‘Yes. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? But I had very much wanted to see another treasure she had.’
‘Did you …?’ interrupted Robin.
Sir Henry again silenced him with a gesture, and continued:
‘A little black carved figure. Did you see it when you were there?’
‘The one she kept in the tureen?’ asked Maud.
‘Yes. I wanted to see it, but I couldn’t, because she sold it yesterday afternoon.’
‘It wasn’t as pretty as the ship,’ said Blanche consolingly.
‘No. But I’m sorry she sold it because it might have been very valuable, and the person who bought it gave very little for it.’
‘I’m sure she’ll never sell the ship,’ said Blanche.
‘I hope she won’t. Robin and I both think that it would be better not to talk about it too much. It isn’t a good thing if an old woman, living alone, is known to have valuable things.’
They all nodded wisely at this, and Maud whispered:
‘Robbers!’
‘So don’t tell anyone about Mrs. Pearce’s things, will you?’
They promised that they never would.
‘Did you mention the ship or the little figure to anyone yesterday?’
‘Lots of people …’ began Blanche, looking concerned.
‘But only the ship,’ put in Maud. ‘We forgot about the little figure.’
‘Yes,’ said Blanche, ‘I only remembered that when you said about it. But we told everyone about the ship … the Giffords, and Mrs. Paley and Miss Wraxton and our mother, and we wrote a description of it in our diary. We never thought of robbers. Shall we tell everyone not to tell?’
‘No,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Don’t worry. But don’t mention it to anyone else.’
He walked off, followed by Robin.
‘I think they were speaking the truth,’ he said, as soon as they were out of earshot.
‘I’m sure they were,’ said Robin. ‘But I had an idea … when they were talking … you don’t think … could it possibly be Mrs. Cove herself?’
‘I think it’s more than likely,’ said Sir Henry. ‘But I don’t see how in the world it’s ever going to be brought home to her.’
3. Getting Experience
Half the morning went by and Nancibel did not appear in the stables to make Bruce’s bed. He had hung about in the yard, after he had washed the car, in the hope of a pleasant interlude. But she did not come, and at last he went in search of her. He looked in at the kitchen window and saw her standing by the table, peeling potatoes in an oddly dispirited way. To his gay greeting she made no reply.
‘When are you coming to do my room?’ he asked.
‘Fred will do it,’ she replied coldly, her face still averted. ‘The work has been rearranged.’
‘What’s the matter?’
She did not answer. So he went round through the back door and the scullery into the kitchen, and planted himself in front of her.
‘What’s happened?’
She looked at him then. She gave him one brief glance before returning to the potatoes.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see.’
There was a long silence which neither of them was willing to break. Nancibel dared not speak lest she should burst out crying again. Bruce found himself, unexpectedly, with very little to say. He had thought that he was prepared for this crisis, and he had already rehearsed his own defence. For he had known that it was inevitable, sooner or later. She was bound to find out, and when she did she was bound to be angry. But he had expected a tirade of reproach and abuse, and this mournful silence was disconcerting. It stung him at last into saying the worst thing he could possibly have said.
‘Jealous?’ he enquired.
He would have done anything to recall the word as soon as it was out of his mouth. Only a thorough-paced rotter would have made such a suggestion. And his whole intention had been to convince her that he was not a rotter but an artist getting experience.
It galvanized Nancibel, however. It dried her tears and loosened her tongue.
‘Please get out of this kitchen,’ she commanded. ‘You’ve no business here, and Mrs. Siddal wouldn’t like it.’
‘I’m a servant, aren’t I? The kitchen’s my place, isn’t it?’
‘No. You eat in the dining-room, so your place is in the lounge.’
‘You let me sit in here yesterday.’
‘I didn’t know you were that kind of boy.’
‘What kind of boy?’
‘You get off to the lounge and tell them how you rose up out of a slum. Ladies may stand for it. I don’t have to. I think you are disgusting.’
‘You’ve got very old-fashioned ideas, Nancibel.’
