Longshot

Chapter 15

I apologized to Tremayne.

‘Nolan started it,’ Mackie said.

She peered anxiously at the reddening bruise on Perkin’s cheek, a twin to one on mine.

Perkin sat in angry confusion at table six while the racing crowd, entertaining skirmish over, drifted away and got the band re-started.

Nolan was nowhere in sight. Sam took off his stained jacket, wiped his bloody nose, sucked his knuckles and began making jokes as a form of released tension.

‘I bumped into him, that’s all I did,’ he proclaimed with tragicomic gestures. ‘Well, say I then took Fiona off him and maybe I told him to go find himself another filly and the next thing was he got a pincer-hold on my ear and was bopping me one on the nose and there I was bleeding fit to fill the Frenchy furrows so naturally I gave him one back.’

He collected an appreciative audience which definitely didn’t include Tremayne. The shambles at the end of his splendid evening was aggravating him sorely and he propelled Fiona into a seat at the table with some of the disgruntled force he’d shown in Ronnie Curzon’s office.

Fiona said anxiously, ‘But, Tremayne, Sam meant it as a joke.’

‘He should have had more sense.’ Tremayne’s voice was rough. Gareth, next to Perkin, looked at his father with apprehension, knowing the portents.

‘Nolan’s been through a lot,’ Fiona said excusingly.

‘Nolan’s a violent man,’ Tremayne stated with fierce irritation. ‘You don’t go poking a stick at a rattlesnake if you don’t want to get bitten.’

‘Tremayne!’ She was alarmed at his brusqueness, which he immediately softened.

‘My dear girl, I know he’s your cousin. I know he’s been through a lot, I know you’re fond of him, but he and Sam shouldn’t be in the same room together just now.’ He looked from her to me. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘John was splendid!’ Mackie exclaimed, and Perkin scowled.

Erica grinned at me like a witch, saying, ‘You’re much too physical for the literati.’

‘Let’s go home,’ Tremayne said abruptly. He stood, kissed Fiona, picked up the box containing his silver bowl and waited for obedience from his sons, his daughter-in-law and his prospective biographer. We stood. We followed him meekly. He made a stately, somewhat forbidding exit, his displeasure plainly visible to all around, his mien daring unkind souls to snigger.

No one did. Tremayne was held in genuine respect and I saw more sympathy than smirks: yet he in many respects was the stoker of the ill-feeling between his warring jockeys, and putting me among them wasn’t a recipe for a cease-fire.

‘Perhaps I’d better not ride schooling in the morning,’ I suggested, as we reached the gate to the car park.

‘Are you scared?’ he demanded, stopping dead.

I stopped beside him as the other three went on ahead.

‘Nolan and Sam don’t like it, that’s all,’ I said.

‘You bloody well ride. I’ll get you that permit. I’ll tame Nolan by threats. Understand?’

I nodded.

He stared at me intently. ‘Is that why Nolan said he would kill you? Besides your making a public fool of him?’

‘I think so.’

‘Do you want to ride in a race or two, or don’t you?’

‘I do.’

‘School Fringe tomorrow, then. And as for now, you’d better go back with Fiona. Make sure she gets home safe. Harry won’t want Nolan pestering her and he’s quite capable of it.’

‘Right.’

He nodded strongly and went on towards his Volvo, and I returned to find Fiona arguing with Nolan in the entrance hall. She and Erica beside her saw me with relief, Nolan with fresh fury.

‘I was afraid you’d gone,’ Fiona said.

‘Thank Tremayne.’

Nolan said angrily, ‘Why is this bag of slime always hanging about?’

He made no move, though, to attack me.

‘Harry asked him to see me home,’ Fiona said placatingly. ‘Get some rest, Nolan, or you won’t be fit for Groundsel tomorrow.’

He heard, as I did, the faint threat in the cousinly concern, and at least it gave him an excuse for a face-saving exit. Fiona watched his retreating back with a regret neither Erica nor I shared.

