Chapter 6

 

Helen woke early and left Alice still asleep in the big bed, where, craving company, she had put the sleeping child on her return to her bedroom the previous night. A gentle mist swirled up from the hollows to a clear, bright sky presaging a beautiful day. She had begun to get a sense of the rhythm of this country, so different from the blue mountains of her own beloved Terrala.

As she rounded the corner of the stable block, Helen saw Paul already sitting on the mounting block, holding the reins of the two horses. His utter stillness caused her to pause. The early morning light leeched the color from the world and he could have been one of the statues of his ancestors in the church. She had never met anyone who seemed so solitary and she wondered if he had always been so self-contained or if the war had turned him inward as it had done to so many young men.

Helen touched her left wrist. There had been no sign of the mark when she had woken this morning but the terror of the moment still burned in her memory. She had turned and Paul had been there, stilling her fright by his mere presence. For all his outward reserve, when Paul had taken her in his arms last night, she had been conscious of a depth of warmth and humanity. He had taken all the fear from her, absorbed it into himself.

It had been so long since a man had held her as Paul had, even for a few fleeting seconds. As she looked at Paul Morrow, his still figure reminded her for the first time in a long time of her own loneliness. In a world where a generation of young men had died, she knew there was little chance of finding someone to fill that empty space in her life. Yes, she had Alice, but the company of the child did not fill the aching void in her heart left by Charlie’s death.

The horses sensed her presence and turned their heads toward her, their ears pricked. Paul looked around and seeing her, jumped down from the mounting block. He winced as he landed.

“Are you all right?” she asked as she joined him.

“I must stop doing that,” he said, ruefully rubbing his right thigh. “I forget.” He caught the question in her face and said, “Broken femur.”

“I’m surprised you can still ride,” Helen said.

 “So I’ve been told, but I couldn’t envisage a life without it. Want a hand?”

“I can manage. Horses are a way of life at home,” Helen said as she took the reins from him, springing easily into the saddle.

“Charlie told me about an annual cattle muster? It sounded like hard riding,” he replied as he mounted Hector.

“We graze our cattle in the high country during summer and every autumn we have to bring them down. It’s rough and dangerous riding, but Charlie took to the muster as if he had been born to it.”

“He would,” Paul replied with a smile. “Never had any respect for his own neck.”

The birds greeted them with their morning chorus as they turned the horses out on to the narrow road. Helen turned to look at the man riding beside her. Like his cousin, Paul rode with ease and grace, at one with the horse.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I thought I’d show you one of Charlie’s favorite places,” he said. “Stoneman’s Hill.” He cast her a sideways glance. “Unless, of course, you’ve already been up to the Standing Stones?”

“No. I’ve tried to find them. Sam even gave me directions, but I just became hopelessly lost.”

He smiled. “They’ll let you find them, when they’re ready.”

“That sounds like local superstition,” she said. “You don’t seem to be the type to pay heed to folk stories.”

His gaze held hers. “I spent my early childhood in a country that thrived on spirits and had a mother who believed in the fairy folk. I don’t take anything in this world for granted.”

Paul turned Hector’s head off the road, up a narrow hacking path Helen had never seen before, despite her morning excursions. Helen’s horse automatically fell into step behind Paul as he urged Hector up the overgrown path that wound up through the thick trees on Stoneman’s Hill. Helen had ample opportunity to contemplate his straight back and broad shoulders beneath the old sweater he wore. She noticed he carried his left shoulder slightly higher than his right and she wondered if that was another legacy of the night Charlie had died.

The path flattened out and the trees cleared to reveal five granite monoliths silhouetted against the early morning sun, the Celtic warriors turned to stone by a druid’s curse of Charlie’s stories.

Helen slid from the saddle and tied Minter’s reins to a tree. Almost afraid to breathe, she walked toward the ancient stones. Two had fallen on their sides and two leaned haphazardly as if they would fall if she touched them, but the last one still stood tall and straight within the circle.

She placed her hand on the lichened and weathered surface, half-expecting to feel the beat of a living heart within the granite.

“You’re the archaeologist,” she said at last, turning back to Paul. “How old are they?”

He stood on the edge of the circle watching her, his hands thrust into the pockets of his trousers.

“No one knows,” he said. “I would say a couple of thousand years at least. If not older.”

