Ancestral Vices

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘We all know he sent Professor Yapp down here ostensibly to do research on the family history.’

  The Judge took another small pill. ‘Is it your contention that Ronald knows about this . . . this . . .?’ he croaked.

  ‘I can’t be sure. The point is that if this dreadful creature Yapp continues his researches he may well find out.’

  A fearful silence fell over the little party, broken only by the sound of clanging tongs and pokers as Mrs Van der Fleet-Petrefact swooned into the empty fireplace. Her husband ignored her.

  ‘In that case he must not be allowed to find out,’ said the Judge finally.

  ‘Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more,’ said the Brigadier-General and might have continued to agree even more if he hadn’t been quelled by the look in his brother’s eye.

  ‘That’s easier said than done,’ Emmelia went on. ‘He’s already tried to get in here and he’s asked to see the family papers. Naturally I refused permission.’

  This time it was Emmelia who got the full bloodshot blast from the Judge. ‘You refused him permission to see the Petrefact Papers when they would have taken his mind off this?’ he demanded tapping the catalogue. ‘I find that a most curious decision. I do indeed.’

  ‘But think of the scandal,’ said Emmelia. ‘A family history would reveal . . .’

  ‘Nothing compared to this,’ yelled the Judge. ‘If it ever gets known that we are the owners of a . . .’

  ‘A merkin manufactory?’ suggested Osbert.

  ‘Whatever you choose to call it, why, we’ll be the laughing stock, and more than laughing in my opinion, the very dregs of society. Have to resign, leave the bench, consequences would be incalculable.’

  Silence fell once more in the office.

  ‘I still think . . .’ began Emmelia, but a storm of words broke over her.

  ‘You allowed this disgusting youth to produce these . . . these . . . things,’ roared the Judge. ‘I hold you responsible for our appalling predicament.’

  The Brigadier-General and Mr Van der Fleet-Petrefact, even Osbert and Fiona, turned on Emmelia. She sat in a chair, hardly listening. The family she had protected for so long had deserted her.

  ‘All right,’ she said finally when the abuse abated, ‘I accept responsibility. Now will you tell me what we should do.’

  ‘Perfectly obvious. Let this Professor Yapp have the Petrefact Papers. Let the fellow write the family history.’

  ‘And Ronald? He must have arrived by now.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the New House. I invited him down too, you know.’

  The Judge delivered his verdict. ‘I can only conclude that you must be demented, woman.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Emmelia sadly, ‘but what are we to tell him?’

  ‘Nothing whatsoever about this.’

  ‘But everything about the family?’

  ‘Precisely. We must distract him as much as possible. And I would advise you all to treat him with the greatest respect. Ronald has it in his power to destroy our entire future.’ And so saying the Judge rose unsteadily and moved towards the door. The others followed. Only Emmelia remained seated, mourning that obscure past which her relatives were bent on destroying in the interests of their own present. From the courtyard she could hear Osbert telling the Brigadier-General to remind him about the story of Great-Aunt Georgette and the Japanese naval attaché.

  ‘I’m sure that’s how Uncle Oswald got the contract for the floating dock . . .’

  His voice trailed away. And they were going to remind the wretch Ronald of every family scandal in order to stop him from finding out about the fetish factory. For a moment Emmelia felt tempted to defy them all and present Ronald with a copy of his son’s catalogue and challenge him to go ahead with the family history in the light of its contents. But there was no point in alienating the rest of the family. She got up and followed them out.

  ‘I shall walk up,’ she said. ‘I feel the need for a breath of fresh air. And I don’t think Frederick should put in an appearance either.’

  But Frederick had already arrived at the same conclusion and was in the bar of the Club ordering a large whisky.

