dandies. Then stopped, and lowered his arms to his sides in awe. ‘Mother of pearl. Suki, darling. Hallelujah!’
Suzanna was standing before the cheval mirror, scrutinizing herself over her shoulder. She was wearing her late aunt’s black riding habit and boots, and the white lace blouse with its stock for a collar. She had pulled her strict grey hair into a bun and fixed it with a silver comb. On top of it she had set a shiny black topper that should have been ridiculous but to Kit was utterly disarming. The clothes fitted her, the period fitted her, the topper fitted her. She was a handsome, sixty-year-old Cornishwoman of her time, and the time was a hundred years ago. Best of all, you’d think she’d never had a day’s illness in her life.
Pretending to be unsure whether it was permitted to advance further, Kit made a show of hovering in the doorway.
‘You are going to enjoy it, aren’t you, Kit?’ Suzanna said severely into the mirror. ‘I don’t want to think of you going through the motions just to please me.’
‘Of course I’m going to enjoy it, darling. It’ll be a hoot.’
And he meant it. If it would have made old Suki happy, he’d have put on a tutu and jumped out of a cake. They’d lived his life and now they would live hers, if it killed him. Taking her hand, he raised it reverently to his lips, then lifted it aloft as if he were about to dance a minuet with her before escorting her across the dust sheets, down the staircase to the hall, where Mrs Marlow stood clutching two posies of fresh violets, Master Bailey’s flower of choice, one each.
And standing tall beside her, dressed in Chaplinesque rags, safety pins and battered bowler hat, their peerless daughter, Emily, recently returned to life after a disastrous love affair.
‘You all right there, Mum?’ she asked briskly. ‘Got your make-me-betters?’
Sparing Suzanna a reply, Kit gives a reassuring pat to his blazer pocket.
‘And the squeezer, for in case?’
Pats the other pocket.
‘Nervous, Dad?’
‘Terrified.’
‘So you should be.’
The Manor gates stand open. Kit has pressure-washed the stone lions on the gateposts for the occasion. Costumed pleasure-seekers are already drifting up Market Street. Emily spots the local doctor and his wife, and nimbly attaches herself to them, leaving her parents to process alone, Kit comically doffing his straw boater to left and right and Suzanna managing a sporting shot at the royal wave as they confer their praises in their separate ways:
‘Gosh, Peggy darling, that’s so absolutely charming! Wherever did you get such lovely satin from?’ Suzanna exclaims to the postmistress.
‘Well fuck me, Billy. Who else have you got under there?’ murmurs Kit, sotto voce, into the ear of portly Mr Olds, the butcher, who has come as a turbanned Arab prince.
In the gardens of the cottages, daffodils, tulips, forsythia and peach blossom raise their heads to the blue sky. From the church tower flies the black-and-white flag of Cornwall. A bevy of equestrian children in hard hats comes trotting down the street, escorted by the redoubtable Polly from the Granary Riding School. The festivities are too much for the lead pony and it shies, but Polly is on hand to grab the bridle. Suzanna consoles the pony, then its rider. Kit takes Suzanna’s arm and feels her heart beating as she presses his hand lovingly against her ribs.
It’s here and now, Kit thinks, as the elation rises in him. The jostling crowds, the palominos cavorting in the meadows, the sheep safely grazing on the hillside, even the new bungalows that deface the lower slopes of Bailey’s Hill: if this isn’t the land they have loved and served for so long, where is? And all right, it’s Merrie bloody England, it’s Laura bloody Ashley, it’s ale and pasties and yo-ho for Cornwall, and tomorrow morning all these nice, sweet people will be back at each other’s throats, screwing each other’s wives and doing all the stuff the rest of the world does. But right now it’s their National Day, and who’s an ex-diplomat of all people to complain if the wrapping is prettier than what’s inside?
At a trestle table stands Jack Painter, red-headed son of Ben from the garage, in braces and a Stetson. Beside him sits a girl in a fairy dress with wings, selling tickets at four pounds a shot.
‘You’re free, Kit, dammit!’ Jack cries boisterously. ‘You’re the bloody Opener, man, same as Suzanna!’
But Kit in his exultation will have none of