‘I would willingly do you a favour if I thought –’
‘I ask you only for ten minutes. If I may come to see you for ten minutes, Mr Mansor, I would esteem it.’
‘You mean, you want to come here?’
‘I mean, sir, I would like to come to your very pleasant home. I would like to call in at seven tonight if that might be convenient. The reason I am suggesting this, Mr Mansor, is I am still in the neighbourhood of the village. I am still staying in the same hotel.’
‘Well, yes, come over by all means, but I really must warn you –’
‘I am used to everything, Mr Mansor.’ Laughter accompanied this remark and then Golkorn said, ‘I look forward to seeing you and your nice wife. I promise only to occupy ten minutes.’
Hugh telephoned Emily. ‘Golkorn,’ he said. ‘He wants to come and see us.’
‘But what for?’
‘I really can’t think. I couldn’t say no.’
‘Of course not.’
‘He’s coming at seven.’
She said goodbye and put the receiver down. The development astonished her. She thought at least they had finished with Golkorn.
The telephone rang again and Hugh suggested that they should go out to dinner, to Rowan House, where they often went. She knew he was suggesting it because she’d been upset. She appreciated that, but she said she’d rather make it another night, mainly because she had a stew in the oven. ‘I’m sorry about that wretched man,’ Hugh said. ‘He wasn’t easy to choke off.’ She reassured him, making a joke of Golkorn’s insistence, saying that of course it didn’t matter.
In the garden she picked sweet-peas. She sat for a moment in the corner where she and Hugh often had coffee together on Saturday and Sunday mornings. She put the sweet-peas on the slatted garden table and let her glance wander over lupins and delphiniums, and the tree geranium that was Hugh’s particular pride. On trellises and archways which he’d made roses trailed in profusion, Mermaid and Danse du Feu. She loved the garden, as she loved the house.
At her feet the Sealyham called Spratts settled down to rest for a while, but she warned him that she didn’t intend to remain long in the secluded corner. In a moment she picked up the sweet-peas and took them to the kitchen, where she arranged them in a cut-glass vase. The dog followed her when she carried it to the sitting- room. Was it unusual, she wondered, to pick flowers specially for a person you didn’t like? Yet it had seemed a natural thing to do; she always picked flowers when a visitor was coming.
‘Ten minutes I promised,’ Golkorn said at seven o’clock, having been notably prompt, ‘so ten minutes it must be.’ He laughed, as if he’d made a joke of some kind. ‘No, no drink for me, please.’
Hugh poured Emily a glass of sherry, Harvey’s Luncheon Dry, which was what she always had. He smeared a glass with Angostura drops and added gin and water to it for himself. Perhaps there was something in the fact that he had rescued her, he thought, wanting to think about her rather than their visitor. Even though she loved the subject, she had never been entirely happy as a teacher of Classics because she was shy. Until she came to know them she was nervous of the girls she taught: her glasses and her strawberry mark and her dumpiness, the very fact that she was a teacher, seemed to put her into a certain category, at a disadvantage. And perhaps his rescuing of her, if you could so grandly call it that, had in turn given him something he’d lacked before. Perhaps their marriage was indeed built on debts to one another.
‘Orange juice, Mr Golkorn?’ Emily suggested, already rising to get it for him.
He waved a hand, denying his need of orange juice. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to beat about the bush. I want to come to the point. Luffnell Lodge, Mr Mansor. You’re a man of business, you know those people wouldn’t ever get that price. They’ll lose a lot. You know that.’
‘We’ve been through all of it, Dr Golkorn. The Allenbys do not wish to sell their property to you.’
‘They’re elderly people –’
‘That has nothing to do with it.’
‘With respect, Mr Mansor, it may have. Our elderly friends could be sitting there in that barracks for winter after winter. They could freeze to death. The old lady’s crippled with arthritis as it is.’
‘Mrs Allenby’s illness cannot enter into this. The Allenbys –’
‘With respect, sir, they came to you for advice.’
‘That is so.’
‘With respect, sir, the advice you gave them was unfortunate.’
‘If they’d sold the Lodge to you they’d be hated in the village.’
‘But they’d be gone, Mr Miansor. They’d have kicked the dust off their heels. They’d be imbibing the sun on some island somewhere. As their doctor advised.’
‘They’ve lived in this village for more than fifty years. It matters to them what the village thinks of them. We’ve been all through this, you know. I can’t help you, Dr Golkorn.’
Golkorn bent his head for a moment over clasped hands, as if praying for patience. He was slightly smiling. When eventually he looked up there was a glint in his dark, clever eyes which suggested that, despite appearances, he held the more useful cards. His black pinstriped suit was uncreased, his smooth black shoes had a glassy glow. He wore a blue shirt and a blue bow tie with small white spots on it. The night before, at the meetings he’d been similarly dressed except for his shirt and tie. The shirt had last night been pink and the tie a shade of deep crimson, though also with white spots.
‘What do you think, Mrs Mansor?’ he said in his sort, unhurried voice, still smiling a little. ‘How do you see this unhappy business?’ His manner suggested that they might have been his patients. Any moment now, Hugh
