The Belting Inheritance

by Julian Symons

  “I don’t like him much.”

  “I haven’t seen him for years, but he reminded me of a starving crow. I couldn’t make head or tail of what he was saying on the telephone, but this letter helps. My God, he’s a creep, that Stephen, don’t you think so?”

  I hesitated, then said “Yes.” We both began to laugh. She opened a drawer, took out half a bottle of whisky, reached behind her and found two small glasses. “Damnation to all creeps.”

  I had drunk whisky only two or three times before, and didn’t really want to now, but I felt that I might label myself a creep if I refused. So I drank damnation to creeps. She put her feet on the desk. “Now, perhaps you’ll tell me the truth about all this cock over someone coming along and pretending to be David.”

  I told her what had happened, about David’s return and Lady W’s acceptance of him, and his brothers’ scepticism. While I talked two or three people came in to look round the gallery. She paid little attention, simply telling them to look around, and handing a price list to a man who asked for it. They had wandered in, as people do in art galleries, and they wandered out again. When I had finished she poured more whisky into both our glasses, and drank half of hers at one gulp.

  “I don’t get it. What does Brother Creep expect me to do? Why should I care whether it’s David or not?”

  I hardly knew how to reply. “He thought you might be able to – to say it wasn’t David, I suppose.”

  She swung her legs off the desk. “God Almighty, they’re his brothers. If they can’t recognise him, how the hell can I?”

  “They do. I mean, they don’t. They’re certain he isn’t David.”

  She stared at me. “Well, then?”

  “But they want proof. After all, you were – you had an affair with him.” The whisky had gone to my head a little, or I would never have said such a thing. But she was not offended.

  “So I did.” She paused. “Did Miles know you were coming to see me?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Perhaps not. But I guess Miles wouldn’t have wanted you to come, and Brother Creep kept it from him. And I can see he didn’t tell you the whole story. Miles was my husband.”

  I gaped. She got up, put what was left of the whisky back in the drawer and said, “Drink up. I’ll take you out to lunch.”

  Five minutes later she had yelled to a young man named John to come down and look after the shop, and we were in the first-floor restaurant of a pub called The Fighting Cock, just a few doors away. I should have liked to stay downstairs, where a good many young men in beards were talking to girls who wore jeans, but Betty (she had told me to call her that) said that if we didn’t go straight up we wouldn’t get a table. She ordered lunch for two, including a bottle of wine. Then she looked at me.

  “You’re not TT, are you? It’s a bit late to ask. So you don’t know a thing about Miles and me. Would you like to hear?”

  I said yes. It was true enough that I wanted to hear, and I could see that she wanted to tell me.

  “Miles was going to be an actor, I was going to be an actress, that’s how we met. We both had walking-on parts in a farce that made the West End, then flopped. Miles was young and handsome, anyway I thought so. I was fairly bowled over, I can tell you. Then he took me down to Belting to meet the family, and I stayed the weekend. My God, what a morgue.” She saw my look of surprise and distress. “All right, you like it, but you weren’t a prospective wife on trial. The old General sized me up as though I were a mare going to stud with a Derby winner, did everything but look at my teeth. He was harmless enough though, in a way I even liked him, it was she who was what you might call the Negress in the woodpile.”

  “Lady Wainwright?”

  “Who else? She’s a real vampire that one, sucking the blood of her children, and all of them saying how wonderful she was while she did it. I saw what she was like straight away. I didn’t like her, and the feeling was what you might call strongly reciprocated. It made me sick to see the way they all fawned on her.”

  I echoed the words in surprise. I had not gathered the impression that Hugh or David were likely to fawn on anybody.

  “That’s what it amounted to. Not so much Hugh, though he never got away from her for all his talk. There they were, stuck in that bloody great barracks of a house pretending to be artists, except Brother Creep of course, Hugh writing his bloody awful plays, David drooping away in a corner thinking up the rhyme scheme for a sonnet, and that old bitch pretending they were all geniuses.”

