They began to work in silence, each remembering and reconstructing the conversation that had gone before. When they were finished, they each went to change and get ready for the arrival of the guests. Caroline thought: Our parents are not always what we think they are. And Frances could have had the same thought about her daughter, but had decided not to think about it at all. She had her duty as hostess before her, and she always attended first to her duty, no matter what.
The guests arrived. They were mostly neighbours or Rufus’s colleagues. But a newly arrived retired couple was there – people who had recently moved to Cheltenham from Ely – and they had with them their son, Anthony. He was a year or two older than Caroline, and he was brought across the room by Frances to be introduced.
Caroline looked at him as he spoke to her. He had grey eyes, she noticed, and a pearl-grey jersey. He matched. She looked down at his shoes: he was wearing ankle boots. They somehow matched his trousers. His hair was blonde and swept back to reveal a strong forehead. His hair seemed just right too. He asked her where she lived in London. His voice matched … matched him.
“I live in Pimlico,” she said. “In a block of flats called Corduroy Mansions.”
He laughed. His laugh matched his voice. “Hey, I know that place,” he said. “I live quite close by. Three streets away, in fact.”
She could think of nothing to say but, “Oh.” There was so much else she could say; so much else that she wanted to tell him.
“Would you like to have dinner?” he asked. “After this? After this party?”
She did not hesitate for a moment. Why hesitate when you were so sure, so utterly sure? “Of course. That would be great.” Jo would entertain herself; she was good at that.
“Italian?”
“Perfect.”
Anything would have been perfect. Italian, French, Indian, Chinese, Thai. Anything. She remembered Delia. Even English.
Chapter 70: A Developing Crisis
Terence Moongrove was only very vaguely known to Rufus and Frances Jarvis, as he moved in different circles from them. He had his sacred dance association, peopled by sundry adherents of the Bulgarian mystic, Peter Deunov; Rufus and Frances had their golf club. Between the sacred dance association and the golf club there was very little, indeed no shared ground, even if the members might recognise one another in the street, as happened when Rufus and Frances had seen Terence Moongrove in the supermarket car park, bundling his shopping into the rear seat of his Porsche.
“What an extraordinary sight,” Rufus had said. “That Moonshine character seems to have acquired the tart cart that used to belong to Alfie Bismarck’s boy. Look at that!”
“Moonwater,” corrected Frances. “Is it really his? Mind you, he’s getting into the driving seat, so it must be. My goodness. Whatever next!”
“I’ll be keeping well out of Moonwater’s way,” said Rufus. “He’ll be lethal in that machine. Why is it that middle-aged men buy themselves these totally unsuitable cars?”
“Precisely because they’re middle-aged men,” said Frances. “A car like that compensates for a lot, you know.”
“Poor Moonwater,” said Rufus.
“Indeed.”
This slight acquaintanceship – if one could call it that – meant that it was very unlikely that Terence would be one of the guests at the Jarvises’ drinks party. And indeed while the Jarvises were shopping that day for their evening entertainment, Terence was sitting in his conservatory, meditating, while his sister, Berthea, rifled through his papers in his chaotically untidy study. Berthea had a very specific objective – to find the telephone number of Lennie Marchbanks, the garagiste who had sold Terence the Porsche. She had looked for the number in the telephone directory and failed to find it because unbeknown to her Lennie Marchbanks traded not under his name but that of Stellar Motors. At last, however, she found a receipt bearing the garage name and his signature – a crumpled, slightly greasy document – and was able to dial his number.
“Mr Marchbanks?”
“Yes. Lennie speaking.” There was a curious clicking sound as he spoke, and she remembered that he had an ill-fitting pair of false teeth that often protruded awkwardly.
She gave him her name and asked whether she could possibly see him on a matter of great urgency. It was, she explained, in connection with Terence, who was in the gravest danger.
“Lordie!” exclaimed Lennie Marchbanks. “Has he had an accident or something? The Porsche? I’ve told him a hundred times not to drive fast.” Click. “I told him, so I did.”
Berthea assured him that it was nothing to do with the Porsche. “Financial danger,” she said.
Click. Click.
“Yes. But it’s difficult to explain over the phone. Can you please meet me in the lane outside the house in half an hour? I can tell you all about it then.”
Lennie agreed. He was fond of Terence, and had always recognised his vulnerability. He would be there, he said, and he would do whatever he could to help. And he was as good as his word, arriving exactly thirty minutes later in the appointed spot, where he found Berthea waiting for him.
The two had met before and Berthea did not bother with preliminaries. She told Lennie about Roger and Claire, and explained their plan to divest Terence of his house and, she suspected, his money too. Lennie Marchbanks listened, wide-eyed. “He’s not the most worldly of men,” he said in a concerned tone. “In fact, I must say I’ve always regarded your brother as an accident waiting to happen. Sorry to have to say it, but that’s what I think.”
