Collected Stories

A Dream of Butterflies

Various people awoke with a sense of relief. Sleepily, Colin Rhodes wondered what there was to be relieved about. As he did in the moment of waking every morning, he encased with his left hand one of his wife’s plump breasts and then remembered the outcome of last night’s meeting. Miss Cogings, alone in her narrow bed and listening to a chorus of house-martins, remembered it with the same degree of satisfaction. So did the Poudards when their Teasmade roused them at a quarter to seven. So did the Reverend Feare, and Mr Mottershead and Mr and Mrs Tilzey, and the Blennerhassetts, who ran the Village Stores. Mrs Feare, up since dawn with an ailing child, was pleased because her husband was. There would be peace when there might have been war. A defeat had been inflicted.

The Allenbys, however, awoke in Luffnell Lodge with mixed feelings. What to do with the Lodge now that it remained unsold? How long would they have to wait for another buyer? For having made their minds up, they really wanted to move on as soon as possible. A bridging loan had been negotiated at one point but they’d decided against it because the interest was so high. They planned to buy a bungalow in a part of Cornwall that was noted for its warmth and dryness, both of which would ease Mrs Allenby’s arthritis. Everything that had been said at the meeting made sense to Mr and Mrs Allenby; they quite understood the general point of view. But they wished, that morning, that things might have been different.

‘That’s really bizarre,’ Hugh said in the Mansors’ breakfast-room.

‘Dreams often are.’

‘But butterflies –’

‘It has to do with the meeting.’

‘Ah, of course, the meeting.’

He saw at once what had been happening. He traced quite easily the series of his wife’s thoughts, one built upon the last, fact in the end becoming fantasy.

Emily buttered toast and reached for grapefruit marmalade. ‘Silly,’ she said, not believing that it was.

‘A bit,’ he agreed, smiling at her. He went on to talk of something else, an item in The Times, another airliner hijacked.

The sun filled their breakfast-room. It struck the bones of his compact features; it livened his calm grey hair. It found the strawberry mark, like a tulip, on her neck; it made her spectacles glint. They were the same age, fifty-two, not yet grandparents but soon to be. He dealt in property; she’d once been a teacher of Latin and Greek. She was small and given to putting on weight if she wasn’t careful: dumpy, she considered herself.

‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Hugh said, folding The Times for further perusal on the train.’It’s all over now.’

He was handsome in his thin way, and she was plain. Perhaps he had married her because he had not felt up to the glamour of a beautiful woman: as a young man, unproved in the world, he had had an inferiority complex, and success in middle age had not managed to shake it off. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the heights he’d scaled in his business world all of a sudden turned out to be a wasteland. He specialized in property in distant places, Jamaica, Spain, the Bahamas: some economic jolt could shatter everything. The house they lived in, on the edge of a Sussex village, was the symbol of his good fortune over the years. It was also his due, for he had worked doggedly; only his inferiority complex prevented him from taking it for granted. It puzzled him that he, so unpromising as a boy at school, had done so well; and occasionally, but not often, it puzzled him that they’d made a success of their marriage in times when the failure rate was high. Perhaps they’d made a go of it because she was modest too: more than once he’d wondered if that could be true. Could it be that Emily, so much cleverer than he, had found a level with him because her lack of beauty kept her in her place, as his inferiority complex kept him? She had said that as a girl she’d imagined she would not marry, assuming that a strawberry mark and dumpiness, and glasses too, would be too much for any man. He often thought about her as she must have been, cleverest in the class; while he was being slow on the uptake. ‘You’re very kind’ was what most often, in the way of compliments, Emily said to him.

‘Have a good day’ was what she said now, forcing cheerfulness on to her face, for the dream she’d had still saddened her and the memory of the meeting worried her.

‘I’ll be on the five o’clock.’ He touched her cheek with his lips, and then was gone, the door of the breakfast-room opening and closing, the hall door banging. She listened to the starting of the car and the sound of the wheels on the tarmac, then the engine fading to nothing in the distance.

