Gillian McPhail, who ran the discussion group Mila was attending at Birkbeck, lived with her husband Bob, a two-year-old daughter, Ellie, and a wire-haired fox terrier called Pompey in a decent-sized house in Maida Vale. Like Skelton and Mila, they had no live-in servants, just a housekeeper/cook and a nanny both of whom only did weekdays, so Sunday lunch was a feat Gillian achieved single-handed.
Skelton didn’t usually like coming into town at the weekend, but the roads were empty, the children were safe visiting friends, the sun shone now and then, and Mila, beside him in the Bentley, kept him entertained with gossip about other members of the discussion group, some of 182whom, she suspected, were having affairs.
‘The first week she came in a ratty old cardigan and a tweed skirt,’ she said, about a woman called Nora. ‘Three weeks later she’s in a low-waisted bouclé tweed thing with silk stockings and enough rouge to cause medical alarm. Meanwhile he’s had his hair cut, polished his shoes and always has a clean collar. And every week they do this pantomime at going home time, “Oh, are you catching the 63, too? I’ll walk down with you,” as if the whole thing wasn’t prearranged. Honestly, it’s some of the worst acting I’ve seen since the Lambourn Amateur Players did Dear Brutus. I’d imagine she’s single. She doesn’t wear a ring, anyway. But I’m fairly certain he’s married.’
‘The soup’s gone wrong, so I’ve thrown that down the sink,’ Gillian McPhail said, as she took their coats. ‘The beef looks all right, but I’ve made the mistake of doing Yorkshire pudding with it forgetting you’re from Yorkshire, so you’ll pass harsh judgement.’
‘Oh, I’m sure—’ Skelton said.
Gillian ignored him. ‘Bob …’ she called upstairs, ‘they’re here.’
Pompey, the dog, who had been barking steadily from somewhere, appeared like a rat out of a trap and bit Skelton’s trousers.
‘I’d suggest kicking him,’ Gillian said, ‘but experience has proved he’ll just think you’re playing and bite more.’
Skelton bent down and pulled the dog’s ears. It stopped biting, looked up and wagged its tail hard enough to put 183its arse in danger of flying off.
Bob appeared carrying Ellie, who had a curly moustache. Introductions were made and hands awkwardly shaken.
‘She’s been painting herself,’ Bob explained. He licked a finger, rubbed at the paint and tasted it experimentally. ‘I don’t think it’s poisonous. Is it poisonous, Gill?’
‘We’ll know soon enough if she falls over or something,’ Gillian said. ‘Are we going to have sherry?’
‘Oh, I’d have thought so. Come through.’
Bob put Ellie down, told the dog not to do whatever it was thinking of doing and took them through to an artsy-craftsy living room where everything was in need of minor repairs. He sat them down and provided them with sherry.
‘Gillian said you work in the Civil Service,’ Mila said.
‘Yes, I do.’ Bob pulled a face. ‘Agriculture and Fisheries, but please don’t assume I know anything about either. It’s probably a wonderful job if you like cereal crops. Do you have a particular fondness for cereal crops?’
‘Not in their raw state, no.’
‘Oh, everybody likes them once they’ve been turned into bread and cakes and what have you, but in the field they’re green for a bit and then they turn yellow and that’s about it. It’s not enthralling, is it? And then they do the same thing a year later.’
‘I expect farmers like it.’
‘I don’t think they do, really, but they’ve no choice but to put up with it. And as for fish …’
The dog jumped on the sofa next to Skelton and looked at him lovingly. 184
‘That is odd,’ Bob said. ‘I’ve never seen him like a human being before. He’s indifferent to Gillian, he holds me in contempt, and I don’t think he’s that keen on Ellie. Where is Ellie?’
‘I think you put her down in the hall.’
‘Did I? Excuse me.’
Bob went out to the hall and spent a difficult minute or two trying to stop his daughter blinding herself with the spokes of an umbrella.
Lunch was ramshackle, but enjoyable.
‘Are they supposed to look like that?’ Gillian said as she introduced roast potatoes to the table. Skelton assured Gillian that the Yorkshire pudding, flat like a pancake and blackened at the edges, was ‘Exactly like my mother made it’, which was substantially true. Skelton’s mother was a terrible cook. And later they all agreed that lumpy gravy was preferable to the smooth stuff because it provided sudden moments of concentrated flavour.
They spoke, or rather Gillian and Mila spoke, about some article they’d both read in a learned journal about the limitations of Freudian psychoanalysis on patients with anything but the mildest forms of mental disturbance.
Bob asked Skelton about the Musgrave case, and Skelton, trying hard to protect his beef from Pompey, who had never been taught not to jump up at table, did his best to give coherent answers.
‘Is it true about all the women Musgrave was supposed to have seduced?’ Gillian asked. 185
And they talked about that, for a while, then got on to Musgrave’s stories about Tom Mix and aerodromes.
‘Did I read somewhere he claimed to be working for MI5?’
‘That was one his many fantasies.’
‘Actually, there could be a grain of truth in that one, somewhere,’ Bob said. ‘They did have some strange and shady characters working for them just after the war. I caught a blighty at Thiepval,’ Bob indicated his chest. ‘Doesn’t bother me now, but it got me a desk job at the War Office. I used to have regular dealings with the hush-hush people. Man called Kell, have you heard of him? Colonel Vernon Kell, I think he ran MI5, although there was another man called Thomson who ran something called SIS that was the same sort of thing. Anyway, after the war, Kell had his budget cut back to the bone and had to lay off his men, so he – I might have this completely wrong, of course, not my department so I’ve only got rumour to go on – but what I heard is that he started recruiting freelancers and paying on result. It didn’t last long because they had all sorts of ne’er-do-wells and charlatans fabricating evidence about anarchist bombers for a fiver in the back pocket. This Musgrave chap could easily have been one of them.’
