Until the Colours Fade by Tim Jeal Page A

same, he repeated to himself, as if seeking conviction . Yet, even at this moment of meeting, he could not forget that George Braithwaite had proposed to her. Twenty-five, thought Magnus, and she was eighteen when I left.
    As they walked in the direction of the house, Catherine turned to him and squeezed his arm.
    ‘You must stay ever so long, Magnus.’
    ‘I’m not going back,’ he murmured.
    ‘The hero of Kandy not going back?’ she laughed, evidently suspecting a joke until she saw the seriousness of his face. ‘But why?’ she asked in astonishment.
    ‘I sent you the extracts from my evidence printed in The Times. ’
    ‘I read them.’
    ‘Then you know why I can’t return. The very men who praise me to my face for doing what I did, snarl at me behind my back.’
    ‘Poor Magnus.’
    ‘I’m not going to force any more natives to work on roads while their rice harvest rots. The coffee planters need the roads; they can get them built without me.’
    The sun was sinking, an indistinct red sphere, and the wind seemed colder. Dead leaves rustled across the gravel path, swirling in wide circles.
    ‘So what will you do?’ she asked with a nervous frown.
    Her concern touched him, but Magnus had no wish to agonise over his future so soon after his arrival. He shrugged his shoulders .
    ‘Become a briefless barrister or make my fortune in the Australian gold fields,’ he answered with a laugh, and then stared at her with a parody of sternness. ‘Since I have come so far to see you, I trust you have given thought to my entertainment.’
    Catherine opened her eyes very wide and simpered coyly:
    ‘Oh yes indeed, but I fear you will find us very dull with ourmuslin work and piano pieces from Donizetti and Bellini.’
    ‘On the contrary,’ he objected with great earnestness, ‘muslin and Donizetti are both absolute passions with me. In Ceylon I felt the absence of them sorely.’
    He gazed at her intensely until they both started to laugh. Then, arm in arm, they resumed their walk towards the house. Once they had laughed a great deal together. Magnus stopped as they reached the carriage sweep. From where they stood the sun’s reflections in the diamond-shaped window-panes made them glow like dull points of fire in the dark façade.
    *
    Most of the rooms in the house were narrow and low-ceilinged, but not so the Great Hall, which was still used for dining. With its high oak hammer-beam roof, carved screen and minstrels’ gallery, it dated from that remote period when the family had sat at a high table on a dais, while their servants ate below them in the main body of the hall. Now there was only a single mahogany table in the centre of the room, immediately beneath a massive brass chandelier holding two dozen candles. Yet, not even with added light from the candelabra on the table and from oil lamps on the sideboard, was more than a fraction of the cavernous room well-lit. In the sombre grandeur of this ancestral hall, Magnus dined with his brother and sister.
    As the meal drew to a close the atmosphere was tense and uneasy. Just as Magnus had supposed he would, Charles had argued that his decision to leave Ceylon was a virtual confession of failure. Principles, in his view, ought not to come into what was a matter of common sense. Whatever the shortcomings of officials and planters, Magnus would be a fool to throw away years of experience without having any alternative profession to take up. While Charles held forth, Catherine said nothing, and Magnus merely gazed at Beechey’s portrait of the first baronet above the wide Tudor fireplace, recalling how much he had infuriated his father by comparing their ancestor’s eighteenth century admiral’s full-dress uniform with the cocked hat and broad facings of a modern beadle’s outfit.
    He had vowed that, whatever his brother might say, he would not lose his temper. So when Charles had finished with Ceylon to his satisfaction, Magnus did not argue, but instead