Farthing Read online

  11

  The breakfast room was empty when I got there, though there were signs that several people had breakfasted. There was even a copy of The Times on the table. I don't know how it had got into the house—maybe the policemen had brought it. The headline was screaming about Sir James being dead, with a picture of Farthing and another of Sir James, which must have been a fairly recent studio portrait. They said the police were about to make an arrest, which made my blood run cold for a moment until I remembered that the papers flat out make things up. The things they said when I was engaged were beyond belief. I had to stop reading them when they said I was going to have a baby.

  I rang the bell and called for tea and a boiled egg. Meanwhile, I flicked through the paper. There was an obituary inside, much calmer and more the kind of thing one would expect of The Times. I expect the Telegraph was even more adulatory. I skimmed this one, as it was in front of me. It lingered on his achievements, and what it called the "miracle" of the peace:

  In May of 1941, the war looked dark for Britain. We and our Empire stood alone, entirely without allies. The Luftwaffe and the RAF were fighting their deadly duel above our heads. Our allies France, Belgium, Holland, Poland, and Denmark had been utterly conquered. Our ventures to defy the Reich in Norway and Greece had come to nothing. The USSR was allied to the Reich, and the increasingly isolationist USA was sending us only grudging aid. We feared and prepared for invasion. In this dark time, the Fuhrer extended a tentative offer to us. Hess flew to Britain with an offer of peace, each side to keep what they had. Churchill refused to consider it, but wiser heads prevailed and sent young Sir James Thirkie to negotiate in Berlin. He was the obvious choice, a rising man in politics, noted for his personal integrity. The country held its collective breath as the bombing stopped. Then Thirkie returned, proclaiming "Peace with Honour." Not only would we each keep what we had, but Hitler agreed to let us take control of the French colonies in North Africa, while he, his flank secure, could at last do what he was born to do, turn East to face his true enemy, the Bolshevik menace. It was Thirkie's greatest hour of triumph, and the joy of the country, reprieved after two years of war, was comparable to that at Trafalgar or Mafeking.

  I could remember the rejoicing. I was in school, it was high summer, term was nearly over, and we were being examined on the year's work. I always hated exams. I was sitting in the exam room, writing an essay on the Armada, making most of it up as usual because I couldn't remember the details. A beam of sunlight was falling on my desk, so I was shading the paper with my hand. A bee had somehow come inside the room and was stuck at the high window, buzzing and buzzing but unable to find its way up to the top where the thing was propped open. The sound reminded me of a bomber's engine far off. In that drowsy warmth and buzzing, I heard another, shriller sound, and thought at first it was a fighter coming to take on the bomber, though the bomber was a bee, and there had been no siren so there wasn't a raid. I kept on writing, wondering if they'd make us carry our papers down to the shelter if there was a raid or if we'd get out of the exam until later. I was almost hoping for the disturbance a raid would cause, though there were hardly ever daytime raids. The noise came nearer, and at last I could make it out. It was cheering. The mistress invigilating got up to investigate, walked to the back of the room, and then stepped out for a moment to speak to someone in the corridor. She came back in and walked back to the front. I could still hear the cheering, and the girls were starting to look at one another.

  The mistress was flushed pink and smiling. "Girls," she said. "It's peace. Sir James Thirkie has done it. Victory. The war is over."

  We all cheered, and some of us threw our papers up in the air. That night we tore the blackout material off the windows and made a bonfire out of it. Nobody else's brother or mother or father would die. We sang. I was happy, except when I thought of Hugh. Then I wondered gloomily what the whole thing was for, what we had now that we hadn't had in September 1939, why we'd bothered to be in the war at all.

  Lizzie brought my egg, with bread and butter, just the way I like it, and a pot of very weak tea. "You spoil me," I said.

  "Mrs. Smollett knows what you like," she said.

  "Oh, so Mrs. Smollett is in charge this morning, that's why I'm in favor," I said, and Lizzie laughed. The servants had taken sides in the debate over my engagement. Mrs. Smollett, whose real name was Szmolokiewitsz, or something like that, and who was a refugee, naturally took my side. Lizzie was another of my old friends; she supported me because she believed in love.

