Borrowed Time

CHAPTER EIGHT

My mother’s death deprived the Timariot family of a centripetal force I’d never realized she embodied. This first became apparent over Christmas 1991, when the traditional mass gathering at Adrian and Wendy’s went by the board. I spent the day alone, tramping the lanes around Steep and wondering whether I oughtn’t to feel deprived or deserted-rather than strangely content.

On Boxing Day, I drove down to Hayling Island to see Uncle Larry. He lived in a chalet bungalow overlooking Chichester Harbour, with a telescope permanently erected in the bedroom window to study the comings and goings of sea birds on the mud-flats. His other passion-cricket-was evident in the daffodil ranks of Wisdens on his bookshelves and the desk-load of notes and documents he’d been trying for ten years or more to distil into a definitive history of Timariot & Small. But the company’s future, not its past, was what he wanted to discuss with me.

“I had lunch with Les Buckingham the other day,” he announced. (Les Buckingham had been his opposite number at one of our biggest rivals in the bat-making business.) “He said something about Viburna Sportswear that worried me. I didn’t know what to make of it. He’s probably got the wrong end of the stick, but, according to Les, Viburna are very much in Bushranger’s pocket. Bushranger Sports, that is.” The clarification was unnecessary. Bushranger Sports of Sydney and Auckland had been making cricket bats for less than twenty years, but had already carved out a large chunk of the Australian market for themselves. “He doesn’t see how they’d let Viburna get away with selling our bats under their very noses.”

“They can hardly stop them now we effectively are Viburna.”

“That’s what I said. But Les… Well, he was unconvinced. Reckoned Bushranger had… ways and means. Couldn’t say what ways and means, of course. That’s why I thought he was just flying a kite. But I wanted to check you’d heard nothing similar. We’ve invested a lot in this takeover. And borrowed to do it, Jenny tells me. With interest rates where they are at the moment, we can’t afford to have it turn sour.”

“I agree. But it’s not going to turn sour.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, Adrian, Jenny and Simon are sure. So I am too. As for Les Buckingham, now he’s retired, isn’t he bound to be just a bit… out of touch?”

“Like me, you mean?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, you may be right. You’ve all got your heads screwed on. I suppose I ought to just let you get on with it.”

“Probably.”

“And stop worrying?”

“Yes. Believe me, Uncle, there really is nothing to worry about.” But there was, of course. Plenty.

The truth emerged in progressively more disturbing morsels during the first few months of 1992. Rumours no more substantial than Les Buckingham’s began to coagulate into doubts nobody quite seemed able to pin down or dismiss. Unexplained problems delayed-then prevented-placements of Timariot & Small bats in Viburna’s retail outlets. Technical hitches, according to Greg Dyson. Rather more than that, I began to suspect.

Then, in March, came two simultaneous bombshells. Danziger’s, the nationwide Australian sports goods retailer, confirmed in writing that a legally enforceable agreement with Bushranger Sports prohibited them from handling cricket bats originating from Bushranger’s domestic rivals. Our ownership of Viburna meant we now fell within that classification. The whole point of taking them over in the first place-readier access to the Australasian market-was vitiated if Danziger’s doors were closed to us. And the lawyers agreed they were closed-if the agreement was valid. Well, Bushranger were bellicose enough in their assertions to suggest they had no doubts about its validity. And Danziger’s insisted Greg Dyson had long known of its existence. Naturally, we wanted to hear Dyson’s response to that. But he chose this moment to send us a perfunctory letter of resignation and quit Melbourne without leaving a forwarding address behind him.

There was worse to follow when Adrian and Jennifer hurried out to Melbourne to investigate. Previously undisclosed creditors of Viburna came to light. Along with details of substantial foreign exchange transactions in the last few weeks of Dyson’s tenure of office which he’d apparently used to camouflage the diversion of Viburna funds to overseas bank accounts held in names which sounded horribly like aliases. Viburna funds were of course Timariot & Small funds. More ominously, they represented moneys lent to us on the assumption that we could repay them from the profits our takeover of Viburna would bring in. But now there weren’t going to be any profits. Just escalating losses made worse by legal fees, hidden debts and outright theft. I don’t know whether Dyson had ever tried his hand at sheep-shearing. But he’d certainly done a thorough job of fleecing us.

