by Simon Raven
'He also spoke in terms of hard cash.'
'I was coming to that. Now the thing is this, my dear tutor. It was my original intention to offer you a small sum of money — say £100 — for your services. But I do feel that the outstanding, the miraculous ingenuity you have shown — though admittedly in quite another matter — entitles you to the satisfaction of receiving direct reward for your perspicacity. It will save me a little money, so that I can afford to take a generous view, and will bring you a considerable benefit. In short, I have something far more valuable than £100 to offer you — on receipt, that is, of the documents I require.'
'Oh!'
'You have justly remarked that your little discovery, as it stands, is tantamount to worthless. But suppose I was to say I had a letter in my possession, a letter I had never previously thought of much account, but which I now consider might raise your expectations from the merest shadow to the most solid substance? Suppose I was to say that?'
'I should ask what sort of letter it was.'
'And I should tell you. "This is a letter," I should say, "written to me by Mrs Fairweather when she first became worried about Terence's behaviour. It would be untrue to say," I should add, "that this letter says anything concrete, but for one who knows as much as yourself it says everything by implication." You see, my dear Esme, she felt I should know — and how right she was — as much as possible about the boy's background — and also something about his parents. Very good: an adopted mother generally knows a little of such things, and it is evident she only knows a very little about the father. "Rough ... vigorous... of the servant class" — that sort of thing. But when she comes to the mother, such is her zeal in the cause of a cure, she gives details way and beyond anything you could normally expect an adopted mother to know. I was surprised at the time, I remember. Now I am no longer surprised, only grateful. For in the course of ten pages she gives an accurate and detailed analysis of a woman who can only, given what we know, of a woman, I say, who can only be herself.'
'It seems rather a question of the hen and the egg. I mean, if you accept the story you'll take the letter as proof; or if you had reason to read such significance into the letter, you'd accept the story. But if you started with skepticism towards both. . .
'Chynnon docs not start with skepticism. He starts with an almost superstitious belief. The mere idea of documentary proof will throw him into a trance.'
'And how successful do you suppose he'll be when he starts circulating the story?'
Trito shrugged.
'I don't know that we need trouble very much, you and I. The letter, like so many of Sandra's, has no heading, and luckily, in this case, no vocatives. If he finds himself thwarted, he'll get into one of his states, and I shall make a handsome fee. If he gets away with it, poor Sandra, what with her other little troubles, is going to require my constant attention. A remunerative appendix, you might say, however the story finishes. And do we make a bargain, scholar, a bill for a letter, and thus breed two acts of justice out of one?'
'Since, as you say,' said Esme firmly, 'I am trapped in any ease, I feel I have no choice.'
'Irrefutable, scholar, irrefutable. And not a trace of pertness. But after all this talk of justice, we must have a change of idiom. Back to the tables, Esme, and the nice disregard of the wheel for all moral worth.'
XVII
The next morning Esme inaugurated a new programme.
'How would you like to live in a suite?' he said to Terence.
'There's no harm in it,' said Terence, who was still by way of being disagreeable.
'Well guess who I met last night, and thinks it a good idea?'
'It's your story.'
'Trito. He's coming to have lunch with us and then going back. Your mother sent him to see how things were. He thinks things would be better in a suite.'
So they moved into Uncle Bill's suite at eight thousand francs a day.
'What do you say about giving a little dinner-party for the Duke and Duchess? After all, they're great friends of your mother.'
'It might be fun.'
So Esme arranged a dinner-party for six at a cost of five thousand francs a head.
The party was a great success. The Duchess shrieked, the Duke boomed, Terence found a new friend, Esme rediscovered an old one, they drank a toast and broke the glasses, and three of them fell through a sheet-glass window. Luckily they were on the ground floor.
Then they went to a night-club the Duke knew about, took Terence and his friend home, went to the Casino, lost all the money they had with them, went back to the night-club the Duke knew enough about to get credit at, and finally arrived home at four in the morning. And at eight in the morning Sandra arrived by the night train from Paris. She appeared at the door of their suite with what looked like a regiment of assistant managers behind her.
'What's all this about a suite?' she said.
