Closed Circle (8 page)

"I could?"

"And, if you did, there would be a reward. Your share of what you would have been paid already but for your friend's obstinacy." He picked up the coin from the desk and slipped it back into his waistcoat pocket. "One thousand pounds, Mr. Horton. A fair price?"

"It sounds more like thirty pieces of silver."

"It's four thousand pieces, actually. And you don't strike me as the remorseful type. Besides, penury would soon shatter your friend's illusion of love. And my daughter's. You'd be doing them both a favour. Their circle would be your straight line. With a thousand pounds at the end of it."

He understood me as well as I understood myself, perhaps better. What he had said made perfect sense. Even that last little concession to my vestigial conscience was finely judged. I rose slowly from my chair. "I'll think about it," I said softly. "Very seriously."

Max was downcast at the news of Charnwood's intransigence. But he derived some comfort from what, with my encouragement, he perceived to be a change of heart on my part. "You don't think I should give up, then?" he asked.

"It's a difficult decision," I replied, with a frown of resignation. "But sometimes love must be given its head. Clearly, this is one of those times." Not, of course, if I had anything to do with it. But poor besotted Max was in no state to hear the truth. I had no choice but to lie, as much for his benefit as for mine. One of us had to think of pounds, shillings and pence even if the other was temporarily blinded to their importance. Our only remaining hope of profit from this enterprise lay in what Charnwood had offered me for betraying Max and Diana's plans. It was therefore incumbent upon me to ensure they had some plans to betray. One day, I did not doubt, my friend would thank me for what I was doing. But that day seemed likely to be a long way off. Meanwhile, there was nothing for it but bare-faced duplicity. "Just don't let Diana slip away from you now I've made this sacrifice," I said with a smile. "She's too good to lose."

"Don't think I don't know it." He chewed pensively at his thumbnail. "But she wants to please him so much. I... I just don't know what she'll do."

"When will you next see her?"

Tomorrow, near Dorking. We agreed to meet for tea at Burford Bridge. It's an hotel at the foot of Box Hill a safe distance from the house." He thought for a moment, then said: "Why don't you come with me? You can make her understand just how unreasonable her father's being."

"Well, if I can help .. ."

"I'd appreciate it. I really would."

"Then say no more. I'll be there."

We caught an afternoon train from Victoria and were walking down the lane from Box Hill station towards the river Mole by three o'clock. Ahead of us, where the main road from London crossed the river, stood the hotel, rambling and substantial in its leafy setting beneath the downs.

Max was nervous lest Diana would not be there. I think he was afraid Charnwood might have imprisoned her at Amber Court. But he need not have been, for she was already installed in a quiet corner of the hotel lounge, tea and cakes arranged on a table before her. She looked sombre and somehow more beautiful because of it, the delicate forget-me-not pattern on her dress emphasizing her vulnerability. If she was surprised to see me, she covered it well. Perhaps, I thought, she had guessed Max might bring me.

We ordered more tea and sat down together. At once Diana lowered her voice and said: "I'm grateful for what you tried to do, Guy, but you've only succeeded in hardening my father's heart."

"I'm sorry," I replied, endeavouring to look suitably crestfallen. "Really I am."

"He's forbidden me to see any more of you, Max," she said, taking his hand discreetly in hers. "Simply by being here, I'm going against his wishes. He says we're to spend next month abroad. In Italy. Out of harm's way. Meanwhile, I'm not even allowed to visit London. And my dear little Imp's been locked in its garage, the keys confiscated. I've never known him to behave like this before. It's as if he's suddenly become some .. ." Tears glistened in her eyes and she reached for a handkerchief. "Some kind of ogre."

"Don't distress yourself, darling," said Max, patting her hand. "He won't stop us marrying. He can't."

"Can't he?"

The question was left hanging in the air as our tea arrived. After the waitress had spent an age arranging cups and saucers amidst many an echoing clatter and finally withdrawn, I decided to contribute my four penn' orth to the anguished discussion. "I believe pride is what's stopping your father admitting he's wrong, Diana."

"Surely he wouldn't let that stand in the way of my happiness?"

