Free The Yellow Room Conspiracy by Peter Dickinson Page B

platform.
    â€œSorry if I look a bit distraite ,” she said. “I’m keeping an eye out for Dick. He doesn’t understand why trains can’t just wait till he gets here. I bet you he’ll come bellowing on to the platform just as we’re steaming out.”
    She was right. The train arrived and the mob surged aboard. Being commissioned officers in uniform we were compelled to travel First Class, but the crush was just as bad as in Third. We were lucky in that there was a door immediately in front of where we stood, so I nipped in and took a corner seat, expecting to be able to give it to Nancy and myself stand for the journey, but she insisted on staying at the door so that she could crane from the window. By the time the train moved out, only forty minutes late, we were crammed five a side, with six standing between the seats.
    â€œDick! Dick!” yelled Nancy, leaning far out and waving.
    She ducked back in and opened the door. Someone was pounding along the dim platform. Already we were going far too fast to be boarded in safety. Then, effortlessly it seemed, he was on the step and inside and closing the door behind him with one hand while with the other arm he lifted Nancy off her feet to give her a long, unabashedly tongue-touching kiss, clean contrary to good order and military discipline.
    He was huge, easily the biggest man I have ever met. His uniform was the finest available cloth and clearly tailored for him, but, only partly because it had been cut taut-trousered in the American fashion it still looked as if it had been made for someone a couple of sizes smaller. Nancy introduced us when at last he put her down. He beamed down at me, an affable ogre dim against the single shaded light. I had risen, expecting Nancy to take my seat, but she said “Dick can put me on the luggage-rack,” so he reorganised the cases and swung her up, a convenient arrangement for both of them as her face was now level with his and they could whisper, and kiss during the frequent unexplained stops, leaving me to gaze at his portentously muscled buttocks.
    Bury is about sixty miles from London. The journey took nearly three hours. Lady Vereker met us at the station driving a sort of carriage, drawn by two horses, with six-foot diameter wheels behind and smaller ones in front. I sat beside her while Dick and Nancy canoodled on the back seat as we trotted briskly along dark winding lanes. (Lady Vereker, multifariously incompetent, at least knew what she was up to with horses.) We reached Blatchards well after eleven. Lord Vereker had a cold supper ready for us at the stables and hovered by while we ate, so as not to miss one syllable of praise for his cuisine. It was past midnight and had started to rain when Nancy, Dick and I carried our bags down a weedy drive to the back door of the main house, let ourselves in, lit candles, and climbed the bare servants’ stairs to the top floor. I was extremely tired.
    Not wishing to mistake my door among the dozen others along that side of the blank, sparse-carpeted corridor, I left it open when I went to the lavatory. Returning with my candle in my hand I was in the room and closing the door when a voice behind me said sleepily, “Who’s that?”
    I turned and saw it was the wrong room. The occupant of the bed was beginning to lift herself onto an elbow.
    â€œDon’t go,” she said, interrupting my apologies. “You’re Paul, aren’t you? You came with Gerry and I was rude to you at tea.”
    â€œI don’t remember the rudeness. We collected eggs, though.”
    â€œDid we? I was so fagged I went to bed early but I left the door open so I should hear you come, only I didn’t. Nan says you’ve seen Gerry. And Harriet, of course. Where’s my dressing-gown? You’re probably dying for sleep, but do just tell me quickly.”
    I picked the dressing-gown off the floor and gave it to her, then put my candle on