Borrowed Time

CHAPTER NINE

Timariot & Small’s financial circumstances didn’t improve as 1992 faded towards 1993. There were, to be honest, no grounds for expecting them to. Jennifer spent nearly as much time in Melbourne as Petersfield, but the more she learned about Dyson’s management of Viburna Sportswear, the worse the outlook seemed to grow. While Adrian ’s attempts to negotiate an exemption for us from Bushranger’s agreement with Danziger’s came predictably to nothing. The road back to profit and self-respect was going to be long and hard.

But we had no obvious choice other than to tread it. For my part, I took some comfort from being the least blameworthy member of the board and concentrated on running the Frenchman’s Road operation as efficiently as possible. The workforce knew about the Viburna disaster, of course. How couldn’t they? It led to some cynicism about the calibre of the directors, but no more than I’d have expected. Less, in some ways, than was justified. Don Banks had been making cricket bats of consistently high quality for as long as I could remember. It had taken him fifteen years just to learn how. His standards were as demanding as ever. And he was no moaner. A stern reticent deferential man was Don. But I saw the look on his face as Adrian and I stood talking in the workshop one day. And I knew what the look meant. We’d let him and his fellow craftsmen down. We’d failed to live up to their standards.

I think it was people like Don who made me determined to see it through. I could have scuttled back to Brussels and index-linked security any time I liked. I often thought of doing so, I can’t deny. The Maastricht Treaty was bulldozing its way through the parliaments of Europe and lots of juicy new posts were sure to follow in its wake. One of them might have my name on it. Nobody could blame me for grabbing a ripe plum from the laden bough. Except Don Banks and the rest, of course. Except all their predecessors and successors for whom Timariot & Small had meant and might yet mean something more satisfying than an adequate living. Except, in the final analysis, me.

So I stuck to the task, over-compensating for the board’s strategic deficiencies by working excessive hours and paring back my life until it comprised little more than the short-term worries and long-term problems of the family firm. Hugh’s example should have deterred me from becoming a workaholic. But during an evening of home truths and brotherly bonding in the Old Drum, Simon assured me that was just what I was turning into. And he was right, however reluctant I might be to admit it. I had few friends and no leisure pursuits besides country walking. Since the break with Ann, I’d deliberately avoided intimacy with another human being. Not just sexual intimacy, but any kind of lowering of the psychological defences. I found the limitations of my existence strangely comforting in an ascetic sort of way. More and more, I was coming to see how safe-how undemanding-the solitary life really was. And I was beginning to think I’d probably settle for it.

Thanks largely to Bella, I stayed in distant touch with the Paxtons. She invited me to a Boxing Day lunch at The Hurdles, which Paul and Rowena also attended, along with Sarah and a humourless young lawyer called Rodney who was clearly more taken with her than she was with him. That and a few similar occasions apart, however, our worlds no longer overlapped. Sir Keith had given his daughters the use of The Old Parsonage as a weekend retreat within easy reach of Bristol, while he and Bella divided their time between Biarritz and Hindhead. The lives of Louise Paxton’s husband and children were back on an even keel. Sir Keith was settling into marriage and retirement. Sarah was looking ahead to her career as a solicitor. And Rowena was probably only waiting to finish her degree course before starting a family. Equilibrium had been restored. As for Louise and her stubborn but elusive memory, those who couldn’t forget her didn’t speak of her. Those, like me, who couldn’t stop wondering, knew better than to wonder aloud.

In March 1993, however, the Kington killings’ slide into a discarded past came abruptly to a halt. That month saw the publication of Fakes and Ale: the Double Life of Oscar Bantock, by Henley Bantock and Barnaby Maitland. I remember clearly the moment when I came across a review of the book and learned of its existence for the first time. It was an unremarkable Thursday afternoon. I was eating a snack lunch at my desk, waiting for our timber agent to return a call and leafing idly through the newspaper. Then the headline caught my eye. NEGLECTED EXPRESSIONIST’S LAST LAUGH AT ART WORLD. What had apparently already been made much of in the specialist art press was summarized in the column below.

