Bar Sinister

by Sheila Simonson

  Tom digested that. "But I had Sims by me."

  "Sims will do. I know that now, but I had to be sure."

  "Why?"

  "Oh, the devil--"

  "Don't avoid me. Why?"

  There was a long pause. "I may be a bastard," Richard said drily, "but I'm capable of ordinary friendship."

  Tom closed his eyes.

  Richard's voice was rough. "I've known you a long time, Tom. You're my son's godfather and you stood by me when Isabel died. What more reason do you need?"

  Tom unclenched his hands slowly, finger by finger. "You've placed me under a very heavy obligation."

  "There is no obligation. I did what I had to do."

  "And devil take the hindmost?"

  "Something like that."

  Tom lay very still.

  "I was afraid they'd make you take laudanum."

  "How did you know about it? My God, Egypt." Tom had been wounded some years before in Egypt. Owing to the stupidity of the surgeons and his own nineteen-year-old ignorance, he was given addictive quantities of opium. Withdrawal had not been pleasant. He had not used it in a decade. He still recalled the nightmares.

  "Then I am grateful," he said, "and very much obliged."

  Richard shifted in the chair.

  "It was good of you to put up with my whining."

  "No whining. A lot of swearing."

  Tom heard his friend rise and looked up at him. Richard stood, rubbing his arms, the habitual scowl between his brows.

  "Is it so very different?" he asked abruptly.

  Tom stiffened. "What?"

  "Knowing. We've all been under a death sentence in a way." He rubbed his arms again, shivering. "I don't express myself well. I'm sorry. It's want of sleep."

  Tom stared.

  "The longer we were over there the shorter the odds. I always thought the axe would fall sooner or later. I still do. It's a matter of time. You've five years left to you."

  "With luck," Tom said bitterly.

  "With good luck. I think you should rest for a few months. Then find something to do."

  "Tatting?"

  "You said yourself you can do anything you put your mind to. Take up Greek or architecture or...or accounts. You've a head for figures. Do something demanding."

  "Perhaps I'll write a novel."

  Richard's shoulders slumped. He turned away and walked back to the window. Tom saw that it had gone pitch dark out. Unlikely that Richard could see far beyond the gate.

  Presently Richard jerked the curtains together. "Try to sleep if you can. I've letters to write. Sims will be along soon."

  "You'll need your candle."

  "Yes. In a moment." He riffled through the stack of freshly copied sheets, squared the pile, and stuffed it in a stiff paper folder of the sort that ties with ribbons. He mended his pen and bent close to scribble the direction.

  "Richard."

  "What is it?" He finished and straightened, turning. His hair flopped over his forehead in a dark wing.

  Tom's voice was harsh. "You'll have to talk about your children. There is the small matter of their guardianship. If you should meet with an accident--"

  "If I'm killed you're stuck with them. I'm sorry to burden you with such a charge, but it's too late to change things. They can be left with Mrs. Foster. My will is with my solicitor."

  "You have great faith in the estimable Mrs. Foster."

  "I have no choice."

  "I am not so sanguine," Tom said with deliberate brutality. "You've only her word for it that they're well and happy, Richard. How if she's lying to you? She could be. Even if she's honest she may take it into her head to marry, or sell the manor and emigrate, and then where would they be, poor brats?"

  "You have the authority to make other arrangements." Richard did not move. His face was a blur in the dim light.

  "What if other arrangements are needed now? What if I stick my spoon in the wall in the next sixmonth? You'll have to think about them, Richard, at the very least."

  "Do you imagine I ever think of anything else?"

  8

  Richard's voice was so quiet that for a moment his words did not register.

  Tom had been watching the spider methodically spinning strand after tiny strand. He jerked his head sharply and was rewarded with another spasm that left him gasping. "If you feel that way, then I wonder you won't go to them." He squinted, but it was impossible to make out his friend's expression. Richard stood beyond the pool of candlelight.

  Richard took his jacket from the chair back and put it on with deliberation. Tom bit back an automatic sarcasm. He didn't have to see the coat, he remembered it very well--the fabric visibily sleazy, the cut foreign. It had annoyed Tom, who was as fastidious in such matters as he could afford to be, for six weeks.

