“Aunt Bee,” said Jane, breathing heavily into her soup, “was Noah a cleverer back-room boy than Ulysses, or was Ulysses a cleverer back-room boy than Noah?”
“Don’t eat out of the point of your spoon, Jane.”
“I can’t mobilise the strings out of the side.”
“Ruth does.”
Jane looked across at her twin, negotiating the vermicelli with smug neatness.
“She has a stronger suck than I have.”
“Aunt Bee has a face like a very expensive cat,” Ruth said, eyeing her aunt sideways.
Bee privately thought that this was a very good description, but wished that Ruth would not be quaint.
“No, but which was the cleverest?” said Jane, who never departed from a path once her feet were on it.
“Clever-er,” said Ruth.
“Was it Noah or Ulysses? Simon, which was it, do you think?”
“Ulysses,” said her brother, not looking up from his paper.
It was so like Simon, Bee thought, to be reading the list of runners at Newmarket, peppering his soup, and listening to the conversation at one and the same time.
“Why, Simon? Why Ulysses?”
“He hadn’t Noah’s good Met. service. Whereabouts was Firelight in the Free Handicap, do you remember?”
“Oh, away down,” Bee said.
“A coming-of-age is a little like a wedding, isn’t it, Simon?” This was Ruth.
“Better on the whole.”
“Is it?”
“You can stay and dance at your own coming of age. Which you can’t at your wedding.”
“I shall stay and dance at my wedding.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Oh, dear, thought Bee, I suppose there are families that have conversation at meals, but I don’t know how they manage it. Perhaps I haven’t been strict enough.
She looked down the table at the three bent heads, and Eleanor’s still vacant place, and wondered if she had done right by them. Would Bill and Nora be pleased with what she had made of their children? If by some miracle they could walk in now, young and fine-looking and gay as they had gone to their deaths, would they say: “Ah, yes, that is just how we pictured them; even to Jane’s ragamuffin look.”
Bee’s eyes smiled as they rested on Jane.
The twins were nine-going-on-ten and identical. Identical, that is to say, in the technical sense. In spite of their physical resemblance there was never any doubt as to which was Jane and which was Ruth. They had the same straight flaxen hair, the same small-boned face and pale skin, the same direct gaze with a challenge in it; but there the identity stopped. Jane was wearing rather grubby jodhpurs and a shapeless jersey festooned with pulled ends of wool. Her hair was pushed back without aid of mirror and held in the uncompromising clasp of a kirby-grip so old that it had reverted to its original steel colour, as old hairpins do. She was slightly astigmatic and, when in the presence of Authority, was in the habit of wearing horn-rimmed spectacles. Normally they lived in the hip pocket of her breeches, and they had been lain-upon, leant-upon, and sat-upon so often that she lived in a permanent state of bankruptcy: breakages over the yearly allowance having to be paid for out of her money-box. She rode to and fro to lessons at the Rectory on Fourposter, the old white pony; her short legs sticking out on either side of him like straws. Fourposter had long ago become a conveyance rather than a ride, so it did not matter that his great barrel was as manageable as a feather-bed and almost as wide.
Ruth, on the other hand, wore a pink cotton frock, as fresh as when she had set off on her bicycle that morning for the Rectory. Her hands were clean and the nails unbroken, and somewhere she had found a pink ribbon and had tied the two side-pieces of her hair in a bow on the top of her head.
Eight years, Bee was thinking. Eight years of contriving, conserving, and planning. And in six weeks’ time her stewardship would come to an end. In little more than a month Simon would be twenty-one, and would inherit his mother’s fortune and the lean years would be over. The Ashbys had never been rich but while her brother lived there was ample to keep Latchetts — the house and the three farms on the estate — as it should be kept. Only his sudden death had accounted for the near-poverty of those eight years. And only Bee’s own resolution accounted for the fact that her sister-in-law’s money would, next month, come to her son intact. There had been no borrowing on the strength of that future inheritance. Not even when Mr. Sandal, of Cosset, Thring and Noble, had been prepared to countenance it. Latchetts must pay its way, Bee had said. And Latchetts, after eight years, was still self-supporting and solvent.
Beyond her nephew’s fair head she could see, through the window, the white rails of the south paddock, and the flick of old Regina’s tail in the sunlight. It was the horses that had saved them. The horses that had been her brother’s hobby had proved the salvation of his house. Year after year, in spite of all the ills, accidents, and sheer cussedness that afflict horseflesh, the horses had shown a profit. The swings had always paid a little more than the roundabouts. When the original small stud that had been her brother’s delight seemed likely to be a doubtful prop, Bee had added the small hardy children’s ponies to occupy the colder pastures half-way up the down. Eleanor had schooled doubtful hacks into “safe rides for a lady,” and had sold them at a profit. And now that the manor was a boarding-school she was teaching others to ride, at a very respectable price per hour.
“Eleanor is very late, isn’t she?”
“Is she out with La Parslow?” Simon asked.
“The Parslow girl, yes.”
“The unhappy horse has probably dropped dead.”
Simon got up to take away the soup plates, and to help out the meat course from the sideboard, and Bee watched him with critical approval. At least she had managed not to spoil Simon; and that, given Simon’s selfish charm, was no small achievement. Simon had an air of appealing dependence that was quite fallacious, but it had fooled all and sundry since he was in the nursery. Bee had watched the fooling process with amusement and something that was like a reluctant admiration; if she herself had been gifted with Simon’s particular brand of charm, she felt, she would in all likelihood have made it work for her as Simon did. But she had seen to it that it did not work with her.
“It would be nice if a coming-of-age had something like bridesmaids,” Ruth observed, turning over her helping with a fastidious fork.
This fell on stony ground.
“The Rector says that Ulysses was probably a frightful nuisance round the house,” said the undeviating Jane.
“Oh!” said Bee, interested in this sidelight on the classics. “Why?”
“He said he was ‘without doubt a — a gadget-contriver,’ and that Penelope was probably very glad to be rid of him for a bit. I wish liver wasn’t so smooth.”
Eleanor came in and helped herself from the sideboard in her usual silent fashion.
“Pah!” said Ruth. “What a smell of stables.”
“You’re late, Nell,” Bee said, inquiring.
“She’ll never ride,” Eleanor said. “She can’t even bump the saddle yet.”
“Perhaps loony people can’t ride,” Ruth suggested.
“Ruth,” Bee said, with vigour. “The pupils at the Manor are not lunatic. They are not even mentally deficient. They are just ‘difficult.’”
“Ill-adjusted is the technical description,” Simon said.
“Well, they behave like lunatics. If you behave like a lunatic how is anyone to tell that you’re not one?”
Since no one had an answer to this, silence fell over the Ashby luncheon table. Eleanor ate with the swift purposefulness of a hungry schoolboy, not lifting her eyes from her plate. Simon took out a pencil and reckoned odds on the margin of his paper. Ruth, who had stolen three biscuits from the jar on the Rectory sideboard and eaten them in the lavatory, made a castle of her food with a moat of gravy round it. Jane consumed hers with industrious pleasure. And Bee sat with her eyes on the view beyond the window.
Over that far ridge the land sloped in chequered miles to the sea and the clustered roofs of Westover. But here, in this high valley, shut off from the Channel gales and open to the sun, the trees stood up in the bright air with a midland serenity: with an air, almost, of enchantment. The scene had the bright perfection and stillness of an apparition.
A fine inheritance; a fine rich inheritance. She hoped that Simon would do well by it. There were times when she had — no, not been afraid. Times perhaps when she had wondered. Simon had far too many sides to him; a quicksilver quality that did not go with a yeoman inheritance. Only Latchetts, of all the surrounding estates, still sheltered a local family and Bee hoped that it would go on sheltering Ashbys for centuries to come. Fair, small-boned, long-headed Ashbys like the ones round the table.
“Jane, must you splash fruit juice round like that?”
“I don’t like rhubarb in inches, Aunt Bee, I like it in mush.”
“Well, mush it more carefully.”
