Perfect Gallows

by Peter Dickinson

  “It doesn’t look as if anything’s going to get settled till the war’s over and young Mr Oyler comes back.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Did Phil find any more out?”

  “Phil? You didn’t hear about Phil? He was the one in his ten.”

  “The one … That’s awful. When?”

  “Week after D-Day. Say—I haven’t told your nigger friend.”

  “Why on earth …?”

  The sergeant sighed.

  “Well, first off I guess I felt bad about old Phil. I’d staked him, remember? It was my dough. So when I saw that clipping he sent I figured I was on a loser. I called Phil back. If I’d kept him on the job he’d be alive now.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Your friend, he’s kind of crazy, huh?”

  “He’s different.”

  “Yeah. Obsessed, I’d call it. Look, suppose I tell him I’m calling Phil back, what’s he gonna do?”

  “Offer to pay the expenses himself? He’s got a bit saved up. But you could always explain that you can’t get Phil more than a few days’ leave.”

  “Sure, and then what’s he do? Hire a private dick of his own, I’ll bet. Now, you gotta understand, I do things my own way in this camp, but I can’t afford to have guys nosing around asking questions. I can’t afford some guy asking about Phil, saying he was in Hull early June when he shoulda been here, right? I could be in bad trouble. So I stalled. I thought if I give him time to think about it, your friend would come around. He asks me, any news from Phil and I tell him no. But he keeps on and on. Then he starts to think just because there ain’t no news from Phil that means Mr Charles ain’t telling the truth. Phil would’ve found something else by now, supposing it was there to find. Right?”

  “So you started making things up?”

  “Yeah, an old lady who was in the shelter … Jesus, all I want is to get the guy to lay off! Why can’t he see reason? You ever seen that clipping? Ain’t that enough?”

  “The trouble is my uncle told him something the morning he died. I think he probably said that Charles wasn’t his son and he was going to change his will to make sure he didn’t get anything. Nobody’d believe Samuel if he just said so, so he’s got to try and prove it somehow. I don’t think he’ll ever give up.”

  “Jesus! What am I gonna do?”

  “I suppose I could talk to him. I’d have to tell him the truth. I could explain about you not being able to afford having people asking about Phil’s leave. He’d understand that. He’s lived in England most of his life. He knows how things work.”

  The sergeant shook his head gloomily and rewound the spool of his film. It seemed an absurd small mess for somebody so competent and wary to land himself in, but of course it wasn’t only questions about Phil’s leave he was worried about. Questions of any sort would be very unwelcome. It crossed Andrew’s mind to wonder whether the episode Samuel had told him about, when it looked as if a couple of GIs were going to rough him up in the drive but the sergeant had turned up providentially and rescued him, hadn’t perhaps been staged to try and warn him off. But then why had the sergeant not cut the link completely by refusing to supply Cousin Blue’s butter?

  “Yeah, I guess that’s the best plan,” said the sergeant. “Provided he lays off—that’s all I want.”

  The last swathes went down. The last sheaves tumbled from the binder. One little rabbit, barely a month old, lolloped a few paces and sat cowering until an Italian POW picked it up and stood teasing the back of its neck and gentling its flattened ears beside the line of corpses.

  “There’s always one who gets lucky,” said the sergeant. Make it me, thought Andrew. Oh, make it me.

  THREE

  “It was really very effective,” said Cousin Brown. “It stuck at the dress rehearsal and I dreaded it would do so at an actual performance, but in the end it behaved perfectly and the audience applauded the effect every time.”

  “Provided I don’t touch it,” said Andrew. “Props tend to go wonky for me.”

