Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  So here was the detestable Lumb, who had watched Sadie Sackett dancing to the cattle, and who would have got the Shufflebotham if he hadn’t added to his other disabilities a real sense of comedy and a graceful and attractive style. And what the hell was he doing here, anyway? Clout could only conjecture that Sadie had encountered him, and sent him along out of pure mischief. It decidedly wasn’t a propitious introduction. ‘Are you George Lumb?’ he asked.

  The young man nodded. ‘Yes, I’m L-L-Lumb.’ His own name appeared to give him particular difficulty.

  ‘The Mr Lumb who is working at New Hall?’ Olivia struck in swiftly with this.

  For a second Lumb didn’t reply. He seemed to be taking stock of some unknown factor in the situation. ‘Yes,’ he presently said. ‘I’m working there for a bit.’

  ‘We’ve heard of you. I’m particularly interested, because I’m a Jory – Olivia Jory. But not the New Hall Jorys – they’re just kinsmen. I expect you know that this is Colin Clout. We’ve been exploring.’

  Lumb nodded. ‘So-so I s-see.’

  Clout cast about in his head for some remark that would be extremely uncivil. He was aware of yet a further occasion for deploring Lumb. There was no special reason to suppose that the man would be interested in Olivia, or she in him. But they belonged to similar worlds – new-poor worlds. Clout (who, after all, was embarking on a professional career as a biographer) felt that the early life of Lumb was a field for quite secure conjecture. He had been at some small, dim public school, the fees for which his father – certainly a dear old vicar – had made untold minute sacrifices to achieve. Lumb was mild, gentle, friendly – and at the same time fanatical in anything he undertook: writing novels, or authenticating Lawrence on the musical capacities of cattle, or even cataloguing books. He would certainly have made an excellent job of a Shufflebotham – even of the first Shufflebotham on the deceased eminent Alderman himself.

  What he was up to now was difficult to guess. But Clout seemed to know that his first conjecture had been wrong. Lumb wouldn’t come along like this – or be sent along – just for the sake of his nuisance-value. He probably hadn’t known at all that there was anybody in the mausoleum. He had come on some independent mission. Perhaps he had tumbled on the same basis for a novel that Olivia had, and like her had come to investigate an important part of its setting. But Clout found that he had his doubts about this. He took another glance at the stammering, squinting Lumb, and acknowledged to himself that he was impressed. Lumb didn’t look at all the sort of man who would suddenly become enthusiastic about celebrating early nineteenth-century Jorys in a historical novel. Lumb was up to something else.

  The opportunity to say anything scathing had passed. Olivia was clearly determined on giving Lumb a friendly reception; she had offered him a cigarette, and was talking to him with the easy, delightful frankness that Clout had admired in her from the first. This was very tiresome in itself. And it was yet more annoying that Olivia was talking about him. She was explaining to Lumb that he, Clout, would presently be appearing at New Hall in quest of biographical material on Sir Joscelyn Jory. ‘And I’, she said, ‘met Colin quite by chance, on the very day he came back here to hunt up something of the sort. Isn’t it odd?’

  Lumb agreed that it was odd.

  ‘As it happens, I’m very interested too – both in Joscelyn Jory and in my own ancestor, his brother Edward. I’m going to write a novel about them.’

  ‘A n-novel?’ Lumb frowned.

  ‘Yes – don’t you think it might be fun? And I hope that Colin, when he joins you at New Hall, may find out things that may be useful to me.’

  Lumb’s frown remained. He was clearly thinking. It was something, Clout divined, that he did rather well. And suddenly Clout felt a senseless panic. It seemed to proceed from an obscure intuition that Lumb was about to perform some dreadful act – or at the very least to utter some atrocious sentiment.

  And something of just this sort did now happen. Lumb turned to him. ‘Do you b-b-believe this n-nonsense?’ he asked.

  The doves didn’t stop cooing, and the sun continued to shine. The universe is a strictly neutral affair, neither beneficent as some poets have proclaimed, nor malign as numerous novelists have darkly hinted. No bolt descended from the blue upon the miserable Lumb, nor did Olivia’s grey dress fall away from her to reveal the burning limbs and gleaming vestments of an offended goddess. A sense of the cataclysmic, indeed, seemed confined to Clout himself. Lumb’s expression was mildly inquiring – which was clearly what was most habitual with him. Olivia might have been described – but only by an observer more in possession of himself than was her outraged lover – as engaged in composed calculation.

