Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  ‘That would be marvellous. I’d be most grateful.’ Clout made this reply with a fervour that he could only hope didn’t sound too imbecile. But, of course, she must really know. Olivia couldn’t but know how he felt about her. And she wasn’t in the least off-putting, although equally she wasn’t faintly what Sadie would coarsely call come-hithering.

  And it certainly wasn’t with any facile flirtatiousness that she said a notable thing now. She was looking at him quite seriously – almost, indeed, with an effect of calculation. ‘I think there’s everything to be said’, she pronounced, ‘for our getting together.’

  8

  What he had heard, Clout told himself reasonably, was no more than a business proposition. But his imagination uncontrollably gave Olivia Jory’s words a further sense. Above their heads, the doves cooed on a note that seemed to produce more than mere sound. The warm, still air inside the mausoleum throbbed and pulsed; and the effect was disconcertingly mixed up with something happening inside his own chest. His heart was pounding. He said rather feebly, ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything about Miss Sackett’s other friend?’

  ‘Sadie’s other friend?’ The question seemed so odd and meaningless that Clout stared quite blankly at Olivia.

  ‘The one working at New Hall. I think she said his name was Plumb.’

  ‘Oh! Not Plumb – Lumb.’

  ‘Lumb?’ Olivia laughed. ‘What queer names people have.’

  ‘Yes – don’t they?’ Without being aware of it, Clout gave his beloved a repellent scowl. At last she had said something scarcely tactful. Moreover he was disgusted with the manner in which the unknown George Lumb kept bobbing up on him. ‘I don’t know anything about the chap,’ he said. ‘I never set eyes on him. But I know he stammers, and has a squint, and has been quite a prize student about the place.’

  ‘Like you?’ She laughed again. ‘I mean only in being a prize student. But this job he’s got with Sir John’s books will have led to his taking an interest in the Jorys at large. He may be useful to you.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it’s not likely that Lumb has taken it into his head to work really intensively at the family history. Of course, if he shows a polite interest in the family, Sir John Jory will presumably give him a pointer or two.’

  ‘The only pointer Sir John would be likely to give Mr Lumb would be one on four legs.’ Olivia was amused. ‘You see, Sir John doesn’t much get beyond books on the Dog and the Horse. I’d say he knows nothing about family history, and cares less.’

  ‘No doubt that’s why he’s agreed to an unknown young person at the local university writing a life of Sir Jocelyn.’

  ‘That’s certainly why.’

  Clout took this frank rejoinder in good part. He couldn’t quite make out what Olivia’s questions and speculations were in aid of. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘If you’re planning this novel, I expect you’ve done a certain amount of digging things up?’

  ‘Digging things up?’ Olivia appeared startled – and then she smiled. ‘That’s an odd phrase – at least in its particular context. Joscelyn was always digging things up. It was his line. But I’ve done a certain amount of reading, and of what Miss Sackett calls poking about.’ Olivia paused to stub out a cigarette. ‘But this job of yours,’ she said. ‘It must have been arranged some time ago?’

  Clout considered. ‘Yes, I think it must have been. The man who decides – he’s called Professor Gingrass – must have sounded Sir John some time back, and got him to promise access to papers and so forth in order to write this life of Sir Joscelyn. It’s for a sort of prize at the University, you see. The Shufflebotham Award.’ Clout got this out stoutly. ‘When the thing’s finished, one gets called Shufflebotham Fellow.’

  Olivia nodded rather absently. She didn’t appear to find this information ridiculous or even mildly funny. ‘Then this Mr Lumb wouldn’t have been working at New Hall for any length of time before this project of yours was fixed up?’

  ‘I should imagine not. Actually, it was in Gingrass’ head that he might set Lumb himself on the job. It was rather like that, when I barged in. But it seems that Lumb’s being now at New Hall has nothing to do with that. It’s just chance.’

