Текст книги "The Angels Weep"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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"So what are you going to do with yourself this time?" "Well, I was trained as an armouRer when I did my national service, and there is an armourer's berth open in the police. The way I see it, I'm going to be called up again anyway, so I might as well beat them to it and enlist." "The police," Jonathan mused, "that does have the virtue of being one of the few things you haven't tried yet. Get me another drink." While Craig poured gin and tonic, Jonathan put on his fiercest expression to cover his embarrassment and growled, "Look here, boy, if you are really short, I'll bend the rule this once, and lend you a few dollars to tide you over. Strictly a loan though." "That's very decent of you, BaWu, but a rule is a rule." "I make "em, I break "em," Jonathan glared at him. "How much do you need?" "You know those old books you wanted?" Craig murmured, as he put the old man's glass back in front of him, and an expression of intense cunning came into Jonathan's eyes which he tried in vain to conceal.

"What books? "His innocence was loaded. "Those old journals." "Oh, those!" And despite himself Jonathan glanced at the bookshelves beside his desk upon which were displayed his collection of family journals.

They stretched back over a hundred years, from the arrival of his grandfather, Zouga Ballantyne, in Africa in 1860 up to the death of Jonathan's father, Sir Ralph Ballantyne, in 1929, but the sequence was broken by a few missing years, three volumes which had come down on Craig's side of the family, through old Harry Mellow, who had been Sir Ralph's partner and dearest friend.

For some perverse reason that Craig could not even understand himself, he had up until now resisted all the old man's blandishments and attempts to get his hands on them. It was probably because they were the one small lever he had on Jonathan that he had held out since they had come into his possession on his twenty-first birthday, the only item of any value in the inheritance from his long-dead father.

"Yes, those," Craig nodded. "I thought I might let you have them." "You must be hard pressed." The old man tried not to let his glee shine through.

"Even more than usual," Craig admitted. "You waste,-" "Okay, Bawu.

We've been down that road before," Craig stopped him hurriedly. "Do you want them?" "How much? "Jonathan demanded suspiciously. "Last time you offered me a thousand each." "I must have been soft." "Since then there has been a hundred per cent inflation-2 Jonathan loved to haggle.

It enhanced his image of himself as hard and ruthless. Craig reckoned he was worth ten million. He owned King's Lynn and four other ranches.

He owned the Harkness Mine which after eighty years in production was still producing 50,000 ounces of gold a year, and he had assets outside this beleaguered country, prudently stashed away over the years in Johannesburg, London and New York. Ten million was probably conservative, Craig realized, and set himself to bargain as hard as the old man.

At last they reached a figure with Jonathan grumbling, "They're worth half of that." "There are two other conditions, Bawu. "And immediately Jonathan was suspicious again.

"Number one, you leave them to me in your will, the whole set, Zouga Ballantyne's and Sir Ralph's journals, all of them." "Roland and Douglas-" "They are going to get King's Lynn and the Harkness and all the rest that's what you told me." "Damn right," he growled. "They won't blow it all out the window like you would." "They can have it," Craig grinned easily. "They are Ballantynes as you say, but I want the journals." "What is your second condition? "Jonathan demanded. "I want access to them now." "What do you mean?" "I want to be able to read and study any of them whenever I want to." "What the hell, Craig, you have never given a damn about them before. I doubt you have even read the three you own." "I've glanced through them," Craig admitted "shamefacedly.

"And now?" "I was up at Kharni Mission this morning, in the old cemetery. There is a grave there, Victoria Mellow." Jonathan nodded.

"Aunty Vicky, Harry's wife, go on." "I had this strange feeling as I was standing there. Almost as though she was calling to me." Craig plucked at the thick forelock over his eyes and could not look at his grandfather. "And suddenly I wanted to find out more about her, and the others." They were both silent for a while, and then Jonathan nodded.

"All right, my boy, I accept your conditions. Both sets will be yours one day, and until then you can read them whenever you wish to."

Jonathan had seldom been so pleased with a bargain. He had completed his sets after thirty years, and if the boy was serious about reading them, he had found a good home for them. The Lord knew, neither Douglas nor Roland was interested, and in the meantime perhaps the journals might draw Craig back to King's Lynn more often. He wrote out the cheque and signed it with a flourish, while Craig went out to the Land-Rover and dug the three leather-bound manuscripts from the bottom of his kit bag

"I suppose you will spend it all on that boat," Jonathan accused as he came in from the veranda.

