* * * *

  Kerslake, deep in the great leather armchair facing Warboys’ desk, uncomfortable with his semi-foetal position, holding his glass of dry sherry on the arm of the chair, wishing it were a pint of draught bitter, hearing the slick of car tyres on the wet roadway outside, and a little angry at the belated news which Warboys had just given, said, “Oh, they can do it – in some respects better than us. But I don’t like it.”

  “You think it gives them a semi-official position?”

  “Perhaps, sir.”

  “Let them do the hard work and, if we find it expedient, at the end we can step in. Think of the economies, too. Our budget is already over-extended.”

  “They’d cut his throat without a qualm if they thought it would get them something.”

  “Time has modified their procedures – a little. But let us forget them for the moment. What have you got?”

  “I’ve had a man down there. There was nothing much to gain at the Abbey. However, the Red Lion turned up something. The day he left he had a guest to lunch. Waiters have long memories when they hear the rustle of a fiver. A Miss Margery Littleton. Took a bar lunch there two or three times a week. Solicitor’s private secretary. Three phone calls tracked her down. Or rather her office. She left the same day as Maurice Crillon – to go and look after a sick aunt in Scotland.”

  “Ah, the sick aunt – what would life, leave alone fiction, do without her? So?”

  “No point in phoning a sick aunt who might not be sick and so make her sick with anxiety or curiosity. Our man went to the block of flats, rang the bell, got no answer and the caretaker kindly obliged —”

  “Spare me the rest – unless it’s particularly piquant.”

  “Traditional. Young chap spent the night with her once or twice. She told the caretaker to keep an eye on things since she was going off for some days, and he watched her drive away in a Renault 14—”

  “Flushed and happy as a bride. And now nothing to do until she returns from her sick aunt in France. She seems a girl of some spirit.”

  “I don’t understand some of these girls.”

  “My dear Kerslake, you sound positively upset.”

  Kerslake laughed. “Well, they take risks, don’t they?”

  “We all do every time we cross the road. Anyway, enough of this. You’ve got nothing germane.”

  “No. But we’ve asked the French to check Renault 14 car registrations under Maurice Crillon – that’ll take some time. Longer, perhaps all eternity.”

  “Don’t be depressed. She’ll be back, dewy-eyed and full of fond memories. I really do admire the girls of today. When she does come back, perhaps you might see her yourself – and be gentle. And don’t upset the apple-cart for her at the solicitor’s office. Let her sweet memories remain untarnished. And remember – there’s really no hurry about any of this.”

  “May I ask you why not, sir?”

  The now rare ‘sir’ amused Warboys. He said, “If you’ll excuse the cliche – there’s more to this than meets the eye. I wonder if you got that feeling when you were at Avoncourt Abbey?”

  “I got the impression that Sir Andrew was enjoying himself. Some private joke?”

  “His life has been full of those – and griefs. But one mustn’t imagine for one moment that he is an entertaining buffoon. You know his record – open and closed. A gallant soldier, and then an ardent Gaullist with the Resistance Movement. One of our on-and-off irregulars whenever we needed him. I never censured him because during the Rommel advance pure luck dropped something into his hands which he kept from us for his own private use – vendetta, you might say – against the Sir Julian Markover types. Did you know that his son, never seen, a few weeks old, was killed in the first bombing raid by the Italians on Toulon in nineteen forty?”

  “No.”

  “That leaves the kind of emotional scar which never quite heals. And its memory works a strange yeast in a man’s attitudes. We should never have known about the business of Markover and the others, had Markover not taken the deliberate risk of coming to us eventually.”

  “Preferring official to private blackmail?”

  “And thereby opening up the prospect of eventual reestablishment.”

  “And Sir Andrew’s private joke?”

  “Ah, yes – that. Until we know better then it’s a case of. . . He only does it to annoy. Because he knows it teases.”

  “More likely pleases as well. You think?”

