‘The Economics Intelligence Committee lives off that banking stuff that Brahms Four provides,’ she added after a long silence thinking about it.
‘I still say we should have stayed on the motorway. That chemist in the village is sure to have skin tonic,’ I said. Although in fact I hadn’t the faintest idea what skin tonic was, except that it was something my skin had managed without for several decades.
‘But not Elizabeth Arden,’ said Fiona. We were in a traffic jam in the middle of Reading and there was no chemist’s shop in sight. The engine was overheating and she switched it off for a moment. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she admitted finally, leaning across to give me a brief kiss. She was just keeping me sweet, because I was going to be the one who leaped out of the car and dashed off for the damned jar of magic ointment while she flirted with the traffic warden.
‘Have you got enough space in the back, children?’ she asked.
The kids were wedged each side of a suitcase but they didn’t complain. Sally grunted and carried on reading her William book, and Billy said, ‘How fast will you go on the motorway?’
‘And Dicky is on the committee too,’ I said.
‘Yes, he claims it was his idea.’
‘I lose count of how many committees he’s on. He’s never in his bloody office when he’s needed. His appointment book looks like the Good Food Guide. Lately he’s discovered “breakfast meetings”. Now he gorges and guzzles all day. I don’t know how he stays so thin.’
The traffic moved again, and she started up and followed closely behind a battered red double-decker bus. The conductor was standing on the platform looking at her and at the car with undisguised admiration. She smiled at him and he smiled back. It was ridiculous, but I couldn’t help feeling a pang of jealousy. ‘I’ll have to go,’ I said.
‘To Berlin?’
‘Dicky knows I’ll have to go. The whole conversation was just Dicky’s way of making sure I knew.’
‘What difference can you make?’ said Fiona. ‘Brahms can’t be forced to go on. If he’s determined to stop working for us, there’s not much anyone in the Department can do about it.’
‘No?’ I said. ‘Well, you might be surprised.’
She looked at me. ‘But Brahms Four is old. He must be due for retirement.’
‘Dicky was making veiled threats.’
‘Bluff.’
‘Probably bluff,’ I agreed. ‘Just Dicky’s way of saying that if I stand back and let anyone else go, they might get too rough. But you can’t be sure with Dicky. Especially when his seniority is on the line.’
‘You mustn’t go, darling.’
‘My being there is probably going to make no difference at all.’
‘Well then …’
‘But if someone else goes – some kid from the Berlin office – and something bad happens. How will I ever be sure that I couldn’t have made it come out okay?’
‘Even so, Bernard, I still don’t want you to go.’
‘We’ll see,’ I said.
‘You owe Brahms Four nothing,’ she said.
‘I owe him,’ I said. ‘I know that, and so does he. That’s why he’ll trust me in a way he’ll trust no one else. He knows I owe him.’
‘It must be twenty years,’ she said, as if promises, like mortgages, became less burdensome with time.
‘What’s it matter how long ago it was?’
‘And what about what you owe me? And what you owe Billy and Sally?’
‘Don’t get angry, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘It’s hard enough already. You think I want to go over there and play Boy Scout again?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She was angry, and when we got on the motorway she put her foot down so that the needles went right round the dials. We were at Uncle Silas’s farm well before he’d even opened the champagne for pre-lunch drinks.
Whitelands was a 600-acre farm in the Cotswolds – the great limestone plateau that divides the Thames Valley from the River Severn – and the farmhouse of ancient honey-coloured local stone with mullioned windows and lopsided doorway would have looked too perfect, like the set for a Hollywood film, except that summer had not yet come and the sky was grey, the lawn brown, and the rosebushes trimmed back and bloomless.
There were other cars parked carelessly alongside the huge stone barn, a horse tethered to the gate, and fresh clots of mud on the metal grating of the porch. The old oak door was unlocked, and Fiona pushed her way into the hall in that proprietorial way that was permitted to members of the family. There were coats hanging on the wall and more draped over the settee.
‘Dicky and Daphne Cruyer,’ said Fiona, recognizing a mink coat.
‘And Bret Rensselaer,’ I said, touching a sleeve of soft camel hair. ‘Is it going to be all people from the office?’
Fiona shrugged and turned so that I could help her take off her coat. There were voices and decorous laughter from the back of the house. ‘Not all from the office,’ she said. ‘The Range Rover out front belongs to that retired general who lives in the village. His wife has the riding school – remember? You hated her.’
‘I wonder if the Cruyers are staying,’ I said.
‘Not if their coats are in the hall,’ said Fiona.
‘You should have been a detective,’ I said. She grimaced at me. It wasn’t the sort of remark that Fiona regarded as a compliment.
This region of England has the prettiest villages and most beautiful countryside in the world, and yet there is something about such contrived perfection that I find disquieting. For the cramped labourers’ cottages are occupied by stockbrokers and building speculators, and ye host in ye olde village pub turns out to be an airline pilot between trips. The real villagers live near the main road in ugly brick terraced houses, their front gardens full of broken motorcars.
‘If you go down to the river, remember the bank is slippery with mud. And for goodness’ sake wipe your shoes carefully when you come in for lunch.’ The children responded with whoops of joy. ‘I wish we had somewhere like this to go to at weekends,’ Fiona said to me.
‘We do have somewhere like this,’ I said. ‘We have this. Your Uncle Silas has said come as often as you like.’
‘It’s not the same,’ she said.
‘You’re damn right it’s not,’ I said. ‘If this was our place, you’d not be going down the hall for a glass of champagne before lunch. You’d be hurrying along to the kitchen to scrape the vegetables in cold water.’
‘Fiona, my darling! And Bernard!’ Silas Gaunt came from the kitchen. ‘I thought I recognized the children I just spotted climbing through the shrubbery.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fiona, but Silas laughed and slapped me on the back.
‘We’ll be eating very soon but there’s just time to gulp a glass of something. I think you know everyone. Some neighbours dropped in, but I haven’t been able to get them to stay for lunch.’
Silas Gaunt was a huge man, tall with a big belly. He’d always been fat, but since his wife died he’d grown fatter in the way that