The House on the Strand

CHAPTER TWELVE

IF MAGNUS HAD wanted to drop a deliberate brick it could not have been better timed, but I absolved him. He believed Vita to be in London and myself alone. Nevertheless, the wording was unfortunate, to say the least. Catastrophic would be more apt. It must have conjured an instant vision to Vita of my sneaking off with shaving-kit and toothbrush to meet some floozie in the Scilly Isles. My innocence would be difficult to prove. I followed her into the library.

"Now, listen," I said, firmly shutting the folding doors between the two rooms in case Mrs. Collins overheard me, "that telegram is a complete joke — a leg-pull on the part of Magnus. Don't make an absolute idiot of yourself by taking it seriously."

She turned round and faced me, her posture the classical one of outraged wife, one hand on hip, the other brandishing her cigarette held at an angle, eyes narrowed in a frozen face.

"I'm not interested in the Professor or his jokes," she said. "You share so many of them, and keep me out, that I'm past caring. If that telegram was a joke good luck to you both. I repeat, I'm sorry I spoilt the weekend. Now you had better go and eat your lunch before it gets cold. She picked up a Sunday paper and pretended to look at it. I snatched it away. "Oh no, you don't," I said, "you just pay attention to me." Taking her cigarette I squashed it in the ash-tray. Then I seized both her wrists and swung her round.

"You know perfectly well that Magnus is my oldest friend," I said. "What's more he's lent us this house rent free, and thrown Mrs. Collins in for good measure. In return for this I've been doing bits and pieces of research for him in connection with his work. The telegram was just his way of wishing me luck."

My words made no impression. Her face was frozen stiff. "You're not a scientist," she said. "What sort of research can you possibly do? And where were you going?"

I dropped her wrists and sighed, as one whose patience is becoming rapidly exhausted by a wilfully misunderstanding child.

"I wasn't going anywhere," I insisted, emphasis on the anywhere. "I had vaguely planned to drive along the coast and visit one or two sites he happens to be interested in."

"How extremely plausible," she said. "I can't think why the Professor doesn't have a teach-in here, with you as his chief assistant. Why don't you suggest it? I'd be in the way, of course, and would make myself scarce. But he'd probably like to keep the boys."

"Oh, for God's sake," I said, opening the door to the dining-room, "you're behaving like every well-worn joke about wives I've ever heard. The simplest thing to do will be to ring up Magnus first thing tomorrow morning and tell him you're filing a divorce suit because you suspect me of wanting to meet-up with some scrubber at Land's End. He'll howl his head off."

I went into the dining-room and sat down at the table. The gravy was beginning to congeal, but no matter. I filled a tankard with beer to wash down the beef and two veg before tackling apple tart. Mrs. Collins, tactfully silent, brought in coffee and stood it on the hot-plate, then disappeared. The boys, at a loose end, were kicking the gravel on the path in front of the house. I got up, and called to them from the window. "I'll take you swimming later," I shouted. They brightened visibly, and came running up the steps to the porch. "Later," I said. "Let me have my coffee first, and see what Vita wants to do." Their faces fell. Mom would be a nonstarter, and possibly throw cold water on the plan. "Don't Worry," I said. "I promise I'll take you."

Then I went into the library. Vita was lying on the sofa, her eyes closed. I knelt beside her, and kissed her. "Stop being bloody-minded," I said. "There's only one girl in this world for me, and you know it. I'm not going to take you upstairs to prove it because I've told the boys I'd take them swimming, and you don't want to spoil their day for them, do you?"

She opened one eye. "You've succeeded in spoiling mine," she said.

"Balls!" I told her. "And what about my lost weekend with that floozie? Shall I tell you what I'd planned to do with her? A strip-tease show at Newquay. Now shut up." I kissed her again with vigour. Response was negligible, but she did not push me away.

"I wish I understood you," she said.

"Thank God you don't," I said. "Husbands loathe wives who understand them. It makes for monotony. Come and swim. There's a perfectly good empty beach below the cliffs. It's blazing hot, and it isn't going to rain."

She opened both eyes. "What were you actually doing this morning while we were in church?" she asked.

"Mooching about in a derelict quarry," I told her, "less than a mile from the village. It has connections with the old Priory, and Magnus and I happen to be interested in the site. Then I couldn't start the car, which I'd parked rather awkwardly in a ditch."

"It's news to me that your Professor is an historian as well as a scientist," she said.

