"Brat!" Ruth said delighted. "Do you mind if I call you Brat? Do you?"
"No. I haven't been called anything else for a large part of my life."
The door opened and Lana appeared to say that a young man had called to see Miss Ashby and she had put him in the library.
"Oh, what a nuisance," Bee said. "What does he want, do you know?"
"He says he's a reporter," Lana said, "but he doesn't look like a reporter to me. Quite tidy and clean and polite." Lana's experience of the Press, like Brat's knowledge of middle-class life, was derived solely from films.
"Oh, no!" Bee said. "Not the Press. Not already."
"The Westover Times he says he is."
"Did he say why he had come?"
"Come about Mr. Patrick, of course," Lana said, turning her thumb in Patrick's direction.
"Oh, God," Simon groaned, "and the fatted calf not half-way down our gullets. I suppose it had to come sooner or later!"
Bee drank the remains of her coffee. "Come on, Brat!" she said, putting out her hand and pulling him to his feet. "We might as well go and get it over. You too, Simon." She led Brat out of the room, laughing at him, and still hand in hand with him. The warm friendliness of her clasp sent a rush of emotion through him that he could not identify. It was like nothing he had so far experienced in life. And he was too busy with thoughts of the reporter to pause to analyse it.
The library was the dark room at the back of the house where Bee kept her roll-top desk, her accounts, and her reference books. A small young man in a neat blue suit was puzzling over a stud book. At their entrance he dropped the book and said in a rich Glasgow accent: "Miss Ashby? My name is Macallan. I'm working on the Westover Times. I'm awfully sorry about barging in like this, but I thought you'd have finished eating this long time."
"Well, we began late, and I'm afraid we lingered over things," Bee said.
"Uh-huh," said Mr. Macallan understandingly. "A very special occasion. I've no right to be spoiling it for you, but 'the first with the latest' is my motto, and just this minute you're the latest."
"I suppose you mean my nephew's homecoming."
"Just that."
"And how did you find out about it so soon, Mr. Macallan?"
"One of my contacts heard about it in one of the Clare pubs."
"A deplorable word," said Bee.
"Pub?" Mr. Macallan said, puzzled.
"No. Contact."
"Och, well, one of my stooges, if you like that better," Mr. Macallan said agreeably. "Which of these young gentlemen is the returned prodigal, may I ask?"
Bee introduced Brat and Simon. Some of the cold tightness had come back to Simon's face; but Brat, who had been around when Nat Zucco had cut his throat in the kitchen of his ex-wife's eating-house and had witnessed the activities of the American Press on that occasion, was entranced by this glimpse of news-gathering in Britain. He answered the obvious questions put to him by Mr. Macallan and wondered if there would be any suggestion of a photograph. If so, he must get out of it somehow.
But it was Bee who saved him from that. No photograph, said Bee. No; positively no photograph. All the information he liked to ask for, but no photograph.
Mr. Macallan accepted this, but reluctantly. "The story of the missing twin won't be half so good without a photograph," he complained.
"You're not going to call it 'The Missing Twin, are you?" Bee said.
"No; he's going to call it 'Back From The Dead'," Simon said, speaking for the first time. His cool drawl fell on the room like a shadow.
Mr. Macallan's pale blue eyes went to him, rested a moment on him consideringly, and then came back to Bee. "I had thought of 'Sensation at Clare'," he said, "but I doubt the Westover Times won't stand for it. A very conservative organ. But I expect the Daily Clarion will do better."
"The Clarion!" Bee said. "A London paper! But-but I hope there is no question of that. This is an entirely local-an entirely family matter."
"So was that affair in Hilldrop Crescent," Mr. Macallan said.
"What affair?"
"Crippen was the name. The world's Press is composed of family affairs, Miss Ashby."
"But this is of no possible interest to anyone but ourselves. When my nephew-disappeared, eight years ago, the Westover Times reported it quite-quite incidentally."
"Ay, I know. I looked it up. A small paragraph at the bottom of page three."
"I fail to see why my nephew's return should be of any more interest than his disappearance."
"It's the man-bites-dog affair over again. People go to their deaths every day, but the amount of people who come back from the dead is very small indeed, Miss Ashby. Coming back from the dead, in spite of the advances of modern science, is still a sensation. And that's why the Daily Clarion is going to be interested."
"But how should they hear about it?"
"Hear about it!" Mr. Macallan said, genuinely horrified. "Miss Ashby, this is my own scoop, don't you see."
"You mean you are going to send the story to the Clarion?"
"Assuredly."
"Mr. Macallan, you mustn't; you really must not."
"Listen, Miss Ashby," Mr. Macallan said patiently, "I agreed about the no-photographs prohibition, and I respect the agreement-I won't go sneaking around the countryside trying to snap the young gentlemen unawares, or anything like that-but you can't ask me to give up a scoop like this. Not a scoop of 'London daily' dimensions." And as Bee, caught in the toils of her natural desire to be fair, hesitated, he added: "Even if I didn't send them the story, there's nothing to hinder a sub-editor lifting the story from the Westover Times and making it front-page news. You wouldn't be a scrap better off and I'd have lost my chance of doing a bit of good for myself."
"Oh, dear," Bee said, tacitly acknowledging that he was right, "I suppose that means swarms of newspaper men from London."
"Och, no. Only the Clarion. If it's the Clarion's story none of the rest will bother. And whoever they send down you don't have to worry. They're all Balliol men, I understand."
With which flip at the English Press, Mr. Macallan looked round for his hat and made motions of departure.
"I'm very grateful to you, and to you, Mr. Ashby, for being so accommodating in the matter of information. I won't keep you any longer. May I offer you my congratulations on your happiness"-for a second the pale blue eyes rested in mild benevolence on Simon-"and my thanks for your kindness."
"You're a long way from home, aren't you, Mr. Macallan?" Bee said conversationally as she went to the front door with him.
"Home?"
"Scotland."
"Oh, I see. How did you know I was Scots? Oh, my name, of course. Ay, it's a far cry to Glasgow; but this is just the long way round to London, so to speak. If I'm going to work on an English paper it's as well to know something of the-the — "
"Aborigines?" suggested Bee.
"Local conditions, I was going to say," Mr. Macallan said solemnly.
"Haven't you a car?" Bee said, looking at the empty sweep in front of the door.
"I left it parked at the end of your drive there. I've never got used to sweeping up to strange houses as if I owned them."
With which startling exhibition of modesty the little man bowed, put on his hat, and walked away.
13
In the library, as the voices of Bee and Mr. Macallan faded down the hall and into the out-of-doors, there was silence. Brat, uncertain of the quality of that silence, turned to the shelves and began to consider the books.
"Well," said Simon, lounging in the window, "another hazard safely negotiated."
Brat waited, trying to analyse the sound of the words while they still hung in the air.
"Hazard?" he said at length.
"The snags and bunkers in the difficult business of coming back. It must have taken some nerve, all things considered. What moved you to it, Brat-homesickness?"
This was the first frank question he had been asked, and he suddenly liked Ashby the bette
r for it.
"Not exactly. A realisation that my place was here, after all." He felt that that had a self-righteous sound, and added: "I mean, that my place in the world was here."
This was succeeded by another silence. Brat went on looking at books and hoped that he was not going to like young Ashby. That would be an unforeseen complication. It was bad enough not to be able to face the person he was supplanting, now that he was left alone in a room with him; but to find himself liking that person would make the situation intolerable.
It was Bee who broke the silence.
"I think we should have offered the poor little man a drink," she said, coming in. "However, it's too late now. He can get one from his 'contact' at the White Hart."
"The Bell, I suspect," Simon said.
"Why the Bell?"
"Our Lana frequents that in preference to the White Hart."
"Ah, well. The sooner everyone knows the sooner the fuss will be over." She smiled at Brat to take any sting from the words. "Let's go and look at the horses, shall we? Have you any riding clothes with you, Brat?"
"Not any that Latchetts would recognise as riding clothes," Brat said, noticing how thankfully she seized on the excuse not to call him Patrick.
"Come up with me," Simon said, "and I'll find you something."
"Good," said Bee, looking pleased with him. "I'll collect Eleanor."
"Did you like being given the old night nursery?" Simon asked, preceding Brat upstairs.
"Very much."
"Same old paper, I suppose you noticed."
"Yes."
"Do you remember the night we had an Ivanhoe-Hereward battle?"
"No; I don't remember that."
"No. Of course you wouldn't."
Again the words hung on the silence, teasing Brat's ear with an echo of their tone.
He followed young Ashby into the room he had shared with his brother, and noticed that there was no suggestion in the room that it had ever been shared by another person. It was, on the contrary, very much Simon's own room; being furnished with his possessions to an extent that made it as much a sitting-room as a bedroom. Shelves of books, rows of silver cups, framed sketches of horses on the walls, easy chairs, and a small desk with a telephone extension on it.
Brat moved over to the window while Simon rummaged among his clothes for appropriate garments. The window, as he knew, looked over the stables, but a green hedge of lilac and laburnum trees hid the buildings from view. Above them, in the middle distance, rose the tower of Clare church. On Sunday, he supposed, he would be taken to service there. Another hazard. Hazard had been an odd word for young Ashby to choose, surely?
Simon emerged from the cupboard with breeches and a tweed coat.
"I think these ought to do," he said, throwing them on the bed. "I'll find you a shirt." He opened a drawer of the chest which held his dressing mirror and toilet things. The chest stood by the window, and Brat, still uneasy in Ashby's vicinity, moved over to the fire-place and began to look at the silver cups on the mantelpiece. All of them were prizes for horsemanship, and they ranged from a hurdle race at the local point-to-point to Olympia. All of them except one were of a date too late to have concerned Patrick Ashby; the exception being a small and humble chalice that had been awarded to Simon Ashby on «Patience» for being the winner of the juvenile jumping class at the Bures Agricultural Show in the year before Patrick Ashby committed suicide.
Simon, looking round and seeing the small cup in Brat's hand, smiled and said: "I took that from you, if you remember."
"From me?" Brat said, unprepared.
"You would have won on Old Harry if I hadn't done you out of it by doing a perfect second round."
"Oh, yes," Brat said. And to lay a new scent: "You seem to have done well for yourself since."
"Not badly," Simon said, his attention going back to his shirt drawer. "But I'm going to do a lot better. Ballsbridge and all stops to Olympia." It was said absentmindedly, but with confidence; as if the money to buy good horseflesh would automatically be available. Brat wondered a little, but felt that this was no moment for discussing the financial future.
"Do you remember the object that used to hang at the end of your bed?" Simon asked casually, pushing the shirt drawer shut.
"The little horse?" Brat said. "Yes, of course. Travesty," he added, giving its name and mock breeding. "By Irish Peasant out of Bog Oak."
He turned from the exhibits on the mantelpiece, meaning to collect the clothes that Ashby had looked out for him; but as he turned he saw Ashby's face in the mirror, and the naked shock on that face stopped him in his tracks. Simon had been in the act of pushing the drawer shut, but the action was arrested half-way. It was, thought Brat, exactly the reaction of someone who has heard a telephone ring; the involuntary pause and then the resumed movement.
Simon turned to face him, slowly, the shirt hanging over his left forearm. "I think you'll find that all right," he said, taking the shirt in his right hand and holding it out to Brat but keeping his eyes on Brat's face. His expression was no longer shocked; he merely looked blank, as if his mind were elsewhere. As if, Brat thought, he were doing sums in his head.
Brat took the shirt, collected the rest of the clothes, expressed his thanks, and made for the door.
"Come down when you're ready," Simon said, still staring at him in that blank way. "We'll be waiting for you."
And Brat, making his way round the landing to his own room in the opposite wing, was shocked in his turn. Ashby hadn't expected him to know that. Ashby had been so certain, indeed, that he would not know about the toy horse that he had been rocked back on his heels when it was clear that he did know about it.
And that meant?
It could mean only one thing.
It meant that young Ashby had not believed for a moment that he was Patrick.
Brat shut the door of the peaceful old night nursery behind him and stood leaning against it, the clothes cascading slowly to the ground from his slackened arm.
Simon had not been fooled. That touching little scene over the sherry glasses had been only an act.
It was a staggering thought.
Why had Simon bothered to pretend?
Why had he not said at once, "You are not Patrick and nothing will make me believe that you are!"?
That had been his original line, if Lana's report and the family atmosphere meant anything. Up to the last moment they had been unsure of his reaction to Brat's arrival; and he had gratified them all by a frank and charming capitulation.
Why the gratuitous capitulation?
Was it-was it a trap of some sort? Were the welcome and the charm merely the grass and green leaves laid over a pit he had prepared?
But he could not have known until the actual face-to-face meeting that he, Brat, was not Patrick. And he had apparently known instantly that the person he was facing was not his brother. Why then should he….
Brat stooped to pick up the clothes from the floor and straightened himself abruptly. He had remembered something. He had remembered that odd relaxing on Simon's part the moment he had had a good look at himself. That suggestion of relief. Of being "let off."
So that was it!
Simon had been afraid that it was Patrick.
When he found that he was faced with a mere impostor he must have had difficulty in refraining from embracing him.
But that still did not explain the capitulation.
Perhaps it was a mere postponement; a setting to partners. It might be that he planned a more dramatic denouement; a more public discrediting.
If that were so, Brat thought, there were a few surprises in store for young Mr. Ashby. The more he thought about the surprises the better he began to feel about things. As he changed into riding clothes he recalled with something like pleasure that shocked face in the mirror. Simon had been unaware that he, Brat, had passed any «family» tests. He had not been present when Brat passed the searching test of knowing his way about the house; and he had n
ot had any chance of being told about it. All that he knew was that Brat had satisfied the lawyers of his identity. Having been faced with, to him, an obvious impostor he must have looked forward with a delighted malice to baiting the pretender.
Yes; all ready to pull the wings off flies was young Mr. Ashby.
The first tentative pull had been about the Ivanhoe-Hereward battle. Something that only Patrick would know about. But something, too, that he might easily have forgotten.
The little wooden horse was something that only Patrick would know about and something that Patrick could in no circumstances have forgotten.
And Brat had known about it.
Not much wonder that Ashby had been shocked. Shocked and at sea. Not much wonder that he looked as if he were doing sums in his head.
Brat spared a kind thought for that master tutor, Alec Loding. Loding had missed his vocation; as a coach he was superb. Sometime, somewhere, something was going to turn up that Alec Loding had either forgotten to tell him about or had not himself known; and the moment was going to be a very sticky one; but so far he had known his lines. So far he was word perfect.
Even to the point of Travesty.
A little object of black bog oak, it had been. "Rudimentary and surrealist," Loding had said, "but recognisable as a horse." It had originally been yoked to a jaunting car, the whole turn-out being one of those bog-oak souvenirs that tourists brought back from Ireland in the days before it was more advisable to bring home the bacon. The small car, being made of bits and pieces, soon went the way of all nursery objects; but the little horse, chunky and solid, had survived and had become Patrick's halidom and fetish. It was Alec Loding who had been responsible for its naming; one winter evening over nursery tea. He and Nancy had looked in at Latchetts on their way home from some pony races, hoping for a drink; but finding no one at home except Nora, who was having tea upstairs with her children, they had joined the nursery party. And there, while they made toast, they had sought a name for Patrick's talisman. Patrick, who always referred to the object as "my little Irish horse," and was conscious of no need for a more particular description, rejected all suggestions.
Brat Farrar Page 10
