The Ornamental Hermit

by Olivier Bosman

  The room was a mess. Sheets, blankets and pillows had been scattered over and around the bed; a silver spoon lay abandoned on the floor next to the shattered remains of a discarded soup bowl; a chair had been thrown over and lay tumbled on its side.

  “Come in,” Mr Forrester said. “Come sit beside me.” He tapped the seat of the chair beside his bed. “How is your investigation going? Have you found anything out yet?”

  Billings approached the bed and sat down beside him. “I’m afraid I haven’t, sir.”

  “But did you study Sebastian’s letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Both Mr and Mrs Forrester were staring at him with wide, expecting eyes.

  “They’re both his, aren’t they?” Mrs Forrester concluded. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

  “It’s too early to tell yet, Mrs Forrester,” Billings replied. “Now, I was hoping to speak to Mr Forrester.”

  “What about?”

  “There are some questions I want to ask him.”

  “Can’t you ask me?”

  “I’d rather ask him.”

  “But what’s it about?”

  “For God’s sake, woman!” Mr Forrester cried suddenly. “Don’t you see the boy wants to talk to me on his own! Just get out of the room, will you!”

  Mrs Forrester hesitated and looked at Billings, offended.

  “Please, Mrs Forrester,” Billings said, smiling gently. “If you want me to find Sebastian, then you must let me go about it my own way. There are things a son tells his father that he doesn’t tell his mother and vice versa. I shall, at times, need to speak to the both of you separately. But right now I need to speak to Mr Forrester.”

  “Very well,” she said eventually and got up from her chair. She looked disappointed. “I’ll be back in a while with Nancy to clean up the mess.”

  “Well, what do you want from me?” Mr Forrester asked after his wife had left the room.

  “I want to talk to you about Sebastian’s disappearance. I want you to tell me why he ran away from university?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows.”

  “Was there some sort of argument between you?”

  “Argument?”

  “Some sort of estrangement?”

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “In his letter Sebastian made certain allusions to a disagreement. ‘Papa will know what I mean. He won’t understand or agree, but he’ll know.’ Why did he write that?”

  “He was being enigmatic.”

  “But you must have a suspicion.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Mr Forrester, the only way for me to find out what happened is by retracing Sebastian’s steps and seeing where that leads to. I need to know what you know about his elopement. You can be frank, with me, Mr Forrester. I’m here as a friend. Not a policeman.”

  There was a short pause.

  “Yes. Yes, you’re right. You should know everything.”

  Suddenly Mrs Forrester re-entered the room with the maid, who was carrying a duster and pan. Mr Forrester instantly grabbed a pillow from the bed and hurled it at them.

  “Out!” he cried.

  The pillow hit the maid on the head and she froze in fear. Mrs Forrester gave her husband an angry look. “Freddy, we just want to clean up the soup you...”

  “Out! The both of you!” He grabbed another pillow from the floor and hurled it again, this time hitting his wife.

  “All right, all right, we’ll clean it later!” Mrs Forrester said, offended, and shuffled out of the room with the maid.

  Mr Forrester turned back to face Billings. “There is something I should tell you,” he said, panting after his exertion. “Cecilia doesn’t know. I don’t want her to know, but something did happen. Something horrible did happen, which I...” He stopped and looked away. He swallowed a few times, as if he had something stuck in his throat.

  “Shall I get you some water?” Billings rose up from his chair, but Mr Forrester held out his arm and urged him to sit down again.

  “No, no, stay here. Stay here, John, and listen to me. I will tell you. But as a friend. As a dear friend, do you understand me? Look at me.” Mr Forrester stared intently into Billings’s eyes. “I will take you up on your offer. I’ll talk to you, but as a friend and not a policeman.”

  Billings nodded quietly. There was clearly going to be a criminal element to Mr Forrester’s confession, which he would have to ignore.

  Mr Forrester leaned back into his pillows, turned his head away from Billings and, looking up at the ceiling, started relating the following story:

  *

  It was late morning. Ten o’clock. Maybe eleven. I was sitting in my office preparing for my lunchtime meeting when my secretary knocked on the door.

  “A telegram has arrived for you, sir,” he said, popping his head into the room and waving the envelope at me.

  I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m doing the books and I made no attempt at hiding my annoyance.

  “Can you not open it and deal with it yourself?” I said, frowning.

  “Do you think I should?” he replied. “It’s addressed to you personally.”

  We didn’t get many telegrams at the bank and when we did they were usually addressed to the director or to one of the brokers, but never to me personally. So I took the envelope from Stevens, walked with it towards the light of the fireside and opened it with a degree of trepidation. Good news always comes to you in the form of a letter. It’s only bad news that needs to be rushed through the telegraph posts.

  ‘Leaving Wycliffe Hall to marry. Sorry to disappoint, but can’t be avoided. Help in finding employment appreciated. Sebastian.’

  I recognized it immediately for what it was – a cry for help. Why would he send a telegram to announce the occasion unless he wanted to be rescued from it? It was obvious what had happened. He’d been ensnared by some callous young girl and needed my assistance in freeing him from his obligations. It’s an age old story, John, and one which would undoubtedly end up costing me a lot of money.

