Doctors Wear Scarlet
Page 8
“We get a bit behindhand,” I said, “but we’ve done them. Miller did a piece.”
“Ah, yes. Smart young man, Miller. I can’t remember though – was he nice about them?”
“Not very.”
“Why not?” said Penelope fiercely.
The topic had already become about as awkward as it could have done.
“I think he felt,” I said, “that there was something not entirely genuine about them.”
“They weren’t intended to go very deep,” Walter remarked. “Just as well perhaps.”
“Richard is very serious about them,” said Penelope. “I’ve discussed them with him often. He says they reflect an important side of his nature.”
“A young man’s fancy,” said Walter condescendingly. “They have charm and even atmosphere. But as for expressing anything of real importance…” He was now clearly anxious, though he himself had introduced the topic, to get us away from Richard’s poetry – but not from Richard. “Tell me, Anthony,” he said, circling his glass with his fingers but making no effort to lift it to his mouth, “have you heard much from Richard lately? He was never a good correspondent. I know he’s getting on quite well with his research. But he’s been very vague about other things – the people he’s meeting, his probable movements… I wondered whether… Perhaps you…”
Penelope sat boot-faced. Slowly Walter uncurled his fingers from his glass and then, one by one, wrapped them round it once more.
“I thought you would have known,” I said spitefully: “he’s coming back this September. If not sooner.”
“Ah,” said Walter, and forced a smile. “Yes, I rather thought–”
“–No, you didn’t,” said Penelope sharply; “you knew nothing at all. Neither of us did. He hasn’t written for months,” she almost shouted in my face.
“Nor to me,” I said, regretting my malice, seeking to reassure her. “It’s just that someone I know has been in contact with Richard. He told me the other night that it…seemed likely Richard would be back this Autumn.”
“Who was this ‘someone’?” demanded Penelope. “How should he know?”
“Nobody you’ve met. Just a friend of mine,” I said, “who is normally accurate about this kind of thing.”
“And no doubt he’s quite right,” said Walter. My exchange with Penelope had given him time to pull himself together. Whatever he felt about Richard’s impending return, or about the fact that he himself had been in ignorance of it until now, he was going to put a good face on the matter. He lifted his glass, drained it, held it out to me to be refilled. “No doubt your friend is quite right,” Walter said. “There’s no need for us to upset ourselves. Richard was always independent in some things. He’ll let us know in his own good time.”
Penelope sniffed.
“Meanwhile,” Walter went on, “now’s the time to think what’s best for him when he gets back. No time better, with Anthony here to help us.” He smiled at me, slyly, ingratiatingly, with mistrust and uncertainty lurking behind his little eyes. “What do you think he ought to do next?” Walter asked.
“Write up his research, I suppose. He’ll have been away a year. He must have quite a lot to work on.”
“Of course,” Walter said smoothly, “of course. And then I think we ought to get him settled. He’s been wandering about too long. The Army, Greece. It’s time he developed some roots.”
He glanced at Penelope, who looked haggardly away through the window and over the darkened lawn of King’s.
“Some sort of College appointment… Junior Dean, perhaps… A little administrative work can do wonders in calming people down. And later a Lectureship. Old Savage will be retiring next year, and that will mean a vacancy…”
He was well into his stride now. Whether he really believed that Richard would fall in with his plans, whether the easy confidence he displayed in himself and his machinations was the result of habit, vanity or wine, I could not be certain. But Walter was an old soldier and he soldiered steadily on. He brought us to the end of Richard’s twenties, to his thirties and his maturity (“a Tutorship and a Readership, and then perhaps a year or two at the British School in Rome”), on to his forties, to a final position of influence and power and esteem. Penelope toyed with her glass, I smoked, the stars blinked between the pinnacles of King’s Chapel: and Walter talked.
“I have always had great plans for Richard. Since the day he first came here to take his scholarship examination, I have always thought that he had a splendid future, not only as a scholar, but as a man to guard and guide the affairs of Lancaster – from without as well as from within. For if we send him into the world at the right time, having first equipped him as only we can do, there is nothing he might not accomplish, and all of it would be to our credit and might – must – be used to our advantage. I see him…as my own successor; as a man who imparts knowledge, forms destinies, provides for dynasty. I see him, sometimes, as my son…”
He broke off, and suddenly his face collapsed and he looked desperately tired.
“I have some papers to collect from my rooms,” he said to Penelope in a slurred voice, “before we go home. Stay here with Anthony until I get back.”
When her father had left us Penelope said quickly, “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“I knew that. It’s not only that Richard was unkind before he left, or that he hadn’t written – not at all to me and hardly even to Daddy. It’s nothing to do with Daddy or me in any case. But I’ve had a feeling for months now. Silly of me. I don’t believe in feminine intuition, in intuition of any kind. But now, from what you say, I was right, so I suppose… How bad is it, Anthony?”
“I don’t know. It should be all right when he gets back to England.”
“I’m not going to ask what it is,” she said, her face trembling. “You’d tell me if you wanted to. I just want you to know that if I can help… You understand?”
