Whip Hand

I sighed and shrugged. 'She agreed, to please you. And because she doesn't think I'll succeed; and she's very likely right. But even talk of my succeeding is putting her in a turmoil and making her angry… and it's by no means unknown for women to go on loving scoundrels who've ruined them.'

Jenny rose to her feet, stared at me blindly, and walked out of the room. Toby took a step after her and Charles too got to his feet, but I said with some force, 'Mr Quayle, please will you go after her and tell her the consequences if she's convicted. Tell her brutally, make her understand, make it shock.'

He had taken the decision and was on his way after her before I'd finished.

'It's hardly kind,' Charles said. 'We've been trying to spare her.'

'You can't expect Halley to show her any sympathy,' Toby said waspishly.

I eyed him. Not the brightest of men, but Jenny's choice of undemanding escort, the calm sea after the hurricane. A few months earlier she had been thinking of marrying him, but whether she would do it post-Ashe was to my mind doubtful.

He gave me his usual lofty look of non-comprehension and decided Jenny needed him at once.

Charles watched his departing back and said, with a tired note of despair, 'I simply don't understand her. And it took you about ten minutes to see… what I wouldn't have seen at all.' He looked at me gloomily. 'It was pointless, then, to try to reassure her, as I've been doing?'

'Oh Charles, what a bloody muddle… It won't have done any harm. It's just given her a way of excusing him… Ashe… and putting off the time when she'll have to admit to herself that she's made a shattering… shaming… mistake.'

The lines in his face had deepened with distress. He said sombrely, 'It's worse. Worse than I thought.' 'Sadder,' I said. 'Not worse.' 'Do you think you can find him?' he said. 'How on earth do you start?'

CHAPTER FOUR

I started in the morning, having not seen Jenny again, as she'd driven off the previous evening with Toby at high speed to Oxford, leaving Charles and me to dine alone, a relief to us both; and they had returned late and not appeared for breakfast by the time I left.

I went to Jenny's flat in Oxford, following directions from Charles, and rang the door-bell. The lock, I thought, looking at it, would give me no trouble if there was no one in, but in fact, after my second ring, the door opened a few inches, on a chain.

'Louise Mclnnes?' I said, seeing an eye, some tangled fair hair, a bare foot and a slice of dark blue dressing gown.

'That's right.'

'Would you mind if I talked to you? I'm Jenny's… er… ex-husband. Her father asked me to see if I could help her.'

'You're Sid?' she said, sounding surprised. 'Sid Halley?'

'Yes.'

'Well… wait a minute.' The door closed and stayed closed for a good long time. Finally it opened again, this time wide, and the whole girl was revealed. This time she wore jeans, a checked shirt, baggy blue sweater, and slippers. The hair was brushed, and there was lipstick: a gentle pink, unaggressive.

'Come in.'

I went in and closed the door behind me. Jenny's flat, as I would have guessed, was not constructed of plasterboard and held together with drawing phis. The general address was a large Victorian house in a prosperous side street, with a semi-circular driveway and parking room at the back. Jenny's section, reached by its own enclosed, latterly added staircase, was the whole of the spacious first floor. Bought, Charles had told me, with some of her divorce settlement. It was nice to see that on the whole my money had been well spent.

Switching on lights, the girl led the way into a large bow-fronted sitting room which still had its curtains drawn and the day before's clutter slipping haphazardly off tables and chairs. Newspapers, a coat, some kicked-off boots, coffee cups, an empty yoghurt carton in a fruit bowl, with spoon, some dying daffodils, a typewriter with its cover off, some scrunched-up pages that had missed the waste-paper basket.

Louis Mclnnes drew back the curtains, letting in the grey morning to dilute the electricity. 'I wasn't up,' she said unnecessarily.

'I'm sorry.' The mess was the girl's. Jenny was always tidy, clearing up before bed. But the room itself was Jenny's. One or two pieces from Aynsford, and an overall similarity to the sitting room of our own house, the one we'd shared. Love might change, but taste endured. I felt a stranger, and at home.

'Want some coffee?' she said.

'Only if…'

'Sure. I'd have some anyway.'

'Can I help you?'

'If you like.'

She led the way through the hall and into a bare-looking kitchen. There was nothing precisely prickly in her manner, but all the same it was cool. Not surprising, really. What Jenny thought of me, she would say, and there wouldn't be much that was good.

'Like some toast?' She was busy producing a packet of white sliced bread and a jar of powdered coffee.

'Yes I would.'

'Then stick a couple of pieces in the toaster. Over there.'

I did as she said, while she ran some water into an electric kettle and dug into a cupboard for butter and marmalade. The butter was a half-used packet still in its torn greaseproof wrapping, the centre scooped out and the whole thing messy: exactly like my own butter packet in my own flat. Jenny had put butter into dishes automatically. I wondered if she did when she was alone.

'Milk and sugar?'

'No sugar.'

When the toast popped up she spread the slices with butter and marmalade and put them on two plates. Boiling water went onto the brown powder in mugs, and milk followed straight from the bottle.

'You bring the coffee,' she said, 'and I'll take the toast.' She picked up the plates and out of the corner of her eye saw my left hand closing round one of the mugs. 'Look out,' she said urgently, 'that's hot.'

I gripped the mug carefully with the fingers that couldn't feel.

She blinked.

'One of the advantages,' I said, and picked up the other mug more gingerly by its handle.

She looked at my face, but said nothing: merely turned away and went back to the sitting room.

'I'd forgotten,' she said, as I put down the mugs on the space she had cleared for them on the low table in front of the sofa.

'False teeth are more common,' I said politely.

She came very near to a laugh, and although it ended up as a doubtful frown, the passing warmth was a glimpse of the true person living behind the slightly brusque facade. She scrunched into the toast and looked thoughtful, and after a chew and a swallow, she said. 'What can you do to help Jenny?'

'Try to find Nicholas Ashe.'

'Oh…' There was another spontaneous flicker of smile, again quickly stifled by subsequent thought.

'You liked him?' I said.

She nodded ruefully. 'I'm afraid so. He is… was… such tremendous fun. Fantastic company. I find it terribly hard to believe he's just gone off and left Jenny in this mess. I mean… he lived here, here in this flat… and we had so many laughs… What he's done… it's incredible.'

'Look,' I said, 'would you mind starting at the beginning and telling me all about it?'

'But hasn't Jenny…?'

'No.'

'I suppose,' she said slowly, 'that she wouldn't like admitting to you that he made such a fool of us.' 'How much,' I said, 'did she love him?' 'Love? What's love? I can't tell you. She was in love with him.' She licked her fingers. 'All fizzy. Bright and bubbly. Up in the clouds.'

'Have you been there? Up in the clouds?' She looked at me straightly. 'Do you mean, do I know what it's like? Yes, I do. If you mean, was I in love with Nicky, then no I wasn't. He was fun, but he didn't turn me on like he did Jenny. And in any case, it was she who attracted him. Or at least…' she finished doubtfully,'… it seemed like it.' She wagged her licked fingers. 'Would you give me that box of tissues that's just behind you?'

I gave her the box and watched her as she wiped off the rest of the stickiness. She had fair eye-lashes and English rose skin, and a face that had left shyness behind. Too soon for life to have printed unmistakable signposts; but there did seem, in her natural expression, to be little in the way of cynicism or intolerance. A practical girl, with sense.