I rode Drifter with the first lot in the morning and crashed off on to the wood chippings halfway up the gallop.

Tremayne showed a modicum of anxiety but no sympathy, and the anxiety was for the horse. He sent a lad after it to try to catch it and with disgust watched me limp towards him rubbing a bruised thigh.

‘Concentrate,’ he said. ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’

‘He swerved.’

‘You weren’t keeping him straight. Don’t make excuses, you weren’t concentrating.’

The lad caught Drifter and brought him to join us.

‘Get up,’ Tremayne said to me testily.

I wriggled back into the saddle. I supposed he was right about not concentrating: a touch of the morning afters.

They’d all gone to bed the night before when I’d returned from a last noggin with Harry. I’d walked up from the village under a brilliantly starry sky, breathing cold shafts of early-morning air, thinking of murder. Sleep had come slowly with anxiety dreams. I felt unsettled, not refreshed.

I rode Drifter back with the rest of the string and went in to breakfast, half expecting to be told I wouldn’t be allowed to ride Fringe. Tremayne’s own mood appeared to be a deepening depression over the evening’s finale, and I was sorry because he deserved to look back with enjoyment.

He was reading a newspaper when I went in, and scowling heavily.

‘How did they get hold of this so damned fast?’

‘What?’

This.’ He pushed the opened paper violently across the table and I read that a brace of brawling jockeys had climaxed the prestigious award dinner with a bloody punch-up. Ex-champion Yaeger and amateur champion Nolan Everard (recently convicted of manslaughter) had been restrained by friends. Tremayne Vickers had said ‘no comment’. The sponsor was furious. The Jockey Club were ‘looking into it’. End of story.

‘It’s rubbish,’ Tremayne snorted. ‘I never said “no comment”. No one asked me for any comment. The sponsor had left by the time it happened, so how can he be furious? So had the Jockey Club members. They went after the speeches. I talked to some of them as they were leaving. They congratulated me. Huh!’

‘The fuss will die down,’ I assured him.

‘Makes me look a bloody fool.’

‘Make a joke of it,’ I suggested.

He stared. ‘I don’t feel like joking.’

‘No one does.’

‘It’s this business about Harry, isn’t it? Upsets everyone. Bloody Angela Brickell.’

I made the toast.

He said, ‘Are you fit enough to ride Fringe?’

‘If you’ll let me.’

He studied me, some of his ill-feeling fading. ‘Concentrate, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘Look,’ he said a touch awkwardly, ‘I don’t mean to take my bad temper out on you. If you hadn’t been here we’d all be in a far worse pickle. Best thing I ever did, getting you to come.’

In surprise, I searched for words to thank him but was forestalled by the telephone ringing. Tremayne picked up the receiver and grunted ‘Hello?’, not all his vexation yet dissipated.

His face changed miraculously to a smile. ‘Hello, Ronnie. Calling to find out how the book’s going? Your boy’s been working on it. What? Yes, he’s here. Hold on.’ He passed me the receiver, saying unnecessarily, ‘It’s Ronnie Curzon.’

‘Hello, Ronnie,’ I said.

‘How’s it going?’

‘I’m riding a good deal.’

‘Keep your mind on the pages. I’ve got news for you.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘My colleague in America phoned yesterday evening about your book.’

‘Oh.’ I felt apprehensive. ‘What did he say?’

‘He says he likes Long Way Home very much indeed. He will gladly take it on, and he is certain he can place it with a good publisher.’

‘Ronnie!’ I swallowed, unable to get my breath. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course, I’m sure. I always told you it was all right. Your English publisher is very enthusiastic. She told my American colleague the book is fine and he agrees. What more do you want?’

‘Oh...’

‘Come down from the ceiling. A first novel by an unknown British writer isn’t going to be given a huge advance.’ He mentioned a sum which would pay my rent until I’d finished the helium balloon and leave some over for sandwiches. ‘If the book takes off like they hope it will, you’ll get royalties.’ He paused. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Sort of.’