This entertaining if sometimes uneven biography of Oscar Bantock, the eccentric English Expressionist who was murdered three years ago, is a collaborative venture between Bantock’s nephew Henley and the unorthodox art historian Barnaby Maitland. It reveals that Bantock, written off in his lifetime as a prickly drink-sodden recluse determined to plough a lonely and deeply uncommercial Expressionist furrow, was actually a womanizer of considerable charm, a popular and sociable pub-goer and a gifted forger of several different artists and styles. His scorn of naturalistic and sentimental work emerged in subtle pastiches of its most popular examples from which he made far more money than he ever did painting in his own name. Maitland’s researches are based on journals inherited from Bantock by his nephew and meticulous cross-checking with the records of dealers named in them, often to those dealers’ vigorous displeasure. They reveal the curmudgeonly idealist’s double life as the most mercenary of forgers. He seems to have stuck at first to middle-rank recently dead artists, notably a clutch of Edwardian specialists in drawing-room or garden scenes of children and pets, greetings card material in reasonable demand but not famous or pricey enough to attract expert attention. In the last few years of his life, however, he became more ambitious, mining his own Expressionist vein to produce several brilliant fake Rouaults and Soutines. Henley Bantock’s insight into his uncle’s drift towards cynicism supports Maitland’s contention that this change was triggered by the artist’s acceptance that he could not hope for recognition in his own right and that material reward represented his only prospect of satisfaction. If they are correct, which many irate dealers, auctioneers and owners will say they are not, Bantock and one of the few tireless fans of his own work, the late Lady Paxton, paid a heavy price for his revenge against the artistic establishment. The authors’ most startling conclusion is that the murders of Bantock and Lady Paxton in July 1990 may have had more to do with his output of fake art than any of the motives imputed to the man convicted of the crimes. If this sad and fascinating tale of frustration and forgery turns, as it well might, into a cause célèbre of miscarried justice, then the authors will have exposed a legal as well as an artistic scandal. But that, as they say, is another story.

I was dumbstruck. What had Henley been thinking of? His uncle a forger. Well, that was between him, his conscience and his customers. I didn’t care one way or the other. But I did care about Louise Paxton. And it was being suggested according to the reviewer-on what evidence he didn’t bother to mention-that there was more to her murder than met the eye. More, by implication, than could be laid at Shaun Naylor’s door.

I telephoned Sarah that evening. Before I could explain why I’d called, she guessed.

“You’ve read Fakes and Ale?”

“No. Just a review.”

“Then you might be making more of it than you should. Henley Bantock sent me an advance copy. Crowed about his theory in a covering letter. Said I’d be bound to find it persuasive. Well, I don’t. He hasn’t produced a shred of evidence to support it.”

“But what is his theory?”

“That Oscar was murdered because several dealers he’d sold fakes to were afraid he meant to go public with the story of how he’d duped them. And that Mummy had the bad luck to be there when it happened. But he can’t back it up. The forgery business seems to be true. But obviously that wasn’t sensational enough for the publisher. So, Henley’s gilded the lily with this wild idea that just happens to tally with Naylor’s defence.”

“But surely, if there’s no evidence-”

“It’ll come to nothing. Exactly. That’s why I didn’t bother to tell you about it. But look, I have to go out and…” She seemed to be whispering to somebody in the background. “Why don’t I send you the book, Robin? It’ll be quicker than you ordering a copy. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

It arrived two days later. The cover illustration was one of Oscar Bantock’s own paintings, a blurred but eye-catching self-portrait depicting the artist standing in a luridly decorated bar drinking from a tankard shaped in the likeness of a death’s head. There was a queasily prophetic quality to it that made me think Sarah might have been glad to get it off her hands.

According to the blurb on the dust jacket, Henley Bantock was a former local government officer. Presumably, he and Muriel had already earnt enough from Uncle Oscar’s art to quit the bureaucratic life. Now they were aiming to cash in on his scandalous secrets while enjoying the luxury of condemning them. With Barnaby Maitland to lend the whole thing some scholarly gloss. Maitland had books on two other twentieth-century forgers-the notorious “Sexton Blaker” Tom Keating and the Vermeer specialist, Hans van Meegeren-to his credit. He must have seemed an obvious choice as co-author. Just as the journals Henley had discovered at Whistler’s Cot must have been too succulent an opportunity for Maitland to resist.

