by Stephen Fry
“Everything’s fine, my old. We’re going on a treasure hunt. Such fun.”
Out in the kitchen yard Simon shouted to us above the roar of the wind and the hissing of the rain.
“We’ll go first to the kennels. Get Soda.”
Max and I nodded and followed him round the back of the house. Rainwater streamed down the back of my neck.
“Do you really think he might have run away?” Max asked me.
“No idea,” I answered. “Christ, I hope not. But if he was listening at the door while I was talking about him, he might well feel unable to face us all.”
“And how exactly is he injured?”
“Well,” I said. “Your daughter bit him.”
Max nodded. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see. The stupid thing is, I never liked the little shit anyway. Always relieved that Simon was my godson, not him. Should have gone on instinct.”
“Not a little shit,” I said, fumbling for the hood of my Barbour. “Hardly his fault everyone encouraged him to believe he was Jesus Christ, is it?”
We had arrived at the kennels. Soda lived apart from the beagles, who were baying and whimpering in the sheltered part of their accommodation. Max and I talked to them and told them that thunderstorms were a harmless lark, while Simon let Soda out and attached a long lead to her collar.
“She’s got a super nose,” he said. “Davey and I used to play hide and seek with her. Manhunts and that kind of thing. You know.”
He bent down and spoke to Soda in the rushed, excited tones humans reserve for dogs. “Seek Davey, Soda! Go on, girl. Seek Davey! Seek Davey! Where’s he gone, Soda? Where’s he gone?”
Soda jumped and barked with pleasure. Never occurred to her to wonder what the fuck we were doing playing games like this late at night in the middle of a thunderstorm. Still, I suppose if you’re a dog and are used to watching humans zooming around at high speed in metal boxes, staring at large sheets of paper at breakfast-time and breathing in smoke from short white tubes, then nothing the species does has the power to surprise you.
We followed Simon and Soda out of the kennel yard and round the side of the house. Soda’s nose bounced along the ground, snorting and sniffing. Every now and again she would dance off in a wide loop, following some false scent, before returning to the main path.
“Nothing yet,” said Simon.
I looked up at the windows of the house and watched the lights being switched on in rooms on every floor. The indoor search party seemed to be having no luck either. I wondered whether they would have the courage to ask the servants for help.
We arrived at the front door and immediately Soda began to snuffle around the steps, barking excitedly and spinning about in frenzied circles.
“I think she’s got something,” said Simon. “Go on, girl! Find Davey! Find Davey!”
Soda yapped twice and tore off towards the front lawn, Simon holding on to the lead. Max sprinted after them, anxious to show he could keep pace with a spaniel and a seventeen-year-old. I rolled along at a more leisurely jog and caught up with the trio at the end of the lawn. Max’s and Simon’s torches were flashing back and forth, but it was light enough to see that of David there was absolutely no sign. Perhaps he had climbed over the ha-ha and into the park. That is where I had been earlier in the evening, peering at the bucket of whisky. The association gave me an idea.
“False alarm,” said Simon.
Soda was barking and circling furiously in the ditch of the ha-ha.
“Wait a moment,” I panted. “I was here the other week. It was morning.”
“So?” said Max.
“Well, I followed a trail of foot-prints in the dew across the lawn and this is exactly where they ended. I couldn’t understand it. That’s the morning I went on into the park and dropped that whisky bottle. Thought I’d been going mad. Just a trail of foot-prints up to here and then nothing.”
Simon looked at the lawn and then down into the ditch where Soda still leapt frantically back and forth barking fit to bust. He slid down the ha-ha and shouted at Soda.
“Seek Davey! Go on, girl! Find him, find Davey!”
Soda kept up a stream of excitable yapping and began to scrabble with her paws against the bank. Simon watched for a moment and then took hold of Soda’s collar and pulled her back.
“Look!” he shouted, pointing. “Here!”
We were still on the lawn level, so Max lay on his stomach and looked down, tracing with the light of his torch a line in the turf that Simon was indicating, a line which formed three sides of a large square.
Simon grasped a handful of the grass and heaved. A heavy turf rectangle, about three feet by three, started to come away from the bank. It was uncut at the top edge, which formed a kind of hinge, but Simon wrenched until the whole piece worked free. Max and I, reaching down, helped take the weight of it and drop it into the ditch beside Simon.
As soon as the entrance was revealed, Soda tried to jump in, but Simon kept hold of her.
“Leave, Soda. Leave. Good girl, you’re a good girl. Stay there.”
He shone his torch into the hole.
Max and I, lying on the grass above and peering down, could make out the doorway of a tunnel cut into the bank beneath us and see in the light of Simon’s torch two bare feet in the mud.
