Roses All The Way

15

Roses All The Way

    Hattie’s weekend of interpreting went splendidly—though unfortunately Hill didn’t manage to see much of her. He wasn’t surprised that Watanabe and Co. were very pleased with her; he did know that she was very bright. But he was both surprised and annoyed to learn that they wanted to whisk her off on a tour of some of YDI’s other houses for a week. Still, Maurice was pleased, and the topic of the Arabs had been dropped, and the series of meetings had actually produced some decisions, so at least he could get on with the Chipping Abbas conversion in the small gap before Maurice had him slated to fly off to the Antipodes again.

    Up at the house on the Monday Warwick Reston buttonholed him with a question, and he suddenly remembered—

    “Warwick, did you mention roses on the tennis court last week?”

    “Yes: they’ve gone wild all over it! Really beautiful: they’re just coming into bloom!” the young landscape designer beamed.

    “Right; well, before Red’s merry men get going on it I might pick a few.”

    Warwick began to panic so Hill reminded him firmly that whatever was done in the grounds was his responsibility and if he wanted a hedge of roses up behind the tennis court he’d better speak to Red himself, and hurried off up there. Ooh, yes! Masses of them: as Warwick had said, just coming into bloom.

    “Hullo, Hattie!” he said eagerly a week later, smiling eagerly as she opened the door of Number 7 Old Mill Lane to him.

    “If those are for me,” said Hattie, glaring at the roses he was holding, “don’t. It’s a waste of lovely flowers, and it isn’t fair to them to throw them out, they haven’t done anything.”

    Hill felt his smile fade. “Um, nor have I, Hattie,” he said feebly.

    Hattie snorted.

    “Please have these, Hattie. With my apologies for—um, well, behaving like a stupid, selfish tit back on the bloody course and—and for anything I unwittingly may have done more latterly to—to offend,” said Hill in a voice that shook a little. He attempted to hand her the bunch of pale apricot-tinted roses. “Unscented, I’m afraid. Climbing tea-roses,” he said feebly as she didn’t take them. “Um, they’re all over the place up at Chipping Ab—”

    “They’re all over the place up at Chipping Abbas because they’re Lady Tarlington!” shouted Hattie, suddenly turning puce.

    Hill’s jaw sagged. “Nuh—uh—no, that’s my ma,” he said feebly.

    “They’re the rose, Lady Tarlington, that that awful old man threatened to prosecute my mum and aunty for picking when they were ONLY THIRTEEN AND FIFTEEN!” she shouted.

    “Uh—oh, God. Your people used to live here, did they? I—I think the old man must’ve been our distant cousin, old Mr Tarlington. Um, the last owner’s grandfather. Look, I’m terribly sorry: obviously I had no idea. I just thought they were lovely, the way the colour ranges from quite a deep shade in the closed buds, and then through to this pale apricot shade when they’re full… Look,” he said, taking a deep breath, “if I apologise for all the Tarlingtons en masse will you accept them?”

    “No. That isn’t funny.”

    “What have I done?” he cried.

    “Nothing in your terms, I suppose. Just leave me alone,” said Hattie, abruptly closing the door.

    Hill turned and strode away, tight-lipped.

    He got the news about Colin when he and Jim Thompson were in Queensland. It made the news that the authorities wouldn’t let YDI build a series of ecolodge cabins with banana-leaf thatch seem bloody insignificant.

    The call had come through to the Big Rock Bay Motel in the early morning and the sympathetic Scott Bell had taken it. Not to Hill’s surprise he had about two minutes to sit shakily on the edge of his bed wiping his hand across his face before Mr Bell tapped at his door.

    “You okay? Not bad news from home, was it?”

    “Could have been worse. My old commander Colin Haworth’s been wounded in Iraq.”

    “Shit.” Scott came in and sat companionably in the cane easy-chair with its palm-leaf patterned cushions. “Sorry to hear that. How is he?”

    “His brother said one leg’s been shot up, they don’t know if it can be saved, and he’s badly concussed.”

    Scott immediately told him that needn’t be too bad, ratifying this opinion with a long story about one of his uncles to which Hill didn’t listen. He’d reached the end of the story by the time Jim appeared looking anxious and Isabelle Bell appeared looking grim.

    “Anything up?” said Jim. Isabelle just gave her spouse a grim look.

    “Not really,” replied Hill. At the same time Scott said: “Yeah, but it doesn’t sound too bad.”

    “What is it?” said Jim grimly to Scott.

    “An old Army mate of Hill’s has been wounded in Iraq. Bringing him home, are they, Hill?’

    “Mm.”

    “Scott can drive you to the airport of you want to go home,” said Isabelle immediately.

    In that case the grimness couldn’t have been on account of Scott’s poking his nose into a guest’s business. Hill passed his hand across his face. “No—thanks very much, but there’s nothing I could do if I went home.”

    “One leg’s been shot up, pretty badly by the sound of it, and he’s got concussion,” explained Scott.

    “In that case you’ll just have to wait and see,” said Isabelle very firmly indeed. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee. Get the brandy, Scott.”

    “Uh—yeah. Wouldja like a nip?” he said, scrambling up.

    “Not at this hour, thanks all the same,” said Hill feebly.

    “It’s medicinal,” said Isabelle firmly. “You can have it in your coffee. Go on, Scott. And you might as well start the breakfasts, since they’re up.”

    Obediently Scott shambled off.

