by Jem Poster
Brave words; but the following afternoon, making my way down to the living-room for the first time since the onset of my illness, I knew I had overestimated myself. Even with Banks’s support, the descent took several minutes, and by the time I slumped into my armchair I was dizzy and breathless, fit for nothing. Banks fussed busily around me, plumping cushions, adjusting the position of my footstool.
‘Do you want me to fetch down a blanket?’ he asked.
I was on the point of protesting that he was treating me like an invalid when it struck me that that was precisely what I was.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No blanket.’
‘A drink?’
‘No. I shall be comfortable as I am for the moment. In any case, I can hardly expect you to go on ministering to my needs for the next fortnight.’
‘Oh,’ he said quickly, ‘don’t worry about that. But I’ve been wondering whether you might want to return home for a week or two once you’re well enough to travel. These rooms are perfectly adequate in normal circumstances, of course, but while you’re convalescing …’
‘I should be no better off in my own rooms. Perhaps worse.’
‘But you must have family?’
‘My father. I don’t visit very often.’
‘It’s often salutary in times of difficulty to remind ourselves of our parents’ love for us. The family home – the place in which we were most fully aware of that love – can be a tremendous source of sustenance. Go back for a few days at least. Your father’s care may be exactly what you need.’
The distorted face, the rough hands dragging me from the bed, the stick raised above me. Only a fever-dream, I reminded myself.
‘I’ll consider it,’ I said. ‘Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you about the doom. When I try to remember what happened, I find that I’m not entirely sure – I mean, the dreams seemed so real, and other things so questionable. Did I—?’
‘Don’t trouble yourself about it now, Stannard. You were sick.’
‘Very sick, I know. And lucky not to have harmed myself.’
‘Lucky? Well, perhaps. I’ve given a great deal of thought to the incident, and I’ve come to feel that I was witness to the workings of a force far more powerful and mysterious than anything implied by your formulation.’
‘I was speaking loosely. Let’s say, if you prefer, that your arrival on the scene was providential.’
He drew up a chair and sat down opposite me, his brow furrowed as though he had been confronted with some intractable problem.
‘You have to remember the hour, Stannard – nearly two in the morning. I should normally have been asleep – indeed, I had been asleep for some time, but something – a dream, a sensation, I don’t know – woke me with a start so violent that I was out of bed before I knew clearly what I was doing. I remember lighting a candle; and as I watched the flame brighten, I felt – really, it was quite extraordinary: such an overpowering sense of danger, with not the slightest clue as to the nature of the threat. Intruders? The house was silent, but the notion seemed as plausible as any. I took the candlestick from the table and made my way downstairs; and as I rounded the turn above the hallway, I caught sight of your lamp through the fanlight over the door. And what haunts me is the delicate precision of the patterning. Think about it, Stannard: a little sphere of light, framed in that small, clear space for – what? – five seconds at most, as you made your way across the field; and me at the only point in my descent from which I could possibly have glimpsed it. That’s something more than luck, wouldn’t you say?’
Banks seemed, as so often, to be making a metaphysical mountain out of a rather insignificant molehill but it would have been churlish, in the circumstances, to have pointed this out to him. I felt it best to say nothing.
‘Not that I realized at the time, of course, what was afoot. I checked the doors and windows and searched the downstairs rooms; and it wasn’t until I was back in my bedroom that I began to think carefully about what I’d seen. Not the gleam of a lantern, but the softer incandescence of an oil-lamp. That was odd, and the more I thought about it, the more apparent it became that I should have to investigate. I dressed and went down again –’
I was momentarily distracted by a series of sharp knocks from below. I heard Mrs Haskell shuffle through the hall and open the front door.
‘– prints plainly visible in the frost. When I reached the church, I saw at once that the door was ajar, and I naturally – are you expecting visitors, Stannard?’
Footsteps on the stairs; a man’s voice. And then Mrs Haskell peering round the door.
‘Mr Redbourne to see you.’
I glanced at Banks. Just a faint tightening of the muscles around the mouth, a narrowing of the eyes; but rising to greet Redbourne, he was already clearly preparing to leave. Redbourne, for his part, barely acknowledged the rector before addressing himself to me. ‘How are you feeling now, Stannard?’
‘Not as strong as I’d like. But the fever’s gone.’
Banks reached the door before Mrs Haskell had finished closing it.
‘I must go,’ he said. ‘I’ve work to do. I’ll call by again at the same time tomorrow.’
He gave a brusque nod and followed Mrs Haskell downstairs. Redbourne settled himself in the chair and stretched his hands to the fire.
‘It’s good of you to call,’ I said.
‘I visited earlier, when I first learned of your illness.’
‘So Mrs Haskell told me. I’ve no recollection of the occasion myself.’
‘You were delirious. We spoke at some length but I couldn’t help feeling,’ – he permitted himself a tight-lipped smile – ‘that you’d mistaken me for someone else. I tried to reassure you that I had no designs whatsoever on your soul, but you seemed unconvinced.’
‘There were dreams … Did I say anything else?’