  ‘I see.’ Olivia got to her feet with a movement that was slightly restless. It suggested a sense that time that might be in some way valuable was slipping dangerously by. She glanced round the mausoleum. ‘I thought this would be a good place for a big scene,’ she said. ‘But now I’m not so sure.’ She made as if to open her cigarette-case again, and then changed her mind and put it in a pocket. ‘Did I hear Miss Sackett say that this Plumb – Lumb, I mean – is a novelist? Isn’t he quite young?’

  ‘He’s certainly a good deal younger than I am. And I think Sadie simply meant that he wants to be a novelist.’ Clout hesitated. ‘A surprising number of people do.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Olivia appeared interested in this. ‘How very odd.’

  ‘Odd?’ Once more Clout was puzzled. In the circumstances, Olivia’s comment seemed quite as odd as the fact itself. At the same time he felt himself getting a sudden glimpse of what this was all about. There was some part of his mind, professional and uninfatuated, that told him Olivia’s conception of prose fiction must be a good deal less sophisticated than much else about her. Having decided to write a historical novel embodying family material, she probably had the amateur’s exaggerated sense of what would be good ‘copy’. She had herself come upon something connected with Sir Joscelyn Jory that she believed would be the making of her story, and she was anxious that nobody else should get hold of it until she had exploited it in her own book. The news that the young man working at New Hall was himself a budding novelist had naturally rather alarmed her. And she must have been startled, too, when the nature of the Shufflebotham Award had become clear to her, by the similar possible threat constituted by Clout himself. And with all this she was now coping warily and well. Conceivably she could be charged with a little lacking candour. But then, although she must by now suspect the nature and even the degree of Clout’s devotion, she couldn’t positively know how utterly reliable it made him. It was all part of her attractiveness, of her coolness and cleverness and poise, that she was taking so cautious a line.

  All the same, Clout yearned for confidence. It was only their second meeting; but their hearts, he felt, should be open to each other. He should tell her not only about the Shufflebotham but about The Examination as well. And she should tell him just what the wonderfully promising episode in the history of the Jorys was. If they could do as much as this before parting, it would be a promise of yet larger mutual trust to come. Suddenly he remembered that she had proposed beginning to tell him a little about Sir Joscelyn, preparatory to the deeper researches in which he must presently engage. And somehow this had got side-tracked. They must get back to it now. If he could get her to talk at all on the subject, she might go on to entrust her secret to him. ‘What was chiefly interesting’, he asked, ‘about Sir Joscelyn?’

  ‘I suppose you might say it was the singleness of his interest in this kind of thing.’ She glanced round the mausoleum. ‘If he’d finished it, it would have been terrific.’

  ‘Why didn’t he? Did he die, or run out of money?’

  ‘I think money ran pretty low. But it wasn’t that, and it wasn’t that he died. There was some crisis that I don’t yet clearly know about. Let’s walk round again, Colin. Shall I call you that?’

  ‘Yes, Olivia, please do.’ For some seconds Clout had difficulty in distinguishing even the broad outlines of the structure in which they were to perambulate. The tremendousness of this latest development had positively dimmed his vision. He managed however to steer some sort of straight course beside his enchanting girl. ‘What about Edward?’ he asked. ‘He didn’t share his brother’s passion for the winding-sheet and the shroud?’

  ‘My great-great-grandfather preferred the quick to the dead. They were rivals, I think, in a way; and in the e
nd they overdid it. Or that’s what I seem to gather. Edward ended up with rather a crisis too.’

  This, although scarcely explicit, was a start. Whether the crisis of which Olivia spoke was in fact the secret she was hoarding for her novel, or whether it was really something still quite vague to her, it was impossible to guess. ‘I suppose’, Clout said, ‘that Sir Joscelyn was for most of his days a perfectly reputable amateur archaeologist and so forth, suitable for the stodgy sort of biography I’m supposed to write?’

