Borrowed Time

CHAPTER FOUR

Resignation isn’t easy if you’re a fonctionnaire titulaire de la Commission Européenne. In fact, it’s next to impossible, because any attempt to resign is officially interpreted as a request for long-term leave of absence. When I handed in my notice to my gratifyingly dismayed head of unit that morning in July 1990, he treated it as an application for what we Eurocrats called a congé de convenance personelle. Unpaid leave, to put it less grandly. A sabbatical, if you like. A career on ice. For a year in the first instance, but automatically renewable for a second year and a third after that; conceivably, even longer. Opinion was divided over whether, theoretically, it could ever come to a conclusive end short of retirement.

But technicalities didn’t interest me. I was leaving with no intention of coming back. My colleagues might be saying au revoir, but I’d be bidding them adieu. That evening, I took a few of them to Kitty O’Shea’s, an Irish bar-cum-English pub near the Berlaymont that supplied an escapist haven for displaced Celts and Anglo-Saxons, to toast my departure. Taken aback by my generosity, they were clearly reluctant to say what they really thought. Poor old Timariot. Giving up an A6 post in the Directorate-General of Economic and Financial Affairs for-what was it?-cricket bats. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Robin?” asked Ronnie Linklater in a soulful moment brought on by a third scotch and soda. “I mean, absolutely sure?” I told him I was. But he obviously didn’t believe me. It was true, though. I was certain I was doing the right thing.

My only frustration was that I couldn’t do it immediately. Three months’ notice loomed oppressively ahead. I tried persuading my head of unit that Timariot & Small were in extremis without me and he agreed to recommend an early release. But those whose approval was needed were away for the rest of the summer in their Tuscan villas and Provençal retreats. I would simply have to wait.

I was still waiting two weeks later when I returned to my flat in the rue Pascale one evening to find a letter waiting for me forwarded by my mother from Steep. It had originally been posted in Worcester, with my name and Petersfield address written in two different hands. I recognized neither. But one of them, it transpired, belonged to Sarah Paxton.

The Old Parsonage,

Sapperton,

Gloucestershire

5th August 1990

Dear Mr. Timariot,

I have hesitated a long time before writing this. I learned of your existence from Henley Bantock. He did not know your address and the police, though very kind, said they could not release such information. But they did offer to forward this letter to you.

If it reaches you, I do hope you will agree to meet me. It is more important to me than I can properly explain to learn as much as possible of my mother’s state of mind during the last day of her life. My sister saw her that afternoon, but I had not seen her in over a week. I am having particular difficulty coming to terms with that fact. I am not sure why.

Something about not saying goodbye, I suppose. But you did say goodbye to her, in a sense. It really would help to talk to you about how she seemed and what she said. Could we meet, do you think? It need not be for long. And I will happily travel to wherever causes you least inconvenience.

If you are willing to meet, please ring me on Cirencester 855785, or write, if you prefer. Either way, I would be very glad to hear from you.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah Paxton.

The appeal was simple and direct. I could try to help her cope with her mother’s death. Or I could ignore the request. She didn’t know where I was. She had no way of tracing me if I didn’t want to be found. I was safely out of reach. All I had to do was pretend I hadn’t received the letter. Screw it up and throw it away. Burn it. Forget it. She’d cope without me. There was nothing we had to say to each other. That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. Until I picked up the telephone and dialled her number.

To my surprise, she insisted on coming to Brussels. I suggested she wait until my next visit to England. But, even if I’d been able to say when that would be, I doubt she’d have thought it soon enough. There was an urgency-a hint of desperation-in her voice that made me regret contacting her almost as soon as I’d done so. And there was a resemblance to her mother’s voice that worried me even more. It wouldn’t have taken much to imagine I was actually talking to Louise Paxton. As a result, in the days that passed between our conversation and her arrival in Brussels, I could only picture her in my mind’s eye as a younger version of her mother: an idealized re-creation of a dead woman.

That, I suppose, is what I set out apprehensively expecting to meet the following Friday night. She’d come for the weekend and was staying at the Hilton on boulevard Waterloo. We’d arranged to meet in the foyer at six o’clock. This turned out to be a bad choice. The place was filled with clacking quartets of jewel-draped women. I cast around amongst them, looking for one young face in the middle-aged crowd, still subconsciously expecting to recognize her. But there was nobody there who even remotely looked the part.

I was on the point of giving up and seeking help from the concièrge when somebody said from close behind me: “Robin Timariot?” I knew at once who it must be.

