Heartbreaker (14 page)
Authors: Susan Howatch
Tags: #Psychological, #Romance, #Suspense, #General, #Fiction
We part with a warm handshake and I head home to Lambeth to report my conquest.
Asherton’s there waiting, obviously revved up by the thought of all the thrumming millions. If he can recruit Sir Colin for GOLD he’ll be in clover, and I find myself wishing, not for the first time, that I knew more about this secret fake-religion society which some of my most affluent clients wind up joining.
Asherton’s looking more like a government official than ever, so ordinary that you could pass him in the street without looking at him twice. It’s his personality that’s not ordinary. It weaves around in his body like a thick worm in a diseased apple.
When I’ve finished my report he says to me in honeyed tones: “I must congratulate you, my dear. You’ve done very well,” and I smile dutifully as my stomach churns.
I really hate that horror-merchant Asherton.
At last I reach Wednesday and my date with Richard’s coffin at the church in Compton Beeches. I do the early shift as usual but Elizabeth’s cancelled the other two. She’s told me that four of the wealthier clients must be fitted in between shifts on Thursday and Friday, but I was prepared for this even though she’d said earlier that she didn’t want to risk me getting overstrained. (Obviously I can’t be allowed to escape scot-free after my pig-headed plea to attend the funeral.) However Elizabeth softens the overtime blow by telling me she’s terminated the Kraut. It’s my reward for doing so well with Sir Colin.
The weather’s perfect: clear September skies, a warm sun and luxuriously fresh air all combine to raise my spirits once I leave the suburbs behind and head south for Hampshire. Compton Beeches is a picture-book village, the kind you see in commercials for dairy products. In the pub I order a lager and a roast beef sandwich and think how great it is to be out of London.
The barmaid’s remembered me. “You were a friend of Mr. Slaney’s, weren’t you?” she says when I arrive, even though I only appeared here with Richard once, and when I smile and say yes, I was a friend of his, she says how sad it is to think he’s gone, he was such a nice man and so well-liked.
After the meal I wander away from the pub past the thatched cottages and head across the green to the church. I like ecclesiastical buildings. Architecture interests me. I thought of being an architect once but Dad said I’d never make a success of it.
I move closer to the church. Richard told me he went to church to set an example and show commitment to the village community. Nothing to do with belief in God. It was all to do with tradition. Richard’s family had owned the big house in the village for two hundred years so he had certain standards to keep up. Dad would have admired this. Dad was heavily into the keeping-up-appearances syndrome, the England-expects-every-man-to-do-his-duty syndrome, the pillar-of-the-community syndrome, the support-the-Church-of-England-even-if-you-don’t-believe-in-God syndrome, the sailing’s-the-only-time-I-feel-happy syndrome—although naturally Dad never said: “Sailing’s the only time I feel happy.” But Hugo and I knew that was how he felt because that was when he relaxed and stopped being such a perfectionist, slaving away in a futile attempt to ensure all his patients lived for ever. Yes, different though Dad and Richard were, they did have a certain mindset in common, and I think Dad would have liked Richard—up to a point. Of course he would have despised him for being gay.
The church isn’t open yet, but I walk around the outside and admire the dressed flint of the walls and the square, squat Norman tower which ought to be ugly but isn’t. Then I start to read the gravestones, always an interesting way of passing time, but Hugo tries to crawl out of the crevice in my mind and I have to stop. To divert myself I think of Carta. The real problem for me here won’t be the clerical underling the Rector of St. Benet’s sends to the service—the problem’s going to be Sad Eric. After last Saturday’s scene he’s bound to tag along to protect Carta from me. He won’t trust the St. Benet’s limp-wrist to beat me off.
I haven’t made up my mind yet which personality I can pull on for Carta, but obviously it must be a serious one, not just because this is a funeral we’re attending but because I’ve got to wipe the memory of my gay monster act. Why don’t I pull out all the stops and play the Surrey doctor’s son? I’ll be so sociably acceptable that she’ll realise the Wallside scene was just a temporary blip—and Sad Eric won’t be able to do a damn thing except glower with rage.
I suddenly become aware that I’m staring at the north side of the church. The sunshine, hitting the other side of the building, is flooding the nave, and the stained glass above me has caught my attention. I’m in deep shadow but the glass is pulsating with multicoloured light.
