“What makes you fancy that?”
“I don’t know. Not really. No, that’s not true. I do. You see, I went down to the Hall for half-term. That was a few weeks before it all happened and . . . well, Punch didn’t seem quite the same.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he didn’t seem to be his old self. You know . . . laughing and full of jokes and taking me everywhere he went. In fact he stuck to the house most of the time. He didn’t ride and he didn’t shoot. And mopey. Not like he usually was. They say some people get a feeling of. . . well, things that are going to happen.”
“I think that was just your fancy. Something you’ve read into it afterwards.”
To Seyton’s surprise the boy said with a sudden surprising firmness, “Oh, no dad. I don’t think so. He was different. Well, for instance . . . you know how I always liked to go up to the Hall and look at the things they’ve got there. He more often than not liked to come with me. Well, I asked him if he’d come up with me one day and I nearly fell over backwards. He suddenly went all funny and told me I wasn’t to go up there. Just like that. Flat.”
“Did you ask him why?”
“Oh no. Not the way he was. I wasn’t going to risk it. But it wasn’t Punch, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t.” Then to ease the boy’s feelings, he grinned and said, “But as you get older you’ll find that grown-ups can be unpredictable at times. The thing is not to read too much into it. Gould be as simple as indigestion or a hangover. We all have moods. I guess you just struck one of Punch’s rare ones. Come on now—off with you. Academe calls.”
But as he drove off to take the Gloucester road, Seyton knew there was no question of indigestion or hangover. They were things that Punch suffered from all right, but one thing Punch would never do was to issue a flat edict and give no explanation to someone like Roger . . . at least, not normally. Punch was as normal and uncomplicated as rice pudding. And Roger had inherited all his mother’s sensitivity. Odd.
* * * *
Though not a Cordon bleu cook, but an enthusiastic one, Quint was careful to keep the meals he served to guests simple. He Supposed, he thought, that he could call Georgina Collet a guest in the usual sense of indicating some form of friendliness . . . certainly sympathy. Anyway, her father had been an old friend and his daughter always welcome to his flat. So, there was avocado pear for what some people disgustingly called ‘starters’, celery rolled in ham with a cheese sauce for the main dish—with a Petit Ghablis from the Wine Society and, not unsurprisingly, very good—and then fresh peaches trempe in brandy. A simple little meal well within the capabilities of himself and his tiny flat kitchen. The whole costing him—for he was careful of money—less than a third of the amount which would have been charged him at even a normally decent West End restaurant. Vivat home-cooking, good homecooking, he said to himself as he began to make the roux for the cheese sauce with a kitchen glass of the lunch Chablis at his side.
Because he had that kind of memory, he could recall exactly the details of the meal he had last served to her father in this flat—two days before he was taken up, and knowing perfectiy well that it was going to happen and too sensible to try and avoid it. Details hung like sleeping bats in the great vault of his memory. An amber-clear julienne, a fillet steak and fresh peas, and strawberry ice cream with fresh Devonshire cream—this last a concession to his guest who, as well as being very stupid for an intelligent man, had a sweet tooth. No wine—since his guest did not drink it. Just a glass of Perrier water which he drank too out of politeness.
Now came the daughter for the first time to his flat since her father had been put away—though he had met her quite a few times since then . . . used her, that too—just once, out of which had come her father’s transfer to an open prison against a great deal of opposition which had been a waste of time and energy since Birdcage always got what it wanted. Well, almost always.