"Good news, don't you think? Makes a change from all those embryos in bottles. I encourage it."

"You encourage him in everything," she said, "that's why he makes use of you."

"I'm adaptable by nature, always have been. Come on, those boys are itching to be off. Go and make yourself beautiful in a bikini, but put something over it, or you'll startle the cows."

"Cows?" she almost shrieked. "I'm not going in any field with cows, thank you very much."

"They're tame ones," I said, "fed on a certain sort of grass so that they can't move out of a slow amble. Cornwall's famous for them." I think she believed me. Whether she believed my story about the quarry was another matter. She was pacified, for the moment. Let it rest.

We spent a long, lazy afternoon on the beach. Everybody swam, and afterwards, while the boys scrambled about in pools hunting for non-existent prawns, Vita and I stretched ourselves full-length on a spit of yellow sand, letting it trickle through our fingers. Peace reigned.

"Have you thought about the future at all?" she asked suddenly.

"The future?" I repeated. In point of fact, I was staring across the bay wondering if Bodrugan had made it that night with a rising tide, after he and Isolda had said goodbye. He had mentioned Chapel Point. In old days, Commander Lane had taken us sailing across the bay from Fowey to Mevagissey, and had pointed out Chapel Point jutting out on the port side before we entered Mevagissey harbour. Bodrugan's house must have lain somewhere close at hand. Perhaps the name existed still. I could find it on the road map if it was still there.

"Yes", I said, "I have. If it's fine tomorrow we'll go sailing. You couldn't possibly be seasick if it's as calm as it is today. We'll sail right across the bay and anchor off that headland over there. Take lunch, and go ashore."

"Very nice," she agreed, "but I didn't mean the immediate future. I meant the long-term one."

"Oh, that," I said. "No, darling, frankly I have not. So much to do getting settled in here. Don't let's be premature."

"That's all very well," she said, "but Joe can't wait for ever. I think he was hoping to hear from you fairly soon."

"I know that. But I've got to be absolutely sure. It's all right for you, it's your country. It isn't mine. Pulling up roots won't be easy."

"You've pulled them up already, chucking that London job. To be blunt, you have no roots. So there's no argument," she said. She was right, for all practical purposes.

"You'll have to do something," she went on, "whether it's in England or the States. And to turn down Joe's offer when no one has offered you anything comparable in this country seems utterly crazy. I admit I'm prejudiced," she added, putting her hand in mine, "and would adore to settle back home. But only if you want it too."

I did not want it, that was the crux. Nor did I want a similar job, literary agency or publishing, in London. It was the end of the road, the end, temporarily, of a particular moment in time, my time. And I could not plan ahead, not yet.

"Don't go on about it now, darling," I said. "Let's take each moment as it comes. Today, tomorrow… I'll think constructively about the whole thing soon, I promise you."

She sighed, and let go of my hand, reaching in the pocket of her towelling wrap for a cigarette. "As you say," she said, the upward inflexion on the say proclaiming her origins on the western Atlantic seaboard. "But don't blame me if you find yourself left high and dry by brother Joe."

The boys came running across the beach with various trophies to show us, star-fish, mussels, and an oversize, long-dead crab that stank to heaven. The moment of truth had passed. It was time to gather up our things and face the trek uphill back to Kilmarth. As I brought up the rear I looked over my shoulder across the bay. The coast was clearly defined, and the white houses on the edge of Chapel Point, some eight miles distant, were caught by the western sun.

In such a night

Otto methinks mounted Bodrugan walls,

And sighed his soul towards the Treesmill creek

Where Isold lay that night..

But did she? Surely she must have followed the children later, after Otto sailed. But where to? Bockenod, where her husband's brother, the self-important Sir John, lived? Too far. Something was missing. She had mentioned another name. Treg something. I must look on the map. The trouble was that every other farmhouse in Cornwall began with Tre. It had not been Trevenna, Treverran or Trenadlyn. So where was it that Isolda and her two children had lain their heads that night?

"I don't see myself doing this often," complained Vita. "My heaven, what a hill! It's like the ski slopes in Vermont. Let me take your arm." The thing was, they had crossed the water-splash below the mill and taken a track to the right. And then I had not seen them any more, because of that car coming up behind me. They could have gone in any direction. And Roger was on foot. When the tide came in the ford would be fully covered. I tried to remember if there was a boat beneath the blacksmith's forge to ferry him back.