  ‘Oh, yes – he certainly was. The family picture is of just that, with perhaps a touch of amiable aristocratic eccentricity that grew rather pronounced at the end. He gave a collection of Etruscan stuff to the British Museum, which is a highly respectable thing to do. It certainly wouldn’t occur to Sir John that an academic biography wouldn’t be highly proper and becoming.’ Olivia came to a halt. ‘Here – just in the middle – there was going to be a dakma.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A dakma – the sort of tower upon which Parsees exposed corpses. They believed that either burial or incineration might pollute an entire element. But of course things happen to corpses left stuck up in the air. So there was provision for drainage into a central pit.’

  ‘I see.’ Clout was rather startled by this sudden turn by his beloved to mortuary considerations. ‘And was Joscelyn going to have a central pit?’

  ‘Certainly. And the corpses were to be in wax. All the corpses were to be that, and so were the horses and cows and crocodiles.’

  ‘What on earth were they for?’

  ‘Patagonians killed horses at the grave in order that the dead might ride to Alhuemapu.’

  ‘Was that a nice place to ride to?’

  ‘Beastly, I imagine. The cows and crocodiles – and, of course, cats – were for the Egyptians. The gallery up there was to be roofed and glassed in. That was for the collection of mourning garments. The Romans called them lugubria.’

  ‘I bet they did.’ Clout realized with something of a shock that dimly at the back of his mind there had been forming the notion that the present was a propitious occasion for advancing to actual love-making. Of course it could still be done. The personages of the Jacobean drama, for instance, were great hands at advancing amatory designs amid an oppressive décor of wormy circumstances. But it didn’t seem quite right now – not when one had one’s eye on a well-bred English girl with twentieth-century habits of mind. There was nothing to do but curse the Parsees and Patagonians, and bide one’s time. ‘You seem’, he said a little morosely, ‘to have been reading it all up.’

  ‘It’s interesting in itself. And don’t you think, Colin, it would give just the right atmosphere for a historical novel that is at the same time contemporary?’

  Clout found this difficult. He found it difficult, that is to say, to consider what might be called a technical and aesthetic question in a context so massively emotive as that created by the presence of Olivia. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘That’s to say, I’m going to be enormously interested in your conception of the whole thing. I just shan’t be able to hear too much of it.’

  She gave him a thoughtful look, and then rather abruptly moved on. ‘What set Joscelyn going on all this’, she said, ‘was the fact that there’s a barrow somewhere on the estate. I was asking you, you remember, about that.’

  ‘Yes. It’s on a small hill at the northern end of the park.’

  ‘It had been opened and explored – and no doubt rifled – when he was a boy. And that’s what gave his imagination its odd bent. I’d like to have a look at the barrow too, some time. Although apparently it’s entirely bunged up again.’

  Clout nodded. ‘I know a bit about that. There’s an archaeological society at the University, and I can remember their proposing to excavate the barrow. It was explained to them that the job had been done donkeys’ ages ago, and that they’d find absolutely nothing. So they gave it up.’ He paused. ‘ When you asked me about the barrow, Olivia, you asked me about an ice-house as well. What put that in your head? It’s quite aside from this sort of business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, entirely.’ Olivia was decided. ‘But it’s a sort of relic of grand living that has an interest of its own. Can one get into it?’

  ‘I’d hardly suppose so. Nobody’s likely to have taken the slightest interest in it for generations, and it’s probably all caved in. But I know where it is. We could have a look some time.’

  ‘That would be fun. I feel we could do quite a lot of exploring – you and I.’

  Clout’s heart jumped again – for Olivia, as she said this, had turned and glanced at him. There was nothing out of the way in that. From the first she had never hesitated to look him full in the face, whether seriously, or in tantalizing mockery, or with her most delightful smile. But this time he was aware of something different. Or he thought he was. He might, of course, just be losing his head. ‘Yes, rather!’ he heard himself say, and broke off in confusion. For a second it was his absurd impression that Olivia had vanished. Then he realized that she had sat down again – this time not on any of Sir Joscelyn’s abortive masonry, but on a small grassy slope that rose into the mild autumnal sunshine. She lay back on it and gazed up at the sky. He sat down beside her and remained perfectly still.

