Page 9 of Preaching to the Choir

“I see you’re settling in.”

She almost spat a gobbet of chewed toast all the way across the room. The voice was a hollow boom, right at her ear. She twisted around to see an old man looking down on her. Neither the expression nor the tone of his words were unkindly, but there was a gravity to them nonetheless. One of the staff drew back the chair next to her, and he lowered himself into it carefully.

He was as broad across the shoulders as Ross, with the tan of someone who spent much of the year somewhere considerably warmer than Britain. His hair was silver-white, and there was a lot of character incised into his face. She could see the family lines here, like Gil, like Ross, but bonier at the temples and chin. A Kirk Douglas sort of face, she thought, where the exaggerations of feature only gave him more command.

A hundred things to say flitted through her mind, all the vapid social pleasantries that the moment surely called for. But she was short of sleep and felt that there was a conversational trap in every direction, and what came out was just honesty.

“I know this has turned out awkward for everyone. I know Ross wasn’t supposed to bring a guest. I guess there was a bit of miscommunication. I don’t mean to stir things up, but I’m here now. I’d like to make the best of it, if that’s okay?”

He regarded her quizzically, as though she was pickled behind glass, and then something twitched in his face. A smile. “I’m Patrick Enderbough,” he told her. “Ross’s great-uncle.”

“Delighted to meet you. Elena Mendes, though I guess you knew that.”

“I did.” He took the hand she proffered, his own fingers startlingly dry, like sand. “They think you should probably go today. I’ve had a car made ready.”

She regarded him steadily, fighting down the knee-jerk anger, because he’d phrased that very oddly. They presumably meant some bloc within the family, who had deputised Patrick to come talk to her. And yet he hadn’t said I think or even we think.

“I don’t think Ross wants me to go. Or he wants to go with me. Which I guess isn’t an option.”

“No.” Very firm, very flat, very much—again—with the indication that it was a majority decision that Patrick hadn’t necessarily agreed with. She’d been expecting the inquisition, after all, and most certainly from the elder generation, surely most likely to disapprove of her on a number of levels. And yet here was the elder generation and she could read a great deal of sympathy in his eyes.

“A doctor, I understand,” he said. “You are, I mean.”

“Studying,” she confirmed.

“And you have the stomach for that, do you?” he asked candidly.

“I mean, I’m not necessarily going to be a surgeon,” she said. “Actually I was thinking more the pharma industry.”

He coughed abruptly, covering it with a monogrammed handkerchief: P.E. and a stitched design that recalled all manner of little flourishes she’d seen about the house, in the woodwork and on stone. Like spread wings woven from Celtic knotwork.

Wings. And maybe she could have asked Patrick about the attack on Will, but that cough had shaken her. It had silenced the whole room, turned all eyes. A deep, resonant knock like a bass drum, all but rattling the window glass in the frames. Louder than even Patrick’s broad chest could account for.

“I was a surgeon,” he said, into the quiet that produced. “I saw a great deal. Normandy, in particular. My commanding officer put me forward for a medal, for composure under extreme conditions. He didn’t understand that I’d already seen worse, before the war. Because I’d already come to Enderby the once.”

And, because of a bad night, and because that cough had rattled her, she seized on precisely the wrong part of what he’d said and blurted out, “You can’t have been, surely. I mean you’d have been…” Looking at that lined face, the steady eyes, the full set of teeth when he grinned at her confusion. His evident strength. An old man, yes, but a hale one, and she knew that money could buy a lot of health, and the Enderbough clan surely had an obscene amount of money, but even so… “Ten…?” she hazarded. “Five?” Although honestly she’d have bet that he hadn’t even been born for that particular war. Was there some other meaning to ‘Normandy’?

“Miss Mendes,” Patrick said, with a young man’s mischief lurking in his eyes, “I turned one hundred and eight last year. This is my third visit to Enderby, you see.” And again she missed the hook. Later she’d think back on it and try to puzzle out the precise way he said it, but right then she was so stunned by the assertion of his age that it was all she could think about.

He coughed again, and she actually heard her cutlery rattle against the china. “If you change your mind,” he said, “come and find me and I’ll see about that car. It would be best, you see.” And still without actively recommending the course of action. Leaving her the option, no more than that.

With far more ease than any one-hundred-and-eight year-old man should have mustered, he levered himself out of the chair and made his way towards the senior’s table. A couple of other elders—or possibly centenarians—glowered at her suspiciously, and at him, too. Quite the maverick, Patrick Enderbough.

So what the hell was that all about? she wondered, but there was nobody around to give her answers. The expression on the face of the ascetic girl was cold and said clearly, If I were you I’d take the car, Yank.

One of the rugby bros, Stewart—Tarquin?—made an appearance then, looking worse than Will had, though mostly through being hungover. Patrick Enderbough coughed again, like a cannon salute, and the greenish Stewart winced, looked bilious and rushed from the room.

“Bloody hell, Melissa, is that a shotgun?” Ross demanded.

Melissa looked unrepentant.

“I mean, d’you think Will was got by some sort of prehistoric grouse?” He glanced at Will, who was looking pale, still. Not at all ready to go rambling in the woods as far as Elena was concerned, but just as obviously not to be dissuaded.

“He was got by something,” she said. “And it’s very obviously something our seniors and betters are fully aware is out there, don’t you think? Dad absolutely took me to task this morning. Just like I was eight and I’d smashed the Chinese vase again. Except he wouldn’t actually tell me what was going on, so it was basically just him spitting feathers and shouting at me.”

Elena tried to remember which of the middle table had been Melissa’s father, coming up with a solid, heavyset man whose face took her jaw and brow and turned them into something ogrish. From somewhere, her memory dredged up one more name. Jeffrey? Jeffrey de la Pole. Often to be seen with Ross’s Uncle Jas, and cut from the same coarse and bullying cloth if she was any judge. Probably not an easy man to have for a father.

“Anyway, I plan to bag the fucker and give it to the chef, whatever it is,” Melissa finished defiantly. “See what Dad has to say to that.” That jaw was set, and the hands about the gun were only a little white at the knuckles. And it was a proper Elmer Fudd piece, Elena saw. Not what an Open Carry type would tout around back home, but double-barrelled and breech-loading.