In the Mouth of the Tiger (49 page)

Mrs Gillaume was more restrained, but I saw tears gleaming behind her glasses as she poured tea and cut up a piece of cake for Tony. ‘He never writes, you know,' she complained to me. ‘Always catches us by surprise. Always. One day he's going to turn up to find Theo and me long dead.'

They both looked so old, and that possibility so likely, that my heart ached for them. ‘That won't happen, Mrs Gillaume,' I said firmly. ‘Not as long as I have any say in the matter. We'll keep in touch, I promise you.'

‘She is a sweet girl, dear boy,' Theo said turning to Denis. ‘Look after her, won't you?' He turned back to me. ‘I don't really need him to promise me that,' he said. ‘It's patently clear how much he loves you.'

After tea, Mrs Gillaume took me up the staircase to the landing. There was a large wooden box, a sailor's chest I think, under the window, with ‘Denis' painted across the top. ‘It's his toy box,' she said. ‘Denis used to stay with us for months at a time when he was a child, to get him out of London. Over the years he built up quite a collection of toys, and one Christmas we bought him this box to keep them in. It's remained here ever since. I like to see it on my way up to bed.'

I knelt on the carpet and opened the lid. The box was chock-f of toys – wooden aeroplanes, boats, balls and the inevitable jumble of toy soldiers. I noticed that they had been kept clean and dusted.

‘Would you like to see his room?' she asked. ‘We've kept it just as it always was.' She must have realised how proprietorial she was beginning to sound and hurried on. ‘We've had no need to change anything, you know – we've got lots of other rooms for guests.'

‘Are you and Theo related to Denis?' I asked. Standing in the little room – full of boyish clutter – I couldn't help asking.

‘Theo was Denis's legal trustee until he turned twenty-one,' Mrs Gillaume said flatly. She sounded a little hurt that I had asked. ‘Denis had money given to him by his mother's family.' She was about to say something more but stopped herself.

We left far too soon for the elderly pair, who stood arm in arm in their driveway as we pulled away. For all the world like parents saying goodbye to a beloved son.

We had arranged to meet the Hillgarths at the Copper Kettle, a renowned New Forest rendezvous point on the A31 at ten the next morning, and decided to spend the night just outside Winchester in order to be within easy striking distance. The Book and Candle was a quintessential English village inn, with a thatched roof, daub-and-wattle walls, and heavy oaken beams. The days were still short so it was dark before we had unpacked, and we tucked Tony into bed and dined early in the quaint, musty little dining room.

‘You are very special to a lot of people, darling,' I said after we had demolished decent helpings of steak and mushroom pie. ‘Does it ever weigh on you, all those people with all their expectations?' I had been thinking of Tim and his cronies in Malaya who seemed to regard Denis as something of a minor god, and of Maxine, and the Gillaumes. And of me too, I suppose.

Denis laughed. ‘Don't inflate my ego too much,' he said. ‘I do enough of that myself.' But then he was thoughtful for a moment. ‘You can never live up to everyone's expectations, so you concentrate on living up to your own.'

‘The Gillaumes would very much like to be more involved in your life,' I said gently. ‘Couldn't you let them in just a little bit more? It would make them very happy.'

Denis moved restlessly in his chair. ‘I've sorted out my life the way I want it to be,' he said almost sharply. ‘The Gillaumes are lovely people but I've moved on. I don't want to go backwards.'

He sounded almost selfish and his words stung me. ‘I suppose that's why I haven't seen any of your family,' I said. ‘You have moved on from them too, no doubt. But I do feel for them. It must hurt to be left behind.'

Denis was now definitely angry and he folded up his napkin carefully and flung it on the table. ‘Please leave my family out of this, Nona. They are my concern, not yours.' He got up abruptly and stalked out of the room.

I must have been tired because I just sat there, stupid tears gathering in my eyes. What a silly girl I'd been to imagine myself a part of Denis's bright and shining future. It was
his
future after all, and he would no doubt move towards it as soon as he wanted to, leaving me behind. I suddenly saw a picture in my mind's eye of Mrs Gillaume uselessly dusting those toys in the sailor's chest above the stairs. The little boy she was dusting them for had moved on
and left her behind, but she simply couldn't accept the fact.

