A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

CHAPTER XI

MONDAY MORNING

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PADDY CAME DOWN next morning pale and quiet, but resolutely calm, and very much in command of himself and circumstances. There were the blessed, beastly, ordinary details of returning to school to be taken care of, and no drama at all, and no opportunity for introspection. He had worked out his own course overnight, even before his mother had looked in almost guiltily to kiss him good-night all over again, and found him composed and ready for sleep. He had been glad to be visited, all the same; it’s fine not to need comfort, but it’s nice to know that it’s ready and waiting if you should want it.

“I hope I wasn’t rude, Mummy. I didn’t mean to be. I was a bit pushed, not having any warning.”

“I know. Don’t worry, you weren’t rude.” She tucked him in, a piece of pure self-indulgence, for Paddy had never looked so adult and self-sufficient as he did now. He smiled up at her with understanding and affection, but very gravely.

“Mummy—will he be all right?”

“He’ll be all right. We’ll see that he is.” She was quick to know what he wanted. It was she who made a point of inviting Simon to drive in with them to the station, and so gave Paddy himself the opportunity of seconding the invitation.

“Yes, do come. Of course there’s plenty of room. My trunk’s gone on ahead, there’s only a small case to take.” So there were four of them in the Mini on the way to the station, Simon in the front seat beside Tim, the pair of them taciturn as yet; Paddy and his mother in the back, cosy and a little disconsolate together. There’s something at once damping and heartening about the beginning of a new term.

“It was a lovely holiday, darling, I’m sorry it’s over. Don’t forget to write every week-end. There’ll be ructions if you don’t.”

“I’ll be chivvied into it, don’t worry. But I wouldn’t forget, anyhow. Cheer up, it won’t be long till Christmas.” It seemed an age away, but he knew from experience how soon it would be sitting on the doorstep. He nuzzled Phil’s shoulder briefly and happily; and presently a corner of his mind defected flightily to consider the Middle School’s football prospects for the new season, even before he had taken care of all his responsibilities here at home.

They disembarked beside the blonde wooden fence of the station approach, and unloaded the suitcase with due ceremony, already worrying vainly about whether anything had been forgotten.

“I’ll say good-bye here,” said Simon, with the right lightness of tone, if not of heart. “I’ve got a call I want to make in the town. So long, Paddy, have a good journey. And a good term!”

“Thanks very much!” He had saved it until then, to give it its maximum effect. He gripped Simon’s hand with warmth, but still with some reserve. “Good-bye,—” His face flamed, but the blue eyes never wavered. “—Uncle Simon!”

Simon turned away briskly, and walked the length of the light-brown barrier with an even pace and a jaunty bearing, balancing with care the great, hollow ache of Paddy’s charity within him; and alongside the extreme end of the platform a lean quiet man was propped against the fence with arms folded, watching the lower school starlings gather and shrill greetings, and the self-conscious young cock-pheasants of the sixth stroll from their parents’ sides to knot themselves into world-weary conversations with their own kind. They had about as much control over their sophistication as over their feet, and their graces were as endearing as one’s first-born’s fledgling efforts on the amateur stage. The in-betweens, like Paddy, had the best of both worlds, rollercoasting without pretence from lofty dignity to uninhibited horseplay, and back again. They could even stand and wait, as Paddy did, warmly linked with their parents, and openly happy to have them close for a few more minutes; for they had outgrown homesickness and quite forgotten the ancient dread of tears, but had not yet grown into that extreme state of senior self-consciousness which scorns to have had a human origin at all, and prefers not to have its parents around for fear they shall somehow fall short of the ideal image.

“On the whole,” said George Felse, turning from the spectacle with the small, private smile still on his lips, “I must say they inspire me with a degree of self-satisfaction. Wouldn’t it be simpler, though, to put boy and trunk and paraphernalia into the Land- Rover, and just drive them the twelve miles there, and tip ’em out?”

“They wouldn’t consider it for a moment. This always has been the school train, and it always will be. It’s better for the little ones,” said Simon. “By the time they get there the ice is well and truly broken, and they’ve been doused a couple of times, and got over the cold and the shock, even begun to enjoy it. Twelve miles is just long enough.”

“I see,” said George, falling into step beside him, “you’ve got the basic knowledge necessary to a father.”

