Chapter Twenty-Three

 

Sebastian's sense of relief gave place very soon to bewilderment and uneasiness.  Alone in his room, as he undressed and brushed his teeth, he kept wondering why the reprieve had come.  Did she really think that the child had done it?  Obviously, he tried to assure himself, she must have thought so.  But there was a part of his mind which obstinately refused to accept that simple explanation.  If it were true, then why should she have looked at him like that?  What was it she had found so exquisitely amusing?  And if she hadn't thought that it was the little girl, what on earth had induced her to say so?  The obvious answer was that she had seen him take the drawing, believed he had no right to it, and tried to shield him.  But again, in the light of that queer smile of hers, that almost irrepressible amusement, the obvious answer made no sense.  Nothing she had done made any sense.  And meanwhile there was that wretched little girl to think of.  The child would be questioned and bullied; and then the parents would come under suspicion; and finally, of course, Mrs Gamble would insist on sending for the police.

      He turned out all the lights but the reading-lamp on the night table, and climbed into the enormous bed.  Lying there, open-eyed, he fabricated for the thousandth time a series of scenes in which he casually mentioned Uncle Eustace's bequest to Mrs Thwale and the Queen Mother, told Mrs Ockham that he had already bought an evening suit with the money he had got for the drawing, smilingly scotched Mr Tendring's suspicions before they were well hatched.  How simple it all was, and how creditably he emerged from the proceedings!  But the reality was as painfully and humiliatingly different from these consoling fancies as the blue tart had been from Mary Esdaile.  And now it was too late to tell them what had really happened.  He imagined the Queen Mother's comments on his behaviour - like sandpaper for uncharitableness.  And Mrs Thwale's faint smile and ironic silence.  And the excuses which Mrs Ockham would make for him with such an effusive sentimentality that her grandmother would become doubly censorious.  No, it was impossible to tell them now.  There was only one thing to do - buy the drawing back from M. Weyl and then 'find' it somewhere in the house.  But the tailor had insisted upon being paid in advance; that meant that ten out of his twenty-two precious banknotes had gone within an hour of his receiving them.  And he had spent another hundred lire on books, and sixty for a tortoiseshell cigarette-case.  So now he had little more than a thousand in hand.  Would Weyl give him credit for the balance?  Despondently Sebastian shook his head.  He'd have to borrow the money.  But from whom?  And with what excuse?

      Suddenly there was a little tap at the door.

      'Come in,' he called.

      Mrs Ockham walked into the room.

      'It's me,' she said; and crossing over to the bed, she laid a hand on his shoulder.  'It's rather late, I'm afraid,' she went on apologetically.  'Granny kept me up interminably.  But I just couldn't resist coming to say goodnight to you.'

      Politely, Sebastian propped himself up on one elbow.  But she shook her head and, without speaking, gently pushed him back on to the pillow.

      There was a long silence while she looked down at him - looked down at little Frankie and her murdered happiness, looked down at the living present, at this other curly-headed incarnation of divine reality.  Rosy and golden, a childish head upon a pillow.  As she looked, love mounted within her, overwhelming, like a tide rushing up from the depths of that great ocean from which for so long she had been cut off by the siltings of a hopeless aridity.

      'Frankie used to wear pink pyjamas too,' she said in a voice which, in spite of her effort to speak lightly, trembled with the intensity of her emotion.

      'Did he?'

      Sebastian gave her one of those enchanting smiles of his - not consciously this time, or deliberately, but because he felt himself touched into an answering affection for this absurd woman.  And suddenly he knew that this was the moment to tell her about the drawing.

      'Mrs Ockham ...' he began.

      But at the same instant, and moved by a yearning so intense as to make him unaware that he was trying to say something, Mrs Ockham also spoke.

      'Would you mind very much,' she whispered, 'if I gave you a kiss?'

      And before he could answer, she had bent down and touched his forehead with her lips.  Drawing back a little, she ran her fingers through his hair - and it was Frankie's hair.  Her eyes filled with tears.  Once more she bent down and kissed him.

      Suddenly, startlingly, there was an interruption.

      'Oh, excuse me ...'

      Mrs Ockham straightened herself up and they both turned in the direction from which the voice had come.  In the open doorway stood Veronica Thwale.  Her dark hair hung down in two plaits over her shoulders, and she was buttoned up in a long white satin dressing-gown that made her look like a nun.

      'I'm so sorry to interrupt you,' she said to Mrs Ockham.  'But your grandmother ...'

      She left the sentence unfinished, and smiled.

      'Does granny want me again?'

      'She has something more to say about that lost drawing.'

      'Oh dear!' Mrs Ockham sighed profoundly.  'Well, I'd better go, I suppose.  Would you like me to turn the light out?' she added, addressing herself again to Sebastian.

      He nodded.  Mrs Ockham turned the switch, then laid her hand for a moment against his cheek, whispered 'Goodnight,' and hurried out into the corridor.  Mrs Thwale closed the door.

      Alone in the darkness, Sebastian wondered uneasily what it was that the Queen Mother wanted so urgently to say about the drawing.  Of course, if he'd had time to tell Mrs Ockham about it, it wouldn't matter what she said.  But as it was ... He shook his head.  As it was, whatever the old she-devil said or did was sure to complicate matters, was bound to make it more difficult for himself.  Meanwhile such an opportunity as he had had just now might not come again; and to go and tell Mrs Ockham in cold blood would be the most horrible ordeal.  So horrible that he began to wonder whether it mightn't be better, after all, to try to get the drawing back from Weyl.  He was in the middle of an imaginary interview with the dealer, when he heard behind him the sound of the door being quietly opened.  On the wall at which he was looking a bar of light widened, then grew narrower and, as the latch clicked, there was darkness again.  Sebastian turned in his bed towards the unseen rustle of silk.  She'd come back, and now he could tell her everything.  He felt enormously relieved.

      'Mrs Ockham!' he said.  'Oh, I'm so glad ...'

      Through the covers a hand touched his knee, travelled up to his shoulder, and with a sharp movement pulled back the bedclothes and threw them aside.  The silk rustled again in the darkness, and a wave of perfume came to his nostrils - that sweet hot scent that was a mingling of flowers and sweat, spring freshness and a musky animality.

      'Oh, it's you,' Sebastian began in a startled whisper.

      But even as he spoke an unseen face bent over him; a mouth touched his chin, then found his lips, and fingers on his throat moved down and began to undo the buttons of his pyjama jacket.