  There was no harvesting that morning because it had been raining off and on since dawn, so between showers Cousin Brown had taken Andrew down to the Amphitheatre to help her fetch out the banquet-table for Act Three from the shed behind the larger Green Room hut where the props from past productions were stored. One at each end they carried it on to the stage. Andrew stood back to look. From the front it appeared to be a table draped with a gorgeous cloth, but though eight foot long it was barely a foot wide, and the cloth was cleverly painted board, hinged halfway up. From beneath it Cousin Brown fetched out a number of L-sectioned objects, made of plywood, and started to set them up, clicking them into place and attaching to each a spring which stretched down into the surface of the table. On the forward-facing surfaces were painted the items of the feast, a boar’s head, a luminescent jelly, a grotesquely turreted pastry and so on.

  “Rex Whistler designed it, you know,” said Cousin Brown. “He did all our magical effects for the production. Stoddart, who used to be our general handyman until he volunteered, was marvellous at building things like this. Now both Rex and Stoddart are dead. How strange and sad war can be.”

  Andrew’s distrust of the object as a gadget liable to stick deepened into horror. The lives, the performances, gone. This thing left. The fact that audiences had applauded it deepened his loathing.

  “Now, you see,” said Cousin Brown, “Ariel, dressed as a harpy sweeps into the banquet just as the nobles are reaching for the food. He claps his wings over the table and ‘with a quaint device’ the banquet vanishes. I have him standing here, behind the table, wings spread wide. The nobles start back—he really does look rather horrendous, you know, in Rex’s jokey manner—Ariel brings his wings together. There is a thunder-clap to drown the clicks, and …”

  She had been going through the movements as she spoke and must at this point have touched a lever below the table with her foot. The painted dishes rattled down, pulled by their springs, and the shorter feet of the L-sections shot into view, with boulders painted on their undersides. At the same time the top half of the cloth flopped down and the front of the table became part of the same barren outcrop. A dismal seagull perched at one end.

  “Isn’t it fun!” cried Cousin Blue’s voice. Andrew turned and saw her standing with Charles at the top of the tiers of seats.

  “Wasn’t Rex too clever!” she said. “I adore that sort of trick—much the best part of the play, don’t you agree?”

  She fluttered her eyelids at Charles and then held out her arm for him to help her down the flight of steps between the seats. He did so a little perfunctorily. It wasn’t that their relationship had changed, quite, but their performance of it had, a bit like that of actors in a play which has run too long but shows no sign of closing. Nothing could happen until Uncle Vole’s will was sorted out, and nobody knew when that would be. Cousin Blue was holding a buff government envelope in her other hand.

  “Something’s come for Andrew,” she said. “It looked important, so we thought we’d bring it down.”

  Andrew’s heart thumped. He took the envelope and stared at the address. No possible mistake. The handwriting, niggling but characterless, spoke of the ordinariness of the event. That clerk might have written a couple of hundred envelopes that day before he reached this one, almost at the end of the alphabet. Each one vital to the addressee, all indifferent to the clerk, another day of John Smiths, Number x, Some Road, Blankton. Death would be like that clerk, choosing you not because your name was Stoddard or Whistler but because you were next on his list. He opened the envelope and read the instructions.

  “It’s my call-up,” he said. “The thirty-first.”

  “But there is no … of this month, do you mean? You said it was not till September!”

  “That’s what they told us at the medical.”

  “Heavens! And we
shall barely have ended our run! What a mercy it is not a day sooner!”

  “Nonsense,” said Cousin Blue. “We would simply have told them he couldn’t be spared. I’m sure they would have understood. But don’t you think it a pity, Charles, that you aren’t doing the play down here, the way we always used to?”

  “And how would we get an audience out here in wartime?” said Cousin Brown.

  “Why—we have one ready-made! Let’s ask the Americans!”

  “Absurd. Besides, all the dates are already booked.”

  “But you’re going to have dress rehearsals—why don’t you have one here? Please do not sigh at me like that, Elspeth.”

