Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  “Well, but it might get back. And then what would they think of you?”

  “Bless you, the articles won’t have my name on ‘em. They’re going to be signed “Hospes,” to give a nice refined classical touch. So no one’s to know it’s me.”

  Val walked for fifty yards in silence, her hands clasped inside her sealskin muff and her head, in its grey fur cap ornamented with a bird’s wing, bent forward, silent and thoughtful.

  At last, in a troubled voice, she said, “Nils?”

  “Well?”

  “Do you—do you really think that’s a decent thing to do? Accept people’s hospitality and then write scandal about them?”

  “My dear Valla! I’ve told you before, you just can’t get on in this profession unless you’re prepared to be as tough as whipcord. It’s just no manner of use entertaining these mawkish, squeamish, tender, middle-class kind of notions.”

  “But to do it about your friends—to exploit them like that—”

  “Oh,” he said quickly. “I wouldn’t do it about my real friends. And, damn it, I only write what’s common gossip anyway.”

  “Well I don’t like it, just the same,” said Val. “It’s muckraking.”

  “One man’s muck is another man’s pigeon, my dear. Anyway, I daresay I shan’t do it for ever—certainly don’t intend to. Sometimes it can be risky, I don’t deny. And I’ve plenty more ideas. For instance, a series of medical articles which I expect to pay very handsomely. If there’s one thing that goes down well, it’s illness—people love to read about ‘em. ‘Ailments of the Great’—you know the kind of thing. Mad Queens. Caesar’s gout. Napoleon’s epilepsy. Dementia praecox—is our prime minister suffering from it?”

  “Good heavens,” said Val, startled, “is he?”

  “Not that I know of. But one can go on for ever at that sort of lark. How many members of Parliament are sane? Was Constance Kent mad? And then, of course, some day, Kirstie’s old aunts will finally be gathered in to their fathers and I hope I’ll be able to stop this sordid grubbing around altogether.”

  “Old aunts? Doesn’t Kirstie have any parents?”

  “No, they died out in India. Her father was some kind of a nabob. The aunts brought her up—real old pair of Gorgon spinsters they are. When they die, to the best of my knowledge, all their cash comes to Kirstie and a devilish great barracks of a place up in the wilds of Lammermuir called Ardnasomething. Castle Barebane, the locals call it—it’s all falling to bits. So we can only hope the aunts will be gathered in quite soon; they’re old and ugly and cantankerous enough, deuce knows! And confoundedly tight with their cash; won’t lay out a penny, even to buy the children a Christmas gewgaw. Anyway one of the aunts, the older one, is always riding round the Arabian desert on a camel, wrapped up in a blanket; keeps a diary of her travels and hobnobs with sultans; so I daresay sooner or later she’ll get desert fever—or some sheikh will lop off her head,” Nils said hopefully. “I wrote a piece about her once for the Post—nothing much—but, deuce take it, the old girl went up like a rocket. Won’t even bow to me in the street now—not that I care.”

  He screwed his head round to stare with interest at a very dashing black-haired girl in a dress of black-and-white-striped moiré with cherry piping. The fashionable crowd in the Mall was increasing.

  “Oh dear,” said Val, “there are the Chaunceys.”

  “Who are the Chaunceys, my love? Some more of Benet’s tiresome connections?”

  “Yes, his cousins; perhaps they won’t see me.”

  But as they walked across into Fifth Avenue the old-fashioned yellow coach with fringed hammercloth rumbled to a stop beside them. Two ladies were in it, Mrs. Chauncey and her daughter; both were staring at Nils with frank curiosity.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Chauncey,” said Val politely, as they bowed. “This is my brother, Nils Hansen, from England.”

  Mrs. Chauncey, stately today in royal blue velvet and a bonnet to match trimmed with frosted grapes, glanced sideways with a sharp flash of interest at this piece of information; but it was plain that her raking scrutiny had immediately summed up the hatless Nils as wholly unsuitable company for her daughter; the greeting she gave him was brief and cool.

  “Dear me, Miss Montgomery, what a pity your brother did not arrive in time for the party last night.”

