The Feast Page 14

‘What is all this?’ he asked.

  ‘Bed fun,’ said Duff, indicating the renewed bumps next door, as Bruce once more struggled into freedom. ‘He’s a very restless sleeper, poor chap. But what about you? Where have you been? Africa?’

  Gerry, who had switched on the light, sat down upon his bed and began to take off his shoes.

  ‘I’ve been up on the cliff,’ he said, ‘with Mrs. Paley and Angie.’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘Angie Wraxton. They wanted to sleep out, and I took up mattresses for them and then they made tea, and we stayed talking for quite a long time. And then, when they turned in, it was so pleasant I stayed a bit and fell asleep.’

  ‘Angie Wraxton? You mean the maniac?’ asked Robin.

  ‘She’s not a maniac. She’s a very intelligent girl.’

  ‘What in heaven’s name did you talk about?’ asked Duff.

  ‘About Africa. I told them about the Kenya opening, and they both thought it sounded marvellous. They couldn’t think why I didn’t jump at it.’

  Gerry pulled his shirt over his head with a very well-satisfied expression. Never before in his life had he been allowed to talk so much about himself; and it had been pleasant to have two women fussing over him.

  ‘I told them I haven’t finally turned it down,’ he added.

  Robin and Duff became pensive. They both knew that the African post—that of medical officer in a big district—would not bring enough to pay their school fees, though it had good prospects of future advancement. And for that reason the whole family had assumed that Gerry would certainly refuse it.

  Neither of them spoke another word. Gerry finished undressing, put on his pyjamas, switched off the light and got into bed. Silence fell upon the stables.

  Tuesday

  1. Stubs

  The garden room was on the ground floor and had french windows opening into a small rose garden. Miss Ellis said that she could not fancy it. Anybody might walk in.

  Next thing, thought Nancibel, stripping the bed, she’ll be saying that somebody has walked in.

  Miss Ellis did so, and Nancibel laughed.

  ‘You think it’s a laughing matter, do you?’ said Miss Ellis. ‘I don’t. I think it’s disgusting. If you knew the world like I do, if you’d seen as much of the seamy side … women of that age can be awful.’

  ‘Making hay in the twilight,’ agreed Nancibel. ‘That’s what Mum calls it.’

  ‘That’s her typewriter,’ said Miss Ellis, peering at it. ‘Supposed to write books or something, isn’t she?’

  ‘She does write books. She’s a famous authoress. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Everybody knows. My sister Myra read one of her books. The Lost Plaid it was called. She was all excited last night when I told them at home we’ve got Mrs. Le-chene stopping here.’

  ‘The Lost Plaid? That’s a funny name.’

  ‘They do have funny names.’

  ‘Is it Scotch, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. It was Myra read it. But it’s a best-seller. She said it was a bit … you know … blue. But a fascinating story.’

  ‘Blue?’ said Miss Ellis. ‘I’m not surprised. A bestseller is always like that, or else it attacks somebody.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nancibel, ‘I read a best-seller once, The Good Companions, and it wasn’t blue and it didn’t attack anybody either. It was lovely.’

  ‘That just shows how ignorant you are, Nancibel. Everybody knows that’s an attack on J. B. Priestley. It was written simply to show him up. You’re putting that counterpane on crooked.’

  ‘It’s not easy for one person to get it straight.’

  Miss Ellis ignored the hint and stared enviously at the typewriter.

  ‘Some people have all the luck,’ she said. ‘Fancy her making thousands and thousands of pounds, just for writing nonsense. What can she want with all that money? I’ve a good mind to write a book myself.’

  ‘Why don’t you, then?’

  ‘When do I get the time?’

  She turned away and picked up the ash tray from the bed table. After one glance at it her expression changed from disgust to something very like pleasure. She carried it across to the window, scrutinized its contents, and exclaimed:

  ‘I thought as much! Look at that!’

  She held it out to Nancibel, who only saw a lot of cigarette stubs.

  ‘Haven’t you eyes, Nancibel?’

  ‘She smokes a terrible lot.’

