Chapter Twenty-One

 

It was to be a small, informal dinner; and Eustace, after all, was only a relation by marriage, not blood.  The Queen Mother had therefore seen no reason for cancelling her acceptance of Lady Worplesden's invitation.  And as for staying at home to be with Daisy when she arrived that evening - why, the idea simply didn't occur to her.

      'You'll have to entertain my granddaughter single-handed,' she announced to Sebastian at teatime.

      'Single-handed?  But I thought Mrs Thwale ...?'

      'I'm taking Veronica with me, of course.'

      Mrs Thwale put in a word of reassurance.

      'You won't find her in the least formidable.'

      'Formidable!'  The Queen Mother's tone was contemptuous.  'She's like blancmange.'

      'So there'll be no excuse for mumbling.  Or for not saying anything at all,' Mrs Thwale added casually, reaching out for a lump of sugar as she spoke.  'Which is a slight defect of yours that I seem to have noticed.'

      'That reminds me,' said the Queen Mother.  'How's he getting on with his mumbling lessons?'

      'I'm hoping he'll give you a demonstration one of these days,' Mrs Thwale answered gravely.

      'A demonstration?  What demonstration?'

      There was no immediate answer.  Sebastian raised his eyes and gave Mrs Thwale a look of agonized entreaty.  But the smile she returned was one of bright, impersonal amusement - as if she were looking on at some delicate comedy of manners.

      'How do you write a poem?' she murmured under her breath.

      'What's that you're saying?' asked the Queen Mother sharply.

      On its withered tortoise's neck the old head turned questingly from side to side in a succession of quick blind movements.

      'What's that?'

      'Please,' Sebastian implored, framing the word voicelessly with lips that trembled in distress.  'Please!'

      For an awful second he was left in uncertainty of what she was going to do next.  Then she turned to Mrs Gamble.

      'It's nothing,' she said.  'Just a silly little joke we have together at our mumbling lessons.'

      'I don't like people having jokes together,' the old woman rasped in a harsh resentful tone.  With unseeing eyes she glared ferociously at Mrs Thwale across the tea-table.  'I don't like it,' she repeated: 'I don't like it at all.'

      In silence Mrs Thwale examined the fossil scorpion from the Carboniferous.

      'It shan't happen again, Mrs Gamble,' she said at last.

      But as she thought of what the submissive words really signified, her eyes brightened and her lips twitched into a little smile of secret triumph.  That morning a special messenger had brought her a letter from Paul De Vries - six pages, typewritten, of frenzy and long words.  Not yet specifically a proposal of marriage.  But it was pretty obvious that Mrs Gamble would soon have to find herself a new companion.

      She got up, stepped softly over to the back of Sebastian's chair and, singling out one of those scandalously charming curls of his, gave it a short but very painful tug.  Then, without even glancing at him, she moved on to where the Queen Mother was sitting and took the cup from between her claw-like hands.

      'Let me give you some fresh tea,' she said in her low musical voice.

 

Another woman might have been vexed to find herself treated in this offhand and discourteous fashion.  But Daisy Ockham was so singularly lacking in a sense of her own importance that she was hardly even surprised when the butler gave her Mrs Gamble's message.

      'My grandmother's gone out to dinner,' she explained to her companion.  'So we shall be alone this evening.'

      The other inclined his head and, in an accent which betrayed that he had not been educated at one of the more ancient and expensive seats of learning, said that it was a pleasure he looked forward to.

      Then, sharp-featured and middle-aged, with brown, damp hair brushed back over a bald spot on the top of his head, Mr Tendring was dressed for the part of an eminent barrister or Harley Street specialist, but unfortunately without much verisimilitude; for the dark striped trousers had been shoddy even in their palmiest days, the black jacket was manifestly ready-made.  Only the collar came up to professional standards - high, with flaring wings and an inordinately wide opening through which Mr Tendring's neck, with its protuberant Adam's apple, looked pathetically stringy and at the same time rather unpleasantly naked, almost indecent.  A black leather briefcase, too important to be handed over to the footman, who had relieved him of his overcoat, was carried under the right arm.

      'Well, I expect you'd like to go up to your room before dinner,' said Mrs Ockham.

      Again he inclined his head, this time without speaking.

