by Nigel Dennis
‘Oh, that’s not likely, Miss Paradise. Yesterday was our first day here, so nobody would come to call, would they?’
‘Of course, Mr Mallet, I know nothing of my brother’s affairs, but I remember when he went out he said something about just seeing if there really were people at the Hall and not, well …’
‘Not people who had no right to be there?’ cried Beaufort. ‘But how clever of him to know that there was anyone here at all! Do you think the milkman told him?’
‘It would not surprise me.’
‘You don’t mean,’ exclaimed Beaufort, his face becoming worried all of a sudden, ‘that your brother hasn’t come back?’
‘So it seems, Mr Mallet.’
‘But “seems” is surely not the right word, Miss Paradise? After all, if your brother had come back, you would be the first to know. He couldn’t be two persons at once, could he, any more than he could be in two places at once?’
‘I would think not, Mr Mallet.’
‘Then you must be terribly worried, Miss Paradise! And here I stand talking! Do jump in immediately and we’ll rush up and see.’ And he packed Miss Paradise into one of those deep bucket-seats that lower the whole horizon of the world and instantly induce a sense of helplessness in all but the driver. ‘It’s quite possible,’ he went on, churning the engine into a fine roar, ‘that he saw my father, or even my stepmother. Are you very upset? Yes, I can see you are. Let’s go full speed. A minute saved often makes the difference between life and … well, life and great discomfort. Was he your only brother?’
‘Yes, and there’s an old bomb-crater in the park,’ cried Miss Paradise, falling to pieces. ‘I fear he’s in it.’
‘You must see Father at once,’ said Beaufort, driving at terrifying speed. ‘Father can do anything.’ He took one hand from the glistening wheel and gave her knee a chummy thump.
‘You are really a very kind young man,’ sobbed Miss Paradise at the top of her voice as the rain-puddles rent under the furious wheels like ripped silk. Though pleased to have his hand on her knee, she would have preferred it to be on the steering-wheel. The next second the car made a frightful semi-circular turn and stopped with Miss Paradise’s door exactly at the foot of the stone steps.
‘So you have opened this door?’ asked Miss Paradise, curiosity breaking through her tears like sunlight.
‘Oh, Father would never hear of a side door,’ said Beaufort, his voice very grave. ‘Now, Miss Paradise, do come along quickly. I hope to heaven we’ve not missed him.’
He hurried her up into the breakfast-room and instantly left her, shouting breathlessly: ‘Father! Father! An emergency, Father!’
By now Miss Paradise was convinced that Henry’s whereabouts did amount to an emergency; but even as she was trying to find the proper response to loss of something priceless her eyes were roving round the breakfast-room with astonishment: it looked absolutely palatial with its deep carpets, tall curtains, and golden ancestors – had they done all this in one day, or had they been secretly preparing for weeks? She heard Beaufort still shouting excitedly down the passage: ‘Father! Father! Wherever are you?’ and suddenly, from far away, a deep voice replied slowly and incredulously: ‘Is it me you are calling so hysterically, Beaufort?’ The poor boy’s tone became flustered at once: she heard him say, almost pleadingly, ‘Well, Father, it’s an emergency, you see; a man has disappeared.’ ‘Then, pray,’ replied the deep voice, drawing closer, ‘compensate for his absence with presence of mind.’
Miss Paradise barely had had time to adjust her look to the awesomeness of the voice when Beaufort threw the door open and his father came in. What an entry; what a man! – a full-length portrait stepping slowly out of an Edwardian picture book, so beautifully dressed and blending so many time-honoured characteristics: the carriage of a duke, the perspicuity of a great surgeon, the courtesy of a sultan, the steel of an imperial governor. And what a sheen on his fine, mature features and on his good boots – real boots, not shoes: the sight of it all struck Miss Paradise as forcefully as if an undertaker had come in. ‘You may go, Beaufort,’ the vision boomed, looking first at and then quickly away from Miss Paradise with princely tact. ‘Yes, sir,’ replied the breathless boy, withdrawing immediately with an ashamed expression. Oh! how quaint! how charming! how different from Lolly! ‘She is Miss Paradise, Father,’ he panted out, as he disappeared.
