that, Laurence thought, and stopped himself from asking any more questions.
Are you al right?' Charles raised an eyebrow. 'Your fish is getting cold.'
Charles's plate was empty but for a couple of game chips, which he transferred so quickly from plate to mouth with his fingers that the action was almost imperceptible. He wiped his hands and moustache with his napkin.
'Do you know, I think you're a bit keen on the mysterious Miss Emmett, Laurence. Who could blame you? She's a handsome girl and since Louise died you've turned yourself into some kind of recluse, so personaly I'm delighted to see an old friend back in play, but, for what it's worth, whatever she was doing last Sunday, it didn't look as if it was making her particularly happy.'
'I don't know,' said Laurence and stopped.
He realised as he spoke that behind the vague reply was a profound truth. The chasm of what he didn't know was huge. Mary was the least of it. Everything he thought he knew when he was eighteen had been meaningless. Everything he had thought his at twenty-one was gone. That was undoubtedly why he was devising hare-brained schemes to chase dead men and why he was so fond of Charles who had seemed old at thirteen and would seem young at eighty.
For want of anything else to say he blurted out, 'I'm actualy going down to the home, asylum, cal it what you wil, where John Emmett was a patient. Next week. Just to see whether there's anything I can find out for ... Mary.'
'Wasn't that somewhere in the Cotswolds? Oxfordshire? Gloucestershire?' Charles asked.
'Fairford. The nursing home is caled Holmwood, it's in Gloucestershire. It's an hour or so west of Oxford by train.'
'Wel,' Charles said, brightening up, 'no need to go by train. We can both go in the car. Good to try her out after her temperamental fit the other day and I haven't got much on during the next week as it so happens. We could leave early, stay a couple of nights somewhere and come back after you've spied out the land.'
Reading the expression in Laurence's face, he added quickly, 'Unless you're taking your Miss Emmett and want to go
When Laurence shook his head, Charles continued, 'Wouldn't get in your way. Have a walk. Take the air. Lovely countryside. Who knows, even pick up a bit of gossip?'
To his surprise Laurence found the thought of going with Charles, even traveling in his car, was a pleasant one. Al the same, he needed to explain more about his enquiry.
'I'm afraid I'm not exactly going as myself,' he started. 'I mean, I am going as myself but I'm not going to represent Mary Emmett. We didn't want the Holmwood people to be aware of my specific interest in John's death. I've sort of invented a brother—Robert—whom we might need to place in the care of a nursing home. Bad experiences in Flanders...' He tailed off.
'Wel, you are a dark horse,' said Charles happily. 'Reminds me of Buldog Drummond. Marvelous read.'
Chapter Twelve
The journey started off more like a voyage. It had been raining al night and it continued to pour as they drove out of London at dawn. There were very few other vehicles on the road. Charles swerved vigorously to avoid standing water on some streets, yet water seeped in round the passenger door. The interior of the car smeled of leather and oil, and the windscreen and side windows were soon misty with condensation. But by the time they reached the country roads beyond Slough the clouds broke up, and when they stopped briefly at an old inn at Hurley at midday it was beginning to get slightly warmer as the sun emerged.
Laurence's back ached as he puled himself upright. It had done so since the war. 'You've got an old man's back,' Charles said as he swung himself nimbly out of his seat.
After a pint of beer, they crunched back through rusty drifts of leaves and bright-green spiked conker cases split open on the steaming path. When they returned to the car, Charles puled back the roof and strapped it down, then took out two woolen scarves, goggles and a map, giving Laurence the less disreputable scarf. Charles set his goggles in place and looked every bit the fearless aviator his driving suggested. Once Laurence got used to the noise and the air rushing past, he relaxed. When they stopped the car a couple of times for Charles to look at the map, he could hear birds and smel the earthiness of the damp countryside. They made little attempt at conversation; Charles occasionaly shouted a brief commentary on the car's performance, which was mostly lost to the wind and the engine, and Laurence made vaguely appreciative gestures with which Charles seemed satisfied.
At one point, where the road was straight and wide, he slowed to ask whether Laurence wanted a go, apparently indifferent to the fact that his friend had never driven a car in his life. Having received a firm refusal, Charles lit his pipe and drove on, occasionaly beating off the sparks which dropped on his coat.
They passed through Maidenhead, Henley, Walingford and Wantage: towns of Georgian brick houses and pale stone bridges with broad and tranquil views of the Thames.
Henley was the only place Laurence had visited before, for the 1911 Regatta. It had been one of the hottest weeks of a blazing summer. He'd stayed with an aristocratic Oxford companion: Richard Standish. The house stood a little way from the town, its park slightly raised above the river. The first morning he had got up early. The air was warm even before the sun rose and as it came up a veil of mist lingered over the water. It was silent at the river's edge, the surface dark and unbroken between the reeds. Standish's people had a large house party. He and Richard and a cousin of Richard's, al unexpected guests, had to share a long attic room in the servants' quarters, under the eaves where they could hear doves cooing while they lay on top of the bedclothes in the stifling heat. It was the week Laurence had met Louise.
Louise, then seventeen, was also staying with friends: a large, noisy family with five daughters. He had sometimes wondered whether their meeting and subsequent attraction had al been based on the fantasy that was that regatta week. Louise was being pushed by her mother to set her sights beyond her mercantile roots. He was lonely and without any family. That week he was ensconced with his titled friend while Louise was nestled at the heart of her ebulient hosts. In those contexts they both seemed to offer what the other most wanted. In fact, when he tried to remember when he first saw Louise—surely this was a crucial moment in any tale of love—he was hard put to separate the pale blur of cream and blue dresses, spinning parasols and straw hats, the chattering and the giggles, into separate young women.
John Emmett was there too, he suddenly recaled, though where he was staying he was not sure. He had forgotten that fact completely but now it occurred to him that was actualy the last time he'd seen him. Into his mind came a picture of John standing barefoot on a slip in a rowing vest and shorts, slender but wel muscled. It had