  ‘Nonsense?’ Clout heard himself say. He had risen to his feet, and even amid his just indignation was aware of himself as rather fatuously putting on a ham-fisted turn. ‘You miserable little…’

  ‘Be quiet, Colin!’ Olivia made an impatient gesture. Then she turned to Lumb. ‘You’ve broken our agreement,’ she said quietly.

  Clout couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Your agreement?’ he demanded – and felt that he might take to stuttering worse than Lumb. ‘You know him? You’ve met before?’

  Olivia ignored this. ‘And you’re the sort’, she continued to Lumb, ‘that’s supposed to know about playing fair.’

  Rather disconcertingly, Lumb turned to Clout with a grin. ‘Women,’ he said.

  And once more Clout felt foolish panic. He had a nasty conviction that he would have to be very smart to cope with Lumb. If Lumb had said ‘women’ satirically or witheringly or in anger there would have been nothing remarkable about it. But in fact he gave it the air of gently perceptive comment upon one large aspect of the human situation; and this was unnerving. It seemed to Clout that Lumb was what they had used to call, at school, a Great Brain – meaning those in a different class again from boys who, like Clout himself, sat comfortably at or near the top of the sixth form. Not that Clout thought any coming show-down with George Lumb to be necessarily a lost battle. Except for these momentary visitings of nasty doubt, he was full of confidence – both in himself and in Olivia. If Lumb had been up to something with Olivia, she must be rescued forthwith. He resolved to speak with firmness. ‘I’d like to know, please,’ he said, ‘what this is all about.’

  ‘I was quite p-p-prepared to stretch a p-p-point.’ Lumb paid no further attention to Clout. ‘Although p-p-pretending to this chap that you and I had never m-m-met was a bit thick. I’d accept it as the l-l-luck of the game that you’ve p-p-pocketed him just when he’s going to write this biography. It gets him into New Hall as your spy. That’s all right by me too. But I won’t stand for him as your d-d-dupe. All this about a n-n-novel.’

  ‘Her dupe!’ Clout was again unable to refrain from hinting immediate physical violence.

  ‘Do be quiet, Colin. I quite see Mr Lumb’s point.’ Olivia seemed unperturbed. ‘No doubt it will be best to have a few explanations.’

  ‘You see his point? Why, the man’s outrageous!’

  Olivia laughed. ‘Not a bit. He’s highly reasonable. Aren’t you, Mr Lumb? By the way, may I call you George?’

  ‘P-p-please do.’

  Clout was really staggered by this – not more by the monstrousness of Olivia’s most untimely advance to familiarity with the wretched man than by the sudden revelation in Lumb of common human frailty. It was clear that he was still indignant with Olivia. But at the same time he was goggling at her in a manner betraying nothing less than disgusting infatuation. Clout had realized from the first that Olivia was a girl who must knock men over wherever she went. But this was the first specific exemplification of the point. It was just one more jolt.

  ‘But George doesn’t like imposture about novel-writing. The craft’s sacred to him. And I expect, Colin, it’s the same with you. Anyway, the novel-business was a mistake. I could never had kept it up. You’d have spotted me as a fraud in no time. Any extremely clever person would.’

/>   This speech naturally occasioned something like a revolution in Clout’s mind. He realized that Olivia had been for some reason disingenuous, and he noted the outrageous stroke of flattery to which she had finally had recourse. He realized that the person with whom he had been in love was substantially his own invention. He realized with equal force that the real woman – tricksy, resourceful, and unscrupulous – was even more enchanting. Like Lumb, he was indignant. But, like Lumb, he goggled. Olivia glanced from one young man to the other, and was plainly satisfied with what she saw. ‘I’m so glad’, she said, ‘that it’s going to be possible to have absolute frankness. We shall have to take sides, I suppose. But that will be part of the fun.’

  ‘I’d like to be on your side if it was p-p-possible, Olivia. But I have to guard the interest of my employer.’

  Olivia looked up swiftly. ‘You haven’t told Sir John anything yet? You haven’t broken that bargain?’

  ‘I shan’t tell him anything until I’m convinced it isn’t a m-m-mare’s nest. He isn’t very bright, and it would only fuss him.’