The father waited to hear the door click. Then, without hesitation, he advanced across the carpet, extended the polished white fingers of his right hand and felt Miss Paradise’s pulse. While he listened, his head slightly cocked, to the beat of that sundered kettle-drum, he expelled from his face all such feeble answers to crisis as worry, doubt, even sorrow: in their place he set placid but inexorable stringency of attention, and his brown eyes, directed full upon Miss Paradise, shone with such a walnut finish that she could see herself reflected in them – thin, concave, a mere petal.
‘Kindly sit down, Miss Paradise,’ he said, gently exchanging her pulse for the sort of chair in which a woman can sit without having to be eternally pulling down the front of her skirt or keeping her knees braced at right angles. ‘Be so good as to tell me the story, as briefly and clearly as your condition will permit.’
Miss Paradise told him what she had told Beaufort.
‘So you are a very, very anxious woman,’ he said when she had finished.
‘Well, shouldn’t I be, don’t you think?’
‘You have telephoned the police, of course?’
‘No, I haven’t. Thinking he was here …’
‘I can see what a shock you have received,’ said Captain Mallet. ‘In your normal state you would never for an instant suppose that your brother could pay a formal call on total strangers and stay with them for twenty-four hours. However, since the alternative seemed to be his having stayed in the bomb-crater over a similar period, you decided to come straight to the house. You could not face the crater. You are hoping against hope. Forgive my grimness. I do not blame you.’ He went to a table, raised a speaking-tube and, when a gurgle came from it, said sharply and simply: ‘Drag the crater.’ Then he returned to Miss Paradise, saying: ‘I am deliberately assuming the worst. There is no reason whatever to believe that it has happened.’
‘The police …’ said Miss Paradise.
‘That is the next step, of course. Unfortunately, our telephone is not connected yet. But my son can carry any message in his motor-car with equal speed.’
This made Miss Paradise smile. ‘He is a nice boy,’ she said.
The captain started, as if she had irresistibly diverted his train of thought. ‘He is a likeable lad,’ he answered slowly, pride and disappointment mixing in his eyes.
‘So thoughtful, so kind.’
‘You find him so?’ asked the captain, bending on her a look of deep interest. ‘One so easily forgets that one’s children’s manners improve in proportion to the distance they are from their homes. I imagine that in our daily life, particularly when we are young, the recurrence of the same problems, the same routine and habits, causes us to show impatience, even rudeness, to those we love. We who are more mature expect, and consequently demur to, the daily frictions of domestic life. Do you not find it so?’
‘Indeed I do. My brother and I always rub along.’
‘Exactly; that is just the phrase. And, consequently, of course, we easily mistake youthful vitality for bad manners – though, I must say, the two characteristics are often hard to distinguish.’ He added, after a pause: ‘The boy has lost his mother.’
‘You have done wonders without her,’ said Miss Paradise, unable to resist another quick look round the splendid room.
‘Thank you. And yet, he needs more than either I or his excellent stepmother can provide. An overwhelming love; something all-embracing and tender: if I could find it for him, in one form or another, I would welcome it with open arms. However, I shall tell Beaufort that at least one discerning person has shown approval of him.’
‘Oh no: quite short. Not a dwarf, of course.’
‘Ah. Not a dwarf. And dressed, you say, in riding-clothes? A horse?’
‘Not actually with him, no.’
‘He could not have fallen off it?’
‘Impossible.’
‘Ah. Clean-shaven?’
‘To a large extent. There is a moustache, but he keeps it cut so flat and allows it so little spread that it is easily overlooked.’
‘Ah. Now, what about moles or birthmarks?’
‘No birthmarks and few moles – not where a stranger would notice them, anyway.’
‘Ah, well. We can pursue that point later should any question of identity arise. Ah … What kind of manner, may I ask? Vigorous? Apathetical? Nondescript?’
‘Both vigorous and nondescript, I would say.’