“But not the other basic requirements. Cigarette?” They halted for a moment over the lighted match, faces close, and again fell into step together. Simon drew in smoke hungrily, and let it go in a long, soundless sigh. “Yes—I promised you a solution, didn’t I?”

“You promised, at least, to let me know whether you could provide one or not. When you’d asked your final question.”

“I’ve asked it. And it’s been answered.” He walked for a minute in silence, his eyes on the ground. “Not that I really have anything to tell you. You already know—don’t you?”

“I’ve known all along,” said George, “who put him there. I didn’t know who’d killed him until Miss Rachel mentioned that you were sitting on the lawn talking to her about Paddy, the afternoon he was there in the garden, picking plums. Only a few hours before he died. And even now,” he said with intent, “I couldn’t prove it.”

“I shouldn’t worry,” said Simon. “You don’t have to prove it. Paddy turned me down.”

Silence for a moment. They walked together equably, down the cobbled paving of a narrow street leading towards the town. Behind them, in the heathy fringes of the uplands, a train whistle sounded.

“If Paddy had opted for me—but I see I was mad ever to think he might—I’d have kept my mouth tight shut and ridden it out, and let you prove it if you could. I’d have taken him and got out. But he turned me down. Flatter than I’ve ever been turned down in my life, and harder. And now, do you know, on the whole I find myself preferring it this way. My instincts are incurably on the side of justice, after all.” He dug his hands deep into his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the sudden cold wind from the sea. “I gathered last night that you knew already Paddy was—or rather used to be—mine.”

“I happened to be with Phil, the night we were hunting for him, when Miss Rachel finally admitted what she’d done. Phil said in any case she couldn’t have told him who his father was, because she didn’t know it. And the old lady said oh, yes, she did, she’d learned it from you yourself, no longer ago than Wednesday afternoon, sitting in the garden. Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone else. I never shall.”

“And how did you know the rest of it? What was it that told you?”

“A number of small things. First, that you asked me to be there at all. I’d been with you most of one evening and part of the next morning, and you hadn’t found it necessary to draft me in. But five minutes after Paddy had let it out that I was C.I.D. by profession, you asked me to make one in your team. I knew there had to be a reason. You hardly knew me as a person, you’d invited me as what you did now know me to be, a policeman, but a policeman on holiday, out of his own manor, without any local connections or loyalties. I couldn’t imagine why you wanted such a person, and why you wanted him suddenly on the last day. Not until we were confronted with a body. Then I knew. You wanted an accurate and unbiased observer. You wanted no one involved because of haphazard evidence. You wanted to be fair to all those who might otherwise come under suspicion. So you’d known he was going to be found there. So you’d put him there. It was as simple as that. Everything else had to fit in. And the whole organisation of that affair, the whole set-up in the vault, did fit in. The discovery had been staged. And there was only one possible stage-manager. And other, personal things, fitted in, too. You began to avoid Tamsin. Forgive me if I’m trampling rather crudely through things you’d prefer to keep well apart from this. But you asked me how I knew. You’ve kept carefully away from her for the last five days. But not—forgive me again!—not because you stopped wanting her. And then, when Paddy went missing, you were the one who said he’d turn up safe and sound. Knowing, of course, that he had nothing at all to fear from our supposed murderer-at-large. It was only later, when time wore on and he still didn’t show up, that you got really frightened about him. Do you want me to go on?”

Simon broke step to tread out his cigarette at the edge of the pavement. The incredible hydrangeas of Cornwall foamed over a garden wall and filled his eyes with blue and rose and violet.

“Yes, go on. I’m interested.”

“Every soul in this district knew the tomb was going to be opened, and nobody knew it better than you. So when you put the dead man there, or at least when you elected to leave him there, it was because you wanted him found. Well, that didn’t surprise me very much. Supposing you were responsible for his death in some way, you might well prefer it like that, if you could arrange it in circumstances that wouldn’t point straight at you. You’d want, other things being equal, to be fair to his family, not to leave them on thorns, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. But if you wanted him found, and if, as seemed likely, he’d drowned in the sea and been washed up on the Mortuary, then why not just leave him to be found there? And there was an answer to that, too. All the time we’ve been staying here, the first bather on that beach every morning has been young Paddy.

“And you wouldn’t want Paddy to be the one to find him. Not even just because of the ugliness. This man had died, in a way, because of Paddy, and you couldn’t bear that there should be any closer link than existed already in your mind. It was shock enough when you heard he’d glimpsed him in the sea, the evening before, wasn’t it? And then, you’d promised Paddy to tell the coastguard, and I know you didn’t, even after Dominic mentioned it in the bar at night, and reminded you. You didn’t forget. You don’t forget promises to Paddy.