“Is he all right?” I shouted down. “How is he?”
Simon put his hands around the ankles and began to pull. “I can’t tell,” he said. “I’ll need a hand.”
Max and I dropped into the ditch to help. Max pointed with the torch as Simon and I heaved and more and more of Davey emerged. He had been lying lengthways and unclothed in a tunnel scarcely big enough to contain him. Air-holes, if he had bothered to construct any, would have been penetrated by the rainwater and blocked by wet earth. He cannot have lain there for more than an hour, I thought. None the less, the air would have become appallingly fetid and the soil would have dampened into mud.
I heard footsteps and shouts from the direction of the house. Michael and Annie were running up the lawn, with Rebecca, Patricia and Mary not far beyond.
“You’ve found him,” cried Annie. “Where was he?”
They looked down into the ha-ha, where Simon and I were laying David’s body in the ditch. Soda licked the mud from his arm and moaned like a rusty gate.
“What’s that bandage?” asked Michael. “There’s blood on it! What in God’s name has he tried to do to himself?”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said.
“He’s not breathing!” wailed Annie. “Michael, his eyes are closed and he’s not breathing.”
Simon took one of David’s arms, which was lying by his side, and I took the other. We raised them, pulling them back behind Davey’s head. We did this several times, slowly at first and then with a quicker and quicker rhythm. Then Simon laid the palms of his hands on David’s chest and bore down with all his weight, pushing and pushing. Annie began to cry.
Finally Simon, shaking his head, pinched his brother’s nose with one hand and with the other opened his mouth. He leant down and blew into the lungs.
IV
“Look, for fuck’s sake, keep up, the pair of you,” I growled. “I’m ten minutes late as it is.”
“We’ll run then,” said Roman. “Yes, sir, we’ll bloody run.”
“Abso-sodding-lutely. We’ll only bloody run.”
They barged past me and ran up the pavement, turning left and out of sight into Great Marlborough Street.
By the time I caught up three minutes later they were swinging around a lamp-post outside the back of Marks and Spencer’s and tutting at imaginary wrist-watches as I approached.
“I’ll be over there,” I said. “In that building. I shan’t be more than half an hour.”
“There’s a McDonald’s in Oxford Street,” said Davey.
“Yeah, can we go over and get a Big Mac?”
“Ten Big Macs.”
“Come on, Dad! It’s the last week before school.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Don’t badger me. Here . . .” I handed them each a fiver. “And don’t throw up in the street.”
“We’ll see you in there. It’s just in Oxford Street.”
“See you . . .”
I crossed the street and pressed the buzzer.
“Ted Wallace to see Lionel Greene.”
“Second floor.”
Greene didn’t have a great deal to say. Nothing that Michael, as executor, hadn’t already told me.
“The estate consists in its entirety of the South Kensington property, four hundred thousand pounds in shares and one hundred and thirty thousand pounds on deposit with the Chelsea branch of Coutts Bank.”
“Seems rather a lot.”
“Would you prefer the shares to be sold?”
“Not sure.” If I donated it all to some leukaemia society I would end up regretting it. Gestures are all very well but they don’t fill bellies. Besides, it would look so smug and greasy.
“It’s entirely up to you as the sole beneficiary.”
“Yes. I know.”
“And the house, Mr. Wallace? Will you be selling that?”
“I’m certainly not going to live there,” I said. “You should see the wallpaper.”
“I am also instructed to give you this letter,” Greene added, handing me an envelope. The handwriting was appalling and it took me some time to make out a single one of the words. Greene turned discreetly away to allow me to read it unobserved.
Dear Ted,
I’m so sorry. I can’t understand what has gone wrong. I need you to send Davey to me at the hospital. I’m suddenly very weak. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense at all.
The doctors say it is the leukaemia, but we know that can’t be the case, don’t we? We know that they must have made a mistake.
Thank you for all your letters and for throwing yourself into the work so whole-heartedly. I wasn’t wrong in sending you and I haven’t forgotten that we have a bargain. I have made a new will which the nurses have witnessed. Spend the money on bringing Davey’s gifts to the notice of the world.
As soon as you get this, come with Davey. He will make it all right again.
Love
Jane
“I understand,” Greene said, “that she died no more than half an hour after writing it. Very sad. I had a brother who died of leukaemia. Terrible thing.”
“Very terrible,” I said, standing.
“Just two things before you go, Mr. Wallace. I have the keys to Onslow Terrace here. Would you like them?”
“I suppose so. There are some papers there that I ought to go through.”
I pondered the strange custom by which people’s letters, bills and scraps of useless rubbish instantly become dignified with the word “papers” the moment they are dead. Objects like house-keys, of course, become “effects.”
