Gil's Decision

4

Gil’s Decision

    “You do have to do something, old man,” said Hill Tarlington cautiously.

    Gil Sotherland eyed him drily. “So they keep telling me.”

    “Well, uh, project management’s not that bad,” he said on a hopeful note.

    Gil swallowed a sigh. Hill had been in project management for some years now: he’d got out of the Army a couple of years after the regiment’s first stoush in the desert, an enforced stint in London pushing papers at the War Office having palled. Taken some daft job leading war games for corporate cretins all over the Yorkshire moors, realised the error of his ways and gone into project management, doing a couple of decent qualifications while he was at it. Which was all very well and good, but if Gil’s riffmatick wasn’t hopelessly off he’d still only have been in his early thirties, back then. And apart from a few negligible shrapnel scars on his bum for which a grateful country had awarded him the bloody M.C., fit as a flea. Whereas he, Gil, was an ageing crock with a shot-up lung. Well, not positively ancient, no, but he’d never see forty again. And frankly, the types Hill worked for sounded utterly tarsome. His job didn’t sound too bad—no. Got out on the sites with the chaps, saw the job through, all that. But he was doing it for a bloody Jap-owned hospitality concern, for God’s sake, with a considerable helping of the consequent corporate bullshit. Endless progress meetings instead of getting on with the job and actually making progress, great piles of bumf generated before, during and after anything that even looked like a decision—Hell, before, during and after any suggestion! And the projects themselves were poncy hotels for the flatulent feeble-minded with more moolah than sense. Not even built from scratch: conversions, that was what they specialised in. Lovely converted English country houses with almost-genuine antiques and full central heating. Well, plus some new bloody daft venture into, ye gods, something called ecolodges. In the warmer but less dangerous eco-parts of the world. Oh, one in New Zealand, really? Gil had been to New Zealand. It had not been warm—but it had certainly not been dangerous.

    “Define what an ecolodge is, Hill,” he suggested unkindly.

    “Can’t,” admitted Hill with a silly grin. “’Oliday lodge what’s very eco?”

    “Quite.”

    “Somewhere in the sun with very environmentally-friendly raw materials?” he offered.

    “Very environmentally-friendly Jacuzzis and hot and cold running massages, isn’t it?”

    “Who the fuck have you been talking to?” said Gil’s old comrade on a very weak note indeed.

    “Jerry Coleby. Said you tried to talk him into this eco-crap, too. Dunno what made you think he’d want to give up a very nice London flat, a cushy job in Whitehall, the warmth of old General Sir Michael Coleby’s approval and the prospect of Georgina Amberbrook once old Amberbrook shuffles off this mortal.”

    Hill looked very puzzled—as he well he might, given his history with the said Georgina, Lady Amberbrook—and asked: “What’s stopping him having her now?”

    “I meant,” replied Gil, looking very dry indeed, “a permanent helping of her plus the old man’s moolah.”

    “Good Christ! He wouldn’t?”

    Gil refrained from shrugging: it wasn’t just the hole in the chest, it was the fucking busted shoulder on top of it. Had a steel pin in it at some spot where no shoulder did ought, or some such story.  “Seemed serious about it last time he looked in.”

    Hill made a face. “It’s his funeral. Look, seriously, old man, we could use you at YDI.”

    “I really can’t face the prospect of swotting up a whole new profession at my age.”

    “Balls! You’d breeze through the project management stuff: just a matter of getting the patter under the belt and spouting it back at ’em to get the bit of paper!”

    “Sounds bloody tarsome,” replied Gil flatly.

    Hill bit his lip. “Well, uh, YDI can still use your skills, but these days you do need the bit of paper if you want to go anywhere with the career.”

    “Hill,” he said tiredly, “I don’t want to go anywhere with the career at all, in fact I don’t want a career, and I don’t even want to go anywhere!”

    “Perhaps you need a holiday first,” he said, giving him a worried look.

    “Push off, Hill,” replied Gil sourly, leaning back in his armchair and closing his eyes.

    “The bastards let you out of the fucking hospital too soon, that’s what,” he worried.

    “Balls,” said Gil with his eyes closed. “I’m all healed up. Just not interested in a bloody career.”

    “Look, it doesn’t have to be project management: YDI could use you on the Hospitality side!”

    Gil opened one eye to peer at him incredulously. “Tell me that doesn’t require a fucking piece of paper in the twenty-first century and I’ll eat the bloody strapping on me shoulder!”

    “N—well, depends what you— Well, nominally, yes.”

    Gil closed the eye again. “Nominally. Yeah. If you’re not going to talk nicely, push off.”

    “No, listen! We had quite a bit of bother finding the right manager to run the New Zealand ecolodge for us—the morons in Hospitality chose some fellow who’d been managing a half-timbered bijou effort for us in Suffolk: serves dainty little piles of strange Jap-inspired nosh scattered in horrid little green fronds of stuff, you know the style: sort of place that provides little bunches of grapes with its cheese”—Gil obligingly winced but didn’t go so far as to open his eyes—“and of course he was used to YDI’s complete supply chain, couldn’t cope with the local conditions at all, made a complete cock-up of the job; we had to put in a local girl: unqualified, but she’s doing a great job for us!”

    “I am not a local girl,” said Gil with his eyes closed.

    “No, but it shows one doesn’t need the piece of paper to be an excellent ecolodge manager!”

    Gil opened his eyes. “Hill, shut up about your bloody ecolodges, the mere word makes me want to scream with laughter, and the bloody shoulder gives me gyp if I so much as giggle. And I can’t take the nasty initialism ‘YDI’ once more today: I may throw a serious conniption if I hear it again.”

    “Sorry,” he said glumly. “I’ll leave you in pieces, then.” He got up, looking glum.

    Gil was aware that his disinclination to work as anything for YDI was not the only cause of this glumness. He swallowed a sigh but said: “Sit down, don’t be a tit. We haven’t opened that nice square bottle, yet. Pour us both a belt, for God’s sake.”

    Looking rather brighter, Hill poured them both a belt.

    Gil held his glass up in his good hand—naturally his right, as he was left-handed. “To Colin’s memory, and sod bloody Blair and fucking George Dubba-You and every fucking Iraqi that ever walked! And may that bloody neurosurgeon fry in Hell for five thousand eternities!”

    It was a month since their former commander, Colin Haworth, who had been badly shot up in Iraq about three months into the regiment’s second stoush in the desert, had unexpectedly died from a blood clot on the brain a good year after his fucking neurosurgeon had claimed it had dissipated. So Hill agreed sourly: “I’ll drink to that. To Colin!”

    They drank.

    After which Gil chucked his whisky tumbler very hard at the fireplace, saying loudly: “Fuck!” So Hill, looking very relieved, also chucked his, saying loudly: “Amen to that, with brass knobs on!”

    After which, anticlimactically, they had to find another couple of tumblers to pour themselves seconds, but they did both feel better. Well, Gil felt marginally better and that blue look round Hill’s mouth had gone, so he presumably felt better. And in fact told him happily about his fiancée and their plans. She was a lovely girl: Gil had met her briefly at Colin’s funeral. An Australian, though Hill had met her here, not out there when he was doing his ecolodge crap. Rather plump, gorgeous smile, glorious long, thick, wavy brown hair. Very natural-looking type. In strong contrast, in fact, to the scads of over-lipsticked society tarts, Georgina, Lady Amberbrook, being most certainly a case in point, who’d also been at the funeral. Not that it hadn’t been bloody decent of them to turn out. –How many of the tarts Gil had done in his time would bother to turn up if he dropped in his tracks tomorrow? Not that there was any chance of that, he had a clean bill of health and unlike poor bloody Colin had not been concussed.

    “What’s up?” asked Hill.

    Gil twitched. “Uh—sorry, old man. Just jealous, I think. I really liked your Hattie.”

    “You can’t ’ave ’er, she’s mine!” he replied gleefully, the lucky, bloody sod.

    “Yeah. Well, pour me another whisky as a consolation prize.”

    Hill duly poured him another. He waited until he’d swallowed and sighed and then said: “So it is all off between you and Marianne Wentworth, then?”

    “The bitch was doing half the ruddy Household Cavalry with my rock on her finger, Hill, so, yes!”

    “Mm. Sorry, old man.”

    “Er—no, don’t be, I’m relieved, as a matter of fact,” he admitted with a grimace. “Knew it was the wrong move, but—uh—well, not getting any younger, she was keen, claimed she wanted a home and kids, her family was pleased—actually I think I wanted to marry her for her brothers and parents, looking back. Well, Mummy was over the moon and bloody Father was overjoyed, but I’m afraid I’m long since past either caring about or soliciting their good opinion.”