The recriminations began straightaway. Simon and I felt Adrian, who’d had more dealings with Dyson than the rest of us, should have realized he was a crook. We also reckoned Jennifer should have spotted the holes in Viburna’s books. There were acrimonious meetings and blazing rows; simmering resentments and incipient feuds. Adrian brazened it out, insisting we’d been taken in by a master fraudster: no blame could attach to him. Jennifer took a different line, admitting she should have smelt a rat sooner and offering to resign her directorship. She was genuinely appalled that we’d been so easily deceived. Well, so were all of us. In the end, there was nothing to be gained by making Jennifer a scapegoat. Her offer was never taken up. And Adrian remained in charge. But his authority-along with our faith in him and in each other-was damaged beyond repair. The anxious debates and stifled accusations left us divided and dispirited. Timariot & Small could never be the same again.

Worse still, it couldn’t be prosperous either. The Petersfield operation remained as viable as ever. We were actually doing very well. But the Viburna connection was an open wound we couldn’t staunch. To cover the debts Dyson had accumulated on our behalf and wind up Viburna Sportswear committed us to several years of corporate loss. Nothing could change that, even if the Australian authorities caught up with Dyson-which they showed no sign of doing. Uncle Larry never once said “I told you so.” But the affair saddened him more than any of us. He’d been researching Timariot & Small’s financial record for his company history and knew a profit, however small, had been turned in every year of its existence. Every one of a hundred and fifty-six years, to be precise. But the hundred and fifty-seventh was going to be different. And so were quite a few more after that. The future had lost its certainty. It was no longer a safe place to go.

Caustic though she was in her criticism, Bella refused to become embroiled in the consequences of the Viburna disaster. As Lady Paxton, I suppose she thought she should remain aloof. And Sir Keith’s money meant she could afford to. They’d sold the London house and taken to using The Hurdles as their base in England. More and more of their time, however, was spent in Biarritz, which Bella found convenient both for Pyrenean skiing and Côte d’Argent sunbathing. I saw little of them and remained unsure whether Sir Keith had been told about Rowena’s suicide attempt. If not, I didn’t propose to break the news. Especially since she seemed to have recovered from it so well.

My evidence for that assessment was admittedly limited. But it was persuasive. Early in April, I was driving back through Bristol from a visit to an engineering firm in Pontypool who claimed they could solve our saw-dust extraction problems at a stroke. I diverted on a whim to Clifton and called at the flat in Caledonia Place on no more than an off-chance that anybody would be at home. It was, after all, the early afternoon of a working day. But Rowena’s Easter vacation had just begun and she welcomed me warmly, plying me with non-herbal tea and repeated assurances that she’d put the neuroses of the autumn well behind her. I found it easy to believe. She looked, sounded and behaved like a relaxed and self-confident twenty-year-old. The baggy black outfit she wore was unflattering, the taped music she turned down for my benefit excruciating, but both were fashionable. She hadn’t cut her hair though and I hoped she never would, but it was tied back under some sort of bandana. Her strangeness-her ethereality-was fading. And part of me regretted its going. But I knew she’d be happier without it.

One other encouraging sign came in a telephone call which occupied Rowena for a whispered ten minutes in the hall. A boyfriend called Paul, she later admitted. “It’s nothing serious,” she added. But I couldn’t help suspecting her blushes told me more than her words.

I’d studied a framed photograph that stood on the mantelpiece while she was out of the room. It was of her and Sarah with their mother and couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. An unremarkable snapshot, casually posed. But even there, in Louise Paxton’s distant half-quizzical smile, you could read the tentative beginnings of her enigmatic end. From the shadow of which Rowena was at last emerging.

What shall I give my daughter the younger

More than will keep her from cold and hunger?

I shall not give her anything.

By June, I’d had a bellyful of Timariot & Small’s intractable problems and was in need of a break. To my surprise, Bella offered me one, in the form of an invitation to visit her and Sir Keith in Biarritz. I’d been too preoccupied to book any kind of a holiday for myself, so I accepted with well-disguised alacrity.