  Richard said calmly, "I could give them only a few days. And don't cover yourself with guilt. Two weeks or two days--the effect would be precisely the same. I'd come galloping on the scene, probably frightening them. They're not used to strangers. I'd disturb their routine, confuse them, and to what purpose? I'd just have to leave, and I daresay that would confuse them, too."

  "And what if you're killed?"

  Richard shrugged. "I think it unlikely they remember me. Amy was two when I saw her last. Perhaps she does have a few dim recollections, but Tommy wouldn't know me at all. I hear of them regularly, and I daresay they hear of me. Thanks to Mrs. Foster, they probably think of me as Father Christmas."

  "Surely not."

  "As a shadowy figure who writes letters," Richard amended, not smiling, "and sends gewgaws on their birthdays. That's tolerable. Do you fancy I'd want them to go into paroxysms of grief over me if I were killed? I find the idea revolting."

  He went to the fire, added a careful ration of sea coal, and stood looking down at it. Apparently his handiwork didn't satisfy him, for he reached for the poker and began jabbing at the coals. The flaring orange light showed his set profile. The bunched muscle of his jaw jumped.

  Tom chose his words with caution. "If they were mine, I'd want to see them, say good-bye to them."

  "My Christ," Richard said softly, "I couldn't bear it." He gave the fire one further tired poke and set the iron in its place with exaggerated care, which was necessary, Tom saw with astonishment, because his hand was unsteady.

  Surprise was succeeded by bewildered pity. Tom closed his eyes. He could think of nothing to say. He was not a parent himself and could only guess at the feelings attached to that state. He had always vaguely supposed them pleasant. It now occurred to him that fatherhood, in Richard's circumstances, was something akin to tragedy. For a man of feeling...

  Was the idea so absurd? One need not wear one's feelings on one's sleeve. Richard had a reputation for aloofness and withering sarcasm, but sarcasm is a fair defence against feeling.

  They had known each other since boyhood. Richard had been a high-strung lad whose bad dreams annoyed his fellows by night and whose belligerence by day made friendship a constant hazard. They had been thrown together because they were both left at Parson Freeman's rectory, where they were being schooled, during the holidays. Later they had lost track of each other for long stretches of time and neither troubled to write. Even in the Peninsula they had not sat in one another's pockets.

  Tom had always accounted Richard a friend, but not a close one, and he had accepted guardianship of Richard's children in the patronising conviction that Richard could very likely find no one else. Now he was in Richard's debt.

  If Richard were in my shoes, would I take such pains for him? Tom turned the thought over in his head. No. What a self-satisfied prig I am. Full of conscious virtue and blind as a sow. Saint Thomas Conway, patron of orphans and universal good fellow. Self-disgust kept him silent.

  Richard leaned on the mantel, head bent, still staring into the fire.

  "Will you tell me how things are left?" Tom said at last.

  Richard straightened. "I've writ everything down. I meant to go over
it with you later."

  "Tell me."

  Richard took a long breath. "They won't be a charge on you. You needn't think that. There's enough to see them educated and a small dower for Amy."

  "How the devil did you contrive that?" Tom was astonished.

  "Cheeseparing, and four very bad novels."

  "In two years?"

  "I'd finished the first before Isabel died." He walked over to the bedside table and took up the other brandy glass. "If the government decide to honour their debts there'll be three months' arrears and whatever prize money they award. I told the colonel to direct it to my solicitor when I exchanged." He swirled the liquour in the glass. "That might see Tommy into a clerkship."

  "Not into the army."

  "No." He gave a short laugh. "Over my dead body."

  Tom said quietly, "Sell out. Before you run out of luck."

  "And do what?"

  "Write."

  Richard stared at him. "I haven't another book in me."

  "Send Don Alfonso to King's Town and stay home yourself." Don Alfonso was the hero of Richard's later works, a highborn Spaniard of extravagant pride and stupidity. A good satire, Tom thought, but one the general reader was unlikely to recognise. The books sold because the plots, improbable though they might be, moved like lightning. "Did you model Don Alfonso on old Cuesta?"