I read the book in one long sitting, enduring Henley’s self-serving hatchet job on his uncle’s character for the sake of Maitland’s convincingly detailed account of how and why he’d taken to forgery. And even that was only a necessary preamble to what really concerned me. We came to it slowly, via Maitland’s meticulous verification of the output of forgeries recorded in the journals. Oscar had wanted the truth to come out after his death, of course. That was the point of them. To show what fools the experts were to denigrate his work. To prove they couldn’t tell good from bad, true from false, real from fake. And he’d proved his point. Perhaps too well. The Rouaults and Soutines were his fatal mistake, in Maitland’s opinion. They fetched high prices despite doubts about their authenticity. Such high prices that the truth about them threatened the reputations and livelihoods of influential dealers and powerful middle-men. The authors reckoned Oscar let it be known he meant to publish the facts. It would have been his glorious V-sign to the self-appointed arbiters of taste who’d done him down. It would have fulfilled his true motive for turning out fakes, which was never really money in their opinion so much as distorted pride.

Sarah was right. They hadn’t uncovered any evidence to support their theory. It was a shallow invention designed to boost sales. But to the ill-informed it might sound plausible. A contract killing that claimed Louise Paxton as an extra victim because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where did that leave Naylor? The authors didn’t know. But Maitland doubted he was the sort to be employed as a hit-man. So, in the end, their implication was clear. But unstated. That was the worst of it. They never came out and said what many readers would infer. That Naylor was innocent.

I felt so angry after finishing the book that I wrote to Henley Bantock care of his publisher, accusing him of a gratuitous attack on a fine woman’s memory. It was a stupid thing to do, since it merely elicited a sarcastic reply that deliberately missed the point I’d made. “You were not above deceiving me about your connection with Lady Paxton,” Bantock wrote, “so your high moral tone is scarcely justified. Our conclusions about the Kington killings represent a reasonable extrapolation of the known facts. I am sorry if they offend you, but I wonder if that is not really because you resent us seeing matters in a clearer light than you.” I didn’t pursue the correspondence. Nor did I comply with his closing request. “Please pass on my best wishes to your sister.”

According to Sarah, the only sensible course of action was to ignore the book. “Treat it with the contempt it deserves, Robin,” she said in a telephone conversation shortly after I’d finished it. “Chuck it on the fire if you like. I don’t want it back.”

I didn’t destroy it, of course. I slid it into a bookcase out of sight, spine turned to the wall, and did my best to forget all about it. Oscar Bantock’s career as a forger would no doubt run and run as a story in the art world. But I didn’t move in the art world. As for its supposed relevance to Naylor’s conviction as a rapist and double murderer, that was surely a kite that wouldn’t fly. With or without Fakes and Ale, Shaun Naylor was staying where he belonged: in prison. And the truth was staying where it belonged. The Kington killings weren’t going to come back to haunt us. Not so long after the event. Not in the face of so much certainty. They couldn’t. Could they?

I had lunch with Bella and Sir Keith over Easter. They took the same line as Sarah. Dignified silence was the only way to respond to Henley Bantock’s money-grubbing. “I’m glad Louise never knew old Oscar was into forgery,” said Sir Keith. “She thought he was a neglected genius-and an idealist to boot. The real irony is that this will actually increase the value of genuine Bantocks. Like the ones Louise bought for next to nothing. And Sophie Marsden. She should be pleased. But Henley’s the big winner, isn’t he? Royalties from his nasty little book. And God knows what per cent whacked onto his stockpile of Bantock originals. With all that to look forward to, you’d think he could have had the decency to leave the murders out of it. But people never are moderately greedy, are they? They always want more.”

I enquired tentatively about Rowena’s reaction to the book. But as far as Sir Keith knew, she was unaware of its existence. “Too busy trying to combine being a student and a housewife to comb through reviews. Paul hasn’t drawn it to her attention and, frankly, I think he’s wise not to. We don’t want any repetition of those problems she had before the trial, do we? In fact, I’d be grateful if you took care not to mention it next time you meet her. With any luck, it’ll pass her by completely. Leave her free to concentrate on making me a grandfather as soon as possible.”

I promised to say nothing, even though I wasn’t sure keeping Rowena in the dark was either feasible or sensible. Too many secrets were piling up for my liking. Presumably, Sir Keith still didn’t know about her suicide attempt. Now she wasn’t to know about Henley Bantock’s alternative explanation for her mother’s death. If and when she found out, the efforts to shield her from it might give the theory some of the credibility it didn’t deserve. “It’ll end in tears,” my mother would have said. And I’d have been bound to agree with her. Tears. Or something much worse.

