* * * *
That evening Kerslake, after taking a call from Georgina Collet, reported to Quint’s office. Quint was hunched up over his desk reading a particularly tedious report from the financial section on undisclosed benefits in cash and kind which various secretaries of some minor Trades Unions were, without reluctance, encouraging the accrual of to themselves. He was less interested in the cash than in the kind which covered a wide field of human and not always virtuous appetites from free double-glazing of their homes to the delights of the flesh and the table. Bored, he gave Kerslake a friendly nod and told him to sit down, saying, “The man I was about to summon. But with true generosity I shall let you get the weights off your own chest first. You look pleased.”
“Yes, sir. Miss Collet has just telephoned. She’s in.”
“Is she indeed? How?”
Quint listened as Kerslake gave him the details and, when he had finished, commented, “Who says there is not a guiding hand behind our destinies? Benevolent or malign is, of course, a matter for argument. But we need not bother ourselves with that. So, she must be a happy girl.”
“If happiness is the word, sir.”
“Contrary to common thought it covers a multitude of states. It can be a dry crust to the starving, the meagre drip from a mossy rock in the jungle to a thirsty man, the elimination of an enemy struck from behind, or in her condition four legs in a bed and close pillow talk.”
“You sound as though you don’t care a damn for her, sir.”
Quint smiled at this taking of rare privilege, a liberty Kerslake had over the years earned as an occasional concession.
“On the contrary, I am very fond of her. Shall we say though—only out of office hours; which, as you know, leaves little of the full twenty-four left once sleeping time has been discounted. However, Kerslake, let us be generous and chalk up a good mark to her. Perhaps you will convey our feelings to her when you go down there.”
“Me, sir? To Herefordshire?”
Quint laughed. “You react as though I had said ‘To Hades’. Yes, Herefordshire,^Kerslake. The Hall and part of the grounds are open on Thursday each week. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in what is called the season, though season for what I don’t know. But you will notice—not Sundays. It is a religious Foundation and I can only suppose the Sabbath is reserved for devotions to be screened from the vulgar gaze. I know that I am being tedious, but bear with me. We are the creatures of our moods and nowhere more so than in the sanctuary of our own offices. That is why men go out to work. Of course you know why I want you to go down there now?”
“Yes, sir. So that I know the ground where I might have to operate.”
“Quite. No more than a few days. Be discreet, a little field mouse gleaning the stubble for the random ears of corn. Boring, but some time in the future you may well have to play a different role—not unknown to you—the adder lurking at the pathside waiting to strike. Seyton is not going to get his Hall back for years and years it would seem. But it also seems that there might be ways—unknown as yet to him—by which he could. If he does discover them—then he becomes expendable. We live in exciting times, Kerslake, and this office makes its full contribution to them. Perhaps you would have been happier, say, in an insurance office?”
Kerslake laughed. He quite liked Quint in this mood—just so long as he did not go on too long. And, anyway, he was by no means fooled by it. In this place each man and woman had an individual mode of consolation. For himself, after much trial and error, he had recently discovered his own way much to his surprise.
And much to his surprise he heard himself say now without any irony, “No, sir. This is my place, my home, my life. Outside it there are no true delights.”
“Charming. Expose the young to the right influences and environments and they adapt to them as the chameleon to the colour of the rock on which it flattens itself. You spoke as I might well have done. But now—to be again serious—before you go to Herefordshire tell the people in the Commercial Section that I want a run-down on Seyton Enterprises, or whatever they call themselves, with particular reference to their sources of private information, international and domestic. The authorization is there.” He indicated a sealed envelope on the edge of his desk and, as Kerslake reached for it, added, “Since there may well be a way to break the lease apparently then we must cover the possibility that Seyton may come to know of it and take action to get some sort of arcane proof to use to win him back his ancestral home. The gardener Adam and his wife may indeed well smile at the claims of long descent, but I assure you that neither Seyton nor Satan does. That’s all, Kerslake. Good night.”
Kerslake picked up the envelope and went to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned, looked Quint full in his grinning face, and said, “Tennyson?”
“A little cobbled. But, yes. The beloved of Queen Victoria, whose statesmen in council ‘knew the seasons when to take Occasion by the hand, and make the bounds of freedom wider yet’. We live in a sad age, Kerslake.”
* * * *
The memorial service for Punch was held a few days later in the second week of April, a day of high winds and fast, scudding rain squalls that raced down the river valley, stripping young leaf and buds and setting the rooks wheeling high to gambol and fight in late courtship displays. The lesson was read by Nancy’s father, and one of the Canons Residentiary of Hereford Cathedral gave the address. The chapel was full and afterwards Seyton had a few of Punch’s and his own friends to lunch with himself and Roger who had come down from school at Cheltenham.
