The Property of a Gentleman: One House. Many secrets.

by Catherine Gaskin

  Nat shrugged. ‘He said he did. It’s easy enough, I suppose, to learn something like that if you’re in the house often enough. It’s a pretty simple system, I’d guess. Oh, what the hell! Who knows about the why of it. Patsy must have walked to Thirlbeck, used the duplicate key to the South Lodge gate I always left in the house. I blame myself now as much as anyone for not checking at once to see if the keys were still at Southdales. But there she was, at Thirlbeck – dead. Tolson and I found her, and I had to force her hand to get La Española out of it. Even before I lifted her we had agreed, Tolson and I, without even speaking, that we would say nothing at all about La Española. I just couldn’t bear to have Patsy’s death surrounded by the kind of horrible publicity it would have brought. And then there was the question I never really asked, but it was there, all the same. How had Patsy been in the house and no one knew it? Why hadn’t anyone thought to go through the place sooner? Jessica said she’d been there all day, but she also said she’d been in the vegetable garden for a while. None of us imagined Patsy would have come in by herself and not let anyone know. When I was asking everyone to look in outbuildings, I should have thought of Thirlbeck that way – a gigantic outbuilding to the wing the Tolsons lived in. My fault, quite as much as George Tolson’s. In fact, it was so far from his mind that for once he didn’t even think to check on La Española for a whole twenty-four hours. He must have been distracted out of his mind to let that happen. He was just as paternalistic about Patsy as he is about his own family. How could I blame him? I hadn’t thought of it myself.’

  I shivered, as if I felt that cold that she must have felt. I thought of the Spanish Woman’s room and what a haven it had become to me; but it had been the death chamber of a young woman whose heart had not been able to bear the panic, the cold and loneliness of that night. I thought of the house as it must have been then, with the Tolsons living in the back wing, and all the front of the house permanently closed in its metal shutters, all the downstairs rooms in darkness, and the little shadow in the big chair had seemed no friend to Patsy, with the unreasoning panic sending a rush of blood to the heart whose valves were too weak and deformed to withstand it.

  Then another thought came. ‘Nat, if she was able to try to attract attention by breaking some of the panes, why on earth didn’t she at least switch on the light? Why didn’t she light a candle? Why didn’t she light the fire? There’s a basket of wood always there. You saw the light as you drove through this morning. Someone would have noticed that night when you were searching.’

  He shook his head. ‘There was no light. That was something Ted Tolson put in there afterwards. The day he fixed the lock. Yes, there was a candle and a basket of wood. There were no matches. Patsy had given up smoking because of her heart. She had no matches. She was all alone. It was dark and very cold. And Murray said she died that first night. Don’t you think I’ve thought about the matches ...?’

  I knew he had. I knew he must have thought about such things as matches and lights a thousand times. It explained so much about his rather fanatical preaching about being careful – always being careful, about the need for proper clothes and climbing boots, and compasses. I seemed to experience the anguish of his thousand regrets myself. The bright morning appeared to have darkened. The birds went on with their spring song, but now the sound seemed strident, a noise that was an intrusion.

  ‘The dogs,’ I said. ‘Didn’t they try, somehow, to tell you that she was there?’

  ‘They did nothing. The police had brought their own tracker dogs, and they told Tolson to keep the wolfhounds shut up because they thought they might confuse their dogs and start fights. So we shut them up in one of the stables, where they howled their heads off. They might have helped ... who knows? Another mistake, I suppose.

  ‘After that,’ Nat said, ‘well, after that the Tolsons sort of closed ranks around me. They tried to make it seem that Patsy had never died – as if they could. They did everything for me. I didn’t have to ask. It was already done. For three years I’ve lived with it, and when Tolson and I look at each other now the question is still there. Why did we let it happen? We never speak about it. I’ve fallen into a kind of lock-step with them, and I don’t seem to be able to break it. I can’t talk about Patsy ... to the boys I call her “your mother”. But that really isn’t the girl who died. She was Patsy.’

  ‘You’re talking now. You’re talking about Patsy. You’re talking about the Tolsons. Do you understand, Nat?’

