The Man Who Didn't Fly

by Margot Bennett

  “Hester, your father has set his heart on making money. He’s decided the quickest way to do it is by gambling on the Stock Exchange. Do you think it better that I should handle the business for him, or would you sooner he went into the jungle alone? Tell me honestly, Hester, what you think.” He stood smiling at her, both hands in his pockets, his brown face serious behind the smile.

  She hesitated. “I’d sooner he didn’t gamble at all.”

  “But if he means to?”

  “Then—then I suppose it would be better if you helped him,” she said in a troubled voice.

  “I’m glad you say that, Hester, because if you didn’t trust me I—well, I couldn’t bear to come here. Now, I’ll tell you the truth, Hester. When people set out to make money quickly, there is no absolute certainty. High returns are only a reward for being prepared to risk your capital. If you have private information, as I have in this case, the risk is very much less, but it does exist. I’m risking everything I have on this project, but you are quite right to dissuade your father.”

  Hester considered this. It sounded a very reassuring statement, until she remembered that she hadn’t managed to influence her father in any way.

  “But I was counting on you to dissuade him, Maurice.”

  “I haven’t encouraged him,” he pointed out. “And I’m bound to tell him that if he’s determined to risk his capital this is a smaller risk than most.”

  “I leave it to you, then, Maurice,” she said, sighing. “I do trust your judgment—but remember I’m equally bound to advise Father not to speculate.”

  “Naturally you are, and I’ll be happy if he takes your advice—although we’ll all be grinding our teeth if the thing comes off.”

  “I hate money,” she said, exhausted. “I think I’ll slash away at those roses now. Oh, Maurice—are you worried about that man—who was in the garden and said he was following you?”

  “Naturally I’m not.” His face was fixed in good-humour, but she thought she saw a tremor pass across it. “No one has any reason to follow me. He must be some kind of lunatic. Harmless, evidently, or I might have seen more of him last night.”

  She nodded smiling agreement, while contradictions ran through her head. “I must do something about the roses,” she said. Maurice lingered for a moment, then went to the house to find her father.

  Thursday (3)

  Prudence was tidying up the sitting-room when Hester came in.

  “I’ve emptied the ash-trays,” she said in a resigned voice. “If only people didn’t smoke we shouldn’t have to do anything in here for weeks but draw the curtains and throw out the newspapers. Even that makes me feel like Cinderella,” she added pointedly. “Have you been enjoying your walk in the garden?”

  Hester didn’t answer. She took a cushion and shook it viciously, then turned it torn side down.

  “The other side’s torn too,” Prudence said. She looked at her sister with an objective interest. “What’s wrong, Hester? You’re looking old.”

  “It’s Maurice.”

  “Maurice? What on earth’s wrong with Maurice? I should have thought he was the only one round here not to worry about. After all, we have Morgan, and Jackie, and Harry.”

  “Harry keeps saying he’s trying to get Father’s money.”

  “I’ve listened to them and it always sounds as if he’s trying not to get Father’s money.”

  “Harry says that’s how all the best confidence men behave.”

  “Harry seems to know a lot about crime. Let me try curling my lip. Do you suppose when people curl their lips it’s convex or concave?” She went to the glass over the mantelpiece. “It looks queer both ways. If I curl it up towards my nose it’s worse, don’t you think? People in those books must look odd, most of the time. ‘She curled her lip. Her lip twitched.’ Oh, I twitch better than I curl. I’ll practise that one. Do you really think I should be twitching and curling at Maurice?”

  “Stop trying to be funny,” Hester begged. “I don’t think innocent people get followed. Oh, I forgot, you don’t know about that. There was a man hiding in the garden last night. I had a long talk with him and he told me he was following Maurice.”

  “Action at last,” Prudence said with satisfaction. “Things have been getting a bit boring round here. Won’t it be wonderful if Maurice is really an international criminal? Do you think he has anything to do with atom bombs?”