  My day was perfectly ruined after reading that. I cast the telegram into the fire, sat ill-humoured and distracted though my client’s meeting, then rushed off to the post office to let my son know I’d be coming down the following morning to see how we could get this ghastly affair settled.

  I found Sebastian sitting on a bench on the platform at Oxford Station, staring at his shoes, looking pale and glum. He didn’t lift his head to look at me as I stepped off the train. Even as I approached and called out his name, he stubbornly refused to look me in the eyes.

  You know, of course, that I’ve always had a strained relationship with my son. It’s his passiveness which annoyed me. The way he would sit at home, before the fireplace, hour after hour, without stirring. I’d come into the room in the morning and he’d be there, sunk in his chair, staring into the flames. I’d come back again in the evening and he’d still be there, in the same position, not having moved an inch.

  “Let him be,” Cecilia would say. “He’s thinking. He lives in his mind.”

  Well, thinking is for old people, John. For people whose bodies have failed and who now have a lifetime of regrets to ponder. Sebastian was a young man, at the prime of his life. Never again would his body contain as much energy and potential as it did then and it bothered me that he was wasting it. He had no passion. He had no ambition. He always said he wanted to follow God’s will, but it wasn’t his idea to train for missionary work, it was mine. He never showed any interest or enthusiasm for going to Africa. I wanted God to move in him. Not just to live in him, but to move him. To fill him with purpose. And love. And charity. But it was also meant to be a challenge. One filled with danger. You of all people must know how dangerous life can be in Africa. It was to be an adventure. A memory to treasure and inspire him throughout his life. Something that would serve him in his future career, whatever that might be. All young people want that, don’t they? To t
ravel? To see more of the world? To break away from their parents and their childhood lives? He never said he didn’t. If he had wanted to do something else, I’d have supported him. If he had wanted to join the navy, or go into trade, or follow me into the bank, or emigrate to America even. I’d have gladly supported him in anything, so long as he showed a passion for it. But he never did. He always did just what he was told and was perfectly content to allow other people to lead his life for him.

  I must admit that as I sat in the train to Oxford, I did derive a small amount of satisfaction at the thought that he had got a girl in trouble. At least it showed that there was something which could stir his blood enough to get his body into action. But when I got off the train and saw him sitting on that bench, staring at the ground with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his coat pocket, I felt that rage rise in me again and I had to bite my lip to stop me from scolding him.

  “Sebastian!” I called.

  He finally lifted his head and looked at me, with that dead and melancholy stare of his.

  “What have you done now?” I said to him. It was meant to be a light-hearted comment aimed at breaking the ice, but he didn’t take it as such, and hung his head again. I sat down beside him and put my hand on his knee. “So what’s her name?” I asked quietly and gently.

  “Janie Drew,” he mumbled back, still staring at his shoes. “She’s one of the maids at Wycliffe Hall.”

  “And what do her parents do?”

  “Her mother is an innkeeper in Farmoor.”

  “And her father?”

  “He’s a navvy. He’s in India working on a rail bridge.”

  “Does she have any siblings?”

  “She has four older brothers. They’re all abroad.”

  “All of them?”

  “Two of them are with their father in India, one of them is with the South Staffies in Africa and the other one has gone to Australia.”

  “So she lives alone with her mother in Farmoor?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far along is she?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How many weeks?”

  “About three months.”

  “Three months? God help us!” It was much worse than I expected. “And what does her mother make of all this?”

  “She’s not happy.”

  “No, I should think not! So what will you do now?”

  He shrugged.

  “Perhaps she can accompany you to Madagascar?” I offered.

  “Her mother won’t let her.”

  “She’ll be a married woman, then. She won’t need her mother’s permission.”

  “She doesn’t want to leave her mother on her own.”

  “So what will you do, then?”

  He shrugged again.

  “Well, come on Sebastian, you must have thought about it a little bit.” Sebastian’s unresponsiveness was annoying me and I was struggling to keep my patience.

  “Janie’s mother says I could live with them and work at the inn,” he said eventually, still looking at his shoes.

  “That’s nonsense, Sebastian. You can not waste your life doing menial jobs which are below your station.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’ll make you bitter and angry, that’s why! You’ll only end up hating your wife and child for it, trust me. As far as I can see, we’ve only got three options. Option one: you marry her and she accompanies you to Madagascar. Option two: I provide her with sufficient funds to look after the child and her mother. And option three...” I stopped.

  Sebastian suddenly raised his head and looked at me with interest.

  “What’s option three?”

  “Why don’t you arrange a meeting for the four of us? You, me, Janie and her mother. I’ll be here for four days.”

  “Four days?”

  “Yes, I told your mother I was going to Birmingham for a meeting about the miners’ houses charity I’m setting up. I said I’d be back in the weekend.”

  “You didn’t tell her about me?”

  “I’ll be staying at the Station Inn. Go back to your college, speak to that girl and arrange a meeting for the four of us tomorrow. We’ll discuss the options then.”

