‘It was so, or approximately so. You simplify a little, but on the broad facts of the case I possess, as it happens, quite conclusive information. It was a matter of Fulke having made me, for a time, something of a confidant. And the situation does become alarming’ – here Gaston cast Mrs Rich’s admonition to the winds – ‘if it holds true of this Bernie Huffer as well. That Penelope should become even a little attached to such a person would be very unfortunate indeed.’
‘Have you a reliable locum, Gaston?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘A reliable locum.’
‘Certainly I have. A retired man, always willing to lend a hand.’
‘Then get into an aeroplane – they go all over the place nowadays – and find out how the land does lie.’ Mr Rich paused as if considering the sufficiency of this. ‘And then act as you can. My wife and I, let me say, are not without a sense of what you feel about my daughter.’
As Gaston drove back to his surgery he reflected in some anxiety on these two conversations. It was surprising that old Henry Rich, despite all his hypochondria and his twaddle about the Problem of Time, had thought to better purpose over Mr Bernie Huffer than had his capable and intelligent second wife. It was not conceivable that Mrs Rich had never heard of what Tommy Elbrow the gardener had termed Fulke Ferneydale’s versatility: the breadth, as it might be called, of that celebrated author’s erotic interests. But even confidentially to himself she had made no mention of this now – presumably because, Fulke being safely dead, his proclivities were without relevance to Penelope’s present situation. But what did Penelope herself know? Here was an entirely open question. Caspar Ferneydale would certainly have deemed it proper to refrain from any communication to his wife of what he would undoubtedly regard as a reprehensible streak in his brother’s character, and it might well be that Penelope had gathered only that Fulke possessed some untidy and unedifying sexual life. If Mrs Rich knew this to be the limit of her stepdaughter’s knowledge she might decide to leave it at that, and might think of Bernie Huffer merely as a young man who, given the present set-up at Le Colombier, was likely to make a nuisance of himself after the fashion to which young men are always liable. But this was an inadequate view of the kind of risks that might be blowing around. Surprisingly, old Mr Rich had appeared to be as aware of them as Gaston was. But Gaston, in addition, felt that there lurked in the situation possibilities – even bizarre possibilities – which he himself was far from clear about.
And how was he going to act when he emerged from that aeroplane and found himself on French soil? He would, presumably, hire a car, and in it make his way to Le Colombier. But how, or as what, was he to present himself to the villa’s new proprietor? He couldn’t renew his acquaintance with Penelope Ferneydale amid a shower of lies designed to suggest that chance alone had brought him into her presence. He must appear all nakedly in the role of a knight errant – either as this or (what would be even worse) as the ambassador of an apprehensive and misdoubting parent. And in one or other of these guises he might prove to be blundering into a situation over which Penelope was entirely in control. The whole exploit might be simply a cooking of his own goose or a queering of his own pitch.
In fact Charles Gaston didn’t like his own position at all, and he might have hesitated but for the knowledge that he liked Penelope’s even less. As it was, immediately he was within reach of his telephone he rang up that useful locum, and then rang up Heathrow. It was then some further time before he realised how early his action had in fact been determined. A single phrase in Penelope’s letter as it had been reported to him had made it inevitable that he should thus in haste set out.
XV
Not, of course, that the coup de theatre – or, at any rate, the major coup de théâtre – was likely as yet to have taken place. Gaston arrived at this perception just as his plane touched down at Bordeaux, and he did no more than cling on to it during the general fuss of going through passport control and customs and the business of finding his way to his waiting self-drive car. But as soon as he was clear of the air-terminal and with an open road ahead of him he fell to probing the state of affairs at Le Colombier with those words of Penelope’s as a point of departure. She had expected solitude in the villa; instead of solitude there had been a young man; and this small surprise had carried with it at least a fleeting sense of the theatrical or contrived.
