'It's not true.'
But her voice said that she saw it was. She had even told me so, more or less, the evening I'd come to Aynsford to start finding Ashe.
'Where will you live?' I said.
'What do you care?'
I supposed I would always care, to some extent, which was my problem, not hers.
'How did you find him?' she said.
'He's a fool.'
She didn't like that. The look of enmity showed where her instinctive preference still lay.
'He's living with another girl,' I said.
She stood up furiously, and I remembered a bit late that I really didn't want her to touch me.
'Are you telling me that to be beastly?' she demanded.
'I'm telling you so you'll get him out of your system before he goes on trial and to jail. You're going to be damned unhappy if you don't.'
'I hate you,' she said.
'That's not hate, that's injured pride.'
'How dare you!'
'Jenny,' I said. 'I'll tell you plainly, I'd do a lot for you. I've loved you a long time, and I do care what happens to you. It's no good finding Ashe and getting him convicted of fraud instead of you, if you don't wake up and see him for what he is. I want to make you angry with him. For your own sake.'
'You won't manage it,' she said fiercely.
'Go away,' I said.
'What?'
'Go away. I'm tired.'
She stood there looking as much bewildered as annoyed, and at that moment Charles came back.
'Hallo,' he said, taking a disapproving look at the general atmosphere. 'Hallo, Jenny.' She went over and kissed his cheek, from long habit. 'Has Sid told you he's found your friend Ashe?' he said.
'He couldn't wait.'
Charles was carrying a large brown envelope. He opened it, pulled out the contents, and handed them to me: the three photographs of Ashe, which had come out well, and the new begging letter.
Jenny took two jerky strides and looked down at the uppermost photograph. 'Her name is Elizabeth More,' I said slowly.
'His real name is Norris Abbott. She calls him Ned.'
The picture, the third one I'd taken, showed them laughing and entwined, looking into each other's eyes, the happiness in their faces sharply in focus. Silently, I gave Jenny the letter. She opened it and looked at the signature at the bottom, and went very pale. I felt sorry for her, but she wouldn't have wanted me to say so.
She swallowed, and handed the letter to her father.
'All right,' she said after a pause. 'All right. Give it to the police.'
She sat down again on the sofa with a sort of emotional exhaustion slackening her limbs and curving her spine. Her eyes turned my way.
'Do you want me to thank you?' she said.
I shook my head.
'I suppose one day I will.'
'There's no need.'
With a flash of anger she said,
'You're doing it again.'
'Doing what?'
'Making me feel guilty. I know I'm pretty beastly to you sometimes. Because you make me feel guilty, and I want to get back at you for that.'
'Guilty for what?' I said.
'For leaving you. For our marriage going wrong.'
'But it wasn't your fault,' I protested.
'No, it was yours. Your selfishness, your pigheadedness. Your bloody determination to win. You'll do anything to win. You always have to win. You're so hard. Hard on yourself. Ruthless to yourself. I couldn't live with it. No one could live with it. Girls want men who'll come to them for comfort. Who say, I need you, help me, comfort me, kiss away my troubles. But you… you can't do that. You always build a wall and deal with your own troubles in silence, like you're doing now. And don't tell me you aren't hurt because I've seen it in you too often, and you can't disguise the way you hold your head, and this time it's very bad, I can see it. But you'd never say, would you, Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry?'
She stopped, and in the following silence made a sad little gesture with her hand.
'You see?' she said. 'You can't say it, can you?'
After another long pause I said, 'No.'
'Well,' she said, 'I need a husband who's not so rigidly in control of himself. I want someone who's not afraid of emotion, someone uninhibited, someone weaker. I can't live in the sort of purgatory you make of life for yourself. I want someone who can break down. I want… an ordinary man.'
She got up from the sofa and bent over and kissed my forehead.
'It's taken me a long time to see all that,' she said. 'And to say it. But I'm glad I have.' She turned to her father. 'Tell Mr Quayle I'm cured of Nicky, and I won't be obstructive from now on. I think I'll go back to the flat now. I feel a lot better.'
She went with Charles towards the door, and then paused and looked back, and said, 'Goodbye, Sid.' 'Goodbye,' I said: and I wanted to say Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry: but I couldn't.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Charles drove himself and me to London the following day in the Rolls with me still in a fairly droopy state and Charles saying we should put it off until Monday.
'No,' I said. 'But even for you this is daunting… and you're dreading it.'
Dread, I thought, was something I felt for Trevor Deansgate, who wasn't going to hold off just because I had other troubles. Dread was too strong a word for the purpose of the present journey; and reluctance too weak. Aversion, perhaps.
'It's better done today,' I said.
He didn't argue. He knew I was right, otherwise he wouldn't have been persuaded to drive me.
He dropped me at the door of the Jockey Club in Portman Square, and went and parked the car, and walked back again. I waited for him downstairs, and we went up in the lift together: he in his City suit, and I in trousers and a clean shirt, but no tie and no jacket. The weather was still hot. A whole week of it, we'd had, and it seemed that everyone except me was bronzed and healthy.
There was a looking glass in the lift. My face stared out of it, greyish and hollow eyed, with a red streak of a healing cut slanting across near the hairline on my forehead, and a blackish bruise on the side of my jaw. Apart from that I looked calmer, less damaged and more normal than I felt, which was a relief. If I concentrated, I should be able to keep it that way.
We went straight to Sir Thomas Ullaston's office, where he was waiting for us. Shook hands, and all that.
To me he said, 'Your father-in-law told me on the telephone yesterday that you have something disturbing to tell me. He wouldn't say what it was.'
'No, not on the telephone,' I agreed.
'Sit down, then. Charles… Sid…' He offered chairs, and himself perched on the edge of his big desk. 'Very important, Charles said. So here I am, as requested. Fire away.'
'It's about syndicates,' I said. I began to tell him what I'd told Charles, but after a few minutes he stopped me.
'No. Look, Sid, this is not going to end here simply between me and you, is it? So I think we must have some of the others in, to hear what you're saying.' I would have preferred him not to, but he summoned the whole heavy mob; the Controller of the Secretariat, the Head of Administration, the Secretary to the Stewards, the Licensing Officer, who dealt with the registration of owners, and the Head of Rules Department, whose province was disciplinary action. They came into the room and filled up the chairs, and for the second time in four days turned their serious civilised faces my way, to listen to the outcome of an investigation.
It was because of Tuesday, I thought, that they would listen to me now. Trevor Deansgate had given me an authority I wouldn't otherwise have had, in that company, in that room.
I said, 'I was asked by Lord Friarly, whom I used to ride for, to look into four syndicates, which he headed. The horses were running in his colours, and he wasn't happy about how they were doing. That wasn't surprising, as their starting prices were going up and down like yoyos, with results to match. Lord Friarly felt he was being used as a front for some right wicked goings on, and he didn't like it.'