I went out as soon as I could arrange a fortnight’s leave and found the resort still hanging back from the tumult of high summer. Its white façades and terracotta roofs lined three miles of surf, sand and crumbling rock with dilapidated but undeniable dignity. Torquay with a Gallic swagger, if you like. And like it I did. Its empty dawn beaches. Its stinging salt winds. Its dazzling afternoons and languorous evenings. Its never obsequious air of being every man’s haven. And every woman’s too.

L’Hivernance was at the northern end of the town, where the Pointe St.-Martin and its lighthouse stood guard over the Plage Miramar. The villa had been built in the twenties for an exiled Chilean politician. Its site was sheltered but panoramic, its design plain yet boldly curvaceous, all peach-washed bays and balconies, with wide arched windows like the heavy-lidded eyes of some bosomy dowager. It was easy to imagine its first owner glaring out at the Atlantic as he’d once glared out at the Pacific, ruminating on the rights and wrongs of the latest coup in Santiago. Perhaps because he’d been afraid of political enemies sending agents in search of him, there was no entrance visible from the street. Just a doorless frontage commanding a prospect of the ocean, flanked by the sub-tropical foliage of the garden. A driveway, leading in by one gate and out by another, curved round to the rear, where access could be discreetly obtained. Or not, as the case might be.

The interior was altogether less discreet. High ceilings and broad staircases suggested a larger and grander residence than it actually was. Dudley Paxton had loaded its conventional comforts with assorted ethnographia collected during his African postings. His son assured me most of it was now mouldering in a museum basement in Bayonne, but plenty of ivory, beaten copper and bolt-eyed statuary remained, along with leopard-skin antimacassars and elephant-foot wastepaper bins.

What Louise had made of this gruesome clutter I couldn’t begin to conjecture. She’d evidently thought better of trying to impose her personality on the villa, however, contenting herself with converting just a couple of rooms to her vision of what it should have been. An airy pale-curtained boudoir with its own south-facing balcony. And a gallery at the back of the house devoted to a dozen or so Expressionist paintings. Not the best, of course. They’d always stayed in England. Latterly in a bank vault, Sir Keith told me. There were a couple of Ensors in the vault. And a Rouault, Louise had always believed, though it still awaited accreditation. The pictures left at L’Hivernance were strictly second division. Which was where the critical establishment had placed Oscar Bantock. So it was no surprise to find him represented by a pair of vividly tempestuous works. The Drowning Clown and Face at the Window. With an empty patch of wall between them where Black Widow may have been destined to hang. But about that Sir Keith was saying nothing.

Staying at the villa focused my mind on Sarah’s all too plausible theory of what had happened there in July 1990. I couldn’t ask whether it was true, of course. Bella and I had struck an unspoken bargain when I accepted her invitation. Her side of it was to avoid cross-questioning me about the Viburna fiasco. Mine was to play the part of a cultured but reticent relative whose presence reassured her new friends that her background in England wasn’t a discreditable blank. Hence, I assumed, the hectic round of dinner parties she arranged while I was with them. And hence the embargo on any expressions of curiosity by me about the first Lady Paxton-and the circumstances of her last departure from L’Hivernance.

But that didn’t stop me thinking. Or imagining. Slammed doors and raised voices echoing through the sea-lit rooms. Louise standing on the beach at sunrise, slipping a ring from her finger and hurling it towards the cream-topped breakers. Or sitting on the boudoir balcony, writing a farewell note to her absent husband. By the time you read this, Keith… I looked at him often when he didn’t realize he was being observed and wondered just what her message had been. If Sarah was right, you couldn’t blame him for destroying it. It made no difference, after all. Nothing could bring Louise back to life. Certainly not the missing jigsaw-pieces of the truth about how she’d died. Even if I found them, I could never find her. She was gone for ever. Though sometimes-when a curtain moved or a silence fell-you could believe she wasn’t quite out of reach.