But despite the favourable conditions it’s still hard for me to make out the picture when I’m on the outside looking in. I can see some white patches and green blobs at the bottom plus a slew of deep blue at the top but the middle’s just a densely worked jumble—apart from a curious little slip of white on one side. All at once I’m overcome with the urge to see this picture properly, and as I move around the church towards the porch I see the clergyman’s unlocking the door for the undertakers.
I forget the window as I realise that mourners are starting to arrive. Should I stay outside and wait to display myself to Carta? No, too obvious. Keep her guessing. I still hesitate but at last I walk quickly into the church, take a service sheet and sit down at one end of the next-to-last pew. When Carta arrives I shall see her but the odds are she won’t see me. Not at first anyway.
Hordes of people are now streaming in. All Richard’s friends are gathering in this little village to say goodbye to him, and I’m with them, I’m not an outsider any more, I belong in this group, I matter. And suddenly I’m thinking: the last word about Richard isn’t that he was homosexual. The last word is that he was a great bloke who cared about people in ways which made them care about him.
Swallowing quickly to ease the ache in my throat, I suddenly identify the window I noticed outside and a second later I’m seeing the picture with knock-out clarity. The little white panels at the bottom are all sheep. They’re on a green hillside below an azure sky, and in the densely worked middle of the picture is The Bloke. He’s togged up in what an ignorant person might think is fancy dress but I know it’s the working gear of the Middle East a couple of thousand years ago, just as I know that The Bloke’s a bit older than I am and has a name everyone knows, though of course no one now believes all the fairy tales people dreamed up about him after he was dead. The nineteenth-century artist has visualised him as an English gentleman so he looks pretty odd in the Middle Eastern gear, but he’s unmistakable: of his many roles he’s playing the shepherd with his flock. No, wait, it’s more complicated than that. I’d forgotten the slip of white more than halfway up the picture. It’s a little sheep. The Bloke’s got it on his shoulder, and as I stare at the animal I see it’s bedraggled, its fleece flattened, its limbs limp with exhaustion. The little sheep’s been rescued. The Bloke couldn’t rest till he’d recovered it. The artist has represented in a miracle of coloured glass the story of the sheep which was lost and then found.
The organ begins to play, cutting across my thoughts and switching on overpowering emotions as I stare at the coffin at the head of the nave. It’s Hugo’s coffin I’m seeing now. Hugo and Richard have fused in my mind. God, why didn’t I anticipate—why didn’t I realise—
The family are arriving. Moira Slaney’s not blonde (as I told Elizabeth when she was on the psychic warpath) but a smart brunette and she still looks like the photo I saw of her during my previous visit to Compton Beeches. But the two kids look very different from the two kids with Richard in that photo which I wanted to lift from the flat in Mayfair. Philip looks as if he’s been popping too much E on wild weekends, silly little sod. I started doing drugs when I was homeless and it was the stupidest thing I ever did. All over now, though. I’m drug-free, fighting fit, a big success.
Hugo starts to say I’m still a loser, but I stuff him back in his crevice and start looking around at the other mourners. I seem to have missed Carta’s arrival—maybe she came in when I was gaping at the stained-glass window. Or maybe she’s just late. The service is starting. I look at my service sheet and see the first hymn’s “He Who Would Valiant Be.” God! That was the hymn we sang in the school chapel on the day Hugo died.
Hugo tries to blitz his way out of the crevice again but I blitz him back and nail him down. Leave me alone, Hugo,
leave me alone
—
Got to pull myself together. I try playing my favourite aria from
Zauberflöte
in my head—and suddenly I escape, I’m sailing past the Needles on a wine-dark sea worthy of Homer, and everything’s beautiful,
beautiful,
so absolutely right in a sense no words could ever describe.
Eventually my concentration breaks as the hymn ends and I return to my body, but before we can all sit down someone on the aisle halfway up the nave turns to look at me, as if he’s somehow aware of my chaotic emotions. He’s tall and middle-aged and for a moment I think he’s nondescript, but then I realise I’ve been misled by his drab brown hair and pale colouring. This bloke oozes charisma. His light eyes would bore a hole through concrete at fifty paces. In fact I’m just thinking that he’s boring a hole through me when the woman beside him turns to see what he’s looking at, and I suck in my breath as I recognise Carta.
At once she swivels to face the altar, and as the man turns away too but without hurrying, I’m able to take in what he’s wearing. I see his black shirt. I see his clerical collar. But this is no limp-wristed church underling I’m staring at. This has to be Carta’s boss. This has to be Elizabeth’s arch-enemy. This has to be none other than the Rector of St. Benet’s-by-the-Wall, the Reverend Nicholas Darrow.
