by Paul Hazel
since been much involved with your studies.
“So, as it happened, we both missed knowing the good
Morag. More’s the pity. Such a thoughtful man! Did you
know that even on his deathbed, seeing his end and seeing as
well, I might say, that another would soon come after him, he
had four hundred bottles of the finest porter laid freshly aside
in the pantry?. . . ”
Harwood began to fidget in his chair.
“Yes, I know,” said Wykeham, shaking his head. “It
would appear he is something of an ass.”
Harwood looked incredulous. “He says he’s now your
guardian.”
Wykeham nodded. “Yes of course,” he put in quickly,
making as little as possible of the other’s surprise. “My father
and mother died when I was quite young. A shipping accident I am told, although it hasn’t prevented the lawyers from .. . . Not that I minded.” He paused. “You might skip the
second page. It’s the third that matters.”
Harwood shuffled the papers. His forehead wrinkled.
Damned if he could think of Wykeham at the mercy of
lawyers and guardians. Frankly, now that he put his mind to
it, he could not think of anyone less likely to be intimidated
by men of any stripe. But guardians. That was new. He hadn’t
suspected Wykeham was an orphan. Without really thinking
what he was saying, he blurted out: “This Morag fellow left
some property, is it?”
“No.”
“It says— let me find it— a will. . . .”
Harwood became aware of Wykeham s eyes again.
“Morag was the executor,” Wykeham said quietly. “It’s
my grandfather’s will. The property has been in my family for
years. The executor, who is always a minister of some sort,
gets the use of the parsonage. Now that Morag is dead there
is a new man.”
“Y-yes. Quite,” said Harwood, annoyed at getting it
wrong and almost stammering. It’s those damn eyes, he
thought. He was still holding the letter. “But what is this
business about leaving school?”
“It begins on the third page,” said Wykeham.
The River
9
Harwood glanced hurriedly at the second sheet but
realizing Wykeham was watching, he put it aside for the next.
The first paragraph consisted mainly of accounts: so much
for tailors, for booksellers, for a wine-merchant. Harwood
added them mentally and was shocked by the sum. The man’s
robbing him, Harwood thought, but then he noticed that the
bills were in every case Wykeham’s. Paid, all paid, Harwood
thought gloomily. He moved in his chair and settled down
again to read. There was mention of builders and gardeners
and a particularly old man, a gamekeeper, who for no reason
was being especially difficult and then:
“So I would be obliged, Mr. Wykeham, if you might
spare a day to come and talk with him.”
Harwood went back to read it once more.
“. . . ‘South Wood' is cleared. Morag, to do him credit,
saw to that last autumn before his decline. He was wonderfully thorough and found twenty new men for the work, each under fifty. Nonetheless, you may be certain, I rechecked the
Register myself. Not a man born before ’96 and most thirtyish
or younger. I mean them to start fencing ‘Black Wood’ as soon
as the ground warms. So there is progress! All the same there
is rather a hitch up at ‘Black Wood,’ in the Keeper’s Cottage,
to put it exactly.
“John Chance he calls himself. The man’s nearly eighty
and hunched over like a tree in a gale. Still he fairly howled
when we tried to evict him. He says we ‘daren’t’ move him,
says he has a paper that gives him rights there, though of
course he wouldn’t show it. But the police won’t touch him.
They were boys on the place when Chance was younger. He
taught them to snare rabbits or some such!!? In any event,
they’re no help nor want to be. So Chance stays where he is.
And I am powerless.
“It’s you he wants. He told me himself, twice. ‘Send me
the Heir,’ he shouted (shouted, mind you). ‘He'll speak with
me.’ Naturally, I said it was quite out of the question. But I
really don’t know what else to do— what with the ground
almost ready. And the delay will cost! So I would be obliged . . .”
Harwood skimmed the rest, down to the name, Timothy
Longford, and a postscript, scribbled precariously close to the
bottom, inquiring whether Wykeham would be kind enough
1 0
W1NTERKING
to secure two volumes, already purchased by Longford and
only waiting delivery, at a bookseller on Abbey Street.
Harwood turned the last page over.
“Is that it?” he asked rather defensively, afraid he had
missed something else. “You're leaving school in order to fire
a gamekeeper?”
Wykeham seemed to concentrate very hard. “In a way I
suppose I am ,” he said carefully. “Except, of course, I very
much doubt I shall end up firing him.” He stood. “I just
wanted to say good-bye.” Wykeham held out his hand.
“You are serious.”
