Charles chuckled. ‘Thomas said he wouldn’t want young master Halley on his tail if he’d been a crook.’
Young master Halley found himself pleased.
Charles asked, ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Sid?’
‘You’ve been great.’
‘Be careful.’
I smiled as I assured him I would. Be careful was hopeless advice to a jockey, and at heart I was as much out to win as ever.
On my way to the car I bought some robust adhesive bandage and, with my right forearm firmly strapped and a sufficient application of ibuprofen, drove to Chichester in West Sussex, about seven miles inland from the English Channel.
It was a fine spirits-lifting afternoon. My milk-coffee Mercedes swooped over the rolling South Downs and sped the last flat mile to the cathedral city of Chichester, wheels satisfyingly fast but still not as fulfilling as a horse.
I sought out the public library and asked to see the electoral roll.
There were masses of it: all the names and addresses of registered voters in the county, divided into electoral districts.
Where was Chico, blast him?
Resigned to a long search that could take two or three hours, I found Patricia Huxford within a short fifteen minutes. A record. I hated electoral rolls: the small print made me squint.
Huxford, Patricia Helen, Bravo House, Lowell.
Hallelujah.
I followed my road map and asked for directions in the village of Lowell, and found Bravo House, a small converted church with a herd of cars and vans outside. It didn’t look like the reclusive lair of an ex-directory hermit
As people seemed to be walking in and out of the high, heavy open west door, I walked in, too. I had arrived, it was soon clear, towards the end of a photographic session for a glossy magazine.
I said to a young woman hugging a clipboard, ‘Patricia Huxford?’
The young woman gave me a radiant smile. ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ she said.
I followed the direction of her gaze. A small woman in an astonishing dress was descending from a sort of throne that had been built on a platform situated where the old transepts crossed the nave. There were bright theatrical spotlights that began to be switched off, and there were photographers unscrewing and dismantling and wrapping cables into hanks: There were effusive thanks in the air and satisfied excitement and the overall glow of a job done well.
I waited, looking about me, discovering the changes from church to modem house. The window glass, high up, was clear, not colored. The stone-flagged nave had rugs, no pews, comfortable modern sofas pushed back against the wall to accommodate the crowd, and a large-screen television set.
A white-painted partition behind the throne platform cut off the view of what had been the altar area, but nothing had been done to spoil the sweep of the vaulted ceiling, built with soaring stone arches to the glory of God.
One would have to have a very secure personality, I thought, to choose to live in that place.
The media flock drifted down the nave and left with undiminished goodwill. Patricia Huxford waved to them and closed her heavy door and, turning, was surprised to find me still inside.
‘So sorry,’ she said, and began to open the door again.
‘I’m not with the photographers,’ I said. ‘I came to ask you about something else.’
‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I must ask you to go.’
‘You look beautiful,’ I told her, ‘and it will only take a minute,’ I brought my scrap of rag out and showed it to her. ‘If you are Patricia Huxford, did you weave this?’
‘Trish,’ she said absently. ‘I’m called Trish.’
She looked at the strip of silk and then at my face.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘John.’
‘John what?’
‘John Sidney.’
John Sidney were my real two first names, the ones my young mother had habitually used. ‘John Sidney, give us a kiss.’ ‘John Sidney, wash your face.’ ‘John Sidney, have you been fighting again?’
I often used John Sidney in my job: whenever, in fact, I didn’t want to be known to be Sid Halley. After the past months of all-too-public drubbing I wasn’t sure that Sid Halley would get me anything anywhere but a swift heave-ho.
Trish Huxford, somewhere, I would have guessed, in the middle to late forties, was pretty, blonde (natural?), small-framed and cheerful. Bright, observant eyes looked over my gray business suit, white shirt, unobtrusive tie, brown shoes, dark hair, dark eyes, unthreatening manner: my usual working confidence-inspiring exterior.
She was still on a high from the photo session. She needed someone to help her unwind, and I looked — and was — safe. Thankfully I saw her relax.
The amazing dress she had worn for the photographs was utterly simple in cut, hanging heavy and straight from her shoulders, floor length and sleeveless with a soft ruffled frill around her neck. It was the cloth of the dress that staggered: it was blue and red and silver and gold, and it shimmered.
‘Did you weave your dress?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘No, you wouldn’t, not nowadays. Can I do anything for you? Where did you come from?’
‘London. Saul Marcus suggested you might know who wove my strip of silk.’
‘Saul! How is he?’
‘He has a white beard,’ I said. ‘He seemed fine.’
‘I haven’t seen him for years. Will you make me some tea? I don’t want marks on this dress.’
I smiled. ‘I’m quite good at tea.’
She led the way past the throne and around the white-painted screen. There were choir stalls beyond, old and untouched, and an altar table covered by a cloth that brought me to a halt. It was of a brilliant royal blue with shining gold Greek motifs woven into its deep hem. On the table, in the place of a religious altar, stood an antique spinning wheel, good enough for Sleeping Beauty. Above the table, arched clear glass windows rose to the roof.
‘This way,’ Patricia Huxford commanded, and, leading me past the choir stalls, turned abruptly through a narrow doorway which opened onto what had once probably been a vestry and was now a small modem kitchen with a bathroom beside it.
‘My bed is in the south transept,’ she told me, ‘and my looms are in the north. You might expect us to be going to drink China tea with lemon out of a silver tea-pot, but in fact I don’t have enough time for that sort of thing, so the tea bags and mugs are on that shelf.’
I half filled her electric kettle and plugged it in, and she spent the time walking around watching the miraculous colors move and mingle in her dress.
Intrigued, waiting for the water to boil, I asked, ‘What is it made of?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Er, it looks like… well… gold.’
She laughed. ‘Quite right. Gold, silver thread and silk.’
I rather clumsily filled the mugs.
‘Milk?’ she suggested.
‘No, thank you.’
‘That’s lucky. The crowd that’s just left finished it off.’ She gave me a brilliant smile, picked up a mug by its handle and returned to the throne, where she sat neatly on the vast red velvet chair and rested a thin arm delicately along gilt carving. The dress fell into sculptured folds over her slender thighs.
‘The photographs,’ she said, ‘are for a magazine about a festival of the arts that Chichester is staging all next summer.’
I stood before her like some medieval page: stood chiefly because there was no chair nearby to sit on.
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that you think me madly eccentric?’
‘Not madly.’