Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

The grandfather clock in the hall struck eight; time for grooming and saddling up. Lucy’s saddle, a birthday gift, was of army pattern, which meant among other things that it had plenty of hooks on which to hang a haversack with her provisions, a nosebag with Boris’s stuff, her black fisherman’s sweater and a blanket of his. She was ready, and of course he knew it at once and made for the outdoors. A minute later she was walking him down towards the road, quite a striking figure in her twill jodhpurs and man’s shirt, hair drawn back under a dark-green scarf, with the upright posture Edward had noticed.

As the sunshine grew stronger, the two of them were making good time, mostly over grassland or greenwood floor, so good that Lucy began to think she would fulfil her hope of reaching the coast before turnabout time and showing Boris the sea, perhaps taking him for a gallop along the sands if the tide was right, for a paddle if not. She had been talking on and off to him since they started, and when she mentioned these possibilities he turned his ears back to listen, but on being asked how he felt about them he simply took no further interest.

From earlier outings with Virginia, Lucy was confident that somewhere along their line of march she would find a good place for a rest, and sure enough not long after one o’clock they came to a shady spot with a patch of turf next to the road and a culvert over a stream, only a little one but enough to water Boris and wash the dust off his feet. Then, having loosened his girth, she put on his nosebag and he munched contentedly, swishing his tail against flies. She ate sandwiches, drank half her tea and read a chapter of her paperback copy of Dr Zhivago . Before they moved on she got into the saddle and let him crop grass for a few minutes.

Lucy was expecting to come in sight of the sea quite soon when she realized she was heading more or less directly for the village near which Colonel Procope lived. A glance at the map she carried in her haversack showed her that by the shortest route she was about two hours’ easy riding-time from it. That route, however, involved a longish stretch of road and, although Boris never complained, she knew he preferred to avoid road travel where possible, so a few minutes later she turned aside on a more roundabout approach. Only then did it occur to her to wonder how long it was since it had first entered her head to seek out the colonel and what she hoped to achieve by doing so. She found no answer to either question, and soon put them aside in favour of taking in the look of sunlit greenery and wild flowers and the lulling pleasure of having a healthy, strong, good-natured horse under her. But she still moved along a curving path that led to Procope’s village.

When at length she reached it she found little to see: a few smartened-up cottages, some boring modern houses, a church decorated in the usual flint, but also a post office, and that was obviously her first port of call. With the sound of rock music in her ears, she tied Boris to a convenient rail and went inside among picture postcards and toffee bars as well as stamps and telegram forms.

Instead of a fat old woman with glasses and a pencil stuck in her hair, Lucy found a fresh-faced one little older than herself, in dark slacks and a tee-shirt bearing the name and device of a brand of American cigarette. No less unexpectedly, this person reduced the music to almost nothing without being asked, and smiled a welcome.

‘Colonel Procope?’ she said at once when the name was mentioned. ‘Straight down the hill over there, lane at the bottom on the left, a bit under a mile along on the left. Say twenty minutes’ walk. I suppose it’d be quicker on horseback. That is your horse out there, is it?’

‘Thank you. Yes.’

‘Work at a riding stable, do you?’

‘No. No, he’s my very own horse. I keep him at home and look after him there myself.’

‘That’s nice,’ said the young woman vaguely. She looked out of the window and then over her shoulder before glancing at Lucy and away again. ‘You, er, excuse me asking, but would you be a great friend of his worship the colonel?’

‘Certainly not. My parents see him occasionally but only as a neighbour.’

Lucy thought this description sounded pretty hollow, but it evidently reassured the other girl, who said with another smile, ‘I thought you weren’t, well, his type, kind of thing. Er, he’s not exactly popular round here at the moment.’

‘What’s he been up to?’

‘Not that he’s ever been very highly thought of in these parts, but just the other day, see, he went too far. One of the village lads, young Tommy, well, he’s only a boy, really, not too bright if you know what I mean, anyway, Tommy was playing round the colonel’s place, just like a kid, you know, he wouldn’t be doing any harm, and his nibs flies into a tremendous rage, shouts at him, says he’ll give him a thrashing if he doesn’t make himself scarce that minute. Then laughed and said he was only joking.’

Lucy thought for a minute. ‘Did Tommy tell you all this?’

‘His mother had to like drag it out of him.’

‘Rough luck on poor little Tommy. Did he say anything else?’

‘No. Oh, there was one bit, he said there was something funny about the shed in the colonel’s garden.’

‘M’m. What sort of something funny? I suppose he didn’t say.’

‘Not really. Something about a hole. His mother said he sounded frightened.’

The girl behind the counter herself spoke with sudden reluctance, as if she repented a little of having been so informative. Lucy took her cue, bought a couple of chocolate biscuits and departed.

Twenty minutes later the biscuits were inside Boris and he was standing in the shade and out of view while Lucy, also out of view, sat looking down on Colonel Procope’s domain. This consisted of a small stone-dressed cottage of no particular consequence, a couple of wooden outbuildings and a fragment of land with a spinney at one end and an open gateway on to the road or lane. This was a rough-and-ready affair that on one hand became no more than a track and on the other led to a bridge across a considerable stream. On the far side of the little valley, a more serious road led westward towards Ipswich, Cambridge and other important places.

Nobody was to be seen moving around or near the cottage, not even through the modest but serviceable pair of field glasses that Lucy habitually carried in her haversack and had hitherto shown her nothing more dramatic than the odd pair of nesting waterfowl. It was more than likely that there was nobody in the cottage either. The sense of adventure that had uplifted her since she had reached the village began to subside, leaving her with a half-memory of more childish would-be exploits, adventures of the mind founded on reading and day-dreaming. She was on the point of calling off her fruitless vigil, remounting Boris and making for home — it was too late now for any trip to the coast — when a large dark-blue car she had glimpsed across the valley came into her view again making for the cottage. In due time it slowed up, drove through the gateway, stopped, and set down a figure she recognized without her field glasses as the eccentric colonel. Lucy had calculated that one or other of the outbuildings must be a garage, but if so Procope made no immediate use of it; instead, he went and unlocked the door of a small shed. Seen through her glasses now, he looked carefully about him before going inside. Though Lucy had no fear of being seen as long as she kept still, she found this intensive survey disturbing in some way. It took a full half-minute to complete, at the end of which time he did enter the shed and no doubt locked the door after him. There was no sign of the younger man who had acted as chauffeur in the past, nor of anybody else.