‘Well . . .’ It was very grudging, but I knew that I had won.
‘Thanks. Anyway, you ought to do more field work. You’re miles better at it than me.’
She liked that. Not that it was news to her. She had a firm conviction that she was miles better than me at everything, except a few activities which anyway she wouldn’t have touched with a barge-pole.
After that I went round to Miggs’s place and fixed up for a chauffeur-driven Rolls for the evening. He gave me tea out of a quart-sized enamel mug, a five-minute dissertation on the state of the second-hand car market owing to the Labour Government squeeze, flipped to a quick run-down of the present state of the Roman Catholic Church and its attitude to the Unity of Christian Churches, which—if he’d had it printed—would have gone on the Index right away and which, since he was a Catholic, didn’t surprise me because they’re always the best value when it comes to running down their religion or making jokes about it, and finished by asking what the hell I wanted a Rolls for.
‘I’m taking a million out to dinner. Name of Stankowski, Mrs, widow, formerly Gloriana Freeman. I’m looking for her brother.’
‘If that was the Stankowski who was in the scrap-metal business, watch out that she isn’t like him. He was as bent as a bedspring.’ Going down the stairs, I ran into Manston at the bottom, arriving for another work-out with Miggs. He was wearing a bowler hat, dark suit, and carried a rolled umbrella, and he looked as usual like a coiled steel spring, and God help you if you were in its way when it went zing!
He said, ‘Busy?’
‘Moderately.’
‘We could always give you a job. Permanently, if you like.’
‘We’ meant his Service, and occasionally they had roped me in to work for them and not once had I spent a happy moment on their payroll. ‘I like a quiet life.’
He grinned. ‘You’re getting old. Sluggish too, I’ll bet.’
As he spoke he raised his umbrella and swiped at the side of my neck with it. I ducked and let it go over my head. Then I went forward and got my right shoulder under his raised right arm, grabbed his wrist and let myself fall back so that I could use his moment out of balance from the umbrella blow to send him over my shoulder. It should have worked, would have done with most people, but in some odd way I found myself spun round, my face pressed against a wall and my right arm twisted up behind my back.
Still holding me, he said, ‘You used to be better than that.’
‘You’ve got it wrong. You used not to be so good.’
He released me, straightened his Old Etonian tie, and then offered me a cigarette. I lit it with a shaking hand. He saw the shake and said, ‘You’ve been leading too sedentary a life. You really should join us and see the world. Also you get a pension at sixty.’
‘Send me a telegram,’ I said, ‘the first time any of your blokes live long enough to qualify for one.’
As it was a nice spring evening I walked part of the way home, from Lambeth Bridge along Millbank and past the Tate Gallery. The sky was an even duck-egg colour, and the tide was coming in fast, making up towards Vauxhall Bridge, an even brown-soup colour. A handful of gulls hung over it, scavenging. I had a growing feeling that any moment now I might feel good to be alive.
Mrs Meld was hanging over her front-garden gate, taking the air, and watching her dog take its hundred-yard-evening stroll down the pavement.
‘’Evening, Mr Carver.’
‘’Evening, Mrs Meld.’
She jerked her head upwards to my place. ‘You’re going it a bit, aren’t you?’
‘You’ve got to be clearer than that, Mrs Meld.’
‘There’s another one up there.’
‘A woman?’
‘What else?’
‘Why do you let them in?’
‘What you told me, weren’t it? Women can go in—not nobody else. Want to alter it, Mr Carver?’
I thought for a moment and then shook my head.
It was Jane Judd. She was wearing a light raincoat and yellow beret and was standing at the window, watching Mrs Meld who still stood at her gate.
‘When that woman speaks about you,’ she said, indicating Mrs Meld as I went and stood at her shoulder, ‘there’s reverence in her voice. Also I got the feeling that she would have liked to search me to see if I had any hidden weapons.’
‘Have you?’
‘Only this.’
She handed me a copy of the Evening Standard.
I said, ‘Let’s have a drink before we settle down to the crossword. And anyway I haven’t got much time. I’ve an appointment at seven. So chat away. I presume this isn’t a social call?’
‘No. It isn’t. I just decided that I’d been less than honest with you.’
‘Don’t worry about that. It puts you in the main category of my visitors and clients. Gin or whisky, or a glass of white wine?’
‘Whisky, Straight.’
I poured it, straight and generous. She was putting on a good act but there was the suggestion of a shake somewhere in her voice. ‘How did you get my address?’
‘I phoned Mrs Stankowski.’
‘And she gave it to you, just like that?’
‘She did when she heard what I had to say.’
‘Then let me hear it.’
She sat down on the arm of a chair and toasted me briefly with the whisky.
‘I should have told you that Martin Freeman is my husband.’
I said nothing, letting it sink in. This Martin Freeman was quite a number. The more I learned about him, the more intrigued I became.
She said, ‘You don’t seem surprised.’
‘Oh, I am. But I’ve learned not to show it, otherwise I’d be going round all day with my eyes popping. Why don’t you wear a ring?’
‘It was a secret wedding,