Well, I get through the church part of the service somehow, but when everyone clusters around the grave to watch the committal my head’s so done in I can’t cope—I lean against a gravestone several yards away and concentrate on keeping sane.
Since Carta has an escort who’s totally taboo, I’ve given up the idea of waylaying her, and I know I ought to leave but I don’t. Richard’s pinning me in place. All I can think is that I want to wait till I’m alone in the churchyard. Then I can go to the grave and say goodbye. Couldn’t say goodbye in the church, I was too churned up, and I can’t leave without thanking him for those shining hours we spent sailing together, can’t leave without saying to him that he made me feel like a real person instead of designer filth tailor-made for the gutter. And I want to promise him I’ll sail again one day down the Solent, and when I pass the Needles I’ll throw a wreath on the water in memory of him. Okay, so he’s dead and can’t hear me, okay, so I’m being pathetically sentimental, but that service has really punched my lights out and right now I can’t be slick and smart, it’s too hard, too painful.
The ceremony around the grave ends and as the crowd begins to break up I see Carta moving away towards the path. She’s wearing a black business suit, very slinky and sleek, and I sigh, wishing she was on her own. Belatedly it occurs to me there’s no sign of Sad Eric, but of course he’d be quite content to entrust her to Mr. Charisma.
Carta catches sight of me and immediately turns her back, but before I can begin to feel upset I get a shock. Mr. Charisma’s joined Carta and he’s looking at me again. Instantly I move away, sheltering behind another tombstone. I don’t have to put up with his prurient peeping. Of course Carta’s told him I was Richard’s leisure-worker and of course he’s getting a holier-than-thou charge out of that choice piece of information, but I don’t have to lurk around pandering to his curiosity. I see now how unnecessary it was for Elizabeth to order me to keep well away from anyone in a clerical collar. This particular cleric’s not going to come near me. He wouldn’t contaminate himself by doing such a thing. I’m not just scum to him—I’m a “sinner,” and that means I don’t count, I don’t matter, I’m just shit waiting to be flushed down the pan.
Well, fuck you too, chum, I think. See if I care.
Plunging into an examination of a huge Victorian tomb, I stare and stare and stare at the stone angels above the obligatory quote from “In Memoriam.”
“Mr. Blake.”
I spin round as fast as if bloody Asherton had stroked the nape of my neck. But it’s not Asherton. It’s Mr. Charisma. His eyes are a steady grey and his face is a mass of hard, sculpted angles. In spite of the collar he doesn’t look like a clergyman. He reminds me of those big-time conjurors you see on TV: lots of pizazz mixed with a touch of hypnotism as the magic’s delivered
con brio.
“My name’s Nicholas Darrow,” he’s saying casually as I’m still wondering where my next breath’s coming from. “Carta pointed you out to me and I thought I’d just come over and offer my sympathy. It’s tough to lose a good friend, isn’t it? And so hard to say goodbye.”
I’m speechless. I’m immobile. And as I stand there, as gauche as the teenager I was long ago in a world I can’t bear to remember, this stranger takes another step forward and firmly holds out his hand.
PART TWO
The Journey
All of us, carers and cared for, are on a journey whose destination we understand only dimly:
We know we are searching for something yet the nature of the thing we seek eludes us. On this strange journey, in this tantalising search, we often feel lonely and bemused, in need of guidance, encouragement, companionship. Not always knowing what we are asking we reach out for the help of others.
Mud and Stars
A report of a working party
consisting mainly of doctors, nurses and clergy,
quoting from
Rediscovering Pastoral Care
by A. V. Campbell
CHAPTER ONE
Carta
The healing ministry is non-judgemental: those involved in it are encouraged to consider and address their own prejudices and stereotyping to avoid projection of their personal internal codes of behaviour.
A Time to Heal
A REPORT FOR THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS
ON THE HEALING MINISTRY
I
When Richard’s coffin was transferred from the church to the grave I lost sight of Gavin, but as soon as the funeral had finished, the mourners began to disperse and I saw him loitering some yards away among the gravestones. Instantly my nerve-ends jangled, just as they had jangled when I had spotted him in church, but this time my stomach lurched as if it were about to liquefy. In panic I turned my back on him, but I remained appalled; in fact I could hardly believe I had been pathetic enough to give such a knee-jerk sexual response.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Nicholas at once.
