‘I’ve gathered,’ he said, ‘that Mr Sedley is a kinsman of yours and Ian’s, although rather a distant one. But it sometimes seems to me that nearer relations influence Ian a good deal. I mean just the fact of their existing, or having existed. He thinks about his family a lot, and sometimes it makes things difficult for him. Do you think that’s possible?’
‘I believe you may have in mind my late brother, Ian’s Uncle Douglas.’ For the second time that evening Lord Brightmony allowed himself more than a moment’s study of Mungo’s face. It was what Mungo was coming to think of as the long-lost-kinsman glance. ‘Is it so?’
‘Well, yes.’ Mungo was now regretting his temerity. ‘I have heard of him. But I’m not trying to be inquisitive.’
‘Why should you be?’ On reflection, Lord Brightmony seemed to think poorly of this demand, for he hurried on. ‘You are Ian’s closest friend, and candour in these matters is due to you. There must be candour – confidence, indeed, in the fullest sense.’
There was silence, Mungo not feeling himself called upon to speak. Now – he told himself – it’s coming. He rather felt that, if it was to be done at all, the job ought to be done by Lord Auldearn. Still, he liked Lord Brightmony. He’d quite made up his mind about that. So Lord Brightmony could go ahead. This, however, didn’t happen. Lord Brightmony stuck to his theme.
‘You have heard of Douglas, perhaps, from your family? But your parents, I think, are dead.’
‘Yes. I live with an aunt.’
‘Ah, yes – Miss Guthrie of Fintry.’ Lord Brightmony said this much as if he were saying ‘Miss Macdonald of the Isles’. Mungo, although a little discomposed by this indecisive hovering, as he felt it to be, before the small family secret he shared with his host, found time to be amused by a courteous attribution of territorial grandeur to a hillside farm. He thought he knew what prompted it. Lord Brightmony knew himself to be embarked, with whatever delay, upon a topic which demanded all the delicacy he could command.
‘It is unhappily true,’ Lord Brightmony went on, ‘that one of your aunt’s generation would have heard much of Douglas. He was two years younger than I, and three years older than our brother Robert, Ian’s father. When we were young men Douglas and I lived together in this house for a good part of the year. But it proved not a happy arrangement, and he found other quarters. He was, in fact, a rootless person – but that, alas, is not all that must be said of him. His morals were impaired. But all this – about one who remained very dear to us – you have probably heard.’ Lord Brightmony paused, and gazed sombrely into the fire. He was a handsome man, and had given what Mungo thought of as a Victorian tone to this speech. With Mungo sitting attentively beside him, and his unconscious nephew playing chess with a priest in the background, he might have been worked up very nicely as the pivot of a Royal Academy picture called, perhaps, ‘The Family History’, or ‘The Spectre from the Past’. This fancy had occasioned a certain inattention in Mungo. He had to emerge from it hastily, and agree that he had heard certain broad facts about Lord Douglas.
‘My brother died – in miserable circumstances which I need not detail – when Ian can have been no more than a very small boy indeed. But if it is your suggestion, Mungo, that the shadow of this unfortunate uncle has a little hung over him nevertheless, I will not say that I myself find it altogether improbable. For one thing, poor Douglas has been a divisive influence among us. My father, whom I gather you know, has never visited Scotland since what may be called the final and humiliating scandal of Douglas’s last days. Yet Douglas had been, I think, his favourite son. So you may judge how deeply he felt about it. My brother Robert – a very charming man, surely, but of a light and volatile spirit – sends Ian here from time to time, but never comes himself. His wife and daughters scarcely know the place. And yet it is not the palatial Bamberton Court, Mungo, but this modest house which you are in now, that is to be regarded as the principal seat, as the reference books say, of our family.’
‘Shall you continue to live here when you become Marquis of Auldearn?’
‘Most assuredly. But will Ian? I fear not. He sees shadows here.’
There was a pause. Mungo, having marked that plural noun, held his peace. Lord Brightmony, for the moment at least, had nothing more to say. But the silence, before it could become awkward, was broken, indeed shattered, in a startling fashion. From the farther end of the room there came an exclamation, something like a cry, and the sound of a quick succession of objects tumbling on the floor.