  “My dear May, from what you have seen of the Americans, from the so-called music they choose to play over that dreadful instrument, do you seriously believe they will wish to spend their time watching …”

  “That’s just what you said about my tours of the house, and look how successful they were. If Andrew were to have a word with his friend Mr Stephens …”

  “Really!” said Cousin Brown. “Who is producing this play, may I ask?”

  “We are, of course. It’s always been a family thing. Charles and dear Andrew are acting in it and you are directing and now I’m helping to get an audience. All together. Quite like old time. Charles?”

  Cousin Blue had presumably made the original suggestion on the spur of the moment, merely for the sake of interfering with already settled arrangements. Now she was enjoying Cousin Brown’s irritation. Andrew mentally drew himself aside. The flimsy letter fluttered in his fingers. It had a temporary feel about it. It didn’t have to last, only three weeks. Then it could go to the paper collection and be pulped and become another drab summons for someone else … Three weeks to do what he chose because he chose it, his own master …

  “Don’t you think, Andrew, it would be jolly to put on just one teeny wee performance down here?”

  “Of course he does not. Now, May, I must ask you to stop interfering. We have more than enough to get done. Andrew …”

  Cousin Brown paused, waiting for him to turn, but he stood looking up over the tiers of seats towards the head of the valley. All the lines of the landscape focused on him. The stage was meant for him, made for him. He would never get another chance.

  “I suppose it’s impossible,” he said, deliberately filling the syllables with longing and regret.

  “Now, really …”

  “Pretty good acoustics,” said Charles.

  He had characteristically retreated up the steps during the argument and wandered along one of the lines of seats. He spoke as he was starting down again.

  “We were very lucky,” said Cousin Brown. “Edith Evans told me they were the best she had ever heard, outdoors, and several other good judges have said the same. But it is still quite ridiculous …”

  She stopped. Charles had climbed on to the stage, turned and struck a pose. He began to declaim:

  “And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by

  From this day to the ending of the world

  But we in it shall be remembered,

  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

  Cousin Blue clapped.

  “Let’s give it a go, eh?” said Charles, not directly to Cousin Brown but giving instructions to anyone who happened to be in earshot. It was the first time Andrew had heard him speak with this kind of authority, though there was still an edginess in the drawled phrase, as if he felt this might be a moment of crisis, a step he had to take but didn’t know if he’d get away with.

  “There!” cried Cousin Blue. “That’s two to one!”

  “Well, all I can say is …”

  “Wasn’t that the bell?” said Cousin Blue. “Shh, everyone.”

  She must have had very keen ears. Even in the silence the distant tinkle could only just be heard. Cousin Brown shaded her eyes. One of the maids—Florrie, Andrew thought—was standing on the Top Walk shaking her hand above her head. He couldn’t see the bell.

  “Two rings, I think,” said Cousin Brown.

  “No, only one,” said Cousin Blue. “It was for you, Elspeth. Andrew dear, go up and wave to Florrie to show her we’ve heard.”

  “It was two rings,” said Cousin Brown.

  “I think you’re getting a bit deaf, darling. Perhaps that’s why you talk so loud.”

  “Very well, we will both go. Charles, if you would be kind enough to help Andrew pack the banquet away …”

  They unfastened the items of the feast, stowed them beneath the table and carried the whole contraption back into the shed. As they walked up between the ruined lawns Charles said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Don’t get much chance with May around the whole time, eh?”

  Andrew mumbled sympathetically.

  “Bloody nuisance about this will,” said Charles. “Old Oyler seems to have made a complete mess of things. But let’s assume it’ll sort itself out in the end. I’m afraid Father didn’t get round to making any provisions for you—daresay that was why he’d sent for Oyler day he died, pop something in.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be all right.”

  “Every chance you will, dear boy. If you want my opinion, you’ve got the talent all right. Still, no harm in having a bit of a financial cushion, especially while you’re starting. Otherwise things can be bloody rough. I know what I’m talking about. So I just wanted to tell you that as soon as this will business is sorted out I’ll get the lawyers to draw something up, see you’re all right.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Andrew.

