The Company of Strangers. Robert Thomas Wilson

like sea fossils in rock.

      ‘Boiling water,’ he said, catching her looking, ‘when I was a child.’

      ‘Sorry,’ she said, flustered at being caught out.

      ‘Did Sutherland and Rose fill you in?’

      ‘As much as they were prepared to. They said they’d purposely left some gaps.’

      ‘Ye-e-e-s,’ said Cardew, a frown of uncertainty rippling down his forehead. ‘Did Rose say anything about Mafalda?’

      ‘He said she was having a breakdown of some sort, not “howling at the moon”, as he put it, just nerves.’

      ‘I don’t know what it is. Something to do with her husband perhaps, but it might just be a genetic thing. A bit of inbreeding back down the line. These big Portuguese families are known for it. Marrying each other’s first cousins and the like and before you know it…I mean, look at the Portuguese royal family. A set of March hares if ever I saw one.’

      ‘Isn’t that all over now? The royal family?’

      ‘Thirty-six years ago. Terrible business. The king and his son came up to Lisbon from the country, from Vila Viçosa in fact, not far from where Mafalda’s family comes from, near the border. They arrived in Lisbon, trundling through the streets, both assassinated in their carriage. End of the monarchy. Well, it took a couple more years to fizzle out, but that was the effective end: 1908. Still, she might just be depressed or something. Whatever, she’s not right, which is probably why Wilshere’s looking for some company.’

      ‘Female company, so I understand.’

      Cardew shifted in his seat and looked as wary as a grouse on the Glorious Twelfth.

      ‘Bit of a rum one, old Wilshere. He’s broken the mould. Not your average chap.’

      ‘Does he have children?’

      ‘Only sons, who are away. No daughters. Probably why he wants female company. And here I am with four, for God’s sake,’ he said, a little gloomy. ‘Sporting legacy gone…although the eldest one’s school long-jump champion.’

      ‘All is not lost, Mr Cardew.’

      He brightened, bounced the end of his pipe by clenching his jaw.

      ‘I think you’ll like Wilshere,’ said Cardew. ‘And I know he’ll like you. You’ve got that determined look about you. He likes girls with a bit of spunk. He didn’t like Marjorie.’

      ‘Marjorie?’

      ‘My former secretary. The one who married a Portuguese and is now pregnant. The husband won’t let her work, says she’s got to lie down. Poor girl’s got six months to go. Still, that’s why you’re here. Wilshere didn’t take to her, anyway. She was a bit too English for his taste and he upset her. Yes, he can be a bit like that. If he takes to you, you’re all right. If not he’s…he’s a difficult bugger.’

      ‘He likes you.’

      ‘Yes…in his way.’

      ‘Aren’t you a bit too English as well?’

      ‘Sorry, old girl. I’m a Scot, both sides. Talk like a Sassenach but I’m a Scot through and through. Like Wilshere, in fact, he’s Irish down to his heels but talks with a silver spoon in his mouth.’

      ‘Or a hot potato…if he’s Irish,’ said Anne.

      Cardew roared, not that he found it so funny. He was just the type who liked to laugh.

      ‘What else is there to know about Patrick Wilshere?’ she asked.

      ‘He can be a charmer…’

      ‘As well as a drinker and a gambler.’

      ‘He rides, too. Do you ride?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘It’s nice up there on the Serra de Sintra on horseback,’ said Cardew. ‘Sutherland told me you had a top-class brain. Maths. Languages. That sort of thing.’

      ‘It didn’t leave much time for anything else. I’m just not sporty, Mr Cardew. Sorry. I’m not much of a team person, I suppose. It’s probably something to do with being an only child and…’

      She pulled up short of saying ‘and not having a father’. She had a father now, of course. Graham Ashworth. Accountant. She looked out of the window and ordered her mind. They passed large villas set in their own, almost tropical gardens.

      ‘There’re crowned heads of Europe sitting out the war in Estoril,’ said Cardew. ‘That’s the kind of place it is.’

      He turned off the main road at the Estoril railway station and drove into a square lined with hotels and cafés surrounding some gardens with palm trees and beds of roses, which gradually sloped up to a modern building at the top.

      They passed the Hotel Palácio which Cardew told her was ‘ours’ and next door the Hotel Parque which was ‘theirs’. They went round the back of the modern building at the top which proved to be the casino, and Cardew pointed out a narrow, overgrown passage and a gate in the hedgerow further up, which was the back way into the Wilsheres’ garden. They climbed higher, right to the top of the hill, past gardens enclosed by privilege, hugging the towering phoenix palms and spiked fans of the Washingtonians, while the brash purple lights of bougainvillea tried to escape over the wall. Anne straightened her sunglasses on her nose, rested an elbow on the car window ledge, wished she had a cigarette going, which she thought would be the final detail of a leading actress’s style, coming into her Riviera home.

      ‘You didn’t say whether you liked Wilshere,’ said Anne, catching sight of herself in the wing mirror.

      Cardew stared intently at the windscreen as if the entrails of squashed insects might lead him somewhere. They pulled up at an ornate gateway, walls curving up and scrolling against solid stone posts, each of which sported a giant carved pineapple on top. A tiled panel bore the words Quinta da Águia and the wrought-iron gates an elaborate QA design.

      ‘Here’s an insight into the man,’ said Cardew. ‘This place used to be called Quinta do Cisne, Swan House, if you like. He’s renamed it Eagle House. His little joke, I think.’

      ‘I don’t get it.’

      ‘He does business with the Americans and the Germans. Both countries use the eagle as their national symbol.’

      ‘Maybe he’s just being a gentleman.’

      ‘How’s that?’

      ‘Making everybody feel comfortable…unless they’re Marjorie,’ she said.

      The driveway was cobbled all the way up to the house, white with black geometric patterns, just as she’d seen on the Lisbon pavements. It was lined with pink oleanders, very mature, almost trees. They came out of the oleanders into a square in front of the house which had a fountain in the middle, water spouting from a dolphin’s mouth. Lawn sloped away to distant hedges, a stepped, cobbled path ran down one side towards the bottom of the garden and the back gateway to possible financial ruin. The view reached to the hotels and palms of Estoril’s main square, the railway station and the ocean beyond.

      The house itself was vast and box-like, not an accumulation of extensions, not something organic that had grown with the owner’s mind or fortune, but a house that had been planned, finished and never again added to. Its ugliness was disguised by the leafy frills of an ancient wisteria whose tributaries reached the eaves of the terracotta tiled roof. They walked to the pillared porch, Anne fretting about her case left in the car.

      The door was opened by a grotesquely bent old man, his head at right angles to his body and turned sideways so that he could look Cardew in the eye. He wore a black tailed jacket and striped trousers. He was backed up by a small, wide woman also dressed in black with a white apron and cap. Cardew’s Portuguese came out like an order for buttered scones but it was intelligible enough