Esme slept in the room by the door. When he had woken slowly up he sat up in bed and gaped.
'Sandra,' he said, 'I didn't think —'
'I don't suppose you did. What's all this about a suite?'
'It was Dr Trito's idea. He thought we should have adjoining bedrooms.'
'So he thought that, did he? Did he suggest a private beach?'
'No.'
'Well that's something to be thankful for.'
Sandra then occupied Esme's bedroom. She unpacked, bathed, changed, and told the regiment of assistant managers to find Esme a servant's bedroom on the top floor. Then they had breakfast and went out shopping.
Shopping with Sandra was always rather fun — even more so in Biarritz. She bought everyone a present and a great many presents for herself. Sandra got a kick out of giving presents.
They stopped at Cartier's and bought a locket. Then they went to a photographer's to have a photo taken of Terence to put in the locket. The photographer was booked up for the morning, so they drove in a taxi to St Jean de Luz — which was big enough to have a photographer but too small for him to be booked up — and had it taken there. They paid treble to have it developed on the spot. It was too big to fit in the locket, and when they cut it down a bit Terence's forehead looked even more criminal than usual: but if it was cut down the other way the dent in his chin had to be left out, which Sandra couldn't bear. So finally they had to go back to Biarritz and make an appointment.
At Lanvier's Sandra bought herself a bag. Half-way down the next street the strap came unfastened.
'There's something wrong with this strap,' she cried.
When they went back to Lanvier's the manager showed her how to manage the strap, but even then it kept coming unfastened, so finally she threw the bag at a beggar out of sheer temper. It was a lucky day for him, because she had forgotten there were still ten thousand francs inside it.
'Where's Uncle Bill?' asked Sandra at lunch.
'He just went away,' they said.
'Most unlike Bill to change his arrangements so suddenly. He's such an old woman these days, too.'
'I think that's why he went away,' said Terence.
'At all costs,' said Sandra, 'we must play golf. I shall borrow the Duke's clubs.'
'Your Grace,' she wrote to the Duke, 'will you please lend me your golf-clubs. This is very important as I particularly want to try this course. It's most urgent, Your Grace.'
The clubs arrived — all except the wooden ones. The Duke said Sandra's temper was too uncertain for her to be lent valuable wooden clubs. But the irons were put in the corner and treated with the reverence due to the Cenotaph for some days. It always seemed to be too hot to play golf, however, so eventually they were sent back.
'Everybody,' said Sandra, 'goes into Spain. Esme must go to the Spanish consulate and get us visas.'
This was quite easy, but their passports had to be left there to be stamped. When Esme returned after lunch with Terence and Sandra, the consulate was shut. Esme had failed to notice that it always shut at two o'clock.
'It'll take more th
an this to beat me,' said Sandra. She knew as well as anyone else that by tomorrow the mood for going into Spain would have passed.
'Where,' she said to a gendarme, 'docs the Chancellor of the Spanish Legation live?'
It took some time to get there and his house was shut. Somebody came and said everyone was having siesta. Apparently it took a thousand francs to rouse the Chancellor from his: and even then it was only his wife who was roused. She came down buttoning up her skirt.
Sandra said her husband was dying in England, and that she must therefore have their passports immediately. Her husband, she added, was a 'milord Anglais', a quaint touch which pleased Esme. The Chancellor's wife said the price for opening a Spanish consulate after two o'clock was five thousand francs. The Chancellor then came down and said that for the wife of a 'milord Anglais' it was ten thousand.
They all drove to the consulate. Somehow the word that the consulate was to be opened had gone round, and the place was besieged with haggard Frenchmen who all wanted emergency visas because friends or mistresses the other side of the border were cither dying or had been put in prison. The Chancellor unlocked the door, admitted Sandra, slammed the door in everyone else's face, handed over the passports to her and received the ten thousand francs with true Spanish courtesy.
After which they went shopping in Spain.
One night Sandra and Esme went to the Casino.
'I think that man over there's an exchange spy,' said Sandra.
'He's the Duke's new secretary,' said Esme.
'He might still be an exchange spy.'
