Free Treasures of Time by Penelope Lively Page B

he’s a pretty resilient fellow. I didn’t think he was all that bad. He makes a change, anyway.’
    He was gripped with restlessness, clutched by it so that during the day he shuffled his papers, watched the clock, made frequent sorties for a smoke, a drink, a wander through the streets. In the evenings he dragged Kate, who would have preferred to stay in, to cinemas and pubs. He was doing the thing he wanted to do, in the place he found most stimulating, spent his time with the person he preferred, and he felt discontented. He heard his mother’s voice – ‘Never satisfied, that’s your trouble…’ When Tony Greenway rang one evening to suggest meeting for a drink, he accepted with enthusiasm; Kate said she thought she wouldn’t bother, if nobody minded. He left her in the flat, reading, a sullen-child expression on her face.
    Tony looked tired. There was strain behind the sprightliness of his greeting. After a few minutes’ chat he began to relax and said, ‘Sorry, it’s been a hideous day, I’m knackered. I’ll be O.K. after a drink. Anyway, I’m out of the studio tomorrow, I’ve got to take a trip up north, that’ll set me up again.’
    Later, dropping Tom back at the flat, he said suddenly ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to join me on this jaunt tomorrow?’
    ‘Where is it you’re going?’
    ‘I’ve got to go and see this old dear up in Yorkshire. Someone we used on a programme. There’s been a bit of trouble about her fee – the contract people boobed somehow – and also she didn’t absolutely like the way we slanted her bit. It’s the sort of thing that could be done by letter, but can be smoothed out much more satisfactorily in a face-to-face situation. It won’t take too long. She lives near Fountains Abbey so you can have a look round that while I chat her up. And I’ve got one or two more chores to do while we’re up there.’
    ‘Yorkshire and back in one day?’
    ‘It’s no distance,’ said Tony, surprised. ‘What’s the problem? A quick run up the M1, that’s all. Fancy it?’
    ‘Yes. I rather think I do. Thanks.’

    Tony’s car crouched above the road. It was long and low and sleek, with two seats into which you lowered yourself and were at once lapped in squashy leather: there were token concessions only to back seat passengers and luggage. Travelling, there was an awareness of faintly whistling tarmac only a few inches beneath. The map that Tony pulled from the leather pocket at his side showed an England held in a network of lines snaking out from London, probing out to the far west, up to the far north, shooting a bolt into East Anglia, tying up the Midlands. There were no county boundaries marked, no physical features, no places other than those snared by the motorway system. In the margin were scribbled names and numbers: Brm 1¼, Manch 2½, N’Castle 4½, Exeter 3. Tony spread the thing out for a moment over the wheel, ran a finger upwards, and said ‘Something under three should do it. You turn off soon after the Leeds road.’ He began to weave, with opportunist skill, through the early morning London traffic.
    Tom said, ‘What exactly was this series?’
    ‘The series?’ There was a fractional hesitation. ‘Oh, I’m not sure it would be your cup of tea, Tom, truth to tell. It was a thing we did on way-out theories to do with places, with the landscape. Nutty stuff, I suppose, most of it, but you know people have the most tremendous taste for that kind of thing. These lines linking churches and prehistoric things and whatnot – leys – that may have some sort of mysterious force. And the powers that are supposed to be held by particular places, we had some people down in Somerset who do some funny stuff with a big stone down there, a kind of healing ceremony, there was a bloke who swore blind he’d been cured of cancer. And some straight ghost stuff, a rather good sequence at Kenilworth at night, there was something very weird on the film but I must say