Chapter 11 The Young And The Lovely

After breakfasting on the following morning in a small breakfast-roomdownstairs, he found Renata waiting for him. The horses were at the door.
Both of them had brought riding clothes with them. Everything theycould possibly require seemed to have been intelligently anticipated.
They mounted and rode away down the castle drive. Renata spoke¹ withthe groom² at some length.
‘He asked if we would like him to accompany us but I said no. I knowthe tracks round here fairly well.’
‘I see. You have been here before?’
‘Not very often of late years. Early in my life I knew this place very well.’
He gave her a sharp look. She did not return it. As she rode beside him,he watched her profile– the thin, aquiline³ nose, the head carried soproudly on the slender neck. She rode a horse well, he saw that.
All the same, there was a sense of ill ease in his mind this morning. Hewasn’t sure why…
His mind went back to the Airport Lounge. The woman who had cometo stand beside him. The glass of Pilsner on the table…Nothing in it thatthere shouldn’t have been–neither then, nor later. A risk he had accepted.
Why, when all that was long over, should it rouse uneasiness in him now?
They had a brief canter following a ride through the trees. A beautifulproperty, beautiful woods. In the distance he saw horned animals. A para-dise for a sportsman, a paradise for the old way of living, a paradise thatcontained– what? A serpent? As it was in the beginning– with Paradisewent a serpent. He drew rein⁴ and the horses fell to a walk. He and Renatawere alone–no microphones, no listening walls–The time had come for hisquestions.
‘Who is she?’ he said urgently. ‘What is she?’
‘It’s easy to answer. So easy that it’s hardly believable.’
‘Well?’ he said.
‘She’s oil. Copper⁵. Goldmines in South Africa. Armaments in Sweden.
Uranium deposits in the north. Nuclear development, vast stretches of co-balt. She’s all those things.’
‘And yet, I hadn’t heard about her, I didn’t know her name, I didn’tknow–’

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