Skeleton-in-Waiting

by Peter Dickinson

  “Beatrice is more able to care for herself than some people realise.”

  “I’ve often thought that too. Hold it a moment—Mr Dyce has to check that there aren’t any maniacs waiting for us with hatchets …”

  They shared the lift, but in silence and the odour of mothballs.

  “See you later,” said Louise, as Mrs Walsh let herself in through her door, and was answered by the usual courtly minibow. That door closed as Aunt Bea’s opened.

  “My dear, how good of you to come. Maria has gone shopping, but will be back any moment.”

  “She’s here. I saw her on the bridge and gave her a lift.”

  “Oh, but …”

  Aunt Bea peered into the shadowy lobby as if expecting to find Mrs Walsh somehow hidden there.

  “Let’s go and make a cup of tea,” said Louise. “I hear you’ve had a visit from the spy-catchers. I hope they were polite.”

  “Perfectly, I’m glad to say, only terribly, terribly thorough. But that dog, an absolutely lovely black labrador, so clever! It snuffled around everywhere. Of course I don’t have any bombs. I don’t think I ever have had. But then, do you know, it became quite excited by the bottom drawer of the bureau, which doesn’t have anything in it except old Christmas cards, and we were all greatly puzzled until I remembered that that was where Jack used to keep his machine-gun. He brought it out of the army, you see—of course he wasn’t allowed to, but he never worried about things like that. He said he was keeping it to use when the Reds tried to take the country over, but luckily we never needed it. Don’t you think that’s marvellous, being able to smell the gunpowder after all those years?”

  “I’m sorry you had to put up with it. I’m afraid it’s part of the system.”

  “But I enjoyed it. Nice young men, and that wonderful dog. It was like having my own little Royal Tournament, all to myself. Maria was very strong-minded. She insisted on seeing their search-warrant, and when they hadn’t got one she wouldn’t let them through her door. After all, it’s not as if you were visiting her.”

  “Good for her. We must all fight for our freedoms.”

  “I suppose it is all a consequence of this fuss about the poor dear Princess. Such a worry for their Majesties.”

  When it came to court life Aunt Bea, vague and hopeless though she seemed, could put two and two together. Even the banal adjectives showed how much she understood, and that raised the question of how much she had told Mrs Walsh. Everything, presumably. At least the remark provided an opening.

  “Oh, don’t let’s bother with a pot,” said Louise. “A bag in a mug is fine. You’re quite right about Mother and Father being worried stiff about Soppy—as a matter of fact that’s why Father asked me to come and see you.”

  “Oh, if only I could help. But it was such a mistake, don’t you think? Look what happened to dear Lady Bakewell—I knew her quite well, you know, and there was a definite likeness. HRH was greatly opposed to the marriage.”

  “Oh, Aunt Bea, you knew Granny better than anyone. Anything she was against was almost certainly a good thing.”

  “She was very experienced in court matters.”

  “All she wanted was trouble, especially with Mother and Father.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true, my dear, much of the time. But she was terribly clever how she set about it. If somebody had a weak point, she was sure to find it.”

  “And that’s all she still wants, isn’t it? I bet there’s some wicked stuff about Soppy in her letters.”

  “I’m afraid so, my dear. Maria was reading me parts of what she had to say only last evening.”

  “You see, that’s what Father wanted me to come and talk to you about. Of course most of what Granny says is nonsense, but the one thing we can’t afford is any of it coming out into the open just now.”

  “I assure you, my dear, it is all quite safe with me.”

  “Yes, of course. We all trust you absolutely. But it’s still a worry. And, Aunt Bea, it’s not just you.”

  “Who … surely you cannot think Maria …”

  Louise smiled reassuringly. It was difficult to tell someone that on past form they had a hundred-per-cent record in picking losers in the people-to-trust stakes.

  “Of course you know her best,” she said, “and you’re sure she’s all right. I know her a bit and I think so too. But Mother and Father don’t know her at all, so you can’t expect them … no, wait a bit … that’s not really the point. They’d still be worried, whoever had the papers. And according to the will it isn’t really supposed to be you at all.”

  “Oh, my dear, but it is. HRH specifically asked me to take charge of them if anything should happen to her.”

