The Satan Sampler

by Victor Canning

  Quint smiled. “In God’s good time?”

  “Ah, now there’s a point. And being a point gives us a full stop. So I suggest you go home and soothe yourself with the making of some simple dish.”

  “And you?”

  “I shall sit and admire my cherry blossom for a while, and then go round to the Flyfishers’ Club for dinner and talk with men who find happiness by their rivers, find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything. And remember—when there seems need to talk—it is often wise to remain silent.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  AFTER SUPPER ON the Sunday night the two women left Captain Hope and Seyton to their port in the dining room with the strict admonition from Nancy that they had half an hour and no more to themselves.

  Alone with Georgina in the sitting room, a late April gale buffeting at the windows, knowing that her abruptness would not be taken amiss, knowing—through some mysterious alchemy of understanding which sometimes two people can recognize instantly and welcome—that true jealousy was not in their natures because they were alike in many ways, and certainly in each other’s independence of spirit and philosophy, she said, “It’s long past the time that somebody pinned him down, Georgina—for his own sake and Roger’s. I’d like it to be me, of course. But if not. . . well.”

  Georgina shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t think you need worry about me. I like him, of course. And, no doubt, you can guess how far it’s gone. But I’m not his kind. All this landed gentry stuff.”

  “Poppycock. What a nice word. There’s no being anybody’s kind. The world’s full of examples of happily married couples who were not considered each other’s kind. That’s why nice girls marry rotters and whores marry aristocrats—and the results surprise you.”

  “I’m not talking about temperaments or vices and virtues. I’m talking about me which is what you want, and what I don’t mind doing. He and I are too alike. We have obsessions. He wants his Hall back. Until he gets it or finally realizes that he’s got to sit out the lease, he’s not going to make any new venture. Oh, yes, I guess a pleasant evening or two, maybe a lovely week together . . . but nothing more. That goes for me, too. I’m perfectly happy with my work. Just being what I am.”

  “He’s got a one-track bloody mind. That’s his trouble—and the reason for his business success. I don’t love him at the moment, but I know I could if I had the chance. My God, I do find hopping into bed is a bit like always making a dinner just of the hors d’oeuvres.” Nancy laughed. “Can you imagine what those two in there would think if they could hear us? Men think women are bird-brained.”

  “Sometimes I think we are. But I’m glad we can talk to one another like this. He’s nice. I like him, yes. Gould love him, yes. But I know I’m never going to have him. What was his wife like?”

  “Perfect. Madly good-looking. Always did the right thing. Never got in his way. Kind, generous, and worshipped him. But so dull. She only came alive when she was on a horse. I sometimes think that was when she escaped—went mad, just let some bottled up frustration in her run wild . . . too wild. It killed her in the end. But, I suppose, really she was right for him. My God, the way I’m talking about him. As though he were some juvenile delinquent problem case. Also I know that I’m covering up . . . Oh, Lord, I do get in a muddle sometimes when I really want to be straightforward. You see, whatever I’ve said, and you’ve nicely agreed with—the fact is that I want him, have for years, at any price. Now my back hair is really coming down. I might even sniff a bit to keep the tears back, if I could force a few—which I’m not very good at. You see I get the feeling deep in my bones that he’s really going to fall for you and, whatever you say, he won’t take No for an answer.”

  “He’d have to take my No—if that’s what I said.”

  “There you are, you see. If.”

  Georgina laughed, though at that moment there was no humour in her, only a slowly growing confusion caused by the emotion so clearly underlying Nancy’s hard-boiled talk. She said, “When I’ve finished here I’m going to America.”

  “He’d follow you there. He can be as stubborn and persistent as hell when he chooses. Both he and Punch were that way from the cradle. You take this Hall thing. He isn’t going to sit by and let them work the lease out. Not him. He’ll get them out one way and another. You heard him when father asked him tonight if he meant to stay here now, and he said of course he was. I know when he means something. He’s a bloody Seyton, this is his place and he’s going to have it back. All that diamond business stuff means nothing. He’d sell out tomorrow if he could walk into the Hall.”