"Some of it," Craig admitted. He placed the books in front of the old man.

"You are a dreamer." Jonathan slid the cheque across the desk.

"Sometimes I prefer dreams to reality." Craig scrutinized the figures briefly, then buttoned the pink cheque into his top pocket.

"That's your trouble," said Jonathan.

"Bawu, if you start lecturing me, I'm going to head straight back to town." Jonathan held up both hands in capitulation. "All right," he chuckled. "Your old room is the way you left it, if you want to use it." "I have an appointment with the police recruiting officer on Monday, but I'll stay the weekend, if that's okay?" "I'll ring Trevor this evening and fix the interview." Trevor Pennington was the assistant commissioner of police. Jonathan believed in starting at the top.

"I wish you wouldn't, jon jon "Don't be daft, "Jonathan snapped.

"You must LeaRN to use every advantage, my boy, that's the way life works." Jonathan– picked up the first of the three volumes of manuscript and gloatingly stroked it with his gnarled brown fingers.

"Now, you can leave me alone for a while, "he ordered, as he unfolded his wire-framed reading-glasses and perched them on his nose.

"They are playing tennis across at Queen's Lynn, I will see you back here for sun downers Craig glanced back from the doorway, but Jonathan Ballantyne was hunched over the book, transported by the entries in yellow faded ink back to his childhood.

AltHough it shared a common seven-mile boundary with King's Lynn, Queen's Lynn was a separate ranch. Jonathan Ballantyne had added it to his holdings during the great depression of the 1930s, paying five cents on the dollar of its real worth. Now it formed the eastern spread of the Rholands Ranching Company.

It was the home of Jonathan's only surviving son, Douglas Ballantyne, and his wife Valerie. Douglas was the managing director of both Rholands and the Harkness Mine. He was also Minister of Agriculture in Ian Smith's UDI government, and with any luck he might be away on mysterious government or company business.

Douglas Ballantyne had once given Craig his honest appraisal. "At heart you are a bloody hippie, Craig, you should get your hair cut and start bracing up, you can't go on dawdling through life and expecting Bawu and the rest of the family to carry you for ever." Craig pulled a sour face at the memory as he drove down past the stockyards of Queen's Lynn, and smelled the ammonia cal tang of cow-dung.

The huge Afrikander beasts were a uniform deep chocolate red, the bulls hump-backed and with swinging dewlaps that almost brushed the earth. This breed had made Rhodesian beef almost as renowned as the marbled beef of Kobe. As Minister of Agriculture it was Douglas Ballantyne's. duty to see that, despite sanctions, the world was not deprived of this delicacy. The route that it took to the tables of the great restaurants of the world was via Johannesburg and Cape Town, where it perforce changed its name, but the connoisseurs recognized it and asked for it by its noyn de guerre, their taste-buds probably piqued by the knowledge that they were eating forbidden fruits.

Rhodesian tobacco and nickel and copper and gold all went out the same way, while petrol and diesel oil made the return trip. The popular bumper sticker said simply, "Thank you, South Africa." Beyond the stock-pens and veterinary block, once again protected by the diamond mesh and barbed-wire security fence, lay the green lawns and banks of flowering shrubs and the blazing Pride of India trees of the gardens of Queen's Lynn. The windows had been covered with grenade screens and the servants would drop steel bullet-proof shutters into their slots before sunset, but here the de fences had not been built with the same gusto as Bawu had shown at King's Lynn. They fitted unobtrusively into the gracious surroundings.

The lovely old house was very much as Craig remembered it from before the war, rosy red brick and wide cool verandas. The jacaranda trees that lined the long curved driveway were in full flower, like a mist bank of pale ethereal blue, and there were at least two dozen cars parked beneath them, Mercedes and jaguars, Cadillacs and BMWs, their paintwork hazed with the red dust of Matabeleland. Craig concealed his venerable Land-Rover behind the tumble of red and purple bougainvillaea creeper, so as not to lower the tone of a Queen's Lynn Saturday. From habit he slung an FN rifle over his shoulder and wandered around the side of the house. from ahead there came the sound of children's voices, gay as songbirds, and the genial scolding of their black nannies, punctuated by the sharp "Pock! Pock!" of a long rally from the tennis courts.