  "Mrs. Richardson isn't up yet this morning," she said. "She leaves getting breakfast to the Farthing staff."

  "I'm very glad to hear it," I said. There was longstanding rivalry between the "London" staff who traveled down with Mummy, and the "Farthing" staff who stayed in Hampshire whether the family were in residence or not. Mrs. Richardson, who was head cook at whatever establishment Mummy found herself, was one of the servants who very much disapproved of my marriage.

  I sipped my tea and looked down at the grainy and much reproduced picture of Sir James stepping off the cutter waving his treaty. Daddy was just recognizable in the corner. I had been a child when I cheered an end to the fighting and privations. They had been adults, had known what they were doing. All right, eight years after and Hitler was still bogged down fighting the Russians, and maybe it would have been the same for us, the war going on endlessly, wearing us down, making us grayer and poorer every year. Or maybe there would have been a Bolshevik revolution here. I know Daddy was very afraid of that—there were strikes and demands even during the war. But we might have won, have set all of Europe free, as we did at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, made a peace like Vienna, not a peace like Versailles—this was David talking. I'd never thought like that until I met him.

  Daddy came in then. "How are you this morning, Luce?" he asked, ringing the bell.

  "Claustrophobic," I replied.

  Lizzie came in. "Bring me toast and sausages, bacon, black pudding, and fried potatoes," Daddy ordered.

  "Yes, sir. Anything more for you, Mrs. Kahn?"

  "Just some more hot water for the tea, please Lizzie." It had got too strong.

  "Is that all you're having?" Daddy asked disapprovingly. "An egg and bread and butter? You'll never get strong on that. Bring Miss Lucy a rasher, Lizzie. You can eat one rasher, Lucy."

  "No, thank you, Lizzie, I don't want any bacon," I said.

  "Haven't given it up, have you?" Daddy asked. Lizzie bobbed a curtsey and went out, getting out of the line of fire.

  "No, and as you'll have noticed at dinner last night, both David and I happily ate the roast pork and applesauce. I just don't feel like bacon this morning."

  "All right. Sorry, Bunny," Daddy said. "Bunny" was his pet name for me since I was small. "What's making you feel penned in? The police or the press?"

  "What about the press?" I asked.

  "Clock Farthing is apparently packed full of them. The police tell me that any of us would be likely to be mobbed if we try to leave."

  Lizzie came back in with a jug of hot water for me and Daddy's glass and chrome French coffeepot. She put them down where we could reach them and went out again.

  "I saw The Times," I said, indicating it. "I suppose the press are a necessary evil."

  I made myself another cup of tea. Half an inch of tea and the rest of the cup hot water, blissful, almost like the real thing.

  "We can gag them when we want to," Daddy said. "If it's a national security issue, for instance. We try not to do it too much. Something like this, well, it's obvious they'd have a field day." He picked up the paper and read a few lines. " 'Tragic waste of his genius.' What twaddle. James wasn't a genius, though he was a sharp man, and good at seeing a job through."

  "He persuaded Hitler to make peace with us and attack Russia," I said.

  "Hitler was panting to attack Russia," Daddy said, pushing down the plunger on his coffee. "He might have done it even without patching up a peace
with us first. Even The Times admits that it was Hess who started the negotiation."

  Lizzie came back in, carrying a covered plate. "I'm sorry your lordship, but there's no black puddings. Mrs. Smollett is out of them, and we're not allowed to go to the village."

  Daddy threw down the paper in irritation. "Very well, very well," he said. "Give me what you have."

  "Mrs. Smollett has given you an extra sausage and two more rashers to make up," Lizzie said, putting the plate down.

  Mark and Daphne came in at that moment. Daphne was heavily made up. Mark looked handsome and untouchable, as always. "Bacon and scrambled eggs, and coffee," he said breezily to Lizzie.

  "I'll have the same as Lord Eversley," Daphne said, sitting down beside me. "Is there tea?"

  "I'll bring tea, madam," Lizzie said, and rushed out.

  "There's no bloody black pudding," Daddy said.

  "You sound more distressed about that than about poor James being dead," Mark said.