Sarah Paxton had her mother’s slightness of build and much else about her that was immediately reminiscent of the woman I’d met on Hergest Ridge. Yet the differences seemed to amount to more than the similarities. Her hair was darker and cut much shorter. Her eyes too were darker, their gaze less open. She was clearly young-twenty-one or twenty-two I’d have guessed-but the freshness of youth was overlaid by something else. A hardness not of feature but of mind. An earnestness amounting almost to a warning. She wore little make-up and no jewellery bar a silver locket on a chain around her neck. Her dress was simple and practical: a plain blouse, loose calf-length skirt, flat-soled shoes; and unpretentious satchel-style handbag. She had enough of her mother’s looks and bearing to turn heads if she wanted to. But her expression implied a wish to do no such thing. It could have been the visible effect of bereavement, of course, but somehow it seemed too entrenched-too permanent-for that. Her smile had a stiffness about it, her handshake a coolness, that mere shyness couldn’t explain. Suspicion. Yes, that was it. A barely veiled scepticism about the world and the people she met in it. Me included.

“Shall we… er… find somewhere else?” I asked, gesturing around at the tableloads of Chanel and Silk Cut. “There’s a… bar I know nearby. It’ll be quieter there.”

She agreed and we made for the exit. It was a sultry evening, sunlight lancing between the tower blocks to turn the traffic fumes into golden clouds. I felt tongue-tied and uncertain. Already, the meeting had enough signs of travesty about it to depress me. I was unable to find anything to say. And Sarah seemed disinclined to help me out.

Mercifully, the walk to the Copenhagen Tavern was a short one. The place wasn’t too busy and the waitresses were as welcoming as ever. They knew me from many solitary evenings spent in its restful corners. But there was nothing restful about my latest visit.

Sarah ordered coffee and mineral water. I asked for my favourite beer, forgetting it was served in a novelty glass shaped like the bottom half of a kangaroo. I could see Sarah’s gaze lingering incredulously on it as the beer was poured and considered making some sort of joke out of it. Then I reconsidered. Humour-even introductory small talk-seemed impossible. We were there to discuss one thing and one thing only. Its shadow stretched between us, drying my throat as I drank, threading doubt between my carefully laid plans. What was I to say?

“I… I’m sorry,” I ventured. “I should have spared you the trouble of tracking me down. I should have written to you. To offer my condolences.”

“There was no reason for you to do that.” Her tone implied the idea might almost have been presumptuous. “It’s not as if you knew Mummy, is it? Or any of us.”

“No, but… the condolences would have been genuine, strangers or not. What happened was… awful. You have my sincere sympathy.”

“Thank you.” She looked away. “It was. Like you say. Awful. The worst it could be, I suppose. What every mother’s afraid might happen to her daughter. It’s not supposed to be the other way round, is it?” Tears had been shed over such thoughts, I sensed. Many of them. And now there were none left. “I can’t stop wondering. Nor can my sister. We don’t talk about it, but… what it must have been like weevils into your mind. You can’t dislodge it. It just stays there, waiting for you to wake up or stop concentrating on something else. The wondering.” She shook her head. “It’s always there.”

“At least they’ve got the man who did it.”

“Oh yes. They’ve got him. And there’s no real room for doubt. Not these days. I’ve become quite an expert on DNA analysis in recent weeks. I’ve read everything there is on the subject. As if my knowing all about it will somehow help. Silly, don’t you think?”

“No. I don’t.”

Her eyes moved slowly to meet mine. “Tell me about… that evening on Hergest Ridge. I went up there. Same time. Same weather. I imagined her being there. I almost…” She sipped some coffee. “Please tell me.”

So I did. I gave her the anodyne version of events I’d treated the police to, supplemented for her benefit with some remarks on how pleasant, how charming, her mother had been. She’d been beautiful too. But I didn’t mention that. It smacked too much of the physical reality of what had happened to her. To describe the sunlight falling on her hair, the warm breeze moving the shadows of its strands across her face, the gleam of something forbidden but imminent in her eyes, would have led inexorably on. To the bedroom at Whistler’s Cot. Sarah had been there and seen the broken mirror. She’d stared at its reflection of the room and imagined the writhing wrenching choking end. Just as I had. But we couldn’t speak of it. Neither of us dared.

“She seemed happy?”

“Very.”

“Contented?”

“Yes.”

“At ease with herself?”

“That too.”

“Not… worried about anything?”

