by Jonathan Coe
‘Well, I don’t know …’ says Mortimer. ‘Perhaps he has other things to think about. Other priorities.’
‘Other priorities?’
‘You know, the … welfare of the animals. The atmosphere of the farm.’
‘Atmosphere?’
‘Sometimes there can be more to life than making a profit, Dorothy.’
She stares at him. Perhaps it is her fury at finding herself addressed in a tone which she remembers from many years ago – the tone which an adult would adopt towards a trusting child – which provokes the insolence of her reply.
‘You know, Daddy always said that you and Aunt Tabitha were the odd ones of the family.’
She puts down her glass, pushes past her uncle and moves quickly to join in a conversation on the other side of the room.
∗
Meanwhile, up in the nursery, there are two more Winshaws with a part to play in the family’s history. Roddy and Hilary, aged nine and seven, have tired of the rocking-horse, the model railway, the table-tennis set, the dolls and the puppets. They have even tired of their attempts to rouse Nurse Gannet by tickling her softly under the nose with a feather. (The feather in question having previously belonged to a sparrow which Roddy shot down with his airgun earlier that afternoon.) They are on the point of abandoning the nursery altogether and going downstairs to eavesdrop on the party – although, to tell the truth, the thought of walking down those long, dimly lit corridors and staircases frightens them somewhat – when Roddy has a flash of inspiration.
‘I know!’ he says, seizing upon a little pedal car and squeezing himself with difficulty into the driver’s seat. ‘I’ll be Yuri Gagarin, and this is my space-car, and I’ve just landed on Mars.’
For like every other boy of his age, Roddy worships the young cosmonaut. Earlier in the year he was even taken to see him when he visited the Earl’s Court exhibition, and Mortimer had held him aloft so that he could actually shake hands with the man who had voyaged among the stars. Now, crammed awkwardly into the undersized car, he starts to pedal with all his might while making guttural engine noises. ‘Gagarin to Mission Control. Gagarin to Mission Control. Are you reading me?’
‘Well who am I supposed to be then?’ says Hilary.
‘You can be Laika, the Russian space dog.’
‘But she’s dead. She died in her rocket. Uncle Henry told me.’
‘Well just pretend.’
So Hilary starts scampering around on all fours, barking madly, sniffing at the Martian rocks and scratching in the dust. She keeps it up for about two minutes.
‘This is really boring.’
‘Shut up. This is Major Gagarin to Mission Control. I have safely landed on Mars and am now looking for signs of intelligent life. All I can see so far are some – hey, what’s that?’
A bright object on the nursery floor has caught his eye, and he pedals towards it as fast as he can: but Hilary gets there first.
‘A half-crown!’
She covers the coin with her hand and her eyes shine with triumph. Then Major Gagarin steps out of his space-car and stands over her.
‘I saw it first. Give me that.’
‘Not on your life.’
Slowly but purposefully, Roddy places his right foot over Hilary’s hand and begins to press down.
‘Give it to me!’
‘No!’
Her voice rises to a scream as Roddy increases the pressure, until there is a sudden crack: the sound of bones crushing and splintering. Hilary howls as her brother lifts his foot and picks up the coin with calm satisfaction. There is blood on the nursery floor. Hilary sees this and her screams get shriller and wilder until they are loud enough to wake even Nurse Gannet from her cocoa-induced stupor.
∗
Downstairs, the dinner party is by now well advanced. The guests have whetted their appetite with a light soup (stilton and steamed pumpkin) and have made short work of their trout (poached in dry Martini with a nettle sauce). While waiting for the third course to arrive, Lawrence, who is seated at the head of the table, excuses himself and leaves the room; on his return, he stops to have a few words with Mortimer, the guest of honour, who is seated at the centre. Lawrence’s intention is to make a discreet inquiry into the condition of their sister.
‘How d’you reckon the old loony’s bearing up?’ he whispers.
Mortimer winces, and his reply has a reproving tone: ‘If you’re referring to Tabitha, then you’ll find that she’s behaving herself perfectly. Just as I said she would.’