When she had been Jane’s age she had mushed up her rhubarb too, and at this same table. At this same table had eaten Ashbys who had died of fever in India, of wounds in the Crimea, of starvation in Queensland, of typhoid at the Cape, and of cirrhosis of the liver in the Straits Settlements. But always there had been an Ashby at Latchetts; and they had done well by the land. Here and there came a ne’er-do-well — like her cousin Walter — but Providence had seen to it that the worthless quality had been confined to younger sons, who could practise their waywardness on subjects remote from Latchetts.
No queens had come to Latchetts to dine; no cavaliers to hide. For three hundred years it had stood in its meadows very much as it stood now; a yeoman’s dwelling. And for nearly two of those three hundred years Ashbys had lived in it.
“Simon, dear, see to the cona.”
Perhaps its simplicity had saved it. It had pretended to nothing; had aspired to nothing. Its goodness had been dug back into the earth; its sap had returned to its roots. Across the valley the long white house of Clare stood in its park, gracious as a vicereine, but there were no Ledinghams there now. The Ledinghams had been prodigal of their talents and their riches; using Clare as a background, as a purse, as a decoration, as a refuge, but not as a home. For centuries they had peacocked over the world: as pro-consuls, explorers, court jesters, rakes, and revolutionaries; and Clare had supported their extravagances. Now only their portraits remained. And the great house in the park was a boarding-school for the unmanageable children of parents with progressive ideas and large bank accounts.
But the Ashbys stayed at Latchetts.
As Bee poured the coffee the twins disappeared on ploys of their own, this being their half-holiday; and Eleanor drank hers hastily and went back to the stables.
“Do you want the car this afternoon?” Simon asked. “I half promised old Gates that I would bring a calf out from Westover in one of our trailers. His own has collapsed.”
“No, I don’t need it,” Bee said, wondering what had prompted Simon to so dull a chore. She hoped it was not the Gates daughter; who was very pretty, very silly, and very commonplace. Gates was the tenant of Wigsell, the smallest of the three farms; and Simon was not normally tolerant of his opportunism.
“If you really want to know,” Simon said as he got up, “I want to see June Kaye’s new picture. It’s at the Empire.”
The disarming frankness of this would have delighted anyone but Beatrice Ashby, who knew very well her nephew’s habit of throwing up two balls to divert your attention from the third.
“Can I fetch you anything?”
“You might get one of the new bus timetables from the Westover and District offices if you have time. Eleanor says they have a new Clare service that goes round by Guessgate.”
“Bee,” said a voice in the hall. “Are you there, Bee?”
“Mrs. Peck,” Simon said, going out to meet her.
“Come in, Nancy,” Bee called. “Come and have coffee with me. The others have finished.”
And the Rector’s wife came into the room, put her empty basket on the sideboard, and sat down with a pleased sigh. “I could do with some,” she said.
When people mentioned Mrs. Peck’s name they still added: “Nancy Ledingham that was, you know;” although it was a decade since she had stunned the social world by marrying George Peck and burying herself in a country rectory. Nancy Ledingham had been more than the “débutante of her year;” she had been a national possession. The penny Press had done for her what the penny postcard had done for Lily Langtry: her beauty was common property. If the public did not stand on chairs to see her pass they certainly stopped the traffic; her appearance as bridesmaid at a wedding was enough to give the authorities palpitations for a week beforehand. She had that serene unquestionable loveliness that defeats even a willing detractor. Indeed the only question seemed to be whether the ultimate coronet would have strawberry leaves or not. More than once the popular Press had supplied her with a crown, but this was generally considered mere wishful thinking; her public would settle for strawberry leaves.
And then, quite suddenly — between a Tatler and a Tatler, so to speak — she had married George Peck. The shattered Press, doing the best they could for a shattered public, had pulled out the vox humana stop and quavered about romance, but George had defeated them. He was a tall, thin man with the face of a very intelligent and rather nice ape. Besides, as the society editor of the Clarion said: “A clergyman! I ask you! I could get more romance out of a cement-mixer!”
So the public let her go, into her chosen oblivion. Her aunt, who had been responsible for her coming-out, disinherited her. Her father died in a welter of chagrin and debts. And her old home, the great white house in the park, had become a school.
But after thirteen years of rectory life Nancy Peck was still serenely and unquestionably beautiful; and people still said: “Nancy Ledingham that was, you know.”
“I’ve come for the eggs,” she said, “but there’s no hurry, is there? It’s wonderful to sit and do nothing.”
Bee’s eyes slid sideways at her in a smile.
“You have such a nice face, Bee.”
“Thank you. Ruth says it is a face like a very expensive cat.”
“Nonsense. At least — not the furry kind. Oh, I know what she means! The long-necked, short-haired kind that show their small chins. Heraldic cats. Yes, Bee, darling, you have a face like a heraldic cat. Especially when you keep your head still and slide your eyes at people.” She put her cup down and sighed again with pleasure. “I can’t think how the Nonconformists have failed to discover coffee.”
“Discover it?”
“Yes. As a snare. It does far more for one than drink. And yet no one preaches about it, or signs pledges about it. Five mouthfuls and the world looks rosy.”
“Was it very grey before?”
“A sort of mud colour. I was so happy this week because it was the first week this year that we hadn’t needed sitting-room fires and I had no fires to do and no fireplaces to clean. But nothing — I repeat, nothing — will stop George from throwing his used matches into the fireplace. And as he takes fifteen matches to light one pipe ——! The room swarms with waste-paper baskets and ash trays, but no, George must use the fireplace. He doesn’t even aim, blast him. A fine careless flick of the wrist and the match lands anywhere from the fender to the farthest coal. And they have all got to be picked out again.”
“And he says: why don’t you leave them.”
“He does. However, now that I’ve had some Latchetts coffee I have decided not to take a chopper to him after all.”
“Poor Nan. These Christians.”
“How are the coming-of-age preparations getting on?”
“The invitations are about to go to the printers; which is a nice definite stage to have arrived at. A dinner for intimates, here; and a dance for everyone in the barn. What is Alec’s address, by the way?”
“I can’t remember his latest one off-hand. I’ll look it up for you. He has a different one almost every time he writes. I think he gets heaved out when he can’t pay his rent. Not that I hear from him often, of course. He has never forgiven me for not marrying well, so that I could keep my only brother in the state to which he had been accustomed.”
“Is he playing just now?”
“I don’t know. He had a part in that silly comedy at the Savoy but it ran only a few weeks. He is so much a type that his parts are necessarily limited.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“No one could cast Alec as anything but Alec. You don’t know how lucky you are, Bee, to have Ashbys to deal with. The incidence of rakes in the Ashby family is singularly low.”
“There was Walter.”
“A lone wolf crying in the wilderness. What became of Cousin Walter?”
“Oh, he died.”
“In an odour of sanctity?”
“No. Carbolic. A workhouse ward, I think.”
“Even Walter wasn’t bad, you know. He just liked drink and hadn’t the head for it. But when a Ledingham is a rake he is plain bad.”
They sat together in a comfortable silence, considering their respective families. Bee was several years older than her friend: almost a generation older. But neither could remember a time when the other was not there; and the Ledingham children had gone in and out of Latchetts as if it were their home, as familiar with it as the Ashbys were with Clare.
“I have been thinking so often lately of Bill and Nora,” Nancy said. “This would have been such a happy time for them.”
“Yes,” Bee said, reflectively; her eyes on the window. It was at that view she had been looking when it happened. On a day very like this and at this time of the year. Standing in the sitting-room window, thinking how lovely everything looked and if they would think that nothing they had seen in Europe was half as lovely. Wondering if Nora would look well again; she had been very pulled down after the twins’ birth. Hoping she had been a good deputy for them, and yet a little pleased to be resuming her own life in London to-morrow.
The twins had been asleep, and the older children upstairs grooming themselves for the welcome and for the dinner they were to be allowed to stay up for. In half an hour or so the car would swing out from the avenue of lime trees and come to rest at the door and there they would be; in a flurry of laughter and embracing and present-giving and well-being.