He laughed. ‘It’s all beginning. I have faith in you.’

Ridiculously, I felt like crying. Blinked a few times instead and told him in a croaky voice that I’d met Erica Upton twice and had sat next to her at dinner.

‘She’ll destroy you!’ he said, horrified.

‘I don’t think so. She wants a copy of the book when it’s published.’

‘She’ll tear it apart. She likes making mincemeat of new writers.’ He sounded despairing. ‘She does hatchet jobs, not reviews.’

‘I’ll have to risk it.’

‘Let me talk to Tremayne.’

‘OK, and Ronnie... thanks.’

‘Yes, yes...’

I handed back the receiver and heard Ronnie being agitated on the other end.

‘Hold on,’ Tremayne said, ‘she likes him.’

I distinctly heard Ronnie’s disbelieving ‘What?’

‘Also she’s very fond of her nephew, Harry, and on Wednesday John saved Harry’s life. I grant you she may write him a critical review, but she won’t demolish him.’ Tremayne listened a bit and talked a bit and then gave me the receiver again.

‘All right,’ Ronnie said more calmly, ‘any chance you get, save her life too.’

I laughed, and with a sigh he disconnected.

‘What happened?’ Tremayne asked. ‘What did he tell you?’

‘I’m going to be published in America. Well... probably.’

‘Congratulations.’ He beamed, pleased for me, his glooms lifting. ‘But that won’t change things, will it? I mean here, between us. You will still write my book, won’t you?’

I saw his anxiety begin to surface and promptly allayed it.

‘I will write it. I’ll do the very best I can and just hope it does you justice. And will you excuse me if I run and jump and do handsprings? I’m bursting... Ronnie said it’s all beginning. I don’t know that I can bear it.’ I looked at him. ‘Did you feel like this when Top Spin Lob won the National?’

‘I was high for days. Kept smiling. Topsy Blob, I ask you!’ He stood up. ‘Back to business. You’ll come up with me in the Land Rover. Fringe’s lad can ride him up, then change with you.’

‘Right.’

Ronnie’s news, I found, had given me a good deal more confidence in Fringe than I had had on Drifter, illogical though it might be.

It’s all beginning...

Concentrate.

Fringe was younger, whippier and less predictable than Drifter: rock music in place of classical. I gathered the reins and lengthened the stirrup leathers a couple of holes while Fringe made prancing movements, getting used to his new and heavier rider.

‘Take him down below the three flights of hurdles,’ Tremayne said, ‘then bring him up over them at a useful pace. You’re not actually racing. Just a good half-speed gallop. Bob Watson will be with you for company. Fringe jumps well enough but he likes guidance. He’ll waver if you don’t tell him when to take off. Don’t forget, it’s you that’s schooling the horse, not the other way round. All ready?’

I nodded.

‘Off you go, then.’

He seemed unconcerned at letting me loose on his half-share investment and I tried telling myself that ahead lay merely a quick pop over three undemanding obstacles, not the first searching test of my chances of racing. I’d ridden over many jumps before, but never on a racehorse, never fast, never caring so much about the outcome. Almost without being aware of it I’d progressed from the hesitancy of my first few days there to a strong positive desire to go down to the starting gate: any starting gate, anywhere. I had to admit that I envied Sam and Nolan.

Bob was circling on his own horse, waiting for me. Both his horse and Fringe, aware they would be jumping, were stimulated and keen.

‘Guv’nor says you’re to set off on the side nearest him,’ Bob said briefly. ‘He wants to see what you’re doing.’

I nodded, slightly dry-mouthed. Bob expertly trotted his mount into position, gave me a raised-eye query about readiness and kicked forward into an accelerating gallop. Fringe took up his position alongside with familiarity and eagerness, an athlete doing what he’d been bred for, and enjoyed.

First hurdle ahead. Judge the distance... give Fringe the message to shorten his stride... I gave it to him too successfully, he put in a quick one, got too near the hurdle, hopped over it nearly at a standstill, lost lengths on Bob.