  “You knew Hugh as well?”

  “Oh, I knew Hugh.” She gave me a glance out of the corner of her eye in which there was something provocative. “After that visit I married Miles.”

  “They didn’t approve?”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Mind you, I think if I’d said to her that I’d go and live at Belting she wouldn’t have said no, because you see Miles was the only naughty boy, the one who wanted to get away. But after that weekend I told him I was never going there again, and if he wanted to marry me we’d do it in a registry office in London. So we did just that, and told them afterwards. There was a row, but there was nothing she could do about it except cut off Miles’ allowance. It was the General who wrote the letter, but her fine Italian hand was behind it.”

  “And then?” I wanted to get on to the affair with David.

  “I loved Miles. You know, I really loved that man and in a way I still love him, because he was perfectly sweet, the sweetest man I’ve ever known.”

  “I like him too.”

  “But it never worked out. And why not? The truth is, when I went down to that ghastly place and met the family, I fell hard for Hugh.”

  “For Hugh?” I said in surprise, “But I thought – ”

  “Yes, I know. I’m coming to that. You’re shocked.”

  There was only one possible answer to that question, and I made it, waving my glass a little as I did so. A little wine spilled on to the cloth. Betty ignored it, and so did I.

  “There was something about the way Hugh looked, a sort of boldness – I can’t describe it, and you’re too young to know what I mean, but it’s the kind of signal that sometimes passes between a man and a woman when they meet, and they know they’re on the same wave-length if you get me. So there were Miles and I installed in a little flat in Kensington, and Hugh and David would come in to see us sometimes. It made me sick, I can tell you, the way they used to talk about Belting, with Miles lapping it all up. Every so often, while Hugh was saying something to Miles about the old homestead I would catch his eye on me, a sort of look as though he knew I was hating it, and that pleased him. I found it very exciting, can you understand that?” I nodded untruthfully. “And then the day came, and I’ve always thought Hugh somehow engineered it, when Miles was out and Hugh called.”

  She paused, looked at me, and went on. “I like sex. To me, you know, having a man is like having a good meal, and you don’t always eat at the same restaurant. So loving Miles didn’t make any difference, you understand? Oh, damn it, you don’t understand, but what does it matter, I don’t know why I’m trying to justify myself to you. Anyway, there we were together, and I knew it was going to happen and I wanted it to happen, and Hugh got most of my clothes off, and then do you know what? There I was sprawled on the bed and he was bending over me, and he smacked my face and said, ‘Do you think I want Miles’ leavings?’, and he put on his clothes and walked out.” She cocked an eyebrow at me, and then laughed. “What a situation for a girl. They call some girls teasers, but what would you call him? I never saw or heard from him again. Why did he do it, you ask?” (Though I hadn’t asked.) “I thought about it a good deal afterwards, and though I should like to think it was my fatal charm that lured him on, I don’t think that’s true. I think he set out to humiliate me. Deliberately. And I suppose you could say he succeeded. Luckily for me, though, I’m like an indiarubber ball, when I’m hit I bounce back.”

  “Why should he want
to humiliate you?”

  “Who knows, Chris? Basically he was queer, I suppose, probably that’s why.”

  “What did Miles think about it?”

  “He never knew. Or at least I never told him.”

  Greatly daring, I said, “What about David?”

  She put her chin in her hand and considered David. “He was much more handsome than Hugh, madly good-looking, but in a mother’s boy Rupert Brooke sort of way. I’m sure he modelled himself on Rupert Brooke. David went on coming to the flat, even though Hugh didn’t, and, well, I told you I was like a rubber ball. I bounced back at David.”

  I protested. “But you didn’t like him.”

  “Oh, I liked him all right in a way, you couldn’t help it, he was serious and boyish and brought out the mother impulse that’s lurking somewhere in every woman. And then there was another thing. This happened in the early part of the war, David had gone into the Air Force like a patriotic lad, and he was in uniform. I’ve always gone for uniforms, though of course he wasn’t in uniform when we did it.” She laughed. “Now I have shocked you.”