She felt as he did, that together they had not done badly in twenty-seven years of marriage. She’d been a Miss Forrest; becoming Mrs Mansor had seemed the nicest thing that yet had happened to her; and for all their married life – the worries during the lean years, the bringing up of their three children-she had regretted nothing, and in the end there’d been the reward of happiness in middle age. She missed their son and daughters, all of whom were now married themselves, but in compensation there was the contentment that the house and garden brought, and the unexacting life of the village. As well, there were the visits of their children and her memories of girls whom she had taught, some of whom kept up with her. It was still a pleasure to read Horace and the lesser Greek poets, to find in an experimental way a new interpretation in place of the standard, scholar’s one.

Their house, in the style of Queen Anne though in fact of a later period, was hidden from the road and the surrounding fields by modest glades of silver birches. It was a compact house, easy to run and keep clean, modernized with gadgets, warm in winter. Alone in it in the mornings Emily often played Bach or Mozart on the sitting-room hi-fi system, the music drifting into the kitchen and the bedrooms and the breakfast-room, pursuing her agreeably wherever she went.

But this morning she was not in the mood for Bach or Mozart. She continued to sit as her husband had left her, saying to herself that she must come to terms with what had happened. She had raised her voice but no one had cared to listen to it. Only Golkorn had listened, his great tightly cropped head slowly nodding, his eyes occasionally piercing hers. At the meeting her voice had faltered; her cheeks had warmed; nothing had come out as she’d meant it to.

Unladylike assortment of calumnies. In the train on the way to Waterloo he couldn’t think of a nine-lettered word. As a chore, he did The Times crossword every day, determined to do better with practice. There’s none of the Old Adam in a cardinal (6). He sighed and put the paper down.

It worried him that she’d been so upset. He hadn’t known what to say, or to do, when she’d stood up suddenly at the meeting to make her unsuccessful speech. He’d felt himself embarrassed, in sympathy or shame, he couldn’t tell which. He hadn’t been quite able to agree with her and had been surprised when she’d stood up because it wasn’t like her to do anything in public, even though she’d been saying she was unhappy about the thing for months. But then she was so unemphatic as a person that quite often it was hard to guess when she felt strongly.

With other suited men, some carrying as he did a briefcase and a newspaper, he stepped from the train at Waterloo. He strode along the platform with them, one in an army, it often seemed. In spite of how she felt, he really couldn’t help believing that the village had been saved. Their own house and garden, and the glades of silver birches, would in no way suffer. The value of the house would continue to rise with inflation instead of quite sharply declining. There would be calm again in the village instead of angry voices and personal remarks, instead of Colin I hodes saying to Golkorn’s face that he was a foreigner. Thank God it was all over.

‘There’s been a telex,’ Miss Owen informed him in his office. ‘That place in Gibraltar.’

In the breakfast-room Emily’s thoughts had spread out, from her dream of butterflies and the meeting there had been the night before. She saw images of women as they might have been, skulking in the woods near the village, two of them sitting on the stone seat beside the horse-trough on the green, another in a lane with ragwort in her hand. They were harmless women, as Golkorn had kept insisting. It was just that their faces were strange and their movements not properly articulated; nothing, of course, that they said made sense. ‘Anywhere but here,’ snapped the voice of Colin Rhodes, as vividly she recalled the meeting. ‘My God, you’ve got the world to choose from, Golkorn.’

Golkorn had smiled. Their village was beautiful, he had irritatingly stated, as if in reply. Repeatedly it had been said at the meeting last night, and at previous meetings, that the village was special because it Was among the most beautiful in England. The Manor dated back to Saxon times, it had been said, and the cottages round the green were almost unique. But it was that very beauty, and the very peacefulness of the lanes and woods, that Golkorn had claimed would be a paradise for his afflicted women. It was why he had chosen Luffnell Lodge when it went up for sale. Luffnell Lodge was less impressive than the Manor, and certainly nothing like as old. It was larger and less convenient, colder and in worse repair, yet ideal apparently for Golkorn’s purpose. In her dream Emily had been walking with him in a field and he had pointed at what at first she’d taken to be flowers but had turned out to be butterflies. ‘You’ve never seen that before,’ he’d said. ‘Butterflies in mourning, Mrs Mansor.’ They flew away as he spoke, a whole swarm of them, busily flapping their black wings.

