to have ambivalent feelingsabout Mr Pembroke and Mr Ian; I gathered from his inconsistent attitude that he liked them both in the past but no longer trusts them. Mr F. is capable of hate, I think.
End of enquiry.
I put Debs and Ferdinand to the back of the pile but had no mental stamina left for the next section on Ursula and Gervase. I put all the notes into the envelope and ate some pub steak instead and decided I would see the family in the age-reversed order Norman West had handed me, taking the easy ones first. Where was the bravado that had led me to tell Malcolm at Cambridge that I would stay with him just because it was dangerous?
Where indeed.
Somewhere under the rubble of Quantum.
In the morning, I rode out on the windy Downs, grateful for the simplicity of horses and for the physical pleasure of using one’s muscles in the way they were trained for. Vigour seemed to flow of its own accord in my arms and legs, and I thought that maybe it was the same for a pianist sitting down after a few days to play; there was no need to work out what to do with one’s fingers, it was easy, it was embedded in one’s brain, the music came without thought.
I thanked my host sincerely after breakfast and drove towards Quantum thinking of the telephone call I’d made to Malcolm the evening before. It had been nearly midnight for me: nearly six, early evening, for him.
He had arrived safely, he said, and Dave and Sally Cander were true blue cronies. Ramsey Osborn had flown down. The Canders were giving a party, starting in five minutes. He’d seen some good horses. He’d had some great new ideas for spending money (wicked chuckle). How were things in England?
He sounded satisfactorily carefree, having shed depression with the miles, and I said things were the same as when he left except that the house was wrapped up in tarpaulins. The state of the house troubled him for roughly ten seconds, and after that he said he and Ramsey might be leaving Lexington on Tuesday or Wednesday; he wasn’t sure.
‘Wherever you go,’ I said, ‘will you please give the Canders a telephone number where I can reach you?’
‘I promise,’ he said blithely. ‘Hurry up with your passport, and come over.’
‘Soon.’
‘I’ve got used to you being with me. Keep looking round for you. Odd. Must be senile.’
‘Yes, you sound it.’
He laughed. ‘It’s a different world here, and I like it.’
He said goodbye and disconnected, and I wondered how many horses he would have bought by the time I reached him.
Back at the pub in Cookham, I changed out of riding clothes and dutifully telephoned Superintendent Yale. He had nothing to tell me, nor I to tell him: the call was short.
‘Where is your father?’ he asked conversationally.
‘Safe.’
He grunted. ‘Phone me,’ he said, and I said, ‘Yes.’
With a heavy lack of enthusiasm I returned to the car and pointed its nose towards Bracknell, parking in one of the large featureless carparks and walking through to the High Street.
The High Street, long before, had been the main road through a minor country town; now it was a pedestrian backwater surrounded by the factories, offices and convoluted ring roads of mushroom progress. ‘Deanna’s Dance and Aerobics Studio’ looked like a wide shop-front flanked by a bright new shiny newsagent on one side and on the other a photographic shop whose window display seemed to consist chiefly of postcard-sized yellow fluorescent labels with prices on, mostly announcing ‘20% OFF’.
Deanna’s studio consisted firstly of a reception area with a staircase on one side leading upwards. A young girl sitting behind the reception desk looked up and brightened when I pushed open the glass entrance door and stepped onto some thick grey carpet, but lost interest when I asked for Serena, explaining I was her brother.
‘Back there,’ she said. ‘She’s taking class at the moment.’
Back there was through white-painted double doors. I went through and found myself in a windowless but brightly lit and attractive area of small tables and chairs, where several women sat drinking from polystyrene cups. The air vibrated with the pulse of music being played somewhere else, and when I again asked for Serena and was directed onwards, I came to its source.
The studio itself ran deeply back to end in a wall of windows overlooking a small strip of garden. The floor was of polished wood,sprung somehow so that it