It smelt of Amanda.
If there were dreams floating through his mind, Dougal failed to notice them. He woke at half-past three, effortlessly gliding back to consciousness. The siesta had done nothing but refresh him; there was no trace of the muzziness which sleeping during the day usually produced.
For a second, he panicked: perhaps a shout from the shore had awakened him. He levered himself up on one elbow and peered through the grimy glass of the porthole. There was no one on the river bank, of course. Amanda and Hanbury wouldn’t be back for at least half an hour.
He fought his way out of the sleeping bag, which had wound itself lovingly around his limbs, loath to let them go. His Wellingtons sprawled under the table like stranded amphibians. Even the rubber seemed dank as he pulled them on.
The stale taste of sleep clung in his mouth, so he ran a toothbrush quickly round his teeth. The heavily filled ones at the top right of his jaw responded with a twinge of pain. When had a dentist last seen them? He put a kettle on for some tea and stood watching it for a moment, scratching his head and wondering what to do while he waited.
Reading was the answer. Malcolm had a paperback copy of Eminent Victorians, whose pages he was systematically using as lavatory paper because he disapproved of Lytton Strachey. Cardinal Manning and most of Florence Nightingale had been flushed away, but Dr Arnold and General Gordon had so far survived intact.
But Dr Arnold failed to absorb Dougal. He merely succeeded in reminding him of Rosington School, a line of thought which naturally enough led to the events of the last few days.
Just before four, a movement on the bank caught his eye. Dougal tossed Strachey on to the chart table and hurtled up the companionway to the cockpit. As he reached the open air, a voice from ashore bellowed, ‘Ahoy!’
He swung round and stared towards the land. A sense of something wrong was crawling over him before he saw the squat figure gesticulating beside the stile, before he recognized who it was.
Philip Primrose.
Dougal rowed rapidly up the creek towards Pee-Pee. He had left his gloves behind and forgotten to fasten his jacket; he was dimly aware that the cold was cutting into him. What the hell was Philip doing here? Had Amanda and Hanbury been forced to alter their plans? Nothing, surely, could have gone really wrong. Underneath the questions, he felt deflated – expecting Amanda and getting Primrose was like finding two slices of cold Spam on your plate when your nostrils had been quivering to the smell of roasting beef for the past two hours. Maybe the others were up at the house . . . but why bring Madame Pee-Pee, for God’s sake?
The bows of the dinghy grated on the mud. Dougal splashed into the shallow water, sending sludgy eddies perilously close to the top of his boots. He scrambled up the bank and found himself smiling at Primrose.
‘Hullo, Bill.’ Philip had swathed his college scarf around much of his neck and face and topped the assembly with a brand-new deerstalker hat. Between the two, his nose protruded pinkly, giving him the appearance of an invalid rabbit.
‘Nice to see you, Philip,’ replied Dougal with cautious politeness. How much did he know? ‘D’you want to come on board? It’s freezing out here.’
‘Yes, that is, no . . . about the boat, I mean. As a matter of fact, I’m rather prone to seasickness. Do you mind?’ Primrose sounded ashamed, as if he felt the failing was incompatible with his temporary character as a secret service agent.
‘Shall we walk up and down?’ suggested Dougal, smothering his impatience. Primrose nodded, and they began to pace self-consciously along the line of the water.
‘Well,’ murmured Pee-Pee (in case of hidden microphones?), ‘congratulations, old man. I gather that between you you’ve pulled off a pretty startling coup, by any standards.’
‘Not at all . . . and what we have done, we couldn’t have managed without you.’ Whatever it was that Primrose thought they’d done, Dougal tried to align his features into an expression of modest nobility.
‘Amanda came to see me around lunchtime, with that chap from You Know Where. No introductions were made, of course – better that way. Though, oddly enough, he did let drop that he believed we shared an alma mater. Small world, eh?’
Dougal, recognizing the unmistakable Hanbury touch, said that he supposed it was.
‘I didn’t know they still bred that sort of mandarin type at Whitehall. Reassuring. Amanda said (when he was out of the room) that he reports directly to the minister, though that can’t be news to you . . . it’s a bit muddy here – shall we turn round?’
Primrose finally reached the reason for his presence. Something had come up, it seemed, which forced Amanda and Hanbury to go to London immediately. ‘Nothing to worry about. They said you’d understand.’ Amanda had asked him to deliver a small package as soon as possible. He, Pee-Pee, had only been too glad to oblige a lady . . .
It was a thick manilla envelope with Dougal’s name on the front in Amanda’s looping handwriting. It reminded him of that other envelope, the one Hanbury had sent him.
Dougal thanked Primrose and said he mustn’t keep him. ‘I’ll have to attend to this at once, I’m afraid.’ He waved the envelope. Perhaps the excuse would turn out to be true. Primrose opened his mouth, and then closed it as his compulsive curiosity about the envelope’s contents was beaten back by his belief in the necessity to be discreet.
They walked back to the stable yard where Philip had left the Escort. Amanda, he said, had told him that he could have the use of the car for the rest of the fortnight it had been hired for. Wasn’t that nice? The sky was darkening and he kept swivelling his eyes about, in the manner of an early Christian martyr, uncertain where the lions were.
Dougal tried to reassure him. ‘I think the danger is over now.’ Then, realizing that Primrose was probably enjoying the drama, he added, ‘Mainly, that is. We can’t be absolutely sure for a day or two.’ That should keep him happy. It was possible, he thought, to argue that conning people could be an altruistic exercise, in some respects. Pee-Pee’s memories of this business would certainly be happier than his own.