That evening, as he sat in the study with his coffee and brandy and, for sole company, his son who was reading a book by the fire, but not—he guessed—with much enthusiasm since he would have preferred the television, yet sensed—correctly—that he was in no mood for it, Seyton was remembering something the Canon had said of Punch . . . He was an open and frank man and, not unnaturally, from the innocence of his own nature valued these two qualities when he found them in others and had an abiding charity of compassion and understanding when he failed to find them in some. To all men he offered kindness, knowing that the powers of light and darkness have for their battle ground the human soul. I am sure he would never have expressed this to himself in these words. Most of you here can probably supply his non-canonical version. He was ever ready to give a man . . . anyone . . . more than one chance . . .
But was it all true? Not quite, he thought. When Punch found true evil, and that not to be changed by any kind of charity—then he could become implacable. To maltreat man, woman, child or beast and to continue to do so against remonstrance brought out a severity in him which had far more to do with the Old than the New Testament.
From across the fireplace Roger broke into his thoughts by saying, “What are you smiling about, dad?”
“Was I?”
“Yes.”
“I was thinking about Punch. Something he did once.”
“What was that?”
Seyton hesitated for a moment or two and then said, “Well, you’ll probably hear it from someone else some time so I’ll tell you.”
He told how when he and Punch were young men there had been a gamekeeper on the estate—a good gamekeeper—who would drink too much at the inn some nights, get drunk and come back to his lodge and beat up his wife and children. So one evening Punch picked the man up as he was leaving the pub and drove him home to his wife and children. The gamekeeper, very drunk, thought he was just getting a lift. But no. Punch went into the lodge with him and there, in front of his family, whipped down his trousers and gave him the beating of his life.
“Gosh, what a thing to do. What did his wife say?” asked Roger.
“She didn’t say anything. Before Punch had little more than started, she picked up a big vase from the table and hit Punch across the head with it.”
Roger rocked with laughter. “And what then?”
“Punch had a bump the size of a melon on his head. But the man never beat his fami
ly again. He was with us for nearly ten years afterwards. Excellent chap. And I don’t want you to try and guess his name.”
“I can guess, but I won’t say.” Roger was silent for a moment or two and then went on in a speculative manner, “There’ve been some funny people in our family from time to time, haven’t there, dad? Like Sarah Seyton. She was a goer, wasn’t she?”
“That’s no way to talk of your great, great, great aunt.”
Getting up and crossing to the far wall near the window Roger said, “I think you’ve missed out a great, dad. Anyway, what was with her? For instance—why did she do the sampler this way?”
Seyton went and stood behind his son. On the wall, framed and fitting exactly into one of the small wainscoting panels, was an eighteenth-century sampler—known in the family as the Satan Sampler—which had been worked by Sarah Seyton at the age of thirteen. In lay-out it followed the conventional design of samplers. It was worked with coloured silks on linen. At the bottom was her name—Sarah Glendower Satan. Although the family by then called themselves Seyton, Sarah had here reverted to the original spelling. There followed her age—thirteen years, and the year 1740. Then, from the top down, came the alphabet and the usual row of numerals from one to ten. But the alphabet and the numbers had been laid out at random following her whim of discord and chaos which obtained everywhere else in the sampler. Adam under the Tree of Life was beating his Eve with a stick while the serpent with a bearded and fork-eared head of Satan looked on. Instead of the usual pastoral motifs of birds and flowers there were snakes, toads, wasps, a bloody-jawed wolf devouring a lamb, a stallion —plainly—rearing up to the hindquarters of a mare, and sprays of deadly nightshade, clumps of toadstools and poisonous fungi. In a spirit of rebellion or sheer wickedness Sarah had reversed convention and—presumably—by doing so had soothed something of her restless and rebellious spirit. At the bottom of the sampler were four lines:
Tis not Religion that can give
Sweetest pleasures while we live
Wiser far praise Earthly joys
And eat the fruit no blight destroys
Answering Roger, Seyton said, “She was a restless spirit and a born rebel.”
“Even so, dad—I wonder the family kept it. I mean it’s a bit off, isn’t it?”
“So it is. But the story is that she was the apple of her father’s eye and he humoured her. He wasn’t exactly orthodox himself. There are good and bad in all families and in ours we seldom bothered to sweep the . . . well, less savoury things under the carpet. History—and we’re proud of ours—is not a matter of selecting and censoring. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Anyway, Punch and I found the sampler useful. We made a language out of it, a secret code.”
“Oh . . . How did that work?”
“From the jumbled up alphabet and numbers. If you write them out as they are and then put over the top of them the way they should be you’ve got a code—a simple one, but it was good enough for us. So the word CAT for instance would read OJP and the number 7 would be 3. We used it a lot and had it off by heart.” Seyton smiled. “You’ve no idea—it came in very handy at times.”
“It wouldn’t be very difficult to break, would it?”
“No, it wouldn’t, but it served us all right. At school we used to write very rude things in code on walls about the masters and fall over ourselves with laughter every time we passed them.”
“That’s an idea.”
“I don’t advise you to try it. You might just pick the wrong master—some crossword fiend, or perhaps a chap who’d done cipher work during the war.” Turning away from the sampler, Seyton went on, “Well, that’s enough of that. We’ve got an early start tomorrow. Bed for you.”