"He can't help himself."

"Then what's to be done?"

"You must take matters out of his hands."

"You mean ..." She bit her lip and frowned. "But I'd so hoped to have his blessing."

"And you will have ... after the event."

"Steady on, old man," said Max, clearly worried that I was rushing our fences. "What Guy means, darling, is '

"I know what he means. And he's right. I thought it myself last night, while I was tossing and turning in bed, wondering what to do for the best. It's the only way, isn't it?"

"I think it is," I said. "I truly do."

And so it was agreed. The two young lovers or not so young in Max's case adjourned to the hotel garden, there to stroll hand in hand among the borders and hatch the romantic scheme I had conceived for them. I remained in the lounge, smoking a cigarette and idly turning the pages of Country Life. I was not told the details of what they had agreed until Max and I had boarded the train back to London, but he did not hesitate once we were under way to take me into their confidence. Diana was to give her father the impression that she would, however reluctantly, comply with his wishes, while Max with my assistance would make the necessary arrangements for a register office wedding at the end of the following week. At two o'clock in the morning of the relevant day, Diana would steal from the house and meet Max halfway up a wooded path leading to the Dorking road. He would have a car waiting on the road and would whisk her away to London, where the ceremony would take place a few hours later, with my good self serving as best man. Diana would meanwhile have left a note for her father explaining her action and hoping to find him reconciled to it upon their return from a honeymoon in Paris.

So far, so touchingly simple. Max and I spent most of the next day browbeating various jacks-in-office into supplying a marriage licence without notice and fixing a date and time for a wedding at Marylebone Register Office: Saturday the twenty-second of August at ten o'clock. We then gladdened the heart of a car dealer in Tottenham Court Road by buying a nearly new Talbot Saloon from him for three hundred pounds and dined at the Ritz on the strength of Max's certainty that an idyllic ally contented future was about to be his. All he had to do now was await the joyous day with as much patience as he could muster.

And I had little choice but to wait with him, knowing it would never dawn. For the expression of dog-like devotion I had seen on his face as he held Diana's hand that afternoon at Burford Bridge had convinced me Charnwood was right. I really would be doing Max a favour by sparing him the creeping realization that love in a garret is very soon hatred in a ditch. I would be saving him and Diana from a grievous disillusionment. And I would be ensuring Max had his share of Charnwood's thousand pounds to console him for his loss, this last being the most compelling argument of all for biding my time and pretending I had not already decided what to do.

But I had. And two days almost to the hour before the wedding was due to take place, I did it. There were no difficulties gaining admittance this time. The secretary had been told to expect me. Nor were there any sleights-of-hand with five-shilling pieces. Charnwood merely heard me out in silence, then wrote out a cheque for a thousand pounds and slid it across the desk to me.

"I'm obliged to you, Mr. Horton. You may rest assured Mr. Wingate will be given no cause to suspect you were the source of my information." We rose and shook hands. "It's been a pleasure doing business with such a straightforward man as yourself. It makes life so ... simple."

Simple for Charnwood perhaps, I reflected as I pocketed the cheque. But, thus far, I had found simplicity to be in desperately short supply.

CHAPTER

FOUR

I did not know how Charnwood intended to prevent the elopement and I did not want to know. Ignorance was, in my case, a guarantee against detection. I took the further precaution of opening a new bank account in my own name, into which I paid his cheque, Max and I having transferred our Canadian deposits to a joint account in London. I had every intention of pooling the money with our other resources in due course, but a good deal of dust would have to settle before I could.

It was then only a question of awaiting developments. As Friday evening drew closer, Max and I both grew nervous, though for different reasons. He was eager to start for Dorking and proposed, to my dismay, that I accompany him. I resisted the idea at first, but could not afford to make him suspicious by behaving as if I knew something was amiss. Faced with his desire for company during the midnight vigil on the downs that lay ahead, I reluctantly consented.