Watching the roux come, the memory banks in his mind clicked gently and faultlessly. Georgina Collet. Georgy, familiarly. Only child. Thirty-two less a very few months at this moment. Because he was a bachelor and quite enjoyed a little mild eroticism, made easy now because he had once inadvertently seen her naked in her father’s house where he was a favoured guest, he let her parade in memory. Though, in fact, at the actual time she had never moved, had just been standing like a statue at the side of the family swimming pool while he had been screened by the lattice work of a growth of roses—Gloire de Dijon—growing up over rustic work. He held the memory fondly. Brown-skinned, for she had just come back from a Spanish holiday, middle height, narrow waisted with perhaps the breasts a little too full for the slender figure which was sleeked with watery highlights from her swim, the short-cropped auburn hair, wet too, closely framing the still, pensive face, not beautiful but pleasantly compelling which could move from solemnity to gaiety as though a racing sunbreak were chasing across it firing the grey-green eyes with life . . . Aye, and mischief, for she had suddenly called out, ‘You’re a dirty old man, Quinney dear.’ Embarrassed, he had moved away without a word. A dirty old man. Well, in some ways, yes—for he had used her since then without decency but with her consent because she was prepared to do anything for the sake of her stupid father. He remembered her comment when it had all been explained to her. So what? If it comes to the point of getting into bed—ifs a simple enough act. Leaves no mark on the mind like the one on my father’s. I want him out of that ghastly security place . . .
He stirred his sauce. What a dirty world. Full of dirty or dubious arrangements. His world. Birdcage’s world. And to be honest he loved it for long ago he had abandoned all other.
When she came, her green beret and green mackintosh soaked and sleeked with a sudden heavy shower, she kissed him with warmth and the dampness of her cheek was cold against his cooking-warm face.
“My lord, Quinney, something smells good.”
He made her a martini and sat sipping his Chablis opposite her as she chatted away telling him of her recent life—whose details he already knew—and showing no hint of curiosity for what might lie ahead of her. Nothing mattered except her father. Warm, good looking, all woman, no cares allowed to furrow her brow. Georgina Collet, D.Sc., and Ph.D. of Oxford University and sometime Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Sussex University—but all academic life put aside now in favour of her writing and her painting—talents discovered not in any withdrawal from university life after her father’s disgrace, but a growth always there, an ambition slowly dominating all others, which had flowered what . . . in adversity? . . . like some random, misplaced bulb or tuber buried by chance in a compost heap suddenly to thrust its emergent, exotic flower to life . . . He smiled gently at his own unspoken simile and said cheerfully, “It’s not very bad—or difficult—and you won’t have to make any break in your work. It’s sound enough cover.”
She laughed. “Don’t even half apologize, Quinney. To get father out on parole I’d do Jerusalem on my knees. He was an altruistic fool—still is. But he’s my father. So no big speeches to soothe me. Just tell me straight. But I’m glad I can still work. And be frank—I might have to go the limit, yes?”
“Yes—and maybe more than that.”
“What is there more than bed?”
“Love and marriage.”
Georgina laughed. “Oh, come, Quinney. Not in your world.”
“It happens sometimes. I don’t mean the true substance—but the shadow.”
“Well, that’s a relief because nobody can command the other. Love and marriage—if necessary—à la mode of Birdcage. And I’m to use my own name?”
“Naturally.”
“More people than you imagine remember, you know. ‘Collet . . .? Collet . . .? Wasn’t that . . .?’ And then out it comes.”
“No need to be less than honest. Your father was listed at the Ministry of Defence, just that. Birdcage doesn’t exist. Just let the apparent truth run. You either get sympathy—invaluable—or, if the cold and uncha
ritable shoulder, well, we pull you out and put someone else in.”
“I see. Well, can we eat? I take this kind of thing better on a full stomach.”
“Of course.”
He gave her fuller details as they ate, and she said little and—he smiled to himself, though his deep mood was far from cheerful—in no way showed any lack of appetite. There was an earthy naturalness and phlegm about her, now long developed and strengthened by concern for her father. He could give her no line for any direct investigation of Richard Seyton (he scarcely had one himself). Some pointers might be made available to her later.
When he had finished, she said calmly, “It doesn’t seem much. I’m to make a natural, unexceptional contact with him. Be myself. Go, if things develop, from acquaintance to friendship and then to wherever these lead. To bed. Even to marriage bed?”
“That would be expected. But the prospect is remote.”
