General Throgmorton

15

General Throgmorton

    David Throgmorton gave his younger brother a helpless look. “But I thought you’d decided to come home, Hugh.”

    Hugh was home—that was, he was at Wenderholme with David. He didn’t point this out: David was still in a state of shock after Tommy’s death. He hadn’t come out to Sri Lanka for Tommy’s funeral, though he’d wanted to, but Hugh had very firmly advised him not to. Well, it wouldn’t have been sensible, there was still very little local transport in the wake of the tsunami, and though some of the foreigners’ bodies had been flown home, all the local funerals were being held without delay: it would have been awkward to insist on special treatment for Tommy, though Hugh Throgmorton had admitted to himself that if he had insisted, it would have happened. But David wasn’t a strong character at the best of times, and what with the complete devastation of the area—it looked as if it had been bombed to blazes—and the local population all in mourning, and the stink of death and decay, not to mention the health risks— Now Hugh wondered uneasily if would have been better to have let him come: given him—what did they call it? Closure, that was it.

    “I’ve just come home to collect my stuff and make sure you’re okay, old boy,” he said kindly.

    “Me?” replied David blankly.

    Hugh swallowed a sigh. “Mm.”

    David looked blankly round his comfortable, shabby sitting-room with its sagging sofas covered in floral linens that dated from their mother’s day—or even their grandmother’s: Hugh remembered the one with the putative yellow lilies in amongst its pink cabbages being there when he was a very, very little boy. Their older sister Penny had spilled a bottle of rosewater on it at the age of about six when she was helping Grandmother make pot-pourri and the thing had smelled gloriously of roses for years.

    There was a discernible pause and then David said in a vague voice: “I’m all right, Hugh. Though I sometimes do wonder what’s the point, with Max off in New Zealand and you not having boys...”

    “Max is still young,” replied Hugh very firmly—they had had this conversation before. “And you’re not in your dotage yet. Give him a few years mucking round with this South Pacific ecolodge stuff and I’m sure he’ll be only too glad to come home.”

    “I don’t know... Ran seemed like a nice girl, but she kept saying it was cold... She’s got no grasp of tradition, Hugh!” he burst out.

    “No, well, you can’t expect her to. And, uh, well, think it was bad tactics to introduce her to Wenderholme in the middle of winter, actually.”

    David passed a hand wearily over his face. “Don’t talk about tactics, Hugh, I can’t take it.”

    “Uh—sorry,” said General Throgmorton feebly. “Uh—look, if you don’t fancy being on your ownsome here, give the place to the National Trust—they’ve been begging for it for years—and come out to New Zealand with me!”

    Oh, dear: David was looking at him in complete horror. Well, perhaps you did feel differently about the old ancestral home when you were the eldest brother, not the third? Hugh had always been given firmly to understand that he had to get out and make his way in the world, but David had been brought up—bullied up, more like, by damned Father—to believe his duty lay at home. A man with a different temperament might not have stood for it, but David— Oh, well. Spilt milk.

    “Then at least for a holiday, old boy,” he said kindly.

    “Ye-es... I hate travel, though. And Penny and Janet were saying you get this leg thing if you have to sit in planes for hours at a stretch.”

    At this, much though he was restraining himself, Hugh Throgmorton took a very deep breath. In the first place the Wenderholme Stud could afford to send David around the world First Class as many times as he fancied, and in the second place it was possible to break one’s journey, and in the third place, did the fellow have the slightest idea what “this leg thing” might be?

    “What leg thing, David?” he said drily.

    “I don’t know, but definitely a leg thing,” replied David simply.

    Hugh thrust a hand through the short grey hair that could curl as thickly as his nephew’s, but wasn’t allowed to. “Yes, all right. Deep vein thrombosis,” he said heavily. “You won’t get it if you travel First Cass or even Business Class and walk up and down the aisle a bit, and break your journey several times. Staying in nice hotels and not having to eat foreign food at all, David: they’re all Americanised these days. In fact you could probably stay at Hiltons all the way across the world.”

    “‘Across the world,’” echoed David faintly.

    Oh, God. “For that matter you won’t get it if you travel on the QEII.”

    “Aren’t they retiring her or something?” replied his brother vaguely.

    “Not yet,” said General Throgmorton through his teeth.

    David could see he was cross with him, but he couldn’t quite see why. Well, just because he was him, really. Hugh had Father’s temperament—though David was in no doubt that his little brother genuinely loved him. He’d always been a very sweet-natured little boy: determined, but sweet-natured. Round-faced, and very sturdy: a very boyish little boy.

