He was pitching somewhere between rueful and apologetic with the usual humor. I wondered if only I saw it, the resentment at having to explain, his hatred of being pinned down and made to account for himself. But then perhaps that was David’s way: to offer a glimpse of a second layer, a secret layer, and by doing so involve you in a private conversation with him. And I wondered if, under this layer, there was not another and in it David was bored, bored beyond measure, and alone, and in conversation with no one.
“Did you get sent down?” Marcus asked.
Rob burst out laughing. “You don’t know him very well if you think that.”
“Rob’s family helped me out. His parents got their lawyer involved and Mr. Mackenzie, the headmaster, thought better of making an example of me. I mean, the whole thing put the school in a bad light, but he did have it in for me. Visited me while I was on remand and told me with a very sad face that it was for my own good, like he was sending me down the salt mines to save me from the gallows. He had it in his head I was going to the bad and the experience would turn me around.”
“But then Dad’s lawyer promised to paint the Italian jaunt in rather a lurid light. Underage drinking because David was a month off eighteen and Badger allowed us wine with dinner. An unmarried schoolmaster overly fond of Greek sculpture. You can imagine,” Rob said.
“You were there too?” Peter asked.
“Missed the fun, though. The rest of us thought we were being daring by sneaking off for gelato in the cafe with the pretty waitress. When we came back, Dave had disappeared, having embarked on a career of international embezzlement.” For a moment, Rob sounded bitter.
“You could have phoned us. We’d have visited you. Baked you a file inside a cake,” Em said.
“Did one of you shop him? He can be insufferable. God knows I would if I had anything on him.” Rob’s eyes flitted between our faces. Peter didn’t move a muscle, but in that moment I knew. Not Marcus then, Peter.
“It was someone from the village,” David said quickly. “A dog walker, someone who’d spotted one of our wild orgies on the lawn.”
“See. He always gets everything,” Rob said.
“Seriously though. We weren’t exactly careful, were we?” His eyes met mine for the briefest moment before I could look away. “I’m sorry. It’s not an excuse but it already seemed very long ago. My hands were full trying to get myself out of the mess I’d created. By the time things had settled down and I could have got in touch, it seemed that ages had passed. It was only a month or two, I suppose. But it felt like thousands of years. It was unreal, the whole summer here, beautiful and magical and utterly unreal. I couldn’t believe any of you were still alive.”
* * *
The room was warm. There was a lot of wine, and the food was a long time in coming, so that when it arrived, the candlelight, reflected upon the table’s polished surface, seemed to swim and ripple.
“It looks wonderful. The renovations, I mean.” Em blushed a little.
“My parents spent a fortune on it and now they’ve toddled off to Paris so Alice and I have to come down and keep the home fires burning.”
“Not exactly a hardship,” Priss said.
“Alice doesn’t like the country.”
“That’s not true, Rob.”
“It is true, but David does, so you’re making an effort. I, on the other hand, am just busy. But the country has its attractions, its areas of outstanding natural beauty. Now, Emma, wherever did you get that ravishing dress?”
He entwined his fingers, rested his chin on them, and batted his eyelashes at Em, and for all I had disliked him, he was the consummate host: opening bottles of wine, making sure people’s plates were full, but above all keeping the awkwardness at bay with conversation, asking questions and involving everyone. Alice and Priss had gone to school together, now Priss and Rob were in finance at the same company. Rob had introduced Priss to Zack who was on the DJ circuit, part-owned a club, and had released a record—Did awfully well in Luxembourg, didn’t it, Zack? He’s a god there. Has his own perfume range, Eau de Lucky Shit—and now the shooting parties. Alice was thinking of doing a course.
“What kind of course?” I asked.
Alice shrugged. “One that takes illiterate people.”
“Dyslexic, not illiterate, Al,” Rob said swiftly. “My father thinks dyslexia’s a made-up thing, but then as I often tell my sister, Dad’s an arsehole. We’re all lesser beings to him.”
Alice gave her brother a quick, grateful smile.
“What about you?” Marcus had turned to David.
“I’m working at an auction house,” and he named one of the famous fancy ones even I had heard of. “Just as a dogsbody really.”
“But you’re seeing if it’s for you, aren’t you?” Alice said. “Finding out which corner you might want to occupy before studying it. You know what the Japanese will pay for a rubbishy old oil painting. Then there’s all the furniture and pottery and jewelry, carpets even. As long as you specialize, as long as you become the go-to person for something and know all the right people, it’s a good line of work. Everyone says he has the eye for it.”
Em burst out laughing. In the candlelight, she was truly the lady from a painting, poised and graceful, her shoulders and throat as white as snow. “I can see it now, David. Traveling up and down the country charming old ladies into parting with their treasures for a song. In a van with your name painted on the side. Perhaps one day you’ll find the diamonds hidden in a box in someone’s attic.”
They knew about the diamonds, you could tell from their faces.
“David said you never found them. The ones that are supposed to be here somewhere,” Alice said.
“Andy’s wearing them,” Em said, which made them all spin in my direction. “The ones we used for the game.”
Rob leaned over to inspect them and for a second I felt his face close to the skin of my throat. “Fake,” he said. “A gentleman can always tell.”
A great oak root was burning in the hearth and above the conversation and chink of cutlery, one of the dogs would occasionally let out a deep groan. The talk circled the summer we had played the game, and then the real diamonds and Mortimer and the night they had been stolen—yes, so like tonight everyone agreed—and the rumors about Denford being a Nazi, or rather a fascist sympathizer, and what about the servants and couldn’t it have been an insurance job, all subjects on which I had nothing to add, nor did I feel much like reminiscing.
“Are you still in the row of cottages, next door to the old lady you were always talking about?” David directed the question at me.
“Mrs. East moved in with her son Ian in Bicester. She had a fall.”
“Are you still staying with your mum?”
Marcus touched my arm. “Andy’s mum died. Car accident.” And I tried to look the way you were supposed to look.
When we were done eating, we went into the library, the dogs padding after us. Priss inspected the fire proprietorially.
“I got it going while I was waiting for the crumble to come out of the oven.” She bent over it, pushing the burning logs around with a poker so that streams of sparks shot up the chimney. “I love a fire.” A blond lock had come free and she blew it away from her face. “David and Alice are moving in together. Her father has a flat in Victoria that he’s letting them have.” She crouched down further to stroke the little cocker, Goli, and gave me a sidelong glance. “It’s short for Goliath. Except she’s a girl of course.” Then, to me, “Would you really have killed that boy if they hadn’t taken him away? Zack says you had berserker eyes.”