Pearl stood at the door with the tray, disapproval on her face. She wasn’t about to crumble at the appeal or at the blackmail. “Are you trying to starve yourself again?” she asked unsympathetically.
“No. I just don’t have much appetite, that’s all.”
Pearl shrugged.
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Half the time you look suicidal. Today-”
Carys smiled radiantly.
“It’s your life,” the woman said.
“Before you go, Pearl . . .”
“What?”
“Tell me about the runner.”
Pearl looked bemused: it wasn’t like the girl to show any interest in goings-on in the house. She stayed up here behind locked doors and dreamed. But today she was insistent:
“The one who races himself every morning. In the track suit. Who is he?”
Where was the harm in telling her? Curiosity was a sign of health, and she had too little of either.
“His name’s Marty.”
Marty. Carys tried the name in her head, and it fitted him fine. The angel’s name was Marty.
“Many what?”
“I can’t remember.”
Carys stood up. The smile had gone. She had that hard look that she got when she really wanted something; the corners of her mouth pulled down. It was a look she shared with Mr. Whitehead, and it intimidated Pearl. Carys knew that.
“You know my memory,” Pearl said, apologetically. “I don’t remember his surname.”
“Well, who is he?”
“Your father’s bodyguard; he’s taken over from Nick,” Pearl replied. “He’s an ex-prisoner, apparently. Robbery with violence.”
“Really?”
“And rather lacking in social graces.”
“Marty.”
“Strauss,” Pearl said, with a note of triumph. “Martin Strauss; that’s it.
There: he was named, Carys thought. There was a primitive power in naming someone. It gave you a handle on a person. Martin Strauss.
“Thank you,” she said, genuinely pleased.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just wondered who he was. People come and go.”
“Well I think he’s staying,” Pearl said, and left the room. As she closed the door Carys said:
“Does he have a middle name?”
But Pearl didn’t hear.
It was strange, to think the runner had been a prisoner; still was a prisoner in a way, racing around and around the grounds, breathing in clear air, breathing out clouds, frowning as he ran. Perhaps he’d understand, more than the old man or Toy or Pearl, what it felt like to be on the sunshine island, and not know how to get off. Or worse, to know how, but never to dare it, for fear of never getting back to safety.
Now that she knew his name and his crimes, the romance of his morning run wasn’t spoiled by the information. He still trailed glory; but now she saw the weight in his body when previously she’d seen only the lightness of his step.
She decided, after an age of indecision, that watching was not going to be enough.
As Marty became fitter, so he demanded more of himself during his morning run. The circuit he made grew bigger, though by now he was covering the larger distance in the same time as he had the shorter. Sometimes, to add spice to the exercise, he’d plunge into the woods, careless of the undergrowth and the low branches, his even stride degenerating into an ad hoc collection of leaps and dashes. On the other side of the wood was the weir, and here, if he was in the mood, he might halt for a few minutes. There were herons here; three that he’d seen. It would soon be nesting time and they would presumably pair off. He wondered what would happen to the third bird then? Would it fly off in search of its own mate, or linger, thinking adulterous thoughts? The weeks ahead would tell.
Some days, fascinated by the way Whitehead watched him from the top of the house, he’d slow as he passed by, hoping to catch his face. But the watcher was too careful to be caught.
And then one morning she was waiting at the dovecote for him as he made the long curve back toward the house, and he knew at once that he’d been wrong about it being the old man who’d been spying. This was the cautious observer at the upper window. It was barely a quarter to seven in the morning, and still chilly. She’d been waiting a while to judge by the flush on her cheeks and nose. Her eyes were shining with cold.