“Thank you,” said the girl. “I’m really awfully sorry—it was my fault absolutely.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yes it was. Only somehow I never expected a car to be coming down this road.”
“Isn’t this the main road?” said Jim.
“This road leads to a pigsty, a large heap of manure, and a duckpond with three ducks.” And the girl swung a shapely leg on to her bicycle and vanished in a slightly wobbling manner round the corner.
“Well!” said Jim.
“I told you it was the other way,” said Freddie. “Just as well we hit the girl. We might have gone on to the duckpond.”
Jim got into his seat again, and the Rolls went through a series of very complicated manœuvres and finally backed itself clear of all danger of duckponds.
“Rather nice-looking girl, that,” said Jim. “Eh?”
“I said that that was rather a nice-looking girl.”
“Nobbad. Hope we’re in time for tea after all this.”
And the car left Adderly village, and climbed a fairly steep hill, and then swooped down into the little valley in which the house called Thrackley lay. From the top of the hill they could see just as much as was ever seen of Thrackley by the outside world… the two turrets standing out grey in the mass of dark green pines. “There it is,” said Freddie.
“Thrackley?”
“Thrackley in person. Situated in the midst of densely wooded countryside, and possessing the finest dry-rot in the kingdom.”
The iron gates were open when they reached them, and they drove slowly through and up the drive. And the usual thing happened: the thing which happens always when a car drives up to Thrackley for the first time. The supply of sunlight seemed suddenly to have been cut off as though they had been shockingly behind with their payments for the same; the temperature cooled under the shade of the pines; the colour scheme, which up to now had been a pleasant affair of golds and light browns and bright greens and blues became at once a sordid affair of dark greens and darker greys. As the car crunched along the gravel of the drive, Jim had a very disturbing mental picture of night at Thrackley, with the pine-trees tenanted by a crowd of nasty, hooting owls and a quantity of whining wind, of himself bathing in tepid water and finding no hot-water bottle between his sheets and no reading-lamp beside his bed, and an annotated copy of the New Testament lying at his bedside, and the prospects of porridge and prunes for breakfast at seventy-thirty, and… “Hell!” he said.
“What’s the matter?” said Freddie.
“I’ve a sickening sensation that this is going to be one of the world’s worst weekends.”
“Me, too. Listen, Jim.”
“Yes?”
“If to-night turns out to be absolutely mouldy, have you any objection to receiving a sudden call from a sick aunt in town?”
“If you only knew the number of aunts I left on their death-beds.”
“And spending the weekend with me at my flat, and having a nice little dinner at the club, and paying a return visit to Raoul at the Alhambra, and—”
“There are times,” said Jim, “when I’m convinced that you were given some sort of a brain after all.”
The car turned round the last bend in the drive and came in view of the front of the house. And wobbled. And nearly stopped. And drew two of its four wheels across a neatly planted flower-bed, putting an effective amen to a dozen and a half Coltness dahlias. Simply because the Honourable Freddie Usher had lost control of the steering-wheel. His mouth had dropped open, and he gaped rudely at the figure standing at Thrackley’s ivy-draped front door.
An immaculate figure, superbly dressed. Raoul the dancer, in fact.
V
By the time Freddie Usher had regained control of himself and of the steering-wheel, had persuaded the tyres of his car to finish their caressing of the dahlias, had applied the brakes and stepped out on to the gravel in front of Thrackley’s front door—by the time all that had happened, the elegant figure of Raoul the dancer had moved up the few steps which led to the door and had disappeared into the house. The performance was not unlike those party occasions when something very desirable is dangled before one’s eyes, removed almost immediately, and an oily voice is heard to remark: “Now, if you’re very good you shall have it.” Except, of course, that in this case one had to imagine the oily voice and its pleasant promise. Freddie Usher shoved his long legs out of his even longer car, stretched himself, and said quietly: “Did you see what I saw?”
“Yes,” said Jim.
