‘Nothing at all?’
‘Quite nothing. Those people brought me here in a lorry, rather uncomfortably jammed up with a bad marble after the Capri Adonis.’
Meredith’s brow darkened. ‘The damned scoundrels!’ And he looked about him as if a policeman had better be found at once.
‘Well, I don’t know.’ The girl was philosophical. ‘I asked for it, all right. And they weren’t beastly. Just something between rough and–’ She stopped. ‘Good heavens, Titian’s gone after a cat!’
Meredith went after Titian – an uncalled-for act of proprietorship to which he felt obscurely compelled. He returned dragging the animal by the collar. It was really an enormous brute, and more sheepish than ever. ‘In that case,’ he said – and paused in perplexity. ‘In that case, we had better get something to eat.’
‘Just that,’ said the girl. ‘And a bed.’
‘Precisely so. That is to say – well, yes.’ And Meredith stopped in the middle of the pavement and looked hopefully about him, much as if he expected Elijah’s ravens to appear with pies, pasties, and a four-poster – or perhaps single bed-chambers chastely disposed on either side of the street. ‘Exactly so. And at once.’ He had been on his way, he remembered, to the Athenaeum. He had proposed to himself a little reading in the Journal of Classical Archaeology. And on the morrow he had been going to visit Mr Collins, the Peacockian old parasite who cared for the Duke of Nesfield’s Library at Nesfield Court. These now seemed projects infinitely remote. And the immediate necessity was indeed a meal. ‘At once,’ Meredith repeated – and saw the girl, himself, and their attendant quadrupeds walking down Lower Regent Street and presenting themselves in those august apartments so notoriously thronged with ‘noblemen and gentlemen distinguished as liberal patrons of science, literature, or the arts’. The Athenaeum would have to be deferred. A restaurant was the thing – but again, they were decidedly grubby; and yet again, there were the dogs. ‘I wonder,’ Meredith heard himself saying – just as when he had spoken from some depth of mother-wit to Mr Bubear – ‘I wonder if you would care to come and have a simple meal in my rooms, and sleep there if it would be convenient to you? Mrs Martin’ – rather hurriedly Meredith came forward with this duenna – ‘Mrs Martin, my landlady, although a trifle morose, is at bottom a motherly soul, I don’t doubt. I am sure she would–’
‘Lead the way.’ Since he had abandoned addressing the girl as ma’am, she had abandoned addressing him as sir. ‘Decidedly lead the way.’ She was looking at him with remote amusement. ‘After a square meal I’ll be fit for anything. Mothering, even.’ Her expression changed. ‘You’ve been very kind. And terribly effective. But I make one condition: no fathering.’
‘Fathering?’ Meredith was perplexed.
‘Look what we’ve been skipping through hand in hand. It makes us exact contemporaries, it seems to me. Thirty-two is your age – just as it is mine.’
‘I see.’ Meredith laughed, really amused at this fancy. ‘But I’m afraid that the sort of activities into which I have tumbled are more likely to add to my years than to take away from them. The chute we went down, for instance. I should describe that as a definitely ageing experience.’
They had turned into a quiet square – or the remains of it – and as the last light drained from the sky the bleak and pure Augustan façades, the sudden void spaces, the blank party walls, and sprawl of shoring timber began to take on mystery from the night. ‘I have no doubt’, said Meredith, ‘that you know more of what it was all about than I do.’ (Was it not to be supposed, he told himself again, that the girl was an adventuress – or perhaps one of those hard-bitten but seductive female reporters who flourish in the tight places of Hollywood films?) He took soundings on this. ‘I don’t know if you go greatly in for that sort of thing–’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Ah.’ Meredith felt considerably relieved. ‘No more do I, as you may guess. And what strikes me about it is the special quality which comes from its being a hazard more or less unique to oneself. I suppose one was in as considerable physical danger on and off for years – but in group contexts, and that makes a world of difference.’
‘That – and the suddenness. To be pitched into a fear situation quite without warning is said to be particularly traumatic.’
‘Precisely so.’ Meredith, although aware of a faint and friendly mockery, was much pleased to find the girl possessed of a vocabulary of this sort. ‘On the other hand, one does recuperate. Granted food, clothing, and shelter, the average human being can carry on indefinitely.’
