Free Touch Not The Cat by Mary Stewart Page A

sausages under the grill. "Shall I do those now?"
    "It's all right. Nearly done."
    "I'm sorry about your dad."
    "Thank you. I brought his ashes home, did you know? That's why I came tonight. I wanted to put them in the church. Did the Vicar tell you?"
    "No."
    "I'm coming back in the morning to—well, to scatter them."
    He had lifted the pan of peas off the stove, and was busy draining them. He added a knob of margarine and shook them to dry in the hot pan. He said nothing.
    "Rob-"
    "Mm?"
    "You're sure you couldn't even make a guess?"
    He must after all have sensed my trouble, back there in the yard. He didn't ask me what I was referring to, nor did he lift his eyes from the peas. He shook the pan thoughtfully. "If I had to, I'd have said it was one of the twins, but you know yourself they're bad enough to tell apart in daylight, let alone a black evening like this."
    "Could it have been Francis?"
    "Might have been, I suppose. But I'd have thought he was a mite too tall for Francis."
    "But it could have been?"
    He did look up at that. "I suppose so. Why, were you expecting Francis?"
    "No. But if it wasn't Francis, it would have to be Emory, and—"
    I stopped. I had never taken it further, even to myself, and I certainly could not do so to Rob. It could not be Emory, the secret friend with whom I had shared my thoughts since childhood. It could not. If it had to be one of those two, it must surely be Francis . . . Francis, who was nearer my own age, and of whom—where one could touch that elusive and self-contained personality—I was unequivocally fond. Emory, the eldest of the three, was, as they say, something else again. I had never had any illusions about Emory. As a child, of course, I had adored my tall cousin, so easily dominating the rest of us, but generous about allowing a small girl to tag along where he led the Ashley gang. He had grown into a tough-minded man, determined, and quietly self-sufficient.
    James, his twin, had a touch of the same ruthlessness, but tempered with something less aggressive.
    Francis, as tough in his own way and very much quieter about it, had opted out of most of our ploys and gone doggedly on with his own affairs. A loner, my cousin Francis. But then, I supposed, that was what writers had to be. And surely, if it were he, I would have had a hint of it from him .
    . . ?
    Francis or Emory . . . But, in spite of the knowledge, I found myself thinking about James as I had last seen him.
    An Ashley to the fine bone; tall, with fair hair which had darkened slightly—to his relief—as he grew older. The long grey eyes of all the portraits, straight nose, hands and feet too small-boned but well shaped. Pleasant voice. A way of doing what he wanted, and doing it so charmingly that yon overlooked the self-interest and thought he was doing you a favour. Clever, yes; shrewd, yes; not perhaps over-imaginative about other people's needs, but kind, and capable of great generosity. About his attitude to women, or his relationships with them, I knew nothing.
    I had my mother to thank that I was able to be so objective about my father's family. She had been a highly intelligent, incisive woman, who had written a couple of novels that had dropped dead on the market, but that had contained a good deal of quiet but acid observation of the people around her. It was she who had taught me to stand back sometimes from life and look at it, even to stand back from those I loved.
    Certainly from those I thought I might love. Which brought me back to my troubled thoughts, and the cottage kitchen, and Rob saying: "Why should it?"
    "Why should it what?"
    "Be Emory?"
    I must have looked quite blank. He said patiently: "In the churchyard."
    "Oh. Because James is in Spain, and Emory's over here. He rang up from England on Wednesday, when I was in Bavaria. Look, Rob, the chips are done, can you strain them?"
    "Sure." He lifted the pan over to the draining board. "Well, then, say it was Emory. Seems funny he didn't