The Elderbrook Brothers

by Gerald Bullet

  ‘What’s Florrie doing to-day?’

  ‘Breaking up,’ said Kate.

  ‘So sorry.’ Felix waxed facetious. ‘Is the doctor with her?’

  ‘I mean the school, silly. As well you know. She’s rather indignant at being a day later than the Stanton boys. Especially as Aunt Ellen’s here.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Felix, recalling the talk about Aunt Ellen. ‘She arrived then?’

  ‘Yes, last night. You’ll see her presently. She’s out for a walk.’

  ‘All by herself?’

  ‘She’s great on walking. And likes being alone, I think. A rather sudden person. She vanished directly after breakfast.’

  Felix had been faintly disappointed to hear that a guest was expected for the holidays. It was not exactly that he wanted a monopoly of the Meldreths, but he felt that with a stranger there the atmosphere of the house could not be quite the same. He liked his pot pourri to have precisely the fragrance it had always had for him, with no admixture of alien scents.

  ‘Look, Kate. I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Elderbrook?’

  ‘Precisely!’ said Felix. ‘That’s just what I mean.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How would you like me to call you Miss Meldreth in future?’

  ‘I should hate it, because it isn’t my name. Captain Meldreth didn’t marry all three of us, you know. Only Mother.’

  ‘Well, Miss Whatever-it-is. Not Winter, is it?’

  ‘No.’ Kate dimpled, for one second looking like her mother whom in general she did not at all resemble. ‘If you call me Miss Winter they’ll think you mean Aunt Ellen. She’s Henry’s youngest sister. And Henry, if you remember, was Mother’s Number Two.’

  ‘The point is,’ said Felix, ‘I think it’s time you called me Felix.’

  ‘Well, I could, couldn’t I?’

  While Kate was pretending to consider the point Ellen Winter arrived back from her walk, and Felix, who was feeling very comfortable, had to dig himself out of his chair and be introduced to her. To his surprise he found she was not very much older than himself. So much the worse, he was inclined to think, for a middle-aged or elderly Aunt Ellen would have been the more likely to be lost in the background. He saw at once what Kate had meant by calling her sudden, though it was not exactly the right word. She had a very quick quiet way of moving. She did not smile easily. She seemed to listen with great intentness to what was said to her, but sometimes made no answer, or answered with a Yes or a No that left nothing more to be said. Her strange deep eyes and sallow complexion gave her a gipsyish quality, and Felix did not think he was going to like her much. But she had one great merit: she was not pretty.

  Unless they were mere children like Kate and Florrie, Felix nowadays was afraid of pretty girls. The heady sweetness of their charms made him selfconscious and maladroit, so that he felt loutish in their presence, and conversed with difficulty, and was ashamed of his secret delight in being near them. The extent of his confusion varied with the power of the attraction. The stronger his impulse to touch these exquisite blossoms (and if he did they would at once break into ten thousand pieces), the stronger the counter-impulse that kept him trembling at a distance. There was something curious about Ellen Winter that made him frequently look at her, against his will; but, interloper though she was, it could at least be urged in her defence that she was not particularly goodlooking, and on the whole Felix was inclined to forgive her for the indiscretion of existing.

  § 4

  On a morning of this same vacation, during which season Felix divided his time between the Meldreths and Tom Williams and Faith’s engaging inescapable children, his brother Guy, pleasantly conscious of his own importance, strode down a spacious sunlit street a hundred and fifty miles south-east of them. He was on his way to deliver, in the name of the bank that employed him, a courteous but clear ultimatum. It was a mission of no little delicacy, and he was secretly gratified—though hardly flattered, for he knew his worth—to have been chosen for it. Mingled with his personal satisfaction was an impersonal sense of the rightness of the choice and the reasons behind it. He was just the man for this diplomatic job. No junior person could have been entrusted with it, and to have sent a conspicuously senior man would have too much softened the implied rebuke to Mr Talavera, the erring client. He applauded the Manager’s choice of himself: Mr Baker had chosen as he himself would have done in Mr Baker’s place.

