by Anne Morice
‘I suppose you’ll miss it all?’
‘All what?’
‘Taking such a big part in your father’s campaign. I expect you’ll be sorry to give it up, in some ways?’
‘But, Tessa, I have no intention of giving it up.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Why on earth should I? Kit will have his job and I shall carry on with mine. There’s nothing unusual in that. Lots of women combine marriage with a career, as you should know.’
‘Yes, but it’s not all plain sailing, and besides your circumstances are slightly different.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, for instance, I’m sure you know all about this marvellous offer Kit’s had from America? If he takes it, and he’d be a fool not to, it could mean his staying over there for six months or even longer. You could hardly do your canvassing from New York or Hollywood.’
‘No, of course not, but the problem doesn’t arise. I haven’t the faintest intention of going to New York or Hollywood.’
‘You’d let Kit go on his own? That’s not exactly what I’d describe as combining a career with marriage. In fact, I doubt if by the end of it there would be any marriage left to combine.’
‘I entirely agree, and it’s one reason why I’m against his going. I think he’d be insane while there’s still plenty of work for him in this country.’
‘In other words, your career is more important than his?’
‘Oh dear me no, not at all. I hope I’m not as selfish and arrogant as that. I wouldn’t dream of standing in his way if I truly believed the American job would be good for him; but you see, Tessa, I don’t. Not at this stage, anyway, when he still lacks experience. America can be a pretty tough place, you know, and the only way to shine there is to have something to offer which no one else has got.’
There was a good deal of truth in this, but I was not sure that it applied in Kit’s case, or even that she had bothered to consider whether it did or not. However, it was really none of my business and, presumably mistaking my silence for agreement, she moved closer and said in even more earnest and confidential tones:
‘In fact, Tessa, you’d be a real friend if you’d put in a word to dissuade him. He admires you tremendously, as a fellow actor I mean, and he’d listen to you. I wouldn’t ask this if I didn’t honestly believe that it was in his own best interests, but I do. I’d like you to believe that.’
I did not doubt it for a second, and the strangely naive thing about Sarah was her sublime confidence that she had only to express the wish that I should believe something and it was as good as done. I saw no point in disillusioning her, however, and fortunately a loud cackle of amusement from her father had now diverted her attention. There was no telling what had provoked his merriment, but Babs was sharing it to the full. They were laughing together on the sofa like a couple of school children, and I could see by the narrowing of her eyes that Sarah’s thoughts were now focused on more pressing problems than Kit’s career. I watched with interest as she went into action, tilting her head and stretching her mouth into the electric smile as she strolled towards them like some beautiful tigress loosening up for the spring.
‘Want some more coffee?’ I asked, perching on the arm of Kit’s chair.
‘No, all I want is to take my tiny self up to beddy byes.’
‘Me too. Why don’t we take them by surprise and make a dash for it?’
‘Trouble is, at this precise moment of time, dashing is rather out. I am very slightly paralytic.’
‘Perhaps some fresh air would help? Come on! Hang on to me and we’ll act like we’re going for a chummy stroll in the garden.’
‘Do you mind? It’s pitch bloody dark.’
‘I know, but we don’t really have to walk and the air might pull you round.’
He blinked at me, as though considering the proposal in a fuddled way, then slowly nodded his head. ‘You may have something there,’ he informed me with great solemnity.
He managed to stand upright without falling flat on his face and, keeping myself between him and the others, I propelled him over to the central window and turned the iron ring handle which opened the whole pane outwards on to the garden. The only remaining obstacle was the sill, which was about a foot above the floor, but Kit was bearing up moderately well and I had high hopes of his negotiating this without attracting unwelcome attention. They were doomed, however, for the operation was only half completed when Sarah called out in bright, governessy tones:
‘Come along, everyone! We’re going to play musical consequences. It’s just the same as the ordinary kind but you’re only allowed to use characters and titles from opera.’
It was all Kit needed and giving the window a violent push he blundered over the sill and disappeared into the night. This brought Sarah to my side in a flash.
