by Joseph Hone
‘The real thing?’
‘Yes: what you have to do, the real thing, whatever it is, with the one person you can really do it with. The rest is just – inconsequential chatter. Friends are great for that,’ she added derisively. ‘The world is full of “friends”,’ a sudden extraordinary vehemence rising in her voice. ‘They’re almost as bad as the others, the enemies, the vulgar fourth-raters most people are today: thugs and gangsters when they’re not mean-minded little schemers. I hate them, hate them all.’
Vulgar fourth-raters, I thought: Alice had lapsed into her Edwardian archaisms again, an embattled Duchess, where the bourgeoisie were storming her gates.
‘You rather narrow your field though, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Seeing life that way. Making it all – or nothing.’
‘That’s exactly what Arthur told me. Like everyone else, he loves compromise. Arthur Roy. Funny name, like a king. But he wasn’t. He’s a New York attorney. He loves his friends, too, down in the Century Club. They mean a great deal to him. But then his whole life is a kind of Club. And I couldn’t join it in the end. And it’s too late anyway now. We’re not actually divorced yet. But as far as I’m concerned I’m Miss Troy again.’
I thought of telling her how all this struck me as pretty childish, how the problems in her life seemed largely of her own making; of telling her how she just lacked the necessary abilities to compromise, to understand, perhaps even to settle for less; of saying to her, in short, that she had simply failed to grow up.
But then I thought how, like Alice, I, too, had cut myself off from wider life and friendship in the past few years; with what perhaps childish derision I too now looked on the contemporary world: a dull place filled with duller people – the churlish, the crass, the ignorant, the cunning. And I thought how an innocent sot like Spinks stood out in such a world, as Alice’s girlfriend obviously had. Like her, Spinks in his way, with all his beer-laden enthusiasms, Spinks was the real thing, too. I knew how rare such people were. And how much one could miss them.
Besides, in criticising Alice for her immaturity, I would surely be doing no more than Arthur had apparently done. She would have heard it all before. Criticism wouldn’t cure her at this late stage. But finally I said nothing because I saw how, if Alice had been a woman of any ordinary sense and convention, I wouldn’t be here, in Arthur’s fine clothes, drinking ice-cold gimlets in her warm drawing-room. I’d have been in Stow police station by now, waiting on a murder charge.
‘I’ve tried to make my own life,’ Alice summed up, in a confident, a happy and not at all a disappointed tone.
‘But why all this very English life? Why so much of that? The pre-Raphaelite paintings, the Gothic decor, the old kitchen; British wild flowers.’
‘Oh, I’ve loved all that ever since I was a child: I had an English nanny, she was always reading to me. Scott’s novels and the stories of King Arthur, the search for the Holy Grail, and that sort of thing. The Knights of the Round Table … I had a book then. I used to read it myself oh, so many times, I lived with it. I must have been about ten or eleven: a big story book, In the Days of the King, it was called, with wonderful line drawings by Walter Crane: a Knight going through a thick, evil, brambly sort of wood on a white charger with a beautiful long-haired maiden, up sidesaddle in front of him: a dark wood. But there was an extraordinary brightness about their heads, I remember, like haloes, like a fire in the dark. They were going to win.’
‘Yes. I wonder if the Knight was Launcelot, taking Arthur’s wife away. He certainly won.’
‘Maybe. But I was never cynical.’
‘No. I can see that. It’s a fine quality: to believe the best.’
‘All right, maybe it was a little crazy, this Anglomania. But I told you: I had the money to do what I wanted. So why not?’
‘And your parents? What did they want?’ I must have looked doubtful.
She smiled, her eyes narrowing happily. ‘Oh you can’t blame them for anything. I get on pretty well with them. My father’s just retired. My two elder brothers, Teddy and Harold, they’re in charge now. Along with one of my uncles. It’s very much a family business.’
‘Don’t you miss the family?’
She hesitated here. ‘I do and I don’t,’ she said finally, equivocating over something for the first time.
‘You’re the only daughter?’
‘Yes. The youngest.’