She rose and cleared away the breakfast things. She carried them on a tray through the hall and into the kitchen. Her dog, an old Sealyham called. Spratts, wagged his tail without getting out of his basket. On the window-sill in front of the sink, hot with morning sunshine, a butterfly was poised and she thought at once that that was a coincidence. Its wings were tightly closed; it might have been dead but she knew it wasn’t, and when she touched it and the wings opened they were not sinister.

Of course it had been for the best when the Allenbys had realized that to sell Luffnell Lodge to Golkorn would have caused havoc: dealing with the telex about the place in Gibraltar, Hugh found himself yet again thinking that. Golkorn was a frightful person; it was Golkorn’s presence rather than his sick women that one might reasonably object to. Luffnell Lodge would put the village on the map, Golkorn had confidently promised, once it was full of his patients: in medical terms he was making a breakthrough. And Hugh knew that what he had offered the Allenbys was more than they’d get otherwise. You couldn’t blame them, elderly and wanting to get rid of what they’d come to think of as a white elephant, for listening to Golkorn’s adroit arguments. The Allenbys had done nothing wrong and in the end had made the sacrifice. They’d sell the Lodge eventually, it stood to reason, even if they had to wait a bit. ‘You see, we don’t particularly want to wait,’ old Mr Allenby had said. ‘That’s just the trouble. We’ve waited two years as it is.’ The Allenbys had asked Hugh’s advice because they thought that being in the international property market he might know a little more than Musgrove and Carter, who after all were only country estate agents. ‘Dr Golkorn is offering you a most attractive proposition,’ he’d had to admit, no way around that. ‘It could be a while before anyone matched it.’ Mr Allenby had asked if he’d care to handle the sale, in conjunction with Musgrove and Carter, but Hugh had had to explain that property in England was outside his firm’s particular field. ‘Oh, dear, it’s all so difficult,’ Mrs Allenby had disconsolately murmured, clearly most unhappy at the prospect of having to hang on in the Lodge for another couple of years. Hugh had always liked the Allenbys. In many ways, as a friend and as an expert, he should have told them to accept immediately Golkorn’s offer. But he hadn’t and that was that; it was all now best forgotten.

For Hugh that day passed as days did at the office. He dictated letters and received telephone calls. He lunched with a client in the Isola Bella, quite often he thought about his wife. Emily was unhappy because of everything that had happened. She felt, but had not said so, that he had let the Allenbys down. She felt that she herself had let the inmates of Golkorn’s home down. Hugh tried not to think about it; but in his mind’s eye he kept seeing her again, standing up at the meeting and saying that afflicted women have to live somewhere Like mongol children, she had said, stammering; or the blind. ‘That’s quite appreciated, Mrs Mansor,’ the Reverend Feare had murmured, and as if to come to her assistance Golkorn had asked if he might address the meeting. He had nodded his heavy razored head at Emily; he had repeated what she’d said, that afflicted women, like mongol children and the blind, have to go somewhere. He had smiled and spread his hands out, impatient with those who were protesting and yet oilily endeavouring to hide it. A woman present, he’d even suggested, might one day need the home he proposed for Luffnell Lodge. Hugh sighed, remembering it too clearly. He would take Emily out to dinner, to the Rowan House Hotel. He was about to pick up the telephone in order to ask to be put through to her when it rang. Odd, he thought as he picked up the receiver, that she had dreamed so strangely of butterflies.

‘It’s a Dr Golkorn,’ his secretary’s voice said. ‘On the other line, Mr Mansor.’