The turning on of the wireless had been so absent-minded a gesture that she did not know that she had done it. “The two o’clock plane from Paris to London,” said the cool voice, “with nine passengers and a crew of three crashed this afternoon just after crossing the Kent coast. There were no survivors.”
No. There had been no survivors.
“They were so wrapped up in the children,” Nancy said. “They have been so much in my mind lately, now that Simon is going to be twenty-one.”
“And Patrick has been in mine.”
“Patrick?” Nancy sounded at a loss. “Oh, yes, of course. Poor Pat.”
Bee looked at her curiously. “You had almost forgotten, hadn’t you?”
“Well, it is a long time ago, Bee. And — well, I suppose one’s mind tidies away the things it can’t bear to remember. Bill and Nora — that was frightful, but it was something that happened to people. I mean, it was part of the ordinary risks of life. But Pat — that was different.” She sat silent for a moment. “I have pushed it so far down in my mind that I can’t even remember what he looked like any more. Was he as like Simon as Ruth is like Jane?”
“Oh, no. They weren’t identical twins. Not much more alike than some brothers are. Though oddly enough they were much more in each other’s pockets than Ruth and Jane are.”
“Simon seems to have got over it. Do you think he remembers it often?”
“He must have remembered it very often lately.”
“Yes. But it is a long way between thirteen and twenty-one. I expect even a twin grows shadowy at that distance.”
This gave Bee pause. How shadowy was he to her: the kind solemn little boy who should have been coming into his inheritance next month? She tried to call up his face in front of her but there was only a blur. He had been small and immature for his age, but otherwise he was just an Ashby. Less an individual than a family resemblance. All she really remembered, now she thought about it, was that he was solemn and kind.
Kindness was not a common trait in small boys.
Simon had a careless generosity when it did not cost him inconvenience; but Patrick had had that inner kindness that not only gives but gives up.
“I still wonder,” Bee said unhappily, “whether we should have allowed the body that was found on the Castleton beach to be buried over there. A pauper’s burial, it was.”
“But, Bee! It had been months in the water, hadn’t it? They couldn’t even tell what sex it was; could they? And Castleton is miles away. And they get all the corpses from the Atlantic founderings, anyhow. I mean, the nearer ones. It is not sense to worry over — to identify it with ——” Her dismayed voice died into silence.
“No, of course it isn’t!” Bee said briskly. “I am just being morbid. Have some more coffee.”
And as she poured the coffee she decided that when Nancy had gone she would unlock the private drawer of her desk and burn that pitiful note of Patrick’s. It was morbid to keep it, even if she had not looked at it for years. She had never had the heart to tear it up because it had seemed part of Patrick. But of course that was absurd. It was no more part of Patrick than was the despair that had filled him when he wrote: “I’m sorry, but I can’t bear it any longer. Don’t be angry with me. Patrick.” She would take it out and burn it. Burning it would not blot it from her mind, of course, but there was nothing she could do about that. The round schoolboy letters were printed there for always. Round, careful letters written with the stylograph that he had been so attached to. It was so like Patrick to apologise for taking his own life.
Nancy, watching her friend’s face, proffered what she considered to be consolation. “They say, you know, that when you throw yourself from a high place you lose consciousness almost at once.”
“I don’t think he did it that way, Nan.”
“No!” Nancy sounded staggered. “But that was where the note was found. I mean, the coat with the note in the pocket. On the cliff-top.”
“Yes, but by the path. By the path down the Gap to the shore.”
“Then what do you ——?”
“I think he swam out.”
“Till he couldn’t come back, you mean?”
“Yes. When I was in loco parentis that time, when Bill and Nora were on holiday, we went several times to the Gap, the children and I; to swim and have a picnic. And once when we were there Patrick said that the best way to die — I think he called it the lovely way — would be to swim out until you were too tired to go any farther. He said it quite matter-of-factly, of course. In those days it was — a mere academic matter. When I pointed out that drowning would still be drowning, he said: ‘But you would be so tired, you see; you wouldn’t care any more. The water would just take you.’ He loved the water.”
She was silent for a little and then blurted out the thing that had been her private nightmare for years.
“I’ve always been afraid that when it was too late to come back he may have regretted.”
“Oh, Bee, no!”
Bee’s sidelong glance went to Nancy’s beautiful, protesting face.
“Morbid. I know. Forget I said it.”
“I don’t know now how I could have forgotten,” Nancy said, wondering. “The worst of pushing horrible things down into one’s subconscious is that when they pop up again they are as fresh as if they had been in a refrigerator. You haven’t allowed time to get at them to — to mould them over a little.”
“I think a great many people have almost forgotten that Simon had a twin,” Bee said, excusing. “Or that he has not always been the heir. Certainly no one has mentioned Patrick to me since the coming-of-age celebrations have been in the air.”
“Why was Patrick so inconsolable about his parents’ death?”
“I didn’t know he was. None of us did. All the children were wild with grief to begin with, of course. Sick with it. But none more than another. Patrick seemed bewildered rather than inconsolable. ‘You mean: Latchetts belongs to me now?’ I remember him saying, as if it were some strange idea, difficult to understand. Simon was impatient with him, I remember. Simon was always the brilliant one. I think that it was all too much for Patrick; too strange. The adrift feeling of being suddenly without his father and mother, and the weight of Latchetts on his shoulders. It was too much for him and he was so unhappy that he — took a way out.”
“Poor Pat. Poor darling. It was wrong of me to forget him.”
“Come; let us go and get those eggs. You won’t forget to let me have Alec’s address, will you? A Ledingham must have an invitation.”
“No, I’ll look it up when I go back, and telephone it to you. Can your latest moron take a telephone message?”
“Just.”
“Well, I’ll stick to basic. You won’t forget that he is Alec Loding on the stage, will you?” She picked up her basket from the sideboard. “I wonder if he would come. It is a long time since he has been to Clare. A country life is not Alec’s idea of amusement. But an Ashby coming-of-age is surely something that would interest him.”
But Alec Loding’s main interest in the Ashby coming-of-age was to blow the celebrations sky-high. Indeed, he was at this moment actively engaged in pulling strings to that end.
Or, rather, trying to pull strings. The strings weren’t pulling very well.
He was sitting in the back room at the Green Man, the remains of lunch spread before him, and beside him sat a young man. A boy, one would have said, but for something controlled and still that did not go with adolescence. Loding poured coffee for himself and sugared it liberally; casting a glance now and then at his companion, who was turning an almost empty beer glass round and round on the table. The movement was so deliberate that it hardly came under the heading of fidgeting.
“Well?” said Loding at last.
“No.”
Loding took a mouthful of coffee.
“Squeamish?”
“I’m not an actor.”
Something in the unaccented phrase seemed to sting Loding and he flushed a little.
“You’re not asked to be emotional, if that is what you mean. There is no filial devotion to be simulated, you know. Only dutiful affection for an aunt you haven’t seen for nearly ten years — which one would expect to be more dutiful than affectionate.”
“No.”
“You young idiot, I’m offering you a fortune.”
“Half a fortune. And you’re not offering me anything.”
“If I’m not offering it to you, what am I doing?”
“Propositioning me,” said the young man. He had not raised his eyes from his slowly-turning beer.
“Very well, I’m propositioning you, to use your barbarous idiom. What is wrong with the proposition?”
“It’s crazy.”
“What is crazy about it, given the initial advantage of your existence?”
“No one could bring it off.”
“It is not so long since a famous general whose face was a household word — if you will forgive the metaphor — was impersonated quite successfully by an actor in broad daylight and in full view of the multitude.”
“That is quite different.”
“I agree. You aren’t asked to impersonate anyone. Just to be yourself. A much easier task.”
“No,” said the young man.
Loding kept his temper with a visible effort. He had a pink, collapsed face that reminded one of the underside of fresh mushrooms. The flesh hung away from his good Ledingham bones with a discouraged slackness, and the incipient pouches under his eyes detracted from their undoubted intelligence. Managers who had once cast him for gay young rakes now offered him nothing but discredited roués.