    Hill had always been very close to his own parents: he looked at him sympathetically. General Sotherland was a prick of the first water, ramrod up the arse type, and the lady referred to as “Mummy” was on her fifth round of matrimony, with a rich American arms manufacturer who apparently didn’t mind that the second round had been, not with the gentleman she’d run off with while married to Sotherland—not that you could blame her for that—but with his chauffeur, that the third had been with a decrepit but very, very rich Italian, a former diplomat who, rumour said, had been doing her during his stint at the embassy in London while she was married to Sotherland, and that the fourth had been with a dim football star young enough to be her grandson. In between the second and third husbands there had been a considerable period in Paris as what could not, even in these days, accurately be described as anything other than a courtesan. She had done extremely well out of it trophy-wise but not so well matrimony-wise, hence the decrepit Italian.

    “Can’t see bloody Marianne turning up to my last rites,” noted Gil sourly.

    Hill jumped. “Eh? Oh! Think all who knew them were stunned to see Lady Daphne at Colin’s, Gil. Though mind you, I’d say she was genuinely in love with him, within her lights. Just had no grasp of the moral factors generally deemed to be involved when the band of gold’s on the left hand.”

    “No-o… Her sister’s a thoroughly decent woman, though.”

    “Face like the back of a bus, though, Gil.”

    “Mm. Well, possibly when you’ve spent twenty-five years or so being adored and spoiled by idiot males, not to say fancied by same, you don’t develop a moral sense. –Her and Marianne both.” He shrugged. “Ow!”

    “That’s what ya get for being so bloody disillusioned.”

    Gil sighed. “Hill, find me another girl like your Hattie and I’ll marry her tomorrow!”

    “Can’t. She’s unique,” he said smugly. “Well, dare say there might be another one out in Australia, but I doubt it. –Tell you what, you could go out there and suss them out!”

    “Yeah, at the same time just happening to suss out these fucking ecolodges of yours! Drop it, Hill, you’re starting to get bloody obvious.”

    “Could it hurt?” he replied mildly. “Isn’t young Whatsisface, your brother’s boy, out there? You could look him up!”

    Gil groaned. “The idiot nephew: yes. Dear little Phil—talking of spoilt rotten on account of your looks since your cradle! Bloody Julian’s little mistake. Well, yes, been out there for—Christ, must be eighteen months, now. Doing what, exactly, God knows, but as far as I know he hasn’t asked the family for money. Probably living off his mother, if he’s on form. –Well, he doesn’t write to me, Hill: doesn’t like nasty Uncle Gil: I told him to pull his finger out and get a decent job instead of poncing round the art galleries like a limp-wristed gay.”

    “That’s not a Mondrian print on your wall as we speak!” retorted Hill pointedly.

    “Mm. Had it for twenty years. Still fond of it. Bloody Marianne informed me it was anal. Well, if you can’t handle control, possibly it is.” He shrugged. “Ow! Shit!”

    Hill got up. “Think I’d better leave you to it. Take it easy, eh? But do think about what you’d like to do, Gil.”

    “Yes, sir, Major, sir!” replied Gil ironically, throwing a salute.

    The former Major Tarlington didn’t tell Colonel Sotherland that if he forgot the Army shit entirely he’d feel a lot better, though he felt like it. He just slung his hook, meditating ways and means.

    “We need to find something to take you out of yourself, Gil, dear,” said his Aunt Beatrice solicitously.

    Gil was under the impression that she’d done that: its name was Rosemary Laingholm, it was at most twenty-four, with a cloud of fluffy dark hair, enormous soulful blue eyes and cheeks like a ripe peach and it was sitting there looking at him soulfully. And peachily, yeah.

    Inexplicably, he had to clear his throat. “Er—mm. Well, the doc said to take it easy, Aunt Bea,” he said without hope.

    “Of course, my dear boy! But that doesn’t mean no distractions!” she beamed.

    Boy, Miss Laingholm was a distraction, all right. In fact, on closer inspection—not that there was any of that going on, of course—he’d put her down as not a day over twenty-three. At the most. Ooh-er.

    “Uh—what? Sorry, Aunt Bea, what was that?”

    “I was saying, Gil, the country’s horrible at this time of year—and don’t take any notice of anything your father says,”—funnily enough he hadn’t been going to—“but as I say, the Laingholms’ house is centrally heated and very cosy, and the most wonderful view of the sea: the sea air would do wonders for you, Gil! And if you did feel like doing a little fishing anybody would take you out in a boat—and then, Cornwall’s always so much warmer than the rest of the country!” She beamed at him.

    Gil had been to Cornwall. It was not warm. And if he stayed at the parents’ place he would be unable—physically unable, never mind he was a wounded ’ero—to stop himself leaping on the peach: his aunt must be purblind!

    “That’s a myth, Aunt Bea, I’m afraid,” he said as firmly as he could. Given his brain and his knees had turned to jelly and another part of the anatomy in between ’em was quite the opposite and distracting him from any sort of thought at all.

    “Mummy and Daddy would love to have you, Gil,” said the peach. She gave him a lovely smile and then just licked those cherry-red lips a little, Jesus!

    “Er—terribly kind, Rosemary, but I’m not up to travelling, just yet.”

    “You went down to Portsmouth, dear, for poor Colonel Haworth’s funeral,” his aunt reminded him kindly.

    “Yes, and I was knocked up for a week afterwards, if you must have it,” said Gil with a sigh.

    “Oh, dear! Why didn’t you say, dear?” she cried.

    God! Because he hadn’t wanted to be fussed over!

    “I expect he didn’t want anyone to make a fuss, dear Mrs Herrick!” suggested the peach brightly. “P’raps he could just come to something soothing in town with us?”

    Soothing? Like what? It’d have to incorporate total anaesthesia to get anywhere near soothing! Twenty-two at the most, definitely. God, why wasn’t he twenty-five again—even thirty would do—and fit as a fiddle? Ooh, imagine twirling round the dance floor with that—

    “Er, pardon?”—clutched to the manly chest, ooh— “A parade?” he croaked.

    “We’re going!” said the peach, beaming at him. “And you’d enjoy the soldiers!”

    “Rosemary, dear, don’t be silly, the last thing he needs is to be standing about in a chilly wind, with his poor chest!” said his aunt officiously. Silly old bat.

    “Oh, of course, I’m so sorry, Colonel Sother—I mean Gil!” she gasped. “Um, well, we are going to the Royal Academy, do you like pictures?”

    Yes, but they wouldn’t see any there, was the old bat bats? Taking a peach like that to— Oh, cor blimey! Oh, help! Under twenty-one, no, under twenty!

    “Rosemary,” he croaked, “are you a deb, by any chance?”

    She beamed at him. “Of course, Gil! Well, they don’t call it that any more, do they, really? Such a pity, and I do think being presented to the Queen would have been lovely, and these days it might be Prince William, that’d be extra-fabuloso! But that is what one is, really: dances and so forth. Mostly they’re awf’ly silly young boys that one has to dance with, though,” she added soulfully, looking at him soulfully,

    Oh, God. Not a day over eighteen, then. Gazetted jail-bait, in fact.

    “Yes,” he croaked. “Well, terribly good of you to ask, but I don’t think the Royal Academy’s my bag, really. –Er, if you do still say that?” he ended with a silly smile.

    “Not really, but I do know what you mean!” replied the peach with a loud giggle, eying his Mondrian. “That’s from one of those Mod dresses of the Sixties, isn’t it? Extra-fabuloso!”

    … “Why don’t you just shoot me now, Aunt Bea?” suggested Gil when the peach had pushed off to the loo.

    “What are you talking about, dear?” she replied tolerantly.

    He sighed. “Nothing, nothing… Is ‘extra-fabuloso’ the latest In word, or is it all her own?”

    “What? Good Heavens, I don’t know, Gil; you know what these children are!”

    “Not really, no, you don’t get many of those in the British Army. Well, none, really. Why the Hell are you dragging her around doing the deb thing?”

    His aunt bridled. “Well, your uncle’s hopeless, of course, he won’t do a thing these days, and when I said one has to live, he said he’d cut my credit card up—and it was only Harrods, I’d hardly spent a thing!—and, well, the Laingholms are very pleasant people, and they suggested it, and why not?” She looked at him defiantly.

    Gil had been under the impression that that sort of thing had gone out with tight-laced corsets and sprays of endangered species held in the hair with diamond clips. No, well, the corsets were back, and speaking purely from the male angle, one certainly got the point of ’em, so why wouldn’t the other thing be? “Yeah. Well, it’s your business, Aunt Bea, but don’t wear yourself out, will you?”

    Brightening horribly, she launched into it. Not tiring at all, young company, dear little girl—

    Yeah, she was that, all right. And gazetted jail-bait. And, in short, why had he ever been born?

    “Thought I’d pop in,” said Major Richardson with a grin. “This still your tipple?” he added, proffering a brown paper parcel shaped like a square bottle.

    “Yes; thanks, Martin.”

    “This is me nephew,” explained the burly major, indicating the very unfledged, pinkish thing that had accompanied him. Household Cavalry, yes, well. “Tommy Carteret, me sister’s boy.”

    “How do you do, Colonel Sotherland?” he gasped, coming smartly to attention. “Terrific honour, sir!”

