The Cotswolds were in a less friendly mood on Sunday as I drove to Hatherfield for lunch. Grey clouds raced across the sky and the wind carried spots of rain. Jenner was sitting beside me, Mrs. Truscott having again pressed me to bring him.
As the old dog and I walked up the path, Ruth Truscott opened the door. ‘In you come,’ she cried. ‘What a horrible day! Isn’t it cold?’
A fire was burning in the sitting-room. Mrs. Truscott gave the glowing logs an encouraging poke or two, then held out her hands to the warmth, shivering.
‘I had planned an alfresco meal today, but with this change in the weather it’s quite out of the question. In fact I thought we’d be cosier here than in the dining-room.’
She waved her hand towards the window, and I saw that the round table in the bay was laid with three places.
Ruth Truscott looked a mite sheepish. ‘I really ought to have told you before, Dulcie. I’ve invited Ian Hamilton as well.’
I just gaped at her. I didn’t know what to make of that bit of news.
‘Please don’t be offended, but I realized that you two weren’t getting along very well together, and I thought it might help if you could meet on what you might call neutral territory.’
We both heard the sound of a car drawing up outside. Mrs. Truscott looked at me anxiously. ‘He is really very nice, you know. There’s no reason I can see why you shouldn’t get along beautifully. I mean..." She broke off and almost ran to open the front door.
Ian would have recognized my car parked outside so my presence in the room didn’t astonish him. He gave me a grave nod. ‘I hope you’re feeling better now?’ he said politely.
Considering I had done two-and-a-half days’ work in the office since the accident, and considering he had asked me that very same thing more than once already, the question seemed rather unnecessary. I took it for a sign that he was as uncomfortable as I was.
I assured him once again that I now felt almost my normal self.
The atmosphere was strained as we sipped sherry and made light conversation. But during lunch things improved. In no time at all we were calling one another Ian and Dulcie. It must have been a triumph for Mrs. Truscott that the transition was made quite naturally. I believe Ian was hardly aware of it.
We both gave a hand with clearing the dishes. I was glad to see Ian insisted on joining in. I can’t bear helpless men.
While we were sitting round the fire with our coffee afterwards, the weight of the years suddenly seemed to descend on our hostess. She snuggled deep into her armchair and drew a cashmere stole around her shoulders.
‘I don’t know what you two young people think,’ she said calmly, ‘but nothing seems nicer to me than a fire at just this moment. If I were alone, I’d put my feet up and have a doze.’
She looked at us artlessly.
Politely Ian took his cue. ‘You mustn’t let us stop you, Mrs. Truscott.’
‘If it had been a nice day, I’d planned to show you around this very pretty village, and the view from the top of the hill.’ She waved her hand vaguely.
‘We can see it another time, perhaps,’ I said cautiously.
A thought appeared to strike her. ‘Now why don’t you two go out by yourselves?’ she suggested. ‘When you’re young there’s nothing like a nice bracing walk on a windy day."
Jenner stirred slightly, suddenly restless. Mrs. Truscott addressed him directly. ‘How about you, Jenner old friend?’
He raised his head to look at her, his body still limp, tail thumping the floor. She tried again. ‘Yes, that’s what I said, walkies!’
The old dog jumped to his feet and began dancing in excitement, making sharp little muffled barks.
Mrs. Truscott regarded him sentimentally, her head on one side. ‘What a dear he is! You’ve only got to mention you-know-what, W-A-L-K, and he’s up and ready to go.’
Ian looked at me with a doubtful smile. ‘Shall we?’
Shall we indeed! Did the man think we had any choice? We might just as well have been driven out with whips.
I wasn’t for a single moment fooled by this ‘frail old lady’ stuff. Mrs. Truscott might be getting on, but she had the stamina of a camel. Of that I was perfectly sure. But Ruth Truscott was wasting her very considerable energy in trying to pair-off two such incompatible spirits as Ian Hamilton and Dulcie Royle.
Under her directions, we set off through a small back gate that led directly from the garden into open fields.
It was an exhilarating afternoon. The sun was breaking intermittently through the racing clouds. Sunlight and shadows chased one another across the sheep-cropped hillside.
My clothes had arrived from London by now, so I was suitably enough turned out in a comfortable dress and low-heeled walking shoes. My short lambskin coat kept me warm. Ian, again wearing a tweed jacket and grey slacks, seemed not to notice the cold. He strode forward, the wind jostling his dark hair and whipping out his tie in a flapping streamer.