  *

  While the others climbed in the old Daimler Emmelia trudged wanly through the gates and into the street. It was a long time since she had seen the little town on a Saturday afternoon. The garden had been her domain, Buscott merely an extension of the garden and, at the same time, the beginning of that wide world she had so long avoided. Her occasional visits to the vet had been by car, while her nightly walks had taken her towards the countryside. It had been enough to know the gossip for her to imagine she knew the town, but this afternoon, in the knowledge that she had been abandoned by her relatives, she viewed Buscott differently. The buildings were still the same, pleasant in their suggestion of cosy interiors, and the shops much as she remembered them, though the windows were crowded with a surprising range of goods. All the same there was something she found strange and almost unrecognizable about the streets. As she paused before Cleete’s, Cornmerchant and Horticultural Supplies, and studied their offering of bulbs for autumn planting, she caught sight of herself in the reflection from the window and was startled by its message. It was as though she had seen Ronald staring back at her, though not the Ronald, Lord Petrefact, who was now confined to a wheelchair. Rather, she mirrored him as he had been twenty years before. Emmelia studied the reflection without vanity and drew a message from it. If Ronald was not a nice person – and of that there could be no doubt – was it not possible that she had deluded herself that she was?

  For a moment she remained glued to the window while her thoughts turned inward towards the very kernel of self-knowledge. She was not a nice person. The blood of those despicable Petrefacts she had so romantically endowed with virtues they had never possessed flowed as ruthlessly through her veins as it did, more transparently, through those of her brother. For sixty years she had subjugated her true nature in order to sustain her reputation and the approval of the world she fundamentally despised. It was as if she had remained a child anxious to please Nanny and her parents.

  Now, at sixty, she recognized the woman she most decidedly was. As if to emphasize the void of intervening years she watched the reflection of a young mother with a pram cross the window, merge with her own tweedy substance and emerge on the other side. Emmelia turned away with a rage she had never experienced before. She had been cheated of her own life by hypocrisy. From now on she would exercise those gifts of malice which were her birthright.

  With a firmer step she crossed the road towards New House Lane and was about to climb up it when her eye caught the placard outside the newspaper shop on the corner. It read: PROFESSOR CHARGED WITH MURDER, FULL STORY.

  For the third time in the afternoon Emmelia had the conviction that something extraordinary was happening to her. She went in and bought the Bushampton Gazette and read the article standing on the pavement. By the time she had finished, the conviction of amazement had been validated. She strode up the hill exulting in the freedom of malice.

  23

  She was not alone in her feelings of strangeness. Things had manifestly changed for Lord Petrefact. He had spent a happy hour, waiting for his relatives to return, regaling Croxley with obnoxious memories of his spoilt childhood and his holidays at the New House, how here he had shot an under-gardener with an air rifle while the fellow was bending over the onions, and there in the fishpond drowned his first (and his Aunt’s favourite) Pekinese, when the family arrived. Lord Petrefact regarded them with his most repulsive expression and was amazed when his loathing was not reciprocated.

  ‘My dear Ronald, how splendid to see you looking so well,’ said the Judge with a bonhomie he had never in a lifetime displayed, and before Lord Petrefact could recover from this shock he was being overwhelmed with a most alarming geniality. Osbert, who had on more than one occasion argued that if he had his way he’d put Ronald down without the use of a humane killer,
was positively beaming at him.

  ‘Marvellous idea, this of yours, for a family history,’ he boomed. ‘I wonder no one has thought of it before.’

  Even Randle radiated a goodwill that was singularly absent from his relations with anyone other than a gerbil or Siamese cat.

  ‘Picture of health, Ronald, absolute picture of health,’ he muttered while Fiona, stifling her repugnance for men, kissed him on the cheek. For a terrible moment Lord Petrefact could only conclude that he was in much worse health than he had supposed and that their remarkable cordiality was an augury of his deathbed. As they circled round him and Croxley wheeled the chair through the french windows into the drawing-room, Lord Petrefact rallied his hatred.

  ‘I am not well,’ he snarled. ‘In fact I am in exceedingly poor health, but I can assure you I have no intention of dying at your convenience. I am more concerned with the history of the family.’

  ‘And so are we,’ said the Judge, ‘no question about that.’

  A sympathetic murmur of agreement came from the group. Lord Petrefact ran a dry tongue round his mouth. Their assent was the last thing he had expected or wanted.

  ‘And you’ve no objection to Professor Yapp working on it?’

  For a moment Lord Petrefact’s eye seemed to catch a slight hesitation but the Judge dashed his hopes. ‘I understand he’s some sort of radical,’ he said, ‘but I daresay his bark’s worse than his bite.’