    “What?” said Hugh uncertainly, looking at the smile.

    “Mm? Oh—I was just thinking of that time your special conker split—the one you'd scientifically dried in the oven, Hughie. You gave it to Penny for the ponies’ mash, you said it was all it was fit for!”

    Hugh looked at him limply. “Uh—you’re not claiming that I think you’re only fit for the scrapheap, are you, David?”

    “No, no... Or perhaps that was the thought behind the thought...” he said vaguely. “I suppose Tommy’s little boy’s very brown, is he?” he added on a sad note.

    Hugh blinked. Well under Father’s thumb though David always had been, he certainly didn’t share any of the old man’s bloody prejudices. “Browner than the average English boy, yes, but so what?”

    “Nothing... I was just remembering those red cheeks of yours,” he said, smiling at him. “You were like a funny little determined pippin, Hugh.”

    Hugh was driven to shove his hand through his hair again. “I dare say. Can we possibly get back to the subject? There is more than one way of getting to New Zealand, and it can be done in great comfort, which you can afford.”

    “Ye-es... I’ll think about it.”

    Hugh leaned forward urgently. “David, if you want to see Max and Tommy’s little Tomkins, come now! Don’t put it off, or you’ll never do it!”

    “Is that what you’re calling him?” he said with a vague smile. “Sweet... It’s not really the weather for travelling, is it?”

    “It’s summer out there,” said General Throgmorton grimly.

    “Is it? I suppose it is... There’s all the planning for next year, though, Hugh, I mean this year. We thought we’d try leaving Long Acre fallow, and try out oats for a change in Titfield—the five-acre. Remember when you and Tommy christened it that? Father was furious, but it really caught on with the locals! Matthews wants rapeseed but I told him we’re not a factory farm yet, thanks very much!”

    He looked almost animated. Hugh swallowed a sigh. “Mm. Don’t think you do mean factory farm, old man, but I know what you mean: those huge fields full of rapeseed plants are deadly, aren’t they? Nothing but harsh yellow as far as the eye can see. But you won’t be sowing for ages yet, will you? We can be there in a day!” he added bracingly, forgetting himself.

    David looked at him horror. “What?”

    “Uh—no, well, the planes do it in twenty-four hours, but we’ll have stopovers, old man, plenty of stopovers. Could break the journey at Jo’burg, see the cousins, eh? Then—uh, well, not Colombo, things are still completely at sixes and sevens—perhaps hop right over to Perth, think they can do that these days, have a nice rest there—met an Australian chap not long since who was telling me it’s a lovely place—then over to Sydney, that’s only a few hours,” he said, glossing over the actual distance, “another break there, that’s a really beautiful harbour city, David, you’d love it, and then hop over to Auckland! Easy!”

    David looked limply at his brother’s smiling, optimistic face. It was a squarer face now, without the round red cheeks, but that optimistic smile was the same as it had been when he was a little boy obsessed with conkers and—what was the other thing? Oh, yes: silkworms. God knew why he’d wanted to keep them, but yes: silkworms. He didn’t say that this New Zealand thing was a new obsession, because it would make no impression whatsoever on Hugh.

    “Or go the other way: fly to New York, spend a few days with Megan’s family in New Hampshire, break the journey in Chicago and see her Cousin George—he’s been very decent to my girls, you know, always remembers them at Christmas and birthdays, and Julia was saying he’s sending presents for little Damian and Christie as well, these days—and you’d love his china collection, David, it’s very worth seeing!”

    “American,” said David on a dubious note.

    “You’ve met him, you said he was a very nice fellow,” Hugh reminded him firmly.

    “Did I? When was that?” he said vaguely.

    Hugh took a deep breath. “Three times, David. First at our wedding—you predicted he’d turn up in morning dress or contrariwise, jeans and a beard, but he was in a decent lounge suit that managed to meet with even your approval—then at Angela’s christening—he didn’t make it to Julia’s, he was down with the flu that winter—and the third time at Megan’s funeral. He was the pall-bearer between you and Cousin Freddy, you may recall.”

    David bit his lip. “Sorry, Hugh; didn’t mean to bring it all back.”

    “That’s all right. It was a long time ago, after all. And I sometimes wonder,” said General Throgmorton, thrusting the hand through the hair again, “if we’d even have been together, these days, if she’d lived, poor girl. Well: obstinate as Hell, you know, and under that bright, brisk manner—very deceptive, actually—really not all that intelligent.”

