The Satan Sampler

by Victor Canning

  “And we?”

  Warboys smiled and ran a hand over his thin white hair. “We would have accepted it.”

  “Eventually, gladly. And we came very close to having to. Kerslake said he was almost at the front door with Seyton showing him out when the hall telephone rang and Seyton, answering it, turned to tell him it was me. Kerslake said his hand was already in his pocket.”

  “ ‘Fate’s hid ends eyes cannot see’—To the truth of that moment when the telephone bell rang Seyton will never be made privy. A lucky man.” He sipped his brandy and smiled thinly. “He owes you much for remembering your Homer.” Quint trimmed his cigar and in between his puffs while lighting it, said, “Every man should have a classical education for in the past resides all knowledge. It saved Seyton. What do we do about him?”

  Warboys turned and looking through the break in the curtains at the gold and silver lights which rain and street lamps cast over the night world of moving cars and dark shrub and tree shapes in the Park, said, “That which no man can resist given the chance. Play at being God and give him his heart’s desire. Give him back Seyton Hall. With luck he’ll keep it till his death, and maybe his son, too . . . but in the end if the world runs true to its present course it will become a National Trust institution or, perhaps, more appropriately, a mental asylum, proud manifestations of democracy.” He began to move across the room, but at the door he paused and looking back said, “I hope you will approve of Grandison’s obituary in The Times when it comes. I wrote it for their library a year ago. They will have little updating to do, except to note that he died of heart failure while working. Some day they will probably ask you to prepare one for me. Be kind but not necessarily strictly honest.”

  Quint smiled through his cigar smoke. “And who shall write mine?”

  Warboys said, “I don’t know. But someone, I hope, who loves you enough to abstain from telling the full truth. No man wishes that ‘Time shall unfold what plighted cunning holds’.”

  “Not at Birdcage certainly.”

  * * * *

  When he rang the bell, as he always did, it was some time before he heard steps coming to the door. It opened and a short, grey-haired woman with a broom in her hand confronted him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  The accent was local and the felt slippers she wore for cleaning had a big toe hole in the right one. In the bungalow a radio was playing pop music so loudly that he had to raise his voice and almost shout, “Is Miss Collet in?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir. Not here. She’s gone. Went early this morning. I’m just a-cleaning up ’fore I take the keys back. Would you be the one she wrote for?”

  “Wrote what?”

  “Well, the letter. Said someone might call. A Mr Seyton.”

  “Yes, that’s me.” As he spoke he knew that something was dying slowly in him.

  “I’ll get it.”

  Leaving the door open she shuffled down the hallway and he followed her as far as the door to the lounge and sunroom and stood looking in. The sunroom was bare of any signs of her drawings or work material.

  The woman came back and handed him the letter. He thanked her and gave her a pound and walked hurriedly away from her surprised flow of thanks.

  He drove off and turned down a side lane and parked at the side of a small fir plantation. A cock pheasant crossed the road ahead, a chiff-chaff was calling tirelessly from, a tree top and a slight breeze shook the delicately coloured bells of the wood anemones in the hedge ditch. He opened the letter and read it.

  Dear Richard.

  This is the way it must be, for any closer way would weaken me too much to follow good sense and accept the inevitable. I’m a good fighter at most things. But not with this. Though I do know in my mind, if not yet entirely in my emotions, that I am doing the right thing but I can’t face a lot of harassing talk about it. So I’m off—like a coward. And so I am.

  Oh, darling, don’t try to come after me and turn things round. It’s all been lovely—a bit of Paradise for a time. Look after yourself. There’s nothing the human heart can’t get over. No loss, or sorrow. You know that.

  God bless you,

  Georgina.

  P.S. You’ll feel bloody after reading this. Go over to Nancy and tell her I’ll be sending her father something one day. Be nice to her. She’s a dear.

  He put the letter in his pocket and drove on, back towards the Hall. But as he came to the turn-off to take the side road which crossed the river to Seyton Hall he changed his mind and carried on along the main road.

  Nancy was in but her father was out. She made coffee for him and as he sat drinking it he looked up at her, tall, fairhaired . . . so much part of his life from before Ruth and after.