He hesitated. There was no point in speaking to Golkorn; at half past ten last night Golkorn had lost his case; the matter was closed. Yet something – perhaps just politeness, he afterwards thought – made him pick up the other telephone. ‘Yes?’ he said.

‘It’s Golkorn,’ Golkorn said. ‘Look, Mr Mansor, could we talk?’

‘About the Lodge? But that’s all over, Dr Golkorn. The Allenbys –’

‘Sir, they agreed beneath all this pressure not to let me have the house. But with respect, is that just, sir? At least agree to exchange another word or two with me, Mr Mansor.’

‘It would be useless, I’m afraid.’

‘Mr Mansor, do me a favour.’

‘I would willingly do you a favour if I thought –’

‘I ask you only for ten minutes. If I may come to see you for ten minutes, Mr Mansor, I would esteem it.’

‘You mean, you want to come here?’

‘I mean, sir, I would like to come to your very pleasant home. I would like to call in at seven tonight if that might be convenient. The reason I am suggesting this, Mr Mansor, is I am still in the neighbourhood of the village. I am still staying in the same hotel.’

‘Well, yes, come over by all means, but I really must warn you –’

‘I am used to everything, Mr Mansor.’ Laughter accompanied this remark and then Golkorn said, ‘I look forward to seeing you and your nice wife. I promise only to occupy ten minutes.’

Hugh telephoned Emily. ‘Golkorn,’ he said. ‘He wants to come and see us.’

‘But what for?’

‘I really can’t think. I couldn’t say no.’

‘Of course not.’

‘He’s coming at seven.’

She said goodbye and put the receiver down. The development astonished her. She thought at least they had finished with Golkorn.

The telephone rang again and Hugh suggested that they should go out to dinner, to Rowan House, where they often went. She knew he was suggesting it because she’d been upset. She appreciated that, but she said she’d rather make it another night, mainly because she had a stew in the oven. ‘I’m sorry about that wretched man,’ Hugh said. ‘He wasn’t easy to choke off.’ She reassured him, making a joke of Golkorn’s insistence, saying that of course it didn’t matter.

In the garden she picked sweet-peas. She sat for a moment in the corner where she and Hugh often had coffee together on Saturday and Sunday mornings. She put the sweet-peas on the slatted garden table and let her glance wander over lupins and delphiniums, and the tree geranium that was Hugh’s particular pride. On trellises and archways which he’d made roses trailed in profusion, Mermaid and Danse du Feu. She loved the garden, as she loved the house.

At her feet the Sealyham called Spratts settled down to rest for a while, but she warned him that she didn’t intend to remain long in the secluded corner. In a moment she picked up the sweet-peas and took them to the kitchen, where she arranged them in a cut-glass vase. The dog followed her when she carried it to the sitting-room. Was it unusual, she wondered, to pick flowers specially for a person you didn’t like? Yet it had seemed a natural thing to do; she always picked flowers when a visitor was coming.

‘Ten minutes I promised,’ Golkorn said at seven o’clock, having been notably prompt, ‘so ten minutes it must be.’ He laughed, as if he’d made a joke of some kind. ‘No, no drink for me, please.’

Hugh poured Emily a glass of sherry, Harvey’s Luncheon Dry, which was what she always had. He smeared a glass with Angostura drops and added gin and water to it for himself. Perhaps there was something in the fact that he had rescued her, he thought, wanting to think about her rather than their visitor. Even though she loved the subject, she had never been entirely happy as a teacher of Classics because she was shy. Until she came to know them she was nervous of the girls she taught: her glasses and her strawberry mark and her dumpiness, the very fact that she was a teacher, seemed to put her into a certain category, at a disadvantage. And perhaps his rescuing of her, if you could so grandly call it that, had in turn given him something he’d lacked before. Perhaps their marriage was indeed built on debts to one another.

‘Orange juice, Mr Golkorn?’ Emily suggested, already rising to get it for him.

