Wild Horses Part 19

'Now? Can't someone else do it?'

I'd been up since four that morning and it was by now five-forty in the afternoon and I needed a shower and I felt knackered, to put it politely. Leicesters.h.i.+re began a lot of miles in the wrong direction.

O'Hara said, 'I thought you'd be interested to meet her, and she has her mother living with her.'

'The Audrey?'

O'Hara confirmed it. 'Silva's character in the movie.'

'Well... yes, I'm interested. OK, I'll go. What's the address?'

He told it to me in detail, phone number included. 'Howard's busting a gut trying to be helpful.'

'I'll bet.'

O'Hara said, changing the subject, 'Ed said you were riding?'

Amused by his oblique question, I answered, 'I rode round the course with a couple of the jockeys for them to see what we'll be needing tomorrow.'

'You take care.'

'Sure,' I said. 'Always.'

We said goodbye and I walked onwards to the car, making another phone call, this time to Robbie Gill.

'Thomas Lyon,' I said, when I reached him. 'How's my girl?'

'Still in intensive care. I've liaised with her surgeon. He's slapped a "Do not move" notice on her, which should hold while she needs drip feeds. Two or three days, anyway. I can't stand that son of hers. What a bully!'

'What's he been doing?'

'The nurses threaten a mutiny. He's so b.l.o.o.d.y lordly lordly.'

'Is Dorothea awake yet?'

'Yes, she's talked briefly to the police. Apparently the last thing she remembers is setting off to walk home from supper with a widowed friend who lives only a quarter of a mile away. They watch TV together sometimes and she felt like company with Valentine gone. Lucky she wasn't at home earlier.'

'I guess so. Perhaps.'

'Perhaps,' he agreed.

'Anything else?' I asked.

'Nothing. I asked the police. They gave me the sort of guff which means they haven't a clue.'

'I'd like to see her.'

'I told her that you'd been asking. She was obviously pleased. Perhaps tomorrow evening, or the next day.'

'I'll phone you,' I said.

I reached the car, delivered the change of plans to the driver and consulted the road map. A matter of turn right onto the A14, go north-west, skirt Kettering, press onwards. Forty miles perhaps to Market Harborough. Wake me when we reach that point, I said, and went to sleep on the back seat.

Alison Visborough's hideaway proclaimed her personality from the gateposts onwards. A crumbling tarmac drive led to an old two-storey house, brick-built, possibly eighteenth century, but without distinction. Fields near the house were divided into many paddocks, all fenced with weathered wooden rails, some occupied by well-muscled but plain horses. A larger paddock to one side held a variety of flakily-painted gates, poles and fake walls, the paraphernalia of show jumping. At the far end, a man in a tweed jacket and high-domed black riding hat cantered a horse slowly round in a circle, looking down and concentrating on the leading foreleg, practising dressage. A child, watching him, held a workaday pony by the reins. Lesson, it appeared, being given and received.

Everything about the place looked tidy and efficient and spoke of a possible shortage of funds.

My driver drew up outside the undemonstrative front door. He had said he would check that we had arrived at the right place, but he had no need to. The door opened before he could reach it, to reveal a full-bosomed middle-aged woman dressed in jodhpurs, s.h.i.+rt and dull green sweater, accompanied by two half-grown labrador dogs.

'Mr Lyon?' Her voice reached me, loud, imperious, displeased.

My driver gestured to the car, out of which I unenthusiastically climbed.

'I'm Thomas Lyon,' I said, approaching her.

She shook my hand as an unwelcome social obligation and similarly invited me into her house, leaving my driver to look after himself.

'I am Alison Visborough. Howard warned me to expect you,' she announced, leading me into a cold tidy room furnished with hard-stuffed, blue-green armchairs and sofas which looked inviting but repelled boarders, so to speak. I perched on the inhospitable edge of one of them, and she on another. The dogs had been unceremoniously left in the hall.

'You are younger than I expected,' she p.r.o.nounced, her vowels unselfconsciously plummy. 'Are you sure you are who you say?'

'Quite often.'

She stared.

I said, 'I'm not the ogre you described to the Drumbeat Drumbeat.'

'You were driving Howard to despair,' she said crisply. 'Something had to be done. I did not expect all this fuss. Still less did I intend to bring trouble to Howard. He has explained that your wretched film company are angry with me, but when I perceive an injustice, I must speak out.'

'Always?' I asked with interest.

'Of course.'

'And does it often get you into trouble?'

'I am not to be deterred by opposition.'

'For Howard's sake,' I said, 'could you write a short apology to the film company?'

She shook her head indignantly, then thought it over, and finally looked indecisive, an unusual state for her, I guessed.

She had short dark hair with grey advancing, also unafraid brown eyes, weathered skin, no lipstick and ringless work-roughened hands. A woman hard on herself and on everyone else, but admired by Howard.

I asked, 'Who did you talk to, who works for the Drumbeat Drumbeat?'

She hesitated again and looked not overpleased. 'I didn't say,' she grudgingly answered, 'exactly what she wrote in the paper.'

'She?'

'She's an old acquaintance. We went to the same school. She works on the "Hot from the Stars" team, and I thought it would help help Howard in his fight against you. Howard in his fight against you. She She didn't write what was printed. She just pa.s.sed on the information to one of the columnists, as she always does. She gathers the material, you see, and then it gets didn't write what was printed. She just pa.s.sed on the information to one of the columnists, as she always does. She gathers the material, you see, and then it gets sensationalised sensationalised, she explained to me, by someone whose job it is to do that.'

