Roland slid out of the Ash factory and went home before Cropper or Blackadder could return from lunch and ask him any awkward questions. He was annoyed with himself for creating a situation in which Cropper could discover Christabel's name. Nothing was wasted on that sharp noticing mind.
The Putney basement was silent, sensuously entangled with the BM basement by its feline reek. Winter was darkly coming, and dark stains and some slow form of creeping life had appeared on the walls. It was hard to heat. There was no central heating, and Roland and Val had supplemented their one gas fire with paraffin stoves, so that the smell of petrol mingled with the smells of cat and mild mould. It was a cold petrol smell, not a burning one, and there was no smell of cooking, no burning onion nor warm curry powder. Val must be out. They could not afford to keep the hall stove lit in her absence. Roland, without taking his coat off, went to find a match. The wick was behind a cranky hinged door in the chimney, made of a transparent horny substance, smoke-stained and crackling. Roland turned the key, extruded a little wick and set it flaring with a low boom; he hastily closed the aperture, producing a steady blue inverted crescent of flame. There was something ancient and magical about the colour, a clear blue, touched with green and dense with purple.
There was a little heap of letters in the hall. Two for Val, one self-addressed. Three for him: a request for a library book, a card acknowledging receipt of an article sent to a learned journal, and a handwritten letter that was unfamiliar.
Dear Dr Michell,
I hope you will not have taken oursilencefor rudeness, orsomething worse. My husband has been making the inquiries he spoke of He has consulted hissolicitor, the Vicar,andour dearfriend Jane Anstey who is a retired Deputy County Librarian. None of these had any very clear advice. Miss Anstey spoke very highly of Dr Bailey's work and of the archive she looks after. She feels it would be entirelyproper to allow Dr Bailey to read our treasure trove and give a preliminary opinion on it - especially as it was she who found it. I am writing to you too, since you were present at the finding, and expressed an interest in Randolph Henry Ash. Would you care to come and examine the papers with Dr Bailey, or if you would find this time-consuming suggestsomeone to come in yourplace? I appreciate that this would be more difficult for you, coming from London, than for Dr Bailey, who lives conveniently near Croysant le Wold. I would offerto accommodate you for afew days - though this has its difficulties, since we are as you will remember, confined to the ground floor, and the old house is woefully cold in winter. What do you think? How long do you imagine you will need to take stock of our find? Would a week be sufficient? We have visitors over Christmas but none over the New Year if you would care to make aforay to the Lincolnshire Wolds at that time.
I am still grateful for your gentlemanly and practical assistance on that field-edge. Let me know how you think it best to proceed. Yours sincerely
Joan Bailey
Roland felt several things at once. Primary elation-a kind of vision of the bundle of dead letters come to rushing life like some huge warm eagle stirring. Irritation at the primacy Maud Bailey seemed to have assumed in the affair that had begun with the discovery of his purloined letter. Practical, calculating anxiety- how to accept the half-invitation to stay without revealing his own extreme poverty, which might make him appear an inadequately weighty person to be entrusted with the letter-reading. Fear of Val. Fear of Maud Bailey. Anxiety about Cropper and Blackadder and even Beatrice Nest. He wondered exactly why Lady Bailey had thought or suggested that he might want to suggest someone else to read the letters-fun, folly, or an edge of uncertainty about himself? How friendly was her gratitude? Did Maud want him there to read the letters?
Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes appeared, followed by impeccably creased matt charcoal pinstriped light woollen legs, followed by the beautifully cut lower hem of a jacket, its black vent revealing a scarlet silk lining, its open front revealing a flat muscular stomach under a finely-striped red and white shirt. Val's legs followed, in powder-blue stockings and saxe-blue shoes, under the limp hem of a crêpey mustard-coloured dress, printed with blue moony flowers. The four feet advanced and retreated, retreated and advanced, the male feet insisting towards the basement stairs, the female feet resisting, parrying. Roland opened the door and went into the area, fired mostly by what always got him, pure curiosity as to what the top half looked like.
The shoulders and chest were as expected; the tie was knitted red and black silk. The face was oval. There were horn-rimmed glasses under a modified 1920s haircut, very short back and sides, moderately long over the brow, black.
"Hi," said Roland. "Oh," said Val. "I thought you were in the Museum. This is Euan Maclntyre."
Euan Maclntyre leaned over and gravely extended a hand downwards. There was something powerful about him, Pluto delivering Persephone at the gate of the underworld.
"I brought Val home. She wasn't feeling very well. I thought she should lie down."
His voice was clear and ringing, not Scots, full of what Roland might inaccurately have called toffee-nosed sounds, or plummy sounds, sounds he had spent his childhood learning to imitate derisorily, hooting, curtailed, drawling, chipping sounds that prickled his non-existent hackles with class hostility. He was obviously waiting to be asked in, with an ease which in earlier novels might have proclaimed the true gentleman, but to Roland and probably to Val suggested nosiness and their own shame. Val drifted slowly and faintly towards Roland.
"I'll be all right. Thank you for the lift."
"Any time." He turned to Roland. "I hope we meet again.”
“Yes," said Roland vaguely, backing down below Val's descent. The Porsche sped away.
"He fancies me," said Val. "Where did he spring from?”
“I've been typing things for him. Last Wills and Testaments.
Deeds of Covenant. Opinions on this and that. He's a solicitor. Bloss, Bloom, Trompett and Maclntyre. Respectable, not sharp, very successful. Office full of photographs of horses. He owns a leg of one, he says. He asked me to go to Newmarket."
"What did you say?"Would you mind what I said?"It would do you good to have a day out," Roland said, and wished he hadn't. "Listen to yourself. It would do you a lot of good. How repellently patronising. “
“Well, I've got no right to stop you, Val."
"I told him you wouldn't like it."
"Oh Val-"
"I should have told him you couldn't care less. I should have gone."
"I can't see why you didn't go."
Oh it you can t see- "What has happened to us?"
"Too much confinement, too little money, too much anxiety and too young. You want to get rid of me."
"You know that isn't true. You know. I love you, Val. I just don't give you a very good time."
"I love you too. I'm sorry I'm so short-tempered and suspicious." She waited. He took hold of her. It was will and calculation, not desire. There were two ways out of this, a row or making love, and the second was more conducive to eventual dinner and a peaceful evening's work and the eventual broaching of the Lincolnshire project.