He waved a hand, denying his need of orange juice. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to beat about the bush. I want to come to the point. Luffnell Lodge, Mr Mansor. You’re a man of business, you know those people wouldn’t ever get that price. They’ll lose a lot. You know that.’

‘We’ve been through all of it, Dr Golkorn. The Allenbys do not wish to sell their property to you.’

‘They’re elderly people –’

‘That has nothing to do with it.’

‘With respect, Mr Mansor, it may have. Our elderly friends could be sitting there in that barracks for winter after winter. They could freeze to death. The old lady’s crippled with arthritis as it is.’

‘Mrs Allenby’s illness cannot enter into this. The Allenbys –’

‘With respect, sir, they came to you for advice.’

‘That is so.’

‘With respect, sir, the advice you gave them was unfortunate.’

‘If they’d sold the Lodge to you they’d be hated in the village.’

‘But they’d be gone, Mr Miansor. They’d have kicked the dust off their heels. They’d be imbibing the sun on some island somewhere. As their doctor advised.’

‘They’ve lived in this village for more than fifty years. It matters to them what the village thinks of them. We’ve been all through this, you know. I can’t help you, Dr Golkorn.’

Golkorn bent his head for a moment over clasped hands, as if praying for patience. He was slightly smiling. When eventually he looked up there was a glint in his dark, clever eyes which suggested that, despite appearances, he held the more useful cards. His black pinstriped suit was uncreased, his smooth black shoes had a glassy glow. He wore a blue shirt and a blue bow tie with small white spots on it. The night before, at the meetings he’d been similarly dressed except for his shirt and tie. The shirt had last night been pink and the tie a shade of deep crimson, though also with white spots.

‘What do you think, Mrs Mansor?’ he said in his sort, unhurried voice, still smiling a little. ‘How do you see this unhappy business?’ His manner suggested that they might have been his patients. Any moment now, Hugh thought, he might tell them to go out for a walk.

‘I feel as my husband does,’ Emily said. ‘I feel the Allenbys have given you their answer,’

‘I mean, madam, how do you feel about the people I wish to help? I do not mean the Allenbys, Mrs Mansor; I mean of course those who would one day be my patients in Luffnell Lodge.’

‘You heard what my wife said last night, Dr Golkorn,’ Hugh interjected quickly.’she is sympathetic towards such people.’

‘You would not yourself object to these patients in your village, Mrs Mansor? Did I understand you correctly when you spoke last night?’

‘That is what I said. I would personally not object.’

‘With respect, madam, you feel a certain guilt? Well, I assure you it is natural to feel a certain guilt. By that I mean it is natural for some people.’ He laughed. ‘Not Colin Rhodes of course, or Mr Mottershead, or Mr and Mrs Tilzey, or Miss Cogings. Not your clergyman, Mr Feare, even though he is keen to show his concern for the unwell. I think you’re different, madam.’

‘My wife –’

‘Let us perhaps hear your wife, eh? Mrs Mansor, you do not believe the village would be a bear garden if a handful of unhappy women were added to it: that was what you implied last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘But the vote went against you.’

‘No vote was taken,’ Hugh said sharply. ‘The meeting was simply to explain to you why the Allenbys had decided not to sell.’

‘But there had been other meetings, eh? At which I naturally was not present. There have been six months of meetings, I think I’m correct in stating. You’ve argued back and forth among yourselves, and sides have naturally been taken. In the end, you know, the question we have to ask is should our elderly friends not be allowed to do what is best for them since they have done so much for the village in the past? The other question we have to ask is would it be the end of the universe to have a handful of mentally ill women in Luffnell Lodge? With respect, madam, you feel guilty now because you did not fight hard enough for justice and humanity. And you, sir, because in your efforts to see everyone’s point of view you permitted yourself to be bulldozed by the majority and to become their tool.’

‘Now look here, Dr Golkorn –’

‘With respect, you misinformed the vendors, sir. They’ll be in Luffnell Lodge till they die now.’

‘The house will be sold to another buyer. It’s only a matter of time.’

