The Episode at Toledo

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Making paint,’ said three people at once; the conversation had now become general. Someone asked if resin was not used in the manufacture of varnish—the word caught the Duke’s attention.

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ he said. ‘From the time of the Egyptians.’

  ‘Not really?’ Sir Noël enquired, startled.

  ‘But yes. Certainly the ancient Egyptians used some natural gums for varnishing their mummy-cases, to make them airtight, and as a preservative. Do you know the origin of the word vernis, the French form?’

  The Ambassador didn’t. ‘Do tell us.’

  ‘It is derived from the Queen of Cyrene, Berenice, who became the wife of Ptolemy III. She had long golden hair, which she cut off and sacrificed on the altar of Venus to ensure her husband’s safety in some battle. So the ancient Greeks called amber “the hair of Berenice”, and thus the Latin word “Verenice” came into use for resins. Originally, indeed for many centuries, this only applied to the resin itself—when mixed with oil to make varnish it was called “Verenice liquida”. But hence, later, the French word vernis and the Spanish bernis, for varnish as we know it.’

  ‘This is pretty, this story,’ Hetta remarked.

  ‘Yes, and of course the English would have to mispronounce the word,’ Richard said—‘Changing the vowel and adding the H.’

  ‘Quite fascinating,’ Sir Noël observed. In fact he was if anything less fascinated by the story itself than by his host’s remarkable familiarity with this ancient lore, and apparent ignorance of the modern potentialities of Berenice’s Hair, of which, he soon learned, Gralheira produced thousands of tons annually. This seemed to the diplomat so wholly in character as to afford him intense secret pleasure.

  But the Duke, once alive to the possibilities of his bulky product, showed a thoroughly practical interest in them. Later, in his study, when the men repaired there for whisky last thing, he asked Lord Heriot some very penetrating questions about the type of machinery required for the distillation plants, the amount of labour necessary, the degree of skill, and what sort of fuel was employed. ‘Petrol? Oil? I imagine that these substances are fairly inflammable. Could electricity be used?’ Indeed Lord Heriot was soon rather out of his depth. He had seen the plants, and knew that they were not unduly large; he had a rough idea of the reduction in bulk by the process of distillation, and was firm on the increased profitability—but as to quantities of labour, and the precise motive power, he could not give exact answers. ‘Someone would have to go there, and look into it all on the spot,’ he said. ‘Pity the old Count’s dead, but he has a very good estate manager, who’d know as much as he did himself, or more. Anyhow I’m sure you’d find it worth going into, Duke.’ The Duke thought so too; he discussed it further, principally with Atherley and the Ambassador, and before the house-party at Gralheira broke up it had been settled that Nick, on his return to France, should pay a visit to the estate in the Landes and prepare a full report. Nick was impressed by the list of questions given him by his future Father-in-law—‘I hope to goodness that I can find out all he wants,’ he said to Luzia. ‘He is a marvellous old boy.’

  ‘You will—and it is marvellous that he sends you. You see he relies on you already!’ She gave him a happy kiss.

  Chapter 13

  Where’S Julia?’ Philip Reeder asked, coming with the post into the library at Glentoran. ‘Letter for you, Mrs. H.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Philip. She went out with Edina—to do the messages in the village, I think.’

  ‘Two for her,’ Reeder said. ‘One from her Philip, and a very fat one, sent on from London; come by bag, by the look of it—it’s in an Embassy envelope.’ People in the isolation of the West Highlands are apt to take this close interest in everybody’s mail, one of their main links with the outside world.

  ‘Then it may be from Hetta Atherley,’ Mrs. Hathaway said. ‘She sometimes writes by bag. Will you excuse me, Philip?’

  ‘Of course.’ As she opened her letter he stooped and put some wood on the fire, pushing the half-burned logs expertly together with his foot before doing so. ‘If that’s a Portuguese stamp, could I have it?’ he added. ‘I keep them for little Tony Menteith.’

  Mrs. Hathaway, half-absently, held out the envelope; she was reading her letter with close attention. When she came to the end she turned the sheets and began to read it through again, with a slightly worried air.

  ‘No bad news, I hope?’ Philip asked, noticing her expression.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the old lady replied—‘At least he doesn’t actually say so. It’s from Richard Atherley.’

  ‘What does he say?’ Reeder asked; he was rather surprised by this apparent uncertainty.