Craig paused at the head of the terraced lawns. Children spilled and tumbled and chased each other in circles like puppies over the green grass. Nearer the yellow clay courts, their parents sprawled on spread rugs or sat at the shaded white tea-tables, under the brightly coloured umbrellas. They were bronzed young men and women in tennis whites, sipping tea or drinking beer from tall frosted glasses, calling ribald comment and advice to the players upon the courts. The only incongruous note was the row of machine pistols and automatic rifles beside the silver tea set and cream scones.

Someone recognized Craig and shouted, "Hi Craig, long time no see," and others waved, but there was just that faint edge of condescension in their manner reserved for the poor relative. These were the families with great estates, a closed club of the wealthy in which, for all their geniality, Craig would never have full membership.

Valerie Ballantyne came to meet him, slim-hipped and girlishly graceful in her short white tennis skirt. "Craig, you are as thin as a bean pole." He always brought out the maternal instincts in any female between eight and eighty. "Hello, Aunty Val." She offered him a smooth cheek that smelled of violets. Despite her delicate air, Valerie was president of the Women's Institute,served on the committees of a dozen schools, charities and hospitals, and was a gracious, accomplished hostess.

"Uncle Douglas is in Salisbury. Smithy sent for him yesterday.

He will be sorry to have missed you." She took his arm. "How is the Game Department?" "It will probably survive without me." "Oh, no, Craig, not again!" "Fraid so, Aunty Val." He didn't really feel up to a discussion of his career at that moment. "Do you mind if I get myself a beer?" There was a group of men around the long trestle-table that did service as a bar. The group opened to let him in, but the conversation went straight back to a discussion of the latest raid that the Rhodesian security forces had made into Mozambique.

"I tell you, when we hit the camp, there was food still cooking on the fires, but they had run for it. We caught a few stragglers, but the others had been warned." "Bill is right, I had it from a colonel in intelligence, no names-no pack drill, but there is a bad security leak.

A traitor near the top, the terrs are getting up to twelve hours" warning." "We haven't had a really good kill since last August when we took six hundred." The eternal war talk bored Craig. He sipped his beer and watched the play on the nearest court.

It was mixed doubles, and at that moment they changed ends.

Roland Ballantyne came around the net with his arm around his partner's waist. He was laughing, and his teeth were startlingly white and even in the deep tan of his face. His eyes were that peculiar Ballantyne green, like creme de menthe in a crystal glass, and although he wore his hair short, it was thick and wavy, bleached to honey-gold by the sun.

He moved like a leopard, with a lazy gliding gait, and the superb physical condition that was a prerequisite of any member of the Scouts glossed the muscles of his forearms and bare legs. He was only a year older than Craig, but his assurance always made Craig feel gawky and callow in comparison. Craig had once heard a girl he admired, a young lady usually Was& and affectedly unimpressed, describe Roland Ballantyne as the most magnificent stud on show.

Now Roland saw him, and waved his racquet. "Don't be vague, call for Craig!" he greeted him across the court, and then said something inaudible to the girl beside him. She chuckled and looked at Craig.

Craig felt the shock begin in the pit of his stomach and ripple outwards like a stone dropped into a still pool. He stared at her, petrified, unable to drag his eyes off her face. She stopped laughing, and for a moment longer returned his gaze, then she broke out of the circle of Roland's arm and went to the baseline, bouncing the ball lightly off her racquet and Craig was certain that her cheeks had flushed a shade pinker than the game had previously rouged them.

Still he could not take his eyes off her. She was the most perfect thing he had ever seen. She was tall, she reached almost to Roland's shoulder and he was six one. Her hair was cropped into a glossy cap of curls, that changed colour as the sunlight played upon it, from the burnished iridescence of obsidian to the rich dark glow of a noble burgundy wine held to the candlelight.

Her face was squarish, with a firm, perhaps stubborn, line to the jaw, but her mouth was wide and tender and humorous. Her eyes were wide-spaced and slanted to such a degree that they seemed just a touch squint. It gave her a vulnerable appealing air, but when she glanced at Roland, they took on a wicked taunting glint.

"Let's blast them, pardner," she called, and the lift of her voice raised little goose bumps on Craig's forearms.

The girl turned her shoulders and hips away, tossed the yellow ball high as she went up on tiptoe and then swung back into the overhead stroke. The racquet sprang sharply and the ball blurred low across the net, and spurted white chalk from the centre line.