  ‘I think I do, Jo. I’m talking to you. Finally I’m talking ... there’s been a kind of drought. I’ve dried up. I’ve become a dull stick who only talks about sheep – sheep and eagles. One of those earnest types. I’ve taken to tinkering with a stupid toy car. I wasn’t always this way. For three years I’ve felt like an old man. I’ve acted like one. Then one morning you appeared at my door, sat in the chair that Patsy used to sit in, and I didn’t mind seeing that. In fact I liked it so much I got drunk just in astonishment at myself. I felt like a kid, and I was trying to cover it up. Well, I’m not going to cover it up any more. Kiss me, Jo.’

  I wasn’t sure I liked the way he kissed me at first. It was hungry, almost greedy and hurting. And then I realised that very few men kissed like that any more because so few were hungry. Kisses and everything else were given and taken as a matter of course. But there had been no matter of course for Nat Birkett for more than three years. I moved closer to him. It is difficult to kiss when two people are sitting on the ground. It was inevitable that we would lie together as lovers always have.

  ‘God, Jo ...’ he said. ‘I’ll stop in a minute.’

  ‘Don’t ...’

  ‘Shut up. You’re crazy and so am I. I want you in bed. But not for a one-night stand. And you’re going away. You’re going back to all that stuff down there in London, and your fancy young tycoon. Well, what the hell! You’ll go, and that will be that. What’s all that stuff about gathering rosebuds while you may? You’re not a rosebud, Jo – on both of us the thorns stand out an inch each side. But we are what we are. Jo, I wish you weren’t going.’

  ‘I’m going – you know I’m going. I’m all wrong for your sort of life, Nat. As wrong as you’d be for mine. But kiss me again – with all the thorns. Or are they nettles? They say they don’t sting if you have the courage to grab them hard enough.’

  But this time it was easier, gentler, his lips dwelling on mine as if we truly tasted each other. And his hands were gentle, patient, exploring, and finally exciting. And then to my shock, my own deep hunger, which I had not recognised as being there unsatisfied, I heard my own voice. ‘Yes, I wish ... I wish too, Nat. Nat Birkett, why?’ And then again. ‘Why not?’

  There are many places to make love. A forest of larch and birch a little after dawn is one of them. Not so different, or unique. Lovers have done such things for centuries. But for me it felt as if it was for the first time.

  It wasn’t that we heard anything. There was no sound, no movement that we could see. There was just the sense of another presence, and Nat’s collie standing alert, ears up. For a moment there was a low growling noise in his throat, and then that changed into a deep, joyous bark. He was gone like a flash through the wood, and we saw a figure among the trees, a slight, fairy-like figure with spun gold hair; like a wraith of the mist she was in those seconds, and then she and the collie were running, running together, back towards Thirlbeck.

  Nat crashed his fist down on my thigh. ‘God damn it! Will they never let me alone? That bloody Jessica – that damnable girl! Forever under my feet – every time I turn around, there she is. Don’t they understand I loathe the sight of her? Tolson still tries to pretend none of it happened. He shields and protects her – I suppose he’s terrified she may say too much one day, or something may happen again.’

  ‘Again? Nat, what are you talking about?’

  He sat up, and he took his time about lighting cigarettes for us both, I noticed his hands trembled a little. Then he rolled over and
rested on his elbows, looking into my face.

  ‘I’m talking, Jo – as I shouldn’t talk. But now I’ve begun I can’t stop because this is the first time the words have been allowed to come out.’ The smoke from our cigarettes drifted together, and vaguely shadowed his face.

  ‘Jessica? ... who really knows what happened between her and Patsy? Did Patsy just turn up at Thirlbeck, as she so often did – as George Tolson had encouraged her to do? Did she wander around? Did Jessica find her looking at La Española and resent it? Or did they both take it out together? Why were they in the Spanish Woman’s room – and still with La Española? All this time and we still don’t know the answers. Probably never will. All we know is that when I carried Patsy’s body down that night, Jessica went completely to pieces – screaming hysterically that she had nothing to do with it, that she hadn’t touched Patsy. I heard it, and I’ll never forget it – that brilliant, half-cracked kid who’d had a nervous breakdown that summer after whizzing through all her exams, screaming and screaming that Patsy had had no right there in the first place. We were to take her away. She hadn’t seen Patsy the afternoon before. She hadn’t been in the house. She shouldn’t have been in the house. She had no right to touch La Española. On and on it went, and every word out of her mouth made it worse. Like some horrible obscenity.