She played for a long time: whenever she had a 100 franc counter handy, she tossed it to Esme to use for roulette, as hundred franc counters are no good for baccarat. Nor, in her case, were any other sort. She came away poorer by fifty thousand francs.
'Now,' she said, 'we shall have to look at the bill and see how long we can stay.'
Esme shuddered.
'But you mean to tell me,' said Sandra the next morning, 'that you've almost used the whole fifty pounds worth of francs you were given? It didn't occur to you that a lot of that would be needed for the bill?'
'It did,' said Esme, 'but Trito said I must amuse Terence in every possible way — show him things, take him round the places, give parties for him.'
'But, Esme, whatever am I to do? I've just seen the hotel manager, and what with the suite, your parties for Terence, hired cars — the bill's going to be about a hundred and eighty thousand francs. That's thirty thousand above the basic allowance for all of us.'
Uncle Bill's dinner had turned the scale.
'Well,' she went on, 'your fifty pounds — that's fifty thousand francs — is gone, mine's gone in the Casino — and we're left with only fifty. The manager's busy seeing if he can't deduct a bit — mercifully I knew him in the old days — but even then ... We shall have to go to Paris and arrange it all there. Now be a dear, and go to the desk: say we're leaving tomorrow morning and that I want the bill as soon as possible.'
Esme went to the desk. Really it could hardly be simpler.
'I want Mrs Fairweather's bill,' he said, ' — in duplicate.'
XVIII
Early in October, Esme had one of the Bursar's dismal notes: Would Mr E. S. Foy call at seven o'clock on Wednesday?
'I must say, Esme,' said the Bursar, 'this is really very gratifying.'
'Yes,' said Esme, 'isn't it?'
'You've paid your entire debt to the college, which was beyond my wildest hopes, and —'
'And all my other debts,' said Esme smugly.
'But how did you manage it? Did Mrs Fairweather take a fancy —?'
'Not exactly. I was lucky in the Casino, in a manner of speaking.'
'But however lucky you were, you couldn't bring much money back as things are now.'
'You mustn't interpret too literally,' said Esme, 'there are ways and ways of being lucky.'
'Evidently there are,' said the Bursar rather acidly.
'But another thing,' he went on. 'I must tell you that for once in a way you've done us all credit. I've had a letter from the solicitors that expresses great satisfaction, and another one from herself that says how very favourably Terence has developed and what a great help and comfort you were when things began to get difficult. I gather she's now in rather serious trouble?'
'I'm afraid so,' said Esme, 'her doctor tells me she'll have to take an extensive rest-cure after it all. In fact he's so worried he proposes accompanying her.'
'Well, let's hope she's in good hands. But to continue: she's so favourably impressed by your manners and general competence that she wants to put both her boys down for this college. What do you think of them?' 'Well, the younger one — whom I saw little of — is incredibly nice but rather stupid. The elder one's a good buy on any terms—he's extremely intelligent and, as she say's herself, coming along nicely.'
'But what about all this "anti-social" business?'
'I think,' said Esme, 'that people exaggerate a little. There might have been something in it once, but he seems very friendly now.'
'Where's he at school?'
'He was in Switzerland. However, this trouble of poor Mrs Fairweather's has led to the currency people refusing her the special allowance for this purpose. So now he's been sent to Hadley Field — the headmaster's rather a snob and thinks it's a leg-up to have someone that's been sacked from Eton.'
'Well there you are,' said the Bursar, 'I shall certainly consider the matter very' favourably. And now, Esme, about yourself. You seem to have emerged with credit and advantage from this business. I think you've been very lucky — undeservedly lucky.'
'I don't know about that. I was kept jolly busy, you know.'
'It still seems to me a small penance to pay for all the trouble you've given other people — and all the money you've spent.'
'I've paid it back.'
'That's not the point. There's a moral somewhere in all this,' said the Bursar desperately, 'if only I could find it.'
'There are a great many,' said Esme, 'but I'm not sure they're very' much to your taste.' He rose to go.
'One more tiling,' said the Bursar; 'I think you might just tell me what you found in the Casino?'
'A moral,' said Esme, 'though you might not call it that.'