The Elderbrook Brothers

by Gerald Bullet

  Because Truman, his colleague on the ledgers, was five minutes late back from lunch, Guy could not get away till one-thirty-five, could not indeed go downstairs to wash until then; and so it was a quarter to two when he presented himself at the Talaveras’ front door. He had a mouthful of apologies ready, but neither father nor daughter seemed conscious of what the time was.

  Emerging from one of his fits of abstraction, Jimmie said: ‘Hullo! It’s you.’ Guy had the impression that the exciting conversation of three hours ago was for Mr Talavera lost in oblivion. But the next remark reassured him. ‘What’s the news?’

  ‘I’ve got a scheme,’ said Guy. ‘Shall we talk about it afterwards?’ He had fasted since eight o’clock and was ravenously hungry.

  ‘Afterwards?’

  ‘He means after lunch,’ Nora said, with a ripple of laughter. ‘Wake up, Jimmie.’

  ‘Lunch?’ said Jimmie. ‘Yes, of course. Is it ready, my dear?’

  ‘A pork pie,’ said Nora severely, ‘is always ready.’

  She led the way into a small room which evidently served for both dining-room and kitchen. It contained a gas-stove and a dresser hung with crocks, and the linoleum floor was covered at intervals with brightly-coloured rugs. A token fire, too small to give much heat, was burning in the grate, and the mantelpiece was adorned with two small green Chinese dragons, which stood guard on either side of a bare-faced kitchen clock. Such as it was, the room was probably Nora’s work. It had, if nothing else, personality. It was bare without being drab, and Guy soon felt at home with it.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse my wife,’ said Mr Talavera, as they seated themselves round the pork pie. ‘She’s out.’

  ‘Father!’ Nora gave him a reproachful glance. ‘Must you?’

  He continued unperturbed: ‘She’s been out some time now. Five years, isn’t it, Nora?’ Enjoying Guy’s surprise he said serenely: ‘She left me, dear boy. To better herself, I believe. So that’s that. We won’t wait lunch for her.’ He jumped up suddenly. ‘A bottle of claret. We’ll crack a bottle, to celebrate.’

  To celebrate what? But Guy did not ask the question.

  Coming back to the table with a bottle in one hand and a corkscrew in the other Mr Talavera said: ‘Now, tell us how he took it, your Mr Baker.’

  Guy smiled. It was a smile designed to charm Mr Talavera and give himself confidence. It had often been used in the past, to ease a way past minor difficulties; it had a golden future before it; and each time it appeared, so far from showing signs of wear, it would be a little brighter and better than the time before.

  ‘Mr Baker,’ he said gently, ‘is rather set on your finding something to pay in. Failing that, he says, the cheque will go back.’

  Having thrown his bomb, he took a sip of claret, conscious of the sudden consternation. The atmosphere of the party was utterly changed. Which was just what he wanted. It was Part One of the plan.

  ‘But I thought …’ said Talavera slowly. Then broke off to say: ‘Did you tell him about my scheme? I stand to make a thousand pounds. And in a matter of weeks. Did you tell him that?’

  ‘Not in detail,’ Guy admitted. ‘I felt it wouldn’t go down with him. After all, one has to trust one’s instincts in these matters,’ he said loftily. ‘Baker’s not what I’d call a quick man. No imagination and very little enterprise. He’s safe in his little rut, and there he’ll stay. Poor Baker!’

  But Mr Talavera had no pity to spare for Mr Baker: he wanted it all for himself. ‘You don’t need imagination for this, Mr … Elderbrook. It’s a matter of simple arithmetic’

  ‘Oh yes you do,’ Guy retorted. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, softening his abruptness, ‘but imagination is just what you do need. And judgment too. The simple arithmetic comes in only after we’ve assured ourselves that the facts are precisely as stated. You say those Camden Town people are dead keen. Can you be sure of that? And if so, can you be sure of just how dead keen? You see my point,’ said Guy, his voice swelling and hurrying on, as though overriding an interruption. ‘Everything depends on how far we can drive them. Everything depends on the actual figures.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Mr Talavera. His smile contrived to be both admiring and ironical. ‘You’re a very remarkable young man. But there’s a fallacy there, my dear boy. From your Bank’s point of view the actual figures do not matter. The Bank’s only concern is that I should make enough money to put the account in credit again.’