  She had. I bravely said, “Not at all.”

  “Good for you, even if you don’t mean it. Well, as you’ve gathered, I don’t take sex seriously, you enjoy yourself and that’s it. But David wasn’t like that, he pretty well went crazy. He was stationed not far from London at the time and there were letters, telephone calls, sudden visits. If Miles hadn’t been as blind as they come, and working part of the time, he must have known what was going on. As it was, we went on for six months, with David feeling guilty, wanting to tell Miles, weeping round the place, wanting me to get a divorce and marry him, and writing bad poems about it all the time. It was perfect hell for me, I can tell you. I was almost glad when the balloon went up one day, when Miles came home and found us together. There was the most tremendous scene, with Miles and David shrieking at each other like actors in a Jacobean tragedy. I sat back and enjoyed it.”

  “What happened then?”

  “What would you expect? They went home and told their tales to Mamma. I’ve always thought that she settled it, like an umpire at cricket, you know. Miles and I parted, he took it very hard, and David wrote me reams of letters about how he loved me but we’d better not meet again. I answered one or two, but then I got fed up with them, and just about that time I got tied up with a BBC war correspondent, and – well, that was the end of it. Except that Miles got a divorce. He had plenty of grounds. David wasn’t named.”

  My first reaction was excitement at this glimpse of a sexual bohemianism that I had only read about. Betty Urquhart suddenly appeared to me an entirely different person. What had been a rather old boyish-looking woman in dirty smock and trousers was transformed into an ideal image of sexual freedom. It was hard enough for me to imagine Miles, Hugh and David in the rôles she had allotted to them, but that the first woman who talked to me about having sexual relations with men should wear no make-up and have grubby hands seemed to me almost unbelievable. I drained my glass, and thoughtlessly accepted the brandy she offered. She said abruptly, “I expect you think I behaved badly to Miles.”

  I had been too thoroughly enthralled to think any such thing, but I said, “Yes.”

  “I think so too. I was a fool. And I damned well loved Miles, can you imagine that. But you can’t help the sort of person you are, can you?”

  If this was an appeal to me, I did not answer it. “So Miles hates David.”

  “You’ve got it wrong, you don’t understand what makes that family tick. It’s all Mamma. Miles wouldn’t hate anybody, he’s not that kind of man. He wouldn’t even hate me. But he was tied to his mother like the rest of them, and when Hugh and David were posted missing he went back to her.”

  “And David?”

  “David was a nice boy, though he had no sense of humour, and could be awfully bitchy at times. Perhaps he’s changed.”

  “But I mean – ” I lost track of what I had wanted to say, then rediscovered it. “ – I mean, don’t you think it’s terribly unlikely, David spending a year in Paris before coming home?”

  She shook her bronze curls. “Very much in character I should say, making a feeble attempt to get free before going back to Mamma again. Before he started writing bad poems he painted bad pictures, you know that, I expect. What I don’t see is how I can help. Even if I wanted to.”

  “I think what Uncle Stephen’s got in mind is that if – I mean, if David’s a fake, he won’t know who you are from Adam. Eve.”

  “Uncle Stephen,” she said mockingly. “Creeping Jesus. He’s married, isn’t that so? I can’t imagine what sort of woman would marry him.”

  “Breeds bull terriers, and looks like one.”

  “It might be fun to see Miles again, at that,” she said as she paid the bill.

  Out on the street I took in great gulps of air, but they acted on me like so much wine. I found my movements slightly uncertain on the way back to the gallery, and Betty took me by the arm. Her grip was like a man’s, strong and firm. The young man, John, raised his eyebrows when he saw us, but said nothing. Betty guided me through a side door, and up some stairs.

  “Come on, you’d better sleep it off.”

  I looked round. I was in a woman’s bedroom. I was sitting with Betty on a comfortable bed, with her face inches from mine. It was not her attractiveness that inflamed my senses, but the glimpse she had given me of a world infinitely distant and desirable. I leaned towards her and kissed her, felt the pressure of her breasts against me and her tongue enormous in my mouth. It was too much for me. My eyes closed, and I knew nothing more.