  “Yes, wasn’t it?” Val agreed, thinking how much easier to bear the evening would have been with Nils there to support her and share a joke from time to time. Or would it? Might she have found the tension exacerbated by uncertainty as to whether Nils was taking surreptitious notes about his fellow guests for future publication?

  After a few commonplaces about the ball, the news of the day, and the weather, Mrs. Chauncey remarked, “And so I hear Benet is escorting the Warrens to Boston? Leaving this afternoon, is he not?”

  Startled from her composure, Val said, “Is he? I mean—yes, I knew he was going to Boston, he called to tell me so this morning, but I—”

  “Oh indeed, yes, he is to advise Cousin Alma about the sale of her house. They travel back with him. Such a worry for her, poor dear, after her husband’s death. But Benet will see to it all. He is a dear, good fellow.”

  “Yes . . .” agreed Val rather wanly.

  “Such a comfort to the family. Well, we must not keep the horses standing; it is quite cool today. Drive on, Thomas.”

  Mrs. Chauncey and her silent daughter inclined their heads again with distant politeness, and the yellow carriage moved off.

  After a moment or two, Nils remarked, “Benet hadn’t told you he was accompanying the Warrens to Boston? Isn’t that rather peculiar?”

  “Oh, I daresay he forgot, or didn’t think it of importance . . . Or perhaps it was arranged after he saw me—” Her voice died away uncertainly.

  Nils paused, and then said, “Valla, my dear, listen to me. What I’m going to tell you is entirely for your own sake—you know that?”

  She nodded.

  “You are never going to be happy in this set. It ain’t right for you. It don’t take half an eye to see that. They’re all stuffy, snobbish, intolerant—I could see how that old b—that old hag was looking you up and down—and me too—as if we were something that had gone mildewy in her pantry. How can you endure such treatment? By God, when I compare it with my life in England—all my friends—”

  “Oh—but when I’ve been married to Benet for a bit, and we’ve settled down, then they’ll accept me.”

  Even to her own ears, Val’s voice sounded singularly lacking in enthusiasm at this prospect.

  “Accept you? They’ll pulverise you. They’ll put you through the grinder and roll you out and jump up and down on you before they are satisfied. And then they won’t be. Because you’ll always have a bit of spirit left. And if you haven’t, what does that mean? That they’ve really done for you.”

  His lazy manner had left him. He spoke with unusual energy.

  “I can’t stand that butter-voiced supercilious set of people; I’d like to grind all their faces in muck.”

  “You really think I ought to break it off, Nils?”

  They had turned away from Fifth Avenue again and were wandering through the hills and dells of the Ramble; Val prodded at the soft earth with the point of her umbrella, remembering with a kind of remote pain the times when she had come with her father to pick violets here. How easy and simple life had been in those days.

  “Break it off?” Nils appeared to consider the question with care. “No, no I don’t say you ought to do that; not yet, at any rate. Benet is a good fellow, you say; he certainly seems all right; I quite took to him, I must say; and there is the family money, that’s not to be sneezed at; don’t toss away your cheese for the moon. But do what I said before; come to England for a spell, look around there; maybe Benet will follow you; or maybe England will change your ideas a bit. You might even s
ee someone you like better than Benet, who can say?”

  “Oh, that would be too unprincipled—”

  What did his words echo? My mind is full of loose ends, Val thought. Something somebody said last night at the ball. That cousin: “Greedy Alma took the girl to England, hoping for an earl . . . in the meantime, Benet’s eye had wandered.” That was a bit of irony, wasn’t it? Everyone going off to England in search of better game, giving Benet time to think again. Maybe it would be better for him to think again. But I don’t want anyone better than Benet. I love him with all my heart.

  “Unprincipled? What nonsense you talk, my dear Valla. You’re as bad as Kirstie. Now, you just forget all those highfalutin ideas and come back with me. Can’t you get that Towers fellow to give you some assignment in England that would pay for the trip? Didn’t you say he had before?”

  “Yes, very likely I could, but—”

  “Well, then! Ask him tomorrow. And—I was coming to this—”

  Nils’ authoritative manner suddenly changed to a more diffident one than he had shown hitherto. Val was not too preoccupied to be slightly amused at the contrast between his previous confident air and this unwonted anxiousness and humility. He paused, picking a plane leaf from the grass, and rolled it between his fingers. “You see—you could also do me and Kirstie a great kindness, if you’d care to.”