‘No, I haven’t. Some things don’t go out of fashion. Everybody has always despised a boy that lives off an old woman, and they always will.’
‘She’s not old.’
‘Twenty years older than you, if she’s a day. You wouldn’t look at her if she didn’t pay you.’
‘I drive her car.’
‘Very hard work, I’m sure. Well … if you drove a bus you could sit in this kitchen. There’s a shortage of bus drivers. I don’t wonder you were ashamed to say you came from a decent home.’
‘You don’t understand,’ protested Bruce. ‘A writer has to have experiences….’
‘I daresay. Well, you’re having one now. You’re getting the experience that a girl like me doesn’t have any use for a boy like you. If you didn’t know that before you’ve learnt something useful, and you can put it in a book.’
‘I damn well will put it in a book.’
‘Yes. When you’ve altered it a bit so’s to make it sound better. You’d never dare to put anything in a book that was quite true. Look what you’ve put in your book about you and her! That she was beautiful and aristocratic! Her beautiful and aristocratic! It’s enough to make a cat laugh!’
‘You’re plain, downright jealous and that’s all there is to it.’
‘You say you want to be somebody. You’ll never be anything but a wretched little show-off that everybody despises and laughs at behind your back.’
Mr. Siddal appeared at the kitchen door, plaintively demanding his elevenses. Perceiving that some drama was afoot he came into the room and sat down at the table. His innocent eye strayed from one furious young face to the other, and he concluded that the boy had been getting the worst of the argument.
Nancibel went to the teapot on the stove and brought him a cup. He told her to give Bruce one too, which she did before taking herself off, with her potatoes, to the scullery.
‘I hear you’re writing a book,’ said Siddal genially, as he pushed the sugar bowl across to Bruce. ‘A novel. Mainly autobiographical, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said Bruce loudly.
‘No? That’s unusual. That’s interesting. Anna’s young … protegés generally write three books. The first is on the little victim theme. It has promise. It is well written. It gets astonishingly good reviews. It is very frank and tells how their childhood has been warped, either in a preparatory school or a public school, or both, or else in Wapping or on Cold Comfort Farm. At secondary and grammar schools they don’t seem to go in for warping children nearly so extensively. I don’t know why. The hero of your novel now … was he warped at Eton or in Stepney?’
‘Stepney.’
‘H’m … yes. I see. Well … the next book on the list doesn’t have to be so tragic. It’s a comedy, a bitter comedy, and very mondain. With a continental background. It deals with the vicious and corrupt lives led by expatriots in Capri or Majorca or the Maritime Alps. The hero is the biggest bum of the lot, but he has the saving grace of being able to despise himself nearly as much as he despises everyone else. The heroine is the only woman in the book with whom the hero does not sleep. She sometimes dies rather pathetically.’
Siddal paused to stir his tea, and Bruce could not restrain himself from asking what the third book was about.
&n
bsp; ‘The third book?’ Siddal seemed to start out of a reverie. ‘Nobody knows. Nobody has ever read it. One hears that it has been written. I think it gets published. But I’ve never been able to get hold of one. So I can’t tell you. It’s one of the things I hope to do before I die—to read a third book by one of Anna’s young friends. I can’t think what they can be about; religion, possibly. If you ever get as far as a third book, I do hope you’ll send it to me. More tea?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Bruce.
4. The Other Cliffs
A frieze of Gifford children appeared for a moment on the skyline. They were running across the cliffs which rose immediately behind the house, and this glimpse of them reminded Sir Henry of a question he had been meaning to ask ever since Sunday afternoon, when he had been up there himself.
This part of the coast, known locally as The Other Cliffs, and on the Ordnance Survey map as Tregoylan Rocks, was much less frequented than the more accessible slopes leading to Pendizack Point, Rosigraille Cove and Porthmerryn. To reach them it was necessary to go far inland, almost to the village, in order to skirt the deep ravine which ran down beside the Pendizack drive. The ravine ended in a narrow creek, immediately below the back of the house, and the Other Cliffs rose to a great height on the far side of this creek so that the back windows looked out upon an overhanging wall of rock. The whole peninsular, upon which the house was built, must have fallen from this rock face into the bay in some prehistoric time.