Then Denis was behind my chair and had put his arms around me. ‘Forgive me,' he said quietly into my ear. ‘I know I can be an awful beast at times.'

‘You called me Nona,' I said tonelessly. ‘That's the code word to send me back, isn't it? Back to being that ragged little Russian émigré girl you picked up in Argyll Street.'

Denis stared at me, the hurt in his eyes so profound that I just had to bring his face down to mine and forgive him with a kiss.

We met up with the Hillgarths at the Copper Kettle the next morning, and enjoyed coffee and toast in the oak-beamed parlour while Alan outlined plans for the weekend. ‘We've got quite a crowd coming,' he said almost apologetically. ‘It would have been nice to have just the two of you for your first weekend at Millward Hall, but the Fates have decreed otherwise.' He turned to Denis. ‘Stewart Menzies and Admiral Godfrey are down in this neck of the woods, and so is Drage, and Manisty, and Robbie Draper. So Menzies thought we might all take the opportunity to meet and have an informal chat about what's going to happen in the Far East when the conflagration comes.'

‘Blast Stewart,' Denis said equably, and Mary nodded vigorously in agreement.

Millward Hall was a large, impressive Elizabethan home constructed in brick mellowed by the centuries to an attractive pale orange. It was set deep in beautiful parkland and when we arrived several expensive-looking cars were already parked on the gravel turning circle by the marble front steps. We climbed out of the little Morris Tourer and I flung my arms impulsively around Denis and hugged him tight. ‘Isn't this lovely?' I asked him. ‘It's like stepping into a photograph from
Country Life
.'

Denis smiled back at me. ‘Beats a two-up, two-down on the Brompton Road.'

Unpacking up in our room, Denis told me a little about the other guests. I'd heard the name Drage before – I think Denis might have spoken about him in KL. He was, I learnt, the head of MI6 in China. Admiral Godfrey was the head of Naval Intelligence, which meant that he was also in MI6. Admiral Manisty, Denis said, was a bit of an old woman, one of the ‘housekeepers' of the Intelligence world who had just toured Malaya and Australia, fine-tuning the various MI6 stations. Lieutenant Draper was a technologist – a radio
expert who was to head a radio-intercept and decoding unit that was to be established in Singapore.

‘Quite a coven of spies,' I commented. ‘Are you absolutely sure I should be here? I don't want to cramp anyone's style.'

‘Oh, don't be silly,' Denis said. ‘We're all here on holiday. It's just a chance for some of us who haven't met to get to know each other.'

Lunch was a delightfully informal meal held in a long, gallery-style dining room overlooking a sunny parterre garden. People kept arriving and being introduced, and Alan, whose family had owned vineyards in Portugal for generations, produced bottle after bottle of a particularly nice Portuguese rosé. The net effect was a lot of cheerful confusion and a lot of happy laughter.

Admiral Manisty and Admiral Godfrey were both accompanied by assistants. Manisty had brought his flag lieutenant, a lean, dark-haired man named Drax-Darnley, while Godfrey had brought along Ian Fleming, ostensibly a journalist. Fleming was young and dashing, and he was of course later to achieve immortality as the author of the James Bond novels.

Everyone seemed to have brought their wives except Fleming, who didn't have one. I was also glad to see several children at the meal. As well as Mary's daughter Ethel, there was Stewart's daughter, a pretty child a year or two older than Tony, and four-year-old twins belonging to the Drax-Darnleys.

Towards the end of the meal Alan clapped for silence. ‘Rules for the Millward Park Point-to-Point,' he said, holding up a single sheet of paper. ‘Not many of them as you can see, and none of them endorsed by the Jockey Club. The course is twelve miles long. Points are marked by red flags about half a mile apart, and the finishing line will be on Roman's Hill. We start in half an hour, and good luck to you all!'

Those of us intending to take part changed into our riding kit and gathered in the cobbled stable yard. There was chafing and more laughter as the head groom allocated horses. ‘You fiend, Alan,' I heard Ian Fleming call out in mock anger. ‘Do you call this thing a horse? I've seen a cockroach with more fire in its belly!' But suddenly the mood changed: Drax-Darnley had been having trouble with his hunter and it backed into a couple of other horses, threatening a minor stampede. ‘Steady on,' cried several voices, and I could hear crops smacking on horseflesh as a number of riders fought to bring their mounts under control.