Whether this impression had remained with Penelope for long there was no means of determining, but at least she had described Bernie Huffer as entertaining, which suggested that she had accepted the unexpected set-up without undue alarm. The fact revealed something about the comportment, if not the underlying character, of the young man. Mr Huffer must own considerable address; he could have said or done nothing to displease; and he had been clever enough to distract Penelope’s attention from the patently artificial nature of the entire situation. That Caspar’s brother should have left her a villa in France made in itself – as everyone kept on saying – quite tolerable sense. But why had Huffer gone along with the place, and why had she been charged with the duty of collaborating with him in sorting through a mass of papers? This was the point at which nonsense entered the picture – or if not nonsense then some malicious design.
Having got thus far in his thinking, Charles Gaston became aware that he was overtaking a good many cars larger and more powerful than his. So he eased up on the accelerator. It wasn’t that he felt he must get to Le Colombier at a breakneck pace; on the contrary he knew that he required more time for thought, and that it was his own mental processes that he was attempting to speed up by injudicious pressure on the pedal. So he slowed down to a steady sixty kilometres an hour.
He had known a good deal about Fulke Ferneydale; had known him capable of outré behaviour in certain rather trivial but displeasing ways; had believed him to harbour resentments more readily than most men; and he had received from Caspar Ferneydale a strong impression that, very long ago, Fulke had wanted to marry Penelope and had proposed to her in vain.
And the whole situation, Gaston told himself, had to be considered within the context of Fulke’s sexual proclivities – which might or might not be precisely mirrored in those of Bernie Huffer. The nub of the matter lay there, and it placed Huffer as an agent rather than a principal in what was going forward. And what was going forward could be nothing less than a fantastically conceived posthumous Ferneydale comedy.
Charles Gaston had done no more than a further five kilometres before deciding that the general mechanism of this comedy was clear to him. What wasn’t so clear was the strategy he must adopt in face of it. And it would be unwise to arrive at the villa without some clearly formulated plan. So he decided to put up for the night at a nearby hotel and make his appearance at Le Colombier a fairly early-morning occasion. Penelope’s extraordinary position – for it was certainly that – it would be prudent to sleep upon.
Gaston was not without misgivings as he put this resolution into effect. All the home-work that he could usefully do ought to have been done before he got off his plane, and there was surely irresolution in thus pausing to scratch his head for a night when within an hour’s run of Penelope’s dwelling. But in fact his delay, if censurable in itself, was to prove fortunate as actually accelerating the final stages of the affair. When he did reach Le Colombier it was to find that the dove – if Penelope might be so conceived – had flown. But only, indeed, with a day’s packet of sandwiches under her wing.
‘No, she isn’t.’ Bernie Huffer – as he clearly was – had appeared at the door of the villa hard upon Gaston’s obeying the injunction, Sonnez ici. ‘Mrs Ferneydale has gone off for a long walk, and I don’t expect her back till early evening. I think she likes this part of the world, and is keen on getting to know it better. I haven’t, in fact, seen much of her during the last few days. But I hope she’s coming to like the house too.’ The young man gave this information with a ready informativeness that sounded entirely friendly, and back
ed up this impression with an engaging smile. But Gaston felt something wary about him, all the same. Huffer was covertly disconcerted as an actor might be when confronted by a character who has come on stage to a totally unexpected cue.
‘My name is Charles Gaston. I am Mrs Ferneydale’s doctor, as it happens, but also a family friend.’
‘And just passing through? I do hope you can wait until she gets back.’
‘No, I’m not just passing through. I have business with Mrs Ferneydale – and I believe with you, too. Am I right in thinking that you are Mr Huffer?’
‘Yes, you are. How odd that you should have heard of me! I hope you’re not having to make what they call a domiciliary visit in the interest of Mrs Ferneydale’s health?’
‘We mustn’t be frivolous, Mr Huffer. And, with your permission, I will come in for a short talk.’
‘Oh, yes – do.’ Bernie, as if some prudent counsel had now prevailed with him, swung the door wide and made a welcoming gesture as he did so. ‘I’ve lived abroad a lot, you know, and it’s always nice to hear a spot of the Queen’s English.’