The cliffs, at the top, were covered with a mass of blackthorn, bramble and gorse which had quite obliterated the old coastguards’ paths, so that walking there was not pleasant. But Sir Henry had gone there in order to escape from the atmosphere of catastrophe which had enveloped Pendizack on Sunday afternoon; and, while he was fighting his way through the gorse, he came upon some curious cracks and fissures in the ground. They were quite far inland, but they had raised in his mind a doubt as to the safety of the whole area, and he now asked Robin about it.
Robin said that they had been there since the mine exploded, the mine which had been washed up into the cave at the end of the creek, just before Christmas. He could not say if the cracks had appeared immediately, for he had not seen them himself until the Easter holidays, when he and Duff discovered them. He fancied that somebody had been to inspect them; his mother had mentioned in a letter, during the summer term, that somebody had appeared and asked the way to the cracks. He did not know what the verdict had been, and when they reached the terrace he asked Gerry, who was mending a striped umbrella.
‘What cracks?’ asked Gerry, lifting a crimson face from his task.
The cause of his embarrassment was obvious, for an angry roar, proceeding from an open window on the first floor, made conversation on the terrace quite difficult.
‘… Do you realize that I’ve been waiting for you all the morning? I want to dictate some letters. Where have you been? Oh! … For heaven’s sake, speak up! Where have you been?’
‘You know!’ shouted Robin. ‘The mine cracks. On the Other Cliffs.’
‘… Can’t answer the simplest question. I tell you plainly I sometimes think I ought to have you certified….’
‘Never heard of them,’ shouted Gerry.
‘Didn’t Mother write about them? We found them at Easter. They’re up among the brambles … long cracks about six inches wide….’
‘Six inches?’ put in Sir Henry. ‘Why … the ones I saw were a yard wide or more. And seemed to go very deep.’
‘Then they must have grown,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve not been up there since Easter.’
‘… Well, never mind! Never mind! You’re back now. And you’ll oblige me by a prompt answer to this question: Where did you sleep last night …?’
Gerry began to look quite agonized and made no further attempt to understand about the cracks.
‘Ask Mother,’ he said, ‘I know nothing about it.’
‘… Who told me? That slut of a housekeeper told me…. What’s her name … Ellis. I’d hoped she was lying….’
‘Sir Somebody Bevin came over, or somebody like that. Surely Mother told you,’ persisted Robin.
‘… Been at it again, have you? I thought I’d put a stop to that sort of thing. While you live in my house you’ll behave decently. Yes, even if I have to lock you up! Creeping out of the house at night like a …’
‘Mother never tells me anything,’ yelled Gerry furiously. ‘Ask Duff. Perhaps he’ll know. She writes to him.’
‘… Who is it this time? I mean to find out. Make no mistake about that. So you might as well save time by speaking up. Who is he? … Mrs. Paley? … You’re a fool, Evangeline, as I know to my cost. But you can’t be quite such a fool as to expect me to believe that….’
‘I’ll ask your mother some time, when she’s not busy,’ said Sir Henry, retreating into the house.
Gerry abandoned the umbrella and began to collect his tools. He felt that the terrace was unbearable. He scowled at Robin, who was listening with horrified attention.
‘… Ask her? I certainly shall ask her. And I shall tell her what she ought to have seen for herself…. I’d have thought it was only too apparent to everybody, after the exhibition you made of yourself in church….’
‘I say, Gerry! He is an old …’
‘Shut up and come away.’
As they left the terrace the voice pursued them:
‘… Only one alternative … to put you under some kind of restraint….’
Robin went to the kitchen, where he found his mother and Duff. He began immediately to tell the sad story of the black amber and he was in the middle of it when Gerry, who had gone to put away the tools, joined them in a belated fit of anxiety about the cracks on the Other Cliffs.