‘I think I know. Friendly? Fond of visiting?’
‘He chooses his friends carefully, but once he has done so he sticks very closely to them.’
‘Ah. Is he inclined to absence and disappearance? How can I put it without being rude? Do nights pass without him? Is he, shall we say, not always quite there after a convivial evening with friends?’
‘Sometimes it has seemed so to me. He is always there, of course, I’m sure; just absent from me.’
‘Yes, yes. It is hard to know exactly, isn’t it, who is and who isn’t? Is he by any chance a little free-handed with money?’
‘Oh, never that. Never, never.’
‘Ah. Inclined rather the other way?’
‘Much more.’
‘What people who didn’t understand him might call close-fisted? Tell me now, if I am not impertinent, have you on account of this thrifty bent of his ever had differences with him? I find that so many tussles between people who otherwise love each other dearly can be traced to money. It is astonishing when you think of it how much people will put up with in the way of duplicity, disloyalty, even broken-heartedness, and yet become most unforgiving where a banknote is in dispute. Do not hesitate to silence me, my dear Miss Paradise, if you find I am too personal.’
‘I am finding it most helpful,’ said Miss Paradise frankly. ‘The only thing that is troubling me is that I have never thought of my brother in the way I have described him. He seems like two persons now, and I’m afraid that you would never recognize the real one if you saw the described one. Or do I mean it the other way round?’
‘We are trying, you see, to discover which is the right way round, Miss Paradise. If we hit on the right way, we are pretty sure to find the right man at the end of it, regardless of any wrongness that may have crept into his description en route. I’m sure you see that. Now, here is a very blunt question indeed which may take us a step farther. Has your brother, despite the fact that you “rub along”, ever suggested breaking off connexions? To put it cruelly, have you ever thought that he might suddenly walk off, taking the cash-box with him?’
At this, Miss Paradise turned quite faint. ‘There have been times,’ she said at last in a cracked voice, ‘when we have quarrelled and …’ But she said no more: panic was making her eyes bulge.
‘Of course, were he to do so,’ said the captain easily, ‘the tragedy would be purely an emotional one. A little loose cash would be neither here nor there, since your capital would be safely in the bank.’
‘No! No!’ screamed Miss Paradise: ‘not safely at all! It’s a joint account!’
‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed the captain, quite losing his calm. ‘Now that is quite another matter!’
‘I am destitute!’ she screamed, filling her lungs to the full to give her emptiness true measure.
‘Not as long as I live, by God!’ he answered, suddenly striking his fist on his knee.
But Miss Paradise had ceased to be impressionable. Not the captain, not the palatial room, not the fairy-dream of having escaped from her ordinary self were as horrifying as the sudden conviction that reality had escaped from her. Seizing her bag, she made a rush for the door.
‘Miss Paradise!’ cried the captain, springing after her.
‘Bank! Police! Let me go!’
‘Not in this condition! Why, none of this may be true of your brother!’
‘It is true! Some sixth sense tells me! I know! I know!’
‘That your brother is a thief?’
‘Yes! Yes! Instinct tells me! He is worse than thief! He has murdered me! He has always wanted to. I have always known. Let me go this minute. I will see him in prison!’
‘Let Beaufort drive you,’ exclaimed the captain, gripping her wrist. ‘Don’t you see it will be quicker?’
‘Then get him, get him!’
The captain released her and ran to the speaking-tube. As he raised it, slow, steady footsteps sounded outside the door.
A butler entered with a silver tray. Gently, he advanced across the room, and with each step he took, Miss Paradise’s frantic face drew tighter and tighter. When he was past her, she gave a plaintive, incredulous cry: ‘That’s him, isn’t it? Henry?’
‘Tell Master Beaufort to bring the car round immediately,’ said the captain into the speaking-tube. ‘We are going after a bank-robber. No delay, please: he is probably miles away already.’
The butler, having laid down his tray, turned and began slowly his march back to the door. Clearly, he was well-fitted for his office, for though Miss Paradise’s eyes ran up and down him madly and one trembling finger pointed straight at his face, he continued his sober walk unmoved.