    Isabelle sat down in the chair he’d vacated looking very firm and proceeded to get all he knew out of Hill. It didn’t amount to more than had already been said, but— Oh, well. He didn’t need to explain that it was Colin’s brother, Michael, who lived up in Yorkshire, who’d rung him, nor that he’d rung from London, but somehow he found he had. Plus the fact that, though Colin never had got on well with his parents, who were Ban-the-Bombers and more latterly Greenies of the most rabid kind, they were dashing up to London, too. Isabelle was by no means an intellectual woman but she had the sort of quick awareness that needed no further telling: she was very, very sympathetic. And assured him again that Scott could run him over to the airport any time he wanted.

    Everyone, in fact, was very, very kind. So why that should have made him feel ten times worse, God knew.

    Colin’s cousin Terence passed Colin’s grapes. “’Ab a grape,” he said thickly through one.

    Swallowing a sigh, Hill took a grape. There was nothing precisely wrong with Terence Haworth: he was a pleasant fellow of about Colin’s age, he was in subs—currently on leave after lurking about in the Guess Which Gulf with his missiles trained on Guess Who for quite some months—but at the moment he was distinctly redundant. Not to say, de trop. It wasn’t by any means the first time Hill had visited Colin in hospital—and he was, thank God, looking a lot better—but nevertheless it apparently hadn’t dawned on bloody Commander Haworth that unlike some he wasn’t on leave and couldn’t pop into the hospital whenever the fancy took him.

    Terence swallowed. “You came on the wrong day,” he said kindly.

    How true! Hill took a deep breath.

    “Have a grape, Terence,” said Colin pointedly from his bed of sickness.

    “Thanks, I will.” Terence selected a small group from off the bunch and thoughtfully passed the bunch to Hill.

    Sighing, Hill took another grape. “Go on, what did I miss?”

    “Sight for sore eyes,” explained Colin.

    “Oh?” Could have been almost anybody, Colin had had scores of ’em in his time. No, hundreds.

    “Lily Rose Rayne in full panoply,” said Colin with a smile.

    Hill did actually know that the famous telly actress Lily Rose Rayne who had made that film at Big Rock Bay was married to Terence’s older brother, John. He grinned feebly. “Got it.”

    “Not the pink Turkish delight look, this time,” said Colin dreamily, lying back on his pillows.

    “Very pale pink,” elaborated Terence unnecessarily. “Squidgy,” he elaborated even more unnecessarily.

    “I have seen her on the box,” Hill replied mildly.

    “Oh, the film’s out now, too, old, chap, you mustn’t miss that! All Fifties bathing-suits—and there’s one scene where she washes her hair and the blouse gets splashed that has to be seen to be believed!”

    Hill eyed him drily. “I have got this right, have I, Terence? This is your brother’s wife you’re leching over?”

    Terence chewed juicily. “Yesh,” he agreed simply.

    “We both are,” explained Colin dreamily. “It was another suit—gets around a lot in nifty suits, y’see—very tight,” he elaborated unnecessarily, “but not pink.”

    “There’s a lovely pale apricot one,” offered Terence.

    “Ooh, is there?” he said, grinning. “No, wasn’t that. It was sort of cocktailish—well, late afternoonish: she explained she was off to some ghastly Navy wives’ do with John: sort of a silvery grey… No, a silvery grey-blue,” he said with precision. “Tight,” he elaborated unnecessarily. “Very low-cut jacket,” he elaborated even more unnecessarily.

    “Ooh-er!” said Terence, grinning.

    “I’ll say! –Lovely feet, ever noticed?”

    “Well, not specif’ly, ole man, but all are goob,” said Terence, investigating a box of his chocolates. “Yum!” he reported.

    “Yum just about sums them up,” said Colin dreamily. “She had these tiny sandals… Pale grey, with just the one tiny knot over the toes, and then weeny, weeny ankle straps…”

    “One shees it all!” Terence assured him through a choc.

    “Filthy buggers,” said Hill with an effort.

    “It’s what it’s there for,” explained Terence, holding out the box. “Have a— Oh. Sorry. Hang on: pass us that other box, Colin!”

    Colin looked dry but passed the box. Since Terence was shoving it under his nose Hill took one in the very faint hope that doing so would end the conversation and the whole sick visit and he would push off.

    “God!” he gasped, swallowing convulsively and clapping his hand to his mouth.

    Colin looked drier than ever. “Violet creams. My sister’s taste.”

    Hill knew his sister, actually. He tried without much success to smile insouciantly.

    “Oh, sorry, Hill,” said Terence feebly. “Why’ve you still got the things?” he demanded of the invalid.

    “Nobody likes them, Terence,” he replied patiently.

    “Any of those rum ones left?” his cousin replied hopefully.

    “No,” said Colin with a sigh. “Shove off, Terence. Thanks for the grapes and all that.”

    “Oh—right,” said Terence, getting up. “Good to see you, Hill. Um—might not be in again for a bit, old man. Promised I’d nip over to France with Megan. Well: good sort, been ages since—”

    “Yes. Push—off,” said the invalid clearly.

    Throwing an ironic salute, Terence did so.

    “What was that?” said Hill after some time had passed in peaceful silence.

    “An idiot?” offered Commander Haworth’s cousin.

    “Yeah. Not him, the outfit.”

    Terence had been scaring the populace in slightly draped and pleated linen trousers of that very pale shade of grey that makes you think your eyes have gone funny until it dawns it’s grey, not white, topped by a short-sleeved, open-necked silk shirt of surpassing gorgeousness in the palest of pale lemons. The whole tied in the middle with the skin of what was very possibly a protected species.

