Red Notice

38

Her stomach still churning and bile threatening to melt the back of her throat, Delphine leaned back behind her makeshift barricade and did her best to take refuge in happier times.

The Georgian mansion at the edge of the Malvern Hills had been so grand and beautiful it had taken her breath away. A long drive, shaded by lime trees, had led through rolling wheat fields and past a paddock where four horses were grazing. As they’d pulled up at the entrance that first time, two fat and ageing chocolate Labradors had bounded out to greet them and slobbered over Tom.

Delphine had looked up at the immaculate white stucco façade, fluted pillars framing the panelled oak door and the date stone set into the pediment above it. She gave a low whistle that contained more than a trace of mockery. ‘Seventeen twenty-five,’ she said, with a smile. ‘You didn’t tell me you were a proper old-fashioned English country gentleman.’

‘My father is,’ he said. ‘I’m just an ordinary soldier.’

‘The Regiment doesn’t do ordinary, does it? But even your mates in the troop are more the two-up-two-down terraced-house type.’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, maybe. And perhaps even that would seem like luxury to a lot of them. Jockey grew up in a rat-infested tenement with no father and an alcoholic mother. Bryce’s dad was a miner — they were three to a room in a tiny pit cottage, in the pre-Thatcher days, when there were such things — and Keenan was shacked up with his mum in a council flat on a dog-rough estate in Plymouth. When she kicked him out, he lived in his van for a couple of years. And Vatu, he really did have a mud hut on a beach.’

Before Delphine could reply, his parents came out to welcome them. Without having met her, but having seen the house and grounds, Delphine had already guessed at what Tom’s mother would be wearing. Her wool skirt and cashmere pullover, complete with single string of pearls, were no disappointment. She even had a trug — with gardening gloves, a pair of secateurs and some cut roses spilling out of it — on her arm. Her blonde hair was flecked with grey, but her classic English complexion made her look much younger than her mid-fifties.

Tom’s father, florid-faced and sandy-haired, with a paunch straining against his tweed waistcoat, welcomed her over the threshold. He led the way to the library and poured Delphine the strongest gin and tonic she had ever tasted. ‘Can’t abide a weak gin,’ he said, rather superfluously. ‘When I have a martini, I like it so bone dry that I do no more than show the bottle of vermouth to the gin, then put it away again without opening it. I’m a bit like Winston Churchill, in that respect if nothing else. When he made one, instead of adding vermouth to the gin, he just used to bow in the direction of France.’

Delphine laughed. ‘Not so different from Dean Martin, then. He just had the barman mention vermouth as he was pouring the gin. And Buñuel, the filmmaker, he talked about the perfect martini being created when a ray of light passed through a bottle of Noilly Prat and touched the pure spirit in the bottom of the glass.’

Tom’s father looked across to his son. ‘I think you’ve found a diamond this time, dear boy. This is a woman after my own heart. Make sure you hang on to her.’

After they’d chatted for a while, and his mother had shown Delphine around the house, Tom took her outside and gave her a tour of the estate. ‘How’s it going so far?’ he said, as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘Bearing up under the strain?’

‘It’s fine. I like them.’ She saw his doubtful expression. ‘No, really!’

Tom led her through the garden, down a winding path across the fields and past a small lake, where swallows skimmed the surface and moorhens shepherded their broods among the bulrushes at the water’s edge.

‘So, do your parents own all this?’ Delphine said, looking around her.

He nodded. ‘As far as the eye can see and then a little bit more. It was my mother’s childhood home. She’s “old money”, as we say, like l’ancien régime in France — before they all got their heads sliced off in the Revolution.

‘My dad’s “new money”, though. He made his in the City, but he took over the running of the estate when my grandfather died. My parents wanted me to go to college at Cirencester and learn estate management, ready to take over this place when the old man retires, but that was never going to happen. It’s full of Sloanes and Hooray Henrys. I’d either have run amok with a shotgun and bagged a few of them, or I’d have gone out of my mind with boredom. Besides, I wanted to be a soldier.’

‘But it’s so beautiful here…’

Tom shrugged. ‘Beautiful. And dull. It’s not so bad in summer when there are a few visitors around, but in winter I could take you down to the village pub and tell you who would be in, where they’d be sitting, what they’d be wearing and what they’d be talking about before I even opened the door. There’s one old bloke who plays darts there every single night of the year, Christmas included. I swear that sometimes I’ve walked out of the pub as he was throwing a dart, gone away for a few months, and got back in time to see it hit the board.’

‘Isn’t it just the same in Hereford?’

‘In the sergeants’ mess, maybe. But there are other attractions in one of the hotel bars.’ He slipped his arm around her waist as they walked on down the fields.

