Decider. Part 22

He laughed.

'Also I told them that you would pack up the big top and go home if there were any more messing about, and they can't afford that.'

'Right little raver, aren't you?' he said.

'I'm not keen on their sort of football.'

He nodded. 'The Colonel told me about that. Why the heck do you bother to help them?'

'Cussedness.'

Christopher said unhappily, 'We left you, Dad.'

'We went to get help,' Edward a.s.sured me, believing it.

Toby, whispering as much to himself as to me, said, 'We were frightened. We just... ran away.'

'You came into the office to fetch me,' I pointed out, 'and that was brave.'

'But afterwards...' Toby said.

'In the real world,' I said mildly, 'no one's a total hero day in and day out. No one expects it. You can't do it.'

'But Dad...'

'I was glad you went to find the Colonel, so forget it.'

Christopher and Edward sensibly believed me, but Toby looked doubtful. There were too many things, that Easter school holidays, that he would never forget.

Roger and Oliver Wells came out of the big top chatting amicably. The fireball of Oliver's temper had been extinguished that morning by a conducted tour of the emerging arrangements inside the tents. Who cared about Harold Quest, he finally said. Henry's work was miraculous: all would be well. He and Roger had planned in detail how best to distribute racecards to all, and entry badges to the Club customers. At Oliver's insistence, a separate viewing stand for the Stewards was being bolted together directly behind the winning post on the inside of the course. It was imperative, he said, that since that high-up box was no more, the Stewards should have an unimpeded all-round view of every race. Roger had found a sign-painter who'd agreed to forfeit his afternoon's television viewing in favour of 'Stewards Only', 'Club Enclosure', 'Private Dining Room', 'Women Jockeys' Changing Room' and 'Members' Bar'.

Roger and Oliver crossed to Roger's jeep, started the engine and set off on an unspecified errand. They'd gone barely twenty yards in the direction of the private road, however, when they smartly reversed, did a U-turn and pulled up beside me and the boys.

Roger stuck his head out and also a hand, which grasped my mobile phone.

'This rang,' he said. 'I answered it. Someone called Carteret wants to speak to you. Are you at home?'

'Carteret! Fantastic!'

Roger handed me the instrument, and went on his way.

'Carteret?' I enquired of the phone, 'Is it you? Are you in Russia?'

'No, dammit,' a long-familiar voice spoke in my ear. 'I'm here in London. My wife says you told her it was urgent. After years of nothing, not even Christmas cards, everything's urgent! So what gives?'

'Er... what gives is that I need a bit of help from your long-term memory.'

'What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?' He sounded pressed and not over pleased.

'Remember Bedford Square?'

'Who could forget?'

'I've come across an odd situation, and I wondered... do you by any chance remember a student called Wilson Yarrow?'

'Who?'

'Wilson Yarrow.'

After a pause Carteret's voice said indecisively, 'Was he the one three years or so ahead of us?'

'That's right.'

'Something not right about him.'

'Yes. Do you remember what, exactly?'

'h.e.l.l, it was too long ago.'

I sighed. I'd hoped Carteret, with his oft-proven retentive memory, would come out snapping with answers.

'Is that all?' Carteret asked. 'Look, sorry, mate, but I'm up to my eyes in things here.'

Without much hope, I said, 'Do you still have all those diaries you wrote at college?'

'I suppose so, well, yes, somewhere.'

'Could you just look at them and see if you wrote anything about Wilson Yarrow?'

'Lee, have you any any idea what you're asking?' idea what you're asking?'

'I've seen him again,' I said. 'Yesterday. I know know there's something I ought to remember about him. Honestly, it might be important. I want to know if I should... perhaps... there's something I ought to remember about him. Honestly, it might be important. I want to know if I should... perhaps... warn warn some people I know.' some people I know.'

A few moments of silence ended with, 'I got back from St Petersburg this morning. I've tried the number you gave my wife several times without success. Nearly gave up. Tomorrow I'm taking my family to Euro Disney for six days. After that, I'll look in the diaries. Failing that, come to think of it, if you're in more of a hurry, you could come over here, tonight, and take a quick look yourself. Would that do? You are are in London, I suppose?' in London, I suppose?'

'No. Near Swindon, actually.'

'Sorry, then.'

I thought briefly and said, 'What if I came up to Paddington by train? Will you be at home?'

'Sure. All evening. Unpacking and packing. Will you come? It'll be good to see you, after all this time.' He sounded warmer, as if he suddenly meant it.

'Yes. Great. I'd like to see you, too.'

'All right then.' He gave me directions for coming by bus from Paddington Station and clicked himself off. Henry and the children gave me blank stares of disbelief.

'Did I hear right?' Henry said. 'You hang onto a walking frame with one hand and plan to catch a train to London with the other?'

'Maybe,' I said reasonably, 'Roger could lend me a stick.'

'What about us, Dad?' Toby said.

