The Takeover Read Free

you to ransom.’
    The Jesuits looked at each other with delight. This was the sort of thing they felt at home with, priests being their favourite subject.
    ‘Times have changed,’ Hubert said to Pauline, ‘since you were at school at the Sacred Heart, I’m afraid.’
    ‘It isn’t so long ago,’ Pauline said, ‘since I was at school. My last year, I went to Cheltenham.’
    Father Gerard said, ‘What goes on at Cheltenham?’
    ‘Ladies’ College,’ said Hubert. ‘If you look closely, it’s written all over her face.’
    ‘What do you have against us?’ Father Cuthbert said, shifting about with excitement in his chair as if he were sexually as much as pastorally roused.
    ‘It seems to me,’ Hubert said, turning with gentle treachery towards Pauline, ‘a bit inhospitable to carry on this conversation.’ His Mitigil had started to work. He had put ice in the glasses. ‘What will you drink?’ he said to the guests.
    ‘Whisky,’ said both priests at once. Hubert looked sadly at his whisky bottle, lifted it and poured.
    ‘Hubert,’ said Pauline, ‘that’s all the whisky we have.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Hubert. ‘I’m having gin. What about you, Miss Thin?’
    ‘Plain tonic,’ said Pauline.
    The younger priest sipped his drink and looked out over the still lake in its deep crater and the thick wildwood of Nemi’s fertile soil. ‘Terrific ecology!’ he said.
    ‘You mean the view?’ Pauline said.
    Hubert sat in a chair with his back to the grand panorama and he sighed. ‘I have to give it up,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing for it. The house isn’t mine and Maggie’s changed so much since her new marriage. They’re insisting on charging me rent. A high rent. I have to go.’
    ‘Remember your dinner date,’ Pauline said, ‘and Hubert, would you sign some letters, please?’
    ‘Dinner date…?’ said Hubert. Since Maggie’s marriage following on her son Michael’s marriage, and since the trouble with his money in Switzerland, he had been asked out less and less. He looked into his little drop of gin, while Father Cuthbert seized on the doubt about dinner. ‘You’re going to go out for dinner?’
    ‘We’ve already told you so,’ said Pauline.
    ‘Oh, I didn’t know if you meant it,’ said the priest.
    Hubert, remembering, said ‘Oh, yes, I am. I have to go and change very soon, I’m afraid. They eat early, these people.’
    ‘What people?’ said Father Cuthbert. ‘Do I know them? Could we come along?’
    His companion the ecologist began to show embarrassment. He said, ‘No, no, Cuthbert. We can go back to Rome. Really, we mustn’t intrude like this. Unexpectedly. We have to.…’ He rose and looked nervously towards the car where it was parked half-way down the drive.
    ‘Why don’t you go and see Michael?’ Hubert said, meaning Maggie’s son, whose house was nearby.
    Father Cuthbert looked eager. ‘Do you know if he’s home?’
    ‘I’m sure he is,’ said Hubert. ‘They’re both in Nemi just now. He got married himself recently. Marriage does seem to be a luxury set apart for the rich. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to see you.’
    While Hubert explained to the excited priest how to get there by car, his friend, Father Gerard, looked around him and across the lake. ‘The environment,’ he said. ‘This is a wonderful environmental location.’
    ‘It’s your duty to visit Michael and Mary, really,’ Pauline egged them on. ‘They have sumptuous dinners. They had a shock when Maggie got divorced and married again, you know. It’s been an upset for the Radcliffes. Her new husband’s a pig.’
    ‘Don’t they see his father?’
    ‘Oh, I dare say,’ Hubert said. ‘Radcliffe was Maggie’s second husband, of course. The new one’s the third. But it was so sudden. The family’s all right financially of course. But I must say it’s left me in a mess, personally speaking.’
    When the priests had left, Hubert went with Pauline into the kitchen. He opened a tin