Дик Фрэнсис - Break In

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Ask Holly. She knows.’

‘Bloody, weren’t they.’

‘it’s finished now,’ I said.

We disconnected and I got through to Danielle and said how about lunch and tea and dinner.

‘Are you planning to eat all those?’ she said.

‘All or any.’

‘All, then.’

‘I’ll come straight round.’

She opened the Eaton Square front door as I braked to a halt and came across the pavement with a spring in her step, an evocation of summer in a flower-patterned jacket over cream trousers, the chintz band holding back the fluffy hair.

She climbed into the car beside me and kissed me as if from old habit.

‘Aunt Casilia sends her regards and hopes we’ll have a nice day.’

‘And back by midnight?’

‘I would think so, wouldn’t you?’

‘Does she notice?’

‘She sure does. I go past their rooms to get to mine — she and Uncle Roland sleep separately — and the floors creak. She called me in last night to ask if I’d enjoyed myself. She was sitting in bed, reading, looking a knock-out as usual. I told her what we’d done and showed her the chest of drawers... we had quite a long talk.’

I studied her face. She looked seriously back.

‘What did she say?’ I asked.

‘It matters to you, doesn’t it, what she thinks?’

‘Yes.’

‘I guess she’d be glad.’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘Not yet.’ She smiled swiftly, almost secretly. ‘What about this lunch?’

We went to a restaurant up a tower and ate looking out over half of London. ‘Consommé and strawberries... you’ll be good for my figure,’ she said.

‘Have some sugar and cream.’

‘Not if you don’t.’

‘You’re thin enough,’ I said.

‘Don’t you get tired of it?’

‘Of not eating much? I sure do.’

‘But you never let up?’

‘A pound overweight in the saddle,’ I said wryly, ‘can mean a length’s difference at the winning post.’

‘End of discussion.’

Over coffee I asked if there was anywhere she’d like to go, though I apologised that most of London seemed to shut on Sundays, especially in November.

‘I’d like to see where you live,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see Lambourn.’

‘Right,’ I said, and drove her there, seventy miles westwards down the M4 motorway, heading back towards Devon, keeping this time law-abidingly within the speed limit, curling off into the large village, small town, where the church stood at the main crossroads and a thousand thoroughbreds lived in boxes.

it’s quiet,’ she said.

‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Where’s your cottage?’

‘We’ll drive past there,’ I said. ‘But we’re not going in.’

She was puzzled, and, it seemed, disappointed, looking across at me lengthily. ‘Why not?’

I explained about the break in, and the police saying the place had been searched. ‘The intruders found nothing they wanted, and they stole nothing. But I’d bet they left something behind.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Creepy-crawlies.’

‘Bugs?’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘That’s it over there.’

We went past slowly. There was no sign of life. No sign of heavy men lying in the bushes with sharp knives, which they wouldn’t be by then, not after three days. Too boring, too cold. Listening somewhere, though, those two, or others.

The cottage was brick-built, rather plain, and would perhaps have looked better in June, with the roses.

‘It’s all right inside,’ I said.

‘Yuh.’ She sounded downcast. ‘OK. That’s that.’

I drove around and up a hill and took her to the new house instead.

‘Whose is this?’ she said. ‘This is great.’

‘This is mine.’ I got out of the car, fishing for keys. ‘It’s empty. Come and look.’

The bright day was fading but there was enough direct sunlight to shine horizontally through the windows and light the big empty rooms, and although the air inside was cold, the central heating, when I switched it on, went into smooth operation with barely a hiccup. There were a few light sockets with bulbs in, but no shades. No curtains. No carpets. Woodblock floor everywhere, swept but not polished. Signs of builders all over the place.

‘They’re just starting to paint,’ I said, opening the double doors from the hall to the sitting room. ‘I’ll move in alongside, if they don’t hurry up.’

There were trestles in the sitting room set up for reaching the ceiling, and an army of tubs of paint, and dustsheets all over the flooring to avoid spatters.

‘It’s huge,’ she said. ‘Incredible.’

‘It’s got a great kitchen. An office. Lots of things.’ I explained about the bankrupt builder. ‘He designed it for himself.’

We went around and through everywhere and ended in the big room which led directly off the sitting room, the room where I would sleep. It seemed that the decorators had started with that: it was clean, bare and finished, the bathroom painted and tiled, the wood-blocks faintly gleaming with the first layer of polish, the western sun splashing in patches on the white walls.

Danielle stood by the window looking out at the muddy expanse which by summer would be a terrace, with geraniums in pots. The right person... in the right place... at the right time.

‘Will you lie in my bedroom?’ I said.

She turned, silhouetted against the sun, her hair like a halo, her face in shadow, hard to read. It seemed that she was listening still to what I’d said, as if to be sure that she had heard right and not misunderstood.

‘On the bare floor?’ Her voice was steady, uncommitted, friendly and light.

‘We could, er, fetch some dustsheets, perhaps.’

She considered it.

‘OK,’ she said.

We brought a few dustsheets from the sitting room and arranged them in a rough rectangle, with pillows.

‘I’ve seen better marriage beds,’ she said.

We took all our clothes off, not hurrying, dropping them in heaps. No real surprises. She was as I had thought, flat and rounded, her skin glowing now in the sun. She stretched out her fingers, touching lightly the stitches, the fading bruises, the known places.

She said, ‘When you looked at me at the races yesterday, over those cups, were you thinking of this?’

‘Something like this. Was it so obvious?’

‘Blinding.’

‘I was afraid so.’

We didn’t talk a great deal after that. We stood together for a while, and lay down, and on the hard cotton surface learned the ultimate things about each other, pleasing and pleased, with advances and retreats, with murmurs and intensities and breathless primeval energy.

The sunlight faded slowly, the sky lit still with afterglow, gleams reflecting in her eyes and on her teeth, darknesses deepening in hollows and in her hair.

At the end of a long calm afterwards she said prosaically, ‘I suppose the water’s not hot?’

‘Bound to be,’ I said lazily. ‘It’s combined with the heating. Everything’s working, lights, plumbing, the lot.’

We got up and went into the bathroom, switching on taps but not lights. It was darker in there and we moved like shadows, more substance than shape.

I turned on the shower, running it warm. Danielle stepped into it with me, and we made love again there in the spray, with tenderness, with passion and in friendship, her arms round my neck, her stomach flat on mine, united as I’d never been before in my life.

I turned off the tap, in the end.

‘There aren’t any towels,’ I said.

‘Always the dustsheets.’

We took our bed apart and dried ourselves, and got dressed, and kissed again with temperance, feeling clean. In almost full darkness we dumped the dust sheets in the sitting room, switched off the heating, and went out of the house, locking it behind us.