In the mild January night, a young man was waiting outside his father’s house. A single bell rang, and kept on ringing, from the cathedral tower. The young man, whose name was Stephen Freer, was used to bells, having lived since he was a child in that house close by. Six fifteen on a Saturday evening: the spoken evensong without a choir: not paying attention, concentrated on his own thoughts, he watched a couple of figures, and then another, move towards the radiant porch.
Stephen moved down the lane and stopped at the bollards at the end. The lane, cut off from traffic, Georgian houses on the further side, was as near a precinct as the cathedral could provide: but in fact the cathedral had until recently been only a parish church, promoted when the town itself was promoted, and the lane was a relic, piously preserved by local antiquarians, Stephen’s father among them, of the old eighteenth-century town.
Stephen rested against one of the bollards and gazed up at the sky. It had been a warm and gusty day, but now the wind had dropped. The spire, elegant and high, a piece of Victorian reconstruction, stood out against some early stars. Stephen knew something about the cathedral, and a good deal about the stars: but he paid no attention to either, no more than he had to the sprinkling of old people going in to the evening service. He was not given to thinking of two things at once. He was waiting for a friend and ally. He was in a state, almost pleasurable to him, though he might not have recognized it as such, not so much anxious as keyed tight; a state in which he wanted to decide and act.
The cathedral clock had struck the half-hour. Minutes of absorption. The street outside empty in the evening. No noise from this part of the town. Then quick, familiar steps.
‘Hallo,’ called Stephen.
‘Hallo,’ said Mark Robinson.
An Englishman would have guessed at once, listening to their tone, that they came from privileged homes.
‘I wanted to catch you,’ said Stephen.
‘What’s on?’
‘Something’s come a bit unstuck.’
‘Oh hell.’ In the dim light, Mark’s expression wasn’t any more anxious than his companion’s, but eager, enthusiastic, pure. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s been a leak.’
‘Hell. Now that we didn’t want. Serious?’
‘Difficult to say.’
The two young men walked back up the lane together. As they came under the first of the eighteenth-century iron lanterns (gift of Thomas Freer), they made a physiognomic contrast. Both were tall, both looked active and intelligent. They were dressed alike, in polo-neck sweaters and corduroy trousers, and their hair, Mark’s shiningly fair, Stephen’s darker, was thick at the nape of their necks. But Mark, six months younger than his friend, who was nearly twenty-two, had a face without much written on it – with the kind of handsomeness, luminous-eyed, which is also innocent. Stephen had none of that. He was long-headed, with features clear and aquiline, already set and unlikely to alter until he was old. His glance was very sharp. Often, as now, he appeared brooding, except when he broke into a sarcastic smile which, surprisingly, gave his face warmth and made it younger.
It was that smile which Mark expected, didn’t need to look for, when he heard Stephen’s answer about his father. The young men had known each other since they were children: they had been at school together: they talked with most of the explanations left out. How they felt about the ‘leak’ didn’t require saying: the action to be taken, they argued about without fuss. Mark, however, was curious as to when and how Stephen had heard. That afternoon, after tea, said Stephen, actually only an hour or so ago – and from his father.
‘Who it came from I don’t know, one of his lawyer friends, I fancy.’
‘How much have they got?’
‘Anything they’ve got, it would be better if they hadn’t.’
Thomas Freer hadn’t said much, there wasn’t enough to go on. Mark asked how had he taken it, what had his attitude been?
‘Semi-detached,’ said Stephen.
As for immediate action, they couldn’t do it all that Saturday night. They would have to stay at the Freer’s dinner party until ten o’clock, for decency’s sake or rather to seem unaffected: afterwards, they could talk to Neil in the pub.
Mark would go off at once and ring him up: he wouldn’t have time to collect the ‘core’ that night, he had better be told to arrange a full meeting for tomorrow.
‘Don’t explain why over the telephone,’ said Stephen.
Mark smiled. That wasn’t necessary. In spite of all his openness, he had learned discretion, or at least the rules of secrecy. Saying that he would be back in time for dinner, he was leaving Stephen, when he suddenly thought to ask whether they could get everything in order by Monday. He had planned to return to Cambridge then.
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Stephen. ‘It might be rather a long weekend.’
They were at the top end of the lane, where it was crossed by another silent and empty street. Mark gave a wave of the hand as he plunged off, leaning forward in his eager walk.