I offered Vanessa a cigarette. She accepted, bending forward to receive a light. I saw that she wore a wedding ring. For an instant, I smelt her perfume. It reminded me of one my wife used to wear. We spoke simultaneously, diving into the conversation like swimmers at the start of a race.
‘Do you live locally?’
‘Do you have a parish –?’
We smiled at each other and any awkwardness dissolved.
‘After you, Mrs Forde.’
‘Vanessa, please. To answer your question, I live in Richmond.’
I noticed that she had said I rather than we. ‘And to answer yours, I’m the vicar of Roth.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Do you know Roth, then?’
‘A little.’ She stared up at me and smiled. ‘Does that surprise you?’
I smiled back. ‘Its identity tends to get swamped by its neighbours. A lot of people think the name is familiar but have no idea where it is.’
‘I went there a few years ago to see the church. Rather an interesting one. You’ve got that medieval panel painting over the chancel, haven’t you? The Last Judgement?’
‘That’s right. With scenes from the life of Christ underneath.’
‘One gin and lemon coming up,’ said Ronald, materializing at Vanessa’s elbow and handing her the glass with a flourish. He had a similar glass in his own hand, which he raised. ‘Chin-chin.’ He beamed at me. ‘David, I know Cynthia wanted to have a word with you about Rosemary.’
‘My daughter,’ I explained to Vanessa.
‘Our niece dropped in last week,’ Ronald went on. ‘She left school at the end of last term and she brought over a trunk of stuff for us to dispose of. Clothes, I suppose. I think there’s a lacrosse stick, too. Cynthia wondered if anything might come in useful for Rosemary.’
I smiled and thanked him. There was a time when I would have objected to being on the receiving end of the Trasks’ philanthropy. Now I knew better. Pride is a luxury and children become increasingly expensive as they grow older. At this moment Cynthia reached us, bearing bowls of peanuts and olives.
‘Did I hear Rosemary’s name?’ she asked. ‘Such a delightful girl. How’s she liking school now?’
‘Much better, I think.’ I turned to Vanessa. ‘When Rosemary first went away, she disliked it very much.’ In fact, she had twice tried to run away. ‘But she seems to have settled down in the last year.’
‘She will be taking her A levels next summer,’ said Cynthia, with a hint of interrogation in her voice, indicating that this was an inspired guess rather than a statement of fact.
She detached me from Vanessa and Ronald and talked to me for a moment or two about Rosemary. We decided – or rather Cynthia decided – that she would send Ronald over with the trunk during the next week or so. Anything we did not want for Rosemary could go to our next jumble sale. Having settled the matter, she steered me away from Vanessa and Ronald, who were talking together at the far end of the terrace, and skilfully inserted me into a conversation between Victor Thurston and the headmaster’s wife.
I did not get another opportunity to talk to Vanessa for some time. While we were on the terrace I glanced once or twice in the direction of her and Ronald, still talking, their faces intent. At one point I noticed her shaking her head.
Eventually we went through to the dining room, and Cynthia steered us to our places at the round table. Vanessa was diametrically opposite me. There was a substantial flower arrangement in the middle of the table, so I caught only the occasional glimpse of her. I was sitting between Cynthia and the headmaster’s wife.
Ronald said grace. The meal which followed was uncharacteristically elaborate. Melon with Parma ham gave way to coq au vin. Ronald, usually the most careful of hosts, kept refilling our glasses with an unfortunate Portuguese rosé. The headmaster’s wife tried delicately to interrogate me about Ronald. It soon became clear that she knew the Trasks rather better than I did. At last she gave up and spoke across me to Cynthia.
‘My dear, this is wonderful. How on earth do you manage to prepare a meal like this and go out to work?’
‘I only work in the mornings. I find there’s ample time if one is sufficiently organized.’
‘I didn’t know you had a job,’ I said.
‘I work for Vanessa. I’m her secretary, really. Jolly interesting.’
I wondered whether that explained the special effort the Trasks were making. Was Cynthia hoping for promotion?
‘I suppose you spend most of your time dealing with authors and so on,’ said the headmaster’s wife. ‘It must be marvellous. Do you have lots of bestsellers?’
Cynthia shook her head. ‘We tend to do fairly specialized non-fiction titles. Actually, I think Royston and Forde’s out-and-out bestseller was something called Great Engines of the 1920s.’
Ronald and Thurston talked to Vanessa for much of the meal. When we left the table, Mary Thurston seized her husband’s arm as if to re-establish her claim to him. Ronald went to the kitchen to make coffee.
‘Ronald bought a machine when he was in Italy last year,’ Cynthia explained to the rest of us. ‘He does like to use it when we have guests. Too complicated for me, I’m afraid.’ She added as an afterthought, ‘Super coffee.’
We went back to the drawing room to wait for it. Vanessa came over to me.
‘I don’t suppose you could give me another cigarette, could you? I’ve mislaid mine. So silly.’ She smiled up at me. Even then I think I knew that Vanessa was never silly. She was many things, but not that. She sat down on the sofa and waved to me to join her.
‘Are you in Ronald’s – whatever it is? – area?’
‘He’s my archdeacon, yes. So in a sense he’s my immediate boss.’
I did not want to talk about Ronald. He and I did not get on badly – not then – but we had little in common, and both of us knew it.
‘Cynthia tells me you’re a publisher.’
She squeezed her eyes together for an instant, as though smoke had irritated them. ‘By default.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It was my husband’s firm.’ She stared down at her cigarette. ‘He founded it with a friend from Oxford. It never made much money for either of them, but he loved it.’
‘I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.’
‘I – I assumed Ronald might have mentioned it to you. No reason why you should know. Charles died three years ago. A brain tumour. One of those ghastly things that come out of a clear blue sky. I’ve taken over his part in the business. Needs must, really. I needed a job.’
‘Do you enjoy it?’
She nodded. ‘I’d always helped Charles on the editorial side. Now I’m learning a great deal about production.’ She smiled towards Cynthia, who was embroiled with the headmaster’s wife. ‘Cynthia keeps me in order.’
‘At dinner Cynthia said she thought Great Engines of the 1920s was your bestselling book.’
‘She’s perfectly right. Though I have my hopes of The English Cottage Garden. It’s been selling very steadily since it came out last year.’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘In fact, our real bestseller in terms of copies sold is probably one of our town guides. The Oxford one. We do quite a lot of that sort of thing – that’s where the bread and butter comes from.’
At that moment, Ronald appeared in the doorway