  "Poor James," Daddy mocked. "I can see he's our new martyr. Pity there isn't a General Election; we'd be sure to win on the sympathy vote. And what the devil were you doing going into his bedroom anyway, Mark? Not up to your tricks again?"

  Mark glanced at Daphne, who was staring at the rather frightful picture on the opposite wall. It's said to be early Dutch and from the school of someone or other, but it's a terribly dark picture of lots of very dead silvery fish on a slab. Mummy hated it, and as she never ate breakfast she put it in here to intimidate everyone else. I was used to it, but I've seen visitors change their minds about eating after seeing it. Then Mark looked at me, and back at Daddy, who had speared a piece of sausage as if it were an enemy.

  If Mark didn't trust me, I didn't like to say that I already knew it was Daphne who had found the body. I had finished eating in any case, so I stood up.

  "Going, Luce?" Daddy asked, looking up from his plate. "How would you fancy a ride in an hour? We'd better not go off the property, but we could go up to the woods and around the lake, get some exercise. No point in keeping the horses down here eating their heads off for nothing."

  It was a wonderful idea, and it brightened the day immediately. I hadn't ridden in months—riding in London was no fun, going up and down the Row with everyone watching, more like showing a horse than riding one properly. Daddy was like that. He'd seem gruff and selfish, and then he'd see the right thing to do and suggest it.

  "I'd absolutely love to," I said, and Daddy smiled at me in a pleased kind of way. I went up to my room to change.

  I hadn't brought riding clothes down with me. But I knew I had an old pair of black jodhpurs in the back of my closet unless Mrs. Simons had turned it out. She hadn't. They were hanging there among the other bits and pieces I hadn't bothered to take with me when I married, the lilac jacket with the stain on the pocket, the ghastly gold lamé dress Mummy insisted I wear to be presented, the brown leather jacket, much too big for me, that I used to use as a dressing gown when scuttling to the bathroom in the winter. I pulled on the jodhpurs, struggling to do them up. I'd put weight on in London. I added a cream pullover and the jacket of my heather tweeds. I'd brought the tweeds because tweeds are always correct in the country, and I really didn't have any idea what Mummy intended.

  I went down to the stables and got Harry to saddle Manzikert and Trafalgar. I spent a little while saying hello to the horses, who were mostly old friends. There was one new little brood mare Daddy had picked up somewhere, called Clover, and a new colt out in the paddock, by Issus out of Valley Forge. Harry said they were calling him Dunkirk.

  "I haven't had much time for the horses this year," Daddy said as he came up. "I miss your help in the stables."

  "I miss the horses," I admitted.

  "You could take Manny," he said. Harry led the horses out and I swung myself up onto Manny's broad back. "She's yours by any measure—you've ridden her for years."

  I patted her neck. "I'm tempted, but I don't have anywhere to keep her and she'd hate to be kept in a hacking stable. Anyway, you know I never ride in London."

  "When you and David get yourself a country place," Daddy said, "you could start a stud."

  "One day," I said, though I knew that David loved London and loved his work. David had a kind of bank, funded partly by his family money and partly by my money that I'd brought with me when I married him, and the bank loaned money in tiny amounts to poor people who wanted to start up in business or expand the businesses they had. Many of his customers are Jews and many of them are women, and there are little corner shops and traveling plumbers and building firms all over the country that are thriving now where otherwise people might be on the dole, all because David believed in his scheme and made it work. He hated to leave it even for a few days. I didn't think he'd ever want to live in the country.

  Harry asked Daddy if he wanted his shotgun. "Not while the birds are out of bounds," he said. "I could pot a rabbit or a hare, but where's the sport in that? Besides, Mrs. Richardson wouldn't deign to put it on the table, hey?" We all laughed at that.

  "I'm very partial to jugged hare," Harry said.

  "So am I," Daddy said. "And hare with raspberry sauce."

  "Mrs. Smollett does a lovely jugged hare," Harry said.

  Daddy took the shotgun and slung it across the saddle. "Just for you," he said.

