What Happened at Hazelwood?

by Michael Innes

  Now Mervyn was staring at Joyleen as we came downstairs. Joyleen, I should imagine, was accustomed to stares and relished them even from puppies of eighteen. But this stare of Mervyn’s was rather different. It was admiring. It was even politely admiring. At the same time it contrived to suggest that the girl had put something on inside-out, or had forgotten to put something on, or ought to take something off. Joyleen didn’t like it. And then Mervyn suddenly turned on his heel, clapped his hands and ran back into the dining-room. ‘Mama, mama,’ he cried in an idiotic falsetto, ‘there is a young gentlewoman too!’

  This brought Lucy out and Mervyn came back with her; I think that after the business of the sherry he didn’t much trust himself with Bevis and young Willoughby. Lucy had been thinking up a line, and now she embarked on it heavily. ‘Hippias!’ she cried. ‘Dear uncle Guy’s boy! Welcome, and welcome again to Hazelwood.’

  Dear uncle Guy’s boy received this effusive greeting coolly. ‘How d’ye do,’ he said. ‘But dashed if I didn’t think I’d met George’s wife ten minutes ago. Slip of a girl. Still, you look more out of his stable. About ages too.’

  Lucy was greatly offended. ‘I am George’s sister Lucy,’ she said, ‘who married the late Richard Cockayne. And this’ – she put her arm round Mervyn – ‘is my darling boy.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Hippias looked appraisingly at the mother and son. ‘Well, I should say that the late Richard Cockayne was well out of it. And don’t come bustling round as if you owned the place. Confusing to a stranger. And thought I was right about George’s wife. Not quite in the best fleece, but a deuced beautiful woman all the same. What’s become of her?’ And Hippias started to look round the hall. Then he paused and sniffed. ‘Damned hungry,’ he said. ‘Knew better than to eat roast shoe-leather and boiled grass on a bally awful English train.’

  Hippias, I think, may be called Edwardian. His chief acquaintance with the Mother Country must have been at the tail end of that era, and it is to be presumed that he formed his manners upon those of some rag-tag and bobtail set which had then received him. Hippias is raffish and rude. It was plain that Mervyn was delighted with him; his brisk bludgeoning of the absurd Lucy was perfectly agreeable to the little beast’s peculiar filial feelings. ‘Cousin Hippias,’ he said amiably, ‘is a gastronome. Not for him the atrocious lamb which his countrymen disingenuously father upon Canterbury, New Zealand. He comes too from a land of noble wines. Bid Owdon bring up the Chateau Lafite ’24 and let it stand its trial at last.’ With this Mervyn led the way into the dining-room and began gesticulating at the table. ‘These are knives,’ he said, ‘and those are forks. The little scoops with handles are called spoons; you will use them first. Just follow our lead and all awkwardness will be avoided. Only mark well that Willoughby is an exception. With sherry he has a private ritual of his own which it would be a solecism to imitate. His morals, however are exemplary and such as you may follow blindly. Willoughby’s heart is pure – which is why his length is as the length of ten and his wrists stick out so many inches from the sleeves of his dinner jacket.’

  ‘Mervyn,’ said Lucy mildly, ‘you are talking a little more than becomes you.’ Having been roundly driven from her rôle of gushing chatelaine Lucy had retreated again upon vagueness.

  ‘And here’ – for Mervyn was merely stirred to further volubility by this – ‘is uncle Bevis. He is a world authority on the History of the Rod, and has written on the subject a monograph of curious interest, available to private subscribers only.’ And as he advanced this grotesque flight of fancy Mervyn politely handed Joyleen to a chair on George’s right. ‘But I must add that much of the material was collected by aunt Grace, the lady who is behaving like a chafing-dish at the far end of the room.’

