“But you’re ready now?” Uncle Miles asked. He sat with the corners of his mouth turned down disapprovingly. Lady W looked at him. David nodded, and then shrugged.
“I don’t know. I hope so. You’ve got to understand what it was like in the camp to be able to realise what I felt. You’re – degraded, degraded by the sort of things that happen to you, the things you do yourself. You get to a point at which the only thing you’re fit for is the lowest, most mechanical work, the only people you want to be with are scum, the sort of stagnant scum you don’t find in ordinary society. I used to think that Russian writers were exaggerating things, but not long ago in Paris I read Dostoievsky’s House of the Dead, and my God, it’s true enough. Life in Russia – they live like pigs and dream about heaven. Am I making sense? I can’t help it if I’m not. When I got to Paris I felt I couldn’t face English life, and then a couple of weeks ago – ” He stopped.
“Yes,” Stephen said. “What happened a couple of weeks ago?”
“I took an overdose. The chap who ran the wretched little hotel I was in found me all right, perhaps I never meant to take a lethal dose, but I knew then it was no good. It was then I wrote to you, Mamma.”
Lady W sat up in her chair, opened her eyes wide. “I shall go to bed. Rikki, your old room is ready for you. Mr Markle, you’ll stay here, of course.”
Markle took his cigar from his mouth. “Very kind of you, Lady Wainwright, but I shouldn’t think of imposing. I’ve already booked a room at the Rising Sun.”
As Lady W stood up she swayed a little. David was at her side in a moment. “The excitement. A little too much for me. It’s nothing.”
“I’ll come upstairs with you.”
“Yes. And then if you’ll tell Peterson.” The smile she gave us was ghastly. She went out of the room leaning heavily on David’s arm. The door had barely closed when Stephen said in his thin, acid voice, “Now, Mr Markle.”
Markle stubbed out his cigar and smiled at Stephen, who said, “Why are you here?”
“I’m a solicitor. Steinberg, Markle and Fasnach. I’m here to look after Mr Wainwright’s interests.”
“You know that we dispute his identity,” Clarissa bayed at him.
“Your husband wrote a letter to that effect. I have it in my possession. He offered my client money, which of course we shall return.”
We had sat a long while at the dinner table and now Susan, the maid who had helped to serve the meal, came in, not for the first time. As we were going through to the drawing-room Markle excused himself, saying that he had some papers in the car that might interest us. He came back briskly cheerful, with a briefcase under his arm which he unzipped. I looked at the things it contained with a curiosity which may be imagined, and ended my inspection rather disappointed.
The things he put upon a table were a copy of Donne’s Songs and Sonets, bent at the edges and obviously much read, and a tattered wallet. In the manner of a lecturer he described them. “This little book was given to my client by Mr Miles Wainwright. There is an inscription inside the front cover.” There was, too: David from Miles, Christmas 1943. “You don’t dispute that this is the copy you gave him?”
“I don’t dispute it.”
“Good, good. We’re making progress. Now, this is the wallet he had during the war. You may recognise it? No? Well, this is the one. Contents, pay book, letters. One here from Lady Wainwright, one from his brother Hugh, one from a lady friend named Joyce. A few other odds and ends, like this small key with a lion’s head on it, perhaps you recognise that? Well, there you are, gentlemen.”
“These don’t mean anything,” Stephen said. “They could have been taken off David’s body.”
At the same time Clarissa asked, “How does he happen to have them still in his possession?”
“A good question, Mrs Wainwright,” Markle said, still in his lecturer’s rôle. “The Russians took the wallet, let him keep the little book of poems, which you can see was his constant companion in camp. Then when the Russians let him go they handed back his wallet intact.”
Silence. Then Stephen said, “As far as I’m concerned these don’t prove anything, if that’s all he’s got to show.”
Markle shrugged. “What do you expect? You heard his story, it’s a marvel he was able to keep anything at all. His mother knew him at once.”
“She believed what she wants to believe.”
“That old man in the garden recognised him.”
“He’d heard this tale about David being alive.”
Markle’s mouth curved in a sneer. “You two gentlemen are what might be called interested parties I understand, and Mrs Wainwright too. Perhaps even this young gentleman here.”
“That’s an outrageous insinuation,” Stephen cried.
“Oh, come along now, you won’t pretend you didn’t want to keep my client away from here. That was your object, wasn’t it? To buy him off. On the cheap.” Markle sat in a cretonne-covered wing arm-chair with his legs stretched out, odiously at ease, and looked around him with surprise. “This really is a period piece, isn’t it? Must say I’ve never seen a room like it. Might be something out of a film.”
Stephen confronted him, trembling with indignation. At this moment David returned, and took in the scene.
“Trouble?” he asked.
I can’t convey what a difference I felt in his attitude in the way he spoke that one word. It was as though he were saying, “All right, the fancy talk is over, let’s get down to business,” or as though he had been wearing a mask at the dinner-table and this had dropped for a moment to reveal his true face. These are not afterthoughts, they are things I thought at the time although I didn’t formulate them clearly, and you can dismiss them if you like as the fanciful notions of a literary young man. But it is a fact that I had been completely convinced by the evident sincerity with which he told his story, and that the first moment when I really doubted that he was David Wainwright was when he said in that cheerfully aggressive voice, “Trouble?” I think perhaps he knew that his tone had disconcerted me, for he changed it again in a moment.