‘And a few familiar objects.’ The girl now gravely supplemented him. ‘One’s own pipe or powder-puff or fireside stool may hold enormous solace. Which is why people dived for and carried away such ridiculous objects in the blitz.’
‘That is very true.’ Meredith was so struck by the interest of this that he stopped dead in the middle of the pavement. Titian and Giotto lay down and appeared to listen attentively. ‘I remember once on an evening like this–’ Meredith glanced round in the gathering darkness. ‘But – dear me! – here we are. I had scarcely realized that we had arrived.’ He turned and moved up a short flight of steps. ‘Now, I have only to find my key – But, no – on second thoughts, I think we might ring the bell. It will bring Mrs Martin at once, and we can explain ourselves.’
‘Yes,’ said the girl, faintly amused again. ‘We can do that.’
Mrs Martin had the proportions rather than the expression commonly thought of as motherly; she looked at Meredith with civil foreboding and at the girl not at all.
‘Good evening, Mrs Martin; I am afraid you expected me to dine at my club.’ Meredith, absent-mindedly endeavouring to remove an overcoat which he was not wearing, very effectively displayed the ravages perpetrated upon his veritable garments by the unregenerate Titian or Giotto of earlier in the evening. ‘But the fact is that my friend, Miss–’ Only at this moment did it occur to him that the girl’s name was unknown to him; and as she had retired some paces to the wardenship of the dogs there was no possibility of a convenient surreptitious prompting. ‘The fact is that my friend and I have been involved together–’
‘Um,’ said Mrs Martin.
‘–have been involved together in an exhausting incident–’
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Martin.
‘–and, being uncommonly hungry, would be glad of whatever your celebrated skill in such matters can put before us.’
‘Well, well, well.’ Mrs Martin, however, was mollified. ‘There’ll be somefink, I dare say.’ She looked past Meredith and her expression became misdoubting. ‘And would those be your friend’s ’ounds?’
Meredith considered this for a moment. ‘No,’ he said; ‘I hardly think that we may so describe them. On the contrary, indeed, they are my enemy’s.’ And he nodded innocently to Mrs Martin, who, presumably accustomed to obscure academic witticisms, let this enigmatic rejoinder pass. ‘It would be not inaccurate, I suppose, to describe them as prisoners – or conceivably as booty. It is probable that they would appreciate being found a bone. Or two bones. And no doubt they can pass the night in the area or the basement.’
‘Did you say pass the night?’
‘Oh, decidedly so.’ Meredith had an obscure feeling that there was something of chaperonage in the dogs; the evil constructions to which, as he feared, Mrs Martin was prone would be less colourable in the face of a party of four than of two. ‘And, of course, my friend as well. Perhaps you can manage something on the second floor. You see, she can’t get home tonight.’
‘A pity,’ said Mrs Martin.
‘Because she doesn’t live in London. She came to Town’ – it would be politic, it occurred to Meredith, a little to harrow Mrs Martin – ‘she came to Town squeezed up with an Adonis in a van.’
‘Is that so, now?’ It was deplorably plain that the vision conjured
up in Mrs Martin’s mind by this information was altogether impertinent to the matter.
‘With a statue, that is to say. The Adonis of Capri.’
‘The Adonis of the coal-cellar, I should have said.’ As she uttered this severe witticism Mrs Martin looked more attentively at the girl. ‘Well, well, well,’ she added with sudden placidity, ‘it mightn’t be a bad thing if I began by turning on the barfs.’
VI
It was an hour later. Meredith, made philosophical by the rare indulgence of cutlets and sherry, leant forward and poked at a hospitable if diminutive fire.
‘Despite your charming fancy’, he said, ‘I must lay claim to all the years that time has laid upon me. But the fact is that even at my age new facets of human nature are constantly being revealed to one. Here is a woman with whom I have lodged since some time before the war. During this long period my conduct has been almost painfully exemplary. And yet, upon the first occasion of my introducing a lady into the establishment in somewhat unconventional circumstances, all this goes for nothing. Mrs Martin at once supposes me fallen into immoral courses. What I say in the matter she unhesitatingly ignores. Only after a personal appraisal of yourself for which I must really apologize does she relinquish a thoroughly nasty view.’
