The Tryst

by Michael Dibdin

  They were sitting in the snug clutter of the basement room in Grafton Avenue, the old man and the boy. To celebrate the commencement of the story he had promised to tell, Ernest Matthews had prepared a high tea of soft-boiled eggs with bread and butter cut into inch-wide fingers. Steve had been instructed at some length in the correct method of opening his egg, by tapping the shell repeatedly with his spoon and then peeling off the shards and the silky clinging inner membrane. When they finished eating, the old man had retired to his armchair and lit the pipe that now lay forgotten in his hand. Steve sat by the table, his eyes fixed on the stove, where rising currents of hot air made the tiles of the fireplace ripple like stones on the bed of a stream.

  ‘I remember the sea, too,’ the old man went on. ‘It seemed so big, so endless, and all in movement. I’d only seen the countryside before, and round our way that was all tucks and folds, so you couldn’t see far. Later on, I found out that once upon a time all that land had been under water too, and that the hills I used to walk upon were made of the skeletons of the creatures that lived in those ancient seas. Just imagine, those hills and valleys, the very houses, were all made of nothing but dead bodies! I lived in a cemetery, lad, and thought it a paradise.’

  He put his pipe between his lips and torched it briefly with the lighter.

  ‘But we must get on, and keep to the story, or we’ll never have done. The trouble is, this skull of mine is packed with memories like the inside of a golf ball, and once I get started there’s no stopping me. First I must tell you about the Hall. Now take this house here. What we’re in now is the kitchen, as was. There’s two more rooms like it downstairs, as well as any amount of cupboards and larders and so on. On the first floor there’s the sitting room and dining room, and three bedrooms above that, making eight rooms in all, not counting the attic. There are many meaner houses than this, I dare say, and yet to call it by the same name as the one where I grew up seems a sort of insult to the language. I’m not speaking about the architecture, mind, though I dare say that there was plenty of that too. It was Elizabethan, you see, which is why the shape of it was like a capital E, with two wings at either end and the great hall jutting out in the centre. But all that meant nothing to me, though I liked the idea, Elizabeth being my mother’s name. What I never got over was how big it all was. Why, this place would have fitted into it twenty or thirty times over! When I was very young, I thought the Hall was a kind of plant that put out new growth each year, for there always seemed to be rooms I hadn’t seen before, doors I hadn’t opened. It wasn’t till I was ten or eleven that I began to understand how it all fitted together, and even by the end it was still full of surprises.’

  ‘Was your mother a princess?’ Steve asked.

  The boy spoke so rarely, and only then in response to a question, that the old man glanced at him with surprise. Then he laughed out loud.

  ‘Good Lord above, you don’t think it was our house, do you?’ He pointed to the electric light above their heads. ‘You see that? And the stove here? And the water pipes? That’s what we were, my lad, nothing more nor less. For there was no light then, once the sun went down, but what you made yourself. That meant fifteen or twenty oil lamps to be cleaned and filled and brought to every room, scenting the whole place with their sweet, warm smell. As for the water, that had to be fetched from the spring, and if you wanted tea or a bath it had to be warmed on the stove. Wood had to be cut and hauled and stacked and laid for the fires, which had to be cleaned out early each morning and then relit. All of that made work for idle hands to do, believe you me. Cooks and housemaids and kitchen maids and still-room maids and laundry maids and I don’t know what else besides, with a housekeeper to make sure they did it properly. And that was my mother.’

  He broke off again to get his pipe going, sucking the flame down into the bowl in a way that fascinated Steve, who imagined the flame continuing through the pipe and down the old man’s throat, blazing in his stomach like the stove.

  ‘But you’re right, too, in a way,’ Matthews went on. ‘The Hall was ours, for unlike these wires and tubes and pipes that do the necessary nowadays, we were alive and we lived there. There were rules, of course. Doors we weren’t allowed to open, rooms that were out of bounds. But that only counted when the family were there, which was only a few months in the summer. So in a way it was our house even more than it was theirs. Mine above all, perhaps, for as a child I was treated with indulgence, and my mother being the housekeeper was above all the staff except the butler. My father, I should explain, had been one of the gardeners until he fell out of a tree and broke his neck. I don’t really remember him.’