“Gavin. He’s still here—I thought he’d gone.” To my relief my voice sounded only mildly harassed, and as Nicholas glanced across the churchyard I felt thankful that he was present. Bridget Slaney had begged him to come, Moira too had added a plea, and finally he had given way, deciding that the funeral should somehow be wedged into his overcrowded schedule.
“Give me a couple of minutes,” I heard him say as he looked at Gavin, “and then join us.”
“You can’t mean you’re going to talk to him!”
Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “It’s my job. The bereaved need support at funerals.”
“
Bereaved?
But Richard was just a walking chequebook to that man!”
“Then why’s he here? No one’s paying him to attend.”
“But—”
“Two minutes,” said Nicholas firmly. “Then join us. Be polite and low-key. If you’re angry and snub him he’ll stalk you harder than ever.”
I felt like bursting into tears, but this feeble behaviour was not fundamentally because of Gavin’s presence and my mindless reaction to it. It was because the service had reminded me of my father who had died the previous year. I had been making a new effort to help him conquer his gambling addiction, but he had died with the problem unsolved, and amidst the grief I had also been aware of relief. “At least you succeeded in having a reconciliation with him before he died,” my mentor Lewis had said when I had admitted how guilty my relief made me feel, “and at least his life had altered for the better.” This was true, but Richard’s funeral had still stirred up my muddled emotions with the result that I was less capable than ever of dealing with Gavin. I was sure he had been unaffected by the service, just as I was sure he had turned up primarily to make a nuisance of himself.
I was too far away to hear what was said when Nicholas reached his target but I saw Gavin jump as if he’d been shot and spin to face him. I went on watching, certain that Gavin would look in my direction, but he never gave me a glance. Indeed as a conversation began to unfold he no longer even looked at Nicholas. He looked at a nearby tomb, at the ground, at the mourners who were drifting away from the grave, and once or twice he dug a heel into the soft turf in a fidgety gesture, but he made no effort to escape, and in the end, driven on not just by the order from my boss but by my curiosity to know how the monster had been tamed, I began to thread my way in and out among the grassy graves towards him.
II
“Ah, there you are, Carta!” said Nicholas casually. “We were just discussing the funeral service. Gavin feels Richard would have approved of it.”
Avoiding all comment I said in a laid-back voice which rang repellently false in my ears: “Hi, Gavin.”
“Hullo, Carta,” he said, very well-behaved, very Home Counties. “How are you?”
I knew he was playing a carefully chosen role but he was so convincing that I even wondered if I had been paranoid in seeing him as a stalker. Meanwhile Nicholas seemed wholly focused on making small-talk. “I hear you went sailing with Richard this summer,” he said to Gavin.
“Right. Hey, Carta—I’m really sorry about that scene last weekend! I tried calling your office to apologise but I only got the granny-gizmo.”
“The
what
?”
“I used to know a man who kept a boat at Bosham,” Nicholas pursued, uninterested in granny-gizmos. “But that was a long time ago. When did you start to sail, Gavin?”
“1969.”
“You must have been very young.”
“My brother was even younger when he started.”
“I had a brother once,” said Nicholas vaguely. “He was a lot older than me and he’s been dead now for some years, but I often think of him—I was thinking of him just now in church, but that’s natural, isn’t it? Funerals remind us of those we love who are no longer with us.”
There was a dead silence. Gavin was motionless, staring at the ground. His long lashes seemed very dark against the skin which was stretched tightly over his prominent cheekbones, and his mouth was clamped shut in a hard straight line. To my astonishment I realised he was struggling with grief.
“I’m sorry,” I heard Nicholas say. “Is your brother dead too?”
Gavin nodded, and somehow Nicholas altered the quality of his silence. It was now intensely sympathetic without being in any way cloying or sentimental, and a second later I realised that in this context any word would have been a mistake.
“He was seventeen,” said Gavin flatly to the ground. “He’d been ill for two years with leukaemia and your God didn’t save him.” As an afterthought he added, abruptly jettisoning the Home Counties persona and looking straight at Nicholas: “Your God’s a shit.”
Clamping my mouth shut I prepared to move away, sure that the conversation had ended. But it continued. Nicholas was talking in silences, and in the silence which he designed I felt the emotional space created by his compassion. Gavin could say anything he liked but the emotional space would always be large enough to contain it.
His next words were: “Why the fuck don’t you say something?”