She spoke with the slightest tone of regret here, so that I said, ‘Poor little rich girl, were you?’
‘I went to a lot of costly private schools that I hated, if that’s what you mean. Boarding schools. I hated being cooped up. I spent a lot of my time trying to run away. The riding; that was the only thing I liked about them. That and the running.’
‘Literally running?’
‘Yes. Athletics. Apart from escaping school. I loved running and swimming and climbing and tennis, all those outdoor things. I hated books and pens and pencils and indoors. That’s what I loved about the Hamptons: everything was outdoors and summer. My father bought one of those great, spooky, Charles Addams houses out on Long Island. That was the Atlantic. I remember thinking one day I could just swim on and on straight out into the ocean and get right across to England and never come home. We lived there every summer. Then there was Vevey in Switzerland, a smart place for rich brats. I hated that, too. Then there was the design school in Florence, and that was something good, at last. And then New York, when I first married. My husband,’ she smiled remembering. ‘Well, he was something of a man-about-town. In fact, that’s all he was. We spent most of our time in the Russian Tea Rooms or at some smart disco till four in the morning. I got tired of that fairly soon. So I started a company, making fine cloths. Weaving. And big patchwork quilts, you know, designed with Red Indian motifs. Reconstructed. I specialised in those. You see, you were right: I am part Indian. An eighth or so. My mother’s mother, she was from one of the Michigan lake tribes.’
She stood up then, put her glass back on the desk and looked out over the hot parkland. ‘I suppose I was the golden girl,’ she said lightly, looking back on her life. But now there was another slight hint of disappointment in her voice. The memory, or the present fact, of some loss creeping into her tones. And I was sure I knew what it must be: Alice Troy had everything except what was really important: a husband, children, family. Those were the vital things she lacked, the permanency, support, the continuity created through love or blood. Something wilful or even disastrous in her character had withheld those gifts from her in the end. Some considerable flaw in her emotional make-up had prevented her ever maintaining such familial ties satisfactorily. And she wasn’t going to tell me now what this might be, even if she knew what it was herself.
‘Do you still weave?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I’ve several looms upstairs. For tweed. From Cotswold wool. I’m trying to revive that. We have our own special flock.’
‘I see,’ I said, fearing a sudden onset of Gothic Arts and Crafts talk, thinking that this might be Alice’s real problem: an obsession with woolly sheep.
‘Yes,’ she went on, going over to the window. ‘Out there. Can you see? Some of them are on the other side of the park, over there, by the chestnuts. Are you interested?’ She turned from the window, looking round at me sharply, suddenly intently quizzical again, as if the fate of the whole of the British tweed industry hung on my reply.
It seemed churlish to say ‘No.’ And besides, I did like good tweeds, even if I preferred the soft Irish Donegals to any of the tougher Scots varieties.
So I said ‘Yes. I am interested,’ and she smiled happily in return. Like a child rewarded.
*
We took a salad lunch on a trolley out to the conservatory where we sat in the shade of a great mimosa tree under the hanging flower-baskets, with the Florentine fountain splashing and warbling to one side of us. In this heat, the ventilating windows high above had all been opened, so that every now and then fronds rustled and the long green trailers from the
baskets swung minutely in the little eddies and down-draughts of summer air.
Tomato and potato salad and Yorkshire ham cut straight from the bone, with watercress and mustard and cheese and bottles of chilled Guinness to go with it. Apart from the cress I ate everything, down to the bone, to the last rind of cheese, telling Alice my story from start to finish between mouthfuls. I left out nothing, not even my theft of the cricketers’ tea, or her Cotswold lamb that I’d killed and barbecued. And it was hard to tell her this, knowing how she valued the flock. At that point in my story I thought she might turn on me, divorce herself from my violent affairs: I thought she might see how far I’d gone into mad ways, stoning defenceless animals, gutting them, murdering them in the rain.
But instead my shamefaced account of this seemed to draw an increased interest and sympathy, a sort of happy wonder from her, as if I had returned to her something of great value which she had once prized and lost.
