Weekend at Thrackley

by Alan Melville

  The beauty of the house, unfortunately, was lost on Jacobson. Perhaps because his own lack of beauty made him unappreciative of the things beautiful. There was no doubt at all about it, Jacobson was not a pleasant-looking individual. He was tall, very thin, with a crop of closely cut greying hair. It had been pointed out to Jacobson on several occasions that his face might very well have been his fortune if only he had removed it from its present job to Hollywood or Elstree and spent the rest of his days portraying those characters which are known in the film world as “thugs”. And at each of these suggestions Jacobson had contorted his face into what, in another set of features, might have been recognized as a smile, and had socked the suggester firmly and squarely on the jaw. For Jacobson preferred his present occupation. Wisely so, perhaps. Officially he was Edwin Carson’s butler. Unofficially he was Edwin Carson’s confidant, adviser, right-hand man. The relationship between the two was a thing which often puzzled even Jacobson himself. Often he wondered whether he really held the upper hand with Carson… or whether (unpleasant thought) it was the other way about.

  He walked silently across the heavy carpet in the lounge hall, and laid Carson’s morning mail at his place at the breakfast-table. He looked over the table to see that all had been set in order, took a slice of toast from the electric rack and spread it liberally with butter. Then he crossed to the chair beside the fireplace, attacked the toast wetly and rather noisily, and settled down to read the racing page of the morning paper. It was not altogether pleasant reading, and Jacobson’s face became, if anything, a shade less easy to look at. Fizzy Lizzy, which had been printed in large lettering as the Best Thing of the Day, and alongside whom the Man on the Spot had affixed three large-sized stars (signifying that Fizzy Lizzy was a pinch, a cert, a snip and a walk-over), had refused to over-exert herself in the two-thirty and had been beaten by half a length by Maiden’s Passion. And Two’s Company (concerning whom the Daily Clarion Racing Correspondent had said: “If Undertaker is still unfit, and the Buckenthirst stable do not put forward a candidate for the race, I should strongly recommend this promising filly as an each-way investment”)—Two’s Company, blast its soul, had been last by a quarter of a furlong, having on its way thrown its jockey, crossed its forelegs twice, and stopped to inspect a bookmaker at the rails. (The same unhappy brute, be it noted, which Jim Henderson “gave” to Mrs. Bertram, and on whom Mrs. Bertram placed her modest bob each way.) Jacobson read the sad tidings uninterrupted for five minutes, and then…

  “Jacobson!”

  The butler leapt from his chair and stared at the speaker. He dropped the newspaper which he had been reading, and his hand, when he raised it to wipe a few buttery remains of toast from around his mouth, was shaking slightly. Even though he had known him for years, a sudden confronting of Edwin Carson always gave Jacobson what he described as a “turn”. Carson stood half-way down the wide flight of stairs which led from the first floor into the lounge; the light from the landing window behind him fell on his bald pate and made it shine like a highly polished melon. He was small, almost hunchbacked, and completely bald save for a few rather dirty vestiges of grey hair which hovered around his ears. But the most arresting feature of Edwin Carson’s face was his eyes. No one ever actually saw Edwin Carson’s eyes. They were hidden by steel-rimmed spectacles, the lenses of which were so thick and so powerful that they made the eyes behind them almost invisible. Somehow one felt, rather than saw, the eyes of Edwin Carson. Jacobson always felt at a cruel disadvantage when talking to him: like a mouse being watched by a cat in the dark, unable to see the thing that was staring at it, conscious all the time that every movement was being watched.

  “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  The little man came slowly down into the room. He was still staring at the butler.

  “The kitchen is the proper place for that. The kitchen, do you understand? That’s your place. And when I want you, I ring, you see? And you come then… when I ring.”

  “Listen to me, you—”

  “This room is where I belong… and the kitchen where you belong.”

  “Oh, for Gawd’s sake—”

  “Jacobson!…”

  He spoke quietly, with a soft, cultured accent. But the butler, after looking at him for a second, shrugged his shoulders and turned to leave the room. Edwin Carson raised his hand as he reached the door at the other end of the room.

