‘I don’t mean that,’ Jeremy frowned. ‘I mean, I don’t mind about the house, it’s hideous, and most of the things are quite hideous too: but these pieces you’ve been pointing out, they’re not only valuable, they’re irreplaceable, aren’t they? And some of them unique. One shouldn’t do it.’
Tom’s heart lurched like a pendulum jolted off balance. What a fool he had been to suggest valuing the things. By this blunder he may have wrecked everything. And for what. What did it matter to him how much Aurora was insured for? His fatal stupid good-natured sense of obligation! Tread softly, Tom, he admonished himself, or you may wake someone out of his dreams. You can no longer manipulate people once they realise they are being manipulated, and the surest way to make a person reconsider an unsuitable decision is by agreeing with him.
‘You’re right, of course. One shouldn’t. It was never anything but a ridiculous impossible prank. A joke not in the best of taste. We’ll scrub it. Let’s go back to the kitchen, it’s time we had a look at our cake.’
Jeremy gave him an odd glance beneath a crooked eyebrow but offered no reply. Nothing more was said on the subject; it was dropped by tacit agreement.
But not, one may surmise, forgotten.
*
The birthday party was a huge success. Dinah was quite incoherent with pleasure at Jeremy’s present. She turned a deep pink and flung herself against him with such force that he fairly staggered back (or pretended to). It was not only for the gift itself that she felt such delight, but because it seemed to her a token of his special affection for her.
‘Ghosts & Tigers’ was enjoyed every bit as much as Jeremy had said it would be. The laughing excited children clambered over him, clinging to him like monkeys on a tree, as they came in to tea.
‘Who would imagine such small creatures could be so wearing,’ Jeremy marvelled afterwards.
‘You deserve the DCM for your gallantry,’ Tom acknowledged murmurously.
All was peace under the quiet sky beside the lake. The silence broken only occasionally by a random remark. They were drinking Camparis, which seemed a pleasant thing to drink on a summer evening as the sun shot flames through the trees beyond. Flight after flight of starlings passed high overhead, like commuters rushing to catch their homebound trains, Tom thought. He closed his eyes.
‘You asleep, Tom?’
‘Not really, no. Thinking … ’ He added after a pause: ‘Thinking there’s no reason why all that good stuff should be destroyed in the fire, is there? All we have to do is to remove it to a place of safety beforehand. Store it somewhere no nosy prying person will find it and jump to awkward conclusions.’
‘Such as where?’ Jeremy demanded.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think. Some old barn or outhouse that’s not being used, there must be plenty of those on the estate. What about the one on 9-acre field?’
‘Locke uses it. Nothing on the estate would do. Besides, how would you propose to transport the furniture there without anyone seeing? You’d need a van. Even then I don’t see how you can expect their absence from the house not to be noticed.’
‘I wasn’t proposing to remove them under Rory’s nose, what do you take me for? It would have to be done after everyone had left, obviously. But really the details are not that important. What I was contemplating was the thought of you having all that stuff, about fifteen thousand pounds worth, safely tucked away somewhere only you knew of. A secret cache, a nice little nest-egg all to yourself. Better than money in the bank. You’d be laughing. Rory would already have had her whack for them from the insurance, so you wouldn’t be doing her out of anything. It would be sheer gravy. And no one would know about it but yourself. Not the bank manager. Not the Taxman. No one. And you could sell it piece by piece at your own sweet will.’
‘By God!’ Jeremy exclaimed with an awestruck expression. ‘What a tempting prospect!’
‘It’s worth thinking about.’
‘It certainly is. I mean, it makes the whole operation so much more interesting when one is going to get something out of it oneself.’
‘Yes, it does lend the scheme a novel charm, doesn’t it? I thought you’d feel that.’
They looked at one another with blank questioning eyes, and Tom suddenly burst out laughing. After a moment Jeremy caught the infection. They laughed helplessly on and on, exploding into fresh gusts of mirth, like giggling schoolboys. Their mirth died away, leaving them grave as judges, except that from time to time, as they caught one another’s eye, their composure would break up into fresh spurts of spontaneous laughter shaken from them in little snorts.