Damn, I thought. Damn.

Second hurdle, managed it a bit better, gave him the signal three strides from the jump, felt him lift off at the right time, felt his assurance flow back and his faith in me revive, even if provisionally.

Third hurdle, I left him too much to his own devices as the distance was awkward. I couldn’t make up my own mind whether to get him to lengthen or shorten and in consequence I didn’t make his mind up to do either and we floundered over it untidily, his hooves rapping the wooden frames, my weight too far forward... a mess.

We pulled up at the end of the schooling stretch and trotted back to where Tremayne stood with his binoculars. I didn’t look at Bob; didn’t want to see his disapproval, all too wretchedly aware that I hadn’t done very well.

Tremayne with pursed lips offered no direct opinion.

Instead he said, ‘Second pop, Bob. Off you go,’ and I gathered we were to go back to the beginning and start again.

I seemed to have more time to get things together the second time and Fringe stayed beside Bob fairly smoothly to the end. I felt exalted and released and newly alive in myself, but also I’d watched Sam Yaeger in a schooling session one morning and knew the difference.

Tremayne said nothing until we were driving back to the stable and then all he did was ask me if I were happy with what I’d done. Happy beyond expression in one way, I thought, but not in another. I knew for certain I wanted to race. Knew I had elementary skill.

‘I’ll learn,’ I said grimly, and he didn’t answer.

When we reached the house, however, he rummaged about in the office for a while complaining that he could never find anything on Dee-Dee’s days off and eventually brought a paper into the dining-room, plonked it on the table and instructed me to sign.

It was, I saw, an application for a permit to race as an amateur jockey. I signed it without speaking, incredibly delighted, grinning like a maniac.

Tremayne grunted and bore the document away, coming back presently to say I should stop working and go with him to Newbury races, if I didn’t mind. Also Mackie would be coming with us and we’d be picking up Fiona.

‘And frankly,’ he said, coming to the essence of the matter, ‘those two don’t want to go without you, and Harry wants you to be there and... well... so do I.’

‘All right,’ I said.

‘Good.’

He departed again and, after a moment’s thought, I went into the office to put through a call to Doone’s police station. He was off duty, I was told. I could leave my name and a message.

I left my name.

‘Ask him,’ I said, ‘why the floorboards in the boat-house didn’t float.’

‘Er... would you repeat that, sir?’

I repeated it and got it read back with scepticism.

‘That’s right,’ I confirmed, amused. ‘Don’t forget it.’

We went to the races and watched Nolan ride Fiona’s horse Groundsel and get beaten by a length into second place, and we watched Sam ride two of Tremayne’s runners unprofitably and then win for another trainer.

‘There’s always another day,’ Tremayne said philosophically.

Fiona told us on the way to the races that the police had phoned Harry to say they’d found his car in the station car park at Reading.

‘They said it looks OK but they’ve towed it off somewhere to search for clues. I never knew people really said “search for clues”, but that’s what they said.’

‘They talk like their notebooks,’ Tremayne nodded.

From Reading station one could set off round the world. Metaphorical cliff, I thought. A guilty disappearance had been the intended scenario, not a presumption of suicide. Unless of course the car had been moved again after Harry had made his unscheduled reappearance.

The racecourse was naturally buzzing with accounts of the row at Tremayne’s dinner, most of the stories inflamed and inaccurate because of the embroidery by the press. Tremayne bore the jokes with reasonable fortitude, cheered by the absence of enquiry or even remarks from the Jockey Club, not even strictures about ‘bringing racing into disrepute’ which I’d learned was the yardstick for in-house punishment.

By osmosis of information, both Sam and Nolan knew details of Fringe’s schooling. Sam said, ‘You’ll be taking my sodding job next,’ without meaning it in the least, and Nolan, bitter-eyed and cursing, saw Tremayne’s warning glare and subsided with festering rancour.

