The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

by Barbara Vine

  But then it occurred to her that Ursula ought to know what she had discovered, should have information about all these new relations. To be fair, she should have advance warning of what she would read in the memoir.

  “Look, if you’re in London for a bit why don’t you come over here tomorrow evening? I’ll get Hope, too. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  It came to her that mothers always took that to mean a forthcoming engagement or even a marriage. Something sexual, anyway. Sarah was so preoccupied with thinking she would never be sexual again that she didn’t take much notice of Ursula’s saying she had something to tell her, too.

  “You haven’t sold the house?”

  “Hardly. It’s only been on the market two weeks.”

  Hope arrived with her head tied up in a scarf because Fabian had said her fur hat made her look like Boris Yeltsin.

  “I’m sure Ma will think I’m going to announce my engagement.”

  “You’re not, are you?”

  “Whom would I get engaged to?”

  Opening the bottle of wine she had brought, Hope said that she and Fabian were thinking of getting engaged.

  “You always are. You’ve been thinking of it for ten years.”

  Hope sat down, looking closely into her glass as if into a crystal ball. “If we got engaged, it would be a sort of signal for us to move in together. And then, maybe, in a year or two, if it works out, we might get married.”

  “You really believe in rushing into things, don’t you?”

  Ursula arrived, wearing the kind of fur hat that might not have looked good on Hope but suited Ursula. As far as Sarah could tell, she was dressed in new clothes from head to foot. Her hair had been cut once more, and cut a good deal better than they had done it in Barnstaple.

  She, too, had brought a bottle of wine, but hers was champagne.

  “Have you sold the house or something?” said Hope.

  “I’ve had an offer. The agent phoned me this morning.”

  “I don’t know what the champagne’s for.” Sarah had kissed her mother. More because, as she told herself afterward, she smelled so wonderfully of Biagiotti’s Roma than for any other reason. “But can we have it in favor of your wine, Hope?”

  “If you look at the bottle,” said Hope, “you’ll see you’ve drunk all my wine already.”

  Their father had been very good at opening champagne. He had always done so without spills or explosions. Hope managed fairly well, fetching a cloth from the kitchen to mop up the table.

  “I want to tell you what I found out about Dad.”

  “It’s not horrid, is it?” Her sister, Sarah thought, looked just as she had twenty years ago and more, when a picture anticipated in a book threatened terrors or when one of their father’s stories took a turn around a frightening bend. He had always promised nothing bad, nothing to alarm, and always kept his promise. “It’s not going to upset me?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m sure not.”

  She couldn’t give his guarantees. But she told them the whole of it. Hope’s mobile face registered every emotion. Once she put up a hand to cover her mouth, once put her head in both hands. She made a little sound that might have been distress or might have been protest. But Ursula sat impassive. She hadn’t touched her champagne. Sarah drank hers and had more, aware by then that her voice was thickening.

  Hope said, the words bursting out of her, “But why? Why did he?”

  “That’s what I don’t know.”

  “But you must know.” Hope spoke to her mother as if she were a policeman and Ursula a suspect in an interview room. “You can’t have been married to him for thirty-five years or whatever and he not have told you.”

  “No. Yes, I should say, I was. I never suspected he wasn’t who he said he was. Why should I?”

  “The thing is,” said Sarah, “shall I tell Robert Postle about it or not?”

  “Tell Postle? Why the hell should you?”

  “I’m writing a memoir of Dad, remember? He was Dad’s publisher and he’s mine. That’s why. Do I tell him in advance that Dad was really called John Ryan and all the rest of it or do I wait till the memoir’s finished?”

  Ursula said nothing. She listened in silence. She picked up her champagne glass and drank a little from it. Reaching for the bottle, Hope said, “If you tell him now, it’ll get out. He’ll be very excited—he’s bound to be—and he’ll drop a word to someone. If only to that wife of his. Or a secretary will see it. Don’t forget Less Is More is due to be published in a few weeks. Somehow, there’ll be a leak—there always is—and it’ll get into one of those diary columns in a newspaper and we’ll all have reporters on the doorstep.”

