The Edge

save.'

She brushed that aside. 'There's, no point in saving. My grandmother left me millions. And Sheridan too. I suppose you think that's awful. He thinks he deserves it. He thinks he can do anything he likes because he's rich.'

'You could give it away,' I said, 'if you think it's awful.'

'Would you?'

I said regretfully, 'No.'

'There you are, then.'

'I'd give some of it away.'

'I've got trustees and they won't let me.'

I smiled faintly. I'd had Clement Cornborough. Trustees, he'd told me once austerely, were there to preserve and increase fortunes, not to allow them to be squandered, and no, he wouldn't allow a fifteen-year-old boy to fund a farm for pensioned-off racehorses.

'Why do you think it's difficult to be rich?' she demanded. 'It's easy.'

I said neutrally, 'You said just now that if you were poor, life would be simple.'

'I suppose I did. I suppose I didn't mean it. Or not really. I don't know if I meant it. Why is it difficult to be rich?'

'Too much temptation. Too many available corruptions.'

'Do you mean drugs?'

'Anything. Too many pairs of shoes. Self-importance.'

She put her feet up on the bench and hugged her knees, looking at me over the top. 'No one will believe this conversation.' She paused. 'Do you wish you were rich?'

It was an unanswerable question. I said truthfully in evasion, 'I wouldn't like to be starving.'

'My father says,' she announced, 'that one's not better because one's richer, but richer because one's better.'

'Neat.'

'He always says things like that. I don't understand them sometimes.'

'Your brother Sheridan,' I said cautiously, 'doesn't seem to be happy.'

'Happy!' She was scornful. 'He's never happy. I've hardly seen him happy in his whole life. Except that he does laugh at people sometimes.' She was doubtful. 'I suppose if he laughs, he must be happy. Only he despises them, that's why he laughs. I wish I liked Sheridan. I wish I had a terrific brother who would look after me and take me places. That would be fun. Only it wouldn't be with Sheridan, of course, because it would end in trouble. He's been terrible on this trip. Much worse than usual. I mean, he's embarrassing.' She frowned, disliking her thoughts.

'Someone said,' I said without any of my deep curiosity showing, 'that he had a bit of trouble in England.'

'Bit of trouble! I shouldn't tell you, but he ought to be in jail, only they didn't press charges. I think my father bought them off… and anyway, that's why Sheridan does what my parents say, right now, because they threatened to let him be prosecuted if he as much as squeaks.'

'Could he still be prosecuted?' I asked without emphasis.

'What's a statute of limitations?'

'A time limit,' I said, 'after which one cannot be had up for a particular bit of law-breaking.'

'In England?'

'Yes.'

'You're English, aren't you?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'He said, 'Hold your breath, the statute of limitations is out of sight. ''

'Who said?'

'An attorney, I think. What did he mean? Did he mean Sheridan is… is…'

'Vulnerable?'

She nodded. '… for ever?'

'Maybe for a long time.'

'Twenty years?' An unimaginable time, her voice said.

'It would have to have been bad.'

'I don't know what he did,' she said despairingly. 'I only know it's ruined this summer. Absolutely ruined it. And I'm supposed to be in school right now, only they made me come on this train because they wouldn't leave me in the house alone. Well, not alone, but alone except for the servants. And that's because my cousin Susan Lorrimore, back in the summer, she's seventeen, she ran off with their chauffeur's son and they got married and there was an earthquake in the family. And I can see why she did, they kept leaving her alone in that huge house and going to Europe and she was bored out of her skull and, anyway, it seems their chauffeur's son is all brains and cute, too, and she sent me a card saying she didn't regret a thing. My mother is scared to death that I'll run off with some…'

She stopped abruptly, looked at me a little wildly and sprang to her feet.

'I forgot,' she said. 'I sort of forgot you are…'

'It's all right,' I said, standing also. 'Really all right.'

'I guess I talk too much.' She was worried and unsure. 'You won't…'

'No. Not a word.'

'Cumber told me I ought to mind my tongue,' she said resentfully. 'He doesn't know what it's like living in a mausoleum with everyone glowering at each other and Daddy trying to smile.' She swallowed. 'What would you do', she demanded, 'if you were me?'

'Make your father laugh.'

She was puzzled. 'Do you mean… make him happy?'

'He needs your love,' I said. I gestured to the path back to the Chateau. 'If you'd like to go on first, I'll follow after.'

'Come with me,' she said.

'No. Better not.'

In an emotional muddle that I hadn't much helped, she tentatively set off, looking back twice until a bend in the path took her out of sight, and I sat down again on the bench, although growing cold now, and thought about what she'd said, and felt grateful, as ever and always, for Aunt Viv.

There wasn't much wrong with Xanthe, I thought. Lonely, worried, only half understanding the adult world, needing reassurance, she longed primarily for exactly what Mercer himself wanted, a friendly united family. She hadn't thought of affronting her parents by cuddling up to a waiter: very much the reverse. She had tried to put me into a difficult position: had been without guile or tricks. I wouldn't have minded having a younger sister like her that I could take places for her to have fun. I hoped she would learn to live in peace with her money, and thought that a month or so of serving other people in a good crew like Emil, Oliver and Cathy would be the best education she could get.

After a while I scanned the whole Chateau and its gardens with the binoculars but I couldn't see Filmer, which wasn't really surprising, and in the end I set off again to walk, and detoured up on to the foot of the glacier, trudging on the cracked, crunchy, grey-brown-green fringe of the frozen river.

Laurentide Ice, one of the passengers had knowledgeably said early on, was the name given to one of the last great polar ice sheets to cover most of Canada twenty thousand years before. Daffodil, nodding, had said her husband had named the horse because he was interested in prehistory, and she was going, to call her next horse Cordilleran Ice, the sheet that had covered the Rockies. Her husband would have been pleased, she said. I could be standing at that moment on prehistoric Cordilleran Ice perhaps, I thought, but if glaciers moved faster than history, perhaps not. Anyway, it gave a certain perspective to the concerns of Julius Apollo.

Back at the Chateau, I went upstairs and drafted a new scene for the script, and I'd barely finished when Zak came knocking to enquire for it. We went into his room where the cast had already gathered for the rehearsal, and I looked round their seven faces and asked if we still had the services of begging Ben, who was missing from the room. No, we didn't, Zak said. He had gone back to Toronto. Did it matter?

'No. not really. He might have been useful as a messenger, but I expect you can pretend a messenger.'