The Skeleton in the Grass

by Robert Barnard

  Meanwhile Sarah had a second evening at the pictures with Roland Bradberry. He rang her up at Hallam, and when she asked Mrs. Hallam if she could have Saturday evening off, Helen said she must just say, not ask, because she was on duty practically all the time, and needed relaxation. Sarah felt that it was impossible to imagine duty that was more consistently and stimulatingly pleasant than her work at Hallam, and she smiled and said of course she would always ask.

  “You’ve found a young man,” said Helen.

  “A young man is taking me,” said Sarah cautiously.

  “Well, if it becomes serious I hope you’ll tell—oh dear, I was going to say I hoped you’d tell your mother. Please forgive me, Sarah dear.”

  “I certainly won’t tell my father unless there is something definite to tell,” said Sarah.

  “I can understand that,” agreed Helen. “I hope if there’s anything you want to talk over, you’ll come to me. I suppose in a way I’m a stand-in for your mother at the moment.”

  But Sarah was determined there would be nothing to talk over, for a while, anyway. Life was just beginning. It had, she felt, begun with her coming to Hallam. The exploration of life’s possibilities was hardly under way. There were going to be no hasty decisions, no falling into traps, no steps taken in hotness of blood that would close up possibilities for the years ahead.

  Meanwhile the excursion to Willbury Village Hall was a nice night out. The film was Little Women and it presented fewer excitements than Grand Hotel. The audience took it very much in their stride, and this time voiced occasional comments on the plot as the action progressed. It was altogether a less rapt occasion, but Sarah enjoyed it none the less.

  In the breakdown they stood a little aside this time, standing against the wall of the village inn. Barry Noaks showed some sign of wanting to approach them again, but at a shake of the head from Roland he stopped some yards away.

  “Hear you’ve got a nigger up at the hall, that right?” he shouted. Sarah found it difficult to respond tactfully at that volume.

  “We had an Indian friend of Oliver’s. He’s gone now.”

  “What them Hallams want a nigger for?” shouted Barry. But at another sign from Roland he turned and went away. Sarah was glad. She found his loud, crowing vacancy difficult to stomach, and she admired Roland for his tolerance. She turned to him and said in a low voice:

  “Which are Major Coffey’s star recruits? Are there any of them here?”

  Roland looked around.

  “That lad over there, in the light blue pullover is Bertie Marsh. And the chap next to him is Jim Fallow. I don’t think Chris Keene is here—oh, wait: that’s him coming out of the shop with an ice-cream.”

  Sarah looked at them all. None of them looked at all like Barry Noaks. In fact, they not only looked normal, they looked rather lively: the sort who in one way or another are likely to take a lead in village life, be marked out from the general torpidity, whether by being on the parish council, or by being the star poacher. Chris Keene even seemed to have a rare quality of gaiety about him. He was obviously a village wit, and kept a little knot of younger members of the audience rocking with appreciative laughter.

  “It seems a bit odd . . .” she said hesitantly. “They all seem sort of . . . above average. I mean, not yokels . . .”

  Roland laughed.

  “You sound like Rector Kroll.”

  “Who’s he? A clergyman?”

  “No, a headmaster in Ibsen. He couldn’t understand why the radical students who were rebelling against him were all drawn from his brightest boys.”

  “But this is quite different!” protested Sarah. “These boys are not radical, they’re horribly reactionary!”

  “Maybe it’s just a question of what rebellion happens to be going,” said Roland.

  The film this time was shorter, and there were fewer villagers there. Their walk home, though very dark, was more solitary and intimate than it had been last time. They were more relaxed with each other too, and were discovering more things to talk about. When the talk shifted from Roland and his prospects after Oxford to Sarah and her plans after the Hallams, Sarah let herself talk and talk, ranging over this and that, so that it might have seemed that the possibilities for her were endless, instead of severely limited (as they were, in fact, for Roland too). They were so close, both physically and temperamentally, that Sarah decided to let Roland kiss her at the gate. She was quite sure he would try to, or ask.

  Thus her mind, as they approached the gate—now in fact nothing but gateposts, without either gate or keeper in the tiny lodge beside it—was on the kiss, rather than on the approach of home. It was only when they stopped talking and she turned towards Roland that she noticed something out of the corner of her eye and swung back. Immediately the kiss was forgotten.

