Final Curtain ra-14

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Are the problem children still digging for a Freudian victory?” asked Cedric.

  “They’re doing a jolly good job of work,” Paul rejoined. “All the second terrace was down in potatoes this year. You can see them up there now.” Troy had already noticed a swarm of minute figures on the second terrace.

  “The potato!” Cedric murmured. “A pregnant sublimation, I feel sure.”

  “You enjoy eating them, anyway,” Fenella said bluntly.

  “Here we are, Mrs. Alleyn. Do you honestly feel like walking? If so, we’ll go up the Middle Walk and Cedric can drive.”

  They climbed out. Paul opened the elaborate and becrested iron gates, explaining that the lodge was now used as a storehouse for vegetables. Cedric, holding the reins with a great show of distaste, was borne slowly off to the left. The other three began the ascent of the terraces.

  The curiously metallic sound of children’s singing quavered threadily in the autumn air.

  “Then sing a yeo-heave ho,

  Across the seas we’ll go;

  There’s many a girl that I know well

  On the banks of the Sacramento.”

  As they climbed the second flight of steps a woman’s crisp voice could be heard, dominating the rest.

  “And Down, and Kick, and Hee-ee-eeve. Back.

  And Down, and Kick and Hee-ee-ve.”

  On the second terrace some thirty little girls and boys were digging in time to their own singing. A red-haired young woman, clad in breeches and sweater, shouted the rhythmic orders. Troy was just in time to see a little boy in the back row deliberately heave a spadeful of soil down the neck of a near-by little girl. Singing shrilly, she retaliated by catching him a swinging smack across the rump with the flat of her spade.

  “And Down and Kick and Heave. Back,” shouted the young woman, waving cheerfully to Paul and Fenella.

  “Come over here!” Fenella screamed. The young woman left her charges and strode towards them. The singing continued, but with less vigour. She was extremely pretty. Fenella introduced her: Miss Caroline Able. She shook hands firmly with Troy, who noticed that the little girl, having downed the little boy, now sat on his face and had begun methodically to plaster his head with soil. In order to do this she had been obliged first to remove a curious white cap. Several of the other children, Troy noticed, wore similar caps.

  “You’re keeping them hard at it, aren’t you, Carol?” said Fenella.

  “We stop in five minutes. It’s extraordinarily helpful, you know. They feel they’re doing something constructive. Something socially worth while,” said Miss Able glowingly. “And once you can get these children, especially the introverted types, to do that, you’ve gone quite a bit of the way.”

  Fenella and Paul, who had their backs to the children, nodded gravely. The little boy, having unseated the little girl, was making a brave attempt to bite the calf of her left leg.

  “How are their heads?” Paul asked solemnly. Miss Able shrugged her shoulders. “Taking its course,” she said. “The doctor’s coming again tomorrow.”

  Troy gave an involuntary exclamation, and at the same moment the little girl screamed so piercingly that her voice rang out above the singing, which instantly stopped.

  “It’s — perhaps you ought to look,” said Troy, and Miss Able turned in time to see the little girl attempting strenuously to kick her opponent, who nevertheless maintained his hold on her leg. “Let go, you cow,” screamed the little girl.

  “Patricia! David!” cried Miss Able firmly and strode towards them. The other children stopped work and listened in silence. The two principals, maintaining their hold on each other, broke into mutual accusations.

  “Now, I wonder,” said Miss Able brightly, and with an air of interest, “just what made you two feel you’d like to have a fight.” Confused recriminations followed immediately. Miss Able seemed to understand them, and, to Troy’s astonishment, actually jotted down one or two notes in a little book, glancing at her watch as she did so.

  “And now,” she said, still more brightly, “you feel ever so much better. You were just angry, and you had to work it off, didn’t you? But you know I can think of something that would be much better fun than fighting.”

  “No, you can’t,” said the little girl instantly, and turned savagely on her opponent. “I’ll kill you,” she said, and fell upon him.

  “Suppose,” shouted Miss Able with determined gaiety above the shrieks of the contestants, “we all shoulder spades and have a jolly good marching song.”

  The little girl rolled clear of her opponent, scooped up a handful of earth, and flung it madly and accurately at Miss Able. The little boy and several of the other children laughed very loudly at this exploit. Miss Able, after a second’s pause, joined in their laughter.