  *

  As Sebastian and I rode into the small village of Farmoor, we saw Mrs Drew standing in the doorway of her inn. She was a large woman with a stern face. Her hair was pulled back tightly and tied into a knot at the back of her head. She was wearing a long white apron which reached down towards her ankles and she had wooden clogs on her bare feet. Her arms were crossed over her breast and she was watching us with a hostile stare. I nodded at her as I disembarked the carriage, but she didn’t reciprocate. She just continued to stare at us, frowning.

  “Mrs Drew, my name is Frederick Forrester,” I said as I walked towards her, holding out my hand.

  “You had better come in quickly before anyone sees us,” she said without shaking my hand. “I have some tea in the lounge.” She stepped aside and Sebastian and I shuffled quietly into the house.

  As I entered the lounge, I caught my first glimpse of Janie. She was sitting in the corner, looking down and fiddling with the buttons of her blouse. I nodded at her, but she refused to turn her head and acknowledge me. She was a plump girl and, although I could see she was dressed up in her Sunday best, there wasn’t the slightest trace of elegance about her. I wondered what Sebastian ever saw in her.

  The room was small, but tidy and cozy. There was a large oak dresser against the wall, displaying a collection of ornamental plates and beer mugs. There was a round table in the middle of the room and a large oil lamp with a beautiful ceramic shade hung low over the centre of it. The table had been laid with a damask tablecloth and silk embroidered napkins. A tray with a tea pot and china cups stood waiting for us. It was clear that every effort had been made to display to us that this was a respectable household with high aspirations.

  “Sit down, Mr Forrester,” said Mrs Drew as she followed us into the room and closed the door behind her. “The punters will start coming in at four and you must both be gone by then. This is a small village and I don’t want any tongues wagging. Will the gentlemen have some tea?” And before we got the chance to reply, she started pouring our cups.

  Sebastian and I both took our seats at the table. I caught Sebastian glancing over at Janie as he sat down, but she refused to look back at him and remained sunk in her chair like a sack of potatoes, fiddling with her clothes, sour-faced and sulking.

  “Well...” said Mrs Drew, sitting down opposite me and sliding the tea cup towards me. “It appears we have a bit of a problem, Mr Forrester.”

  ‘A bit of a problem.’ Those were the precise words she used. She had a very affected way of speaking and her speech was littered with words which were far above her station. She had clearly spent a great deal of her life studying the speech patterns of the upper classes.

  “It needn’t be a problem, Mrs Drew, if the youngsters agree to marry. I believe Sebastian has already proposed.”

  “Oh yes, he has proposed alright! He has proposed to ship my only daughter off to Africa and deprive me of the only family I have left. No sir, I will not allow that!”

  “No, I didn’t think you would.”

  “The boy will have to stay here if he marries her. He’ll have to stay here and help me with the inn.”

  “I’m sure there’s many a young man who would be delighted at that prospect, but I’m afraid I have higher aspirations for my son.”

  “My inn not good enough for your boy, is it Mr Forrester?”

  “Let us not be sensitive, Mrs Drew. I can see that this is a respectable household and I do not look down my nose at you or your daughter, but I have invested a considerable amount of money on my son’s education and future and I do not wish to throw all that away on account of his youthful folly.” I looked over at Sebastian at that point and saw him frozen in his seat, looking down at the table, defeated and embarrassed. “You and I both know that marr
iage is out of the question,” I continued, “so let us not waste any more time on that subject and let us get straight down to what this meeting is really all about.”

  “Oh? And just what is this meeting really all about, Mr Forrester?”

  “Money.”

  “Money?”

  “You want money, Mrs Drew, and I’m prepared to make a deal with you. So I suggest we kick off negotiations and start naming our prices.”

  There was a long silence. Mrs Drew frowned, then took a deep breath, sat up in her seat and looked defiantly at me. “You say you don’t look down your nose at me and yet you come into my house and you offer me money?”

  I was taken aback and started to stutter. “Well, I... I only meant for the child. It will cost money to bring up a child and I’m prepared to pay my share.”

  “You say that this is a respectable household and yet you expect my unmarried daughter to bring up your son’s bastard?”

  Mrs Drew’s haughty accusations were irritating me and I’m afraid I lost my patience. “Well, then what the devil do you want, Mrs Drew!”

  “I told you what I want, Mr Forrester. I want your son to marry my daughter and help me run the inn!”

  “Well, that is out of the question.”

  “Well, then we’re at an impasse, aren’t we?”

  There was another long pause as Mrs Drew and I both took a deep breath and calmed ourselves down. Sebastian and Janie both remained frozen in their seats, looking passively at the ground as their futures were being decided for them.

  “There is one other option open to us,” I said eventually.

  Mrs Drew suddenly looked up with interest. “Oh? And what may that be?”

  “There is some medication.”

  “Medication?”

  “To bring on your daughter’s cycle.”

  “Her cycle?”

  I could tell by the tone in her voice that her surprise was fake. She knew exactly what I was talking about and had clearly been waiting all this time for me to introduce the topic.

  “There are pills she could take which will cause her to menstruate again,” I explained. “I know a pharmacist in London and I’m perfectly willing to...”