Vindication of my scepticism came within a matter of weeks. It was heralded by a telephone call at work from a researcher for the television series Benefit of the Doubt. I’d heard of it, of course, and seen it a couple of times. Nick Seymour, the presenter, set about drawing public attention to a possible miscarriage of justice during a thirty-minute assessment of the evidence that had sent one or more people to prison. He’d helped bring about acquittal and release in several cases and become a minor celebrity in the process. Now he planned to devote a future edition to the Kington killings-and the conviction of Shaun Naylor. As a witness at Naylor’s trial, would I be prepared to record an interview for the programme? I said no. But Seymour wasn’t the man to leave it there. A couple of days later, he rang me personally at home.

“I’m trying to get as full and fair a picture as possible, Mr. Timariot. All I’d want you to do is repeat what you said in court. Set the scene for the viewer. Give your first-hand impression of Lady Paxton’s state of mind on the day of the murders.” His voice was rounded and reasonable. But there was an edge of impatience in it as well. He didn’t like being turned down.

“The problem is, Mr. Seymour, that I have to assume you’ll be trying to suggest Naylor’s innocent. And I simply don’t believe he is.”

“Have you read this new biography of Oscar Bantock?”

“Fakes and Ale? Yes. And if Henley Bantock’s unsubstantiated theories are what-”

“They’re part of it, of course. But if you’re so sure they’re unsubstantiated, why not say so on TV? I’m offering you that chance.”

“But the programme will be geared to backing Henley’s interpretation, won’t it? Otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it.”

“True. But look at it this way. Naylor claims Lady Paxton picked him up that night. If you think he’s lying, why not tell it on air the way you saw it? After all, you’re the only other person who met her that day. Apart from her daughter. And I don’t really want to bother her. Unless I have to, of course. Unless you leave me no choice in the matter.” The pressure was subtle but definite. I wasn’t warming to Mr. Seymour. But I was beginning to think I’d better cooperate with him. If only for Rowena’s sake.

“How do I know you’d transmit what I said? I can tell you now none of it would help you paint Naylor in a sympathetic light.”

“Then I might not use it. But at least I couldn’t say you’d refused to talk to me, could I?”

“All right, Mr. Seymour. You can have your interview. For all the good it’ll do you.”

The interview was fixed for Thursday the twentieth of May. Seymour and a cameraman would come to Greenhayes at six o’clock that evening and be gone again within the hour. They’d be punctual and I’d be put to minimum inconvenience. So Seymour assured me, anyway. And I believed him. I also believed he wouldn’t want to linger after he’d heard what I had to say.

At the time I scribbled the appointment in my diary, Thursday the twentieth of May seemed just one handy blank in an otherwise busy week. But it didn’t turn out to be. Adrian was supposed to return to the office on Monday the seventeenth after a fortnight in Australia. The trip was a last ditch attempt to strike some kind of deal with Bushranger Sports. Adrian believed-unlike the rest of us-that he might still be able to sweet-talk Bushranger’s notoriously hard-nosed chairman, Harvey McGraw. And McGraw had agreed, apparently, to let him try. I arrived at Frenchman’s Road on the seventeenth expecting to hear Adrian’s account of his failure. Instead, his secretary announced his return had been delayed by forty-eight hours. Whether that was a good sign or not he’d declined to tell her. We’d just have to wait and see.

Adrian was home by Wednesday. But nothing was seen of him at the factory. He phoned in to say jet-lag had claimed him, but he’d be fit to chair an informal board meeting on Thursday morning to which he’d report the outcome of his trip. By now, I was beginning to smell a rat-or the marsupial equivalent. Simon and Jennifer were as puzzled as me. And so was Uncle Larry, who called me that night. “Why does Adrian want me to attend this blasted meeting, Robin? What’s he up to?” I couldn’t tell him. But we didn’t have to wait long to learn the answer.

It rained that morning. All that day, as it turned out. The rain ticked at the boardroom windows and ran in reflected rivulets down the glazed face of Joseph Timariot. He seemed to be listening to us as we conferred. Measuring our achievements against his. And taking silent note of the disparity.

We were expectant and uneasy. All of us were uncomfortable, though some more obviously so than others. Even Adrian looked strangely abashed. As if what he had to report was something worse than simple failure to strike a deal with Bushranger Sports. And so it was. Far worse. It was what he called success. But success often has a higher price than failure. And he was about to invite us to pay it.