“Then don’t write to him,” I said, “and don’t let Walter write or interfere in any way. Let me know of anything you should hear. That’s all you can do just now.”
She nodded, and then, like the sensible girl she was, went quickly (but not very competently) to work with her compact. Walter re-entered the Restaurant, obviously recovered, firm, smiling, radiating all the right attitudes for the end of a pleasant evening with an old friend.
“It’s been most agreeable, Anthony. Let us know when you’re coming again… And now, Penelope, I think we should go home.”
He smiled with determination. Penelope did her best, thanked me with brief formality. Then they both left. I called for some more brandy and sat thinking for a while, watching the constellations wheeling over King’s.
Later on, through streets gay with cheap evening frocks, through levies of young men at once arrogant and bashful in their first hired dinner jackets, I walked slowly back to Lancaster again. So Walter and Penelope, I reflected, knew nothing: they were worried and hurt that they had not heard from Richard, and Penelope had sensed, in some strange way dependent, one must suppose, on her loyalty and love, that something was wrong; but they had no inkling of what Tyrrel had hinted to me two weeks before. Nor, for that matter, had I expected them to. For the rest, they would both be pleased to see him back, though Walter at least had seemed rather shaken by the news – partly because he did not like hearing it from someone other than Richard, and partly, I suspected, because there was now a definite prospect of Richard’s friendship with Piers Clarence being renewed during Piers’ third year in the college. None of this was either surprising or particularly helpful; though I now knew (if indeed I had not always known) that I might call on Penelope for help – in the unlikely event of there being any help she could give.
The next step was to see Marc Honeydew. There was to be no May Ball in Lancaster this year and Marc would not have gone outside the college to a ball in any other: so I could call on him that very evening. Heralded by a fanfare of litt
le shrieks, silver sandals stepped neatly through the revolving door of the Blue Boar Hotel: a froth of muslin bubbled outside Trinity: but Marc Honeydew hated May Week even more than I did, would almost certainly be in his rooms – and alone. At all other times of the year his hospitality was princely; but each summer he let it be known that no one could expect entertainment or even courtesy from him during the first fortnight in June. “If you must show off your frumpish cousins somewhere, then show them, my dears, to Walter. Or to the Provost, for all I care. But I hope you will leave me in peace.” Indeed, so great was his desire for privacy that on this occasion he had closed his oak, and I had to ring him up from the Head Porter’s Lodge to ask for admittance. (“Come straight up, my dear, and I will open the door; but take care that a hundred young women don’t burst in behind you.”)
“Now, Anthony Seymour,” he said as soon as I was safely inside, “I will just sport the oak against the legion of females who are sacking our beloved university, and I will give you an enormous glass of brandy, and you can then tell me exactly what brings you here at this devilish time of the year, hot with desire to have dinner with Penelope and Walter.”
“So you know about that already?”
Marc, as usual, was on the scent of news. It would be difficult to get information from him without parting with something substantial in exchange.
“Of course I know. I may lock everyone out, but news, my dear, travels through the thickest walls.” He poured a lavish glass of brandy. “Tongue-loosener,” he said.
“I simply came,” I told him, “to find out if anyone had heard from Richard in Greece. He hasn’t written to me for five months and I was getting rather worried. I thought that Walter at least might know what was going on.”
“And did he?”
“Not really.”
“Of course not. Nobody, my dear, knows a thing. Unless that randy little piece Piers Clarence has heard, and is keeping it from us out of devilment.”
“Why should he do that?”
“He’s a sly one, that Piers. He might want to keep Richard to himself.”
“We’ve been over this before Marc,” I said sternly, “we have all agreed that both Richard and Piers are heterosexual by nature and that they are not having an affair; and we may therefore presume that the sort of petty possessiveness you are hinting at is out of the question.”
“There are times, Anthony Seymour, when you are not at all subtle. Granted they are not having an affair, people can still be very possessive about the most ordinary friendships. It’s common knowledge that Walter thinks Piers is one of the reasons, however innocent this relationship, for Richard ignoring Penelope. Piers knows Walter thinks this and he may be playing up in consequence. After all, we do know that Richard was using Piers as a Walter-antidote. So what more natural than that Piers should keep anything good to himself?”
“All of which is getting us nowhere,” I said. “Whatever Piers may or may not know, he hasn’t told it to us. Now what, Marc, do you know?”
“Nothing, Anthony Seymour; but what, my dear, about you?”
He raised his stringy body from the sofa, swept up my glass and recharged it. “More tongue-looseners needed,” he said. “Quite obviously, my dear, you know something – enough, at any rate, to bring you whizzing down here to see if there’s anything more. You can only have one reason for braving the monstrous hordes of students’ sisters – sheer curiosity. Now what, my dear, set you off?”
You nimble old queen, I thought. Probably you really do know nothing, but you’ve already seen I’m on to something and you want the best possible value from me you can get. All right, I thought: we’ll toss you one crumb and see how keenly you sniff at it.
“I heard in a round-about way,” I said, “that Richard’s coming back this Autumn.”
“So,” said Marc. “Well, I certainly thought Walter would try and make him stay another year – to make sure he didn’t get in with Piers again. But does Walter know he’s coming back?”