“No. But it was only a fleeting encounter. A few words. No more. I didn’t think it was important… at the time.”

“Of course not.”

“I wish there was more I could tell you. More I could say. But there were no presentiments, Sarah. Nothing to show her-or me-what was about to happen. We met. And we parted. As strangers. I didn’t even know her name. But for the photograph in the paper…”

“You’d never have known.”

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“And now you know so much about her. Where she lived. Who she was married to. The sort of art she collected. The make of car she drove. Even her date of birth.” Her tone had become suddenly bitter, almost sarcastic. But at whose expense I couldn’t tell. “And one thing none of the papers has revealed. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring, was she, Robin? Don’t pretend you didn’t notice. Men do, don’t they? They notice that sort of thing.”

I shrugged. “All right. She wasn’t. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“You’re the only one, then. The police didn’t know what to make of it. But it certainly worried them. Not at first. At first, they thought he’d taken it. Because it was gold, I suppose. But then Rowena mentioned Mummy didn’t have it on when she got home that morning. She’d lost it, apparently, the day before. On the beach. In Biarritz. We have a villa there. Mummy and Daddy spend…” Her face fell. “They used to spend a lot of time there. Daddy’s father bought it just after the war. My grandmother was French, you see. They retired there. Daddy thought he and Mummy would do the same one day.”

“So,” I said awkwardly, “she simply lost it.”

“Apparently.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, then, does it?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you believe she lost it.” Seeing me frown, she went on. “Naylor denies the charges. All of them. He plans to plead not guilty. The police think he’ll change his mind before the trial, but if he doesn’t…”

“How can he plead not guilty? You said yourself. DNA fingerprinting. It’s foolproof.”

“Not if he claims the sex was voluntary.”

“Voluntary? That’s absurd. He murdered her, for God’s sake.”

“Somebody murdered her. I’m not sure the police have any evidence to prove it was Naylor who actually strangled her. They haven’t told us much, of course. I’ve pieced this together from the questions they’ve asked. And the ones they haven’t asked. I’m actually studying to be a lawyer. It doesn’t help a lot, but it gives me some idea what’s going on. Naylor’s going to say he met her at a pub near Kington. A place called the Harp, at Old Radnor.” She paused. “You look as if you know it.”

“I had lunch there with Henley Bantock. The day we… just missed each other.”

“How did he know it?”

“Through his uncle.”

“Damn,” she said under her breath.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s a connection, isn’t it? With Mummy. It means she could have been there before.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Old Radnor’s the back of beyond. Naylor’s story isn’t credible if it’s unlikely Mummy ever went there. But if she did go there…”

“With Oscar Bantock?”

“Maybe. She’d visited him in Kington before. And he liked a drink. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is. But so what?”

“Naylor will say they met there by chance. She propositioned him. Or he propositioned her. It doesn’t matter which. He’ll say she took him to Whistler’s Cot and they had what the law calls consensual sex. Then he left, with Mummy alive and Oscar Bantock nowhere to be seen. He’ll say somebody else must have murdered them later.”

“Nobody will believe that.”

“No. But the defence will argue it as best they can. It’s the only thing they can argue. And this business about the Harp makes it one degree less incredible. Plus the timing, of course. The police were disappointed when you said Mummy left Hergest Ridge at seven forty-five. It means Naylor’s claim to have met her at the Harp between eight and eight thirty can’t be ruled out.”

“But surely… if nobody saw them there…”

“It’s still theoretically possible though, isn’t it? Mummy offered you a lift. You said so yourself. The defence will try to make that sound like a pick-up line. They’ll say it failed with you but worked with Naylor.”

“I won’t let them get away with that.”

“It won’t be easy to stop them. Once you’re in court, you’re on their territory.”

Court. There was the word. And there was the realization I’d somehow dodged. Making a guarded statement to the police wasn’t the end of this. I was going to have to give evidence at Naylor’s trial. To answer questions on oath. If Naylor persisted in his plea of innocence, it was virtually certain I’d be called as a witness by one side or the other.

“Naylor’s guilty. But proving it could be messy. Mummy loses her wedding ring, flies to England and goes to see a man who lives alone on the Welsh borders. On the way, she offers a stranger a lift that would take her on a long detour if he accepted. Don’t you see how it could all be made to sound?”

