A Delicate Truth A Novel

you even that much.’
    ‘But you did. So it’s no good trying to untell it now. You were going off to be the Office’s red telephone , and you wouldn’t sayhow long or where it was, except it was warm. We were impressed. We drank to you: “Here’s to our red telephone.” That happened, didn’t it? You’re not going to deny that? And you came back scratched and said you’d fallen into a bush.’
    ‘I had. I did. A bush. It was true.’
    And when this failed to appease her:
    ‘All right, Suki. All right. Listen. I was Paul. I was his red telephone. Yes, I was. Three years ago. And we were comrades-in-arms. It was the best thing I ever did in my entire career, and that’s all I’m going to tell you ever. The poor chap’s gone completely to pieces. I hardly recognized him.’
    ‘He looked a good man, Kit.’
    ‘He’s more than that. He’s a thoroughly decent, brave chap. Or was. I’d no quarrel with him. Quite the reverse. He was my – keeper ,’ he said, in a moment of unwelcome honesty.
    ‘But you denied him all the same.’
    ‘I had to. No choice. Man was out of court. Whole operation was – well, beyond top secret.’
    He had thought the worst was over, but that was to reckon without Suzanna’s grip.
    ‘What I don’t understand at all , Kit, is this. If Jeb knew you were lying, and you knew you were lying, why did you have to lie to him at all? Or were you just lying for me and Emily?’
    She had done it, whatever it was. Seizing upon anger as his excuse, he emitted a gruff ‘I think I’ll just go and have it out with him, if you don’t mind’ and the next thing he knew, he had thrust the hats into her arms and was storming back along the towpath with his walking stick and, ignoring the ancient DANGER notice, clattering over the rickety footbridge and through a spinney of birches to the lower end of Bailey’s Meadow; then over a stile into a pool of mud and fast up the hillside, only to see below him the Arts and Crafts marquee half collapsed and the exhibitors, with more energy than they’dshown all day, dismantling tents, stands and trestle tables and slinging them into their vans: and there among the vans, the space, the very space, which only half an hour earlier Jeb’s van had occupied and now occupied no more.
    Which didn’t for a second prevent Kit from loping down the slope with his arms waving in false jocularity:
    ‘Jeb! Jeb! Where the hell’s Jeb? Anyone seen Jeb at all, the leather chap? Gone off before I could pay him, silly ass – bunch of his money in my pocket! Well, do you know where Jeb’s gone? And you don’t either?’ – in a string of vain appeals as he scoured the line of vans and trucks.
    But all he got for an answer were kindly smiles and shakes of the head: no, Kit, sorry, nobody knows where Jeb’s gone, or where he lives for that matter, or what his other name is, come to think of it, Jeb’s a loner, civil enough but not by any means what you’d call chatty – laughter. One exhibitor thought she’d seen him over to Coverack Fair a couple of weeks back; another said she remembered him from St Austell last year. But nobody had a surname for him, nobody had a phone number, or even a number plate. Most likely he’d done what other traders do, they said: spotted the ad, bought his trading ticket at the gate, parked, traded and moved on.
    ‘Lost someone, have you, Dad?’
    Emily, right beside him – girl’s a bloody genie. Must have been gossiping with the stable girls behind the horseboxes.
    ‘Yes. I have actually, darling. Jeb, the leather-maker chap. The one your mum bought a bag from.’
    ‘What does he want?’
    ‘Nothing. I do’ – confusion overcoming him – ‘I owe him money.’
    ‘You paid him. Sixty quid. In twenties.’
    ‘Yes, well, this was for something else’ – shiftily, avoiding her eye. ‘Settlement of an old debt. Different thing entirely’ – then,babbling something about needing to ‘have a word with Mum’, barged his way back along the path and through the walled garden to the kitchen, where Suzanna, with Mrs Marlow’s help, was chopping vegetables in preparation for this evening’s dinner for the Chain Gang. She ignored him, so he sought sanctuary in the dining room.
    ‘Think I’ll just buff up the silver,’ he announced, loud enough for her to hear and do something about him if she wanted.
    But she didn’t, so never mind. Yesterday he had done a great job of polishing the commander’s collection of