A chair, a table, the chess-board, and the chess-men: all these had been knocked over and scattered. Across the evidences of this unaccountable misadventure Leonard Sedley and Ian faced each other. Both were strangely immobile and very pale. Righting the table and chair, picking up the chess-board, resourcefully gathering the scattered pieces in the skirt of his soutane, Father Balietti was labouring to obscure the nature of the crisis.
‘But how very clumsy of me,’ Balietti was exclaiming. ‘A single inadvertent movement, and all this disaster!
My dear Ian, our game is ruined, I fear.’ He tumbled the chess-men on their board, and at the same time glanced swiftly at Sedley. ‘For shall we be able to return to the status quo ante bellum? I judge it improbable.’
‘Call it impossible,’ Ian said, and walked across the room to his uncle. Lord Brightmony, frowning and with compressed lips, watched him approach – whether in mere perplexity, or with anger or dismay, it was impossible to tell.
‘I was losing badly, so it must be called Father Balietti’s game.’ The commonplace words came from Ian in a voice Mungo seemed never to have heard before. ‘And I don’t think anything has been broken.’
‘Then no more need be said.’ Lord Brightmony looked gravely at his nephew. ‘And on another occasion you must make a fresh start.’
‘Yes, of course. But it’s later than I thought. Mungo and I must go.’
‘Ian, what on earth was it all in aid of?’
Mallachie Castle was behind the young men. In the soft Highland darkness they were striding through the park at a pace that challenged a tumble. It was a very still night.
‘For the Lord’s sake, man!’ Silence had greeted Mungo’s first question. ‘Stop creating, and speak up.’
‘He pawed me. Sedley pawed me. You saw how he was standing behind me, seeming to watch the game? But his mind wasn’t on that sort of game at all.’
‘Stop creating, I said. Be sensible. How could he paw you? At your end of the room you were in as bright a light as we were. It would be a ridiculous thing to do.’
‘He put his hand on my head.’
‘Well, why shouldn’t he?’ Having received what seemed not very shocking news, Mungo made up his mind what line to take. ‘As I understand the matter, he’s known you off and on since you were a kid. The poor chap’s fond of you, and believes you to be fond of him. I’ve told you that. So all he intended was a token of the fact – a token of simple affection. There’s nothing indecent about having a hand put on your head. Bishops are doing it all the time. Probably the sight of Balietti sitting opposite you put it into his head. A kind of whimsical echo of being confirmed.’
‘He ran his fingers through my hair.’
‘Oh.’ This silenced Mungo for a while. ‘But, Ian, what happened then? What did you do?’
‘I jumped up. I just couldn’t stand it, or take it. I jumped up, and everything went tumbling.’
‘Did you say anything?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Well, what?’
‘I called him something. Something I’m not going to repeat.’
‘I don’t take it as a compliment that you think my ear as chaste as all that. Now cool off.’
They walked on in silence to the river. It seemed a long way. When they were inside the cottage it was Ian who first spoke.
‘Shall we pack up now, or in the morning?’
‘Neither, I hope. We’ve got to cut this thing down to size first.’
; ‘Mungo, I resent your talking about me as creating. It’s as if I were a hysterical girl.’
‘All right. It’s only a phrase, and I’m sorry. Do you mind my saying you over-reacted?’
‘Not if you admit there was something to react to.’
‘Well, then – there was. Sedley has done something extremely silly, and knows it.’
‘Perhaps you think I ought to be satisfied with an apology?’
‘Not quite that. Not that way on, as a matter of fact.’
‘Mungo, what the hell do you mean?’
‘The apologising, or whatever it’s to be called, had better be done by you. First thing in the morning will be best.’
‘You’ve taken leave of your senses.’