‘A great deal, none of it either coherent or memorable. As you probably realize, I’ve none of Banks’s patience with the sick, and it seemed sensible to leave you to his tender mercies until you’d recovered your capacity for rational discourse. Now, it strikes me, you may need other company: a man can take only so much solicitude, only so much high-minded forgiveness.’
‘Forgiveness?’
‘The doom. You presumably know—’
‘Seriously damaged?’
‘Ruined. Apparently Banks took it very badly at first, moping around the church or walking up and down the lane outside, latching on to passers-by like some latter-day ancient mariner with his mournful tale of damage and desecration. And there’s no doubt that he blamed you for the business.’
‘It was the fever. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘He realized that, I’m sure. But sick or sound, he said at one point, it makes no difference: the man’s actions – yours, he meant – are all of a piece. Even at that time he was visiting you regularly, of course, but with a look on his face which suggested that the milk of human kindness had turned decidedly sour. And then, quite suddenly according to Mrs Haskell, he let the whole lot go – tiles, pews, stained glass, doom – as if none of it mattered any more. The power of prayer, Mrs Haskell says; and who are we to doubt it?’
The question, unemphatic, faintly ironic, hung in the air between us for a moment, and then he was off on a new tack – some personal preoccupation with estate boundaries – leaving me to follow as best I could. I tried to maintain my side of the conversation, but my eyelids were heavy and I found it difficult to concentrate.
‘You’re tired, Stannard.’
‘A little, yes.’
‘More than a little, by the look of you. Let me help you back to your bed.’
‘Thank you, but I’ll stay down here for a while. Mrs Haskell will give me any help I need.’
‘As you wish,’ he said, ‘but don’t overtax your strength. Take good care of yourself now and you’ll be back on your feet all the sooner. And when you are’ – he rose abruptly from his chair – ‘you must come and visit m
e again. Any time you like. I shall look forward to seeing you.’
I nodded my thanks as he left; but at that particular moment I could no more envisage myself walking out to the Hall than flying there.
18
If Banks had not been so persistent in his argument and so eager to make the necessary arrangements, I should no doubt have completed my convalescence in Mrs Haskell’s house; but he seemed unable to relinquish the idea that a period spent with my father would speed my recovery and, after a few days of rather feeble resistance, I let him talk me round.
I had, in fact, reason of my own for falling in with his proposal. I wanted to see a reputable physician. Not Barratt, who had struck me, on the single occasion I had attempted to discuss my progress with him, as the worst kind of country quack, at once ignorant and opinionated; but a practitioner with whom I could talk on terms of equality, man to man.
A reputable physician? Yes, of course; but what I wanted above all else was one who had no connection with the life of the village. It was not – or not primarily – my recent fever that I wished to discuss, but a matter of greater delicacy. I had not anticipated any danger from a girl barely entering womanhood and reared, as I knew her to have been, in rural seclusion; yet symptoms that had developed in the fever’s aftermath had forced me to entertain a possibility which, whenever it presented itself, made me sick with anxiety and shame.
By the morning of my departure my strength had increased significantly, and it was perhaps a mark of my improvement that I now found myself faintly irritated by Banks’s ministrations. He helped me to pack my valise, hovered attentively at my side as I made my way down to the front door, settled me into the glorified farm wagon he had hired to convey me to the station; and I should not have been entirely surprised if he had offered to accompany me there.
‘Make sure you keep warm,’ he said, taking a filthy travelling-rug from the seat beside me and spreading it across my knees.
‘Thank you, Banks. I shall be comfortable enough.’
‘If you need help at the station, Wardle’ – he indicated the driver – ‘will look after you.’ Wardle turned and gave me what he must have imagined to be an encouraging smile. Banks reached out and grasped my hand.
‘Have a safe journey,’ he said. ‘And don’t return until you’re ready.’
‘I shall be back next week.’
Wardle clicked his tongue softly against his palate and the wagon began to move.
My father refrained from commenting on my condition until the third evening of my stay. We were seated at the table and the maid had just ladled a thin fish soup from the tureen. As she leaned over to place my bowl in front of me, the smell rose to my nostrils with such overpowering intensity that I gagged and averted my face, clapping the linen napkin to my mouth and nose. The maid started back. My father looked at me with a mixture of disgust and concern.
‘Just how sick – that will be all for the moment, thank you, Muriel – just how sick are you?’
I shook my head and pushed away the bowl, careful to avoid looking too closely at its contents.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You should let someone examine you. Shall I send for Holcombe?’
‘No.’ I leaned back in my chair and folded my napkin. ‘No thank you. I’ll see my own doctor.’
‘But that will mean a journey into town.’
‘I’ve already arranged it. In any case, I need to call in at my office to see how matters stand there. I shall go tomorrow.’
‘Very well.’ He picked a bone from his soup and placed it on the rim of his bowl. ‘Are you sure you won’t have any of this? It’s not one of Mrs Ford’s better efforts, I admit, but you need to eat if you’re to recover your strength. I’ve not seen you like this since you had scarlet fever as a child.’