  “I think that’s a bit unfair to Robert, but I see what you mean. Not a word, then, until he gets the manuscript. Is that agreed, Ma?”

  “Yes, of course, if that’s what you want. The reporters will turn up when it’s published, though.”

  “We’ll all be prepared by then,” said Sarah, without explaining how they would be prepared, without knowing how.

  She sighed. She had expected the telling to be a relief, to make her feel better, but it hadn’t. She was aware, suddenly, that her sister and her mother would go away soon, would leave her alone; she would once more be alone, and she had never felt quite like that before. The drink that always helped hadn’t helped. When they were gone and the bottles were empty, she would find what drink she had in the flat. She would put herself out for the night.

  Ursula said, “I said I’d got something to tell you, Sarah. You and Hope.”

  Had she? Sarah couldn’t remember. She must mean the offer on the house. Was that what the champagne was for?

  “Do you remember when you brought me to London that time I told you I’d be seeing a friend?”

  “That’s right. I took you to a hotel. Where you are now.”

  “No, I’m not there. I’m staying with someone, that friend. You said, ‘Where does she live?’ and I said, ‘It’s not a she; it’s a he.’ Don’t you remember?”

  Sarah nodded, because it was easier than arguing.

  “I’m staying with him. No, I’m living with him. His name’s Sam Fleming and I’m going to live with him. Perhaps in his place or perhaps we’ll buy somewhere together when the house is sold. I don’t know. But I’m living with him—now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I often tried to tell you, Sarah, but you didn’t listen. You don’t listen to me. I tried to tell you when you took me to the hotel. And when he phoned me and you answered. So I thought in the end that I’d have to come here and tell you both. Like this. And I have.”

  Her mother had grown quite breathless. She was flushed. She said, “I didn’t mean that about you not listening to me. I know you have your own worries and things to think about. Why should you listen? Anyway, I’ve got you both listening now. I want you to meet Sam soon. He wanted to come with me tonight, but I said no, not this time.”

  Sarah was so intent on her mother’s flushed face, her mother’s unexpected awkwardness, and, above all, her words, that she didn’t look at Hope. She had, for the moment, forgotten Hope’s existence. So that when Hope yelled, she jumped.

  “You can’t! You can’t do that!”

  Ursula retreated a little into her chair. Her warding-off hand came up. Sarah thought for the first time how often in the past she had made that particular gesture, but always at something their father had said. Now it was to defend herself from Hope.

  “I can’t see how it will affect you much, Hope. You knew I was leaving the house; you were happy about that.”

  “I wasn’t happy!”

  “You were content with the arrangement. I’m going to live in London with a man I’m very fond of. I shall be near you; we could see each other.…”

  “See you? I never want to see you again as long as I live. You were married to Daddy. Have you forgotten that? To Daddy!”

  Ursula’s awkwardness gone, her flutter
iness gone, she said in a strong, bitter voice, “You know nothing about it. What do you know about other people’s marriages? No one knows what goes on in a marriage. You know nothing, nothing.”

  “I know I hate you.” The tears streamed down Hope’s face. “You were Daddy’s wife, and now you’re going to live with this man. He must be awful to want you. You should be dead like Daddy. You should be dead instead of Daddy.”

  She was eight years old again. Her face had puffed up into childish contours. Sarah was frightened. She was at a loss, but she got up and went to her sister, her arms out. Hope struck out at her.

  “You’re not to!” she screamed. “I forbid you to do it. Daddy forbids you.”

  “As you say, Hope, your father is dead,” Ursula said.

  Hope pulled on her coat, stumbling, scrubbing the hair out of her eyes, wiping at her eyes with her fists. Sarah did nothing. She didn’t speak. Ursula lay back against the cushions, white-faced. Hope got the door open and pulled it shut behind her, crashed down the stairs. The front door slamming rocked the house.