‘No, I haven’t. Just listen. You can’t help being attractive to Sedley. You can’t give yourself a squint and a hump and a clubfoot. But the thing’s been no more, you know, than a sentimental indiscretion on the part of an ageing man, and it’s up to you to mitigate it as a disaster for him. Your uncle and he are important to each other, and the status quo there you can help to maintain. I think your uncle is a very remarkable man. But he’d be inclined to be harsh, I believe, to any overt expression of ways of feeling that he hopes he has mastered and repressed in himself. So it’s only fair to get the whole thing played down. Tell your uncle you haven’t been sleeping well, or something like that. Tell Sedley your nerves have been a bit on edge lately. Say any damn thing – briefly and quietly. They’re both rather formal people, and will respond to a ritual gesture, or spot of decorum.’
‘I’m to paper over the cracks?’
‘Exactly that.’
‘You seem to be a bloody sight more concerned about those old men than about me.’
‘Ian, say that over again slowly, and you’ll see it’s rot.’ Mungo managed a grin. ‘In fact, you’ll be ashamed of it.’
‘That’s true, at least. Sorry.’
‘Then just go on listening for a moment longer. The well-intentioned advice of Mungo Lockhart is advanced directly in the interest of Ian Cardower.’
‘Don’t be so verbose. It’s about time we were going to bed.’
‘All right. But meanwhile just hold on to your seat. When you jumped up in that absurd way, and let out a great yell, and knocked over a perfectly harmless table and chess-board, and called a distinguished elderly novelist—’
‘Oh, stow it, Mungo. Stuff it.’
‘Well that’s from the same region of discourse.’ This time, Mungo’s grin was wholly unforced. ‘When you were doing all those things, you were putting on a classic turn as the boy with disastrous uncles. Uncle One, Douglas Cardower, so I’m booked for a life as a squalid womaniser. Uncle Two, David Cardower, so—’
‘You do most tediously spell things out, Mungo. Your novels are going to be quite awful.’
‘So they are.’ Mungo drew a deep breath, kicked off his shoes, yawned, and began scrambling out of his clothes while still crossing the floor to his bedroom. He paused at its door, with his hand on the latch. It might have been Howard 4, 4. But nothing further came into his head, and he simply said good-night. Ian – once more – was going to do as he’d been told.
Chapter Nineteen
He did it with commendably little delay. He went up to the Castle after breakfast, and was away much longer than Mungo had expected. When he got back to the cottage he grumbled about missing a morning’s fishing, demanded his lunch, and said briefly that he supposed Mungo had been right. About the previous night’s embarrassment, he added, he’d uttered no more than a dozen words, but the effect seemed to have been an easing of tension all round. Leonard Sedley had walked part of the way back with him.
‘What did he talk about?’ Mungo asked.
‘Never mind what he talked about. There are a lot of things about which you’re a damn sight too curious.’
Mungo realised with a shock that Ian was in one of his very darkest moods. Something must have happened to occasion this, and it was something that Ian didn’t want to talk about. It was Mungo’s impulse to challenge such an infringement of an unspoken compact between them. Then he reflected that he himself had felt unable to tell Ian of his own convinced belief – for by now it was entirely that – that he was Ian’s uncle’s son. The reason for this inability, he didn’t quite know: perhaps it was simply that romantic illegitimacy was a notion, or a fact, just too silly to talk about. But still, whether silly or not, it was a pretty large thing to keep from his best friend.
There came to him a sudden perception that it must be precisely this, and nothing else, that Ian was now keeping from him. He, Mungo, had been taken to Bamberton to be inspected – on the initiative, as it must have been, of Ian’s father. Then he had been brought to Mallachie for the same purpose; and he was sure that Lord Brightmony’s persuasion – and Sedley’s too, for that matter – had been the same as Lord Auldearn’s. And now the thing had been broken – if that was the word – to Ian. Ian now actually knew that they were cousins of a sort. And Ian was finding it very difficult to talk about. So Mungo waited. He felt he had to wait. The initiative was very much Ian’s to welcome him, so to speak, into the family. And surely this was exactly what Ian would immediately want to do? He had thought about Mungo as a possible brother-in-law (what might be called the Mary Cardower episodes witnessed to that); so surely he wasn’t going to jib at this other and much less substantial relationship – which, anyway, he’d once advanced as an idle joke?