  Grace was certainly simmering – I suspect because the new arrivals had cut short what was to have been quite a major denunciation of George passed on from the Reverend Mr Deamer. It was (it subsequently turned out) the blacksmith’s daughter who was in question; and for my own part I would have welcomed quite a covey of Joyleens in order to be spared Grace on a theme like that. After all, nobody was going to reform George – and indeed George as a reformed rake would have been rather more intolerable than George just as he was. So why fuss? The answer in Grace’s case was just jealousy. All unknown to herself, she had some infantile fixation on her big bad brother and couldn’t bear him to be naughty anywhere outside the old familiar nursery. George knew this – he was far from stupid, and knew most things – and sometimes I had been constrained to believe that a certain unnecessary obtrusiveness in his irregular courses was simply a means he took to diverting himself by tormenting his sister. It was even possible to think that one day he might go too far, and drive Grace into some frenzy dangerous to herself or others. And this was particularly so since she had become thick with Mr Deamer – who was (as will appear) a thoroughly fanatical man on his job.

  But at the moment Dismal Swamp was still the focal point of irritation. George from the foot of the table and Hippias from my right hand kept up an obscure sparring which naturally dominated the room. Grace put in fishing questions – no doubt suspecting that there might have been a girl-angle to this ancient misdemeanour of George’s. Mervyn took it into his head to affect an inside knowledge of the affair. Bevis tried to talk kangaroo hunting with Gerard – this by way of indicating his opinion that intimate family business should not be discussed before the servants. Lucy brought out a hazy knowledge of Australian families and fell to questioning any of the new arrivals who would listen. Joyleen would have liked to join in this, but I could see that she didn’t really know the right answers and would have been stronger on the number of bathrooms so-and-so had in Bondi. Willoughby said nothing; at present you must regard him as decidedly a dark horse in what is going forward. And behind us moved Owdon, Timmy Owdon and our remaining parlour-maid, supposing or meditating I don’t know what.

  And that leaves Gerard, who was sitting on my left. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I had problems of my own to consider that night; and for a time I was quite content to leave the Simneys to their own remote affairs. But I began to get interested when I noticed how Gerard was feeling as the meal wore on. At first he had joined in this Dismal Swamp business civilly, on the whole, but incisively enough. Then he seemed to grow puzzled, and presently said very little.

  And I had an obscure feeling that it was important to gather what he was feeling puzzled about.

  ‘Bally mean trick,’ said Hippias. He glared at Owdon – apparently by way of demanding more veal. ‘And it’s not a trick Denzell would have played, my boy; I can tell you that.’

  ‘Denzell?’ said George blankly.

  The florid features of Hippias changed from red to purple, and for a moment I wondered what could be so peculiarly maddening in this response. Then I remembered what I had in fact once been told clearly enough: that George had had a younger brother, Denzell Simney, a year younger again than Bevis, who had gone out to Australia with him and there met some more or less tragic death. To have George treating the name as if it were quite unknown to him was certainly displeasing enough.

  ‘Yes – Denzell,’ said Hippias. ‘And – what’s more – if Denzell were in your shoes now, and in command of a fortune, he would make reparation like a gentleman.’

  Momentarily George’s eyes narrowed. Then he looked impassively round at people’s glasses. ‘Owdon,’ he said, ‘–claret.’

  ‘And let us have a rouse,’ said Mervyn, ‘to the departed gentility of the family. Grace is genteel, but a very Diana for chastity. I, who am all the sons of my mother’s house and all the daughters too, will never be other than a little cad. Nicolette is charming, but in her veins runs only the ink of poets and the mascara of mummers. Willoughby is going to be a schoolmaster and will take his pleasure only in smacking small boys’ behinds with a cane – or is it a birch? And thus, then, I conclude that on Joyleen rests
the onus of restoring the old patrician dignity of our house.’ And Mervyn lifted his glass gravely to Gerard’s wife – who did not at all know whether she was being made fun of or not. Then a thought seemed to strike him. ‘But of course there is Timmy. How often one forgets him.’ And Mervyn turned to smirk at George, certain of approval for thus reviving this tiresome theme.