‘What’s the matter? Where’s Kit gone?’
‘I should leave him to it,’ I advised her. ‘The last Cointreau may have been a drop too much. We thought the air might freshen him up a bit.’
‘You mean he’s drunk?’ she enquired incredulously.
‘Not to beat about the bush, yes.’
‘Oh, heavens! Well, I suppose you’re right. We’d better leave him to sober up. Or should I go and see?’ she asked, glancing back over her shoulder at Magnus and Babs, once more in intimate conversation on the sofa.
‘I’ll go, if you like, Sarah. Just make sure he hasn’t fallen in the swimming pool or something. If I were you, I’d start the game without us. We’d be hopeless at it, anyway.’
‘That’s awfully kind of you, Tessa. I would be most grateful. Magnus gets so cruelly bored with small talk, and it might be better if I keep him amused until Kit’s pulled himself together. He doesn’t terribly approve of that kind of behaviour.’
His last small spurt had apparently exhausted Kit, for he had moved only a few yards from the window and was leaning against a tree.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked him.
‘Never worse. This was a lousy idea. Go inside, for God’s sake. I think I’m going to be sick.’
Whereupon he plunged away from me towards a clump of bushes and disappeared from view.
I waited to see if he would return, less from concern for his welfare than the passionate desire to miss at least one round of the ghastly game, but five minutes went by without a sign of him. Since it was a cold as well as boring vigil, I gave in and climbed back through the window, shutting it behind me but leaving the curtains drawn to light the way for Kit if he ever returned.
With the exception of Henry, who was wisely recharging his batteries with a comfortable snooze, they were all sitting round, industriously scribbling away with their little pencils and pads, and I awarded Sarah full marks for generalship. Babs was now decorously paired off with her husband, Julie sat with Magnus and Sarah beside Walter, apparently quite content to fill in his contributions as well as her own. Rather ludicrous they all looked too, in my opinion, frowning and tapping their teeth with the pencils and pulling rueful little grimaces as they passed the slips of paper round and round.
‘Ready to join in now?’ Magnus asked me when the results had been read out amidst rather misplaced hilarity.
‘No, I think I’d rather be a spectator. You’ve already used up the only titles I know.’
‘Then let’s play something else. What’s it to be, Sarah? Think of something that Tessa would enjoy. We can’t leave her out, you know. I’ll give you a drink, Tessa, while they’re all making up their minds.’
He walked over to the tray and, searching desperately for a means of escape, I said:
‘No, really, thank you, I won’t have any more. In fact, if you don’t mind, I—’
I paused in mid-stream; the silence was broken by a crash of glass behind me, and a flying object went skimming over my head. Concluding that the I.R.A. had arrived, I pitched sideways and fell on my knees, burying my head in the nearest armchair and covering it with a cushion. The expected
explosion did not follow, although I heard muffled squeals and shouts. Someone moved swiftly past me, there were more sounds of shattering glass, and when I nerved myself to break cover I found that everyone had moved around a bit. Magnus was now in the middle of the room, also on his knees, although it was obviously not cowardice which had driven him there. He looked as composed as any man could in that position, but Sarah was bending over him, examining a cut on his left temple, which he was mopping at with a handkerchief.
On the carpet about two feet away from him there was a fair sized brick, with a piece of paper still partially attached to it by rubber bands. I moved forward for a closer look, but Magnus was ahead of me. He made a grab for the brick and wrenched the paper free.
‘I don’t think you ought to do that,’ I told him, all my training coming to the fore. ‘There might be fingerprints.’ It would be gratifying to record that he instantly drew back his hand in the manner of one bitten by a serpent, and indeed I did perceive a fractional hesitation, but only sufficient for Sarah to swoop on the paper instead. She took it over to a table lamp and slowly and deliberately smoothed out the folded sheet.
I turned to Julie. ‘Oughtn’t you to ring the police? They might be in time to catch whoever did it while he’s still in the grounds.’
