A Delicate Truth A Novel

of night to the throb of engines out to sea.
    And how do two confiding, darting, brown eyes manage to grow old and wrinkled and lose their lightness of being in the ridiculously short space of three years? For the head had lifted, and not just halfway but all the way back, till the brim of the leather hat cocked itself, leaving the harrowed, bony face beneath it in plain sight – a turn of phrase he suddenly couldn’t get rid of – gaunt cheekbones, resolute jaw, and the brow, too, which was etched by the same web of fine lines that hadcollected themselves at the corners of his eyes and mouth, drawing them downward in some kind of permanent dismay.
    And the eyes themselves, formerly so quick and knowing, seemed to have lost their mobility, because once they had settled on Kit, they showed no sign of shifting but stayed there, fixed on him, so that the only way either man was ever going to break free of the other was if Kit did the breaking; which he duly achieved, but only by turning his whole head to Suzanna and saying, Well, darling, here we are, what a day, eh, what a day! – or something equally fatuous, but also sufficiently untypical of him for a frown of puzzlement to pass across Suzanna’s flushed face.
    And this frown has not quite disappeared when he hears the soft Welsh voice he is praying uselessly not to hear:
    ‘Well, Paul. Quite a coincidence, I will say. Not what either of us was led to expect, was it?’
    But though the words came smashing into Kit’s head like so many bullets, Jeb must in reality have spoken them quietly, because Suzanna – either thanks to the imperfections of the little hearing aids she wore under her hair, or to the persistent boom-boom of the fairground – failed to pick them up, preferring to manifest an exaggerated interest in a large handbag with an adjustable shoulder strap. She was peering at Jeb over her bunch of Bailey violets and she was smiling a bit too hard at him and being a bit too sweet and condescending altogether for Kit’s taste, which was actually her shyness at work, but didn’t look like it.
    ‘Now you’re Jeb himself, are you? The real thing.’
    What the hell does she mean, real thing? thought Kit, suddenly outraged. Real as compared to what ?
    ‘You’re not a substitute or a stand-in or anything?’ she went on, exactly as if Kit had put her up to explaining her interest in the fellow.
    And Jeb for his part was taking her question very seriously:
    ‘Well now, I wasn’t christened Jeb, I’ll admit that,’ he replied, directing his gaze away from Kit at last and bestowing it on Suzanna with the same steadfastness. Adding with a loquacity that cut straight to Kit’s heart: ‘But the name they gave me was such a mouthful, frankly, that I decided to do some essential surgery on it. Put it that way.’
    But Suzanna was in her asking mode:
    ‘And where on earth did you find such marvellous leather, Jeb? It’s perfectly beautiful .’
    At which Kit, whose mind by now had switched to diplomatic autopilot, announced that he too had been bursting to ask the same question:
    ‘Yes, indeed, where did you get your splendid leather from, Jeb?’
    And there follows a moment where Jeb considers his questioners in turn as if deciding which of them to favour. He settles on Suzanna:
    ‘Yes, well now, it’s actually Russian reindeer hide, madam,’ he explains, with what to Kit is by now an unbearable deference, as he takes down an animal skin from the wall and spreads it lovingly on his lap. ‘Recovered from the wreck of a Danish brigantine that went down in Plymouth Sound in 1786, they tell me. She was on her way from St Petersburg to Genoa, you see, sheltering from the south-westerly gales. Well, we all know about them , don’t we, down these parts?’ – giving the skin a consoling stroke with one tanned little hand – ‘not that the leather minded, did you? Couple of hundred years of seawater were just what you liked,’ he went on quaintly, as if to a pet. ‘The minerals in the wrapping may have helped too, I dare say.’
    But Kit knew that if Jeb was delivering his homily to Suzanna, it was Kit he was talking to, Kit’s bewilderment and frustration and anxiety he was playing on, and – yes, his fear too – galloping fear – though of what precisely he had yet to work out.
    ‘And you do this for a living , do you, Jeb?’ Suzanna was demanding, overtired and sounding dogmatic in consequence. ‘Full time? You’re not just moonlighting