  Hanging on the gatepost, on the hinge left behind by the removed gate, there was a dead chicken.

  “Bloody fools!” said Roland violently, and strode over to take it down.

  “No, don’t. It may be evidence.”

  Sarah looked at the unappetizing bird. It had been hung by its head, and its neck seemed an inordinate length. It looked yellow and scaly in the moonlight, and none the pleasanter for being obviously the sort of fowl that would need long, slow cooking.

  “Evidence of what?” asked Roland. “I can’t see that hanging a chook on a gatepost is any sort of crime. They’re being very cunning, don’t you see? And I shouldn’t think the surface is susceptible to fingerprints.”

  He looked at it with distaste, and Sarah, after a few moments, decided to giggle.

  “It is a bit of an anti-climax after the dog. Poor old bird. Why is a dead dog horrible but a dead hen ridiculous? Actually, the Hallams are wanting to play all this down. They think it’s just village foolishness rather than anything worse. I suppose the best thing is to get rid of it. I can have a word quietly with Mr. Hallam and say we’ve disposed of it.”

  But barks from the other side of the house told them that Bounce had been let out for his evening run-around. He sensed Sarah in the vicinity, and in a trice was cavorting over the darkened garden to welcome her home. He had no sooner jumped up to greet her than he sensed the chicken and set up a great barking at the intrusive presence. He sat beneath it, protesting, and when Roland tried to take it he redoubled his noise, convinced he was being robbed of something. Soon the front door of the house opened, and a figure appeared against the lighted hall, peering out.

  “They’re a bit on edge,” whispered Sarah. She stood in the gateway and shouted: “It’s all right. It’s only me, Sarah.” She turned to Roland. “I must go.” Bounce jumped up at her again, imploring her to prevent his being despoiled of the desirable bird, which would never torment him or fly away as all the other birds did. She took him by the collar. Roland, the bird flung over his shoulder, bent forward, and, tickled by dog fur and the neck feathers of the chicken, they had their first kiss.

  “I’m sorry about the bird,” whispered Roland.

  “It was unlike any kiss I’ve had,” said Sarah. Then, waving with one hand and still clutching Bounce with the other, she darted across the front lawn to the safety of light and home.

  When she got in she talked about the film, and it was not until next morning that she told Dennis. He made light of it, but said that he was calling in on Sergeant South on his way to Oxford that afternoon, and he’d tell him then.

  “It’s another little piece of persecution,” he said, “but it’s hardly against the law. Apart from the killing of the dog, they’ve kept well inside it. Now it’s just pinpricks, and we just have to wait until they get tired.”

  With that verdict, apparently, Sergeant South agreed. Over sherry that evening Dennis told Sarah that the envelope with the white feather had been tested for fingerprints, and the sender was found to be Christopher Keene. He had been up before magistrates two years before, on a minor pilfering charge. South had had a long, stern talk with the boy, but he was not particularly s
anguine about its effects.

  “We must hope that they run out of metaphors for cowardice,” said Dennis, with a sad smile.

  CHAPTER 8

  They took the Wolseley to the Wadhams’ party, because they were all rather decked out. Not exactly in fancy dress, because it wasn’t that sort of party, but not normally dressed either. It was for this reason they decided not to walk. They could have gone over the river by the little wooden bridge to the west of Hallam’s lawns, and then along a half-mile of country lanes to Beecham Park. But as Helen said: who wanted to make a raree show for the locals? “And what a fag, walking home after all those games!”

  There were other, unspoken, reasons for not wanting to walk home in the dark.

  They had all rummaged around in the trunks and attics of Hallam to come up with something in the clothing line that would appeal to the Waddies. Amusing the Waddies was apparently the whole aim of this party, which seemed rather topsy-turvy to Sarah when she thought about it. But the trunks were a delight, a miniature history of English clothes over the previous hundred years. Dennis came up with cream boating gear and a straw hat, a get-up which had probably graced Henley around the year 1910. Helen found a long, drapey woollen dress, immediately post-war, three-quarter length and a rather slimy green, and she said she intended to be a Bloomsbury lady. “But darling, you don’t look a bit like Virginia Woolf!” protested Dennis.

