A Delicate Truth A Novel

escorted by the redoubtable Polly from the Granary Riding School. The festivities are too much for the lead pony and it shies, but Polly is on hand to grab the bridle. Suzanna consoles the pony, then its rider. Kit takes Suzanna’s arm and feels her heart beating as she presses his hand lovingly against her ribs.
    It’s here and now, Kit thinks, as the elation rises in him. The jostling crowds, the palominos cavorting in the meadows, the sheep safely grazing on the hillside, even the new bungalows that deface the lower slopes of Bailey’s Hill: if this isn’t the land they have loved and served for so long, where is? And all right, it’s Merrie bloody England, it’s Laura bloody Ashley, it’s ale and pasties and yo-ho for Cornwall, and tomorrow morning all these nice, sweet people will be back at each other’s throats, screwing each other’s wives and doing all the stuff the rest of the world does. But right now it’s their National Day, and who’s an ex-diplomat of all people to complain if the wrapping is prettier than what’s inside?
    At a trestle table stands Jack Painter, red-headed son of Ben from the garage, in braces and a Stetson. Beside him sits a girl in a fairy dress with wings, selling tickets at four pounds a shot.
    ‘You’re free , Kit, dammit!’ Jack cries boisterously. ‘You’re the bloody Opener, man, same as Suzanna!’
    But Kit in his exultation will have none of it:
    ‘I am not free, thank you, Jack Painter! I am extremely expensive. And so is my dear wife,’ he retorts and, happy man that he is, slaps down a ten-pound note and drops the two pounds change into the animal-welfare box.
    A hay cart awaits them. A beribboned ladder is lashed against it. Suzanna grips it with one hand, her riding skirts in the other, and with Kit’s help ascends. Willing arms reach out to receive her. She waits for her breathing to calm down. It does. She smiles. Harry Tregenza, The Builder You Can Trust and celebrated rogue, wears an executioner’s mask and brandishes a silver-painted wooden scythe. He is flanked by his wife wearing bunny ears. Next to them stands this year’s Bailey Queen, bursting out of her corsage. Tipping his boater, Kit plants chivalrous kisses on the cheeks of both women and inhales from each the same waft of jasmine scent.
    An ancient hurdy-gurdy is playing ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do’. Smiling energetically, he waits for the din to subside. It doesn’t. He flaps an arm for silence, smiles harder. In vain. From an inside pocket of his blazer he extracts the speech notes that Suzanna has nobly typed for him, and waves them. A steam engine emits a truculent shriek. He mimes a theatrical sigh, appeals to the heavens for sympathy, then to the crowd beneath him, but the din refuses to let up.
    He goes for it.
    First he must bawl out what he amusingly calls the Church Notices, though they concern such non-ecclesiastical matters as toilets, parking and baby-changing. Does anyone hear him? Judging by the faces of the listeners hanging around the foot of the hay cart, they don’t. He names our selfless volunteers who have laboured night and day to make the miracle happen, andinvites them to identify themselves. He might as well be reading out the names of the Glorious Dead. The hurdy-gurdy has gone back to the beginning. You’re Master of Misrule too. They’ll expect you to be funny . A quick check of Suki: no bad signs. And Emily, his beloved Em: tall and watchful, standing, as ever, a little apart from the pack.
    ‘And lastly, my friends, before I step down – though I’d better be jolly careful when I do!’ – zero response – ‘it’s my pleasure, and my very happy duty, to urge you to spend your hard-earned money unwisely , flirt recklessly with one another’s wives’ – wished he hadn’t said that – ‘drink, eat and revel the day away. So hip hip ’ – tearing off his boater and thrusting it in the air – ‘ hip hip! ’
    Suzanna raises her topper to join his boater. The Builder You Wouldn’t Trust Further Than You Could Throw Him can’t raise his executioner’s mask, so punches the air with his clenched fist in an unintended communist salute. A long-delayed Hooray! tears through the loudspeakers like an electrical fault. To murmurs of ‘Good on you, my handsome!’ and ‘Proper job, my robin!’, Kit clambers gratefully down the ladder, lets his walking stick fall to the ground and reaches up to take hold of Suzanna by the