      As they followed the butler towards the staircase, Mr Tendring looked about him with small appraising eyes - took in the pillars and barrel vaulting of the hall, darted, through the tall double doors, a glance down the long rich vista of the drawing-room, observed the pictures on the walls, the porcelain, the carpets.  The thought of all the money that most have been spent to make the house what it was gave him an almost sensual pleasure.  He had a deep, disinterested respect for wealth, a tender and admiring love of money for its own sake and without any reference to himself or his immediate needs.  Surrounded by these exotic and unfamiliar splendours, he felt no envy, only veneration tinged with a secret satisfaction at the thought that here he was, the greengrocer's son, the ex-office boy, enjoying the splendours from the inside, as a guest, as the indispensable financial adviser, tax expert and accountant of their new owner.  Suddenly, the grey sharp-featured face relaxed and, like a schoolboy who has succeeded in scoring off his companions, Mr Tendring positively grinned.

      'Quite a mansion,' he said to Mrs Ockham, showing a set of teeth which the suburban dentist had made so brilliantly pearly that they would have seemed improbable in the mouth even of a chorus girl.

      'Quite,' said Mrs Ockham vaguely.  'Quite.'

      She was thinking how poignantly familiar it all seemed.  As though it were only yesterday that she had been a schoolgirl, coming out to Florence every Christmas and Easter to spend the holidays.  And now all the rest were dead.  Her father first of all.  So old and awe-inspiring, so tall and bushy-eyebrowed and aloof, that his going had really made no difference.  But then had come her mother's turn; and, for Daisy Ockham, her mother had died twice over - once when she married Eustace, and again, for ever, five years later.  And when that anguish had been lived down, there had come her marriage and those years of happiness with Francis and little Frankie.  Nearly fourteen years of the richest, the intensest living.  And then one brilliant holiday morning, with the seagulls screaming, and the air full of blown spray, and the great green glassy waves exploding into foam along the beaches, they had gone down for a bathe.  Father and son, the man's hand on the boy's shoulder, laughing together as they walked.  Half an hour later, when she followed them down to the beach with the thermos of hot milk and the biscuits, she met the fishermen carrying the two bodies up from the water.... And now it was poor Eustace, whom her mother had loved and whom, for that reason, she herself had passionately hated.  But then her mother had died, and Eustace had fallen out of her life, had become a casual acquaintance, encountered occasionally in other people's houses - and once every year or so, when there was business to discuss, they would meet by appointment at the solicitor's and, from Lincoln's Inn, when everything had been settled, he would take her to lunch at the Savoy, and she would listen to his odd, disconcerting talk, so utterly unlike anything she heard at home, and laugh and reflect that, after all, he was really very nice in his funny way.  Very nice indeed and very clever, and it was a shame he didn't do anything with his gifts and all that money.

      Well, now he was dead, and all that money was hers - all that money and, along with it, all the responsibility for using it as it ought to be used, as God would want it to be used.  At the mere thought of the future burden, Mrs Ockham sighed profoundly.  This house, for example - what on earth should she do with it?  And all the servants?  There must be a dozen of them.

      'It was terribly sudden,' she said in Italian to the butler as they started to climb the stairs.

      The man shook his head and an expression of genuine sadness appeared on his face.  The signore had been so kind.  Tanto buono, tanto buono.  Tears came into his eyes.

      Mrs Ockham was touched.  And yet she simply couldn't keep all these servants.  Perhaps if she offered them a year's wages when she gave them notice - or, better, a year's board wages.... But Mr Tendring would never allow that.  She shot an apprehensive glance at the grey face with its sharp nose and tight-shut, almost lipless mouth.  Never, she repeated to herself, never.  And after all, that was what he was there for - to keep her in order, to prevent her from doing anything too silly.  She remembered what Canon Cresswell was always dinning into her.  'It takes two people to make a swindle - the swindler and the swindlee.  If you let yourself be a swindlee, you're an accessory before the fact - you're leading an innocent person into temptation.  So don't do it.  Don't!'  Golden advice - but how difficult it had been for her to follow it!  And now that, instead of her all too comfortable twelve hundred a year, she was to have six thousand and a whole fortune in buildings, furniture and works of art, it would be even harder, because there would be so many more outstretched hands.  She had hired Mr Tendring, among other reasons, to protect her from her own sentimentality.  And yet she couldn't help feeling that those poor servants ought to have a year's board wages.  After all, it was no fault of theirs that Eustace had died so suddenly; and some of them had been with him for years and years.... She sighed again.  How hard it was to know what was right!  And then, when one knew, the knowledge had to be acted upon.  That was fairly easy if there were nobody but oneself involved.  But mostly one couldn't do what was right without upsetting almost as many people as one satisfied.  And then their disappointment and their bitterness made one wonder whether, after all, one had been doing right.  And then the whole debate had to begin again....