  ‘He asks if I can suggest somewhere for Hetta to stay in England till the next child is born—their own house is let, it seems—with her baby and its nurse; he seems to want her to come as soon as possible.’

  ‘Well, that’s fair enough. Is he coming too?’

  ‘No—that is what puzzles me. I gathered that they have a very nice flat in Madrid, with excellent servants—so why send her back to England, if he can’t come himself? They weren’t in London long enough for her to make many friends before he went to Paris to work for NATO. So it seems rather strange, to me.’

  ‘H’m—yes, I see.’ Reeder’s mind was running back to an earlier letter from Mrs. Atherley. ‘We never heard what was really worrying her before about that American Admiral, did we? When she wrote and asked Julia whether Torrens could go out?’

  ‘I never did, certainly.’

  ‘Julia would have been sure to tell you if she’d heard any more. Anyhow nothing happened on that visit; the Admiral—what’s this his name was?—yes, Luxworthy, that’s it—went to Spain, and went down to that big naval base of theirs, Rota, and flew home to the States, all serene-oh. It was all in the papers; no “untoward incidents” of any sort. So I suppose it was all a mare’s nest—she just got into a fuss for nothing. Women in that state often do.’

  ‘Richard isn’t in that state,’ Mrs. Hathaway remarked, rather repressively. ‘He must have some reason for wanting her to come home.’

  ‘I s’pose so,’ Philip said meekly. ‘And something he doesn’t want to tell us—on paper, anyhow. Have some sherry, Mrs. H.—it is twelve.’

  In a few minutes Julia and Edina came in, the latter in a state of jubilation.

  ‘Look what Madame Bonnecourt has done for me!’ she exclaimed to Mrs. Hathaway, holding out a small bundle of handkerchiefs. ‘The most exquisite monograms on my hankies! She twitched them away when she was doing the washing, and cut off the name tapes, and put these lovely letters on instead.’

  ‘It’s beautiful work,’ Mrs. Hathaway said, putting on her spectacles to examine the fruits of the embroidery frame which she had procured at the Frenchwoman’s request. ‘How nice, Edina.’

  ‘Two letters for you, Julia,’ Reeder said. ‘Can I have that Arabic-looking stamp?’

  Julia pinched the stamp out of the thin air mail envelope, and became absorbed in her husband’s letter: it was a long one, and took her some time to read—Mrs. Hathaway waited with admirable patience. At last the younger woman opened the other letter, forwarded from Gray’s Inn—she gave a slight exclamation of surprise as she began to read.

  ‘Is it from Mrs. Atherley?’ Philip asked.

  ‘Yes, one is, Mr. Parker!—and one from Luzia. But why should you expect that?’ Julia enquired coolly.

  ‘Because Mrs. Hathaway has had a rather odd one from the husband, and we jaloosed that she might have written as well, as it’s in an Embassy envelope.’

  ‘Well, she has. She says she wants to come home till the next baby arrives, Mrs. H.’ Julia said, turning to that lady. ‘Is that what he said to you?’

  ‘Yes—does she say why?’ the old lady asked, earnestly.

  ‘No, only asks if I can find somewhere for her to stay, with Richenda and her nurse, because their house is let. He isn’t coming.’

  Edin
a, who was opening her own mail at her desk, swung round in her chair.

  ‘Don’t tell me they’re splitting up already,’ she said.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think it was that for a moment. Much more likely the same dose as before; some worry about Communist thuggery.’

  ‘Nothing came of that last time,’ Philip put in.

  ‘Not that we heard of. But we might not have heard—Richard is so desperately cagey and official, and I think he tends to infect Hetta. Could I see his letter, Mrs. H.?’

  ‘Of course. But what does Luzia say?’

  ‘Oh yes—I was forgetting Luzia’s.’ She opened the other enclosure from the official envelope. ‘Here are some Portuguese stamps, Philip, if they’re any good to you not post-marked,’ she added.

  ‘Thanks. Why stamp a letter and not put it in the post?’ Philip enquired, stowing the stamps in his wallet.

  ‘More of Richard’s fuss, I expect.’ She read, and then gave another exclamation.

  ‘What is it?’ Mrs. Hathaway asked, anxiously.