‘I saw you both having a bit of a chinwag this afternoon on the croquet lawn. You looked rather serious, that’s all. There wasn’t anything up, was there?’
‘Of course not. We’d just been for a walk together.’ Mortimer sees an opportunity to change the subject at this point. ‘The gardens are looking magnificent, by the way. Especially your jasmine: the scent was quite overpowering. Wouldn’t mind learning your secret, one of these days.’
Lawrence laughs cruelly. ‘Sometimes I think you’re as bats as she is, old boy. There’s no jasmine in our garden, I can vouch for it. Not even a sprig!’ He glances up and notices a huge silver tureen being carried in at the far end of the dining room. ‘Hello, here comes the next course.’
∗
Midway through her saddle of curried hare, Rebecca hears a diffident cough at her side.
‘What is it, Pyles?’
‘A word in private, if I may, Mrs Winshaw. It’s a matter of some urgency.’
They withdraw into the transverse corridor and when Rebecca returns, a minute later, her face is pale.
‘It’s the children,’ she tells her husband. ‘There’s been some silly accident in the nursery. Hilary’s hurt her hand. I’m going to have to take her to the hospital.’
Mortimer half-rises from his seat in panic.
‘Is it serious?’
‘I don’t think so. She’s just a bit upset.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, you’ll have to stay here. I doubt if I’ll be much more than an hour. You stay and enjoy your party.’
∗
But Mortimer does not enjoy his party. The only aspect of it which he was enjoying in the first place was the company of Rebecca, upon whom he has come to depend more and more in the last few years as a means of shielding himself from his hated family. Now, in her absence, he is forced to spend most of the evening in conversation with his sister Olivia; dry, sour-faced Olivia, who is so implacably loyal to the Winshaw pedigree that she even married one of her own cousins, and who now drones on remorselessly about the management of her estate and her husband’s impending knighthood for services to industry and the political future of her son Henry who has at least been clever enough to see that it’s the Labour Party which offers him the best prospect of a cabinet position by the age of forty. Mortimer nods tiredly throughout her monologue, and takes an occasional glance at the other faces around the table: Dorothy shovelling food into her mouth; her sheep-faced fiancé sitting morosely beside her; Mark’s ratty, calculating eyes maintaining their restless vigil; sweet, bewildered Mildred telling some shy anecdote to Thomas, who listens with all the frosty indifference of a merchant banker about to withhold a loan from a small businessman. And there, of course, is Tabitha, sitting erect at the table and not saying a word to anyone. He notices that she consults her pocket watch every few minutes, and that more than once she asks one of the footmen to check the time on the grandfather clock in the hallway. Otherwise, she sits perfectly still and keeps her eyes fixed upon Lawrence. It’s almost as if she is waiting for something to happen.
∗
Rebecca returns from the hospital just as coffee is about to be served. She slips in beside her husband and squeezes his hand.
‘She’ll be fine,’ she says. ‘Nurse Gannet is just putting her to bed.’
Lawrence stands up, raps on the table with his dessertspoon and proposes a toast.
‘To Mortimer!’ he says. ‘Health a
nd happiness on his fiftieth birthday.’
Muted echoes of ‘Mortimer’ and ‘Health and happiness’ resound throughout the room as the guests drain off whatever is left in their glasses. Then there is a loud and contented sigh, and somebody says:
‘Well! It has been a most pleasant evening.’
All heads turn. Tabitha has spoken.
‘It’s so nice to get out and about. You’ve no idea. Only – ’ Tabitha frowns, and her face assumes a lost, downcast expression. ‘Only … I was just thinking how nice it would have been, if Godfrey could have been here tonight.’
There is a long pause; broken eventually by Lawrence, who says, with an attempt at jovial sincerity: ‘Quite so. Quite so.’
‘He was so fond of Mortimer. Morty was most definitely his favourite brother. He told me so, many times. He much preferred Mortimer to Lawrence. He was quite decided about it.’ She frowns again, and looks around the table: ‘I wonder why?’
Nobody answers. Nobody meets her eye.
