The Property of a Gentleman: One House. Many secrets.

by Catherine Gaskin

  When I left, Hardy’s was wearing its evening hush, only essential lights burning, and the security man at the side door had settled to his evening paper and his meat-pie supper. I took the suitcase from him at the door. ‘You’d better decide to come back from holiday, Jo. We’ll be forgetting what you look like soon.’

  I went back to the Mini feeling slightly bewildered. From the excitement of talking with William Hudson as if I might one day be his equal in knowledge and experience, I was back with the chilly reality of a rainy spring evening and of being tired and hungry. If the world of Thirlbeck seemed remote and unreal, a mixture of fairy-tale and nightmare, then for some strange reason which I couldn’t explain, in these weeks I seemed to have taken a step away from Hardy’s also.

  I drove the Mini up a block to Jermyn Street, and there was a parking place near an Italian restaurant where I often ate. I felt my whole body dragging along the pavement, and then there came the warm, sensuous smell of drink and food when I opened the door. I was on my way through the bar to the dining section when the voice called to me.

  ‘Jo – where have you been? We hear tales of you living it up with the Jet Set somewhere. How’s life? Have a drink.’

  In the darkened area where the drink tables were I recognised two young men from Hardy’s, though at the moment it was difficult to put a name to either of them. They were flanked by two young women, neither of whom seemed much interested in me. I didn’t think, after all those hours on the motorway, after the time which had gone by since I had heard Nat Birkett’s Land Rover go up the valley that morning, that my appearance posed much threat to their fresh London elegance. With a faint sense of shock I realised I was wearing the anorak I had bought in Kesmere. I dropped down into a seat beside them, and then my mind began sorting out the special departments they both worked in, and the things they excelled in.

  The Scotch was put in front of me before I could frame the thought. ‘Peter – you speak Spanish, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, a bit. But don’t send me to take any exams right now.’

  ‘Just hold on – please. I’ll be back.’ Then I called back over my shoulder: ‘And don’t let them take my drink away.’

  I returned quickly, having once again searched the suitcase for what I wanted. We had to ask the bartender to bring a candle from one of the dining tables so that Peter Warner could look at what I had brought to show him.

  He examined it closely, a kind of minor variation of William Hudson’s behaviour over the Sung bowl. ‘Lord, Jo, where on earth did you come across this?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Peter. All you have to look at is what’s written under her name. Can you make out any of it?’

  He looked up at me. ‘It’s an extremely beautiful Horae, Jo. Worth quite a bit. It probably wasn’t made for her, was it? I think it was a she, from the handwriting.’

  ‘It was a she,’ I admitted. ‘You see her name there. I suppose it was given to her. But what is written under the name? Can you make it out?’

  ‘Well, she was pretty young, I’d say – from the handwriting again. Well enough educated, but a bit spottily – which might well have been so for any lady at that time. The Latin and Spanish is all mixed up, and the spelling – well, the spelling is what it was in the ...’ He shrugged. ‘I’d guess the sixteenth century.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Give me a chance.’ He took his time, sipping his drink, tapping his fingers on those parchment pages. I saw one of the girls at the table look at the other and give an exaggerated shrug. I realised then I hadn’t even waited to go through the formality of being introduced to them.

  ‘What, Peter?’

  ‘I think ... I think it says, the sense of it is, roughly, “When I am dead, of your charity, offer nine Masses for my soul”.’ He looked up. ‘That’s about it, I think. It’s typical enough. The Spanish are always brooding about death.’

  ‘Thanks, Peter.’ I finished my drink quickly, and fended off the questions about Thirlbeck. Then I went and sat alone and ate cannelloni, and had a half bottle of wine. And as I ate, Juana Fernández de Córdoba’s Book of Hours lay on the banquette beside me, wrapped in several sheets of paper, and a final covering of plastic. I suppose I had no more right to it than to the miniature in my handbag, and I would have to return it to Thirlbeck. But as I ate, the misspelled words of the little exiled Spanish girl came echoing through the centuries, her loneliness and her premonitions of death. When I am dead, of your charity, offer nine Masses for my soul. No one knew where she was buried, or if she indeed had a grave at all. And no one, I thought, had offered nine Masses for her soul.

  II

  I started for my flat in Chelsea, but when I got to Knightsbridge I just kept going west until I reached Kensington High Street, and the turn up into Church Street. It was probably madness to do what I was doing in this state of fatigue, but it was something I knew I could never do in the cool calmness of an early morning. I had needed the Scotch and the wine, even the feeling of languor after the food so that there should be some insulation against the shock of visiting Vanessa’s flat for the first time since her death. I had avoided going there on the few days after my return from Mexico. Gerald was executor of her will, and he had told me that I was the only beneficiary. It was understood between us that when the estate was settled, there might be very little to inherit. Vanessa had been recklessly extravagant in giving her time, her money, and her patience to a host of friends who suffered reverses of fortune; she had been the first call for all the lame ducks. Gerald had deplored the tendency, telling her she was being ‘used’, and yet he had loved her for it. We both knew the chaotic state of the books she kept, or tried to keep, of the antique business she owned. She had had one employee, Mary Westerson, who still kept the shop open, hoping to sell off its contents for the eventual settlement of the estate. Mary Westerson loved beautiful things, which was why Vanessa had employed her, and was just as hopeless as Vanessa herself in keeping books that would make sense to an accountant at the end of the year. Between them, they had enjoyed the business they ran, had made enough money to live, and that had been all Vanessa had cared about.