  “Did she really? You didn’t say so last time.”

  “Didn’t I? I know I do get rather muddled, but that’s always been quite clear in my mind.”

  “According to the will, Alex Romanov’s supposed to take charge of them.”

  “Oh, I’m having such a time with that young man! I scarcely dare answer the telephone unless Maria is in the room. I don’t know where I should be without her. She is so wonderfully composed and firm—of course she speaks to him in Russian, but I can tell from the tone. And only this week he has employed a solicitor to write to me in a really most abrupt manner. I do find that sort of thing so unsettling.”

  “Poor Aunt Bea. Have you talked to Jane Gordon-Byng?”

  “Oh, yes, more than once. I’m sure she is doing her best, but all she will say is that I must send her all the papers and then she will deal with Count Alex.”

  “Yes, that’s right. That would be much the best.”

  “But she doesn’t speak Russian.”

  “She’ll get someone from the Foreign Office, or something. Please, Aunt Bea, can’t you see …”

  “Oh dear … Maria …”

  Aunt Bea had half-turned, as if expecting to find Mrs Walsh standing beside her to support her toppling resolution. Louise sensed an inward squaring of shoulders.

  “I can’t, you see,” said Aunt Bea.

  “Can’t?”

  “I promised.”

  “Promised Granny?”

  “Well. Yes.”

  “That you wouldn’t let the Palace have her papers?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you supposed to do?”

  “Do? Look at them, and then … oh dear …”

  “Give them to Alex Romanov? That’s what it says in the will.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Only after I’d looked at them and taken out the ones which might hurt people’s feelings. That’s why it’s so important Maria should help me read right through them first.”

  “What about the others, the ones you didn’t pass on?”

  “Well, burn them, I suppose.”

  (No, that was inconceivable. Or that Granny would have trusted the despised Aunt Bea with such a task, or indeed imagined that she herself wouldn’t outlive the poor old thing. Bloody woman. Women.)

  Louise kept her face of concern, and apparent belief in the fibs she had just been told.

  “That does make it tricky for you,” she said. “Personally I don’t think Granny had any right to ask you to do that. All she wanted was to go on making trouble for everyone after she was dead. I think you’ve got to grit your teeth and let me take the whole lot off to Jane, and then you can tell Alex Romanov that’s what you’ve done and you won’t be bothered any more.”

  “I can’t, my dear. I simply can’t.”

  Aunt Bea was becoming too distressed for Louise to persist on that tack.

  “Are you still paying Mrs Walsh for her help?” she said.

  “I hope nobody is going to tell me I should not.”

  “No, of course. It’s up to you. Only … well, I told Father what you’d said about her finding things a bit toug
h and he said he’d look into her pension. She’s got one, all right. It’s pre-war, but it’s index-linked now so she ought to just about get by. I mean, she shouldn’t be living on scraps from the tea-room.”

  Silence, and again the sensed stiffening of the will.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Bea.”

  “You’re doing your best, my dear, and really I’m very grateful, but … if I tell you something, will you promise not to breathe a word more about it to anyone?”

  “I might have to tell Father.”

  “Oh, I suppose … You see, my dear, Maria has a daughter.”

  “Yes, I know. She lives abroad, she said.”

  “Exactly, and the reason is that she’s a Mongol, poor thing. There’s a family who takes care of her—it’s somewhere quite primitive, because that’s the only thing Maria can afford. But that’s why she hasn’t any money. She’s extremely proud about not asking for help, and she would very much prefer not to have to tell anyone.”

  “Yes, I see. But surely …”

  “It is no use making suggestions. Maria has her own way of doing things. She is so very, very Russian. HRH was very Russian too, of course, but in a different way—Petersburg Russian, if you know what I mean. Maria comes from a good family, but I sometimes wonder if she doesn’t actually think more like one of those peasants you read about.”

  Louise understood at once. It was an example of Aunt Bea’s occasional perceptiveness that she should have latched on to something not at all obvious, a sort of primal simplicity, brutality almost, behind Mrs Walsh’s courtly façade. Not that the actual courts were really that far from barbarism. Louise remembered Father muttering once during some ceremonial function that a dish-washer service engineer slouched in front of his TV with his Heineken in his hand presented a more civilised spectacle.