    Gil sighed. “Sit down, Tommy, don’t be a blithering ass, we’re not on parade now.”

    “No, rather not, sir!” he beamed, sitting.

    “Household Cavalry,” explained his uncle redundantly,

    “I can see that,” said Gil heavily. “Teaching you to ride a gee-gee, are they, Tommy?”

    “No, well, I can do that, actually, sir!” he replied with a merry laugh. “Been learning all about tanks, though—we’re due for another stint up on Salisbury Plain next week, ’smatter of fact. I say, sir, came straight over, sorry about the get-up, y’know, but Uncle Martin popped in, said hurry up if y’want a lift—”

    “Yes, it has dawned that you’ve just come off duty. One can only thank God standing that it wasn’t the Colours,” replied Gil heavily.

    “Hardly be that at this time of day, sir!” he said with a merry laugh.

    “No. Nip out to the kitchen and grab us a jug of water and some glasses, will you?”

    “Rather, sir!” he agreed, scrambling up and nipping.

    “Why?” said Gil heavily to Major Richardson.

    “Eh? Oh—wanted to meet the hero of Tell Al-How’s-Your-Father, old man. Sorry.”

    “I do trust you’ve told him not to ask to see me wound?” replied Gil sweetly.

    Grinning, Major Richardson replied: “Not ten years old any more, y’know!”

    “You or him, Martin?”

    “Hah, hah. Feeling a bit more yourself, are you, Gil?” he said on a hopeful note.

    “Something like that, mm.”—That inane fledgling crashing around in the kitchen as they spoke—CRASH!—yeah, him—was just about the right age for that delirious little peach of a Rosemary, just by the way.—Blast: Martin was looking at him anxiously. As he was an old pal of Hill’s, very soon the word would be all around the chaps that he wasn’t feeling himself.

    “So how are the Horse Guards, Martin? You managed to lose their great big map of the world for ’em yet?”

    “Hah, hah,” he said tolerantly. “No, it’s all computers these days, y’know. I was telling Tommy—that’s a good lad, put ’em down here—telling him earlier, the brass have got us this new super-duper mapping program. Well, I say mapping: satellite links and God knows what! You see—”

    Yeah. Wasn’t it lovely to see a man happy in his work?

    Gil’s Aunt Vera was very unlike his Aunt Bea. She looked down her substantial nose and said: “I suppose you haven’t spoken to your father?”

    “Not for some time, no.”

    “He was very worried about you when you were wounded, Gil!” she said sharply.

    “Well, yes, he did come to see me in hospital. Didn’t say he was worried or look it, mind you, but he was there. Several times. Julian was there for a solid week, until the butchers declared me out of danger. But as you’re no doubt about to point out, he didn’t have anywhere else to be.”

    “That place of your father’s won’t run itself, you know!”

    Balls, ran on oiled wheels: wouldn’t dare to do otherwise with him in charge of it. And it was hardly a “place” as such. Nice old house, lovely old stables, few fields and a flourishing hazelnut wood.

    “I dare say,” he said in a bored voice.

    “Gil, he could use your help, you know.”

    What? Surely the old bastard hadn’t put her up to this? Er—no, wouldn’t lower himself, must be all her own idea.

    “It’s flattering of you to say so, Aunt Vera, but we both know he neither wants nor needs anybody’s help. Added to which, if he does want my help, he can ask for it.”

    “It would be better if the offer came from you, my dear.”

    “He’d prefer me to crawl to him, I’m sure of that, mm. –Don’t let’s quarrel, Aunt Vera. I can see you mean well, but I’d go barking mad doing anything at all in Father’s vicinity. Tell me some gossip instead. Seen Aunt Bea lately?” he added in a super-casual voice.

    “Bea! She’s trailing some inane girl round the debs’ parties for money! Thank God your father doesn’t know: he’d have a fit!”

    “I think it’s quite enterprising. Saw a little niche, grabbed it for herself. Is living off one’s husband more praiseworthy?”

    “Don’t be silly, Gil. –Well, if you want the gossip, as a matter of fact I did see Lilibet quite recently. She’d very much like to see you, my dear.”

    Gil’s ears rang. Yes, literally. He and Lilibet had married when they were both twenty-one, in the teeth of his Colonel’s opposition, be it said, but as both families were very keen, the thing had gone ahead. Lovely little Norman church in the country, flowery arches, yards of silk and lace—the lot. Arch of swords, absolutely. They had a short period of continual rows and reconciliations: she was spoilt, captious, and dazzlingly gorgeous—and then he was sent to the Falklands. He came home to find Lilibet gone and a note saying she was sorry but she didn’t like being a soldier’s wife after all and she and Micky Allison had decided she’d better get a divorce and marry him instead. Mr Allison, who was twice their ages, adorned the Foreign Office, and Gil had been under the impression both that he had political ambitions and that he was married already. He went round to his house, steaming, but a red-eyed Mrs Allison informed him that Micky was a filthy beast and had ruined his career and that he, Gil, was well rid of the horrid little slut and that she, Mrs A., had sacrificed the best years of her life to the bastard. Words to that effect: he’d been too angry to take much in. The two had disappeared, though various kind persons took it upon themselves to inform Gil that Micky Allison was on a year’s leave of absence, he hadn’t absconded from his job. No-one knew where they’d vanished to, and it eventually dawned on Gil that he was making a bloody fool of himself trying to find them, so he gave up and went to see a lawyer.

    Things settled down, and these days no-one except him seemed to remember the fugue: Micky Allison was now doing very well for himself in Brussels as an EU civil servant, married to a charming and, so it was said, very determined Dutch woman, and Lilibet had married an older chap who’d made his pile in packaging materials and made him retire to, variously, a small manor house in Kent and a villa in Tuscany. She was, of course, the same age as Gil: forty-four this year, in fact. And after more than half a lifetime without the bitch he wasn’t interested in even talking about her. Though in the wake of the Marianne episode he had reflected sourly that the experience hadn’t taught him as much about spoilt, pretty women who’d had their own way all their lives as it should have.

    “Well, I wouldn’t very much like to see her! Are you mad?”

    His aunt went rather red. “Don’t say that, Gil! She’s a widow now, you know, and—and I do think she regrets the past, dear.”

    “She regrets being forty-four and not as rich a widow as she planned to be, I think you mean. Sorry, not interested. Er—and if I wanted to, not to blow my own trumpet, I probably could do better, you know.”

    “But Gil, dear, you’ve got no-one in your life! A man needs company!”

    Not on a permanent basis he didn’t have, no, but there had been a few. Well, quite a few. Not the sort you’d report to your aunt, though, so he didn’t. “I’m a crock at the moment: not up for the emotional stuff, thanks. Need a bit of R&R.”

    “Well, in that case, Gil, I know just the thing!”

    “Not Cornwall again?” he groaned.

    “What? No! What on earth gave you that idea? No, Jane and Jerry Fuller know someone with a very nice little villa on the Costa— Now don’t make that sort of face, Gil, it’s quite an exclusive area, you are not going to bump into wide boys avoiding British taxes or—or great train robbers or anyone of that sort!”

    Good Christ, where did she get this stuff—not to say the vocabulary—from? Gil just sat back and gaped as she rattled on and on and on…

    “Sounds lovely. But I haven’t got the energy, and the surgeon’s told me to keep the chest out of the sun for a bit,” he said firmly.

    “But my dear boy, you could wear a—”

    “No.”

    He did win that round but it was so exhausting that he had to have a triple Johnnie and a wee sleep after it. See: proved he wasn’t up for anything much, didn’t it?

    Oh, God! Was he up for it or was he up for it! “What are you doing here?” he croaked.

    “Oh, well, I do hope it isn’t inconvenient, Gil, but I was in the neighbourhood and I suddenly thought, surely this is near where Colonel Soth—Gil lives, and so I thought I’d just pop round to see how you are!” beamed the peach.

    “Rosemary, these are technically what is are known as bachelor chambers and girls don’t just pop round to ’em.”

    Rosemary gave a loud giggle. “Silly! You sound just like something out of Jane Austen!”

    “Er—well, possibly as late as Evelyn Waugh. Come in, I suppose,” he groaned.

    Giggling, the peach came in. “I just brought you a little something for lunch,” she cooed.

    Mm. It was in a carrier-bag from Fortnum’s, and Fortnum’s was nowhere near his flat, so she had not been in the neighbourhood at all—if anyone was imagining she had been, which he didn’t think anyone present and breathing in this here flat at this point in time was.

    “I’ll eat it—provided it doesn’t incorporate frondy little Japanese-style greens”—she giggled again, shaking the soft black cloud of hair—“but that is all I will do.”

    “You poor weak boy!” she cooed, gazing up at him soulfully. “It’ll make you feel ever so much better, I promise!”