I glanced at Henry who nodded resignedly. 'I'll see they come to no harm.'

'I'll be back by their bedtime, with a bit of luck.'

I phoned Swindon railway station and asked about timetables. If I ran, it seemed, I could catch a train in five minutes. Otherwise, yes, possibly I could get to London even on the reduced Sunday service and be back in Swindon by bedtime. Just. With luck.

Roger, returning from his errand, offered not one but two walking sticks, plus, at my cajoling, a copy of Yarrow's grandstand plans ('You'll get me shot' shot'), plus a ride to the station, though as we set off he said he doubted my sanity.

'Do you want to know if Wilson Yarrow can be trusted?' I asked.

'I'd be happy to know he can't be.'

'Well, then.'

'Yes, but...'

'I'm healing,' I said briefly.

'I'll say no more.'

I paid for my ticket by credit card, tottered onto the train, took a taxi from Paddington and arrived without incident on Carteret's doorstep near Shepherd's Bush. (Bay-windowed terrace built for genteel but impoverished Edwardians.) He opened the door himself and we took stock of each other, the years of no contact sliding away. He was still small, rounded, bespectacled and black haired, an odd genetic mixture of Celt and Thai, though born and educated in England. We had paired as strangers to share digs together temporarily during our first year in architectural school and had gone through the whole course helping each other where necessary.

'You look just the same,' I said.

'So do you.' He eyed my height, curly hair and brown eyes; raised his eyebrows not at the working clothes but at the sticks I leaned on.

'Nothing serious,' I said, 'I'll tell you about it.'

'How's Amanda?' he asked, leading me in. 'Are you still married?'

'Yes, we are.'

'I never thought it would last,' he said frankly. 'And how are the boys? Three, was it?'

'We have six, now.'

'Six! You never did anything by halves.'

I met his wife, busy, and his two children, excited about going to meet Mickey Mouse. I told him, in his untidy, much lived-in sitting room, about the present and possible future of Stratton Park racecourse. I explained a good deal.

We drank beer. He said he hadn't remembered anything else about Wilson Yarrow except that he had been one of the precious elite tipped for immortality.

'And then... what happened?' he asked. 'Rumours. A cover-up of some sort. It didn't affect us, personally, and we were always working so hard ourselves. I remember his name. If he'd been called Tom Johnson or something, I'd have forgotten that too.'

I nodded. I felt the same. I asked if I could look at his diaries.

'I did find them for you,' he said. 'They were in a box in the attic. Do you seriously think I'd have written anything about Wilson Yarrow?'

'I hope you did. You wrote about most things.'

He smiled. 'Waste of time, really. I used to think my life would go by and I'd forget it, if I didn't write it down.'

'You were probably right.'

He shook his head. 'One remembers the great things anyway, and all the dreadful things. The rest doesn't matter.'

'My diaries are balance sheets,' I said. 'I look at the old ones and remember what I was doing, when.'

'Did you go on with rebuilding old wrecks?'

'Yeah.'

'I couldn't do that.'

'I couldn't work in an office. I tried it.'

We smiled ruefully at each other, old improbable friends, unalike in everything except knowledge.

'I brought an envelope,' I said, having clutched its large brown shape awkwardly along with one of the walking sticks during the journey. 'While I read the diaries, you look at the way Wilson Yarrow thinks a grandstand should be built. Tell me your thoughts.'

'All right.'

A sensible plan, but no good in the performance. I looked with dismay as he brought out his diaries and piled them on his coffee table. There were perhaps twenty large spiral-bound notebooks, eight inches by ten and a half, literally thousands of pages filled with his neat cramped handwriting; a task of days, not half an hour.

'I didn't realise,' I said weakly. 'I didn't remember...'

'I told you you didn't know what you were asking.'

'Could you... I mean, would would you, lend them to me?' you, lend them to me?'

'To take away, do you mean?'

'You'd get them back.'

'You swear?' he said doubtfully.

'On my diploma.'

His face lightened. 'All right.' He opened the brown envelope and took a look at the contents, pausing with raised eyebrows at the axonometric drawing. 'That's showing off!' he said.

'Yeah. Not necessary.'

Carteret looked at the elevations and floor plans. He made no comment about the amount of gla.s.s: building in difficult ways with gla.s.s was typical Architectural a.s.sociation doctrine. We'd been taught to regard gla.s.s as avant-garde, as the pus.h.i.+ng back of design frontiers. When I'd murmured that surely building with gla.s.s had been old hat since Joseph Paxton stuck together the old Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851, I'd been reviled as an iconoclast, if not ruthlessly expelled for heresy. In any case, gla.s.s was acceptable to Carteret in futuristic ways that I found clever for the sake of cleverness, not for grace or utility. Gla.s.s for its own sake was pointless to me: except as a source of daylight, it was normally what one could see through it that mattered.

'Where are the rest of the plans?' Carteret asked.