  “Oh, yes – but us, too, when the day comes that we see the point of the joke. Of that I am sure.”

  * * * *

  The end came as she knew it had to come, but she found herself – and was pleased at this, for she wished to have nothing mar her paradisiacal interregnum – without high emotion, or tearful regrets and longings. She made it that much easier for herself, too, by cosseting the simple fiction in her mind, though more banally expressed, that though man proposes, God disposes. There was no law against hope. Some day he might come back for her – the too short idyll would be renewed on a much longer tenancy and – stretching it over far – though she did not insist on this element – the wedding bells would ring. And, anyway, if it were all girlish nonsense and she wished to encourage it in herself, no one could say her nay. Though she was sensible enough to keep her dreams unexpressed to him.

  They drove to Bordeaux on a Saturday, lunched on the road in a vine-arboured garden, held hands across the table, denying nothing of the romance fleeting so fast from them – and perhaps, though not openly expressed – each one (for there are some situations which suspend time and suppress mercifully truth long known) giving temporary living room to the if-onlys and the wouldn’t-it-be-wonderfuls which make the coarse inevitabilities of life bearable by temporary remoteness. Playing her game, Maurice, to his surprise, found himself pleasingly deceived too by the romantic handful of days passed and now and again giving house-room to thoughts which had long been strangers to him. She was so good and beautiful and bountiful it seemed a shame for the curtain to fall and no cries of Bis! Bis! ever able to raise it again.

  They came in to Bordeaux over the Pont d’Aquitaine and the Garonne and booked in at an hotel in the Parc des Expositions overlooking the lake. She would have liked to have seen the art school in which he worked, but was easily steered from this wish.

  Their last night was pure Paradise Sustained, though she wept a little, silently, after he was asleep, and – an odd thought in her drowsy drift to oblivion – wondered if she would ever tell her aunt about it all . . . not the full truth, for that was hers to cherish, but an expurgated edition, enough to reward her for making the past marvellous days possible.

  He drove her out to the airport at mid-morning, leaving the barest but comfortable time to catch her plane – and this, part of his kindness, she knew – because there is no agony on earth more rending for lovers than to spend an eternity of two hours in an airport lounge, bereft of real speech, denied privacy for true embraces, waiting for the tannoy to call the boarding warning and the fall of the curtain on over-prolonged and inhibited farewells.

  She was back in Salisbury by seven o’clock.

  Maurice Crillon was in Cragnac by half-past three. He unloaded his car and for the first time took out the Augustus John painting of his father from its brown paper wrappings. For a while he was undecided what to do with it. There was little room on the sitting room walls for it. He took it upstairs to his bedrom and hung it on the far wall from the window where the light fell evenly on it. He had no sentimental feeling about it, only an odd conviction that from his mother – no mother, but deeply loved and respected – there had come to him his own love of secrecy, of protecting his true emotions, and the almost mystical passion he had for giving no more of his true self to anyone than absolute necessity demanded.

  Straightening the picture a little, eyeing it now with professional regard, he thought that some day, when he had the time, he might clean it. A little act of unnecessary tenderness towards Sir Andrew . . .

  * * * *

  Told on the telephone the next morning – a Monday – by his man in Salisbury that Miss Littleton had returned to her flat, Kerslake, less out of tenderness for the woman’s feelings than from a need first of all to consult Warboys, told him to take no action until instructed. Warboys, coming in late from a weekend fishing on the Test, was pleased to hear the news of the return, but asked, “Why are you holding your man off?”

  “Because of the other side. They’re working on it too. What’s the poor girl going to think if first we go in – and then Markover’s people follow suit?”

  Warboys smiled. “Never did I think to have such compassion demonstrated by you. But you’re right. Two visits from different people. She’s going to wonder what on earth it’s all about and maybe – all her passionate protective instincts roused – then neither side will probably get much from her – if there is anything useful to get. And come to that – just one visit will seem strange. People she doesn’t know, or know about – pumping her about Crillon? Oh, yes – you’re quite right. Well, I can fix it with Markover. He’ll understand and trust us. But it’s still going to be a strange somebody who walks in on her. How do you get over that?”