She crossed the court with quick dainty steps, and caught the return on the volley. She tucked it away in the corner, and then glanced at Craig.

"Shod" he called, his voice ringing hollowly in his own ears, and a little satisfied smile puckered the corner of her mouth.

She turned away and stooped to recover a loose ball. Her back was turned towards Craig, her feet slightly apart and she did not bend her knees. Her legs were long and shapely, and as her short pleated skirt popped up, he had a fleeting glimpse of thin lacy panties and the buttocks in them so neat and hard and symmetrical that he was reminded of a pair of ostrich eggs gleaming in the Kalahari sunlight.

Craig dropped his eyes guiltily as if he had played the peeping Tom. He felt light-headed and strangely breathless. He forced himself not to look back at the court, but his heart was pounding as though he had just run a crosscountry, and the conversation around him seemed to be in a foreign language, relayed through a faulty transmitter. It did not make sense.

It seemed hours later that a hard muscular arm was thrown around his shoulders, and Roland's voice in his ear.

"You're looking well, old son." At last Craig allowed himself to look around.

"The terrs haven't caught you yet, Roly?" "No way, Sonny, "Roland hugged him. "Let me introduce you to a girl who loves me." Only Roland could make a remark like that sound witty and sophisticated. "This is Bugsy. Bugsy, this is my favourite cousin, Craig, the well-known sex maniac." "Bugsy?" Craig looked into those strangely tilted eyes. "It doesn't suit you." He realized that they were not black, but a dark indigo blue.

Janine," she said. "Janine Carpenter." She held out her hand. It was slim and warm and moist from the game. He did not want to release it.

"I warned you," Roland laughed. "Stop molesting the girl and come and have a set with me, Sonny." "I haven't got togs." "All you need is shoes. We are the same size, I'll send a servant for a spare pair." raig hadn't played for over a year. The lay-off seemed to have worked wonders. He had never played so well. The ball came off the sweet spot of his racquet so fast and clean that it felt as though he had clean missed it, and the top-spin pulled it down onto the baseline as though it were a magnet.

Effortlessly, he passed Roland on either side, and then dropped the ball so short that it left him stranded in mid court He hit first-time serves that nicked the line, and returned shots that usually he would not have bothered to chase, then he rushed the net and slaughtered Roland's best forehand.

He was loving it, so involved with the marvelous unaccustomed sense of power and of his own invincibility, that he had not even noticed that the stream of Roland Ballantyne's easy banter had long ago dried up until he won another game and Roland said, "Five games to love." Something in his tone reached Craig at last, and for the first time since they had begun playing, he really looked at Roland's face.

It was a swollen ugly red. His jaw clenched so that there were lumps of muscle below his ears. His eyes were murderous green, and he was dangerous as a wounded leopard.

Craig looked away from him as they changed sides and he saw that their game had fascinated everybody. Even the older women had left the tea-tables and come down to the fence. He saw Aunty Val, with a nervous little smile on her lips. From hard experience, she recognized her son's mood.

Craig saw the sniggering smiles on the faces of the men. Roland had won his tennis half-blue at Oxford, and he had been Matabeleland singles champion three years running. They were enjoying this as much as Craig had been up until then.

Suddenly Craig felt appalled at his own success. He had never beaten Roland at anything, not a single contest of any sort, not even monopoly nor darts, not once in twenty nine years. The elasticity and strength went out of his legs, and he stood on the baseline, just a long-legged gangling boy again, dressed in faded khaki shorts and worn tennis shoes without socks. He gulped miserably, pushed the hair out of his eyes, and crouched to receive service.

Across the net Roland Ballantyne was a tall athletic figure. He glared at Craig. Craig knew he was not seeing him, he was seeing an adversary, something to be destroyed.

"We Ballantynes are winners," Bawu had said. "We have got the instinct for the jugular." Roland seemed, impossibly, to grow even taller, and then he served. Craig began to move left, saw it was the wrong side and tried to change. His long legs tangled and he sprawled on the yellow clay. He stood up, retrieved his racquet, and went across to the other court. There was a bloody smear on his knee.

Roland's next service crashed in, and he did not get a touch of his racquet to it.

When his turn came, he hit one into the net, and the next one off the wood. Roland broke his service three times in a row, and it went on like that.