  ‘All the things she was denying, we knew had happened. She had known all along Patsy was in the house, and had said nothing. Not until she saw Patsy’s body. Then her nerves cracked. The things she said about Patsy ... I wouldn’t have believed Jessica even knew words like that – vile words. Tolson got her to her room, but the screaming still went on. Dr Murray came. He looked at Patsy and told me he believed she had been dead since the night before. Then he had to go and give Jessica a knock-out injection. But he must have heard an awful lot. Being a doctor, he never said anything. I didn’t doubt that having tried to help Jessica when she’d cracked up that summer, he’d have said she was still in a period of diminished responsibility. So ... we just told the police and all the searchers that Patsy had been found, and it was all over. That part of it was over ...

  ‘Later, as Jessica grew better, it was less and less possible to believe that we had really heard her screaming the things she did. She couldn’t, of course, ever admit it herself. Who would confess, or want to admit to having shouted that vile stream of hatred and greed and jealousy? Not little Jessica, not that perfect little ice maiden! No, she couldn’t have. It would be quite impossible.’

  ‘Nat, do you honestly think she locked Patsy in the Spanish Woman’s room, and simply left her there?’

  ‘The Spanish Woman’s room never was locked. The key was on the inside of the door, remember. It had jammed. Patsy made it worse, probably, by fiddling about with the key. I imagine – I suppose either Jessica found Patsy there with La Española, or they went there together. Some row blew up, Jessica flew out of the room in a rage, slammed the door, and that was enough to jam the lock.’

  ‘So she might not have touched her, just as she said.’

  He shook his head. ‘Probably didn’t. What she didn’t do was tell us that Patsy was there. And she reconnected the alarm system so that her grandfather wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t start to think about Patsy being somewhere in Thirlbeck.’

  ‘But why do that to Patsy? She couldn’t have known she was going to die. She must have guessed she’d be in terrible trouble when Patsy did get out.’

  ‘You’ve seen kids, haven’t you, who do something wrong, and try to cover it up as long as possible, even when they know it’ll be discovered in the end. They stall – they do anything to hold off the evil hour. You could say Jessica had a fit of madness. When all the searchers started combing the Thirlbeck valley, she couldn’t admit she knew where Patsy was. She might honestly have had a mental black-out. Forgetting what she didn’t want to remember. Scared stiff, I suppose, the way children get scared of what they’ve done. She was ... well, she was only sixteen at the time. Too young ... or at least too young for me to feel there was any sense in accusing her. And knowing damn well that it would do Patsy no good, and wouldn’t make me any more at peace with the world. Murray told me that same night that he was referring Jessica to a psychiatrist in London. She went away for a while. Had shock treatment I think. Then she went to a man in Carlisle a couple of times a week for two years. I didn’t enquire very much into it. I really didn’t want to know. And all the time, since that night when she screamed those hideous things about Patsy, she’s been the good little girl she is now. Intelligent, willing, very competent. At times when she’s around I can even forget, because the creature I see and hear now bears no resemblance to the evil little demon who let Patsy die there alone. I almost think she forgets herself, because she doesn’t seem to realise I have any reason to hate her.

  ‘So, you see, it was for Jessica’s sake as well as mine that the Tolsons have closed in so tight, protecting me, making things easier for me, trying not to let me miss Patsy in any practical sense. In a way, they’ve denied me the right to grieve for her, and I resent it. My life fell apart, and I’m not allowed to show it.’