  Kerslake smiled. “I’m thinking of somebody she knows about and will respect, and who already has a valid connection with Crillon. I think he’d enjoy it – and do it as well as anyone. If he will do it, that is.”

  “I think he will. But do we trust him? After all Sir Andrew isn’t a bit interested in whether we get the painting and its contents back.”

  “I’m glad you said it and not me. But it presents no difficulty. She’s out all day. I’ll get the flat bugged. When Sir Andrew gives us his version of their talk we can check it against the recording.”

  Warboys shook his head with mock sadness. “That I should do this to one of my best and oldest friends. Still in different circumstances he would do it to me. That’s what friendship is all about – understanding. Nothing is dearer to a man than a serviceable friend. Not my words: Plautus. All right, I’ll get in touch with him. Markover won’t mind. His fraternity works on different lines from us.”

  So it was that two days later Sir Andrew Starr saw Margery Littleton. This took place not, as had been expected by Warboys or Kerslake, in her already efficiently bugged flat, but at her place of work – a slip-up unforeseen by Kerslake and not catered for in Warboys’ talk with his friend, since both had assumed he would seek a private meeting.

  At eleven o’clock in the morning Miss Littleton was called into her employer’s room and introduced to Sir Andrew and her employer insisted on leaving them alone as a mark of courtesy to Sir Andrew, who soon put her at her ease.

  “Nothing serious, my dear. Just wanted a chat about someone we both know. Maurice Crillon. I thought you might be able to help me.”

  The adrenalin charge in her beginning to ease, Margery said, “If I can, Sir Andrew. How did you know him?

  “I had him up at the Abbey – cleaning and restoring some pictures for me. Damned cheek my coming here like this. But it seemed the only way. He mentioned once that he’d made friends with a Miss Littleton who worked in a solicitor’s office. So I tracked you down. Damned cheek again. But there it is ..

  “Well, Sir Andrew . . . if I can help . . .”

  “I’m sure you can.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “I hear you’ve just got back from nursing a sick aunt in Scotland.” There was a warmth in his slight roguish half-lift of an eyebrow. “At your age I used my aunts in the same way. Fact is one way and another I was very impressed with Maurice Crillon. Comes from good stock . . .” he rattled on, putting her at her ease. “But the point is that he started this cleaning work for me at the Abbey – and now he’s popped off into the blue. And I want him back to finish the work – wouldn’t trust anyone else. You wouldn’t know where I could find him, would you, my dear?” Suddenly the tension in her was gone and confidence in this man spread through her like a slow balm. Added to which she knew that here was a man of long experience to whom she could talk in confidence. Perhaps the only person in the world she would ever want to talk to in such a way.

  Smiling, she said, “I’ve got an aunt in Scotland but she’s not been ill – though she agreed in case –”

  “Say no more, my dear.”

  “We went to France together. It was something . . . well, I never imagined I could or would ever do.”

  “Good for you. Gather ye rosebuds and all that – but no need to tell me anything more on that side. I can read it in your eyes. Also –” he put out a sun-browned hand and touched one of hers “– I admire your spirit. But the point is – do you know how I can get in touch with him? I could give him six months’ work at the Abbey, cleaning and restoring.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful . . . but I don’t really know, except that he said he worked in an art school in Bordeaux. That’s where he put me on the plane. I don’t even remember the names of all the places we went to.”

  “Why should you – paradise isn’t a place. It’s something you suddenly find all around you. Well, don’t worry. If he’s in Bordeaux I’ll find some way of getting in touch with him and —” he was silent for a moment or two, eyeing her with a fatherly tenderness, “– when I do I’ll let you know.”

  “Oh, that would be lovely, Sir Andrew.”