  “Not at all. Plenty to go round. I shan’t miss it. You’ve taken the whole rum business very well, to my mind. I mean, supposing I hadn’t shown up …”

  “It was always a sort of fairy-tale. I never really believed it.”

  “Bit like that for me too … Life’s a rum do … Tell me, any idea what the row was about, the one that started it all off?”

  “I think it was something to do with a girl.”

  “Not surprised. The old boy had a weakness there, all right. His fault, I take it.”

  “He did it on purpose to settle a grudge with his brother. That’s why he built the house too, to rub it in.”

  Charles shook his head, frowning.

  “Never been able to understand that,” he said. “You get it a lot in the classics—what’s the point? Never played the Prince myself—done Horatio a couple of times—supposed to be every young actor’s dream, but I don’t think I could’ve taken the chap seriously.”

  Andrew liked Charles and felt comfortable with him, partly because Charles in his vague way seemed to take it for granted that Andrew was already a professional actor. In addition to that there was an unspoken set of complicities—the men of the family against the dominating women, the late-come outsiders against the Cousins who had lived their whole lives at The Mimms, and, subtler than either of those, a shared understanding of each other’s right to present an outer self to the world, perhaps quite different from their inner selves. Whether Charles was an impostor or not, he still had almost thirty years of hidden life behind his new façade. It was odd that he should reveal such a glimpse at this moment. Perhaps he had something else he wanted to say, but was trying not to rush it.

  Two things struck Andrew. First he had been shown a possible way to find out some of the truth about Charles. How many productions of Hamlet had been staged between the wars? A hundred? Trace all you could. List the Horatios. You’d have a very good chance of netting at least one of Charles’s. You could go to agents, look at photographs. You might even start with Cousin Brown’s diaries—perhaps that was the perfor­mance she faintly recalled, and asking her would jog her memory …

  The second thing was that he wouldn’t do anything about it. It was what Charles had just said that decided him. Revenge. Uncle Vole’s mali
ce had been built into this house, binding its mortar, nailing beams and floorboards. Once you knew the story you couldn’t forget it. That was why he’d insisted on seeing Andrew before he changed his will, to make sure that he would continue to live and breathe the old grudge, both victim and perpetrator. The house was a trap as Samuel had said. It waited for its victim. Andrew had escaped that morning by speaking with the power of Adrian’s voice, but the trap still gaped.

  Now along came Charles, and stood at the entrance. Why stop him? Why even warn him? He was immune to Uncle Vole’s malice. He could breathe the air of The Mimms, sleep in its sheets and not be poisoned. Best of all, in a way, if he was an impostor. Break the chain. Close the circle. Finish.

  Charles cleared his throat.

  “Better spell it out, I suppose,” he said. “What I was saying just now about setting you up financially—it all depends on getting the will sorted out.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Something you might be able to help with there.”

  “Oh?”

  “Tell me, what d’you make of old Mkele?”

  “Samuel? I like him very much.”

  “Talked to him about any of this?”

  “Well, not recently. It’s been a bit awkward.”

  This was true. In fact, since their one meeting in the woodland garden the night before Uncle Vole’s death Andrew hardly remembered speaking to Samuel alone. It was impossible at rehearsals, of course, and though he used to breakfast in the kitchen on days when he was helping at the farm the atmosphere there had changed. Before Samuel’s intervention at the will-reading the servants had talked openly among themselves about whether Charles was “our Mr Charles”, taking sides—Florrie, for instance, saying it didn’t matter either way, because he was a nice gentleman who’d had a hard time and he was due for a bit of luck—but amicably, feeding each other crumbs of evidence, for and against. It was a welcome topic, a change from the weather and the war. Since that day, though, Mrs Mkele had made it clear, largely by the weight of her silences, that Andrew, for all his privileges as “family”, would only be welcome in her kitchen so long as he minded what he said and asked about.