‘I suppose it’s because … I suppose it’s because he knew – that Mortimer had no intention of killing him.’
She watches her relatives’ faces, as if looking for confirmation. Their silence is horror-struck and absolute.
Tabitha lays her napkin down on the table, pushes her chair back and rises painfully to her feet.
‘Well, it’s time I was getting to bed. Up Wood Hill to Blanket Fair, as Nanny used to say to me.’ She walks towards the dining-room door, and it becomes hard to tell whether she is still talking to the guests or merely to herself. ‘Up the long and winding stairs; up the stairs, to say my prayers.’ She turns, and there can be no doubt that her next question is addressed to her brother.
‘Do you still say your prayers, Lawrence?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘I should say them tonight, if I were you.’
∗
Drained of feeling, Rebecca lay back against the thick bank of pillows. Slowly she stretched her legs apart and massaged her thigh, easing the soreness. Beside her, his head weighing heavy upon her shoulder, Mortimer was already sinking into sleep. It had taken him almost forty minutes to reach his climax. It took longer every time; and although he was on the whole a gentle and considerate lover, Rebecca was beginning to find these marathon sessions something of a trial. Her back ached and her mouth was dry, but she did not reach out for the bedside glass of water in case she disturbed her husband.
He started to mumble something drowsy and incoherent. She stroked his thinning hair.
‘… what I’d do without you … so lovely … make everything all right … bearable …’
‘There, there,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll be going home tomorrow. It’s over.’
‘… hate them all … what I’d do if you weren’t here to … make things better … feel like killing them sometimes … kill them all …’
Rebecca hoped that Hilary was managing to get some sleep. Three of her fingers had been broken. She didn’t believe that story about it being an accident, didn’t believe it for a moment. There was nothing she wouldn’t put past Roddy, these days. Like those photographs she’d caught him with: which had turned out to be a present from Thomas, damn him …
Half an hour later, at a quarter to two in the morning, Mortimer was snoring rhythmically and Rebecca was still wide awake. That was when she thought she heard the footsteps in the corridor, stealing past their bedroom door.
Then the noises started. Crashes and banging and the unmistakable sounds of a fight. Two men fighting, using all their strength on each other, grabbing whatever weapons came to hand. Grunting with the exertion, shouting and calling each other names. She barely had time to slip into her dressing-gown and turn on the bedroom light when she heard a long and terrible cry, far louder than the rest. Lights were going on all over Winshaw Towers by now and she could hear people running in the direction of the disturbance. But Rebecca stayed where she was, paralysed with fear. She had recognized that cry, even though she had never heard anything like it before. It was the sound of a man dying.
∗
Two days later, the following story appeared in the local newspaper:
Attempted Burglary at Winshaw Towers
Lawrence Winshaw in fight to the death with intruder
THERE WERE dramatic scenes at Winshaw Towers on Saturday night when a family celebration was tragically disrupted.
Fourteen guests had gathered to mark the fiftieth birthday of Mortimer Winshaw, younger brother of Lawrence – who is now the owner of the 300-year-old mansion. But soon after they had gone to bed, a man broke into the house in a daring burglary attempt which was shortly to cost him his life.
The intruder seems to have entered the house through the library window, which is normally kept securely locked. He then forced his way into Lawrence Winshaw’s bedroom, where a violent altercation ensued. Finally, acting entirely in his own defence, Mr Winshaw got the better of his assailant and dealt him a fatal blow to the skull with the copper-headed backscratcher which he always keeps by his bedside. Death was instantaneous.
Police have not yet been able to identify the attacker, who does not appear to have been a local man, but they are satisfied that burglary was the motive behind the break-in. There is no question, a spokesman added, of charges being preferred against Mr Winshaw, who is said to be in a state of deep shock following the incident.
The investigation will continue and readers of this newspaper can expect to be brought up to date with every development.