  “And don’t worry about things here. The firm handle quite a few of the Abbey affairs.” For a moment or two he wished that he could tell her Maurice’s address but rejected the temptation. For himself he was only going through the motions demanded of him by Birdcage. Common sense told him that to trust her with it was too dangerous. Other people would be watching her – and he did not mean to help either Birdcage or the other damned side. In his heart of hearts, too, he guessed that Maurice would have given him no thanks. They had had their time together. Leave it at that. Memories unmarred, the red hot coals greying to ash which the winds of Time would finally and gently scatter. . .

  That afternoon he telephoned Warboys and told him that he had got no joy from Margery Littleton. But since he knew it was a lie he did tell him about the possibility of a Bordeaux address . . . the more false scents the better. So far as he was concerned Maurice could run forever. . . dear boy – a chip off the old block in so many ways. Damned fine girl, nice – but a bit on the emotionally stupid side, God bless her. One day, of course, they would catch up with Maurice – the odds had to be that way. What would they do? Sneak in at night and pinch the Augustus John? And that would be that. Finis. And the dead would go on sleeping. . . and he one day would join them. But not too soon. . . there was a great deal more yet left to live for.

  * * * *

  Maurice was lying on his bed in the late afternoon after working for a while on a pen-and-ink drawing he had been doing from memory of Margery Littleton, naked, but transposing her into the attitude of Goya’s La maja desnuda, raised a little against a pile of pillows and giving her face – in contrast to the original – a look of pure innocent joy. While doing it, remembering that Goya had died in Bordeaux, he had smiled to himself and had written underneath in English – Souvenir of the Hotel Aquitania, Bordeaux. Sometime perhaps he would send it to her. It was the kind of thing she would love . . . Just for a moment or two he regretted that she was no longer with him . . . undemanding, trusting, and loving. Thinking of her and of Salisbury and Avoncourt Abbey, he looked across at the painting of his father. He still didn’t like it very much. Perhaps one day he would clean it and send it back to Sir Andrew. Perhaps . . .

  At this moment someone banged the heavy knocker on the front door three times loudly. He went downstairs unhurriedly and opened the door. Carla stood outside and across the road was parked Aldo’s Alfa Sud.

  “Maurice!” Her arms went round him and her mouth found his and without hesitation his own knew his hunger for her. Still embracing her, he drew her inside and put out a foot and shut the front door.

  She laughed then, and drawing back from him said, “Oh, caro Maurice . . . always Maurice. I do nothing to compromise you, you beast. There was an old man working in the garden when I first came by. I wait until he goes for I say to myself maybe here my dear Maurice has a reputation to guard. After all it is your home. Are you not glad to see me? You want to talk first. Or we go upstairs – or maybe you have some little visitor there and I go away and come back after? Such good news that I have will keep –”

  He laughed, sat her down in a chair, and holding her face in his hands, kissed her lips lingeringly and then sat down himself. He said, “My heart when I saw you leapt for joy. But now joy must wait a little while. My head is full of questions.”

  “Are you angry that I find you?”

  “No. I knew you would one day. You are the one from whom final escape is not possible. This you have always known. Now from the beginning. Take your time and I will get you a glass of wine. Mamma mia – things must have changed with Aldo since he lends you his beloved car.”

  “Many things have changed – and more will if you are sensible. Still we leave that for the moment. I will tell you everything from the beginning.”

  She did, but still restless with happiness, she reached out and held his hand now and again and the thought passed through him that not even the greatest artist in the world could ever truly and fully catch the linked moments of joy passing across a woman’s face, for they defied the eyes of mortals. Maybe the gods looking down saw them fully.

  When she came to Trudi, she said, “I like her and we are at once as sisters so she tells me everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “About how you run away together. And then how you leave her . . . poor Fraülein Keller. She is not the type to know you for what you are. And then to use her as a letter box – oh, Maurice you are wicked.”