  ‘Yes, but look! Don’t you see something funny about these stubs?’

  ‘Some’s yellow and some’s white.’

  ‘The yellow ones are her special brand of Egyptian. Like those in that box on the mantelpiece. She gets them from some place in London. She never smokes anything else. She said so in the dining-room last night. The white ones are Player’s Weights. Look! You can see … here’s one only half smoked.’

  There was a pause. Nancibel grew very pale. Miss Ellis continued:

  ‘I emptied that tray last night, when I took round the hot-water cans. After ten o’clock. Somebody’s been in here for hours on end since then. Know anybody who smokes Player’s Weights?’

  ‘Lots of people do.’

  ‘Not here. But I’m not surprised. I knew it when I saw them together at dinner, Chauffeur! I thought. That’s very likely. Come along, we’ve all the upstairs beds to make.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Nancibel. ‘I’ll make no more beds with you, Miss Ellis. I’ve had enough. I warned you yesterday. I can’t stand your way of talking. I’m going to Mrs. Siddal.’

  ‘If anybody goes to Mrs. Siddal, I shall. There are limits….’

  ‘There certainly are. I’m tired of hearing everybody scandalized behind their back. You’re nothing but a mean, spiteful old woman that’s got your knife into everybody better than yourself, and that means everybody in the house, because you’re the lowest class of person in it. You never did a decent job of work in your life, I believe. You couldn’t if you tried; you’re so dumb you couldn’t put a kettle on the fire without spilling half of it and blacking your nose. It burns me all up….’

  ‘Straight to Mrs. Siddal. I go straight to Mrs. Siddal. Either you leave this house or I do.’

  ‘O.K. Trot along and see which of us she can spare best.’

  Miss Ellis rushed out of the room.

  As soon as she had gone Nancibel burst into desolate tears. She knew who smoked Player’s Weights. And she knew, now, what Anna had meant to convey by that long stare yesterday. There had been so many little things which she had thought funny: now she understood them all. Bruce was a rotten bad lot. He was living on this horrible old woman, whom he did not love, did not even desire in the most perfunctory way. He had sold himself for a silk dressing-gown and that wallet full of notes which he brandished at the Harbour Café.

  There were all the upstairs bedrooms still to be done, but for the moment she could not face them. She ran out through the french windows into the garden and hid herself among the rhododendrons until she could control her tears, a little astonished at the immensity of her own bitterness. For she had not taken him very seriously; they had only been acquainted for three days, and she had begun by disliking him. But yesterday he had been so nice, helping with the potatoes and the pumping. He had made her feel young and merry again. When she went off duty he had walked home with her, and her mother had asked him in for a cup of tea. Everyone had been charmed with him. His manner to her parents had been perfect—friendly and cheerful, with just the right hint of respect. He had made them all laugh with a story of his own mother’s retort to the girl in the Food Office. There had been no nonsense about slums. No young man could have made a better impression, and Nancibel’s only trouble had been a fear lest her mother’s satisfaction might be too obviously displayed. As soon as he had gone she had been quite sharp with poor Mrs. Thomas for making such a fuss of him, and had shrugged derisively at the suggestion that he might take her out dancing on Satur
day night. But in her heart she had already determined that he should and on Thursday, which was her half day, she meant to have a perm in honour of it.

  Beyond Saturday she had not allowed herself to think. There would be time enough, later, to get serious, if her liking for him increased at its present impetus. It was quite enough to want to go dancing once more, to be looking forward to Saturday, and to think a new perm worth while. Yet now she was crying as she had never cried in her life, even for Brian. For she had always known that she would in time recover from the pain that Brian had caused her. But this wound had poison in it. In getting used to the idea that Bruce was a rotten bad lot she must become a harder, colder person. So she went and sobbed among the rhododendrons, not for him, but for the Nancibel of yesterday.