‘How on earth do they know?’ I asked, mystified.

‘Sam phoned Bob to find out,’ Tremayne said succinctly. ‘Bob told him you did all right. Sam couldn’t wait to tell Nolan. I heard him doing it. Bloody pair of fools.’

All afternoon Fiona kept me close by her side, looking around for me any time I fell a step behind. She tried unsuccessfully to hide what she described as ‘preposterous fear’, and I understood that her fear had no focus and no logic, but was becoming a state of mind. Tremayne, sensing it also, fussed over her even more than usual and Fiona herself made visible efforts to act normally and as she said ‘be sensible’.

Whenever Mackie wasn’t actively helping Tremayne she stayed close also to Fiona, and although I tried I couldn’t dislodge the underlying anxiety in their eyes. Silver-blond and red-head, they clung to each other occasionally as long-time friends, and spoke to Nolan, cousin of one, ex-fiancé of the other, with an odd mixture of dread, exasperation and compassion.

Nolan was disconcerted by having lost on Groundsel though I couldn’t see that he’d done anything wrong. Tremayne didn’t blame him, still less Fiona, but the non-success intensified if possible his ill-will towards me. I was truly disconcerted myself to have acquired so violent an enemy without meaning to and could see no resolution short of full retreat; and the trouble was that since that morning’s schooling any inclination to retreat had totally vanished.

I looked back constantly to the morning with huge inward joy; to Ronnie’s phone call, to the revelation over hurdles. Doors opening all over the place. All beginning.

The afternoon ending, we took Fiona home and went on to Shellerton House where Perkin came through for drinks, Tremayne went out to see the horses and Gareth returned from a football match. An evening like most others in that house, but to me the first of a changed life.

The next day, Sunday, Gareth held me to my promise to take him and Coconut out on another survival trip.

The weather was much better; sunny but cold still with a trace of a breeze, a good day for walking. I suggested seven miles out, seven miles back; Gareth with horror suggested two. We compromised on borrowing the Land Rover for positioning, followed by walking as far as their enthusiasm took them.

‘Where are you going?’ Tremayne asked.

‘Along the road over the hills towards Reading,’ I said. ‘There’s some great woodland there, unfenced, no signs saying “keep out”.’

Tremayne nodded. ‘I know where you mean. It’s all part of the Quillersedge Estate. They only try to keep people out just before Christmas, to stop them stealing the fir trees.’

‘We’d better not light a fire there,’ I said, ‘so we’ll take our food and water with us.’

Gareth looked relieved. ‘No fried worms.’

‘No, but it will be survival food. Things you could pick or catch.’

‘OK,’ he said with his father’s brand of practical acceptance. ‘How about chocolate instead of dandelion leaves?’

I agreed to the chocolate. The day had to be bearable. We set off at ten, collected Coconut and bowled along to the woods.

There were parking places all along that road, not planned, official, tarmacked areas but small inlets of beaten earth formed by the waiting cars of many walkers. I pulled into one of them, put on the handbrake and, when the boys were out, locked the doors.

Gareth wore of course his psychedelic jacket. Coconut’s yellow oilskins had been superseded by an equally blinding anorak and I, in the regrettable absence of my ski-suit jacket, looked camouflaged against the trees in stone-washed jeans and a roomy olive-drab Barbour borrowed from Tremayne.

‘Right,’ I said, smiling, as they slid the straps of bright blue nylon knapsacks over their shoulders, ‘we’ll take a walk into the Berkshire wilderness. Everyone fit?’

They said they were, so we stepped straight into the tangled maze of alder, hazel, birch, oak, pine, fir and laurel and picked our steps over dried grass, scratchy brambles and the leafless knee-high branching shoots of the wood’s next generation. None of this had been cleared or replanted; it was scrub woodland as nature had made it, the real thing as far as the boys were concerned.

I encouraged them to lead but kept them going towards the sun by suggesting detours round the obstructing patches, and I identified the trees for them, trying to make it interesting.