  Lord Petrefact tended to agree. If Yapp’s presence in Buscott had done no more than generate this bizarre friendliness among the family, he hadn’t bitten at all. ‘And you’re all agreed that he be given full access to the family correspondence?’

  ‘Don’t see how he could write the book properly without it,’ said Randle, ‘and I daresay it will sell well too. Osbert here was just reminding me of Uncle Oswald’s stratagem for getting the Japanese contract for the floating dock. Apparently he persuaded Aunt Georgette to slip into the Nip’s room one night on her way back from the loo and . . .’

  Lord Petrefact listened to the story with growing apprehension. If Randle was prepared to have that sort of stuff published he was prepared for anything. Again the dark suspicion that he was being conned flickered in Lord Petrefact’s mind. ‘What about Ruskin Petrefact’s penchant for goats?’ he asked, dredging from the mire of family gossip the foulest predilection he could find.

  ‘As I was told it, he preferred them dead,’ said Osbert. ‘Warm, you know, but definitely slaughtered.’

  Lord Petrefact gaped at him and the knuckles clutching the arms of the wheelchair whitened. Something had gone terribly wrong. Either that or they were humouring him in the hope that he would never live to see Yapp’s scurrilous history published. He’d soon scotch that hope. ‘Then since you are all agreed perhaps it would be as well for us to draw up a new contract with Professor Yapp, a family one, which you would all sign, conceding him full access to any document or information he requires.’

  Again he watched for dissension but the Judge was still beaming jovially and the others seemed to be as unperturbed as before.

  ‘Well, Purbeck, what’s your answer?’ he demanded brusquely in the face of that irritating smile. But it was a new voice that answered him.

  ‘I hardly imagine Professor Yapp will have much opportunity to continue his researches into the family, Ronald dear.’

  Lord Petrefact swivelled his head lividly and saw Emmelia in the doorway. Like the others she was smiling at him, but there was nothing genial about her smile; it was one of triumph and malign glee.

  ‘What the devil do you mean?’ he asked with as much menace as he could muster in so contorted a position. Emmelia said nothing. She stood, smiling and emanating a composure that was even more alarming in its way than the family’s welcome.

  ‘Answer my question, confound you,’ shouted Lord Petrefact and then, unable to keep his head screwed over his left shoulder a moment longer, turned back to the Judge. Purbeck’s expression was hardly enlightening. He was staring at Emmelia with as much amazement as Lord Petrefact felt himself. So were the others.

  It was the Brigadier-General who repeated his question for him: ‘Er . . . well I mean . . . what do you mean?’

  But Emmelia was not to be drawn. She crossed to a bell and pressed it. ‘Now why don’t we all sit down and I’ll tell Annie to bring us tea,’ she said, seating herself with the air of one wholly in command of a slight social occasion. ‘How good of you to put in an appearance, Ronald. We’d have been quite lost without you. Ah, Annie, you may serve tea in here. Unless . . .’ she paused and looked at Lord Petrefact, ‘unless you’d prefer something a trifle stronger.’

  ‘What the hell for? You know damned well I’m not allowed . . .’

  ‘Then just the tea, Annie,’ interrupted Emmelia and leant back in her armchair. ‘Of course one tends to forget your ailments, Ronald dear. You look so wonderfully youthful for an octogenarian.’

  ‘I’m not a fucking oct . . .’ he began, rising to the bait. ‘Never mind my age, what I want to know is why you’ve got it into your blasted head Professor Yapp won’t write the family history.’

  ‘Because, my dear,’ said Emmelia, having savoured the suspense, ‘he would appear to have . . . how shall I put it? . . . Let’s just say that he has more time on his hands than would seem—’

  ‘Time on his hands? What the hell are you blathering on about? Of course he’s got time on his hands. I wouldn’t have hired the fellow if he hadn’t.’

  ‘Not quite the time you’d expect. I believe the word is a stretch.’

  Lord Petrefact goggled at her. ‘Stretch?’

  ‘A stretch of time. I think that’s the vernacular for a long prison sentence. Purbeck, you’ll know.’

  The Judge nodded vacuously.