"Match point," Roland said. He was smiling again, gay and handsome and genial as he bounced the ball at his feet, and lined up for his final service. Craig felt that old heavy feeling in his limbs, the despair of the born loser.

He glanced off court. Janine Carpenter was looking directly at him, and in the instant before she smiled encouragingly, Craig saw the pity in those dark indigo eyes, and abruptly he was angry.

He sockM Roland's service, double-handed, into the corner, and had it come back as hard. He crossed with his forehand, and Roland was grinning as he drove it back. Again Craig caught it perfectly, and even Roland was forced to lob. It came down from on high, floating helplessly, and Craig was under it, poised and coldly angry, and he hit it with all his weight and strength and despair. It was his best shot.

After that he had nothing to follow. Roland trapped it on the bounce, before it could rise, and he punched it tantalizingly past Craig's right hip while he was twisted hopelessly off balance by the power of his own stroke.

Roland laughed, and vaulted easily over the net.

"Not bad, Sonny." He put his arm patronizingly around Craig's shoulders. "I'll know not to give you a start in future he said and led Craig off the court.

Those who had been gloatingly anticipating Roland's humiliation a few minutes before now crowded slavishly around him.

"Well played, Roly." "Great stuff." And Craig slipped away from them. He picked a clean white towel off the pile and wiped his neck and face. Trying not to look as miserable as he felt, he went to the deserted bar, and fished a beer out of the bath of crushed ice. He swallowed a mouthful, and it was so tart that it made his eyes swim.

Through the tears he realized suddenly that Janine Carpenter was standing beside him.

"You could have done it," she said softly. "But you just gave up." "Story of my life." He tried to sound gay and witty, like Roland, but it came out flat, and self-pityingly.

She seemed about to speak again, then shook her head and walked away.

Graig used Roland's shower and when he came out with the towel around his waist, Roland was in front the full-length mirror adjusting the angle of his beret. his beret was dark maroon with a brass cap-badge above the left ear. The badge was a brutish human head, with the forehead of a gorilla and the same broad flattened nose. The eyes were crossed grotesquely and the tongue, protruded from between negroid lips, like a Maori carving of a war idol.

"When old Great-grandpa Ralph recruited the Scouts during the rebellion," Roland had once explained to Craig, "one of his better-known exploits was to catch the leader of the rebels, and to hang him from the top of an acacia tree. We have taken that as our regimental emblem. – Bazo's hanged head. How do you like it?"

"Charming," Craig had given his opinion. "You always did have such exquisite taste, Roly." Roland had conceived the Scouts three years previously when the sporadic warfare of the earlier days had begun to intensify into the merciless internecine conflict of the present time.

His original idea had been to gather a force of young white Rhodesians who could speak fluent Sindebele and reinforce them with young Matabele who had been with their white employers since childhood, men whose loyalty was unquestionable. He would train black and white elements into an elite strike-force that could move easily through the tribal trust areas amongst the peasant farmers, speaking their language and understanding their ways, able to impersonate innocent tribesmen or.

ZIPRA terrorists at will, able to meet the enemy at the border or drop onto him from the sky and take him on at the most favourable terms.

He had gone to General Peter Walls at Combined Services Headquarters. Of course, Bawu had made the usual phone calls to clear the way, and Uncle Douglas had put a word in Smithy's ear during a cabinet meeting. They had given Roland -the go-ahead, and so Ballantyne's Scouts had been reborn, seventy years after the original troop was disbanded.

In the three years since then, Ballantyne's Scouts had cut their way into legend. Six hundred men who had been officially credited with two thousand kills, who had been five hundred miles over the border into Zambia to hit a ZIPRA training base, men who had sat at the village fires in the tribal trust lands listening to the chatter of the women who had just returned from carrying baskets of grain to the ZIPRA cadres in the hills, men who laid their ambushes and maintained them for five straight days, burying their own excrement beside them, waiting patiently and as unmoving as a leopard beside the water-hole, waiting for yet another good kill.

Roland turned from the mirror as Craig came into the bedroom. The pips of a full colonel sparkled on his shoulders, and over his heart the cluster of the silver cross was pinned below his dog-tab on the crisply ironed khaki bush-shirt.

"Help yourself to what you need, Sonny he invited, and Craig went to the built-in cupboard and selected a pair of flannels and a white cricket sweater with the colours of Oriel College around the neck. It seemed like coming home to be wearing Roland's cast-offs again, he had always been a year behind him. "Mom tells me you've been fired again."