Gaston made no reply to this idle remark, but stepped into the hall and paused to look about him.
‘Nothing changed, I see,’ he said. ‘Even the Modigliani hanging where it always hung. I occasionally felt there was something slightly odd – whimsical after Fulke Ferneydale’s manner – about the lady being so placed as to greet you on entering the house.’
‘You mean you’ve been here before?’ Asking this, Bernie had failed to keep a certain sharpness out of his voice.
‘Dear me, yes. Visiting Fulke and Sophie and Silvan. And a young secretary whose name I’ve forgotten. It was a little before your time, Mr Huffer.’
‘Yes – and I don’t think I ever heard your name mentioned, Dr Gaston. But of course Fulke had oceans of acquaintances. Come into the sitting-room, won’t you? I do a bit of painting in it sometimes, by way of a change from my own quarters. They’re in the colombier, as perhaps you’ve also heard.’
‘Yes, indeed. Penelope has mentioned it in a letter to her father and step-mother. Among other things.’
‘What about making you a cup of coffee?’ As he spoke, the young man indicated a comfortable chair. ‘I used to do house-maiding jobs for Fulke at a pinch, you know. And knowledgeable coffee-making was one of them.’
‘Thank you, no. I breakfasted less than an hour ago.’ Gaston, as he sat down, felt that he was beginning to know a little about Bernie Huffer. Bernie had sensed the presence of an enemy, and had to make an effort to be even momentarily polite. But this was done in a fashion suggesting that he could command considerable charm. And gaiety too, no doubt, so there was nothing surprising in Penelope’s having found him an agreeable companion. That she could be in any danger of losing her head over him was a different proposition altogether. But some important questions about Fulke’s former secretary were as yet unresolved. Bernie might now be what Fulke had been through a long phase of his career: a basically homosexual man who took pleasure in his ability to seduce and subjugate women. It was in this that Bernie may have been Fulke’s pupil. Alternatively, Bernie might simply enjoy the frisson of having dangling after him one or another female who, sexually, meant nothing to him at all. Gaston was well instructed in the presence, throughout all human geography, of these and other meandering paths. What he found himself not bearing to believe in was the possibility of Penelope’s becoming substantially involved with this equivocal young man. Even her being for a time lured into some painful absurdity was a horrible thought, and it was this that he feared as he took the measure of Bernie Huffer.
‘Would you describe yourself,’ Bernie asked easily, ‘as having been a close friend of Fulke’s at one time?’
‘Not exactly that. But we were fairly intimate in a casual fashion, and he tended to confide in me over one thing or another.’ It wasn’t clear to Gaston whether Bernie had meant to import some innuendo into his question, and he was far from prompted to explain that his odd association with Fulke had indeed begun in a bad guess on Fulke’s part. ‘And to show off some of his side-lines. His photography, for example.’
‘His photography?’ Bernie had momentarily stiffened where he sat. ‘Oh, yes – all that. He rather liked to obtrude it, didn’t he? He’d confess that it was a childish hobby for a serious artist. But he was a complex chap. He’d say at times that his novels and plays weren’t much more than photography. It was meant to sound like a kind of false modesty. But in fact it was pretty well the truth of the matter, as he clearly knew. And the existence of his betters wasn’t the challenge it ought to have been; rather it was something very like an incubus. Fulke was an instance of the working of the inferiority complex – which was fashionable psychological jargon a long time ago.’
‘You don’t appear, Mr Huffer, to rate either your late employer’s endowments or his character very highly.’
‘Oh, well – he was extremely successful at his own true level. But I don’t feel that he was unjustly denied the O.M. Do you?’
‘Of course I don’t. Surely it’s odd, isn’t it, that you should want to carry on as a sort of posthumous secretary to so mediocre a person?’
‘There’s money in it – in a short term way.’ Bernie contrived to utter this avowal with an engaging ingenuousness. ‘And the world is readier, you know, to do without pictures than it is to do without pills and potions.’