‘Thank you, but I’m more in need of rest than food. Will you excuse me?’
His deafness had evidently worsened since my previous visit. He made no reply, but looked up irritably as I rose and left the room.
I slept fitfully and woke unrefreshed. The walk to the station chilled me through, and I was still shivering as I stepped off the train and made my way through the back-streets towards the office. Aaron, seizing me by the hand as he opened the door to me, commented at once on my coldness and pallor. ‘And you’ve lost weight,’ he added, leading me through to the back room. ‘You’ve not been looking after yourself, John. Finish the job and get back to civilization as soon as you can.’
‘I may well have to stay out there for a couple of months yet. You were right, of course; I should have turned down the work.’
‘You had your reasons, I know. And it was a slack time for us. Since you’ve been gone, though …’ He hesitated, as though searching for an appropriate form of words.
‘Since I’ve been gone?’
‘Well, things seem to have taken a turn for the better. Look, I’ve got something to show you.’
He strode over to his desk and with a triumphant flourish swung the drawing-board round to face me. I stared at the plan for a moment, slowly absorbing its detail.
‘Have we actually secured this?’ I asked at last.
‘More or less. They’ve asked for a few modifications – that’s what I’m doing now – but they’ve left me in no doubt that the contract will be ours.’
‘How long have you been working on this?’
‘Three weeks on and off. Maybe a month.’
‘But this is a major undertaking. We agreed that you’d keep me informed of any significant developments. I’ve not heard from you since the beginning of November.’
‘I’ve been busy. Not only with this project – there are several others in the offing. I’ve scarcely had a minute—’
I pushed past him and stood by the hearth, spreading my hands to the fire.
‘Not even to write a letter?’
‘I’d planned to give you a full account of this and other recent developments in a week or so, when I forwarded the new contract for your signature.’ He flashed me one of his dazzling smiles. ‘I’d intended it as a surprise.’
‘A surprise? This is a business enterprise, Aaron, not a schoolboy game. I’ve no time for such silliness.’
He flushed deeply, half turning to the window, the smile fading from his face; then he swung round again and slammed his open hand down on the drawing-board.
‘Is this silliness?’ he demanded. ‘Or this?’ He reached across the desk and dragged a bulky file towards him, scattering papers. ‘This correspondence – no, I want you to look at it – this correspondence represents a new phase in our development. Negotiations are at an early stage, but if even half of these proposals are taken up – and I have reason to suppose that the proportion will actually be rather higher than that – we’ll have enough work to keep us busy for the next three years. And before those three years are up, my reputation – I mean ours, of course – will be sufficiently well established to ensure continuity. I believe we shall be in a position to expand the firm significantly within five years. You’re right in one respect: I should have communicated all this to you earlier, and I’m willing to apologize for not having done so. But I’ll not allow you to accuse me of silliness. I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life, or more confident of achieving my aims.’
For as long as I have known him Aaron has been prone to bouts of febrile and frankly unjustifiable enthusiasm, and my role in the partnership has generally been to hold in check what I have tended to regard as the excesses of a brilliant but undisciplined mind. Leafing through the correspondence as he paced excitedly about the room, I realized that he had, in my absence, seriously compromised the restrained professionalism that has always seemed to me to be the mainstay of any respectable business enterprise. I twitched a letter from the file and held it out to him.
‘Did you actually send this?’
He peered short-sightedly at it, his neck twisted at an angle.
‘Of course. I may have refined one or two of the phrases in my final draft but it’s essentially—’
‘Listen to me, Aaron. I’ve spent years – literally years – cultivating Oliver Drewett’s acquaintance and, latterly, interest, and you send him this. Drewett is not merely a figure of considerable distinction but a sensitive and discerning man. Can you imagine the kind of impression such a letter would be likely to make on him?’
Aaron was lapsing into the defensive surliness with which he so often responds to my advice and guidance.
‘A very favourable impression, I should think. Have you looked at his reply?’
‘We can’t go around touting for custom like common tradesmen.’
‘So you’ve always said. But it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that we can’t sit about for ever in the hope that our discreet integrity will one day have clients beating a path to our door. The world doesn’t work like that, John, and we can’t make any headway until we acknowledge the fact.’
‘Once a firm descends to an unseemly scrabbling for custom, it loses the respect not only of potential clients but also of existing ones.’
‘I asked whether you’d looked at Drewett’s reply. It might dispel some of your anxieties.’
‘I don’t wish to read his reply, nor would it help me to do so. My point is a general one concerning the conduct and reputation of this firm. In future I want to see all significant correspondence before you send it out. Is that understood?’
He said nothing. My whole body, I realized, was trembling with rage or weakness, my mind faintly hazed by the dizziness that had afflicted me periodically since my illness. Thinking for a moment that I might fall, I stepped over to my desk and pulled back the chair, only to find it piled high with papers.
‘What are these?’ My voice was thick with anger.
‘More correspondence. Sketches. Notes. I’ve been meaning to put it all away but I haven’t had the time. Since you were away there seemed no harm—’
‘And these plans on my desk?’