Thinking in this fashion, Mungo kept mum. They sat down opposite each other to munch bread and cheese and gulp brutally swamped malt whisky. Ian had produced a single flare of straight hostility, and Mungo rather hoped he’d do it again. It might at least start explanations. But for a long time Ian kept mum too. He wasn’t hostile, Mungo decided. He was simply, in some mysterious way, totally out of his depth. The river might have got into those ridiculous waterproof breeches and be carrying him he didn’t know where.
‘Damn and blast!’ Sitting up abruptly, Ian had chucked a last crust savagely through the open door of the cottage. ‘I suppose I can clear out in good order as soon as this lunch-party of my uncle’s is over. I’m about through with this place. There are things I want to do.’
‘I’ve had an idea, as a matter of fact.’ Mungo hadn’t failed to mark the singular pronoun. ‘Those friends of yours near Fochabers, the ones that absolutely stink of fish—’
‘The D’Arcy-Drelincourts.’ Ian was looking at Mungo strangely, and only half attending.
‘Yes. Obviously another ancient Scottish family—’
‘Don’t jabber. What the hell ought we to be caring about ancient Scottish families? All that just buggers things up. But go on.’
‘The D’Arcy-Drelincourts – lords of the salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded sea.’ Mungo had been so confounded by Ian’s enigmatical outburst that he had momentary recourse to nonsense. ‘Don’t you feel their particular fishy fume calling to you?’
‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about it.’ Ian brightened a little as he said this. But it didn’t escape Mungo that the statement wasn’t true. Ian was simply grabbing at something which hadn’t been in his head.
‘Well, then,’ Mungo demanded, ‘why don’t you go?’
‘It might be an idea. And I could – at least I suppose I could – ring them up and ask if I might bring a friend for a week. It’s a big house, and I expect they could find us a couple of garrets.’
‘My child, you could angle for an invitation – but I continue not to angle for fish.’ Mungo’s dismay – for that was what he was conscious of feeling now – took shelter behind a doggedly facetious idiom. ‘You go, and I’ll stay put.’
‘Stay here at Mallachie?’ Ian asked sharply.
‘Yes – why not? It will give us a rest from each other. Have some more whisky.’ Mungo watched Ian reach for a bottle with what horrifyingly revealed itself as a trembling hand. ‘I rather think your lugubrious uncle approves of me,’ he went on
desperately. ‘He knows of my one carnal sin, but otherwise rates me as pure and—’
‘Dry up, for Christ’s sake!’ Ian brought this out in such a burst of real desperation that Mungo saw he must make a drastic reappraisal of the situation. ‘Of course Uncle David has lent us this cottage for the season, and won’t in the least mind how we come and go.’ Ian took a gulp of whisky in a fashion so random that it dribbled down his chin. ‘And just what do you plan to do with yourself,’ he demanded roughly, ‘if I go off?’
‘Lie on my lonely pallet, sobbing bitterly, I suppose.’ Mungo waved in the direction of his typewriter. ‘Don’t you know I have a novel to get on with?’ Pausing, and getting no response, he decided to try provocation. ‘Besides, I propose to haunt the Castle, and get to know a lot more recent Cardower history.’
‘To put into your rubbishing romance, I suppose. I tell you again, I’ve never known anybody so full of impertinent curiosities.’
Mungo felt what he supposed was his blood going to his head. But, strangely, something else swam up there as well. It was the knowledge that what had come from Ian was not an insult but an appeal. The contemptuous words, decoded in terms of their normal relationship, represented not exactly a plea for quarter, but certainly a plea for time. Whatever had happened had got Ian thoroughly disoriented.
‘Then that’s fine,’ Mungo said. ‘Your turn to skivvy round.’ And he went out to sun himself on the river-bank.
The arrangement fulfilled itself a couple of days later – days so constrained and miserable that it was a relief when Ian departed. Mungo told himself that now he’d settle down and work. He’d go up to Mallachie to dine, if only because it seemed to be expected of him, but for the rest of the time he’d work like mad. At least it wasn’t true that he had the slightest wish to put any of the Cardowers into his book. If he could sufficiently lose himself in his story he might even stop uselessly beating his brains over Ian’s strange behaviour. You can’t write a novel, he supposed, and remain uncomfortably curious about anybody outside it.
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