“But there wasn’t a ghost of a motive. Not even when it came out that Trethuan had been trying to threaten or persuade you into leaving the vault alone. What did you care for his threats? He had no hold on you. No, what I was inclined to think, up to then, was that you knew who had killed him, and were covering up for the guilty party because you didn’t think of him as a murderer, but at the same time trying to protect the innocent from suspicion. And then Miss Rachel let it out that he’d been there in the kitchen garden of Treverra Place, just at the time when you were there with her on the lawn, telling her that Paddy is your son. Trethuan had followed you down from the churchyard, after you brushed him off for the last time. He was desperate to stop you, by any means. Whether he would have tried to put you out of the way, too, if everything else had failed, one can’t be sure. But it’s worth considering, isn’t it?”

He flashed a glance along his shoulder, and saw Simon’s clear profile beside him, fixed as bronze, the lines of jaw and cheekbone pale with tension. “I suppose he might have tried it. I hadn’t thought. He didn’t, though.”

“No, what happened wasn’t in self-defence, I realise that. All the same, he was dogging your steps, in search of anything, any mortal thing, that could be used to bring you to heel or shut you up for good. And he was in the kitchen garden. Picking plums, maybe, but only because where the plums were he could listen to your conversation, and be ready to continue his pursuit of you.

“I don’t suppose he heard everything. What he did hear meant just one thing to him, didn’t it? Just one obvious, crude but possibly useful thing.

“And then you left the Place, and went out along the Dragon’s Head, alone, at an hour when it was deserted. Having a lot of not very happy thinking to do, and plenty of time before you were expected home to tea. And Trethuan made his excuse to Miss Rachel in a great hurry, promised to finish the job next day, and made off after you. He thought he had what he needed, now. He thought he could make you dance to his tune. He came to you, I judge, somewhere near the point, up on the cliff path. He’d want a solitary place. I can guess what he said.

“Yes—he had a simple sort of mind. Not nice, but simple. It wasn’t Paddy he threatened to tell—was it?”

They had come down to the southern corner of the harbour, and halted there to lean on the railings shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the smooth brown mud and the stranded boats close to them, and the gleaming quiet water beyond, lipping so softly now at the masonry of the mole. Watery sun gilded the small, scalloped waves. The tide was well out, but not yet at its lowest. Simon clenched his hands on the rail, and stared blindly before him, and the screaming flight of gulls wheeling round them was only a pattern of sound to him for a moment. He shut his eyes hard, and shook his head, and the dizziness passed.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping so well.” He passed a hand over his eyes, and in a moment he said: “No, it wasn’t Paddy!” and again was silent.

“You’d better tell it,” George said reasonably. “You know best.”

“You know already. It was just as you said. It was the blind, bloody meanness and stupidity of it that got me,” he said, suddenly shivering with detestation. “I blow up, sometimes. One thing Paddy’s got from me, worse luck!—wouldn’t you know it would be something like that I’d give him?—is that temper of his. If you’ve ever seen it in action? No, I suppose not. Tim’s the patient one, Tim’s done wonders with him. But it can still happen, to Paddy and to me. And there was this creature capering and crowing that he’d heard me admit Paddy was my son! You’re so right, to him that meant just one thing, and he thought it was all he needed. If I wouldn’t call the whole thing off, he’d tell Tim!

“It was ludicrous, it didn’t mean a thing, it was no threat to anyone, how could it be? I burst out laughing in his face. And then he called Phil—the sort of name—Phil! The truest soul alive, and the one I’ve injured most already!

“And I hit him.

“I don’t know if it makes sense to you. It was somehow the one thing I couldn’t stand. After all I’d done to them, making use of them for my own ends when it suited me, and then wanting to steal Paddy back—because I did want to, very badly. And then on top of everything, this futile, meaningless, humiliating bit of dirt. You can’t imagine how horribly it offended.”

“I think,” said George mildly, “I can. You’re sure he didn’t lose his head and hit out at you first? Or shape towards it? When you laughed at him, for instance?”

“Don’t tempt me, George. I’m a dodger but not a liar. He never raised a hand.”

“Did you ever, even for an instant, mean to kill him?”