  “I don’t think it’s funny. He may be hiding in the garden now, or the wood, waiting for Maurice.”

  “I’ll look,” Prudence said eagerly. “Anything rather than make the beds.”

  She rushed out of the room. She didn’t want to be stopped to listen to interminable discussions about caution and correct behaviour. She was still armed in complete innocence, and was afraid of no one.

  She walked round the garden. There was no one to be seen. She lost interest in the search, and stopped to look across the valley to the dry brown hill on the other side. She knew suddenly that everything was empty and boring and that nothing would ever happen. The place was dead. It was only in cities that life went on. She stood dreaming of a thousand faces rushing past, every one alight with secret passions. She moved unrecognised through them all, understanding, but aloof. In the theatre elegant women were slipping out of their wraps; insolent, sophisticated men were preparing to be bored. Behind stage, in the little dressing-rooms, everything was frantic and expectant. It was a first night. She had only a small part, but in a way the play hinged upon it. She sighed, and shook her head, and looked angrily across the valley again. She meant to get out of this place, or die.

  She remembered she was supposed to be looking for a lurking stranger. She turned into the woods, and became again a little excited at the thought that a murderer might be hiding behind the trees. She walked cautiously under the deep green ceiling of leaves until she came within sight of the ruined chapel. A man was sitting in one corner, apparently slumped in sleep. He might be dead, she thought, and was carried towards him on a wave of fear.

  “Hello, Prudence,” Harry said, opening his eyes.

  “Harry, what on earth are you doing here so early?” she said in exasperation.

  “I’ve been walking around for a long time, brushing the dew with urgent feet.”

  “You weren’t. You were sleeping.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I was composing a poem.”

  “I don’t believe it. Tell me it, if you were.”

  “Then carrying my incredible maps,

  I knocked at the strange king’s door,

  And asked now for only one ship

  To drive through the unwaked sea

  To that half-predicted shore,”

  Harry said promptly.

  Prudence tried twitching her lip. “Is it something to do with history?” she asked, backing away.

  “No, it’s about me,” Harry said, grinning. “Practically all my poetry is about me.”

  “If it’s about you what does it mean?”

  “It means I want you to ask me to lunch,” he said in a serious voice.

  “Well, I shan’t,” Prudence said irritably. “I don’t know why you want to write poetry anyway, even if it was good. There are lots of things that pay better and you don’t have to know anything. You could be an M.P. or an editor or something.”

  “Or a tinker or a tailor. I like the idea of manual work, but my hands won’t co-operate.”

  “They co-operated all right when you were tearing up that floor.”

  “Shall I tell you why you’re so aggressive towards me, Prudence?”

  Prudence sighed and raised her eyes to the tops of the trees, a monument to patience, preparing to be incredulous.

  “It’s because you’re too young. When you’re older, you’ll find that most men are as monotonous as steam-hammers. When you’ve been battered b
y a hundred thousand soporific words from jolly decent chaps, you’ll yearn for my company. But I shan’t be there. I believe in moving on.”

  “Anyway, you’ve stayed here a long time.”

  “Only a few weeks. Your family’s been here for hundreds of years. It’s time you moved on, too.”

  For a startled second, Prudence looked at him as though she had encountered a friend. Of all the adults she knew, he was the only one who occasionally recognised an obvious truth. She was in this vulnerable state when they heard someone coming towards them through the woods.

  Harry caught her hand. “Let’s hide,” he whispered. His face was bright and serious; he was like a soldier who enjoys war and has sighted the enemy at last. Prudence, to her surprise, found herself kneeling behind a bush, watching the man who came furtively through the trees to the chapel.

  It was Morgan. He stopped by one of the broken walls, and waited, listening. Then he moved on to the ruined stone floor and knelt down. He was half sheltered by the wall, and they could no longer see him.

