So he had felt the trembling of the Rover's engine before ever its growl rolled down the cliff to him, and he braced himself as he stood waiting in the wind. When its headlights appeared, aimed straight at him, he aimed back at them in his mind, estimating the Rover's speed by the telegraph poles and calculating the distance ahead that he would have to aim if he were sighting a rocket-propelled grenade. Meanwhile a corner of his vision waited on the hilltop in case they had a chase car or were sending in a decoy.
And when Rooke parked and Jonathan walked smiling through the gale with his torch, he had imagined shooting his two guests down the torch's beam, blowing off their green faces in alternate bursts. Players successfully negotiated. Sophie avenged.
But now as they left he was calm and saw different things. The storm had vanished, leaving torn-off shreds of cloud. A few stars lingered. Grey bullet holes made a spray pattern round the moon. Jonathan watched the Rover's tail-lights pass the meadow where he had planted his iris bulbs. In a few weeks, he thought, if the rabbits don't get through the wire, that meadow will be mauve. The taillights passed a bull warren, and he remembered how one warm evening, returning from Falmouth, he had surprised Jacob Pengelly and his girlfriend there, stripped of everything except each other, Jacob in transport straining back from her, the girl arched to him like an acrobat.
Next month will be a blue month on account of the bluebells, Pete Pengelly had told him. But this month now, Jack, this one is a gold month getting golder, with the gorse and cowslips and wild daffodils winning against all comers. Just you see if they don't, Jack. Cheers.
To complete me, Jonathan rehearsed to himself. To find the missing parts of me.
To make a man of me, which was what my father said the army did: one man.
To be useful. To stand upright. To rid my conscience of its burden.
He felt sick. Going to the kitchen, he gave himself a glass of water. A brass ship's clock hung above the door, and without pausing to think why, he wound it up. Then he went to the drawing room, where he kept his treasure: a grandmother long-case clock in fruitwood with a single weight, bought of Daphne's in Chapel Street for a song. He pulled the brass chain till the weight was at the top. Then he set the pendulum in motion.
"Reckon I'll go up my Aunt Hilary's in Teignmouth for a bit, then," Marilyn had said, no longer weeping. "Be a break, Teignmouth will, won't it?"
Jonathan had had an Aunt Hilary too, in Wales beside a golf club. She had followed him round the house putting the lights out, and prayed aloud to her dear Lord Jesus in the dark.
* * *
"Don't go," he had begged Sophie, in every way he knew, as they waited for the taxi to take them back to Luxor airport. "Don't go," he had begged her on the plane. "Leave him, he'll kill you, don't take the risk," he had begged her as he saw her into the cab that would take her back to her apartment, and Freddie Hamid.
"We both have our appointments with life, Mr. Pine," she had told him with her battered smile. "There are worse indignities, for an Arab woman, than being beaten by her lover. Freddie is very wealthy. He has made me certain practical promises. I have to consider my old age,"
It is mother's day as Jonathan walks into Esperance. His third cement truck in four hundred miles has dropped him on the crossroads at the top of the Avenue des Artisans. The signs as he strides down the sidewalk swinging his Third World air bag read merci maman, bienvenue á toutes les mamans and vaste buffet chinois des meres. The northern sun is an elixir to him. When he breathes, it is as if he is breathing light as well as air. I'm home. It's me.
