A Prospect of Vengeance

'No.' Cathy looked at her steadily. 'I'm not having much luck.

In fact, I'm not having any luck, to tell the truth.'

Jenny felt firmer ground under her feet. 'Did you expect to find any?'

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But now Cathy was looking past her, at Ian.

'Oh — Cathy, I'm sorry!' She had clean forgotten about Ian herself. And she had done that in the past, and felt guilty about it: but now all she required of him was politeness. 'This is Mr Ian Robinson, dear: he's a friend of mine.' She looked down at the broken earth at her feet, and couldn't see any bullets (why the hell should the child look for . . . bullets, for God's sake!). 'Ian — Miss Catherine Audley — ?'

'Yes.' His voice came soft and cold, and quite without interest. 'Hullo, Miss Audley.'

'Mr Robinson.' The child stared at him.

Jenny felt her doubts increasing. Because Mr Robinson had also appeared on the damned television programme, even if only briefly: Ian typically self-effacingly, even though he'd been the real hero, and she'd not really been-the heroine at all. Damn!

But if Cathy Audley remembered him, and recognized him, his lack of interest froze her out now — just as it had frozen Jenny herself out, these last few hours. Ian was only interested in one woman, and she wasn't here. Indeed, she wasn't anywhere.

'Did you expect to find any . . . musket balls, Cathy?' Jenny controlled her fears carefully. Because Ian's Frances Fitzgibbon obsession was all very well, in its place, however unhealthy. But now, when this eccentric child could lead them straight to Audley, Ian and his obsession were an dummy2

inconvenience — even, a quite unnecessary obstacle, which made her wish that he wasn't here with her, when she had more urgent questions on her mind. So — sod Ian!, as she looked down at the earth at her feet. 'Musket balls — here?'

'Oh yes!' Cathy Audley matched her move. 'On the Somme I found lots of them. Or not musket balls, actually — lots of shrapnel balls, I mean. But musket balls must be just like shrapnel balls — like round — ?' Her head came down so close to Jenny that she exchanged a strong whiff of childishly over-applied scent ' — and there should be lots of them hereabouts . . . because the poor Portuguese charged up here . . . and then down again . . . and then the French charged after them. And finally the British charged. So there should be lots. But I just can't find any . . .'

Cathy trailed off, and they both concentrated on scanning the field together for a moment, to the exclusion of all other matters.

Jenny straightened up finally. 'No — I see what you mean.

Perhaps they've just been ploughed into the ground, Cathy?'

'Oh no! It doesn't work like that.' Cathy shook her head vehemently. 'There's someone I know who's an expert, and he says that ploughing brings them up to the surface, it doesn't bury them. And I'm sure this is the right place.' She reached into the back-pocket of her jeans, producing a crumpled piece of paper which she then unfolded with grubby fingers. 'This was practically the centre of the battle

— at the start, anyway.'

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It was a map, neatly hand-drawn, but now rendered incomprehensible with its profusion of little red and blue squares, and diagonally red-and-white and blue-and-white rectangles, which followed the criss-crossing arrows of the rival armies' advances and retirements around and beyond the Greater Arapile.

'We're here — ' Cathy stabbed the map, and then shook her head. 'I simply don't understand it. It's most vexing.'

'Yes.' It was curious how, when Cathy Audley had stared at her she had seemed grown up, but now she was a child again.

'Do you collect . . . bullets and things, Cathy?'

'No ... not really.' The child-Cathy grinned at her. 'But, it's interesting finding things — isn't it? I got some super barbed-wire at Verdun. My father says it's German. It's got very long barbs on it, and they're much closer together than on modern barbed-wire.'

Jenny felt her jaw drop open.

'People in America collect barbed-wire, you know.' Cathy Audley nodded seriously. There are hundreds of different varieties, going back to the middle of the nineteenth century, almost. Some bits are worth hundreds of dollars, my father says — the first bits they used in the Wild West, I suppose.'

The repetition of 'my father says' recalled Jenny to reality.

She had established herself with the child. And now the child would lead her to the father, complete with an introduction of sorts. 'And your father collects battlefields, does he?'

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The child's eyes sparkled suddenly, and she laughed.

'Oh ... he collects everything — he's like a great big jackdaw, Mummy says: he never throws away anything.' She shook her head, becoming older again as she shared her mother's despair. 'But . . . yes, he does collect battlefields. In fact, this is a 'battlefield holiday' — at least, the first two weeks are.'

She grinned fondly. 'Medieval ones coming down: Crecy, Poitiers and Chastillon — that's the place where the French finally beat us, in the Hundred Years' War, you know — did you know?'

'No.' Jenny sensed Ian chafing nearby. But Ian was wrong to chafe: so long as they had the daughter, then they couldn't lose the father.

'Oh yes! There's even a monument to poor old John Talbot, who got killed there, by the river. And my father says . . .