"After all this exercise and air I ought to sleep tonight," said Vita.

"Yes," I replied.

There had been a boat. High and dry on the edge of the creek. At high water this would be used for carrying passengers to and fro between the blacksmith's forge and Treesmill.

"You couldn't care less, could you," she asked, "what sort of a night I have, and whether I'm dead on my feet right now?" I stopped and stared at her. "I'm sorry, darling," I said, "of course I care. Why revert suddenly to that business of a sleepless night?"

"You were miles away in thought — I can always tell," she said.

"Four miles at the most," I told her. "If you really want to know, I was thinking about a couple of children riding ponies I saw this morning. I wondered where they were going."

"Ponies?" We continued walking, Vita a dead weight on my arm. "Well, that's the most sensible thought you've had yet," she said. "The boys love riding. Maybe the ponies were let out on hire?"

"I doubt it," I said. "I imagine they came from some farm."

"Well, you could always make enquiries. Nice-looking children?"

"Enchanting. Two little girls, and a youngish woman who looked as if she might be their nurse, and a couple of men."

"All riding ponies?"

"One man was walking, holding the children's bridles."

"Then it must be a riding-school," she said. Do find out. "It would make something for the boys to do other than swimming or sailing."

"Yes," I said.

How convenient it would be if I could summon Roger from the past and bid him saddle two of the Kilmarth ponies for Teddy and Micky, then send them off with Robbie for a gallop on Par sands! Roger would handle Vita to perfection. Her slightest whim obeyed. Juice of henbane whistled up from Brother Jean at the Priory to induce a restful night, and if that failed… I smiled.

"What's the joke?"

"No joke." I pointed to the fading foxgloves, a purple mass thrusting tall stems through the hedge encircling the paddocks below Kilmarth. "If you have a heart attack, no problem. Digitalis comes from foxgloves. You've only to say the word and I'll crush the seeds."

"Thanks a lot. No doubt your Professor's laboratory is full of them, along with other poisonous seeds and goodness knows what sinister mixtures."

How right she was. An error, though, to let her dwell on Magnus. "Here we are," I said. "Through that gate and into the garden. I'll mix you a long, cool drink, and the boys as well. Then I'll cope with the supper."

"Plenty of cold beef and salad."

Let cheerfulness prevail. Memories of my mis-spent morning fade into an urge to please. Attentive husband, smiling stepfather; keep the whole thing going to bedtime and beyond.

As it turned out, beyond took care of itself. The swim, the long climb and the soporific Cornish air had done their trick. Vita, yawning her head off at a television play, was in bed by ten, and fast asleep when I crept in stealthily beside her an hour later. Tomorrow would be fine, judging by the sky, and we would sail to Chapel Point. Bodrugan existed still. I had found it on the road-map after supper.

There was just enough breeze to take us out of Fowey harbour. Our skipper, Tom, a stalwart fellow with a ready smile, busied himself with the sails, aided or hindered by the boys, while I stationed myself at the tiller. I knew just enough about it not to bring the boat up into the wind and set the sails flapping, but neither Vita nor the boys knew this, and were suitably impressed by my air of efficiency. Soon we had mackerel lines astern, the boys hauling them in with shouts of excitement as soon as they felt the slightest tug, caused by the ripple of tide or a piece of weed, while Vita stretched herself at my side. Her jeans became her — like all Americans, she had a stunning figure — and so did her scarlet sweater.

"This is heaven," she said, snuggling close and leaning her head against my shoulder. "So clever of you to arrange it, I give you full marks for once. The water couldn't be smoother."

The trouble was, it didn't stay heaven for long. I remembered of old, after passing the Cannis buoy and the Gribbin Head, a westerly wind met the tide with a smacking force, increasing the boat's speed — always a joy to the helmsman with his heart in his job, like Commander Lane — but causing the craft to heel over, so that the passenger sitting on the leeward side found himself within a few inches of the sea. In this case the passenger was Vita.

"Hadn't you better let the man steer?" she said nervously, after the boat had curtseyed three times like a rocking-horse — my fault, too close to the wind — then lay firmiy on her side with the lea rail awash.

"Not a bit of it," I said cheerfully. "Crawl under the boom and sit on the weather side."

She groped to her feet, and caught her head an almighty tonk on the boom. As I bent to help her unravel a rope from her ankle, which took my eye off my work as helmsman, I shipped a short sea across the bows, thus drenching the whole party, myself included.