  The muffled muggy silence of the room reformed for a few moments.

  ‘What about your parents?’ Matthews asked, looking round at Steve. ‘Don’t you live with them?’

  The boy jerked his head aside. It was a warning, but the old man paid no heed.

  ‘Ran away, did you?’

  Steve twisted his head to the other side in a convulsive movement which might have been taken for a negation.

  ‘Or are they …?’ the old man began tentatively. But Steve was on his feet and shouting.

  ‘What you asking me all this for? This ain’t got fuck to do with it! You’re supposed to be telling me about what happened, about that man, not asking me a lot of shit like you was the police or something!’

  The old man seemed to wilt visibly under the boy’s furious gaze. His hands dithered aimlessly about in his lap.

  ‘I’m sorry, lad. Sorry. I won’t ask again, I promise.’

  He turned away and poked the fire, clearing his throat apologetically. After a while Steve sat down again.

  ‘You said we got to stick to the story,’ he muttered.

  ‘Quite right, quite right.’

  ‘Well, you better,’ the boy warned. ‘Because I seen him again, that man. When I got here tonight. He was standing right outside, staring at the house like it was made of glass and he could see everything you do!’

  Steve considered this a fair return for the pain the old man had given him. Tit for tat was the rule the world ran on, he knew that much. You had to do your bit to keep things in balance or there was no saying what might happen. Besides, it was only relatively untrue, for he had seen the grinning man again, though not that evening and not outside Matthews’s house. It had happened earlier in the week, when Steve was on his way back from collecting the stotters’ social security cheques from the letter-box in the council block they used as a convenience address. This was in White City, a fair old step from the newspaper round, so it had been all the more startling to find the grinning man there, striding along the pavement on the other side of the road. There was no mistaking that frenetic motion, though, like someone having an epileptic fit on his feet. He didn’t appear to have noticed the boy, so Steve decided to follow him and see where he was going. Ernest Matthews had made it clear that he was terrified of this man, and he would therefore presumably welcome any information Steve could provide about him. Keeping a safe distance, and dodging into doorways or behind parked cars whenever necessary, Steve followed the grinning man all the way up Wood Lane. Just before the canal the man turned right and continued for another half-mile or so before disappearing into an imposing gateway. Steve approached with great caution, fearing that it might be a trap. Inside the gates, at the end of a short drive, was a large brick building which looked like a prison. The man was nowhere to be seen. Attached to a wire fence at the side of the building was an orange sign with black lettering which read ‘WARNING HAZCHEM’.

  ‘Outside the house!’ Matthews echoed. ‘Staring at it! This is new. This is not good.’

  His hands rubbed together as if trying to comfort each other. Too late, Steve realized that he would not now be able to tell the old man what he had found out. That was the problem with telling stories. It seemed all right at the time, but then they got out of control. Still, it wasn’t important. For now he was content to relish this new sen
se of power. All his short life, Steve had been the one to be terrified by others. To find himself creating fear rather than suffering it was a delicious sensation, and completely justified by the principle of tit for tat. Steve still had a long, long way to go before he had repaid all the fear which he had been made to feel! And it was all right, because his story had been untrue. If Hazchem, as Steve now thought of him, had really been watching the house and he hadn’t told Matthews, that might have been serious. But how could something that had never happened do anyone any harm?