  “No long, soulful face, and much too pretty.” And indeed, when she put it on, she looked like a very pretty woman pretending to be Bloomsbury. “I’m sure there are pretty Bloomsbury women,” said Helen. “We’re not far from Bloomsbury people ourselves.”

  Oliver went as a Victorian blood, Elizabeth found a costume which had been used in amateur theatricals, and which was labelled “Prince Orlofsky.” She made a handsome prince. Sarah decided on a weird and wonderful black and purple flowing dress, that must have been left behind by some exotic visitor late in the last century.

  “It makes you look like some Rumanian countess,” said Helen. “Or did Queen Marie ever stay here, I wonder?”

  Chloe looked enchanting in a sailor suit, and not in the least boyish.

  Even driving through the country roads to Beecham Park felt a bit odd. “We might be on our way to Mr. Korda’s film studio,” said Elizabeth. Of course all the country people who saw them knew exactly where they were going. Many of them had been involved in preparing the substantial quantities of food that were to be provided. “Tuck,” said Elizabeth, screwing her face up. “Or nursery fare.” Drink, apparently, was more sparingly available, and both Dennis and Oliver had provided themselves with hip flasks.

  Their reception was very different from that at Cabbot Hall. In fact there was no reception. The party was already under way, and they heard from open doors and windows laughter and shrieks. So the Hallams just got out of the car and went in, hoping at some point to meet their hosts so that they could introduce Sarah. In fact the first people they met that Sarah knew were the Mostyn Hallams. Chloe threw herself joyfully into Winifred’s arms, and Sarah could almost feel the conflict of affection and jealousy in the woman. She laughed and cuddled her, then put her back on the ground to run off.

  “She’s a delightful child,” said Sarah.

  “Wonderful. Almost too good to be true,” said Winifred haltingly. “You’re lucky . . . So lucky.”

  Sarah suddenly found Winifred rather congenial in her gauche openness to hurt. She said, not entirely going off at a tangent:

  “I enjoyed your gardens at Cabbot. They’re beautifully . . . random, if that’s the word, and if it isn’t insulting. Are they of your making?”

  “Largely. Yes, it was a quite different sort of wilderness when we got the place. Are you interested? Would you like to come and see around properly some time? Not much to see here at Beecham, I’m afraid, even if there were more light. A muddle rather than a wilderness, and not a very creative one. The Waddies are not interested in gardens.”

  They were still in the entrance hall, the Hallams talking to some other neighbours, people by the name of Cousins, whom Sarah had met over tea at Hallam. He was tall, and handsome in an immensely aristocratic way that Sarah found rather intimidating, while she was small and fluffy and silly. She and Winifred were about to turn and go into the main part of the house, whence all the jollity came, when Winifred said: “Ah—here’s Waddy.”

  Here, in fact, were most of the Waddies.

  Waddy himself was a delightful bumbler of a man, dressed in tweed trousers and an old cardigan with leather patches on the sleeves. He might have just come in from feeding the dogs. His wife wore a thick brown jumper, a grey skirt, and ankle socks. They were delighted to see both branches of the Hallams.

  “Hello m’dears!” chortled Waddy. “Well, if it isn’t the lovely Chloe. You’re more beautiful every time I see you, young lady, and if that isn’t your mother’s influence I don’t know what is. Is this your new governess, then? She’s a bobby-dazzler like you, isn’t she? What are you going to play, Chloe? We’ve got so many games you won’t know where to start. We’re just off to find somewhere to set out the Monopoly board.”

  He handed over the game to one of his daughters. There were two of them, lumpish, amiable girls, incredibly dreary in dress (though Sarah was glad to see that neither of them sported ankle socks), and apparently raring to pile up properties on Mayfair and Park Lane. Their mother watched them go, fondly.

  “It’s so lucky women are not allowed on the Stock Exchange. We should none of us have any money left.”

  Waddy had taken Dennis by the arm, confidentially. He apparently regarded him as a sounding-board, a well-disposed critic.