    Yeah. Right. The infant was mad, that was wot. Why pick on him? Er, wounded ’ero syndrome? He was aware some women found him attractive—mature, grown women—but a thing barely out of the egg, for God’s sake? He was tall, and the lower limbs had been admired in their time by the distaff side, and he was pretty slim and before the Iraqis had had a go at him had been pretty fit. But he was scarcely an Adonis. Lightish, brownish hair which had a hint of gold in it in the sun but which now also had a hint of silver, sort of squarish, ordinary face, slightly flattened nose, it did it naturally, not the result of the boxing he’d done in his youth—far-off youth, yes—and a wideish mouth which certain ladies had decided was his best feature, nibbling the fullish lower lip as they did s— Uh, yeah. None of the features were particularly regular. His eyes were blue but so were half of England’s. Not the answer to a maiden’s prayer, in short. And them lines from nose to mouth did not completely vanish when he stopped smiling fatuously—like he was of this minute, actually, so he’d better stop. God!

    Aw, gee, the lunch included a bottle of plonk. Er—well, yes, Mateus Rosé was “a good brand”, he agreed weakly, not mentioning that he hadn’t drunk anything this pink since he was about seventeen. She’d thought it would be nice for lunch and white wine was so boring? Er, mm. There was some sort of chicken pie with that strange, flaky, Greek-style pastry, didn’t know Fortnum’s did that but presumably they had a market to satisfy, and, good God, a piece of real pâté—well, yes, Fortnum’s knew what it was but he’d have taken his dying oath the peach didn’t—and, good God, a hunk of real Stilton! And a lovely stick of French bread to help it down. And she hadn’t known what he’d like for pudding—Gil braced himself—but everybody liked ice cream, didn’t they? And this one was yummy! Weakly Colonel Gilbert Sotherland, DSO, aged forty-four, agreed that the very pink strawberry ice looked yummy. Well, matched the wine—yes.

    So they had it all. He honestly couldn’t have said what it tasted like. Though he did register that the pink ice struck somewhat strangely upon the palate in conjunction with the Stilton. Then she bustled into his kitchen and made coffee.

    “It’s not very strong,” she beamed, “but then, I don’t think you need it too strong if you’ve got a weak chest, do you?”

    “Er, no, of course not, Rosemary.” What had she done? He had a perfectly decent Italian coffee-pot, it made wonderful strong espresso-style coffee with no effort whatsoever. “Um, how much coffee did you put in?” he croaked.

    “Well, a spoonful each!” the deluded infant beamed. “As one does!”

    Uh—right. Oh, good grief, she must mean a teaspoonful! Thought it was like instant coffee!

    “Mm, lovely. Not too strong, at all,” he croaked.

    She beamed at him over her cup and lapped it up like nobody’s business. Oh, deary, deary, dear. If ever there was anything calculated to make a gentleman no longer in his first youth with one of the greatest hard-ons of his adult life feel very, very elderly…

    “Shall we listen to some lovely music?” she cooed, putting her cup down.

    Gil seized the chance to put his down, too. And just waited.

    “All classical,” said the peach in a stunned voice.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “But— Um, well, dear Mrs Herrick took me to a classical concert, it was lovely, much nicer than the orchestra at school! Mozart. Um, and some others, I think, but I didn’t recognise their names. Um, aren’t you into pop at all, Gil?”

    “No.”

    “Not even old-time pop?” she asked sadly. “Like, um, The Beatles, or um, well, Elton John?”

    Gil coughed suddenly. “Er, no. Never was, really. Um, well, put some Mozart on if you’d like to, by all means.”

    She looked through his CDs blankly. “Ooh, here’s one of excerpts! Shall we have it?”

    He usually listened to it when he was driving on the M1 or something similar: reasonably soothing and not so distracting that one would end up under a large lorry. He didn’t say that that was all excerpts were fit for, and it had been a present, and he had a rooted dislike of excerpts, he just let her put it on.

    “Ooh, I know this!” she beamed as the strains of Voi che sapete rang out. “La, la—I say, her Italian’s not very good, is it?” she said cheerfully, coming to perch on the arm of his chair.

    “Uh—what?” She smelled completely entrancing, what on earth was it? Not a classic perfume. Well, muguet des bois, yes: he’d once been in Paris in spring when the florists had been full of it, delicious, but— “Oh—yes, English singer.” He let the song finish and then asked, more or less in spite of himself: “What is that perfume, Rosemary?”

    “Lily of the Valley,” she replied simply.

    “Er, yes, ’course, muguet des bois, but what is it?”

    “It is Lily of the Valley, silly!” she gurgled. “It’s one of the pure flower perfumes from Penhaligon’s!”

    Uh—was it? He’d been under the impression they made gentlemen’s cologne, in fact hadn't Grandfather’s lavender water stuff been by them? Okay, they made pure flower perfumes as well. “Mm, what, Rosemary? Yes, perfumes do have notes,” he agreed weakly.

    “Top note geranium, middle note lily of the valley and base note sandalwood!” she carolled. “It’s on the container!”

    Right. All he could smell was warm lily of the valley and warm Rosemary, Jesus! “Uh—look, Rosemary, lovely though this is, I really think you’d better go,” he said desperately.

    She gave him a soulful look. “But Gil, I thought we could have a little fun. I mean, you’re not so sick as all that, are you?” she cooed, looking soulfully at the bulge in his pants.

    “No. I mean, I’m not up for— I mean— Blast!” he said as she collapsed in giggles.

    “I’m not a virgin, Gil, darling,” she cooed, batting the long, black, deliciously curled and tangled eyelashes terrifically.

    “Nuh—uh— Got nothing to do with it, I’m more than twice your age!”

    “Pooh, that doesn’t matter between a man and a woman!”

    “You are not a woman,” said Gil clearly. “And I’m old enough to be your father and you’re far too young for me to even think about it!”

    “But you are thinking about it, Gil,” she cooed, looking soulfully at it again.

    Gil cleared his throat desperately. “That’s not thought, you daft ’aporth, and if you were older you’d bloody well know it!”

    “I’m not necessarily proposing actual intercourse—only if you felt like it, Gil,” she said soulfully, favouring him with the eyelashes again. “And of course we wouldn’t do anything to hurt your poor shoulder.”

    “You’re damn right, there!”

    “No, see, what I thought was,” she said soulfully, “we could use that nice big sofa of yours and I could go on top!”

    Gil Sotherland found he had gone very, very red. “No,” he said shortly, getting up. “Come on, grab your handbag and your coat: you’re going.”

    Rosemary jumped off the arm of the chair. “I’m quite experienced, Gil!” She came up very close and cooed: “I could just do something very nice for you, if you think the other’s too naughty.” The tongue licked the cherry lips.

    “No, you couldn’t—Jesus! Don’t do that!” he gasped.

    Rosemary’s hand retreated from his crotch but she looked up at him hopefully.

    “Oh, God! Go—away,” he said through his teeth.

    “Well, I will go, darling Gil, ’cos the last thing I want is for us to have a row before we’ve hardly even got to know each other properly—and as a matter of fact I’m not into rows, they’re not nice, are they?” she said with a blinding smile. “But I’m not giving up, it’s not a passing fancy.”

    “You’re eighteen: of course it’s a passing fancy, you benighted infant!” he cried.

    “No, twenty. I didn’t do awf’ly well at school, so Mum and Dad thought maybe I’d better go to finishing school and be polished and learn how to be a lady: silly, isn’t it? Terribly old-fashioned! I wanted to go to university but Dad said I should have worked harder at school. But in any case I’ve rethought my options,” she said, smiling that blinding, seraphic smile again.

    “Oh?” he croaked feebly.

    “Mm!” she said, nodding the misty black cloud. Ooh, er, she had tiny pink shell shapes in those tiny perfect ears, why hadn’t he noticed them earlier? Ooh, one could just nibble them off—

    “Eh?”

    “Yes: lovely little house and darling babies first, you see, Gil! Two, I think,” she said soulfully. “One of each would be nice, such a pity one can’t plan it, isn’t it? Mrs Herrick showed me some of her family photos: you were the dearest little boy! –And then, you see, by the time I’m in my late thirties they’ll be ready to leave home, and I’ll still be comparatively young. It’s such a difficult period, so often, for a woman when the chicks leave the nest, isn’t it? ’Cos you see, they leave it too late to have an alternative career. But that’s what I’m going to do: I’ll do my degree then! And by that time of course you’ll be at retirement age,”—What? How had he got into this scenario?—“and so of course it’ll be your turn to be a house hubby! Won’t it work out perfectly? I might go into politics, like in that lovely series with the lady from To The Manor Born, I can’t remember what it was called but it was about Parliament. I mean, her husband’s a bit older, I don’t think she married early enough, but he’s a house hubby!” She panted and beamed.

    Gil took a very deep breath. “This is a complete fantasy, Rosemary, and please leave me right out of it!”

    “But Gil, darlingest, you’re the point of it,” she said soulfully.

    “Rosemary, go away before I give you the damn’ good spanking your parents should have given you long since!”

    Giggling, Rosemary danced over to the door. “I’m going! And I must say I’m not absolutely into S&M, but that sounds like super-extra-fabuloso fun, we must try it some day! –Think about it all, darling Gil, it’d just be perfect! And I’m not giving up!” With that she vanished.

