by Muriel Spark
‘There wasn’t time to go through the whole of it with Laurence. He wants me to go and stay nearby for a couple of weeks, so that I can investigate under his supervision and consult him on my daily visits.’
‘No,’ Helena said, ‘that won’t do. We can’t weary Laurence in his state. I want him moved to London at the first opportunity.’
Ernest agreed. ‘It would be very inconvenient for me to leave London at this time of the year. But Laurence was keen. Perhaps there’s some other way —’
Helena looked at Ernest reclining now on Caroline’s divan in such a hollowed-out sort of way. Shifting sand, we must not build our houses on it. But Helena was not sure whether he didn’t possess some stable qualities in spite of the way the family regarded him. She realized her inexperience of Ernest: Caroline had a more lucid idea of him.
‘Of course,’ Helena said, ‘it would cheer Laurence up tremendously, someone visiting him every day. Now that they’re out of danger I can only manage twice a week. Caroline too, you would visit Caroline too?’
‘I’m not sure that I can get away.
‘Ernest, I will pay your expenses of course.’ She was almost glad of his resistance, it proved him to be ever so slightly substantial.
‘If you would,’ he said, ‘it would be a help. But I shall have to talk to Eleanor. This time of year is difficult, and we aren’t doing so well just now.’
‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t confide in Eleanor.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t mention any family business.’
They talked back and forth until it became needful to Helena that Ernest should go to reside at Hayward’s Heath for two weeks.
‘We must get to the bottom of this intrigue without upsetting my mother,’ she declared. ‘Laurence understands that perfectly. I’m sure his recovery depends on our doing something active. We must be doing. I know you are discreet, Ernest. I don’t want Mother to have a stroke, Ernest. And we must pray.
‘I’ll try to see Hogarth,’ he promised. ‘Maybe I can get him to meet me in London.’
He was pouring out their second cups, with that wrist, of which there was a lot showing, poised in a woman’s fashion which nibbled at Helena’s trust in him.
‘I have no misgivings,’ she declared, ‘I have implicit trust in you, Ernest.’
‘Dear me,’ said Ernest. She thought how Caroline with her aptitude for ‘placing’ people in their correct historical setting had once placed Ernest in the French Court of the seventeenth century. ‘He’s born out of his time,’ Caroline had explained, ‘that’s part of his value in the present age.’ Laurence had said placidly, and not long ago, ‘Ernest never buys a tie, he has them made. Five-eighths of an inch wider than anyone else’s.’
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life. It is possible for parents to be corrupted or improved by their children. Through Laurence, and also of later years through Caroline, Helena’s mental organization had been recast. She was, at least, prepared for the idea that Ernest was not only to be tolerated in a spirit of what she understood as Christian charity, but valued for himself, his differences from the normal. Helena actually admired him a little for what she called his reform. But when he gave up his relations with men she had half expected an external change in Ernest; was disappointed and puzzled that his appearance and attitudes remained so infrangibly effeminate, and she understood that these mannerisms were not offensive to people like Laurence and Caroline. Helena possessed some French china, figurines of the seventeenth century which she valued, but the cherishing of Ernest while he was in her presence came hard enough to present her with an instinctive antagonism; something to overcome.
Ernest had folded while she packed nearly everything. What couldn’t be packed was ready to be carried to the car. ‘Let’s have a cigarette, we’ve worked hard.’
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that machine belongs to Caroline. We had better have the man up to make sure we haven’t left anything of ours, or taken away what’s theirs.’
Ernest, curling himself on a low footstool, lifted the cover off the machine. ‘It’s a tape-recorder. Caroline probably used it for her work.’
‘I have implicit trust in you, Ernest. I’ve come to you before anyone. I don’t want to inconvenience you of course, and if it’s a question of expense —’
‘Thank you, Helena. But I can’t promise — I’ll try of course — this time of year we have our bookings, our classes. Maybe Hogarth will agree to come to London.’
‘I’m so grateful to you, Ernest.’