‘Oh no,’ she replied nervously, her eyes on Sarah. ‘I don’t think we’d want the police brought in. It was probably only some silly boys from the village trying to scare us. Besides, Walter’s already gone after them.’
‘Oh, was that Walter who went out? How brave of him! Do you suppose he’s all right? If there are several of them they may be giving him a rough time.’
‘No, Walter can take care of himself. He may look rather weedy, but he played Rugby for his university or something, so he won’t have much trouble dealing with a bunch of yobs. The only thing that worries me is . . .’ She broke off, biting her lip, as Sarah handed the grubby piece of paper to her father. He had moved into a chair by this time, still holding the bloodstained handkerchief to his head:
‘I can’t read it without my glasses,’ he complained fretfully. ‘They’re down there on the floor somewhere.’
‘Not to worry,’ Sarah said in a nursie voice. ‘It’s not important, just stupid hooliganism. What we ought to do is to put some disinfectant on that cut and see if it needs stitching. Come along upstairs and I’ll bathe it for you.’
‘No, read this out first.’
‘Aloud?’
‘Otherwise I shan’t hear, shall I? There’s no need to be squeamish. The others were all here when it happened, and they have a right to know what it says. Luckily, it happened to be I who was struck but it could just as well have been one of them.’
‘All the same, I don’t think this is quite the moment for a post mortem,’ Sarah told him. ‘I think we should see to that cut before anything else.’
While saying this, she had shaken her head very slightly and glanced obliquely at Henry. The rumpus had woken him up but he looked noticeably cooler than the rest of us, which made Sarah’s warning gestures rather a puzzle. Their significance was evidently not lost on Magnus, however, for he capitulated at once. Standing up, he crumpled the piece of paper in his hand and aimed it at the fireplace. It fell short and landed on the hearthrug and at this point the final scene in the evening’s entertainment got off to a resounding start.
The door was flung open and two figures came lurching through. One of them was Walter, and he was supporting Kit, who appeared to be semi-conscious. With a wild moan of distress, Julie went limping down the room towards them and seized Kit’s hand.
‘Oh, what’s happened? Are you all right, Kit? Oh look, my God, you’re hurt!’
He did not answer and together she and Walter lugged him on to a chair, where he sank back with a feeble groan.
‘It was my fault, I guess,’ Walter explained, scarlet with embarrassment, ‘but I didn’t know who he was, see? Came on him out in the garden and took him for the culprit. It was only after I’d punched him on the nose that I realised. The other fellow must have got away. Too bad I had to go after the wrong man.’
‘Not altogether,’ Magnus told him. ‘You seem to have been a little hasty, but Kit’s injuries don’t look too serious, and we might have been in real trouble if you’d beaten up one of the local chaps. Well, Babs, my dear, and Martin, I must apologise to you both for this somewhat unhappy evening. I don’t imagine any of us wishes to prolong it. I shall say goodnight now, and wish you all a safe journey home. If Walter has brought his bike, he can be your outrider and you need have no fears with such protection as that. I think the least said about this business the better, and I feel sure I can rely on your discretion.’
At the end of this little admonitory speech, they all moved out to the hall, leaving the room to me and a comatose Kit, and I seized the chance to indulge my curiosity on another subject. I quickly stooped down and retrieved the crumpled piece of paper, read through the brief message and then tossed it down again. It was written in red crayon and capital letters, and ran as follows:
‘YOU ARE A TRAITOR AND WE ARE WATCHING YOU SEND THE BLACKIES HOME WHERE THEY BELONG WE DONT WANT THEM HERE THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING FROM THE CLEAN UP BRITAIN CRUSADE’.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
‘Good morning, Miss Julie,’ I said, flopping down on the grass beside her. ‘How are the invalids today?’