    Gil’s legs gave way and he sank down onto the aforementioned sofa. His hands were actually trembling, he noticed in a faint, fuddled, far-off way. Christ! It was a fantasy, of course, a complete fantasy, the deluded peach would forget his elderly self two seconds after something inane, hefty and very, very young, like Martin Richardson’s dim nephew, gave her the eye. But—God!

    … Twenty. We-ell— No. Now who was fantasising? Absolutely not.

    “Well, let’s face it, old man, one has to do something!” said Adam Gilfillan with a silly laugh.

    Gil eyed him drily. “So they do keep telling me.” –He was fully aware that during their mutual time in the regiment Adam had thought the sun shone out of Hill Tarlington’s arse, so Guess Who had put him up to this? Adam had been out for approximately three months, so he could hardly be called an expert in second bloody careers.

    “No, well, the Army’s not the be-all and end-all, y’know, Gil,” he said, avoiding his eye.

    “Going well on your Uncle Hugo’s fish farm, is it, Adam?” asked Gil solicitously.

    “Why wouldn’t it be?” he retorted, sticking out his chin defiantly.

    “Oh—no reason. Personally I’ve no ambition to spend me declining years gutting salmon, but if it’s what you fancy, why not?”

    Adam had brought him a long, interestingly-shaped package. “Okay, be like that; I’ll take this back!”

    “Er—no, don’t,” said Gil weakly. “Bung it in the fridge, would you? And ta muchly.”

    “It is smoked, it’ll keep in the larder.”

    “Not with the central heating in this bloody building.”

    “It is warm in here,” conceded Adam, getting up. “Um, thought it was just because, um, the medicos might have told you to keep warm,” he muttered.

    “No, the whole block’s sweltering, there’s something wrong with the heating, you benighted ass!”

    “Right,” he said meekly, getting up to put the salmon in the fridge.

    Gil sighed. Adam was a decent chap, but he was a bit of a follower. Which the Army had duly recognised: he’d got his majority some years since but had stuck there. Currently he was following in Hugo Gilfillan’s fishy footsteps because Hugo was a damn’ strong-minded chap—and, incidentally, with one son and two daughters who were all in good professions and didn’t like fish. He’d obviously decided Adam was going to be the heir. Adam was very good-looking and had never had any trouble in attracting strings of bird: tall, dark and ’andsome just about summed it up. What the distaff side called Irish looks, though Gil personally didn’t know any Irish chaps that had ’em. However, attracting strings of bird and keeping them were two different things; so when he sat down again Gil asked cautiously: “Sally did go up to Scotland with you, did she?”

    Adam shrugged. “She came, she saw, she loathed it, she went.”

    Right. The rumour that they were going to get engaged had been wrong, then.

    Adam helped himself to whisky. There was a distinct pout on his face—the full lower lip was much admired by the ladies but most of the sterner sex didn’t consider a sulky pout an asset in a chap. “Helena popped up for a week, thought that might work out.”

    Helena Durrant was as fond of the bright lights as Sally Gresham-Wright was, so Gil replied without hope: “Mm?”

    “Hated every moment of it, let that ass James Duff-Ross drive her back down.”

    Ouch. In the Porsche, this would have been. Er—talking of Duff-Rosses…

    “Don’t look at me like that!” said Adam crossly, pouting more than ever. “As a matter of fact Willi did pop over with him—well, their father’s place isn’t that far, y’know—but it wasn’t like that!”

    “It wasn’t like that before Helena slung ’er ’ook, you mean,” replied Gil drily.

    Adam pouted and shrugged. “It was on offer.”

    Well, yeah. It had also been on offer to Colin Haworth, who happened to be Willi Duff-Ross’s cousin—she wasn’t all bad, she’d turned up to the funeral genuinely red-eyed—and Gil rather thought also to Hill Tarlington, not necessarily at the same period but very close to it, and he knew for a fact she’d had a prolonged holiday in Corfu not so long since with, uh, well, some chap, and another one another year with a completely different chap in, uh, the West Indies, was it? Oh, yes: that was the summer poor old Colin had been in hospital and the lure of Nassau or wherever had been much stronger than that of sick-visiting. She was tall, red-headed and, though she must be well into her thirties by this time—there had been a husband, some time back, but she’d gone back to her maiden name—still extremely luscious, if you liked ’em voluptuous, and there was no indication that Adam didn’t.

    “Mm. Uh—who was that chap she went to Nassau with, the year Colin was shot up?”

    “Uh—dunno,” Adam admitted. “Uh—Guy Vane?”

    “No, you cretin! He was in the desert with us!”

    “Oh, yes, so he was. Couldn’t have been him, then. Think Terence Haworth was up her at one stage, if we’re counting.”

    “Uh—oh, yeah, Colin’s cousin. At least he isn’t a blood relative, but I’m not counting.”

    “Nor am I: she’s a slag,” he said, this time with a defiant pout.

    Gil didn’t bother to say then why do her: he knew bloody well why one did them. “Mm. Well, uh, just as a hypothetical suppose, Adam, if you were to give the salmon away, any idea what else you might do?”

    “I’d really fancy something with horses.”

    “Ye-ah. There are an awful lot of chaps that can ride a bit, old man.”

    “Mm. Um sorry, Gil, didn’t mean to bring the subject up,” he said awkwardly.

    “Forget it.”

    “Timmy Everett was saying you sold your polo ponies to him.”

    “Yeah, no point in keeping them, the shoulder’ll never let me play the piano again.”

    “Mm. Um, talking of Terence Haworth—you do know he’s taken up with his brother’s wife’s cousin, do you? Lovely blonde girl, looks just like her? –Yes. Bumped into him at the Army and Navy, chewing the fat, y’know—this was before he decided to buy the pub in his brother’s village, y’see,”—at this point Gil refrained from sighing, but it was an effort—“and he mentioned that he was thinking of doing something with horses in Australia.”

    “Herding sheep in the dust?” he croaked.

    “Or cattle: think they have huge cattle ranches too, don’t they? But nothing like that. Er, the phrase ‘dude ranch’ was mentioned. But,” he said quickly before Gil could scream, “what he was thinking of was something more on the lines of a B&B with a bit of horse riding on the side. Well, by and large Australians are quite athletic, outdoors-y types: no reason it shouldn’t be a goer.”

    Cautiously Gil replied: “It’s possible there’d be a market, mm. But, uh, that sort of venture takes capital, old chap. Dunno about you, but I always found Army pay didn’t stretch all that far. Well, after the divorce,” he said, grimacing, “decided not to put it away for a rainy day, ’cos it was raining, so most of it went on the string. Not just the cost of buying the nags: feeding and housing ’em, that sort of thing. Vets’ bills. Which, by the way, one’d be up for with any sort of riding establishment.”

    “Yes, s’pose so. Um, I’ve got a few thou’ put by; not all that much, though. Um, well, don’t need to buy a car, really,” he said vaguely.

    “No, but from what I’ve heard about Australia, you’d have to buy one the minute you got there: the distances are huge, everybody drives. You didn’t own that flat you used to have? –No. I don’t own this dump, either. Costing me a fortune in rent. Should have taken bloody Father’s advice, got a gi-normous mortgage and bought myself a dump, in order not to live in it for most of the year.”

    “Well, yes, bit pointless when one’s never stationed within spitting distance of the joint. Er—don’t suppose the General would cough up, would he?”

    Gil snorted. “What, for the blue-eyed boy? No, Adam, I’ve told the old fart what I think of his treatment of poor Julian too often. Not to say of his grasp of elementary tactics!”

    “Ouch. Well, that’s out. Well, uh—pool our resources?” he suggested, looking at him hopefully.

    Gil scratched his chin. “Mm-m… Maybe. What about your Uncle Hugo, though? Aren’t you more or less committed, there?”

    Pouting more horribly than ever, Adam replied crossly: “I thought I was, but I don’t think I can take it, Gil! The old bugger wants to own me, lock, stock and barrel! I mean, the life’s not bad, though the winters up there are shocking, but Jesus! He’s started telling me when I can take the estate waggon—no-one else wants it, he’s got his own crate and the fishery staff all drive their own cars—and what time I have to get back in the evenings—I’m not kidding!—and last week the bloody decree went forth that no sliced white bread will be served for breakfast and it has to be fucking porridge! And when I asked Mrs McIver why there was no fire in my room the other day she said he’d decided not to light the fires after the first of May! And it was brass monkeys, Gil! I mean, good God, I’m used to the worst of conditions—well, after Iraq, almost anything’s a bed of roses—but telling a chap of my age when he can or can’t have a fire? And two days before I left he ordered me—I’m not kidding—ordered me to go to some damned local hop with the local Presbyterian minister’s bloody daughter!”

    “Mm. Well, he does strike forcibly as a control freak, Adam. Er, was it the Presbyterianism that was the sticking-point?”

    “Eh? No! It was the scrawny and the moustache!” he said angrily.