  2. Black Amber

  Sir Henry kept his promise and went over to Porthmerryn with Robin immediately after breakfast to look at Mrs. Pearce’s carved figure. But a disappointment awaited them. The trinket had been sold. A lady had called and bought it on Monday afternoon—a foreign lady, a Mrs. Smith, who said that she was passing through the town and that another lady had told her of Mrs. Pearce’s curio. Only three guineas had she offered at first, but Mrs. Pearce had been too sharp for her and had stood out for five pounds ten shillings.

  ‘For Robin, he told me it were worth five pounds,’ she chuckled, ‘and I got ten shillings over and above that. I was too sharp for her, I b’lieve.’

  She was unable to describe the lady, not being able to see so well as she used.

  ‘But she had a short way of speaking. I didn’t take to her, and that’s the truth. But five pound ten is a lot of money…. I’m very sorry, I’m sure, sir, that you should have come too late to see it.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Sir Henry. ‘What made you think she was foreign?’

  ‘Mrs. Pearce means that she wasn’t Cornish,’ explained Robin mournfully.

  ‘She was from London Church Town,’ said Mrs. Pearce. ‘She said she come from London. And gone back there to-day. For I had it in mind, first of all, to wait until I could ask my grandson, Barny Thomas, up to Pendizack, if he’d be agreeable, seeing as it’s he that’ll get my bits of things when I’m gone. But no, she couldn’t wait for that. It’s take it or leave it, says she, for I’m going back to London to-morrow, she says. And five pound ten is a deal of money.’

  Robin’s lamentations broke out as soon as they had left the cottage. He was heart-broken. His ruddy face was quite pale. He would not console himself with the hope, suggested by Sir Henry, that the piece might not, after all, have been black amber. He was quite sure that it was and that Mrs. Pearce had lost a thousand pounds.

  ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that it would be any good to advertise? If this Mrs. Smith knew what it’s worth … she probably hasn’t the least idea….’

  ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that,’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘Oh, but she couldn’t! Nobody could be so mean. A poor old woman, afraid of having to go to the workhouse!’

  ‘I don’t suppose Mrs. Smith knew that.’

  ‘I can’t think how she knew anything about it at all. Who can have told her that Mrs. Pearce had this piece?’

  ‘Plenty of people heard you talking about it in the shop yesterday.’

  ‘I never said where she lived.’

  Sir Henry tried to remember who had been in the sweet shop, and a sudden suspicion flickered across his mind. But it shocked him so much that he hastily dismissed it and concentrated upon other possibilities. He remembered that Robin had taken the three little Coves to see Mrs. Pearce. It was possible that they had talked about the carving. He suggested this to Robin, who agreed that they had seen it and said he would question them as soon as he got home.

  They walked back over the cliffs to Pendizack, each occupied with his own thoughts. Robin meditated an enquiry at all the hotels in Porthmerryn for a Mrs. Smith, returned that day to London. He was determined to get the carving back, for his mind misgave him that his own indiscretion had been inexcusable. He would track this woman down. If she was honest he would buy the piece back from her; he had seven pounds in his Savings Bank account. If she was dishonest he would write a letter to John Bull about it. He would proclaim her infamy to the uttermost ends of the earth.

  Sir Henry was trying not to think that Mrs. Cove probably had it. She had overheard Robin in the sweet shop. She had a short way of speaking. She was a mean, grasping woman; the episode of the marshmallows proved that. He did not like her at all. But he felt that he had no business to suspect her of anything quite so outrageous; the use of a false name, and the lie about her return to London, would preclude all hope that she had been acting in good faith.

  ‘There are the Coves,’ said Robin suddenly.

  He pointed to Pendizack sands which had just come into view. Blanche, Maud and Beatrix were kneeling in a bunch, their heads close together, intent upon some game.

  ‘It looks like them,’ agreed Sir Henry, peering.

  ‘It is them. Nobody else wears gym tunics on the beach.’

  They turned off the cliff and went down towards the beach. As they got nearer they saw that the girls were busy on a sand castle. It was not a mere mound but an exquisitely finished little fairy tale castle of a peculiar triangular shape, with tall, thin towers. They were carving a long causeway over a moat with an old table knife, working very swiftly and in complete silence. It seemed as though their bony little hands were impelled by some communal inspiration, for there was no discussion or consultation, and no one child appeared to be the architect; yet their creation was perfect—in detail, proportion and design.