“Good lord, no! Well,—I don’t think so. I don’t know that I meant anything. I just blew up. I hit him with everything I’d got, but I give you my word I only hit him once. I even woke up in time to make one wild grab at him as he dropped, but he slipped through my fingers. I’d turned, you see, when he came up to me, there was the rise of the Dragon’s Head on my right, and the drop to the deep water outside the haven on my left. If I lash out, it’s always with the right. I hadn’t thought how it would swing him round. I hadn’t thought at all, it was too quick for thought. It wasn’t quite a sheer fall, we weren’t that near the edge. He went lurching two or three strides downward, and then lost his footing and rolled. Before I could slither after him he was over the edge. He dropped into the deep water. I think he must have been stunned, because he never came up.”

The lines of strain had eased a little, blood was coming back to his face. He drew breath deeply, and let go of the rail.

“We’d better be moving along, hadn’t we?”

“When you’re ready.”

“You’re not in any hurry to turn me in, are you?” said Simon, with the first reviving smile.

“I’m not turning you in. And there never was any hurry. We hadn’t got a murderer at large to worry about. Go on, if you care to. You went in after him, didn’t you?”

“How did you know that?” He was capable of feeling surprise again.

“Because you went in again with Dominic afterwards, so long afterwards that it couldn’t have been with any hope of finding him alive. It must have been full tide when he fell, if there was deep water off the haven. It was at least half an hour past when you showed up on the beach with the boys. So either it was just for the look of the thing generally—which isn’t entirely convincing where you’re concerned—or because you wanted to account satisfactorily for wet hair and wet underclothes. The boys wouldn’t be noticing that you were wet already, before you went in, they were much too preoccupied then.”

“That’s pretty good, but I can tell you one more reason. I’d skinned my knuckles on the right hand, when I hit him. Diving and swimming round those rocks, I made the other hand match. I hadn’t thought about that the first time. You can get cut about quite extensively if you’re not careful. Paddy was quite concerned, when we were cleaning up afterwards, and he saw them.” He looked down with a dark, remembering smile at the backs of his hands, the points of the knuckles still marked with small, healed lesions.

“Yes, I went in after him. I scrambled down the rock path, and shed my top clothes, and dived and dived for him until I was worn out, and by then it would have been no good, anyhow. It was pretty rough going, but I’m a strong swimmer. And after that, I suppose, it came over me what I’d done, and I knew I had to get away from there, fast. I couldn’t get through the Dragon’s Hole, or I’d have beat it through there and let myself be seen along the harbour. But it was deep under water at that time. All I could do was put on my clothes and bolt back up the cliff path, and work round by the Maymouth side on to the road. And when I came up over the neck on my way home I saw your boy hauling Paddy out of the rough water. I ran down to them, and you know the rest. I went in and worked hard for the complete answer to why my hair was wet and my knuckles skinned. Praying we wouldn’t find him. Praying he’d never be found.

“And that’s all. Except that Sam said, that night, he’d probably come in on the Mortuary with the next high tide. That gave me a shock. I’m not a native, that was something I didn’t know.”

“And the first thing you thought of was Paddy running down to the beach about seven o’clock in the morning and finding him.”

“Wouldn’t it be the first thing that would have occurred to you? If the body was going to be cast up here, I wanted to be the one to find it, not Paddy. I was awake all night, brooding about it, and before it was light I got up and dressed, and sneaked out while everybody else was asleep. High tide was about a quarter past four that morning. I bet I was down on the shore before five.

“And he was there! I hadn’t really believed in it till then, but he was there. Miles of sand every way, and he was a big fellow, and dead weight. And the sea was no good, the sea wouldn’t have him. There was only the church anywhere near for a hiding-place. And the key of the vault was in my pocket. So I put him in there. We had crowbars and wedges down there, already, waiting for the big job. I suppose I thought I could move him again the next night. Maybe I didn’t think at all, just huddled him out of sight. It was getting light, and all the time I had Paddy on my mind. It was quite a job, single-handed, but it can be done if you’re pushed.”

“So you very honestly explained to me,” said George, “when I asked you, yesterday.”

“Well, by instinct I am honest. I’ve never had any reason to be anything else, before. It gets everything snarled up, though, when you do get into a jam. Well, I got him into the coffin. I thought I was putting him in with Treverra. And all the time I was shutting him in with the man he’d killed two years before. Who says providence hasn’t got a sense of humour?

