‘He did.’
‘Is the daughter on the stage?’
‘No. She writes. Not the sort of stuff I like, but I believe many people do. Slim volumes with titles like Daffodil Days and Morning’s At Seven. Whimsical essays.’
‘Good God.’
‘Yes, that’s how I feel, too, but that isn’t the reason why I don’t want Jerry to marry her.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Because she’s utterly wrong for him. Do you remember that second breach of promise case of yours?’
A quick blink of Crispin’s mild eyes showed that that unfortunate episode of the days when he had been a well-heeled young man about town was still green in his memory.
‘Why bring that up, Bill?’ he asked reproachfully. He liked the dead past to bury its dead.
‘Vera Upshaw reminds me of the girl who soaked you so much on that occasion. The same type. Lovely as an angel, but as hard as nails and sedulously on the make. All she wants is Jerry’s money, or rather the money she’s found out he’s going to get some day.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She said so. She told him definitely that she wasn’t going to marry him till I coughed up his capital. Which is why I’m not coughing it up.
This evidence that his brother was not lightly to be parted from cash in his possession lowered Crispin’s spirits, which at one time had tended to rise, and he sat chewing his moustache.
Willoughby took advantage of this lull in the conversation to abandon the topic of G. G. F. West and his amours.
‘But let’s talk of something else,’ he said, ‘beginning with what brings you up here like this, when it’s unheard of for you to come to London. Is it business?’
‘No, not exactly business, Bill.’
‘Income tax?’
‘No, not income tax.’
‘Something wrong at Mellingham? Trouble with the lodgers?’
‘I wish you would not call them lodgers.’
They lodge, don’t they?’
‘Yes, curse them.’
‘Well, then. By the way, you aren’t full up, are you?’
‘No. Two of them left last week. Said they found it too quiet.’
Then that’s all right, because I’m sending you an addition to the menagerie. An American woman called Clayborne. Bernadette Clayborne, commonly known as Barney. She’s the sister of Homer Pyle, a New York lawyer I’ve occasionally worked with. Homer brought her over a couple of days ago, and they’ve been staying with me. He wants a quiet retreat for her in the country, and he made a point of it being a good way from London. Mellingham ought just to suit her.’
So bitterly had Crispin spoken of the two paying guests who had defected, thus depriving him of much-needed rent, that one would have supposed that he would have received this announcement with joyous enthusiasm. Instead, he was plainly stunned, and expressed his dismay with a batlike squeak.
‘But I don’t want women at Mellingham!’
‘Of course you do. Home isn’t home without the feminine touch.’
‘She’ll expect breakfast in bed.’
‘Not Barney Clayborne. She’s the kind of woman who goes for a five-mile walk before breakfast to get up an appetite. How well do you know your Chaucer?’
‘My what?’
The father of English poetry.’
‘Oh, that Chaucer?’
That’s the one. Have you studied him lately? I ask because, if so, she will remind you of the Wife of Bath. You know the sort of thing — bright, breezy and full of beans.’
‘My God! Hearty?’
‘Yes, I suppose you would call her hearty.’
‘I won’t have her near Mellingham!’
Think well, Crips.’
‘I won’t!’
‘Your mind is made up?’
‘Yes, it is. You don’t understand, Bill. You’re a big, beefy chap, and you don’t know what it is to have sensitive nerves. A hearty woman would drive me insane.’
‘Well, it’s a pity, for she would have been paying double your usual rates. Homer is loaded with money, and he’s got to get his sister settled before he leaves for Brussels. He’s a member of P.E.N. and he has to attend the conference they’re having there, so I was able to make the terms stiff.’
For a moment or two Crispin sat plunged in thought. Then he said, ‘Oh’, and the monosyllable indicated clearly that his iron front had crumbled beneath the impact of second thoughts. He said All right, the woman could come, but there was no elation in his voice, and he went on to put into words his sentiments concerning those who enjoyed the hospitality of Mellingham Hall.