"A drop of salt water hurts nobody," I shouted, but the boys, clinging to the weather rail, were not so sure, and with their mother made a dive for the shelter of the small cabin, which, lacking headroom, forced them to crouch like hunchbacks on the tiny locker seat, where they rose and fell with every curtsey of the over-lively craft.

"Nice fresh breeze," said our skipper Tom, grinning all over his face. "We'll be at Mevagissey in no time at all."

I bared my teeth in imitation of his confidence, but the three white faces upturned to me in the cockpit lacked enthusiasm, and I had the impression that none of them shared the skipper's opinion about the breeze.

He offered me a cigarette, but it proved an error after three puffs, and I let it fall over the side when he was not looking, while he proceeded to light up a particularly noxious pipe. Some of the smoke found its way down to the cabin and circled there in rings.

The lady would feel the motion less if she sat in the cockpit, suggested Tom, and the lads as well.

I looked at the boys. The boat was steady enough now, but penned in the dark cabin they felt every thump, and an ominous yawn appeared on Micky's face. Vita, her eyes glazed, appeared hypnotised by Tom's oilskin, which was hanging on a hook by the cabin door, swaying to and fro with the boat's motion like a hanging man.

Tom and I exchanged glances, seized by a sudden freemasonry, and while he took over the tiller and knocked out his pipe I pulled the family up into the cockpit, where Vita and her youngest were promptly sick.

Teddy survived, possibly because he kept his head averted.

"We'll soon be under the lea of Black Head," said Tom. "They won't feel any motion in there."

His touch on the tiller was like magic. Or perhaps it was pure chance. The rocking-horse motion moved to a gentle lilt, the white faces lost their pallor, teeth ceased their chattering, and the pasties baked by Mrs. Collins were torn from their napkins in the basket and fallen upon by all of us, even Vita, with the ferocity of carrion crows. We passed Mevagissey and came to anchor on the western side of Chapel Point. There was not a tremor in sea or sky, and the sun blazed down.

"Rather extraordinary," observed Vita, now stripped of her sweater, which she bunched under her head as a pillow, "that as soon as Tom took charge of the boat it scarcely moved at all and the wind dropped."

"Not really," I said. "We were coming closer to the land, that's all."

"I know one thing," she said, "and that is that he's going to steer the boat home."

Tom was helping the boys into the dinghy. They had bathing-shorts and towels under their arms. Tom had fishing-lines, baited with worm.

"If you want to stay aboard, sir, with the lady, I'll see the lads come to no harm," he said. "This beach is quite safe for bathing." I did not want to stay aboard with the lady. I wanted to climb up through the fields and find Bodrugan.

Vita sat up, and removing her dark glasses looked around her. It was half-tide and the beach looked tempting, but I saw, with delight, that it was temporarily in the possession of half a dozen cows, who were mooning about aimlessly, spattering the sand in the evitable fashion. "I'll stay aboard," said Vita firmly, "and if I want to swim I'll swim from the boat."

I yawned, my immediate reaction when feeling guilty. "I'll go ashore and stretch my legs," I said. "It's too early to swim anyway, after a pasty lunch."

"Do as you like," she said. "It's perfect here. Those white houses on the point look enchanting. We might be in Italy." I let her think it, and climbed into the dinghy with the others. "Land me over there, in the left-hand corner," I said to Tom.

"What are you going to do?" asked Teddy.

"Walk," I said firmly.

"Can't we stay in the dinghy and fish for pollack?"

"Of course you can. Much the best plan," I told him. I sprang ashore amongst the cows, free of encumbrance. The boys were equally glad to be rid of me. I stood for a moment, watching them pull away. Vita waved a languid hand from the anchored boat. Then I turned, and struck uphill.

