of some ten square miles of new and old afforestation along the border, found nothing interesting in gatherings for social chit-chat, and preferred his deer and his setters to more garrulous company.
‘Oh, yes, everybody was invited this time, even me. “Forest warden” sounds pleasantly feudal, and who knows, he may want a haunch of venison some day.’ Part of Willie the Twig’s forest was plantation only a few years old, but part of it was very old indeed, and had supplied venison to kings of England ever since Edward III. ‘I just blew in out of curiosity, I’ve only met the fellow once. I thought I’d have a look round, and be civil, and then shove off to the “Gun Dog” for a pint.’ Judging by the distrait tone of his voice and the steady stare of his light, bright grey eyes this original plan was in process of being modified. And at that very moment Barbara Rainbow’s roving gaze had lighted upon him, and very thoughtfully halted there. George felt the slight, silent tensing of sinews, the almost imperceptible leaning forward, as when a pointer is about to surge out of his concentrated immobility into action.
‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ said George benignly.
‘On the contrary,’ said Willie the Twig, ‘being you, of course you wouldn’t, but if you were me you certainly would.’ And without further waste of time he strode across the room, swerving only sufficiently to clear such persons and objects as got in his way, and made straight for Barbara. Who, George observed before he drifted towards his next encounter, was neither surprised nor displeased, but stood and waited, reeling in on the dark and glittering thread of her glance the only fish that had so far engaged her interest, in all these hundred or so milling about her.
‘Hullo!’ said Barbara. ‘I’ve been noticing you for some time, and nobody’s told me who you are. I was wondering when you’d work your way round to me.’
‘I don’t work my way round,’ said Willie the Twig. ‘I go straight across. And my name’s Will Swayne. Warden of Middlehope Forest. I don’t know if you like forests?’
‘I never really met one,’ said Barbara. Her voice was low, deliberate and thoughtful. ‘On closer acquaintance I think I might get to like them very much.’
By the time the musical interlude ended, George had reached a little group gathered at an open window. Courteously silent until that moment, they fell into easy conversation after Rainbow had received his due acclaim. Two of them George knew well, Robert Macsen-Martel from Mottisham Abbey, down the valley, and his wife Dinah. Their half-ruinous property was in process of renovation under the guidance of the National Trust, and archaeological interest in the new acquisition was proving unexpectedly lively.
‘I don’t think you’ve met Charles Goddard,’ said Robert, attenuated and lank and fair. ‘He’s advising on the work, we’ve been uncovering some rather good tiled floors.’ He was a little deprecating about saying ‘we’ now that he had agreed to surrender the place, but obviously he must be ploughing everything that was left of his family patrimony into endowing it, or the Trust would never have been able to accept the burden, however desirable. Robert worked in an estate office selling small new houses, in one of which he and his wife lived, and there was nothing left of the centuries of Macsen-Martels and their outworn glory except the decency and integrity contained within this desiccated and aloof exterior. Unless, perhaps, Dinah’s dress, loose from the shoulders, had been chosen for more reasons than fashion? Dinah was petite, rounded and dark, born into the ranks of honest toil, and with both small feet planted firmly on the ground, and what those two apparently incompatible and wildly devoted people would produce between them gave room for interested speculation. What was more, Dinah had already detected, the brief glance at her waistline, and was staring George out in sparkling silence, challenging him to ask or comment. Probably Bunty had already got all the answers.
Charles Goddard was large, impressive and grey, the silver of early distinction rather than encroaching age. He had the slightly waxen and heavy smoothness of the legal profession.
‘And here’s John Stubbs, who’s taken over as man-on-the-spot. Someone has to live on the premises, and John’s brave enough to inhabit the lodge alone, ghosts or no ghosts, and look after the whole place.’
This one was younger, dark, solid and taciturn, even dour. Perhaps partly because, while he murmured his perfunctory greeting, his real attention was concentrated upon a distant corner of the room, where Barbara Rainbow and Willie the Twig were perceptibly getting on rather well together. And now George realised that both these young men he was confronting had already caught his attention once this evening. They were the two who had been drawn half across the hall in bemused pursuit of Rainbow’s spectacular wife, like helpless sparks in the tail of a comet.
‘– and Colin Barron, who’s been an enormous help to me over a number of things I never realised were valuable assets until he briefed me. I owe Colin’s acquaintance to our host, as a matter of fact, and I’m grateful. I know absolutely nothing about the antiques market,’ owned Robert. ‘It’s salutary to discover that what you’ve been writing off as junk can realise a lot of money elsewhere, and be hailed as treasure.’
This was the fair one, who belonged on sight to Rainbow’s world. He was tall, and built like an athlete, but his features were urban and shrewd, his clothes, while tactfully unobtrusive, of the city and the fashion.
‘I’ve been a friend and rival of Arthur’s for a long time,’ he ‘said with an amiable but knowing smile, ’and learned a lot from him. Enough to know that any hare he starts is well worth coursing. When a chap like Arthur moves up into these parts, it pays to take a look at the territory and see what drew him there. I haven’t caught up with the real attraction yet, I suspect, but I did discover Mottisham Abbey. In time to be useful to Mr Macsen- Martel, maybe, but you may be sure it didn’t do me any harm, either. I like to be candid about it.’
‘I’m afraid we’ve been talking shop, even on this occasion,’ said Robert apologetically. ‘My fault, I don’t seem able to think of anything else at the moment. It really has become very interesting. Several schools and clubs have come into the act, and been doing splendid work, under Charles’s guidance. I never imagined there’d be so much enthusiasm. We’re being asked to allow party visits from so many bodies that we’re planning on beginning in a few weeks. Afternoons only, and while the work’s in progress they’ll have to be strictly guided tours, it would be too chaotic to have people straying everywhere among the plant and materials lying around there. You wouldn’t like to volunteer as a guide, would you, George? We’re open to offers!’
‘I doubt if I should be much of an asset,’ said George. ‘I could certainly improvise a stunning scenario for you, but the facts might cause less trouble. You seem to have recruited several competent candidates already. And there’s always Professor Joyce, if you can lure him away from his magnum opus.’
That was a joke strictly for local people, who were all well aware that Professor Emeritus Evan Joyce, happily retired at sixty-odd to a decrepit but spacious cottage up the valley with his books, was busily engaged in not writing his long-projected history of Goliard poets, and almost any distraction was enough to justify him in never getting it beyond the note stage.
‘I think he’d rather reserve his options at the moment,’ said Dinah, dimpling. ‘Haven’t you run into him tonight? He is here. Miss de la Pole has just told him she’s made up her mind to retire, and has broken the news to the vicar. We could lure him away from his Latin poets, all right, but we can’t compete with the organ and the choir, not a hope. He’s been waiting to get his hands on them for years.’
The Reverend Stephen Baines was young, earnest and good-looking, and as poor as his eighteenth-century predecessors here had been rich. He lived in a small bungalow, a bashful bachelor looked after by a widowed