    David had always thought that about his American sister-in-law, true, but he looked at him anxiously, not liking to say it. “Um, yes, a lot of American woman are like that, I think, Hugh,” he fumbled.

    David’s experience of women could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. A small postage stamp. Hugh eyed him tolerantly. “Mm. Well, her mother was, her sisters are, and so are her surviving aunts, I have to admit. But they’ve all been very kind to the girls.”

    “Of course,” replied David automatically.

    As a young man Hugh had accepted his in-laws’ kindness and concern for his little girls when his wife died unquestioningly, too. Megan’s unmarried Aunt Cynthia had even come over to England and looked after them for the next ten years, and though Hugh had been very grateful, it had never occurred to him back then to question her decision to do so. Now he eyed his innocent brother very drily indeed, but said only: “Mm. It’ll be nice to see them, won’t it?”

    David shrank. “I hardly know them.”

    “They’d make us very welcome, and we wouldn’t need to stay more than a couple of days. And we could go via San Francisco: haven’t you always wanted to see it?”

    “Not really...” he said vaguely. “I saw a documentary on television not long since; those cable cars look quite dangerous.”

    “Rubbish!”

    David swallowed. “Not to you, Hugh, but I’ve always hated heights.”

    “They’re not h—” Hugh broke off. “Very well, old man, if you won’t, you won’t,” he said heavily. “I think I might go that way, though. Old George is getting on. Though there’d be nothing to stop him coming out to see us, of course!” he added cheerfully. “He quite often gets over to Honolulu, it’s only another leg!”

    “Leg,” said David faintly, closing his eyes.

    Hugh didn’t know whether he meant the distance or if the word had reminded him of “this leg thing”—and he wasn’t about to ask. Because if he persisted he had a strong feeling he might lose his temper with the poor old fellow, and David certainly didn’t deserve that!

    He got up. “I’d better sort out my junk. I’ve told Penny and Janet they can have anything I leave behind for jumble, so don’t worry if you see them carting armfuls of old uniforms and so forth out of the house, will you? –Oh, and talking about carting stuff away, David, if you won’t come and see George in person I think he’d very much appreciate it if you’d pick out a nice piece of china for him.”

    “It all belongs to the house,” said David dubiously.

    Hugh took a deep breath. “David, if this bloody tsunami business has taught me one thing that at my age I should already have known, it’s that people matter more than things! And more than bloody houses, too! Now, sort out a nice piece of porcelain for George!”

    David got up slowly. “Does he like Sèvres?”

    Hugh didn’t have a clue: one piece of old china looked pretty much like another to him—well, he’d notice if it was smothered in roses as versus quite plain, but that was about his level—but anything by that name that had been allowed to come to rest at Wenderholme would be old and valuable, so he replied flatly: “Yes.”

    David brightened. “Ooh, good! He could have that Sèvres tea-set, it’s never sat well with the Wenderholme Worcester in the Blue Room.”

    Hadn’t it? Jolly good. Hugh hadn’t meant a whole ruddy tea-set, he’d envisaged a figurine or, uh, a dish or some such, but he said cheerfully: “Sounds like just the ticket!” and went off to sort out his stuff.

    David went slowly off to the Blue Room. The heating was on, never mind what Ran had claimed, but turned down very low in that part of the house, so he put a heavy shawl round his shoulders. ...Yes: the room would look much, much better without that Sèvres blue, and really, the set didn’t suit the room at all! He hadn’t brought anything to pack the tea-set in, so he took it carefully, piece by piece, back to his sitting-room.

    Wenderholme wasn’t big, as delightful Adam manors went, but big enough for Hugh, sorting out his old clothes upstairs, not to be aware of what was going on down below. By the time he came back down to the sitting-room it was full of mountains of tissue paper and old newspapers and David was packing the tea-set, which wasn’t very big, into an immense carton. Uh—weren’t there professional antiques packers who would do the whole job for you? Never mind: it was giving him something to do and taking his mind off Tommy’s death—in fact he looked quite bright and perky, and told his brother a whole lot, that Hugh definitely didn’t want to know, about old Sèvres.

    In the end, nobody saw Hugh off. David couldn't face the drive to London and back, Penny and Janet claimed they couldn’t leave the dogs in this weather, his daughter Angela was now working in Hamburg and married to a German chap whom Hugh couldn’t stand, and his daughter Julia was immured in deepest Devon with two young children and another one on the way, plus a husband whose hobby was falling sick whenever the kids seemed to be claiming too much of his wife’s attention. Currently it was chronic asthma on top of what could easily have turned to pneumonia if he hadn’t been very careful. Julia was actually taken in by the wanker, what was more.