Berthea shook her head. “You don’t have to apologise for thinking that,” she said. “I’ve thought as much for years. Ever since he was a little boy. But he’s a good man, at heart, even if he is a little bit ...”
“Weak in the head,” supplied Lennie Marchbanks helpfully.
“Yes. Perhaps.”
“But, as you say, he’s a kind man and we need to protect him.” Lennie Marchbanks paused. “Do you want me to say something to these people? Do you want me to tell them to clear off?”
This would not work, said Berthea. She explained that Terence had a tendency to become very determined when told not to do something, and that the only way of dealing with the situation, in her view, was to get him to come to the realisation himself that Roger and Claire were a threat.
“And how do we do that?” asked Lennie Marchbanks. Click.
Berthea found her eyes drawn inexorably to the mechanic’s false teeth, the top row of which had slipped forward over the bottom of the set. He sucked them back into place as she answered his question.
“Terence believes in all sorts of things,” she said. “And at the moment he seems to be interested in the Green Man. Have you heard of—”
“There’s a pub down the way called that,” said Lennie Marchbanks. “The Green Man. Does a nice pint of mild.”
Berthea nodded. “I’m sure it does. There are an awful lot of pubs of that name, of course. The Green Man is a mythical figure who still occurs in the collective imagination. He pops up in all sorts of places … In fact, if he were to pop up in the rhododendron bushes in Terence’s garden and issue some sort of warning to my brother …”
Lennie Marchbanks was not a slow man, and it took him very little time to guess what Berthea was about to ask of him. “I see,” he said. “Now that’s an interesting idea.”
“Yes,” said Berthea. “You dress up as the Green Man. We can stick leaves all over your face – you’ll have seen drawings and carvings of him. Then I get Terence to go for a walk in the garden – the rest is over to you.”
“I jump out of the bushes and say, ‘Beware Roger and Claire,’ or something like that? Then I vanish?”
“More or less. But I think you should say something like, ‘There are people in the house who are planning to harm you.’ Something like that. He’s quite capable of putting two and two together – sometimes.”
Lennie Marchbanks rubbed his hands together. “That’ll sort them.”
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“But then there’s part two of the plan,” said Berthea. “Let me tell you about that …”
Chapter 71: The Green Man Cometh
Berthea rather enjoyed covering Lennie Marchbanks with foliage. They did this on a piece of vacant land behind the house, using leaves from nearby laurel bushes.
“The last time I dressed somebody up like this was when I was a child and we were making Guy Fawkes,” she said. “Terence and I used to have tremendous fun dressing him up in one of our father’s old shirts.”
“I think these leaves suit me,” said Lennie, from behind the greenery. “Careful. Not too much glue.”
“Such an interesting figure,” said Berthea, applying a splash of glue to Lennie’s chin before sticking a large laurel leaf on it. “We had all sorts of pagan gods in this country, you know. Not that the Green Man was a god – more of a spirit, I suppose. A bit like Pan.”
Lennie was now largely bedecked with leaves, and Berthea stood back to admire her handiwork.
“Convincing?” asked Lennie.
Berthea stroked her chin. “I think so. Say something in your Green Man voice.”
Lennie lapsed into an exaggerated West Country burr. “Green Man here,” he said. “I come from the forests.” Click.
“Very nice, very nice,” said Berthea warmly. Then she hesitated. “Except …” She was not sure how to put it. People with mannerisms often did not know that they were doing whatever they did, and she thought it unlikely that Lennie Marchbanks ever noticed the unscheduled movement of his false teeth. Yet if Terence heard the familiar clicking sound he would almost immediately realise who was hidden behind the leafy disguise.
“Do you think …” she began. “Do you think … I’ve had an idea, Mr Marchbanks. If you were to remove your teeth, then your voice would be even more disguised. I hope you don’t mind my suggesting that.”
Lennie did not mind at all. Reaching into his mouth, he extracted his teeth and handed them to Berthea. “Good idea,” he mumbled. “Here.”
Berthea tried not to show her distaste as she took hold of the false teeth. They were of course moist, and she quickly popped them into a pocket of her coat before wiping her hands discreetly. “There you are,” she said. “You already sound much more like a real Green Man.”
Lennie was pleased with the compliment. “I’ll tell the morris dancers,” he said. “I used to dance a bit with them in my younger days. Maybe they need a Green Man.”
Berthea thought it highly likely that they did. Even as she expressed her agreement, she was mulling over in her mind the possibility of a paper for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. It would be an exploration of our need for Pan-like figures – a need that seemed to survive our loss of Arcadia – and an explanation of the role such figures play. The Green Man, she thought, was a reminder of our suppressed knowledge that ultimately we all relied on the growth of plants; no matter how assiduously we covered our world with concrete, we knew at heart that without grass and leaves we would simply not survive. The Green Man, then, was a figure of reassurance: we might have made his life difficult by destroying his habitat but he was still there, lurking in the inmost recesses of our consciousness.
