‘Oh, on the contrary. It’s purely a question of generosity. Are you, I ask myself, a deserving case? Or will you blue it all on drink?’
‘Stop it!’ Fraser’s voice rose and cracked. ‘Stop laughing at me!’
‘Oh, Lord . . .’ I heard footsteps, and a shadow crossed the band of sunlight. Jack said, with a strange kind of tenderness, ‘What else am I to do with you, Jimmy? You’re a poor fish. You’re of no great concern to anyone. Even your vices are mean and petty-minded. You might have money one day, if I give it to you, but you’ll never amount to anything.’
‘If it hadn’t been for you I would have been –’
‘What? Mediocre? Perhaps. Never anything more.’
There was a noise as if Fraser had stumbled away. ‘This is all very well,’ he said, a little breathless, ‘but you’re in my power. Don’t forget that.’
‘Oh,’ Jack said. ‘Yes, you’re right. So, ten thousand . . .’
‘Ten thousand five hundred,’ Fraser said, his voice hitting a high note. ‘I don’t like being insulted.’
‘I apologise,’ Jack murmured. ‘You must appreciate that my position is not without its . . . frustrations.’
There was a silence. The shadows crossed and re-crossed the light, and there was a scraping noise as the chair was drawn out from the desk, then the scratch of a nib on paper. Jack said quietly, ‘And once you have this, you’ll leave me alone and keep your mouth shut?’ His voice shook a little and I clenched my fists.
‘Probably.’
‘Suppose I gave you another thousand? Would you give me your word of honour then?’
Fraser gave a gulp of laughter. ‘My word of honour?’
‘Yes, I suppose it wouldn’t mean very much. Well, I suppose there’s nothing I can do about that. Except – beg.’ He paused. ‘Would you like me to beg, Jimmy?’
‘You can if you want.’
The chair creaked as Jack got up, and I heard him cross the room to where I imagined Fraser was standing. There was a crackle, so soft I could hardly hear it, like paper passing from hand to hand. The silence went on and on; I strained my ears, but there was no movement, not even a floorboard creaking.
At last Fraser said, ‘What’s this?’
‘Your cheque,’ Jack said. There was a note in his voice that I couldn’t identify. ‘Your ten thousand, five hundred pounds. What’s the matter? Did I misspell your name?’
‘But –’ Fraser seemed to choke on his own breath. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh, I say, I am sorry,’ Jack said. ‘Come to think of it, I might inadvertently have misspelled my own name. Did I?’
Silence. I leant forward and closed my eyes, as if that would help me hear.
‘It happens to me more and more as I get older,’ Jack went on. ‘I’ll mean to write “H. J. Martin” and suddenly find myself writing “go to hell”.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘I wonder what a priest would make of that.’
There was another pause. Then Fraser said, in a brittle, painful voice, ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘I shall go to the police, you know. I wasn’t bluffing. All this – you’ll lose everything. I shall ruin you.’
‘You think so, do you?’ He laughed: a soft, pleased laugh, as though he had made a good croquet shot. ‘You don’t have a leg to stand on. Your word against mine, James. Imagine – who would be believed? Me, or you? Need I spell it out? I will ruin you, Fraser. Don’t push me to do it. You know what I’m capable of.’
‘I’d be telling them the truth.’
‘That’s entirely irrelevant. Now, I think we’ve discussed this for long enough, don’t you?’
‘But why did you –’ Fraser was almost crying out. I wanted to enjoy his misery but it was pitiful, not amusing. ‘Why did you agree, and tell me to come back, and – you could have told me before. You knew I was right – you knew I could tell the police, that they’d believe me –’
‘No.’
‘Then – I don’t believe you – why –?’
‘I wanted you to hope. I find that hope is the most painful emotion that man is capable of. I wanted you to suffer. And you have, haven’t you?’
‘You –’ His voice faltered; it sounded as though he had put his hands over his face. ‘You are – evil. Evil.’