  ‘Just what I said—those thugs again! Broke her wrist in a car accident that wasn’t an accident when that American was in Spain, and has just had another “narrow escape” at Gralheira!’

  ‘Do they know definitely that it was Communists?’ Reeder enquired, with the usual masculine tendency to incredulity.

  ‘Yes, chum! Luzia spells it out: “The same people who menaced her before, when you were with us,” is what she says.’

  ‘Merciful Heavens!’ Mrs. Hathaway exclaimed, horrified.

  ‘How exactly did they “menace” her before? I don’t know that I ever heard,’ Reeder said.

  ‘Kidnapped her, drugged her, and gagged her!—if that’s enough. Mrs. H. found her unconscious in a car after another smash, and saved her life. “Menaced” is a bit of an understatement,’ Julia replied crisply.

  ‘And she broke her wrist in Spain, while the American was there?’ Mrs. Hathaway asked.

  ‘That’s what Luzia says—in a bogus car accident.’

  ‘Then you see it wasn’t a mare’s nest, Philip, when she wrote before,’ the old lady said, rather severely.

  ‘No, I give you that, Mrs. Hathaway. I wish we knew what had happened. Anyhow from the point of view of international relations it’s just as well that it was her wrist that got broken, and not the good Admiral’s.’

  ‘Oh, really, Philip,’ his wife protested. ‘With the wretched girl expecting a baby, and all! You are a callous creature.’

  ‘Sorry, Edina. But NATO is pretty important, you know; and now that this second American is going to Spain as well, it is rather vital that nothing should go wrong there.’

  ‘What second American?’ Julia asked. But before Philip Reeder could answer, his wife broke in.

  ‘Honestly, Julia, if yet another official Yank is going to Spain, I think Hetta would be better out of the country. You don’t want her acting as a sort of lightning-conductor to American V.I.P.s! Was there anyone high up at Gralheira, that they might have been after, when she had this second narrow escape?’

  ‘Luzia doesn’t say so. I daresay they were after Hetta herself—they always keep tabs on anyone they’ve once got tangled up with, or who has thwarted them in any way,’ Julia replied gloomily. ‘Of course we’ve no means of knowing what happened in Spain, but we do know that she was afraid that something might happen to the Admiral, and that nothing did, only to her—so she might have frustrated some attempt, for all we know.’

  ‘And she and Luzia between them were responsible for that man—“the Principal” as the Portuguese police called him—being arrested at Gralheira, when I was in Portugal,’ Mrs. Hathaway said, thoughtfully.

  ‘While you helped them to mop up the others!’ Julia said briskly. ‘They may or may not have a dossier on you, Mrs. H., but they will certainly have one on her. Yes, she ought to come home.’

  ‘Well, have you any plans for where she can stay?’ Edina asked.

  ‘I am trying to think,’ Mrs. Hathaway replied, looking worried. ‘If it weren’t for Richenda and the nurse, I could have her in my flat, but I don’t know—’ she paused, doubtfully.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that would work very well—your old trouts would hate having a nursery on their hands!’ Julia said. Mrs. Hathaway laughed, rather unwillingly, at this description of her elderly maids. ‘And there just isn’t quite enough room in Gray’s Inn, even if we turned Buchan out.’ (Buchan was the Jamiesons’ cook and man-servant, and general factotum.)

  ‘Oh, you couldn’t do that!’ Mrs. Hathaway exclaimed. ‘Whatever would your Philip say?’

  ‘Quite—I couldn’t really, very well.’ She reflected.

  ‘Aren’t there hotels?’ Philip Reeder asked.

  ‘Yes, of course—only they’re so tiresome about children now. One would really have to go and vet several, and be sure of a place where she would be properly looked after.’ She frowned. ‘It looks as though I shall have to bottle the Philipino, and go and do a recce,’ she said, still frowning.

  ‘My dear, I shouldn’t do that,’ Mrs. Hathaway said. ‘I can go—I can get the maids back quite quickly, with a couple of telegrams. In fact, once one is in London, I expect it would be fairly easy to find a place in a private house; so many people are thankful to have p.g.s. today, when servants, and heat and everything, are so expensive. That would be nicer for her than an hotel, if she weren’t feeling too well. She ought to have someone to look after her, these last months.’

  Edina Reeder had continued, intermittently, to open her mail while this conversation went on; now she got up, left her desk, and came over to the fire, getting herself a glass of sherry on the way.