“My God!” he said suddenly. “Your teeth!”
Even that did not startle the young man’s face into any expression. He lifted his eyes for the first time, resting them incuriously on Loding. “What’s the matter with my teeth?” he asked.
“It’s how they identify people nowadays. A dentist keeps a record of work, you know. I wonder where those kids went. Something would have to be done about that. Are those front teeth your own?”
“The two middle ones are caps. They were kicked out.”
“They went to someone here in town, I remember that much. There was a London trip to see the dentist twice a year; once before Christmas and once in the summer. They went to the dentist in the morning and to a show in the afternoon: pantomime in the winter and the Tournament at Olympia in the summer. These are the kind of things you would have to know, by the way.”
“Yes?”
The gentle monosyllable maddened Loding.
“Look, Farrar, what are you frightened of? A strawberry mark? I bathed with that kid in the buff many a time and he hadn’t as much as a mole on him. He was so ordinary that you could order him by the dozen from any prep. school in England. You are more like his brother at this moment than that kid ever was, twins though they were. I tell you, I thought for a moment that you were young Ashby. Isn’t that good enough for you? You come and live with me for a fortnight and by the end of it there won’t be anything you don’t know about the village of Clare and its inhabitants. Nor anything about Latchetts. I know every last pantry in it. Nor anything about the Ashbys. Can you swim, by the way?”
The young man nodded. He had gone back to his glass of beer.
“Swim well?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you ever qualify a statement?”
“Not unless it needs it.”
“The kid could swim like an eel. There’s the matter of ears, too. Yours look ordinary enough, and his must have been ordinary too or I should remember. Anyone who has worked in a life-class notices ears. But I must see what photographs of him exist. Front ones wouldn’t matter, but a real close-up of an ear might be a give-away. I think I must take a trip to Clare and do some prospecting.”
“Don’t bother on my account.”
Loding was silent for a moment. Then he said, reasonably: “Tell me, do you believe my story at all?”
“Your story?”
“Do you believe that I am who I say I am, and that I come from a village called Clare, where there is someone who is practically your double? Do you believe that? Or do you think that this is just a way of getting you to come home with me?”
“No, I didn’t think it was that. I believe your story.”
“Well, thank heaven for that, at least,” Loding said with a quirk of his eyebrow. “I know that my looks are not what they were, but I should be shattered to find that they suggested the predatory. Well, then. That settled, do you believe that you are as like young Ashby as I say?”
For a whole turn of the glass there was no answer. “I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“On your own showing it is some time since you saw him.”
“But you don’t have to be young Ashby. Just look like him. And believe me you do! My God, how you do! It’s something I wouldn’t have believed unless I saw it with my own eyes; something I have imagined only happened in books. And it is worth a fortune to you. You have only to put out your hand and take it.”
“Oh, no, I haven’t.”
“Metaphorically speaking. Do you realise that except for the first year or so your story would be truth? It would be your own story; able to stand up to any amount of checking.” His voice twisted into a comedy note. “Or — would it?”
“Oh, yes, it would check.”
“Well, then. You have only to stow away on the Ira Jones out of Westover instead of going for a day trip to Dieppe, et voilà!”
“How do you know there was a ship called the Ira Jones at Westover about then?”
“‘About then’! You do me scant justice, amigo. There was a ship of that repellent title at Westover the day the boy disappeared. I know because I spent most of the day painting her. On canvas, not on her plates, you understand. And the old scow went out before I had finished; bound for the Channel Islands. All my ships go out before I have finished painting them.”
There was silence for a little.
“It’s in your lap, Farrar.”
“So is my table napkin.”
“A fortune. A charming small estate. Security. A——”
“Security, did you say?”
“After the initial gamble, of course,” Loding said smoothly.
The light eyes that looked at him for a moment held a faint amusement.
“Hadn’t it occurred to you at all, Mr. Loding, that the gamble was yours?”
“Mine?”
“You’re offering me the sweetest chance for a double-cross that I ever heard of. I take your coaching, pass the exam, and forget about you. And you wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. How did you figure to keep tabs on me?”
“I hadn’t. No one with your Ashby looks could be a double-crosser. The Ashbys are monsters of rectitude.”
The boy pushed away the glass.
“Which must be why I don’t take kindly to the idea of being a phoney. Thank you for my lunch, Mr. Loding. If I had known what you had in mind when you asked me to lunch with you, I wouldn’t have ——”
“All right, all right. Don’t apologise. And don’t run away; we’ll go together. You don’t like my proposition: very good: so be it. But you, on the other hand, fascinate me. I can hardly take my eyes off you, or believe that anything so unique exists. And since you are sure that my improper proposal to you has nothing of the personal in it, there is nothing against our walking as far as the Underground together.”
Loding paid for their lunch, and as they walked out of the Green Man he said: “I won’t ask where you are living in case you think I want to hound you. But I shall give you my address in the hope that you will come to see me. Oh, no; not about the proposition. If it isn’t your cup of tea then it isn’t your cup of tea; and if you felt like that you certainly wouldn’t make a success of it. No, not about the proposition. I have something in my rooms that I think would interest you.”
He paused artistically while they negotiated a street crossing.
“When my old home, Clare, was sold — after my father’s death — Nancy bundled together all the personal things in my room and sent them to me. A whole trunkful of rubbish, which I have never had the energy to get rid of, and a large proportion of it consists of snapshots and photographs of the companions of my youth. I think you would find it very interesting.”
He glanced sideways at the uncommunicative profile of his companion.
“Tell me,” he said as they stopped at the entrance to the Underground, “do you play cards?”
“Not with strangers,” said the young man pleasantly.
“I just wondered. I had never met the perfect poker face until now, and I should be sorry if it was being wasted on some nonconformist abstainer. Ah, well. Here is my address. If by any chance I have fled from there the Spotlight will find me. I am truly sorry I couldn’t sell you the idea of being an Ashby. You would have made an excellent master of Latchetts, I feel. Someone who was at home with horses, and used to an outdoor life.”
The young man, who had made a gesture of farewell and was in the act of turning away, paused. “Horses?” he said.
“Yes,” Loding said, vaguely surprised. “It’s a stud, you know. Very well thought of, I understand.”
“Oh.” He paused a moment longer, and then turned away.
Loding watched him as he went down the street. “I missed something,” he was thinking. “There was some bait he would have risen to, and I missed it. Why should he have nibbled at the word horse? He must be sick of them.”
Ah, well; perhaps he would come to see what his double looked like.
The boy lay on his bed in the dark, fully dressed, and stared at the ceiling.
There were no street lamps outside to illuminate this back room under the slates; but the faint haze of light that hangs over London at night, emanation from a million arcs and gas-lights and paraffin lamps, shone ghost-like on the ceiling so that its cracks and stains showed like a world map.
The boy was looking at a map of the world too, but it was not on the ceiling. He was examining his odyssey; conducting a private inventory. That meeting to-day had shaken him. Somewhere, it seemed, there was another fellow so like him that for a moment they could be mistaken for each other. To one who had been very much alone all his life that was an amazing thought.
Indeed, it was the most surprising thing that had happened to him in all his twenty-one years. In a way it was as if all those years that had seemed so full and exciting at the time had been merely leading up to that moment when the actor chap had caught himself short in the street and said: “Hello, Simon.”
“Oh! Sorry!” he had said at once. “Thought you were a friend of ——” And then he had stopped and stared.
“Can I do something for you?” the boy had asked at last, since the man showed no sign of moving on.
“Yes. You could come and have lunch with me.”
“Why?”
“It’s lunch-time, and that’s my favourite pub behind you.”
“But why me?”
“Because you interest me. You are so like a friend of mine. My name is Loding, by the way. Alec Loding. I act a bad part in a bad farce at that very bad old theatre over there.” He had nodded across the street. “But Equity, God bless them, has ordained a minimum fee for my labours, so the hire is considerably better than the part, I rejoice to say. Do you mind telling me your name?”