“And did you know who it was that we both saw?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then. It strikes me that that milk train may carry only milk after all. Come on.”
The bell at the side of Thrackley’s front door was one of a rapidly disappearing breed: the species that you disentangle from the surrounding ivy, pull towards you in a series of stiff and creaking jerks, release suddenly and wait patiently until a deep rumble is heard far away in the bowels of the house. Thrackley’s bell did not tinkle; no one could say that it even rang. It gave (if you pulled the thing far enough out of its socket) a dull, gong-like boom—very much the same unpleasant sort of sound as that made by Dr. Fu Manchu and other Oriental sinners when about to distribute cups of poisoned tea, make a couple of lengthy vows to their ancestors, or commit hari-kari. The boom which followed Freddie’s heave went a fair distance in cancelling the cheering effect which Raoul had produced. And when the front door of Thrackley opened and Jacobson inserted his set of features between it and the wall, Raoul might just as well never have happened.
“Good afternoon,” said Freddie.
He had expected something at least to happen to the features following this remark. Anything, he felt, would necessarily be a change for the better. But Jacobson remained still and silent and kept the door open just enough to fit his face.
“Er… good afternoon,” said Jim. “Is Mr. Carson at home? My name is Henderson. This is Mr. Usher. Mr. Carson is expecting us.”
Having delivered himself of this speech, there seemed very little to add. Fortunately the speech seemed to have had some effect on Jacobson, for he moved his mouth a little to the west (Jim was later to recognize this movement as a smile of welcome and good cheer), bowed slightly, and opened the door a full three inches farther to allow them to pass in.
“If you will wait here, sir,” said Jacobson, “I will tell Mr. Carson that you have arrived.” But there was no need for this: mine host himself appeared at a door at the far end of the lounge hall and came at a steady canter to meet them. It surprised Jim to come across such a surfeit of ugliness at once; he remembered a certain evening in Paris when on leave during the war when, at a quarter to twelve, he had seen definitely the Most Beautiful Girl in the World (a blonde) and a little later, at half-past one or so, he had come face to face with positively the Most Beautiful Girl in the World (but this time a brunette). It had always seemed to him bad staff management that the two could not have been spread over at least a couple of evenings. Jacobson and Edwin Carson were very much the same: too much of a bad thing to take in at one gulp.
Mr. Carson stretched forth the hand of welcome to Freddie first. “I’m so glad you were able to come, Mr. Usher,” he said. “A popular young fellow like you, you know—you’re paying a great compliment to me by burying yourself in the backwoods for a whole weekend.”
“Not at all,” said Freddie. “In any case, it’ll be a new one on my creditors.”
“Quite,” said Mr. Carson. He turned to Jim. “And this is Captain Henderson. Well well, well. I’m glad to see you, Henderson. Very glad indeed.”
The handshake, Jim felt, was a shade over-hearty for so small a man. And (or was it only his imagination?) he felt that his host was scrutinizing him very carefully indeed in the few moments of shaking hands. Mr. James Lockhart, M.A., had had,
many years before, an irritating habit of peering in silence at any small boy who had failed to prepare preparation or who got his cotangents mixed up with his tangents—a long, silent scrutiny, taking in every despicable detail from head to foot, and during which the object of the gaze grew steadily smaller and smaller, pinker and pinker, and hotter and hotter. And mine host Carson, damn him, had exactly the same disturbing effect. He stared and continued to stare, much as though Jim were the bearded lady of a circus or some newly discovered skeleton of a prehistoric mammal. Well, thought Jim, might as well have my hand back if he’s quite finished with it… “Very glad to be able to come, Mr. Carson,” he said politely.
“You have luggage in the car? Yes—Jacobson, attend to Mr. Henderson’s and Mr. Usher’s luggage. Come along, gentlemen, I’ll show you your rooms. This way. I’m afraid you’ll find this place very dull after London—very dull indeed. You have a gay time of it in London, eh, Henderson?”