    His aunt by marriage, Cynthia Worth, would certainly have seen him off had she been in England still, but Julia’s marriage to the wanker had been too much for her and she’d gone back to the States with the remark: “Call me crazy, Hugh, but Florida with the pink-rinsed widows seems a preferable option to being surrogate grandma to that guy’s kids.” Oddly enough Hugh hadn’t called her crazy. He would have planned his itinerary to take in Cynthia’s pleasant apartment in Miami, but Cynthia, as usual, was away on a cruise. According to her you met the same pink-rinsed Florida widows with their heads wired wrong, but you got to go to a few exotic places and the food and drinks on the cruise boats were always good, and if you felt like a flutter there was always a gaming room. Her New Hampshire relatives were horrified by Cynthia’s lifestyle, but then, according to her, they were all old stick-in-the-muds. At one time Hugh would have been firmly on the New Hampshire side. Now he just thought with an inward grin, as he assisted two burbling American and very possibly Florida widows onto the coach to the airport, “Good for Cynthia!”

    The in-laws in New Hampshire made him very, very welcome—in fact they were pathetically glad to see him, and asked eagerly about the girls, getting their names right, even old Aunt Harriet, who was ninety-one, and after Julia’s children. They were all getting old and tottery, including, alas, Megan’s oldest sister, Kate, who had always seemed so bright and brisk back when Hugh and Megan were married—even brighter and brisker than Megan herself. Megan had been several years older than Hugh, though it hadn’t mattered to either of them, but Kate was ten years her elder, so, as Hugh was now fifty-seven, Kate must be—Hell, nearly seventy-five. The mind was as sharp as ever but her eyesight was very bad and she had shocking arthritis. Cynthia was sure it was being exacerbated by the freezing winters and had urged her to come down to Florida, but of course Kate would rather have cut off her right hand than done any such thing.

    Megan’s oldest brother, Larry, was now retired and living in the house next-door to Kate and Aunts Harriet and Jane. He’d be seventy, now. He’d always seemed hale and hearty, but though he still looked quite sturdy and pink-cheeked, even without the weekly massages, steam-rooming and manicures his lifestyle in his extremely handsome New York apartment had included as a matter of course, he’d had his gall bladder removed some time since, a prostate operation about five years back, and a triple bypass two years back. He still played golf but his scratch handicap had deteriorated to the point where he just declared with a jolly laugh that it was the same as his age. Well, uh, no use blinking at facts, and we were none of us getting any younger, but to see good old Larry riding round the course on one of those damned motorised carts he’d always despised—! The weather was too cold for golf, really, but the greens had been cleared of snow and so they just sank a few putts, as Larry seemed to fancy it. He insisted on putting a few dollars on it, as he always had done. Hugh did his best but still didn’t manage not to win a considerable sum off him.

    Larry was divorced—twice, actually—and it would have been sensible for him to live with Kate, but he never had been able to take her abrasive personality. He had a very competent and pleasant daily woman, who served a pleasant lunch—well, American-style, it incorporated fried chicken and a boiled cob of sweetcorn next to a scoop of apricot ice—and the house was very warm and comfortable, but Jesus! It was huge, with enormous rooms downstairs, obviously designed for entertaining, and five large bedrooms, each with an ensuite bathroom, as well as maid’s quarters downstairs which nice Mrs Jackman didn’t use: she lived locally. The man must rattle in it! Hugh tried to find out delicately what he actually did up here in rural New Hampshire: apart from the golf, he only seemed to watch more golf on the television—he’d given up following tennis, couldn’t stand the modern prima donnas that didn’t shave and chucked their racquets at the umpire—read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and collect tobacco jars. No, he’d long since given up smoking, Hugh, bad for the lungs and Dr Jellicoe had said his wind wasn’t all it should be. This was just an interest. Eagerly he showed him the shelves of tobacco jars in his study and how you could get onto the Internet and bid for them at online auctions, these days! That was it. Well, better than spending most of the day and half the night watching the crap on American television, no doubt, but Hell! Could you call it a life?