  Guy could not deny that, but by slightly shifting his ground he contrived not to admit it. It braced him to find that poor Jimmie wasn’t after all entirely a fool: there would be all the more fun in manipulating him.

  ‘But there is a danger, don’t you see, sir, that you may overcall your hand. What’s to prevent them saying: “We’re not interested at that figure. Go ahead and complete your purchase!”? Where should we be then, Mr Talavera?’

  ‘I shan’t let it come to that.’

  ‘But how will you prevent it?’

  Mr Talavera winked. It gave him a look of quite extraordinary innocence. ‘Ways and means, my boy. I don’t say the transaction won’t need careful handling. It will.’

  ‘If you can get past the present little difficulty,’ Guy reminded him.

  Poor Jimmie’s face fell. ‘That’s true,’ he admitted.

  ‘Perhaps I can help you there,’ said Guy.

  Nora, whose presence they had forgotten, remarked pointedly: ‘So you said this morning, Mr Elderbrook.’

  Guy quelled her with a beam from his bright eyes. ‘Ah, that was different. I’m not thinking of the Bank now. I mean myself as a private person. I’ve a fancy, Mr Talavera, that I should like to be in on this little gamble of yours. Now look. You’re short of about eighty-three pounds. Suppose I were to let you have a cheque for seventy-five?’

  ‘Your own cheque?’ said Mr Talavera. He swallowed his surprise.

  ‘Yes. I could manage that.’

  ‘You could? That’s fine,’ said Mr Talavera.

  He took it so coolly that Guy suspected him of unbelief. ‘I’m not joking. It’s a genuine offer. I’m sure Baker won’t jib at the other eight pounds. You’ve often been overdrawn more than that.’

  ‘Nora my dear, will you pinch me, please? I think I’m dreaming. Someone is offering me seventy-five pounds.’ He turned quickly back to Guy. ‘And where do you come in, dear boy? Do I give you my I O U?’

  ‘No, you give me a cheque. Post-dated.’

  ‘Dated three weeks from today,’ said Mr Talavera, ‘for, shall we say, eighty-five?’

  Guy laughed. It sounded like genuine amusement. ‘You stand to make a thousand, and I’m risking all my little capital on the gamble. Suppose we make it three times seventy-five. That’s two twenty-five.’

  ‘You’re a good boy,’ said Jimmie, chuckling. ‘We could work together, you and I. But two hundred per cent in three weeks wouldn’t be good for you. Still, I’ll make it a hundred, dashed if I don’t!’

  ‘Hundred per cent? That’s twice seventy-five …’

  ‘A hundred pounds I said.’

  ‘Sorry. I misunderstood you. So we needn’t discuss it any further then?’ said Guy airily. ‘Just as well. It’s a risk I oughtn’t to take.’

  Half an hour later, with a good will none the less genuine for being fortified by the belief that each could make use of the other, they exchanged farewells. Talavera had Guy’s cheque, which presently he would be bringing in person to pay into his account. Guy shrank from the publicity which his intervention must have among his own colleagues as soon as his cheque should reach them, and for that reason insisted that Talavera, and not he, should pay it in. But so excellent a game was worth that much candle. In his pocket-book was Talavera’s post-dated cheque for a hundred and fifty: substantially more than he had expected to get. Even so, he might never get it. He had no illusions about post-dated cheques, notwithstanding that you could, in the last resort, sue on them in the fullness of time. But he had faith in his star; he had faith in Ta
lavera’s scheme; and he had faith in Talavera’s liking for Guy Elderbrook.

  Even Nora seemed to like him, in spite of his masterful business dealing, or perhaps (he thought complacently) because of it. As she opened the front door for him, on his way out, there was mockery in her smile, an irony odd in one so young; but there was friendliness too and a hint of reluctant admiration. It flashed into his mind, as an amusing thought, that he could probably kiss her with impunity. And in a few years time, he reflected, the chance would be well worth taking.