She looked at Lennie Marchbanks. Here was a man whose life was one of machinery, and yet he had reverted so quickly and easily to a man of the woods and hedgerows. The entire Age of Machines had been rendered as naught by the simple application of dabs of glue and a few laurel leaves.
Berthea brought herself back to the business in hand. “Right,” she said. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, you go and hang about in the rhododendron bushes, and I shall bring Terence out for a walk.”
“Will do,” mumbled Lennie. “Do we need to synchronise our watches?”
Berthea laughed. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Mr Marchbanks. But please remember one thing: I won’t see you. So don’t look at me, and I won’t look at you. Just look at Terence.”
Lennie Marchbanks nodded, causing a leaf to fall off the end of his nose. Berthea retrieved it from the ground and stuck it back on. “Premature autumn,” she remarked. “A well-known hazard for green men.”
They made their way back to the garden. While Lennie Marchbanks burrowed into the thick foliage of the rhododendrons, Berthea returned to the house, where she found Terence still meditating in the conservatory.
“Terence,” she said. “It’s lovely outside. I think we should have a little walk together.”
“Perhaps later, Berthy,” said Terence. “I’ve just reached a jolly high level of inner calm.”
“An ideal state in which to commune with nature,” she said briskly, taking his arm in encouragement.
They went outside. “Let’s look at those beds first,” said Berthea. “What lovely pinks. And freesias, too. I’ve always loved freesias. Such a delicate smell, and such beautiful colours too. And look at those lilies over there, Terence.”
“Lilies are so contented,” said Terence. “They neither spin, nor do they toil, yet Solomon in all his glory …”
“Indeed,” said Berthea. “Mind you, I’ve always imagined that Solomon wore rather dull clothes. I’m not surprised the lilies eclipsed him. But enough of flowers, let’s go down there, Terence. Over by the rhodies.”
Berthea glanced at the large mass of greenery that was the cluster of rhododendrons. She thought she detected a movement, but was not sure.
“Berthy,” Terence said suddenly. “I think I can see something in the rhodies.”
“Really? I can’t.”
They moved closer. At that moment Lennie Marchbanks’s leaf-covered face emerged from within the green embrace of the bushes.
“Beware!” he called.
Terence grabbed his sister’s arm. “Berthy! Look! Look! The Green Man!”
“Oh don’t be so ridiculous, Terence. There’s nothing there.”
“Beware!” Lennie Marchbanks called again. “Beware of a person within your house, O mortal!”
Berthea was impressed with Lennie’s acting, but could not show it of course.
“Why are you shaking like that, Terence?” she asked. “Are you cold?”
There was a further movement in the bushes and Lennie Marchbanks disappeared.
“Let’s go back to the house, Terence,” said Berthea, leading her brother away. “You’ve obviously been meditating far too hard and it’s gone to your head. A cup of tea will bring you back, no doubt. It always does.”
Chapter 72: A Meeting with MI6
There are few harsh words that have greater effect than those spoken by child to parent. A home truth delivered by our offspring is for most of us far less easily ignored than one emanating from a colleague or a friend. Et tu, Brute is bad enough; et tu, fili tends to be uttered with real reproach.
William had been shocked by the upbraiding that he had received from his son, Eddie. Part of this reaction was attributable to astonishment on his part that Eddie, who had shown fecklessness since early childhood, should believe himself to be in a position to criticise anybody, let alone his father. If there is high moral ground – usually claimed by politicians – then there must also be a middle moral ground – normally claimed by most of the rest of us – and, of course, a low moral ground. This low terrain, susceptible to moral flooding, was that occupied by Eddie and his friends, and it was ground from which one might not expect much moral advice to be issued. But Eddie had given such advice in clear and unequivocal terms: William should never have let Freddie de la Hay be used by MI6; to do so was to ignore the moral obligation that people owed to their animal charges, and in this case it made William unfit to own a dog.
The shock had spurred William into action. He had demanded a meeting with Tilly Curtain, at which she had told him that Freddie de la Hay was still alive and, most importantly, that her colleague Sebastian Duck knew where he was. Now, back in Corduroy Mansions, William dialled Sebastian Duck’s number, determined to confront him over Freddie’s whereabouts.
??
?Mr Duck?”
“Yes, Duck here. And that’s you, Mr French?”
Once again, William could not help experiencing a moment’s surprise at being recognised but then if MI6 did not know who was phoning them, who would?
William came straight to the point. He wanted to see Sebastian Duck, and he wanted to see him immediately.
“By immediately, do you mean—”
“Immediately.”
Sebastian Duck was surprisingly obliging, and they arranged to meet in a coffee bar on Brook Street. When William arrived, the other man was already there and beckoned him over.
“I know you like latte,” Sebastian Duck said. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you.”