  When I opened my eyes again I was alone. My head ached. My shoes and jacket had been taken off. I found a note in the jacket: “Don’t have much luck with gentlemen from Belting, do I? Had to go out, back about six. Come to The Fighting Cock for a drink if you’re around. Tell Brother Creep I’ll come and beard the villain, if he is one. Tomorrow or day after, should be fun. Betty.” There was a PS “Why doesn’t Creep try family dentist, fillings and all that. I’m sure they had a family dentist.”

  I lurched downstairs and out. John stared at me with open hostility. I looked at my watch. The time was half past three.

  “Yes, I have had a telephone call from your uncle. I couldn’t quite understand what he wanted, nor why he didn’t come up to London himself.” Doctor Foster’s gaze took in my youth and my (I dare say) rather wild appearance. It is possible, although I didn’t think of it at the time, that he smelt drink on my breath.

  I began to explain. We were in his consulting-room, which seemed to be full of black leather furniture. He had said that he could spare me twenty minutes, and I had the feeling that it would not be extended to twenty-one. He sat behind his desk and I was on the other side of it, so that our positions were distinctly like those of doctor and patient. Doctor Foster was a very handsome man. He had dark thick hair beautifully cut and shaped, fine regular features, and long elegant hands. He wore a dark grey suit and a plain white shirt. The cuffs of the shirt shot beyond the jacket arms to reveal emerald cuff links, his one touch of ostentation. He listened to me attentively but with increasing surprise.

  “What an extraordinary tale.” He played with a paper knife on his desk. “There surely can’t be any difficulty in settling whether or not it is David. His handwriting – ”

  “I said that his right hand is injured.”

  “So you did.”

  “Then there’s the dentist,” I said boldly, using the idea so recently given me by Betty Urquhart. “I believe Uncle Stephen’s working on that.”

  “Yes. There can be little doubt that the man is an impostor.”

  I took a breath. There was something forbidding, or at least distinctly detached about Doctor Foster. “Suppose he isn’t.”

  “What?” The word was sharply spoken.

  “You might be able to help him prove his identity. I mean, he was your best friend, wasn’t he?”

  “We were friends
at Oxford.” He got up and went across to the window. “And we were at the same air station for a time during the war,” he said as if he were making a concession.

  “If there was anything special, any incident that concerned just the two of you – ”

  “David had an old appendicitis scar, a doctor could check on that. And when he wrote letters to me he used to begin ‘Dear Vof’ – my second initial is O. I can’t think of anyone else who would know that.”

  The words came readily, yet it seemed to me that in some way he was evading questions. My head was aching. “Anything else?”

  “When David came down – ” He stopped and looked at me. “It seems wrong that I should be telling you this, but in view of the letter I suppose there is no harm in it. I left Oxford some time before him, when I decided that I wanted to study psychiatry, and I saw nothing of him in his last year. Then one day I had a telephone call, saying that he wanted to see me urgently. We met in a teashop.” He said incredulously, “He wanted to borrow two hundred pounds.”

  “What for?”

  “That was the most outrageous thing about it. For a gambling debt. Horse racing. He owed the money to a bookmaker.”

  “Were you able to lend it to him?”

  He looked at me as though he would like to commit me to a mental hospital. “It was not a question of being able to. I shouldn’t do so as a matter of principle.”

  I reflected that friendship did not go very far for Doctor Foster. “What happened?”

  “I had nothing further to do with it, but I believe that David’s elder brother Hugh – you’ve heard of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think he saw the bookmaker involved, and induced him to settle for a percentage of the debt. Then he borrowed the money from somewhere. I can only hope the man who lent it got his money back. Hugh Wainwright was far from reliable.”

  “He seems to have helped his brother.”

  “And I didn’t, is that what you mean? You are too young to understand. I liked David, but he was a spoilt boy,