  Sarah rubbed her arm where Hope had punched her. She looked at her mother, wanting her to sit up and smile and say something about how childish Hope could be and she didn’t know what had got into her and it would all soon blow over. But Ursula said none of those things. She looked deathly ill. The brightness of her appearance when she had first arrived, the gloss of new clothes and freshly done hair and, yes, of happiness surely, all that had faded and she looked stricken. It was as if lightning had passed through her, felled her, deprived her of some vital force.

  “Ma,” Sarah said, and then said, “Mother.”

  Ursula moved. She raised her shoulders, dropped them, made a wincing face. Then she shook herself, or perhaps she shuddered. “I must go.”

  “Look, she didn’t—” Sarah had been going to say that Hope didn’t mean it, but she remembered that was what Adam had said, and his saying it had made no difference. “I mean, she did mean it at the time, but she’ll get over it. Are you okay?”

  “No. But I will be. One day. I, too, will get over it. I must go.”

  “Would you like me to call you a taxi?”

  All at once, Ursula became articulate, calm. “I can get a taxi in the street, Sarah. I don’t think that’s difficult, though I hardly know, I’ve been here so seldom. But I can get a taxi or I can walk to the tube station because I don’t want to stay here any longer. I don’t want to talk anymore, not now. There’s just one thing I want to say to you. I’ve never said it and perhaps I shouldn’t now, but I’m going to. I was deeply unhappy with your father—it was no marriage; it was nothing. He rejected me in every way after Hope was born, and if he never abused me physically, he—he struck me daily with his tongue. I’ll go now.”

  Sarah stared at her. She got up mechanically and helped her mother into her coat. Ursula turned, her face close to Sarah’s, her eyes tired and sad. Sarah put her lips up to a cheek that was cold and rigid. The kiss wasn’t returned. Nothing more was said until they were downstairs, Sarah realizing too late that she had offered her mother no congratulations, no good wishes for her happiness. It was too late now.

  “Look, Ma, I’ll be in touch. I don’t even know where you’re living. I haven’t got a phone number.”

  “I was going to give you that, both of you,” said Ursula. “It can wait awhile, don’t you think? Good night.”

  Upstairs in the flat, Sarah looked down into the street from the window. It was early yet, only nine. She saw Ursula walking along under the bare tree branches and then the rear lights of a taxi as it came out of a side turning. Her mother was out of sight by then, too far away for Sarah to see if she got into the taxi or not, and when the doorbell rang five minutes later, it seemed as if she must have come back. She had forgotten something or regretted her parting words. Sarah picked up the intercom, said, “I’ll open the door for you, Mother.”

  There was silence, then a crackle, then a voice said, “It’s not your mother; it’s Jason.”

  “I thought maybe you wouldn’t let me in,” he said.

  Like her mother, he had had his hair cut. He looked healthier, as if he had been eating. The spots had gone. He handed her an envelope.

  “It’s your check. I’m giving it back. I didn’t do the work, so you shouldn’t be paying me.”

  “Do you want a drink?” she said.

  “I brought a bottle of wine. It’s what’s in my pocket—I haven’t suddenly gotten fat. I’ve got a job—well, it’s part-time, on account of I’ve gone back to school.”

  “You’ve gone back to college?”

  “I will have. When term starts. Not in Ipswich, here in London. Have some wine?”

  She had had too much already. She shook her head and he smiled, his eyebrows up. “You keep it for tomorrow then. Did you find out why your dad changed his name?”

  She told him about Stefan, showed him the file, then the two thousand words she had written. He said, “There isn’t going to be any more to discover, is there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re never going to know why. D’you want to know what my nan said when I told her? She said that he must have done something terrible to a member of his family. Or one of them had done something terrible to him.”

  Sarah nodded. She said in a stifled tone, “If anyone had ever told me I’d be pleased to see someone who called his grandmother ‘my nan,’ I’d never have believed them.”

  “You’re a snob, Sarah.”

  “I know.”

  He laughed. “I’d better go. I’m still living in Ipswich for another week, and my last train’s at eleven.”