I had breakfasted in my room and foreseeing only limited scope for enjoyment in the hours ahead, had delayed my descent until past ten o’clock. I could just as well have dragged it out still further because there was no one about when I came downstairs and I had eventually wandered out to the garden where two marquees had already been set up on the lawn. The first one was empty but in the second I had come upon Julie, crouched on her hands and knees and fussing about with some tubs of potted tulips and forget-me-nots, which were placed around each of the posts supporting the striped canopy roof.
‘Kit’s much better,’ she replied. ‘He came down for breakfast. But please don’t call me that.’
‘And your father?’
‘Recovering rapidly, so Sarah tells me. Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you, but why mustn’t I call you Miss Julie?’
‘Oh, such a pathetic, contemptible creature,’ she replied, sitting back on her heels and then flopping sideways as they gave way under her. ‘And the horrid thing is that I sometimes feel I’m exactly like her.’
‘It’s a good play,’ I remarked. ‘The trouble is that to make her behaviour credible the odious Jean has to possess enormous physical magnetism, and not many actors have it. Offhand I can only think of two and they’re both in their sixties. What’s this tent going to be used for?’
‘The flower and vegetable display. They’ll be bringing the tables in this morning, and I want to make sure they don’t damage these plants.’
‘All this is going to make rather a hash of your lawn, isn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Magnus is quite prepared to have it returfed if necessary. Perhaps Kit could do it? How about that?’
‘I hardly think so,’ I replied, wondering if she were off her head. ‘I wouldn’t have said gardening was quite in his line.’
She laughed. ‘No, I meant that he might do for the man in Miss Julie. Or too fundamentally sympathetic perhaps?’
Unfortunately her explanation did nothing to resolve the problem, for it was now a matter of deciding whether she was so besotted with love as genuinely to believe that Kit was competent to play such a role, or so besotted with love that no excuse was too flimsy to drag in the idol’s name.
‘I should say Henry would be even better,’ I remarked, hoping to ridicule the subject out of existence.
She had bent forward to pick a dead leaf off one of the flowers, but she looked up sharply, her face flushing as she said:
‘What makes you say that?’
‘One has the sense that underneath that sleepy exterior there’s s
ome of the quality I was talking about,’ I replied, warming to the theme. ‘I realise that Strindberg didn’t mean Jean to be coloured, but I don’t see why that should bother anyone. In fact, it might bring it a bit more up to date. Nobody nowadays would blink an eye if a repressed young woman had an affair with the valet, but if he was an African valet it might make a difference.’
‘Magnus wouldn’t agree with you,’ she said, with a return to some forget-me-not pruning. ‘Truly. Do you doubt me?’
‘Of course not. That is, I don’t doubt your sincerity. I just think you’ve been very slightly brainwashed. For instance, Julie, did you read that note which came flying in on the brick last night?’
‘Yes, we had a conference about it when we were . . . after you and Kit had gone up. Are you saying you read it too?’
‘Yes. As your father pointed out, it could have hit any one of us, me included, so naturally, I felt curious.’
‘So it would appear,’ she said coolly.
‘And I was particularly curious to know what it contained that was too alarming to be read out to a group of grown-up people but not nearly alarming enough to notify the police.’
‘And did you find out?’
‘Naturally. In a flash. The reason for not reading it aloud and not informing the police was the same: to spare Henry embarrassment. Right?’
‘Exactly, and doesn’t it prove my point? Magnus is just as considerate of coloured people’s feelings as anyone else’s. Perhaps even more so.’
‘Oh, definitely even more so, I should say.’
‘I can’t see anything shameful in that,’ she retorted, staring down at a little pile of grass which she had been plucking out in handfuls.
‘It probably indicates great sensitivity, but patronage is still patronage, whatever form it takes.’
I don’t know whether she heard this because we were interrupted. A man walked backwards into the tent, holding up one end of a long trestle table. Both he and his opposite number wore green baize aprons and if they were not actually pulling the forelock it was probably only because to do so would have interfered with the job in hand for their attitude was redolent of solemn servility. This was no doubt for Sarah’s benefit for she brought up the procession looking stern and preoccupied.