  ‘I think that’s a thoroughly bad idea, Mrs. H.’ she said.

  ‘What, Hetta’s p.g.-ing?’ Julia asked.

  ‘No; Mrs. H. going South, and wearing herself out finding a place—or you bottling the brat, either. If Mrs. Atherley and her private crêche are going to p.g. anywhere, why shouldn’t they come here, for a start, anyway? There’s oceans of room, and we can get in any extra help that’s needed. Then she’ll be among friends. ‘What do you say?’ she enquired of her husband.

  ‘Yes, by all means—on one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’ his wife asked suspiciously.

  ‘That she tells us all! I really can’t wait to hear what’s at the back of all this—it’s too tantalising to be on the fringe of history in the making, and only get these hints and scraps.’

  Edina laughed; Julia frowned slightly.

  ‘If you’re going to pester her, Philip, she’d better not come here. I’m sure she’ll tell us anything she thinks proper, but she oughtn’t to have to fence, or be careful.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, Julia,’ Mrs. Reeder exclaimed. ‘You know he wouldn’t really bother her.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Julia said at once. ‘I take that back, Philip. It’s just that I’m worried about her; I feel she must have had pretty well all that she can take.’

  ‘I’m sure she has,’ Mrs. Hathaway said. ‘But really, Julia, I think it’s a most excellent idea. As Edina says, she will be with people she knows and trusts—and Dr. Macfarlane is very clever at confinements, isn’t he, Edina?’

  ‘He’s done me all right, twice—and unless she wants a gamp of her own, Nurse Campbell is an exceptionally good midwife,’ Mrs. Reeder replied.

  ‘I’m sure it would be a great relief to Richard’s mind if she came here,’ Mrs. Hathaway pursued.

  ‘Yes, so do I, really,’ Julia said. ‘Thank you, Edina—and you too, Philip. I’ll write this afternoon, and run down and catch the bus with it.’ She looked across at her hostess. ‘I’m sure you’ll like her,’ she said—‘And she’ll love Glentoran. She’s a very countrified creature.’

  ‘Good. And you can tell her wretched Richard that if any Communists should turn up in Tarbertshire, we’ve got a professional thug-hunter on the spot!’ Edina said gaily. ‘Good for Bonnecourt to keep his hand in.’

  ‘D
on’t suggest anything so horrible, Edina!’ Mrs. Hathaway protested.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs. H.—I was only funning.’

  ‘Why not telegraph?’ Reeder said to Julia.

  ‘No, I think I’ll write. Letters are quite quick to Portugal. Edina, you’ll have to think up a figure per week, so that I can tell them.’

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ Philip enquired. ‘There’s no need for them to come as p.g.s.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they’ll insist on that, and they’re not in the least poor. Make it a rational sum, Edina, that they’ll believe in.’

  ‘Right-oh.’ Mrs. Reeder returned to her desk, and began jotting on a block. ‘Heat, light, board, extra milk for the child, an extra maid for the cleaning—I can make it sound quite a lot.’

  ‘You needn’t itemise it!’ her husband said, looking shocked.

  ‘Of course I shan’t—that’s only for myself.’ She scribbled away. ‘There! Fifteen pounds a week,’ she exclaimed triumphantly.

  ‘Make it guineas—sounds more realistic,’ Philip said.

  ‘Oh, I am so glad about this,’ Mrs. Hathaway said fervently. ‘Do start your letter, Julia. You won’t have much time after luncheon.’

  ‘Use my desk,’ said her hostess. ‘I’ve done.’ Mrs. Reeder always bestowed her correspondence immediately in large wire trays; her ‘INS’ and ‘OUTS’ were as methodical as any civil servant’s—so the large area of green blotting-paper in the centre remained uncluttered. Mrs. Jamieson sat down at the desk, pulled a sheet of paper out of the rack, and began to write rapidly. Her handwriting was large; she was already on a second sheet when she swung round in her chair.

  ‘How’s she to get here?’ she demanded of the room at large. ‘From London, I mean? They’ll have too much luggage to fly to Renfrew. Won’t someone have to go down to London to meet her, and bring her up?’

  ‘Can’t the good Atherley do that much?’ Edina enquired.

  ‘If he can get away, with this second American coming—that’s the question,’ her husband said.