‘We’re not eating the bark again, are we?’ Coconut said, saying ugh to a birch tree.

‘Not today. Here is a hazel. There might still be some nuts lying round it.’

They found two. Squirrels had been there first.

We went about a mile before they tired of the effort involved, and I didn’t mean to go much further in any case because according to the map I had in my pocket we were by then in about the centre of the western spur of the Quillersedge woods. We’d come gently up and down hill, but not much further on the ground fell away abruptly, according to the map’s contour lines, with too hard a climb on the return.

Gareth stopped in one of the occasional small clearings and mentioned food hopefully.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We can make some reasonable seats with dead twigs to keep our bottoms off the damp ground, if you like. No need today for a shelter.’

They made flat piles of twigs, finishing them off with evergreen, then emptied their rucksacks and spread the blue nylon on top. We all sat fairly comfortably and ate things I’d bought for the occasion.

‘Smoked trout!’ Gareth exclaimed. ‘That’s an advance on roots.’

‘You could catch trout and smoke them if you had to,’ I said. ‘The easiest way to catch them is with a three-pronged spear, but don’t tell that to fishermen.’

‘How do you smoke them?’

‘Make a fire with lots of hot embers. Cover the embers thickly with green fresh leaves: they’ll burn slowly with billows of smoke. Make a latticed frame to go over the fire and put the trout on it or otherwise hang them over the smoke, and if possible cover it all with branches or more leaves to keep the smoke inside. The best leaves for smoking are things like oak or beech. The smell of the smoke will go into the fish to some extent, so don’t use anything you don’t like the smell of. Don’t use holly or yew, they’re poisonous. You can smoke practically anything. Strips of meat. Bits of chicken.’

‘Smoked salmon!’ Coconut said. ‘Why not?’

‘First catch your salmon,’ said Gareth dryly.

He had brought a camera and he took photos of everything possible; the seats, the food, ourselves.

‘I want to remember these days when I’m old like Dad,’ Gareth said. ‘Dad wishes he’d had a camera when he went round the world with his father.’

‘Does he?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘He told me when he gave me this one.’

We ate the trout with unleavened bread and healthy appetites and afterwards filled up with mixed dried fruit and pre-roasted chestnuts and almonds. The boys declared it a feast compared with the week before and polished off their chocolate as a bonus.

Gareth said casually, ‘Was it in a place like this that someone killed Angela Brickell?’

‘Well... I should think so. But five miles or so from here,’ I said.

‘And it was summer,’ he commented. ‘Warm. Leaves on the trees.’

‘Mm.’ Imaginative of him, I thought.

‘She wanted to kiss me,’ he said with a squirm.

Both Coconut and I looked at him in astonishment.

‘I’m not as ugly as all that,’ he said, offended.

‘You’re not ugly,’ I assured him positively, ‘but you’re young.’

‘She said I was growing up.’ He looked embarrassed, as did Coconut

‘When did she say that?’ I asked mildly.

‘In the Easter holidays, last year. She was always out there in the yard. Always looking at me. I told Dad about it, but he didn’t listen. It was Grand National time and he couldn’t think of anything but Top Spin Lob.’ He swallowed. ‘Then she went away and I was really glad. I didn’t like going out into the yard when she was there.’ He looked at me anxiously. ‘I suppose it’s wrong to be glad someone’s dead.’

‘Is glad what you feel?’

He thought about it.

‘Relieved,’ he said finally. ‘I was afraid of her.’ He looked ashamed. ‘I used to think about her, though. Couldn’t help it.’

‘It won’t be the last time someone makes a pass at you,’ I said prosaically. ‘Next time, don’t feel guilty.’

Easier said than done, I supposed. Shame and guilt tormented the innocent more than the wicked.

Gareth seemed liberated by having put his feelings into words and he and Coconut jumped up and ran around, throwing mock punches at each other, swinging on tree branches, getting rid of bashfulness with shouts and action and shows of strength. I supposed I’d been like that too, but I couldn’t remember.