My fortnight in Biarritz was half done when Rowena telephoned her father with news that clearly took him aback. She’d got engaged and wanted to come out straightaway to introduce him and Bella to her fiancé. His name was Paul, as I could have predicted. Not a student, apparently, but a risk analyst for Metropolitan Mutual, an insurance company with headquarters in Bristol. In a separate call, Sarah explained that Rowena had met him through her. She and Paul Bryant had been a year apart at King’s College, Cambridge. He’d looked her up on realizing they were both living in Bristol and had instantly fallen for Rowena. As she had for him. Sarah reckoned Sir Keith couldn’t fail to like him.

She was spot on. Rowena and Paul arrived a few days later and were hardly through the door before their compatibility and affection for each other-as well as Paul’s suitability as a son-in-law-became abundantly obvious. He was a young man of charm, humour and evident sincerity. Dark-haired and handsome in a fashion-poster style that clearly appealed to Bella every bit as much as Rowena, he also possessed a keen and probing intellect. Along with a disarming facility for drawing people out about their achievements and ambitions while saying remarkably little about his own. I couldn’t decide whether this was a deliberate technique or a personality trait. Nor whether it was as apparent to others as it was to me. But, strangely, it didn’t make him any less likeable. Quite the reverse. Especially where women were concerned. He was, according to Bella, “the least vain good-looking man I’ve ever met.” Which, coming from her, was quite a compliment. Though where it left me I didn’t like to speculate.

Something else about Paul Bryant puzzled me from the first. His amiability-his lack of the slightest hint of sarcasm-was as intriguing as it was endearing. There was either more or less to him than met the eye. But which? His manner deflected any attempt to decide. He could be naïve as well as profound, gauche as well as sensitive. He could be, it sometimes seemed, anything he judged you wanted him to be.

But his love for Rowena was genuine beyond doubt. To watch him watching her was to glimpse true devotion. And it was devotion that never threatened to smother. He knew how much support to give her and how much independence. He protected her without dominating her. He encouraged her to bloom and stepped back to study the result. He was the best friend she could hope to have. And would make the perfect husband. As she well knew. “Meeting Paul was like recovering from colour blindness,” she told me. “He’s banished the drabness from my life. Not the sadness. Not all of it, anyway. Not yet. But soon he will. With Paul I can lead a happier life than I ever expected to.”

There was never any likelihood that Sir Keith would object to the match. Since Paul worked in Bristol and already owned a home there, marriage needn’t disrupt Rowena’s studies in any way. When she revealed they’d been thinking of a September wedding, her father was almost more enthusiastic than she was. “Yes, make it September,” he urged. “It’ll be more than a wedding. It’ll be the day this family puts the past behind it and goes forward together.” Fine words. Fine sentiments. With every prospect of fulfilment.

While I was in Biarritz, there was only one occasion when I talked to Paul on his own. It was the day before I was due to leave. Sir Keith was at the golf course, while Bella had taken Rowena to experience the delights of thalasso-therapy, the latest beauty treatment with which she hoped to stave off middle age. We’d agreed to meet them afterwards for tea. Leaving the villa with plenty of time to spare, we strolled down the beaches-emptied by grey skies and a keen wind-to the old fishing port, then climbed by zig-zag paths up through the tamarisk trees to the Pointe Atalaye. At its summit, we leant against some railings and looked back along the sweep of the bay to the lighthouse and the nestling roof of L’Hivernance. And Paul suddenly answered a question I’d not had the courage to ask.

“I know about the suicide attempt, Robin. You don’t have to avoid the subject for my benefit.”

“Good. I’m glad. That you know, I mean.”

“She told me right at the start. She’s still not ready to tell her father, but… we’ll get there in the end.”

“I’m sure you will. You seem to be just what she needs.”

“Glad you think so. It makes it easier for me to mention something that’s been on my mind.”

“Oh yes?”

“Well, Sarah and Rowena have both told me how kind you’ve been to them since their mother’s death. How generous with your time and attention.” It was a curious choice of phrase. He kept his eyes trained on the distant lighthouse as he continued. “Sarah and I saw quite a lot of one another at Cambridge. I feel I know her almost as well as Rowena. I even met their mother once. And the infamous Oscar Bantock.”