  ‘You mean this Yapp blighter’s . . .’ began Randle, but Emmelia raised a hand.

  ‘Professor Yapp has been arrested,’ she said and smoothed her skirt in the serene knowledge that she was pushing Lord Petrefact’s blood pressure up into the danger zone.

  ‘Arrested?’ he gargled. ‘Arrested? My God, you’ve nobbled the brute.’

  Emmelia stopped smiling and turned on him. ‘For murder,’ she snapped, ‘and I’ll have you know that I do not frequent race courses and nobbling—’

  ‘Never mind what you fucking frequent,’ yelled Lord Petrefact, ‘who the hell’s he supposed to have murdered?’

  ‘A dwarf. A poor little dwarf who did nobody any harm,’ said Emmelia, taking a handkerchief and rendering the news even more distressing by dabbing her eyes with it.

  But Lord Petrefact was too dumbfounded to notice. His mind had switched back to that terrible evening at Fawcett when Yapp had manifested an unholy interest in stunted things, and particularly in dwarves. What had the sod called them? Pork? Something like that. And now the maniac had gone and murdered one. In his own mind Lord Petrefact had no doubts. After all it was precisely because the swine was capable of causing havoc wherever he went that he’d sent him down to Buscott. But dwarficidal havoc was something else again. It would mean a trial with Yapp in the witness box saying . . . Lord Petrefact shuddered at the thought. It was one thing to threaten the family with publicity but quite another to be personally held responsible for sending a dwarf-killer . . . He shut off the thought and looked at Emmelia, but there was no comfort to be found in her gaze. Suddenly everything fitted together in his mind. No wonder the fucking family had been so pleased to see him and so ready to cooperate on the history. Lord Petrefact came out of his frightful meditation and turned from Emmelia to the others.

  ‘I might have guessed,’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘Of all the double-dyed swine you take the cake! Well, don’t think I’ve finished. I haven’t—’

  ‘Then I wish you would,’ said Emmelia sharply. ‘It’s too tiresome to hear you ranting on, and besides, you’ve only yourself to blame. You sent this extraordinary man, Yapp, down here. You didn’t consult me. You didn’t ask Purbeck or Randle—’
/>   It was Lord Petrefact’s turn to interrupt. ‘Croxley, back to the car. I’m not staying here another minute.’

  ‘But what about your tea, Ronald dear?’ asked Emmelia switching to sweetness. ‘It’s so seldom we have a family reunion and . . .’

  But Lord Petrefact had gone. The wheels of his chair crunched on the gravel and the family sat in silence until the hearse started.

  ‘Is this true, Emmelia?’ asked the Judge.

  ‘Of course it is.’ And she produced the Bushampton Gazette from her bag. By the time they had all read it Annie had brought the tea in.

  ‘Well, that’s a merciful release, I must say,’ said the Brigadier-General with a sigh. ‘It’s put a stopper on Ronald. I’d stake my reputation on the fact that he doesn’t know what’s been going on at the Mill. Never seen him in such a tizzwhizz since he heard Aunt Mildred had left him out of her will.’

  ‘I tend to agree with you,’ said the Judge, ‘but it’s not only Ronald we have to consider. The point is, does this murderer Yapp know about the Mill? If he should raise the matter in court . . .’

  ‘I daresay you’ll use your influence to see that he doesn’t,’ said Emmelia.

  ‘Yes . . . well . . .’ murmured the Judge, ‘naturally one will do what one can.’ He took a cup of tea and sipped it thoughtfully. ‘Nevertheless, it would be useful to know if he made any mention of the Mill in his statement. Perhaps it would be possible to find out?’

  That night, the first of many for Yapp who lay in his cell trying to order out of horror and chaos some doctrine to explain why he was there, and finding only an incredible conspiracy, the Petrefacts, gathered round the dining-table in the New House, began that process which was to justify his theory.

  ‘I should have thought it would be easy enough for you to find out if the man Yapp made any mention of what’s been going on at the Mill in his statement,’ said the Judge, addressing himself to Emmelia.

  But for once Emmelia displayed no interest in the family’s concern. ‘You can always ask Frederick. He’s bound to be in the Working Men’s Club at this hour of the night. For myself, I’m going to bed.’