‘—I’m not late, am I?’
‘No.’ She ignored the smile. ‘But you do have some form of … ’ she extended a long thin-fingered hand on the end of a matchstick arm ‘ … of identification—?’
‘Oh—yes!’ The extraordinary thing was that she was somehow rather sexy with it—matchstick arms, vague expression and ash-blonde hair so pale that no one would know when she went off-white, thought Tom professionally; only the recent memory of Willy, as bouncy as a squash ball and as wholesome as her own proverbial blueberry pie, relegated the woman to the second division.
‘Thank you.’ She fumbled his identification, like the Tsarina accepting something rather nasty from a flea-ridden moujik , which she had to take but would have preferred not to look at before she passed it to someone else. ‘Why were you sorry?’
‘Why was I—?’ Now he was behaving like a moujik , damn it! ‘I was captivated by your beautiful house, actually—craning my neck like a tourist, when I should have been knocking on your door, Mrs Audley.’
‘I see.’ She waved his identification card briefly and very closely in front of her face, but then smiled at him, displaying fetching dimples. ‘It is rather beautiful, isn’t it? We’re terribly lucky to live in it, David and I.’
‘But I didn’t understand it.’ Tom knew when he was on a winner. With some women it would be their children—or their diamonds, or their dogs, or the expertise of their dress-maker. But with this one it was her home.
Nikolai Andrievich Panin, KGB and all the way back to the NKVD of the 1940s , he thought: that was as far back as he wanted to go. But, for this moment, Panin would have to wait!
‘The house—?’ She tried to take another look at his picture, but it didn’t seem to do her any good. ‘Or the barn?’ She abandoned his identification in favour of the barn. ‘David loves the barn—he says there’s nothing like it in the whole of Southern England.’ She favoured him with another loving smile. ‘You know about architecture, do you, Sir Thomas? But, of course, you must do, mustn’t you—in order not to understand it, I mean?’
He had to say something intelligent now, for God’s sake! ‘All that fine ashlar … better than the house itself!’ That was a fact, anyway: the porch in which Mrs Audley was standing had been added at a later date, but there was nothing unusual about that. But such stonework as he could see behind the wisteria which covered the house was far rougher than that of the barn. ‘But it’s that archway to the barn I really can’t understand, Mrs Audley.’
As he gestured towards the barn doors, one of them quivered, and then began to swing outwards towards them.
‘The archway—of course!’ Mrs Audley gave him another tick, quite oblivious of the opening doors. “That’s what all the experts notice first—the man from Country Life was very taken with it, last year—particularly with the defaced stones on each side, where the coats-of-arms have been cut away. He thought that might have been done not long after the battle of Bosworth Field, in 1485.‘ She blinked at him, with sudden embarrassment, as though aware just too late that she had insulted him by unnecessarily adding the date to the battle. ’Henry Tudor gave the Honour of Horley to the Wilmots, after the Stokeseys had been killed at Bosworth. And the Wilmots had always hated the Stokeseys—at least, since Barnet and Tewkesbury.‘ This time she didn’t supply the date, but offered him the names of another two battles from the Wars of the Roses with another blink, as though they were two recent parliamentary by-elections.
‘Is that so?’ Tom was torn between the barn doors, which were now just outside his range of vision, and the dates of Barnet and Tewkesbury, in a civil war which had never particularly interested him, because it had not been distinguished by any good sieges. But it wouldn’t do to disappoint her—
Damn
‘No.’ She ignored the smile. ‘But you do have some form of … ’ she extended a long thin-fingered hand on the end of a matchstick arm ‘ … of identification—?’
‘Oh—yes!’ The extraordinary thing was that she was somehow rather sexy with it—matchstick arms, vague expression and ash-blonde hair so pale that no one would know when she went off-white, thought Tom professionally; only the recent memory of Willy, as bouncy as a squash ball and as wholesome as her own proverbial blueberry pie, relegated the woman to the second division.
‘Thank you.’ She fumbled his identification, like the Tsarina accepting something rather nasty from a flea-ridden moujik , which she had to take but would have preferred not to look at before she passed it to someone else. ‘Why were you sorry?’
‘Why was I—?’ Now he was behaving like a moujik , damn it! ‘I was captivated by your beautiful house, actually—craning my neck like a tourist, when I should have been knocking on your door, Mrs Audley.’
‘I see.’ She waved his identification card briefly and very closely in front of her face, but then smiled at him, displaying fetching dimples. ‘It is rather beautiful, isn’t it? We’re terribly lucky to live in it, David and I.’
‘But I didn’t understand it.’ Tom knew when he was on a winner. With some women it would be their children—or their diamonds, or their dogs, or the expertise of their dress-maker. But with this one it was her home.
Nikolai Andrievich Panin, KGB and all the way back to the NKVD of the 1940s , he thought: that was as far back as he wanted to go. But, for this moment, Panin would have to wait!
‘The house—?’ She tried to take another look at his picture, but it didn’t seem to do her any good. ‘Or the barn?’ She abandoned his identification in favour of the barn. ‘David loves the barn—he says there’s nothing like it in the whole of Southern England.’ She favoured him with another loving smile. ‘You know about architecture, do you, Sir Thomas? But, of course, you must do, mustn’t you—in order not to understand it, I mean?’
He had to say something intelligent now, for God’s sake! ‘All that fine ashlar … better than the house itself!’ That was a fact, anyway: the porch in which Mrs Audley was standing had been added at a later date, but there was nothing unusual about that. But such stonework as he could see behind the wisteria which covered the house was far rougher than that of the barn. ‘But it’s that archway to the barn I really can’t understand, Mrs Audley.’
As he gestured towards the barn doors, one of them quivered, and then began to swing outwards towards them.
‘The archway—of course!’ Mrs Audley gave him another tick, quite oblivious of the opening doors. “That’s what all the experts notice first—the man from Country Life was very taken with it, last year—particularly with the defaced stones on each side, where the coats-of-arms have been cut away. He thought that might have been done not long after the battle of Bosworth Field, in 1485.‘ She blinked at him, with sudden embarrassment, as though aware just too late that she had insulted him by unnecessarily adding the date to the battle. ’Henry Tudor gave the Honour of Horley to the Wilmots, after the Stokeseys had been killed at Bosworth. And the Wilmots had always hated the Stokeseys—at least, since Barnet and Tewkesbury.‘ This time she didn’t supply the date, but offered him the names of another two battles from the Wars of the Roses with another blink, as though they were two recent parliamentary by-elections.
‘Is that so?’ Tom was torn between the barn doors, which were now just outside his range of vision, and the dates of Barnet and Tewkesbury, in a civil war which had never particularly interested him, because it had not been distinguished by any good sieges. But it wouldn’t do to disappoint her—
Damn
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