In the interest of continuing to survive for another week or ten days, I stopped at the supermarket nearest to the friend’s aunt’s house and spent my food allotment on enough provisions for the purpose: bunch of packet soups, loaf of bread, box of spaghetti, box of porridge oats, pint of milk, a cauliflower and some carrots. I would eat the vegetables raw whenever I felt like it, and otherwise enjoy soup with bread in it, soup on spaghetti and porridge with milk. Items like tea, Marmite and salt cropped up occasionally. Crumpets and butter came at scarce intervals when I could no longer resist them. Apart from all that I bought once a month a bottle of vitamin pills to stuff me full of any oddments I might be missing and, dull though it might seem and in spite of frequent hunger, I had stayed in resounding good health all along.
I opened the front door with my latchkey and met the friend’s aunt in the hall.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “Everything all right?”
I told her about Ronnie sending my book to America, and her thin face filled with genuine pleasure. She was roughly fifty, divorced, a grandmother, sweet, fair-haired, undemanding and boring. I understood that she regarded the rent I paid her (a fifth of what I had had to fork out for my former flat) as more a bribe to get her to let a stranger into her house than as an essential part of her income. In addition, though, she had agreed I could put milk in her fridge, wash my dishes in her sink, shower in her bathroom and use her washer-drier once a week. I wasn’t to make a noise or ask anyone in. We had settled these details amicably. She had installed a coin-in-the-slot electric meter for me, and approved a toaster, a kettle, a tiny tabletop cooker and new plugs for a television and a razor.
She’d been introduced to me as “Aunty” and that’s what I called her, and she seemed to regard me as a sort of extension nephew. We had lived for ten months in harmony, our lives adjacent but uninvolved.
“It’s very cold... are you warm enough up there?” she asked kindly.
“Yes, thank you,” I said. The electric heater ate money. I almost never switched it on.
“These old houses... very cold under the roofs.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
She said, “Good, dear,” amiably, and we nodded to each other, and I went upstairs thinking that I’d lived in the Arctic Circle and if I hadn’t been able to deal with a cold London attic I would have been ashamed of myself. I wore silk jersey, long-sleeved undershirts and long johns under sweaters and jeans under the ski suit, and I slept warmly in a sleeping bag designed for the North Pole. It was writing that made me cold.
Up in my eyrie I struggled for a couple of hours to resolve the plight of the helium balloon but ended with only a speculation on nerve pathways. Why didn’t terror make one deaf, for instance? How did it always beeline to the bowel? My man in the balloon didn’t know and was too miserable to care. I thought I’d have to invent a range of mountains dead ahead for him to come to grief on. Then he would merely have the problem of descending from an Everest-approximation with only fingers, toes and resolution. Much easier. I knew a tip or two about that, the first being to look for the longest way down because it would be the least steep. Sharp-faced mountains often had sloping backs.
My attic, once the retreat of the youngest of Aunty’s daughters, had a worn pink carpet and cream wallpaper sprigged with pink roses. The resident furniture of bed, chest of drawers, tiny wardrobe, two chairs and a table was overwhelmed by a veritable army of crates, boxes and suitcases containing my collected worldly possessions: clothes, books, household goods and sports equipment, all top quality and in good shape, acquired in carefree bygone affluence. Two pairs of expensive skis stood in their covers in a corner. Wildly extravagant cameras and lenses rested in dark foam beds. I kept in working order a windproof, sandproof, bugproof tent which self-erected in seconds and weighed only three pounds. I checked also climbing gear and a camcorder from time to time. A word processor with a laser printer, which I still used, was wrapped most of the time in sheeting. My helicopter pilot’s license lay in a drawer, automatically expired now since I hadn’t flown for a year. A life on hold, I thought. A life suspended.
I thought occasionally that I could eat better if I sold something, but I’d never get back what I’d paid for the skis, for instance, and it seemed stupid to cannibalize things that had given me pleasure. They were mostly, anyway, the tools of my past trade and I might need them again. They were my safety net. The travel firm had said they would take me back once I’d got this foolishness out of my system.
If I’d known I was going to do what I was doing, I would have planned and saved a lot more in advance, perhaps: but between the final irresistible impulse and its execution there had been only about six weeks. The vague intention had been around a lot longer; for most of my life.
Helium balloon ...
The second half of the advance on Long Way Home wasn’t due until publication day, a whole long year ahead. My small weekly allotted parcels of money wouldn’t last that long, and I didn’t see how I could live on much less. My rent-in-advance would run out at the end of June. If, I thought, if I could finish this balloon lark by then and if it were accepted and if they paid the same advance as before, then maybe I’d just manage the full two years. Then if the books fell with a dull thud, I’d give up and go back to the easier rigors of the wild.
THAT NIGHT THE air temperature over London plummeted still further, and in the morning Aunty’s house was frozen solid.
“There’s no water,” she said in distress when I went downstairs. “The central heating stopped and all the pipes have frozen. I’ve called the plumber. He says everyone’s in the same boat and just to switch everything off. He can’t do anything until it thaws, then he’ll come to fix any leaks.” She looked at me helplessly. “I’m very sorry, dear, but I’m going to stay in a hotel until this is over. I’m going to close the house. Can you find somewhere else for a week or two? Of course I’ll add the time on to your six months, you won’t lose by it, dear.”