  ‘Ah, lad, I should never have involved you in this terrible business,’ the old man sighed, shaking his head once more. ‘I should never have invited you into the house that day. It was wrong of me, very wrong. But it can’t be helped now. You are in, and he knows you are, so the only thing to do is get on as quickly as we can, so that at least you know the danger. Now next I must tell you something about the family. They weren’t county, like you might suppose, but in trade. Jeffries’ Biscuits used to be a household name at the time, though you won’t find them nowadays. They came in square metal tins with a paper label with the name spelt out in big black capitals with edges and shading and a picture of a boy sitting on a hill looking at a sunset, all in royal blue and red. Maurice and Rupert, the two sons, used the empty boxes as forts, up in the playroom. They had toy artillery pieces that fired little pins, and clockwork trains that ran all round the room, under the legs of the furniture and through tin tunnels painted with shrubs and grass. They had warships too, made of lead, and others they made themselves, cut out of cardboard and glued together and painted grey. I used to go up there when the family was away. Many an afternoon I spent wandering through those rooms full of furniture draped in huge dust-sheets, like an Army camp. Sometimes I’d get lost and catch a beating for being late to tea, for everyone had to be punctual in those days, gentry and staff alike. There were no exceptions.

  ‘Now all this makes Maurice and Rupert Jeffries sound like children, but in fact by the time I’m talking of they were almost twenty and both at university. Their mother had passed away some years earlier and there were no other children, so when old man Jeffries died, the same year as the king it was, the staff at the Hall were anxious they’d all be dismissed. I remember my mother discussing it with the butler and the cook. “This’ll mean change!” they agreed. “The young masters won’t want to keep this old place.” You see country houses then were two a penny. No one wanted them, because the land didn’t pay no more. And so it looked as though the Hall would be given up and we’d all be turned out to seek positions elsewhere. My mother and the other staff were resigned to this prospect, for they knew how the world wagged. But I’d spent my whole life at the Hall and in the village and countryside round about. I couldn’t believe that all that could be taken away from me by the whim of two young striplings barely older than I was myself. My mother tried to explain, but to me it sounded as crazy as hearing that the river which ran down our valley would stop flowing because someone had signed a bit of paper to that effect. Nevertheless, that was the position, and turned out we would no doubt have been if it hadn’t been for cunning old Jeffries.

  ‘Maurice’s and Rupert’s father had left a will stipulating that his estate was to be divided equally between the two sons, but that no part of it was to be sold, let or otherwise alienated or disposed of without the signature of both. No great stumbling block there, you might think. Twin brothers, brought up together from the cradle, should have been able to agree on what to do. Ah, but that was it, you see! They couldn’t. Never had been able to, never would be able to. If Maurice wanted one thing, then as sure as night follows day Rupert would set his heart on the opposite. No one knew the reason why, only that it was so. I once heard the butler say that if one of them asked for port wine he knew to offer the other madeira. It was the same when they went to university. No sooner had Maurice announced that he was going to Cambridge than his brother promptly settled on Oxford. Which was all to the good, as it turned out, for that was not so far away, and Rupert was able to spend much of his time at the Hall. He was our favourite, by a long way. He relished all the country had to offer, the hunting and shooting and fishing, and he took an interest in everyone who lived and worked on the estate. He knew all the villagers by name and would stop and inquire after their health. He used to organize a big tea for them once a year, too, which was considered a great treat in those days. Maurice, on the other hand, was a townee through and through. Even when he did venture down to the Hall, days would pass without him setting foot outside the front door. It was all books and pictures and conversation with him. His favourite exercise was lying on the sofa smoking a cigarette and passing remarks in foreign languages with his clever friends. But he spent most of his time in London, or running around on the Continent. Which suited us just fine, because when he did take it into his head to come down with a party of guests then all hell broke loose. Breakfast at eight, that was a meal in itself, six or more courses. Lunch at half past one, about eight or ten courses there. Tea in the afternoon, then dinner at eight thirty, with twelve courses. Then there were the rooms to be cleaned and heated, for these folk weren’t like Rupert, who slept with the window open all year round and could never abide a fire. There were baths to draw, linen to air and iron, provisions to order, and if everything wasn’t just right and dead on time someone would catch it. But luckily Maurice’s visits were rare and didn’t last long, for he and his sophisticated pals soon got bored with the simple pleasures of the country. As for Master Rupert, he was so easy to care for you’d hardly know he was there, as my mother used to say. His rooms were in the east wing of the Hall, where the guest rooms were, but he was the easiest guest you’d ever hope to entertain, for he was always out, walking or riding from dawn to dusk. As for his meals, he’d bring home a trout he’d hooked, and be content with that and a plain roast. He went out shooting or fishing every day, depending on the season.