The path ran parallel with a stream and curved, passing a cottage on the right-hand side, and then the sea was out of sight. The track continued up the hill, leading to a gate between old walls, and on the left-hand side what appeared to be the ruins of a mill. I ventured through the gate, and Bodrugan farm was all about me, a big pond to my left that must have fed the mill-stream, and to my right the gracious, slate-hung farmhouse of today, early eighteenth century, perhaps, curiously like Magnus's Kilmarth, and beside it and beyond great stone-walled barns of a much earlier date that surely must have stood upon the site of Otto's fourteenth-century home. Two children were playing under the windows of the farmhouse, but they took no notice of me and I ventured on, crossing the wide sweep where cows were grazing, and stepped inside the high-roofed barn the further side. This served as a granary today, and must have done for centuries, but six hundred years ago perhaps a dining-hall stood here, and other rooms, while the long, low barn across the way could have been the chapel. The whole demesne was vast, far larger than the space covered by those mounds and banks that once had formed the home of the Champernounes, below the Gratten; and I realised now why Joanna, born and bred a Bodrugan in this place, may have thought the house above the Treesmill creek a poor exchange when she married Henry Champernoune. I came out of the barn and followed the low stone walls surrounding the entire farm, then, striking off to the hills on the opposite slope, came once more in sight of the sea. Here, on top of the high field, was a mound that must once have formed a keep or outpost, commanding the bay, and I wondered how often Otto rode here from his house, and looked out from the keep past Black Head to the cliffs in the far distance that gradually descended to Tywardreath bay and to the winding estuary with its narrow arms, the first runmng to the Lampetho valley, the second to the Priory walls, the third to Treesmill and the Champernoune demesne. He would have seen all of this on a clear day, even perhaps the humped dwelling of Kylmerth, and the little straggling copse beyond. This would have been the moment to have the flask in my pocket, and have seen Otto leaning from the round tower of his keep, and beneath him, in the sheltered cove where the boys fished today, his ship at anchor, ready to make sail. Or travel even further back in time and watch him ride away to that first rebellion against Edward the Second in 1322, younger and hot-headed, to be fined a thousand marks when the rebellion failed. Champion of lost causes, seeker after forbidden fruit; how often, I wondered, did he steal across that bay, leaving his dim-faced wife Margaret, Henry Champernoune's sister, snugly secure inside Bodrugan house, or in their other property of Trelawn, wherever that might be, in which the Champernounes also seemed to have rights? I clumped back to the beach, hot and curiously tired. It was odd, but it seemed more of an effort to face the family now, without having swallowed the drug and moved in the other world, than it would had I actually taken a trip in time. I felt thwarted, drained of energy, and filled with a strange sense of apprehension. Imagination was not enough; I craved the living experience which had been denied me, and which I could have possessed had I taken a few drops from the flask safely locked away in the old laundry at Kilmarth. I might have witnessed scenes, on that old site above the cliffs or by the farmstead itself, that now I should never know; and the frustration was absolute. The cows had gone from the beach. The boys had returned to the anchored boat and were sitting in the cockpit having tea, their swimming trunks strung up on the mast to dry. Vita was standing in the bows taking snapshots. A contented party, everybody happy, myself the odd man out. I wore bathing trunks under my trousers, and stripping off my clothes I entered the water. It struck chill, after the walk, and seaweed floated on the surface like tresses from the drowned Ophelia's hair. I turned over on my back and stared at the sky, still filled with this strange feeling of despondency, almost of doom. It would need a tremendous effort to respond to the family greeting, join in the general chatter, smile and joke.

Tom had seen me, and was bringing the dinghy ashore to fetch my clothes. I swam out to the boat and managed somehow to clamber aboard, with the aid of a rope's end and the willing hands of Vita and the boys.

"Look, three pollack," shouted Micky. "Mom says she'll cook them for supper. And we've found a lot of shells."

Vita came forward with the remains of the tea from the thermos jug. "You look all in," she said. "Did you walk far?"

"No," I said, "only across the fields. There was a castle of sorts there once, but nothing's left of it."

"You should have stayed on the boat," she said. "The bathing was heaven. Here, rub yourself down with this towel, you're shivering. I hope you haven't taken a chill. Such a mistake to plunge into cold water when you've been perspiring."

Micky thrust a damp doughnut into my hand tasting of cotton wool, and I swallowed the lukewarm tea. Then Tom climbed aboard, bearing my clothes, and before long it was up anchor and away, with Tom at the tiller. I put on another jersey and went and sat up in the bows, where Vita presently joined me.