She’d come to find out what I meant to say. That was it, of course. I could tell by the hint of impatience in her tone. She didn’t want my help in coping with her grief. What she wanted was my confirmation that there was nothing else still to emerge. A bundle of slender connections and stray coincidences was bad enough. But something concrete-something attributed to her mother by a disinterested witness-would be infinitely worse. She needed me to tell her it wasn’t going to happen.

“Mummy was careless with possessions and tended to lose all sorts of things. She was keen enough on Expressionist art to break off a holiday simply to buy a coveted example. And she had a generous nature. She acted on impulse. Whim, you could call it. Like offering you a lift. There’s no hidden meaning in any of it.”

“Of course there isn’t.”

“But you have to have known her to understand that. The jury will be strangers. So will the judge and the barristers and the people in the public gallery and anybody who reads about the trial while it’s going on. They won’t understand her at all. But they’ll think they do.”

“If I’m called, Sarah…” I leant forward to give emphasis to my words. “I’ll do my best to ensure there’s no possibility of any misunderstanding. Your mother’s reputation won’t suffer at my hands.”

She looked at me intently for a moment, then said: “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”

“I mean it.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank me. All I’ll be doing is telling the truth.”

But that wasn’t all, was it? And if my evidence was compromised, how could I be sure the explanations Sarah had given me for the loss of the ring and the impetuous flight from Biarritz weren’t as well? In doing the decent thing, I was tacitly agreeing to play my part in a subtle editing of the facts: a damage limitation exercise on behalf of Louise Paxton’s good name. And why not? It couldn’t do any harm. Nobody lost by it. Not even Naylor. Since he was undoubtedly guilty. Wasn’t he?

I wasn’t sure whether Sarah expected to meet me again while she was in Brussels. When I showed her back to the Hilton, I asked-more out of politeness than anything else-if she wanted to see the sights. The city didn’t boast many, to be honest, but it seemed the least I could do. To my surprise, her reaction was enthusiastic. I suppose a solitary weekend in a foreign country was the last thing she needed. I agreed to pick her up at ten o’clock the following morning.

Saturday dawned warm and bright. She was waiting for me when I reached the Hilton and we set off for a tour of what Brussels had to offer. The Grand Place and the Mannekin Pis on foot. Then out in my car to the Atomium-Belgium’s answer to the Eiffel Tower. Lunch at a café near Square Montgomery. A stroll round the Parc du Cinquantenaire and a visit-at her insistence-to the Berlaymont. Followed by tea back at my flat in rue Pascale.

At first, we didn’t talk about the trial-or even directly about her mother’s death. Instead, I described the life of a Eurocrat and the alternative attractions of Timariot & Small, revealing more about myself in the process than I’d intended to. It turned out that Sarah’s knowledge of the poems of Edward Thomas put mine to shame. She could quote them seemingly at will. And she could recite the names of the hangers above Steep even though she’d been there no more than once.

“Mummy drove me down to Steep one Sunday during my last year at school,” she recalled as we stood in the top-most ball of the Atomium, ostensibly admiring the view of the Parc de Laeken and the Château Royal but both picturing in our mind’s eye the thickly wooded flanks of Stoner Hill. “We were studying Thomas for A level and he’d become my favourite poet. Something to do with his melancholia, I suppose. Adolescents understand that condition better than most adults, don’t you think?” Seeing me frown in a vain effort to recollect my state of mind at the age of eighteen, she took pity and went on: “I wanted to see the places that had inspired his poems. And Mummy was keen to take me, though she must have regretted it later, driving round and round those winding lanes while I lapped up the scenery. We probably passed Greenhayes several times in the course of the afternoon. Without ever thinking that one day…”

“When would this have been?”

“Spring eighty-seven. May, I think.” She paused. When she resumed, I knew at once the words were no longer hers. “‘The cherry trees bend over and are shedding, on the old road where all that passed are dead, their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding, this early May morn when there is none to wed.’ ” She gave a sad little smile. “Strange, isn’t it? I mean, our paths coming so close three years ago, but not crossing till now. I suppose fate just wasn’t ready.”

“You believe in fate?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps it helps if you do. If anything can help.” She took a long calming breath. “The police offered to arrange counselling for us and Daddy persuaded Rowena to try it. She’s seeing a trauma expert twice a week.”

“But you aren’t?”

“I don’t want counselling. I want justice.” The hardness was back in her voice now, the sentimental philosophizing brought abruptly to an end. “I want Shaun Naylor put behind bars for the rest of his unnatural life.” Another smile, different now, self-aware, almost self-mocking. “A trainee lawyer isn’t supposed to talk like that, is she?”