Dismay was a small word for what I felt. I helped her close all the stopcocks I could find and made sure she had switched off her water heaters, and in return she let me use her telephone to look for another roof.
I got through to her nephew, who still worked for the travel firm.
“Do you have any more aunts?” I inquired.
“Good God, what have you done with that one?”
I explained. “Could you lend me six feet of floor to unroll my bedding on?”
“Why don’t you gladden the life of your parents on that Caribbean island?”
“Small matter of the fare.”
“You can come for a night or two if you’re desperate,” he said. “But Wanda’s moved in with me, and you know how tiny the flat is.”
I also didn’t much like Wanda. I thanked him and said I would let him know, and racked my brains for somewhere else.
It was inevitable I should think of Tremayne Vickers.
I phoned Ronnie Curzon and put it to him straight. “Can you sell me to that racehorse trainer?”
“What?”
“He was offering free board and lodging.”
“Take me through it one step at a time.”
I took him through it and he was all against it.
“Much better to get on with your new book.”
“Mm,” I said. “The higher a helium balloon rises the thinner the air is and the lower the pressure, so the helium balloon expands, and goes on rising and expanding until it bursts.”
“What?”
“It’s too cold to invent stories. Do you think I could do what Tremayne wants?”
“You could probably do a workmanlike job.”
“How long would it take?”
“Don’t do it,” he said.
“Tell him I’m brilliant after all and can start at once.”
“You’re mad.”
“I might as well learn about racing. Why not? I might use it in a book. And I can ride. Tell him that.”
“Impulse will kill you one of these days.” I should have listened to him, but I didn’t.
I WAS NEVER sure exactly what Ronnie said to Tremayne, but when I phoned again at noon he was mournfully triumphant.
“Tremayne agreed you can write his book. He quite took to you yesterday, it seems.” Pessimism vibrated down the wire. “He’s agreed to guarantee you a writing fee.” Ronnie mentioned a sum which would keep me eating through the summer. “It’s payable in three installments—a quarter after a month’s work, a quarter when he approves the full manuscript, and half on publication. If I can get a regular publisher to take it on, the publisher will pay you, otherwise Tremayne will. He’s agreed you should have forty percent of any royalties after that, not thirty. He’s agreed to pay your expenses while you research his life. That means if you want to go to interview people who know him, he’ ll pay for your transport. That’s quite a good concession, actually. He thinks it’s odd that you haven’t a car, but I reminded him that people who live in London often don’t. He says you can drive one of his. He was pleased you can ride. He says you should take riding clothes with you and also a dinner jacket, as he’s to be guest of honor at some dinner or other and he wants you to witness it. I told him you were an expert photographer so he wants you to take your camera.”
Ronnie’s absolute and audible lack of enthusiasm for the project might have made me withdraw even then had Aunty not earlier given me a three o’ clock deadline for leaving the house.
“When does Tremayne expect me?” I asked Ronnie.
“He seems pathetically pleased that anyone wants to take him on, after the top men turned him down. He says he’d be happy for you to go as soon as you can. Today, even, he said. Will you go today?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He lives in a village called Shellerton, in Berkshire. He says if you can phone to say what train you’re catching, someone will meet you at Reading station. Here’s the number.” He read it out to me.
“Fine,” I said. “And Ronnie, thanks very much.”
“Don’t thank me. Just... well, just write a brilliant chapter or two and I’ll try to get the book commissioned on the strength of them. But go on writing fiction. That’s where your future is.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Of course I mean it.” He sounded surprised I should ask. “For someone who’s not afraid of jungles you exhibit the strangest self-confidence deficiency.”
“I know where I am in jungles.”
“Go and catch your train,” he said, and wished me luck.
I caught, instead, a bus, as it was much cheaper, and was met outside the Reading bus station by a shivering young woman in a padded coat and woolen hat who visually checked me over from boots six feet up via ski suit to dark hair and came to the conclusion that I was, as she put it, the writer.
“You’re the writer?” She was positive, used to authority, not unfriendly.
“John Kendall,” I said, nodding.
“I’m Mackie Vickers. That’s m,a,c,k,i,e,” she spelled. “Not Maggie. Your bus is late.”
“The roads are bad,” I said apologetically.
“They’re worse in the country.” It was dark and extremely cold. She led the way to a chunky jeeplike vehicle parked not far away and opened the rear door. “Put your bags in here. You can meet everyone as we go along.”
There were already four people in the vehicle, it seemed, all cold and relieved I had finally turned up. I stowed my belongings and climbed in, sharing the backseat with two dimly seen figures who moved up to give me room. Mackie Vickers positioned herself behind the wheel, started the engine, released the brake and drove out into a stream of cars. A welcome trickle of hot air came out of the heater.
“The writer says his name is John Kendall,” Mackie said to the world in general.
There wasn’t much reaction to the introduction.
“You’re sitting next to Tremayne’s head lad,” she went on, “and his wife is beside him.”