“I wanted you to be ready to hear what I have to say, and it’s this: you have a right to be angry. Rage at God as much as you like—he’s big enough, he can take it. It’s the repressed anger that’s dangerous because the road to healing doesn’t lie in denying what you feel.”
“I can’t rage at God. I don’t believe in him.”
“I thought you said just now he was a shit?”
Yet another silence fell, but this one was full of tension. Then Gavin turned his back on Nicholas and gave me a brilliant smile. “You’re looking really cool!” he breathed. “You ought to wear black every day!”
“Think so?” I murmured, mild as milk. “Thanks.”
“So am I forgiven for that scene last Saturday?”
“Well—”
“Great! Of course it would never have happened if Eric had treated me with the respect due to a friend of Richard’s, but don’t worry, you can tell Eric I’ve decided to be forgiving—almost Christian, in fact!” he added laughing, and suddenly gave Nicholas such an erotic look that I flinched.
But Nicholas betrayed no emotion. In the empty silence which followed, his eyes were luminously clear.
I was just about to ignore my orders and tell Gavin what I thought of his loathsome posturing when there was an interruption. A woman called: “Nick! I’m so glad you were able to come!” and swinging round I saw that Moira Slaney was hurrying across the churchyard towards us.
III
Realising that Gavin might well have no idea who she was, I said to him urgently: “It’s Moira.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen a photo.”
“Well, go on—disappear, for God’s sake!”
“I was a friend of Richard’s! Why shouldn’t I get to meet his wife?”
“Moira!” said Nicholas, ignoring this muttered exchange, and moved towards her as she tiptoed over the soft ground.
She was in her mid-forties but looked younger because she was so well-dressed and well-groomed. I admired this talent for capitalising on her assets. Yet she was not my kind of person. There was a class gap between us, and there was also a generation gap even though she was barely ten years my senior. Feminism had passed her by; she seemed to believe that a woman’s place was in the home, and although she had never displayed hostility when I had talked of my past career as a partner in Curtis, Towers, I felt she had hardly listened. Unable to conceive of why a woman should want such a life, she was also unable to be interested in it. I had no doubt that she privately pitied me for my childlessness and current lack of a husband.
Since my discovery of Richard’s homosexuality I had, of course, tried to reassess her private life but had only found it more baffling than ever. What could have kept her in that marriage? I was unable to decide and Moira herself gave nothing away.
“The service went well, didn’t it?” she was exclaiming to Nicholas after their brief embrace. “Thanks so much for all those helpful suggestions . . . Carta! How nice to see you!”
As I murmured a suitably warm response I noticed that her make-up was intact. No trace of tears there.
“Mrs. Slaney,” said Gavin without waiting to be introduced, “I’m so sorry about Richard. I’m one of his friends from the City. My name’s Gavin Blake.”
“Ah yes,” she said, still smiling. “You’re the lover.” And barely pausing to draw breath she added carelessly to him: “Nicholas and Carta will be coming back to the house—why don’t you come with them? After all, you probably knew Richard as well as anyone in that church just now.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, and as we all stood staring after her she walked serenely down the churchyard path towards the black Daimler which was waiting to take her home.
IV
The oddest effect of this odd little scene was that it temporarily bonded me with Gavin. Ignoring Nicholas, who appeared unsurprised by Moira’s behaviour, we stared at each other in amazement.
“She obviously knew your name,” I said, “but who mentioned it to her?”
“You mean it wasn’t you?”
“Don’t be stupid! Richard told me about you in confidence!”
“No doubt Richard himself told her,” said Nicholas.
I said: “You’re joking!” at the exact moment Gavin exclaimed: “No way!” He added: “She knew he was gay, of course she did, but he never told her any details about what he got up to,” and I supported this statement by saying: “When I had dinner with him the night before that first coronary, I definitely got the impression that I was the only person he’d talked to about Gavin.”
Nicholas sighed, magnificently controlling his middle-aged impatience with all this dumb dogmatism from the under-forties. “I think we have to acknowledge that Richard and Moira were married for over twenty years and she was with him when he died,” he said. “Is it really so unlikely that he finally confided in her? He’d have been shocked and frightened by the coronary, and there was Moira, signalling by her presence that she still cared what happened to him.”
Reluctantly I saw the logic. “Okay, fair enough. But why invite Gavin to the house?”
“Obviously she was acknowledging that Gavin was Richard’s friend. Gavin, can we offer you a lift to the house, or would you prefer to go in your own car?”