“Maybe not. But I’m no lawyer, so I can say it. Any man who does what Naylor did has forfeited the right to live.”

She looked at me sharply. “You really think so?”

“Yes. Don’t you? I mean, when the platitudes-the social niceties-are swept aside. Don’t we all fundamentally believe in an eye for an eye?”

She didn’t answer. Her gaze moved past me to focus on some distant point beyond the horizon. And I felt suddenly embarrassed by my own vehemence, ashamed by the primitive instinct Louise Paxton’s death had stirred in me-but that her daughter was capable of keeping in check. “Let’s go down,” she said softly. “I’ve seen enough.”

Over lunch-and afterwards, as we sat on a shady bench in the Parc du Cinquantenaire-Sarah grew more forthcoming about herself and the Paxton family. Her grandfather, Dudley Paxton, had been in the Diplomatic Service, his career culminating in his appointment as British Ambassador to several former French African colonies just after their independence in the late fifties and early sixties. He and his Basque wife spent their retirement in Biarritz, close to Grandmère’s numerous relatives. Their villa, L’Hivernance, inherited by Sarah’s father, was the scene of many of her happiest childhood memories. She and Rowena would spend days on end playing in the garden or building sandcastles on the world-famous beach, only a pebble’s throw away, during long sun-drenched summers.

Sir Keith, meanwhile, was making a name for himself in the medical world. With royal patients and a knighthood came a lucrative private practice, a large town house in Holland Park, a homely weekend retreat in the Cotswolds and the best of everything for his wife and children. He was a doting and generous father, buying both daughters an expensive education, a succession of well-bred ponies, a skiing holiday every winter and a car for their eighteenth birthdays. As for Louise, who was fifteen years younger than him and looked more beautiful at forty than she had at thirty, there was nothing Sir Keith wasn’t prepared to do. A dress allowance she couldn’t spend. A luxury car she didn’t want. And a gilded cage-I couldn’t help suspecting-she wasn’t prepared to remain in for ever.

Sir Keith didn’t share Louise’s interest in Expressionist art and, for all his lavishness in other directions, seemed to begrudge the money she spent on it. She and a school-friend, Sophie Marsden, began dabbling as collectors to see if they could make more than their husbands earned from sound and sober investments. They didn’t, of course, but they enjoyed becoming expert amateurs and started trying to spot unrecognized talent before it acquired the price-tag to match. Oscar Bantock was more of a has-been than a might-be, but Louise did her best to make something of him, arranging exhibitions at small but select galleries where the right sort of people might realize what they were missing.

One such exhibition was held in Cambridge during Sarah’s last year at King’s College. Her presence at the private view was virtually mandatory and it was there she met Bantock for the first and last time. “A short and stocky man with white hair and a bushy beard. A bit cantankerous, of course. A bit ‘Why am I dressed up like a dog’s dinner sipping warm white wine with this rabble of Philistines?’ But you could see he was trying to behave well for Mummy’s sake. Which was ironic, since the event was supposed to be for his benefit, not hers. He was nice to me, probably for the same reason. Even to the man I’d brought with me, who made some pretty cringe-inducing remarks I remember. But old Oscar just grinned and twinkled his eyes at me. They were a quite startling blue. Pale yet bright at the same time. And he had this low rumbling suppressed voice. Like some operatic baritone singing a lullaby. You know? Power on a short leash. Energy waiting to be released. I can see him now so clearly. It’s no more than five months ago. But in other ways it seems like five years.”

There it was. The same dead end we couldn’t avoid coming back to. Take any path you liked through the maze. Admire any vista you pleased over the hedge en route. It was still waiting. If not round the next corner, then round the one after that.

“Why did he do it?” she asked later. “I mean, if he was just a burglar, as they seem to think. Why murder? Why rape?”

“One thing leads to another, I suppose. Probably high as a kite on drugs. And your mother…”

“Yes?”

“Was a very beautiful woman.”

“You make that sound almost like an excuse.”

“It’s not meant to be. Just an explanation. His type see something lovely and precious and want to destroy it. Looking-even touching-isn’t good enough for them. What they can’t have they smash.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “And the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces.” She walked on down the tree-lined avenue of the park and I stood where I was, watching her for a few seconds, before following. Her head was bowed, her shoulders almost visibly sagging. She was doing her best to gather up the fragments of her life-and her sister’s and her father’s too. But there were so many. They were so widely scattered. And so sharp that those who touched them were bound to bleed.