  “Little devil,” said Paul. “Honestly, Fenella, I really do think a damn good hiding—”

  “No, no,” said Fenella, “it’s the method. Listen.”

  The ever-jolly Miss Able was saying: “Well, I expect I do look pretty funny, don’t I? Now, come on, let’s all have a good rowdy game. Twos and threes. Choose your partners.”

  The children split up into pairs, and Miss Able, wiping the earth off her face, joined the three onlookers.

  “How you can put up with Panty,” Paul began.

  “Oh, but she really is responding, splendidly,” Miss Able interrupted. “That’s the first fight in seven and a half hours, and David began it. He’s rather a bad case of maladjustment, I’m afraid. Now, Patricia,” she shouted. “Into the middle with you. And David, you see if you can catch her. One tries as far as possible,” she explained, “to divert the anger impulse into less emotional channels.”

  They left her, briskly conducting the game, and continued their ascent. On the fourth terrace they encountered a tall and extremely good-looking woman dressed in tweeds and a felt hat, and wearing heavy gauntleted gloves.

  “This is my mother,” said Paul Kentish.

  Mrs Kentish greeted Troy rather uncertainly: “You’ve come to paint Father, haven’t you?” she said, inclining her head in the manner of a stage dowager. “Very nice. I do hope you’ll be comfortable. In these days — one can’t quite”—she brightened a little—“but perhaps as an artist you won’t mind rather a Bohemian—” Her voice trailed away and she turned to her son:

  “Paul, darling,” she said richly, “you shouldn’t have walked up all those steps. Your poor leg. Fenella, dear, you shouldn’t have let him.”

  “It’s good for my leg, Mother.”

  Mrs Kentish shook her head and gazed mistily at her glowering son. “Such a brave old boy,” she said. Her voice, which was a warm one, shook a little, and Troy saw with embarrassment that her eyes had filled with tears. “Such an old Trojan,” she murmured. “Isn’t he, Fenella?”

  Fenella laughed uncomfortably and Paul hastily backed away. “Where are you off to?” he asked loudly.

  “To remind Miss Able it’s time to come in. Those poor children work so hard. I can’t feel — however. I’m afraid I’m rather old-fashioned, Mrs. Alleyn. I still feel a mother knows best.”

  “Well, but Mother,” Paul objected, “something had to be done about Panty, didn’t it? I mean, she really was pretty frightful.”

  “Poor old Panty!” said Mrs. Kentish bitterly.

  “We’d better move on, Aunt Pauline,” Fenella said. “Cedric is driving up. He won’t do anything about unloading if I know him.”

  “Cedric!” Mrs. Kentish repeated. “T’uh!”

  She smiled rather grandly at Troy and left them.

  “My mother,” Paul said uncomfortably, “gets in a bit of a flap about things. Doesn’t she, Fen?”

  “Actually,” said Fenella, “they all do. That generation, I mean. Daddy rather wallows in emotion and Aunt Dessy’s a snorter at it. They get it from Grandfather, don’t you think?”

  “All except Thomas.”

  “Yes, all except Thomas. Don’t you think,” Fenella a
sked Troy, “that if one generation comes in rather hot and strong emotionally, the next generation swings very much the other way? Paul and I are as hard as nails, aren’t we, Paul?”

  Troy turned to the young man. He was staring fixedly at his cousin. His dark brows were knitted and his lips were pressed together. He looked preternaturally solemn and did not answer Fenella. “Why,” thought Troy, “he’s in love with her.”

  ii

  The interior of Ancreton amply sustained the promise of its monstrous façade. Troy was to learn that “great” was the stock adjective at Ancreton. There was the Great West Spinney, the Great Gallery and the Great Tower. Having crossed the Great Drawbridge over the now dry and cultivated moat, Troy, Fenella, and Paul entered the Great Hall.

  Here the tireless ingenuity of the architect had flirted with a number of Elizabethan conceits. There was a plethora of fancy carving, a display of stained-glass windows bearing the Ancred arms, and a number of presumably collateral quarterings. Between these romped occasional mythical animals, and, when mythology and heraldry had run short, the Church had not been forgotten, for crosslets-ancred stood cheek-by-jowl in mild confusion with the keys of St. Peter and the Cross of St. John of Jerusalem.