  “Well, he’s no immediate hope, has he?”

  “I don’t know about that. I know my little Richard, that touch of smugness and a look which means ‘All in good time, you’ll see’. And then, bingo, when you least expect it he pulls the white rabbit out of the top hat. I tell you, he’s a worker but he’s also a lucky bastard—things fall into place for him very often without his lifting a hand.”

  “Well, that’s nice for him. And now, to cheer you up—which I don’t think you really need—you can tell your father after I’ve gone that I’ll do a few drawings for him before I leave.”

  “You will? Well, bless you for that. It’ll mean so much to the old boy.”

  Driving back to the bungalow with him, although they talked quite easily about the evening and the two Hopes, there was in her an undercurrent of speculation about her responses to Nancy’s forcing talk. Herself, she had been reasonably frank, but no more than that because her truth was a vastly different one from Nancy’s. She knew without doubt that, being free, Birdcage non-existent, she would now be in love with him. Or rather was in love with him but barred from giving it completely free expression. My God, bed yes, and a closer, easier manner of disposing herself with him. Bed broke a few barriers, but too many remained. Even now she could not forget and knew she would report Nancy’s intuition that he had some near hope of getting the Hall back, some rabbit perhaps already up his sleeve. Quint and his kind might reverence facts, but they were also greedy for fancies. The whole bloody thing wearied her so that she longed to be a million miles away . . . somewhere where there had never been any dear Daddy, no Quint cloaking his own self-disgust with carefully chosen words—so often other people’s—and escaping each night into a world of civilized and mildly epicurean delights and avoiding as often as he could looking into the mirror of truth, and no Kerslake who—frankly accepting his state and enjoying it—would have liked her to share board and bed, the union blessed or not by priest or some indifferent Registrar of Marriages flanked by vases of artificial flowers. Anywhere but here now, in this Rolls with him, because close though they were in flesh they were a million miles apart and she was wishing she could in a little while find the resolution to make some excuse for his not staying with her that night. But she could not. Would not for she lacked the courage of self-denial. . . and, damn it, why not? The job was a dirty one, but at least he was a bonus on the side.

  He came in with her, and they sat over a last drink and talked, easily, pleasantly, and she threw off all her thoughts of the outside world and built a make-believe romance for herself and him and, while he made her laugh at his tales of local people and odd characters and of his escapades with Punch, she embraced self-indulgence, pretended to herself that they were engaged with all their friends to read the announcement in the Daily Telegraph, that she was to be Mistress of Seyton Hall, and let pleasure and fantasy run in her like some drug in the blood at once potent and benign. And when they were in bed and he had made love to her and his hand, touching her face, discovered the tears that were under her eyes he said nothing, but kissed them away. Then, when he went and she had heard the sound of his car die away, she reached for the telephone at the bedside and spoke a message into the recording unit at Birdcage saying that he was going to London on the coming Tuesday and would be there probably through Wednesday and part of Thursday, staying a
t Brown’s Hotel. The purpose of the visit—business. Then she took two Mogadons and went to sleep.

  * * * *

  Helder was waiting for Seyton outside Burlington House. They walked to the Piccadilly Circus tube station and rode to South Kensington station. There was little conversation between them. From the South Kensington station they walked towards Sloane Square and a few minutes later stopped before a small hotel.

  Helder said, “You know what you are doing, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. First floor. Room number Three. Just knock and walk in. He knows your name and what you look like. I took the liberty of giving him a photograph . . . a press cutting, but a good likeness. He may or may not give you a name. If he does it won’t be his real one. But he’s the man you want. They don’t come much higher. I briefed him a bit about the background, but by now he will have done his own homework.”

  “Thank you, Helder.”