  “Just a minute, Jacobson. Where are my letters?”

  “Are you blind? Beside your plate.”

  “M’m… well, wait until I open them and you shall hear the news. Yes, come and hear the news. Pour yourself out a cup of coffee, Jacobson, and sit down… you’re not angry with me, are you, Jacobson?”

  The butler grunted.

  “That’s right,” said Carson. “That’s right. I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know. Really, I don’t know…”

  He bent down over the back of his chair and picked up the four letters with his thin, bony fingers. He held up the envelopes in front of Jacobson’s face, smiled as he waved them in front of the butler. He inspected each before opening them, smelt one with apparent satisfaction, then slit the four open with a butter knife picked up from the table.

  “The Honourable Frederick Usher… yes, very pleased… the Bramptons… yes… Catherine Lady Stone… yes, delighted…”

  He spoke half to himself, and then turned to the butler.

  “So far, extremely satisfactory, Jacobson Always remember, if ever you should be inviting people down to spend a weekend at a country house, always remember to invite only the people whom you would think to be too wealthy and too busy and too important to accept. They’re the very ones who will jump at the chance of a free weekend. Curious, but true, Jacobson. It’s a useful tip, though you’ll probably never have the opportunity to make use of it.”

  “Thank you all the same, Carson,” said the butler.

  The little man turned to the last of the four letters. He read:

  34, Ardgowan Mansions,

  London, N.W.I.

  Dear Mr. Carson,

  Many thanks for your very kind invitation for next weekend which I shall be delighted to accept. I am afraid I must plead either to never having known you, or else to the worse crime of having forgotten you. However, I am looking forward very much to meeting an old friend of my father.

  I understand that Mr. Usher is to be a guest at Thrackley next weekend, and as he has offered me a lift down in his car, there is no need for you to meet me at Adderly as you kindly promised. We expect to arrive somewhere about five o’clock on Friday evening.

  Thanking you again for your kindness.

  Yours sincerely,

  James Henderson.

  The little man smiled again. Jacobson felt that behind the heavy glasses his eyes were twinkling.

  “And Captain James Henderson, M.C.… splendid. Absolutely splendid. A most enjoyable weekend, I should imagine. And… profitable, perhaps, eh, Jacobson?”

  And for the second time Jacobson did the smiling act with his features.

  “And our arrangements?” said the little man. “Everything in order?”

  “Everything all right, Carson.”

  “There must be no mistakes this time, Jacobson. I can’t have mistakes… can’t tolerate mistakes. Unpardonable things. You understand?”

  “There won’t be any mistakes this time, Carson.”

  “Right. Now you can get out.”

  The butler turned to go, then hesitated for a moment before laying his hand on the handle of the door.

  “Well? What the devil are you waiting for? Get out, I said… get out!”

  “Just a minute, Carson.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know why all these other blokes are coming here next weekend. But this Henderson bird. What’s he be
ing brought in for?”

  The little man looked up from his chair at the breakfast-table.

  “I wish,” he said, “that you would stop referring to my guests as ‘birds’ and ‘blokes’, Jacobson. Don’t you realize that most of them are members of the richest and most exclusive set in England?”

  “Exclusive my aunt Emma! What’s the idea in getting Henderson here? He’s no gold-mine, from all accounts.”

  “No, Jacobson,” said Edwin Carson. “Captain Henderson is, as you say, no gold-mine. Not worth a penny, I should imagine.”

  “Then why the hell—?”

  Edwin Carson smiled. Not an attractive smile.

  “Captain Henderson is visiting us, Jacobson, for a very different reason to our other guests.” He patted his serviette neatly into his lap and poured out a cup of steaming coffee. “A very different reason,” he repeated.

  And Jacobson, as all good butlers should do when their masters make remarks which they do not quite understand, shrugged his shoulders and closed the door softly behind him.