  He gave Val a slow, tentative, pleading look; the large blue eyes were guileless now, transparent.

  “What is it, Nils?”

  “Well—these aunts of Kirstie’s have started kicking up a row; they really are the most beastly bore you can imagine! They have been putting ideas into Kirstie’s head.”

  “What kind of ideas?”

  “Well, they go trundling round to our house in Welbeck Street in their smelly old barouche, when I’m not there, and telling Kirstie that I neglect her, and all that kind of thing. Deuce take it, what am I doing all the time I’m away but making our living? But they won’t see it. They say I never take Kirstie anywhere and it’s a black shame, and she never gets a chance to go out or meet people—and a lot of bosh of that sort. It is bosh—as I’ve said, she don’t care for society, you can’t pry her away from those brats—and she’s downright scared of mixing in a great rout of people. Rather like you, eh, Valla? I daresay you and Kirstie will get on very well.”

  “I daresay we should. But what is it you want me to do?”

  “Well I’ve got a particular pal called Nugent Reydon; Lord Clanreydon, he is now, got made a baronet last year, for lending eighty thousand to the Prince of W., so the story goes.”

  “I’ve read about him,” Val said. “Isn’t there some mystery about him—he came from the colonies—Australia—very rich? Isn’t there talk that he might be the next prime minister?”

  “Yes, if the Whigs get back. That’s the fellow; he keeps his origins dark—and who’s to blame him? He’s probably the son of an Irish weaver who got deported to New South Wales and made good; why should he have to acknowledge his scrubby kin to all the world? He keeps the best table in London—always cooks his ham in champagne—why should anybody need to know more than that?”

  “Why indeed?” agreed Val gravely, reflecting that her brother did not seem to put these praiseworthy principles into effect while pursuing his profession. But he had said that he never wrote about his real friends; presumably Lord Clanreydon was one.

  “What about him?”

  “He has just got himself a new yacht; devilish neat job it is, cost a cool three-quarter million. Tiled bathrooms, carpets, curtains—everything done to a T.”

  “A yacht? How can it cost as much as that?”

  “Steam yacht, of course,” said her brother impatiently. “Now, the thing is, old Nuggie’s collected together a very jolly sporting party, and he’s invited us all for a two-month cruise in the Mediterranean, around Christmas. Fun, eh? All the best people are going—he’s even asked the prince—”

  “Gracious. Would the prince really go?”

  “Not for Christmas. But he might slip away for a bit. He likes to get off, you know, en garçon, now and then; he travels around incog as Baron Renfrew; but anyway there would be all the swells.”

  “And so?” Val said, as her brother seemed slow in coming to the point. She lifted her watch on its ribbon; the afternoon was drawing on; soon she must go round to the Allerton house. And what, anyway, had Lord Clanreydon’s new yacht to do with her?

  “Well, Kirstie’s old aunts are cutting up really rusty at the thought of my going off for two months; more or less urging the poor girl to get a divorce if I do any such thing—”

  “You aren’t serious?” She turned to look at him in astonishment. “Divorce, because you go on a two-month cruise?”

  “Yes, ridiculous, ain’t it? After all, it would be a professional trip for me; much as my name is worth, with the Post, to be on board. But the thing is, you see,” Nils rolled his plane leaf in the other direction, and then impatiently threw it down, “the thing is, I’d got to know this gal, kind of a dancer, very jolly gal called Letty Pettigrew, and old Nuggie was going to ask her along, just for larks, and somehow the tabbies got wind of it. That’s the worst of them,” he burst out, “they’re ancient, but they ain’t out of touch, not a bit of it! They write letters to everyone, and everyone writes to them, and when they’re in town they’ve got this great mouldy house in Grosvenor Square, and all the old sticks go to their soirées. And the gossip that gets passed around there makes my column seem like Little Miss Muffet, I can tell you! So, as I say, they cut up rusty, and I had to tell Letty P. that it was all U.P. with her coming on the cruise. But even that didn’t satisfy the spiteful old hags; nothing would do for them but I should take Kirstie along. Or else, they say, I’d better decline the invitation. Decline! It would be professional suicide! Besides, I practically helped Nuggie design that yacht.”

