Decider. Part 37

'Don't go down there,' I said, pus.h.i.+ng myself to my feet. 'Where's Colonel Gardner?'

'We couldn't find him,' Christopher said.

'But... the sprinkler?'

'I turned it on, Dad,' Christopher said. 'I saw Henry sticking all those labels on, the day you went on the train. I knew where the tap was.'

'Brilliant,' I said; but there weren't any words good enough. 'Well, let's get out of here, out of the rain.'

Neil wanted to be carried. I picked him up and he wound his arms round my neck, clinging tightly, and all six of us, soaking wet, made our slowish way out to the tarmac.

Roger drove up in his jeep, got out, and stared at us.

We must, I supposed, have looked odd. One tall boy, one little boy, clinging, the three others close, all dripping.

I said to Christopher, 'Run and turn off the tap,' and to Roger, 'We had a fire in the big top. Bits of petrol-soaked matting and floorboards burned, but Henry was right, the canvas didn't.'

'A fire fire!' He turned towards the entrance, to go and see for himself.

'Better warn you,' I said. 'Keith's in there. He's dead.'

Roger paused for one stride and then went on. Christopher came back from the errand, and all of the boys and I began s.h.i.+vering, as much, I supposed, from shock and anxiety as from standing wet in the light April breeze, in air too cold for comfort.

'Get into the car,' I said, pointing at Dart's beaten up wheels. 'You need to get dry.'

'But Dad...'

'I'm coming with you.'

They piled in as Roger came out of the tent looking worried.

'Whatever's happened?' he said urgently. 'I'll have to get the police. Come into the office.'

I shook my head. 'First, I get the boys into dry clothes. I'll not have them catching pneumonia. I'll come back.'

'But Lee '

'Keith tried to burn the big top,' I said. 'But...'

'But,' Roger finished, 'people who try to start fires with petrol can end up by burning themselves.'

I smiled faintly. 'Right.'

I walked over to Dart's car and drove the boys down to the bus, where everyone, myself emphatically included, showered and changed into dry clothes down to the skin. My check s.h.i.+rt, its back blackened as if pressed by a too-hot iron, went into the rubbish bin, not into a laundry bag. Underneath I felt as if sunburnt: a first-degree soreness, nothing worse. Dead lucky, I thought, that the s.h.i.+rt had been thick pure wool, not melting nylon.

When the boys were ready I marched them over to Mrs Gardner and begged her to give them hot sweet drinks and cake, if she had any.

'My dears dears,' she said, embracing them, 'come on in.'

'Don't leave us, Dad,' Edward said.

'I have to talk to the Colonel, but I won't be long.'

'Can I come with you?' Christopher asked.

I looked at his height, listened to the already deepening voice, saw the emerging man in the boy and his wish to leave childhood behind.

'Hop in the car,' I said and, deeply pleased, he sat beside me on the short return journey.

'When you went up to the big top,' I asked him, 'what did Keith Stratton say to you?'

'That man!' Christopher shuddered. 'It seemed all right at first. He told us to go into the big top. He said you would be coming.'

'So then?' I prompted, as he stopped.

'So we went in, and he came in behind us. He told us to go on ahead, and we did.'

'Yes.'

'Then...' he hesitated, 'it got weird weird, Dad. I mean, he picked up a can that was lying there and took the cap off, and we could smell smell it was petrol. Then he put the can down again and picked up that rod thing, and flicked his lighter, and the end of the rod lit up like those torches in Ku Klux Klan films.' it was petrol. Then he put the can down again and picked up that rod thing, and flicked his lighter, and the end of the rod lit up like those torches in Ku Klux Klan films.'

'Yeah.'

'Then he poured petrol onto the floor and trailed the torch into it and of course it went on fire, but just in one place.' He paused, remembering. 'We began to be scared, Dad. You've always told us never to put fire near petrol, and he had a big can of it in one hand and the torch in the other. He told us to go up further into the big top and he came along behind us and started another fire, and then another, and lots of them and we got really frightened, but all he said was that you would come soon. "Your father will come." He gave us the creeps, Dad. He didn't behave like a grown-up. He wasn't sensible sensible, Dad.'

'No.'

'He told us to go on further in, past that sort of stand thing that was there, and he put the torch into it so that it just burned there there, and wasn't swinging about, and that was better, but we still didn't like like it. But he put the petrol can down too, and then he just looked at us and it. But he put the petrol can down too, and then he just looked at us and smiled smiled, and it was awful awful, I mean, I can't describe it.'

'You're doing well.'

'He frightened me rigid, Dad. We all wanted to be out of there. Then Alan darted past him suddenly and then Edward, and I did too, and he yelled at us and ran about to stop us and we dodged him and ran, I mean, pelted pelted, Dad... and then Toby didn't come out after us, and Neil started screaming... and that's when you came.'

I stopped the car beside Roger's jeep. Keith's Jaguar stood beyond, and beyond that, a police car.

'And he didn't say anything else?' I asked.

'No, only something about not being blackmailed by you you. I mean, it was silly, you wouldn't blackmail anyone.'

I smiled inwardly at his faith. Blackmail wasn't necessarily for money.

'No,' I said. 'All the same, don't repeat that bit, OK?'