‘Curse and damn all paying guests! And curse Mellingham! I wish I could sell the foul place.’
‘Why don’t you?’
Crispin uttered a laugh of the variety usually called mirthless, and Willoughby regarded him with some concern.
‘Your asthma bothering you again?’
‘I was laughing.’
‘Are you sure? It didn’t sound like it.’
‘And perhaps it would interest you to know what made me laugh. “Why don’t you?” you say in that airy way, as if selling Mellingham was a thing that could be done over the counter. Who wants a house nowadays that’s miles from anywhere and about the size of Buckingham Palace? And look at the way it eats up money. Repairs, repairs, everlasting repairs — the roof, the stairs, the ceilings, the plumbing, there’s no end to it. And that’s just inside. Outside, trees needing pruning, hedges needing clipping, acres of grass that doesn’t cut itself, and the lake smelling to heaven if the weeds aren’t cleaned out every second Thursday. And the tenants. Those farmers sit up at nights trying to think of new ways for you to spend money on them. It’s enough to drive a man dotty. I remember, when I was a boy, Father used to take me round the park at Mellingham and say “Some day, Crispin, all this will be yours.” He ought to have added, “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.” Bill, can you lend me two hundred and three pounds, six shillings and fourpence?’
Something had told the experienced Willoughby that this jeremiad was going to culminate in some such query, and he exhibited no great concern. He was accustomed to meeting people eager to share his wealth. The exactness of the figures stirred his curiosity a little. Most of those anxious to become his debtors were not so precise.
‘Odd sum,’ he said.
‘It’s for the repairs people.’
‘Won’t they wait?’
‘They’ve been waiting two years.’
‘Then they ought to have got the knack of it by now.’
‘Don’t joke, Bill. It’s all very well to make a joke of it, but it’s deadly serious. They’ve sent a man down. He’s at the house now.
‘You mean you’ve got the brokers in?’
‘Yes, it’s a terrible situation. I live in hourly fear of my paying guests finding out.’
‘Give them a good laugh, I should think.’
They would all leave.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘It isn’t nonsense, they would. So if you won’t let me have that money —’Of course I’ll let you have it. What did you think I was going to do? Though I still feel it’s funny, you having a broker’s man on the premises, and it’s a shame to let him go.’
Crispin gave a short quick gulp like a bulldog trying to swallow a chop whose dimensions it has underestimated. It was plain that a great weight had been lifted from his stooping shoulders, but mingled with the joy, relief and ecstasy that surges over him, a borrower of money cannot help experiencing a certain sensation of flatness when his request is granted as soon as uttered. Arab traders in eastern bazaars get this feeling when an impatient customer refuses to haggle. Crispin had anticipated a lengthy session of argument and pleading, and for an instant his emotions were those of one who, descending a staircase in the dark, treads on the last step when it is not there.
Then joy, relief and ecstasy prevailed, and he expressed them with a glad cry.
‘That’s wonderful of you, Bill. You’ve saved my life.’
‘A mere sample of the way I’ve been behaving since yesterday afternoon. Did you ever read Oliver Twist?’
‘I suppose so, as a kid.’
‘Remember the Cheeryble brothers?’
‘Vaguely. Sort of elderly boy scouts, weren’t they?’
‘Exactly, and after yesterday afternoon I’m both of them rolled into one.’
‘What happened yesterday afternoon?’
‘Look at this.’
Crispin eyed the small object without enthusiasm. It was the miniature of a thin girl in the costume of a past age, and thin girls had never had a great appeal for him. He had always preferred the more opulent type. Both the breach of promise actions of his youth had been brought against him by plaintiffs in the light-heavyweight division. It was difficult to find anything to say, so he merely made a sound as if he were starting to gargle, and Willoughby continued.
‘Our great-great-grandmother.’
‘Oh?’