‘Who are you?’ screamed Miss Paradise suddenly.
The butler halted, as if such a question was more than flesh could bear, and looked hopefully to his master. ‘A little sal volatile, Jellicoe,’ said the captain in a low voice. ‘Just knock on the door and leave it outside.’
The butler bowed. ‘Beaufort will be ready in five minutes,’ said the captain to Miss Paradise; ‘then we will scour all England.’ He rubbed his hands briskly.
The butler again passed before Miss Paradise, moving to his exit like a ghost who has played its part. As a ghost she saw him, and her own fingers stretched out to take him by the shoulder. But she was no longer able to judge his distance from her, so that he passed a full foot beyond her reach; nor was she able to encompass his whole name, and could only say: ‘Hen…. Hen!’ She saw the door close behind him, and the captain standing out in front of her: she heard his voice say firmly, but pleadingly, ‘Miss Paradise! Try to listen! Try to be yourself!’
‘But it was Hen…’
‘So will everyone be Hen, Miss Paradise, till we have tracked Hen down. Here now, this deep chair.’
‘Have I lost my wits?’
‘Only the outer eye, Miss Paradise – the unimportant eye.’
‘I know you; I can see you.’
‘Because you trust me, Miss Paradise. You trust I am not Hen.’
‘Don’t speak of him! To think I gave him a Woodbine to cheer him on! Oh!’
‘Can you see this cup?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then drink it up, Miss Paradise. We have a long way to go and you must be strong and well if you are to perform your proper duty.’
*
‘Dear Florence,’ said Mrs Mallet in her soft voice. ‘Our one and only Florence. Do yo
u feel any more yourself? I am going to draw back the curtains, so you must tell me if the light is too blinding.’
She drew half the curtain back, revealing a comfortable, homely room. Miss Paradise’s cuckoo-clock ticked on the far wall; on her dressing-table lay her brushes, comb, and pin-bowl. On the wall at the foot of her bed was her favourite photograph of Henry, pointing his stick at one of Sir Malcolm’s cows. Miss Paradise surveyed it all with the equable look that marks lunatics and the newly-risen: the world (her look said) is furnished with many sightly shapes; it is not for me to try and name them.
‘See, here,’ said Mrs Mallet, pointing, ‘your own little clock, Florence, to tell you the time as it has always done. And your pretty own things, to use every day, to tell you where you are. And your pretty old mirror, to see yourself. We have brought them all here.’
‘You talk too much,’ said Miss Paradise crossly, vexed by being urged to leave the restful state of non-recognition.
‘Oh, Florence, I am sorry!’ said Mrs Mallet. She took Miss Paradise’s hand, squeezed it gently and said no more.
‘So, it’s me, Florence,’ said Miss Paradise in an aggrieved tone, after a long pause.
‘Yes, you are Florence,’ replied Mrs Mallet gently, giving her a look of congratulation.
This look had a strong effect on Miss Paradise. Though almost all her mind was stall dead, one faculty suddenly became shrewdly alive – that of how to win compliments. ‘That’s my clock,’ she said pointing.
‘Oh, yes, Florence, you clever dear; it is your clock!’
‘An’ ’at’s my brush an’ comb an’ whatsisname.’
‘Right again, Florence, dear!’
‘’S my brother an’ cow on th’ wall.’
‘How fast you are coming back!’
Vanity having thus led the way to the surface, towing behind it the faculty for recognizing any object that would please it, Miss Paradise might now be said to be conscious. But she was still rebellious, she still required to be self-convinced, and Mrs Mallet seemed to know this. ‘I have been asked, Florence,’ she said, ‘to remember to give you all sorts of messages from downstairs. The captain, of course, sends his love, and says that nothing will induce him to let you start work again until you are absolutely yourself. Master Beaufort sends you a big hug: don’t ever tell him I told you, Florence, but he went to his room in tears, when he heard … And Jellicoe presents his compliments and wishes you a quick recovery: “The best housekeeper in England, madam,” he said; and there were tears in his eyes, too.’