Strange Music (16 page)

‘We could go for dinner at the Cross Hands,' she suggested.

He swallowed audibly. ‘I was wondering about that. It would mean getting back around midnight. What time d'you have to be at work tomorrow?'

‘Whenever I like. I told Fogel I was taking work home – writing a prospectus for this new art series – and I'd probably be at it until Tuesday.' She gave his arm a little pinch. ‘But I didn't say
what
I'd be at.'

‘And instead you've been wasting all that precious working time with me.'

‘Oh, but I've finished the prospectus already. So what about it – the Cross Hands?'

After a silence in which she could almost hear his brain whirring, he said, ‘We're both
known
in this part of the world. You more so than me.'

‘Oh, yes – we'd have to
book
separate rooms.'

They left it at that for the moment.

When they were a quarter-mile or so short of Castle Combe, where the road and the By Brook run side by side, she asked him to stop just there.

‘You don't want to go into the village itself?'

She shook her head. ‘I know it well enough . . . and I'll only go all nostalgic and it makes me feel my age. I'd start saying things like, “That's where the blacksmith used to be . . . and you used to be able to get ginger pop there for a penny.” But this part here is different altogether.'

They parked the car and climbed over a half-hearted wall into a long, straggly, tree-mottled pasture of a riverbank, where she led him southward, farther still from the village. ‘I haven't been along here since we were children,' she told him.

‘You and your brother.'

She glanced at him sharply. ‘How d'you know I've got a brother?'

‘Reverend Michael Bullen-ffitch? It's not quite as anonymous as the Reverend Michael Smith. Especially if he's also an
OB
.'

It stopped her. ‘You were at Bedford, too?'

He pulled out his cigarette case, which now contained Balkan Sobranies as well as Gauloises. ‘I was just about leaving Upper School when he joined the Inky, so we wouldn't have met.' He lit her cigarette. The smoke drifted away at a snail's pace, barely rising. ‘But I see him mentioned in
The Ousel
from time to time. Runs a mission school in Kenya? He's district vice-president for the
OB
s out there. The Old Boys' Network has its tentacles everywhere.'

She nodded. ‘Don't I know it!'

‘Have you seen him lately?'

‘He came home at Christmas – brown as a white hunter – speaks with a colonial accent. He cannot believe I'm not just Fogel's typist.'

‘Ah, yes! That's the old school indoctrination for you. “Bedford laid her hands on each thick skull with this prophetic blessing: Be thou dull!”' He exhaled a long, thin cloud. ‘We make bloody good colonial administrators, though – blueprint in one hand, pistol in the other, and a curse on our tongues. Also soldiers. D'you know, eight out of the ten on Monty's staff were
OB
s.'

She resumed their stroll along the bank. He could have mentioned the Bedford connection last Tuesday in Paris; it must have crossed his mind. Yet he chose not to. It seemed, then, that he gave out information about himself – about anything – only when he thought it necessary. For whom? Necessary for him.

‘We used to come here for picnics,' she said. ‘We cycled all the way here and back, too. Had very sore bums all next day.' She stopped again. ‘Good heavens! It can't be the same one!'

‘What can't?'

‘See that waterlogged stick there? Lying on the bottom. I must have been just three or four and we had a picnic here and I saw a waterlogged stick lying on the river bed, just about there. And I yelled out that I'd found a stick that wouldn't float. And I heard my grandmother say to my mother that it was very clever of me to realize that it
was
a stick, particularly as it didn't float. And my mother said – very sarcastically – “Oh yes, she's another little nonesuch!” And poor Granny looked so crestfallen I went up to her and whispered, “You're right and Mummy's wrong.” And they all laughed when she repeated it. But that can't be the same stick, can it? Not after . . . well, thirty-odd years?'

‘No,' he agreed. ‘That must be the place where all Pooh-sticks come to die.'

‘Oh! Pooh-sticks! We
must
play Pooh-sticks when we get back to the road.'

Then, as if it were the easiest and most natural thing in the world, she took his hand and led him still farther up the meadow.