‘He wouldn’t still be working for them, would he?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Bob said. ‘Not if he’s telling people about it. Not telling is the first rule of spying, I would have thought.’
‘Unless it’s a double bluff.’ 186
‘What, he tells people because they’ll never believe it’s true, so he escapes suspicion? Couldn’t the same be said about Tom Mix?’
‘Or for that matter, could Tom Mix be working for MI5?’
Cigarettes and pipes were smoked, coffee was drunk.
‘Would a postprandial stroll be of any interest?’ Bob asked. Mila and Gillian seemed keen, so Skelton’s vote remained silent. ‘We’ve got Regent’s Park to the east, or Hyde Park to the south, but neither are really walking distance. We usually go up to Paddington Recreation Ground.’
‘What’s there?’ Mila asked.
‘Nothing of any interest. A running track, some tennis courts, a few square yards of muddy grass and some very scruffy trees.’
Gillian and Bob made a fine-looking couple as they walked along with Ellie in her pushchair and Pompey on his lead. Mila, who walked with them, chatting and making faces at Ellie, could have been Gillian’s sister. Skelton, limping slightly behind, towering over them with his horse face and pebble-glasses, dressed inappropriately in his Homburg hat and black overcoat, felt like a dull uncle to whom they owed some duty of care.
Near the park gates, they encountered a dumpy man in tennis clothes, carrying a net of balls and a racquet in a press.
‘My goodness, here’s a how-de-do’, he said, and broke into something halfway between a smile and a sneer that made his big shiny face look even bigger and shinier.
Mia and Gillian made some surly introductions and 187he shook hands, ‘Digby St Clements,’ he said. ‘I’m one of the less bright sparks at Lady Gillian’s Birkbeck discussion group.’ He laughed to indicate he was being absurdly modest and actually he had the brains of twelve or thirteen other men and twice as many women.
With care, as if he’d practised the move many times in front of a mirror, he spun his tennis racquet into the air and caught it neatly. ‘Been having my usual Sunday afternoon knockabout,’ he said. ‘I was actually up against Henry Frobisher. Do you know him?’
‘No,’ Mila said, her surliness attracting ‘What d’you think has got her goat?’ glances from passers-by.
‘Used to be a fairly big wheel at the Queen’s,’ St Clements said. ‘Must be a bit rusty these days, of course, because even a worn-out has-been like me could take a few points off him.’
Mila took a step back, and with surprising warmth said, ‘Oh, well, I was going to suggest I give you a game some time. But if you’re used to playing with ex-champions …’
O, lor, Skelton thought. She’s up to something. And it’s sly.
‘No, no, not at all,’ St Clements said.
Mila looked around to Bob and Gillian, doing things with her eyebrows to tell them to play along with her. ‘Perhaps we could get up a four for doubles.’
St Clements looked at Skelton, who clearly was not included in this arrangement.
‘I’m hors de combat, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Dicky hip.’
‘That sounds a delightful idea, then,’ St Clements said. 188‘I’ll book the court. They’re just over there. Say, one o’clock next Sunday?’
When they were out of earshot, Gillian whispered, ‘What was all that about?’
Mila smiled enigmatically and Skelton said, ‘I’d guess that, for some reason, Mila dislikes that man and wants to humiliate him on the tennis court.’
‘Spot on,’ Mila said. ‘Congratulations. He is a vile little man.’
‘Loathsome,’ Gillian said.
‘He once said he doesn’t believe women should have the vote, because they’re too emotional and can’t understand a logical argument,’ Mila said. ‘And this is proved by the fact that every time you try to explain this to women, they’re unable to follow your reasoning and often get angry.’
‘He said this out loud?’ Bob said.
‘He did.’
‘And he’s still alive?’
‘Gillian discourages weaponry in class.’
‘I’d have no objection to a bit of cheesewire, though,’ Gillian said. ‘Or one of those tubes Renaissance assassins used to use to drop poison in your ear.’
‘But how do you intend to humiliate him on the tennis court?’ Bob asked. ‘I haven’t played for years and Gillian … you were good at school, weren’t you, Gill?’
‘I wasn’t bad.’
‘The only person who has ever beaten Mila on the tennis court, as far as I know,’ Skelton said, ‘was Cissy 189Pemberton, a schoolfriend who subsequently went on to give Suzanne Lenglen a run for her money at Wimbledon. In any sport you care to mention, my wife is shamefully competitive and has, over the years, acquired an arsenal of psychological tricks designed to undermine an opponent’s self-confidence, their will to win, and sometimes their will to live before and during the game. She is unhinged. And a cheat.’
‘I don’t cheat.’
‘You do. You cheat playing Ludo with the children.’
‘I don’t.’
‘There’s no such rule as no jumps after a three.’
‘People shouldn’t make up games where it’s so easy to cheat. It’s almost impossible to cheat at tennis.’
‘Almost. Exactly. There’s always that little loophole you like to turn into a gaping maw.’
‘But I win, don’t I?’
‘Of course you do.’
‘So, what else could possibly matter?’
Skelton turned to Bob and Gillian, ‘You take my point.’
Mila ignored him. ‘Mixed doubles. Bob and I against Gillian and St Clements. Play your best game, Bob, and leave any tricky shots to me. Same for you, Gillian. Best game and I’ll make sure you get plenty of easy returns. As far as possible, we need to make sure that St Clements can be blamed for every point you and he lose. Halfway through the first set, I promise he will be tripping over his laces and thinking there’s something wrong with his racquet. By the 190end of the match he will doubt his right to call himself a man, or indeed a human being.’
‘Cheesewire,’ Skelton said. ‘Would actually be kinder.’