  “Still,” she said, “you see … well, actually, Aunt Bea, I don’t really believe everything you were telling me just now. No, wait. I think, and Father does too, that the real reason for you trying to hang on to Granny’s papers for so long is that you need an excuse for paying Mrs Walsh to help you. You know she wouldn’t take it if you just gave it to her. No, I still haven’t finished. Father’s talked to the Palace about her pension, and they’d be quite happy to top it up a bit if there was a good reason for doing so, like helping pay for her daughter’s keep.”

  “But that’s the whole point, my dear. You simply can’t tell them that.”

  “They know already. I mean, they don’t know about Mrs Walsh needing help—they didn’t even know the daughter was still alive—it’s a bit of a medical record, actually—but they do know that she was Down’s syndrome. You see the security people had to check on Mrs Walsh—it’s a bit like sending the sniffer-dog in here—and they looked in the Palace files and they found somebody who remembered the Walshes back in Great-grandfather’s time. Do you understand?”

  Aunt Bea’s large white face had changed as Louise spoke. For a moment it looked as if she was about to burst into tears with the release of tension.

  “Well, my dear …” she breathed.

  “I mean you can’t go on helping her for ever, can you? But if we could get her a pension hike that would be something permanent.”

  “It would certainly be a solution. The difficulty is going to be to get Maria to ask for anything. She won’t like your knowing about her daughter—she won’t like it at all.”

  “I’ll just have to do my best to persuade her. Don’t worry. She can’t eat me.”

  Louise felt full of confidence as she walked down the hallway and out onto the landing. Things were going really well. Aunt Bea had as good as admitted her real reason for hanging on to Granny’s papers, and also seemed to think that a pension hike for Mrs Walsh would do the trick. Mrs Walsh herself now seemed less formidable, partly because of this progress but also because of the quasi-magical power of knowing her real name. Her description of the servants putting on plays for her family while they waited for the next train to hitch the coaches to made it almost certain that her real name had been Belayev, and not Belitzin. Alex had told Louise about the Belayev custom of employing servants who could also act; he’d been fairly insistent that there were no girls of Mrs Walsh’s age in the family, but perhaps she had been some kind of poor cousin, a hanger-on—not that poor, though, if there’d been jewels to sell and her mother had given her the great brooch she wore. Trivial mysteries, none of which Louise intended to explore or exploit just now.

  She raised the brass knocker, but the door opened before she could bang it. There was then almost a collision in the doorway as Mrs Walsh started forward instead of holding the door for Louise.

  “May I come in please?” said Louise.

  “It is much warmer in Beatrice’s apartment.”

  “I would rather talk to you in private.”

  For a moment Mrs Walsh didn’t move and seemed as if she wasn’t going to. Louise looked her in the eyes and deliberately, without words or gesture, pulled rank.

  “Very well,” said Mrs Walsh, but instead of standing aside backed off. Louise followed her into the hallway and closed the door. To her surprise she found not the mirror-image of Aunt Bea’s entrance which she’d been expecting but a much smaller lobby, with no doors opening from it and only a stairway winding up out of sight opposite the door. Mrs Walsh stood at the bottom of the stairs, blocking further progress. There was one weak bulb overhead, against the left wall a cheap chair with an army greatcoat flung across it, and a worn brown carpet on the floor and stairs. It was indeed icy cold. Mrs Walsh must have been waiting down here, wearing the greatcoat perhaps, while Louise talked to Aunt Bea.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this,” said Louise. “The thing is, I need your help. First I want to say how grateful we all are—my family, I mean—to you for taking Aunt Bea under your wing the way you have. We really do appreciate it. But we’re really worried about the way she’s insisting on hanging on to my grandmother’s papers. We don’t want to hurt her feelings, but she hasn’t got any right to be doing it.”

  “I cannot help. It is Beatrice’s own decision.”

  “Yes, I know. But I think what you can help with is the reasons why she’s doing it. Of course she says that it’s because my grandmother told her to, but actually I don’t believe that. I knew Granny pretty well, and I’m quite sure she wouldn’t have trusted Aunt Bea with a job like that. I think Aunt Bea probably had a vague feeling that Granny didn’t want the Palace to get their clutches on them which is probably true—that’s why she made Alex Romanov her literary executor—but we could easily have persuaded her to give them up if it wasn’t that they gave her an excuse for helping you financially, and she just wants to go on doing so as long as she can.”