Greene handed them over with a ceremonial dip of the head.
“And the second thing?” I asked.
“The second thing is this,” he said, picking up a book from his desk with a shy smile. “I wonder if you would do me the inestimable favour of signing my copy of your Collected Works?”
The boys were sitting in an upstairs section of the “restaurant,” as it liked to call itself.
“Everything hunky-dory, Dad?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “My God, do you really enjoy those things?”
“No, Dad,” said Roman, “we eat them because we hate them. Of course we bloody enjoy them. Have one yourself.”
“I think not.”
“Go on, Ted,” Davey urged. “You’ve got to at least try them, you know. Otherwise you’ve no right to criticise them.”
“Oh, now hang on . . .”
“I’ll nip down and buy you one,” he said.
“Why couldn’t he have asked a waitress?” I asked, watching him shoot downstairs.
“Come off it, Dad,” said Roman. “Don’t pretend to be more ignorant than you are.”
“Hum.”
“Do you know, Davey had never had a Big Mac in his entire life until two weeks ago?”
“Yes, I did know,” I said.
“Bloody addicted to them now.”
“Roman,” I said.
“Yup?”
“I know we never really get much of a chance to talk about anything, but I just wanted to say . . .”
“Say what?” he burped.
“Well, I just wanted to say that it’s bloody good having you around. I hadn’t realised what a . . . what a splendid chap you are.”
He smiled. “Dad, you’ve been watching too many bloody American TV movies,” he said.
“I have watched as many American TV movies as I’ve eaten Large Macs,” I replied. “At least let me try and be fatherly, however badly I may do it. The thing is this, though. I know Helen only carts you off to London when she and Brian go on their August holiday, but if ever you want to hang around the flat at any other time, well . . .”
“Yeah, I don’t mind,” he said.
“Good man.”
“So, what’s the plan for the rest of the afternoon?”
“Well, it’s a rather busy day for me, as it happens. I’ve got to cut over to the Harpo Club in half an hour. Your sister Leonora wants to see me. I think her boyfriend’s run out on her.”
“Again?”
“Again. She hasn’t got anywhere to live. I might be able to put a house her way. After that, I’ve got a meeting with a publisher.”
“You writing poems again?”
“This is for a novel, based on . . . based on an idea that came to me last month when I was staying at Swafford.”
“And how long will that take?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ve never written one before.”
“No, the meeting. With the publisher person. How long will that take?”
“Oh, no more than half an hour I don’t suppose. But then I really ought to zip over to visit Oliver in hospital.”
“Blimey, and what are we supposed to do all this time?”
“Ah, well. I’m coming to that. Let me see . . . hold out your hand.” I took out my wallet. “I reckon thirty pounds each ought to do it.”
“Yes, please!” said Roman. “Ought to do what?”
“This afternoon’s task,” I said, counting out six ten-pound notes into his hand, “is for the two of you to go along Brewer Street and see if you can get admitted into a dirty movie or bed show. You have to bring me the ticket stubs as proof.”
“And what’s the prize if we manage it?”
“The prize, Roman, you ungrateful bastard, is the pleasure of having seen a dirty movie or a bed show. Isn’t that enough?”
“All right. You’re on.”
“Fine.”
“What exactly is the point, though?” Roman asked, pocketing the cash. “Is it just to annoy Mum if she ever finds out?”
“It has absolutely nothing to do with your mother. Nothing whatsoever. It’s for the good of your immortal souls, if you must know.”
“Fair enough. Just wondered.”
“And the pair of you had better find something to do this evening as well. I’m taking Patricia out to Le Caprice and she may want to come back afterwards.”
“We’re going to need more than thirty quid, then.”
“You are one of the few people,” I said, handing him another four tenners, “who can accurately be called a son of a bitch.”
“Your Big Mac, sir,” said Davey, depositing a plastic tray on the table in front of me. “With Regular Fries and a Diet Coke.”
&n
bsp; “There’s no cutlery,” I protested.
“Fingers and thumbs are nature’s cutlery,” he replied with a self-conscious smile.
I opened the brown polystyrene box and stared gloomily at the contents.
“Do I really have to do this thing?”
“Yes, sir, you do!” they said.
“A good trick,” Davey offered, “is to empty the fries into the open lid of the box. There, like that. Neat, isn’t it?”
I raised the bun to my face and sniffed. “What’s that pink sauce?”
“Ah, nobody knows. It’s the best-kept secret in the world.”
I bit into the warm squashy mess.
They watched me anxiously, like laboratory technicians monitoring a guinea-pig.
“Well, Dad? What do you reckon?”
“Absolutely disgusting.”
“So, another one?” Davey suggested.
“Why not?” I said.