  She hesitated, thought of them all suddenly, her dead father, her mother, Hope, Adam Foley’s hurtful insults, and she said in a small voice, not looking at him, “Would you like to stay the night?”

  28

  Plagiarism is more often the outcome of desperation than of villainy.

  —THE BRIDEGROOM’S DOORS

  MANUSCRIPTS FROM TWO OF HIS AUTHORS ARRIVED ON ROBERT POSTLE’S desk on the same day in the first week of August. The one that came through an agent, he hadn’t expected for a month or more; the other, which was sent to him directly, he had almost given up hope of ever seeing.

  Thankful Child: A Memoir of My Father seemed about twice as long as The Spoiled Forest, which would suit Robert’s requirements very well. Titus Romney’s manuscript was the novel expected as the second under the terms of a two-book contract. At first glance, it looked as if it wouldn’t make two hundred pages, but Robert was gratified to note its early arrival just the same. When last he had spoken to Romney on the subject, the author had told him he was bereft of ideas and suffering from writer’s block. But that, Robert reflected, not altogether happily, had been nearly a year ago. Time flew.

  He didn’t much care for Sarah’s title. She was playing with that line from Lear, of course. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!” A couple of months ago, she had hinted to him that the memoir would make a sensational impact. Her father hadn’t really been called Gerald Candless; he had changed his name and identity at the age of twenty-five. There had been a lot more in the same vein, but Robert wondered, as he had wondered at the time, if Gerald Candless had been sufficiently a celebrity for the tabloids to get excited about it. Perhaps. It would depend on what she had found out and had written. Anyway, that would be a problem for Carlyon-Brent’s publicity department, not him.

  Ursula had sold Lundy View House and was living with a bookseller in London. Robert had expected to meet the man at Hope’s wedding, but he wasn’t there. More to the point, Ursula wasn’t there. If some people asked why not, Robert hadn’t been among them, but a woman called Pauline told him Hope had fallen out with her mother and the breach wasn’t mended yet.

  “Personally, I’d have expected Auntie Ursula to show more respect for my uncle’s memory.”

  Then Sarah had introduced him to a man she called Ste
fan, who seemed rather too old for her, but that was all right, because, later, while she was explaining to him yet again that the book wouldn’t be done by May, after all, a much younger chap turned up who was obviously her boyfriend. One of those awful names, Gareth or Darren—no, Jason.

  That was when she said the memoir would be sensational and the Jason chap laughed and put his arm around her and said that was an understatement. Now that he had the manuscript there before him, he began to feel apprehensive. No, that was an understatement. He was afraid of it. Of course, this wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling; he was quite used to having it. Publishers are habitually afraid of possible libel, defamation, ludicrous mistakes, gross inaccuracies, and blatant falsehood from their authors. Not to mention plagiarism. It seemed possible that all those causes of fear might be found in Sarah’s book, and therefore he was afraid.

  The two cardboard folders that contained it, fastened together by an elastic band, looked innocuous lying there. Only paper, after all, five hundred sheets of paper with words printed on them. But paper and print always look innocuous. Nothing in this world was more deceptive when you considered what the printed word could and did do.

  He was going away on holiday on Saturday. With his wife and those of the children who still lived at home. Carlyon-Brent’s senior editors were expected to take their main holidays in August, the silly season. One of those manuscripts he would read now and the other take with him to the Luberon. Which?

  Perhaps obviously, one read the shorter first, the less welcome, the one to be gotten out of the way. Using a phrase of Freddie Cyprian’s, he said to himself that a couple of hours would wrap it up. Then Sarah’s, later. On a hotel terrace in the warm shade or at a table outside a café … Was there a photograph in existence of Gerald with his two girls when they were small?

  He seemed to remember one Carlyon-Brent had in its archives. It would do admirably for the jacket.

  He put Titus Romney’s The Spoiled Forest in his briefcase and after dinner, after the nine o’clock news on television, took the manuscript out of its cardboard folder and began to read.