“Farrar.”
“Farrell?”
“No. Farrar.”
“Oh.” The amused, considering look was still in his eye. “Is it long since you came back to England?”
“How did you know I had been out of it?”
“Your clothes, my boy. Clothes are my business. I have dressed too many parts not to recognise American tailoring when I see it. Even the admirably conservative tailoring that you so rightly wear.”
“Then what makes you think I’m not American?”
At that the man had smiled quite broadly. “Ah, that,” he said, “is the eternal mystery of the English. You watch a procession of monks in Italy and your eye singles out one and you say: ‘Ha! An Englishman.’ You come across five hoboes wrapped in gunny sacks sheltering from the rain in Wisconsin, and you notice the fifth and think: ‘Dear goodness, that chap’s English.’ You see ten men stripped to the buff for the Foreign Legion doctor to pass judgement on, and you say —— But come to lunch and we can explore the subject at leisure.”
So he had gone to lunch, and the man had talked and been charming. But always behind the lively puffy eyes there had been that quizzical, amused, almost unbelieving look. That look was more eloquent than any of his subsequent argument. Truly he, Brat Farrar, must be like that other fellow to bring that look of half-incredulous amusement into someone’s eyes.
He lay on the bed and thought about it. This sudden identification in an unbelonging life. He had a great desire to see this twin of his; this Ashby boy. Ashby. It was a nice name: a good English name. He would like to see the place too: this Latchetts, where his twin had grown up in belonging quiet while he had bucketed round the world, all the way from the orphanage to that moment in a London street, belonging nowhere.
The orphanage. It was no fault of the orphanage that he had not belonged. It was a very good orphanage; a great deal happier than many a home he had seen in passing since. The children had loved it. They had wept when they left and had come back for visits; they had sent contributions to the funds; they had invited the staff to their marriages, and brought their subsequent children for the matron’s approval. There was never a day when some old girl or boy was not cluttering up the front door. Then why had he not felt like that?
Because he was a foundling? Was that why? Because no visitors ever came for him; no parcels or letters or invitations? But they had been very wise about that; very determined to prop his self-esteem. If anything he had been privileged beyond the other children by his foundling status. His Christmas present from Matron, he remembered, had been looked upon with envy by children whose only present came from an aunt or uncle; a mere relation, as it were. It was Matron who had taken him off the doorstep; and who saw to it that he heard how well-dressed and cared-for he had been. (He heard about this at judicious intervals for fifteen years but he had never been able to feel any satisfaction about it.) It was Matron who had determined his name with the aid of a pin and the telephone directory. The pin had come down on the word Farrell. Which had pleased Matron considerably; her pin had once, long ago, come down on the word Coffin, and she had had to cheat and try again.
There had never been any doubt about his first name, since he had arrived on the doorstep on St. Bartholomew’s day. He had been Bart from the beginning. But the older children had changed that to Brat, and presently even the staff used the more familiar name (another device of Matron’s to prevent his feeling “different”?) and the name had followed him to the grammar school.
The grammar school. Why had he not “belonged” there, then?
Because his clothes were subtly different? Surely not. He had not been thin-skinned as a child; merely detached. Because he was a scholarship boy? Certainly not: half his form were scholarship boys. Then why had he decided that the school was not for him? Decided with such un-boylike finality that all Matron’s arguments had died into ultimate silence, and she had countenanced his going to work.
There was no mystery about his not liking the work, of course. The office job had been fifty miles away, and since no ordinary lodgings could be paid for out of his salary he had had to stay in the local “boys’ home.” He had not known how good the orphanage was until he had sampled the boys’ home. He could have supported either the job or the home, but not the two simultaneously. And of the two the office was by far the worse. It was, as a job, comfortable, leisurely, and graced with certain, if far-off, prospects; but to him it had been a prison. He was continually aware of time running past him; time that he was wasting. This was not what he wanted.
He had said good-bye to his office life almost accidentally; certainly without premeditation. “DAY RETURN TO DIEPPE” a bill had said, plastered against the glass of a newsagent’s window; and the price, in large red figures, was exactly the amount of his savings to the nearest half-crown. Even so, he would have done nothing about it if it had not been for old Mr. Hendren’s funeral. Mr. Hendren was the “retired” partner, and on the day of his funeral the office shut down “out of respect.” And so, with a week’s pay in his pocket and a whole week-day free, he had taken his savings and gone to see “abroad.” He had had a grand time in Dieppe, where his first-year French was no deterrent to enjoyment, but it had not even crossed his mind to stay there until he was on his way home. He had reached the harbour before the shocking idea took hold of him.
Was it native honesty, he thought, staring at the Pimlico ceiling, or his good orphanage training that had made his unpaid laundry bill bulk so large in the subsequent mental struggle? A boy who had no money and no bed for the night should hardly have been concerned with the ethics of bilking a laundry of two-and-threepence.
The camion, rolling up from the harbour, had been his salvation. He had held up his thumb, and the brown, sweaty brigand at the wheel had grinned at this international gesture and slowed as he passed. He had run at the moving cliff-face, snatched and clung, and been hauled aboard. And all his old life was behind him.
He had planned to stay and work in France. Debated with himself during the long run to Havre, when gesture had given out and the driver’s patois proved unintelligible, how best he might earn enough to eat. It was his neighbour in the Havre bistro who enlightened him. “My young friend,” the man had said, fixing him with melancholy spaniel’s eyes, “it is not sufficient to be a man in France in order to work. One has also to have papers.”
“And where,” he had asked, “does one not have papers? I mean, in what country? I can go anywhere.” He was suddenly conscious of the world, and that he was free of it.
“God knows,” the man had said. “Mankind grows every day more like sheep. Go to the harbour and take a ship.”
“Which ship?”
“It is immaterial. Have you in English a game that ——” He made descriptive gestures.
“A counting-out game? Oh, yes. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe.”
“Good. Go to the harbour and do ‘Eenie, meenie, minie, moe’. And when you go aboard ‘moe’ see that no one is looking. On ships they have a passion for papers that amounts to a madness.”
“Moe” was the Barfleur, and he had not needed papers after all. He was the gift from heaven that the Barfleur’s cook had been looking for for years.
Good old Barfleur; with her filthy pea-green galley smelling of over-used olive oil, and the grey seas combing up mountains high, and the continuous miracle of their harmless passing, and the cook’s weekly drunk that left him acting unpaid cook, and learning to play a mouth-organ, and the odd literature in the fo’c’sle. Good old Barfleur!
He had taken a lot away with him when he left her, but most important of all he took a new name. When he had written his name for the Captain, old Bourdet had taken the final double-L to be an R, and copied the name Farrar. And he had kept it so. Farrell came out of a telephone directory; and Farrar out of a tramp skipper’s mistake. It was all one.
And then what?
Tampico and the smell of tallow. And the tally-man who had said: “You Englishman? You want shore job?”
He had gone to inspect the “job,” expecting dish-washing.
Odd to think that he might still be living in that great quiet house with the tiled patio, and the bright scentless flowers, and the bare shadowed rooms with the beautiful furniture. Living in luxury, instead of lying on a broken-down bedstead in Pimlico. The old man had liked him, had wanted to adopt him; but he had not “belonged.” He had enjoyed reading the English newspaper to him twice a day, the old man following with a slender yellow forefinger on his own copy; but it was not the life he was looking for. (“If he doesn’t understand English, what’s the good of reading English to him?” he had asked when the job was first explained to him; and they had made him understand that the old man knew “reading” English; having taught himself from a dictionary, but did not know how to pronounce it. He wanted to listen to it spoken by an Englishman.)
No, it had not been for him. It had been like living in a film set.
So he had gone as cook to a collection of botanists. And as he was packing to go the butler had said consolingly: “Better you go, after all. If you stay his mistress poison you.”
It was the first he had heard of a mistress.
