For the Good of the State

She laughed, half-regretfully, half-proudly. ‘But please—it’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

“Faith”, not “Mrs Audley”, Sir Thomas.’ She gestured towards the porch. ‘Do come inside—David will be with us directly.’

‘Then it’s “Tom”.’ The thought of Audley—not David, and a world away from Father— dragged Tom back to harsh reality. And not Tripoli either—Tripoli was a damnably nasty Libyan memory: he had been scared stiff that one time he’d been in Tripoli, sailing under false colours on a dangerous coast—once in Tripoli was enough, and he was glad that he could never go back there. ‘Please lead the way… Faith.’

He followed her into what seemed for a moment like cool darkness, smelling of furniture polish and the old- house-damp which so often rose from deep cellars beneath. Then he was at the foot of an oak staircase, looking up towards a window ablaze with stained-glass sunlight.

And Panin, he thought— Nikolai Andrievich Panin— who was another world away from David Audley here and these two females-of-the-species, but also in the same world that he and Audley both inhabited outside it.

‘Tom—’ Faith Audley accepted the diminutive as of right, having been quite properly unimpressed with ‘Sir Thomas’ even before she’d had a clear view of him ’—we have to go through the kitchen because we’ve lost the key to the French windows in the dining room. David says he hung it up, for the winter… but heaven only knows what he actually did with it… It’ll turn up one day, of course… He’s down in the orchard making one of his bonfires—

making a bonfire is one of the two jobs he’s good at… the other is making compost heaps—‘ She threw her domestic prattle over her Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State shoulder as she led him down a short passage towards a stone-arched doorway ’—bonfires and compost heaps are major scientific operations, according to him, and I’m not allowed to touch either of them—‘ Beyond the door lay a huge kitchen, dominated by an equally huge table, scrubbed pale with time and elbow-grease ’—which is ludicrous really, because I’m the scientist in the family, and David doesn’t really know why one wire must go on one terminal—‘

She was already opening another door while Tom was still taking in the kitchen’s weird mixture of ancient- and-modern, between its smoke-darkened beams and stone-flagged floor, and the gleaming plastic gadgetry of electric cooker and microwave and dish-washer, via a middle-aged solid fuel Aga stove, with a museum-array of copper saucepans and a blackened fireplace furnished with an iron turning-spit which could have roasted a whole pig to celebrate the news of any battle of the Wars of the Roses, if this household had been on its winning side.

‘Tom—?’ Faith Audley’s voice issued from the half-light of another passage.

‘Coming!’ Damn the Wars of the Roses! Tom shook his head.

Another short corridor, with a laundry room on one side and a larder on the other, and other doors—for the extremes of boiler and freezer, maybe—?

Tom blinked as the light streaming through the last door hit him, and stepped out of the house in Faith Audley’s wake, following her under another stone archway which had never started its life in a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State kitchen garden wall, its crudely defaced heraldic shields reminding him of the bigger arch above the barn doors.

Then the full sun hit him as he emerged from the archway into a little courtyard at the back of the house, with a stone well-head in the centre of it and a fine view of the high downland away across a coarse winter lawn in the foreground.

But no sign of Audley—? He frowned towards the man’s wife.

‘This is the first good day we’ve had, when it hasn’t rained much

—’ She wasn’t looking at him, but at the grass ‘—but does he prune the roses? Oh no! ’ She turned to him at last, sniffing the air as she did so. ‘ He has to make a bonfire… and if the wind stays in this direction… we shall get the benefit of it—’ She swung round to look at the house ‘—in fact, I’d better go and close all the windows before it’s too late—excuse me, Sir Thomas— Tom… But I’ll put the kettle on for a cup of tea while I’m about it. David will be here directly.’ She indicated the nearest of a group of dirt-stained white ironwork chairs. ‘He knows I was bringing you here.’

Tom wondered what Research and Development had passed on to Audley about him, in preparation for this meeting. Whatever it was, it ought to be about him, not Panin, because Jaggard had indicated that the Russian had arrived unobtrusively, by agreement with the FCO. But R & D had ways of knowing things, Harvey had warned; and it would certainly know all about one Thomas Arkenshaw, Harvey had added nastily: ‘ He probably knows more about you than we know — and maybe more than you’ll find comfortable, old boy! ’

So what? thought Tom. considering the grimy seat of the chair. It Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State looked as though it hadn’t been sat on since last summer, and although he might have parked his castle-exploring denims of this morning on it he wasn’t about to mess up the good suit he had packed for tonight’s dinner-with-Willy that would never take place. Instead, he sauntered across the yard—it was more a terrace than a yard, separated from the lawn above it by a low stone wall—

until he reached the well, which was completely equipped with a rusty winder and an antique wooden bucket on a chain. Idly, he picked up a small piece of flaked stone from the rim and dropped it in.

One, two— plop!

‘Hullo, there! Arkenshaw, I presume?’

Tom controlled his involuntary start of guilt at being caught throwing something into another man’s well: there were parts of the world where that rated a bullet in the back. Also, he had somehow expected Audley to come from the direction of the lawn, rather than from behind him.

A slow innocent turn was required, anyway.

‘Good afternoon, Dr Audley.’ “Big, ugly old devil‘, Harvey had said off-handedly, and all those adjectives filled David Audley’s bill exactly: in his gardening clothes, which had not seen better days for many years, he resembled nothing so much as an ageing Irish navvy who had done his share of fighting for pounds and pints on the old fairground circuit of his native land. So that makes two of us, thought Tom, who don’t look like themselves! ’Im sorry to descend on you like this.‘ That was what Jaggard had said to Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State him; only this time it