    “’Orrible, wasn’t it? Thinks he’s gonna attract very young bird. Drives around in his Porsche with the top down, in it. I have mentioned that nothing under thirty’ll look at him unless he shaves the hair off and drapes himself in baggy black with ’uge stripes down the legs and a tick on the chest,” replied Colin drily.

    “Yeah. You forgot the backwards-facing baseball cap—or has he got one of those?”

    Colin’s lips twitched. “He has, but he doesn’t wear it any more, because a little while back Rosie—Lily Rose Rayne to the hoi polloi—couldn’t make it and sent along a deputy: one of her gay actor friends.”

    Hill looked at him in horrid speculation.

    “I admit he wasn’t wearing his backwards!” he said, grinning.

    “I hope you didn’t spare ruddy Terence on that account.”

    “Of course not! Oh: your eyes haven’t gone funny: those bags were very, very pale—”

    “Thanks. It dawned.”

    “I don’t know who Megan is, if that was going to be your next—”

    “It wasn’t.”

    “What’s up?” said Colin very, very mildly.

    Hill felt himself go very red. “Nothing,” he said shortly.

    “Balls.” Colin hesitated for a moment. Then he said: “Do us a favour, would you, old chap, and open this bedside cabinet for me?”

    The cabinet was on his good side, his right. It was the left that had been shot up: the spray of bullets had got him neatly in the hip, the knee and the ankle, and since he’d been standing on a moving vehicle at the time, he’d fallen off it and onto the wounded side, cracking his left shoulder and bashing his head badly in the process. Hill got up uncertainly. “Sure.”

    “Saves me from overbalancing and falling out of bed, y’see,” explained his former commanding officer.

    Hill opened the cabinet. “Yeah. –Shit! Are you supposed to have this?”

    “Eh? Oh—Uncle Matthew forced it on me, or, to answer your question directly, No. Have a belt, if you like, and grab that paper bag for me, would you?”

    Obediently Hill handed him the paper bag.

    “Use the water glass,” said Colin mildly.

    Very well, then, he would. Carefully Hill poured the water that was in the glass back into the carafe, and helped himself to a slug of Glenlivet.

    Meanwhile Colin had withdrawn a bread roll from the paper bag and was sinking his teeth into it hungrily. “Ooish,” he explained thickly.

    “Eh?” replied Hill weakly.

    He swallowed and sighed deeply. “These buttered buns. Jewish. From a kosher grocery near John’s and Rosie’s flat. This is the last of them. God knows how he does it, but he puts little pieces of chopped onion on top of ’em and doesn’t burn ’em in the cooking process!”

    “You’d certainly want to hide those from Terence,” agreed Hill.

    Colin nodded round the remains of the roll. He swallowed. “Puts loads of real butter on ’em, too. What is up?”

    Hill passed a hand through his hair. “It’s stupid.”

    “It usually is,” agreed his former commanding officer mildly.

    “Um, well… Hell, it was a year back!” he realised. “Uh, went down to Chipping Abbas with Allan and Harriet and their kids and Harriet insisted we had to go to this bloody hop that some frightful in-comer had got up for the delectation of the rest of the gentrified in-comers—well, theoretically the villagers as well—and—and Hattie was there. Um—”

    “I remember,” he said calmly. “Just give us a taste of that whisky, would you?” He sipped from Hill’s glass, and sighed. “Thanks,” he said, passing it back. “Yes, you bent our ears about her that time you popped over to see us in Germany. –Few years back,” he said to Hill’s blank and incredulous face.

    “But—”

    “In the mess,” Colin reminded him kindly. “The lads laid on a welcome-back-to-the-regiment do for you. You drank a great deal of that real Russian vodka that R.S.M. Forbes had managed to get for us.”

    “I remember the do,” he admitted. “McLeod danced a sort of Scotch hornpipe on the table.”

    “That was the one, yes. You gave us a searing account of the crawling through the Yorkshire heather stuff and an even more searing account of Hattie’s inexplicable indifference to your manly charms, old boy.”

    “Shit, did I?” said Hill numbly. “Um—sorry, and all that.”

    “Oh, we were most entertained,” Colonel Haworth assured him politely. “Especially Grover—it was his sister you dumped for an American WAAF with shoulders like an all-in wrestler, wasn’t it?—and Halliday: didn’t like you walking off with that pouting little black-haired number from under his nose; and Johnstone: think that possibly related to that time we were on manoeuvres in Kent and you managed to end up with that juicy farmer’s wife while he had to slog through the mire for twenty miles with the chaps. On foot,” he clarified kindly.

    “Look, Colin—”

    “Oh, and O’Connell, of course: just when his Irish charm had cracked it with that buxom blonde bit the last time we were in Germany, there she suddenly wasn’t! Or there she suddenly was, hanging on your arm at that damned mess dance, large and as life and, I use the phrase advisedly, twice as natural. I was forgetting about Ketteridge, too,” he added. “Though one and all were agreed that it was not your fault that Mrs K. threw herself at you. Only slightly your fault that you managed to catch her, old chap.”

    “You’re so bloody pure, of course!” returned Hill furiously.

    “Never said that,” said Colin calmly. “Go on: Hattie was there.”

    “Mm,” he said, biting his lip. “Seems to have a cottage down there. Um, had a friend staying. Black girl—very good-looking.”

    Colin looked at him in despair.

    “No! I didn’t!” he said angrily. “The girl can’t be twenty-five!”

    “That never stopped you before,” he noted mildly, “but perhaps there is a first time for everything. So what did you do?”

    “I didn’t do anything!” said Hill angrily. “She—she overheard Allan and me— Um, think she overheard bloody Cynthia having a go, too, actually.”