He had cooked his way steadily to the New Mexico border. That was the easy way into the States: where there was no river to stop you. He enjoyed this absurd, brilliant, angular country but, like the old aristocrat’s home near Tampico, it was not what he was looking for.
After that it had been a slow crescendo of satisfaction.
Assistant cook for that outfit at Las Cruces. Their intolerance of any variation from the food they knew, and their delight in his accent. (“Say it again, Limey.” And then their laughter and their delighted “Whaddya know!”)
Cook to the Snake River round-up. And his discovery of horses. And the feeling it gave him of having come home.
Riding herd for the Santa Clara. And the discovery that “ornery” horses were less ornery when ridden by the limey kid.
A spell with the shoesmith at the Wilson ranch. He had had his first girl there, but it hadn’t been half as exciting as seeing what he could do with the “hopeless lot” in the corral. “Nothing but shooting for them,” the boss had said. And when he had suggested trying to do something about them, the boss had said unenthusiastically: “Go ahead; but don’t expect me to pay hospital bills. You’re hired as help to the farrier.”
It was from that lot that Smoky came: his beautiful Smoky. The boss gave it him as a reward for what he had done with the hard cases. And when he went to the Lazy Y he took Smoky with him.
Breaking horses for the Lazy Y. That had been happiness. That had been happiness full up and running over. Nearly two years of it.
And then. That momentary slowness on his part; drowsy with heat or dazzled by the sun. And seeing the writhing brown back turning over on him. And hearing his thighbone crack.
The hospital at Edgemont. It had not been at all like the hospitals in films. There were no pretty nurses and no handsome internes. The ward had sage-green walls, the fittings were old and dingy, and the nurses overworked. They alternately spoiled and ignored him.
The sudden stoppage of letters from the boys.
The sweat-making business of learning to walk again, and the slow realisation that his leg had mended “short.” That he was going to be permanently lame.
The letter from the boss that put an end to the Lazy Y.
Oil. They had struck oil. The first derrick was already going up not two hundred yards from the bunk house. The enclosed cheque would look after Brat till he was well again. Meanwhile, what should be done with Smoky?
What would a lame man do with a horse in an oil field?
He had cried about Smoky; lying in the dark of the ward. It was the first time he had cried about anyone.
Well, he might be too slow to break horses any more, but he would be no servant to oil. There were other ways of living with horseflesh.
The dude ranch. That had not been like the films either.
Ungainly women in unseemly clothes punishing the saddles of broken-spirited horses until he wondered that they didn’t break in two.
The woman who had wanted to marry him.
She had been not at all the kind of woman you’d imagine would want a “kept man.” Not fat or silly or amorous. She was thin, and tired-looking, and rather nice; and she had owned the place up the hill from the dude ranch. She would get his leg put right for him, she said. That was the bait she had offered.
The one good thing about the dude ranch was that you made money at it. He had never had so much money in his life as when he finished there. He planned to go East and spend it. And then something had happened to him. The smaller, greener country in the East, the smell of spring gardens, woke in him a nostalgia for England that dismayed him. He had no intention of going back to England for years yet.
For several restless weeks he fought the longing — it was a baby thing to want to go back — and then quite suddenly gave in. After all, he had never seen London. Going to see London was quite a legitimate reason for going to England.
And so to the back room in Pimlico and that meeting in the street.
He got up and took his cigarettes from the pocket of the coat that was hanging on the back of the door.
Why hadn’t he been more shocked when Loding made his suggestion?
Because he had guessed that a proposition would be coming? Because the man’s face had been warning enough that his interests would be shady? Because it quite simply had nothing to do with him, was not anything that he was likely to touch?
He had not been indignant with the man; had not said: “You swine, to think of cheating your friend out of his inheritance!” or words to that effect. But then he had never been interested in other people’s concerns: their sins, their griefs, or their happiness. And anyhow, you couldn’t be righteous with a man whose food you were eating.
He moved over to the window and stood looking out at the dim frieze of chimney-pots against the luminous haze. He was not broke yet but he had got the length of prospecting for a job, and the prospects were anything but encouraging. It seemed that there were far more people interested in stable jobs in England than stables to accommodate them. The horse world contracted as the horse lovers expanded. All those men who had lost their main interest in living when the cavalry was put down were still hale and active, and besieged stable entrances at the mere whiff of a vacancy.
Besides, he didn’t want just to “do his two a day.” If road engineering interested you you didn’t pine to spend your days putting tar on the surface.
He had tried a few contacts, but none of the good places was interested in a lame stranger without references. Why should they be? They had their pick of England’s best. And when he had mentioned that his experience of breaking had been in the States, that seemed to settle it. “Oh, cattle horses!” they said. They said it quite kindly and politely — he had forgotten until he came back how polite his countrymen were — but they had inferred in one way or another that Western kill-or-cure methods were not theirs. Since they never said so openly he could not explain that they were not his either. And anyhow, it wouldn’t have been any good. They wanted to know something about you before they took you to work with them in this country. In America, where a man moved on every so often, it was different; but here a job was for life, and what you were mattered almost as much as what you could do.
The solution, of course, was to leave the country. But the real, the insurmountable trouble was that he didn’t want to go. Now that he was back he realised that what he had thought of as free, purposeless wandering had merely been a long way round on the way back to England. He had come back, not via Dieppe, but via Las Cruces and points east; that was all. He had found what he wanted when he found horses; but he had no more sense of “belonging” in New Mexico than he had had at the grammar school. He had liked New Mexico better, that was all.
And better still, now that he looked at it, he liked England. He wanted to work with English horses in an English greenness on English turf.
In any case, it was much more difficult to get out of this country than to get into it, if you were broke. He had shared a table at the Coventry Street Lyons one day with a man who had been trying for eighteen months to work his passage somewhere or other. “Cards!” the little man had snarled. “That’s all they ever say. Where is your card? If you don’t happen to belong to the Amalgamated Union of Table-napkin Folders you can’t as much as help a steward set a table. I’m just waiting to see them let a ship sink under them because no one aboard has the right card for manning a pump with.”
He had looked at the Englishman’s furious blue eyes and remembered the man in the Havre bistro. “One has also to have papers.” Yes, the world was cluttered up with paper.
It was a pity that Loding’s proposition was so very criminal.
Would he have listened to it with any more interest if Loding had mentioned the horses earlier?
No, of course not; that was absurd. The thing was criminal and he wouldn’t touch it.
“It would be quite safe, you know,” said a voice in him. “They wouldn’t prosecute you even if they found out, because of the scandal. Loding said that.”
“Shut up,” he said. “The thing’s criminal.”
It might be amusing to go and see Loding act, one night. He had never met an actor before. It would be a new sensation to sit and watch the performance of someone you knew “off.” How would Loding be as a partner?
“A very clever partner, believe me,” said the voice.
“A plain bad lot,” he said. “I don’t want any part of him.”
“You don’t need any part of any of it,” said the voice. “You have only to go to Latchetts and say: Take a look at me. Do I remind you of anyone? I was left on a doorstep on such-and-such a date, and as from to-day I want a job.”
“Blackmail, ‘m? And how much do you think I’d enjoy a job I’d blackmailed out of anyone? Don’t be silly.”
“They owe you something, don’t they?”
“No, they don’t. Not a bean.”
“Oh, come off it! You’re an Ashby and you know it.”
“I don’t know it. There have been doubles before. Hitler had several. Lots of famous people have doubles. The papers are for ever printing photographs of the humble doubles of great men. They all look like the great men with the character sponged out.”
“Bunk. You’re an Ashby. Where did you get your way with horses?”
“Lots of people have a way with horses.”
“There were sixty-two kids at that orphanage, and did any of them go about spurning good jobs, and adoption by rich parents, so that they could find their way to horses?”
“I didn’t know I was looking for horses.”
“Of course you didn’t know. Your Ashby blood knew.”
“Oh, shut up.”
To-morrow he would go down to Lewes and have a go at that jumping stable. He might be lame but he could still ride anything on four legs. They might be interested in someone who could ride at ten stone and didn’t mind risking his neck.
