would be stretching it. I don’t know that she’s ever really delighted by people. She much prefers animals. This is where I stay when I’m in Sussex. When one of her guests rang to say she was ill, I told Fleur I’d invite you.’
‘Is it her house?’
‘Strictly speaking it’s Dickie’s. He’s her husband. It’s been in his family for a couple of generations.’
‘They seem to have prospered.’ I could not help comparing the grounds of Ladyfield with Cutham Hall, to the latter’s disadvantage.
The lights of the house appeared through the trees. The drive curved round in a circle to end before an early Georgian house of soft red brick. Ladyfield must have been built at roughly the same time as Cutham Hall but had escaped Victorian revision. The light was fading but I could see a well-proportioned façade with a pedimented portico, pilasters and a balustrade at roof level ornamented with urns. The half-glazed front door stood open.
‘Well?’ Burgo asked as we stood on the drive after Simon had driven the car away. ‘Like it?’
‘It’s enchanting!’
‘Let’s go in.’
The hall was painted a marvellous rich red, the perfect background for what seemed at a cursory glance to be good paintings. A cantilevered staircase curled round at the far end beneath a Venetian window. It was all quite grand but untidy. On the lovely, worn limestone floor a pair of gumboots stood beside a bowl containing pieces of meat. Beneath a side table was a dog basket from which trailed a filthy old blanket. A halter and a Newmarket rug were thrown over a chair. Burgo examined a pile of letters on the table. He picked up one and read it quickly, then threw it aside.
‘Nothing that can’t wait. Let’s get a drink. Then I’ll run up and change.’
We went into the drawing room. The walls were buff coloured and looked superb with the plasterwork, which was of a high quality and painted, in the correct manner, several shades of greyish-white. Burgo appeared at my side with a glass of something that fizzed.
‘What are you looking at so intently?’
‘Plasterwork’s a particular weakness of mine.’
‘Perhaps, after all, you are a strange woman.’
I stared at the painting above the fireplace. ‘Isn’t that a Turner?’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s an early one. Before he was bitten by cosmic mysticism. But you can see the hand of the master.’
‘You may be able to. I don’t know enough about it.’
‘Oh, I’m a novice myself when it comes to painting. That takes years and years of just looking.’
‘You beast!’ said a voice behind us. ‘I’ve been waiting and waiting for you. And then you choose just the moment I dash out to the stable to arrive.’
A girl, younger than me, I guessed, had come into the drawing room. She walked up to Burgo, threw her arms round his neck and pulled down his head so she could kiss him on the mouth. Burgo disengaged himself from her embrace and held her wrist in one hand while he pulled her ear with the other.
‘Roberta, this is Fleur,’ said Burgo. ‘My sister.’
‘Hello.’ Fleur gave me her hand. It was slightly sticky. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. I’ve been drenching a colt. He’s got worms.’
Fleur was small and slender. Her hair was brown, her face soft and round like a child’s. Her eyes slanted up at the outer corners, like his, and had the same dark brilliance, but hers were vague and dreamy.
‘Where is everybody? I thought we’d be the last to arrive.’ Burgo poured a glass of champagne for his sister. She held the stem of the glass in a childish fist.
‘They’ve all come. Dickie took them out to see the Temple to Hygeia.’
‘Dickie’s in the process of repairing an old folly,’ Burgo said to me. ‘Dedicated to the goddess of health and cleanliness. I’m going to change.’
Before I could ask: Why cleanliness? he had gone. There were noises in the hall and then people in evening dress came into the drawing room. I felt a little shy, not only because they were all unknown to me but also because I was certain they must wonder what I was doing there. But my diffidence was as nothing to my hostess’s. She frowned, licked a finger and began to scrub at a mark on the skirt of her beaded dress.
‘You must be Roberta.’ A man with grizzled, receding hair shook my hand. He leaned upon a stick. ‘I’m Dickie. Charmed to see you. Any friend of Burgo’s … Can I give you a top-up?’ I accepted his offer of more champagne. ‘So nice of you to make up the numbers at the last minute,’ he continued. ‘It isn’t everyone one can ask; Homo sapiens is a sensitive, thin-skinned creature.’
‘Yes,’ I said. Then, feeling my reply to be inadequate, I added, ‘It certainly is!’
‘Glad you agree with me!’ The expression in his eyes above his half-moon spectacles was cordial. ‘I must quickly do the rounds with the booze. Fleur darling, look after Roberta. Catch up with you later.’
He limped away. I watched him talking to his friends. He was affable, gave a pat on the arm here, a peck on the cheek there, his pinkish face suffused with pleasure. Fleur abandoned the scrubbing of her dress but kept her eyes on the carpet, her mouth unsmiling.
‘Do tell me about your colt.’ I had once been the proud possessor of a piebald with a large head and short legs and had been to enough gymkhanas and pony-club dances to be able to maintain a horsy conversation without making an idiot of myself.
Fleur’s beautiful eyes met mine with sudden enthusiasm. ‘He’s nearly three and absolute heaven. Bright chestnut with white socks and a blaze. I’ve called him Kumara. It’s the name of a Hindu god. He’s got the most perfect action …’
While Fleur talked, the words coming quickly in a way that was already familiar to me, I speculated about what seemed a striking mismatch. What attractions, apart from a genial manner, had a man like Dickie for a lovely girl at least twenty years younger? He had a wonderful house and appeared to be well heeled, but Fleur did not seem the mercenary type.
‘And I’ve already lunged him twice …’
There was something endearing about the grubby fingernails and a definite tidemark round the neck, half-hidden by the expensive dress.
‘I’ve had a good offer for Kumara but nothing would persuade me to part with him. I love him best in all the world – after Burgo, naturally. But you can’t equate people and animals, can you? I mean, Kumara looks to me for everything. I know that sounds rather sad and selfish, having to be important to something. But Burgo doesn’t need me. He doesn’t need anyone. That doesn’t stop me loving him but it makes it rather one-sided.’
I looked across the room at Dickie, who was roaring with laughter at something he had just been told. He threw back his head and leaned more heavily on his stick to balance himself.
‘Children need you, I suppose for the first few years, anyway,’ I said.
Fleur’s expression changed. Her fine brows drew together and she flushed. ‘Probably they do.’ She grew silent.
Obviously I had put my foot in it. I wondered what the trouble was? Perhaps Dickie was too much of an invalid to … I cast about for a change of subject. ‘What sort of dogs do you have?’
‘I’ve got three. Looby, a black Labrador, Lancelot who’s a red setter and King Henry. He’s a stray, a mixture of Alsatian and poodle, I think.’
Fleur told me the provenance of each dog, their likes and dislikes and particular charms. It ought to have been excruciatingly dull but actually I enjoyed Fleur’s artless confiding style. It was like being with an old friend with whom no pretence is necessary.