The shadowy man next to me said, “Bob Watson.” His wife said nothing.
“In front,” Mackie said, “next to me, are Fiona and Harry Goodhaven.”
Neither Fiona nor Harry said anything. There was an intense quality in the collective atmosphere that dried up any conversational remark I might have thought of making, and it had little to do with temperature. It was as if the very air were scowling.
Mackie drove for several minutes in continuing silence, concentrating on the slush-lined surface under the yellowish lights of the main road west out of Reading. The traffic was heavy and slow moving, the ill-named rush hour crawling along with flashing scarlet brake lights, a procession of curses.
Eventually Mackie said to me, turning her head over her shoulder as I was sitting directly behind her, “We’re not good company. We’ve spent all day in court. Tempers are frayed. You’ll just have to put up with it.”
“No trouble,” I said.
Trouble was the wrong word to use, it seemed.
As if releasing tension Fiona said loudly, “I can’t believe you were so stupid.”
“Give it a rest,” Harry said. He’d already heard it before.
“But you know damned well that Lewis was drunk.”
“That doesn’t excuse anything.”
“It explains things. You know damned well he was drunk.”
“Everyone says he was drunk,” Harry said, sounding heavily reasonable, “but I don’t know it, do I? I didn’t see him drinking too much.”
Bob Watson beside me said “Liar” on a whispered breath, and Harry didn’t hear.
“Nolan is going to prison,” Fiona said bitterly. “Do you realize? Prison. All because of you.”
“You don’t know he is,” Harry complained. “The jury haven’t found him guilty yet.”
“But they will, won’t they? And it will be your fault. Dammit, you were under oath. All you had to do was say Lewis was drunk. Now the jury thinks he wasn’t drunk, so he must be able to remember everything. They think he’s lying when he says he can’t remember. Christ Almighty, Nolan’s whole defense was that Lewis can’t remember. How could you be so stupid?”
Harry didn’t answer. The atmosphere if possible worsened, and I felt as if I’d gone into a movie halfway through and couldn’t grasp the plot.
Mackie, without contributing any opinions, turned from the Great West Road onto the M4 motorway and made better time westward along an unlit uninhabited stretch between snow-covered wooded hills, ice crystals glittering in the headlights.
“Bob says Lewis was drunk,” Fiona persisted, “and he should know, he was serving the drinks.”
“Then maybe the jury will believe Bob.”
“They believed him until you stood there and blew it.”
“They should have had you in the witness box,” Harry said defensively. “Then you could have sworn he was paralytic and had to be scraped off the carpet, even if you weren’t there.”
Bob Watson said, “He wasn’t paralytic.”
“You keep out of it, Bob,” Harry snapped.
“Sorr-ee,” Bob Watson said, again under his breath.
“All you had to do was swear that Lewis was drunk.” Fiona’s voice rose with fury. “That’s all the defense called you for. Then you didn’t say it. Nolan’s lawyer could have killed you.”
Harry said wearily, “You didn’t have to stand there answering that prosecutor’s questions. You heard what he said, how did I know Lewis was drunk? Had I given him a breath test, a blood test, a urine test? On what did I base my judgment? Did I have any clinical experience? You heard him. On and on. How many drinks did I see Lewis take? How did I know what was in the drinks? Had I ever heard of Lewis having blackouts any other time after drinking?”
“That was disallowed,” Mackie said.
“You let that prosecutor tie you in knots. You looked absolutely stupid . . .” Fiona ran on and on, the rage in her mind unabating.
I began to feel mildly sorry for Harry.
We reached the Chievely interchange and left the motorway to turn north on the big A34 to Oxford. Mackie had sensibly taken the cleared major roads rather than go over the hills, even though it was farther that way, according to the map. I’d looked up the whereabouts of Tremayne’s village on the theory that it was a wise man who knew his destination, especially when it was on the Berkshire Downs a mile from nowhere.
Silence had mercifully struck Fiona’s tongue by the time Shellerton showed up on a signpost. Mackie slowed, signaled, and cautiously turned off the main road into a very narrow secondary road that was little more than a lane, where snow had been roughly pushed to the sides but still lay in shallow frozen brown ruts over much of the surface. The tires scrunched on them, cracking the ice. Mist formed quickly on the inside of the windscreen and Mackie rubbed it away impatiently with her glove.
There were no houses beside the lane: it was well over a mile across bare downland, I found later, from the main road to the village. There were also no cars: no one was out driving if they could help it. For all Mackie’s care one could sometimes feel the wheels sliding, losing traction for perilous seconds. The engine, engaged in low gear, whined laboriously up a shallow incline.
“It’s worse than this morning,” Mackie said, sounding worried. “This road’s a skating rink.”
No one answered her. I was hoping, as I expect they all were, that we would reach the top of the slope without sliding backwards, and we did, only to see that the downside looked just as hazardous, if not more so. Mackie wiped the windscreen again and with extra care took a curve to the right.
Caught by the headlights, stock-still in the middle of the lane, stood a horse. A dark horse buckled into a dark rug, its head raised in alarm. There was the glimmer of sheen on its skin and luminescence in its wide eyes. The moment froze like the landscape.