  Across the back of the hall, facing the entrance, ran a minstrels’ gallery, energetically chiselled and hung at intervals with banners. Beneath this, on a wall whose surface was a mass of scrolls and bosses, the portrait, Fenella explained, was to hang. By day, as Troy at once noticed, it would be chequered all over with the reflected colours of a stained-glass heraldry and would take on the aspect of a jig-saw puzzle. By night, according to Paul, it would be floodlit by four lamps specially installed under the gallery.

  There were a good many portraits already in the hall, and Troy’s attention was caught by an enormous canvas above the fireplace depicting a nautical Ancred of the eighteenth century, who pointed his cutlass at a streak of forked lightning with an air of having made it himself. Underneath this work, in a huge armchair, warming himself at the fire, was Cedric.

  “People are seeing about the luggage,” he said, struggling to his feet, “and one of the minor ancients has led away the horse. Someone has carried dearest Mrs. Alleyn’s paints up to her inaccessible eyrie. Do sit down, Mrs. Alleyn. You must be madly exhausted. My Mama is on her way. The Old Person’s entrance is timed for eight-thirty. We have a nice long time in which to relax. The Ancient of Days, at my suggestion, is about to serve drinks. In the name of my ridiculous family, in fact, welcome to Katzenjammer Castle.”

  “Would you like to see your room first?” asked Fenella.

  “Let me warn you,” Cedric added, “that the visit will entail another arduous climb and a long tramp. Where have they put her, Fenella?”

  “The Siddons room.”

  “I couldn’t sympathise more deeply, but of course the choice is appropriate. A steel engraving of that abnormally muscular actress in the rôle of Lady Macbeth hangs over the washhand-stand, doesn’t it, Fenella? I’m in the Garrick, which is comparatively lively, especially in the rat season. Here comes the Ancient of Days. Do have a stirrup-cup before you set out on your polar expedition.”

  An extremely old man-servant was coming across the hall with a tray of drinks. “Barker,” said Cedric faintly. “You are welcome as flowers in spring.”

  “Thank you, Mr Cedric,” said the old man. “Sir Henry’s compliments, Miss Fenella, and he hopes to have the pleasure of joining you at dinner. Sir Henry hopes Mrs. Alleyn has had a pleasant journey.”

  Troy said that she had, and wondered if she should return a formal message. Cedric, with the nearest approach to energy that he had yet displayed, began to mix drinks. “There is one department of Katzenjammer Castle to which one can find no objection, and that is the cellar,” he said. “Thank you, Barker, from my heart. Ganymede himself couldn’t foot it more featly.”

  “I must say, Cedric,” Paul muttered when the old butler had gone, “that I don’t think your line of comedy with Barker is screamingly funny.”

  “Dear Paul! Don’t you? I’m completely shattered.”

  “Well, he’s old,” said Fenella quickly, “and he’s a great friend.”

  Cedric darted an extraordinarily malicious glance at his cousins. “How very feudal,” he said. “Noblesse oblige. Dear me!”

  At this juncture, rather to Troy’s relief, a stout smiling woman came in from one of the side doors. Behind her, Troy caught a glimpse of a vast formal drawing-room.

  “This is my Mama,” Cedric explained, faintly waving his hand.

  Mrs. Henry Ancred was a firmly built, white-skinned woman. Her faded hair was scrupulously groomed into a rather wig-like coiffure. She looked, Troy thought, a little as if she managed some quiet but extremely expensive boarding-house or perhaps a school. Her voice was unusually deep, and her hands and feet unusually large. Unlike her son, she had a wide mouth, but there was a resemblance to Cedric about the eyes and chin. She wore a sensible blouse, a cardigan, and a dark skirt, and she shook hands heartily with Troy. A capable woman.

  “So glad you’ve decided to come,” she said. “My father-in-law’s quite excited. It will take him out of himself and fill in his day nicely.”

  Cedric gave a little shriek: “Milly, darling!” he cried. “How— you can!” He made an agonised face at Troy.

  “Have I said something I shouldn’t?” asked his mother. “So like me!” And she laughed heartily.

  “Of course you haven’t,” Troy said hurriedly, ignoring Cedric. “I only hope the sittings won’t tire Sir Henry.”