“Risk your neck when you might be living in clover?”
“If it was clover I wanted I could have had it long ago.”
“Ah, but not clover with horses in it.”
“Shut up. You’re wasting your time.”
He began to undress, as if movement might put an end to the voice. Yes: he would go down to Lewes. It was a little too near his calf country, but no one would recognise him after those six years. It wouldn’t really matter, of course, if they did; but he didn’t want to go backwards.
“You could always say: Sorry, my name is Ashby,” mocked the voice.
“Will you be quiet!”
As he hung his jacket over the back of the chair he thought about that young Ashby who had bowed out. With everything in the world to live for he had gone and thrown himself off a cliff. It didn’t make sense. Did parents matter all that much?
“No, he was a poor thing, and you’d make a much better job of Latchetts in his place.”
He poured cold water into the basin and washed vigorously; an orphanage training being almost as lasting as a Regular Service one. And as he towelled himself on the thin turkish — so old that it was limp-wet before he was dry — he thought: “I wouldn’t like it, anyhow. Butlers, and things.” His idea of English middle-class life being derived from American films.
Anyhow, the thing was unthinkable.
And he’d better stop thinking about it.
Someone had said that if you thought about the unthinkable long enough it became quite reasonable.
But he would go some time and see those photographs of Loding’s. There was no harm in that.
He must see what his “twin” looked like.
He didn’t like Loding much, but just going to see him could do no harm, and he did want to see photographs of Latchetts.
Yes, he would go to see Loding.
The day after to-morrow perhaps; after he had been to Lewes.
Or even to-morrow.
Mr. Sandal, of Cosset, Thring and Noble, was nearing the end of his afternoon’s work and his mind was beginning its daily debate as to whether it should be the 4.55 or the 5.15 that should bear him home. This was almost the only debate that ever exercised Mr. Sandal’s mind. The clients of Cosset, Thring and Noble were of two kinds only: those who made up their own minds about a problem and told their solicitors in firm tones what they wanted done, and those who had no problems. The even pulse of the Georgian office in the shadow of the plane trees was never quickened by unexpected news or untoward happenings. Even the death of a client was not news: clients were expected to die; the appropriate will would be in the appropriate deed-box and things would go on as before.
Family solicitors; that is what Cosset, Thring and Noble were. Keepers of wills and protectors of secrets; but not wrestlers with problems. Which is why Mr. Sandal was by no means the best person to take what was coming to him.
“Is that all, Mercer?” he said to his clerk, who had been showing a visitor out.
“There’s one client in the waiting-room, sir. Young Mr. Ashby.”
“Ashby? Of Latchetts?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, good; good. Bring in a pot of tea, Mercer, will you?”
“Yes, sir.” And to the client: “Will you come in, sir?”
The young man came in.
“Ah, Simon, my dear boy,” Mr. Sandal said, shaking hands with him, “I am delighted to see you. Are you up on business, or are you just ——”
His voice died away uncertainly, and he stared, the gesture of his arm towards a chair arrested mid-way.
“God bless my soul,” he said, “you are not Simon.”
“No. I am not Simon.”
“But — but you are an Ashby.”
“If you think that, it makes things a whole lot easier for me.”
“Yes? Do forgive me if I am a little confused. I didn’t know that there were Ashby cousins.”
“There aren’t, as far as I know.”
“No? Then — forgive me — which Ashby are you?”
“Patrick.”
Mr. Sandal’s neat mouth opened and shut like a goldfish’s.
He stopped being a green thought in a green shade and became a very worried and staggered little lawyer.
For a long moment he looked into the light Ashby eyes so near his own without finding any words that seemed adequate to the occasion.
“I think we had better both sit down,” he said at last. He indicated the visitors’ chair, and subsided into his own with an air of being glad of an anchorage in a world suddenly at sea.
“Now, let us clarify the situation,” he said. “The only Patrick Ashby died at the age of thirteen, some — let me see — eight years ago, it must be.”
“What makes you think he died?”
“He committed suicide, and left a farewell note.”
“Did the note mention suicide?”
“I am afraid I cannot recall the wording.”
“Nor can I, exactly. But I can give you the sense of it. It said: ‘I can’t stand it any longer. Don’t be angry with me.’”
“Yes. Yes, that was the tenor of the message.”
“And where in that is the mention of suicide?”
“The suggestion surely is — One would naturally infer — The letter was found on the cliff-top with the boy’s coat.”
“The cliff path is the short cut to the harbour.”
“The harbour? You mean ——”
“It was a running-away note; not a suicide one.”
“But — but the coat?”
“You can’t leave a note on the open down. The only way to leave it is in the pocket of something.”
“Are you seriously suggesting that — that — that you are Patrick Ashby, and that you never committed suicide at all?”
The young man looked at him with those unrevealing eyes of his. “When I came in,” he said, “you took me for my brother.”
“Yes. They were twins. Not identical twins, but of course very ——” The full implication of what he was saying came home to him. “God bless my soul, so I did. So I did.”
He sat for a moment or two staring in a helpless fashion. And while he stared Mercer came in with the tea.
“Do you take tea?” Mr. Sandal asked, the question being merely a reflex conditioned by the presence of the tea-tray.
“Thank you,” said the young man. “No sugar.”
“You do realise, don’t you,” Mr. Sandal said, half-appealingly, “that such a very startling and — and serious claim must be investigated? One cannot, you understand, merely accept your statement.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
“Good. That is good. Very sensible of you. At some later date it may be possible — the fatted calf — but just now we have to be sensible about it. You do see that. Milk?”
“Thank you.”
“For instance: you ran away, you say. Ran away to sea, I take it.”
“Yes.”
“On what ship?”
“The Ira Jones. She was lying in Westover harbour.”
“You stowed away, of course.”
“Yes.”
“And where did the ship take you?” asked Mr. Sandal, making notes and beginning to feel that he wasn’t doing so badly after all. This was quite the worst situation he had ever been in, and there was no question of catching the 5.15 now.
“The Channel Islands. St. Helier.”
“Were you discovered on board?”
“No.”
“You disembarked at St. Helier, undiscovered.”
“Yes.”
“And there?”
“I got the boat to St. Malo.”
“You stowed away again?”
“No, I paid my fare.”
“You remember what the boat was called?”
“No; it was the regular ferry service.”
“I see. And then?”
“I went bus-riding. Buses always seemed to me more exciting than that old station wagon at Latchetts, but I never had a chance of riding in them.”
“The station wagon. Ah, yes,” said Mr. Sandal; and wrote: “Remembers car.” “And then?”
“Let me see. I was garage-boy for a while at an hotel in a place called Villedieu.”
“You remember the name of the hotel, perhaps?”
“The Dauphin, I think. From there I went across country and fetched up in Havre. In Havre I got a job as galley boy on a tramp steamer.”
“The name? You remember it?”
“I’ll never forget it! She was called the Barfleur. I joined her as Farrar. F-a-r-r-a-r. I stayed with her until I left her in Tampico. From there I worked my way north to the States. Would you like me to write down for you the places I worked at in the States?”
“That would be very kind of you. Here is — ah, you have a pen. If you would just write them here, in a list. Thank you. And you came back to England ——?”
“On the 2nd of last month. On the Philadelphia. As a passenger. I took a room in London and have lived there ever since. I’ll write the address for you; you’ll want to check that too.”
“Yes. Thank you. Yes.” Mr. Sandal had an odd feeling that it was this young man — who after all was on trial, so to speak — who was dominating the situation and not, as it certainly should be, himself. He pulled himself together.
“Have you attempted to communicate with your —— I mean, with Miss Ashby?”
“No, is it difficult?” said the young man gently.
“What I mean is ——”
“I’ve done nothing about my family, if that is what you mean. I thought this was the best way.”
“Very wise. Very wise.” There he was again, being forced into the position of chorus. “I shall get in touch with Miss Ashby at once, and inform her of your visit.”
“Tell her that I’m alive, yes.”
“Yes. Quite so.” Was the young man making fun of him? Surely not.