    Colin closed his eyes, wincing. “Cynthia Brereton?”

    “Yes. –Moreton, she’s gone back to her maiden name,” he said dully.

    “Mm?”

    Hill licked his lips. “All I said was that some bloody local woman had near as dammit tried to give me a knee-trembler on the floor and—and she accused me of God knows what! Doing skinny lady execs and— I dunno.”

    “It was skinny lady execs last time, as I recall.”

    “What? Yes! That’s why she wouldn’t—” He broke off, very flushed. After a moment he admitted sourly: “She said something about the leopard not changing its spots, if you must have it.”

    “Ouch.”

    “I wrote her a letter,” he said, scowling.

    “Um, not all that wise to put pen to paper when in a foul mood, old boy,” replied Colonel Haworth uneasily.

    “Eh? Not now, you birk! She lives in the village, ten minutes away, for God’s sake! Um, no: back then. Um, didn’t I say?” he added feebly.

    “Not to me. Might’ve told Macintosh—oh, and Doc was still compos mentis at the end of the evening, I think. Well, when I packed it in,” he said with a little smile.

    “All right, Colonel, sir, setting a good example, ’nuff said,” groaned Hill.

    “Go on, what about this letter?”

    “Um, it was back then. Um, well, I didn’t know her surname and the bloody bosses— Never mind that. She wasn’t working at this dump any more, you see.”

    “With the corporate gits—right, got that.”

    “Mm. I thought up this brilliant scheme of pretending she’d left something behind and I made up a parcel and—and got one of one of the bitches that worked there, that had been on the course—”

    “Just to put me completely in the picture, Hill,” interrupted Colin with a sigh, “was this one of the skinny lady exec bitches what you’d done?”

    “YES!” he shouted.

    “Thanks, that’s very clear. Sabotaged it, did she?”

    “All right, the bitch did, and how was I to— She sent the package without the letter and—and so Hattie never even— I mean, it was a joke! And I must say, she might have guessed it who it must be from, because no-one else thought the Mars Bars were funny! But come to think of it I didn’t know she had a coffee-pot so, um… Sorry,” he ended glumly.

    “No, I am, old boy: it sounds a mess,” he said kindly.

    “Yeah. I asked Allan who the Black girl was, too,” he admitted miserably.

    Colin was blank for a moment. “Oh! Oh, good God! ‘I say, Allan, old chap, who is this damn’ Black gal what we Tarlingtons are t’rrfically above, hey? Bad show and all that!’”

    “The Haworths are nobody, of course, not to mention the bloody Duff-Rosses!” snapped Hill angrily.

    Colin ignored the reference to his relatives, and just raised his eyebrows slightly.

    “All right, that was the implication, I suppose. That’s certainly the way she took it, anyway.”

    “Mm.”

    “I made a stupid joke and she took it the wrong way,” he remembered sourly.

    “Mm?”

    “All I said was that I hadn’t done any skinny lady execs for at least two months and she rushed off like a whirlwind!”

    “Hill,” said Colin heavily, “I hate to come on like an elderly uncle, but there isn’t a woman in the world that wouldn’t have taken that sort of joke the wrong way.”

    “No. I— Um, well, this was after she’d accused me of the leopards and spots bit and not thinking her Black friend was good enough for Allan.”

    “Mm. –Do you think she isn’t good enough for Allan?”

    “Look, it’s gone nowhere, Colin! He’s gone off her: some frightful relative he bumped into thoroughly put him off.”

    Colin just waited.

    “That bitch Cynthia,” admitted Hill sourly, “did say something about not having seen him look at a woman like that since bloody Iras. Um, well, he has been off women entirely.”

    “Understandable.” Iras Tarlington had abandoned her husband and two little girls when the younger one had been aged about six months, and gone off to California—not with a bronzed god of the silver screen, but with a stout middle-aged businessman who happened to be a multi-millionaire ready to chuck the lot her way. To give her her due, she had tried to get custody of the girls from California, but this hadn’t worked. The second husband had then offered Allan an immense bribe to give them up but this hadn’t worked, either. That had been some years back, and that was the last they’d heard from her. Colin hesitated; then he said: “Is she as pretty as Iras?”

    Iras had been tall, svelte, and silver-blonde. Hill made a face. Then he said honestly: “The features are different but overall the impression she gives is of a photographic negative of bloody Iras. Same figure. Very slim waist, slim hips, but—” He gestured glumly at his own flat chest. “Full.”

    “That’s a Black Iras, all right,” he conceded. “So why do you disapprove?”

    Hill sighed. “It’s irrelevant. I said, he’s gone off her.” He met Colin’s cool grey eye. “Look, she’s one of the hospitality staff at YDI! What could they possibly have in common?”

    “He was supposed to have a lot in common with Iras,” replied Colin with horrid frankness. “Same background, at school with Harriet—” He shrugged a little and then grimaced, and put his good hand to his bad shoulder.

    “Um, look, old man,” said Hill uneasily, “maybe I should let you rest.”

    “I’m okay. Keep forgetting I shouldn’t shrug, cough, sneeze or laugh, that’s all,” he said with a wry expression. “It sounds to me rather a pity that he’s broken it off; personally I don’t see that it matters how frightful the girl’s relatives are—well, look at bloody Cynthia Moreton, if you want an example of frightful relatives!—or what her job is.”

    Since Colin’s ex had been a very up-market lady indeed there was perhaps some excuse for Hill’s gaping at him incredulously.