“Really?”

“Sarah took me to an exhibition of his work in Cambridge. Pretty crappy stuff.” He chuckled. “I think I may have let Bantock realize what my opinion was. I expect I was a bit drunk. Tongue ran away with me. I’ve learned to control it better since. Anyway, Louise Paxton was there. I exchanged a few words with her. Nothing more. Like you, I suppose.” Now he did look at me. “Just a fleeting encounter. But enough to be able to imagine what losing her must have meant to her daughters.”

“They’ve suffered, no question.”

“But Sarah’s ridden it out. And, with my help, Rowena will too.”

“Good.” I smiled to cover my puzzlement. He was making some kind of point. But I couldn’t grasp what it was. “I hope you’re right.”

“Oh, I am. I’m sure of it. Surer than I’ve ever been of anything. Rowena and I are made for each other. Which means…” He smiled. “What I’m saying, Robin, is that you can stop worrying about her. She’s got me to look after her now.” And she doesn’t need you any more, his dazzling smile declared. “You’ve been a real help to her. And to Sarah. But from here on… Well, you can let me handle things.” I was being warned off. Politely but firmly told to keep my distance. He obviously didn’t see me as a rival for Rowena’s affections. Then what did he see me as? Somebody who knew a little too much for comfort? Somebody who might possibly know more than he did? Was that what he feared? Or did he just want rid of me for Rowena’s sake? There was nothing in his expression or tone of voice even to hint at the answer. Candour and concealment were in him almost the same thing.

I smiled back and made a calculated attempt to catch him off guard. “Tell me, Paul- Does Rowena still believe her mother went back to England that last time purely in order to buy one of Bantock’s paintings?”

The question was as much a test of Sarah as of Paul. I needed to know whether she trusted him as completely as he’d implied. His response was swift. But it didn’t quite dispel the doubt. “She believes it. And I think it’s best she should. Don’t you?”

He had me where he wanted me. The only slight advantage I could deny him was the pleasure of hearing my explicit agreement. I glanced at my watch and nodded down towards the Hôtel du Palais, a mansarded monument to Second Empire opulence that dominated the shoreline-and was the chosen venue for our tea party. “I think we ought to start back,” I said, grinning at him. “Don’t you?”

Tea amid the chandeliered splendour of the Hôtel du Palais-the Ritz-sur-mer, as Bella called it-was superficially a delightful experience. For Bella it was an opportunity to show off her possessions before an appreciative audience of après-midi society. Her jewellery. Her suntan. Her shapely thighs. Her pretty stepdaughter. And her stepdaughter’s handsome fiancé. Paul and Rowena played their parts so well that my own mood made no impact. When Bella did notice my lack of contribution to the sparkling banter, she attributed it to depression at the thought of returning to England. And I let her think she was right.

In a sense, I suppose she was. But it wasn’t the prospect of leaving behind the charms of Biarritz that weighed me down. It was the knowledge that Paul’s marriage to Rowena really would raise the drawbridge between us. Between me and the only other person who’d met Louise Paxton on the day of her death-and glimpsed the indecipherable truth. It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did. It shouldn’t have mattered at all. But still, two years on, I couldn’t forget. I didn’t want Rowena to either. I didn’t want Paul Bryant to make her happy at the expense of her mother’s memory. But I knew he meant to. And I was very much afraid he would succeed.

Rowena Paxton and Paul Bryant were married at St. Kenelm’s Church, Sapperton, on Saturday the twelfth of September, 1992-a gorgeous late summer’s day of mellow sunlight and motionless air.

As I drove up across the Berkshire Downs and the Vale of the White Horse that morning, I could already picture the scene awaiting me: the Cotswold stone; the stained glass; the lace ruffs of the choristers; the silk dresses of the ladies; the grey top hats of the gentlemen; and the deep black shadows cast by ancient yews across the gravestones. The blessings of nature and the contrivances of man would weave their familiar spell and for a single afternoon we’d believe we really were witnessing the perfect union of two lives.