As he squeezed Harwood’s fingers Wykeham smiled.
“It would seem that I must be.”
2
.
Harwood met with two more students after lunch but was
not, he realized, very helpful. When the latter had gone,
he spent another half an hour looking through his notes for a
Saturday morning class on Blake, trying to decipher, without
quite remembering how it went, the line of an argument he
had made at least a dozen times. At last, seeing no improvement in his wits, he closed the book resentfully, rose and, taking his coat from his chair, hurried out onto the common
without thinking to fasten the door. The afternoon was still
bitter with the hard breath of sleet in the wind. The cold
went straight through him and he pulled the coat tighter.
The coat was nearly twelve years old and had a frayed
collar; little strips of torn lining trailed beneath the hem. He
could well imagine how he looked in it. For the price of the
woodcut he might have purchased a better than adequate
replacement. But the chill wouldn’t last, he was certain, for it
was nearly April and with the good weather he could get by
in his shirt-sleeves. Damn, he thought, remembering the
door.
In the middle of the common he turned. There were
puddles all around him; his shoes squelched as he zigzagged
over the huge brown lawn until he was brought up short
under the clump of elms. In the shade of vanished summers
troops of young men had worn away the grass, leaving a patch
of bare earth. In the drizzle the patch had become a shallow
pond. Harwood looked about dismally. He was just turning
his neck when something stirred in the branches: a black
smear. But when he faced it squarely, he saw it was a crow.
Its raffish head crooked sideways, absurdly, like a thief caught
in the act.
11
1 2
WINTERKING
It’s the money, Harwood thought with a start. He remembered the extraordinary sums he had seen in the letter and knew, in a moment of utterly useless honesty, he would
have chucked school himself, would have chucked it, in fact,
a damn sight faster than Wykeham.
His Grace the Duke of West Redding pulled out his
watch and, scanning the face, made a mental note to remind
Maintenance to adjust the wall clock by a minute. He was
sharply aware of the quiet. As he waited he listened. He
heard the faint patter of rain on the windows, the distant
clank of his private elevator as it climbed the two hundred
eleven feet from the public corridor in the bank’s main lobby.
The ledger which had been in his personal care for thirty-
eight of his sixty years lay closed on the desk in front of him.
Precious little leisure he had had in those years; although,
truthfully, he had not sought it. He had been eager and
clever, capable of prodigious work and infinite care. The
young men of his own generation, who by station and training
might have seemed more worthy of the chance, had professed
to be horrified by his diligence, his eighteen-hour days, his
independent and consuming studies of asset depreciation,
exclusions and trusts. To be perfectly honest, if by some
miracle he could have been given a second crack at it, he
doubted he could have managed it again himself. A miracle
indeed! The Duke touched the closed ledger with his manicured fingers. He did not choose to open it for one last look.
This morning, as he dressed, he had found himself
whistling. He had stood at the window of his town house
overlooking the Park. Gazing across at the shadowy towers of
the College, he had seen a quizzical smile reflected back at
him in the glass. Certainly he had no immediate plans, but it
was agreeable and stimulating to think of what he still might
do. On his doorstep he had waved aside his driver and,
unmindful of the rain, had instead set olf walking. He had
taken a roundabout route, following the High Street down to
the river and only then turning, nearly reversing his tracks,
before heading north again along Chapel Street. Even so, the
public doors had not yet been opened when he marched into
the office of the senior clerk.
"Send me Houseman," the Duke had said.
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13
Caught between duty and surprise, the senior clerk had
sputtered.
"H e’s quite bright, I believe,” the Duke had said
reassuringly.
The clerk had small black eyes and a dry mouth like a
lizard’s. He had shaken his head slightly. “Your Grace," he
had said unhappily, “he’s no more than a boy.”
“He’s twenty-two,” the Duke had said, half to himself,
. . as I was."
From behind his desk the Duke rose, large and unbent
despite his age, and came out into the center of the room just
as the young man slid the brass cage to his left and stepped
from the elevator. Houseman himself was tall, only casually
erect, with thick, long arms and huge square hands which at
first glance seemed ill suited for quiet tasks with ink and
paper. Now, although he had been watching for months, the
Duke found himself studying the young man with renewed
curiosity.
He saw clearly what had made the senior clerk nervous.
Although they met you straight on, Houseman’s alert dark
eyes, having made their judgment, were inclined to look
about on their own. For a moment the young man’s face had
turned, gazing down over the city through the rain. The dull
sound of thunder rolled on the air. It was not a face, the
Duke decided, made content by waiting.