The next morning Seyton drove to London, dropping Roger at his school on the way. Figgins, who had come down for the memorial service and was staying on for a few days to see her family, had made an appointment for him to meet Helder in the early evening of the same day. She had said, “He’ll call at your club—six o’clock.”
“Hasn’t he got an office?”
“No. He lives in a flat. Hampstead way. I always get him by phone and he likes to meet people in public. You’ve never met him, have you?”
“No.”
“He’s a useful man. But don’t try to push him. He likes to do his own summing up. Then, if he thinks he should talk—he will. But if not—then you might as well be banging your head against a brick wall.”
That evening at six o’clock precisely Helder arrived at the club and was brought to Seyton by a club servant. He was sitting in a window alcove of the large lounge bar on the first floor overlooking Brook Street. Helder was a big man in his forties, wearing dark, heavy tweeds, an immaculate white shirt, a knitted black tie, and highly polished black brogues. He had a soft, muted manner, a flat, toneless voice as though he had long learned to eradicate all feeling from it, aiming perhaps at an inscrutability which was marred now and then by the shadow of a smile which would take the corners of his mouth unexpectedly.
Their greetings made and a large gin and tonic ordered for Helder and a whisky and soda for Seyton, they sat together at their relatively isolated table in the window overlooking the slow crawl of evening rush hour traffic in the street below.
Clearly not one for irrelevant chatter, Helder said, solemnly, “Miss Figgins tells me that you are interested in the Governors of the Felbeck Foundation. A very worthy institution, very worthy.”
It was then, as Seyton said that this was indeed the case, he realized what it was the man reminded him of—a prosperous undertaker, an expert at avoiding distress to anyone’s feelings, but still quietly dedicated to getting on with the job in hand.
“I am indeed interested.”
“May I say how sorry I was when I heard the sad news of your brother?”
“Thank you.”
“Ebullient, straightforward, and with a spirit as clear as crystal. However . . .” He sipped at his drink, and waited for Seyton to speak. Clearly if there were to be a meaningful conversation he meant to initiate no more than his opening statement.
Amused, but deciding not to show it, Seyton said, “You’ve let Miss Figgins have some stuff—which, of course, I’ve seen. I was wondering . . . well, if perhaps that was only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.”
“Nicely put, Mr Seyton. Yes, I would say just the tip.”
“Is it possible to dive deeper—either into the depths or into, say, your files?”
Helder considered this for a while, and then replied, “It would be, of course, Mr Seyton. But being an honest man I think I would have to say that the farther into the depths I went it would only be to surface eventually with more of the same. If you know a man has stolen money and got away with it—then it’s a fair assumption that he’s either done it before or certainly will do it again. Translate that to other areas of human fallibility and the answer is the same. Against this, may I say that a man may be a lecher or a swindler and still have a genuine concern for the starving hordes of the Third World. In other words, Mr Seyton, you would only be asking me to dig or dive deeper into an already familiar environment. You would get nothing that will help you or that you haven’t already got. To break a lease no matter under which clause—you must have facts that will stand up in law, facts and proof of those facts. Not hearsay, not gossip. Am I being discouraging?”
“Somewhat.” Seyton spoke with a touch of sharpness for he felt that the man was being unnecessarily didactic. “Anyway—I’ve said nothing about breaking a lease.”
Helder smiled and said, “No—but your brother, Mister Harry, did—some months ago—sitting, which I find curiously appropriate—in this very same room.”
“Punch said that to you?”
“Yes, Mr Seyton. His actual words were—as usual, refreshingly blunt, ‘Helder, you’ve got to help me. I’ve got to find a way to break the bloody Felbeck Foundation’s lease on the Hall.’ I remember them clearly.”
“Good L
ord! Did he tell you why?”
“No, Mr Seyton. And I did not ask him. I don’t ask clients direct questions like that. What I guess or assume is my own affair.”
“But there must be more to it than that?”
“Oh, indeed, sir. Along what lines, would you think?”
“Damn it! That’s what I want you to tell me. You wouldn’t be breaking any confidence.”
Helder finished his gin and tonic, looking very thoughtful, and put the glass down on the table a few inches more forward of himself than necessary, but making sure that the signal should not be overlooked by Seyton.
Seyton, holding himself in check now, knowing that he must go at the man’s own gait, signalled to the waiter to bring them fresh drinks, and then said, “Punch would want me to know.”
“I’m sure he would, Mr Seyton. But I can’t give you a direct answer because I don’t have it. Not a full answer, that is.”
Seyton was silent for a while, a silence without embarrassment to Helder for that individual turned and looked out of the window as though the passage of traffic outside was of absorbing interest to him. Seyton was sure that there were things, or something, the man could tell him but would not unless he could hit the needed note to set the key for the tune he wished to have sung to him.
Finally, and almost at random, he said, “If Punch talked to you about breaking the lease—did he by any chance show you the lease or a copy of it?”
“Yes, he did, sir.” The shadow of an approving smile touched Helder’s lips.
“And then ask your advice as to which clause—given your knowledge of the Governors of the Foundation—would be the one to go for?”
The Satan Sampler Page 11