“He didn’t until this evening.”
“One in the pan for him. But what do you mean, Anthony Seymour, by ‘heard in a round-about way’? You can’t catch an old field-worker like me with that sort of spiel.”
“A common friend of Richard’s and mine,” I lied, “was returning to England from Cyprus, where he had been stationed with the first battalion of our regiment. He took some leave on his way home, ran into Richard in Athens, heard he was coming back, and told me about it in London.”
This was much too elaborate to ring true; and in any case Marc spotted an essential flaw that hadn’t occurred to me.
“And was this all your Army chum had to tell you, Anthony Seymour? But of course,” he said, twinkling with the exuberance of his malice, “I forgot. He couldn’t have had time to ask Richard much, because the Army Council, so my papers tell me, issued an Instruction late last year forbidding Army officers to go to Greece during their leaves in view of the unpopularity there of our military cavortings in Cyprus. So I expect your chum, being out of bounds, my dear, got a little nervous and pushed off before Richard told him much.”
“My ‘chum’,” I said stoutly, “was allowed to spend some of his leave in Athens because the General Staff in Cyprus had entrusted him with a top secret report for the military attaché at the Embassy.”
“Intelligence work,” said Marc. “Well, if he was that sort of chum, it’s a pity he didn’t ferret a bit more news out of Dickie Fountain.”
“I expect he had other things on his mind,” I said. “Anyhow, he did learn that Richard was coming back this September. So now for a fair exchange, Marc. I’ve told you my news: what’s yours?”
Marc shook his head in a pantomime of sadness.
“Nothing so dramatic,” he said. “No secret agents in Athens; no meetings at dawn on the Acropolis. Just stale college gossip, and most of it well known to you. Walter spends much of his time talking of what Richard will do when he comes back – and has certainly implied, my dear, that he will be away the full two years. So now he’ll have to change his tune about that. Penelope hangs her head in sorrow. The Provost, like myself, does not get younger. Piers has been naughty, almost naughty enough to be sent away. But it is whispered, though the results are not yet officially known, that he has done quite creditably in his exams this year. So now they really have no adequate excuse for getting rid of him; and since Dickie is coming back, this will be a great worry to Walter… But nothing at all startling, my dear. And indeed I am very much beginning to wonder what we are fussing about with such persistence.”
“What indeed?” I said.
“Because,” Marc pursued, “all that seems to have happened is that Dickie Fountain has decided to come home this Autumn instead of next, which was always on the cards in any case.”
“Exactly so,” I said.
“But,” Marc said, his eyes glinting with amusement, “here are you rushing about asking us all whether we know anything. So bizarre of you, my dear.”
“I was just worried.” I said.
“You can tell that, Anthony Seymour, to the Marines. You’re a cool fish, my dear, and you don’t run about hysterically giving dinner parties and breaking through sported oaks and telling tales about masked men in Athens simply because you’re ‘worried’. No, my dear, you’re keeping something back. I know that serious old face of yours, and it’s pregnant with disaster.”
“Nonsense,” I said.
“Old Mother Honeydew knows her onions, Anthony Seymour. You’re keeping something back. I’m not going to ask you what, because clearly you don’t want to tell me, and I prefer listening to people, my dear, when they’re co-operative. And in any case, my love, I shall find out in time. Just trust Old Mother Honeydew for that.
“And now you’d better go away to bed, so that you’re all fresh for tomorrow’s assignations. Good night, Anthony Seymour; and don’t stick your neck out too far, otherwise some spy, my dear, may cut your head off with a stiletto.”
Before going to sleep I came to a decision. I had learned nothing from Walter or Penelope; and as for Marc, I had done even worse: I had learned nothing (because he, like everyone else, knew nothing), but in the process of doing so I had aroused his suspicions. Within twenty-four hours it would be all round Cambridge that “something was up” with Richard Fountain in Greece and that Anthony Seymour was being both secretive and hysterical about it. God alone knew what floods of conjecture would be let loose. This being the case, the best thing I could do was to go – go before people started questioning me and before I did more harm. But one thing I would do first: early in the morning I would see Piers Clarence. I didn’t mind him becoming suspicious, indeed I was prepared to tell him all I knew, because I trusted him; he might have something of value to say; and in any case I liked him and knew he would think it odd (he wasn’t the sort of person who felt “hurt”) if I left Cambridge without calling on him. So I would talk to Piers and then leave Cambridge to speculate how it might; and once in London I would replace this particular baby where it properly belonged – firmly back in Inspector Tyrrel’s lap.
Piers didn’t answer when I knocked on his door the next morning; so I went through his sitting-room and found him, as I had rather expected, in bed.
“Go away, Anthony,” he said in a friendly voice.
“That’s just it,” I said; “I’m going away from Cambridge in two hours, and I want to talk to you first. You can spend the rest of the day sleeping.”
“As it happens, I can’t. I have a long day of May Week amusements ahead of me.” But he got up all the same and splashed some cold water on his face. “However, Anthony, seeing that it’s you… So long as you haven’t been appointed to lecture me about my course of life…”