A Prospect of Vengeance

Philly had almost had an unmarked grave of his own, she thought. And the thought turned her round again. 'Come on, Ian. We've got work to do.'

Cathy was waiting for them.

'See there, Miss Fielding — Jenny — ?' She pointed at the ground.

'What?' Behind the child the final tumble-home of the Greater Arapile rose more steeply, in a jumble of rocks. But it would be no more exhausting than climbing up to Piccadilly from the Underground without the benefit of the moving escalator.

'Autumn crocuses, Miss Fielding.' The child pointed again.

Jenny looked down. And there at her feet was a tiny delicate pale-mauve flower with a bright white-into-yellow centre, dummy2

thrusting out of the dead grass like a promise of life-in-death.

'Isn't it beautiful, Miss Fielding?'

'Yes, dear.' Jenny stepped carefully around the crocus. And then she saw another, and another . . . and some were already wilting in the fierce Spanish sun, as ephemeral as butterflies. 'Very beautiful.'

'Here, Jen — ' Ian reached down to help her up over a steeper place, almost like the old Ian.

Now they were on the edge of the summit, with bedrock and tumbled rock all around them.

Their hands and their eyes met. And it wasn't strange that he looked sad: they were at the beginning of their long goodbye; which had always been going to come one day, inevitably; but that didn't make it any sadder, now that they could both see it ahead of them: maybe they would write a Spanish book together, but it would be their last book; or maybe he'd write it, while she was frying some other and very different fish.

But this was Philly's day for her, anyway —

She felt his strength as he hauled her up, and mourned the loss of it already. But then she saw Audley, waiting for them.

And this was Philly's hour.

The sun beat down on her head, hotter than ever, behaving as she always felt it should now that they were closer to it, dummy2

melting her as it had melted the wax holding Icarus's feathers to his wings. But there was a lump of ice-cold resolution in the centre of her which resisted the heat —

which even seemed to expand as she stared past them, at Audley —

Audley waiting for them: he knew who they were, and what they were, and why they were here. So he was sitting there, on the plinth of the monument, on its cooler shadowed side: Audley still unhappy this morning, after last night's phone-call, but cool and calm and collected now, and ready for them —

'Wait a minute, Ian.' She used the last ounce of her waning influence over him in her voice. 'Please wait!'

He stopped. 'What is it, Jenny?'

'There's no hurry. He's not going away.' She looked round deliberately, taking her time; at first seeing nothing, then seeing everything with sudden clarity in the crystal air.

The Greater Arapile was shaped like a ship, exactly: long and flat-topped, and barely a dozen yards wide. And they were standing halfway down the deck, between the supertanker prow and the slight rise to the monument; and the deck itself was covered with a carpet of dead grass, brown and withered, through which an astonishing profusion of Cathy Audley's dummy2

delicate autumn crocuses burst out defiantly.

'What an amazing place!' It wasn't particularly amazing, actually: it was just another piece of the great yellow openness that was so much of Spain, with nothing to betray the great and terrible event which it had once witnessed. In fact, nothing had happened here since that moment when the rolling fields below had been black with marching lines, and columns, and screaming horses and thundering cannon.

But there wasn't the slightest echo of the past up here now, anymore than of the future.

But she had to say something.

And, by God! something was going to happen here now!

'Look!' She saw a sudden flick of movement in a jumble of rocks on the flank of the ridge.

'What — ?'

'There — ' She pointed. 'It's a fox — with long pointy-ears —

see!'

Obligingly, the fox moved again, and became visible for an instant before it vanished into the hillside.

'Yes — !' In that same instant Ian's face lit up, with pure pleasure, and he was just like the old Ian at the sight of any small interesting thing, like a new postage stamp on a letter, or an old building which caught his eye. (Had he welcomed the sight of that first autumn crocus? Or had he had eyes only for Audley, and thought only for his Frances Fitzgibbon?) But then he frowned at her, and was the new dummy2

Ian again. 'What are you playing at, Jen?'

Now they were at last facing each other in the face of the enemy, and facing their moment of truth. 'Audley's mine, Ian

— he's not for you. I want him.'