Part 24 (2/2)

I smiled at him over the menu. 'Good.'

'For deviousness, Daniel, you are unsurpa.s.sed. Except possibly by Roddy Beckett.'

'My dear Edward... have some bread.'

He laughed, and we travelled amicably to London together, as ill-a.s.sorted looking a pair as ever rested heads on British Railways' starched white antimaca.s.sars.

I poured some more coffee and looked at my watch. Colonel Beckett was twenty minutes late. The pigeons sat peacefully on the window sill and I s.h.i.+fted gently in my chair, but with patience, not boredom, and thought about my visit to October's barber, and the pleasure with which I had had my hair cut short and sideburns shaved off. The barber himself (who had asked me to pay in advance) was surprised, he said, at the results.

'We look a lot more like a gentleman, don't we? But might I suggest... a shampoo?'

Grinning, I agreed to a shampoo, which left a high water mark of cleanliness about midway down my neck. Then, at October's house, there was the fantastic luxury of stepping out of my filthy disguise into a deep hot bath, and the strangeness with which I afterwards put on my own clothes. When I had finished dressing I took another look in the same long mirror. There was the man who had come from Australia four months ago, a man in a good dark grey suit, a white s.h.i.+rt and a navy blue silk tie: there was his sh.e.l.l anyway. Inside I wasn't the same man, nor ever would be again.

I went down to the crimson drawing-room where October walked solemnly all round me, gave me a gla.s.s of bone dry sherry and said, 'It is utterly unbelievable that you are the young tyke who just came down with me on the train.'

'I am,' I said dryly, and he laughed.

He gave me a chair with its back to the door, where I drank some sherry and listened to him making social chit-chat about his horses. He was hovering round the fireplace not entirely at ease, and I wondered what he was up to.

I soon found out. The door opened and he looked over my shoulder and smiled.

'I want you both to meet someone,' he said.

I stood up and turned round.

Patty and Elinor were there, side by side.

They didn't know me at first. Patty held out her hand politely and said, 'How do you do?' clearly waiting for her father to introduce us.

I took her hand in my left one and guided her to a chair.

'Sit down,' I suggested. 'You're in for a shock.'

She hadn't seen me for three months, but it was only four days since Elinor had made her disastrous visit to Humber's. She said hesitantly, 'You don't look the same... but you're Daniel.' I nodded, and she blushed painfully.

Patty's bright eyes looked straight into mine, and her pink mouth parted.

'You... are you really? Danny boy?'

'Yes.'

'Oh,' A blush as deep as her sister's spread up from her neck, and for Patty that was shame indeed.

October watched their discomfiture. 'It serves them right,' he said, 'for all the trouble they have caused.'

'Oh no,' I exclaimed, 'it's too hard on them... and you still haven't told them anything about me, have you?'

'No,' he agreed uncertainly, beginning to suspect there was more for his daughters to blush over than he knew, and that his surprise meeting was not an unqualified success.

'Then tell them now, while I go and talk to Terence... and Patty... Elinor...' They looked surprised at my use of their first names and I smiled briefly, 'I have a very short and defective memory.'

They both looked subdued when I went back, and October was watching them uneasily. Fathers, I reflected, could be very unkind to their daughters without intending it.

'Cheer up,' I said. 'I'd have had a dull time in England without you two.'

'You were a beast,' said Patty emphatically, sticking to her guns.

'Yes... I'm sorry.'

'You might have told us,' said Elinor in a low voice.

'Nonsense,' said October. 'He couldn't trust Patty's tongue.'

'I see,' said Elinor, slowly. She looked at me tentatively. 'I haven't thanked you, for... for saving me. The doctor told me... all about it.' She blushed again.

'Sleeping beauty,' I smiled. 'You looked like my sister.'

'You have a sister?'

'Two,' I said. 'Sixteen and seventeen.'

'Oh,' she said, and looked comforted.

October flicked me a glance. 'You are far too kind to them Daniel. One of them made me loathe you and the other nearly killed you, and you don't seem to care.'

I smiled at him. 'No. I don't. I really don't. Let's just forget it.'

So in spite of a most unpromising start it developed into a good evening, the girls gradually losing their embarra.s.sment and even, by the end, being able to meet my eyes without blus.h.i.+ng.

When they had gone to bed October put two fingers into an inner pocket, drew out a slip of paper, and handed it to me without a word. I unfolded it. It was a cheque for ten thousand pounds. A lot of noughts. I looked at them in silence. Then, slowly, I tore the fortune in half and put the pieces in an ash-tray.

'Thank you very much,' I said. 'But I can't take it.'

'You did the job. Why not accept the pay?'

'Because...' I stopped. Because what? I was not sure I could put it into words. It had something to do with having learned more than I had bargained for. With diving too deep. With having killed. All I was sure of was that I could no longer bear the thought of receiving money for it.

'You must have a reason,' said October, with a touch of irritation.

'Well, I didn't really do it for the money, to start with, and I can't take that sort of sum from you. In fact, when I get back I am going to repay you all that is left of the first ten thousand.'

'No,' he protested. 'You've earned it. Keep it. You need it for your family.'

'What I need for my family, I'll earn by selling horses.'

He stubbed out his cigar. 'You're so infuriatingly independent that I don't know now how you could face being a stable lad. If it wasn't for the money, why did you do it?'

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