‘Oh, but you knew that already, James.’ A pause. ‘And you’re not exactly a paragon of virtue, are you? Blackmail is a very ugly word.’
‘All this time you were –’
‘Playing. Yes. I enjoy watching people like you squirm; I think you’ll agree you had it coming. Now, really –’
There was a noise like someone stepping in a cowpat, and then a kind of choking; with a pang of disgust, I realised that Fraser was weeping. It went on for so long I wondered how Jack could bear it. Finally Fraser said, hoarsely, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry –’
‘Get out.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry, Jack, I’m sorry, I’ll go, forgive me . . .’ The door jerked open and I just had time to draw back out of sight. Fraser was like a marionette whose strings had been cut; he had one hand over his face as he stumbled towards the door. Jack watched him from the doorway of the study, a quiet, satisfied look on his face. He waited until Fraser had scrabbled the door open and fallen through it, staggering and then running away like a child after a beating. Then he turned his head slowly to look at me. I met his stare, frozen, the blood mounting in my cheeks, but he only smiled. It seemed to last for ever. Then he moved to the front door, shut it, and walked into the drawing room. A few seconds later I heard the scrape of a match as he lit a cigarette.
I wanted to run away. There had been something in his gaze that had unnerved me, and not simply the fact that he hadn’t been surprised to see me there. I was trembling. The sight of Fraser stumbling away like a broken man had shaken me.
The house creaked in the heat. It felt unfamiliar; it wasn’t the place I had been so happy in.
Hesitantly, still carrying my suitcase, I went through the doorway into the drawing room. Jack was at the window, smoking. I sat down on the sofa and watched him. He was in shirtsleeves, and I could see his shoulder blades move as he exhaled.
He said, ‘Oliver.’ He didn’t look round.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t know what to say.
‘Oliver. I knew you’d come back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I – I shouldn’t have left so suddenly. My mother –’
He laughed. There was an edge of malice in it, as if he enjoyed my discomfort, but I clenched my hands together and told myself I was imagining it. He said, ‘Gardner, honestly, you don’t think I believed that nonsense about your mother? Anthony read us your letter, for God’s sake. You couldn’t have come up with a worse lie if you’d tried.’
‘Then –’ I wished he’d turn and look at me, but he was still watching the ivy on the windowsill flutter in the breeze. ‘Then – thank you. For pretending you did. For making it easy for me.’
He shrugged. ‘I knew you’d come back. That’s all.’
‘Don’t you want to know why I left?’
He turned round. There was a strange expression on his face, as though his eyes were lit from inside his skull. He picked the packet of cigarettes up from the windowsill and threw it towards me. It landed on the sofa and I took one out and lit it, grateful for the diversion. When I put his lighter back in my pocket he noticed, and his mouth twitched.
He said, ‘You can tell me if you want.’
I inhaled a lungful of smoke, blew it out through my nose, and tried to remember what I had decided to say. ‘I – it’s so childish, Jack, I’m sorry. It was my mother, partly; she’s missing me terribly, and it’s not as if she has anyone else –’
He shrugged my words away with one shoulder
. ‘And the rest? You said partly.’
‘The rest was – Fraser sent me a letter. A vile, poisonous letter.’
‘Ah.’
‘I got cold feet. I should have known better. But it was –’
‘May I see it?’
‘I burnt it.’
He raised his eyebrows, tapping the ash from his cigarette into the ivy behind him, but that odd, elated expression was still on his face. ‘What did it say?’
‘That you were – Jack, you don’t think for a moment that I –’
‘Tell me what it said.’
‘Nothing specific. Vague accusations that you’d corrupted him, that you were dissipated, and loose-living, and –’ I hesitated. ‘Evil. That was the word he used.’
‘One of his favourite epithets,’ Jack said. ‘You heard him a few moments ago.’
‘Yes.’ I smiled at him, and for a second we were old friends, sharing a joke. But I still didn’t feel quite at my ease. I glanced down at my suitcase, wishing I hadn’t been such a fool. I said, ‘And I came back because –’
‘Oh, I know why you came back.’
