The Bridge at Arta

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘Just as well, Daddy?’

  ‘Come, come, Clarrie – be a wise girl. It would be a little awkward if we were grand enough to have a butler ourselves still, and the senior Mr Hedgepath was standing behind my chair at this moment.’

  Claribel felt that this thought, although just, need not have been so soon obtruded. But she had been right to take the bull by the horns. Roland was accepted, and all would be well. It would be unfair – again she was alert to this – to say that her father had capitulated before adroit shock tactics. He meant what he said, or at least he hoped that he did. And although her mother was quietly weeping, that was just one of her generation’s curious forms of behaviour. After a great deal of marriage, Lady Balmayne was really contriving to be overjoyed that her daughter was taking on the same stiff assignment.

  So now there were kisses, and some rather random talk about plans, and then Claribel was sent to the telephone to find out whether Roland would come to dinner. It was with a slight trepidation that she picked up the receiver. She had of course told Roland what she was going to do, but now she wondered whether she had been right to jump the gun. Roland, she suspected, had been building up in his mind the pattern of a little confrontation scene with her father, and perhaps his male vanity would be offended that she had done the job herself. She knew about male vanity, having frequently bumped up against it in her brother Ronnie and been aware of its subtler operation in her father from time to time. But Roland reacted very favourably to her news. In fact he sounded uncommonly grateful and relieved. He would certainly come to dinner. But meantime Claribel must join him immediately. They would find the right shop and buy an engagement ring.

  ‘Why don’t men wear engagement rings?’ Claribel demanded. She was extremely happy, and wanted to talk nonsense to Roland at once.

  ‘They just don’t. It isn’t the custom.’

  ‘What a feeble reply from a psychologist! They do wear wedding- rings now, and they didn’t use to.’

  ‘Quite a lot do. I shall.’

  ‘But not an engagement ring? One that’s all dainty little diamonds?’

  ‘If you order me to, I’ll do it without turning a hair. But in all right-thinking minds dark suspicions will be aroused.’

  ‘You mean it must be a cigarette-lighter, or a barometer, or something like that?’

  ‘Gold cuff-links, darling. They’re more personal, and just the same as a ring. The bonding symbolism inheres equally in both.’

  ‘Roland, shall I ever keep up with you? The depth of your thought!’

  ‘It won’t be necessary. Now, stop chattering, woman, and catch the next bus.’

  He had never addressed her as ‘woman’ before. She thought it quite enchanting.

  Later that morning, and when they were alone together, Sir Bernard and Lady Balmayne held a less light-hearted colloquy.

  ‘I’m sure it’s perfectly all right,’ Sir Bernard said. ‘Only we must expect from time to time—well, little things like this. Obscure birth, indifferent breeding: they’re bound to show up now and again, wouldn’t you say? It would be unfair, it would be quite ungenerous, to expect otherwise.’

  ‘Yes, dear. But just what little thing like this?’

  ‘The chap’s having left it to Clarrie. He ought to have tackled me himself. Strictly speaking, that is. Instinct of a gentleman, and so forth. I don’t say it’s important. In fact, I’m saying there will be a number of things we shall be well advised to think of as quite trivial.’

  ‘Yes, Bernard, I’m sure that must be so. But perhaps Roland did fully intend to speak to you himself, only Claribel was a little precipitate.’

  ‘I very much doubt it. He has had plenty of time.’

  ‘He would take his time, Bernard. Because he’d think of interviewing you in quite a formal way. A man inclines to be formal if his manners have come to him rather late.’

  ‘Ah, that’s true! Yes.’ Sir Bernard quite brightened at this sage remark.

  ‘And we must be glad that Roland has overcome his disadvantages so well. It must partly be a matter of high intelligence. But he must be sensitive to quite little things – social nuances, you know. He always pleases me. And you may count your own blessings, dear.’ Lady Balmayne had judged it time to be firm. ‘He’s not a man you would hesitate to take into your club, is he?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! Sometimes, Mary, you seem to have the weirdest ideas about me.’