  I found a parking space near the mews flat around the corner from Vanessa’s shop. She had been lucky that, on Gerald’s advice, she had bought long leases with low ground rents on the two properties more than twenty years ago – before the property market in London had gone soaring. Probably she had borrowed against them; Gerald had thought that when her affairs had been gone into, we would find them heavily mortgaged. And then I thought of the Hilliard miniature of the third Countess of Askew, carried now, as always, in my bag. That would have to be declared as part of the estate also – or should be. And if I declared that, what else would I be declaring about Vanessa? That she had stolen it? A good quality Hilliard could now be worth as much as twenty thousand pounds. At the time it would have left Thirlbeck it might only have been worth hundreds. I stared up at the darkened window of her flat, the open curtains with the blackness behind them speaking of a terrible emptiness within; my heart ached, and the puzzle of Vanessa’s unrevealed presence at Thirlbeck all those years ago nagged and tugged with growing urgency. I suddenly knew why I had come this night. Somewhere in the chaos of Vanessa’s personal possessions, in the labyrinth of her papers, there might be revealed the reason for her silence. There was little chance I would uncover much – but now, the urgency of the unanswered question translated itself into the urgency to re-establish contact with Vanessa herself, the glowing spirit of the woman which had not died with her body.

  Gerald had given me keys to the flat, as well as duplicate keys to the shop. There was even the smell of emptiness about the place when I entered, the smell of closed windows, and most acutely for me, the absence of the smell of flowers, which had always been here, and were one of Vanessa’s great loves and great extravagances. It was a small flat – just one long room on the ground floor which was a combination sitting- and dining-room, with a pa
rtly screened-off kitchen at the end, and above it, two small bedrooms. One of the bedrooms had been mine when I was growing up; it was now used as an overflow office for the shop, crammed with papers, catalogues of sales, reference books, the whole paraphernalia of Vanessa’s jumbled existence. It would be there, if anywhere, I would find some reference to the summer and autumn she had spent at Thirlbeck. Did Vanessa ever keep a diary? I doubted it – that would have been too orderly a habit for her. Then, with my hand on the banister ready to mount the steep stairs, I turned away. Up there was also Vanessa’s bedroom, as strongly personal a room as I had ever seen, stamped indelibly with her character, her charm, her sensuous nature. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  So I went into the sitting-room, turning off the light in the hall as I went. The flat had an opaque glass panel with wrought iron across it in the front door, and whenever I had approached it at night, it had seemed too exposed to the street outside. So I turned off the light in the hall, and closed the door to the sitting-room. Then I drew the curtains on the street side. It immediately became the warm and charming room it had been in Vanessa’s time – the orange carpet, the gold curtains expressions of her own vibrant nature. Vanessa had never favoured blue. I looked again at the favourite antiques she had gathered into her life, the beautiful small tables, the mirrors, the Chippendale chairs. And with these pieces she had mixed comfortable sofas and easy chairs, upholstered in yellow; she had never let the antiques dominate the comforts of life. What it needed was the scent of flowers.

  It was all dusted and tidy. I wondered if it had been Gerald or Mary Westerson who had arranged for the cleaning woman to come still, whose duties now would be so vacant and empty. I went into the kitchen and drew the curtains against the darkness of the opposite brick walls. Now it was almost the cosy world of Vanessa’s making, lacking just the scent of the flowers and the crackle of a fire. So I turned on the substitute electric fire. There was no way to make up for the flowers.

  I brewed some coffee. The refrigerator had been defrosted and cleared out. There was coffee, tea, sugar, but no milk. Biscuits were still in their canisters – all looking unnaturally tidy because Vanessa had not been there to disturb their order. I stood by the stove while the coffee perked, and hardly let myself think. It was just enough, for the moment, that I had been able to come here. Then I poured the coffee and went to the chair beside the telephone.

  It was a shock to hear Harry answer almost at once. I was so used to the voice of the manservant, telling me that Mr Peers was elsewhere. ‘Hello, luv,’ he said. ‘Where’ve you been? Back in London now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, how did you know?’

  ‘Difference in your voice. Up there, you always sounded as if you were off somewhere in cloud-cuckoo land. A bit absent, you know.’

  ‘It’s a long way, Harry.’

  ‘Sweetheart, you don’t know what a long way means. A long way is Australia – or the moon.’

  ‘What have you been doing, Harry?’ I wasn’t going to argue our differences on the level of miles.

  ‘This and that. I bought a house, for one thing.’

  ‘A house? I thought you were always buying houses.’

  ‘Luv, you don’t know anything. I buy properties, I don’t buy houses. But yesterday I bought a house. A house for me.’

  ‘You’re giving up the flat, then?’

  ‘Well, what do you think? What would I need one a half a mile away from the other for? I’m good at throwing money around, luv, but not absolutely crazy.’

