But there was a quiet desperation that seized him at odd moments.A feeling that he had ended up in the wrong place.
But where else could Crispin Fairweather be?
He knew a great deal about so many places.Khartoum, Axum, Tibilisi, the Argentine, Spitzbergen, Tasmania, Montreal, the Crimea.
He knew these names and places like the proverbial back of his hand.Indeed, at twelve, he had been able to draw an accurate map of the Empire entirely from memory, including major waterways, harbours, and mountain ranges.
He was good at his job, and every day men walked past his desk who were not small men, and who in some way depended upon his work.
Men who went to all those places.
He had long ago accepted that fact that he couldn’t be one of those men.But he could be the nail—one of many—that kept on the horseshoe that kept the great man on the horse, fighting the great battles.
And if he wasn’t in the very room where the great men made their decisions, he was at least in the anteroom where they smoked and laughed before and after they made them, and that was something.
Wasn’t it?
He was correcting the curve of the Upper Nile on a map of the Sudan, using a new one recently brought back by an imperial surveyor, when someone leaned over his desk, shadowing his work.
Crispin took off his spectacles and looked into the face of someone he recognised straight away as one of the great men that passed by regularly.
This one was the Home Secretary, with his rumbly voice and piercing gaze.
“Fairweather,” he said, in a slightly downgraded version of the distinctive voice that thrilled the House of Commons with its oration before it made its way with unerring aim to the front page ofThe Times.“When are you going to stop all this messing about.”
It was not really a question, so Crispin made no reply, but merely gazed pleasantly at the man, counting the freckles along the Home Secretary’s lower eyelids, doubtless gained on some foreign field of glory—Cuba or the Sudan, most likely, for he had witnessed wars in both.Crispin was a little surprised that the Home Secretary knew him by name.Doubtless it was because Crispin’s father was a well-known figure at the War Office.
“When I was your age,” the man continued, as an office boy rushed forward to help him on with his coat and tophat, “I was riding a bicycle through Jo’burg in a hail of Boer bullets.”
Ah, yes, South Africa, too, of course, thought Crispin.
“Come and see me at the Home Office sometime if you want some real work to do.”
And with that, he turned and left.A moment later, the clerk at the desk next to Crispin’s looked at his watch and made a gratified sound.
“Well, that’s me knocking off!See you at Blackfriars Ring later on?The new arena is spiffing.”
Crispin managed not to grimace.He had once made the mistake of letting his habit of boxing for his health slip out at the office, and now his colleagues were always inviting him to watch public matches.
“We’ll see,” Crispin said amiably, and went back to work.
Chapter five
Ormdale
Havingcompletedthefulltour without mishap, Una showed Mr Anderson to the table in the glasshouse with great relief.
The building was very quiet now because it was teatime, and the crowds would be gorging themselves on Martha’s excellent cream teas on the lawn.
Shaded by palms, the ironwork table was nicely laid for tea with the best china and a pitcher of elderflower cordial.
Una herself was positively gasping for a cup of tea, but she had ordered the cordial for Mr Anderson in case he might prefer a cool drink.
As she opened her mouth to ask him, she caught a glimpse of something that filled her with terror.
A hand—a small and dirty hand—snatching a scone from the table and disappearing it into the flourishing fern at her feet.
She snapped her mouth shut.
