'If you don't want it', said Teddy, 'I'll put it back in the cupboard where I found it.'
'No,' I said, 'give it to me. I do want it.'
He pretended to take aim at me, smiling, holding it balanced like a spear, then lobbed it gently in the air. I caught it and held it fast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WE SAT IN the lounge at Exeter airport waiting for our flight to be called. Take-off was twelve-thirty. The Buick was parked behind the airport, to remain there until our return, whenever that should be. I got sandwiches for all of us, and while we ate them cast an eye over our fellow-travellers. There were flights that afternoon for the Channel Isles as well as Dublin, and the lounge facing the airfield was filled with people. There were a number of priests returning from some convocation, a party of schoolchildren, family parties such as our own, and the usual sprinkling of holiday types. There was also a hilarious sextet who, from their conversation, were on their way to, or from, a riotous wedding.
'I hope', said Vita, 'we aren't going to find ourselves beside that lot on the plane.'
The boys were already doubled up with laughter, for one of the group had donned a false nose and a moustache, which he kept dipping into his glass of Guinness, to emerge beaded with froth.
'The thing to do', I said, 'is to leap to our feet as soon as our flight is called, so that we can get right up to the front, well away from them.'
'If that man with the false nose tries to sit beside me, I shall scream,' said Vita.
Her remark set the boys off again, and I congratulated myself on having ordered generous rations of cider for the boys and brandy and soda — our holiday drink — for Vita and myself, because it was that, more than the wedding party, which was making the boys giggle and causing Vita to squint as she peered in her powder-compact. I kept a close watch on the plane on the runway, until I saw that it was loaded. They were pulling the baggage trucks away, and a hostess was walking across the tarmac to our door. 'Damn!' I said. 'I knew it was a mistake to swill all that coffee and brandy. Look, darling, I must rush to the gents. If they call the flight go ahead and get seats in front, as I said. If I'm caught up in the mob I'll find myself a seat at the back and change places after take-off. As long as you three are together you'll be all right. Here — you take your boarding cards and I'll hang on to mine, just in case.'
'Oh, Dick, honestly!' exclaimed Vita. 'You might have gone before. How typical of you!'
'Sorry,' I said. 'Nature calls.'
I walked rapidly across the lounge as I saw the hostess enter the door, and waited inside the gents. I heard the flight number called over the loudspeaker, and after a few minutes, when I came out again, our party was walking with the hostess across to the aircraft, Vita and the boys in the van. As I watched, they disappeared into the plane, followed by the school-children and the priests. It was now or never. I went rapidly out of the main door of the airport building, and crossed over to the car park. In a moment I had started the Buick and pulled out of the airport entrance. Then I drew into the side of the road and listened. I could hear the sound of the engines before the plane taxied to the start, which must mean that everyone was aboard. If the engines ceased it would mean my plan had gone for nothing, and the hostess had discovered that I was missing. It was twelve thirty-five exactly. Then I heard the engines increase in pitch and in a few minutes, unbelievably, my heart pounding, I saw the silver streak of the aircraft speeding along the runway and take off, gain height and flatten out, and then it was away amongst the clouds and out of sight, and I was sitting there, at the wheel of the Buick, on my own. They were due to touch down at Dublin at one-fifty. I knew exactly what Vita would do. She would put through a call from the airport to Doctor Powell in Fowey, and find him out. He would be out because it was his half-day. He had told me so, when I had rung up after breakfast to say goodbye. He had said that, if it was fine, he was going to take his family over to the north coast to surf; and he would be thinking about us, and would I please send him a postcard from Ireland saying 'Wish you were here'.
I started to sing, as I turned into the main road and touched seventy. This was how a criminal must feel when he had just robbed a bank and got away with the loot in a stolen van. A pity I had not the whole day before me to explore at leisure, drive over to Bere and look up Sir William Ferrers and his wife Matilda, perhaps. I had found the spot on the map — it was only just across the Tamar in Devon — and I wondered if their house was standing still. Probably not, or, if it was, it had turned itself into a farm like Carminowe. I had located Carminowe on my map at the same time, when Teddy was up in my dressing-room packing my case, and had also found the reference to it in the old volume of Parochial History that had given me Tregesteynton. Carminowe was in Mawgan- in-Meneage, near the Loe Pool, and the writer said that the ancient mansion and chapel had fallen into decay in the reign of James I, along with the old burial ground. I took the Launceston road after leaving Okehampton, for it was faster than the way we had come, and as I crossed from Devon into Cornwall, heading for Bodmin moor like a homing pigeon, I sang louder still, for even if Vita had beaten me to it, and was about to land in Dublin, I was safe from pursuit; she could not reach me now. This was my last trip, my final fling; and whatever became of me in the process I could not hurt either her or the boys, for they would be safe on Irish soil.
In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and wav'd her love
To come again to Carthage.
The trouble was, Isolda's lover had died in Treesmill creek upon the strand, and I doubted if either the threat of convent walls, or Joanna's taunts, or the monk's promise of safe passage to some doubtful refuge in Angers would have made her turn to Roger in the end. The future was bleak, six hundred years ago, for wives who left their husbands, especially when the husband had an eye to a third bride. It would have suited Oliver Carminowe, and the Ferrers family too, if Isolda had simply disappeared, which she might well have done had she entrusted herself to Joanna's care; but to remain under Roger's roof was at best only a stop-gap measure, and could not have continued long. As I drove across Bodmin moor, rejoicing that each mile brought me nearer home, exhilaration was tempered by the knowledge that not only must this be the last trip to the other world, but that when I entered it I had no choice of date or season. The thaw could have come and Lent be over, high summer have taken its place, Isolda herself, having made her choice, be languishing behind those convent walls somewhere in Devon, in which case she would have moved out of Roger's life, and mine as well. I wondered, had Magnus lived, whether he could have perfected the timing factor, thus leaving the awakening from present to past to the participant's own choice; so that today, by some infinitesimal alteration of the dose, I could have summoned up at will those figures in the basement where I had left them last. Never, in the few weeks of experiment, had it happened that way. There had always been a jump in time. Joanna's carriage would no longer be waiting on the top of the hill above Kylmerth; Roger, Isolda and Bess would have left the farmhouse kitchen. That single draught in the walking-stick could guarantee re-entry to my world, but not what I should find there when I did.
The halt-sign brought me up with a jerk on to the main Lostwithiel-Saint Blazey road. I had driven the last twenty miles like an automaton, and I remembered the side turning that would take me past Tregesteynton to the Treesmill valley. I drove down it with a strange nostalgic sense, and as I passed the present farmhouse of Strickstenton, and a black-and-white collie darted out on to the road barking, I thought of small Margaret, Isolda's younger child, who had wanted a riding-whip like Robbie's, and Joanna, the elder, preening in the looking-glass while her father chased Sybell up the stairs with the otter's paw. I came down into the valley, and so intense was my identification with the past that I had forgotten, momentarily, that the river would no longer be there, and I looked for Rosgof's cottage by the side of the ford opposite the mill: but of course there was no river and no ford, only the road turning left and a few cows grazing in the marshy field. I wished I was in the Triumph, for the Buick was too big and conspicuous. On sudden impulse I parked by the bridge below the mill, and, walking a short way up the lane, climbed over the gate into the field leading to the Gratten. I knew I must stand there once more amongst the mounds before returning home, for once back at Kilmarth the future would be uncertain; the last experiment might land me in some trouble unforeseen. I wanted to carry in my mind the image of the Treesmill valley as it looked today under the late August sun, letting imagination and memory do the rest, bringing back the winding river