  § 7

  MEASURED by days in the calendar the school holidays were brief; but to Felix, living at the centre of an expanding world, each day was a long full chapter, palpably longer than its predecessor. Time, because emptied of routine activities except those few that gave a rhythm and pattern to the day, had a fullness, a bland continuity, as of no-time: the idle, meditative, unregarded moments, coming but not going, lived but not lost, gathered drop by drop in the growing continuum of his being. Except the children, Mifanwy and Claribel, for whom time had hardly begun to exist, every member of the household was in some degree affected, if unconsciously, by the new order of idleness: Faith’s unslackening busyness as housewife and mother, of which it would have been unkind to deprive her, did no more than ripple for her the surface of a prevailing deep calm. She, against all reason as it seemed to Felix, was well content with her odd middle-aged husband and her narrow industrious existence. That she was rapturously content with her children did not so much surprise him; for they were attractive little creatures, and he knew that some allowance must be made for maternal extravagance. He was grateful to his brother-in-law, whom he had with difficulty taught himself to think of as Daniel, for making his favourite sister happy. In the holidays, indeed on all domestic occasions, he had to remember not to address Daniel as ‘Sir’; but in term and in school the headmaster was still, after all, the headmaster. There was a good feeling between the brothers-in-law,, but they had somehow never quite got to know each other. And yet, and yet, Felix sometimes reflected, of the two male Williamses whose home he shared, he knew the father better than the son. With Tom there was established a breezy, superficial intimacy: the confidences were all on Tom’s side, and they gave Felix no clue to the young man’s inner life. Tom did his work when he must and took his pleasure where he found it, in riding, in shooting, in sampling the local brews and the local wenches.

  There were moments when Felix almost envied him his blithe, unthinking, animal existence. But the envy was not quite sincere. His own life was perhaps less full of good cheer, and delight when it visited him was less confident than Tom’s, more easily frightened away; yet he could not help knowing that he had access, however precarious, to regions of experience— of unanswerable and even unaskable questions—beyond range of Tom’s hearty horsemanship. He did not imagine himself to be unique in that. His self-esteem was not excessive; he had already an inkling of the truth that truth cannot be contained in a formula or expressed in a judgment; and he was more puzzled and troubled, than gratified, by the mysterious difference between Tom’s outlook and his own.

  ‘But suppose you got the girl into trouble, Tom?’

  ‘Trouble, old boy? You mean the family way?’

  ‘Yes, if you like.’ Felix found himself slowly reddening. ‘But that’s not the only thing.’

  ‘She can look after herself, don’t you worry!’ Tom grinned. ‘She knows a trick worth two of that.’

  ‘But she might,’ suggested Felix, ‘get really fond of you, and then …’

  ‘Fond of me? Why of course! She dotes on me, bless her little heart! You bet she does.’ His complacency was almost charming.

  ‘Well, then——’ Felix was oppressed by what seemed to him an obtuseness in Tom ‘—when it’s over … when it’s all over, she’ll come to grief, won’t she? It might even,’ he said diffidently, ‘be the ruin of her.’

  ‘My poor old boy, you’ve read too many Victorian novels. We’re living in the twentieth century, don’t forget. When it’s all over, as you delicately put it, the dear girl won’t hang herself in her garters or hide her shame in the murky waters of yonder river, like little Emily or whoever it was. She’ll marry a poacher or a gamekeeper and provide him with a dozen healthy brats.’

  ‘If he’ll have her,’ said Felix.

  ‘And why shouldn’t he have her? She’s worth having, I assure you. Where the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve. And anyhow,’ said Tom, abandoning argument, ‘one’s not a dashed eunuch, you know.’

  Felix was silent. He was both repelled and attracted by the thoughts which this kind of conversation bred in him.