“And what am I looking for—because there must be something?”
“Oh, yes—there must be something. But I can’t tell you what it is. We want you to find that for us.”
Georgina shook her head, laughing. “The whole thing sounds just too daft for words.”
“That’s true. That’s why I lack more precise words.”
“Dear old Quinney. Either you’re deeper than I think or you’re all adrift. The former, I think.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t hazard a guess myself. But I’m glad you can take it light-heartedly.”
She frowned then suddenly and said sharply, “I’m not taking it light-heartedly! Treating it so, yes. What other way is there? I’m in your hands. I think it’s disgusting.” Her frown went and she smiled and put a hand over one of his across the table. “But I’m happy to do it because of father. But I see now why he kicked over the traces. When is all this supposed to happen?”
“It is happening now. You’ve started by being here—but I want you up in Herefordshire by the end of this week. He lives in the Dower House, quite close to Seyton Hall. The whole shooting match has fallen into his hands at the death of his brother.” He ran on, giving her such information as he could and she sat silently looking into her coffee cup but seeing nothing—which was her remedy for despair; to look at the world and see nothing.
“You must fix it up yourself. As though you were going at your own choice because the area held something for you. His place is on the Wye, not far from Bredwardine. He’s hunting, shooting and fishing—so there’s a start. Something in common.”
“I don’t hunt and I don’t shoot. Fishing, yes.”
“You can do all three if you have to. Anyway I’ve told you that you must play it the way advantage lies. Expense is no consideration. You might even do good work up there.”
“I bloody well will!” She was stiff with brief resentment. “I have to have some compensation personally. Oh, God—what sods you people are.”
“All in a good cause.”
“Oh, I know—you have to believe that, don’t you? How would you sleep at night otherwise? Oh, dear Quinney, how could such a nice man as you be so bloody awful? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not grumbling. I’m grateful—for my father’s sake. It would have been nice though had it only been a question of money being needed to help my father. Then I could have set myself up in Mayfair, earned an honest living on my back and kept most of my self-respect. Damn you, and damn all with you, I say.” She shrugged her shoulders, the movement lacing her auburn hair with red gold gleams, and then smiled. “Okay—that’s the end, the limit of my personal reaction. So now your Georgy will be a good girl. Pillow talk or marriage bed chatter. And no clue as to what you want?”
Quint fetched the brandy from his sideboard and standing poised with the decanter said, “None at the moment. But with time I might be able to pass you a hint or two. Not personally. You’ll have a stand-off. He’ll make himself known to you in good time. When he does everything comes and goes through him. I don’t exist. Nor those above me. How many studies do you make before you get to the essence of the animal or bird you mean to put on canvas? Many, many? Do the same with Seyton. We want the whole man exposed to us. You go to Herefordshire and by chance you meet a man called Seyton who attracts you. A blank sheet with just his name at the top—the blankness is for you to fill if you can—for us.”
As she left she put an envelope into his hands and said, “A little present—in return for your kindness. And I do mean kindness.” She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
He opened it when she had gone. It was a very fine woodcut—which he would have known anywhere as her work—of a grass snake swallowing a frog backwards, the frog’s mouth gasping and one small foreleg raised in a gesture that looked like farewell. Not for one moment did he think that any sentiment had been in her mind. She had just marked down a moment she had seen without any personal comment. When she worked, her work claimed her, precluding all sentiment. That was the way he wanted it; the way which would serve Birdcage.