“And yet it doesn’t make me feel a bit better about it, that he turned out to be a murderer. It doesn’t alter anything.

“And then afterwards, when I began thinking where I’d move him to, I thought, well, why? Why move him at all? For all I knew then, he had a loving family. I don’t think I’d ever wanted to deprive them of him, and I didn’t really like the thought of them waiting and worrying, and looking for him, not even knowing whether he was alive or dead. Never knowing. I’d killed him, and that was bad enough. But I found my conscience was going to give me double hell if I tried to sneak out and leave them to fret, and justice to fumble around without any hold on me. But most of all, I suspect, I simply hated and dreaded the thought of touching him again, and going on with this awful game of hide-and-seek. Oh, I wanted to get off scot-free, if I could. Half of me did, anyhow. But not quite on those terms. So I thought, all right, let it just happen. We’re going to open the tomb, right, we’ll open it. Murder will out, let it at least out in a decent, orderly fashion, with no kids and no women to happen on it unawares, and nobody to give emotional and misleading evidence that can land some innocent person in trouble. That’s why I asked you to make one.”

They had walked the length of one little shopping street from the end of the harbour, and emerged into the square. Without consultation, but quite naturally, they crossed the cobbled space of parked cars towards the door of the police station.

“I’m glad I did,” said Simon, producing suddenly, even out of his profound depression, the smile that drew people after him.

“You didn’t need me,” said George. “This has been your show throughout.”

They reached the apron of paving before the steps, and halted there by consent to take breath before entering. Neither of them noticed the light flurry of steps on the cobbles, heading for them at a confident run from the newsagent’s shop at the corner of the square.

“Well, that was exactly how it happened. Pointless and needless. Nobody even wanted it. But it happened, and I was the one who made it happen.” Simon filled his lungs deeply, as though there was going to be less to breathe inside. Very soberly he asked: “What do you think I shall get?”

The running feet broke rhythm, suddenly and very close to them. A breath caught on a half-sound, as if someone had been about to speak quite loudly and gaily, and then swallowed the word unspoken. George swung round, and found himself staring into the wide, wary, golden-hazel eyes of his son.

“Dad, I—I was only—” His voice wavered away into uncertainty and silence. He looked from one face to the other with that bright, uneasy, intelligent glance, and drew back a step. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to butt in. I’ll see you later. It wasn’t anything.”

“That’s all right, Dom,” said George calmly. “But not now, we’re occupied. Run off and take care of your mother, I’ll be with you at lunch.”

“Yes, of course. I didn’t realise you were busy. Sorry!”

He drew back at once, gladly, quickly, but the stunned look in his eyes had begun to change before he turned his back on them and walked away rapidly out of the square, and the imagination behind the eyes was at work frantically with what he must certainly have heard. “It happened, and I was the one who made it happen. What do you think I shall get?” His innocent approach couldn’t have been better timed to tell him everything in two sentences. And he was exceedingly quick in the uptake.

“I’m sorry about that,” said Simon with compunction, looking after the slender figure as it walked too steadily, too thoughtfully, away from them. “But he’d have had to know pretty soon, I suppose. What do you think I shall get?”

“With luck,” said George, “a discharge. At the worst, up to three years for manslaughter. If you tell it as you’ve told it to me.”

“Ah, but I shan’t be doing that. And neither will you, George, not quite. If they reduce the charge to manslaughter, or unlawful killing, or anything less than murder, I’m going to plead guilty. Then they won’t have to call evidence at all—will they? So everyone will be spared.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said George with equal firmness. “You’ll employ a good lawyer, and be guided by him how to plead. You just tell the truth and leave the law to him. With any luck he’ll get you off.”

Simon’s tawny face had recovered something of its spirit and audacity, and all of its obstinacy. “I’ll tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not quite the whole truth. I’ll say he came following and threatening me, I’ll say he was abusive. And with what’s going to come out about Ruiz, that won’t be at all hard for them to believe and understand. But I won’t bring Paddy and Tim and Phil into it. They’re back safely on the rails, and running like a train, and I’m not going to do anything to shake them again, and neither are you. I’d rather plead guilty ten times over. I’m not what I’d call a good man, George, but that’s one thing I won’t do, and won’t let you do, either. And unless you promise me here and now to keep them out of it, it’s your word against mine for all this. I won’t co-operate. I’ll turn back here and deny everything, and make you sweat your case up as best you can. I don’t believe you could ever make it stick.”

