Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

If she was wrong about what this house contained, her trip would have been a colossal waste, and nothing would be clearer. But if she was right? She remained in place, the back of her bare knees sticky on the vinyl seat.

She knocked at the front door. Waited.

Knocked again.

A flame-haired young woman in jeans and riding boots answered, blue dress shirt undone two buttons too far down her freckled chest, presumably the result of breastfeeding, given the shiny-lipped infant at her hip. “Hullo!” the woman said cheerfully, scratching her red mane with the aerial of a cordless phone.

“Sorry to bother you,” Tooly said. “I was looking for Xavier Karamage. Is this right?”

“Yes, of course,” she said cheerily, in the cut-glass accent of the English upper classes, then told the telephone, “Mummy? Visitor. Yes, yes. Love to all.” She hung up and addressed Tooly—“Please, do come in”—then led the way down a long entrance hall, pine floorboards mottled from dried mud, orphaned shoes among children’s toys, a radiator piled with mail, a pewter vase containing an unhinged shotgun, field-hockey stick, fencing épée, hedge clippers, a deflated football. “My appalling husband is out putting an end to innocent lives,” she said, toe-pecking a baby rattle, which skittered down the hall. She turned through a doorway, jiggling the baby on her hip, voice trailing off: “Can’t even say when the horrible man will be back.”

Tooly followed, passing a door to a somber library, then a burgundy dining room, down five steps into a rustic kitchen with wood-beam ceilings, a vast open hearth, and a cottage window overlooking parkland.

“You know, I don’t even know who you are,” the woman exclaimed, sitting on a long bench in the kitchen, placing the baby on the table before her. Popping a grape into her mouth, she offered the bowl to Tooly. “So busy with the christening, I’m not even thinking straight. Please, take one. Take a bunch. Take them all, if you like.”

They exchanged names, Tooly describing herself as an old friend of Xavier’s, saying she’d been passing through the area.

“Well, I’m relieved we didn’t know you were coming,” Harriet said. “Was going to have to get quite cross with the brute. He has a habit of keeping guests waiting. And so, Tooly, ought I to know who you are? Sorry, that sounded rude. Of course I should.” She scratched her hair, said, “Far too little sleep.”

“You expect him back soon?”

“Yes, yes. As soon as he’s finished his murders.” She gathered that this required explanation. “Ferrets,” she added. “I’m not fussed myself — leave them alone, don’t you think? But my ghastly husband unearthed a nest of them in an abandoned warren and has been on the verge of pumping car exhaust down there for days. Far as I’m concerned, ferrets are sweet. It’s like having foxes dashing about the garden. He’s of another mind. Probably right — they are considered pests. Still.”

The infant gaped at Tooly, who looked back, eyebrows raised. Harriet considered the two considering each other. “Babies stare like that. I am sorry.”

“I don’t mind. Don’t often get the chance to just stare at another person. Long as he doesn’t mind if—”

“She.”

“Long as she doesn’t mind me staring back.”

But the baby lost interest in grown-up noises, and her abrupt inattention stifled them.

Harriet said, “An angel passes.”

“What?”

“It’s that thing French people say when a conversation goes quiet. Speaking of angels, c’est le diable qui s’approche . Hello, darling.” She stood to greet her husband.

His four dogs scampered through the scullery, each different in size and color, from an ankle-nipping Scottie to a hip-high Old English sheepdog, with a Jack Russell and a bull terrier in between, each sniffing, leaping, barking, racing through the house. “Not on the furniture, boys!” she cried. “Nor you,” she told her husband as he kicked off his rubber boots by the washing machine.

He leaned over and kissed his wife. A gentleman farmer, he appeared, in waxed Barbour coat and tweed cap, which he tossed onto the table. Harriet placed the hat on the baby’s head, swallowing the infant up to her wobbly neck, prompting a terrified Waaaaaa! “Oh, you silly!” Harriet responded, removing the cap. Seeing its mother again, the child burbled, and Harriet swooped in to smooch her cheek. “Only one angel here! Isn’t there, darling!” The baby chortled.

Harriet insisted — and her husband seconded it, brushing aside Tooly’s objections — that she stay overnight in the guesthouse, just the other side of the stable yards. He fetched her shoulder bag from the Micra, led her past a dozen stalls, three horses harrumphing in there, toward her lodgings around back.

“I knew,” she said. “I knew this was going to be you.”

They walked for a minute, neither speaking, she closing her eyes for a few seconds, electrified and tranquillized at his proximity. “This place is amazing,” she said. “How much land do you have here?”

“If I told you in acres,” Venn asked, “would that mean something to you?”

“Probably not.”

“In that case, about a hundred and forty acres.”

“Is that half the size of Texas?”

“Not quite. But respectable for South Tipperary.” He opened the door to the guesthouse, slid her bag in.

“You don’t seem surprised that I just turned up.”

“I’m never surprised, duck, never surprised.”

“You don’t mind that I came, do you?”

“Tooly, Tooly, Tooly,” he said, putting his arm around her. “A bit late to ask that.”

They reentered the main house via the scullery and found Harriet tapping at her iPad, the baby mesmerized by the screen.

“I’m going to show our young friend the property,” he informed his wife, not yet having informed Tooly.

“Wonderful,” Harriet said, raising the baby to her husband. “Kiss.”

To Tooly’s surprise, he dutifully did so, stooping to the baby’s pudgy cheek.

Overnight rain had softened the turf beyond the stable yards, and she and Venn squelched toward the trees, the four dogs hurrying along. All this sploshing rendered their outing distinctly ridiculous — she started laughing, looked over, found him grinning back. Onward they went, mud thickening on her shoes. “So,” she observed, “you are the proud owner of a bog. Congratulations. And where the hell are you taking me?”

They reached an open-topped wartime jeep, which he used for zipping around the grounds. To the yapping mutts, he said, “Those of you that are coming, get in now.” All four leaped in, followed by Tooly.

Venn gunned the jeep down the dirt road, kicking up mud, the dogs thrusting their muzzles into the wind. With his elbow, he guided the wheel, noting sights as they went: where Harriet went riding, where they held hunts, the apiary down the hill. He wore no seatbelt, so neither did Tooly, gripping the door handle, wind chapping her face. Venn pulled up at a score of cedar-box hives misted with bee clouds. He cut the engine, its growl replaced by the buzz of the insects. He hopped out and inspected a honeycomb frame swarming with bees.

“Shouldn’t you wear protective garb?” Tooly called over, she and the dogs remaining a safe distance behind. “Don’t they bite?”

He returned, held up his hand, lumpy from stings, and revved the engine.

“You idiot,” she said.

Off they went, the vehicle rattling on rutted cattle guards, his arm shuddering as he made a sweeping motion over the windscreen to indicate the land before them. “It’s all her people’s,” Venn said. “They’re Anglo-Irish. The family goes way back.” During the Irish War of Independence, he explained, her ancestors handed over the manor against their will, when nationalists held a match to the place. Long after, the Beenblossoms had made annual pilgrimages to visit the family graveyard — Harriet used to come with her grandparents. Then, two years ago, Venn earned their undying gratitude when he restored the estate to Beenblossom ownership, persuading the existing owners, who’d been ruined in the property crash, to accept a risibly low bid.