I didn’t analyse the assumptions and prejudices Sarah and I shared that weekend until much later. They were there, of course, underpinning everything we said and thought. Long before we knew all the facts, long before a court of law had weighed and tested the evidence, we were sure we knew exactly what had happened. Above all, we were sure Shaun Naylor was guilty.

According to Sarah, the police had only caught him thanks to a tip-off. From whom she didn’t know. A wife. A girlfriend. A mate he’d boasted to. It didn’t really matter who or why. The evidence must have piled up against him since. Otherwise he’d never have dreamt up such an implausible story. Would he?

I took Sarah out for dinner that night to my favourite Italian restaurant, Castello Banfi. She gave me a sharp lesson in her determination to be beholden to nobody by threatening a public scene if I didn’t let her pay half the bill. But she did let me walk her back to the Hilton. There it could easily have been goodbye, since she was flying home the following afternoon and I’d been invited to Sunday lunch by some Eurocrat friends in Waterloo who were concerned for my sanity. But, unsure whether I wanted to face them anyway, I claimed to have no commitments and offered her a ride to the airport, which she accepted.

As I walked away from the hotel, I glanced across the boulevard at the frontage of the Toison d’Or cinema complex. One of the films whose illuminated titles glared back was the latest Harrison Ford thriller: Presumed Innocent. But I can honestly say that the irony registered with me for no more than an instant before I pressed on towards rue Pascale, devising an excuse for my friends in Waterloo as I went.

Something else I chose not to analyse was my reluctance to let Sarah Paxton vanish from my life so soon after entering it. Such analysis might have revealed whether the attraction I’d begun to feel was to her or the part of her that reminded me of her mother. Perhaps we always chase ghosts or tokens or chance resemblances. Perhaps everyone we’re ever drawn to is really only a pallid version of the real thing we’ll never meet. But, if so, it doesn’t help to confront the fact.

It was only when I was sitting with Sarah in the airport coffee bar an hour before her flight, in fact, that I thought to ask what life-what immediate future-she was going back to in England. And only when I heard her answer did I realize that keeping in touch with her needn’t be so difficult after all.

“A year at law college before I take articles. I’d thought of postponing, but… what would be the point? Life, so they tell me, must go on. So, I’ve enrolled to start at Guildford next month.”

“Guildford? But that’s not far-”

“From Steep? No. Not a million miles. Actually, it’s why I chose it. I didn’t realize then, of course…”

“Will you commute from London?”

“Ideally, no. I really want somewhere local to stay during the week. But… it’s been hard to concentrate on practicalities like that recently. By now, the best places will already have been snapped up.”

“If they have…” I hesitated, then decided it was just a suggestion she might find helpful. Nothing significant hung on whether she did or not. How could it? “My sister-in-law-my brother’s widow, that is-has a large house with plenty of room to spare in Hindhead. It can’t be more than twelve miles from Guildford. And she’s looking for a lodger. She told me so herself. You’ve both suffered a loss recently. Perhaps… Well, it might be worth considering.”

“Yes,” said Sarah thoughtfully. “It might.”

When she left, ten minutes or so later, it was with Bella’s address and telephone number recorded in her diary.

The following day, at Brussels’ largest stockist of English language books, I bought a collection of Edward Thomas’s verse. I soon found the poem Sarah had recited and others too to haunt me with their resonance of things half seen and understood but never grasped or named or known for precisely what they are. Whether because I’d ignored them before or simply not been ready for them, his poems came to me now with a sort of revelatory force. How could they fail to, when so much of my own experience seemed embedded in the verse? And how could I not think of Louise Paxton-or her daughter-when I read such lines as:

After you speak

And what you meant

Is plain,

My eyes

Meet yours that mean,

With your cheeks and hair,

Something more wise,

More dark,

And far different.

Especially when Thomas seemed to have foreseen even our meeting on Hergest Ridge.

It was upon a July evening.

At a stile I stood looking along a path

Over the country by a second Spring

Drenched perfect green again. “The lattermath

Will be a fine one.” So the stranger said.

But there he’d erred. Or the stranger had. Our lattermath wasn’t to be a fine one.

A week or so later, I had a telephone call from Bella. She wanted to thank me for finding her a lodger. “One of your better ideas, Robin,” she said. “Sarah and I hit it off straightaway.” This I found hard to believe. But if Bella wanted to believe it, who was I to argue? “I think we could turn out to be rather good for each other. Don’t you?”