Soon we had climbed high enough to look right down on the village nestling snugly in its fold of the hills.
‘I just love this countryside,’ I said. ‘There’s a grandeur about it, yet it’s intimate too.’
Ian nodded. ‘I know what you mean. It seems a bit isolated at first, but not when you get to know it.’
‘I should have thought you might find it rather tame after Scotland,’ I said. ‘Compared with all those bleak moors and mountains and lochs.’
He seemed amused. ‘The whole of Scotland isn’t like that, you know. I was born in a rather dreary suburb of Glasgow. The only time I saw the Highlands was during our holidays, but even then we came to England as often as not.’
‘So your father wasn’t a laird? I thought all Scottish fathers were.’ I was joking, of course, but at the same time it was a bit of a let-down to find his background wasn’t as colourful as I had somehow imagined. He looked just the type to stride the patriarchal heather with swirling kilt.
‘A laird?’ He laughed. ‘Sorry to have to spoil such a nice idea. My father’s dead now, but he used to own a small printing works.’
‘And your mother? Is she still alive?’
‘No, she died when I was a child. I have an elder sister who played quite a part in rearing me. She’s married with three children. I visit her now and again for a weekend—they have a house in Surrey.’
Busily I made the necessary adjustments. I tried to imagine Ian as an uncle, but I was short of data. ‘What ages are your sister’s children?’
‘Alison has twin boys of nine, and a four-year-old girl with pigtails and freckles. She’s rather sweet.’
He talked naturally and easily. If his words destroyed my mental images, his present manner made it difficult to remember his surliness, the extreme rudeness of earlier meetings. Yet that I had not imagined. Although he was ready to tell me what I wanted to know, I found I had to prompt him with questions. He wasn’t the sort of man so full of himself that he could think of no better subject for conversation. I noticed, though, that he showed remarkably little curiosity about me. I couldn’t help feeling piqued about this.
We had walked down the other side of the hill and followed a path which ran beside a stream. Where the two met at a little stone bridge, we stopped for a few minutes, leaning on the parapet, watching the clear bustling water.
‘Ian...?’ I said, and stopped.
His elbows resting on the stone ledge, he turned his head to look at me.
‘Yes, Dulcie?’
‘I ... I realize you can’t possibly commit yourself at this stage, but can you tell me if you have any plans for the future? I mean, are you thinking of sticking with Drysdale Pharmaceuticals?’
I felt awkward asking such a direct question, but this was an opportunity that might not occur again. ‘You see, I’m thinking very seriously of staying on to help run the business, but my final decision rather depends on you. I know perfectly well how much the laboratory leans on you scientifically, so it’s important to know if you intend staying.’
He was silent for a long time before replying. What he said was not very satisfactory.
‘I’m afraid I can’t commit myself indefinitely.’ He looked away from me, down at the water again. ‘Whether I stay or not depends on ... a lot of things.’
It was the way he said it that made me sure his hesitation was because of a woman. Was he trying to make up his mind whether to marry Gillian Hayes?
Ian had picked up some tiny loose flakes of stone from the coping, and was dropping them one by one into the stream.
‘I can promise you this much.’ he said, as if it was a new thought. ‘I won’t leave you in the lurch. I mean, I won’t push off without giving you time to find a suitable replacement.’
That was a relief at any rate.
We started to walk again. Jenner was running among the trees, and we followed him. Heavy rain in the night had made the leaves underfoot wet and slippery, and several times my rubber heels began to slide. When I nearly pitched headlong, Ian caught my elbow. In trying to save me from falling, he pulled me round so that I was in his arms.
He didn’t let go. For several seconds we stood frozen like that. I knew he was going to kiss me. My heart was pounding as I waited, quite still, not daring to move.
Then suddenly his arms were gone and he was standing away from me. ‘I think we’d better stick to the path,’ he said abruptly, looking at the ground, avoiding my eyes. ‘It should be less slippery.’
It was mortifying. We both knew perfectly well what had nearly happened. My humiliation went all the deeper because I’d wanted him to kiss me. I’d let him know I’d wanted him, and yet he had turned away. It had been his decision.
We hadn’t far to walk back to the house. We trudged along in a heavy silence, not even trying to make conversation. I don’t remember seeing the sun again all day.