‘Unless it’s great-great-great or even more greats than that. I’m never any good at working these things out. When was Gainsborough?’
‘In the Regency, wasn’t he?’
‘I believe so. This is by him. It’s called The Girl in Blue. Our great-great-grandmother and her sister were twins, and he did miniatures of them both, one in blue, the other in green. I’ve had the other one for years and have been scouring the country for this one. It came up at Sotheby’s yesterday. I had to outbid a lot of dealers who spotted how much I wanted it and ran the price up, but I did the stinkers down in the end and got it.
Crispin found it difficult to repress a sigh. Reason told him that anyone as rich as Bill had a perfect right to collect objects that took his fancy, even if they were nothing much to look at and he had to outbid a lot of stinkers who were running the price up, but it gave him a pang to think of money that might have come in his direction being frittered away on miniatures of great-great-great-grandmothers.
‘But I mustn’t bore you with my petty triumphs,’ said Willoughby. ‘I’ll write that cheque.’
‘It’s awfully good of you, Bill.’
‘Just routine with us Cheerybles. Here you are.
Crispin took the precious slip of paper, fondled it for a moment like a mother crooning over her first-born, and put it away in the pocket nearest his heart. As he did so, the door in the wall, communicating, he presumed, with Ashby’s office or that of Pemberton, opened and a head came through.
‘Could you spare a minute, Bill?’ said the head.
That Delahay business?’
‘Yes. A couple of points I’d like to take up with you.’
The way I’m feeling today,’ said Willoughby, ‘I don’t mind if you take up three points, or even four. I’ll be back in a second, Crips.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Much though Crispin always enjoyed the company of his brother Willoughby, this sudden deprivation of it did nothing to diminish the glow of happiness which their most recent get-together had sent coursing through him. He was not familiar with the works of the poet Browning, but had he been he would have found himself in cordial agreement with the statement of his Pippa in her well-known song that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. Puts the thing in a nutshell, he would have said. He did happen to know that bit in the Psalms about Joy coming in the morning, and he would have contested hotly any suggestion that it didn’t. He was, in a word, in excellent shape, in fact, sitting pretty with his hat on the side of his head.
This uplifted mood, it should be noted, was in the deepest sense a triumph of mind over matter, for he had come to London with a stiff neck, the result of sitting in one of the draughts with which the home of his ancestors was so well supplied. It had been a source of considerable anguish on the train, but now he found that if he held his head quite motionless and kept thinking of the cheque that crackled in his pocket, the pain was practically non-existent.
Abandoned by Willoughby, he did what most people do when left alone in strange rooms. Always remembering to keep the head rigid, he wandered to and fro, peering at this, sniffing at that, fingering papers and wondering how that dictaphone thing on the desk worked; and he had just concluded a cursory examination of the shelf of law books and was thinking that he would not care to have to read them himself, when the door leading into the waiting-room burst open and something solid entered at a high rate of speed.
‘Sorry, Bill,’ said this something, ‘tripped.’
With a sharp cry Crispin put a hand to his neck, which had exploded like a bomb, for under the impact of this abrupt intrusion there had been no question of keeping the head motionless. He stood rubbing it vigorously, but was not so preoccupied with the massage as to be unable to take in the general aspect of the newcomer.
It was a woman who had joined him, and it did not need a second glance to tell him that she was a large woman. Somebody less deeply engaged in trying to soothe his neck might have observed in addition that she was a cheerful woman, a friendly woman and a woman whom it would be a pleasure to know, but these aspects of her did not dawn on him till later.
She was the first to speak. She was one of those women who are always the first to speak.
‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘You aren’t Bill Scrope.’
Crispin, courteously stopping rubbing his neck, explained that Bill Scrope had had to step out, to confer, he imagined, with one of his partners, and would be returning shortly.
‘I am his brother,’ he said, ‘his elder brother from the country.’