  Mrs Walsh said nothing.

  “We aren’t against that,” said Louise. “That part of it’s no business of ours—it’s her own money—but it isn’t very satisfactory, is it? I mean, it can’t go on on that basis for ever. I’ve talked to my father, and he thinks we can come to a better arrangement.”

  Silence still, but was there a gleam in the greenish eyes?

  “They’ve looked up your husband’s file in the Palace,” said Louise, “and they’ve talked to someone who remembers you both …”

  “Who, may I ask?”

  “Lady Godstone.”

  Mrs Walsh nodded.

  “She remembered your daughter,” said Louise. “You said first time we met that you’d got one, and that she lived abroad, but it was only after talking to old Lady Godstone that anyone realised that you might need help looking after her. If they’d known, I’m sure they would have done something about increasing your pension ages ago, but …”

  “Your Highness is entirely mistaken.”

  The words came out with no anger or appeal, as toneless as a voice from a machine.

  “Oh?”

 
“It is true that I have a daughter. She lives abroad and I contribute to her upkeep. I have always done so, and will continue until one of us dies. I have never asked anyone for help and need none. If Beatrice chooses to pay me for my services, that is her own affair. I see no reason to doubt her word that the late Dowager Princess asked her to behave as she is doing. I cannot, whoever asks me, encourage her to break that trust. The wishes of the dead are to be respected. That is all I have to say.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake, Mrs Walsh. We’re not trying to buy you off. We genuinely feel we should help in a case like …”

  “I need no help. I have needed none all my life. What I have done I have done without help. If you wish, you may come and see how I live.”

  Without waiting to see whether Louise in fact did wish, Mrs Walsh turned and started to hobble up the stairs, crab-wise, putting her left foot up a step and leaning her weight on her stick while she hoisted her right foot up beside it. The process had the deftness of long practice, and looked almost graceful, as though Mrs Walsh’s powerful will was able to impose her own notions of order on the entropy of dissolution into old age. Louise followed her. The cold, if anything, increased as they went up.

  The stair-carpet reached only a couple of steps beyond the first turn. After that came bare boards. At the top was a low ceilinged landing, carpetless and bare apart from a small ebony table with one drawer, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. All the doors onto the landing were closed, but Mrs Walsh opened one and held it like a landlady showing prospective lodgers round her boarding house. Beyond the door was a large bare room, directly beneath the roof, to judge by the shape of the ceiling. Two grimy dormers showed the back of the brick crenellations of a parapet. The only furniture was an upright wooden chair beside a black pot-bellied stove in the middle of the far wall. The room was no warmer than the stairs, but smelt faintly of that special kind of rather peppery smoke you get when somebody has been trying to light a fire and failed. There was, in any case, nothing to burn, no log-basket or coke-scuttle.

  Louise walked into the room and turned. Mrs Walsh waited at the door. The tour continued. There was a bedroom, containing a bed, table with mirror, and chair, all old and plain; another room, smelling strongly of mothballs, with nothing in it but four old tin trunks against the walls, their lids stencilled “Major J. J. Walsh”; a kitchen with one chair and table and a condemnable gas stove; an icy bathroom with an equally dangerous-looking water-heater. The whole flat spoke of a life as bleak as those lived in the most basic and possessionless mud huts which Louise had been shown in the Sahel, but the inhabitants there had listlessly endured her coming, answered her translated questions in tones of no hope, stared at her with the large but lightless eyes of starvation. Mrs Walsh, though, seemed to vibrate with renewed energies as she hobbled round. The tap of her stick on the gnarled planking was a rattle of triumph. At last she turned and waited with an air of challenge beside the little black table on the landing. Louise felt an impulse to try and put Mrs Walsh off her balance by asking about this. It had an oddity about it. It was ugly but well-made, the only good piece of furniture in the whole flat, and as such seemed to have a symbolic quality, as if asserting something about Mrs Wash and her past life, rather in the way that the diamond brooch did. But this wasn’t a game, so she asked the expected question.