    “I’m long since over the Daphne sort,” he said mildly. “Or, put it like this, I wouldn’t have another one on a permanent basis if you promoted me to God Almighty and gave me the power to sack George Dubba You!”

    Hill swallowed, and didn’t point out that that apparently didn’t stop him doing fleets of them on an impermanent basis. “Um, yeah, I mean, no.”

    “I’d finish that whisky, if I was you. Preferably before Matron comes in.”

    Jumping slightly, Hill finished the whisky in his glass.

    “I don’t know if you realize it, Hill, but your narrative omitted the entire past year. Did you make any effort at all to see Hattie again?”

    “Yes!” Angrily Hill launched into a long, self-exculpatory complaint. After quite some time, during which Colin merely listened, it dawned how self-exculpatory he sounded, so he stopped.

    “Uh-huh. Do you want her?” asked his old commanding officer baldly.

    “Of course I bloody do!” he shouted.

    “Don’t shout: Matron’ll come in and tell you you’re a bad boy,” said Colin mildly. “I’m not talking about one of your usual one-night stands, or even your concentrated three-week stands. I think it’s pretty clear she’s not the sort of girl that’s up for that, isn’t it?”

    “Was I suggesting it?” he snarled.

    “Just think about it, Hill.”

    “I have been thinking about it, and I don’t want a one-night stand!” he said angrily.

    “So it’s serious, then?” replied Colin placidly.

    “I—” Hill’s mouth opened and shut.

    “See?” said Colin very mildly indeed.

    “I don’t know how much I’ve got in common with her, if that’s your point, but I’d quite like the opportunity to find out!” he said loudly and bitterly.

    “Mm.”

    Hill swallowed hard. “Um, can’t think what to do. Um, more flowers? The last two lots were unmitigated disasters.”

    Colin scratched his jaw slowly. “I suppose more flowers couldn’t hurt. Er—don’t imagine it’ll be easy, old chap. I think it may take months for her to come round, especially if she’s seen you at your worst—make that, especially since she has seen you at your worst. –I’m talking about the lady execs, Hill, not about the Tarlingtons’ inflated opinion of themselves,” he added as Hill opened his mouth angrily.

    “Oh,” he said lamely. “Yeah.”

    “Slow and steady, and repeated helpings of humble pie,” said Colin with a tiny smile. “And, dare I say it? No more lady execs.”

    “I don’t want the bitches anyway,” he said sourly. “In fact I never wanted them.”

    Colin didn’t say then why do them, he just said in tones of extraordinary mildness: “Yes. Funny how, even though one doesn’t want ’em, one doesn’t refuse when they’re offered on a plate, isn’t it? –Oh, I’m speaking for myself as well,” he assured him.

    “I do know that! Um—’ve any you did fairly recently turned up to see you, old man?”

    “No, of course not,” he said tranquilly. “Not at this time of year: they’re all on holiday in Ther Bee-’ah-mas or Martinique or some such. Oh: tell you who has been, though, and that’s good old Margie!” He grinned at him. “She turned up the first time Rupy dropped in—Rosie’s gay actor friend,” he explained. “He brought me some of the Jewish buttered buns. I gather she addressed a few kindly words to him down the corridor. The poor little fellow was scared out of his seven wits!”

    Brigadier Margie Phelps-Patterson could scare the seven wits out of full-blown field-marshals, never mind a mere gay actor. “I’m not surprised!” returned Hill with feeling.

    “She’s a damn’ good sort,” he murmured. “Well, sorry I couldn’t suggest an instant fix, old man.”

    “What? No!” said Hill, going very red. “I didn’t expect— I mean, I’m sorry to dump it all on you, Colin.”

    “Don’t mensh. Makes a change from me invalid reading matter,” he said with a smile. “Over there: go on, take a look.”

    Uncertainly Hill got up and went over to the small chest of drawers. Country Life, Country Life, Country Life… “Who in God’s name brought you all these Country Lifes?” he croaked.

    “Partly Uncle Matthew and partly Rupy,” replied Colin blandly.

    Hill choked: Colin’s Uncle Matthew was not unlike his own Uncle Hubert. He went on flipping through the piles of reading matter. “Christ!” he gasped, breaking down in sniggers.

    “You’ve found it, I see.”

    Hill was turning the pages reverently. “Who in God’s name— Terence?”

    “’Course not, he’s quite a prudish fellow, really. No: couple of the chaps—you might remember them, they were in your last do with us. Rob Cowan and young Owen Bridges.”

    “Of course, yes. Cowan must have done his thirty years, then? Is young Bridges out? Thought he was in for ten?”

    Colin eyed him drily. “It’s over ten years since our last little stoush in the desert, Hill.”

    Hill gaped at him.

    “I realize that time you spent on the Yorkshires moors was like falling down a black ’ole, but yes.”

    “Uh—well, yeah. That and the stint at the fucking War Office.” Considerately he replaced the dirty book under the pile of Country Lifes before returning to his seat. “So how are they?”

    “Oh, in the pink! Bought a lorry, like Cowan always threatened he would, and started up their own little business—”

    The old comrades plunged into happy reminiscence. Colin had told Hill about the time in Germany when he’d had to give young Bridges twenty days for giving the regiment a bad name, not precisely for doing three women in their forties, two married and one divorced, but for the huge bar brawl when either or both of the husbands found out—the divorcée, incidentally, also throwing herself into the fray with a will—and Hill had got over the spluttering fit and was asking Colin eagerly, while they were on the subject of doing divorcées in Germany, what had happened to that rather pleasant blonde woman, Brigitte, was it? And Colin was just admitting that she had been a pleasant woman, but at about the same time there had been a slightly unfortunate episode with a general’s daughter who wouldn’t take no for an answer, if that had ever been going to be the answer, and Hill was yelping with laughter, when a cool voice said from the doorway: “Visiting hours were over some time ago, Colonel Haworth.”