The reality was almost exactly that. Sapperton lay deep in Ideal Home country: a neat little village of restored cottages and secluded residences perched on the eastern slopes of the Golden Valley. The cars were parked two- or three-deep along the lane leading to the church. Inside, family and friends were massed in their finery. I caught a glimpse of Bella at the front before being relegated to a distant pew. From there I was happy to spectate anonymously as the bride made her entrance on her father’s arm. Rowena’s delicate features were transformed into fairy-tale beauty by a narrow-bodiced wedding dress. While Paul, slim and elegant in his morning coat, resembled her saviour prince as closely as anyone could demand. Sir Keith swelled with paternal pride as he led his daughter up the aisle, Sarah and two other bridesmaids following with the page-boys. The priest welcomed us with a nicely judged reference to the bride’s mother. Paul and Rowena recited their lines without a stumble. The marriage was pronounced. Prayers were said. Hymns were sung. Eyes were dabbed and throats cleared. And I saw such unalloyed happiness in Rowena’s expression that I rebuked myself for doubting this would turn out to be the best thing she’d ever done. Clearly, she was confident it would. So who was I to quibble?

The Old Parsonage stood so close to the church that the bride and groom’s conveyance there by pony and trap was the shortest of superfluous trots. It was a handsomely gabled house made to seem larger than it was by its lofty setting above the valley. The terraced garden led the eye towards the winding course of the river below and the wooded slopes on its other side: a ruckled blanket of green up which a tide of shadow slowly climbed as the afternoon advanced.

A marquee had been set up at the top of the garden, adjoining the house. Here, as a string quartet played and waitresses dispensed champagne with limitless generosity, I did my best to amuse the guests I shared a table with: the couple who lived next door and their daughter; an old medical colleague of Sir Keith’s; and a cousin of Paul’s who seemed to know him about as well as I did. “Smart and close, our Paul,” he remarked with a frown. “Always has been.”

I exchanged a few words and a kiss with Rowena, a handshake and garbled best wishes with Paul. I suppose I didn’t expect more. My invitation was something of a farewell gesture. I knew that and so did they. My connection with Bella meant there’d probably be the odd fleeting encounter over the years. But nothing more. Paul had become the master of Rowena’s destiny. And I didn’t feature in his plans at all.

This awareness stayed with me throughout the day. It was there when I followed the usher across the church. When I applauded the speeches and toasted the happy couple’s future. When I stood in the crowded lane and cheered them off. And it would still be there, I knew, when I made my solitary journey home. For them, this was a glorious beginning. For me, a solemn end.

“It went well,” Bella said to me as they drove away, letting me see some of the relief she would have hidden from others. She’d done the bulk of the planning and, in a sense, this was as much a celebration of her marriage as Rowena’s. The first full-scale public occasion she’d presided over as Lady Paxton. Its success was a measure of her acceptance. And it had been a success. If anybody had compared her unfavourably with the first Lady Paxton, they’d done so in the privacy of their own thoughts. Bella was safely installed.

I’d always known she would be, of course. Her dress sense might occasionally betray her. Some, for instance, would have said she shouldn’t have been showing so much cleavage at her stepdaughter’s wedding. But that wouldn’t have included any of the male guests. Her joie de vivre was irrepressible. And so was her social ambition. The council-house girl had become what my mother had always said she wasn’t: a lady.

Sir Keith paid her a special tribute in his speech, describing her as “the woman who’s helped me and my daughters recover better than we ever thought we could from the loss we suffered two years ago.” He was equally fulsome in his praise of his new son-in-law. “Paul is a remarkable young man. As strong as he is sensitive. As honest as he is perceptive. Rowena has found herself a fine husband.” He meant it too. The conviction in his voice was unmistakable. Sir Keith Paxton was a man well pleased with the compensations life-and death-had handed him.

And who could blame him? He’d not been married to Bella long enough to see her crueller side. While Paul was the sort of son-in-law fathers dream of. I watched him charming the aunts and chucking the page-boys. I listened to his witty well-ordered speech. I studied him long and hard as he posed with his parents and sisters for yet another photograph. Mr. and Mrs. Bryant were a gauche good-hearted couple, overawed in the company of medical grandees and Cotswold weekenders. But their son wasn’t. Paul Bryant went in awe of nobody. Metropolitan Mutual employed him as a risk analyst and it was easy to see why. Because for him risk spelt no danger. He was in smooth and complete control of his life. And now of Rowena’s too.