CHAPTER THREE
RICHARD SEYTON WOKE early. Although it had rained hard and consistently through the night the morning was now bathed in sunlight, the cropped grass and smooth lawns glistening like bright enamel. Distantly, below a high wooded bluff, he could see the river running brown with brief spate water. From this room—always his when he stayed at the Dower House—he could see neither the Hall nor the family chapel. In the park sheep cropped below the bare beeches and oaks and, more distantly, on the rising ground there was the red and white movement of the cattle of the home farm. Below him to one side of the gently terraced lawn stood the old black-and-white timbered dovecote which had been built by some long distant Seyton. A handful of white doves rose from the high-pitched dark-slated roof and then dropped to fly low across the grass and swing round the far corner of the house where, he guessed, old Shipley would be throwing out their corn. For years and years Shipley women had house-kept, served and nursed for the Seytons, and Shipley men had farmed, laboured, groomed and kept kennels for the family. Now the Shipleys, childless, served on with Mrs Shipley as housekeeper and cook and old Shipley, devoted to Punch, ready to turn his hand to anything, driver, ghillie, groom, a shadow cast by his master, and a faithful friend.
While he loved this house and had had a room here ever since Ruth had died and he had given up farming, his true love was the Hall. His true room—even after his marriage—had always been the one he had slept in from the time he had outgrown the Hall nursery—a small raftered room, the plaster walls pargeted inside, the leaded, narrow windows facing the buffeting winds and storms which came down from the Welsh hills to the west to howl and whistle around the solid red Tudor brickwork of the high round tower which for generations had always been the quarters of the young Seytons. Now, God-knows-who of the Foundation staff slept in it. He smiled to himself, discounting his bitterness.
Bathed, shaved and dressed in comfortable country clothes, he went along to Punch’s room. It was still as it had been while Punch lived, poignantly so. A pile of sporting magazines cluttered the bedside table. In a cut-glass bowl on the dressing table was a bunch of keys and a collection of loose change which each night Punch had emptied from his pockets. The top of the Chippendale mahogany desk in the window was crowded with framed photographs—Punch’s first pony, a Welsh; a long dead, favourite Labrador bitch; girl friends; and one of himself with Ruth and Roger, placed between two studio portraits of their father and mother. On the wall to the right was an oil painting of the rose garden at the Hall. Grouped around a sundial were three men—his great-grandfather, then old Sir George Cornewall of nearby Moccas Court, and the third the Reverend Francis Kilvert—the famous diarist—destined to die in his thirties as Punch had done—who had been vicar of nearby Bredwardine and rector of Brobury.
Seeing the wall safe, he smiled to himself and went over and opened it. It was never locked for Punch had used it only as a cupboard. It held now a half full bottle of Haig whisky, a soda syphon, a chipped crystal glass an
d a half-empty box of cigars. Turning away to leave the room he paused for a moment at the second window. Before him was the full stretch of land running back from the river Wye. Close by was the Shipleys’ old black-and-white timber-framed house which lay to one side of the red-bricked kennels and stables, no hounds now but a couple of hunters still kept. There was no view of the Hall, but as he stood there he saw three or four cars come into the park and move up the driveway to the Hall which was hidden by the angle of the house. There was a fairly large staff employed there and nearly all of them lived in the close neighbourhood. It was almost nine o’clock and they were on their way to work.
The sight gave him no pleasure. There was a fast tide of change running now which many found hard or impossible to resist. Estates far larger than the Seyton place had long made a compromise with the times, turning themselves into show pieces, museums, fun fairs and zoos and wild animal parks . . . the public gawping, few realizing or caring that change—and not for the good—was eating into their own lives. The breezes that blew over England’s green and pleasant land were soured now by the stink of car exhausts, and that not the only pollution for the spirit of man was being poisoned by the decay of the old virtues. For a moment or two bitterness and anger stirred him. In the long run, perhaps, there would be no standing against the change. But here, as long as he could make it so, things must stay as they always had been. Once he had the Hall back it should be the way it had always been; some small part of the tide of change could be resisted by him. After him? Well, he could only do what he could do. Roger would either be able to carry on or he would have to make some compromise. But that was the future. For the present he meant to have his say. He smiled suddenly, knowing how most people would regard and pity his attitude. Well, let them. The good Lord in His wisdom was over careful with His miracles these days, waiting perhaps for the first true cry of deep anguish from His people.
The Satan Sampler Page 4
