thought he pierced and appalled me by saying, 'Perhaps your subconscious won't let you remember who this enemy of yours is because you like him.'
I dropped Lodge at Maidenhead and went on to the Cotswolds.
Entering the old stone house with the children noisily tumbling through the hall on their way to tea was like stepping into a sane world again. Scilla was coming down the stairs with her arms full of Polly's summer dresses: I went over and met her on the bottom step and kissed her cheek.
'Joan and I will have to lengthen all these,' she said, nodding at the dresses. 'Polly's growing at a rate of knots.'
I followed her into the drawing-room and we sat down on the hearthrug in front of a newly lit fire.
'Is it all over?' asked Scilla, pushing the dresses off her lap on to the floor.
'Yes, I think so.' Too much was all over.
I told her about the inquest and the verdict. I said, 'It was only because of Bill that George Penn was ever found out. Bill didn't die for nothing.'
She didn't answer for a long time, and I saw the yellow flames glinting on the unshed tears in her eyes. Then she sniffed and shook her head as if to free herself from the past, and said, 'Let's go and have tea with the children.'
Polly wanted me to mend a puncture on her bicycle. Henry said he'd worked out some gambits in chess and would I play against him after tea. William gave me a sticky kiss and pressed an aged fruit drop into my palm as a present. I was home again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The almost unbearable belief that I had lost Kate grew very little easier as the days passed. I couldn't get her out of my mind. When I woke in the morning the ache rushed in to spoil the day: when I slept I dreamed continually that she was running away down a long dark tunnel. I thought it unlikely I would ever see her again, and tried to make myself be sensible about it.
Then, a week after the inquest on Uncle George, I went to ride at Banbury races, and Kate was there. She was dressed in dark navy blue and there were big grey hollows round her eyes. Her face was pale and calm, and her expression didn't change when she saw me. She was waiting outside the weighing-room, and spoke to me as soon as I drew near.
'Alan, I think I should apologize for what I said to you the other day.' The words were clearly an effort.
'It's all right,' I said.
'No- it's not. I thought about what you said- about those children going to school with the judo expert- and I realize Uncle George had got to be stopped.' She paused. 'It was not your fault Aunt Deb died. I'm sorry I said it was.' She let out a breath as if she had performed an intolerable duty.
'Did you come all the way here especially to say that?' I asked.
'Yes. It has been worrying me that I was so unjust.'
'My dear precious Kate,' I said, the gloom of the past week beginning to vanish like morning mist, 'I would have given anything for it not to have been Uncle George, believe me.' I looked at her closely. 'You look very hungry. Have you had anything to eat today?'
'No,' she said, in a small voice.
'You must have some lunch,' I said, and giving her no chance to refuse, took her arm and walked her briskly to the luncheon-room. There I watched her eat, pecking at first but soon with ravenous appetite, until some colour came back into her cheeks and a faint echo of her old gaiety to her manner.
She was well into her second helping of hot game pie when she said in a friendly tone, 'I wish you'd eat something too.'
I said, 'I'm riding.'
'Yes, I know, I saw in the paper. Forlorn Hope, isn't it?' she asked between forkfuls.
'Yes,' I said.
'You will be careful, won't you? He's not a very good jumper, Pete says.'
I looked at her with delighted astonishment, and she blushed deeply.
'Kate!' I said.
'Well- I thought you'd never forgive me for being so abysmally beastly. I've spent the most vile week of my life regretting every word I said. But at least it brought me to my senses about you. I tried to tell myself I'd be delighted never to see you again and instead I got more and more miserable. I- I didn't think you'd come back for a second dose, after the way you looked at Brighton. So I thought if I wanted you to know I was sorry I'd have to come and tell you, and then I could see how- how you reacted.'
'How did you expect me to react?'
'I thought you'd be rather toffee-nosed and cool, and I wouldn't have blamed you.' She stuffed an inelegant amount of pie-crust into her mouth.
'Will you marry me, then, Kate?' I asked.
She said, 'Yes' indistinctly with her mouth full and went on uninterruptedly cutting up her food. I waited patiently while she finished the pie and made good time with a stack of cheese and biscuits.
'When did you eat last?' I asked, as she eventually put down her napkin.
'Can't remember.' She looked across at me with a new joy in her face and the old sadness beneath it, and I knew from that and from her remark about Forlorn Hope – the first concern she had ever shown for my safety – that she had indeed grown up.
I said, 'I want to kiss you.'
'Racecourses were not designed for the convenience of newly affianced lovers,' she said. 'How about a horsebox?'
'We've only got ten minutes,' I said. 'I'm riding in the second race.'
We borrowed Pete's horse-box without more ado. I took her in my arms, and found this time on Kate's lips a satisfactorily unsisterly response.
The ten minutes fled in a second, and the races wouldn't wait. We walked back, and I went into the weighing room and changed into colours, leaving Kate, who looked a bit dazed and said she felt it, sitting on a bench in the sun.
It was the first time I had been racing since Uncle George's inquest. I glanced uneasily round the changing room at the well-known faces, refusing to believe that any was the go-between who had brought death to Joe. Perhaps Lodge was right, and I didn't want to find out. I had liked Uncle George himself, once. Did I shrink from seeing the fa‡ade stripped from another friend to reveal the crocodile underneath?
Clem handed me my lead-packed weight cloth. I looked at his patient wrinkled face, and thought, 'Not you, not you.'
It was a sort of treachery to reflect that Clem heard all that went on and that no event of any significance ever escaped his ears. 'The oracle,' some of the lads called him-
A hearty thump on the back cut off my speculations.
'Wotcher, me old cock sparrow, how's the sleuthing business?' bellowed Sandy, pausing and balancing his saddle on one knee while he looped up the girths. 'How's Sherlock these days?'
'Retired,' I said, grinning.
'No, really? After such grade A results?'
'I'll stick to steeplechasing, I think. It's less risky.'
Sandy 's friendly gaze strayed to the scar on my cheek.
'You're welcome to your little illusions, chum,' he said. 'You'll change your mind when you've broken as many bones as I have.' He wound the girths round the saddle, tucked in the buckles, and with his helmet pushed far back on his head and his cheerful voice drawing heads round like a magnet, made his way out to the scales.
From across the changing room I had a good view of Dane's back solidly and deliberately turned towards me. Talking to someone by the gate, he had unfortunately seen Kate and me returning from the horse-box parking ground. He had had a good look at our radiant faces before we knew he was there, and he didn't need to have