The party slowly broke up after the bride and groom’s departure. Some guests left promptly. Others lingered, chatting over tea and coffee in the marquee or strolling in the garden. Bella circulated among them, making new acquaintances and sealing old ones, her energy apparently inexhaustible. Sir Keith too kept up the round, paying me little heed when I said goodbye. “Delighted you could come, Robin. Delighted. It’s been a splendid day, hasn’t it?” He didn’t stay to hear my answer. But he wouldn’t have been disappointed if he had.

I’d not spoken to Sarah all afternoon, so I went in search of her before leaving. A friend of hers I vaguely recognized said she was in the house. I traced her to a small room at the front fitted out as a study, about as far from the party as she could be. There was a woman with her. Tall, fair-haired and elegant, aged somewhere in her forties. I hadn’t noticed her at the top table or close to the centre of the celebrations. But she obviously knew Sarah well. They were talking softly as I entered, almost whispering. And, whatever they were saying, they stopped as soon as they saw me.

“Robin!” said Sarah, jumping up. “How lovely. I was hoping to see you before you left. I’m sorry to have neglected you. But it’s been so hectic.”

“Of course,” I said, smiling. “I quite understand.”

“You’ve been well looked after?”

“Absolutely. Couldn’t have been better.”

“Just what I was saying,” her companion remarked. “I’m Sophie Marsden, by the way.” She rose and stepped towards me, extending a kid-gloved hand.

“Robin Timariot.” I looked at her as we shook, my attention raised now I knew who she was. Louise Paxton’s friend. The one who’d shared her enthusiasm for Expressionist art. And who’d shared a few secrets along the way, perhaps? There was a similarity to Louise. Not in looks so much as manner. A hint of distance. An involuntary implication that much of her mind dwelt on subjects no-one else could understand. It was there in Sophie, albeit more faintly-more impermanently-than it had been in the woman I’d met on Hergest Ridge. But it was there. Like a palm-print. An impression. A dried flower preserved between the pages of a book. No scent. No sap. No life. But stronger than a memory. More than chance likeness or fading recollection. More than could ever be forgotten.

“Sarah’s told me about you, Mr. Timariot. What a help you’ve been to her and Rowena. And to Keith, of course. In introducing him to Bella.”

“Well, I…”

“Louise was a great believer in life, you know. In making the most of it. In casting off past sadnesses. She really would have been pleased at how things have turned out.”

“I… I’m…” I groped for an adequate response. Part of me wanted to echo her sentiment. To draw a neat straight line with Louise Paxton on one side and me incontrovertibly on the other. But another part of me wanted to protest. To rage against a travesty I couldn’t define. To cross the neat straight line. “I’m so glad… to hear a friend of hers say so, Mrs. Marsden.”

“Actually, Robin,” said Sarah, “I was about to take Sophie to see Mummy’s grave. She’s not visited it since the funeral. Rowena’s asked me to put her bouquet on it along with mine. Would you like to come with us?”

“I’d be delighted,” I said. With sudden and utter sincerity.

The graveyard of St. Kenelm’s Church had been full for fifty years or more. Since then, burials had taken place in a small cemetery just outside the village. I drove Sarah and Sophie there at the start of my journey home. Though it was less than a mile from The Old Parsonage, we seemed to have been transported a vast distance from the gabbling gaiety of the wedding party. The cemetery was still and silent, its graves clustered around an avenue of yew trees at one end while the other end stood empty and overgrown, awaiting future use. I didn’t ask why Sir Keith hadn’t come. Why Rowena had felt unable to do this herself. Why Sarah had asked Sophie and me to go with her. Did she, I wondered, regard us as more likely to understand her feelings than her father? Were we the only two she could trust with a share of this experience?