∗
On Sunday morning, the day after his birthday party, Mortimer found his loyalties divided. Family sentiment, or what little residue of it continued to lurk inside him, insisted that he should stay with his brother and help him to recover from his ordeal; but at the same time, Rebecca’s anxiety to leave Winshaw Towers and return to their Mayfair apartment as soon as possible could not be disguised. It was not, in the end, a difficult decision to make. He could never deny his wife anything; and besides, there remained a whole army of relatives who could safely be trusted with the task of helping Lawrence to recuperate. By eleven o’clock their cases were gathered in the hall waiting to be carried out to the silver Bentley, and Mortimer was preparing to pay his final respects to Tabitha, who had yet to emerge from her room after learning of last night’s shocking events.
Mortimer caught sight of Pyles at the far end of the hallway, and beckoned him over.
‘Has Dr Quince been in to see Miss Tabitha this morning?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. He visited her quite early, at about nine o’clock.’
‘I see. I don’t suppose … I hope nobody in the servants’ quarters is thinking that she might be in any way connected with … what happened.’
‘I wouldn’t know what the other servants are thinking, sir.’
‘No, of course not. Well, if you’ll see to it that our cases are taken out, Pyles, I think I’ll go and have a quick word with her myself.’
‘Very good, sir. Except that – I think she has another visitor with her at the moment.’
‘Another visitor?’
‘A gentleman called about ten minutes ago, sir, inquiring after Miss Tabitha. Burrows dealt with the matter and I’m afraid to say that he showed him up to her room.’
‘I see. I think I’d better go and investigate this.’
Mortimer rapidly climbed the several sets of stairs leading to his sister’s chambers, then paused outside her door. He could hear no voices issuing from within: not until he knocked and, after a substantial pause, heard Tabitha’s cracked, expressionless cry of ‘Enter’.
‘I just came to say goodbye,’ he explained, finding that she was alone after all.
‘Goodbye,’ said Tabitha. She was knitting something large, purple and shapeless, and a copy of Spitfire! magazine was propped open on the desk beside her.
‘We must see more of each other in future,’ he went on, nervously. ‘You’ll come to visit us in London, perhaps?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Tabitha. ‘The doctor was here again this morning, and I know what that means. They’re going to try to blame me for what happened last night, and have me put away again.’ She laughed, and shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘Well, what if they do. I’ve missed my chance, now.’
‘Missed your …?’ Mortimer began, but checked himself. Instead he walked to the window, and tried to adopt a casual tone as he said: ‘Well, of course, there are some … circumstances which take some accounting for. The library window, for instance. Pyles swears that he locked it as usual, and yet this man, this burglar, whoever he was, doesn’t seem to have forced it in any way. I don’t suppose you’d happen to know anything …’
He tailed off.
‘Now look what you’ve made me do with your chatter,’ said Tabitha. ‘I’ve dropped a stitch.’
Mortimer could see that he was wasting his time.
‘Well, I’ll be off,’ he said.
‘Have a nice journey,’ Tabitha answered, without looking up.
Mortimer paused in the doorway.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘who was your visitor?’
She stared at him blankly.
‘Visitor?’
‘Pyles said that someone had called on you a few minutes ago.’
‘No, he was mistaken. Quite mistaken.’
‘I see.’ Mortimer took a deep breath and was about to leave, when something detained him; he turned back with a frown. ‘Am I just imagining this,’ he said, ‘or is there a peculiar smell in here?’
‘It’s jasmine,’ said Tabitha, beaming at him for the first time. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’
3
Yuri was my one and only hero at this time. My parents would save every photograph from the magazines and newspapers, and I fixed them to the wall of my bedroom with drawing-pins. That wall has been re-papered now, but for many years after the pictures came down you could still see the pin marks, dotted into a random and fantastic pattern like so many stars. I knew that he had visited London recently: I had watched the scenes on television as he drove through streets lined with welcoming crowds. I had heard of his appearance at the Earl’s Court exhibition, and the knowledge that he had shaken hands with hundreds of lucky children turned me hot with envy. Yet it had never occurred to me to ask my parents to take me there. A trip to London for my family would have been as bold and far-fetched a proposition as a trip to the moon itself.