  ‘As I said, Maurice and Rupert didn’t see eye to eye on anything, and whenever Maurice appeared at the hall we knew that sooner or later there would be ructions. Maurice was far too genteel ever to raise his voice, but he had a way of describing what his brother thought or did that made it sound ridiculous. For instance he might tell his guests, “Now if any of you are depraved enough to be up with the lark tomorrow morning, if you happen to glance out of your window, you may see a figure tripping stealthily across the lawn. Do not be alarmed. It is neither fawn nor satyr, but merely my brother Rupert, off to commune with Nature, that great dynamo whence he draws those mystic powers, which, as you have doubtless remarked, cause him to hum and crackle with energy and charm.” We had all this from the butler, who waited at table and could do Maurice to a T. Rupert gave as good as he got, though, only there was none of this sly insinuating manner about him. He’d come right out and say what he thought. “This country is decaying like fine timber with dry rot. There’s nothing to show on the surface as yet, but at the heart the old vigour and vibrancy is gone. And the fungi that have caused this, the canker that is consuming our great heritage, is composed of tiny crawling creatures like you and your friends, Maurice. Men who have sold their souls to progress and the mob, who go whoring after strange gods and neglect the spirits of their native land, who spice their corrupt and decadent conversation with foreign catchphrases yet have so far forgotten their own tongue that they call their cowardice pacifism, their ignorance science, their treachery socialism and their lack of virility civilization.” Oh, he didn’t mince his words, our Rupert, I can assure you! But Maurice and his friends didn’t seem to mind. They just smiled in a superior way, as though Rupert were some sort of country show they’d come down on purpose to see.’

  The old man broke off to relight his pipe.

  ‘Are you following all this?’ he asked.

  Steve shrugged.

  ‘Go on. I like hearing you talk.’

  ‘Well, that’s very convenient, because it happens to be the thing I like best myse
lf. Anyway, according to the terms of old Jeffries’ will, with the two brothers at loggerheads nothing could be changed, which suited us down to the ground. My mother and the rest of the staff all kept their places and I wasn’t robbed of the only life I’d ever known, not yet. Then that last summer, just before the war, much to everyone’s surprise Maurice suddenly came to live at the Hall. Naturally this caused problems, not just for Rupert, who expected to have the place pretty much to himself, but for the staff, who had grown rather too used to idleness. No one seemed able to explain Maurice’s abrupt change of heart. By this time I had turned sixteen, and was helping out in the garden. They hoped I would take after my father, who they said could make a dead plant sprout again. At any rate, one day I was hoeing some beds when I heard somebody say, “… because I’m in love!”. It was Mr Maurice’s voice, coming from the alley just behind the hedge where I was working. I heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel, and then another voice replied, “In love! Why, Maurice, I fall in love at least once a week, on average, but I shouldn’t dream of deserting my friends and burying myself away in the depths of the country like some hermit.” Naturally all this whetted my curiosity. The head gardener was nowhere about, so I set off along the service path, which ran parallel to the walk that the two gentlemen were on. The hedge between us was so high that although we were just a foot or two apart, they were no more aware of me than of the man in the moon. I missed the next few words, but I caught up with them in time to hear Maurice saying, “… the most ravishing female I have ever set eyes on.’ “But who was she?” the other man enquired. I’d recognized him by now. It was one of Maurice’s closest friends, a young man named Aubrey Deville. “That’s just it,” Maurice went on, “I haven’t the slightest idea.”