‘No actual need—since you put it like that,’ Quentin said, still playing. ‘I like the bit where it goes into the major, don’t you …’ He hummed.
Edwina, with high percipience for her, said soothingly, ‘Look, boys, let’s all have drinks. Then you can both go off for a walk somewhere and discuss all this properly. Stella is coming back to supper.’ She added this to cheer herself up. It had been so lovely working on the path … So lovely to see Quentin standing there like that. But now … Her fingers worked uncontrollably against the carved rails of her chair. Quentin and Richard saw that she was upset and at once were ready with their nonsensical comfort. But she shrugged them both off and hurried into the kitchen and took refuge in what had once been the rectory cook’s basket-chair, where she wept a little and loathed both her sons with a temporary fury. There was Florence Crawford, she told herself, hanging grimly on to her child as though she were a lifebuoy, while she had to put up with Stella, Dick and Quentin using her home for a stamping-ground every week-end. She longed passionately to be left alone with her own futility. Never mind what cleverer people thought. No longer to be organised by Stella, nor disorganised by the boys.
In the morning-room Richard was asking, ‘How did you meet? When?’
‘We were introduced in the usual way by John Munsen-Orle.’
‘On Tuesday? In London?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘And did you say at Munsen-Orle’s club?’
‘I didn’t. But that was where we met. It’s the Sheridan in Bruton Street.’
‘I know.’
‘You’ve been there?’
‘No. Wasn’t Sir Paul surprised to meet my brother like that?’
‘I suppose he was—although he takes precautions not to be surprised at anything, doesn’t he?’
‘You’re finding him out rather soon aren’t you.’
Quentin didn’t answer. His hands continued to fly across the keys, but without striking a note. Their reflection lashed about, white and antic in the lid. At last he said, ‘Let us both be careful not to take a stand on a false intention. If you really meant to go through with it and all this comes as a disappointment to you, then all well and good. I can say that I’m sorry and that it is one of those things—and you can curse me if you like. I do happen to be going through with it, you see, Dick. It does have meaning for me, which, if you’re honest, is more than you could ever say.’
‘So he thought I was shallow?’
Quentin stopped his phantom strumming and turned round abruptly. ‘Good God no! He was full of your praises. The man’s beholden to you. You’ve helped him no end. But he’s looking for friendship, not librarianship—if I may put it that way. And—’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, he heard that you had other plans—that you might be getting married, for instance.’
‘Who in Hell’s name told him that?’
‘A colleague, shall we say—’
‘Not—not the Winner?’
Quentin nodded. ‘Right first time.’
‘But how—?’
‘Partly because Mr Winsley got that impression when you brought Mary along to some party or other at Copdock, and partly from what old Yockers told him when they met at the Archaeological Society. They were both at the House or something in the year dot, so they find plenty to chat about.
‘Is that all?’
‘Oh no. One last thing—rather a nice thing really. Apparently your being Sir Paul’s secretary was Miss Bellingham’s idea. As soon as Mr Winsley heard of it he went straight over to Sheldon and put his own spoke in. He wants you for Copdock. In fact he’s got great new ideas for the school. In a way, as you can see, Sir Paul had very little choice.’
Then the telephone rang. Small spurts of an imperative bell splashed across the conversation. Edwina left to answer it. The telephone stood on a bracket in the hall. She returned at once and said, ‘It’s for you, Richard.’
Analysing later what had at first had seemed to him mere coincidence, Richard understood that events do, at times, have a tinder quality. They leap the distances between situations, connecting them with a flame which unites them in a mutual climax. Mr Winsley’s voice jumped in the receiver. The nasal, ‘Ah Brand’ contained a note of self-indulgence—the telephone had always been a luxury where Mr Winsley was concerned. He spoke rapidly, but with care.
‘At first I thought I ought to write,’ he said, ‘but letters, as you know, take time. It is going to be a great shock, dear boy—’ There was a satisfying pause before he spoke the sentence which contained for him the most dreadful sequence of syllables on earth; ‘It is my unhappy duty to tell you that Miss Bellingham has died.’ He had rehearsed these few words at different times throughout his life, sometimes inserting euphemisms such as ‘passed on’, ‘entered her rest’, ‘passed away’, etc. But unfortunately, as in so many instances of premeditated distress, when the moment actually did come Mr Winsley discovered that all his worst fears had already been indulged. Since eight that morning, when he had entered her room and found her already hours dead—though appearing much the same as usual—he’d had to positively goad himself into an appropriate outward grief.
‘You will never know—no one will—just what Miss Bellingham meant to me. And mine is only the personal loss. Who is there left nowadays to take the place of ladies like Miss Bellingham in the field of education …?’
‘Shall I come over to Copdock? Would that help?’
‘Oh, no, no, no.’
‘I am dreadfully sorry.’
‘She would have celebrated her eighty-seventh birthday on August the third.’
‘She had a very long life.’
‘And a brilliant one,’ Mr Winsley reminded him.
‘Oh, indeed.’
‘Many have much to thank her for.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘She was devoted to you. Your interests were much in her mind at the last.’ Mr Winsley’s voice sounded strangled.
Richard was silent.
‘Well I’d better ring off, there’s a great deal to do. But I wanted you to know particularly. Miss Bellingham—’ Mr Winsley’s words suffered glottal confusions—‘She had been planning great things. Great things … She was longing to reform the School. It was her dream to do so. You, I may add, my dear Brand, came into those plans very fully.’
‘I do? I mean I did?’
A smirk was somehow conveyed. ‘Present tense, Brand! Is it not our duty to carry out what she would have planned had Heaven been merciful?’
‘Perhaps it is. I’m very glad she liked me. I liked her. She was a—’ Words failed Richard. ‘She was a great character,’ he concluded weakly.
Mr Winsley gave the impression of frothing over at his end of the telephone. ‘She was a genius’ he corrected severely.
The talk in the morning-room ceased abruptly as Richard hung up. He glanced in and saw their faces—Stella’s too; she had returned home—taut with expectancy. He hesitated, then walked quietly on up the stairs to his own room. In the waste-paper basket was Bateson’s brief note and the crumpled Suffolk Regiment recruiting instructions he had enclosed. He smoothed them out and filled them up without any feeling at all. The sea hissed over the shingle and the spring fishermen clumped by below. Searchlights came out to play. He walked to the window to watch them and heard again the faint, clever discords of Quentin’s new party-piece. Then he sat down and wrote, ‘Dear Bateson’, crossed it out and put instead, ‘Dear Tom.’ And even when he’d done all this St Prolixia’s was only just striking six.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2012
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
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London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Ronald Blythe, 1960
The right of Ronald Blythe to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, D
esigns and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–28750–5
A Treasonable Growth Page 33