Meredith laughed unexpectedly. ‘And, having provided us with some very tolerable coffee, she is now, I don’t doubt, investigating the mores of Titian and Giotto.’ He laid down the pipe which he had just picked up from the mantelpiece. ‘By Jove! Do you know I believe I have some cigarettes?’ He jumped up. ‘Ten cigarettes for you – I haven’t the faintest doubt you smoke – and for me two ounces of tobacco which I bought in a commonplace little shop this afternoon. Do you know Johnson’s London? “Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay”. And “Here falling houses thunder on your head”. It is extremely odd that lines so apposite should have been running in my mind as I bought the stuff. Yes, here are the cigarettes – and now let me find you a match. You and I, it is clear, have a tale to tell each other. And I think we might begin by exchanging names.’
The girl had curled up on a sofa and now looked at him through a perfectly defined smoke-ring which she had formed from her first puff of tobacco. ‘Yes, Mr Meredith.’
Meredith laid down his pipe once more and looked at her in surprise. ‘I don’t think I heard Mrs Martin–’
The girl smiled. ‘Martial,’ she said. ‘I used to come to your lectures on Martial at Cambridge.’
‘Good heavens! That must be nearly twelve years ago.’ Meredith was oddly pleased. ‘You know, as simple, expository lectures they weren’t at all bad.’
‘And they seemed to be extempore. Which made me not so astounded at your dazzling performance this afternoon. Seconds after being dubbed Vogelsang you were piping like the veriest songster of the grove. But not before I had recognized you – and it was lucky that I did. Otherwise I should never have tumbled to it that you were on my side. By the way, my name is Jean Halliwell.’
‘God bless my soul! Do you mean to say you wrote those papers on Minoan weapons in the Hellenic Review?’ Meredith was so surprised that he had jumped up from his chair. ‘And I took you for an adventuress or the sort of person sent out by newspapers.’
‘I’m terribly sorry to be nothing so romantic. But I did write them and hope to write some more.’
‘Of course you wrote them.’ Meredith was quite confused. ‘And I assure you that by “adventuress” I did not at all imply – That is to say–’ He caught Jean Halliwell’s eye, recovered suddenly, and sat down again, chuckling, to stuff his pipe. ‘I liked them. The ordonnance is markedly good. But I am bound to say that in some of your conclusions–’ Meredith was once more on his feet, scanning the bookshelves which everywhere reached to the ceiling. ‘I believe I could dig you out something by Salzwedel–’
‘Which of us’, asked Jean Halliwell, ‘shall tell the first tale?’
And Meredith explained himself – with quite as much lucidity as if it were the Epigrammata of Martial that were in question. Miss Halliwell appeared to find it not at all odd that one should say ‘London, a Poem’ out aloud in a tobacco shop. ‘London, a Poem,’ she repeated appreciatively. ‘London’s goin’. Your tobacconist must have expected a visitor from the very highest circles. Not even the boldest and baddest baronets talk of huntin’ and shootin’ nowadays. The dropped g is confined to a few decrepit peers of the realm. I’m afraid he thought you were a duke – just another duke come to pawn a Gainsborough or Velasquez in a quiet way.’
‘Do dukes pawn things to those people?’
‘I doubt it. Anything like honest business would be abhorrent to the spirit of the firm. London, a Poem. How foolish of them to have a fellow with so defective an ear. And how foolish of the next lot of people to jump to the conclusion that you were Vogelsang.’
‘Or Birdsong.’ Meredith frowned. ‘I’m afraid there is no doubt at all that I killed him. The – the appearances were conclusive.’ (Brains, thought Meredith; brains as well as blood on that Aubusson carpet. He took a good pull at his pipe and discerned in the eddying smoke that his conscience was clear, after all.) ‘It is not a thing one would willingly have done.’