  He handed her the letter without a word and watched her as she read it. He said, ‘‘Did you know she was going?”

  She handed the letter back. “Yes, she phoned me very early this morning. I knew how you would feel. I tried to get her to change her mind.”

  “You did?”

  “Why not? If what you feel for her is the truth then I would want the two of you to be together. Want it—but to be honest—not welcome it.”

  “I can’t understand that.”

  “I know you can’t and never will. For you to want something is all. You just go after it. It works in business, maybe. But not with love, because Jove often means sacrifice of love. Is that incomprehensible to you?”

  He smiled faintly. “I think with an effort I could sort it out.”

  “Try it sometime.”

  He sighed. “And I thought this was going to be a great day. I’m getting the Hall back—it’ll take a little while. I saw her there.”

  “An addition to the collection of family possessions?”

  “You’re a bastard, Nancy.”

  “Of course. So was the first recorded Seyton. Perhaps that’s something you would like to have in the family now. A bastard Nancy? Do you think I’m ready to take the risk that it will work? That I don’t have any pride? No jealousy either—if you should meet her in one, two, three, four years’ time and the both of you go to bed together?”

  “In God’s name what do you think I am?”

  “I think that’s something you must find out for yourself.” He stood up, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her and found her lips and body unresponsive. As he stepped back from her she smiled at him and said, “Sorry for that outburst. Understanding is one thing. Thawing out is another. You can’t have summer without winter first. . . nor passion, nor love and marriage without first the agonies of doubt and anxiety. If you should ever come round to thinking that you love me and want me . . . you’ll have to work at it. I’m giving up the habit of falling flat on my back when you walk into the bedroom . . . of running to you when you call. Damn right, I am! I don’t know or want to know now how you have worked the Hall thing. All I know is that if you want me you’d better start on it fast because if you don’t I won’t be around. So now, I say in the nicest way I can manage, you take yourself off and if you want to—think about it. And don’t take too long because you might find I may not be available.”

  “Jesus—what’s happened to you?”

  “Something, at least, which you should understand—I’ve just discovered in the attic of my emotions a fascinating left-over called pride.”

  He laughed then, and said, “You know, I’ve just discovered something.”

  “Important?”

  “Not very. Just that I don’t want coffee. A stiff drink is more in line.” He leaned forward to kiss her on the lips again, but she turned her head so that he kissed her cheek.

  She laughed and said, “Don’t be put off. Keep trying—you’ve a long way to go. And you know where the drinks are—help yourself.”

  * * * *

  Quint, peering into his little oven to watch the cheese sauce over the dish of ham and celery hearts turning a golden brown, a glass of Chablis in one hand, said, “You’ve got what you wanted for your f
ather, done some good work, I gather, in Herefordshire—your drawings I mean. As for the other—and it so happens often that way—you were very little needed. Indeed, it would have gone the right way for us even if you had not been there. But . . . that so often happens.”

  Perched on a kitchen stool, one leg crossed over the other, and seeing that as Quint turned to her they held his eyes, Georgina said, “I did some good work of my own. I’ve no grumbles, Quinney, my love. And dear Daddy is happy.”

  “No regrets, then?”

  “If there were, I’ve left them behind. Bulky things to cart around, aren’t they?”

  “I’ve always found so. What do sad regrets avail?”

  “Damn all. I see your Sir Manfred Grandison has died of heart failure.”

  “How did you know he was ours? Oh, I see—another of Daddy’s indiscretions?”

  “Could be. Will it mean you go up the ladder?”

  “Step by step.”

  “And your Mr Kerslake following?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Poor twisted-up man.”

  “Less so, I imagine, soon. He has been sent on vacation—and, I gather, his secretary, a charming brunette, has also taken her vacation at the same time. And what will you do now?”

  “There’s no problem. I shall fall on my feet somewhere.”

  “And occasionally on your back?”

  “Oh, Quinney . . . how determined you are to make a whore of me.”

  He laughed gently. “Well—it’s an old profession. Older and more respectable even than mine.”