  ‘Then there you are. And we had better forget all this business about Mr Hedgepath the butler.’

  ‘Well, now, that brings me to a funny thing. The name rings a faint bell with me, but I simply remember nothing at all about a butler called Hedgepath. I can’t see him in my mind’s eye, or anything of that kind. And it even occurs to me that his son may find that offensive. It won’t be flattering to have to say I can’t recall a confounded thing about his father. A butler is normally quite somebody in a household, after all – and positively a figure of awe to its children. So the chronology of the thing puzzles me. I must get it sorted out.’

  ‘I don’t think, Bernard, that Roland will very much want to have chats about his father. And I do think he might be offended if he formed the impression that you were poking around in his family’s past.’

  ‘My dear Mary, am I likely to do that? Of course Mrs Corler is almost sure to know, and I shall be going to see her quite soon, in any case. Yes, I’ll ask Mrs Corler about Hedgepath.’

  When Roland came to dinner all went as well as Claribel could have hoped. Ronnie was away from home for a few days, so there was just the old couple and the young. And the young couple were obviously so happy that their elders warmed to them. Sir Bernard had arranged with his wife that, although the occasion was so very domestic, he and Roland should remain for a little at the dinner table after mother and daughter withdrew. The resulting conversation was entirely friendly. Contrary to Lady Balmayne’s expectation, the young man actually introduced the subject of his family history himself. Not much, it was true, emerged, and Sir Bernard was careful to ask few questions. What did become clear was that Roland knew little about Raymond Balmayne or his household, for the simple reason that he had been born several years after his father had left the Balmayne service. In fact Horace Hedgepath could have been at Cray Hall only for a few years all told, and as a man comparatively young for his position there. And this must have been during a period at which the future Sir Bernard had been first in the army and then studying architecture abroad – years, in fact, in which he had seldom been with his parents except in their London house. He must have heard about the young butler down at Cray, and even seen him and talked to him from time to time. But nothing except a vague memory of the man’s name had stuck in his head.

  Sir Bernard again felt that there was perhaps something slightly injurious about this blank in his mind. He was, indeed, relieved that his future son-in-law’s connection with the Balmayne family was so tenuous, was in fact non-existent. But he felt that he must offer some explanation of his ignorance.

  ‘I was studying hard in Munich,’ he said, ‘and for some years was a bit vague about affairs at home. Moreover, and to tell you the truth, Roland, I hadn’t been getting on too well with my father. My respect for him never faltered – but that quite common kind of father-and-son friction must have been there. I dare say you can recall something of the sort yourself.’

  ‘Well, no—I can’t, as a matter of fact. My father died when I was three. I was never given more than scraps of information about him. The business of his having been your father’s man came to me only by chance from an aunt.’

  ‘Is that so? Well, well!’ It is possible that this additional piece of information was satisfactory to Sir Bernard in its way. It seemed further to distance what might be called the whole buttling connection. ‘The trouble didn’t last with me, of course. My father and I became great friends again later on, and I shall always account him as the prime agent in forming my character, such as it is. But those German years of
mine coincided with a period of considerable strain in his career, and perhaps he became a little distanced from all of us.’

  This exchange of confidence, although circumspect and slender, was to the satisfaction of both men, and hard upon it they rose and returned to the drawing-room. They were not, they probably felt, ever going to be very intimately acquainted, but a reasonable basis of understanding had been established between them. It was a point at which Sir Bernard would have done well to take his wife’s advice and leave the long dead Horace Hedgepath in his near oblivion. That he failed to do so may be seen to some extent as a matter of bad luck. Had Mrs Corler passed from his ken long before, it is doubtful whether he would deliberately have sought her out for the somewhat invidious purpose of checking up on the antecedents of a prospective son-in-law. As it was, he owned the entirely laudable habit of paying regular visits to this ancient retainer of the family, treating her much as if she had been his nurse, although her actual position had been for many years that of his parents’ housekeeper. It may be that there was a small element of vanity in Sir Bernard’s thus maintaining contact with a person recalling the consequence and material prosperity which his father had won. But he was doing no more than act as his father would have acted – a decent regard for servants retired after long service having been in Raymond Balmayne’s view among the minor obligations of life.