I glanced up at him, taken aback. ‘Do you?’
‘Of course. It’s perfectly obvious.’ He ground the stub of his cigarette into the ashtray, rubbing the back of his neck with the other hand.
‘Oh, God, no.’ I checked an impulse to stand up, like an anxious child. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with Tyme’s End – that is, you think I was frightened you’d change your mind, that I came back for that – truly, Jack, it wasn’t –’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
‘Then –’
He looked at me and smiled. ‘Very well. Tell me. If you were so . . . afraid, why did you come back?’
‘Because Edie told me – she didn’t mean to, but she did – she told me that . . . She told me why Fraser was blackmailing you.’
He blinked. He didn’t move, but his muscles seemed to tense. He stared at me until I felt my cheeks colour and had to look away; then he walked towards me, plucked the cigarette packet out of my lap and strode back to the window. He said, ‘Edie has no idea why Fraser was blackmailing me.’
‘Well –’ I watched him light another cigarette, and felt glad that he had his back to me. ‘She didn’t say that exactly, only she told me about you, and then I realised –’
‘She told you –?’
‘That –’ I had finished my own cigarette, and I wished he hadn’t taken the packet back; I desperately wanted something to do with my hands. ‘That you’re – homosexual.’ I wasn’t sure I’d ever said the word before.
He laughed.
Of all the possible reactions, it was the one I hadn’t anticipated. He threw back his head and laughed until the room rang with the sound.
I felt the blush on my face spread downwards, past my collar, across my whole body. I imagined a quick, clean death, and thought how grateful I would be for one.
‘Homosexual,’ he said, at last, correcting my pronunciation. ‘With a short “o”. It comes from Greek, Gardner, not Latin.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I said.
‘Why should you?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for laughing, but you’re absolutely priceless. Edie, too. As Anthony would say, you can trust a lesbian to bark up the wrong tree.’
‘Then – you’re not?’
He held my look for just long enough for me to realise what an impertinent question it was. Then he said, ‘As it happens – no. At least . . . no. To tell you the truth, I’m not terribly interested in that sort of thing.’
I hadn’t known it was possible to flush more deeply than I already had, but I did. For a few seconds I felt nothing but embarrassment, like a lobster in a vat of boiling water. I cleared my throat. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Jolly good.’
He watched me, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It would have been more humane of him to avert his eyes, but I supposed I had deserved it.
At long last he said, ‘But you came back.’
I clenched my teeth together, caught his eye and looked away quickly.
‘How loyal. Like a dog.’
‘I’d imagined something so much worse,’ I said, stumbling over the words.
His smile broadened, and he threw the cigarette packet back to me. I tried to field it, but my fingers only caught the corner. I bent down and blundered about for it on the floor, glad of the excuse to hide my face.
He waited until I’d got a cigarette out – the first one bent and crumbled in my fingers and I had to take another – and managed to light it. I drew in the smoke, glad of the bitterness, and felt my cheeks return slowly to their ordinary colour. Then he said, ‘Would you like to know why Fraser was blackmailing me?’
I looked up, sharply. ‘Only if you want to tell me.’
‘Oh, I think I do.’
‘Then – yes.’ But I wasn’t sure I was telling the truth. Of course it could be nothing serious – that Jack had disposed of Fraser so quickly reassured me of that – but all the same . . . I said, suddenly, ‘No. No, Jack, it’s none of my business. I don’t want to know.’
It was as if he hadn’t heard. He walked over to the gramophone and wound it thoughtfully, using one foot to leaf through a pile of records that someone had left on the floor. He said, ‘Get a drink.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Get a drink. Get one for me too.’ He glanced round, then crouched to pick up one of the records, turning it over to see the sleeve. ‘Whisky and soda for me. You’d better make yours neat whisky.’