  Prudence, hiding behind the bush, took a minute to realise how childishly she and Harry were behaving. Hiding behind bushes, watching people who thought they were alone, was too much like the games she had played long ago, when she was twelve or thirteen. She pulled her hand away from Harry’s and stood up.

  “I’m going home now,” she said clearly.

  She walked towards the chapel. “Good morning, Morgan,” she said.

  He jumped up.

  “Hello, Prudence. Hello. Hello, Prudence,” he said in an agitated voice. “I—came here—I can’t stand the house when that little crook’s in it. He’s still there, is he, Prudence? Has your father sent for the police?” He was talking wildly, and it was evident to Prudence that he had no idea what he was saying.

  “Jackie’s very useful. I don’t think it would be fair to send for the police,” she said sternly.

  “It’s the only way to treat people like that,” Morgan gasped. He was in a state of such agitation that Prudence wondered if he was ill, but as he was always pretending to be ill it followed that he must be in perfect health.

  Harry came through the trees, said Good morning to them both with an air of gravity, and sat down on one of the walls.

  Morgan turned to him, with the hatred a hunchback might feel for a jeering boy.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded passionately.

  “I was wondering if I’d take up archaeology. Some of those old wool merchants may have been buried in a golden fleece,” Harry said, looking speculatively at the stone floor.

  Morgan was suddenly transformed. He dropped his shoulders and lowered his head. He looked much smaller, and as malevolent as a weasel about to spring on a rabbit.

  “Stay away from here. Stay out of the wood and away from the house. Get out of my reach,” he advised.

  “Why don’t you have the law on me?” Harry said.

  Prudence began to back away.

  “Harry, come on,” she said in an urgent voice.

  Neither paid her any attention.

  “Get away. Quickly,” Morgan said in a flat voice.

  Harry, with apparent difficulty, began to fumble at his pocket, Prudence and Morgan watched him. The article, whatever it was, stuck in his pocket. In the end it took him two hands to produce it.

  “Now,” he said to Morgan with satisfaction, and held out the small, polished gun, as though he was offering it for inspection. He withdrew it quickly, and balanced it on his knee.

  “Don’t be so violent, Morgan,” he said in a reproving voice.

  Morgan seemed to ignore the gun. “Are you going?” he asked.

  Harry looked at Prudence, and smiled, like a performer who has finished his act and waits for the applause.

  “Certainly,” he said, and rose, tossing the gun from hand to hand, and walked away.

  Morgan sank down on the wall and wiped his brow. Once again, he looked like a sick man.

  “You see what it’s like, Prudence,” he said in a broken voice. “He’s dangerous.” He felt in all his pockets and finally discovered some cigarettes. He took one, the last, and threw the empty packet on the stone floor. He lit the cigarette with a match, and then looked up.

  “Don’t worry your father with any of this,” he advised. “Tomorrow I’m flying to Ireland. By the time I come back Harry will have gone away. There will be no more trouble. I’ll be glad when I’m on that plane.”

  Prudence continued to look at him with her candid, suspicious stare.

  “Let’s get back to the house,” he said irritably.

  Prudence stood waiting for him like a wardress. He jumped up, and they went back through the woods together, not talking at all.

  Thursday (4)

  Harry found Hester beside the rose garden. She wore gloves, and carried a basket and scissors.

  “You look deliciously Edwardian,” he told her lazily. “Are you sure you’re not going to begin trilling ‘Today I’m gathering posies of roses, roses And all the other flowers That fill the happy hours?’ Enter chorus, pursued by bevy of young peers. If we’d lived fifty years ago, Hester, I’d have pelted you with the family jewels. I’ll find diamonds for you still. I promise you. Now sit down, and I’ll cut the flowers.”

  He took the scissors from her.