  He went in through a neat, soberly furnished, highly polished hall. A girl sitting behind the reception desk gave him a smile briefly and went back to her ledger work as he climbed the first flight of stairs.

  In answer to his knock on Number Three the door was opened by a tall, elegant man, spare of flesh, his long pale face deeply cleft below the cheek bones, his hazel eyes large-lidded, the pink of his scalp showing warmly through his thinning white hair. He wore a light grey suit, a finely linked gold chain looped across his double-breasted waistcoat. A motion of a hand brought Seyton into the room and, as the door was shut, the man said, “Good morning, Mr Seyton. I’m Peacebairn——” a flicker of a smile relieved the rather solemn face, “——and I don’t have to apologize for the dramatics. I gather it’s what you would have wanted.”

  “What I want, Mr Peacebairn, is some advice and, of course, discretion.” As he spoke Seyton sat in a chair, indicated to him by a wave of the man’s hand. The room was double-bedded and on a small table was a tray with two glasses and an opened bottle of pale dry sherry.

  Smiling, Peacebairn filled two glasses with sherry and said, “What I want is a glass of sherry and no doubt you’ll join me. Yes, of course. Advice and discretion. A well-matched pair, go well together, but need sympathetic handling.” He handed Seyton a glass of sherry and then sat down in a small armchair by the window, gave a little sigh, sipped at his drink, and went on, “So—the floor is yours. I have of course briefed myself about you and the basic situation which exists at Seyton Hall between you and the Felbeck Foundation—the sight of whose back, I gather, would be a glad sight for your very determined eyes. Have you known Helder long?”

  “Quite a few years.”

  “A good man—but beyond our tempting, sadly. And now, I am all yours.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “The day is ours—and one, I hope, which may produce more than ‘a beggarly account of empty boxes’?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Forgive me. A bad habit of cloaking my thoughts in other—and far more illustrious—men’s words.”

  Seyton smiled. “Well, this is no account of empty boxes. It’s of tapes and films, and adds up to a well-planned, still growing conspiracy of interests against our national security.”

  “Ah, then you have at once my attention. I shall sit and without interruption hear you out while you demonstrate to me the truth of Helder’s statement that you were no man with a bee in your bonnet or a habit of chasing rainbows. I wait.” From then on he was as good as his word while Seyton told his story, beginning with the part letter in code from Punch which he had discovered and then going on to tell how he had discovered the tapes and films and the obvious deductions he had drawn from them. . . and the further, and to him, personal point, that they gave him every right to take legal action which would successfully enable him to break the Foundation’s lease on the Hall. He finished, “That’s the full story—and you can see quite clearly why I needed the advice and help of someone like you. It’s not a thing I could just trot off with to my solicitor.”

  “Indeed not.”

  “I presume you know something of this Sir Manfred Grandison?”

  “Quite a bit. May I say, too, that you did the right thing in coming to us.”

  “Well, I don’t pretend that I don’t have some sympathy for what they’re after—even though they don’t see it as an immediate thing. But all I’m really concerned with is getting the Hall back.”

  “Which I think I can say you will.”

  “I’m bloody going to get it back!”

  Peacebairn laughed. “I don’t think there’s any doubt of that. But from now on—and you’ll appreciate this—it is not a matter for any further action on your part. You shall have your Hall, but we must have the handling of affairs, and, of course, we must have the tapes and the film. Where are they at the moment?”

  “Locked up in my safe at the Dower House.”

  “A pretty old-fashioned one, I should imagine?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

  “Then they must be held with absolute security. That means you will have to hand them over to us. Not just from the security point of view. We’ll have to run them through to confirm your story.”

  “That’s what I want. To be shot of the whole thing and just told when I can walk back into the Hall.”

  Peacebairn smiled. “I like your obsessive directness. Are you not concerned about the political and national issues involved?”

  “Yes, I told you I was. I take their point—but I can’t go all the way with them. But somebody’s got to do something some time or this country will go up the spout.”

