all beneficiaries under the present arrangement. It was putting him in an impossible position to ask for his advice. Even supposing he was willing to discuss it again at present.
No, the thing was – she saw it quite clearly now – to say nothing more about it to Godfrey but to talk it over with Henry Whittall; Henry would give her impersonal professional advice.
‘You might give Henry a ring,’ she said with a casual air as Godfrey set down his cup and stood up to go. ‘Ask him to call in and have a word with me. It’s all right,’ she added reassuringly, seeing the look on Godfrey’s face, ‘I’m not going to wear myself out talking to him for hours about my affairs, or anything foolish like that. But there are one or two little things – if he would just look in for a moment some time during the next few days, no desperate hurry, then we could fix a time for later on, when I’m well again, to go into things properly. In the meantime, he could be looking up one or two details for me.’
‘Very well then,’ Godfrey said without enthusiasm. ‘I’ll phone him.’ Henry Whittall was a clerk in the firm of Chilford solicitors who handled Miss Tillard’s affairs. He was a local man, a bachelor, a couple of years younger than Godfrey; he had known the Tillard girls since they were all youngsters growing up in Chilford; he lived now on his own in a cottage a mile or so from Oakfield. His firm also counted the Barratt family among its clients, so Godfrey had known Whittall for a number of years on a business level; in his more privileged boyhood his path had crossed Henry’s only on those occasions when young Whittall had been sent up to Oakfield with a legal paper to be signed by Godfrey’s father.
Godfrey stooped now and kissed Elinor lightly on the cheek. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said. ‘I’ll call in about four o’clock with the medicine.’
He was halfway down the slope leading from the bungalow when he glanced over to his left, at the road coming from the village and saw, a couple of hundred yards away, a toiling figure weighed down on each side by a shopping bag. Henry Whittall, he recognized the figure at once; no other adult male in this region plodded along on Saturday mornings with his week’s fodder slung about him. I’ll catch him at the crossroads, Godfrey thought, save me a phone call. The sight of Henry aroused in him no emotion of any kind. Either you wanted to speak to Whittall on business or you did not want to speak to Whittall on business and apart from those two concepts Henry really had no existence in Godfrey’s mind, or for that matter, in the minds of very many other people.
Godfrey reached the intersection and stood waiting by the grassy bank. When Henry was within earshot he called out pleasantly, ‘Good morning, Whittall, I’d like a word with you.’ Henry gave a single nod in reply. ‘I’ve just been to see Miss Tillard,’ Godfrey said when Henry had reached him and set his burdens down.
I wouldn’t mind in the least if Barratt called me Whittall in the friendly way that men do when they’re on an equal footing, Henry thought with suppressed anger, but he always speaks to me as if I were a servant. He listened with an air of scholarly concentration to Godfrey’s account of Miss Tillard’s latest illness, her wish to see him. He didn’t look Godfrey in the eye but kept his head inclined at a polite, impersonal angle, his gaze fixed on the creamy florets of a luxuriant weed in the hedgerow. A very tidy sum to leave, Miss Tillard.
‘Certainly I’ll call at the bungalow,’ he said as soon as Godfrey had finished. ‘I can look in during the next day or two.’
‘That should suit very well.’
‘I trust Mrs Barratt is in good health? And the boys?’ Henry said as Godfrey showed signs of setting off again for Oakfield. He made up his mind sometimes to refer to Godfrey’s wife by her Christian name when he was talking to her husband. He had after all called her Pauline when they knew each other as children. But when it came to the point his nerve always failed. In conversation with the lady herself he had since her marriage grown quite skilful in avoiding calling her anything at all.
‘Very well, thank you.’ Godfrey added a few remarks about the busy season and end of term and then suddenly said, ‘Oh yes, you knew the Lockwoods, didn’t you? My wife’s arranging with them to come and stay with us very soon. I dare say you’ll see them about the village.’ It would never cross his mind, Henry thought with savagery, to ask me up to Oakfield for a meal while they’re here.
He stopped and grasped the handles of his shopping bags, he spoke in an expressionless voice. ‘I was at school with Stephen Lockwood.’ A fact he was likely to remember when most of the other facts of his existence had dwindled into hazy recollection. He found it difficult to realize that he would shortly see Marion again. It was some years since he had caught a glimpse of her going by in a car on one of her brief visits to the area. It was more than sixteen years since he had spoken to her. He wouldn’t mention her name now, wouldn’t by any word of his own evoke her image to hover like an airy ghost in the brilliant sunlight, he hugged the memory of her to him, away from casual tongues.
‘By the way.’ Godfrey held up a warning finger. ‘Don’t say anything to Miss Tillard about the Lockwoods, not about their visit, that is. It isn’t definitely settled, in fact my wife is ringing them up about it this evening. I wouldn’t like Miss Tillard to be disappointed in case they can’t come. Or if they don’t come for some time.’
‘No, I won’t mention it.’
‘I’m pretty certain they will come, though,’ Godfrey said in a flat tone. The last thing he wanted just now was for Stephen Lockwood – reasonably successful, securely placed – to go poking and prying into his business, asking shrewd questions about the future of the firm; he would probably want to go into Chilford with him and prowl round the workshop. Oh – that’ll be all right, he remembered suddenly, the men will be on holiday from the end of next week. He closed his eyes briefly against the notion that as far as Barratt’s was concerned the holiday might be a permanent one. ‘July the twenty-fourth,’ he said aloud, forgetting for a moment that he was standing a yard or two away from Whittall. ‘I was just thinking,’ he added, recollecting himself, ‘that Barratt’s will be closed for three weeks from the twenty-fourth. It would be pleasant if my wife could arrange for the Lockwoods to come at that time.’
The twenty-fourth, Henry repeated in his mind a few minutes later as he trudged round yet another curve in the road. He had three weeks’ holiday still owing. Might take a week or two soon, he pondered; things were fairly slack at the office. By the time he set the shopping bags down on his doorstep he had reached a decision.
‘I’m just slipping down to the post, dear.’ Marion Lockwood was patting her hair in front of the hall mirror when her husband came slowly down the stairs. She gave him a mechanical half-smile and let herself out into the warm sunlight of early evening.
Stephen went into the sitting room and crossed to the window. He stood looking out at Marion walking down the path to the gate, casting his eye – without the faintest trace of affection – over the back view of her rather short, slightly plump figure. He yawned and glanced at his watch. Half past six. Not a minute before seven, Fiona had said. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and began to pace moodily about the room. How did Fiona occupy herself away from the office during the long stretches of hours when she wasn’t seeing him? She never offered any information, certainly didn’t encourage direct questions, answered teasingly or evasively if he so far forgot himself as to ask one. ‘Not really any of your business,’ her smile would imply, ‘I’m not married to you . . . yet.’
A few minutes later he was roused from his thoughts by the sound of his wife returning. He flung himself down into an armchair and stared critically at the walls, the furniture, the proportions of the room.