  If happiness implies contentment, Guy was not happy. But he was very much alive and alert. He was impatient because his destiny was so slow in shaping itself; for he could not and would not believe that it was his destiny to remain where he was in the world. Some years had passed since that merging of the Mercester County Bank with the more powerful Cousins Blade and Company, commonly known as Cousins, which had made possible his translation to London. Without conscious disloyalty to his native shire he was now a seasoned Londoner by adoption, member of the staff of a metropolitan branch of that world-famous banking house. Byford and Mercester, and even Upmarden itself, were left unregretfully behind him, in the discredited past. He hoped never to go back there, except on the most fleeting visits. He now lived, cheaply and abstemiously, in a bed-sittingroom at Walham Green. He did not smoke; he did not drink; he had no expensive habits or indulgences. These abstentions constituted a triumph of spirit over flesh, the control of a disposition by no means inclined towards the mean or the miserly. It was part not of any far-reaching plan (for he could not see a long way ahead) but of an interim policy for the conduct of a life in which independence and security were of first importance. He dressed with a carefully ordered casualness, made useful friends when he could, and nearly every month managed to ‘put by’ a pound or two out of his modest salary. Meanwhile he watched and prayed, keeping a sharp look-out for a chance to escape from his present routine, so sparing in its rewards, as by the grace of heaven and his own wits he had escaped from the farm and the family.

  For more reasons than one, Guy was glad to be calling on Mr James Talavera. It gave him a chance of becoming better acquainted with that shy, melancholy, middle-aged gentleman, whose business transactions, so far as the ledger revealed them, had for some time past excited his curiosity. One of the consolations of being a bank-clerk was that it gave one at least a glimpse of other people’s private affairs and created an agreeable illusion of holding their fortunes in the palm of one’s hand. It was amusing, too, to see the fluctuations in cordiality between the customers and the Manager, who was paid to value his fellows in terms of cash and credit and found no difficulty in doing so. Guy had noticed that some of the shadiest financial characters were the most magnificent in their general bearing: the contrast between their manners and their bank-balances was piquant. Mr Talavera belonged to neither of these categories. So far from affecting magnificence, he had the face of a disconsolate poet; and though his account was far from satisfactory in its general contour, for it went down as often as it went up and it was too often overdrawn, no one yet had cast doubts on his solvency. Unless, indeed, this very visit Guy was paying him reflected some such doubt on the part of Mr Baker, in spite of his putting the blame for it, as usual, on Head Office, which notoriously looked askance at unsecured overdrafts. Mr Talavera was the father of a daughter, a pretty and demure young creature who presented herself at the counter two or three times a week with cheques to be cashed or credited. Guy had no interest in the child (she was scarcely more); he certainly had no thought of her now; but her visits to the Bank, like those of certain other young women, from secretaries and girl-cashiers to the dazzling young actress Rosalind Farr, were among the minor amenities of his situation.

  Mr Talavera, though he seldom took a photograph and never with any enthusiasm, had once been a photographer by profession and was still so described in the Bank’s records. His premises, number 57b, took some little finding; but Guy found them at last, situated above a florist’s shop which he had passed many a time on his way to an
d from the bus. They were approached by a narrow side stairway, at the top of whose second stage Guy came upon a door with a letter-box and a brass knocker, above which, as if hoping to escape attention, a card was affixed (with two rusty-headed drawing-pins) bearing the one, odd, improbable word: Talavera.

  He knocked; waited; knocked again. The door was opened by a girl he did not at first recognize.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is Mr James Talavera at home?’

  She was a shade less pretty than he had generally thought her, but in a way more appealing. Her youngness, which was like that of a week-old foal, made him feel older than his years and vaguely protective.

  ‘I’m not sure. Do you want to be taken?’ Seeing his blankness she explained: ‘Do you want your photograph taken?’

  ‘No. Oh no.’ A smile warmed his voice. ‘I’m from the Bank.’

  ‘From the Bank?’

  ‘From Cousins Bank,’ said Guy firmly, ‘where your father has an account.’ He had suspected her of obstructiveness, but seeing himself mistaken he hastened to say, with another salvo of charm: ‘I’m on the staff there. I’ve often seen you.’