  “If only,” said Edwin Carson to himself, “I could get him to call me ‘sir’. Hopeless, I suppose…”

  IV

  A Rolls-Royce was so much of a rarity in the neighbourhood of Ardgowan Mansions, N., that the appearance of Freddie Usher’s long-nosed yellow tourer caused quite a flutter of excitement. The traffic in Ardgowan Mansions consisted mostly of obsolete types which rattled noisily from house to house delivering specimens of butchery and bakery. With the exception of a couple of very secondhand baby Austins, the car as a pleasure vehicle was unknown to the district. Hence the quite excusable sensation when Freddie’s tourer purred round the corner from Ardgowan Crescent, along Ardgowan Place, and into the straight of Ardgowan Mansions. Rupert, a message-boy in the employ of Messrs. Parkinson Bros., Fruiterers, Florists and Greengrocers, was the first to notice the car. He could scarcely have been in a finer position for his noticing, for Rupert was freewheeling along the wrong side of Ardgowan Mansions road with a fourpenny novelette in one hand and a quarter-stone of potatoes, half a dozen leeks and a few similar items dangling from his handlebars. The driver of the Rolls gave a long, unmusical toot and Rupert left his novelette in mid-sentence. He did not return to it. He said “Gosh!” referring not to the fact that he had nearly read his last fourpenny but rather to the lines of the car in front of him. And then Rupert got busy. This, he felt, was a thing that ought not to be kept to oneself. And Rupert became possessed with this very laudable sentiment of sharing a good thing with his fellow-creatures and set off to spread the glad tidings throughout the neighbourhood. When Mrs. Bertram looked down from her third-storey window on to the scene at her front door she threw her arms heavenwards (a very difficult feat when half of your anatomy is sticking over a window-sill and the other half is still in your sitting-room), decided that at last there had been a Young Girl Murdered by Unknown Assassin Sensation in Ardgowan Mansions, and rushed to tell Jim. And when Jim put his head out of his own window, he saw an elegant Rolls-Royce car surrounded by seventeen message-boys, eleven message-boys’ friends, eight of the unemployed of the district, five housewives and two policemen. And, in the middle of it all, the Honourable Frederick Usher.

  “Hoi!” said Jim.

  “Hoi!” said Freddie, brushing off a couple of message-boys from his rear off mudguard. “Nearly ready?”

  “Be with you in a couple of shakes!” said Jim, and banged his head on the sash of the window as he vanished into the room.

  He slammed the window behind him and cast a thoughtful eye over his suitcase. Pyjamas. Dressing-gown. Handkerchiefs and collars. Bedroom slippers. Brushes and comb and razor and shaving-soap. And tooth-brush and tooth-paste. And an evening suit in Freddie’s car. Everything appeared to be in order. He sat on the suitcase and locked it with difficulty. Mrs. Bertram hovered fussily around the room, and asked him if he was sure he’d remembered everything, and wouldn’t he need this, or this, or at any rate those? For it must be admitted that in Mrs. Bertram’s estimation Jim had behaved like a helicopter in the last few days. As she had pointed out to the lady over the fence during the previous Tuesday’s hanging of the washing, Mrs. Bertram had a lodger who received invitations for weekends at country houses. And as she would also point out to the same lady at the first opportunity, she had also a lodger who had Rolls-Royces coming for him at the front door. (But when Mrs. Bertram did mention this fact to the lady over the fence, that worthy merely said: “Not Rolls-Royces, my dear. Just one Rolls-Royce. And a 1930 model at that, so my Alfred tells me!” which took a considerable amount of wind out of Mrs. Bertram’s sails.)

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Bertram,” said Jim. “See you Monday some time, I expect.”

  “Good-bye, dearie,” said Mrs. Bertram. “Take care of yourself, now.” (For if half of what you read in the papers were true, you never could tell with these house-parties.)