He fiddled with the tape machine, pressed the lever. It gave a faint whirr and the voice came with an exaggerated soppy yak: ‘Caroline, darling… .
Within a few seconds Helena had recognized Laurence’s voice; a slight pause and it was followed by Caroline’s. The first speech was shocking and the second was nonsense.
Ernest said, ‘Hee, silly little dears.’
Helena lifted her coat, let Ernest help her on with it.
‘Will you send for the man, Ernest? Give him a pound and ask if everything’s all right. I’ll take some of the loose things down to the car. No, ten shillings will do.’
She felt almost alone in the world, wearily unfit for the task of understanding Laurence and Caroline. These new shocks and new insights, this perpetual obligation on her part to accept what it went against her to accept… . She wanted a warm soft bath in her own home; she was tired and worried and she didn’t know what.
Just as she was leaving, Ernest phoning for the housekeeper said, ‘Look, there’s something. A notebook, that’s Caroline’s I’m sure.’
A red pocket notebook was lying on the lower ledge of the telephone table. He picked it up and handed it to Helena.
‘What a good thing you saw it. I’d quite forgotten. Caroline was asking specially for this. A notebook with shorthand notes, she asked for it.’ Helena flicked it open to make sure. Most of it was in shorthand, but on one of the pages was a list in longhand. She caught the words: ‘Possible identity.’
‘This must be connected with Laurence’s investigations,’ Helena said.
She turned again to that page while she sat in the car waiting for Ernest with the bags, but she could make nothing of it. Under ‘Possible identity’ were listed:
Satan
a woman
hermaphrodite
a Holy Soul in Purgatory
‘I don’t know what,’ said Helena, as she put it away carefully among Caroline’s things. ‘I really don’t know what.’
SEVEN
Just after two in the mild bluish afternoon a tall straight old man entered the bookshop. He found Baron Stock alone and waiting for him.
‘Ah, Mr Webster, how punctual you are, how very good of you to make the journey. Come right through to the inside, come to the inside.’
Baron Stock’s large personal acquaintance — though he had few intimate friends — when they dropped in on the Baron in his Charing Cross Road bookshop were invariably greeted with this request, ‘Come to the inside.’ Customers, travellers and the trade were not allowed further than the large front show-place; the Baron was highly cagey about ‘the inside’, those shabby, comfortable, and quite harmless back premises where books and files piled and tumbled over everything except the three old armchairs and the square of worn red carpet, in the centre of which stood a foreign-looking and noisy paraffin stove. Those admitted to the inside, before they sat down and if they knew the Baron’s habits, would wait while he placed a sheet of newspaper on the seat of each chair. ‘It is exceedingly dusty, my dears, I never permit the cleaners to touch the inside.’ When the afternoons began to draw in, the Baron would light a paraffin lamp on his desk: the electricity had long since failed here in these back premises, ‘and really,’ said the Baron, ‘I can’t have electricians coming through to the inside with their mess.’ Occasionally one of his friends would say, ‘It looks a simple job, I think I could fix your lights, Willi.’ ‘How very obliging of you.�
� ‘Not at all, I’ll do it next week.’ But no one ever came next week to connect up the electricity.
‘And how,’ said the Baron when he had settled Mr Webster on a fresh piece of newspaper, ‘is Mrs Jepp?’
Mr Webster sat erect and stiff, turning his body from the waist to answer the Baron.
‘She is well I am pleased to say, but worried about her grandson I am sorry to say.
‘Yes, a nasty accident. I’ve known Laurence for years of course. A bad driver. But he’s coming home next week, I hear.’
‘Yes, he had a handsome escape. The poor young lady’s leg is fractured, but she too might be worse, they tell us.’
‘Poor Caroline, I’ve known her for years. Her forehead was cut quite open, I hear.’
‘Slight abrasions, I understand, nothing serious.’
‘Such a relief. I hear everything in this shop but my informants always exaggerate. They are poets on the whole or professional liars of some sort, and so one has to make allowances. I’m glad to know that Caroline’s head has no permanent cavity. I’ve known her for years. I am going to visit her next week.’