  ‘Me? Oh yes. I think I’ve seen you too. You sit at the back somewhere, don’t you?’ He smiled agreement and she said: ‘I’ll tell my father. Will you come in?’

  Guy’s quarry was discovered in a large, high, bare room which had obviously been a photographer’s studio but was now being put to other, vaguer, and more general uses. He was sitting at a round, one-legged, mahogany table, a smallish baldish yet somehow boyish man, dreaming amid a litter of books, papers, wire trays, and the unwashed implements of a late breakfasting. Light slanted down on him from a tall window; above him was a skylight, half-curtained, and behind him a square sky-blue screen on wheels. Just in front of this screen, at ceiling height, ran a horizontal pole from which depended dark velvet curtains, now looped back at each side. The total effect was at once theatrical and homely. Mr Talavera might almost have been posed at his table, ready for the curtain to rise on the first act. But there was nothing studied or selfconscious about the man himself. He was ordinary and friendly: ordinary with a difference, and friendly with the merest hint of shyness. His long dolorous nose and wide blue eyes gave him a touch of distinction.

  ‘Someone from the Bank to see you, Jimmie,’ said Miss Talavera.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Talavera, rousing from his dream. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Guy. The ‘sir’ was not obsequious. It was Guy’s way of striking a note of hearty good breeding. ‘It’s about your account, of course.’ He glanced questioningly towards the girl.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said his host. ‘My daughter Nora. Mr …?’

  ‘Elderbrook,’ said Guy. ‘From Cousins Bank,’ he added, not sure that his mission was quite understood.

  ‘She calls me Jimmie,’ said Mr Talavera, ‘but she’s my daughter for all that. And my confidential secretary. Nothing wrong, I hope?’ A distracted look came into his eyes. ‘Sit down, won’t you? Have a drink.’

  As the only chair in sight was already occupied by Mr Talavera himself, Guy remained standing. And the offer of a drink seeming too vague to require an answer he thought it best to proceed straight to business.

  ‘I’m instructed to give you the Manager’s compliments, Mr Talavera, and to ask you if you will be so good as to pay in early, today.’

  ‘Oh? Why’s that?’ He turned to Nora. ‘Anything in the post, my child?’

  ‘Nothing of that sort,’ said Nora. She glanced at Guy: ‘How much?’

  ‘There’s a cheque of yours in the clearing this morning,’ said Guy, addressing himself to Talavera, ‘payable to Garter Shortt & Entwistle.’

  ‘Quick work,’ said Talavera. ‘They only had it yesterday.’

  ‘It’s for £160,’ said Guy, and smiled.

  It seemed unnecessary to say more, since this client must know as well as he did that there was not that amount to his credit.

  ‘And you want me to pay in to meet it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘That’s the position.’

  ‘Dear me, what a pity!’ But still his thoughts seemed elsewhere. ‘Nora ducky, any whisky left?’

  ‘Not for me, please,’ said Guy.

  ‘If not, run round and fetch a bottle, there’s a good girl. I’ve got one golden rule in life, Mr …’

  ‘Elderbrook.’

  ‘Precisely. One golden rule, I was saying. When you come to your last half-sovereign, don’t save it, spend it. Spend it on something you don’t need.’

  Nora was setting out tumblers on a corner of the table which she had cleared for that purpose. She went out of the room and presently came back carrying a siphon of soda-water and a bottle half-full of whisky. With his gaze fixed on her father Guy lost sight of her for a moment; then, from behind the screen, she suddenly appeared dragging a chair for him to sit down on. He hurried forward to relieve her of the burden, thanked her warmly, said ‘You have it, please: I’ll stand ‘, and after some amiable argument was persuaded to sit down and draw up to the table. Nora was dark and rosy-cheeked, with the rounded comeliness of her seventeen years. She had the grace of a kitten and the bloom of a flower, and her self-possessed grown-up manners somehow only emphasized her youth. Taking no notice whatever of his disclaimers she handed him the potion which her father poured out for him.