“Are they on your land?”

He nodded. “They were here before the Morrows and will be here long after we’ve gone. Tony will tell you that on the Wellmore land, they have seven standing stones, but they’re nothing more than an eighteenth century folly. These,” as he spoke, he walked into the circle and sat down on one of the fallen stones, “are real.” He straightened his right leg and rubbed it.

Helen sat down next to him. A flight of birds rose from the trees above their heads, spiraling into the soft gray morning light. Charlie had loved Australia but this had been his home long before he met her, this was where he truly belonged. More than at any time since she had come to England the question nagged at her mind, the need to know how he had died, the need to lay his memory to rest and turn her face to the future.

“Paul...” Her fingers twisted the wedding band on her left hand.

“You’re going to ask me about Charlie?” he interrupted.

She looked down at the toe of her riding boot. “Am I that transparent?”

“No, but it’s the question you want answered, just as Evelyn does. That is why you came to England, isn’t it?”

Helen opened her mouth, the denial forming on her lips. “Partly,” she admitted.

Paul crossed his ankles and looked up at her. “I can’t give you the answer you want, Helen, because I don’t know. My memory of what happened between a mortar shell blowing up in front of me and waking up in the field hospital is a complete blank.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...”

He rose to his feet. “You have every right to ask, Helen, but you will just have to accept that you may never know the answer.” He started to walk away and then turned back to look at her. “And if you do find the answer, it may not be the one you want to hear. I had to write letters.” Paul took a heavy breath and looked up at the trees. “Every time one of my men was killed. The grieving mothers and widows would not have thanked me for honesty. We all take refuge in platitudes as a defense against the horror of reality. Let him go, Helen.”

He looped the reins over Hector’s head and swung into the saddle. Man and horse had already been swallowed up by the undergrowth before Helen had time to follow him.

As she emerged from the path, she found him waiting for her. He raised a questioning eyebrow and put his heels to Hector. Accepting the unspoken challenge, Helen urged the old horse into a gallop. Neck and neck the two horses pounded down the quiet country lane.

They arrived back at the stables, flushed and exultant. Sam came out to meet them. He gave the panting horses a glance and shook his head.

“Leave the horses,” he said. “I’ll see to ‘em. Sarah’s got your breakfast going and will be wonderin’ where you both are.”

* * * *

“You two look like you could do with a cup of tea,” Sarah said as Paul and Helen walked into the kitchen. Alice sat at the kitchen table with a glass of milk in her hand.

“Now you’re here, I’ll put on the eggs.” Sarah bustled over to the large kitchen range. “Good ride?”

“Paul took me up to Stoneman’s Hill,” Helen said. She kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “When that pony arrives from Wellmore, I’ll take you there.”

“If you go through, I’ll bring you breakfast in the parlour,” Sarah said.

“Don’t be silly,” Helen responded. “I don’t see any point in setting up in the parlour. I’m quite happy to eat breakfast here. Paul, can you pour the tea?”

Paul looked at Helen and then at the large, brown teapot Sarah had set on the table. A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “Of course. Pass those tea cups, Alice.”

Sarah Pollard put her hands on her hips and glanced at Helen as the man took a chair at the end of the table and dutifully poured four large cups of tea.

“We always eat breakfast in the kitchen at home,” Alice said as the adults arranged themselves around the table.

“Just don’t tell Grandmama,” Helen said.

Paul regarded Alice over his teacup. “Definitely don’t tell Grandmama. Anyone else want that last piece of toast?”

Helen pushed the platter across to him. Sitting at the kitchen table with his sleeves pushed up, his dark hair falling across his eyes as he buttered a piece of toast, he seemed more relaxed then he did in the world beyond the green baize door.

The outside door opened and Annie, the girl from the village walked into the kitchen.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pol...” she stopped mid-sentence, her hand still on the door latch, staring at the breakfast crowd. She bobbed a curtsey. “Good morning, sir… madam.”

“It’s all right, Annie,” Paul rose to his feet. “I’ve finished. I’ll leave you all in peace. Thanks for breakfast, Sarah.”

“You go and make a start on the dining room, Annie,” Sarah said as the kitchen door swung shut behind Paul. Humming to herself the girl picked up her basket of cleaning rags and followed Paul out of the kitchen.

