Though the rain had stopped, it still shook from the trees when the wind blew, spattering the windows, and still dripped from the guttering over the porch, which was thick with leaves. A lagoon had appeared in the lane, drowning the grassy verge, and in the village a burst main had closed the road for a day and a half, water pumping through the tarmac in its familiar, implacable way. Fire you could fight, and even half-way tame; water went where it chose, taking a hundred years to wear away a rock, or a minute and a half to pick the same rock up and carry it two miles distant. It altered the landscape too, so that when he looked from his window at first light he might have been transported elsewhere in his sleep; the whole house shipped off to a realm where trees groped upwards from the depths, and a tracery of hedgework scraped the surfaces of lakes. Bewildered by difference, you could lose your bearings. Which was the last thing you wanted to happen to you, because one day it would be the last thing that did.
It was important to keep track of where you were.
Knowing when you were was equally critical.
A good job, thought David Cartwright—River’s grandfather; the O.B.—that he had a head for dates.
January 4th. The year, as ever, the current one.
His house was in Kent; old house, big garden, not that he did as much of that since Rose had died. Winter provided an alibi:
Tie seemed straight enough, though. Important to maintain standards. You read about these old chaps in their pee-stained corduroys, with their vests on backwards, and dribble on their chins.
“That ever happens to me,” he’d instructed River more than once, “shoot me like a horse.”
“Exactly like a horse,” River would reply drily.
Dammit, that was the name they gave them, there at Slough House. The slow horses. Treading on a young man’s toes, that was; reminding him of the balls-up he’d made of things.
Not that his own copybook was free of blot. If they’d had a Slough House in his day, who knew? He might have whiled his own career away in terminal frustration; forced to sit it out on the bench, watching others carried shoulder-high round the boundary. Laps of honour and whatnot. That was what the boy thought, of course; that it was all about guts and glory—truth was, it was all about flesh and blood. Medals weren’t won in the sunshine. Backs were stabbed in the dark. It was a messy business, and maybe the boy was better off out of it, though there was no telling him that, of course. Wouldn’t be a Cartwright otherwise. Just like his mother, whom David Cartwright had missed acutely for years, without admitting it to anyone, even Rose.
. . . All these thoughts and he was still here in the hallway. What was it he’d been going to do? A blank moment came and went so smoothly it left barely a ripple. He was going to walk to the village. He needed to stock up on bread and bacon and whatever. His grandson might call round later, and he wanted to have some food in.
His grandson was called River.
Before he left, though, he needed to check his tie was straight.
In the same way a tongue keeps probing a sore tooth, the conversation in Marcus and Shirley’s office kept returning to Roderick Ho—specifically, the wholly improbable, end-of-days-indicating, suggestion that he no longer flew solo.
“You think he’s really found a woman?”
“He might have. It’s surprising what some people leave lying around.”
“Because it could easily turn out to be a chick with a dick or whatever. And he’d be the last to know.”
“Even Ho—”
Shirley said, “Seriously, trust me. Last to know.”
“Yeah, okay,” Marcus said. “But he seems convinced.” He directed a sour look towards the doorway, and Ho’s office beyond. “Says he’s a one-woman man now.”
“He probably meant cumulatively.”
Marcus, who hadn’t been laid since his wife’s car was repo’ed, grunted.