  ‘Sir John has no legitimate interest, anyway. Remember the swap. It’s my whole point.’

  ‘I know it is.’ Lumb nodded vigorously. His stammer, Clout noticed, tended to fade away as he warmed up. ‘But the evidence for the swap is even thinner than the evidence for the t-t-treasure.’

  ‘For the what?’ Clout looked from Lumb to Olivia in bewilderment. ‘Whatever has treasure got to do with it?’

  ‘Everything, Colin my dear.’ Olivia’s laugh rang delightfully through the mausoleum. ‘This is all about treasure – a perfectly enormous treasure. And we may be sitting on it now.’ She patted the grassy bank on which they were all perched. Then – unexpectedly, gracefully, with an enchanting fling of skirt and glint of knees – she was on her feet in front of them. ‘Do you know what I think will be best? That I leave George to explain. Then he can say absolutely anything he likes. That’s fair. And it’s only fun – isn’t it? – if one plays entirely straight.’

  Clout stared at her in dismay. The thought that Olivia might vanish again quite precluded his feeling anything a trifle steep in her last sentiment. ‘You mustn’t go!’ he said.

  ‘St-t-teady on, Olivia!’ Lumb was equally upset

  ‘You can talk it out – a couple of men together.’ She glanced from one to the other in impartial mockery. ‘So – as your Sadie says – So long!’ She turned and ran for the ivy.

  Neither Clout nor Lumb stirred. Abject and ashamed of it, they didn’t even follow Olivia Jory with their eyes as she rapidly climbed. But they did presently look at each other cautiously – and each found himself viewing so dismal a sight that they involuntarily exchanged rueful smiles.

  ‘One could scarcely make a grab at her,’ Clout said.

  ‘No. She knows her own m-m-mind.’ Lumb dug a heel gloomily into the turf. ‘It’s easy for you, C-C-Clout. You can b-b-back her b-b-bald-headed.’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘D-d-damn it, no!’ Lumb was angry, although it was difficult to distinguish with what. ‘It would be a breach of t-t-rust. But I’d better do what Olivia said, and t-t-tell you what I can. For the sake of what she c-c-calls fair play.’ He paused, brooding darkly. ‘Women,’ he said again.

  10

  ‘I begin with a personal narrative.’ George Lumb had turned over on his stomach and was peering into the grass as if it was a jungle. ‘This will quite quickly bring me to my first meeting with Olivia, and to the situation as it stands at present.’

  Clout saw that he mustn’t interrupt. When Lumb could ignore the existence of other human beings, using articulate speech only as for the purpose of soliloquy, he didn’t stammer at all. So Clout kept quiet, and found that he was coming to view the prone figure before him with mixed rather than pure feelings. Lumb was a pest – but there was also something engaging about him. He was even shabby in an engaging way – a way, that is, that Clout understood. His jacket was threadbare and the seat of his trousers was very shiny. There could be no doubt that Lumb was excessively poor.

  ‘When I’d taken my degree, I felt I must get down to serious writing at once. The real thing seemed to be coming to me at last.’ Lumb, who couldn’t be more than twenty-one, paused broodingly for a moment, as if reviewing long years of unsuccessful creative struggle. ‘Lawrence had been a great influence with me. And, after Lawrence, some modern Continental writers – and notably Kafka. At last I felt I was through with all that pupillary phase. I dare say you know what I mean.’

  This time Clout had no difficulty in keeping silence. Clearly, it would be dreadfully humiliating if Lumb ever got to know about the existence and yet-unfinished state of The Examination.

  ‘So I looked about for a job on which to keep going. I rather think Gingrass might have found me something. But, of course, it’s fatal for a writer to mess about with the academic life. He ought to get clear of it as soon as he can, don’t you think? Well, what I wanted was a local job, so that I could live at home, and at the same time pay my way there. My father – he’s the parson of a parish called Bardley, less than four miles from here – found me the very thing. Our Squire is Sir John Jory, and New Hall is just over the vicarage wall. It seemed the library was in a great muddle, and Sir John had a vague notion there might be quite a lot in it that is valuable. He offered to take me on. Of course I explained that I hadn’t the right bibliographical training. But he very decently said he’d have me, all the same. That’s where my obligation to him begins.’

  Lumb paused at this, and gently waved his heels in air. Even to this idle action, it seemed to Clout, he contrived to give rather a special air of intellectual distinction.