Helen set down her empty cup. “I should go too. I’m holding you up,” she said, pushing her chair back from the table. “Have you finished that toast yet, Alice?”

Alice set the crust she had been eating around, back on the plate and looked up.

“If you’re not in a hurry, I’ve something to show the two of you.” Sarah rose to her feet and fetched a large parcel, loosely wrapped in brown paper from the sideboard. She set it down in front of Alice. The child knelt up on the chair and pulled back the wrapping to reveal a heavy old-fashioned scrapbook.

“It’s just something I’ve kept all these years,” Sarah said, collecting the breakfast plates and carrying them over to the sink.

Helen pulled her chair up beside Alice and they began to turn the pages. The scrapbook contained a history of the Morrow’s lives, chronicled in newspaper cuttings, yellowed invitation cards and photographs, beginning with the wedding of Sir Gerald Morrow and the Honorable Evelyn Vaughan. There followed birth announcements for Charlie, clipped from The Times, items from the social pages of the county newspaper recounting Charlie’s prowess at cricket and rugby and a photograph of Charlie playing Dick Dauntless in a school Gilbert and Sullivan production. There were newspaper photographs of Sir Gerald’s funeral, including one of the villagers turning out to line the route of the coffin to the church.

A couple of small articles mentioned the success of the Winchester First Eight, stroked by P.N. Morrow, at the Head of the River and Paul as captain of the First Eleven in their win against Harrow in the cricket.

Then the war, a brief item recounting that Captain Charles Morrow would be awarded a posthumous MC for gallantry in the face of the enemy and a couple of newspaper epitaphs, none of which Helen had seen before. She looked at the neat printed words recounting Charlie’s bravery and the nation’s collective sorrow at his death. They meant nothing to her, it was almost as though they talked about a total stranger.

Helen closed the book. “Thank you for showing that to us.”

“I want you to have it,” Sarah said. “I thought Alice may like to keep it.”

“May I?” Alice’s eyes shone and she turned the pages slowly, revisiting each one as Helen helped Sarah with the washing up.

Alice swiveled on the chair and looked across at the two women by the sink. “Mrs. Pollard, Uncle Tony said you know all about the Holdston ghosts,” she said.

Helen started and nearly dropped the cup she was drying. “Alice, we’ve talked about this before. There is no such thing as ghosts.”

“Have you ever seen any, Mrs. Pollard?” Alice persisted, ignoring Helen’s protest.

Sarah cast Helen a quick glance. “I have to disagree with you, Mrs. Morrow. There’s ghosts at Holdston right enough.”

Helen glared at Sarah. She did not need Sarah filling Alice’s head with such nonsense.

Alice’s eyes widened. “So they’re real?” Sarah frowned. “They’re not real in the sense you and I understand, Alice. There’s old Ben. You never see him but you know he’s around because you can smell his tobacco. Then there’s some civil war soldiers. There was a battle near here and they reckon they was brought here and died of their wounds.”

“Are they scary?” Alice’s eyes resembled saucers.

“No,” said Sarah. “They’re in their own place in time, love. If I know one of them is around, I say good morning. They like to be acknowledged but they’re not scary and they won’t hurt you.”

Helen rubbed her wrist and shuddered inwardly at the memory of that icy touch. If she allowed herself to believe that what happened to her in the dark corridor the previous night was indeed paranormal, then she had to disagree with the last assertion. There had been malice and an intention to hurt in that grip.

“I think that’s enough talk of ghosts,” she said firmly.

Sarah smoothed down her apron. “Mrs. Morrow, if you don’t mind, I’ve choir practice tonight. If I leave some soup for you and Miss Alice, will you be able to manage without me? There’s fresh bread and cheese in the larder.”

“Of course, Mrs. Pollard. What about the Major?”

“The Major’ll fend for himself if he wants to eat.”

Helen caught the older woman’s wry smile. “You do worry about him, don’t you?” she observed.

“Someone has to. He hasn’t got anyone else. My boy, Fred, was in his regiment and there weren’t a man who served under the Major who wouldn’t have put their trust in him.”

It was the first Helen had heard about Sarah’s son and she sensed the answer even before she asked, “And your son? Where is he now?”

Sarah stiffened. “He was killed ten days before Armistice,” she replied. “If the Major’d still been with the regiment he’d have seen Fred through to the end.”