‘It’s what you call a white elephant, sir.’

‘I think we’d rather you went, Dr Golkorn.’

Golkorn leaned back in his chair. He crossed one leg over the other. He smiled, turning his head a little so that the smile was directed first at Hugh and then at Emily. He said:

‘You are both of you upset. In my profession, Mr Mansor, which has to do with the human heart as much as the human mind, I could sense last night that you were both upset. You were saying to yourself, sir, that you had made an error of judgement. Mrs Mansor was wanting to weep.’

‘I admit to no error of judgement –’

‘Shall we refer to it as a mistake then, sir? You have made a mistake with which you will live until the white elephant is sold. And even then, if ever it is sold in the lifetime of the vendors, the mistake will still be there because of the amount they will have forfeited. In good faith they called you in, sir, taking you to be an honest man –’

‘You’re being offensive, Dr Golkorn.’

‘I apologize for that, sir. I was purely making a point. Let me make another one. Your wife, as long as she has breath to keep her alive, will never forgive herself.’

Emily tried not to look at him. She looked at the sweet-peas she’d arranged. Through her shoes she could feel the warmth of the Sealyham, who had a way of hugging her feet. She felt there was nothing she could say.

Hugh rose and crossed the room. He noticed that Emily hadn’t touched her sherry. He shook the little bottle of Angostura bitters over his own glass, and added gin and water.

‘Actually, sir,’ Golkorn said, ‘all I am suggesting you should do is to pick up the telephone. And you, madam, all that is necessary is to say how you feel to Mrs Allenby. She, too, has humanitarian instincts.’

His beadiness had discovered that they were the weak links in the chain. When he’d argued with the others the night before, trying to make them see his point of view, opinion had hardened immediately. And when he’d persisted, anger had developed. ‘In blunt terms,’ Golin Rhodes had shouted at him, ‘we don’t want you here. If you’re going to be a blot on the landscape, we’d be obliged if you could be it somewhere else.’ And Colin Rhodes would say it even more forcibly now: there’d have been no point in Golkorn’s insinuating his way into the Rhodes’s sitting-room, or the sitting-room of the Reverend Feare, or the sitting-room of Mr Mottershead or Miss Cogings. There’d have been no point in tackling the Poudards, or taking on the Tilzeys, or making a fuss with Mr and Mrs Blennerhassett in the Village Stores.

‘My trouble is,’ Golkorn said softly, laughing as if to dress the words with delicacy, ‘I cannot accept no for an answer.’

She imagined telling him now that she had dreamed of butterflies in mourning. She imagined his cropped head carefully nodding, going slowly up and down in unspoken delight. Eventually he would explain the dream, relishing the terms he employed, telling her nothing she did not already know. He was a master of the obvious. He took ordinary, blunt facts and gave them a weapon’s edge.

‘Which comes first,’ he inquired quite casually, ‘the beauty of an English village, like a picture on a calendar, or the happiness of the wretched?’ He went on talking, going over the same ground, mentioning again by name the Poudards and the Tilzeys and the Blennerhassetts, Mr Mottershead, Miss Cogings, Colin Rhodes and the Reverend Feare and Mrs Feare, comparing these healthy, normal people with other people who were neither. He made them seem like monsters. He mentioned the Middle Ages and referred to the people of the village as belonging to an inferno of ignorance out of which the world had hauled itself by its own bootstraps. He himself, he threw in for some kind of good measure, had been a poor man once; he had worked his way through a foreign university, details of which he gave; he was devoted to humanity, he said.

But the Poudards and the Tilzeys were not monsters. The Blennerhassetts just felt strongly, as the others, varying in degree, did also. Mr Mottershead would do anything for you; the Feares had had children from Northern Ireland to stay for two summers running; Miss Cogings cleane old Mrs Dugdall’s windows for her because naturally old Mrs Dugdall couldn’t do it herself any more. Having sherry with Colin Rhodes after church on Sundays was a civilized occasion; you couldn’t in a million years say that Colin Rhodes and Daphne were a pair of monsters.