"That's right." Craig's voice was muffled by the sweater over his head.

"There's a billet for you with the Scouts." "Roly, I don't fancy the idea of putting piano wire around somebody's neck and plucking his head off." "We don't do that every day," Roland grinned. "Personally, I much prefer a knife, you can also use it to slice biltong when you aren't slitting throats. But seriously, Sonny, we could use you.

You talk the lingo like one of them, and you are a real buff at blowing things up. We are short of blast bunnies." "When I left King's Lynn I swore an oath that I would never work for anyone in the family again."

"The Scouts aren't family." "You are the Scouts, Roly." "I could have you seconded, you know that?" "That wouldn't work." "No," Roland agreed. "You always were a stubborn blighter. Well, if you change your mind, let me know." He knocked a cigarette half out of its soft pack and then pulled it the rest of the way with his lips. "What do you think of Bugsy?" The cigarette waggled as he asked the question, and he flicked his gold Ronson to it.

"She's all right," Craig said cautiously.

"Only all right?" Roland protested. "Try magnificent, try sensational, wonderful, super-great wax lyrical, for you're talking about the woman I love." "Number one thousand and ten on the list of the women you have loved, Craig corrected.

"Steady, old son, this one I am going to marry." Craig felt a coldness come over his soul, and he turned away to comb his damp hair in the mirror.

"Did you hear what I said? I'm going to marry-her." "Does she know?" "I'm letting her ripen a little before I tell her." "Ask her, don't you mean ask her?" "Old Roly tells "em, he doesn't ask "em. You are supposed to say, "Congratulations, I hope you will be very happy."" "Congratulations, I hope you will be very happy." "That's my boy. Come on, I'll buy you a drink." They went down the long central corridor that bisected the house but before they reached the veranda, a telephone rang in the lobby and they heard Aunty Val's voice. "I'll fetch him. Hold the line please," and then louder, "Roland, darling, it's Cheetah for you." Cheetah was the call-sign of Scout base. "I'm coming, Mom." Roland strode into the lobby and Craig heard him say, "Ballantyne," and then after a short silence, "are you sure it's him?

By Christ, this is the chance we have been waiting for. How soon can you get a chopper here? On its way? Good! Throw a net around the place, but don't go in until I get there. I want this baby myself."

When he came back into the corridor, he was transformed. It was the same look as he had given Craig across the net, cold and dangerous and without mercy.

"Can you get Bugsy back to town for me, Sonny? We are going into a contact." "I'll look after her." Roland strode out onto the veranda.

The last of the tennis guests were dispersing towards their vehicles, gathering up nannies and children as they went, shouting farewells and last-minute invitations for the coming week. There was a time when a gathering like this would not have broken up until after midnight, but now nobody drove the country roads after 4 p.m the new witching hour.

Janine Carpenter was shaking hands and laughing with a couple from the neighbouring ranch.

"I'd love to come over," she said, and then she looked up and saw Roland's expression. She hurried to him.

"What is it?" "We are going in. Sonny will look after you. I'll call you." He was searching the sky, already remote and detached, and then there was the whack, whack, whacking of helicopter rotors in the air and the machine came bustling in low over the kopje. She was painted in dull battle-brown, and there were two Scouts standing in the open belly port, one white and one black, both in bush camouflage and full webbing.

Roland ran down the lawns to meet her as she sank, and before she touched he jumped to link arms with his Matabele sergeant, and swung up into the cabin of the helicopter. As the machine rose and beat away, nose low over the kopje, Craig caught a last glimpse of Roland. He had already replaced the beret with a soft bush hat, and his sergeant was helping him into his camouflage battle-smock.

"Roly said I was to see you home. I take it you live in Bulawayo?" Craig asked, as the helicopter disappeared and the sound of its rotors dwindled. It seemed to take an effort for her to bring her attention back to him.

"Yes, Bulawayo. Thanks." "We won't make it this evening, not before ambush hour. I was going to stay over at my grandpa's place."

"Bawu?" "You know him?" "No, but I'd love to. Roly has kept me in fits with stories about him. Do you think there'd be a bed for me also?"

"There are twenty-two beds at King's Lynn." She perched on the seat of the old Land-Rover beside him, and the wind made her hair shimmer and flutter.