  “I say, Hallam, did you know we have a debate on population coming up in the Lords? Listen—I’ve thought of a phrase, tell me what you think of it. ‘What we need is not birth control but self-control.’ Rather good, eh?”

  “Awfully good, Waddy. But I thought you were rather in favour of birth control?”

  “Ah—that was before I thought of the phrase,” said Waddy, with a look of beguiling cunning. “What do you think, eh? Will it get me a paragraph in the Daily Mail?”

  “What a lovely dress, my dear,” said Lady Wadham to Sarah. “Is the Eastern look fashionable this year? I must get some nice gauzy scarves and pin them to my jumpers.”

  “Actually,” said Sarah awkwardly, because after all this wasn’t supposed to be fancy dress, “it’s something we found in a trunk at Hallam, Lady Wadham.”

  “Well, you all look terribly fun, which is the main thing,” said Lady Wadham, quite unoffended. “And do call me Josabeth, my dear. Now, do you feel like joining Susan and Jane at Monopoly? They have an absolute craze on it at the moment, I suppose because they have so little money of their own, poor things. Or I wonder what Simon is getting up. Sarah, this is Simon . . . Oh, and this is a friend of Simon’s, Major . . .”

  “Coffey,” said Sarah. “We have met.”

  She had not seen him, standing silently behind, in the shadow of the staircase, a sinister presence. She shook hands reluctantly, disliking intensely the sardonic half-smile, replete with self-satisfaction, with which he greeted her. Everyone else seemed to have evaporated, and she was forced to turn, faute de mieux, back to Simon, the son of the house.

  “What is it you’re getting up?” she asked.

  Simon Killingbeck, the next Lord Wadham, was as unlikely a son of Lord and Lady Wadham as it was possible to imagine. Most probably he was a throwback to his greatgrandfather, Jubal Killingbeck, who had made his fortune in the Potteries, manufacturing equipment for public urinals and private privies. A cantankerous old slave-driver he had been, with a nose for money and an itch for power. His punishment in this life was to know that he had handed on his dubious gifts neither to his son nor his grandson, whom he regarded as mentally defective. Lord Wadham still had interests in the family firm, but the direction of it had long since passed to more capable hands. In Simon the old Adam had disconcertingly r
eappeared. He was a fair boy, with prominent eyes, not good-looking, but with a firm, mean mouth and an obstinate expression that boded ill for anybody and anything that stood in his way.

  “Croquet,” he said, with no particular invitation in his voice. Never since she came to the Hallams had Sarah been told more clearly that she was a nursery governess.

  Some obstinate instinct made her say: “I’ll play.”

  He looked at her insolently for a moment, then turned back into the doorway that led to the rest of the house.

  “Come on, all the croquet players,” he shouted.

  On the lawn outside the darkness was broken only by the lights from the house. A little knot of six players assembled, but they were watched from the wall of the house by the Major, a saturnine, unfestive presence. Simon introduced Sarah to nobody, and seemed to think it neither funny nor fun to play croquet in the dark. The squeals of laughter inside were not reproduced on the lawn. It was the oddest game of croquet Sarah had ever played. The near-darkness made it difficult at the beginning to see the hoops. Even when Sarah’s eyes had accustomed themselves to the murk, it was not possible to see all the balls. It became clear after about ten minutes that Simon Killingbeck’s team was the less proficient of the two. From that moment Sarah was conscious of oddities in the game—balls, mainly Simon’s, that seemed to have been moved, discrepancies in the scoring, to his advantage.

  Others, she felt sure, had noticed too. They did not protest. Simon was, after all, the son of the house. And of course they probably knew him better than to protest. Sarah wondered whether the Major was proud of his protégé’s cunning. As the game was drawing to its close she realized the Major was no longer watching, and wondered which of the laughing groups he was making uneasy by his participation in their fun.

  “Thank you for a splendid game,” said Sarah to Simon at the end. “It’s always stimulating to play with someone who has the will to win.”

  Inside the house the various festivities were going on with great zest and noise. Sarah looked in on the smallest guests, who were playing Happy Families, which was Chloe’s favourite game. In another room the Killingbeck girls were amassing huge sums of paper money at Monopoly, and in the study Waddy was doing his performance from Dickens.