  He took it, at last, meekly. He was half-amused and half-suspicious. He had never tasted whisky, and he wondered what was behind this unexpected hospitality. But he was not set in his notions; he was very willing to learn; and if this was the way a business talk should be conducted it was high time he knew about it.

  ‘The trouble is, sir, that the Manager will feel obliged to return the cheque unpaid, unless you can provide funds to meet it.’

  Mr Talavera looked shocked and sad. ‘He wouldn’t do that, surely?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. By four o’clock,’ said Guy, eyeing his still untasted whisky. ‘Head Office,’ he explained, with a sudden dazzling smile, ‘takes a very strong line about unauthorized overdrafts.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time the account’s been overdrawn.’

  ‘Not the first, but the worst,’ countered Guy. ‘You’d like to see the figures, I expect. I’ve a note of them here.’ He handed a slip of paper.

  ‘It’s not,’ said his host presently, after sorrowfully examining the figures, ‘it’s not that I don’t want to provide the funds, my dear boy. I’d like nothing better. It’s simply that I haven’t got any. If you were to hand me a hundred sovereigns I’d pay them in with the greatest pleasure in life. But, not having them, can’t be done. You see my point?’

  Since he had delivered his message and received an unequivocal answer, there was no logical reason for Guy to prolong the interview. But the look with which Mr Talavera now confronted him made him curiously reluctant to get up and go. Besides, he had not finished his whisky. Funny stuff. He was hard put to it to conceal his dislike of it.

  ‘But,’ said Mr Talavera, ‘if that cheque is dishonoured it will be a very sad day for me indeed.’

  His quick, gay, apologetic, rueful smile had the effect of sudden sunlight in a wintry scene. He had the look of a boy of twelve.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Guy.

  ‘Yes,’ poor Jimmie went on, ‘it was going to be a very nice little deal. That trifling cheque represents a ten per cent deposit on the purchase of a useful little property.’

  ‘And you’ll lose it. Dashed hard lines,’ said Guy, taking another sip.

  ‘That doesn’t trouble me. I don’t want it. And between you and me, dear boy, I couldn’t pay for it if I did.’

  Guy raised his eyebrows. ‘And yet you paid a deposit? If you don’t complete the purchase you’ll lose that hundred and sixty.’

  ‘I don’t want it, but there’s somebody that does, don’t you see? By getting in first I stand to make a useful little sum. We’re talking in confidence, aren’t we, Mr …?’
/>
  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘As a business man you may ask why I didn’t merely buy an option.’

  ‘That was in my mind,’ said Guy mendaciously, looking very shrewd.

  ‘Answer: because they wouldn’t let me have an option. And so …’

  Guy did some quick thinking. The germ of an astonishing idea had come into his head. He felt old and bold, and highly stimulated; and not with whisky either, he told himself.

  ‘Of course, Mr Talavera, if we could be sure——’

  ‘Sure, you mean, that I’m on a good thing?’

  ‘Exactly. Well, in that case … you understand that I have no authority, but …’ He smiled meaningly, one man of the world to another.

  ‘But it might make a difference, eh?’

  ‘It might, certainly.’

  ‘To your attitude to my little cheque.’

  ‘To the Bank’s attitude,’ Guy modestly corrected him. ‘I’m only a——’

  ‘Yes, quite,’ said Mr Talavera. ‘A word with the Manager, eh? From me or from you? I wonder.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Baker will be happy to see you, if you like to come along,’ said Guy, in his grandest manner. ‘But, on the other hand——’

  ‘It would come better from you, dear boy?’

  He smiled winningly. Guy shrugged his shoulders and looked modest once again.

  ‘Right!’ said Mr Talavera. ‘In the strictest confidence, then——’

  ‘That’s understood.’

  ‘——in the strictest confidence,’ he repeated joyously, ‘this is how the matter stands.’

  It was wonderful. They understood each other perfectly.

  After ten minutes’ earnest conference Guy rose to take his leave. Mr Talavera shook him warmly by the hand.

  ‘You’ll do you best, 1 know. Will you telephone me?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Guy, consideringly. ‘I’ll look in again if I may. It’ll take a little time, you know. It’s not only Baker. He may insist on consulting Head Office. I don’t say he will, but he may.’