There was a cottage and a cluster of outbuildings at the bottom of the hill, sheltered by an oak wood. ‘I need to call in here and say hello,’ Tom said. ‘It won’t take long.’

A middle-aged man answered the door. He was wearing muddy boots and a worn tweed jacket with a belt of orange baler twine. He broke into a huge grin at the sight of Tom and clasped him in a bear hug. ‘Tommy Boy,’ he said. ‘Now you’re a sight for sore eyes, I must say. Where have you been hiding?’

‘Not hiding, Jack, just busy, but it’s great to see you. This is Delphine.’

They shook hands, Delphine’s dwarfed by Jack’s huge paw, rough and reddened from outdoor work. ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he said. He gave her the ghost of a wink. ‘I keep telling him it’s about time he found a good woman to settle down with.’

He came with them as they walked on around the estate, showing them the pheasant pens and the new trees he’d put in. He pointed to a cedar of Lebanon sapling, planted a few yards from the stump of a felled giant. ‘It broke my heart to take that old tree down,’ he said. ‘It was a beautiful specimen and had been growing there for more than two centuries, almost as long as the house has stood there. They say the man who planted it brought the sapling back from the Holy Land in his hat and shared his water ration with it on the long sea voyage home.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘I didn’t have to work quite so hard to get that one. I just bought it from a nursery. Still, it’s nice to think that a tree I’ve planted will still be there long after I’ve passed on.’

He looked around him. ‘So, we’ve made a few changes since you were last here, Tom, but some things haven’t changed at all. Your dad’s still too tight to invest in new machinery, so I’m having to drive the same knackered old thing every harvest.’

He gestured towards the corner of the field where an old combine was parked, its red paint sun-faded and streaked with rust. ‘I taught Tom to drive this when he was a boy. It was the worst harvest we ever had. Well, in truth, he wasn’t bad at it, though he did tend to go a bit off-line whenever a pretty girl walked down the lane.’ He laughed and ducked under the mock-punch that Tom threw at him.

‘He was always down here helping me when he was a boy. I couldn’t shake him off! He wasn’t much of a one for book-learning but he was a smart kid, just the same. And he could fix pretty much anything. I’d only have to show him something once and he’d never forget it.

‘He was quite a scrapper, too, weren’t you, Tom? Remember the time when Parnaby’s boys set about you — real tough lads they were, farmhands from the next estate. Well, I reckon they thought he’d be a soft touch, with his private education and his posh accent, but Tom took them apart, didn’t you? Flattened both of them and then saw off their elder brother when he came looking for revenge. I was squaring up to him myself, trying to protect Tom, though to be honest, I wasn’t fancying my own chances that much, because that brother of theirs was a real big sod. Then Tom pushed past me and took him on himself.

‘He was giving him a few inches in height and more than a few pounds in weight, but he cleaned him up good and proper. He ducked under a big right hook, doubled him up with a couple of punches right into the guts and then threw a right-hander that broke his nose. We didn’t have any more trouble from those boys after that, did we, Tom?’

He broke off and gave an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry, Delphine, I do tend to run off at the mouth sometimes. It must be living alone. Whenever I’m out in company, I suppose I must be trying to make up for the silence at home.’

She put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m learning all sorts of things about this misfit I didn’t know.’

‘Well, you could tell he was a proper fighter, even then. He had fantastic hand-speed, but above all he had a real fighter’s brain, and a fighter’s instincts. For most people in a punch-up, the red mist comes down and they rush in, throwing punches like they’re going out of fashion. They often get decked as a result.’ He paused. ‘Tom was never like that. He was always ice cool, watching the other guy, reading and anticipating his moves, then putting him away like a slaughterman stunning a bullock. And do you remember that time when—’

‘Yeah, Jack, I remember,’ Tom said, hastily cutting him off before he could start another tale. ‘But, look, we’ve got to get back now. Dad’ll have us horse-whipped if we’re late for dinner. Great to see you, though. Take care, huh?’

Jack took Delphine’s hand in his. ‘A real pleasure to meet you.’ He turned to Tom. ‘Look after this one. She’s a real keeper, if you ask me.’

As they walked back up the fields, Delphine turned to wave goodbye, but Jack was already making his slow, solitary way back towards his house in the shadow of the wood.

Tom fell silent, perhaps embarrassed that so much of him had been revealed, or worrying that Delphine wouldn’t want to be with someone like that — not just in the SAS but enjoying fighting.

To his surprise, Delphine slipped her hand into his, leaned into him and kissed him.

As they walked through the garden towards the house, they could hear a gong being struck. ‘Oh, please,’ Delphine said. ‘What is this? Downton Abbey? I should be in a tiara and an evening gown, and you should be wearing a white tie and tails.’

‘Just one of my mother’s little foibles,’ Tom said. ‘As you may have noticed, she’s very old school.’