‘That Eric Brandon . . .' he said.

‘Ye-es?'

‘Interesting fellow.'

‘He can be,' she said guardedly. ‘He can also be bloody infuriating. No. That's unfair. What I mean is that he has a strong moral sense but if he feels moral outrage about . . . I don't know . . . anything . . . he disguises it as a—'

‘Like the concentration camps?'

She dropped his hand and turned to face him. ‘What
is
this?'

He was unperturbed. ‘I was talking to his wife last night. Isabella? Before dinner. Charming woman. She told me he sent in a play to Harold Byron – for the Third Programme. So I rang Harold this morning. He says it was pretty strong meat. But not a drama at all – no dramatic structure – more like the verbatim minutes of a genuine conference. She showed me some of his books for children. I couldn't see how both could come from the same mind.'

She took his hand again and they resumed their stroll. ‘What are you fishing for, Alex?' she asked.

‘Hardly “fishing” – just curious. Byron said that the script mentioned Felix and he questioned that, but Brandon never replied to say Felix was a friend. In fact, he never replied at all.'

‘Oh, damn you!' She gave a laugh that was half hollow, half genuine. Isabella, in all innocence, must have said even more than Alex had chosen to reveal; pregnancy must be softening all her sharper instincts. Also – the thought lingered pleasantly at the back of her mind – Alex might be wondering if there was anything more intimate going on between her and Eric. ‘It was a plan that Eric and I concocted between us.' And she went on to explain the entire history of their abortive attempts to intrude a Trojan Horse inside the
BBC
. ‘I just wanted to go into an interview with something objective, something concrete, something
out there
– and apparently nothing to do with me. So that I could say, “There!
That's
the sort of thing I'm talking about.
That's
what I think television should be doing.” It would make it so much easier.'

‘And what have you done since?' he asked.

‘Nothing.'

‘That doesn't sound like you.'

‘Well . . .' She sighed. ‘The thing is . . . the thing is . . . this detailed prospectus I'm handing over on Tuesday . . . it was supposed to be my farewell gift to Fogel, before I made a really serious move toward a new career in television.'

‘But?' He smiled. ‘I can hear a “but” coming?'

‘Well, I described it to Fogel the day after I got back from Paris and he's been on the phone all week and the excitement for it is very hot. Especially in America, which is a market we've never really cracked. He wants me to go over there and “firm up” their interest.'

‘So? Bye-bye television?' The words were spoken casually but she could feel the tension in his grip.

‘Not at all,' she said. ‘You're going to think me horribly Machiavellian, but it set the brain cogs whirring. If I come back from New York and say to the editorial people, “Saint Martin's Press wants this” or “Random House wants that” – or whoever signs up with the best offer – then that's what will get done. “Ve are all prostitoots now.” The editors may have their own pet ideas but it will be
me as the sales person
who'll have the veto. And so I did just wonder if something like that might not be true for the
BBC
as well? Have I been “barking up the wrong chimæra,” as Eric says – thinking only of programme
making
? What about programme
selling
– overseas sales?'

He shook his head. ‘They're far too small a tail to wag the programme-making dog – as Eric might say.'

‘For now – yes. But, Alex, things have changed since the war. People who base their careers on
now
tend to have now-only careers.'

He whistled.

‘Come on!' She dug him with her elbow. ‘Don't tell me part of you hasn't rehearsed the arguments for jumping ship when commercial television is allowed!'

His silence told her she might just be wrong. ‘The Tories are bound to get back sometime,' she pointed out. ‘There's the smell of death about this lot. And the Tories will end Auntie's monopoly – toot sweep! Oh, and can we stop talking about Eric Brandon? I'd much rather talk about us.'

That tension in his grip again. ‘Us?'

‘Yes. You and me. I'm no longer some little eighteen-year-old girl just expelled from Cheltenham. And you're the easiest, most exciting, most intriguing, most relaxing man I've ever known. And when I remembered about us in Montmartre just now, I thought, “was it
only
last Tuesday?” It's still a shock. Because it feels as if we've been friends for years. Don't you feel that?'