Sometimes she interrupted or interjected a query, sitting across the table from me, hoping to clarify something I’d said. She was not a passive listener. She listened like a military commander hearing vital news from the front, news upon which he would soon have to make even more vital decisions.
The thing that surprised her most was my handing Clare over to the policeman.
I said, ‘At the time I felt there was no alternative. Laura was dead. If they’d taken me I would have been dead for Clare as well, with ten years in gaol or worse. As it stands, well, at least I can do something now. I’m free.’
‘Yes. You mean we can get her back?’
‘We?’
‘You asked me to help.’
‘I didn’t mean personally. If I could just use a few things from the house: clothes, a car, money. I’d pay you back.’
She laughed. ‘And if you did manage to rescue her, all on your own, what then?’
I had, in fact, already roughly thought out what I’d do then: try and get Clare and me back to Portugal, to Laura’s parents in Cascais. It was the only thing to do, I thought, since I felt that Laura’s father, Captain Warren, would understand, would give me sanctuary. He hated the British authorities already, the War Office and the secret men generally in Whitehall who had dispossessed him of his land and home in Gloucestershire forty years before. And if I could get to Portugal, David Marcus and his hit-men in MI6, as well as the police, would have another problem altogether. And even if they eventually got me back to Britain, Clare would be able to stay out there, with her grandparents. She would be safe from any dreadful institution. I told Alice all this.
‘And how would you get yourselves to Portugal?’
‘A plane. A ship. The usual way.’
‘With false moustaches and so on? They’d be looking out for you, you know.’
‘I haven’t thought it all out. And anyway, it depends first on whether I can get Clare away from wherever she is.’
‘I could probably find that out for you,’ Alice said, leaning forward, a sudden sparkle of adventure in her eyes. ‘The regional Committee for Autistic Children held a wine and cheese party here last winter, to raise money. I know the secretary –’
‘I don’t want you to get involved personally. There’s no need.’
‘Why not, for heaven’s sake?’
‘I’m sorry, you shouldn’t.’ I stood up. It was getting too hot, even in the shade of the mimosa tree. ‘If you help me directly it can only make it worse for you.’
‘You mean, you’d just like me to pretend that you came up here, for example, and stole a car and some clothes and some money?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly what I thought.’ I stopped over by the Florentine fountain and splashed some cool water from the great Carrara marble bowl over my face. ‘There’s no point your getting involved. You mustn’t.’
I turned to Alice. She was sitting, rather hunched, over the table, her head down, hair falling over her cheeks, fiddling with a napkin, dejected: like a child just denied a treat.
It made me angry that I seemed to have upset her so. ‘Good God, Alice, you’ve got better things to do. You could find yourself in gaol as well!’
She looked up. ‘Why? Why should either of us find ourselves in gaol? You’re telling the truth, aren’t you? Well, they’re bound to find out you didn’t kill your wife in the end. And find that other man … And what’s wrong with regaining control of your daughter? You’re still her legal father, after all.’
‘Nothing wrong, if you do it legally. But this is taking the law into my own hands, to put it mildly. I’ve gone too far to do otherwise. Besides, as I told you, it’s really British Intelligence who are after me. I know too much, about various people. They want me stopped, put away, killed. Not the police. So even if I were proved innocent about Laura, that wouldn’t stop the others still coming after me. Look at what happened this morning: that man with the shotgun. That was Ross, the head of our dirty tricks section. Well, he’s somewhow got onto my track. They’re working hard. They’re out to kill me. It’s obvious. So I can’t do anything “legally” in this country. I have to get out if I can, with Clare. But you mustn’t get tied up in all this. If they killed Laura by mistake, why, they might do the same for you.’
Alice stood up and started to clear away the lunch. ‘That’s all theory. You could be wrong. In any case, one thing is fact: you won’t get Clare out of any institution, or either of you away to Portugal, without help. Without me,’ she added decisively.
‘Why not? I had some training when I was in the service. With a car, some money –’
‘And passports? You’d need them. And one with Clare’s name on it.’
‘She’s on Laura’s passport. It’s back in the cottage. Or I could buy one. There are places in London … I’d pay you back.’