‘If you will pardon my mentioning, Baron, if you intend to be in our part of the country, I think at the moment you should not make occasion to call on Mrs Jepp. The Hogarths have had to cancel their trip to the Continent and they frequently call at the cottage.’
‘What was the trouble? Why didn’t they go?’
‘Mrs Jepp had the feeling that the Manders were about to investigate her concerns. She thinks there should be no further trips till the spring. The Hogarths were ready to leave, but she stopped them at the last minute. She is not at all worried.’
‘It sounds fairly worrying to me. The Hogarths do not suspect that I am involved in your arrangements?’
‘I don’t think you need fear that. Mrs Jepp and I are very careful about mentioning names. You are simply Mrs Jepp’s “London connexion”. They have never shown further curiosity.’
‘And the Manders? I suppose Laurence has put them up to something, he is so observant, it’s terrifying. I am never happy when he goes to that cottage.’
‘Mrs Jepp is very fond of him.’
‘Why, of course. I am very fond of Laurence, I’ve known the Manders for years. But Laurence is most inquisitive. Do you think the Manders are likely to suspect my part in the affair?’
‘If anything, their interest would reside in myself and the Hogarths. I do not think you need worry, Baron.’
‘I will tell you why I’m anxious. There is no risk of exposure either from the Hogarths or from the Manders. In the one case they themselves are involved. In the other case the old lady is involved and the Manders would of course wish to hush up anything they found out. But it happens that I am interested in Mervyn Hogarth in another connexion. I have arranged to be introduced to him, and I do not wish to confuse the two concerns.
Mr Webster thought, Ah, to do with the woman, Hogarth’s former wife, but he was wrong.
‘Hogarth is up in London today,’ he informed the Baron, ‘I saw him on the train, but I thought best to remain unseen.
‘Sure he didn’t see you? No chance of his having followed you here out of curiosity?’
‘No, in fact I kept him in sight until he disappeared into a club in Piccadilly. Ho, ho, Baron.’
He handed the Baron a small neat package. ‘I had better not forget to give you this,’ he said, still chuckling in an old man’s way.
The Baron opened it carefully, taking out a tin marked in Louisa Jepp’s clear hand, ‘Soft herring roes.’
‘Mrs Jepp was particularly anxious that you should eat the actual herring roes,’ Mr Webster said. ‘She bade me say that they are very nourishing and no contamination can possibly arise from the other contents of the tin.’
‘I shall,’ said the Baron, ‘I shall.’
He slid the tin into his brief case, then opening a double-locked drawer took out a bundle of white notes. These he counted. He took another bunch and did likewise, then a third; from a fourth lot he extracted a number of notes which he added to the three bundles. He replaced the remainder of the notes in his drawer and relocked it before handing the bundles to Mr Webster. Then he wrote three cheques and handed them over.
‘They are dated at three-weekly intervals. Please check the amount,’ he said, ‘and then I will give you this good strong envelope to put them in.’
‘Much the safest way,’ said Mr Webster as he always did, referring, not to the envelope but to the method of payment. ‘Much the safest in case of inquiries,’ he added as always.
When this business was done, and the notes packed into their envelope and locked away in Mr Webster’s bag, the Baron said, ‘Now, a cigar, Mr Webster, and a sip of Curaçao.’
‘Very well, thank you. But I mustn’t delay long because of the time of year.’
The shop door tinkled. ‘Tinkle,’ said the Baron, and rising, he peered through a chink in the partition that separated the grey-carpeted front shop from the warm and shabby inside. ‘A barbarian wanting a book,’ the Baron remarked as he went forth to serve his customer.
Returning within a few seconds, he said, ‘Do you know anything of diabolism?’
‘I’ve seen witchcraft practised, many times in the olden days; that was before your time, Baron; mostly in South American ports.’
‘You are a sail-or,’ said the Baron. ‘I have always thought you were a sail-or.’
‘I was a merchant seaman. I have seen witchcraft, Baron. In those countries it can be fearful, I can tell you.’