    Right. Got it. Oh, dear, he was looking at him hopefully again. “Ye-ah… That sort of thing needs careful planning. Um, for one thing, there are all the complications of the local conditions—droughts, bushfires, floods, think in some parts they have hurricanes, as well—not saying there’d necessarily be a disaster, but there’s a whole gamut of stuff that could affect the number of punters willing to turn up. And then, one would have to deal with ’em when they did turn up. Can’t order paying guests around like the chaps, can one? What if they were dyed-in-the-wool pains in the arse?”

    “They couldn’t be worse than Uncle Hugo!” the poor chap replied bitterly.

    Well, no, possibly not, but he manifestly hadn’t coped at all with him. True, he had been pretty good with the men, and well-liked by his fellow officers… “Um, look, as I think you know, Hill was round here last month chewing my ear,”—Adam had gone very red but Gil managed to ignore it—“and I think to run a place like that successfully you’d have to have the sort of qualifications he was blathering about. Hospitality qualifications, Adam.”

    “Eh? But YDI manages a huge number of hotels! That’s quite different!”

    “Different in that they’re very successful?” returned Gil drily. “–I know you can fall off a horse okay, don’t tell me,” he said heavily as he began to tell him. “Didn’t I say, about fifteen hours back, that there’s a lot of chaps that can do that?”

    “Mm. ’Tis a start, though. Um, well, what about you, Gil?”

    If he went to Australia he’d never see the luscious little peach again, would he? So much the bloody better! “It’s worth thinking about. Dare say I might check up on bloody Phil, too. –My nephew, Julian’s boy. Went out to see his mother. No, well, went out to spite Father, but the declared intention was to see his mother. Um, and talking of Australian properties at the back of beyond, there is a place some old uncle left him and the mother jointly.”

    He brightened horribly. “I say!”

    Gil scratched his jaw, looking rueful. “Last time he saw me he told me I was an interfering old has-been that couldn’t see past Sandhurst and the regiment.”

    Adam collapsed in gleeful sniggers.

    “Yeah. Well, in the first place the property belongs to Phil and his mother, not to us, and in the second place, while it’s not so very far from Sydney, it’s only about twenty acres, which isn’t a farm in their terms. And I think—well, got curious, looked at a couple of maps—that the terrain in those parts is all very broken: foothills, more or less, interspersed with more or less dead waterways. No cash went along with the legacy, which seems to me to indicate that the old uncle never made a sou out of the place.” He shrugged, and grimaced. “Ow! Bugger it!”

    “Um, well, if the place just needs a bit of cash put into it—”

    “Mm. Put it down as a vague possibility—if Phil wants his uncle and his uncle’s Army buddy to run the place for him. The mother has every right to loathe anything even remotely related to Father, y’know. Well, he forced Julian to marry her—”

    “But then, surely—

    “No. This was Father, Adam,” said Gil heavily. “He also forced her to sign the kid over to him. Possibly persuading her that he could give him a better life— Well, I don’t know the full details, this was back in ’85: the regiment was in Northern Ireland and I’m afraid Julian’s peccadilloes were the last thing on my mind. But according to Julian the old bastard didn’t pay her off, did it by persuasion alone. They were both only kids—seventeen,” he said with a sigh.

    “Uh—I hadn’t realised,” said Adam weakly. “What was Julian doing out there?”

    Gil sighed again. “One of Father’s hair-brained ideas. Send the boy to that school they sent H.R.H. to, stiffen up his sinews— God knows! Spending his hols with some friends of friends in Sydney, met the girl—” He shrugged.

    “I see. Um, but if she knew these friends—”

    “No, picked her up in, guess what? An art gallery,” said Gil heavily.

    “Right.” He cleared his throat. “There are worse things he could have picked up in art galleries, old man.”

    “Tell that to Father. –Well, yes!” Gil admitted with a grin. “Well, um, I will think seriously about the Australia idea, Adam. Nothing much left for me here.”

    Uh—old Sotherland was doubtless under the impression that his place in the country was left for him here. Adam winced, but nodded. “Good! Um, your brother’ll miss you, though, Gil,” he added cautiously.

    “When he’s not rotating between Ther Bee-’ah-mas, Saint Moritz, Réunion and Corfu with any one of a dozen ladies who ought to know better, y’mean? Well, no, actually. The latest—and don’t spread it around, old man, will you, it’s not definite yet—but the latest is that Myra Pennington Brandt intends to marry him and cart him off to the States with her!”

    “Golly,” said Adam numbly.

    “Puts it well! Well, the amount old Brandt left her won’t stick in Father’s craw, but the rest of it—! Let’s not mention a lady’s age, but she can give Julian a few years; and then, American? He loathes the Yanks! And she was Boston Irish originally, y’know—back in the days when she caught old Pennington. The Irish are Father’s anathema! And—hah, hah—Catholic! He’ll explode!”

    “Uh, but— No, hang on, she’s a widow, of course.”

    “Twice,” agreed Gil drily. He waited until Adam’s splutters had died down and added: “No-one’d hold Myra up as a model of marital fidelity, but it did last about fifteen years, and by all accounts old Brandt was happy as Larry; and he must have been pushing ninety when he went, so she certainly deserves something as pretty as Julian!” He collapsed in awful sniggers, clutching at his bad shoulder as he did so.

    Adam grinned but said cautiously “So you are pleased, then?”

    “Oh, Hell, yes! Well, terrifically managing woman, of course, but then that’s what Julian needs! She’ll take over where Father left off, but she’ll do it ever so tactfully.”

    “Mm. Uh, will he stick at it, though, do you think, Gil?”

    Of course Julian Sotherland had never stuck at anything in his life. However, Gil replied: “Don’t think it’ll be up to him, frankly. I’m quite sure she’ll let him have his little bits on the side—if he’s got the energy for it, reliably reputed to be a demanding woman, Myra, y’know! But it’ll all go smooth as silk. God knows Pennington was notorious over two continents in his day—make that three, there was that spell when the State Department sent him to the East, of course—but once he married Myra all that nonsense stopped. Let him have his little secretary, far too much sense to put her foot down over something like that, fed him on the best, buttered up his diplomatic and political pals like nobody’s biz, and Bob was very much your uncle. And old Brandt dropped that French actress for her, y’know: he’d been keeping her for years: think the poor woman thought he’d marry her when Louise Brandt popped off. But lo! There was dear Myra, all ready to pick up the pieces and serve him up seven-course gourmet meals and run his houses like clockwork for him, meanwhile doing him great credit on his arm at anything y’like to name. If he’d been a younger man, she’d have had him in the White House by this time,” he added thoughtfully.

    Adam gulped, but nodded.

    “Think she’s decided,” said Gil, his eyes twinkling, “that it’s time she gave herself a little treat.”

    Adam nodded gamely. Julian Sotherland fell into that category, all right.

    Julian sat on his brother’s sofa, sipping whisky. “Oh, well—y’know,” he said airily. “Dare say Myra’s right and it is time I settled down.”

    “Uh-huh. What happened to that job carting rich Yanks around the châteaux of the Loire?”

    He waved a careless hand. “Went frightfully well, old man. Half of them belong to some damn’ New York ‘Save the Old Buildings of Versailles’ folderol: can’t speak a word of French to save their lives, terrifically chuffed to have yours truly do all the hard bits for ’em! Seems there’s a few Frogs over at Versailles that are up with the play, got them eating out of their hands, taken care never to let on there’s other old buildings round the place as well, so they were tickled pink to be taken gently by the hand and shown something a bit different. Only the thing is,”—Gil braced himself: there always was a thing, of course—“half of them—no, more than half—are widows or divorcées, started giving yours truly the eye, and, uh, well, wasn’t all bad, but the rivalry was getting to silly proportions, if y’see what I mean.”

    “No, I don’t see,” replied Gil heavily. “I have never had a clutch of rich American widows and divorcées fighting over me in my life, Julian.”

    “Ought to give them half a chance, old boy!” He collapsed in sniggers.

    Gil just waited until the noise died down. “So you decided to give it away because of the embarrassment?”

    “Not only the embarrassment, old man: the Cartier watches, the lorry-loads of silk shirts, the ‘just casual’ Armani jackets—if they’re casual it’s okay to give ’em, apparently.” He shrugged. “Dunno why they all imagine one hasn’t a rag to one’s name.”

    Gil eyed him sardonically. Julian as of this moment was clad in what was probably a casual Armani jacket: it looked rich as well as silly, put it like that: a light tan with just a hint of pink in it, possibly linen but even more possibly a mixture of linen and silk, over a collarless silk shirt of a truly offensive shade of pale blue. Many chaps wore pale blue shirts, true. This shirt, however, was, uh… powder blue. That was it, yeah. Powder blue. Ugh. He wore a lot of blue: it set off, according to him, the thick, honey-coloured straight hair—it showed no signs of thinning, although he was now thirty-seven. The long lower limbs which he would admit quite freely, in fact all too freely, were two of his greatest assets, were merely clad in dark denim. Excessively well cut and doubtless having cost a disgusting amount. As he would admit all too freely, it was a “look” that the ladies admired. Sometimes he varied it with a manly tweed jacket, depending on the weather or the mood— Oh, forget it. Peacock always had been his middle name.