  Mrs Corler was in no degree a financial liability, since Raymond (to whom she had been singularly devoted) had bought her an annuity when she left his employment. So Sir Bernard when he visited her two or three times a year was able simply to take along a suitable present chosen by his wife: a shawl or bed-jacket, perhaps, or alternatively some delicacy judged suitable for degustation in extreme old age. Each Christmas, however, Sir Bernard departed from this rule, sending the old lady a ten-pound note, together with a card saying ‘With gratitude and best wishes from the entire Balmayne family’.

  The recipient of these bounties lived in Pimlico, in the attic quarters of a small house owned by an elderly married niece. Although in no sense enjoying anything that could be called this niece’s services, Mrs Corler was felt to be fortunately placed, since were anything to go seriously ‘wrong’ it was probable that the circumstance would be remarked within twenty-four hours or so and some appropriate measure taken. Meanwhile Mrs Corler did for herself and her cat; took an interest in the Royal Family, sensational crime and the Nine o’Clock News; and was as yet free from culpable accident with her gas fire or her electric kettle. Sir Bernard had on several occasions expressed his willingness to make arrangements for her transfer into institutional care. But this had not been well received, and he had come to judge that matters were best left as they were.

  On the present occasion he took a taxi to Pimlico, with an unusually bulky present, a quilted dressing-gown, in a box on the seat beside him. He was not at all easy about his mission – about, that is, the particular aspect of this routine visit to which the term could be attached. Perhaps he would do well to drop it out of the programme. Was there not something demeaning in the proposal to extract from one former servant information about another – whose son was going to marry one’s daughter? There quite clamantly was! Sir Bernard actually wondered at himself, and from this wonderment a small and fresh perception grew. To that faint bell which the name ‘Hedgepath’ sounded in his head, some unsatisfactory – or even sinister – timbre attached. Had he then suppressed some actively displeasing memory in the fashion that Roland Redpath’s colleagues were fond of talking about, or had he sensed a withholding from him of some unfavourable, if unimportant, information concerning the man which it would have been natural for him to receive? Something of the sort, although he had no idea what, must be prompting his present behaviour.

  He had no idea what. But then suddenly, and as his taxi swung into Lupus Street, he had. Very definitely he had. Lupus . . . Lopez: perhaps the association of these names gave a fresh jolt to his obstinate sense of the inconveniences that may lurk within so untoward a parentage as Roland Redpath’s. Hadn’t some burglary taken place during the period about which he felt himself to be imperfectly informed? He could now remember his father referring to it, although briefly, as having been quite a serious affair. All the silver – and there was a lot of it – had been taken from Cray, and so had a good many other valuables as well. Moreover, unless he had got the story wrong, none of the booty had ever been recovered. His father, characteristically, had made no tragedy out of it; the firm was beginning notably to prosper, and everything was no doubt soon replaced with interest. But wasn’t it possible that the theft had been what the police call an inside job? As he asked himself this question, Sir Bernard admitted to his dismayed consciousness a further possibility that followed upon this one. It could only be for two or three years that the man Hedgepath had been his father’s butler, and for a fairly young man to leave such good service so soon was surely something out of the way. And he had changed his name!

  The fellow had changed his name to that which the Balmaynes’ prospective son-in-law now bore. Confronted by this, Sir Bernard experienced a strong revulsion of feeling. He almost rapped on the glass in front of him and instructed the taxi driver to turn back. Wasn’t he in danger of discovering about Hedgepath something criminal that Hedgepath’s own son possibly didn’t know? Indeed, something that he certainly didn’t know. For, consulting his sense of the young man, Sir Bernard saw that just this must be the case. Roland, indeed, had a little hung back about his parentage. But if such a grim fact as had now to be suspected harboured in the situation, Roland would have concealed it neither from Claribel nor from her parents. He was not that sort of man.