‘I am interested in diabolism. In a detached way, I assure you.’
‘Ho, I am sure, Baron. It isn’t a thing for a temperate climate.’
‘That is why,’ said the Baron, ‘I am interested in Mervyn Hogarth. You would call him a mild and temperate man?’
‘Well, Baron, he doesn’t say much though he talks a lot. Myself I don’t care for him. But Mrs Jepp tolerates, she tolerates. She is thinking perhaps of the poor son. This trading of ours, it gives him something in life. Poor lad, poor lad.’
‘Would it surprise you, Mr Webster, to know that Mervyn Hogarth is the foremost diabolist in these islands?’
‘I should never have thought of the man as being foremost in anything.’
‘How does he strike you, tell me?’
‘Between ourselves, Baron, he strikes me, between ourselves, as a cynic, as they say, and a misanthropist. A tedious fellow.’
‘Devoted to his son, though?’
‘I don’t know, I do not. He behaves well to the lad. Mrs Jepp believes, and this is between ourselves, Baron, that he only sticks to the boy in order to spite his former wife. At least that was her impression when she first met them.’
‘This diamond trading was Mrs Jepp’s idea, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. Oh, and she enjoys it, Mrs Jepp would be the last to deny it.’
‘They don’t need money, the Hogarths?’
‘No. Hogarth himself is comfortable. The unfortunate young man does so enjoy evading the customs, Baron.’
The Baron put a finger to his lips with a smile. Mr Webster lowered his voice as he thanked his host for the replenishment of his glass.
‘Evading the customs has made a great difference to young Andrew Hogarth. It has given him confidence,’ Mr Webster said in low tones.
‘When Mrs Jepp first suggested this arrangement to me — for it was she, you know, who approached me with the scheme, she came straight in to the shop here a few days after I had met her with Laurence and stated her proposition most admirably; I could see her quality. Well, when she put it to me she added that if I should agree to come in with her, I must undertake not to inquire into the methods used by the more active agents. When I had thought over her suggestion and had satisfied myself that the plan was genuinely and well conceived — allowing for the usual risk which I do not find unpleasurable — I agreed exactly to Mrs Jepp’s terms. I mention this, because frankly I would not be within my
rights if I asked you by what means the Hogarths convey their valuables. Up to the past few months I have not been greatly interested in that side of the transactions, but now I am greatly interested because of my interest in the actions of Mervyn Hogarth.’
‘I do not know their method,’ said Mr Webster, and the Baron could not tell if he were speaking the truth or not, so unaltered were his sharp blue eyes.
‘Hogarth is a diabolist. I am intensely interested in Hogarth for the reason that I am interested in the psychology of diabolism. You do not know the madness of scholarly curiosity, Mr Webster. To be interested and at the same time disinterested. …
‘I can well understand it, Baron. But I should not have thought the elder Mr Hogarth indulged in any exotic practices. He seems to me a disillusioned man, far from an enthusiast.’
‘That is the interesting factor,’ said the Baron excitedly. ‘From all I have discovered of the man’s personality, he is drenched in disillusionment, an intelligent man, a bored man; an unsuccessful man with women, indifferent to friendships. Yet, he is a fanatical diabolist. You will keep my confidence, Mr Webster.’
‘Baron, of course. And now I must be going.’
‘A fanatic,’ said the Baron as he escorted Mr Webster from the inside to the outside. ‘A pity the Hogarths did not go abroad. I would have called on Mrs Jepp. She may have been persuaded to tell me more of Mervyn Hogarth. However, I shall be meeting him myself very soon, I believe.’
‘Good day to you, Baron.’
‘My regards to Mrs Jepp.’ And he added, ‘Be assured, Mr Webster, the risk is neglig-ible.’
‘Oh, Hogarth is not dangerous.’
‘I do not mean Hogarth. I mean our happy trade. We are amateurs. There is a specially protective providence for amateurs. How easily the powerful and organized professionals come to grief! They fall like Lucifer—’
‘Quite so, Baron.’
‘But we innocents are difficult to trip up.