A Prospect of Vengeance

'For heaven's sake, Jen — let me in!' He couldn't stop himself protesting. 'My feet are soaking, damn it!' He managed to lower the squeak to a growl.

Click!

'Darling — I'm sorry — I am sorry . . . But John Tully and dear old Reg insisted — remember?' She patted him like a child after relieving him of his raincoat and umbrella. 'Of course, John wanted my taxi. And he said we'd got nothing to lose, anyway . . . And Reg wanted you to lead the opposition away, so he could do his own thing.' She brushed ineffectually at the huge bird's-nest tangle of hair which she'd pinned up, but which was falling down on all sides. 'I do love Reg — don't you, Ian?'

'No.' He could smell an unfamiliar smell. And it was as far removed from the usual smell of her flat as what he felt for Reg Buller was separated from love. 'Reg Buller is not lovable.' He sniffed again. 'Have you been cooking?'

'He is so. Come and have a drink. And he's also one very smart operator. Did you read his report? You did bring it dummy2

with you?'

'Yes.' He had to sniff again. 'Is that what I think it is?'

'Eh? Well, I don't know what you think it is. But the man in the butcher's shop said it was his very best Scotch beef. And he gave me all sorts of advice about what I should do with it

— he seemed quite worried that I might not treat it with proper respect. I almost asked him to come and roast it for me . . . only I was afraid he might take me up on the offer.'

She smiled her Scarlett O'Hara smile at him. 'But then he said it needed a good Burgundy with it. Only, I know you like claret, so I asked the other man, in the wine merchants', who sells me my usual plonk . . . and he said this would be about right — ' She swept a bottle off the sideboard ' — he said it had the body ... which really sounded rather gruesome . . .

But I do remember the name — it has to be named after an Irishman really — 'O'Brien'? Because none of that area is

'haut', it's all flat as a pancake. But it was one of Daddy's favourite tipples, so it can't be bad — can it?' She jerked the bottle to her nose. 'I think it smells rather fun — it reminds me of Daddy, actually. He used to make me smell all his bottles. Here — have a sniff! Is it okay?'

Ian clamped his hand on the bottle. What he had to remember was that he was almost certainly being taken for a ride, as better men before him had been, and others after him would be. Because Daddy had been a power in the land (and that was part of Jenny Fielding's stock-in-trade, and his also by their literary alliance). And also because she was his dummy2

only-and-favourite daughter, and a conniving chip off the same block.

It was Haut-Brion, and he had been in short trousers when it had been in its grapes. This'll do just fine, Jen. It's . . . okay.'

'Oh — good!' She turned away from him. 'I have to take the little man's beef out of the oven — if I don't, I think he'll come and demonstrate outside, or haunt me when he's dead . . . And there are the vegetables — but they're just out of the freezer, so they're no trouble . . . But I have also made a Yorkshire pudding, according to that recipe the man gave us in Belgium — remember? The one who said that the people in Yorkshire had got it all wrong, after the battle of Waterloo — ? But you must come and help me, Ian — '

He followed her, towards the smell, with his arm and shoulder frozen, as though it was a bottle of Chateau Nobel, from the Nitro-Glycerine commune, of an unstable year —

Waterloo was right, though: the kitchen resembled nothing so much as the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte towards the end of the battle, after the French had stormed it, and Wellington's troops had re-taken it at the point of a bayonet.

And, quite evidently, the ex-freezer vegetables were already casualties, and the Belgian-Yorkshire pudding had suffered the same fate as the unfortunate Belgian regiments which had been exposed to the fire of Napoleon's artillery for too long —

'Jen! Let's eat the beef — ' There was just enough space to bestow the Haut-Brion safely on the table. But then, as he dummy2

rescued what looked like the better part of an Aberdeen Angus from her, he met her eyes ' — all this on my account, Jen — ?'

'Well. . . you don't eat enough, do you? All those fast-foods —

junk foods — and take-aways?' She looked down at the beef, and then back up at him. 'The way to a man's heart is supposed to be through his stomach, that's all.'

She really wanted Audley's scalp. Or someone's scalp, anyway. Or, one way or another, she wanted some more Beirut-style excitement, anyway. And (more to the point) she'd expected him to cast his vote against the enterprise.

'But all a bloody waste of time?' Having already got what she wanted, she was perfectly happy, and the irritation was hardly skin-deep. 'Shall we throw it away, and go round the corner to the pub, Ian?'

'Certainly not!' As always, the pain was his as he was reminded for the thousandth time of the difference between her need and his desire. 'I'm not going to let this beef — and that plonk of yours — go to waste. Get the carving-knife, Fielding-ffulke! And lay the table — go on!'

'Yes, master — at once, master!' As always, she was his humble and attentive servant in her moment of triumph, and never more beautiful. 'So what about David Audley, then?

Isn't he something, eh?'

'The devil with Audley.' Predictably, her carving-knife was blunt. But the beef was superbly tender. 'Were you followed?'

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'Don't ask me, darling. But if Reg says we're being, then I'm sure we were. And — don't you think it's