Mrs. Truscott pretended not to notice anything, though I’m convinced she had a pretty shrewd idea of how things stood between us. It took all her skill to relax the tension enough to get us talking again.
It had been on my mind to ask her if she would like to choose something from Father’s possessions as a personal memento of their friendship. I had an idea it would please her.
I was right. When I mentioned it over tea her monkey-ugly face split in a delighted smile. ‘How sweet of you, Dulcie, to think of it.’
She didn’t hesitate about what to pick. ‘The cut-glass ink-stand on Eliot’s desk,’ she said. ‘He used it every day, you know—he was old-fashioned enough to insist on a dip pen. I used to tease him about it.’
This started her off talking about Father’s idiosyncrasies. He’d had a lot, and she recalled them with affection.
‘Except for his science, poor Eliot lived in the past. The present meant little enough to him. It was understandable, I suppose….’
I said quickly, ‘Yet it could so easily have been different for him.’
Ian had been listening without speaking, so his sudden contribution was unexpected. ‘It wasn’t his fault that life lacked fulfilment.’
I glanced up at him in surprise, but he was looking steadily out of the window.
Apparently Ruth Truscott hadn’t noticed the interjection. She was musing. ‘I don’t mean Eliot was really unhappy, of course. He had reached a degree of contentment. His life was very placid on the whole. Such a pity it should have been marred like that at the end…’
‘Like what?’ I cut in. Then realizing I had sounded rude, I amended. ‘Was there something wrong, Mrs. Truscott?’
‘There must have been. When he spoke to me on the telephone the day before he died, he was terribly agitated.’
“But I didn’t know this,’ I said. ‘What was it all about?’
‘I’m not sure. I got the impression it was connected with the firm in some way or other.’
Too late I realized where we were heading. This was delicate ground. I didn’t want a discussion of Ian’s quarrel with my father right now.
But apparently Ian himself wasn’t troubled with such qualms. He had swung round in his chair to look directly at Ruth Truscott, suddenly alert. ‘Did he give you any clue at all? I ... I didn’t see much of Dr. Drysdale myself those last few days.’
‘No, not really.’ The elderly woman looked from one to the other of us, concerned, trying to be helpful. "I did wonder at the time if perhaps....’
‘Yes?’ Ian prompted her.
She gave a half-smile, as if to excuse her wild imaginings. ‘Well, it could just possibly have been the same sort of thing that happened a few years ago.’
Ian was gently persistent. ‘And what was that, Mrs. Truscott?’
She bit her lip. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know the details. It was when Eliot was still working on research, before MJ71 was anything like perfected. He was always trying out new experiments, varying the procedure. You know the sort of thing, Ian?’
‘Yes indeed. I still do that, to some extent.’
‘I remember Eliot phoning one afternoon. He was dreadfully upset, and wanted to come over to see Charles right away. That in itself was unusual, for even in those days Sunday was his time for visiting us. He arrived as soon as Charles’s evening surgery was over, and the two of them were talking together until quite late.’
Ian asked, ‘And what was it all about?’
‘I wish I could tell you. I was in and out of the room, you see, and anyway, I was never interested in their technicalities. Charles did explain to me afterwards, but I had a strong feeling that he didn’t tell me everything. It was to do with an experiment that had gone wrong,’
I sat there quite still, sensing Ian’s sharp attention. He seemed to be willing Mrs. Truscott to remember.
‘It was something to do with steeping the dried herbs in a solution of …. some sort of chemical, I can’t recall what it was, then when they were dried again afterwards, Eliot found that a most curious change had taken place. He was terribly worried that whatever it was might fall into the wrong hands. I can still remember him crying out, “But it’s so damned simple, Charles, so incredibly simple. Any fool could do it, if he only knew the method”.’
Ian leaned forward in his chair, his face paling. ‘Did you hear anything more?’
‘No, nothing.’ She spread her hands helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, Ian.’
‘You needn’t be, Mrs. Truscott. I think you’ve told me enough already. Certainly enough to get to work on. My God, if it’s what I think it is...."
‘What’s that?’ I asked, in some alarm. ‘Tell me!’
‘I’m not going to say anything for the moment. I’ve got to think about it."
I pressed him, but he was as close as a clam.
I didn’t see him alone again that day. When we left, we each had our own car. Ian went by a direct route to Lechford, so we even took different roads.