They shook themselves, smoothed back their hair and uttered some profound sighs.
‘No, it could be done, you know,’ Jeremy said seriously, ‘if one could get hold of a van and rent a lock-up garage where one could stow the stuff.’
Tom frowned and shook his head.
‘Too risky. Wouldn’t it be better and a much simpler arrangement to store it in a furniture depository?’
‘Yes … yes … I suppose it would … ’
‘I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll arrange for an estimator to come and see the stuff the next time Madam is going up to town. Then we fix a date for it to be removed after you and Madam have gone. And I’ll leave the Inventory for you at the Bank. How’s that?’
‘What a cunning brainy devil you are! I am lost in admiration for your faculty for coming out with string after string of neat and purposeful plans. I don’t know how you do it! A great entrepreneur has been lost in you, Tom. You seem to think of everything. I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you for all this.’
‘Oh well … no one’s ever come up with a better answer to that than the Phoenicians when they invented money,’ Tom said with a laugh.
An indefinable expression flickered momentarily across Jeremy’s face, as though he’d been punched unawares.
‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know the Phoenicians were to blame for all our troubles. Yes, of course, I couldn’t expect you to be put through all this for nothing, naturally. It’s just that I hadn’t given the matter any thought. What sort of figure had you in mind?’
‘If I wasn’t so damned hard-up I’d do it for love. But without some hard cash in hand I wouldn’t be able to carry it out for you. I really only want my expenses, plus a little bit to tide me over.’ He turned his hand at the wrist in a careless gesture, and added with a shrug: ‘Say fifteen hundred — to pare it down to the bare bone, knowing you’re none too flush yourself at the moment.’ He turned his head away, plucked a blade of grass, and put it between his lips. ‘You don’t say anything. I hope you don’t think that’s unreasonable?’
‘My dear boy, it isn’t that. I wouldn’t grudge you a penny of it. You deserve twice as much. Yes, you do. And I honestly wish there were some way I could give it to you, but I don’t know where I’m to find such a sum.’
‘We’re not going to let money come between us, are we? I’m sure you’ll find it somehow.’
‘You couldn’t possibly — ?’
‘I can see I shall have to explain to you how I’ve scraped the sum down to these Scroogelike dimensions. It is a crucial part of our project that Kate and the children go abroad as soon as school breaks up. It doesn’t have to be anywhere expensive. I had in mind, some little out of the way place in Belgium or Brittany perhaps where they could stay at a cheap pension, or maybe a farmhouse, for a month. I reckon, if they’re very careful, Kate could manage on about £750. It isn’t really very much these days, you know; it doesn’t allow for any luxuries: I’m keeping it as slim as I can. Then there are my expenses, say another two hundred or so. Plus a little something for the job itself: I didn’t think £500 was too much to ask.’
‘No, indeed.’
‘If you can see any way the figure can fairly be reduced … ’
‘Well, I was wondering, couldn’t Kate and the kids go, just temporarily, to her parents?’ he ventured. ‘That
would make an enormous difference.’
‘No,’ Tom said decisively, ‘that wouldn’t do at all. It is essential for them to go abroad, somewhere too far for them to be in contact. I can’t risk their getting it into their heads to tootle down to see their old Dad as a surprise; it could ruin everything, wreck the whole enterprise.’
‘Ah! I suppose it would.’
‘Well, look, if they’re over here they’re not likely to stay away from me for a month. Why should they? It would seem most unnatural. And you must surely realise, Jerry old son, that I can’t begin to put our plan into action as soon as I am on my own here, it would be much too suspicious. I must carry on in my usual way, looking after things here, anyhow for two or three weeks, before I’m called away suddenly to my father’s sickbed, or whatever it is.’ He paused and gazed up at the pallid clouds gathering against the darkening sky. ‘If I thought it was possible for you to carry out the job on your own, I’d say: “Fire away and good luck!” No pun intended. Or we can scrub the whole thing.’ He got to his feet, not looking at the other. A rising breeze sent a faint shiver across the pewter sheet of water.
