Free Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark Page B

their young friends, doubled up with laughter. A quintet was playing softly, to suit the two main generations represented. By instinct, the stranger noticed a tall, dove-gray-clad woman and her equally tall and grayly distinguished husband standing apart. He went over to them. “How do you do? Congratulations. I’m Walker,” he said. “I’m afraid I hadn’t time to change but they knew I wouldn’t. Glad to be here, anyway.” Having said this and shaken hands with the couple, he helped himself to a glass of champagne from a tray that was wafted before him.
    “Oh, don’t worry about your clothes,” she said nervously. The stranger looked down on his dark-gray suit and then beamed at them. “So glad you could come, Mr. Walker. I don’t know half my new son-in-law’s friends, I’m afraid.”
    “Hundreds of them,” said her husband. “And hundreds we hardly know on my daughter’s side.” “Well, I’ll go and say a word to the happy couple,” said the stranger.
    It would have been difficult for him to reach the couple even if he had wanted to. The marquee was very warm both from human heat and from the side-stoves carefully placed along the sides of the tent. The stranger found a spot to stand, and before long was approached by a good-looking middle-aged woman. “I’m sure we’ve met somewhere, but I can’t place you.”
    “Walker,” he said.
    “Walker? I don’t recall.” She spoke with a strong Scottish accent. “But I know your face. I’m Bessie Lang.” “Bessie!” he said. “Of course. How the years fly!” He took another glass of champagne. She refused one. “I must remind Bobbie,” said the stranger, “to give me the guest list. So many people I know here. But of course, the young people, especially on her side, are more or less unknown to me. Oh, there’s Bobbie over there”-the stranger waved to the other side of the tent-“Excuse me, won’t you? I have to make myself useful over there. Let’s keep in touch.” Then he was gone, lost in another crowd, mingling, smiling, exchanging pleasantries. He shook hands finally with the bridegroom’s mother and kilted, lace-shirted father, who were as short, it seemed, as the bride’s parents were tall; then, having judged that a good forty minutes had passed, he made his way through the chattering concentration of the Scottish privileged, back to his white Ford.
    True enough, on the road, his pursuers had disappeared.
    Maria Twickenham’s daughter and Joe Murray, the latter’s name only dimly remembered by Lucan, both of them on the hunt for him. He remembered Maria Twickenham well and felt a great nostalgia for her. If it had been Maria, he might even have revealed himself for twenty minutes. But the daughter . . . And Joe . . . Oh, no, you don’t write any book about me, you don’t. Ambrose had suspected they were having an affair. “I know by the way they look over each other’s shoulders while they’re perusing the press cuttings,” Ambrose had said. “There’s something about lovers and their slop, I always know it.”
    And the girl’s name is Lacey, thought Lucan. Very ridiculous. Imagine if I were to put in twelve to fifteen years in a prison cell just to satisfy a girl called Lacey . . . Anyway he had thrown them at the wedding. Any subsequent enquiries would result in a man called Walker having put in an appearance at the invitation of a man whose name no one remembered.
    Hildegard had come from Paris by train through the tunnel. She had brought two bulging zip-bags full of documents, a small suitcase, her handbag briefcase, and what she stood up in. She got a taxi and went to the Manderville Hotel at Queen’s Gate, where she had booked a room. In the taxi she put her watch one hour back. It would be one fifteen in Paris, it was twelve-fifteen here. In Paris Jean-Pierre would be on the phone trying vainly, as he had tried for the past half hour, to reach her and arrange, as usual, where they would eat lunch. This was