  Jim took the stairs three at a time and arrived at the front door slightly out of breath. He pushed his way through the multitude and placed his suitcase in the back seat and himself in the front beside Freddie. The car gave a snort, a powerful roar, a second snort, and then slid down Ardgowan Mansions and round the pillar-box into Ardgowan Place and past the rubbish-bin into Ardgowan Crescent. Mrs. Bertram waved to the number-plate of the car as it swung round the corner of the road, and then went back to the society column of her morning newspaper and learned all about what the charming Lady Anne Beaulieu (who was, of course, Miss Anne Dudley-Dempster) was wearing at the Trocadero on the previous evening. The eight unemployed went back to their favourite corner and resumed their favourite sport of spitting across the full width of their favourite pavement. The five housewives suddenly remembered that they had left their five lunches on the boil and rushed off ovenwards. And Rupert the message-boy mounted his bicycle, rearranged his potatoes and his leeks over the handlebars, found his place in the novelette, and set off to deliver the goods to Number Seventy-two. Ardgowan Mansions, its little slice of excitement over, settled down once again to its normal and remarkably uneventful life.

  And the Rolls purred contentedly out of Ardgowan Crescent, and along Pillington Road East, and along Pillington Road West, and through all the rest of the suburban streets until it reached the city. And at last, outside the placarded walls of the Alhambra, a traffic block stopped its purring progress.

  “Seen this show?” said Freddie.

  “No. Derek Simpson’s in it, isn’t he? I heard him telling some people at the club how good he was.”

  The Honourable Freddie made a noise which seemed to indicate that he thought nothing, or possibly less, of Mr. Simpson.

  “Only one person in that show,” he said. “Only one. This Argentine dancer, Raoul. The most marvellous, gifted, amazing, beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. What features! What a figure!”

  “I can see that from here without having to pay fifteen bob for a stall.”

  “Posters?” said Freddie, and snorted at the idea. “Posters! My good man, those things in front of you are rank insults to the woman. She’d win an action for libel any day against them. Or are posters slander? And, mind you, no scenery to help her. No costumes. Well, hardly any costumes. Of all the…”

  “Get on with it—the signal’s changed.”

  “Eh? Oh, all right!”

  Once out of London, Freddie put his foot on the accelerator and kept it there. Jim took off his hat and let the wind rush through his hair. Conversation resolved itself into a bawled “Wass-itsay on that signpost?” and a yelled “Dunno, couldn’t see!” Villages appeared in the distance, tore towards them, flashed past in split-second impressions of hens and dogs and oldest inhabitants jumping indignantly from in front of the car’s bonnet. The sport of passing the car in front became monotonous through repetition. The long yellow Rolls gave a toot of annoyance, the car in front waved a slightly peevish hand, the Rolls sailed past in a swirl of dust a
nd gave a second toot of victory. In less than half an hour the village of Adderly presented itself through the frame of the windscreen.

  The village of Adderly looked, as always, particularly charming. True, the owners of the cottages had been somewhat conservative in the planting of their gardens, and Dorothy Perkins seemed to have a complete monopoly where climbing over wire arches was concerned. But a monopoly of Dorothy Perkins is just about as good a monopoly as you will find anywhere, and the general effect of Adderly’s gardens was good to the eye. Adderly village is one of those delightfully lop-sided affairs where one house has been added to its neighbour at random and at the angle which suited the builder’s frame of mind at the time. The road through Adderly twists and turns and reverses and takes sudden impulses; all of which is no doubt picturesque but at the same time is very difficult for the motorist who is passing through the village in order to be at a certain place in time for tea. The Rolls negotiated the twists and the impulses fairly well, coming at last to a fork in the road. Freddie said: “This way?”

  “No,” said Jim. “That way.”

  “Up there, I’m sure.”

  “Down here, I should think.”

  And Freddie, having said “Very well, then,” turned the nose of the car in the direction which he himself thought was fit and proper, accelerated, and hit a girl on a bicycle.

  The girl had picked herself up before Freddie brought the car to a standstill. She was small and fair-complexioned, and her age, one imagined, was considerably less than that of the bicycle which she had been riding. Jim had a feeling that in other circumstances she might have been classed as good-looking. Very good-looking, in fact. But just now her hat was on at a rakish angle and covered half of her face, and there was a large smudge of dirt on the rest of the face, and altogether it could not be truthfully said that she was looking her best. Girls rarely, of course, look their best immediately after they have been knocked down by large Rolls-Royce cars. The bicycle had landed in the ditch by the side of the road, and a rather pathetic rear wheel stuck heavenward out of the grass. Jim jumped out of the car, and set it on its feet again.