‘And there’s fun in it as well?’ The sudden flash of insolence in Bernie’s last remark had been felt by Gaston as marking definite progress. The young man’s insouciance was wearing thin.
‘Fun?’ Bernie repeated with a little too much of whimsical surprise. ‘I wouldn’t call Le Colombier exactly a fun fair.’
‘Then let me be more explicit.’ Gaston paused for a moment on this, and in the pause it came to him that he was talking to a thoroughly conceited person. Bernie had that fondness for ridicule which often goes along with a marked distaste for being oneself exhibited in a ludicrous light. Briefly pondering this, Gaston felt that at last he saw his way ahead. ‘Let me be more explicit,’ he repeated, ‘even at the risk of being a little too candid for your taste. Your self-regard is such that you can’t resist any opportunity of being ever so clever – even if it is only as a puppet dangling from a dead man’s strings. Or perhaps you see yourself as a kind of deputy puppet-master, obeying instructions to contrive a deft and nasty situation with Mrs Ferneydale at the centre of it.’
‘I don’t call that being candid; I call it being bloody rude. And I think that perhaps we’d better call it a day.’
‘I’ve no wish to be gratuitously rude.’ Gaston ignored the suggestion that this interview should be brought to a close. ‘But I’m here to get a very displeasing mess cleared up. And I know just where to begin. You talked psychology a couple of minutes ago. Well, Fulke had a fondness for what he called experimental psychology, had he not?’
‘Oh, all that.’
‘And based a good deal of work on his conception of it. You set up a situation, a little nexus of personal relationships, and then you sit back and watch what happens. And if what happens is sufficiently discomfiting, or turns into a kind of black comedy, so much the better – whether it be either in real life or in fiction. And that’s what we are in the first act of now. It just so happens that I am myself a wholly intrusive character – and Fulke, to do him justice, wouldn’t have disapproved of me. If he’s looking down on this precious spectacle now, I believe he’s being rather pleased with it. The situation develops surprisingly, and that’s the main thing.’
‘Do relax, Doctor. Do relax if you have at all the trick of it.’ Bernie’s tone had fallen back upon impertinence. ‘For I suppose you intend to stay until Penelope gets home in the evening, and pour out all this rubbish over again to her. And I rather think, you know, that you’ll find she quite likes me.’
‘Liking, perhaps. But continued believing is another matter. Were I to enter with her on the brisk sort
of exposé I am adopting with you, and you were to deny it all, I judge it likely it would be me that she would see to be telling the truth. But of course I intend to do nothing of the sort.’
‘You wouldn’t dare to, you mean.’
‘I mean nothing of the kind, young man. The whole sorry situation as I see it I will certainly communicate to her. But in my own time. Which means, among other things, after you leave Le Colombier.’
‘But I’m not leaving Le Colombier. Aren’t you taking a little too much for granted?’
‘Listen to me a little longer. And let us go back to those photographs. To those two very special albums of them, that is. Do you know where they’re hidden?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Bernie checked himself. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I could walk straight up to them now, but you yourself would have to pull the whole place to bits before you laid your hands on them. The situation’s awkward for you, is it not? It was Fulke’s streak of bravado that made him show them to me, almost in the presence of his wife and child. The first could already have been called the closed sequence, I imagine, since by that time Fulke had quite settled down as an admirer of young men. But here were his women, or at least a full dozen of them, all naked, and all posed as the Venus dei Medici. Coyly masking those parts that men delight to see. That’s how some poet describes the pose.’
‘Marlowe – but distinctly in another connection.’ Bernie Huffer managed this piece of perkiness in something like desperation. For he was starting in horror at this unspeakable intruder upon a stage that he had believed himself wholly to command only half an hour before.
‘The second album might have been described as the continuing series. It chronicled, if that’s the word, Fulke’s boy-friends. Do you remember Rodin’s L’Age d’Airain?’
A Villa in France Page 21