For the next hour he sat answering questions from Stephen and Miles, and he did so with remarkable coolness and conviction. They asked him about school, about incidents in their childhood, about servants they had had before the war. He answered nine out of every ten questions at once, and obviously what he said was correct. When he didn’t remember something he admitted it. At one point Miles said, “What about Durdle Door?”
“What about it?”
“What happened there? On the cliffs? You were ten and I was seven.”
“I don’t know.”
“If you were David you would know. I got stuck on the cliff. You crawled up and helped me to get to the top. We agreed we wouldn’t say anything to anybody about it, and we never did.” Spitefully – I had never known Uncle Miles spiteful before – he added, “I don’t suppose you even know where Durdle Door is.”
That last sentence was a mistake, because if David had been on the hook, now he was off it. He laughed. “Of course I do, it’s near where we used to go for summer holidays. About the cliff, honestly, Miles, I don’t remember a thing. Try and be reasonable, old man. It was thirty years ago and I’ve forgotten a hell of a lot since then. For a while after I got out of Russia there were great yawning gaps so that if you’d asked me then what school I went to, I wouldn’t have known. Since then a lot’s come back to me, but I know there are still some holes.”
“If you were David you’d remember,” Miles said obstinately.
Markle had lighted another cigar and now he sat forward in the wing chair, pointing with it. “Remember you were the one who got stuck on the cliff. Maybe that’s why you’d be the one to remember, eh?”
He looked about for smiles, but found himself ignored. David went on talking. In the time I knew him I never saw him lose his temper, but now he showed his feelings plainly – or was it that he gave a calculated display of anger?
�
�As a matter of fact I think you’ve been pretty unreasonable altogether. If I weren’t your brother, how the hell do you think I could have answered half your questions, how would I have known my way about the house? I don’t want to harp on it, but that letter you wrote, Stephen – well, I don’t imagine it’s the sort of letter you’d want people to see.”
There was a threat in the words rather than in the way they were spoken, but it struck home to Stephen. He pulled at his collar and said something unintelligible. His white face was twisted so that for a moment I thought that he might cry. Then he walked quickly, almost ran, out of the room. Clarissa followed him.
“I can’t say I admire Stephen’s taste in wives,” David said. Markle laughed. “That doesn’t apply to your wife, though, Miles. You haven’t married again I suppose?”
These apparently harmless words made Uncle Miles clench his fists. David said tauntingly, “You don’t want to do anything silly, Miles. Mustn’t have a fracas on my first night back under the family roof.”
“You’re a scoundrel.”
“Oh, come along now. I’m your brother. You remember, the one who rescued you from Durdle Door.”
Miles stamped his foot in anger at this mockery, a gesture pettish rather than angry. “Why did you come here? If you don’t go away I’ll – ”
He didn’t say what he would do and this uncompleted exit line was comic, or if you liked Miles as I did, pathetic.
That left the three of us in the drawing-room, David and Markle and I, and again I seemed to detect in David a change, this time a sense of relaxation as though a hurdle had been surmounted and a breathing space was possible. As David wandered about the room exclaiming at the odds and ends and knick-knacks he remembered, a papier mâché chair and a frame for an embroidery panel, and as Markle said that he must be getting along or they would lock him out of the Rising Sun, I said casually and with no sense of putting a searching question, “What made you choose that name – Stiver?” I hesitated about adding “Uncle David,” and decided against it.
Markle merely raised his eyebrows, but David’s head jerked back as if we were boxers, and I had shaken him with an uppercut. “What do you mean?”
What had I meant? “Well, it was a kind of joke I suppose, was it? Not having a stiver, that means not having any money. Was that it?”
“Yes, of course.” It seemed to me that he accepted this suggestion with relief. “It was a joke. A pretty bad one, you may think, but a joke, that’s all.”
I don’t know why I should have been dissatisfied by this explanation, but the feeling of dissatisfaction stayed with me as David saw Markle out, and then said goodnight to me. I went up to bed, along the corridor that no longer held terrors, with my mind in a whirl. I was in my pyjamas and brushing my teeth when there was a knock on the door.
I do not know who I had expected to see standing there, but I was certainly surprised to see Stephen. He too was in pyjamas and dressing-gown, and I was fascinated to see that his neck, when not confined by a tight collar was white as an asparagus stalk. He looked round at my wallpaper and prints with a dislike which I could see he did not want to express, and it was with a humouring air that he said, “I see, you like this sort of thing, do you?” To this remark I made no reply. He tugged at his dressing-gown and burst out, “You’ve got to help expose this fraud.”
I have made it clear that there was no love lost between Stenhen and me, and the effect of this remark was to make me feel immediately more kindly disposed towards David. “Why do you say he’s a fraud?”
