The Man Who Didn't Fly

by Margot Bennett

  “When Harry stays to lunch,” he said, “the next thing that happens is that around two in the morning I’m being asked to play Donegal Poker. You have two cards each and you take away the value of the one from the other. Then you bet a penny, or a shilling, or a pound that the difference in your cards is bigger than the difference in his. Or if you don’t want to bet, you put your money in the kitty instead. And you get extra from the kitty for every point you win by. It’s a gambling game,” he added unnecessarily. He glanced at Wade. “If any girl decides to marry Harry, she’ll have a bad time.”

  “This is wonderful soup, Prudence,” Hester said.

  “I had to grate twelve onions with my eyes shut,” Prudence said. “I’d better warn you that my cooking phase is nearly over. I’m going on to dress-designing next. Why would any girl who married Harry have a bad time, Morgan?”

  “Gamblers are always losing the housekeeping money,” Morgan said.

  “Always? Don’t they sometimes win?” Prudence asked. She was still at the age when contradiction is automatic.

  “Not often,” Morgan said, looking around for help. His conversational phase was over, and he wanted to be left alone on the mantelpiece again.

  “I thought they sometimes had syndicates and died rich,” Prudence persisted.

  “Not many do.”

  “And some gamblers make fortunes on the Stock Exchange and go to Hunt balls. It would be O.K. being married to a gambler like that. The real thing is not to generalise,” Prudence said sternly.

  “Harry doesn’t make fortunes on the Stock Exchange. He plays Donegal Poker in the small hours,” Morgan said angrily. He was usually a very quiet man, emotional only about his illnesses, but Prudence could annoy him very quickly. She was sixteen, not at all shy in her assumption that she had the solution to all human problems; and she added to this common adolescent feature a frightening competence. She could light a fire with one match and mend broken fuses.

  “I don’t see that Donegal Poker would ruin his wife,” she now said scornfully. Morgan wasn’t old enough to be treated with the dubious respect she gave her father. He was about forty, too old to count, not old enough to be allowed indulgently to revel in his imaginary illnesses, and he had a twinging smile that scraped uneasy symbols on her mind.

  Wade took no part in the discussion. He was lost in a private world of monetary calculations, where the house, miraculously restored, was crammed with guests who paid large sums of money and incurred no overheads. He began to pencil figures on the tablecloth. ‘9 at £10 each.’ Then he thought of Maurice, and looked up smiling.

  “How would everyone like a little trip to Madeira this winter?” he asked genially.

  Hester smiled at him unhappily, beginning to realise that her father was like a greyhound, doomed for ever to run round a circular track after an electric hare that would never be caught. She stood up, and began to gather the plates.

  “The dining-room is so far from the kitchen,” she said. “Couldn’t we move the dishes by bicycle, Prudence?” She wasn’t entirely used to the house. Her father had bought it, an astoundingly bad investment, when he had been forced to sell The Grey House to cover his losses on the fruit farm.

  In the kitchen they found Harry with the soup saucepan in front of him. He was eating from it with a spoon.

  “There was no sherry in any room at all,” he explained. “So I thought I had better come out here to say goodbye. Who’s lunching here today?”

  “Morgan. He pays for his board, so we have to toss him a biscuit now and then,” Hester said coldly.

  Harry pushed the saucepan away. “Morgan’s got so much anxiety in his heart he walks with a list to the left side. He has the merit of being very fond of the game of Donegal Poker. I’m still a hungry man, Prudence. You’ll give me a spoonful from that casserole before you take it in?”

  “If you help with the washing-up,” Prudence said, scowling.

  “We can discuss that later,” Harry said easily. He emptied some of the meat from the casserole on to his soup plate.

  “Morgan drinks without getting any pleasure from it,” he said. “He drinks alone in his room.”

  “Harry, how do you know?” Hester asked.

  “I’ve seen the empty bottles. He hides them in his wardrobe, like Hemingway.”

  “But how did you come to look in his wardrobe?” Hester asked, shocked.

  “It’s the place to find empty bottles. Why is Morgan hanging around that room your father is painting?”

  “Is he?”

  “When I couldn’t find any sherry, I went up there again. He shot out of the room like a clay pigeon from a trap.”

  “We’d better take what’s left of the casserole to the dining-room,” Prudence said bitterly.

  “If you don’t want him in that room, getting in the way, I’ll tell him doctors have discovered this new paint is a prime cause of T.B. That will send him off to London for an X-ray,” Harry said.

  Prudence hovered in the door with the casserole. “Come on, Hester.”

  “How long is it since anyone was in the room—the attic room?” Harry asked.

  “Years, I suppose,” Hester said over her shoulder.

  She was worried when she went back to the dining-room, and she found it hard not to take too obvious an interest in Morgan’s face. She had never before met a secret drinker, and she looked at him now with a mixture of clinical interest and human sympathy; she saw nothing but a cold, reticent face, with features that suggested strength far more than weakness. She wanted to help him, but she was surprised when she heard herself saying:

  “I want to walk to Furlong Hill this afternoon. Would you like to come, Morgan?”

  “A walk?” he asked grudgingly. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Yes, yes, thank you, Hester. In about an hour?”