  “Here’s a pure white rosebud, for the first year of your life, when you crawled about in waterproof pants, with not an impure thought in your head, apart from a deep Freudian desire to murder your parents. And here’s one with a tinge of pink—that’s when you were two, and smeared your frock with jam. Then we’ll have some red ones, for the dark ages up to seven, when infant feet stamp and infant faces turn dark with fury. Then we proceed in a pale rose and cream through the years of fantasy. Roses don’t come in purple. I can’t do you as a brooding adolescent. I shall have to take the deepest red I can find. Now we’ll have the white coffee roses, and the very pale cream, for tenderness and delicacy and all the charms combined. That’s twenty. Am I right?”

  “Harry, I didn’t mean you to take so many. You’ve left none at all. The garden will be bare.”

  “Accept the rosebuds while ye may. One for each year of your life, to emphasise the moral.”

  She took them from him gravely, trying to conceal the sudden surging expectation she felt in her veins.

  “I’ll take them in,” she said in a low voice.

  “If we’re together when you’re twenty-one, I’ll pick you another then.”

  “I’ll take them in,” she repeated.

  “And then?”

  “I’m going to the village,” she said, over her shoulder.

  “May I come with you?” he asked, looking at her with his eager, pathetic smile.

  “Oh, yes.”

  She went quickly to the house with the flowers and arranged them in the wide, blue vase. She put them on a low table by the window, and drew one curtain, so that the sun shouldn’t blight her twenty years too quickly.

  She went into the garden again. Harry was waiting by the gate.

  “You mustn’t talk to me about Maurice,” she warned him.

  “I’m not interested in Maurice at all. It’s Morgan that fills my thoughts.”

  “Why? Why do you think so much about Morgan? Have you met him somewhere before?”

  “No.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious. You know something about Morgan. I wish I did. He said last night he’d been in South Africa, and I think that’s the first thing I’ve heard about his past life. Did you meet him in South Africa?”

  “I’ve never set foot in any part of Africa. I’ll tell you about Morgan when the time comes.”

  She looked at him with deep uneasiness.

  “Don’t do anything—rash. I feel—I keep feeling something terrible’s going to h
appen.”

  “Perhaps it is,” he suggested. “Has your father parted with his money yet?”

  She was so sad and angry she was afraid she was going to cry. She caught one hand in the other, and dug her nails into her own flesh, trying to think of the pain instead of her emotions.

  “If you think it’s funny,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Don’t walk so fast. I think it’s serious. But if it wasn’t your father, I’d stand back and enjoy the comedy.”

  She was outraged. “Comedy!”

  “Yes, comedy. The man with money who’s determined to lose it in order to get more. It’s one of the classic situations. The newspapers thrive on it, and there must be thousands of people whose vanity keeps them out of court.”

  “So you enjoy the ruin of innocent people?”

  “Well, innocent of what?” he enquired reasonably. “Greed? Covetousness? A desire to enjoy the benefits of money they’ve never worked for? No confidence man ever got a penny out of anyone who wasn’t dreaming of easy money.”

  “I won’t listen. You’re insulting my father. And you always look at things upside down.”

  “You’re angry because you suspect it may be the right way to look at them. Hester, you’re making me run to keep up with you.”

  “Go away.”

  “Don’t you see anything funny in the fact that ruin doesn’t mean anything more now than the loss of money?”

  She didn’t answer, and he walked quickly until he was alongside her again.

  “Hester, you’re crying.”

  “Go away.”

  “I have a handkerchief,” he said eagerly, pulling one from his pocket. He looked at it reminiscently. “No, perhaps this one won’t do. I have another handkerchief.” He felt in his pockets, and finally produced a blue handkerchief, still in its virgin folds.

  She began to laugh. “It isn’t like you, Harry, to have two handkerchiefs.”

  “I’ve had my laundry done,” he said, dabbing tenderly at her cheeks. “But I suppose you want to blow your nose? Oh, well, clean handkerchiefs can’t last for ever.”

  “Harry, why are you so horrid about Father.”

  “I’m not. It’s just that I see him as a natural victim. How did Maurice get on to him in the first place? Who told him your father was waiting there, tied to a tree by the drinking pool? Was it Morgan?”