  But George’s reaction was altogether surprising. ‘Mervyn,’ he said evenly, ‘you will finish your meal in silence.’

  Mervyn blinked at him and then turned to Lucy. ‘Mama, mama!’ he squeaked.

  ‘It appears that we have stopped having a schoolroom earlier than we ought. Very well. Certain of its usages we will revive.’ As George made this pronouncement he looked up the table, and as his eyes swept past mine I got a vivid impression of rapid calculation. ‘Get out!’ he snapped.

  For a moment I thought he was addressing me – and had it been so I believe that I would have risen and departed in silent seeming-obedience. They were one family, after all, and it might have been best to leave them to it. But then a scurry behind me and a softly closing door explained the situation. It was Timmy – so recently promoted to his position of prominence beside his father – who had been peremptorily ordered from the room.

  It was odd. For I found it hard to see why the arrival of the Australian cousins should suddenly inspire George with a sense of the elementary proprieties in this matter. It occurred to me that I, like everyone else, had very little certain information about Timmy’s origins. Was it possible that no Simney lady had been involved – nor the heavy Owdon either; was it possible that his looks came from his father, and that I had been right in my conjecture the first time I had set eyes on him? Was he George’s son, after all – and the far more scandalous story we had all accepted a thoroughly characteristic perverse fiction of George’s own? But then how could the story have gained credibility in the first place, and why should Owdon acknowledge the boy to be his? These were all mysteries. And I realized how sketchy was my knowledge of the precious clan into which I had precipitated myself.

  But one thing was clear. The arrival of Hippias had set George some obscure problem. This might not have been evident to everybody, but circumstances had obliged me to make some study of the man, and I could sense that he felt himself in the presence of certain imponderables amid which he was cautiously feeling his way. Moreover he was rattled – a state of mind I never expected to live to see George experience. He was sitting back now, looking through his claret at the candles on the corner of the table near him – and I could see that he was reviewing his handling of Mervyn and Timmy a few moments before and by no means approving of it. But presently he looked down the table with a confident eye. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘my memory is bad. But all these things may come back to me. So tell me more, my dear Hippias, about this Dismal Swamp.’

  ‘Dismal Swamp?’ said Hippias blankly.

  6

  Well, that was queer. It was a second before I at all got the hang of it. And then I remembered how George had said ‘Denzell?’ in just the same blank way a few minutes before. That plainly enough had been a sort of manifesto, an announcement that George didn’t intend to be disturbed by Hippias and his pesterings, and that in any trouble there might be over those distant dealings in land he felt quite secure of having the upper hand. And now Hippias appeared to be saying that he didn’t after all care a damn about Dismal Swamp either. But what sense could there be in so sudden a change of front?

  Gerard evidently saw none. He was looking at his father in perplexity. And immediately Hippias hedged, as if feeling that too obvious a shift of position was undesirable. ‘We’ll give it a rest,’ he said. ‘Papers to unpack, and all that.’ He turned to Bevis. ‘Kangaroo? They’re swell enough. But if you want excitement you have to go for buffalo. You can stand in the middle of a sizeable plain, you know, and see nothing and believe you’re feeling a slight earthquake. But it’s a herd of those fellows over the horizon, and before you can say Jack Robinson they’re coming down on you. General idea is that the Australian Bush is a dull place for a sportsman–’

  ‘No, no,’ said Bevis. He was apparently anxious to dissociate himself from so drastic an aspersion as this. ‘Impression is that there’s no scenery or tourists’ stuff scattered about. But I’ve always understood a fellow could have a very fair spin with a gun. Trout, too, I’ve been told.’