  “Patriotism is a violent emotion. One of the many manifestations of the emotion love, or that even more violent one—religious faith. Excessive love is like excessive wine . . . an enemy to steal away men’s brains. However, if I send a man down you will hand over all this stuff to us?”

  “Yes. But I must have a firm promise that I get the Hall back.”

  “I give it. And I have your word that nobody knows anything about this except yourself—and now me?”

  “That’s so.”

  “And so far as you are concerned it will remain that way?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right, Mr Seyton. I’ll let you know when someone is coming for the tapes and films. I shan’t feel happy until they are with us.”

  “Neither shall I. Just fancy those buggers sitting there, singing hymns, collecting Church antiques, and slashing out charity to all the world like confetti, and all the time . . . God, it beats me. I think Felbeck must have gone quietly mad to let Sir Manfred Grandison talk him into all this.”

  Peacebairn shrugged his shoulders. “We’re all potentially mad, Mr Seyton. Perhaps because we all came from Chaos we have an ineradicable nostalgia for it.”

  “The only nostalgia I have is for the Hall. And I want it back.”

  Peacebairn laughed. “I realize that.” Then his face moving to a severe solemnity, he went on, “But I must ask you to keep that subject a completely closed one as from now. Say nothing . . . not even the hint of a hope to anyone, no matter how near and dear.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Good—then I shall be in touch with you.”

  A few minutes after Seyton had gone the door opened and Quint came in. Without a word he helped himself to a glass of sherry and then sat down on the bed with a heavy sigh, and said, “Peacebairn?”

  Warboys smiled. “On the spur of the moment. It amused me. Not overmuch, but enough to lighten what followed. What have we got on our hands?”

  “Something with quite a few historical precedents. Another casualty caused by the corrupting forces of power. Give a man an acre of ground and soon he will want more. Give a man like Grandison the means to make a dream come true and he’ll use them. After all we have had a winter and spring of discontent . . . vicious, inhumane strikes . . . garbage piled in the streets, hospitals and schools crippled by strikes . . . road haulage men refusing to move
goods, docks closed, picketing and all the petty and not so petty tyranny of the trades unions who have yet to learn how to keep an orderly house. Power from below instead of firm government from above. Hospital cleaners telling surgeons when they may or may not operate—no matter the urgency of any particular case. Decent workers scared to break a picket line—with reason for bang goes their daily bread. And all this merely a preliminary flexing of the muscles by the trades unions. Not even a rehearsal for the real thing to come . . . the historical process they’ve set in motion and no longer know how to control. The state of the nation suddenly a marvellous, fecund spawning ground for extreme types of ambition. Which way do you go? A Soviet state? Or a dictatorship? Or something in between—if there is anything in between? Well, you can see the option that Grandison and those with him have decided to pick up. Not yet, but not all that far ahead. Next winter, maybe.”

  “And how will it run?” asked Warboys.

  “Along classical lines. At some crisis point—a winter of want, shortages of food and fuel because of industrial action provoked by militant shop stewards, and possibly rioting, the country on the brink of chaos—the Prime Minister will have a State of Emergency declared. The rest follows. A National Government. Key men in all the Services already committed. Some influential trade union leaders, hating their troublemakers, will take their stand with the Government—glad of the chance to crush their left wing elements. Three-quarters of the people of this country will back a show of force against the militant unionists. Bloody hell, and bloody strife for a while—and then, with the prospect of paradise more or less to be regained, this country enters a new era of discipline and decency. I tell you—the mood of the majority of people in this country is ready for it. It is a political evolution most people think is long overdue. They only wait for someone to fire the starting gun.”

  Warboys sighed. “How right Grandison was when he told me that his interest in the Felbeck Foundation was to find a way to use it for Birdcage. And he’d already found it. You get some Chief of Staff down there who’s shying at the veiled suggestion of a future role that could be open to him and then you wine and dine him and pop him into bed with a woman while a hidden camera . . . God, he must be mad.”