‘But, being done, it’s all to the good. It gives us a line.’ Jean Halliwell threw the butt of her cigarette into the fire. ‘And now let me tell you about me. The story has points of similarity with your own. That is to say, I passed for a time under false colours too. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t know half so much as I do. Not that what I do know is enough. I think you’ll find that we have lots to discover still.’ She glanced fleetingly at Meredith. ‘When we really get going on the job.’
Meredith looked startled. ‘Do I understand that you propose–’
‘But my introduction to the affair was not like yours. You pushed in without suspecting what it was all about. Although I suppose you must have suspected something.’
Meredith recalled his speculations when his eye had first fallen on the dimly lit Horton Venus. ‘Well,’ he said cautiously, ‘my mind did turn over a few commonplace explanations. The reality at least had the charm of being out of the way. But do not let me interrupt you any more.’
‘You pushed in without suspecting. I pushed in because I did suspect. And then, when it would have been healthy and possible to push out again, I gave a second obstinate shove, Lord knows why. And that was what I meant by saying that I had asked for it.’
Jean Halliwell paused as if to collect her thoughts and Meredith eyed her speculatively through his tobacco smoke. The horrible death of the creature Vogelsang, she had declared, was all to the good. Was so tough an assertion not disconcerting – even, perhaps (and Meredith picked a word from one of his obsolete vocabularies), a shade unmaidenly? Or was it merely clear-headed? Certainly the girl was that, and courageous as well. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.
‘It began with my getting ten days’ holiday and starting to help some people with a dig. You remember the fun some twenty years ago when all the Viking stuff was dug up at Traprain? Well, these friends of mine were on the trail of something similar in the Pentlands; and off and on they were digging away on some plan I didn’t at all understand. You may guess I know nothing whatever about Danish and Norse antiquities. But I love a dig and I went up to help when I could. It was all pretty quiet; we had let out that all those hearty pits and trenches were an obscure sort of geological survey – and if the folk round about didn’t believe that one they took it to be a hush-hush hunt for oil, which came to much the same thing. But then we suddenly got a bit of an advertisement. Sir James Presland, who lives in Edinburgh and is no end of a swell in that sort of archaeology, used to come out sometimes and give an eye to the affair. He gave a hand, too – for although he has a great white beard and must be about eighty he just loves going at it with a spade and pick – terribly recklessly, I may say, after the fashion of digging folk of that generation.
‘Well, there was little doubt in the end that we were bang on the site. And out came Sir James brandishing his pick as if plumb determined to send it straight through a cinerary urn or a faience goblet. What he did put it through was a skull, and the skull turned out to be embarrassingly recent. In fact, the eminent Presland had unearthed some rather nasty mid-nineteenth-century crime. It was in all the sensational papers, and there was even a decent little column in the Scotsman. As a result, everybody knew just what was on and that quite a find might be expected any day. The publicity didn’t seem greatly to matter, even though the dig had as often as not to be left deserted during the week. What we were likely to find might have considerable intrinsic value – there might be gold and jewels, that is to say – but the general impression would be that we were eager to dig up a few old swords and helmets… I’m afraid I’m making this story frightfully long.’
‘You are making it distinctly intriguing.’ Meredith chuckled at what he conceived to be his very modish use of this word. ‘I would beg you not to retrench in any way what may appear to you to be the superfluities of your expression.’
Jean Halliwell gave him a momentary wary glance, such as elaborately facetious dons are accustomed to receive from their pupils. ‘Well, we were working away one day – cautiously and without Sir James – and suddenly we came on the whole thing. The clue, whatever it was, had led to something very considerable indeed: piles and piles of treasure thieved from all over the place. And there we were, four women and one man, ladling the stuff out as if from a bran pie. We had the use of a shed nearby and we stacked things there for the first night. We had arranged with the nearest police-station for a guard if necessary, and one of us went off on a bicycle and found the bobby assigned to the job. In the end we left both him and the man of our party camped in the hut until various transport arrangements could be made next day. The bobby was a decent chap in a dour Midlothian fashion, and two of his kids came along to see him settled in for the night. And our own man was a decent chap too – minus a leg which he had left in Lybia, but able to give a thoroughly good account of himself if there was trouble. It seemed all right.’ Jean Halliwell paused. ‘The next bit isn’t at all nice.’
From London Far Page 6