“Meanwhile you will go on living at this address?”
“Yes, I shall be there.” The young man got up, again taking the initiative from him.
“If your credentials prove to be good,” Mr. Sandal said with an attempt at severity, “I shall be the first to welcome you back to England and to your home. In spite of the fact that your desertion of it has caused deep grief to all concerned. I find it inexplicable that you should not have communicated with your people before now.”
“Perhaps I liked being dead.”
“Being dead!”
“Anyhow you never did find me very explicable, did you?”
“Didn’t I?”
“You thought it was because I was afraid that I cried, that day at Olympia, didn’t you?”
“Olympia?”
“It wasn’t you know. It was because the horses were so beautiful.”
“Olympia! You mean.... But that was.... You remember, then ——”
“I expect you’ll let me know, Mr. Sandal, when you have checked my statements.”
“What? Oh, yes; yes, certainly.” Good heavens, even he himself had forgotten that children’s party at the Tournament. Perhaps he had been altogether too cautious. If this young man — the owner of Latchetts — dear me! Perhaps he should not have been so ——
“I hope you don’t think ——” he began.
But the young man was gone, letting himself out with cool decision and a brief nod to Mercer.
Mr. Sandal sat down in the inner office and mopped his brow.
And Brat, walking down the street, was shocked to find himself exhilarated. He had expected to be nervous and a little ashamed. And it had not been in the least like that. It had been one of the most exciting things he had ever done. A wonderful, tight-rope sort of thing. He had sat there and lied and not even been conscious that he was lying, it had been so thrilling. It was like riding a rogue; you had the same wary, strung-up feeling; the same satisfaction in avoiding an unexpected movement to destroy you. But nothing he had ever ridden had given him the mental excitement, the subsequent glow of achievement, that this had given him. He was drunk with it.
And greatly surprised.
So this, he thought, was what sent criminals back to their old Ways when there was no material need. This breathless, step-picking excitement; this subsequent intoxication of achievement.
He went to have tea, according to Loding’s instructions; but he could not eat. He felt as if he had already had food and drink. No previous experience of his had had this oddly satisfying effect. Normally, after the exciting things of life — riding, love-making, rescue, close calls — he was ravenously hungry. But now he just sat and looked at the food in front of him in a daze of content. The glow inside him left no room for food.
No one had followed him into the restaurant, and no one seemed to be taking any interest in him.
He paid his bill and went out. No one was loitering anywhere; the pavement was one long stream of hurrying people. He went to a telephone at Victoria.
“Well?” said Loding. “How did it go?”
“Wonderful.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“No. Why?”
“That is the first time I have ever heard you use a superlative.”
“I’m just pleased.”
“My God, you must be. Does it show?”
“Show?”
“Is there any faint change in that poker face of yours?”
“How should I know? Don’t you want to know about this afternoon?”
“I already know the most important thing.”
“What is that?”
“You haven’t been given in charge.”
“Did you expect me to be?”
“There was always the chance. But I didn’t really expect it. Not with our combined intelligences.”
“Thanks.”
“Did the old boy fall on your neck?”
“No. He nearly fell over. He’s being very correct.”
“Everything to be verified.”
“Yes.”
“How did he receive you?”
“He took me for Simon.”
He heard Loding’s amused laughter.
“Did you manage to use his Tournament party?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God, don’t go monosyllabic on me. You didn’t have to rake it up, did you?”
“No. It fitted very neatly.”
“Was he impressed?”
“It had him on the ropes.”
“It didn’t convince him, though?”
“I didn’t wait to see. I was on my way out.”
“You mean, that was your exit line? My boy, I take off my hat to you. You’re a perishing marvel. After living in your pocket for the last fortnight I thought I was beginning to know you. But you’re still surprising me to death.”
“I surprise myself, if it’s any consolation to you.”
“I don’t detect any bitterness in that line, do I?”
“No. Just surprise. Neat.”
“Ah, well; we shall not be meeting for some time to come. It has been a privilege to know you, my boy. I shall never hear Kew Gardens mentioned without thinking tenderly of you. And I look forward, of course, to further privileges from knowing you in the future. Meanwhile, don’t ring me up unless there is absolutely no alternative. You are as well briefed as I can make you. From now on you’re on your own.”
Loding was right: it had been a wonderful briefing. For a whole fortnight, from early morning till seven in the evening, rain or shine, they had sat in Kew Gardens and rehearsed the ways of Latchetts and Clare, the histories of Ashbys and Ledinghams, the lie of a land he had never seen. And that too had been exciting. He had always been what they called “good at exams”; and had always come to an examination paper with the same faint pleasure that an addict brings to a quiz party. And those fourteen days in Kew Gardens had been one glorified quiz party. Indeed, the last few days had had some of the tight-rope excitement that had characterised this afternoon. “Which arm did you bowl with?” “Go to the stables from the side door.” “Did you sing?” “Could you play the piano?” “Who lived in the lodge at Clare?” “What colour was your mother’s hair?” “How did your father make his money, apart from the estate?” “What was the name of his firm?” “What was your favourite food?” “The name of the tuck-shop owner in the village?” “Where is the Ashby pew in the church?” “Go from the great drawing-room to the butler’s pantry in Clare.” “What was the housekeeper’s name?” “Could you ride a bicycle?” “What do you see from the south window in the attic?” Loding fired the questions at him through the long days, and it had been first amusing and then exciting to avoid being stumped.
Kew had been Loding’s idea. “Your life since you came to London must be subject to the most searching scrutiny, if you will forgive the cliché. So you can’t come and live with me as I suggested. You can’t even be seen with me by anyone we know. Nor can I come to your Pimlico place. You must go on being unvisited there as you have been up till now.” So the Kew scheme had been evolved. Kew Gardens, Loding said, had perfect cover and a wonderful field of fire. There was nowhere in London where you could see approaching figures at such a distance and still be unnoticed yourself. Nowhere in London that offered the variety of meeting-places, the undisturbed quiet, that Kew did.
So each morning they had arrived separately, by different gates; had met at a new point and gone to a different region; and there for a fortnight Loding had primed him with photographs, maps, plans, drawings, and pencilled diagrams. He had begun with a one-inch Ordnance Survey map of Clare and its surroundings, progressed to a larger size, and thence to plans of the house; so that it was rather like coming down from above in a plane. First the lie of the country, then the details of fields and gardens, and then the close-up of the house so that the thing was whole in his mind from the beginning, and the details had merely to be pointed on a picture already etched. It was methodical, careful teaching, and Brat appreciated it.
But the highlight, of course, was provided by the photographs. And it was not, oddly enough, the photograph of his “twin” that held his attention once he had seen them all. Simon, of course, was extraordinarily like him; and it gave him a strange, almost embarrassed, feeling to look at the pictured face so like his own. But it was not Simon who held his interest; it was the child who had not lived to grow up; the boy whose place he was going to take. He had an odd feeling of identity with Patrick.
Even he himself noticed this, and found it strange. He should have been filled with guilt when he considered Patrick. But his only emotion was one of partisanship; almost of alliance.
Crossing the courtyard at Victoria after telephoning, he wondered what had prompted him to say that about Patrick crying. Loding had told him merely that Patrick had cried for no known reason (he was seven then) and that old Sandal had been disgusted and had never taken the children out again. Loding had left the story with him to be used as and when he thought fit. What had prompted him to say that Patrick had cried because the horses were so beautiful? Was that, perhaps, why Patrick had cried?
Well, there was no going back now, whether he wanted to or not. That insistent voice that had talked to him in the dark of his room had fought for its head and got it. All he could do was sit in the saddle and hope for the best. But at least it would be a breath-taking ride; a unique, heart-stopping ride. Danger to life and limb he was used to; but far more exciting was this new mental danger, this pitting of wits.
This danger to his immortal soul, the orphanage would call it. But he had never believed in his immortal soul.
He couldn’t go to Latchetts as a blackmailer, he wouldn’t go as a suppliant, he would damn well go as an invader.