 

Half an hour later, refreshed by a hot bath and a change of clothes, Mrs Ockham entered the drawing-room.  She had expected to find herself alone; and when, from the depths of one of the enormous chintz-covered chairs, a small figure suddenly uncurled its legs and jumped respectfully to its feet, she uttered a startled exclamation of surprise.  Diffidently the figure advanced, and as it came within range of her rather short-sighed eyes Mrs Ockham recognized it as the boy she had talked to in the Hampstead public library.  The boy who had reminded her of Frankie; had actually been Frankie, so it excruciatingly seemed; had been her little precious one as he would have become if she had been allowed to keep him another year or two.  How often, since that chance meeting of a couple of weeks before, she had reproached herself for having lacked the presence of mind to ask his name and where he lived!  And now, impossibly, he was here in Eustace's drawing-room.

      'You?' she whispered incredulously.  'But ... but who are you?'  The living ghost of Frankie smiled at her shyly.

      'I'm Sebastian,' he answered.  'Uncle Eustace was ... well, he was my uncle,' he concluded lamely.

      Suddenly and rather heavily - for she was feeling strangely weak about the knees - Mrs Ockham sat down on the nearest chair.  Another moment, and she might have fainted.  She shut her eyes and took three or four deep breaths.  There was a long silence.

      Standing in front of her, Sebastian fidgeted uneasily and wondered whether he oughtn't to say something - 'What a funny coincidence!' or 'That was awfully good chocolate you gave me.'  But after all, she had lost her son.  He ought to say something about that.  'I didn't have time to say how sorry I was.'  But somehow even that sounded pretty bad.  Seeing how upset she obviously was, poor old thing!

      Mrs Ockham looked up.

      'It's the hand of Providence,' she said in a low voice.

      There were tears in her eyes, but she was also smiling - a smile that transfigured the soft and snubby face, making it seem almost beautiful.

      'God wants to give him back to me.'

      Sebastian writhed.  This was really awful!

      God wanted to give her Frankie back to her, Mrs Ockham was thinking; yes, and perhaps to give Himself back.  For Frankie had been the living sacrament, the revelation, the immediate experience of divinity.

      'God is love,' she said aloud.  'But what's love?  I never knew until after my little boy was born.  Then I began to learn.  And every day I learned a little more.  Different forms of love, deeper intensities - every day for nearly fourteen years.'

      She was silent again, thinking of that windy summer's morning, and the fishermen toiling slowly up the beach; remembering those first weeks of almost insane, rebellious despair, and then the moths of emptiness, of being numb and hopeless and half dead.  It was Canon Cresswell who had brought her back to life.  After the disaster she had refused to go near him.  Perversely - because she knew in her heart that he could help her, and she didn't want to be helped; she wanted to suffer in solitude, for ever.  Then, somehow, Mrs Cresswell had discovered where she was; and one wet November afternoon there they were on the doorstep of the dismal little cottage she had chosen as her hiding-place.  And instead of condoling with her on the tragedy, instead of telling her sympathetically how ill she looked, Canon Cresswell made her sit down and listen, while he called her a cowardly, self-indulgent emotionalist, a mutineer against God's Providence, a self-willed sinner guilty of the most inexcusable despair.

      An hour later, Mrs Cresswell was helping her to clean up the cottage and pack her bags.  That evening she was back at the Girl's Club, and the next day, which was Sunday, she went to early Communion.  She had come back to life again - but it was a diminished life.  In the past God had been with her almost every day.  For example, when she came and said goodnight to Frankie, and he got out of bed and knelt down there in his pink pyjamas and they repeated the Lord's Prayer together - there He was, Our Father in the heaven of her love.  But now even Communion failed to bring Him close to her.  And though she loved the poor children at the Club, though she was ready to do much more for them now than she had done when her work there was only a thank-offering for so much happiness, it was all a second best; there was nobody to take the place of Frankie.  She had learnt to accept God's will; but it was the will of somebody at a distance - withdrawn and unrevealed.

      Mrs Ockham took a handkerchief out of her bag and wiped her eyes.

      'I know you think I'm a dreadful old sentimentalist,' she said with a little laugh.

      'Not a bit,' Sebastian protested politely.

      But for once the Queen Mother had been quite right: blancmange was the word for her.

      'You're John Barnack's son, I suppose?'

      He nodded.

      'Then your mother...?'