“Oh Sarah,” Helen’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry.”

Sarah shook herself. “We’re just two of many women in this country, Mrs. Morrow. Mothers, wives, daughters, sisters. We’ve all got someone to mourn but the Major came home, lost and silent just like he was when he first came to this house when he was eight years old.”

“Eight?”

“Aye, motherless and fatherless, for all his father was still alive. I don’t think there’d been much room in his folks’ lives for him even before his mother died.” Sarah heaved a theatrical sigh. “Her ladyship tried her best but he wasn’t an easy child to love. Some children aren’t, but here in the kitchen with me and the staff he was a different boy. So yes, I worry about the Major.”

Helen looked at the door as if she expected Paul Morrow to reappear through it. She rose to her feet and tapped her daughter on the shoulder. Alice, still absorbed in the scrapbook didn’t move.

“Would Miss Alice like to help me with the baking this morning?” Sarah asked.

Alice brightened and looked from Sarah to her mother. Helen relented. It suited her to have Alice gainfully employed. She had other plans.

* * * *

Paul ran his hand through his hair and contemplated the paper-strewn table, his gaze coming to rest on the Remington. He needed to start typing up the report, but the thought of tying himself to the ancient machine with his laborious two fingered typing did not thrill him. He turned his head at a knock on the library door. Helen stepped into the room, her hands thrust into the pockets of her cardigan.

“I thought if you didn’t mind, that perhaps I could help you?” she said.

“Help me?”

She looked past him at the disorganized mess on the table. “I will die of boredom if I don’t find something useful to do. Is there any typing or filing I can do?”

“I won’t say no to the offer of help with the typing,” Paul admitted. “As your daughter has already observed, I’m no typist.”

Helen walked over to the table and picked up the pile of photographs of the recent dig. “This is extraordinary. Who is that man?” She pointed to a figure in one of the photographs.

Paul stood up and joined her at the table. “Woolley, Leonard Woolley. He believes he has found the ancient Sumerian city of Ur.”

Helen looked up at him, the wonder shining from her face. “The Ur that is mentioned in the Bible?”

“The same.”

She drew an awed breath and replaced the photographs back on the table. “What is your role on these digs?” she asked.

“Officially, I do what the army trained me to do. I organize things. An archaeological dig is no different from a military operation. People have to be fed, watered, housed, moved around, so that’s what I do. But I have some aptitude with ancient language and I do help out with this sort of thing.” He swept a hand at the tablets in their padded boxes. “I leave the digging work to the others.”

He made a pretence of shuffling some of the papers on the table to avoid her eyes. While part of him yearned to join the dig, he could not bring himself to descend into the diggings. Woolley had tried to persuade him to join in but he had stood on the edge of the trenches and broken out in a sweat.

“As interesting as Woolley’s work is, I have no particular passion for ancient Babylonian history.”

“What is your passion?” She cocked her head and looked at him with a smile.

“Ancient Greek,” he said without hesitation and then without really knowing why he said it, he added, “In my spare moments in the trenches, I worked on a translation of Homer’s Iliad.”

As soon as he said it, he regretted the confidence. She looked at him with large gray eyes that invited his trust in a way no one else had for a long time.

“Tony said you never went to university?”

Paul felt the old grievance shift on his shoulders. “I’d won a scholarship to Magdalen in Oxford but my uncle insisted that it was my father’s dying wish that I follow him into the regiment. So off to Sandhurst, I went.” He wondered if she could hear the bitterness in his voice.

Helen’s gaze lingered on his face for a few moments before she squared her shoulders and picked up some papers with his scrawled notes. She squinted at the papers in her hand. “Your writing is atrocious but I am used to my father’s scrawl so it shouldn’t take me too long to decipher this.”

“Your father?”

“Yes, I work for my father,” she said. “When I’m not doing the paperwork for Terrala, I type out his speeches for parliament. The boys went to university, I went to secretarial college. Father deemed that a far more useful skill for a woman.”

He heard the irony in her voice and smiled. “And you would have rather done something else?”

“I don’t see why I couldn’t have gone to university. They’re taking women now. I could have studied medicine.” He raised his eyebrows and she smiled. “Although it is far more probable I would have ended up a school teacher so maybe secretarial college wasn’t such a bad idea.”