  He carefully squashed his cigarette butt into a rusty tobacco tin that was almost overflowing with the butts from all the other watchers who used the shelter. ‘So there they are, the whole tribe of them, propping me and the boys up, plastering over the cracks in my existence, refusing to understand that at times I’ve been close to letting the whole thing go. It’s the boys who are the hook, of course. I go along with the Tolson situation because of them. But sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t be better, Thomas and Richard and myself, if we were quite alone, even if the house was in a mess and they had holes in their socks. But do I punish them because of Jessica? Not all the Tolsons are cracked. I think they’re mostly just very decent people, trying to make up for Patsy not being here. I’ve kept quiet, so they probably think I’ve begun to accept it. But I haven’t. I haven’t forgotten that night, and I don’t know how to wipe it all away. I don’t know how to get out from the load of kindness and care they’ve buried me under. I feel, sometimes, as if I haven’t had a breath of really clean air for more than three years.’

  He sat up fully, and I felt his hand hard on my shoulder, saw the perspiration break on his forehead. ‘For just these minutes with you I almost felt I was breathing again – not just taking in air, actually breathing, Jo. I had a feeling I was coming out from under. Maybe there was going to be a way out, after all. But I’ve come to my senses and I know you’re going. You don’t belong in this world, and you’re going. I know it.’

  I had no ready word to deny that. Because I also knew it would be easier if I went.

  And in a little time I did leave him; I left him squatting there in the shelter, smoking again, making more coffee, gazing after me with a look that could have been hurt, or equally could have been anger. But some special warmth still lived in me as I walked away, a new feeling in an aftermath of lovemaking, a sense of having tasted something for which I would for ever after be hungry. I felt, even, a flicker of intuition that while it might be easier to go, it might not be better. But then, Nat himself had said it. I didn’t belong in this world.

  When I reached it, the mist had lifted from the lake, and from the tops of Brantwick and Great Birkeld. I looked back, but the woods had covered the shelter in their shadow. Above the newly revealed crag an eagle soared, went higher and higher, across the valley and was lost to sight against the upward straining mass of the bald mountain.

  I had thought I would find her in the kitchen, and there she was. It was still very early – I had seen no sign of Tolson, and Mrs Tolson didn’t leave her bed until later in the morning. So Jessica was alone, as I had expected her to be, and in the kitchen surrounded by pans and bowls, starting the day’s cooking.

  She looked up when I came through by the back passage. She was completely calm, not at all disconcerted by the fact that she knew Nat and I had seen her from the shelter. The collie must have m
ade his way back to Nat. There was coffee gently perking on one of the stoves. She hadn’t yet started the preparations for breakfast. There was more than an hour to go before Askew would appear, before Jeffries would carry up Gerald’s tray.

  She jerked her head towards the coffeepot. ‘It’s ready now. Would you like some?’

  ‘Yes – yes I would.’ I went to the big dresser and took a cup and saucer from the pile. ‘Are you having any?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Cream and sugar. Cream’s in the fridge.’

  In silence I poured coffee, put in the two spoonfuls of brown sugar she indicated, and passed the cup to her. ‘Thanks ...’ She took a sip, and then went on with measuring the ingredients she needed for her mixture. ‘It’s Bavarian cream – for lunch,’ she said. ‘Can you cook?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘No – I didn’t think so. I don’t know what you do at Hardy’s, but you’re not terribly useful anywhere else. In a few years, if I keep reading I’ll know as much as you do – much more, probably. And I’ll be able to run a house as well.’

  I drew out a chair and sat down facing her across the big table. ‘What’s all this supposed to mean, Jessica? And why did you hang around the shelter this morning? What were you looking for?’

  ‘Why did you go there? What were you trying to do – fill in some time while you’re waiting to go back to London? Nat Birkett’s not the sort for someone like you to amuse yourself with. He doesn’t go for smart London types.’

  ‘Who does he go for, Jessica? Your type?’

  ‘Why not my type? I’m not a child any more. He’s going to know it – quite soon he’s going to wake up and know it.’

  While she was talking I had begun fingering a plain cream-coloured bowl which stood with her mixing basins and measuring cups on the table. It was slightly fluted at the edges with a thin brown rim, and carved in the centre and sides with a delicate line drawing of flowers and leaves – possibly peony and lotus. A very plain bowl, very beautiful. Jessica probably meant to pour her completed dessert into it.