    “Setting aside the crucial question of your wardrobe, Julian, do you actually want to marry Myra?”

    “Well, quite, y’know. And she fancies being a Sotherland,” he replied lightly.

    Gil winced. “Um, she does realise you’re not the oldest son or flavour of the month with the old bastard, does she?”

    “Oh, well, yes, but she’s been looking us up, y’see. Says we’re Plantagenets or some such blather—well, don’t look at me! Y’know what Yanks are. And if the old bastard ever does think of selling that dump of his—”

    “Julian, I honestly think he’d rather die.”

    “Well, yes,” he admitted regretfully. “Dashed nice thought, though, eh?”

    Gil’s eyes met his. They both broke down in horrible splutters.

    “Yes,” said Julian feebly, mopping his eyes. “Well, Mummy was a Luton, of course, that helps. Likes the thought we’re related to Sare.”

    “The late Lord Sare cut Mummy off without a shilling when she ran off with Whatsisname: Teddy Luton claims the silly old sod actually struck her name out of the family Bible,” Gil reminded him.

    “Nevertheless, old chap, our cousin’s a belted—er, well, baron, but the Yanks—” Gil had broken down in splutters again. “—don’t distinguish!” ended Julian with a laugh. “No, well, very fond of Myra, y’know. And she’s right, dash it! ’Tis time I settled down. And she doesn’t expect too much of a fellow, she’s made that quite clear. Think it’ll work out quite well.”

    That was as good as it was gonna get, so Gil didn’t press him. “Well, if it’s what you want, Julian, I’m very glad. Told Phil yet?”

    Julian looked smug. “As a matter of fact, yes. Wasn’t too sure I had the address right—well, he does write, y’know, but usually just postcards, no room for a return address—but Myra got her social secretary to look it up on the Internet: did you know y’could do that these days? Fascinating. Told me she looks up all sorts of things. –What’s that face for?”

    “What does this social secretary look like?” asked Gil in a voice of doom.

    Julian looked down the lovely straight, slender Sotherland nose that Phil had inherited but Gil had missed out on. “Not that daft, old chap: wouldn’t dream of fouling me own nest! But as a matter of fact, looks like the back of a bus. Whiskery. Retired nun or some such.”

    Gil gulped. He might have known! Trust Myra Pennington Brandt for that. But, uh, even for Myra, wasn’t that over the top and down the other side? “Retired nun?” he croaked.

    “Er—not the word? Uh—not defrocked, no. Well, given it up, y’know, Gil. Myra found her workin’ for some damn’ charity that asked her to be on their committee, think was the word, saw how efficient she was, snaffled her up.”

    Gil found he couldn’t laugh: he just nodded feebly. Trust Myra.

    Julian cleared his throat. “Er—Myra thinks we ought to tell Father personally.”

    “God!”

    “Well, yeah. Tried to hint her off, y’know: didn’t work. Thing is, in the Yanks’ terms she’s not nobody, Gil, and she can’t understand that the old bastard won’t mince words.”

    “Mm. Er—it’s no use looking at me, Julian. Not that I give a damn if I’m on his bad side for all eternity—in fact I’d prefer it; but it really isn’t up to— No, hang on!”

    “Yes?” said Julian eagerly.

    “How’s this? Drop in at the Army and Navy, bump into the old bugger just casually: ‘Hullo, sir, fancy seeing you here, oh, by the by, frightfully good news about Julian’s and Myra’s engagement, what?’”

    Julian gave a yelp of laughter, but then looked at him in awe. “You wouldn’t?”

    Gil’s eyes sparkled. “Not bloody ’alf! Lead me to it!” He got up.

    “Now?” faltered his brother.

    “Well, yes: according to Aunt Vera, he is in town. Come on!”

    “Uh—Gil, in those old bags?”

    “Eh? Oh. Damn. Okay, Julian, I’ll come clean and admit that it’s such a fag getting in and out of trousers one-handed—”

    “Are you taking your painkillers?” demanded his little brother in a steely voice.

    “Don’t,” said Gil, wincing. “You sounded just like Aunt Vera—in fact you almost sounded like the old bastard himself! Um, well, I’m rationing myself, because—”

    “Because you’re a bloody idiot with a martyr complex!” he shouted.

    “No, because I’m terrified of becoming addicted: there is the point that in their separate ways, Father, Mummy and Phil are all addictive personalities.”

    “Um, not me?” said his brother in astonishment.

    “No, I think addictive implies sticking to the one thing for sustained periods at a time, Julian.”

    Julian grinned. “Addicted to being non-addictive, then? –Come on, I’ll valet you. Dare say you could take a shower, too.”

    “Wash; I can’t shower with the bloody strapping on my shoulder.”

    “Very well, wash.” Looking smug, Julian steered him into the bedroom, stripped him, steered him into the bathroom, washed—“For God’s sake, Julian!”—inexorably washed him, dried him, steered him back into the bedroom and dressed him.

    “Ye gods,” said Gil faintly, looking at the reflection in the mirror of a gentleman who was more than old enough to know better clad in a pale grey flecked tweed jacket with huge leather patches on its elbows, discovered by Julian at the back of his wardrobe where it had been lurking for nigh on twenty years, over a pale dove-grey silk shirt given to him by an aunt and never worn, buttoned to the neck but tieless, with the long lower limbs clad in dark blue denim, excessively well cut.

    Julian ranged alongside him, looking at his handiwork with approval. “Those jeans aren’t bad at all.”

    “Have them! I admit she wasn’t an elderly American divorcée, but she was divorced, all right. –You don’t know her,” he said heavily to his look of bright-eyed interest. “During the regiment’s last stint in Germany. Lady architect. ’Orribly capable. Thought yours truly could chuck in the Army and be a house husband.”

    “You should have, you wouldn’t have a hole in your chest as we speak.”

    “No, very true, and I wouldn’t have me soul to call me own, either, Julian. –NO!” he shouted as his brother picked up a tie.

    “It’ll look good with—”

    “That is a regimental tie, you bloody idiot!” he shouted.

    Julian looked at it again. “Oh, so ’tis. Hang on… No. Ugh, what are you keeping this for? Um… no. Never mind, that look is really good on you—and do NOT undo that top button!” he shouted as Gil’s hand hovered over it.

    “The collar’s choking me, Julian.”

    “No, it isn’t. Come on. Or have you lost your nerve?”

    “Not Pygmalion likely!” replied Gil with a laugh.

    No: he wouldn’t, reflected his little brother with wry envy. That look on his face had been seen, to Julian’s certain knowledge, when the School had been sixty-seven runs down to Harrow with the tenth man in on a blinding pitch in thirty-five degree heat with the spectators dropping like flies, when the regiment had lost three chukkas in a row to the traditional rivals who had beaten them for the last five seasons, and, as a matter of fact, when Jimmy Martin had bet him he couldn’t get a rook’s egg from the nest atop the church belfry the year Gil and Master Martin had both turned thirteen and Julian himself had been all of six years old. Those encounters had of course resulted in a win for the School with Gil a hundred and four not out, a draw followed by a win for the regiment in the play-off, and the discomfiture of Jimmy Martin. Julian had very little doubt that the exact same look had appeared on Gil’s face just before he led the skirmish in Iraq that had resulted in the DSO.

    At the club Julian dithered but eventually came in, on the understanding that he wouldn’t have to speak. There they were informed that General Sotherland wasn’t in the club but was expected very shortly, and Colonel Sotherland was congratulated on his recovery and welcomed back to the club. After which they were able to totter into a watering-hole and actually absorb one. Not, however, in peace. Old Hammerhead in person.

    “Uh—yes, good to see you, too, sir. No, pretty much recovered, thanks, sir.”

    “He isn’t: his shoulder’s strapped up and he’s supposed to be taking painkillers and I rather think,” said Julian crossly, “that his left arm’s supposed to be in a sling, still!”

    “This old hen is my brother, Julian, sir,” explained Gil.

    “I was at school with poor Ronny, sir,” Julian informed the old man artlessly. “Terrifically sorry about it.”

    Gil found he was holding his breath: no-one dared to mention Ronny to the old man: he’d been the white hope of his family and the apple of his grandfather’s eye— Good God! In fact good grief! It had gone over with a bang and the old boy was wringing Julian’s hand and starting in on reminiscences of Ronny’s triumphs on the rugger field! Okay, they’d all had it wrong for the past fourteen years: the poor old boy wanted to talk about him…

    They were in a bunch with Martin Richardson, Jerry Coleby and a few like-minded spirits not needed at the War Office at the hour of the watering-hole, the old boy waxing very genial indeed, when Father arrived. By this time Julian—with malice aforethought—had spread the good word. Gil didn’t have to utter: Old Hammerhead did it for him. Well, never had been able to stand Father.