“Thank you for coming,” the Duke greeted him.
Houseman nodded.
“You would do me an added favor,” the Duke said, “if
you would sit in my chair.” His voice was quiet, his own face
still.
Houseman’s gaze lingered there a moment, then unhesitatingly he walked behind the desk. But he stood, his back to the room, as though transfixed. On the window, one drop
edged toward another. When the wind joined them, they fell.
“They were all betting you would pick Roger Henshaw,”
the younger man said.
“He's not gone without notice. Remember that. You will
have need of him.”
“I know,” Houseman answered, without irony. “I would
have picked him if it had been my choice.”
The Duke smiled.
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WINTERKING
“Then you will remember.” The Duke pulled a second
chair up to the desk so that at last Houseman sat in the first,
the great chair, his hands to either side of the ledger.
Houseman felt at once that the chair suited him as it
would not a smaller man.
"What is expected?” he asked.
“In a very few minutes,” the Duke said, “a young man
will come here. A summary record of the affairs of his family
is before you. He does not manage them and will riot, even in
part, for several years more. For the moment you will deal
almost exclusively with a man named Longford. There are
letters concerning him in the vault. From what I have seen
he is a fool, as the two others I have known in his position
have been. That does not matter. For thirty-eight years it was
one of my responsibilities to make certain that the trustees
and guardians were of no significance. Now it is yours. It is
entirely legal. Longford holds but a limited copy of the will.
He cannot begin to imagine its true scope or complexity. The
full will is here. Its authority, duly granted and affirmed,
rests— as long as you have the confidence of the heir— with
you. In time the young man will doubtlessly wish to share
some little part of it himself but only by way of amusement.
You will find he really has no interest in day-to-day business.
It’s the long view you must take with him. If you do, he will
be generous.”
The Duke flicked his watch open.
“He will want to speak with you at some length,” he
said, “to see what you are like. You must be entirely candid.
He will make a point of that and yet I shouldn’t worry. It will
not be a test. If he hadn’t faith in my judgment, 1 should not
have been here to greet you.”
“Shall I see him often?” Houseman asked.
There was such a long silence that Houseman, who
under other circumstances would have been immune, became embarrassed.
“Only once,” the Duke said finally. He took a deep
breath. “That is the reason for this talk. Generally you will
confer by letter.”
One side of the older man’s face twitched ever so slightly.
It would have been kinder, Houseman knew, to ignore it. But
at the very last moment, when he might have let pity rule
The River
15
him, it struck him that there was something important here
and he would not let it pass.
“Yet, Your Grace, you know him. And rather well, b
y
your description.”
The Duke did not look up. “I knew the grandfather. Met
him here in this room.” His head straightened. “Just once,”
Both men heard the clank of the elevator.
The Duke was already standing. By the time the brass
cage slid back he had slipped from the room. Nevertheless
the door to the outer office remained slightly ajar. There was
another long silence.
When the dark young man stepped onto the carpet,
Houseman found himself listening to the rain rather than
staring. For a moment the room seemed dwarfed by the
sound of rain. The young man came no closer and Houseman
realized that he too was listening. Then the wind changed,
taking the rain away from the glass. The young man went on
listening. Small creases turned up at the corner of his mouth.
“You have my thanks, Your Grace,” Wykeham said fondly.
With a deep satisfied click the door pulled shut.
A bell on a hook jingled when he entered the shop.
The wind had reversed his umbrella, cracking two of its ribs.
Wykeham abandoned it by the door. A pool of water collected
under his feet. Trying to get his coat unbuttoned with numb
fingers, at first he did not notice the woman sitting by the
warming stove and peering up at him angrily. He dug about
in his inside pocket for a handkerchief.
“Is it books you’re wanting?” the woman said impatiently.
Her voice was foreign. The sound of distant streets rang
at the back of it, the old faded music of crowded twilight
streets where as a girl she had walked boldly under the eyes
of sailors. She had not known then that those same streets
stretched over the sea nor had she known the dream of the
man with his black whiskers, a parcel of books in his duffel,
when he smiled from the doorway.
“Bod0?” Wykeham asked. The woman’s face, which
once may have been as haughty and brave as the pictures of
heroines in her husband’s books, was no longer pretty, but
when she laughed with surprise he was nearly certain it had
been so.
“Do you know it?”
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W IN TER IN G
“I have stopped there,” he said, coming across the floor
to stand by her, warming his hands at the stove. Her eyes