He laughed. ‘I
have
felt it for years – in fantasy, anyway. Remember the hunt I spoke about? When we met in Paris? God help me but from that moment on I knew I had married the wrong woman. Not that I didn't
love
Wendy but it was a very comfortable, friendly sort of love. But
you
! You were . . . altogether different. We only spoke a couple of times at that hunt – casual remarks one says to strangers out in the field – but even then the air around you was . . . somehow . . . electric . . . precious . . .'

‘I'm not sure I'm altogether happy with the past tense here, Alex.' She laughed and now she linked arms with him.

‘Oh God, Faith – it's still true. Even when we're not arm-in-arm, the side of me that's nearest you is twice as alive, twice as warm as the other. You are . . . magical! When I set sail for India the following week . . . as I watched dear old Blighty vanish over the horizon . . . well, that was the bleakest moment ever. Knowing you were there . . . imagining all the fascinating men you were going to meet. That and the guilt.'

‘Guilt?'

‘Well, I already knew Wendy was dying. The doctor had warned me, though we kept it from her until it was just too obvious. And all the while I was thinking when-when-when? And thinking of you. And almost the last thing she said to me was “Marry again, Alex – don't let Jasmine grow up motherless.” And I couldn't tell her how that was decided long ago – at a hunt in Gloucestershire. I hope you never know guilt like that.'

She twisted round to face him and pulled his face down to hers. Their kiss – the one they both knew they had postponed in Paris – was a blissful fusion, a nervous melting of the softness of their lips and the padded hardness of their cheeks. When at last they broke, he said, ‘It's like . . .' But she pulled his head to hers and silenced him with yet another kiss. And another.

And then, suddenly, it began to rain – from a single pale cloud in an otherwise clear sky.

By the time they reached the car they were too wet for Pooh-sticks; instead they drove as fast as the winding Cotswold roads allowed to the Cross Hands, to steam themselves dry in front of a baronial-scale log fire. On the way they passed that field where the farmer disguises one of his hayricks as a small house, making it slightly different each year. This time he had furnished it with an ivy-covered porch and leaded-light window panes.

‘It's a kind of lying, isn't it?' Faith remarked. ‘The sort of lie we all conspire to accept, like fancy-dress parties, stage plays . . . even novels. We have to go along with the lie, pretending to accept it as true, even though, underneath it all, we go on knowing it's not true at all. It's a voluntary conspiracy between the pretender and the audience. Or the reader.'

‘Whereas in your type of publishing . . .?' he prompted. ‘I mean, how “non” is the non-fiction?'

While she considered her response he went on: ‘It's Pontius Pilate's question. It sometimes seems to me that
everything
that goes into the making of a civilization . . . or a culture . . . is actually a fiction. All those rock-solid truths we were taught at school about the blessings of empire, and especially the British Empire . . . and just about everything you could lump together as “Victorian values” . . . it's all going up in smoke now.'

‘It's certainly making Victorian furniture remarkably cheap. Felix and Angela have bought some superb pieces from that old warehouse on Bull Plain in Hertford, and all for an absolute song. Last week they got a great refectory table – one solid piece of mahogany two and a half inches thick for thirty quid!'

‘I saw it. Very good.'

‘The architects among us turn up their noses, of course, even as they drown in a sea of Scandinavian bent laminate stuff.'

‘. . . while the Breits drown in Victorian gothic! They'll soon need an annexe, surely? I never saw a place so crowded – except in my grandparents' photograph albums.'

When at last they stood, slightly steaming, before the vast open fire at the Cross Hands, Alex returned to the subject of the Breits: ‘Angela and Felix . . .' He let the words hang.

‘What about them?'

‘They're both concentration camp survivors.'

‘Yes. Different camps, of course.'

‘Of course.'

‘Is that all?'

He sighed. ‘I don't wish to pry. I mean, I know they're friends of yours. But do you think they were taking an awful risk, marrying each other?'