  So here was a dreadful situation developing – and it wasn’t one to which he could simply call a halt. A dishonest servant was something beyond the pale. It might be irrational and wrong, but he would never himself feel comfortable about his daughter’s husband if this suspicion inspissated the uncomfortableness of his lowly birth. And it might be a suspicion merely. This meant that, having started it, he owed it to both Roland and Claribel to determine the truth.

  The taxi had turned towards the river and was approaching the half-derelict little street, ignored by developers, humbly neighbouring Dolphin Square. He had to make up his mind, and it seemed to him that he must persevere with Mrs Corler, distasteful as this seemed. She was his only ready means to acquainting himself with the small obscure domestic event which had assumed such shocking proportions in his mind. But he rather hoped that Mrs Corler would recall nothing material about Hedgepath. It would quite probably be so. Her memory, as often in people of great age, was frequently vivid but as frequently patchy. The period she particularly liked to dwell upon was that of Bernard Balmayne’s boyhood, which coincided with the earlier years of her occupying a station of responsibility and even grandeur at Cray. She hadn’t, of course, been what was later to be termed a ‘working’ housekeeper, but neither had she been at the start ‘superior’ in any very definite way, let alone a member of the tribe of gentlewomen in reduced circumstances. She had worked her way up (as her employer, indeed, had done). Since retiring she had, it could not be denied, a little slithered down again, and you might never have guessed that she had once found no difficulty in controlling flighty housemaids, or even in holding the cook herself at a respectful distance. Sir Bernard had lately learnt, with high indignation, that the niece downstairs was disposed to regard her aunt as ‘common’.

  What Mrs Corler remembered, then, was what might be called the period of her apogee, and she had comparatively little to say of the years in which Master Bernard was ‘Master’ no longer, and had become first a ‘varsity’ man and then largely an absentee and a citizen of the world. Moreover she had an odd touchiness at times, and would obstinately refuse to recall matters which were plainly not really eluding her memory. Sir Bernard, as he rang the door-bell to gain admittance from Mrs Corler’s snobbish relative, indicted himself of considerable confusion of mind in face of all t
his. He seemed to be proposing to conduct a catechism to which he hoped to receive no answer. It wouldn’t do; he must get his purpose clear before entering the old woman’s presence. And to this he was at once assisted, as it turned out, by Mrs Peglin. Mrs Peglin was the niece, and she claimed at one time to have held some connection with the legitimate stage. She had at least carried away from this an extravagantly accented speech and an addiction to what must be thought of as grease-paint rather than mere cosmetic aid. Her figure was flabby and shapeless but her features were cragged and deeply lined; her hair was a dirty chaos and nothing else. Much more, if it were useful, could be said in dispraise of Mrs Peglin’s person, and Sir Bernard disliked it only less than he did her personality. He thought her a horrible old gin-sodden wretch, although in fact she was probably no more than an inadequate and defeated woman perpetually on the verge of cracking up. As on numerous previous occasions, Sir Bernard told himself that Mrs Corler ought not to be even remotely in the charge of such a creature, and that he was much to blame for not having taken some firm action in the matter long ago. Nor ought he to have failed to consider how much Mrs Corler’s annuity from his father had probably been hit by inflation.

  His immediate reaction now, however, was rather different and not particularly logical. Here was what used to be called low life, and he would not, when within its miasma, put on a low turn himself. To say that it was only fair to Roland Redpath to discover whether or not his father had been a scoundrel was, if not humbug, at least sheer muddle. Roland’s father was Roland’s business, and he himself ought to keep out of it. During this brief visit to his father’s former housekeeper he would make no reference whatever to his father’s deceased butler.

  The sense that this was an oddly belated resolution, and that he had betrayed himself into a marked infirmity of purpose, didn’t improve Sir Bernard’s manner with Mrs Peglin. He even asked her – very absurdly – whether Mrs Corler was at home. But this expression – belonging, as it did, to high rather than low life – didn’t offend a lady who recalled herself as an ornament of the West End stage, and she waved her hand towards her narrow dusty staircase with the air of a court chamberlain according the grande entrée to a person only of lesser consequence than himself.