  That startled a smile. "As Don Gregorio might have been at twenty-five, with touches of Joachim Blake."

  "A clever invention."

  "Nonsense," Richard said flatly. "I write the purest tripe. The great British publick prefer it to art."

  Tom chuckled. "I only read the one. It was damned amusing."

  Richard said nothing. The brandy sloshed in slow circles.

  There was an uninhibited crash at the front door and Sims entered, laden with viands from the nearest inn.

  Despite the humiliation of having Sims feed him in the manner of a robin stuffing its nestling's craw, Tom surprised himself by eating with a fair appetite. Sims's imperturbable cockney cheer was equal to that, or as Tom well knew, any other occasion. Nevertheless Tom determined to take no more meals lying down.

  Sims swept up the crumbs deftly. "Try a bit o' cheese, major. Nice crumbly cheddar. Nothing like it. There's a bit o' berry tart if you've a fancy for it. Sip o' ale first? Right you are." He trundled over to the table where Richard was picking at a slice of boiled chicken, and poured a swig into a pewter tankard.

  "Try not to spill it all over him," Richard said shortly.

  Sims was offended and returned to Tom's side muttering, but he didn't spill much.

  Richard rose. "I'm going for a walk."

  "No 'urry, Major Falk, sir."

  The door closed.

  Sims clucked like a hen. "Not 'alf civil tonight, is 'e?"

  "He's tired," Tom said pacifically. "Er, how long have I been lying here, Sims, and why? Not another metal fragment."

  "No, now. Pulled a couple of stitches when we come down from London in Lord Bevis's flash carriage. Road like a cart track the last five mile. That didn't 'elp. You was doing well enough 'til the ague set in." He met his master's gaze blandly. "Been more'n a week. 'E said," Sims jerked his head in the direction of the door, "'E said wot you wanted was Peruvian bark, but the 'pothecary balked. Wanted to dose you with laudanum. Rare set-to that was. I told the quack you didn't use it, but 'e thought 'e knew best. Major Falk threw 'is drops out the door and they 'ad words."

  "I can imagine." Tom suppressed a laugh. It hurt to laugh. He was relieved to know that the surgeons hadn't been at him again. "The ague, you say. You're sure?"

  "Sure as death," Sims said with characteristic want of tact. "Dosed you with bark, Major Falk did. 'Ad to pour it down you, four, five different times. Nasty stuff. 'E said I should keep a supply of the bark to 'and. That right, Major?"

  "Yes. Thank you, Sims. If you've been spelling Richard off and on for a week you'll be tired, too. Turn in early."

  "Oh, I took forty winks on me couch of ease this morning. Major Falk said 'e'd cope. 'Ad 'is scribbling to keep 'im 'appy. 'E's writ a book, ain't 'e?" Sims looked impressed.

  "Four. No, more than that. The first few were too dreadful to count."

  "Cor. Is 'e famous then?"

  "No." Tom stared at his man and decided not to try to explain pseudonyms. Richard's was Peter Picaro. Alliterative and appropriate. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

  "'Ere, wot's so bleeding funny?"

  "Sorry, Sims," Tom choked back a laugh. "A stray thought."

  "It's a fair treat to see you pulling out of the dismals," Sims said generously. "More like yerself, if I may say so, Major."

  "You may. Thank you, Sims. Did I have the wit to cash a bank draught before I left Town?"

  "Aye. We're in clover."

  "Then take a crown, or whatever you need, and be off to the inn. What's it called?"

  "The Dolphin, sir."

  "To the Dolphin. You can return the crockery and settle the account. Have a pint or two before you come back."

  Sims looked pleased at that and vanished in a trice, having built up the fire and lit a fresh candle before his exit. It was some time before Richard returned.

  9

  Tom drowsed, but he wasn't tired. Slept out, he thought. The spider on the center beam seemed to have retired for the night. It was raining and beginning to blow.

  At last the front door opened quietly. Sims was incapable of such delicacy.

  "Where's Sims?" Richard snapped.

  "At the Dolphin. Probably under the table by now."

  "I told him not to leave you."