“I spent quite a long time with Harvey McGraw. I got to know the man pretty well. He is hard. But fair. He made me an offer which, after I’d thought about it, I realized was both of those things. Hard to accept. But fair. And in the circumstances, the best we can hope for. As I’m sure you’ll agree when you’ve reflected on it. I don’t want instant reactions. That’s why I’ve kept this meeting informal. I want your mature thoughts when you’ve mulled it over.”

“Mulled what over?” asked Simon impatiently. But by now, I suppose, we all had an inkling of what was coming.

“McGraw’s offering to buy us out.”

“Of Viburna? The guy must be-”

“Not Viburna. Not just Viburna, anyway. McGraw wants the whole operation.”

“You mean Timariot & Small?” put in Uncle Larry.

“Yes.”

“Good God.”

“But you told him we’re not for sale, didn’t you?” I asked disingenuously.

“Not exactly. He knows we’re in the mire. He knows we have to listen.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a good offer. He’ll cover Viburna’s debts. And pay us two and a half million on top.” Adrian risked a smile. “Pounds, that is.”

There was momentary silence. Then Uncle Larry said: “Am I to take it that you’re recommending acceptance?”

“I am.”

Uncle Larry stared at him in stupefaction. “You’re advocating the sale of this business? After more than a hundred and fifty years of independent trading? To an Australian? Good God almighty, Harvey McGraw’s great-grandfather was probably in chains on a convict ship bound for Botany Bay when my great-grandfather-”

“Reciting the firm’s history isn’t going to help,” snapped Adrian. “We’re staring crippling losses in the face.”

“But we wouldn’t be, would we?” I couldn’t help asking. “Not if we hadn’t bought Viburna in the first place.”

Adrian glared at me, but didn’t speak. Instead, Jennifer tapped her pen on her note-pad and said: “It’s a good offer. From a strictly financial viewpoint. It’s more than we’re really worth. At the moment. And for the foreseeable future.” She turned to Adrian. “Any strings?”

“None.”

“There don’t have to be, do there?” said Simon. “Bushranger can make a go of Viburna thanks to their deal with Danziger’s. And they can use us to expand over here just like we planned to use Viburna to expand over there. When we dipped our toe in Australian waters, I thought we might get it bitten off. I never expected we’d be swallowed alive, though.”

“I had reservations about the Viburna takeover,” I said, looking accusingly at Adrian. “But you trotted out some cliché about having to get bigger if we weren’t to get smaller. Now it seems what you mean by getting bigger is going out of business.”

“Recriminations won’t help,” said Jennifer, ever the conciliator.

“Nor will acquiescence. We’re being asked to sell the workforce down the drain to pay for our mistakes. The mistakes of some of us, anyway.”

Adrian was angry. That last shaft had hit home. I could tell by the tic working in his cheek. But not by the tone of his voice. It stayed calm and reasonable. “Bushranger wants to take us over, not close us down. The workforce will be fully protected. Timariot and Small will become a subsidiary of Bushranger Sports, that’s all. In some ways it’ll be a bigger and more challenging operation. We’ll be marketing Bushranger’s products along with-”

“Who’s we? Who’s going to head this subsidiary? Our current chairman?”

Adrian flushed. “Perhaps. But-”

“No doubt a seat on the Bushranger board will go with the job. I can see you’ll have done very well out of taking this company from profit into self-inflicted loss.” I was angry too. Angrier than I could ever have foreseen at the terminal consequences of my smooth-talking wide-horizoned brother’s leadership. And at my own naïvety. I should have nipped his ill-considered ambitions in the bud long ago. I should have known better than to trust him with stewardship of the values and traditions bound up in Timariot & Small. I should have realized he saw them merely as a stepping-stone to something bigger and grander. Bigger and grander, that is, for him.

“Your share of two and a half million won’t be a bad return for three years’ exile from the fleshpots of Brussels,” said Adrian, his face darkening.

“Won’t? Don’t you mean wouldn’t? If we compounded your errors of judgement by accepting this offer?”

He sat back and composed himself, refusing to let me draw him into open confrontation. “I’m confident this board will accept the offer, when it’s had time to consider its merits. For the moment, that’s all I’m asking it to do. Though I should tell you I stopped off in France on my way back from Australia. I visited Bella in Biarritz and put her in the picture. She, like me, favours acceptance.”

