was still at college because the oldest of the little girls was imminent. They were happy, he said, but they'd never been able to save a deposit for a house. Lucky to have a mobile home. Hire purchase, of course. During the holidays, he looked after the children while Jane took temporary secretarial jobs. Better for the family income. Better for Jane. He still went hiking on his own, though, one week every year. Backpacking. Sleeping in a tent, in hilly country; Scotland or Wales. He gave me a shy look through the black-framed glasses. 'It sorts me out. Keeps me sane.' It wasn't everyone, I thought, who was his own psychotherapist.
When we got back, the caravan was tidy and the children asleep. One had to be quiet, Ted said, going in: they woke easily. The girls all slept, it appeared, in the larger of the two bedrooms, with their parents in the smaller. There was a pillow, a car travelling rug and a clean sheet awaiting me, and although the sofa was a bit short for comfort it was envelopingly soft.
It was only on the point of sleep, far too late to bother, that I remembered that I hadn't called back to talk to Irestone. Oh well, I thought, yawning, tomorrow would do.
In the morning I did call from a telephone box near the public park where Ted and I took the children to play on the swings and seesaw.
Irestone, as usual, wasn't in. Wasn't he ever in, I asked. A repressive voice told me the Chief Superintendent was off-duty at present, and would I please leave a message. I perversely said that no, I wouldn't, I wanted to speak to the Chief Superintendent personally. If I would leave a number, they said, he would in due course call me. Impasse, I thought: Ted Pitts had no telephone.
'If I call you at nine tomorrow morning,' I said, 'will Chief Superintendent Irestone be there? If I call at ten? At eleven? At midday?'
I was told to wait and could hear vague conversations going on in the background, and going on for so long that I had to feed more coins into the box, which scarcely improved my patience. Finally, however, the stolid voice returned. 'Detective Chief Superintendent Irestone will be in the Incident Room tomorrow morning from ten o'clock onwards. You may call him at the following number.'
'Wait a minute.' I unclipped my pen and dug out the scrap of paper which held Ted's address. 'OK.'
He gave me the number, and I thanked him fairly coolly, and that was that.
Ted was pushing his tiniest girl carefully round on a sort of turntable, holding her close to him and laughing with her. I wished quite surprisingly fiercely that I could have had a child like that, that I could have taken her to a sunny park on Sunday mornings, and hugged her little body and watched her grow. Sarah, I thought. Sarah- this is the way you've ached, perhaps; and for the baby to cuddle, and the young woman to see married. This is the loss. This, that Ted Pitts has. I watched his delight in the child and I envied him with all my heart.
We sat on a bench a bit later while the girls played in a sandpit, and for something to say I asked him why he'd lost his first intense interest in the racing form-books.
He shrugged, looking at his children, and said in the husky voice which was slowly returning to normal, 'You can see how it is. I can't risk the money. I can't afford to buy the form books. I couldn't even afford to buy a set of tapes for myself this week, to copy the programs onto. I bought some for you with the money you gave me, but I just didn't have enough… I told you, we've been down to counting pennies for food, and although next month's pay will be in the bank tomorrow I still haven't paid the electricity.'
'It's the Derby soon,' I said.
He nodded morosely. 'Don't think I haven't thought of it. I look at those tapes sitting up on that shelf, and I think, shall I or shan't I? But I've had to decide not to. I can't risk it. How could I possibly explain to Jane if I lost? We need every pound, you know. You can see we do.'
It was ironic, I thought. On the one hand there was Angelo Gilbert, who was prepared to kill to get those tapes, and on the other, Ted Pitts, who had them and set them lower than a dust-up with his wife.
'The programs belong to an old woman called O'Rorke,' I said. 'Mrs Maureen O'Rorke. I went to see her this week.'
Ted showed only minor signs of interest.
'She said a few things I thought you'd find amusing.'
'What things?'Ted said.
I told him about the bookmakers closing the accounts of regular winners, and about the system the O'Rorkes had used with their gardener, Dan, going round betting shops to put their money on anonymously.
'Great heavens,' Ted said. 'What a palaver.' He shook his head. 'No, Jonathan, it's best to forget it.'
'Mrs O'Rorke said her husband could bet with an overall certainty of winning once every three times. How does that strike you statistically?'
He smiled. 'I'd need a hundred per cent certainty to bet on the Derby.'
One of the children threw sand in the eyes of another and he got up in a hurry to scold, to comfort, to dig around earnestly with the corner of his handkerchief.
'By the way,' I said, when order was restored, 'I took some copies of your game 'Starstrike', I hope you don't mind.'
'You're welcome,' he said. 'Did you play it? You have to type in F or S at the first question mark. I haven't written the instructions out yet, but I'll let you have them when I do. The kids,' he looked pleased and a touch smug, 'say it's neat.'
'Is it your best?'
'My best?' He smiled a fraction and shrugged, and said, 'I teach from it. I had to write it so that the kids could understand the program and how it worked. Sure, I could write a far more sophisticated one, but what would be the point?'
A pragmatist, Ted Pitts, not a dreamer. We collected the children together, with Ted brushing them down and emptying sand from their shoes, and drove back to the caravan to home-made hamburgers for lunch.
In the afternoon under Ted's commiserating eyes I corrected the load of exercise books which I happened not to have carried into my house on Friday night. Five B had Irestone to thank for that. And on Monday morning with Ted's voice in good enough shape, he thought, to quell the monsters in the third form, we both went back to school.
We each drove our own cars. I felt I'd used up my welcome in the caravan and although Jane said I could stay if I liked I could see I was no longer a blessing from heaven. The new pay cheque would be in the bank. There would be more than bread this week, and I would have to think of somewhere else.
Ted stretched up in the last minutes before we left and plucked the six cassettes from the high shelf. 'I could do these at lunchtime today,' he said, 'if you like.'
'That would be great,' I said. 'Then you can keep one set and the others will be Mrs O'Rorke's.'
'But don't you want some yourself?'
'Maybe later I could get copies of yours, but I can't see me chasing round betting shops for the rest of my life.'
He laughed. 'Nor me. Though I wouldn't have minded a flutter…' A sort of longing gleamed in his eyes again, and was quickly extinguished. 'Ah well,' he said, 'forward to the fray.' He kissed Jane and the little girls, and off we went.
During the mid-morning break I yet again tried to reach Chief Superintendent Irestone, this time from the coin box in the common-room. Even with the new number, I got no joy. Chief Superintendent Irestone wasn't available at that time.
'This is boring,' I said. 'I was told he would be.'
'He was called away, sir. Will you leave a message?'
I felt like leaving a couple of round oaths. I said, 'Tell him Jonathan Derry called.'
'Very good, sir. Your message time at ten thirty-three.'
To hell with it, I thought.
I had taken about five paces down the room in the direction of the coffee machine when the telephone bell rang behind me. It was the time of day when masters' wives tended to ring up to get their dear ones to run errands on their way home, and the nearest to the bell answered its summons as a matter of course. My wife, at least, I thought, wouldn't be calling, but someone shouted, 'Jonathan, it's for you.'
Surprised, I retraced my steps and picked up the receiver.
'Hullo,' I said.
''Jonathan,' Sarah said. 'Where have you been? Where in God's name have you been?'