  “Morgan is a bit queer,” Prudence said when the two girls were alone in the kitchen.

  “He’s probably going to sit in his wardrobe with the door shut, drinking,” Hester said. “I wonder where Harry is?”

  When she went up to the attic she found Harry. He seemed to be tapping the walls.

  “What are you doing, Harry?” she asked.

  “You saw. I was tapping the walls. Looking for more weak spots.”

  Morgan’s uneasy face appeared in the doorway. He stared at the sand and broken plaster on the floor.

  “I didn’t know you were going to make so thorough a job of this room,” he said accusingly. “Are you going to have all the walls down?”

  “Very likely,” Harry said.

  “If I were your father,” Morgan said to Hester, “I should leave this room alone. It’s too big a job for one man.”

  “But I’m going to help,” Harry said.

  Morgan wavered in the doorway, then left.

  “He looks worried,” Hester said.

  “He does indeed,” Harry said thoughtfully.

  He walked up and down the room, not speaking to her, and she went to the window and looked out again over the trees.

  “Do you hear a ticking?” Harry asked from behind her.

  She listened. “Only my watch, I think.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “I don’t hear anything else.” She turned round. “You’re probably listening to your own watch.”

  “I haven’t got one. I lent it to a friend. He went to South America. Lie down on the floor and listen.”

  “I’ll get paint on my clothes.”

  “Lie down and put your ear to this board,” Harry said. His eyes were bright and excited, his normally sad, mocking face was stern. He looked like an anarchist who at last has his hands on a bomb.

  Hester lay down obediently. She wasn’t sure. She heard, or thought she heard, something that might have been a ticking.

  Her father opened the door and lo
oked at them in consternation.

  “Sshh!” Harry said. “We’re listening to a ticking. It comes from under the floorboards.”

  “A ticking,” Wade repeated. “You’re mad, Harry.”

  “I’m not. The boards are ticking.”

  Wade tried to laugh.

  “If you think it’s a joke,” Harry said, “lie here and listen.”

  Hester stood up. “What do you think it is?” she asked uncertainly.

  “Death watch beetle,” Harry said curtly.

  “What?” Wade said in a stunned voice. He put out a hand to the wall, to support himself.

  “Death watch beetle,” Harry repeated with relish. “They eat their way into the middle of boards and through and through and suddenly the floor collapses, and then the ceiling underneath. They nibble their way round the walls and through the beams on the roof until the whole building shudders and turns to dust—like something found in an Egyptian tomb. Listen!”

  Wade dropped on his hands and knees beside Harry and put his ear to the floor. He thought he heard the sound of ticking.

  “They make the noise by banging their heads on wood,” Harry explained. “It’s a mating song. When the female death watch beetle hears the male banging its head on wood, it gnaws its way through the intervening timbers to reach the male. I suppose they carve themselves out a little cell. It’s like the end of Aïda, except they have children.”

  “Aïda?” Wade asked, looking defenceless and baffled. “What has Italian opera got to do with it?” He was fond of opera, but he hadn’t Harry’s talent for seeing one event in terms of another.

  “Oh, Father, don’t look so worried,” Hester said. “There’s bound to be some way of getting rid of death watch beetle.”

  “Of course there is,” Harry said briskly. “You send for—I think it’s the County Sanitary Engineer. When he’s confirmed it’s death watch beetle he lists your house as a dangerous structure. You have to pull it down or rebuild.”

  “That sounds arbitrary,” Hester said coldly.

  “Or you can take the boards up yourself and soak them in paraffin. That often cures it.”

  Wade looked round the half-painted room at the crumbled wall. “I don’t think I can tackle it today.”

  “I’ll do it for you,” Harry said. “Get me a hammer and chisel and a gallon of paraffin, and I’ll fix it for you.”

  When the tools had been brought to him, he began to wrench up the boards and pour paraffin on the joists beneath.

  “You look like a fire-raiser,” Hester said.

  “These boards aren’t too bad,” Harry said. “It may have spread to the floor beneath, that’s all. Morgan’s room is under this, isn’t it?”

  “Morgan wouldn’t like to have his room torn up,” Wade protested.

  “Take him out for a walk, Hester, then he’ll never know. I’ll do it very neatly,” Harry promised. “But I’ll need some more paraffin.”

  “I’ll send Prudence up,” Wade said.

  Hester lingered.

  “Harry, do you know what you’re doing? You’re not going to do any damage, are you?” she asked unhappily.

  “Damage?” He looked up with a serious, preoccupied face. She felt ashamed of her suspicions, without knowing precisely what her suspicions were.

  “It’s hard to know when you’re being serious, Harry. You’re so different from anyone I’ve ever met,” she said despairingly. She left the room quickly before he had time to answer.

  Prudence appeared with the paraffin, and stood, peering intently at the exposed joists.

  “I’d like to see a death watch beetle,” she said.

  “They’re like woodworm, only smaller. You’d need a magnifying glass.”

  “I’ll get a magnifying glass.”

  “They take cover. They don’t like being exposed to light. You can try, if you want to. I think I’ve finished this bit. I’ll have a look at the room downstairs. You wouldn’t like to hammer these boards back on for me?”