  “Oh, he’ll tell you at once if he’s tired,” Millamant Ancred assured her, and Troy had an unpleasant picture of a canvas six by four feet, to be completed in a fortnight, with a sitter who had no hesitation in telling her when he felt tired.

  “Well, anyway,” Cedric cried shrilly. “Drinks!”

  They sat round the fire, Paul and Fenella on a sofa, Troy opposite them, and Millamant Ancred, squarely, on a high chair. Cedric pulled a humpty up to his mother, curled himself on it, and rested an arm on her knees. Paul and Fenella glanced at him with ill-concealed distaste.

  “What have you been doing, dear?” Millamant asked her son, and put her square white hand on his shoulder.

  “Such a lot of tiresome jobs,” he sighed, rubbing his cheek on the hand. “Tell us what’s going to happen here. I want something gay and exciting. A party for Mrs. Alleyn. Please! You’d like a party, wouldn’t you?” he persisted, appealing to Troy. “Say you would.”

  “But I’ve come to work,” said Troy, and because he made her feel uncomfortable she spoke abruptly. “Damn!” she thought. “Even that sounds as if I expected her to take him seriously.”

  But Millamant laughed indulgently. “Mrs. Alleyn will be with us for The Birthday,” she said, “and so will you, dear, if you really can stay for ten days. Can you?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said fretfully. “The office-place is being tatted up. I’ve brought my dreary work with me. But The Birthday! How abysmally depressing! Darling Milly, I don’t think, really, that I can face another Birthday.”

  “Don’t be naughty,” said Millamant in her gruff voice.

  “Let’s have another drink,” said Paul loudly.

  “Is somebody talking about drink?” cried a disembodied voice in the minstrels’ gallery “Goody! Goody! Goody!”

  “Oh, God!” Cedric whispered. “Sonia!”

  iii

  It had grown dark in the hall, and Troy’s first impression of Miss Sonia Orrincourt was of a whitish apparition that fluttered down the stairs from the far side of the gallery. Her progress was accompanied by a number of chirruping noises. As she reached the hall and crossed it, Troy saw that she wore a garment which even in the second act of a musical extravaganza would still have been remarkable. Troy supposed it was a négligée.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” squeaked Miss Orrincourt, “look who’s here! Ceddie!” She held out both her hands and Cedric took them.

/>   “You look too marvellous, Sonia,” he cried. “Where did it come from?”

  “Darling, it’s a million years old. Oh, pardon me,” said Miss Orrincourt, inclining towards Troy, “I didn’t see—”

  Millamant stonily introduced her. Fenella and Paul having moved away from the sofa, Miss Orrincourt sank into it. She extended her arms and wriggled her fingers. “Quick! Quick! Quick!” she cried babyishly. “Sonia wants a d’ink.”

  Her hair was almost white. It fell in a fringe across her forehead and in a silk curtain to her shoulders, and reminded Troy vaguely of the inside of an aquarium. Her eyes were as round as saucers, with curving black lashes. When she smiled, her short upper lip flattened, the corners of her mouth turned down, and the shadow of grooves-to-come ran away to her chin. Her skin was white and thick like the petals of a camellia. She was a startling young woman to look at, and she made Troy feel exceedingly dumb.

  “But she’d probably be pretty good to paint in the nude,” she reflected. “I wonder if she’s ever been a model. She looks like it.”

  Miss Orrincourt and Cedric were conducting an extraordinarily unreal little conversation. Fenella and Paul had moved away, and Troy was left with Millamant Ancred, who began to talk about the difficulties of housekeeping. As she talked, she stitched at an enormous piece of embroidery, which hypnotised Troy by its monstrous colour scheme and tortuous design. Intricate worms and scrolls strangled each other in Millamant’s fancy work. No area was left undecorated, no motive was uninterrupted. At times she would pause and eye it with complacency. Her voice was monotonous.

  “I suppose I’m lucky,” she said. “I’ve got a cook and five maids and Barker, but they’re all very old and have been collected from different branches of the family. My sister-in-law, Pauline, Mrs. Claude Ancred, you know, gave up her own house in the evacuation time and has recently joined us with two of her maids. Desdemona did the same thing, and she makes Ancreton her headquarters now. She brought her old Nanny. Barker and the others have always been with us. But even with the West Wing turned into a school it’s difficult. In the old days of course,” said Millamant with a certain air of complacency, “there was a swarm.”