“It’s obvious. Don’t you think I’d know if he were my brother?”
“What about the wallet and the book?”
“This man must have taken them off David, or got possession of them in some way.”
“And Mamma recognised him.”
I knew that it infuriated Stephen to bear me calling Lady W, Mamma. He controlled himself with an effort, and said as he had done before, “She’s determined to believe it.”
I sat down on the bed. “As a matter of fact I think he may be a fraud too.”
He asked me why, but did not seem impressed when I told him about the name. “I don’t believe that idea, about not having a stiver, had occurred to him before. He just accepted it when I suggested it.”
“Does it matter?”
“My æsthetic sense tells me there’s something wrong about it.” I could not resist adding, “You see now that there are advantages in belonging to the Æsthetes’ Society.”
“What?”
“At school. We burn incense while we worship Oscar Wilde on prayer mats.”
This was strictly untrue, but I think Stephen half-believed it. The stalk of his neck bulged with his effort to keep his temper. “Are you willing to help?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“While that man is here I shall not leave this house. The ascendancy he has gained already over Mamma is appalling.”
“Uncle Miles is here.” Stephen made no reply to this, and I was left to wonder whether he was doubtful of Miles’ capacity to deal with David. “I suppose you’re afraid that Mamma may change her will.”
“If she did, you would be affected too.” He stopped again, realising I suppose that this argument was not likely to affect me. He stared at one of the Japanese primitives, and turned away from it with distaste. “Christopher, I know this man is a fraud, and I am going to prove it. Miles and I are agreed that we should both stay here for the moment. We want you to go to London tomorrow and see two people who should be able to help. If you agree, I will write letters to both which you can take along, and I’ll telephone and tell them to expect you.”
I had already decided to say yes when I asked, “Who are they?”
“One is named Betty Urquhart, the other Vivian Foster.”
“Hadn’t you better tell me why I’m going to see them?”
He bit off the words reluctantly. “Foster was a great friend of David’s. He was a doctor. He’s in Harley Street now. Betty Urquhart was – she runs some sort of gallery – she was a friend of David’s too.”
Something about his tone made me ask, “You mean she was his mistress?”
“Yes, I believe so,” he said unwillingly, and with something odd in his glance. When I said that I would go he patted me on the shoulder and said “Good man” two or three times. He was a great one for old-fashioned slang, Uncle Stephen.
Chapter Five
Betty Urquhart and Vivian Foster
So it came about that just before midday the next morning I found myself outside the People’s Art Gallery, just off Leicester Square. I had seen Lady W, and told her that I had arranged to go up for the day to see a friend in London. A year ago she might have been annoyed that I was spending a day in London so soon after the beginning of the holidays, but now she was so completely occupied with David’s return that she hardly noticed what I was saying. The gaiety and vividness of the previous night had all drained away, and although she was cheerful I thought that she looked dreadfully ill. David and Miles had not appeared by the time I left, Clarissa was with the dogs, and so I was left with Stephen, who was looking even more pinched and near-strangled than usual. He gave me the letters, and said that he would ring both Betty Urquhart and Vivian Foster late in the morning.
“We’ll spike this fellow’s guns,” he said as I left, a phrase which made me decide to add up the number of clichés he used and award myself some sort of prize when I’d reached twenty. It was only on the way to the station that I looked at the letters and saw that they were not only sealed but stuck down at the back with sticky tape, a reminder that Stephen was not simply a comic character but a mean one too.
The door of the gallery clanged as I went in. Nobody appeared, so I walked round looking at the pictures. About half of them were abstracts and the other half were social realist, showing labourers with enormous muscles shifting great lumps of iron, that kind of thing. My own preference at the time was for the neat and finicky.
Pretty well the only modern pictures I admired were surrealist paintings done with a fanatical, naturalistic attention to detail, and I didn’t like any of these very much. I was trying to decipher one of the artists’ names when a voice behind me said, “Yes?”
I turned to be confronted with what seemed at first glance to be a thin young man. Only the first of these adjectives proved accurate, for in fact I faced a woman, wearing paint-stained trousers, who was of the same age as those I counted old, like Stephen and Miles. I had been deceived by the loose smock that concealed the breasts, by the trousers, and by the bronze curls that topped an eager, open face innocent of powder and lipstick. “You must be Christopher Barrington. I’m Betty Urquhart.”
“How do you do?”
“I do pretty well. I see you’ve been properly brought up. What do you think of Destrello? You were looking at his paintings.”
“I don’t like them very much.”
“No need to be so bloody cautious, if you think they’re no good, say so. He’s a genius.”
“Is he?”
“So the people who know tell me, but if you think he isn’t, there you are. Perhaps you’re right.”
“Do you work here?”
“Work here? I own the place. I’m promoting Destrello because he’s a genius. Smoke?” She sat down behind a small desk, took some canvases off the only other chair and invited me to sit on it. I sat down, but refused the cigarette. I gave her Stephen’s letter. She tore it open, read it, struck a match on the heel of her shoe, lighted a cigarette, and made a face. “How do you get on with Stephen?”
The Belting Inheritance Page 6