could find a job. If no one needed a welder or carpenter, then I could sell my title to some idiot who wanted an aristocrat’s name on his firm’s letterhead. I could join the other clowns in the House of Lords and claim my attendance money. Perhaps I could write a book:
It was hopeless. A small house in Devon and a job would not solve my problem because Elizabeth would still hold all the cards; she had a large house, a husband, and no record of being drunk and disorderly. What I needed was a lot of money, very fast; enough to buy a sharper lawyer than Sir Oliver.
Charlie.
That thought stopped my walking. The lights were coming on across the river and reflecting in shaking streaks on the darkening water.
Charlie would help. Charlie would throw himself into this battle with all his huge heart and soul and strength, but Charlie would be no match for a cunning bastard like Sir Oliver Bulstrode. Charlie would give me money, but the lawyers would soon drain that away and Charlie, despite his success and despite his flashy toys, was deeply in debt. Besides, this was family. This was my responsibility, and I had already taken too much money from Charlie. What I needed now was my own money; gobs of money, a lawyer’s wet dream of money. What I needed was a patch of canvas, two feet three inches wide by a shade over three feet long, on which some poor half-mad genius had once painted a vase of sunflowers.
In short I needed Sir Leon Buzzacott. He had known that, which was why he had sent Jennifer Pallavicini with the message that he would look after Georgina’s future.
But to secure that future I would have to crawl abjectly to Jennifer Pallavicini. Otherwise I was trapped by the short and curlies.
Unless, of course, Sir Oliver was right and I was being unfair in my judgment of Elizabeth. That was the last straw of hope I could cling to, and if that straw failed me then I would have to eat humble pie. I turned towards Westminster for the last time. It was late, fully dark, and I was soaked to the skin, so I phoned an old girlfriend and asked if I could have a bed for the night. She agreed, though she didn’t offer her own bed, but I hadn’t expected her to, because nothing was going right these days. Nothing.
In the morning I went to Gloucestershire. During the night I had half persuaded myself that Elizabeth was indeed doing the decent thing, and that I had been blinded to her decency by my own unreasonable dislike of her. It was nonsense, I told myself, to think that Elizabeth could cheat the trustees. She would need to satisfy them that she could provide Georgina with proper care and living-quarters, and so, by the time I caught the train, I was more than half convinced that my troubles would soon be over. Georgina would have a safe haven, and I would be free to return to my life and
Jennifer Pallavicini had called me uncaring and selfish. She was wrong about the first. I cared for Georgina; it was simply that, when Jennifer Pallavicini confronted me in Horta, I had been unwilling to dance to her insistent tune. Selfish? I thought about that as I stood in the crowded train going from London to the Cotswolds. Yes, I thought, she was probably right. I was selfish. I had always done what I wanted. I’d worked for it, if welding steel hulls in some humid tropical hell hole was called work, but I had still pursued my own desires. Yet not, I decided, to the detriment of others. I had never betrayed anyone to get what I wanted. I’d fought a few, but it takes two to fight.
So the Pallavicini, I decided, did not understand me half as well as she believed. She had believed that I would need her assistance to settle Georgina’s future, but now I was proving that I could look after my sister without Sir Leon’s help. I would do it quickly, then take myself back to
I caught a bus from the station to Elizabeth’s village, then walked a lane between dry-stone walls to where the drive led to Lord Tredgarth’s farm. A big sign on the gate said ‘Entrance to Perilly House and Equestrian Centre Only. Private. No Trespassing’, while another sign ordered tradesmen to use the entrance on the Gloucester road. I decided I wasn’t a tradesman and pushed open the tall wrought-iron gates. The sun was trying to break through the clouds as I walked between the stumps of trees killed by Dutch elm disease. To my right was a thistle-rich paddock where a few fat ponies grazed between low jumps made from painted oil drums and striped poles. Elizabeth’s ‘Equestrian Centre’ was really a scabby riding-school which catered to the fat children of middle-class mothers who liked to boast they were acquainted with the Lady Elizabeth Tredgarth. It was a toss up which Elizabeth hated the most: the mothers or their children. She’d never had children herself, which I considered a blessing to the unborn.
The grandly named Perilly House was really just a large farmhouse. It was a very pleasant farmhouse built of Cotswold stone, with a big central gable and two large wings. Roses grew about the front door which had been tricked out with a white Georgian portico and an antique brass bell-pull.
A nervous cleaning woman answered the bell and told me her ladyship was not at home. Her ladyship had gone to a hospital charity committee meeting in Cirencester, which answer, despite my attempts to convince myself that Elizabeth was behaving well, triggered a rush of uncharitable thoughts. I imagined Elizabeth earning every brownie point she could so long as she saw Georgina’s trust fund in her sights. I imagined she would suddenly be active on the hospital charity, and the mental health fund-raising committee and even the flower rota at the parish church. “But his lordship’s at home,” the cleaning lady volunteered.
“Would you tell him John Rossendale’s here?”
“Is it business, sir?” She had clearly been trained to be wary of all strange visitors.
“No.” I was about to say I was a friend, but decided that would stretch the truth too far. “It’s a private matter.”
The woman looked dubious, but seemed reassured that I was not in a suit, which meant I was probably not serving a writ or otherwise adding to Peter Tredgarth’s troubles. “He’s at the camp, sir.”
I knew where that was. In the early days of my sister’s marriage, when Peter and I had still been friends, I had been a frequent visitor to Perilly, and I remembered the old camp which had been hastily built in the war to house Italian prisoners doing farm work on the surrounding estates. By the time I, first saw the camp it was already derelict. At one time Peter had thought to turn the old wooden huts into a chicken farm, but in the end he had done nothing and the timber had rotted away and the undergrowth had all but hidden the concrete foundations.
I walked down a tractor-rutted path, past a spinney of alders, then turned alongside the stream which would lead me to the low hill where the camp had been built. I saw Peter Tredgarth standing beside the stream, staring gloomily at the water. He had a shotgun under his arm, making him look uncommonly like a man contemplating the benefits of suicide. He jerked guiltily when I called his name, then stared with surprise as he recognised me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. I could hardly expect him to be glad to see me after our last meeting in the Channel Islands.
“I’ve come to see you. And Elizabeth, of course, but I gather she’s not at home?”
“She never is, these days. I sometimes forget what she looks like.” He peered at me, evidently trying to decide whether to be grudgingly polite or dismissiyely nasty. He didn’t have the guts to be nasty, so offered me a grunt of welcome instead. “D’you see any heron?”
I looked up and down the stream. “No heron, Peter.”
“One of the labourers told me he saw a nesting couple up by the weir. Thought I’d shoot them.”
“Aren’t they a protected species?” I teased him.
“Bad for the fishing, you see. Bloody bad. Best thing to do is shoot them.” He broke the gun and took out the cartridges.
“Why don’t you have a water-bailiff to look after the fishing?” I asked.
“I did. Retired sergeant from my regiment. Nice chap, but I couldn’t afford to pay him.” He looked unhappily at his water, which was choking with weeds. “Needs a bit of work, eh?”
“A bit.”
“Must get down to it one day. You can get a lot for the fishing rights these days. And it’s good water, you know! No damn fish farms filling it up with trout-shit.”
“Why don’t you build your own fish farm,” I asked him, “and pollute it yourself?”
“I tried that, John, but they wouldn’t give me planning permission. Bastards. They’ll let some upstart grocer build a brick bungalow on a beauty spot, but they won’t let a landowner make a decent living. I should have bribed