  We walked the horses until we were up on the turf. Then we brought them to a trot, into a canter, and at last a good gallop. Manny definitely needed the exercise, she was raring to go, and Trafalgar gave her a good race. If we'd gone on we'd have been on land that was part of Adams's farm, so Daddy pulled up and turned onto the track through the woods, where we had to walk them. The horses were happy enough to walk, having had a little run, and it did mean we could talk.

  "Can the police really make us stay on our own land?" I asked.

  "Yes and no," Daddy grunted. "They can ask us to, and we will, of course, because we don't want to pervert the course of justice. If we really wanted to go, they couldn't stop us without arresting us. Your mother says if they don't let us go tomorrow she's going to drive down to the gates and dare them to arrest her in front of the press and the whole world. They wouldn't do it, of course."

  No, they wouldn't arrest Mummy, or Mark Normanby, even though pretending he'd found the body when Daphne had was actually coming much closer to perverting the course of justice than I'd like to go. They might arrest David, though, if we tried to leave. It would give them an excuse. Nobody would protest, least of all the press, who were always stirring up hatred against Jews. I hoped they'd find the real murderer soon.

  The woods were beautiful, bluebells everywhere, and the trees in just their best leaf, all the green looking newly washed. The sun kept going in and out of the clouds, and every time it came out the landscape lit up again, so you never got tired of it. There were lots of ferns just uncurling under the trees—I kept feeling that I might catch one in the act. There was also a terrific amount of very vibrant moss anywhere it was shaded and the slightest bit damp, which Daddy shook his head at but which I privately thought very beautiful. We came out of the woods by the lake, where we could trot a little. We saw a few hares, too far and too fast to shoot, and plenty of whirring wood pigeons making, as Hugh once said, their insistent demands for a return to the one style of architecture that really suited them: "Ro-coo-co! Ro-coo-co!"

  We talked a little as we rode.

  "Normanby's a donkey, and his wife's worse," Daddy said. "Know anything about that?"

  "I'm not sure their marriage will last," I said, looking at the bluebells and the woods and not at Daddy. If he was feeling me out to see if I knew about Daphne finding the body, I didn't want to play.

  "It'll last if the silly ass wants to be Prime Minister," Daddy said, and snorted. "Divorce is a dirty word in politics. It's important to be seen to be doing the right thing."

  "They could live apart, though," I suggested.

  "Oh yes, they could live apart."

  W
e rode on, not talking about anything important, and then we came back around the woods, having made a circle, to where we could gallop back downhill towards home.

  Manny sensed something before I did. Maybe it was something that showed more clearly to horse sense than humans. She put up her head and whickered. I turned to Daddy to say something about her being spooked, then something whizzed between us, stinging me hard on the cheek. I could swear I didn't hear a sound until afterwards. "Dammit, he's hit you," Daddy said, and then he yelled, "Go, Lucy!" and in case I didn't, he slapped Manny's flank and she took off downhill as if it were the home stretch of the Derby. I tried to look back, but I couldn't see anything. There was something trickling down my cheek.

  "Daddy!" I shouted. I heard another whizzing sound, and then the familiar bang of a shotgun.

  I managed to get control of Manny and turn her back up the slope, which might have been crazy of me. David said it was. He also said it was the kind of thing people did in combat, so that was all right. I didn't think about it—there was no time to think about anything, really. Trafalgar came down towards us. Daddy was slumped over on her back, riding like a sack of turnips. "Are you all right, Bunny?" he called.

  "Me?" I was surprised he asked. "I'm fine. How about you?"

  "He winged me. I've a bullet in my arm. But I got him. Now we'll find out what's going on."

  "You got him?" I echoed.

  One of the police constables came up and caught at Manny's head. "What's happening?" he asked.

  "My daughter and I were attacked by a terrorist," Daddy said. "I defended myself with my shotgun."

  "A terrorist?" I asked.

  "Are you sure you got him?" the policeman asked.

  "Oh yes, I got him," Daddy said. "He's dead."

  12

  Royston interrupted Carmichael just as he was finishing with Lord Eversley's report.

  "A couple of things, sir," Royston said.

  Carmichael set his report down, knowing Royston, unlike Yately, wouldn't interrupt him frivolously.