‘The sooner we're off the better,' Stewart Menzies called sharply. He was
beautifully mounted on a thoroughbred grey, and he swung imperiously towards the gate, waving others to follow him.

I was about to swing into the saddle when Mary came up to me and laid her hand on my arm. ‘I'm a late scratching, I'm afraid,' she said quickly. ‘Too much testosterone on display for my liking. I'm sorry – it leaves you the only woman in the field.'

‘I don't mind in the least,' I said, but Denis had overheard and brought his horse across. ‘I would prefer it if you didn't join us either, darling,' he said urgently. ‘I suspect there'll be an awful lot of pace on, and you don't know the country.'

I looked up at him, pretending to be disappointed. But to be truthful I was a little relieved at the chance to back out. I hadn't ridden for weeks and the horses were definitely over-excited by the bustle. ‘You go off and enjoy yourself,' I said with a small, fake martyr's smile.

But I did feel a twinge of envy as I saw the crowd trooping off through the park to the start point, with men calling out to each other and the horses whinnying in anticipation. I would have liked to have watched at least, but Mary steered me purposefully back towards the brick-walled parterre garden where the womenfolk were assembled. ‘Good thing we're not out there risking our necks,' she said firmly. ‘And as for you in your condition – what on earth were we thinking?'

The servants had arranged a circle of cane chairs, and while the children rolled croquet balls on the nearby lawn, the ladies chatted as they got to know each other. The girl sitting next to me was brilliantly pretty, with thick dark brown hair braided and bound around her head with blue ribbon. With her pink cheeks and dancing blue eyes she looked the very picture of English maidenhood.

‘I'm Violet Drax-Darnley,' she said extending a cool, manicured hand.

‘Norma Elesmere-Elliott,' I said. And then, lazily: ‘Do you come here often?' I don't know why I said that. It was the expression Freddie Burton had used to break the ice on the first night on the
Cathay
. It was a silly, inappropriate remark and I realised I'd said the wrong thing when Violet immediately bridled.

‘We're invited here quite often,' she said sharply. ‘It's just that we're up in London such a lot. Harry is on Admiral Manisty's staff, you know.'

‘I didn't mean it like that,' I said, probably making things worse. ‘I was just making conversation.'

Violet was not mollified. ‘We live in Manor Farm, just outside the park. But I haven't seen you here before.'

‘Oh, we've been travelling,' I said lightly.

I think I may have said the wrong thing again because Violet sat up quickly. ‘We travel a lot too,' she said forcefully. ‘Next winter we are going to Harry's people's place in Italy. Near Lake Como. They're not Italian, of course. Quite English. But they have retired to Lake Como. Their place there is quite stunning.'

‘You've just come back from Malaya, haven't you?' It was Pamela Menzies, Stewart's dark, intense second wife. The one Maxine had said would die for her husband.

‘Oh, we wouldn't care to travel that far afield,' Violet put in with what was almost a pout. ‘Much too hot and dirty. Italy is as far east as we care to go.'

Tony was busy with an oversized croquet mallet under Mary's laughing supervision so I lay back in my chair, somnolent in the warm spring sunshine. Violet sounded spoilt and defensive, and I decided I didn't want to prolong the conversation. On the edge of my hearing I could just make out the sounds of the point-to-point: the occasional whinny of a horse, the muted cries of the riders, and sometimes the clear notes of a marshal's horn.

This is perfection, I thought to myself. I felt happy and at ease, accepted as one of a privileged group. Marguerite Blakeney amongst the wives of his lieutenants.

‘Are you Roedean too, Norma?' Violet was saying. ‘We have just discovered that all the girls here are Roedean.' I had not been following the conversation and had no idea what she was talking about.

‘Sorry,' I said. ‘What did you just ask me?'

‘We are all Roedean,' Violet repeated. ‘Are you?'

‘I daresay I am,' I said blithely, not wishing to be the odd man out. I was lying back in my chair, my head on a cushion, my eyes closed against the sun.

‘You don't have a clue what I'm talking about, do you?' Violet's tone was suddenly vicious and I opened my eyes in surprise. Her wide blue eyes were staring into mine, glittering with malice.