“You wouldn’t be happy,” said George, smiling.

“No, I wouldn’t. I’d much rather go in there and get it off my chest. But not at that price.”

“I told you,” said George, “I’m not turning you in. You brought yourself here. It’s your show.”

“Good, then they’re out of it. For keeps. I look upon that as a promise, George. But—would you mind coming in with me? And will you be kind enough to let Tim know, afterwards? Don’t let them worry. They’ll know best how to tell Paddy. It isn’t that I wanted to keep him from knowing,” he said, as they climbed the steps side by side. “I just wanted him safely off the scene until I’d got the worst over.”

The shadow of the doorway fell on him, softening the tight, bright lines of his face, braced again now for the ordeal.

“Oh, well,” he said, with a small, hollow laugh, “I’ve never been in gaol before. It should be a rest-cure.”

From the corner of an alley at the far end of the square, Dominic watched them disappear into the dark doorway. When they were gone he came out of hiding, and began furiously to climb the steep streets inland, towards the upper town and Treverra Place. Inside him a weakening sceptic was still clamouring that it was impossible, that he was making a fool of himself, that there were dozens of possible interpretations of what he had heard, besides the obvious and yet obviously inaccurate one. But he went on walking, at his longest climbing stride, and with lungs pumping.

“Nobody even wanted it. But it happened, and I was the one who made it happen.” And then, in that quiet voice: “What do you think I shall get?”

It had to mean what he thought it meant, there was nothing else it could mean. But in that case it could tell him more, if he looked closely enough and carefully enough. “Nobody even wanted it.” It wasn’t intended, it wasn’t done deliberately. Not murder, then. “But it happened, and I was the one—” Still not murder, something that happened by Simon’s act, possibly by Simon’s fault, but not deliberately. Manslaughter, culpable homicide, but not murder. And he wasn’t expecting extremes in the penalty, either. “What do you think I shall get?” Dominic wished he’d been clever enough to blunder in just two or three seconds later, in time to hear the reply. To make it easier to tell, to answer some of the frantic anxieties that would result, before they could even be voiced. Because there was still just one thing a knowledgeable friend could do for Simon, in this extremity. And Dominic was the one person who knew exactly how to do it.

He arrived blown and panting at the absurd, top-heavy gates of Treverra Place, and took the drive a little more soberly, to recover his breath.

Tamsin was in the library, copy-typing catalogue notes, her underlip caught between her teeth, the reddish-gold fringe on her forehead bouncing gently to the slight vibration of her head. He marched straight to her desk, leaned a hand on either side the typewriter, and looked down into the startled face that warmed immediately into a smile for him. He wondered why he felt like the bearer of good news, when he was only the messenger of disaster. Still, you may as well pick up the better pieces even of a catastrophe, and see what they’ll make when you put them together.

“Tamsin, I’ve got something very urgent to tell you. I just ran slam into Dad and Simon outside the police station, and from what I heard, Simon has just given himself up for killing Trethuan.” That’s the way news should be delivered, if you want to know what people really feel about it.

“Simon?” cried Tamsin, eyes and tone flaring into partisan anger and derision. She was on her feet. “Simon murder someone? You’re out of your mind.”

“I didn’t say murder, I said killing. They were perfectly calm but deadly serious. And they’ve gone into the police station. I’d say what’s in the wind is manslaughter, at most. But it was Simon, I heard him say it himself. He said: ‘Nobody even wanted it. But it happened, and I was the one who made it happen.’ And then he asked Dad: ‘What do you think I shall get?’ Now you know everything I know. And what,” demanded Dominic, jutting his jaw at her, “are you going to do about it?”

She was a remarkable girl, he’d always known it. She had exclaimed once, and there was no more of that. She caught him by the shoulders and held him before her, so hard that she left the marks of her fingers on his arms, while she searched his face with wild blue eyes that had been like cornflowers a moment ago, and were now like spears.

“So that’s why!” she said in a rushing whisper. “Five days, and he hasn’t touched or looked at me. You’d have thought I had plague. Ever since it—And I thought he’d just been having fun with me! What does he think I am?”

“He wouldn’t let you be dragged into this. And you said he was spoiled and in bad need of a fall, anyhow.”

“Dragged in? Let him try and keep me out! The big, brilliant, incapable idiot, how did he get himself into this mess?”

