A Delicate Truth A Novel

hips.
    ‘Bloody wonderful, Dad!’ Emily declares, appearing at Kit’s side with the walking stick. ‘Want a sit-down, Mum, or flog on ?’ – using a family expression.
    Suzanna, as ever, wants to flog on.
     
    *
     
    The royal tour of Our Opener and His Lady Wife begins. First, inspect shire horses. Suzanna the born country girl chats to them, strokes and pats their rumps without inhibition. Kit makes a show of admiring their brasses. Home-grown vegetables in their Sunday best. Cauliflowers that the locals callbroccoli: bigger than footballs, washed clean as a pin. Home-made breads, cheeses and honey.
    Sample piccalilli: tasteless but keep grinning. Smoked salmon pâté excellent. Urge Suki to buy some. She does. Linger over Gardening Club’s floral celebration. Suzanna knows every flower by its first name. Bump into MacIntyres, two of life’s dissatisfied customers. Ex-tea-planter George keeps a loaded rifle at his bedside for the day the masses assemble at his gates. His wife, Lydia, bores for the village. Advance on them with outstretched arms:
    ‘George! Lydia! Darlings! Marvellous! Super dinner at your house the other night, really one of those evenings. Our turn next time!’
    Move gratefully to our bygone threshing machines and steam engines. Suzanna undaunted by stampede of children dressed as anything from Batman to Osama. Kit yells at Gerry Pertwee, village Romeo, squatting up on his tractor in Red Indian headdress:
    ‘For the umpteenth time, Gerry, when are you going to mow our bloody paddock?’ And to Suzanna, aside: ‘Damned if I’ll pay the bugger fifteen quid an hour when the going rate’s twelve.’
    Suzanna waylaid by Marjory, rich divorcee on the prowl. Marjory has set her sights on the dilapidated greenhouses in the walled garden of the Manor for her Orchid Club, but Suzanna suspects it’s Kit she’s set her sights on. Kit the diplomat rides to the rescue:
    ‘Suki darling, hate to interrupt – Marjory, you’re looking extremely dishy, if I may say so – small drama, darling. You alone have the power to solve.’
    Cyril, church warden and lead tenor in the choir, lives with mother, banned from unsupervised contact with schoolchildren; Harold, drunk dentist, early retirement, pretty thatched cottage off the Bodmin road, one son in rehab, wife in the bin.Kit greets them all lavishly, sets course for Arts and Crafts Expo, Suki’s brainchild.
    Marquee a haven of quiet. Admire amateur watercolours. Forget the quality, endeavour is all. Proceed to other end of marquee, descend grassy knoll.
    Straw boater cutting ridge in forehead. Suede loafers giving him hell as predicted. Emily at edge of frame, keeping a quiet eye on Suzanna.
    Enter roped-off enclosure of our Rustic Crafts section.
     
    *
     
    Does Kit feel a first chill on entering here, a presence , an intimation ? Does he hell: he’s in Eden, and he intends to remain there. He’s experiencing one of those rare sensations of pure pleasure when everything seems to have come right. He’s gazing with unbounded love on his wife in her riding rig and topper. He’s thinking of Emily, and how even a month ago she was still inconsolable, and today she’s right back on her feet and ready to take on the world.
    And while his thoughts are contentedly drifting in this way, so is his gaze, which has fixed itself on the furthest limits of the enclosure and, seemingly of its own accord, on the figure of a man.
    A hunched man.
    A small hunched man.
    Whether permanently hunched or merely at that moment hunched is thus far unknown. The man is hunched, and he is either squatting or sitting on the tailgate of his traveller’s van. Oblivious to the midday heat, he is wearing a shiny, full-length, brown leather coat with the collar up. And for a hat, a broad-brimmed affair, also of leather, with a shallow crown and a bow at the front, less a cowboy’s hat than a Puritan’s.
    The features, what Kit can make of them in the shadow ofthe brim, are emphatically those of a small white male in middle life.
    Emphatically?
    Why the emphasis suddenly?
    What was so emphatic about him?
    Nothing.
    The fellow was exotic, true. And small. In burly company, the small stand out. That doesn’t make him special. It simply makes you notice him.
    A tinker was Kit’s first determinedly light-hearted thought: whenever did he last see a real tinker ? Romania fifteen years back, when he was doing a stint in Bucharest. He may actually have turned to Suzanna to