    Over in his huge lakeshore apartment in Chicago old George was also happy. Well, he always had been a maniacal collector, nothing had changed there. He’d inherited a lot of family money—the cousins on Megan’s mother’s side had a great-grandfather who'd been a beef baron—and had never had to work for a living. He had, however, been through the War, as a navigator in bombers. The skills he must have had to acquire back then had, apparently, long since been forgotten—though he had all his wits about him, there was nothing wrong with his mind. No, well, lots of chaps preferred to forget their wartime experiences. He wasn't gay, though the passion for fine china might have led one to suppose otherwise. There had been a wife, from an eminently suitable Westchester family. Hugh had never met her but he’d heard Cynthia on the topic. The marriage had lasted about fifteen years, the last twelve of them, according to the family, consisting of the pair of them living separate lives: she in a very choice apartment in New York and George in the one in the multi-storey lakeshore building his father had put up in Chicago and that the family trust still owned.

    Over the years there had been a string of very fancy mistresses, none of them live-in, and none aged more than about thirty, on whom George had showered various fancy gifts, mainly in the bodily-adornment, bound-to-appreciate-in-value category, and absolutely none of whom he had ever taken seriously or, again according to Cynthia, even seen as real people. George was now in his eighties, and the last one had been about ten years back. Cynthia had written not long since to report that if Hugh watched a thing called Sex and the City he’d be able to see a clone of the woman: the older blonde one, very, very pretty, and maybe that’d help him to understand—at this point Hugh had actually felt the laugh behind the words—why poor old George’s relatives stigmatized her as a cold-hearted, promiscuous gold-digger! Though it wasn’t true she’d had those damn china monkeys playing musical instruments off him.

    George was thrilled with David’s bloody Sèvres stuff and decided he would write to him, an email was so impersonal. Just as well—of course the Wenderholme Stud had computers, and so did Penny and Janet, but David didn’t. George thought he might clear this cabinet, and make a feature of the tea-set: what did Hugh think? Hugh agreed, why the Hell not? He then suggested, since it was for once a beautiful crisp, clear day, that they take a bit of a constitutional along the shore—he would have said “walk” but he knew George liked the word “constitutional”—but George looked at the clock and decided it wasn’t the right time of day. Hugh’s jaw sagged: it was mid-afternoon, for God's sake! But he didn't insist: obviously the old boy had a routine and liked to stick to it. Like so many retired people: yes.

    He had let him know in good time he was coming, and the old man had insisted he stay for dinner. It consisted of a starter of stuffed mushrooms, reasonably tasty, a main course of poached chicken breasts, almost tasteless, accompanied by huge baked potatoes and a side salad of strange mixed coloured leaves, and a dessert of so-called “cheesecake”, a gelatinous confection which did not seem to contain any sort of cheese. George explained that today was Thursday. His housekeeper, an elderly woman who'd worked for him for years, added kindly that “Mr George” had to watch his cholesterol level, these days, but would General Throgmorton like sour cream on his potato? Reflecting that he ought to watch his cholesterol, too, Hugh joined George in the polyunsaturated “morge-rin”—he’d forgotten that Americans pronounced it like that—the housekeeper assuring him cheerfully that it was low-salt, as well!

    General Throgmorton retreated ruefully from George’s sumptuous apartment after what, by his standards, had been an early dinner, with a very wry expression on his square face. Nothing to choose between George’s lifestyle and Larry’s, was there? Heaven preserve him from ending up like that!

    His reception in New Zealand was so unlike his departure from England that Hugh actually felt like pinching himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. Er—well, no doubt it was partly the effect of that last long leg across the Pacific from Honolulu. He’d had a stopover, though it had seemed pointless, really, since he was by himself. But at least it had given him a decent night’s sleep and a pleasant half-day on the beach, not thinking of anything, really, just doing a bit of swimming and relaxing.

    He was met at the Auckland airport not only, as promised, by the beaming and waving Max and Ran, with little Tomkins, but also by a broad-shouldered, grinning young fair-haired man—Ran’s brother Sean, right; a very pretty pink-cheeked, plump girl with Irish looks and her little boy—okay, Sean’s girlfriend, Molly; and an extremely excited little stoutish, squarish girl who seemed to be in the charge of a handsome, smiling dark-haired older woman. Er, Molly’s mother, perhaps? No, she was introduced as a friend: Bettany.

    They were all, without exception, wearing jeans. Of varying ages, Ran’s, Sean’s, and Molly’s being well aged, Max’s newish pair being the extremely well-cut, dark variety he was used to seeing his nephew in, but, most unlike the Max he thought he knew, adorned with a splash of white paint on one thigh, and the children’s tiny ones looking very new. So did Bettany’s. Not tiny. She was one of the most attractive women Hugh had met in a long time. Not conventionally pretty, but extremely handsome, with a wonderful olive skin, huge dark eyes, and a glorious mop of dark curls. And a wide, generous mouth.

