it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’
Marina looked at me. I could feel her stare. She could usually read me like a book and I was sure that all my inner thoughts were, even now, passing through the ether between us.
‘We’ve decided nothing,’ she said. ‘That’s for you to do.’
She spoke softly and comfortingly and I knew that she knew what had just happened. It didn’t faze her one bit. She smiled at me and I felt like an idiot.
‘It’s all right,’ she said.
‘What’s all right?’ asked Charles.
‘Everything,’ I said standing up. ‘Do you want a refill?’
‘Oh, yes, thank you.’
I poured a generous whisky and a splash of Malvern Water into his glass and he leaned back contentedly in his chair.
‘More for you, my darling?’ I asked Marina.
‘Just a little.’
I looked deeply into her eyes. ‘I do so love you,’ I said.
‘I love you more,’ she replied.
Everything was indeed all right.
Mrs Cross had left us smoked salmon and cream cheese cornets as a starter and a beef casserole in the Aga for our main course. The cornets were small and one-mouthful size so they didn’t need cutting. I silently thanked dear, thoughtful Mrs Cross. She always took the one-handed embarrassment out of eating. Marina cooked some rice and we ate in the dining room, formally at the table with silver cutlery and cut-glass crystal. I had never once known Charles to have a meal on his lap.
‘So what did you two discuss today?’ I asked while we ate the casserole.
‘I’m sorry if I broke a confidence between us but I told Marina of our little discussion last night about what it takes to stop you investigating someone.’ I realised that Charles had been more astute than I had given him credit for. I should have known better than to think he hadn’t understood what had been going on over drinks. One doesn’t rise to the rank of Admiral without being susceptible to vibes.
‘As I understand things,’ said Marina, ‘you have a reputation. Villains know that beating you up won’t stop you investigating them. In fact, quite the reverse. The more they hurt you, the more determined you become to continue.’
‘Something like that.’ It sounded rather implausible but I knew it was true.
‘So the only way you protect yourself from violence is by not giving up even if you are assaulted. Any potential attacker now doesn’t even bother trying because it won’t stop you anyway, and will make things worse for them.’
‘That’s about it,’ I said. ‘But it has taken a few bad beatings for them to find it out. Times I would rather not remember.’
‘But someone beating
‘Yes.’
‘Because that’s what was said to me by my attacker?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what makes you think that I don’t want the same protection? If you stop now because some vicious thug punches me a couple of times in the face, then every time anyone wants you to quit it will be “punch Marina” time.’
‘She’s right, you know,’ said Charles. ‘The same goes for me. If it’s not “punch Marina” it may be “punch Charles”. Neither of us want that burden. Neither of us want our love for you, yes, our love for you, to be a cause for us loving you less. Does that make sense?’
I couldn’t speak.
‘So let’s have no more of this nonsense about not asking questions about the deaths of your friends.’ Charles was in ‘order giving’ mode. ‘They, or rather their families, they need you. So get on with it.’
‘And,’ added Marina, ‘if I get beaten up again then all the more reason for carrying on. Let me have the reputation, too.’
‘And me,’ said Charles. ‘Come on, let’s have a toast.’ He raised his glass of claret. ‘Fuck the lot of them!’
I laughed. We all laughed. I’d never heard Charles use such ‘below decks’ language and certainly never in front of a lady. ‘Fuck the lot of them,’ we echoed.
I slept the sleep of the reprieved. Deep, dreamless, refreshing sleep.
We had all gone fairly early to bed but not before some further conversation over coffee for us all, plus a brandy for Charles.
‘So what will you do now?’ he had asked, with his nose deep in his balloon glass drawing up the alcoholic vapours into his lungs.
‘As the controllers of my life, what do you two suggest?’ I had asked with a grin.
‘Well,’ Marina had said, ‘if the decision is to not heed the warnings about keeping quiet about the deaths, I suggest that you get yourself a bell, go and stand on street corners and shout about them. No point in doing things by halves. Go out there and make a fuss. Show the bastards who’s the boss.’
‘Good idea,’ Charles had agreed with her.
‘I’ll sleep on it,’ I’d said.
So I had.
I positively leapt out of bed the next morning with renewed vigour. The sun had even come back to echo my mood of optimism and I stood by the window looking out at the rolling Oxfordshire countryside, bright with a new day.
I had been brought up by my single mother in Liverpool as a city boy, playing football in the street outside our council flat and going to school at the end of the road. I remembered seeing my first cow when I was aged about twelve and being astonished by the bulbous shape and the enormous size of its udder. For me, milk came out of bottles, not cows. And apples materialised from cardboard boxes in the greengrocers, not from trees, and the very idea that pork chops had once been walking, oinking pigs would have sent me into giggles.
Then, during my race-riding years, I had lived first in Newmarket where I had been an apprentice jockey, and then near Lambourn, when my weight had increased beyond that for the ‘flat’ and I had converted to the ‘jumps’. I had grown to enjoy the rural lifestyle but, after my hand disaster, I had soon moved back to the urban life in London, somehow needing a return to my childhood comfort of being surrounded by concrete, tarmac and brick.
Now, with Marina, I would look again for a change. Back to this calmer, less stressful environment of hills and trees and meandering streams. Back to where a chaffinch may sing from an orchard bough, or a pear tree may blossom in a hedge. ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s there’. Browning certainly knew what he was talking about.
Marina was still sound asleep and I decided to leave her that way. When the body is healing, sleep is the best medicine.
I quietly dressed, attached my arm, replaced its exhausted battery pack with one freshly charged, and slipped out and down the stairs. I wanted some time to think, and a wander through the village was just what I needed to energise my brain cells.
Mrs Cross was already in the kitchen busying herself with clearing up last night’s dinner and making preparations for breakfast.
‘Morning, Mrs Cross,’ I said cheerfully.
‘Good morning, Mr Halley,’ she replied. ‘And it is a lovely morning, too.’
‘I know, I’ve seen. I’m going for a walk around the village. Back in about half an hour.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll have your breakfast ready on your return.’
‘Thank you.’ I unlatched the back door. ‘Oh, Mrs Cross, Marina and I will be leaving right after lunch today.’