So there it was. The virtual declaration of his victory. Between them, he and Bella controlled more than 40 per cent of the company’s shares. If Jennifer voted with them-as her guarded remarks had suggested she would-Adrian would be home and dry. Simon was bitter enough when I cornered him in his office later. But he was already becoming philosophical. “This could net me more than three hundred thou,” Rob. Enough to keep Joan at bay and then some. I’ve got to go for it. You do see that, don’t you?” Oh, I saw. I saw all too clearly. “Anybody who votes no will get the chop if it goes through. That’s obvious. And it will go through. You know it will. So why fight it?”

Why indeed? It was hard to explain to somebody who didn’t understand. Uncle Larry understood, of course. I went out with him for a long lugubrious lunch at the Bat & Ball on Broadhalfpenny Down, the cradle of organized cricket. Afterwards, we stood outside in the rain, gazing over the fence at the famous ground, its old thatched pavilion and memorial stone bearing witness to the legendary exploits of the Hambledon club more than two hundred years ago.

“John Small played here many times,” said Uncle Larry. “Old John, I mean. He was a bat maker for more than seventy years, you know.” I knew very well. He was also grandfather of the John Small who’d gone into business with Joseph Timariot in 1836. “I suppose you could say he was our founder in a sense.”

“I shall vote against,” I solemnly declared.

“So shall I. But we’ll lose, won’t we? Adrian has his children to consider. Simon needs the money. Jenny can’t stop thinking like an accountant. And to Bella it’s all antediluvian nonsense. Our goose is cooked.”

“But not served or eaten. Not yet.”

I drove straight home from Broadhalfpenny Down and telephoned Bella. But she wasn’t in. Instead, Sir Keith came on the line.

“Anything I can do for you, Robin?”

“I don’t think so. I wanted to talk to Bella about the Bushranger bid.”

“Ah yes. Your brother told us all about it. Seems a neat way out of the hole you’ve dug yourselves into. Bella certainly seems to think so.”

“Does she?”

“I suppose you’re mightily relieved.”

“Not exactly.”

“You should be. Salvation of this order doesn’t often present itself. I’m glad you called, by the way. My solicitor tells me that TV programme Benefit of the Doubt is going to take a sceptical look at Naylor’s conviction. Have you heard anything from the producers?”

“No,” I heard myself lie. “Not a thing.”

“Well, if you do-”

“I’ll know what to tell them.”

Looking back, I can see why it happened. My anger at the probable demise of Timariot & Small and my frustration at being unable to do anything to prevent it had to find an outlet. I didn’t think it through on a conscious level. I didn’t plan to lash out at Bella by upsetting her husband’s cosy assumptions. But that’s what I did. I’d spent a couple of hours at Greenhayes, drinking scotch and watching the rain sheet across the garden, when Seymour and his cameraman arrived, dead on time, at six o’clock. I’d worked up a fine head of resentment by then. Resentment of the greed that had dragged down Timariot & Small; of the ease with which Adrian and the rest seemed able to turn their backs on the labour of four generations; of the readiness I and others had displayed to mould the memory of Louise Paxton to fit our requirements. The ends seemed to have justified the means once too often. I wanted to give honour and tradition a solitary triumph over commercial expediency; honesty and sincerity a single victory to savour. I wanted to speak my mind without tailoring my words to their audience and my thoughts to their results. I wanted my own blinkered form of justice. And Nick Seymour gave me the chance to have it.

I’d expected to dislike him. In the event, his self-deprecating humour and affable manner won me over. He had wit and patience. The wit to see I was in the mood to talk. And the patience to let me. He had a long list of questions to ask. I saw them typed out on a sheet of paper in his hand. But he didn’t need to reel them off. I answered them without prompting. I tried-for the very first time-to describe my meeting with Louise Paxton fully and accurately. I had enough sense not to contradict or withdraw anything I’d said in court. But I also had enough courage-or stupidity or recklessness or all three rolled together-to try to define what it was that had lodged in my mind after our fleeting encounter on Hergest Ridge.

After Seymour had gone, evidently pleased with the material he’d got on tape, I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said to him. Not every word and inflection. I certainly couldn’t imagine how it would look and sound on television several weeks down the road. And I didn’t much care. Not at the time. It was sufficient to have unburdened myself. To have told it as it really was. Or as it had seemed to be that day. Recalled at last. Without distortion or evasion. Without fear of whatever the consequences might be.

I poured myself another drink and toasted the fragile truth that was all I could throw back at Bella and Sir Keith and my hard-hearted siblings. I’d paid my dues to Louise Paxton. Late but in full. I’d cleared my debts. Now I was free to remind others of theirs.