“Occasionally I go out and watch the electric signs in Piccadilly.”
“Now, now—I know you young fellows. I hope you won’t be bored at Thrackley. We have a tennis-court—not a very good one, I’m told, too many worm-holes in it, I believe—and the stream near here is supposed to be over-stocked with trout, though I’ve never seen a single one myself. D’you fish, Henderson? Your father was a great man with a rod. Oh, that’s your room, Mr. Usher—go in and make yourself at home. Now, my dear Henderson…”
It was a considerably long time since anyone had paid so much attention to Jim. He turned back over his shoulder and smiled at the forlorn way in which Freddie was entering his room after being dismissed (no other word for it) by mine host. This was all contrary to expectations. Jim had expected to be a definite back-number of the Thrackley house-party—invited to it mainly out of charity and the memory of a chance acquaintanceship between his father and this ugly little Mr. Carson. But… “And this is your room, Henderson, my boy—best in the house, in my opinion, but that’s for you to say yourself. Bathroom next door. And just give the bell a ring whenever you want anything. I do hope you’ll be comfortable.” Well, if that was the way of it, so be it. And very nice, too.
“This is great, Mr. Carson. It’s really damned good of you to ask me down here this weekend.”
“Not a bit of it. Best friend I ever had, your father was. No reason why his son shouldn’t be the same, eh?”
Perhaps not, thought Jim; but very difficult getting so friendly with a face like that.
“Right. I’ll leave you. Tea’s ready—come down when you are.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh—and, Captain Henderson…”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps you might do me a favour and have tea with me in my study. Just the two of us. I’d like so much to have a chat with you about your father.”
“Why, certainly, Mr. Carson—but Freddie… Mr. Usher…”
“That’s all right. Two of my other guests are to be in for tea… the rest are out walking. I’ll introduce Usher to them. They’re both very charming ladies—he’ll get along splendidly with them. My study, then, when you’re ready. First door on the right at the foot of the stairs. Jacobson will show you.”
And Mr. Carson bared what remained of his unclean and uneven teeth in another smile of welcome, and closed the door softly behind him.
Jim took a look round. He quite believed Mr. Carson when he said that the room was the best in the house. Not that Jim supposed there would be much opportunity for comparing other bedrooms with his own; but, at any rate, any improvements on the room which he had been given would have to be pretty carefully thought out. The room was large (from the glance he had had as he passed along the corridor, it was about three times as big as Freddie’s). It was beautifully furnished. The bed, the dressing-table and wardrobe, the easy chairs, and the little settee were all of a finely grained and unstained walnut. There were, as the hotel advertisements tersely put it, all mod. cons.—electric fire, h. and c. pouring when necessary into a rose-coloured wash-basin, telephone by the bedside, reading lamp above the bed. The usual collection of bedside books (the New Testament, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and an annotated autobiography of Archimedes) were conspicuous by their absence; instead there were a couple of what looked to be promising thrillers, a book of modern poems, two Oscar Wilde plays and some selections from the diaries of Mr. Pepys. The walls were mercifully bare of oleographs of Queen Victoria or prints of Diana in the Forest. There was no regrettable affair on the mantelpiece informing one when breakfast, lunch, dinner and the last post happened. In short, the room was perfect—except for one thing only. The view. The trouble with which being that there was none. A dense barricade of thick pine branches two feet away from your windows—you cannot by any stretch of imagination call that a view. Jim crossed to the window and lit a cigarette. “Even if it breezes,” he said to himself, “those things will swish all night, and if it blows a gale there’ll be a hell of a row.” And, hearing outside his door what could be fairly described by the last phrase of these thoughts, he added aloud, “Come in!”
The hell of a row proved to be Jacobson juggling with luggage and door handles. When Jim’s suitcase had been safely landed on the settee, and the butler satisfied that he could be of no further assistance at the moment, and that Mr. Henderson preferred always to unpack himself (a quaint Henderson custom, but necessary with superior country-house butlers when one has re-cuffed shorts and rather over-darned socks), Jacobson bowed his trim little bow and made for the door.