‘What cracks are they?’ demanded Gerry. ‘Where are they? Why wasn’t I told?’
He had to repeat these questions several times before anyone would listen to him. But at last Mrs. Siddal said:
‘They’re all right. Sir Humphrey Bevin heard about them and came to look at them.’
‘When?’
‘Some time in May, I think.’
‘Why wasn’t I told?’
‘Why should you be told?’ said Robin, who was annoyed at the interruption to his story.
‘Did he say the cliff was safe?’ asked Gerry.
‘He’d surely have said if it wasn’t,’ said Mrs. Siddal.
But Gerry was not satisfied.
‘He mightn’t have said so to us. We don’t own those cliffs. How do we know it’s safe to walk on them? Perhaps we ought to warn people not to go up there. I think we ought to find out.’
‘Old fuss pot,’ muttered Robin.
And Mrs. Siddal exclaimed:
‘I do wish you wouldn’t fuss about everything so, Gerry. I’ve got quite enough on my mind as it is. Miss Ellis has gone on strike because I won’t sack Nancibel.’
Gerry shrugged his shoulders and went out to oil the engine of the boat. This was kept at the top of a slipway cut in the rocks above the creek at the back of the house, and it could be launched when the tide was high, on a calm day.
Nobody ever went to the creek unless they wanted the boat, for it was not attractive. The towering mass of cliff kept it in shadow for the greater part of the day, even in summer. The rocks, never dried by the sun, were slippery and slimy, and covered with bright green weed where the little stream came down. Occasional spaces of coarse sand were always dimpled, at low tide, by great drops of moisture falling at regular intervals from the cliff above. And there was a smell of rotting weed.
Gerry shivered as he pulled the boat out from under its little tarpaulin roof. He had never liked the Other Cliffs, and to-day it seemed to him that they were looking unusually black and grim. He supposed at first that this must be a fancy, but, when he took a second glance at them, he realized it to be a fact. They were blacker than they had ever been before because there were no gulls there. In other years this whole cliff face had been a famous ne
sting place; every crevice and ledge had been splashed white with their droppings. Generations of chicks had taken their first swim in the creek, pushed callously off the lower rocks by their parents. Now there was not a gull to be seen. Patches of discoloration showed where former nests had been, but there were no recent ones.
He could not remember that such a thing had ever happened before. And an uneasy inference was beginning to take shape in his mind when the door from the house flew open and Evangeline Wraxton came running down the steps to the creek.
Had he not known the cause of her distress he must have thought her crazy, for she was grimacing and muttering to herself like a lunatic. She did not see him until she was halfway down the steps; when she did she turned and started to run up again. But he called to her to stop. He did not want her to go rushing about the house in this manner, giving further proofs of mental instability to anyone who should catch sight of her.
‘Stay here,’ he commanded. ‘Sit on the doorstep where it’s sunny. I’m only oiling the boat. I shan’t be a minute. And then you can have the place to yourself.’
She obeyed him. He turned his back on her and busied himself with his oil can, but he could feel that her agitation was subsiding. Presently she sighed and said:
‘I didn’t know the boat had an engine.’
She pronounced it ingine, like a little girl, and Gerry smiled. He had already been aware of a touchingly childish quality that she had; he had felt it during the tea party in the shelter last night on the cliffs. Encouraged by Mrs. Paley she had been happy and at ease; the spinsterish mannerisms, the jerky movements, had vanished. She talked and laughed freely, and did not mind when they teased her. But she was like a very charming little girl—a child who had never been allowed to grow up. This tender creature had remained hidden and protected behind the battered front which she presented to an unkind world. And he had felt, dimly, that there was a certain valour in this refusal, at any rate, to grow up crooked. It was as though she was still wisely waiting for the climate to grow more propitious.
‘I thought you were on the terrace,’ she said presently.
The Feast Page 15