  ‘Sir John didn’t say anything about this biography of his great-grandfather that it seems you’ve been turned on to. But I thought I ought to know about the building up of the library, and that made me think about the family history in general. There have been Jorys for quite a long time, but they’ve never been what would be called a distinguished family. They’ve never produced anything tip-top – not, that is to say, until Olivia.’

  Clout had one of his fits of alarm. There was something unnerving in this indication that Lumb – Great Brain Lumb – was as deep in as he was.

  ‘But at least there had been this rather eccentric archaeologist, Joscelyn, who had been almost the last of the Jorys to live at Old Hall. His dates are easy to remember. He was born in the same year as Wordsworth and died a decade earlier.’

  ‘In fact, 1770 to 1840.’

  ‘Y-y-yes. Well, he sounded quite interesting, and I did poke about and discover some facts. Joscelyn drifts in and out of various memoirs of the period – in addition to figuring in the transactions of learned societies, and so on. He was a specialist in this business of tombs and burial customs. That’s where, towards the end of his life, he differed from the professional learned chaps in that line. They went after tombs as historical evidences – for what they might reveal about a long-past living culture. Joscelyn liked them for their own sakes. He wandered about the world, haunting them in all their melancholy variety. And then he hit on the notion of having them, so to speak, artificially thick on the ground; of assembling a collection of them in his own park. Hence, as you know, this mausoleum. It brought him up against quite a lot of trouble.

  ‘Even in post-Napoleonic Europe, which was still a wonderful place for rich people to fool around in, there was sometimes difficulty in walking off with a tomb. Joscelyn was usually prepared to pay cash down. But the ownership of tombs is often, it seems, disputed between private persons. And, if the things are sufficiently grand, governments may step in and be extortionate or obstructive. After a good deal of experience of all this, Joscelyn, as far as I can make out, went on the black market. Sometimes, even, he appears to have proceeded to plain theft. And in the end there was a row.’

  ‘So big that all this’ – Clout made a gesture – ‘stopped off?’

  ‘I d-d-don’t know, C-C-Clout. Th
is place was nearly completed, and Joscelyn had a lot of stuff ready to move in, when the obscure row happened. Quite soon after that he seems to have dropped the whole thing, and a few years later he died. Perhaps as his own dissolution approached, other people’s tombs held less attraction for him. Perhaps he just took a craze for something else.’

  ‘And that’s all you’ve found out?’

  ‘It was all I’d found out up to the day that Olivia came to tea.’

  ‘Olivia came to tea with you?’

  ‘N-n-no. She c-c-came to tea at New Hall, although she only has a slight acquaintance with the Jorys there. But I was p-p-present.’ Lumb paused and gently sighed. ‘Oh! when mine eyes did see Olivia first,’ he breathed, ‘methought she purged the air of pestilence.’

  Clout didn’t find this at all odd. ‘That instant was I turned into a hart,’ he rejoined simply, ‘and my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, e’er since pursue me.’

  There was silence. The two young men looked at each other seriously and with a kind of melancholy respect.

  ‘D-d-did you ever believe’, Lumb presently asked, ‘that sort of Zuleika D-D-Dobson business ever really happened? Of course, it’s in other b-b-books too.’

  Clout made no immediate reply – and when he did speak it was to return to a subject less absolutely mysterious. ‘Well, then,’ he said ‘–about this treasure, and so forth?’

  ‘Olivia and I went wandering through the gardens at New Hall, and had a lot of talk. I quickly saw that she wanted to pump me.’ Lumb’s gravity was here broken in upon by his highly intelligent grin, so that Clout marvelled at how much it must have been with his eyes open that he had fallen in love. ‘She wanted to know if Sir John’s library had much in the way of old family papers – letters or diaries, perhaps, of the first half of the nineteenth century.’

  ‘But she didn’t say she was going to write a historical novel?’

  ‘N-n-no. She couldn’t have imagined I’d believe anything so absurd.’ Lumb offered this opinion quite inoffensively. ‘She told me about a family tradition – a sort of legend. She’d had it from an old nurse. According to this tradition, her great-great-grandfather, Edward Jory, had won something like a fortune from his brother, Sir Joscelyn, by some sort of queer bet. Or rather, it was first a bet, and then a bit of barter.’