list, and I’m going to do that this year, bar falls and bloody stand-downs by stupid doctors. After that, I’ll manage the place.’
I listened to her confidence, not sure whether she were self-deluded or, in fact, capable.
‘The directors would have to appoint you,’ I said prosaically.
She sharpened her gaze on me assessingly. ‘So they would,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’ve two whole years to make sure that they do.’ She paused. ‘Whoever they are, by then.’
Deciding abruptly that she’d given me enough of her time she prowled back to her scarlet car, casting hungry looks left and right at the domain she aimed to rule. Marjorie, of course, would frustrate her: but couldn’t for ever, in consequence of the difference in decades. Rebecca had had that in mind.
Henry and Roger cravenly returned as Rebecca’s exhaust pipe roared towards the exit.
‘What was she saying to you?’ Roger asked curiously. ‘She looked almost human.’
‘I think she wants to take charge here, like her grandfather.’
‘Rubbish!’ He began a laugh which turned uneasily into a frown. ‘The family won’t let her.’
‘No, they won’t.’ Not this year, I thought, nor next year: but thereafter?
Roger shrugged away the untenable thought. ‘Don’t tell Oliver,’ he said. ‘He’d strangle her first.’
A policeman and the twenty-eight-year-old bomb expert came through a section of the fence, swinging it partly open, revealing the slow sifting activity of others within.
Roger and I walked to meet them and looked curiously at what they were carrying.
‘Remains of an alarm clock,’ the expert said cheerfully, holding up a cog wheel. ‘One nearly always comes across pieces of timing devices. Nothing actually vaporises with this type of explosive.’
‘What type?’ I asked.
‘P.E.4. Not Semtex. Not fertiliser and diesel oil. Not do-it-yourself terrorism. I’d say we’re handling regular army here, not Irish Republican.’
Roger, the colonel, said stiffly, ‘The army keeps strict control of detonators. P.E.4 is pussy-cat stuff without detonators.’
The expert nodded. ‘You can pat it and mould it like marzipan. I wouldn’t hit it with a hammer, though. But detonators under lock and key? Don’t make me laugh. My life would be easier if it were true. But the army’s been known to mislay tanks. What’s a little fulminate of mercury between friends?’
‘Everyone is very careful about detonators,’ Roger insisted.
‘Oh, sure.’ The expert grinned wolfishly. ‘Old soldiers could liberate a field-gun from under your nose. And – you know what they say – there’s nothing as good as a fire.’
From the look on Roger’s face, the saying was all too familiar.
‘When a certain large depot the size of five football pitches went up in flames a few years ago,’ the expert enlarged to me with unholy relish, ‘enough stuff was reported lost to fill double the space. The army produced tons of constructive paperwork to prove that all sorts of things had been sent to the depot during the week before the fire. Things that had earlier gone missing, and might have had to be accounted for, were all reported as having been “sent to the depot”. Things were reported to have been “sent to the depot” that had, after the fire, marched out of their home bases by the suitcaseful to much nearer destinations. A good fire is a godsend, right, Colonel?’
Roger said formally, ‘You don’t expect me to agree.’
‘Of course not, Colonel. But don’t tell me it’s impossible for a caseful of detonators to fail to be counted.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll grant you no one but a fool or an expert would handle them, but a word here, a word there, and there’s a market for anything under the sun.’
CHAPTER 10
The work went on.
Electric cables snaked everywhere and were gradually assimilated invisibly into the canvas. Lighting grew, looking as if it belonged there anyway. White silently whirling fans hung beneath roof vents, to get rid of smells and used air. Henry himself understood tent management and crowd comfort in a way that sweltering guests in sunbaked marquees had never imagined, and as I too put climate control near the top of all living priorities, the Stratton Park racegoers were going to breathe easily without knowing why.
The nineteenth-century chimney-born updraughts in houses had created a boom then in footstools, winged chairs and screens; twentieth-century wind tunnels meant gale-ridden city street corners.
Air pressure, air movement, air temperature; dust removal, mite reduction, dehumidification: all were not just a matter of soft self-indulgence indoors, but of positive no-allergy health and the deterrence of rot, rust, fungus and mildew. The Lazarus act on old buildings began, in my