‘Right,’ I said, as they subsided onto the seats and panted while I packed away our food wrappings (which would have started a dinky fire). ‘Which way to the Land Rover?’

‘That way,’ said Gareth immediately, pointing east.

‘That way,’ Coconut said, pointing west.

‘Which way is north?’ I asked.

They both got it instinctively wrong, but then worked it out roughly by the sun, and I showed them how to use a watch as a compass, which Gareth half remembered, having learned before.

‘Something to do with pointing the hands at the sun,’ he guessed.

I nodded. ‘Point the hour hand at the sun, then halfway between the hand and twelve o’clock is the north-south line.’

‘Not in Australia,’ Gareth said.

‘We’re not in Australia,’ Coconut objected. He looked at his watch and around him. ‘That way is north,’ he said, pointing. ‘But which way is the Land Rover?’

‘If you go north you’ll come to the road,’ I said.

‘What do you mean “you”?’ Gareth demanded. ‘You’re coming too. You’ve got to guide us.’

‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that it would be more fun for you to find your own way back. And,’ I went on as he tried to interrupt, ‘so as you don’t get lost if the sun goes in, you can paint the trees as you go with luminous paint. Then you can always come back to me.’

‘Cool,’ he said, entranced.

‘What?’ Coconut wanted to know.

Gareth told him about finding one’s way back to places by blazing the trail.

‘I’ll follow you,’ I said, ‘but you won’t see me. If you go really badly wrong, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, survival’s up to you.’

‘Ace,’ Gareth said happily.

I unzipped the pouch round my waist and gave him the small jar of paint and the sawn-off paintbrush.

‘Don’t forget to paint so you can see the splash from both directions, coming and going, and don’t get out of sight of your last splash.’

‘OK.’

‘Wait for me when you hit the road.’

‘Yes.’

‘And take the whistle.’ I held it out to him from the pouch. ‘It’s just a back-up in case you get stuck. If you’re in trouble, blow it, and I’ll come at once.’

‘It’s only a mile,’ he protested, slightly hurt, not taking it.

‘What do I say to your father if I mislay you?’

He grinned in sympathy, giving way, and put the best of all insurances in his pocket.

‘Let’s go back the way we came,’ Coconut said to Gareth.

‘Easy!’ Gareth agreed.

I watched them decide on the wrong place and paint the first mark carefully round a sapling’s trunk. They might just possibly have been able to find the morning’s path if they’d been starting again from the road, but tracking backwards was incredibly difficult. All the identifiable marks of our passage, like broken twigs and flattened grass, pointed forward into the wood, not out of it.

They consulted their watches and moved north through the trees, looking back and painting as they went. They waved once and I waved back, and for some time I could see their bright jackets in the dappled shade of the afternoon sun. Then, when they had gone, I began to slowly follow their splashes.

I could go much faster than they could. When I saw them again I dropped down on one knee, knowing that even though they were constantly looking back they wouldn’t see me at that low level, in my nature-coloured clothes.

Besides the map I’d brought along my faithful compass, and by its reckoning checked the boys’ direction all the time. They wandered off to the north-east a bit but not badly enough to get really lost, and after a while made a correction to drift back to north.

The pale cream splashes were easy to spot, never far apart. Gareth had intelligently chosen smooth-barked saplings all the way and all the marks were at the same height, at about waist level, where painting came to him most naturally, it seemed.

I kept the boys in sight intermittently all the way. They were talking to each other loudly as if to keep lurking wood-spirits at bay, and I did vividly remember that teenage spooky feeling of being alone in wild woodland and at the mercy of supernatural eyes. Even in sunshine one could be nervous. At night a couple of times at fifteen I’d been terrified.