    At which Colin stopped sniggering, removed his good hand quickly from the bad shoulder it had been supporting through the sniggers, and said sheepishly: “Sorry, Matron. Got carried away. Uh—this is Hill.”

    “Good afternoon, Sir Hilliard,” said the tall, handsome woman in nursing uniform severely. “I’m very glad you could make it: he’s been looking forward to seeing you again. Perhaps you’d like to come with me? You can see Colonel Haworth again tomorrow.”

    “Um, yes, of course,” he said feebly, stumbling to his feet. “Sorry, Colin. Um, well, till tomorrow, then.”

    “Balls. Get on back to Chipping Abbas. Bunches of flahs,” said Colin, making a face at him.

    “Um, got meetings in town. I’ll send her some. So long,” he said lamely, allowing Matron to usher him out.

    To his horror she didn’t let him just creep off, she came down the corridor with him. It was a private hospital, or he was in no doubt he’d have been chucked out bodily long since, never mind Colin’s known effect on the opposite sex.

    “His hair’s looking better,” he said lamely at last.

    Colin’s red-gold head featured a horrid shaven patch where they’d cut it open to relieve the pressure. “Yes, it’s growing back quite fast. Though given our female nursing staff, I don’t know that that’s entirely a good thing,” she said dispassionately.

    He grinned feebly. “Yeah. So he is a lot better, then?”

    “He’s certainly recovering much faster than we anticipated.”

    “Mm. May I ask how his latest cat-scans came out?” he croaked.

    “Sir Francis Dorning is quite pleased with them,” said Matron temperately. “Do you know Sir Francis? –No. Well, you might speak to Captain Haworth, I believe they were at school together,” she said on a dry note. “But you can see for yourself that Colonel Haworth’s much brighter. I can tell you he’s still having headaches, but only sporadically, and he hasn’t complained of any more dizzy fits.”

    Hill sincerely doubted that Colin would complain if the woman in person was gnawing his bloody foot off with her teeth! “I hope you don’t mean that literally,” he said grimly. “He’s never complained in his life.”

    “No,” she said, suddenly smiling at him. “It took us a while to adapt, I must admit! We’re more used to moaners, here!”

    Right, it’d only be the moaners that could afford the dump. He was pretty sure that Colin’s old Uncle Matthew was paying, or least paying for the bits the Army wouldn’t cough up for. “Mm. Um, but has he been doing any walking, though?”

    “No: Mr Pryce-Fisher doesn’t want to risk jolting the hip just yet.”

    “Yeah,” said Hill with a sigh. “I suppose if I ask if the foot’s going to have to come off you won’t be able to tell me that, either?”

    “On the contrary; I can tell you that Mr Pryce-Fisher his told him that it won’t have to,” she said, smiling. “The nerves are in very good condition, though the ankle was badly shattered, of course.”

    Yeah, the nerves were in excellent condition, if that blue look round Colin’s mouth was any indication. He thanked the woman and let her show him firmly out. It wasn’t bad news at all, when you thought what it might have been.

    He did have meetings all next morning, but managed to get to the hospital in the afternoon, where he was rewarded, or possibly punished, by finding Colin’s room occupied by a crowd of theatrical lovelies, headed by the cuddly blonde Lily Rose Rayne in person. In the flesh John Haworth’s wife was everything Terence and Colin had said and more. Added to which she wasn’t the simpering upper-middle moron she came over as on the box, but an unaffected Australian, clearly with considerable intelligence. One upon a time Hill would have been very, very struck indeed. And as it was he admitted to himself, as she urged him to call her Rosie, that it was difficult to take one’s eyes off her. Or it would have been had she not been accompanied by two almost perfect copies! Cousins, so the story ran. Er—sisters of one another and cousins of Rosie’s? Something like that.

    It was a very warm day and they were all in what you could have classified as summer frocks if you were both brain-dead and unnatural. Rosie’s was possibly made of cotton-knit tee-shirt fabric, but if so it was a demonstration of the fact that the stuff was being completely wasted world-wide. It was the pale, Turkish-delight pink mentioned by Terence and Colin and it sort of just draped round her deliciously curved form, no, make that licked round it. Squidgy—yes. There might have been a couple of little bows on the shoulders. Oh, and pearls in the perfect shell-like ears and round the perfect neck. The hair was a simple halo of palest spun gold.

    Her cousins were very similar. Very, very similar. One was in pale green, the sort of wrap-around style that with luck dropped right back as she crossed those perfectly curved pale legs in their high-heeled pale green sandals. If you had a micrometer you might have realized that she was a little plumper in the face and the curves. The younger sister had gone for a somewhat smarter look, if one was being critical, in white. Strapless white, very low and curved over the tits, very tight in the skirt, and unfortunately topped by an unnecessary tiny bolero jacket, also white. She had a big white wide-brimmed straw hat but she took it off to display another apparently casual mop of palest gold. Cor. Coincidentally Jerry Coleby had also chosen this afternoon to drop in on Colin and he spent the entire visit with his eyes on stalks. Not that one could blame him.