In the stable yard, they shook hands with becoming gravity.
‘I’ll be seeing you back at college, I hope?’ Primrose’s voice sounded hoarse with all the whispering he had been doing.
‘Next week, probably.’ Dougal’s attention had wandered to his hand, which was feeling the envelope in his pocket. It could well contain a wad of money. But why? ‘We must all have dinner together when this is over. I’ll be in touch.’ Could an ally of Lee’s have appeared from the blue to threaten them at this stage? The police?
He waved as the Escort jerked towards the drive like a mechanized kangaroo. Primrose’s departure, though desirable on all counts, felt like a desertion when it actually happened. Dougal found himself running through the dusk towards the creek, as if he was fleeing from the desolation of Havishall Place to the company of the almost human Sally-Anne.
By the time he reached the river bank, his heart was throbbing in his chest, generating a painful warmth throughout his body.
His mind, however, was blank and cold. He rowed across to the Sally-Anne, trying to fill the emptiness with little, harmless thoughts: it was blowing up again tonight – he must check that everything was secure on deck; he might have that can of pheasant soup soon – hadn’t they bought some claret in Ipswich?
In the saloon, he tossed the envelope on the table and busied himself with lighting the lamp, straightening the sleeping bag and pouring himself some brandy and water. Well, why not?
Then he slit his way into the envelope and extracted its contents, making sure that he missed nothing.
There were two piles of banknotes, secured with thick elastic bands, and a sheet of foolscap paper, folded once. Dougal lit a cigarette with exaggerated deliberation, as if he faced an audience of millions. He pushed the money to one side and opened the letter.
Amanda’s familiar scribble covered most of the paper. He had never had a letter from Amanda before. It
was written in biro – the familiar green Bic which she always carried.
William darling,
There’s been a change of plan – hope you don’t mind. James & I are going straight to A’dam from here. Could you lose the Lancia in London, and wait there till we join you? J. says all 3of us going abroad might be rather cumbersome – a slicker operation wd be better.
It’s good timing for us, too. I’ve been trying to say this for a while, but it’s not been easy and then there was all this excitement, which put a sort of wrong perspective on us – made us seem closer than we are, or anyway more than I want to be with anyone at present. I mean, next thing you’ll be wanting to marry me!! I just don’t feel ready to settle down. Another thing: the last few days have changed everything somehow – & maybe we both need time to sort it out.
Don’t feel bad about it, please. Better be honest about it now, & see what happens in the future, than grind on together. I need to be with someone like James, who doesn’t make claims, for a while. Father complex, you’ll think, but it’s more than that. Actually, all that’s happened so far is this weird biochemical click & that’s quite enough to be going on with.
See you when we get back to London. Enjoy yrself. J. sends the enclosed to keep you solvent. He says it may take a while to arrange the sale, but not to worry.
Love (lots of it),
Amanda.
P.S. Cd you drop by Chiswick at some point & water the plants? If you want to write (please do) send it Poste Restante, A’dam.
Dougal read the letter once more. His mind understood its contents perfectly, but he still found it difficult to digest. But this shouldn’t happen to me. So Hanbury had pulled one last surprise. Perhaps the man was addicted to the sensations which surprises caused, and continued to produce them out of habit, like a conjuror persisting in turning silk handkerchiefs into doves long after the audience had gone home.
But that ignored Amanda’s part in it.
He gulped the rest of the brandy and poured some more into his cup. It dissolved, or at least weakened, the numbness inside. Tears pricked behind his eyelids, though he knew he wouldn’t cry.
There was a terrible temptation, he thought, to wrap himself in a warm, smothering cloud of self-pity. Not only would it be easy, but it would also be the customary reaction for situations like this. The hard core of his mind refused to let him take the option. At least when he had found Gumper’s body, he hadn’t needed to bother about reactions – his body had decided that for him – he had been sick.
Dramatic solutions danced through his mind, attractive in their meretricious finality. He could take the Sally-Anne out into the North Sea and open her stop cocks. He could go after Hanbury and Amanda with Tanner’s Smith and Wesson.
No, Dougal told himself, this was wrong: he was wondering what he should be feeling, rather than what he actually felt. But his true feelings were so difficult to catch that he suddenly doubted the value of pursuing them . . . why bother? Amanda had left him, just as certainly as he had killed Cedric (though perhaps less irrevocably).
A squall of rain hit the Sally-Anne, setting the boat skipping at her moorings: the noise of the rain drowned the silence.
Tomorrow he would go to London, pay off his debts and get a flight to somewhere warm. He would write to Amanda later. He would take Philip out to dinner – the old-fashioned grandeurs of Simpson’s in the Strand would be suitable, perhaps, provided there weren’t too many American tourists – and tell him how pleased the minister was. In May, he would be back in England to meet Malcolm; maybe they would be able to work out a congenial way to make a living – he couldn’t face going back to finish the university term.
He poured himself another three fingers of brandy. A flicker of tipsy excitement shot through him. Whether or not he got his share of Vernon-Jones’s legacy, the search for it seemed to have increased his options immeasurably, by removing some of those strange taboos which hedge people in . . . he now had more unmentionable details for his curriculum vitae.
Swaying to his feet, Dougal crossed to the galley to put the kettle on. He’d had enough thinking for the time being. He would go to bed with a pot of tea, the rest of the bottle of brandy and Lytton Strachey.
And let things settle in their own way.
Amanda’s letter on the table, her clothes strewn like discarded intimacies on the starboard berth, mocked him. But only if he chose to listen.
He wondered what Caroline Munns would do when she grew up.
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