  ‘Heaven is up there,’ she said. ‘That’s why they bury us on our backs. Corpses are always made to face the direction it would be nice to go. In the old Scandinavian tombs nobody is ever found facing the frozen north. But of course, the dead are helpless, and have dirty tricks played on them from time to time. Think of being buried in a jar deliberately turned upside-down.’ Olivia sat up again. ‘Do you think I’m a bit touched?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head and smiled. But in fact he was a little uncomfortable. It did seem possible that Olivia was rather obsessed.

  ‘Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.’ Suddenly Olivia arched her back and stretched out her arms behind her. ‘Or rather let’s do nothing of the sort. Let’s forget this is a mausoleum and think of it as something else – say, a temple.’

  ‘Whose temple, Olivia?’ He thought her a miracle of wit and beauty.

  ‘Artemis, decidedly. Or have I got the name wrong? I was never good at them.’ She was laughing at him. ‘I think Joscelyn Jory’s mania very amusing, and most attractive to write about. But I assure you I can have enough of it. I’ve less of Joscelyn in me, if it comes to that, than I have of Edward. And that’s natural, since Edward was my great-great-grandfather. Who and what was your great-great-grandfather, Colin?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’ He was watching her, fascinated. They were both strangely relaxing; the faint warmth of the sun was soaking into them; there was no longer anything inhibiting in their queer surroundings. ‘And I don’t think it’s important,’ he said. ‘But, very illogically, I rather hope my great-great-grandsons will know something about me.’ He felt himself flush. ‘I suppose that’s extraordinarily silly.’

  She at once turned quite serious. ‘Are you talking about fame?’

  ‘If I am, then I’m being terribly pompous. But it would be nice to leave something that would – well, be about for a while.’

  ‘Of course it would.’ Olivia spoke with decision, but something in her voice suggested that she had really been brought up against quite a new idea. ‘You mean – writing?’

  ‘Of course. You must feel just the same.’

  ‘Naturally.’ She said this in a small voice he hadn’t heard before. He looked at her in surprise. She had plucked a blade of grass and was beginning to chew it moodily. ‘How tiresome’, she said, ‘that honesty is one of the luxuries of the prosperous.’

  He was so puzzled that he didn’t manage to make any reply. What she had said sounded artificial and stupid; it might have been a démodé crack remembered from Bernard Shaw.

  She threw the grass away and made an oddly irresolute movement that for a moment he didn’t understand. Then he saw that she was putting out a hand to him
. He realized their solitude in the middle of this bizarre stone circle, and he was at once awed and rather scared. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘When I told you…’ She broke off abruptly, and he saw the hand which had been about to touch his raised suddenly in air and pointing across the mausoleum. They were in solitude no longer. A figure was climbing down the ivy just where Clout himself and Sadie had descended.

  Clout felt an impulse to scramble to his feet, as if there were something improper or compromising in his being found reclining here with the girl. But he at once thought better of this and sat tight. Olivia didn’t stir either; only she gave an odd little sigh that might have been either exasperation or disappointment or satisfaction. ‘Is it somebody come to turn us out?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. That sort of person would have a key to the gate, and come in by it. Besides, I’m entitled to be here, even if you’re not.’ He grinned at her rather doubtfully, for he was in a confused state in which a faint sense of relief mingled with the robust annoyance that certainly preponderated in him. ‘I was sent here by my professor to begin my researches.’

  ‘And you’ve been interrupted, Colin, right at the start.’ She gave him a quick smile that struck him as also being a confused affair. It seemed to mix up something rather new – which might have been compunction – with her familiar delicious mockery.

  The scrambling figure touched ground and turned. It was a young man.

  9

  The young man walked over to them. ‘G-g-good morning,’ he said. He gave a swift glance at Olivia – it was almost as if she held no surprise for him – and then turned to take more deliberate stock of Clout. He was lanky – indeed he was slight to the point of weediness – but this didn’t make him awkward. He had round glasses with rather thick lenses. The eyes that looked through them were bright with intelligence. They were also oddly set. In fact the young man had a squint.