  “Not much.”

  “I’ll put them back later, then.”

  He picked up the tools and the paraffin, and walked downstairs and nonchalantly into Morgan’s room. Prudence followed.

  “Does Morgan know you’re going to be in his room?” she asked.

  “I didn’t ask his permission. Death watch beetle can’t wait.”

  “I can,” said Prudence, and sat down on the bed.

  Harry looked at her briefly, then walked over to the heavy, dark, Jacobean wardrobe, and opened the door.

  “See,” he said, “bottles.”

  Prudence looked, entranced.

  “Harry, I thought you weren’t serious.”

  “People are always thinking I’m not serious, when I am. Help me roll back the carpet.”

  They lifted a table to the corner, then took one end each of the frayed green carpet and rolled it to the other side of the room. Harry looked quickly at the dusty boards underneath, and walked thoughtfully to the middle of the room. He bent down and tapped one board with the hammer.

  “There’s a lot of dust about. Get me housewife’s implements, and I’ll sweep it up,” he said to Prudence.

  She was out of the room for several minutes. When she came back, she carried a book as well as a brush. Harry had already lifted one board and was staring into the hole.

  She stood beside Harry, scrutinising him, noting with distaste that his brown hair waved, that his nose was not quite straight, as if it had once been broken, that his face was round and his mouth and chin soft. She liked a man to have a hard, lean, Hollywood look. Harry was nearly handsome, but he didn’t look like a man who would be put in charge of a space-ship.

  “I’ve been reading about death watch beetles in my insect book,” she said.

  “Yes?” Harry stood up.

  “Are you looking at me with narrowed eyes?” he asked.

  “Death watch beetles court in February,” she said. “You wouldn’t hear them tick in August. It’s people you hear ticking,” she added cryptically.

  “In February?” he said, grinning. “Then I’ve made a mistake.”

  “You have.”

  “A natural, human mistake,” he said cheerfully. “So I’ll put the boards back and say no more. Imagine these little creatures confining their love life to February!”

  “What do you know about death watch beetles anyway?” she asked grimly.

  “I used to collect them when I was a boy. Relax, Prudence, unless you’re training to be a girl detective.”

  “Do you mean to tear up any more floorboards?”

  “There wouldn’t be any point in it, if I can’t separate them when they’re courting.”

  “You know there aren’t any death watch beetles there,” she said accusingly.

  “For all I know, there may be. I regard them as not proven. I’ll put the boards back.”

  “Harry, I don’t know what you’ve been trying to do, but I shall tell Father. Then what will you say?”

  “I shall feign madness. And I’ll leave him to put the floorboards back. You’ll never find out what I was trying to do. But if you keep your mouth shut, you’ll discover something very interesting—about Morgan.”

  “About Morgan?” Prudence asked, frowning.

  “Or perhaps you think he’s an ordinary man with nothing queer about him?”

  “He is a bit odd,” Prudence said slowly. “But so are you.”

  “In the next two days I’m going to show you just what Morgan is. You’ll have your name in the papers.”

  “My name in the papers!” Prudence repeated scornfully. “Exactly what do you think I am? A child of twelve?”

  “All right then. You win. Tell your father. I’ll give up. I’ll leave Morgan to get on with it,” Harry said savagely. He picked up the loose flo
orboard and dropped it back into place, his face drooping into melancholy. He looked down at the hammer and chisel he still held, then let them slip from his fingers. He looked like a man who had climbed nearly to the top of a pit, and was sliding down again.

  “I won’t speak to Father now. I’ll give you two days,” Prudence said in the clipped, decisive voice that Englishwomen use to intimidate foreigners on the Golden Arrow.

  Wednesday (3)

  Morgan walked halfway up Furlong Hill with Hester before he was overtaken by ill-health. He clapped one hand to his side, waved a hand weakly in the air, and leant against a tree for support.

  “I can’t go on,” he said.

  “What’s wrong, Morgan?”

  “It’s a pain at my heart, that’s all. I suppose it’s nothing, really.”

  “Have you ever had trouble with your heart before?”

  “I’ve suspected for years that there was something wrong.”

  Hester looked at him thoughtfully. In the short time she had known him he had suffered from his liver, his appendix, and his tonsils. She knew nothing of how to treat a hypochondriac invalid.

  “Are you unhappy about something, Morgan?” she asked.

  “Unhappy? I feel as though I was being knifed,” he said in a gasping voice.

  “But is there something else troubling you, Morgan?”

  He groaned. “My heart!”

  She sat down beside him. “We must wait until you’re better.”

  “Hester? Did you see some strangers in the village?”

  “I didn’t notice. Probably. It’s August, Morgan,” she said impatiently. “The village is always full of tandem bicycles or foreigners doing England in a one-day coach tour.”

  “Your father told me this was quiet country where strangers never came.”

  “It’s not Father’s fault that England is small and everyone has a holiday in August. Would you like to come home and rest?”

  Morgan rose, wincing, and hobbled painfully down the hill. The path plunged steeply through the woods. He looked at it nervously, as though he thought it had been mined.