“This is the administrative report for the season,” he said. “Very boring and unromantic but if Woolley wants the money to continue digging, it must be done. To keep myself amused, I also do some of the more tedious translation work which is why I have these tablets.” He picked up one of the tablets from its box and handed it to her.

She turned it over, her eyes widening. “How old is this?”

He shrugged. “Probably older than the stones on the hill.”

She handed it back to him. “I’d hate to drop it,” she said. “What does that one say?”

He smiled. “It’s a household inventory.”

Her face fell. “How dull.”

“I suppose it is, but at the same time it is like a photograph of their way of life.”

Helen looked at the Remington. “Well, then let’s get to work,” she said.

He passed her a stack of handwritten pages and she rifled through them, pulling a face. Paul gave her a rueful smile. “I’m sorry. Just tell me if there is something you can’t read.”

Helen sat down at the Remington, took two pieces of plain paper and carbon and began to type with a speed and dexterity that left him staring at her in amazement. At this rate the report would be finished in no time.

With a few stops to decipher his atrocious handwriting, after typing for an hour Helen pushed back her chair and stood up, stretching her arms above her head. She walked over to the enormous mahogany bookcases that flanked the old fireplace and surveyed the books for a moment before pulling one out.

“Whose crest is this?” she asked pointing to a regal coat of arms on the bookplate.

Paul shook his head. “No idea. It’s not the Morrow crest. I suspect you’ll find that most of the books have the same bookplate. One of my illustrious ancestors would have purchased the library as a job lot.”

Helen replaced the book and pulled out another one. “The pages on this one haven’t even been cut,” she exclaimed.

“Evelyn’s brother has looked over the books. He seems to think as a collection it’s worth quite a sum these days,” Paul said, sitting back in his chair and tapping his nose with the end of his pencil.

“Will you sell it?”

Paul shrugged. “Evelyn has suggested that and I have no great affection for it. It will buy us some time.”

“Time for what?”

He sighed. “I suppose you should know, Helen. The estate barely makes ends meet. This house alone,” he looked up at the ceiling, “costs us a fortune. Did you wonder why we live only in a few rooms with two staff? As well as the house, we have eight farms to run and maintain. We need to improve the way we farm but there is no money for new equipment and hardly enough to make running repairs to the farm buildings.” He gave a rueful smile. “Sorry. None of this is your concern.”

“But it is isn’t it? I’m a Morrow too and I’m only too aware of the difficulties of running a large estate. Is there anything I can do to help?”

He looked at her. She was involved in the affairs of her father’s property so, yes, she would understand his difficulties but he wouldn’t ask her for help. The trust Charlie had left was for her and the child and he knew little of Helen’s family situation. Holdston was his problem. His alone.“The rents haven’t been raised in twenty years and I can’t do so now, not while the buildings are in such poor condition so that’s why I work. The museum pays me quite well. Enough to keep body and soul and this house together, but we can’t go on this way.”

“What will you do?”

He met her gaze. “I want to sell Holdston.”

Her eyes rested on him for a moment. “Would Charlie have come back and saved Holdston?” she asked.

Paul shook his head. “No. He told me he had every intention of settling in Australia after the war, and even if he’d wanted to, Holdston is beyond saving. My aunt and uncle lived in another world.”

“Charlie and I bought some land in the King Valley but I was afraid that once he went home, he’d change his mind.”

“Evelyn is convinced Charlie would have returned to Holdston but his mind was made up. He would have gone back to Australia. Sorry, I didn’t mean to bore you with tedious family business.”

“But I am family, Paul.” She echoed her earlier words. “For better or worse, I’m a Morrow. Generations of your family have lived in this house. Your blood, Charlie’s blood, Alice too. There must have been hard times before, but they still managed to get through them.”

“You’re quite right, Helen. There have been hard times before. A couple of civil wars and several kings intent on taxing the lifeblood from their subjects, but I doubt any of my ancestors would recognize the world we live in now.”

Paul rose to his feet and looked out of the window while he fumbled in his pocket for his cigarettes. An odd procession was making its way up the drive toward the house. Tony, mounted on his black hunter headed the cavalcade followed by a groom on horseback leading a piebald pony.

“Good lord,” he exclaimed. “Is that rotund little beast the one Tony is lending Alice?”

