Going It Alone Read Free Page B

ticket-of-leave. And it wouldn’t be Gilbert Averell alone who was compromised. The Prince de Silistrie would be compromised as well. Georges would assuredly hasten to the land of the free (on that British passport, if need be) and grandly declare himself to have been responsible for the entire ludicrous and scandalous affair. They might both end up in what Georges called the nick. A magistrate at Bow Street or wherever might be amused, but was more likely to think of the Inland Revenue. It would all take – at the most optimistic estimate – a lot of living down. No betting man would give much for his chances of receiving that honorary fellowship.
    For most of the morning he continued to confront the momentous issue (as it now seemed to him) of just how he was going to spend seven April days. Was it in London as the Prince de Silistrie; as an industrious hoaxer, in fact, building up a little fund of exploits with which to entertain Georges when he got back to Paris? Was it in London as nobody in particular, doing the theatres and concerts and galleries and whatever else offered by way of entertainment for a solitary visitor? Or was it as Gilbert Averell, visiting his sister Ruth Barcroft and her family in a perfectly normal way? Berkshire could be delightful at this time of year. There would be armies of daffodils in Ruth’s wild garden, one day seemingly dashed for ever to the ground by a late frost, and the next erect again in brilliant sunshine. On the Ridgeway the winter’s mud and rut would have dried out, and it would be terrain good for windy walking under scurrying cloud, a protean sky.
    But about this attractive picture there was a snag. It was all very well to say that the visit would be perfectly normal; that no thought to the contrary would enter his sister’s head. It wouldn’t be normal, but part of a situation which, although merely amusing in Georges’ eyes (and intermittently in his own), would perplex and distress Ruth were she to get wind of it. And Ruth, he very well understood, had endured her share of family troubles. It would be a great shame if her reliable brother Gilbert proved to have turned up on her as the consequence of what she might read as downright dishonest behaviour.
    Faced with this sobering discovery, Gilbert Averell ought, of course, to have washed out the whole thing. But that, he thought, would be to represent himself to his friend Georges in a poor-spirited light; would even, in an irrational way, be a kind of hauling down the flag. No, he’d go ahead! But he’d opt for London.
    This was Averell’s state of mind (if mind it can be called) when his telephone rang. And it proved to be his sister on the line.
    Ruth’s voice came across with the complete clarity that long-distance calls so frequently achieve. She might have suddenly been in the room with him, so that the smallest inflexion or change of tone coming through the instrument seemed to carry a visual impression too – as of a smile, a questioning glance, a shade of perplexity or surprise passing over her face.
    ‘Gilbert, it’s Ruth. How are you?’
    ‘Fine, only rather idle. How about yourself?’
    ‘Not too bad. Do you hate the telephone?’
    ‘No, of course not. Or not if it’s you. Why?’
    ‘You sound as if you’re not being idle at all, but rather busy or preoccupied or something, and not terribly wanting to be disturbed.’
    ‘Absolutely not. I’ve just been thinking about you, as a matter of fact. It must be telepathic as well as telephonic. How are all the family?’
    ‘Just as they should be. For the most part.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Gilbert, I don’t want to badger you, if you’re absorbed in things. I meant to write, but then I thought I’d ring up. This instrument’s more revealing than a carefully composed letter, don’t you think?’
    ‘Perhaps.’ Averell, as a scholar, had faith in the written word. ‘But I’ve known it to generate misconceptions at times.’ He hesitated for a