  Faith’s contentment as wife and mother did not make her altogether unpossessive as a sister. An unseasonable burst of warm weather gave her an excuse for promoting a picnic in which the Meldreths and the Williamses were to get together and have the friendliest jolliest time you could imagine. In this way the ignominy of Felix’s too exclusive possession of these neighbours would be obliterated and forgotten, and her little girls thenceforward accorded their rightful share of his too easily diverted attention. The event fell out much as she had intended, if with some inevitably unforeseen variations. Her darlings were indeed the centre of the party. Tom amused them infinitely with cockcrows and other spirited devices; Felix aided and abetted his clowning; and Ellen Winter, with a demure humour unsuspected in one so quiet, constituted herself mistress of the comic ceremonies. Under cover of playing with the children Felix found himself watching Miss Winter with a new interest, or rather with a sharpening of the interest brought suddenly to birth some days ago, in that moment of intimately shared perception in the woods. ‘It was like you yourself,’ he had said; and with her eyes as well as in words she had confirmed his quick guess. By virtue of that instantaneous understanding he felt there was an invisible bond between them. She had today put aside the burden of her twenty-seven years: unaffected enjoyment and excitement showed through her habitual reserve, suffusing it with a warm radiance. She talked nonsense with Tom, capping his goodnatured jokes with better ones equally goodnatured; and every adult member of the party, even the reluctant benevolent Mr Williams who had been dragged away from the fascinations of heresy to join it, was surprised to find Aunt Ellen so lively. Felix, when his glance met hers, to share for an instant their pleasure in the children’s pleasure, was quietly assured in the possession of a new and special friend. He thought no further than that. It was riches enough.

  § 8

  WITHOUT knowing why, Felix began collecting facts about Ellen Winter. She was the youngest child of a Monmouth solicitor, fruit of his late second marriage. Her half-brother, born a quarter of a century earlier, had been the second husband of the lady who was now Mrs Meldreth. It was the kind of confusing family concatenation that provokes most people to humorous impatience; but Felix managed to get it clearly mapped out in his mind. He found also, from conversations with Kate, Mrs Meldreth, and Ellen herself, that losing her father while still a very small child she had passed into the sole care first of her young mother, who was delicate and did not long survive him, and then of a spinster aunt who lived in a northern suburb of London. For several years now she had been private secretary to an economist who, in addition to being a lecturer and a member of parliament, was in the habit of writing somewhat formidable books on world affairs. Scrutinizing these arid items, Felix saw or thought he saw that they fitted in very well with his personal impressions of her. She was country-born and town-bred. She had a certain odd directness, like a child’s, and a certain sophistication. With nothing that could be called an accent, her speech yet had a subtle musical quality, a softness and a lilt, that was certainly not of London, where the greater part of her life had been spent, and was perhaps, at least in its ancestry, Welsh. And perhaps it was not. The doubt that enshrouded this small point was somehow, he felt, characteristic of her whole personal effect. The facts of her life were simple and unexciting, but she was not contained in th
em. By something, yet by nothing in particular that she said or did, his curiosity was stirred.

  Seeing her one morning in church, unexpectedly, he spent an hour and a half in more or less continuous study of her profile, looking for a clue, if not an answer, to a question he did not even formulate. The atmosphere of morning church was very grateful to his senses, and to his spirit too, his spirit that was not so much restless as in a state of precarious balance or suspense. Here the urgencies of spring, the rising sap, the incitement of sunshine, the birds busy with love, were translated into a mild and genial holiness, an agreeable decorum. The tall interior gave fancy room to soar, but not too far; the solemn music of the prayers, even of the most obsequious, kept imagination within decent bounds; the gentle, well-bred voice of the Vicar, now intoning, now reading, now speaking as a man to other men, and commending by this triple mode the doctrine of a trinity-in-unity, was for Felix the voice of all the Sundays he had known, a long vista of them, a luminous tunnel through past time and a golden ladder into the kingdom of heaven. It was familiar, seemly, soothing. It kept his nerves quiet while he learned by heart this one human face, at least in those aspects that were visible from where he sat. It was an idle occupation, or seemed so; for he had no sense of being urgently or intimately concerned in it. As sometimes he would watch a thrush or a blackbird intent on its affairs in the garden of Stanton House, so now he watched Ellen Winter. Her profile gave him, nevertheless, a moment’s astonishment. Compared with the complexity of her general effect as he remembered it, her air of decision and of mature self-possession, it was an artless and candid scripture, a child’s confession. It was as if all she essentially was were written in that one naked eloquent line.

  ‘Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost …’