The Talisman

by Lynda La Plante

  Throwing up his hands in despair, Richard walked out, leaving BB, his father, to take over his position by the fire, warming his rear end.

  ‘Leave him be, dearest,’ Sylvia remonstrated feebly, ‘you always criticize him. He’s a dear boy, and means no harm . . . Did you bring your hunting jacket?’

  BB bit the end of his cigar, spat it in the fire and bellowed for Fred to get him a drink to warm him up.

  The thundering sound of Buster charging down the hall announced the arrival of Mrs Simpson. She proffered her cheek for Sylvia to kiss, while BB complained bitterly about not being able to take a bath after their journey. Mrs Simpson pursed her lips and murmured that there was a war on. BB snorted, ‘Don’t tell me they’re rationing hot water now, Edna, for Gawd’s sake.’

  Sylvia could see her sister was furious, so she suggested Edna might tell them when it would be convenient for them to take their baths.

  ‘Well, come along now, dear, and I’ll show you your rooms and explain the intricacies of the plumbing system at the same time.’

  They left BB still hogging the fire, his trousers sizzling. Sylvia followed her sister upstairs, noting Edna’s pathetic attempts at flower arranging. ‘My dear, perhaps you would like me to make a few Christmas decorations? I can paint some twigs and put some coloured balls and ribbons on them – they look very festive.’

  ‘We don’t really go in for that kind of thing . . . The gardeners haul a tree up outside the house and the Judge switches on the fairy lights – that, my dear, should suffice. And we’re not sending Christmas cards this year – rather goes against the grain, but there is a war on.’

  Sylvia sighed. There was indeed a war raging, but somehow here in the depths of the country it seemed very far away.

  Feeling a bit miffed at Sylvia’s condescension, Edna ushered her into her bathroom and explained how the hot water supply worked. Noting how many trunks her sister had brought from London, she said, off-handedly, that they had been invited to the Duke and Duchess’s house party the following weekend. Of course, she would call and ask if she could take her sister along.

  The two women were so different, one five foot eight in her stockinged feet, the other five foot nothing. Their only similarity was in their plummy, aristocratic voices, Edna’s hoarse from constant shouting and Sylvia’s husky from chain-smoking. Sylvia must at one time have been very pretty in a doll-like way, with her big, liquid eyes, tiny upturned nose and cupid’s bow mouth.

  Edna looked around the bedroom and folded her arms. She loved to take digs at Sylvia, as if they were still children. She’d always been jealous of her younger sister. It was unfair that Sylvia should have all the looks, but the fact that she herself had married a judge, and now mixed with high society, was reward enough. The family beauty was married to a South African, and a rough diamond at that, and Edna never let an opportunity pass to rub it in. ‘I can’t say for certain that the Duchess will oblige – they must have so many guests . . . It’s rather an honour, you know, to be invited, but then the Judge is very well thought of in these parts. The rumour is that he may even become Lord Chief Justice, did I tell you that?’

  ‘Yes, you did, dear, and I’m thrilled for you both.’ Sylvia fluttered her eyelashes, which were thickly coated with mascara, and looked so down, so hesitant and nervous that her sister felt quite sorry for her.

  ‘No doubt Richard will be roped in. Young men are always in demand, there are so few about with the war on . . . I don’t suppose you’ve got any dresses that would suit Harriet, have you? We really should do something with the gel. She’ll be coming out in a year or two, and she’s not the slightest bit interested in fashion. Would you see what you can do with her? The wretched child cut off half her hair, you know. Her best feature and she ruins it . . . Well, not the back, it’s just that the front’s gone fuzzy.’

  ‘I’m sure I can find something appropriate for Harriet . . . She’s out riding, I hear, with – Edward, isn’t it?’

  Edna snorted and strode to the window. With all the students up at the university Allard could at least have brought home someone less peculiar. ‘Chap hardly speaks, you know. Good-looking, I suppose, but I find him rather disturbing. He’s sly in a funny sort of way – can’t fathom out his background at all. Welsh, or his family were, but then Allard was always one for collecting lame ducks.’

  Sylvia carefully placed a silver-framed photograph on the bedside table. It was of two blond, angelic-looking boys, arm-in-arm and smiling into the camera. She touched the frame fleetingly, a sad, motherly gesture as if she were touching the child itself.

  ‘You shouldn’t carry that around with you, Sylvia. A constant reminder like that doesn’t do any good, you know, not after all you went through. I’d put it away somewhere.’

  Sylvia ignored her, but she continued, ‘I don’t know why you put up with that husband of yours, I really don’t. He’s so dreadfully coarse and loud. He may be rich, but that’s not everything. Does he still run after the ladies the way he used to?’

  Sylvia blinked, her nervous little hands trembling as she began to arrange her pure silk underwear, all neatly packed in layers of tissue paper, in the drawers. But she said nothing.

  Edna pressed the point. ‘I do care about you, you know. You are my sister, after all.’

  Sylvia shut the drawer very carefully and blinked, gave a tight little smile. ‘And I care about you, my dear. But I am perfectly well now, and BB takes care of us all, in more ways than one. Don’t be cruel about him, he is a good man.’

  Silently thanking God that he was also a rich man, Mrs Simpson kissed her sister’s powdered cheek and walked out.

  Left alone, Sylvia sat on the bed and looked at the photograph. Her tiny hands fluttered above the two beautiful, smiling boys, then dropped like birds to her side. Her eyes filled with huge tears and brimmed over, staining her cheeks with mascara.

  BB walked into the room. For a moment his face puckered with pain, then he assumed a neutral expression and breezed over to lay a hand on her curly, blonde head. ‘Hold on, there’s a good girl, keep yer pecker up – we don’t want you having to go away again, now do we?’

  She smiled up at him, and he took out his big silk handkerchief and wiped her tears away as though she were a child. She patted his hand and managed a small smile, saying she was perfectly all right, it was just that her sister sometimes got the better of her.

  ‘All I know is I got the best of the sisters. By God, I couldn’t survive that creature for long.’

  BB watched his wife pull herself together, take her little silk make-up bag and go quietly into the bathroom to patch up her face. He sighed. She was so fragile, he could never tell her everything he felt, everything he was going through. The photograph of the two blond boys caught at the big man’s heart. He gritted his teeth and frowned, then took the frame and laid it face down so the two boys would not be looking at him, not forever making him feel guilty . . . He wished he could love his last born as much, but somehow he had closed off a part of him when his two eldest sons had died.

  ‘Be quite a social time here, Sylvia, my lamb. You’ll like that, and you know something – you’ll be the prettiest woman they’ve seen in these parts for years. Always said you’re the loveliest woman I ever set eyes on.’

  She came out, refreshed and repainted, kissed his cheek lovingly. BB turned to leave the room. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, old gel, see you down in the arctic lounge.’

  Harriet held her feet up to the fire. In the cracked, stone-flagged floor were little blue-flowered weeds, and she picked them one by one and threaded them through her toes, then held her foot up and laughed. She leaned on her elbow and looked at Edward, who was staring at the wall, a strange, expressionless look on his face.

  ‘What are you thinking? You’re miles away.’

  He moved to her side and touched her hair, hair like gold, just like gold, just like his mother’s, so long that it hung below her waist. He remembered brushing it by the old
grate, how Evelyne had loved her hair to be brushed. ‘You remind me of someone.’

  Harriet smiled and leaned back against his shoulder, a natural and unprovocative move. The fire was low, there was no more wood in the chapel, and Edward noticed the rain had stopped. But he made no move to go. The quietness, the peace, was nice.

  ‘Did you love her, this person I remind you of?’

  He smiled down at her and nodded his head. He found himself talking freely, unashamedly, and for the first time without any pain inside him. ‘I loved her, loved her very much.’

  Harriet touched his face softly, looked into his dark-brown eyes. ‘You’ve got all the girls running after you round here, haven’t you? Is this a girl in Cambridge?’

  He laughed and whispered to her that it was his mother, she had red hair too, long, long red hair.

  Harriet snuggled into his shoulder, said that she was glad it wasn’t some woman. Edward coiled a strand of her hair round his finger, rolled it and let it drop into a ringlet on her shoulder . . . She caught his hand, kissed it, and he kissed the top of her head, very, very gently . . . He shook himself back to sanity. ‘We should go, Harry – come on, it’s stopped raining.’ Standing up, he lifted her to her feet. She was too close, his hands involuntarily tightened around her – he knew he should push her away, but he couldn’t. She looked up into his face. There was a calmness in her, an adultness that took his breath away. Gently, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed his lips. The sweetness, the innocence of the kiss, her lips so soft – no tongue searching, thrusting down his throat – it was a childish kiss, no hands swarmed over his body, or clutched at his trousers to feel him. She was simply there, so warm and so pure that it made him gasp. ‘We’d better go, come on, get your boots on.’

  She began to tie her hair back, and got into a mess so he had to do it for her. As he tied the ribbon, he lifted her thick hair and kissed the nape of her neck, then tapped her tight little bum and told her to get a move on . . . He walked out, hampered by his erection and knowing he had to get away from her before he ripped her skin-tight jodhpurs off.

  At seven-thirty, Edward was freezing to death in the bathroom, in a cold bath. The dinner gong, obviously repaired, boomed out, and he hurried to his room to dress. Harriet hurtled into his bedroom in a dreadful pea-green dress. The hooks and eyes were undone at the back, she had only one shoe on and her hair was like a wild hedgerow. ‘Will you do me up, Allard’s not in his room? I hate this dress, it looks dreadful, doesn’t it? Mother says I have to wear one for Uncle and Auntie.’

  The dinner gong chimed again. Edward adjusted his immaculate, perfectly tied bow tie and, silently congratulating the late Clarence on his taste and style, hurried down the stairs.

  Mrs Simpson was talking loudly to her husband as Edward entered the sitting room.

  ‘A real stallion hound, darling, is frightfully rare nowadays.’

  Sitting astride her chair as though it were a horse, Mrs Simpson gave Edward a cursory smile and kept talking. The Judge rose to his feet as his wife went on at great length about what, in her opinion, a good hound should look like. He poured a sherry and handed it to Edward.

  ‘Straight, beautiful neck and shoulders, depth of girth, bone and feet. Must have that essential muscle, refinement of skin, back quarters like a horse. Frightfully important that it’s quick of hearing. Get a deaf dawg . . .’

  ‘Thought you were describing me for a minute there, Edna.’

  BB and his wife, with their son trailing slightly behind, made a grand entrance, and were introduced to Edward. His wife, tiny and demure, fluttered in a chiffon dress that seemed to trail myriad floating panels like scarves. The room reeked of Chanel No. 5, and her shrill, nervous laugh mingled with the clinking of her many bracelets.

  BB accepted a whisky from the Judge. He was a lot older than his wife, and wore an immaculate grey suit and stiff white collar, with a blue foulard tie in an old-fashioned dimple knot and a large diamond pin. His complexion was florid, his white hair, though balding, thick at the sides of his red cheeks, and his small round eyes were like flints. He shook Edward’s hand in a grip like iron, and stood nearly as tall as Edward, his wide shoulders tapering to his once-slim waist showing that, although he was too heavy, he had at one time been a very fit, athletic man. He raised his glass high, including everyone in the room in a toast to the family.

  His son paled beside him, although he had his father’s colouring and was exceptionally handsome, the similarity ended there. Richard Van der Burge was slim and dandyish, and Edward reckoned him to be around the same age as himself, although far more sophisticated.

  Richard laughed up at Harriet who loomed over him as he sat on the sofa, and observed that she was growing faster than he was. Then he got to his feet and gave her a kiss. She pushed him away and wiped her cheek, telling him he was a ponce. The butler nervously approached Mrs Simpson and whispered to her, asking if he should announce dinner. Edward took stock of the guests. They were, it was exceedingly obvious, ‘money’.

  Allard swept in, his cheeks flushed with the evening air and slightly out of breath. He apologized to everyone for his lateness and linked arms with his mother. They all drifted into the dining room.

  The table was beautifully laid, and a rotund cook peered through a hatch that led into the kitchen. She was handing the dishes to a young local girl who had come in to help out, and to old Fred. Fred, obviously a ‘man of all trades’, was acting butler. Edward couldn’t help but notice that he was even less adept at this than he was at driving. Edward was placed next to BB with Harriet opposite. While the others at the table discussed family outings and previous dinners together, Edward became fascinated with BB.

  ‘I have not shaved myself in over twenty years. I was in New York, and I realized that it was non-productive and time-consuming. In the time it would take to shave, I could have been reading, say, a company report, and no doubt made a decision that could possibly bring in a million dollars, maybe more. So I detailed a unique tonsorial network between myself, my chauffeur and my barbers. The barbers were briefed to be standing by to attend to me instantly, and they got a good tip for being ready and waiting.’ His shaggy eyebrows and piercing blue eyes roamed the table, demanding attention. He spoke in a strange, guttural manner, clipping the ends of his words. The family, obviously having heard most of his stories before, continued their chatter. Richard paid no attention to his father, but Harriet was avidly interested in her uncle and asked questions Edward was too shy to ask.

  ‘Did you make millions, Uncle BB? In America? I thought you were in mining? You’ve got mines in America too, I suppose.’

  BB roared with laughter while he picked at the dreadful dinner on the plate before him. Edward gathered that the Van der Burges were in gold- and diamond-mining in South Africa, and that BB must have made a fortune in the early twenties over there and opened up some kind of banking operation in America. He fascinated Edward as he patiently described the mysteries of the Stock Exchange to Harriet. ‘You got different types of markets, Harriet, we give them names. First we got the “bull” market, that’s the one in which the majority of share prices have been, and continue to be, rising. Then you got what we call the “split up” – that’s when the value of a company’s stock goes very high. Market dealings are made easier if the value of the stock is reduced, and the number of shares correspondingly increase as the “split up” happens, understand?’ BB continued to talk, holding forth with gestures so expansive that his wife carefully removed his cut-glass wine and water tumblers from his reach. ‘A man known as a “bear” is a person who believes prices will fall, and the “bull” is a man who expects them to rise.’

  Both her elbows on the table, Harriet’s eyes twinkled as she asked BB which of the two he considered himself.

  ‘You tell me, Harriet, eh? Which one do you think I am, Harriet, lovey?’

  BB gave the butler a small nod of his head to clear, and by that small movement placed himself as th
e head of the table – not that the Judge seemed to notice, he was too busy pouring himself another glass of wine. He was arguing with his wife about the vegetables, telling her they should be lightly boiled and not stewed to a pulp. Mrs Simpson haughtily repeated his suggestions through the hatch to the cook. At the same time Harriet spoke even louder to BB, ‘Does that mean you are rich then? I mean, diamonds are worth a lot of money, Ma’s got a diamond ring and that’s worth thousands, isn’t it Ma? Not as big as Auntie Sylvia’s, though. Did you sell them in America? Is that what you did over there, Uncle?’

  Harriet was reprimanded for asking impertinent questions, and it gave Edward the opportunity to talk to BB. Buster appeared at this moment, at least, they could smell him and he had to be removed. He was dragged unceremoniously out of the doors, and the Judge remarked that if the dog was fed the same stewed veg as he was, no wonder he farted.

  BB quietly explained to Edward what they meant in the City by ‘selling short’. He smiled and murmured that he was, if anything, a bear, and selling short was a favourite device of a bear. This was done if you believed that a stock was going down. A bear would sell, but the stock he sold was not necessarily his own – or not as yet, because he knew he was able to borrow it from a broker for a time, for a fee. ‘Then, Edward, I deliver the borrowed shares to my buyer, collect the payment and wait for the price to fall. Once it goes down, I buy the same shares at a lower price – you with me? – and give them to the broker to replace the shares I initially purchased . . . my profit is the difference between the price at which I sold the borrowed shares to the buyer and the price I paid to replace them. Now, you can get yourself in a right bad situation if the prices unexpectedly go up instead of down. In 1930, rules governing the short-selling system were imposed, aimed at the likes of me so that there could be no possibility of the system actually causing prices to fall.’