    “Hah! There y’are, Sotherland! Dashed good news about your Julian’s engagement to Myra Brandt, what? Drink to it, hey? Waiter!”

    “Is this a joke, Julian?” said the old bastard, icy-cold.

    “No,” said Gil quickly. “Thought Aunt Vera might have heard the rumours by this time, sir. No, perfectly true. Frightfully good news.”

    “I’m afraid I cannot congratulate you, Julian. –Gil, I would like a word, if you please.”

    “No, thanks, Father. Oh, and by the way: I’m emigrating to Australia. Start a bit of a dude ranch out there.”

    “Thought you said it was a B&B?” said Julian—brightly, but avoiding their father’s eye.

    “Yes, that sort of thing. Bed and breakfast, bit of riding.”

    “That isn’t amusing, Gilbert,” warned General Sotherland.

    “Well, no; ’tisn’t a joke.”

    “Adam Gilfillan was saying he was interested, too,” agreed Jerry, eying the old bastard sardonically.

    “Yes, that’s right, we’ve tossed the idea around. He’s still making up his mind, but I,” said Gil firmly, “am definitely going.”

    Unexpectedly Old Hammerhead weighed in on his side. “Quite right, me boy! Man needs something he can get his teeth into! –Ah!”—seizing his fresh glass as the waiter came up with refills. “Drink to that, eh?”

    “You will have to excuse me,” said General Sotherland, icy-cold to the last, walking out.

    Old Hammerhead was completely unmoved—completely. “Drink up, you chaps!”

    Shaken but gamely trying not to show it, the chaps drank up.

     Incautiously Gil opened his front door. He recoiled as something smelling deliciously of lily of the valley hurled itself at him and burst into sobs against his chest.

    “Uh—stop it, Rosemary! This is silly, stop it!”

    “Going—Aus-tra-li-a!” wailed the peach.

    Oh, God. “Yuh—uh, stop it, Rosemary. This thing is entirely in your imagination!”

    “’Tisn’t!” she gulped, pressing herself against him. “I can feel it!”

    Y—uh, shit. “There must be hundreds of men all over England who’d fancy you, that’s no reason for, uh, making assumptions,” he ended feebly.

    “But I feel it, too!” she wailed, looking up at him with drenched-violet eyes, the dew drops sparkling on the ends of the lashes an’ all.

    “Yes,” said Gil with a sigh. “Well, you think you do. You’d better come in, Mrs Harrison’ll be worrying about us. –It’s all right, thanks, Mrs Harrison!” he said loudly to the door across the landing. “No emergency!”

    The door had been open only a crack. It opened wider and the middle-aged Mrs Harrison peered out avidly. “It’s not the chest, is it, Colonel Sotherland?”

    No, it was all healed up, only it had a sobbing peach plastered to it, see? “No, I’m fine, thanks. –Come in, you idiot!” he hissed, hauling her in bodily and closing the door.

    “Crumbs!” gulped Rosemary, looking up at him doubtfully.

    “Crumbs it is. It’ll be all over the building before either of us is a half-hour older, at which point there’ll still be twenty-four years between us, won’t there?” he said grimly.

    “That doesn’t matter!” she cried.

    “It does to me.”

    Rosemary pouted. “I’m getting older as fast as I can. What if I was thirty, and you were fifty-four?”

    He’d be up her faster than a ferret, that was wot! Gil passed his hand across his forehead. “It’s academic.”

    “No, it isn’t, you’re envisaging it, see? There’s no logical difference, it’s the same gap!”

    “I’m not prepared to argue about it,” he said heavily.

    “Very well, if necessary I’ll wait ten years!” she threatened.

    “Bollocks.”

    “It—isn’t—bollocks! I—love—you!” she wailed, collapsing on his chest again.

    “Jesus! Stop crying,” he sighed, putting both arms round her and holding her very tight, ’cos after all it was the very last time he’d see her. In fact by the time he saw England again she’d doubtless be married to some mindless young oaf that didn’t deserve her and didn’t know what a pearl he’d got.

    “Oh, Gil!” sobbed Rosemary.

    “Oh, Rosemary,” said Gil wryly into the clouds of soft black hair.

   After quite some time she looked up and said soggily: “Could we just do it once? Sort of to say goodbye?”

    “No,” he croaked. He could feel he’d gone scarlet all the way up to the top of his scalp, in fact he felt sort of as if the top of his scalp was coming off.

    “I can feel you want to, darling Gil,” she breathed, squashing the tits against his chest.

    “Mm. Uh—no, I mean—Uh! Christ, will you not do that?” he gasped as she grabbed his cock.

    “I want you so much, darling Gil!” breathed Rosemary, looking up into his face and massaging him strongly—not in the manner of one unaccustomed, he registered through the haze.

    “One kiss, and that’s it,” said Gil in a voice he didn’t recognise as his own.

    Rosemary just parted the cherry lips slightly, looking up adoringly into his face.

    Okay, could once hurt? He kissed her…

    “Oh, Gil!” she gasped.

    ... Yes, it could. “Uh, that was a mistake,” said Gil dazedly as the world more or less resumed its normal pace around its axis.

    “Oh, Gil, that was wonderful!” she gasped.

    Yep, that was pretty much what it was. Wonderful. Uh-huh. Also miraculous, shattering, deliriously and utterly— Somehow Gil found he’d fallen to his knees and buried his face in that darling little mound of a belly in its ridiculously silly little turquoise tunic affair, tied up in a sort of bunch at one hip over a pair of ludicrous little black tights with no feet in ’em. The tits were in a sort of ridiculous black bra top that went over the turquoise tunic, and the incredibly nibble-able little pale feet were in ludicrous tiny turquoise sandals. Had she assumed the outfit for his benefit? Almost undoubtedly. “Rosemary,” he murmured against the belly.

    After some moments Rosemary put her hands gently on his head. “I—I do love you,” she said in a little lost voice.

    No, she didn’t, the silly infant. Thought he was a wounded ’ero or some such crap. He, on the other hand, being much too old for silly crushes, would be in danger of something a lot more serious, if he didn’t watch it. He said nothing.

    “You’re not going to, are you?” concluded Rosemary at last.

    “No,” said Gil in a muffled voice against the belly.

    “I’ll wait until you decide I’m old enough,” she said in a tiny voice.

    “Mm. –No,” he said, sniffing hard and sitting back on his heels. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, silly one.”

    “It’s not even a promise. It just feels entirely right.”

    Uh—yeah. It did. Gil got unsteadily to his feet. “No. Shouldn’t have kissed you: sorry. Gave in, proves I’m only human, or something, I s’pose. As well as a blamed idiot, of course.”

    “Everyone has feelings, Gil,” replied the peach seriously.

    “Uh—something like that. As you seem to have heard, I am about to go to Australia. And, whilst not wishing to be over-dramatic, Rosemary, one of the reasons I’m going is that I know damn’ well if I stay in London I’ll leap on you.”

    To his surprise she merely nodded seriously and said: “I see.”

    “Um, just go, could you, darling?” he said, thrusting his hand through his hair and turning away from her.

    He felt the peach come up very, very close. “Will you write to me, Gil?”

    “Uh—as long as you write back, yes.” She wouldn’t, of course. Not after the first couple of months. Whereas he— Oh, well, he was old enough to realise that agreeing to any such thing was a bloody stupid mistake and it was only him that’d be hurt thereby, wasn’t he? Yeah.

    “Yes, I promise,” she agreed. “At the moment I haven’t got any money, but when I’m twenty-one the money Grampy left me comes to me. He was very old-fashioned, you see. That’ll mean we’ll have given ourselves a year. Then I’ll come out to Australia, too.”

    What? Daft infant! He took a deep breath and turned to look at her. “Uh, well, twenty-one is still too young, but—well, if it lasts that long, why not?” he said with a mad laugh, not having intended to say any such thing. “I guarantee that if you come out to Australia in a year’s time I won’t turn you down!”

    “Good. I won’t say goodbye, then, I’ll just say au revoir, darling Gil.”

    “Yes, uh, au revoir, Rosemary sweetheart,” he croaked.

    Smiling bravely, the peach went over to the door. There she paused. Gil waited in fear and trembling. If she came back he wouldn’t be able to stop himself—

    “You should wear jeans more often, they really suit you,” the bell-like little voice said.

    What? Good grief! “Uh—yes, I will,” he croaked. “I will write, if you will.”

    Smiling bravely, the peach produced a—was that a visiting card?—and put it on the little table by his front door. “That’s my home address and my mobile number and just in case, my friend Harriet Baldwin’s number. Look after yourself, darlingest Gil. Au revoir, darling.”

   “Au revoir, Rosemary,” he croaked.

    Smiling bravely, the peach went out.

    And that left Gil, his hard-on, his forty-four years, and the lingering scent of muguet des bois, didn’t it? What a blithering idiot!

Next chapter:

https://theroadtobluegums.blogspot.com/2022/11/welcome-to-new-south-wales.html