    The ladies’ escorts were Rosie’s gay actor friend, Rupy, that Colin had mentioned, and a pal of his. And what that proved was either that the whole male section of the British theatrical scene was gay, which Hill did not maintain was not the case, or that most of them were gay and the rest were potty. Well, that or that Captain John Haworth, R.N., knew how to take care of his own—yeah. He turned up later on, in uniform, in which his wife’s gay pal immediately told him he looked lovely. He took it in his stride, but even on very brief acquaintance Hill would not have expected otherwise.

    Colin was putting a brave face on it but obviously pretty tired and finally admitted he’d had a lot of physio this morning: they were threatening to let him out some time next month. He’d eaten a sweet that the divine vision in palest pink had presented him with, but couldn’t manage one of the buttered Jewish rolls she’d also brought. Firmly John Haworth rounded them up and led them away, amiably promising drinks at the Ritz, in which he was ably, nay vociferously, seconded by the gay friend.

    Hill was opening his mouth to phrase a polite refusal when there was a fusillade of flashes and a babble of impertinent shouted query and comment broke out. “Lily Rose! Lily Rose! Are you pregnant again?” and such-like. And it dawned that the front entrance of the hospital was surrounded by bloody paparazzi.

    “Smile,” said John Haworth on a grim note in his ear. “Rosie’ll get rid of them, don’t worry.”

    Hill looked round at him feebly. He’d plastered a grin to his mug, all right. Feebly he and Jerry did their best to copy him.

    “Sorry, Hill! It’s the silly season, they’ve got nothing to fill their space with,” said Rosie as they eventually managed to pile into a taxi. “It’s a matter of giving them what they want.”

    “Unfortunately what they want,” said Haworth grimly, closing the door and smiling and waving nicely to the buggers, “—the Ritz, and make it sharpish, thanks,” he said to the driver—“is posed pics of Rosie and the girls on assorted males’ arms.”

    “Mm.” The two gays had hung on each other’s arms, so that had left the delightful cousins for him and Jerry. Jerry had the white one in the other taxi with the gays.

    “Never mind, Hill, it’s all over!” said the pale green one with a gurgle of laughter.

    “Unless they follow us to the Ritz, Molly,” he replied in a hollow voice.

    “No, they won’t bother,” her famous cousin explained placidly, “’cos they’ve got what they want, see? They only hound you if you’ve been silly enough not to give them what they want in the first place. Or if they think they’re on the track of a new story, of course, only mostly they’re far too lazy and unenterprising for that.”

    “Mm. We’ve learnt a lot about the world of publicity, PR and Press over these last few years,” said Haworth, dry as Hell.

    Hill smiled palely. He just betted they had. Poor bastard. –And he’d never thought he’d hear himself thinking that of the man who was married to the luscious Lily Rose!

    He popped in on Colin next morning before heading back to Chipping Abbas. He was very much brighter and urged a pink sweet on him. Barfis. From the Indian restaurant near John’s and Rosie’s flat. Hill wasn’t into sweets at any hour, really, let alone ten in the morning, but he took one. Rosewater. “Very nice.”

    “Very nice? Ambrosia for the mouth!”

    “Ambr— Oh, hah, hah.”

    Colin winked. “One of Rupy’s. Catches out about eighty percent of ’em. Not bad, eh?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Hill, I’ve been thinking. Why is Hattie down in Abbot’s Halt?”

    “Thought I explained? She inherited the cottage from her grandfather. He left her his house in London, too, and she got the insurance for it when it burned down, and sold the site for a good price. She’s found these damned tutoring jobs, and she’s doing a fair bit of interpreting, which is why she’s hardly ever there when I am,” he ended glumly.

    “Ye-es.”

    Hill stared at him. “Colin, what exactly is going through that paranoid brain of yours?”

    “Not paranoid, just careful.”

    And the rest! Well, where the safety of his men was concerned—yes. Not in any other sphere of life, however. “Go on,” he said heavily.

    “Nothing specific. But I’d check out just what the situation is. For one thing, you don’t want to be faced by another eighteen-stone Scotsman with a claymore in his hand.”

    “Bottle,” said Hill feebly. “And he fell down dead drunk before he could use it.”

    “Same difference. Just be careful, old chap. Six years is a long time.”

    “She’s not married, I asked her,” he said tightly.

    “Good show,” replied Colin, smiling nicely.

    “Look, if you’re imagining she heard Chipping Abbas had come to me and came belting down on the strength of—”

    “No. Though I suppose it isn’t impossible.”

    “She’d be the last woman in the world to want to do the lady of the manor bit! Don’t look like that, you don’t know her!”

    “I rather think my point is that you don’t know her, either.”

    Perhaps fortunately his Uncle Matthew turned up at that point with an enormous bunch of flowers and what looked like a square bottle, silly old coot, so Hill got out of it.

    Um… could Colin’s paranoia have some sort of basis in reality? No, balls! Miriam Green and June Whatserface had seemed quite sure about Hattie’s story—and if there was anything suspicious about her, the village gossips would have pounced immediately. Colin was just being over-cautious. Besides, five minutes in Hattie’s company and anyone but a blind and deaf idiot in a coma would realize she was as straightforward—not to say forthright—as the day was long!

    Smiling, Hill went off to a really nice flower shop he’d patronised for some years and ordered a big bunch of mixed crimson and pink roses with some of that fuzzy stuff and some frilly ferns, if that could be managed, to be sent to the cottage without delay. Only realizing after he’d been and gorn and done it that possibly, in view of the confrontation over the damned Lady Tarlington roses, that the choice hadn’t been the most tactful that he might have made. Oh, well, it was done now. And at least she’d realize he wasn’t ignoring her.