She uttered a cry that loosened the plaster on the ceiling. ‘Are you the fellow who owns this Mellingham Hall joint?’
‘I do own Mellingham Hall.’
‘I’m coming there tomorrow. I’m Mrs Clayborne. Well, this is swell, running into you like this. Gives us a chance to get acquainted. Now I shan’t feel like a kid going to a new school when I clock in.’
Crispin was frankly appalled. Although this woman had not spoken a word calculated to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty, she had shocked him to the core. He had told Willoughby of his distaste for hearty women, and here was one, earmarked to share his home, so hearty that the senses reeled. At the thought of her galumphing about Mellingham Hall his head quivered on its base and his neck seemed to be on fire. And when she continued, Tell me about this place of yours,’ only his breeding enabled him to preserve his customary courtliness.
‘Bill,’ she proceeded, ‘says it dates back to Ethelbert the Unready or someone like that. He says it’s all drawbridges and battlements and things, and there’s a lake. It must be heavenly.’
Heavenly was not the adjective that came uppermost in Crispin’s mind when he thought of Mellingham Hall. It was one he was particularly slow to apply to the lake, an ornate sheet of water which called for the services of two men at exorbitant salaries if it was to be kept from smelling to heaven. He disliked the lake intensely. Sometimes of an evening when all was still and the rays of the setting sun turned its surface to molten gold, he would stand gazing at it, wondering if anything could be done about the beastly thing. If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, do you suppose, he would ask himself wistfully, that they could get it clear? Very improbable, he felt, and who can afford seven maids these days?
Mrs Clayborne was enlarging on her theme. If she had been a house agent hoping to sell the place to a wavering client, she could not have been more enthusiastic. She said she had read a lot about these old English country homes in novels and all that, but had never come across one yet. Some of her friends on Long Island and at Newport owned pretty palatial joints, but it wasn’t the same, they lacked the old-world touch.
‘Take you, I mean. I suppose there were Scropes at Mellingham at the time of the Flood.’
It was an unfortunate phrase for her to have chosen, for it reminded Crispin of the night when the rain had come in through the roof, adding a further forty-seven poun
ds five and ninepence to the bill of the repairs people, who at that point were already more than a hundred and fifty ahead of the game. His hand flew up to his neck, and she looked at him enquiringly.
‘Why are you doing that?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You keep rubbing your neck.’
‘I think I must have been sitting in a draught. It is rather painful.’
All the motherliness in Bernadette Clayborne came to the surface as if somebody had pressed a button. It is not only when the brow is racked by pain and anguish that women become ministering angels. They react to stiff necks with equal promptitude.
‘We must look into that,’ she said. Take a chair and lean forward as if you were an early Scrope about to be beheaded on Tower Hill.’
It would be deceiving the wide public for which the chronicler hopes he is writing to say that Crispin enjoyed the next few minutes. They were, indeed, some of the most agonizing he could remember ever living through. He seemed to have delivered himself into the steely clutch of some sort of machine. Only the knowledge that it was firmly fastened on at the roots kept him from being convinced that his head was about to part from the parent spine. He blamed himself for having been so foolish as to sponsor such a performance.
But, as has been well said (by John Dryden, 1631—1700, to keep the record straight), sweet is pleasure after pain. The relief Crispin felt when with a muttered, ‘That ought to do it’ his assailant relaxed her grip more than compensated for all he had gone through. Shortly before embarking on her activities she had assured him that she would teach his little old neck to take a joke, and her prediction had been amply fulfilled. He sat up. He felt wonderful. He regarded her with gratitude and awe, marvelling that he could ever have thought her unsuitable for residence at Mellingham Hall. It was precisely women of her type that Mellingham Hall had been standing in need of for years.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ he said fervently. The pain has completely gone.’
‘I knew it would. I used to do that to my late husband when he had a hangover, which was almost daily, and he said there was nothing like it. And now tell me more about the old home.’
The Girl in Blue Page 3