We walked slowly and self-consciously along the gravel path, Sarah a few steps ahead, cradling the bouquets in her arms. She went straight to the grave and placed the flowers beneath the headstone. Sophie and I stood behind her and watched as she knelt beside it. Dew still clung to the grass in the shadow cast by the nearest yew. Its moisture was darkening the hem of her full-skirted dress, turning rose pink to blood red. There was meaning everywhere, if you cared to look. As I looked now, at the inscription on the headstone.

LOUISE JANE PAXTON

11 NOVEMBER 1945-17 JULY 1990

FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST

The phrase was from a poem by Thomas. Only Sarah could have chosen it. Only she could have known what the choice meant. Though in that moment I seemed to as well.

We stayed a few minutes, no more. Then Sophie and I started diplomatically back towards the gate, while Sarah lingered by the grave. They meant to walk back to the house, so I’d soon be on my solitary way. There was much I wanted to ask Sophie, but there was too little time and no obvious pretext for extending it. Besides, my curiosity about her dead friend would have seemed odd, suspiciously inappropriate. A few mumbled trifles were all that should have been expected of me.

“A peaceful spot,” I ventured, as we reached the gate and looked back at Sarah.

“Yes. I’m glad to have come back. You’ve not been here before?”

“No.”

“You didn’t come to the funeral, of course. But I thought perhaps afterwards…” She glanced round at me, her eyes narrowing beneath the brim of her hat. I sensed suspicion on some score I couldn’t fathom. I sensed there was a question she longed to ask me. But something held her back. “Sarah told me you manage a cricket-bat factory in Petersfield. Is that right?”

“Yes.” The point seemed deliberately banal, provoking me to respond in kind. “What about your husband, Mrs. Marsden? What line is he-”

“Agricultural machinery. But you don’t want to hear about that. Very boring.”

“No more so than the cricket-bat business, I’m sure.”

“Believe me, it is.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Have you heard from Henley Bantock, by the way?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oscar Bantock’s nephew. He’s writing his uncle’s biography. Has written it, I suppose. It’s due out next spring. He came to see me a few months ago. I have two Bantocks on my drawing-room wall and he wanted to photograph them for the book. Wished I hadn’t agreed in the end. Appalling little creep.”

I smiled. “He is rather, isn’t he?”

“Oh, so you have met him?”

“Once, yes. But not about the book. There’s nothing I could have told him anyway.”

“No?”

“Of course not.” Her questions were becoming more and more baffling. I could have believed she was trying to provoke me into disclosing something, but for the fact that there was nothing to disclose. “I never knew Oscar Bantock.”

“No. But you knew his foremost patroness, didn’t you?”

I frowned. My bemusement must by now have been apparent to her. Along with my growing irritation. “You mean Louise Paxton?”

“Who else?”

“You’ve lost me. I met Lady Paxton for a few minutes on the day she died. That’s all. We didn’t discuss Oscar Bantock’s painting career.”

“Then what made you contact the revolting Henley? It’s you who’ve lost me.”

We stared at each other, incomprehension battling with incredulity. I sensed it would be foolish-perhaps dangerous-to try to explain how I’d met Henley. But why I couldn’t have said. Sophie Marsden seemed not just to know something I didn’t, but to know it about me. I couldn’t decide which might be worse. To find out what it was. Or never to.

“Are you two all right?” asked Sarah, surprising both of us, even though her approach along the gravel path can hardly have been stealthy.

“Fine,” replied Sophie. “Just chatting.”

“Yes,” I said. “But as a matter of fact-” I glanced ostentatiously at my watch. “I think I ought to be starting back now. I’ve… er… a long drive ahead of me.”

“Of course,” said Sarah, smiling warmly. “It’s wonderful you were able to share the day with us, Robin. Rowena really appreciated it, I know.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I responded, leading them out through the gate and moving round to the driver’s door of my car. “Well, I…”

“Goodbye,” said Sarah, stepping forward to kiss me. “Lovely to see you.”

“You too,” I murmured. Then I turned to shake Sophie’s hand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Marsden,” I said, hoping my grin wouldn’t look too stiff.

“Please call me Sophie,” she replied, fixing my eyes with hers as she added: “After all, I’m sure we’ll meet again.”