I stood waiting, although I wasn’t sure what for, but Jack didn’t say anything else. I crossed the hall, went into the kitchen and poured drinks for us both. I did it slowly, wondering at my own obedience. I had left my suitcase beside the sofa in the drawing room, but the warm air blew in through the window, tempting me. I still had the train ticket to Peltenshall in my pocket. I could desert without Jack even noticing, as long as I didn’t mind leaving my things behind me.
But Jack had been so kind to me; it would be the basest ingratitude, and cowardly to boot.
I took a deep breath, drinking in the fragrance of the garden, and heard, as if from a long way away, the gentle creaking of the house as it settled in the heat. Yes, it would be cowardly to leave. And if I did, Jack might – would, almost certainly – disinherit me. That seemed, suddenly, to matter.
I poured more whisky into my glass, until there was a scant quarter-inch of space between the liquid and the rim. Then I took a deep breath, picked up both glasses and went back into the drawing room.
*
Jack said, ‘Sit down.’
I sat down. I put my tumbler on the little table at my left hand. I said, ‘Honestly, Jack, there’s no need – whatever Fraser accused you of, I know you can’t have done anything base or vicious.’
‘Do you? How do you know that?’
I stared at him. ‘Because I know you.’
He said, without ill will, ‘Shut up, Gardner. I’m sure that’s very touching, but you really know hardly anything about me.’
I picked up my drink – carefully, so that the liquid trembled below the rim, but didn’t spill – and moistened my lips with it. I put the glass down again and sat with my hands folded. There was a breath of warm, sweet air from the window, the smell of summer.
‘Now,’ Jack said, and leant against the windowsill, watching me, as if it were I, not he, who had something difficult to say. Then, in a dreamy, pleasant tone, like someone at a cocktail party, he began to speak.
.
‘I suppose you know a little of my war service in Arabia; of course you do – you read The Owl of the Desert, didn’t you? That isn’t absolutely . . . exact, but the details hardly matter; it’s close enough to the truth to give you a decent idea of w
hat I did. My life had a certain – glamour – that the trenches lacked. To the English, mud is regrettable, but sand has an inherent romance.’ He smiled. ‘Be that as it may . . . I worked for a little while in Egypt, and then I was appointed liaison officer between the Arabs and the British. That gave me some considerable freedom and I conducted my own operations, blowing things up, leading ambushes, organising assassinations of civilians.’ I gave a start, and he laughed. ‘Only a few, Gardner, and they were very efficiently carried out.’
I said, ‘Is that what Fraser –?’
‘No. There were . . . other things.’ There was a silence. ‘When one has absolute freedom . . . It’s an extraordinary feeling. I could have done anything I wanted. At first there were no other British soldiers with me. And, in any case, I was producing very satisfactory results; it would have been foolish of my superiors to worry much about a few indiscretions here and there.’
I picked up my glass; when I raised it to my mouth the whisky slopped over the rim and ran down my chin. I swallowed and wiped my face with the back of my hand.
‘But after a while,’ Jack went on, watching me, ‘I was sent another British officer, to tag round with us. It was a terrible bore. He was a little self-righteous Welshman – there was some story that his brother had been shot by our men at Gallipoli when they heard him speaking Welsh and thought he was a Turk – with a voice like a foghorn. To start with, I thought he might rub along with us quite amiably, but he turned out to be rather too naive for our purposes.’
‘You mean –’
‘I mean he had little conception of the necessities of modern warfare.’ Jack shrugged. ‘And unfortunately he wanted to impose his views on me, and my men. He was determined that we should play at war like gentlemen, as though it were cricket – only without enjoying it, naturally.’ He lit a cigarette, shook the matchbox thoughtfully and smiled. ‘You can keep that lighter of mine, by the way, Gardner. Where was I?’
‘Disregarding the Geneva Convention, I think.’
He shot me a glance, but I avoided his eyes. I took another gulp of whisky, feeling it burn as it went down. He said, ‘Yes, in effect. We had . . . procedures, with which Jones took issue. He made himself unpleasant.’
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