lost so much weight, his signet ring kept falling off, so he gave it to Lucy to look after.
As the chapel clock struck half past nine, the finalists took up their positions. Lucy and Simone are so sweet, thought Wolfie, as he jumped from foot to foot on the baseline. Why was he too hopelessly in love with Tab to consider anyone else? Glancing across the valley he felt sick to see a car, looking suspiciously like his father’s Merc, creeping stealthily up the little lane to Magpie Cottage. An ace from Griselda whizzed past his ear. He mustn’t give in to weakness. If he was incapable of returning Simone’s love, he could at least ensure her victory.
‘Oh, well played, Wolfie,’ said Simone, five minutes later, as he aced Granny for a second time.
Alpheus, sitting away from the rabble on the other side of the court, much envied the way Simone ran around picking up balls for Wolfie. It was high time he had an adoring young woman in his life again. He picked up his mobile.
Moths were bashing against the floodlights. Even Rannaldini’s sapphire delphinium bed, the only thing watered in the garden, was losing colour in the dusk. A mobile rang, everyone dived hopefully — but it was for Chloe.
‘OK,’ she purred, ‘terrific. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Not having had any exercise, she announced she was going for a jog and, giving Mikhail a kick in the ribs as she passed the weeping ash, disappeared into the darkness. Shortly afterwards, Alpheus muttered about swimming his twenty lengths, drained his glass of Perrier and also left.
‘He and Chloe must have started up again,’ hissed Flora.
‘I hate Rannaldini,’ said Pushy.
‘So do I,’ agreed Bernard, stunning everyone, because he never bitched.
‘No-one hates him as much as I do,’ said Griselda, as she remembered Rannaldini wrecking Hermione’s dress.
Mikhail must have been roused by Chloe’s kick for suddenly he reared up and sang, ‘“Thunder rumbles deep in the heavens, a man must die,”’ then slumped back to sleep.
Everyone exchanged nervous glances, particularly when real thunder started to grumble round the hills in sympathy. A slight breeze rattling the summer-hardened poplar leaves sounded like rain. Lucy put her arms round a quivering James: she’d have to trank him if the claps grew louder.
‘Guess what I had to do earlier today,’ she asked the remaining spectators, as the players changed ends. ‘Streak Clive’s hair.’
‘Whatever for?’ asked Meredith.
‘He had an important date, he said. His bloodless face went quite pink. Actually, he was really sweet and told me about his mum,
‘Must be the first time,’ shuddered Flora. ‘Clive scares me more than Rannaldini. That black crow’s been sitting on top of the cypress for the last two hours. D’you think it’s stuck?’
‘Its name is Death,’ said Ogborne, with a sepulchral laugh. ‘Christ, that girl’s got amazing legs.’
Everyone turned as Jessica, Sexton’s beautiful secretary, loped back from the house.
‘You’ll never guess what?’ she gasped.
‘You’ve been streaking Clive’s hair,’ said Ogborne.
‘I just saw Tristan.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Bernard roughly. ‘He’s in Paris. You’ve had too much to drink.’
‘Keep your hair on, Bernie,’ said Meredith. ‘Baby saw a ghost yesterday.’
‘What was Tristan doing?’ asked Flora.
‘Nearly running me over, belting down the drive.’
‘Must have been someone else,’ insisted Bernard angrily.
‘I find it a relief Tristan’s away,’ confessed Flora. ‘He’s so uptight, and he
Lucy hugged an increasingly trembling James. If only she could explain to the others why Tristan was being so difficult.
‘I miss the birds singing at twilight,’ she said, looking up into the trees.
‘They’re all exhausted feeding their young,’ said Jessica. ‘Mr Brimscombe told me nightingales disappear in July. One morning they’re here, the next they’ve gone, departing silently in the dusk.’
‘Like us next week,’ said Ogborne.
Burying her face in James’s coat, Lucy burst into tears, then leaping to her feet fled into the wood.
37
It was nearly nine and even hotter when Tab got home from working The Engineer. She went straight into the shower, then put on the coolest clean thing in her wardrobe, a virginal calf-length grey cotton shirtwaister, which she had never worn but which her American bosses had given her last summer for her birthday, probably as a hint she might curb her dissolute lifestyle.
God, it was stifling. She was already breaking out in sweat again. In the past she would have got stuck into the vodka, but staying off it seemed to be the only achievement she had to cling on to.
She missed Tristan so dreadfully. But as she breathed in a familiar smell of night-scented stock and philadelphus, she was flattened with longing for Penscombe. Tristan, however, had urged her to work at her marriage. Isa was back in England, and as she expected him home later she opened and applied the chic French make-up Simone had given her for her birthday. Then she drenched herself in Quercus, the disturbing, sweet yet lemony scent which Isa so loved.
Going downstairs she found Sharon panting on the kitchen floor. She was on heat, and most of the local dogs, including James, Trevor and Tabloid, when he escaped from his dungeon, had been hanging round Magpie Cottage. ‘At least one of us has got admirers,’ sighed Tab.
Listlessly she switched on the wireless. They had all been so caught up in
‘One of the children had taken her collar off for fun,’ her stepmother was saying.
‘Oh, no.’ Tabitha clutched herself in horror.
‘We were playing Grandmother’s Footsteps in the woods,’ went on Taggie, ‘and suddenly Gertrude had vanished. She’s deaf and blind. She must be so frightened.’ Taggie’s voice broke.
‘What does Gertrude look like?’ asked the interviewer.
‘She’s only a little black and white mongrel, but her black patches are mostly white because she’s eighteen.’
‘A good age,’ said the interviewer, ‘and your husband Rupert has offered an amazing ten-thousand-pound reward. A lot for such an old dog.’
‘She’s special to us,’ sobbed Taggie. ‘She eats Bonios in her paws like ice-creams. She was eating one yesterday, and this magpie, one for sorrow, snatched it away. She’ll be so bewildered. We just want to know she’s safe.’
‘Well, I’m sure with a ten-thousand-pound reward we’ll have the whole of England looking for her. That’s Gertrude, and the number to ring is…’
Tears were flooding Tab’s face. She had known Gertrude, Taggie’s dog, since she was eight, even before Taggie married her father. Rupert had had to work hard to win over Gertrude.
Gertrude had also starred at Taggie and Rupert’s wedding, escaping up the aisle and standing panting between her mistress and Rupert while the Bishop ranted about sexual mores. When anyone had a row at home, Gertrude, the peacemaker, would rush in rattling a box of Bonios. She had so much character.
Oh, poor Taggie, thought Tab. She must ring home at once. It took her three goes to dial because she was shaking so much, then the number was engaged. Feeling the need of Wolfie’s solid comfort, she dialled Valhalla.
