Death on a Branch line

Chapter Twenty-Three

I followed the Chief back onto the terrace, where I crossed the wife, who was making towards Milly Chandler.

She said, ‘Can you smell the lovely musks and damasks?’

‘Is that what they are?’

There was a beat of silence.

‘John Lambert’s here,’ I said, indicating him with a nod.

‘I see him,’ she replied.

‘He looks rather seedy.’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s going off, do you suppose?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said the wife. ‘I thought your Chief might be putting you in the picture just now.’

I could only shake my head.

I sat down on one of the stone steps to the rear of the terrace — and when I sat down, I really sat down. I found a glass of claret near my perch, and drank it off. Someone had placed an oil lamp on the steps to supplement the Chinese lanterns, and it had drawn any number of drab-coloured moths. This terrace was really a room without walls; it was very hard to credit that a man who’d had the run of it, and the house too, was now in a cell in Durham nick.

Usher was speaking in low tones to John Lambert, who would meet his gaze by some great effort, and then turn away. It was rather cheering to know that two members of the upper classes did not always see eye to eye. The Chief, not being upper class, was not privy to this exchange, and he stood on the edge of the terrace looking spare. After a few minutes, Usher broke off, sighing, from the conversation and drifted towards the white-covered table, while John Lambert went over and sat on the far steps, so that he and I balanced each other as the two gloomy onlookers at the party.

It seemed to me that of all the people around the table, Lydia was in the greatest request. She had recovered from her early shock, and I saw that this was a world to which she was very well-suited, and from which she was being unfairly kept by her low-class husband.

Milly Chandler was saying to her: ‘I don’t agree with you about religion. I think it’s all lies.’

‘Is that why the vicar’s not here?’ asked the wife.

‘I notice you make a connection between God and vicars,’ Milly Chandler said. ‘I find that interesting. In fact, the Reverend Ridley’s not here for the simple reason that he’s a perfectly horrible man who once put his hand on my — well, let us say my derriere. It was after matins,’ she added, and at this she started doing a little dance with her glass held high in the air. As I watched her — and watched especially her white, rolling bosom (that ruby necklace was a very brave adventurer) — the manservant and three other servants new to me came down the stone steps carrying a sofa and a divan.

I thought: Christ, is this for me?

But Usher indicated the sofa to the ladies, and they sat down in it. He then invited the Chief and Bobby Chandler to the divan, while he remained standing, letting everyone see his perfectly pressed trousers, and the golden watch chain stretched across the silk ribbon that ran around his middle.

During all this, the wife was talking once again about the women’s movement, and Usher flashed me a couple of glances as she did so. What had the Chief told him of me?

As the wife spoke, the Chief looked down at the glass of champagne in his hand. He was not in favour of the women’s cause: the suffragettes were too pushing. And yet he sat silent. He knew something of what was happening, and was silent on that account. The Chief had once described himself to me as ‘self-educated’ and I wondered whether I fell into that bracket. I had been taught how to fire engines, but did that really count as an education? I knew a dart from a pricker or a paddle, and that ‘little and often’ was the best way with coal and water. But my work had never impressed Lydia, and she’d thought it a blessing when I’d been stood down from the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. Well, I’d known what I was taking on when I married her. She was always trying to climb, both for her sex and for herself. She wanted everything a woman could have, and everything a man could have, too.

The manservant came over again, and poured more claret. The stuff was too warm. They would have an ice chest somewhere for the champagne.

‘Might you stick the claret in the ice for a while?’ I said, but the man had already gone, and I was glad about that. You had a narrow squeak there, Jim! I thought. Cold claret! The stuff had to be warmish, like blood.

I walked after the manservant, and asked him where the water closet was — I had never called a jakes a water closet before. He directed me through a dark arch cut out of a yew bush, and I was in the territory of the kitchen garden. On low black trees that looked like old men, lemons grew. They glowed in the deep darkness, but lemons? Could that be right, even in the heat of this summer? I walked a little way of the gravel path towards them and saw that they were lemon-shaped yellow apples. Anything seemed possible as (having given up my search for the water closet) I pissed by the sweet-smelling compost pens.

When I returned to my former post on the terrace, Usher was speaking to the wife, and I did not like this connection between them. If it continued, I would have to put aside my claret, top-class vintage though it might be, and lay the bastard out.

‘Are you quite opposed to violence on behalf of your cause?’ he was asking Lydia.

‘Not absolutely,’ replied the wife. ‘Are you in the case of yours, Captain Usher?’

He gave a half-smile that made his handsomeness double. Lydia never called a man handsome, but you could tell when she thought it. I put my hand into my inside pocket, and there was a single paper there. Lydia said something else about the women’s movement, and Usher, lighting a cigarette, said, ‘Hear, hear!’ He seemed to be making out that he agreed with her, but how could he? A man like that was sure to be an Ultra.

I heard the faint sound of the Adenwold clock striking midnight as Milly Chandler stepped onto the lawn with a glass in her hand, calling out that she was looking for glow-worms. A bottle of whisky and a siphon were now on the go, and a cigar box started doing the rounds. As long as both of these stayed away from me, I would not be sick.

Instead, Bobby Chandler came over.

‘Lydia and the Captain are hitting it off rather well,’ he said, but I would not rise to the bait. Instead I asked him in a rather slurring voice about Hardy, the station master.

‘I’ve seen him once or twice,’ said Chandler. ‘My brother-in-law told me to look out for him as one of the leading curiosities of the village. To George, the man was a buffoon, plain and simple, but I wonder. He’s an amateur historian, you know — hides from the world. His only refuge is with those toy soldiers of his. Seen them, have you?’

‘A lot of people around here like midget objects,’ I said, for some reason.

More claret came.

‘Could you manage some more?’ asked the manservant, and I replied ‘Yes’ but I knew it would be a struggle. I was crippling myself with this stuff — it was beyond all reason. Was I alcoholic? If not, it was probably because of Lydia. That was the great thing about having a wife. She checked your drinking.

Chandler was moving away from me; John Lambert remained sitting on the far step. My hand still rested on the paper in my pocket. I took it out, and saw the docket that Will Hamer the carter had given me — the proof of the wire having been sent.

Usher was still speaking to Lydia, and still his speech was well-greased.

‘The ladies might break a few windows in Oxford Street,’ he was saying, ‘but is that so serious a matter? It seems to me they are driven to it not by a deep malice, but simply by the excitement of the moment.’

‘No,’ the wife cut in.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Usher.

‘They are not driven to it by the excitement of the moment, but by the injustices of the centuries.’

‘The excitement of the moment or the injustice of the centuries,’ said Usher. ‘I am not going to split hairs over that. The point I wish to make is that they are handled too roughly by the ordinary constables.’

I watched the wife’s face. I knew when she was likely to give trouble, and all the warning signs were there, but Usher of course could not see them. He was lighting another cigarette. He drew a line of fire in the dark-blue air as he waved out the Vesta, saying:

‘The ladies have a will of iron. Unfortunately, their bodies are not made of iron, and all concerned should act accordingly. The watchword of the constables ought to be: “Remember these are ladies — handle with care.”’

The wife stood up from the sofa and folded her arms. Poor old Usher had jarred, for if there was one thing the wife disliked more than unkind remarks about the women’s cause, it was kind remarks about it.

I addressed myself again to the data on the docket or receipt in my hand, which seemed to be perpetually being replaced by another version of itself dropped from above, like raindrops repeatedly falling on the same spot. I would make out one or two words, and then it would drop again. As I finally made sense of the receipt and lowered it slowly onto my knees, I noticed that the Chief was looking across the terrace towards me.

He had arrived before the telegram had been sent.