‘No, no,’ Jeremy said. ‘I’ll get the money somehow.’
‘Of course you will,’ Tom said. He stooped to pick up the glasses and empty bottles, and they walked towards the house. ‘Everything’ll be all right, you’ll see.’
*
Aurora lost the emerald and sapphire ring Jeremy had given her for an engagement ring. Naturally, she adored it. Naturally, she was very upset when she could not find it in her jewel-case. Since she was always mislaying things, since her pathway through life was strewn with her lost belongings, no one else in the household was unduly alarmed by her cries of dismay and her agitation, because they were so accustomed to it; sooner or later the missing object was sure to turn up. It must be admitted that usually the things that went absent were of no great value in themselves, and their disappearance was more a matter of irritation and inconvenience. But this was a ring. Worth — so she said — two thousand pounds. Nothing so valuable had been lost since she was at Upperdown.
Mrs. Savage and Mrs. Slaughter understood from familiarity with the situation that she was not really accusing them when she cried: ‘Mrs. Slaughter (or Mrs. Savage), where have you put my keys?’ Or ‘What have you done with my chequebook, or stockings, or sunglasses, or silver hairbrush?’ But this, they could see, was a more serious matter. It made them feel awkward, uncomfortable, when she asked them boldly: ‘When did you last see my sapphire and emerald ring?’
‘I don’t know as I’ve ever set eyes on it,’ Mrs. Savage declared.
‘Oh, come on! You’ve seen it on my hand a thousand times. You must have,’ Aurora insisted impatiently.
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Are you telling me that you’ve never seen me take it out of my jewel-case, or put it back in?’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t say. I don’t take that much notice,’ Mrs. Savage remarked with the icy hauteur of a duchess.
‘Well, whether you have or you haven’t, all I’m saying is, it’s got to be found,’ Aurora declared with understandable irritation.
Mrs. Slaughter and Mrs. Savage could quite see that it had to. All the same they didn’t like it. It made them nervous. They felt down the sides of armchairs (discovering 2 pens, scissors, glasses, a biscuit, a chocolate, several letters, and even in one of the sofas a mouse-nest), moved the furniture, lifted rugs, opened numerous little porcelain, cloisonné, and wooden boxes, and even searched through the contents of the dustbins. They assisted Mrs. Eskdale to remove all the garments from her wardrobe to go through the pockets and feel the hems of lined coats. Aurora herself emptied out her various handbags. Every likely and unlikely place was turned out.
Tom, the constant friend, lent a hand. Only Jeremy did not bother to participate in the crisis. He stayed out of harm’s way in the library as usual, reading the papers and drinking, only saying in his indolent way, when reproached by Aurora or Tom: ‘It’ll turn up eventually. There’s no need for me to join in the general hullabaloo.’
And he was right. It did.
After five days Mrs. Savage saw it in front of the 18th century clock in the centre of the chimney-shelf in the drawing room.
‘Found your ring then, I see,’ she remarked, picking up the wet towels her employer had dropped on the bathroom floor. ‘Shouldn’t leave it there if I were you, or it may go missing again.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Aurora frowned in on her from the doorway.
‘Your ring. First thing I saw when I entered the lounge’ (as Mrs. Savage persisted in describing the drawing-room) ‘right in the middle of the mantelpiece. Well! I thought, so it’s turned up at last, after all that to-do. Fancy!’
‘So you found it.’
‘I didn’t find it, I just saw it there when I went in.’
‘Did you now!’ murmured her employer, giving her the strangest look, and left the room.
Ellen Savage stared after her, her jaw dropping, her dark-skinned face turning a dusky red. ‘My Gawd,’ she thought in a fury, ‘of all the bleeding impudence! She thinks I pinched her rotten ring. Then lost me nerve when it looked like making trouble and brought it back. Bloody cheek! That’s it then. That’s her lot. I’m packing it in. I’m not working my fingers to the bone for someone who looks sideways at me, no thanks, I’ve had it.’
She went down and informed Mrs. Slaughter of her decision. Mrs. Slaughter nodded.