  "I daresay he thought my orders took precedence of yours." Tom felt a stab of annoyance. Officious bastard. "Do you fancy I'll fall on my sword if I'm left alone?"

  "You might turn feverish again. I can do without another night of wrestling with you." Richard latched the door.

  "I daresay." Tom squinted. "Richard, you lunatic, you're soaked to the skin. Take that appalling coat off and change your shirt or you'll be needing the Peruvian bark."

  Richard crossed obediently to the fire and, removing the offensive garment, dragged out a dilapidated firescreen. He hung the coat on it, where it dripped a melancholy puddle onto the flags. "You don't like my Bordeaux jacket?"

  "Is that what it is? No. I do not."

  "Pity."

  "Change your shirt."

  "In a moment." Richard knelt and held his hand to the fire.

  "You might've had your tailor choose a less obnoxious shade of blue."

  "What tailor? It was ready made for an avocat who unfortunately succumbed to the typhus. M'sieur assured me it suited milor' to a perfection. Besides it was dagger cheap and you'll allow I needed a new one."

  Tom closed his eyes. He tried to recall if he had given Richard money for the remove from London. He felt a cool hand on his forehead and looked up into Richard's composed features. A drop of icy water hit Tom's nose. "What the devil?"

  "Sorry. Wet hair. I wanted to see if you need another dose."

  "No!--that is, I'm perfectly well."

  "All the same, one more glass..."

  Tom groaned theatrically.

  A spark of laughter lit his friend's eyes. "I perceive you are greatly improved. It will do you good, however."

  "That's what all quacks say of their revolting potions. Where are you going?"

  "To change my shirt." He disappeared beyond Tom's range of vision and returned, pulling a fresh shirt over his lean torso. His hair had been towelled and stood up in tufts.

  "You look a guy."

  Richard entered to the scullery. He came back with a glass of murky liquid. "Don't try to sit up. I'll prop you."

  "Good God."

  "Stop imagining horrors," Richard said rather sharply. "You're almost healed. When you've healed completely you'll have to work at it a bit. In a month or so it won't play the devil with you all the time. Standing and walking would be well enough now. Bending and sitting will take l
onger, that's all."

  "I do not love thee, Dr. Falk."

  "No reason you should. No, don't try it. Just lean on my arm. I'll pull you up."

  Tom leaned. He drank the stewed bark off and made a face. Richard removed the glass. When he lay flat once more and the worst twinges had subsided, Tom took a careful breath. "I'll need a replacement in the wings--as the children's guardian. Have you thought of that?" He was proud of his own matter-of-fact tone.

  "No. Not really." Richard sat on the chair and stretched his booted legs out, staring at them.

  "Bevis."

  "No."

  "Do you dislike Bevis?"

  "I don't dislike him. He's an affable man. I don't know him well enough." Richard chewed his lip. "Forgive me. I realise he is your close friend, but I judged him somewhat volatile."

  "In his tastes perhaps. Not in his sense of duty."

  "That is high praise."

  Tom sighed. "Whom do you suggest?"

  "Travers. No, he's bound for America, too. I forgot."

  "Who else?"

  Richard said bleakly, "There aren't legions to draw from. I haven't your gift for friendship."

  "They're dead, aren't they? I'm sorry, Richard. I have been somewhat more fortunate, but apart from Bevis I haven't a great many friends I could entrust children to, either."

  "Then it will have to be Bevis." Richard rose, levering himself up on the chair back. The chair protested. "I'll draw up instructions for my solicitor."

  "Have you thought to ask your family for help?"

  His hand clenched on the curved wood. "Christ!"

  "I wish you will hear me out."

  "I'd sooner see them on the parish," Richard said fiercely. "Are you mad?"

  "There is such a thing as an excess of stubborn pride. The Duke of Newsham is a great landowner. I think the Ffouke estate could bear the charge of two small children."

  "I can see," said Richard with false calm, "that I am going to have to tell you a story."

  Tom frowned. "That's not necessary. I appreciate your reluctance. God knows, I'd have to be stricken blind, legless, and penniless before I'd apply to the Earl of Clanross. It is far better not to be a relation at all than a poor one."

  Richard went to the secretary. Paced like a cat.