    The gorgeous bunch of roses was gracing the glass-topped cane table under the front sitting-room windows that was from Joanna’s cane set when Hattie got home from a late afternoon ramble in the lanes. “Aren’t they lovely!” she gasped. “Who gave them to you, Joanna?”

    Joanna very nearly lost her nerve and lied. She swallowed hard. “They’re not mine.”

    Hattie went very red.

    “I’d read what’s on the card, if I was you.”

    Tight-lipped, Hattie picked up the card. It said: “Darling Hattie, with apologies for everything, from Hill.”

    “See?” said Joanna before she could speak.

    “You don’t understand,” said Hattie in a stifled voice.

    “I understand that he hasn’t lived like a monk for the last ten years waiting around for you, but ’oo wants to marry a ruddy monk?” she returned heatedly.

    “You started off good,” noted Hattie drily.

    “Um, well, not marry, necessarily,” said Joanna very, very weakly. “And you can’t say he hasn’t apologised this time!”

    “That’s true.”

    “And there isn’t room on a florist’s card to say for what!”

    Hattie was very flushed again but she managed to retort: “Not in his case, no.”

    “And don’t throw them out: they’re really lovely, and it’d be a crime!”

    “I’m not throwing them out,” said Hattie in a stifled voice, going over to the door.

    “Um, I looked in the oven,” ventured Joanna.

    “Just as well it isn’t doing a soufflé, then.”

    “Hah, hah. Um, well, it looks great, Hattie.”

    “Thanks. It’s only a potato bake.”

    “Ooh, goody!” said Joanna with a laugh in her voice.

    Hattie went out to the kitchen, smiling a little in spite of herself.

    Gordon had been told that three helpings of potato bake were enough and it was Kenny’s turn to scrape out the baking dish, Joanna had finished the miraculous mixed salad that had accompanied the dish of sliced potato baked in what she was pretty sure the boys had no idea was a mixture of sour cream and yoghurt, what Hattie called “just fluffy jelly” but which was actually more like a taste of Paradise had vanished like the dew, Gordon and Kenny again competing to scrape out the dish and Gordon this time gaining the honour, and they were all sitting back replete in front of the telly when the day was finally ruined for good and all.

    Joanna gasped and sat up very straight.

    “Lily Rose,” discerned Kenny, grinning. “Look, those other ladies look just like her! Hey, ’ve you seen the film yet?”

    “Shut up, Kenny,” she said tensely.

    “She’s an Australian,” he said, not shutting up. “That’s her husband, see, he’s really in the Navy! He’s a full captain, see the four bars?”

    The voice-over was now kindly telling them that in any case, but it was drowned by Gordon’s shout of: “Hey, LOOK! That’s ’Ill! ’Tis, eh? Look, Hattie, it’s ’Ill!”

    “Shut up, Gordon,” said Hattie sourly, abruptly getting up. “I’m going to bed.” She vanished.

    “What’s up with her?” said Kenny blankly to his sister’s friend.

    “What do you think? That was Hill Tarlington with the lady in the green dress!”

    “I saw ’im first!” shouted Gordon.

    “Yeah,” said Kenny weakly. “Uh—keep a look-out for the cricket scores, wouldja, Gordon?”

    Eagerly Gordon glued his eyes to the screen.

    Kenny looked at Joanna. “Um, I sort of thought— Um, I mean, well, I dunno,” he admitted.

    He’d floundered to a stop and Joanna, reminding herself firmly that, bright though he was, he was only fourteen, prompted: “Yes?”

    “Um, well, if a bloke sends a lady a bunch of flowers, um, well, Mum was always getting flowers, um, well, doesn’t it mean he’s sort of, um, keen?”

    Under the yellowish skin he had gone very red so Joanna said kindly: “Yes, that’s right.”

    “So why would he go up to London and, um, go round with another lady?”

    She sighed. “I dunno, Kenny. It’s quite possible he was just, um, doing something else and bumped into those people.”

    Kenny nodded dubiously. Even to his fourteen-year-old mind, thought Joanna bleakly, it must’ve been obvious that Hill Tarlington hadn’t looked as if he disliked having that pretty blonde lady hanging on his arm like that.

    “Um, I wouldn’t mention it to Hattie, if I was you,” she ventured.

    He shuddered. “I’m not that mad!”

    Silence fell. Gordon proudly repeated some scores and the other two ignored him.

    Finally Kenny said lamely: “It’s on over in Ditterminster. –The Captain’s Daughter: Lily Rose’s film,” he explained lamely as Joanna just looked at him dully.

    Joanna had read about the film in a magazine—and of course she’d seen the telly series, it was just the film of the series, really. It was a romance—well, a romantic comedy, really, there were a lot of funny bits in the series and the film was supposed to be funny, too. A Royal Navy background, Kenny’d probably like that, but it was set during the Fifties, with an awful lot of emphasis on Fifties fashions and old songs and stuff: she wouldn’t have said it was at all the sort of film to appeal to a teenage boy.

    “Um, I’ll take you, if you like— No! It’s a love story, you’d hate it!’ she snapped as Gordon came to and lodged his claim—“but whatever you do, don’t breathe a word to her.”

    “Nah,” agreed Kenny, brightening. “Thanks, Joanna!”

    Joanna sank back into the grasp of Hattie’s comfy old second-hand couch, trying to smile. She doubted if she’d be able to take in a split second of the ruddy film: the lady in the green dress had been very, very like Lily Rose, and really, the silly smirk on Hill Tarlington’s face—! And then he had to go and send her a bunch of flowers right on top of it? Talk about rubbing salt in the wound! Why were men so—so hopeless?