‘Yes, of course. I need the money.’
‘Besides, if I need help, I’ve friends in London. One of them could help. They’re my friends after all. You don’t have to be involved.’
She saw at once that I was lying here. It was a stupid thing to say. We were already closer than I realised.
She said sharply. ‘I don’t believe you have such friends in London. If you had, you’d have gone to them in the first place, instead of lying up in the woods here for ten days. I think you’re probably as bad as I am about friends,’ she added with some defiance. ‘Any way,’ she went on, ‘I’m here to help …’
But she didn’t finish the sentence. We both of us heard wheels crunching over the gravel surround in front of the house just then. And we both saw the police car a moment later, a big white Rover streaked in orange and black, pulling up by the porch. Alice didn’t hesitate for a second.
‘Quick! Over there,’ she said. ‘Don’t go through the hall. There’s no time. Get in under that big shelf at the back, where the pots are. The other plants in front will hide you completely. I’ll get these dishes out of the way.’
I ran over to the back of the big conservatory where a profusion of brilliantly coloured potted plants and shrubs lay along a broad shelf against the wall. On the stone floor in front were other taller shrubs in pots and urns. Pushing my way in behind these from one end, I found myself beneath the shelf in a kind of greeny cage, hedged in by the exotic plants, with just the odd spyhole through the leaves and crimson petals out into the conservatory.
I heard the great hall doors opening in the distance. Alice would surely take the police into the drawing-room at the far end of the great hall, I thought. So I was surprised – no, I was angry – when a minute later I heard the footsteps coming through the library and on into the conservatory. What the hell was she doing bringing the police in here, unless to have done with me, to betray me? She’d probably fixed it all on the phone, when I’d been changing in Arthur’s rooms.
A bluff, nice, west-country voice rang out not far in front of me. ‘… I shouldn’t, Miss Troy. But I couldn’t resist asking you – just another look at your conservatory? I only glanced at it last time I was here. I’m not r
eally a hothouse man myself, and I don’t get up to Chelsea now. But this! This is really wonderful. You don’t mind if I take another look, do you?’
‘Of course not, Superintendent. Go right ahead.’
‘These camellias, Miss Troy. They’re quite extraordinary.’ I heard the heavy policeman’s footsteps coming straight towards me. ‘Never seen anything like them. Even in Chelsea. This one …’ The Superintendent had stopped right in front of me now. I could see his black trousers blotting out all the light. The camellias were obviously all along the shelf immediately above me.
‘Yes, I’m proud of that. Marvellous, isn’t it? So dramatic. Those crimson petals on the little narrow bush. “Anticipation”, it’s called. Yet it’s ideal for small gardens. But my favourites are these, over here, these single-flowered ones: “Henry Turnbull”. They’re so delicate, the petals, like some fantasy Ascot hat. Just a breath of air and you’d think they’d disintegrate. In fact they’re quite robust.’
‘Beautiful. Just beautiful. Of course they don’t really do at all up here on this soil. Outside, I mean.’
‘No. Not enough acid. You have to pot them. And then pot on, and re-pot as they get bigger. It’s a bit tiresome, and you have to have the right kind of mulch every year and a good loam compost: acid loam if you can get it. Or add some sulphur. But once you get your compost right there are really no problems, they’re quite trouble-free. You have to watch the watering, though. Not too much, that’s the great thing. I use rainwater. The softer the better.’
‘Yes. I’d heard that.’
‘Or you can sub-irrigate, with a sand base and a water drip, if you’re really doing it grandly. But I prefer the old watering-can: the personal touch.’
‘Of course. That’s what plants are all about anyway, aren’t they? The personal touch.’
‘Would you like a cutting? Here – this japonica hybrid: “Tinkerbell”. There’s no problem.’
‘I wouldn’t think of it, Miss Troy –’
‘Not at all, Superintendent. Here, I’ll get my secateurs. Put it in some damp moss peat, you know, cover and seal it with a thin polythene, a little warm water now and then and you should have something in six or eight weeks …’