‘It’s about survival,’ I said politely.
Everyone listened. Everyone always listened to Erica Upton.
‘What sort of survival?’ she asked. ‘Medical? Economic? Creative?’
‘It’s about some travellers cut off by an earthquake. About how they coped. It’s called Long Way Home.’
‘How quaint,’ she said.
She wasn’t intending to be outright offensive, I thought. She seemed merely to know that her own work was on a summit I would never reach, and in that she was right. All the same I felt again the mild recklessness that I had on Touchy: even if I lacked confidence, relax and have a go.
‘My agent says,’ I said neutrally, ‘that Long Way Home is really about the spiritual consequences of deprivation and fear.’
She knew a gauntlet when she heard one. I saw the stiffening in her body and suspected it in her mind.
She said, ‘You are too young to write with authority of spiritual consequences. Too young for your soul to have been tempered. Too young to have learned the intensity of understanding that comes only through deep adversity.’
Was that true, I wondered? How old was old enough?
I said, ‘Shouldn’t contentment be allowed its insights?’
‘It has none. Insight grows best on stony ground. Unless you have suffered or are poor or can tap into melancholy, you have defective perception.’
I rolled with that one. Sought for a response.
‘I am poor,’ I said. ‘Well, fairly. Poor enough to perceive that poverty is the enemy of moral strength.’
She peered at me as if measuring a prey for the pounce.
‘You are a lightweight person,’ she said, ‘if you have no conception of the moral strength of redemption and atonement in penury.’
I swallowed. ‘I don’t seek sainthood. I seek insight through a combination of imagination and common sense.’
‘You are not a serious writer.’ A dire accusation; her worst.
‘I write to entertain,’ I said.
‘I,’ she said simply, ‘write to enlighten.’
I could find no possible answer. I said wryly, with a bow, ‘I am defeated.’
She laughed with pleasure, her muscles loosening. The lion had devoured the sacrifice and all was well. She turned away to begin talking to Fiona, and Harry made his way to my side, watching me dispatch my champagne with a gulp.
‘You didn’t do too badly,’ he said. ‘Nice brisk duel.’
‘She ran me through.’
‘Oh yes. Never mind. Good sport, though.’
‘You set it up.’
He grinned. ‘She phoned this morning. She comes occasionally for lunch, so I told her to beetle over. Couldn’t resist it.’
‘What a pal.’
‘Be honest. You enjoyed it.’
I sighed. ‘She outguns me by far.’
‘She’s more than twice your age.’
‘That makes it worse.’
‘Seriously,’ he said, as if he thought my ego needed patching, ‘these survival guides are pretty good. Do you mind if we take a few of them home?’
‘They’re Tremayne’s and Gareth’s, really.’
‘I’ll ask them, then.’ He looked at me shrewdly. ‘Nothing wrong with your courage, is there?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You took her on. You didn’t have to.’
I half laughed. ‘My agent calls it impulsive behaviour. He says it will kill me, one day.’
‘You’re older than you look,’ he said cryptically, and went off to talk to Tremayne.
Mackie, her drink all but untouched, took his place as kind blotter of bleeding feelings.
‘It’s not fair of her to call you lightweight,’ she said. ‘Harry shouldn’t have brought her. I know she’s highly revered but she can make people cry. I’ve seen her do it.’
‘My eyes are dry,’ I said. ‘Are you drinking that champagne?’
‘I’d better not, I suppose.’
‘Care to give it to the walking wounded?’
She smiled her brilliant smile and we exchanged glasses.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I didn’t understand all Erica was saying.’
‘She was saying she’s cleverer than me.’
‘I.’
‘I,’ I agreed.
‘I’ll bet she can’t catch people who’re fainting off horses.’
Mackie was, as Tremayne had said, a sweet young woman.
Angela Brickell’s remains lay on the Quillersedge Estate at the western edge of the Chilterns.
The Quillersedge gamekeeper arranged on the telephone for the local police to collect him from his cottage on the estate and drive as near to the bones as possible on the estate’s private roads. From there, everyone would have to go through the woods on foot.
The few policemen on duty on Sunday afternoon thought of cold wet undergrowth and shivered.
In Tremayne’s house, the informal party lingered cheerfully. Fiona and Mackie sat on a sofa, silver-blond head beside dark red-brown, talking about Mackie’s baby. Nolan discussed with Tremayne the horses Nolan hoped still to be riding when racing resumed. Gareth handed round potato crisps while eating most of them himself and Perkin read aloud how to return safely from getting lost.
‘ “Go downhill, not up,” ’ he read. ‘ “People live in valleys. Follow streams in their flow direction. People live beside rivers.” I can’t imagine I’ll ever need this advice. I steer clear of jungles.’
‘You could need it in the Lake District,’ I said mildly.
‘I don’t like walking, period.’
Harry said, ‘John, Erica wants to know why you’ve ignored mountain climbing in your guides.’
‘Never got round to it,’ I said, ‘and there are dozens of mountain climbing books already.’
Erica, the sparkle of victory still in her eyes, asked who was publishing my novel. When I told her she raised her eyebrows thoughtfully and made no disparaging remark.
‘Good publishers, aren’t they?’ Harry asked, his lips twitching.
‘Reputable,’ she allowed.
Fiona, getting to her feet, began to say goodbyes, chiefly with kisses. Gareth ducked his but she stopped beside me and put her cheek on mine.
‘How long are you staying?’ she asked.
Tremayne answered for me forthrightly. ‘Three more weeks. Then we’ll see.’
‘We’ll fix a dinner,’ Fiona said. ‘Come along, Nolan. Ready, Erica? Love you, Mackie, take care of yourself.’
When they’d gone Mackie and Perkin floated off home on cloud nine and Tremayne and I went round collecting glasses and stacking them in the dishwasher.
Gareth said, ‘If we can have beef sandwich pie again, I’ll make it for lunch.’
At about the time we finally ate the pie, two policemen and the gamekeeper reached the pathetic collection of bones and set nemesis in motion. They tied ropes to trees to ring and isolate the area and radioed for more instructions. Slowly the information percolated upwards until it reached Detective Chief Inspector Doone, Thames Valley Police, who was sleeping off his Yorkshire pudding.
He decided, as daylight would die within the hour, that first thing in the morning he would assemble and take a pathologist for an on-site examination and a photographer for the record. He believed the bones would prove to belong to one of the hundreds of teenagers who had infested his patch with all-night parties the summer before. Three others had died on him from drugs.
In Tremayne’s house Gareth and I went up to my bedroom because he wanted to see the survival kit that he knew I’d brought with me.
‘Is it just like the ones in the books?’ he asked as I brought out a black waterproof pouch that one could wear round one’s waist.