“Jacobson, just a minute,” said Jim.
“Sir?”
“Are there many guests here this weekend?”
“Six, sir. Mr. and Miss Brampton, Lady Stone, a Miss Raoul—an actress person, I believe, sir—and Mr. Usher and yourself.”
“I see. Been here long, Jacobson?”
“Since Mr. Carson bought the house, sir. But I have been in Mr. Carson’s service for a good many years now, sir.”
“Decent sort of bloke?”
“Mr. Carson, sir? The very best, sir. One of the kindest of men. I only hope you will find him so, sir.”
And that, thought Jim as the door closed, was a dashed peculiar sort of remark for a butler to make to a newborn guest. He unlocked his suitcase, spreadeagled a few garments over the room, felt at the foot of his case for the hard lump which marked the resting-place of the old army revolver—incidentally unloaded and with no ammunition supply. He smiled again at Freddie Usher’s idea of bringing guns to Thrackley and went off to see how that gentleman’s unpacking was getting along.
“Small but adequate, I suppose,” he said as he entered Freddie’s room. “Mine is about four times as large and has a much better bed. But then I expect you’re used to roughing it, old man.”
Freddie removed the notorious pyjamas from his case and laid them reverently on his bed.
“I suppose you’ve got the bridal suite,” he said. “Old man Carson seems to have taken to you all right. Quite the pet of the party, aren’t you? I must be losing my sex appeal, I suppose.”
“Honestly, Freddie, I can’t make it out. He’s running round me as though I were a long-lost relative.”
“It’s the daughter, I expect.”
“I’ll let you know about that when I see her, thank you. Anyway, I’ve got to have tea with the old geyser in his private sanctum. You’re having it with Raoul, God help her. Good luck.”
First door on the right at the bottom of the stairs, Carson had said. Edwin Carson’s voice said “Come in” almost before he had knocked. The study was a small room, overfilled with furniture: a big desk, a table, a heavy bookcase, many chairs. Somehow the room seemed out of place when one compared it with the rest of Thrackley. Rather cheaper and not so genuinely old. When Jim walked into the room, Edwin Carson was sitting at the desk; tea had already been laid out on the table.
&nbs
p; “Well, my boy,” said Carson, “everything to your liking?”
“Thank you, yes.”
“Fine. Now come and sit down and have some tea. You know, this is the realization of one of my ambitions—to get in touch with the son of my old friend, Edward Henderson.”
“Did you know my father very well, Mr. Carson?”
“He was my best friend. We met in prison.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said we met in prison. I think, don’t you, that friendships formed under circumstances like that are often the most lasting? You take sugar? And cream?… Yes, he was in for two years… I was reaching the end of a rather longer term.”
“Are you trying to tell me that my father was in gaol?”
“Why, yes. You never knew? Most of the men like your father and myself found themselves on the wrong side of prison bars in those days, you know. The arm of the law wasn’t a very long arm in South Africa then. But occasionally it caught you up. I.D.B.—you know. Your father, Jim—I may call you Jim, mayn’t I?—your father wasn’t such a clever man as I, I’m afraid. Perhaps I should say he wasn’t such a good criminal, eh? That term of imprisonment was the only one I ever served out there… your father wasn’t so fortunate.”
“You mean—he went back to gaol?”
“That’s where he died. Johannesburg gaol. And so I lost the best friend I had in that country. A clever man, your father, Jim—good thinker, cool plotter, brave as they make them. I remember the second time they got him—”
“I’m afraid I’m not interested, Mr. Carson. We won’t discuss my father any more, d’you mind?”
“I’m sorry. I imagined that you knew—”
“I don’t really want to, thank you.”
“If that’s the way you feel, my boy… certainly. A piece of this cake? Home-made, I understand, but quite edible.”
Weekend at Thrackley Page 4