  Reading between the lines of this artless history, Val began to feel intensely sorry for her sister-in-law. Poor Kirstie; either left alone at home, or taken as a matter of convenience and whitewashing—what humiliation, either way. But perhaps Kirstie had her own friends, diversions, compensations—how could one judge, from such a distance? What did Val know, after all, about the kind of life her brother and sister-in-law lived in fashionable London?

  “Did Kirstie agree?”

  “Well, I got her to consider it—matter of fact her doctor said it would be a very good thing for her, as she’s not been a bit well lately; she had a low fever in the summer that’s turned to a cough, and somehow she can’t seem to pull herself out of it. The doctor said sea air and so on would be just the article.”

  “I expect it would,” Val agreed. “Poor Kirstie.”

  “Ay, but here’s the rub; she won’t leave the children! You’d think after all this time she’d have found someone that she could trust with them, but no! All the gals that come to us get turned off after a month or so.”

  Val wondered fleetingly if the proclivities of Nils had anything to do with this phenomenon, and was confirmed in her hypothesis when he added, “All except one old trout who was as strict as a jailor and as ugly as sin, and I turned her off; couldn’t stand the sight of her. If you ask me,” he went on aggrievedly, “Kirstie’s got a bee in her bonnet about those brats. She’s reasonable enough on all other points, but when it comes to them, she won’t listen to sense, you might as well waste your breath talking to the wall.”

  “Perhaps it’s because she’s not well?” suggested Val. “Ill people are often unreasonable.”

  But is it so unreasonable, she wondered, not to want to leave your children? It depends how long for, I suppose.

  “Well, this all harks back to some affair about a year ago when I took her to the races—thought it’d be a treat for her, for heaven’s sake!—and when we got home, Kirstie looked through the window as I was paying off the cab and saw the girl we h
ad then—redheaded Irish colleen, that one was, pretty girl but a devil of a temper—Kirstie saw her give the little one, Jannie, a bit of a cuff on the head. I’ve never seen Kirstie so angry, she flew in like a tigress. Gave the girl her marching orders then and there, watched while she packed her box, and turned her off with a week’s wages and no character.”

  “I expect I would have done the same.”

  “Oh, stuff!” said Nils. “You have to teach children to mind you, after all; spare the rod, and so forth. Still,” he added, recollecting his mission, “I can see that you and Kirstie would see eye to eye on that head, which brings me to what I want to ask: what she sent me to say: would you consider keeping an eye on the brats for us while Kirstie comes with me on the Dragonfly? There’d be a maid, too, of course, and cook, and so forth; all you’d have to do is be there, you know?”

  A whole series of things immediately fell into place for Val. Her brother’s airy and nonchalant manner of putting the request had not wholly disguised the eagerness he felt, and with which he now waited for her reply. She suspected that considerably more was at stake in his personal life than he had so far conveyed (or ever would convey, probably); it must be so, indeed, for him to have come all the way across the Atlantic to ask this favour. Well, true, he had also arranged the lucrative commission with the Knuckle; but still, despite his previous arguments, that could have been done by letter?

  For that matter, why had he not written to Val to make his request? Because he mistrusted his epistolary powers of persuasion?

  It certainly did seem quite a lot to ask, of somebody, moreover, to whom he had not written for two or three years. He had really come to America, she deduced, to look over the situation and come to a spot decision.

  “But,” she said, “Kirstie doesn’t even know me. How can she be sure I wouldn’t ill-treat the children? Haven’t you any closer friends—somebody—”

  “No. Not a soul.”

  “How about the old aunts?”

  “Are you joking? They wouldn’t be plagued with children Pieter and Jannie’s age. Do say yes, Valla,” he said coaxingly. “Think what fun it would be! You could come back with me on the boat—no end of larks—and then, you’d like our house, Welbeck Street ain’t bad—we could give you introductions to our friends—you could go about a bit and see London—”