      Mrs Ockham left the sentence unfinished.  But her tone, and the expression of distress which appeared in her grey eyes, sufficiently indicated what she meant to say.

      'Yes, she's dead,' said Sebastian.

      'Your mother's dead,' she repeated slowly.

      But imagine poor little Frankie, all alone in a harsh, indifferent world, with nobody to love him as she alone was capable of loving him!  To the love of her heart there was added an overpowering compassion.

      Blancmange, Sebastian was thinking.  Blancmange with Jesus sauce.  Then, to his great relief, the butler entered and announced that dinner was served.

      With a sigh Mrs Ockham put away her handkerchief, then asked the man to go and tell the signore.  Turning to Sebastian, she began to explain Mr Tendring.

      'You'll find him a bit ... well, you know, not quite ...' The deprecating gesture sufficiently indicated what he quite wasn't.  'But a good soul underneath,' she hastened to add.  'He's a Unitarian, and he's got two children, and he grows tomatoes in the sweetest little greenhouse in his back garden.  And as for business - well, I don't know what I'd had done without him these last five years.  That's why I asked him to come along with me now - to deal with all this.'

      In a limp gesture of all-embracing ineptitude she waved her hand at Eustace's treasures.

      'I wouldn't even know where to begin,' she concluded hopelessly.

      The sound of footsteps made her turn.

      'Ah, I was just talking about you, Mr Tendring.  Telling Sebastian here - he's Mr Barnack's nephew, by the way - how utterly lost I'd be without you.'

      Mr Tendring acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow, silently shook hands with Sebastian, then turned and apologized to Mrs Ockham for having kept her waiting.

      'I was compiling a catalogue of the furnishings in my bedroom,' he explained; and in confirmation of his words he pulled a small black notebook out of the side pocket of his jacket and held it up for her inspection.

      'A catalogue?' Mrs Ockham repeated in some astonishment, as she got up from her chair.

      Mr Tendring further compressed his tight-shut mouth, and nodded importantly.  In the wide, barristerial opening of his stiff collar, the Adam's apple stirred like a thing endowed with a small spasmodic life of its own.  Deliberately, in phrases modelled on those of the business letter and the legal document, he began to speak.

      'You have informed me, Mrs Ockham, that the late owner carried no insurance against fire or theft.'

      Surprisingly, Mrs Ockham uttered a little peal of rich, bubbly laughter.

      'He used to say he couldn't afford it.  Because of the duty on Havana cigars.'

      Sebastian smiled; but Mr Tendring contracted his brows, and his Adam's apple sharply rose and fell, as though it too were shocked by such a blasphemy against Prudence.

      'Personally,' he said with severity, 'I don't hold with joking about serious matters.'

      Mrs Ockham hastened to placate him.

      'Quite right,' she said, 'quite right.  But I don't see what his having no insurance has to do with your making a catalogue.'

      Mr Tendring permitted himself a smile.  The Gaiety-Girl teeth flashed triumphantly.

      'The fact,' he said, 'constitutes presumptive evidence that the later owner caused no list of his personal property ever to be drawn up.'

      He smiled again, evidently delighted with the beauty of his language.

      'So that's what you're writing in your little black book,' said Mrs Ockham.  'Is it really necessary?'

      'Necessary?' Mr Tendring repeated almost indignantly.  'It's a sine qua non.'

      It was final and crushing.  After a little silence Mrs Ockham suggested that they should go in to dinner.

      'Will you take me in, Sebastian?' she asked.

      Sebastian began by offering her the wrong arm, and was horribly embarrassed and ashamed when Mrs Ockham smiled and told him to go round to the other side.  Making a fool of himself in front of this awful little bounder....

      'Too stupid,' he muttered.  'I know perfectly well, really.'

      But Mrs Ockham was enchanted by his mistake.

      'Just like Frankie!' she cried delightedly.  'Frankie could never remember which arm to give.'

      Sebastian said nothing; but he was beginning to have enough of Frankie.

      Intimately, as they walked towards the dining-room, Mrs Ockham squeezed his arm.

      'What luck that the others should have been out for our first evening!' she said; but added quickly, 'Not but what I'm very fond of poor dear Granny.  And Veronica's so ...'

      She hesitated, remembering the Cresswell's concern over the disquieting spirit that had started, before she was even out of pigtails, to peep through their daughter's calm, bright eyes.

      'So pretty and clever,' she concluded.  'But all the same, I'm awfully glad they're not here.  I hope you are too,' she added, smiling at him almost archly.

      'Oh, very,' Sebastian answered without much conviction.