood waiting in the pool of light, obviously expecting him to speak first.
'Can I help you?' he volunteered at last.
Now she was surprised, and it dawned on Audley that she knew him and had assumed that he knew her. For a long moment he dummy4
groped for her face in his memory, without success. Somebody's wife? Somebody's sister? Somebody's—
'Dr Audley, don't you remember that we met this morning. Faith Jones–Faith Steerforth?'
He made the identification as she spoke. Somebody's daughter! It was unpardonable, but her unexpected glasses and the shadows thrown by the harsh overhead light had deceived him.
For another long moment he stared at her, at a complete loss for words.
'Aren't you at least going to ask me in?'
The 'at least' was like a gauntlet thrown down before him.
It assumed hostility and carried the fight into the enemy's territory.
But how could she have become hostile to him so quickly?
'Miss Steerforth–Miss Jones,' he apologised. 'Forgive me. Please come in.'
He motioned her through the hall, down the passage and into the sitting room. She looked around her with unashamed curiosity, as though valuing the place.
'You've got a lovely house, Dr Audley. And lovely furniture. I didn't know policemen were so well paid,' she said aggressively.
That flecked him on the raw. He thought of the long struggle to preserve these things that he loved so much, and of the things that had gone to save the rest.
'This house, or what's left of it, has been in my family for a long time, Miss Steerforth. Or is it Miss Jones?' He tried to keep the dummy4
anger out of his voice, and achieved a sneer instead.
'I call myself Jones, Dr Audley. But you can call.me Steerforth if you prefer. That's the name on my birth certificate.'
She took off her glasses and regarded him with the same disconcerting haughtiness he had felt outside the churchyard at Asham, doubly disconcerting now because the to-hell-with-you look which characterised the surviving pictures of her father was even more pronounced. Except now it was tinged with hostility rather than boredom. Only something her mother or step-father had told her could have roused her like this. And only the card he had given to Jones could have enabled her to track him down. But that didn't ring true of Jones–it was puzzling.
He realised suddenly that he was out-staring her out of sheer surprise and curiosity. There was uncertainty just beneath the arrogance, and it would be prudent to give that uncertainty time to grow.
'I was just about to have a drink, Miss–Jones.' He moved to the door without giving her a chance to refuse. 'I'll get you one too.'
It was only when he had reached the kitchen that he remembered he didn't have a casual female drink in the house any more. He could hardly offer her a choice of beer or brandy, which left only too-good Claret or execrable Spanish burgundy. He searched for the burgundy abstractedly. Why the hell had she come to disturb him? And why did she think he was a policeman? Not that those answers were of any importance, since she could know nothing about the father she had never met.
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He fumed as he pulled the cork. He had lost his confidence with young women; since his break-up with Liz he had been like the pilot who hadn't dared to go up again immediately after the crash.
The sooner this nuisance of a girl was packed off, the better.
But the nuisance looked so woebegone and vulnerable when he returned to her that his determination weakened. She had put on her glasses again, but it seemed that her supply of courage had run out: the strange old house and the strange policeman had begun to overawe her.
He set a glass on the table beside her. 'Now, Miss Jones, what's the trouble?' Confident neutrality was the note to strike. 'But I must tell you straight away that I'm not a policeman. I think you've been misinformed there.'
She looked down at her feet.
'I think–I think maybe I've made a fool of myself,' she said slowly.
Audley relaxed. It wasn't going to be so embarrassing after all. So long as she didn't start to weep, anyway; anger was preferable to tears any day.
'I've driven all the way from Asham making up things to say to you. But now I'm here they all seem rather stupid and melodramatic. I don't know what to say now.'
Audley gestured towards the wine. 'Drink your drink–it isn't very good, I'm afraid. Then let's hear some of the things you made up and I'll tell you if they fit.'
'They don't fit–I can see that now. But my father–my step-father, that is–said you were a sort of high-up policeman.'
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'Your step-father told you that?' It still didn't sound like Jones.
Faith Jones shook her head in embarrassment.
'No, he didn't. That's what makes it worse. I overheard him talking to Mummy. Not deliberately–I'm not an eavesdropper. I was in our spare room, and you can hear every word that's said in the dining room underneath. And I wouldn't have listened, except that I heard my father's name–my real father's name.' She paused. 'It was rather a shock. I just couldn't stop listening.'
'Why was it a shock? You must have heard them talk about him before. You must have asked them about him.'
'They've told me lots about him. Grandmother talks about him all the time, even now. But—'
And it came tumbling out. The brave pilot, hero of the Arnhem drop, with a medal to prove it. Jones had been a little more guarded, or more honest, and had admitted that he hadn't really known her father. But even he had stretched a point and pretended that he believed Steerforth had stayed with the Dakota to save other people's lives. And the little girl had thought herself lucky to have two gallant pilot fathers instead of one, and had never missed the one already in heaven.
And then she had grown up and strayed into the wrong room, and overheard a conversation with a very different flavour.
'It was Mummy who started it. She always sees through people.
She said: "That man asked you about Johnnie, didn't he?" And Daddy didn't want to answer at first, but she insisted. She said she had a right to know.
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'And then finally he said: "The bastard was up to something big,"