'No, Dad, OK.'

Feeling curiously lightheaded, I walked across to the office with Christopher and told the police, when they asked, that I had no idea why Keith Stratton had behaved as irrationally as he had.

It was Friday before I left Stratton Park.

All Wednesday afternoon I replied 'I don't know' to relays of police questions, and agreed that I would return dutifully for an inquest.

I said nothing about rus.h.i.+ng at Keith to overbalance him. It didn't sound sensible. I said nothing about Neil.

When asked, I said I hadn't used a fire extinguisher to try to save Keith's life, because I couldn't find one.

'Four of them were lying out of sight in the bar area,' Roger told me.

'Who put them there?' the police asked.

'I don't know,' I said.

Christopher told the law that Keith was a 'nutter'. They listened politely enough and decided he was too young to be called as an inquest witness, as he had anyway not himself been present at the moment of the accident.

The Press came; took photographs; asked questions, got the same answers.

A policewoman, in my presence, asked the younger boys later, down at the Gardners, what they'd seen, but in the manner of children with questioning strangers they clammed up into big-eyed silence, volunteering nothing and answering mainly in nods. Yes nod there had been fires in the tent. Yes nod Keith Stratton had lit them. Yes nod Toby's hair had got singed. Yes nod Christopher had turned on the sprinkler, and yes nod their father had looked after them.

The Strattons, I thought ironically at one point, had nothing on the Morris family when it came to keeping things quiet.

On Thursday the clips came out of my mostly-healed cuts and, with Dart chauffeuring, I took Toby to Swindon to see what Penelope could do with his unevenly burned hair.

I watched her laugh with him and tease him. Watched her wash the still lingering singe smell out, and cut and brush and blow-dry the very short remaining brown curls. Watched her give him confidence in his new appearance and light up his smile.

I spent the whole time wondering where and how I could get her into bed.

Perdita came downstairs behaving like a mother hen defending her chick against predators, as if reading my mind.

'I told you too much, dear, on Tuesday,' she said a shade anxiously.

'I won't give you away.'

'And Keith Stratton is dead!'

'So sad,' I agreed.

She laughed. 'You're a rogue. Did you kill him?'

'In a way.' With help from my twelve-year-old, I thought, whether he realised it or not. 'Self-defence, you might say.'

Her eyes smiled, but her voice was sober. She used only one word for an opinion. 'Good.'

Penelope finished the twelve-year-old's hair. I paid her. She thanked me. She had no idea what I felt for her, nor gave any flicker of response. I was six boys' father, almost double her age. Perdita, seeing all, patted my shoulder. I kissed the cheek of the mother and still l.u.s.ted for the daughter, and walked away, with Toby, feeling empty and old.

Dart returned Toby to his brothers at the Gardners and willingly took me on to see Marjorie.

The manservant, aplomb in place, let us in and announced us. Marjorie sat, as before, in her commanding armchair. The smashed looking gla.s.s had been removed, the torn chairs were missing. Rebecca's shot at me had left no permanent traces.

'I came to say goodbye,' I said.

'But you'll come back to Stratton Park.'

'Probably not.'

'But we need you!'

I shook my head. 'You have a great racecourse manager in Colonel Gardner. You'll have record crowds at the next meeting, with Oliver Wells's flair for publicity. You'll commission superb new stands and what I will do, if you like, is make sure any firms submitting proposals to you are substantial and trustworthy. And beyond that, as regards your family, you have more power than ever to hold things together. You don't have Keith, so you don't need any way of restraining him. You have control of Rebecca, who aimed probably still aims to run the racecourse herself. She has probably done herself in there, as, even after you're gone, Conrad and Dart can both hold blackmail and attempted murder over her head, enough to out-vote her at Board meetings.'

Marjorie listened and came up with her own sort of solution.

'I want you,' she said, 'to be a director. Conrad and Ivan and I will vote for it. Unanimous decision of the Board.'

'Hear, hear,' Dart said, delighted.

'You don't need me,' I protested.

'Yes, we do.'

I wanted to disentangle myself from the Strattons. I did not want to step in any way into my non-grandfather's shoes. From beyond the grave his influence and way of doing things had sucked me into a web of duplicity, and three times in a week his family had nearly cost me my life. I'd paid my debt to him, I thought. I needed now to be free.

And yet...

'I'll think about it,' I said.

Marjorie nodded, satisfied. 'With you in charge,' she said, 'the racecourse will prosper.'

'I have to talk to Conrad,' I said.

He was alone in his holy of holies, sitting behind his desk.

I'd left Dart again outside in his car, reading about hair-loss, though not acting as look-out this time.

'With this American system,' he said, deep in before-and-after photographs, 'I would never worry again. You can go swimming diving your new hair is part of you. But I'd have to go to America every six weeks to two months to keep it right.'

'You can afford it,' I said.

'Yes, but...'

'Go for it,' I said.

He needed encouragement. 'Do you really think I should?'

'I think you should book your first ticket at once.'

'Yes. Yes Yes. Well, yes, I will will.'

Conrad stood up when I went in. His cupboard door was closed, but boxes stood higgledy-piggledy on his carpet, their contents stirred up.

He didn't offer his hand. He seemed to feel awkward, as I did myself. .