‘I don’t blame you, dear, I’d feel the same myself. Anyway I wouldn’t want to stick on here on my own. I feel like a change. Might give up work altogether for a bit. Do meself a favour, eh?’ she laughed. ‘Tea or coffee, dear?’ she asked, putting on the kettle.
Silly of Mrs. Savage really to take offence at a muttered phrase and a glance, because neither in fact was intended for her, they were directed at her employer’s husband. Aurora had seen in that moment that Jeremy must have taken the missing ring. For a minute she was very angry, but then decided not to make anything of it, since he had returned it. She would let the matter drop … for the time being. Later, when he was off-guard, she would catch him unawares and discover what he had been up to.
The women did not give notice, that was not their way. They simply failed to turn up again. Nothing to be done about it. It was maddening for Aurora, because almost everyone in the village was inter-related, it produced in them a clannish loyalty, which would make it well-nigh impossible to replace them.
‘Well, I’m not going to let it spoil my holiday,’ Aurora asserted. ‘Tom’ll look after things.’
Jeremy’s ploy had been very successful. He had borrowed the ring to raise some easy cash to put on a double at Kempton Park, which came up. A great piece of luck (‘Not luck,’ Jeremy insisted to Tom. ‘All due to my knowledge of form. I’ve been watching those particular gees all season.’) He got the ring out of hock, paid Tom the fifteen hundred he wanted, and had enough left from the transaction to feel very jolly and well-served by Fate. He’d won £5,000.
It was a sheer bonus that the cleaning women had taken umbrage and walked out.
Now everything was in position, ready for the ‘Off’.
SEVEN
The Eskdales departed for Bermuda. It was nice for the Ransomes to have the place to themselves once more, almost like having a home of their own again. The last weekend before Kate and the children were leaving, things between the two of them were practically back to normal. Kate seemed to have got over her dislike of his love-making at last.
Tom groped for her hand as they lay on the sunbaked grass, listening to the children shrieking at play in the distance. The scent of pinks from the nearby border drifted to them on the breeze … A plane sawed through the air … Birds called from tree to tree like peasants in a Naples slum … A pair of Marbled Whites made their way up an invisible spiral staircase.
It was wonderfully peaceful: a moment to remember, a moment of pure happiness. Tom wanted to
ask her if she was happy, as he would have done once upon a time without a second’s thought. He wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right. Only he knew she wouldn’t believe him; he had made that optimistic prognostication too often for it to be reassuring. It isn’t only cries of dolour and woe, like Wolf! Wolf! which come to be disregarded; it works as untrustingly the other way round. Well, she would discover the reality of it for herself soon.
It had not been easy to persuade her. She said they couldn’t possibly afford it. Until he told her Jeremy had put £50 on a double for him, and it had come off. Which was near enough to the truth.
‘I wish we weren’t going without you,’ Kate said, the day before they left. They were going to a small cheap pension near Le Zoute, with its shallow sandy shore and tranquil sea, a resort lying between Ostend and the Dutch border. It was a placid pastel little town, ideal for children with its safe bathing, a place from which it was easy to make expeditions to Bruges and Antwerp. They had taken the children there before when they were three and five, and had found it a charming innocent place.
‘It’s only for a short while, love. I must stay here, I couldn’t let down Rory and Jeremy after all their kindness to us. It’ll do you all a world of good. Biddy badly needs a change of air; and as for you, if you don’t get a real break … I’ll write every day and ring you every evening.’
On the morrow he drove them down to Dover and put them on the Ostend boat. Among the pushing bumping passengers, he found one moment alone with Kate. Looking into her eyes, trying to read her face, he said with sudden urgency: ‘Do you still care?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘I mean, do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ he muttered like a shamefaced Englishman, and pecked her cheek.
Tom had no time to feel lonely, there was so much to see to. Luckily Aurora had taken his advice when he suggested her taking Upperdown off the market for a time simply because it is never a good idea to leave a property up for sale for too long, it’s off-putting. Moreover, since there were at present no cleaners it would save a lot of spit-and-polish for Tom.
A Game of Consequences Page 10