On that day, as I slowly followed the trail, I simply felt at home and at peace. There were birds singing, though not yet many, and apart from the boys’ voices the quiet was as old and deep as the land. The woods still waited the stirring of spring, lying chilly and patient with sleeping buds and butterflies in cocoons. The smells of autumn, of compost and rot, still faintly lingered into the winter thaw, only the pines and firs remaining fragrant if one brushed them. Pine resin, collected by tapping, dried to lumps that made brilliant firelighters.

It was a slow-going mile, but towards the end one could hear occasional cars along the road ahead and Gareth and Coconut with whoops crashed through the last few yards, again, as the week before, relieved to be back in the space age.

I speeded up and stepped out behind them, much to Gareth’s surprise.

‘We thought you were miles back,’ he exclaimed.

‘You laid an excellent trail.’

‘The paint’s nearly finished.’ He held it up to show me and the jar slipped out of his hand, rolling the remains of its contents onto the earth. ‘Hey, sorry,’ he said. ‘But there wasn’t much left.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ I picked up the jar which was slippery on the outside from dripped paint and, screwing its lid on, dropped it with the brush into a plastic bag before stowing it again in my pouch.

‘Can we get some more?’ Coconut asked.

‘Sure. No problem. Ready to go home?’

The boys, both pumped up by their achievement, ran and jumped all along the road to the Land Rover that we found round the next bend, and rode back in euphoric good spirits.

‘Terrific,’ Gareth told Tremayne, bursting into the family room after we’d dropped Coconut and returned to Shellerton. ‘Fantastic.’

Whether they wanted to or not, Tremayne, Mackie and Perkin received a minute-by-minute account of the whole day with the sole exception of the discussion about Angela Brickell. Tremayne listened with veiled approval, Mackie with active interest, Perkin with boredom.

‘It’s a real wilderness,’ Gareth said. ‘You can’t hear anything. And I took lashings of photos—’ He stopped, suddenly frowning. ‘Hold on a minute.’

He sped out of the room and came back with his blue knapsack, searching the contents worriedly.

‘My camera’s not here!’

‘The one I gave you for Christmas?’ Tremayne asked, not over-pleased.

‘Perhaps Coconut’s got it,’ Perkin suggested languidly.

‘Thanks.’ Gareth leaped to the telephone in hopes that were all too soon dashed. ‘He says he didn’t see it after lunchtime.’ He looked horrified. ‘We’ll have to go back at once.’

‘No, you certainly won’t,’ Tremayne said positively. ‘It sounds a long way and it’ll be getting dark soon.’

‘But it’s luminous paint,’ Gareth begged. ‘That’s the whole point, you can see it in the dark.’

‘No,’ said his father.

Gareth turned to me. ‘Can’t we go back?’

I shook my head. ‘Your father’s right. We could get lost in those woods at night, paint or no paint. You’ve only got to miss one mark and you’d be out there till morning.’

‘You wouldn’t get lost.’

‘I might,’ I said. ‘We’re not going.’

‘Did you drop it on the path back?’ Mackie asked sympathetically.

‘No...’ He thought about it. ‘I must have left it where we had lunch. I hung it on a branch to keep it from getting damp. I just forgot it.’

He was upset enough for me to say, ‘I’ll get it tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Will you?’ Disaster swung back to hope. ‘Oh, great.’

Tremayne said doubtfully, ‘Will you find one little camera hanging in all those square miles of nothing?’

‘Of course he will,’ Gareth told him confidently. ‘I told you, we left a trail. And oh!’ He thought of something. ‘Isn’t it lucky I dropped all the paint, because now you can see where the trail starts, because we didn’t paint any trees once we could see the road.’

‘Do explain,’ Mackie said.

Gareth explained.

‘Will you really find the trail?’ Mackie asked me, shaking her head.

‘As long as someone hasn’t parked on the patch of paint and taken it all away on their tyres.’

‘Oh, no,’ Gareth said, anguished.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘I’ll find your camera if it’s still in the clearing.’

‘It is. I’m sure. I remember hanging it up.’

‘All right then,’ Tremayne said. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

‘Grub?’ Gareth asked hopefully. ‘Pizza?’