“It’s nothing to you, anyhow,” pointed out Dominic, tasting a kind of slightly bitter but still unmistakable joy. “You wouldn’t have him. You don’t even like him.”

“I know I don’t. I could wring his neck! And anyhow, what do you know about it, Dominic Felse? The last time he asked me I didn’t tell him yes or no, I just walked away.” She had been all this time ricocheting about the room like an uncoiled spring, slamming the cover on her typewriter, grabbing her coat from a closet, sweeping the papers from the table into a drawer anyhow, just as they fell. “And now I’m walking back,” she said, turning the blue blaze of her indignation on Dominic, as if he had dared to challenge her. “Whether he likes it or not. I bet he hasn’t even got a lawyer. Can you get bail in a case like this?”

“I don’t know, I’m just the errand boy.” She had caught him by the hand and was towing him with her through the doorway; and there, caught close together, they turned to spare one hurried glance for each other, and she stretched across the remaining few inches, and kissed him on the mouth.

“With me, you’re royalty plus! But right now, if you can drive, you’re the chauffeur. I’ve just started lessons. Can you?”

“Yes, I’ve got a licence. But we can’t possibly take—”

“We can, we’re going to. We’ve got to get down there quickly. She’s out with Benson in the Morris right this minutes, but the Rolls is in the garage.”

“Rolls? Not likely!” gasped Dominic, appalled. “I’d be terrified to touch it. Suppose I went and scraped the paintwork?”

“You won’t!” she said, commanding, not reassuring.

And he didn’t. And perhaps that was all that was needed to crown this mad holiday with the right extravagant finale, the impossible fantasy of himself driving that glossy, purring, imperial monster doggedly and gloriously out of its garage and down through the steep, narrow streets of Maymouth to the square, with Tamsin bright and fierce as a fighting Amazon beside him, and parking it with the superb accuracy of sheer lunatic chance in a painted oblong only just big enough to contain it.

Tamsin patted his shoulder, and said something wild and fervent and complimentary, that he never even heard in his daze of retrospective terror, and was gone like an arrow across the square.

Dominic sat quivering with reaction, still clutching the wheel. He wasn’t even sure he could stand up now, he thought his knees would give under him if he climbed out and attempted to walk away. They didn’t; he got out, closed the door with reverent gentleness, tried a few steps, and had hard work not to take to his heels. One thing was certain, as soon as he turned to look again at the majesty on which he had just laid impious apprentice hands: the chauffeur would have to fetch it back. Nothing in the world would have induced Dominic to tempt providence a second time.

George, humanely withdrawn to the window of Hewitt’s office, and thus having half the square in his sight, saw the resplendent car insert itself with the delicacy of desperation into the tight parking space, saw the brave red head sail flaming out of the opened door like a torch, and blaze across towards the doorway below him. And in a minute more he saw the driver’s door open, and his son emerge. George’s brows rose; he permitted himself a small, appreciative smile. Taking away cars without the owner’s permission, now. No need to ask if Miss Rachel had been consulted. Dominic’s charge-sheet was becoming interesting. But George was not an exclaiming man. The speaker and the listeners behind his back knew nothing of the storm-wind that was blowing rapidly their way.

Simon, having reached simultaneously the end of his cigarettes and the end of his story, felt lighter, but with the lightness of emptiness. If you can see your whole life clearly as you drown, so you can when events go over you like a tidal wave, and effectively drown the person you have been up to now. Simon saw his life as a dust-sheeted room, the occupant of which had gone gallivanting so often and so far that he had never actually had time to live in it at all. Such a lot of time wasted, looking elsewhere for the impermanent. He’d left it too late to realise the potentialities of a son, and far too late to fall in love with a girl twelve years his junior.

I’m a thirty-seven-year-old widower, he thought, looking into the last coils of cigarette smoke as into a mirror, and a pretty harsh mirror, too. I’m going to be doused headfirst in the kind of publicity I’d rather do without, and I shall learn to live with it. I’m going to be hurt, and survive it. I’m going to be stripped of my privileges, and fight my way back into a competitive world as best I can. But at any rate, the distress to other people is only going to be marginal.

He offered himself this, despondently, as a worthy and comforting thought, but instead it made him feel even more depressed. It’s too late for me to change, he thought, I’ve revolved round myself too long. Much the best thing I can do is keep my own company. No wonder I could never find the right note with Tamsin, no wonder I always managed to sound as though I was insulting her. I suppose in a way I was trying to protect her, wanting and not wanting, begging for her and warning her off. And Paddy—what was he to be? A consolation prize? Thank God they both have sound instincts. They know a heel when they see one.