Helen joined him at the window. “Oh it is. I must get Alice. Excuse me, Paul.”

Paul followed her out of the courtyard door, crossing the bridge over the moat to meet the Wellmore party.

“Morrow. I heard you were back.” Tony dismounted, greeting Paul with an outstretched hand and a clap on his good shoulder.

Paul gave the pony a quick appraising glance. “Using me as an agistment stable, I hear?”

“I didn’t think one more new resident would make much of a difference,” Tony replied.

Paul glanced back at the house. “Holdston is becoming quite used to new residents,” he observed. “What brings you to the country?”

“Ma is on the matchmaking path again. She’s intent on filling the house with dismal debutantes for me to make my selection.” Tony gave a mock shudder. “Suitable young women, Anthony. It’s about time you settled down.”

Paul smiled at the fair impersonation of Tony’s mother.

“There’s a soiree planned for Friday night. Angela’s coming down for the weekend to lend me support.” Tony continued.

“Angela?”

“I thought that would interest you,” Tony said. “Enough to inveigle you to Ma’s party?”

Paul shook his head. “I can’t imagine anything I would like less.”

“Oh be a sport. There’s some pretty girls in the herd and if it’s time for me to ‘settle down’, it must be time for you as well.”

“Uncle Tony.” Alice called out as she ran across the bridge.

“True to my promise, sprite. One Turnip for you to ride,” Tony said with a mock bow.

Alice giggled at the joke, and at the sight of the child’s delighted face a rush of regret surged through Paul at his own failure to be the child’s benefactor.

Obviously brought up around horses, the child did not rush to the piebald pony, but walked over slowly, approaching him from the front. The pony eyed her with his ears pricked. Alice had come prepared. From her pocket, she produced two crumbled and lint-impregnated sugar lumps.

“So, sprite. Shall we take this lazy beast for a ride?”

“Oh please can we, Mummy?” Alice addressed her mother who had joined the group, standing beside Paul with her arms crossed.

“Of course,” she said. “I just need to change and get Minter saddled. You will stay for lunch, Tony?”

Tony shook his head. “Expected back at Wellmore, I’ll ride with you as far as the crossroads, sprite. What about you, Morrow?” Tony turned to Paul.

“Please, Uncle Paul?” Alice pleaded.

Paul shook his head. “I have work to do,” he said, not willing to admit that the ache in his leg made another ride an unattractive prospect, “but you’re welcome to take Hector, Helen. I think you’ll find him easier than Minter.”

The men watched as Alice scampered back toward the house with her mother following. Tony produced a silver cigarette case and offered it to Paul.

“I’ve a message from Angela. She said if you didn’t come and relieve the tedium of the party, she would personally ride over and haul you out.”

Paul laughed. “That’s an invitation I can’t resist,” he said tapping the ash off his cigarette. “She knows how I loathe those sorts of occasions.”

“We all do,” Tony admitted.

“Liar,” Paul responded. “All those girls fawning over you, Scarvell?”

“A title and a large estate do compensate for my lack of good looks,” Tony said with a wry grin. “So, what do you think of Charlie’s widow?”

Paul coughed on the smoke. “Does it matter what I think?”

“Charlie did rather paint her as a paragon,” Tony said, “so I thought the reality would be disappointing but I have to say, old man, she’s a beauty.”

Paul contemplated the exterior of the old house and drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. He’d met many beautiful women but Helen had more than just striking good looks. Even in their short acquaintance, she shone like a beacon in his bleak life.

Mistaking Paul’s silence, Tony continued. “She’s the most interesting woman I’ve met in years, Morrow.”

Paul brought his attention back to his friend. “Don’t go falling in love with her. You know your mother would never approve.”

“Love? What makes you say that?”

“Because despite all your talk, Scarvell, you fall in love with any woman who looks twice at you.”

“Unlike you. When was the last time you were ever in love, Morrow?”

Paul shook his head. “A state of bliss I have avoided,” he said with a smile. Except, perhaps, for Angela. He had loved her once.

“Here come the girls.” Tony drew a deep breath. “My God, look at those legs. Are all Australian girls such stunners?” He straightened. “See you on Friday night, Morrow.”

Paul stubbed the cigarette out on the wall. “Tell Ange I’ll think about it,” he replied.