We dined at an hotel near Leatherhead, but still reached Dorking with more than four hours to while away before the rendezvous. Driving out aimlessly along the Guildford road, we stopped at a wayside inn and installed ourselves in the saloon bar. Several large whiskies later, Max's confidence was at a high and garrulous pitch, whereas mine was rapidly ebbing. How was he going to react to whatever form Charnwood's intervention took? What would he do when he realized Diana could not be his? And what, more to the point, would I do? The uncertainties multiplied in my head as alcohol leached away my ability to resolve them.

Fortunately, Max was too intoxicated with his own optimism to notice any trepidity on my part. One of the other customers, by the look and sound of him an opinionated commercial traveller, had been flirting with the barmaid all the time we had been there. He had eventually persuaded her to call him by his Christian name, which he had claimed, somewhat implausibly, to be Hildebrand. The barmaid had laughed uproariously at this, but Max had taken it for an omen.

"Remember the "dwarfish Hildebrand", Guy?"

"In The Eve of St. Agnes, by Keats. I remember. What about him?"

"He was Porphyro's sworn enemy, wasn't he? But he couldn't prevent Porphyro stealing off into the night with his beloved. Well, Charnwood won't prevent me stealing off with my beloved either."

"Let's hope not."

"Don't worry. Nothing can go wrong."

But it already had, as I was hard put not to tell him. Our glasses were empty and, as I went up to have them refilled, the un-dwarfish Hildebrand was entertaining the barmaid with a conjuring trick that involved plucking a red silk handkerchief from the front of her low-cut blouse. How I wished I could practise some similar magic for Max's benefit and call up a happy ending to our night's work. But I had ensured it could not end happily. So there was nothing for it but to blame my sentimental regrets on the whisky and to order some more.

We lingered at the inn as long as we could, but were eventually obliged to leave. Max had shown me the positions of Amber Court and the meeting-place on a map, but the reality of narrow lanes winding up thickly wooded hillsides beneath a starless sky was infinitely less clear-cut. Moths swirled in the headlamp beams and a fine drizzle smeared the windscreen. When we reached the point where the footpath from the house met the road, Max nosed the car in beneath the trees and turned off the engine and lights.

It was nearly midnight, dark and silent enough to remind me of all the reasons why I distrusted the countryside. Not completely dark, of course. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out the gap in the trees where the path began. Nor yet completely silent. My ears began to detect faint rustlings and stirrings in the undergrowth.

An owl hooted somewhere. A fox barked. Then Max struck a match and offered me a cigarette.

"You reckon I'm mad to do this, don't you, Guy?" he asked with a chuckle.

"I never said so."

"No. But you came close. In your shoes, I might have come closer. So, don't think I'm not grateful, because I am."

His gratitude was like a blow to the solar plexus. It was the last thing I needed. "What time is it?" I hastily enquired.

He struck another match and looked at his watch. "Four minutes past midnight. Less than two hours to go. A mere bagatelle compared with those stints we used to do at Lake Doiran. Sometimes, I thought we'd be there for ever, you know. But we weren't, were we? We came through. And now Macedonia's just a memory. Like this will be, one day. Except this'll be a happy memory. For both of us, I promise. Charnwood will come round once Diana and I are married. You see if he doesn't. He dotes on her really. And when it comes to spending my new father-in-law's inexhaustible wealth, you can be sure I won't forget my best friend. Or my best man, as you'll soon have the pleasure of being. Amor vincit omnia. Old Carter dinned that phrase into my head twenty years ago and I never once believed it till now."

There was more, much more, in a similar vein as the time ticked slowly by. I was torn between wishing it would accelerate, so that we might have done with whatever the next few hours held, and wanting them never to elapse. Max had set so much store by what I knew he could not have that I alternately craved and dreaded the moment of his enlightenment. Meanwhile, there was nothing I could say or do to moderate his hopes. As they soared, so were they bound to fall. And, as they soared, so my fears increased.

At a quarter to two, Max set off for the meeting-place: a stile where the path crossed the boundary of Charnwood's property, marked by a fence erected in the farther outskirts of the wood. He anticipated being back within half an hour, Diana by his side, and responded jauntily to my parting words.

"Good luck, Max."

Thanks, old man, but I won't need it." Then he patted my shoulder through the open window of the car, set off along the track, paused to flash his torch back in farewell, and was gone.