Her face clouded as quickly as it had grown amused. ‘About George? What sort of allegations?’
‘About his business dealings. About some of the people he had employed and some of the things he had done during his working life. About the methods he had used to achieve his success. Bribery was mentioned, or “bungs”, to use Preston’s word.’
The lines around her mouth were suddenly deeper as it set into a determined line. ‘I wish I’d known about this. Peter Preston would have had me to contend with. It doesn’t happen often, but I can be very direct, when I am upset.’
Lambert was as grave as she was. ‘Are you saying that you had no knowledge of this material Preston had gathered?’
Her detached, slightly amused air had gone completely. ‘I am. If I had known anything about this, I should certainly have confronted Mr Proud Peter Preston.’
Sue Charles still looked shaken as she showed them out. They had little doubt that this elderly, gracious woman would make a formidable opponent if anyone gave her reason.
Sue came slowly back into the room and stared unseeingly for many minutes at the empty coffee cups on the low table. The cat, which was her sole domestic companion, eventually sprang from his chair, came across the room and rubbed himself against his mistress’s calves, breaking the spell of her meditation.
Sue smiled as she bent to fondle his ears. ‘You didn’t like those nice men, did you, Roland? Well, you can relax now. I don’t think they’ll be coming here again.’
SEVENTEEN
Like many doting fathers, Walter Merrick still chose to think of his daughter as a vulnerable child. He ruffled her short fair hair as she came into his house and kissed him, just as he had done her much longer blonde locks when she had been four years old.
He was seventy now; he had been ten years older than his wife and forty-eight years old when Kate was born. She sometimes wondered whether living alone had made him more conservative. He seemed to her older than his years, not so much in body as in mind. Her mother and he had always argued; their angry raised voices had been the recurrent chorus of her childhood. Kate hadn’t really been surprised when her mother had gone off to live in Durham with a younger man six years ago; Dad and Mum had been chalk and cheese. With all the accumulated wisdom of her twenty-two years, Kate had pronounced it a good thing. Now she was not quite so sure. Dad seemed to be ageing more rapidly than he should be.
He gave her coffee in a cup and saucer, then vigorously stirred his own in the beaker he had used for as long as she could remember. They talked a little about her infancy and the small, precocious things she had done. Kate smiled and answered a little absently, but he was too occupied with his delighted reminiscences to notice that. She was wondering how she could broach the subject she had come here to introduce. She couldn’t leave him in the dark for ever, whatever his reaction. That would be behaving as if she was somehow ashamed of herself.
She talked at some length about the exhibition in Cheltenham, about how good it was for Ros Barker, and how it proved that she was a serious artist, who was going to make a good living out of her painting.
Walter said, ‘She’s a talented girl, your friend. I’ve heard that from other people as well as you. I don’t understand much about art myself. I like a good Constable or Turner, but I don’t pretend to know much. I’ll go to that exhibition, though. Be good if you were able to come with me and guide me around it.’
‘Of course I will. I’ll be in there a lot of the time. I said I’d be in the gallery as much as I could.’
She hoped he’d take that up, or at least raise an eyebrow, but he merely smiled at his coffee. She was compelled to say as lightly as she could, ‘You might be a little shocked by some of the paintings, Dad. Well, by one of them in particular. One of them with me in it.’
He looked up eagerly. ‘Ros has done a painting of you? That’s a nice thing, isn’t it? Quite a compliment, I’d have thought.’
‘Several of them have me in. One might shock you, though, Dad.’
‘Take a bit to do that, girl.’
‘It’s a nude, Dad.’ She looked out of the window at the familiar small, neat garden, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
He didn’t say anything for several seconds. ‘I’m glad you told me, Kate. I need to be prepared. I suppose I haven’t seen you like that since you were about eight.’
‘It’s not highly realistic — it’s part of a larger painting. You might not even recognize me, but I thought I should tell you.’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m glad you did. You said you’d acted as a model for your friend, but I didn’t really think that she might want to paint you in the altogether. I suppose I should have done.’
‘No reason why you should. But no reason why I shouldn’t do it, is there?’
‘No reason at all. You need to spread your wings, as you told me when you moved out of here.’ He looked out of the window and she sensed that he was going to change the subject and talk about his vegetables. Sure enough, before she could think of what to say, he said, ‘You must take some of those carrots with you when you go. They’re young and tender. And I’ll get you a cauliflower and a lettuce. There’s far too much for me — I give most of the stuff away.’
He was moving the talk steadily away from her, as if he understood her purpose and was out to frustrate it. She said desperately, ‘The thing is, Dad, Ros and I live together.’
‘I know that. Very sensible to share; you don’t earn enough to rent a place of your own.’
‘I mean we really live together. We’re partners. Like man and wife, if you like. We love each other, Dad.’
He gazed at her very seriously for what seemed to her a very long time. Then his face cracked into the broad, familiar smile she remembered so well. ‘I wondered when you’d get round to telling me.’
The mouth beneath the pert little nose he loved dropped open. Then she gulped and said, ‘You knew about it? About Ros and me?’
‘Of course I did. I was born in the twentieth century, not the nineteenth, you twerp. I saw the way you were with boyfriends and I wondered then. But you had to make your own way, find these things out for yourself.’
‘And you’re all right with it?’
He stood up and held out his arms to her. She flung herself delightedly against his chest and he kissed her, then held her as tightly as he ever had in his life. He looked fondly down at the familiar head with its short blonde hair, then away down his garden to the rows of vegetables at the end. ‘Not many people find happiness in love, girl. You grab it and hold on to it. I was never much for grandchildren, anyway. It’s women who want them.’
She was weeping softly with her joy. He held her more gently for a few seconds, then sat her down again and resumed his own seat. Eventually she leaned across and punched his knee. ‘You old fraud! You knew all the time! And I’ve been so worried about telling you.’
‘We people with bus passes know a lot more about life than you give us credit for. Experience, we generally call it.’
They took a chance on Sam Hilton being at home. It was possible that he wouldn’t be there at eleven thirty on a Saturday morning, but Lambert wanted to surprise him.
Sam wasn’t bleary-eyed or half dressed, as they had half-expected he would be. He had been working on the poem prompted by his grandfather’s decline into Alzheimer’s, trying to force his ideas into some sort of framework.
‘Die happy, old man. Go content into
The welcoming darkness. The slow limbs
Struggle. The brain is fractured, faltering
Towards death. Remember him as laughing,
Young limbs flying fast in games. .’