  Gerard joined in. ‘There are trout in Tasmania. And they’re in streams that don’t belong to anyone in particular.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Bevis was civil but shocked. ‘What an extraordinary state of affairs. Though for that matter I’ve been told that in Kenya–’

  ‘But quite often,’ interrupted Lucy, ‘there is nobody in particular. The Shropshire Mortimer’s have cousins in a place called the Flinders Ranges. And they say that there is nobody in particular within hundreds of miles of them. Nobody, that is to say, except ordinary colonials.’

  Gerard put down his knife and fork, and I could see that he was quite quickly learning to be less annoyed than amused by talk of this sort. ‘But we are all ordinary colonials,’ he said. ‘Except of course those of us who are indigenous and black.’

  ‘Black?’ said Lucy. ‘I thought that was Africa.’

  At this Joyleen felt she must take a hand. ‘There aren’t many blacks,’ she said defensively. ‘Or not any longer. They were protected, and that sort of thing, so that now there are very few of them left. They are quite horrid, of course, and particularly the children.’

  Gerard opened his mouth and shut it again. I felt sorry for him, for I saw that his marriage must be pretty awful. In fact we rowed in the same galley, Gerard and I. And if I’d had my wits about me I would have seen that he might be making the same observation.

  ‘Blackfellows?’ said Hippias. He applied himself vigorously to his veal. ‘George and Denzell had dealings with blackfellows – of a sort.’

  Grace was upon this like a flash. ‘Black women?’ she demanded.

  Hippias looked at my unmarried sister-in-law, sizing her up. ‘That’s telling,’ he leered.

  And at that I saw that Hippias was the nastiest of the lot. Not even Mervyn Cockayne could touch quite this. For it was plain to me that although Hippias had intended some innuendo in this matter of George and the blackfellows it had actually nothing to do with women – or at least with immoral relations with women. Hippias was just joining in baiting Grace.

  I’m not fanatical about smut. I suspect that it has a sanative place in the intimate society of young adult males. Aerated by wit, I’m prepared to stick it – even put it across – on the stage. But I don’t like it at my dinner table, and in front of a parlour-maid. I can tell you I felt pretty well through with Simneys that night.

  ‘Yes,’ said George, ‘it all floats back. Blackfellows, buffalo, billabongs and tepid bottled beer. A wonderful life. How eager you must be to get back. And yet how much of England Joyleen must be shown first. How her mind and spirit will expand as she actually sees so much that her education has led her to expect. Can you stop at so dull a place as Hazelwood till Wednesday – or even Thursday? Nicolette, do persuade our cousins to spare us several days.’

  I uttered some decent form of words. It was unfair of George – I was thinking – to silence Mervyn and then embark on so poor an imitation of the little toad’s vein. But here was only another sign that George was not so much in command of the situation as he seemed to claim. And somehow I was alarmed by this. I think I had a feeling that if, for mysterious reasons, he was going to be driven hard by his cousin Hippias he would make up for this disagreeable experience by taking it out of others nearer home.

  I didn’t know that George’s death was going to take place just twenty-seven hours later.

  And I daresay you are just longing for it – or even for a general extinction of the Simneys, as at the conclusion of an Elizabethan p
lay. Well, don’t despair. Of that blunt instrument, at least, we are within reasonable reach now. As to whether any of the others are to die I don’t yet know. Somebody has declared that we shed our sicknesses in books, and perhaps that’s why I’m writing. And possibly the more effective the book the more effective the cure – so I had better build up what suspense I can. Anyway, all those Simneys are alive for the moment. You might say indeed that they have the horrid vitality shown by many of the lower forms of life.

  At that meal there was a certain amount of further cryptic talk. I could report it and then later on you could perhaps turn back and see its lurking relevance. But even in this sort of narrative much cryptic talk is tiresome. Certainly I was tired of it at dinner that night. And I was glad when I got the women away to the drawing-room.

  Joyleen walked to the fire and said, ‘Coal!’ with the air of one preferring a mild indictment.

  ‘I expect,’ I said, ‘that you will feel the cold, arriving in winter like this.’