    He was blissfully unaware that, on Sean’s revealing casually that the planned expedition to Auckland over the weekend would include meeting General Throgmorton, Bettany had phoned Livia and burst into tears, wailing that she couldn’t, she looked all wrong! But she’d absolutely promised she’d go and keep an eye on little Nokomis while Sean helped Molly with her packing, and she couldn’t let the little girl down— And she did so want to see Max’s and Ran’s little Tomkins!

    Polly Carrano was again down at Taupo, staying with Livia. She had of course gone back to Auckland earlier, but she’d come back, since Jake was immersed in, variously, plans for tsunami relief, plans for taking over Taupo Organic Produce, and his own work—those tits in the London office not pulling their fingers out, as usual. Her kids were back at school, but she’d cheerfully rubbished Livia’s murmured enquiry as to who was feeding them, dear? They were all old enough to look after themselves and so was his Sir Jacobness. And the freezer was full of stuff and the shops were five minutes’ drive away.

    So she and Livia drove over to Taupo Organic Produce, retrieved Bettany, brought her back to Livia’s and between them got her calmed down and helped her to change her look to something that would “fit in”, Bettany’s phrase, and not cause a stiff-upper-lipped British general to look down his nose at her—not quite Bettany’s phrase but certainly what she meant. Though why she should care what Max’s uncle thought of her—! But neither of them voiced this opinion, they just got on with it.

    “Yes, I see,” said Bettany with pathetic gratitude, looking at herself in Livia’s giant Mexican mirror. “Toned down.” She took another look “Perhaps I should wear the tee-shirt out, darlings—looser, you know?”

    “Not if Hugh Throgmorton’s a red-blooded male,” replied Polly incautiously.

    Livia clapped her hand over her mouth, unsuccessfully trying to stifle the giggle. “No,” she agreed weakly. “I mean, I’m sure he is, Polly, dear!”

    “No, um, but do I look polite?” asked Bettany desperately.

    There was a short silence, it not being a word either of them had thought of in that context, really.

    Then Livia said quickly, before Polly could come out with one of her typical detached remarks that might shock the poor thing: “Utterly, darling! And very womanly.”

    “Oh, good! –I really like this colour,” she added, smiling.

    The tee-shirt was a lovely warm apricot shade—quite bright, but not glaring. Of course there was no tee-shirt on earth that’d retain its colour for more than a few months, but never mind, she’d get some wear out of it this year. They agreed warmly it suited her, and then, since it was a hot afternoon, Livia produced a great jugful of iced lime juice. Rose’s lime cordial, Livia had been so surprised to find one could buy it out here! After big glasses of this Livia suggested just a weeny drop of gin with the next, but as they’d both known her for years neither of them was surprised.

    Having dropped Bettany off at Taupo Organic Produce, Polly and Livia drove all the way back to the Briggses’ very up-market lakeside street without uttering—a record, as both of their spouses would have noted.

    Livia drew a deep breath. “Darling, she’s never met the man!”

    Polly bit her lip. “I know. Um, I think Sean might have said something in front of her about his accent, after he’d spoken to him on the phone.”

    “Oh, Lor’. I did think of saying that that sort of thing doesn’t matter out here, but…”

    “Not if it matters to her, Livia.”

    “No, exactly, darling! I must say Polly, darling, I feel quite drained.”

    “Me, too. Let’s go inside and have another gin.”

    They did that.

    After which Livia was capable of admitting: “She does look really good in that outfit. And she’s so tanned… Well, quite an exotic look, don’t you think?”

    Polly’s big grey-green eyes twinkled. “Mm, very. At least that’s something the ruddy Maltese dad left her! Where’s Hugh Throgmorton served, do you know, Livia?”

    She didn’t, of course. Polly did mental arithmetic. He’d be too young for Vietnam—had the Brits even been in that? Possibly the Falklands, Northern Ireland, and very likely he’d been in Desert Storm and then Iraq, but never mind the mysterious East, all he’d have seen there would have been sand, dust, and female figures shrouded in tent-like garments from head to toe. Unless he’d been to Egypt, or, well, Malta itself, or perhaps Italy, it was quite likely that General Throgmorton had never set eyes on anything as “exotic” as Bettany in all his entire, well-ordered, soldier’s life!

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