  ‘So you’ve bought a house, Harry. Where? When are you going to move into it?’

  ‘When you do.’

  I was silent a moment. ‘Harry, I don’t think I need to move into it. I have a flat.’

  ‘Crazy, girl – crazy. Do you expect us to bring up our kids in that two-by-four place you live in? Our kids are going to have nurseries and nannies, and the whole razzmatazz. They’re going to be wheeled in their prams in St James’s Park. All that common old lot get pushed around in Hyde Park, but our kids are going to wave at the Palace Guard every day.’

  ‘Our kids, Harry? Our lot?’

  ‘Who else’s? Nothing too good for them. I’ve bought a house in St James’s Place. It’s the last building that will ever be a private house. Nice and convenient for us both. And the kids. You can get to Hardy’s in two minutes’ flat – no, three, allowing for the crossing. I don’t want you to get run down. And I can nip along to St James’s Square and kiss you goodbye on the steps of Hardy’s on the way. You can keep on working right up until each kid is born, almost, and then be back again before they’ve missed you. And you’ll end up being a director of Hardy’s.’

  ‘Who says that, Harry? That’s not something even you can guarantee.’ I don’t know how I got the words out; he was preposterous and overwhelming, as always, and at the centre of my excitement there was a dead cold calmness.

  ‘I don’t have to, luv. You’re good, you know. Other people know it. You just need a few years, and a little bit more confidence. And I promise you our honeymoon can be any place in the world you want to go to look at bits and pieces of china. Any place. I’ll even get you a visa into China itself. Just so long as you make my half of the honeymoon a beach in Bali. It’s all done, Jo. The house is bought. It has to be fixed up a bit, but you could move in here until it’s done. It won’t take nine months. All we have to do is arrange to get together in person instead of by telephone. So ... when will it be?’

  I spoke very deliberately. ‘I think I need to come and talk to you, Harry. There’s so much to talk about.’

  ‘What’s there to talk about? We’re going to get married. There’s nothing so odd about that. People do it every day. We can do it any time we want.’

  ‘I’ll come and see you tonight, Harry. I’m at Vanessa’s flat. We have to talk – ’

  ‘Nothing to talk about, and especially not tonight. Tonight – in fact right this minute – I’m due at a meeting. It’s at my office. These guys have come over from New York. It’ll be a late session.’

  ‘Harry – ’

  ‘Sorry, luv. No business meeting, no trips to China. It’s that simple. Just think about it. Take a walk along there. Take a look at the house. You can’t miss it. It’s the one tucked back beside Duke’s Hotel. There’s a discreet estate agent’s sign on it, and a whopping great vulgar SOLD sign tacked across it. Go and take a look. I’ll call you. ’Bye, luv.’

  I sipped the coffee, and because I needed it, I went and poured some brandy from Vanessa’s stock. I noticed my hands shook a little, and still that strange calmness was upon me. I had just been handed the world, and it didn’t feel as I had expected it to. I could have China, and a beach in Bali. I was being given time and the chance to become what I had dreamed of, the one whose name could authenticate almost any piece of ceramic that came to hand. It was the world on a golden plate. I should have felt like champagne, but instead I needed the brandy.

  I didn’t notice how long I sat there. Outside the mews became quiet, the traffic on Kensington Church Street took on its late-evening sound. I sat in the stillness of the room, with just the one lamp lighted on the table beside me, and I thought about Harry – about Harry and Vanessa. I had believed that if this time had ever come I wouldn’t even think, that pleasure could drive out any thoughtfulness. It was what I had wanted – more than I had dreamed of. And still I sat on in the quiet, sipping the brandy, and strangely I was taking out once more the Hilliard miniature, turning it between my fingers, watching the light play on the tiny features of the woman who suddenly seemed even more to resemble Vanessa. The light fell on the damaged gold frame, and gave life to the diamonds. I wished Vanessa was here, sitting across from me in her usual place; she would have drunk three brandies to my one, and made all the better sense for it.

  I don’t know when I first became aware of the sound – the slight scraping sound from the hall. It didn’t last long, and I thought it may have been going on for some time bef
ore I became aware of it. Then there was the murmur of a man’s voice, quiet, authoritative, unhurried. I reached up and switched out the light on the table beside me. Then the door opened, and the beam of a torch swept the whole room quickly, passed over me, and did not pause. I remained in the chair; I couldn’t have moved, even if I’d known what to do. The man pressed the switch beside the door, and the chandelier over the dining-table sprang to life.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Tolson.’

  He looked in my direction uncertainly, peering through the pebble glasses, not quite sure of what he saw.

  ‘Dad ...?’

  ‘All right, Ted. Just close the door. Miss Roswell and I know each other well enough.’ The younger man came through into the room, and I recognised one of the Tolson sons from Thirlbeck.

  I deliberately took up the brandy glass, and was pleased to see that my hand wasn’t shaking any more. It was as if something I had been waiting for for a long time was beginning to happen. I fingered the miniature for a second longer, and then slipped it back into my handbag.

  ‘You seem to know your way, Mr Tolson.’