Twice Shy

I again dialled Ted Pitts's possible number. No reply.

Shrugging, I tugged a small chest of drawers across inside the front door and climbed out through the dining-room window. Drove down to the pub: told Bananas the way in.

'Do you expect me-?'

'Not really. Just in case.'

'Where are you going?' he asked.

I showed him the address. 'It's a chance.'

The address was in Mill Hill on the northern outskirts of London. I drove there with my mind resolutely on the traffic and not on Cassie, unconscious, and Angelo, captive. Crunching the car at that point could be the ultimate disaster.

The house, when I found it, proved to be a middle-sized detached affair in a street of trees and somnolence; and it was empty.

I went up the driveway and looked through the windows. Bare wall, bare floors, no curtains.

With sinking spirits I rang the bell of the house next door, and although it was clearly occupied there was no one in there either. I tried several more houses, but none of the people I spoke to knew anything more of Ted Pitts than yes, perhaps they had seen some girls going in and out, but of course with all the shrubs and trees one was shielded from one's neighbours, which meant, of course, that also one couldn't see them.

It was in one of the houses obliquely opposite, from where only a corner of the Pittses' front garden was visible, that in the end I found some help. The front door was opened a foot by a large woman in pink hair rollers with a pack of assorted small dogs roaming round her legs.

'If you're selling, I don't want it,' she said.

I exercised on her the story I had by then invented, saying that Ted Pitts was my brother, he'd sent me his new address but I'd lost it, and I wanted to get in touch with him urgently. After six repetitions, I almost believed it.

'I didn't know him,' she said, not opening the door any wider. 'He didn't live there long. I never even saw him, I don't think.'

'But, er, you noticed them move in… and out.'

'Walking the dogs, you see.' She looked fondly down at the pack. 'I go past there every day.'

'Do you remember how long ago they left?'

'It must be ages. Funny your brother didn't tell you. The house was for sale for weeks after they'd gone. It's only just been sold, as a matter of fact. I saw the agents taking the board down just last week.'

'You don't happen to remember,' I said carefully, 'the name of the agents?'

'Goodness,' she said. 'I must have walked past it a hundred times. Just let me think.' She stared at her pets, her brow wrinkled with concentration. I could still see only half of her body but I couldn't tell whether the forbidding angle of the door was designed to keep the dogs in or me out.

'Hunt bleach' she exclaimed.

'What?'

'Hunt comma BLEACH.' She spelled it out. 'The name of the agents. A yellow board with black lettering. You'll see it all over the place, if you look.'

I said fervently, 'Thank you very much.'

She nodded the pink rollers and shut herself in, and I drove around until I found a yellow board with Hunt, Bleach's local address: Broadway, Mill Hill.

The brother story brought its by now familiar crop of sympathetic and/or pitying looks, but finally gained results. A slightly sullen-looking girl said she thought, the house had been handled by their Mr Jackman who was now away on his holidays.

'Could you look in the files?'

She took advice from various colleagues, who doubtfully agreed under my urging that perhaps in the circumstances she might. She went into an inner office, and I heard cabinet drawers begin to open and shut.

'Here you are, Mr Pitts,' she said, returning, and it took me a fraction to realise that of course I too would be Pitts. 'Ridge View, Oaklands Road.'

She didn't give me a town. I thought; he's still here.

'Could you tell me how to get there?' I said.

She shook her head unhelpfully, but one of the colleagues said, 'You go back up the Broadway, right round the roundabout until you're pointing towards London, then first left, up the hill, turn right, that's Oaklands Road.'

'Terrific.' I spoke with heartfelt relief which they took as appropriate, and I followed their directions faithfully and found the house. It looked a small brown affair; brownish bricks, brown tiled roof, a narrow window each side of an oak front door, bushes screening much else. I parked in what seemed an oversized driveway outside a closed double garage, and doubtfully rang the doorbell.

There was no noise from inside the house. I listened to the distant hum of traffic and the nearer hum of bees round a tub of dark red flowers, and pressed the bell again.

No results. If I hadn't wanted to find Ted Pitts so much I would have given up and driven away at that point. It wasn't even the sort of road where one could enquire at a neighbour's: there were houses only on one side, with a steep wooded hillside rising on the other, and the houses themselves were far-spaced and reclusive, drawing themselves back from public view.

I rang a third time out of indecisiveness, thinking that I could wait, or come back, or leave a note begging Pitts to call me.

The door opened. A pleasant-looking girl-woman stood there; not young, not yet middle-aged, wearing a loosely flowing green sundress with broad straps over suntanned shoulders.

'Yes?' she said enquiringly. Dark curly hair, blue eyes, the brown glowing face of summer leisure.

'I'm looking for Ted Pitts,' I said.

'This is his house.'

'I've been trying to locate him. I'm the brother of an old friend of his. A friend he had years ago, I mean. Could I see him, do you think?'

'He isn't here at the moment.' She looked at me doubtfully. 'What's your brother's name?'

'Jonathan Derry.'

After the very slightest pause her face changed from watchfulness to welcome; a smile in remembrance of time past.

'Jonathan! We haven't heard from him for years.'

'Are you-… Mrs Pitts?'

She nodded. 'Jane. She opened the door wide and stepped back. 'Come in.'

'I'm William,' I said.

'Weren't you…' she frowned, 'away at school?'

'One does tend to grow.'

She looked up at me, 'I'd forgotten how long it was.' She led me across a cool dark hall. 'This way.'

We came to a wide stairway of shallow green-carpeted steps leading downwards, and I saw before me what had been totally invisible from the higher roadway, that the house was large, ultramodern, built into the side of the hill and absolutely stunning.

The stairs led directly down to a huge room whose ceiling was half-open to the sky and whose floor was partly green carpet and partly swimming pool. There were sofas and coffee tables nearest the stairs and lounging chairs, bamboo with pink, white and green cushions, dotting the far poolside, out in the sun; and on either side wings of house spread out protectively, promising bedrooms and comfort and a life of delight. I looked at the spectacular and pretty room and thought no schoolmaster on earth could afford it.

'I was sitting over there,' Jane Pitts said, pointing to the sunny side. 'I nearly didn't answer the doorbell. I don't always bother.'

We walked around there, passing white trellised alcoves filled with plants and cushioned bamboo sofas with bathing towels casually thrown down. The pool water looked sea-green and peaceful, gleaming and inviting after my trudging search.

'Two of the girls are around somewhere,' Jane said. 'Melanie, our eldest, is married, of course. Ted and I will be grandparents quite soon.'

'Incredible.'

She smiled. 'We married at college.' She gestured to the chairs and I sat on the edge of one of the loungers while she spread out voluptuously on another. Beyond the house the lawn sloped grassily away to a wide sweeping view over north-west London, the horizon lost in misty purples and blues.