“No need for cars, sir,” said Gavin, very friendly now that Nicholas had confirmed his status. “The house is just down that lane past the green.”
“How convenient! And by the way, you can call me Nicholas or Nick. I appreciate the respect you’re showing but I don’t think a post-funeral gathering is a time to stand on ceremony.”
Gavin made no reply as we headed out of the churchyard but in the road beyond he said to me: “I’m going to ask Moira if I can have that photo of Richard, the one we saw in the flat.”
I was annoyed. “You can’t possibly!”
“Why not?”
“Well, for starters Moira doesn’t know you’ve ever been in that flat. If you go asking her about a photo you couldn’t have seen—”
“I’ll say Richard took me to the flat once.”
“But you can’t demand a gift on the day of the funeral! Can’t you see how naff you’re being?”
“What’s so naff about wanting a pic of my friend to remember him by?”
“Talking of Richard,” said Nicholas, overriding this scratchy exchange, “did he tell you about my church, Gavin? It’s St. Benet’s-by-the -Wall in Egg Street, the Guild church with the Healing Centre in the crypt.”
“Never mentioned it.”
“Oh yes, he did!” I exclaimed, scandalised not only by the lie but by this offensively abrupt response. “ ‘You work for the bloke who’s fixing Bridget,’ you said to me when we first met—”
“The church itself is open from eight in the morning till six at night,” interrupted Nicholas, ignoring Gavin’s sudden change of mood, “except on Thursdays when it’s open until eight. In a powerhouse like the City it’s good to have a quiet space where people can meditate or simply be themselves with no one hassling them . . . You became interested in meditation recently, didn’t you, Carta?”
I finally remembered I was supposed to be exuding a laid-back courtesy. “Right,” I said, “but I came to the conclusion I had no gift for it.”
“Carta’s a lawyer,” said Nicholas to Gavin, “and her special gift for rational analysis isn’t easy to integrate with a mystical approach to religion. What would you say your special gift is, Gavin?”
Gavin suddenly flipped out. Like a disruptive child fixated on exploring the boundaries of acceptable behaviour he said: “Fucking.”
“Oh yes?” said Nicholas politely. “But you’re straight, aren’t you? So why are you abusing this talent of yours by misdirecting it?”
“Oh, piss off! God, no wonder my manager told me not to go near anyone in a dog collar today!”
“What unusual advice! Why the dog collar phobia?”
“It’s no phobia! She just wanted to save me from being persecuted, that’s all!”
“Persecuting people isn’t actually part of the Christian gospel.”
“Fuck the Christian gospel!” shouted Gavin, and walked on at such a rapid pace that Nicholas and I were soon left behind.
“Sorry, boss,” I muttered. “If I hadn’t put him in a bad mood by calling him naff—”
“That wasn’t the remark which yanked his chain. The problem seemed to be me talking about St. Benet’s . . . This female pimp of his sounds quite a character, doesn’t she?”
“He denied she was his pimp.”
“Probably didn’t want to admit to you he was under some woman’s thumb. But do we seriously think he started his very upmarket business all on his own and then advertised in
The Times
for a manager? No, you can bet the manager came first and that she had a handful of useful contacts to get him going.”
“A lady with an eye for the main chance . . . Hold on, Gavin’s lingering—”
“Maybe he’s managed to solve the baffling social dilemma of how to turn me right off while simultaneously turning you right on. I foresee a dazzling display of apologies, charm and immaculate good manners.”
I groaned. “If you weren’t here I’d run away.”
“Don’t you even want to try to be kind to this messed-up kid who’s so pathetically proud of his friendship with Richard?”
I was silenced.
Gavin was waiting for us at the start of the lane which led from the village green to Richard’s house, and as we drew closer he gave us a rueful smile. “Sorry I lost it just now,” he said, wide-eyed with sincerity. “Post-Funeral Stress Syndrome.”
Nicholas merely said: “It’s good of you to apologise . . . How far did you say it was to the house?”
“It’s just round the next bend. I was here recently,” said Gavin, and I heard the pride in his voice. “Moira was away and Richard wanted to show me his home. He showed me all over the house and garden and later we went down to the pub for a drink.”
After a pause Nicholas said gently: “He was a good man, wasn’t he?” and Gavin nodded, averting his face. I tried to answer for him, but I too found the words refused to come. In silence we walked on, and a minute later we reached the gates of Richard’s manor house.
I started dredging up the will to be sociable.