The quietness of the room was suddenly shaken by raised voices below, one of them, and the one that seemed to be laying the law down most emphatically, unmistakably a woman’s. They all pricked up their ears, Simon most sharply of all. But it couldn’t be! She couldn’t even know anything about it yet, and even when she knew, why should she interfere?

George crossed from the window; Hewitt rose from his desk in mingled irritation and curiosity, and stalked across to open the door and call down the stairs: “Who is that? What’s going on down there?”

The tones which had disrupted the desk-sergeant’s calm echoed imperiously up the well like a trumpet-call: “Oh, Mr. Hewitt! Good! I’m coming up.” High heels pattered rapidly up the uncarpeted stairs like a scud of hail. “Is Simon here with you?”

Simon was on his feet, shaky and disrupted with hope and dismay, and an absurd, shamed apprehension; half hoping against his own heart that Hewitt would manage to send her away, half smiling in spite of his own conscience, because he knew that that was more than the entire Maymouth constabulary and the county regiment could have managed between them.

“You can’t come up now, Miss Holt, I’m occupied,” Hewitt blocked the doorway with a broad body and an extended arm.

“I am up. He is there, isn’t he? What’s he told you? What have you charged him with?”

“He hasn’t been charged with anything yet,” said Hewitt dryly. “He’s made a statement, which is now being typed. And you’ve got no business here, my girl, let me tell you that.” He had known her since she was a pig-tailed imp doing acrobatics on the swings in the park; if he couldn’t control her, he could still make satisfactorily stern noises.

“Oh, yes, I have. I bet he hasn’t even done anything about a lawyer yet. I want to talk to him. Let me in!” Not a request, a command.

She appeared beyond Hewitt’s solid shoulder, pale and bright and formidably angry, her red-gold hair in ruffled feathers on cheek and temple, her forehead smudged with carbon. Her eyes, levelled lances, flashed across the room and pierced Simon to the heart. Faint flags of colour had come to life in his tanned cheeks, warming the grey of sleeplessness out of them. An incorrigible spark of mischief reappeared in his eyes, a shadow of itself and veiled in desperation, but alive. The two roused faces locked glances like the beginning of a battle or an embrace. Difficult to be sure which, thought George, edging unnoticed towards the door. Maybe both.

The first words of love sounded like the clash of arms, if that meant anything.

“You’re a fine one!” said Tamsin hotly. “What the devil have you been up to, to get yourself in this mess?”

“If it’s a mess, at least it’s my mess,” said Simon, all the more loudly and angrily because of the longing he had, and knew he must suppress, to welcome her in and grasp at this unbelievable happiness while it offered. “What do you think you’re doing here? For God’s sake, girl, go home and behave yourself.”

“ ‘Go home and behave yourself,’ he says,” Tamsin rolled bitter blue eyes to heaven in mute appeal. “Listen who’s talking! And he isn’t fit to be let out alone!”

“I doubt if he’s going to be let out at all for the next year or two,” snapped Simon, man-alive again, and surrounded by a live, thorny and rewarding world. “So you can make your mind easy, you won’t be needed for a keeper. Now get out and leave me alone!”

Maybe it was the note of entreaty he hadn’t been able to suppress, or maybe she possessed an intuition that didn’t even need such aids. However it was, Tamsin knew her moment. The blue of her eyes softened to its calmest gentian darkness.

“It’s the forty years or so afterwards I’m worrying about,” she said sternly. She looked at Hewitt, looked him levelly in the eyes, and smiled.

“You’d better let me in. Give me ten minutes with him. I have got a certain right here, you know. That’s my fiancé you’ve got in there.”

She had unfurled her colours, and nobody would ever be able to trick, bully or persuade her into striking them again. Seemingly they all knew it. She breasted Hewitt’s large arm, and it gave before her and let her in. She looked as if she could have marched through walls just as irresistibly. She marched straight at Simon, all pennants flying.

“Ten minutes!” said Hewitt, and shoved George before him out of the office, and closed the door upon them.

—«»—«»—«»—

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[proofed and formatted by MollyKate and released in #bookz for the Prooflist, Sept 17, 2002]

[A 3S Release— v2, html]

[July 17, 2007]