  ‘How lovely!’ said Sir Henry.

  The Coves, startled, sat back on their haunches and looked at him. Their castle was much more real to them than he was.

  ‘French, isn’t it?’

  ‘Poitiers,’ said Blanche, nodding.

  ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘No. It’s in a book.’

  ‘The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry,’ said Maud.

  ‘Oh yes, of course! I thought I recognized it. There’s a very good Vernet book of reproductions. Have you got it, then?’

  ‘We wanted to ask you …’ began Robin.

  But Sir Henry checked him and pursued an oblique approach. For there was something which he wanted to find out on his own account.

  ‘You’re very fond of books, aren’t you?’ he said.

  The three fair heads nodded.

  ‘Have you got many?’

  They looked doubtful.

  ‘We have seventeen books,’ said Beatrix at last.

  ‘Do you often buy them?’

  They had no difficulty in answering this. They had never, they assured him, bought a book.

  ‘But we would if we had the money,’ said Maud.

  ‘Your mother buys them for you?’

  No. They were quite sure that she did not.

  ‘When did you last get a new book?’

  ‘When we had measles,’ said Blanche, after some pondering. ‘The doctor gave us Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’

  ‘When was that? How long ago?’

  ‘It was when peace broke out,’ said Maud. ‘We couldn’t go to the rejoicings because we had measles.’

  Two years! So much, he thought, for that woman’s story of selling sweets to buy books. The mean liar!

  ‘We got The Very Rich Hours because of the Flying Bomb,’ said Blanche. ‘An old gentleman gave it to us. He had a book shop.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maud. ‘We were sent a walk to the Common and we heard it coming so we ran into his shop and got under the counter. We heard it cut out and it came down just outside. And the next thing we were all buried under books. So we stayed all the afternoon helping him get it straight. And he gave us The Very Rich Hours because the back was torn off.’

  ‘And he gave us sherry,’ said Blanche. ‘Oh, he was nice. But the milkman told our mother we were dead. He was further down the road and he saw us just before
; and he flattened out when he heard it coming and didn’t see us run into the shop. So afterwards when he looked and we weren’t there he thought we’d all been blown to bits.’

  ‘He went off and told our mother we’d been blown to bits,’ said Beatrix. ‘And of course we didn’t come home, because we stayed so late helping with the books; we didn’t realize how late it was. So she thought it was true and went in a taxi to the Town Hall. So it was a waste of three shillings.’

  Robin and Sir Henry were so stunned by this narrative that they almost forgot why they had come.

  ‘It was more than three shillings,’ said Maud solemnly. ‘There was the fare back, when she had notified the Town Hall.’

  ‘That was only twopence,’ said Beatrix. ‘She came back in a bus.’

  ‘Of course the Town Hall couldn’t tell her anything about us,’ explained Maud. ‘We weren’t in the mortuary.’

  ‘But wasn’t your mother frightfully upset?’ asked Robin.

  ‘Oh very!’ said Maud. ‘You see she was still out when we got back so we couldn’t get into the house. And the people next door saw us on the doorstep. And the milkman had told them we were dead too. So they came rushing out and quite a crowd collected. And when she came back there was quite a crowd, and when they saw her they started yelling: “It’s all right! They’re safe!” And she doesn’t like the people next door; they’re very inquisitive. So she couldn’t get the door unlocked, because her key stuck. And a man took a photograph of her and sent it to the newspaper.’

  ‘And she said,’ continued Beatrix, ‘would they kindly go away and cease from trespassing in her garden. So the people from next door started to be very rude. But just then another fly bomb came over and everybody did go away as fast as they could.’

  ‘But it was one of the very happiest days in our lives,’ said Blanche, ‘because we got The Very Rich Hours.’

  The more I hear of that woman, thought Sir Henry, the less I like her.

  ‘We’ve just been to see old Mrs. Pearce,’ he said.

  They all beamed at him, and Blanche asked if he had seen the little ship.