This was so obviously true that Nicholas could think of nothing to say in reply. Furiously he pushed back his chair and, without even thanking them for the lunch, clattered back upstairs.
“Some people,” said Avery, and looked nervously across the table. But Tim was already stacking the glasses and plates and taking them over to the sink. And there was something about the scornful set of his shoulders and his stiff, repudiating spine that warned against further overtures.
Poor Avery, cursing his careless tongue, tidied and bustled and kept his distance for the rest of the afternoon.
Colin Smy was replacing the blocks of wood in the trestle table, and Tom Barnaby was painting the fireplace. It was a splendid edifice, which Colin had made from a fragile frame of wooden struts covered with thick paper. It had then been decorated with whorls and loops and arabesques and swags made from heavily sized cloth. It now looked, even without the benefit of lighting, superb. Tom had mixed long and patiently to find exactly the right faded brickish red, which, together with swirls of cream and pale gray, gave a beautiful marbled effect. (In the Penguin Amadeus the fireplace had been described as golden, but Harold hoped he had a bit more about him than to slavishly copy other people’s ideas, thank you very much.)
Although Barnaby ritually grumbled, there had been very few productions over the past fifteen years that he hadn’t spent at least an hour or two on, sometimes even tearing himself away from his beloved garden. Now, looking around the scene dock, he remembered with special pleasure a cutout garden hedge, all silver and green, which had represented the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and how it had shimmered in the false moonshine.
Barnaby derived great nourishment from his twin leisure activities. He was not greatly given to self-analysis, believing the end result, given man’s built-in capacity for self-deception, to be messy and imprecise, but he could not but observe, and draw conclusions from, the contrast the fruitfulness of his off-duty time and the aridity of much of his working life. Not that there was no call for imagination in his job: The best policemen always had some (not too much) and knew how to use it. But the results when it was applied were hardly comparable to those of his present occupation.
If he failed, the case would be left as a mass of data awaiting a lucky cross-reference from some future keen eyed constable eager for promotion. If he succeeded, the felon would end up incarcerated in some institution or other, while Barnaby would experience a fleeting satisfaction before facing once more, for the umpteenth thousandth time, the worst humanity had to offer, which, if you caught it on a bad day, could be terrible indeed.
So was it any wonder, he now reflected, that in what little spare time he had, he painted pictures or stage scenery or worked in his garden? There, at least, things grew in beauty, flowered, withered, and died all in their proper season. And if freakish Nature cut them down before their allotted span, at least it was without malice aforethought. “You’ve done a grand job there, Tom.”
“Think so?”
“Our Fuehrer will be pleased.”
Barnaby laughed. “I don’t do it for him.”
“Which of us does?”
They worked on in a companionable silence surrounded by fragments from alien worlds. There was the bosky world (spotted toadstools from The Babes in the Wood), the chintzy (fumed oak from Murder at the Vicarage), and the world of pallid chinoiserie (Teahouse of the August Moon—paper screens). Barnaby glanced up and caught the shy eye of a mangy goose peering through the frame of a french window (Hay Fever).
Colin finished hammering four new blocks into the trestle, then upended it, saying, “That’ll do it. They can dance on that with hobnail boots and it should hold.”
“Who do you think took the others out?” said Tom, Joyce having described the scene to him.
“Oh, some silly bugger. I shall be glad when this play’s over and done with. Every rehearsal something goes wrong. Then it’s Colin do this, Colin fix that. …” Barnaby selected an especially fine brush for one of the curlicues and stroked the paint on carefully. Colin’s automatic grumbling flowed peacefully around his ears. The two men had worked together, on and off, for so long that they had now reached the stage of feeling that really they’d said all they had to say and, apart from certain ritualistic remarks, kept a silence as comfortable as a pair of old slippers.
Barnaby knew all about his companion. He knew that Colin had brought up his son, motherless since the age of eight. And that he was a gifted craftsman who carved delicate, high-stepping animals full of lively charm. (Barnaby had bought a delightful gazelle for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday.) And that Colin loved David with a protective devotion that had not grown less as the boy developed into a young man more than capable of taking care of himself. The only time Barnaby had seen Colin lose his temper was on David’s behalf. He thought how fortunate it was that Colin was rarely in the wings at rehearsal and so missed most of the sniping that David was having to put up with. Now, knowing of the younger Smy’s reluctance to perform, Barnaby said, “I expect David’ll be glad when next Saturday comes.”
Colin did not reply. Thinking he had not heard, Barnaby repeated his remark, adding, “At least he hasn’t got any lines this time.” Silence. Barnaby took a sideways look at his companion. At Colin’s stocky frame and tufty hair, black when they had first met, now brindled silver like his own. Colin’s usual expression of sturdy self-containment was slightly awry, and a second, much less familiar, lurked beneath. Barnaby said, “What’s up?”
“I’m worried about him.” Colin looked sharply at Barnaby. “This is just between us, Tom.”
“Naturally.”
“He’s got involved with some girl. And she’s married. He hasn’t been himself for some time. A bit … quiet … you know?” Barnaby nodded, thinking that David was so quiet anyway, it would take a father to spot the silence deepening. “I thought it might be that,” continued Colin. “I’d be really delighted to see him settled—after all, he’s nearly twenty-seven. So I said, ‘Bring her home then and let’s have a look at her,’ and he said she wasn’t free. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Well … I suppose there isn’t a lot of point.”
“Not what you hope for them though, is it, Tom?”
“Oh,” said Barnaby, “I shouldn’t worry too much. Things might still work out.” He smiled. “They don’t mate for life these days, you know.”
“I pictured him going out with some nice local girl. A bit younger than himself, perhaps courting in the front room on the settee like me and Glenda used to. And grandchildren. What man our age hasn’t pictured his grandchildren?” Colin sighed. “They never turn out like you think, do they, Tom?”
Barnaby pictured his little girl, now nineteen. Tall, clever, malicious, stunningly attractive, with a heart of purest platinum. He could not help being proud of her achievements, but he knew what Colin meant.
“That they don’t,” he said. “Nothing at all like you think.”
Earnest Crawley was carving the joint. He worked like a surgeon, unemotionally but with great precision and a certain amount of eclat, wielding the long, shining knife like a scimitar and laying the slices of meat tenderly on the hot plates.
Rosa browned the potatoes on top of the stove. She wore a loose, flowing garment, the cuffs of which sailed dangerously close to the fragrant, spitting fat.
“How are them fellas getting on with their part then, love?”