Sensationalised. What a process! Yet without it, I supposed, Howard's gripe wouldn't have been worth the s.p.a.ce.

'How long,' I enquired, 'have you known Howard?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I only wondered about the length of your commitment to him.'

With a touch of the belligerence I was coming to expect, she said, 'I can be committed to a good cause within five minutes.'

'I'm sure.'

'Actually, we've known Howard since he came to visit us after Daddy died.'

The word Daddy came naturally: it was only I who found it odd and incongruous in someone of her age.

'He came to see your mother?'

'Princ.i.p.ally, I suppose so.'

'Because of the obituary?'

She nodded. 'Howard found it interesting.'

'Mm.' I paused. 'Have you any idea who wrote that obituary?'

'Why do you want to know?'

I shrugged. 'Interest. It seemed to me it was written from personal feelings.'

'I see.' She let seconds pa.s.s, then said, 'I wrote that myself. It was edited by the paper, but the gist of it was mine.'

'Was it?' I was non-committal. 'You wrote about your father's potential career being blighted by Sonia's death?'

'Yes, I did.'

'You wrote as if you cared.'

'Of course course I cared,' she said vehemently. 'Daddy would never discuss it with me, but I knew he was bitter.' I cared,' she said vehemently. 'Daddy would never discuss it with me, but I knew he was bitter.'

'Uh,' I said, 'but why did Sonia's death make him give up politics?'

Impatiently, as if it were self-evident, she said, 'Scandal, of course. But he would never talk about it. He would never have let this film be made. Rodbury and I were also against it, but we were powerless. The book was Howard's, not ours. Our name, Daddy's name, doesn't appear in it. Howard says you forced forced him to make the ridiculously untrue changes to his work, so of him to make the ridiculously untrue changes to his work, so of course course I felt someone had to stop you. For Howard's sake and, yes, for Daddy's memory, I had to do it.' I felt someone had to stop you. For Howard's sake and, yes, for Daddy's memory, I had to do it.'

And nearly succeeded, I thought.

I said, without trying to defend either myself or film company policy, 'Excuse me, but who is Rodbury?'

'My brother, Roddy.'

Roddy, of course.

'Could I possibly,' I asked, 'meet your mother?'

'What for?'

'To pay my respects.'

It hung in the balance, but it wasn't left to her to decide. The half-closed door was pushed open by a walking stick in the hands of a thin seventyish lady with a limp. She advanced slowly and forbiddingly and, while I rose to my feet, informed me that I was a monster.

'You are the person, aren't you,' she accused with tight lips, 'who says I was unfaithful to my husband with Jackson Wells? Jackson Wells Jackson Wells!' There was a world of outraged cla.s.s-distinction in her thin voice. 'Dreadful man! I warned warned my sister not to marry him, but she was headstrong and wouldn't listen. He wasn't good enough for her. And as for you thinking that my sister not to marry him, but she was headstrong and wouldn't listen. He wasn't good enough for her. And as for you thinking that I I... I...' Words almost failed her. 'I could hardly even be civil civil to the man and he was almost twenty years to the man and he was almost twenty years younger younger than I.' than I.'

She shook with vibrant disapproval. Her daughter rose, took her mother's arm and helped her towards one of the chairs whose overstuffed firmness suddenly made sense.

She had short white curling hair and high cheekbones, and must once have been pretty, but either pain or a general disapproval of life had given her mouth a pinched bad-tempered downturn. I thought of Silva and her glowing beauty, and reckoned the two women would probably not want to meet.

I said without emphasis, 'The film company discussed with Howard Tyler the changes they wished made to certain elements of the published book. I did not myself arrange them. I was engaged after the main changes had been agreed. Still, I think they were necessary and that they'll make a strong and entertaining motion picture, even though I understand your reservations.'

'Reservations!'

'Disapproval, then. But as your own name is nowhere used, and as the film is fiction, not many will connect you to it.'

'Don't be ridiculous. We are the laughing stock of Newmarket.'

'I don't think so,' I said. 'It was all so long ago. But I would like to ask you a question, and I do hope you will help with the answer, as it might soften for you your understandable outrage. Did your sister Sonia lead the strong fantasy life that Howard gave her in the book? Was she a dreamy young woman in real life?'

While the older woman hesitated, Alison said, 'I've never met her husband and I don't remember her much at all. I was only fourteen.'

'Sixteen,' her mother corrected sharply.

Alison darted a barb of irritation at her mother, who looked faintly complacent. An uneasy mother-daughter friction existed, I saw, that was only half-stifled by good manners. Alison, odd though it seemed for one of her disposition, was woman enough to want me to believe her younger.

'Dreams?' I prompted.

'My sister,' Audrey Visborough p.r.o.nounced repressively, 'tended to fall for any man in breeches. She would drool over men she could never have. Very silly. I daresay I mentioned it to Howard when he first came here. Jackson Wells looked good in breeches and of course he was flattered when Sonia made eyes at him. It was no basis for a marriage.'

I said, 'Er...' without opinion.

'I at least prevented my daughter from making the same mistake.'

Alison, the unmarried daughter, flashed her a glance full of old and bitter resentment.

I cleared my throat diplomatically and asked, 'Do you by any chance have a photograph of your sister?'

'I don't think so.'

'Not even from when you were both young?'