The little popple in mid-bay sent her back to the cockpit, to wrap herself in Tom's oilskin, and I stared ahead towards the distant prospect of Kilmarth, screened by its belt of trees. In old days, sailing nearer to the coast, Bodrugan would have had a closer view, as he steered his ship towards the estuary that covered Par sands then, and Roger, had he been watching from the fields, could have signalled to him that all was well. I wondered whose fever was the greater, Bodrugan's as he rounded the sloping headland to the channel, knowing she waited for him in that empty house behind the low stone walls, or Isolda's, when she sighted the masthead and saw the first flutter of the dark sail. Now, with the sun astern, we passed the Cannis buoy and made for Fowey, entering the harbour, to the great excitement of the boys, just as a large vessel, her decks white with china-clay and escorted by two tugs, left it outward bound.

"Can we come again tomorrow?" they clamoured, as I paid off Tom and thanked him for our sail.

"We'll see," I said, uttering the inevitable adult formula that must be so infuriating to the young. See what, they might have asked? If the mood suits and there is harmony in the grown-up world? The success or failure of their day depended upon the state of truce between their mother and myself.

My immediate problem, when we got back to Kilmarth, was to telephone Magnus before he telephoned me, which he was bound to do, now the weekend was over. I hung about the library furtively, waiting for a good moment, and then the boys came in and switched on the TV, so I had to go upstairs to the bedroom. Vita was downstairs in the kitchen seeing about supper: it was now or never. I dialled his number and he answered immediately.

"Look," I said quickly, "I can't talk long. The worst has happened. Vita and the boys arrived unexpectedly on Saturday morning. They caught me almost in flagrant delit. You understand? And your telegram was an equal calamity. Vita opened it. Since when the situation has been decidedly tricky, and that's putting it mildly."

"Oh, dear…" said Magnus, in the tone of an elderly maiden aunt confronted with a mild household problem.

"It's not Oh, dear at all, it's hell and damnation," I exploded, "and the end of the road, as far as any more trips are concerned. You realise that, don't you?"

"Keep calm, dear boy, keep calm. You say she arrived and actually caught you en route?"

"No, I was returning from one. Seven in the morning. I won't go into it now."

"Was it valuable?" he asked.

"I don't know what you call valuable," I said. "It concerned a near rebellion against the Crown. Otto Bodrugan was there, and Roger, of course. I'll write you fully about it tomorrow, and Sunday's trip as well."

"So you did risk it again, despite the family? How splendid."

"Only because they went to church, and I was able to slip off to the Gratten. And there is a time problem, Magnus; I can't account for it. The trip seemed to last half an hour to forty minutes at the most, but in actual fact I was out for about two and a half hours."

"How much did you take?"

"The same as Friday night — a few more drops than on the first two or three trips."

"Yes, I see. He was silent a minute, considering what I had told him."

"Well?" I asked. "What's the significance?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "I'll have to work on it. Don't worry, it won't be serious, at this stage. How are you feeling in yourself?"

"Well… healthy enough physically, we've been sailing all day. But it's a hell of a strain, Magnus."

"I'll see how the week goes and then try to get down. I shall have some results from the lab up here in a few days and we can discuss them. Meanwhile, go easy on the trips."

"Magnus—"

He had rung off which was as well. I thought I could hear Vita coming up the stairs. In a sense, I was relieved this time at the thought of seeing him, even if it meant difficulties with Vita. He would adopt his special brand of charm and smooth them away, and the responsibility would be his, not mine. Besides, I was worried about the drug. This sense of depression, of foreboding, might be a side-effect. I looked in the shaving-mirror in the bathroom. There was something odd about my right eye, it looked bloodshot, and there was a faint red streak across the white. A bloodvessel burst, perhaps, which was nothing, but I did not remember it having happened before. I hoped Vita would not notice it. Supper passed off all right, with the boys chatting happily about their day and enjoying the pollack they had caught (the most tasteless of all fish, to my mind, but I did not damp their ardour). Just as we were clearing away the telephone rang.

"I'll get it," said Vita quickly, "it could be for me." At least it would not be Magnus. The boys and I loaded the dish-washer and had set it going when Vita came back into the kitchen. She had on a face I knew. Determined, rather defiant.

"That was Bill and Diana," she said.

Oh, yes?

The boys disappeared to the library to watch TV. I poured out coffee for us both.

"They're flying to Dublin from Exeter," she said. "They're in Exeter now." Then, before I could make some adequate reply, she said hurriedly, "They're just crazy to see the house, so I suggested they put off their flight for forty-eight hours or so, and came down to us for lunch tomorrow and to stay the night. They jumped at the idea." I put down my cup of coffee untasted, and slumped in the kitchen chair.

"Oh, my God!" I said.