‘Listen, you’ve got this all wrong, Dr Golkorn,’ Hugh said.

‘I wouldn’t have said so, sir.’

‘Your patients would be all over the neighbourhood. You admitted that yourself. They would be free to wander in the village –’

‘I see now, sir, I should have told a lie. I should have said these unhappy people would be safely behind bars; I should have said that no suffering face would ever disturb the peace of your picture-postcard village.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Emily asked, unable to restrain curiosity.

‘Because with respect, madam, it is not in my lifestyle to tell lies.’

They had to agree with that. In all he had said to the Allenbys and at the meeting last night he had been open and straightforward about what he had intended to do with Luffnell Lodge. He might easily have kept quiet and simply bought the place. It was almost as if he had wished to fight his battle according to the rules he laid down himself, for if lies were not his style deviousness made up for their absence. He knew that if they approached the Allenbys with the second thoughts he was proposing the Allenbys would not hesitate. Deliberately he had let the rowdier opposition burn itself out in righteous fury, and had accepted defeat while seeing victory in sight. His eyes had not strayed once to Emily’s tulip-shaped birthmark, nor lingered on her spectacles or her dumpiness, as such eyes might so easily have done. He had not sought to humiliate Hugh with argument too fast and clever.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘all three of us know. You are decent people. You cannot turn your backs.’

In Luffnell Lodge the women would be comforted, some even cured. Emily knew that. She knew he was not pretending, or claiming too much for himself. She knew his treatment of such women was successful. He was right when he said you could not turn your back. You could not build a wall around a pretty village and say that nothing unpleasant should be permitted within it. No wonder she had dreamed of butterflies mourning the human race. And yet she hated Golkorn. She hated his arrogance in assuming that because his cause was good no one could object. She hated his deviousness far more than the few simple lies he might have told. If he’d told a lie or two to the Allenbys all this might have been avoided.

Hugh wanted him to go. He didn’t need Golkorn to tell him he had misled the Allenbys. In misleading them he had acted out of instincts that were not dishonourable, but Golkorn would not for a second understand that.

‘I have my car,’ Golkorn said. ‘We could the three of us drive up to Luffnell Lodge now.’

Hugh shook his head.

‘And you, Mrs Mansor?’ Golkorn prompted.

‘I would like to talk to my husband.’

‘I was hoping to save you petrol, madam.’ He spoke as if, at a time like this, with such an issue, the saving of petrol was still important.

‘Yes, we’d like to talk,’ Hugh said.

‘Indeed, sir. If I may only phone you from the hotel in an hour or so? To see how you’ve got on.’

They knew he would. They knew he would not rest now until he had dragged their consciences out of them and set them profitably to work. If they did not go to Luffnell Lodge he would return to argue further.

‘You understand that if we do as you suggest we’d have to leave the village,’, Hugh pointed out.’We couldn’t stay here.’

Golkorn frowned, seeming genuinely perplexed. He gestured with his hands. ‘But why, sir? Why leave this village? With respect, I do not understand you.’

‘We’d have been disloyal to our friends. We’d be letting everyone down.’ ‘You’re not letting me down, sir. You’re not letting two elderly persons down, nor women in need of care and love –’

‘Yes, we’re aware, of that, Dr Golkorn.’

‘Sir, may I say that the people of this village will see it our way in time? They’ll observe the good work all around them, and understand.’

‘In fact, they won’t.’

‘Well, I would argue that, sir. With respect –’

‘We would like to be alone now, Dr Golkorn.’

He went away and they were left with the dying moments of the storm he had brought with him. They did not say much but in time they walked together from the house, through the garden, to the car. They waved at Colin Rhodes, out with his retrievers on the green, and at Miss Cogings hurrying to the post-box with a letter. It wasn’t until the car drew up at Luffnell Lodge, until they stood with the Allenbys in the hall, that they were grateful they’d been exploited.