Mingled With Venom

Chapter 4

Campions and Seawards

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‘But we can’t have both of them,’ said Parsifal, his long-lipped camel-face lengthening lugubriously. ‘Will they pay us anything?’

‘If they don’t, we truthfully plead poverty and say they simply must.’

‘Are you prepared to tell them that?’

‘Perfectly. Why not? It is not our place to support them, even if we could afford to do so.’

‘We had better find out what Garnet thinks about it all. This house is his.’

‘Like me, he can hardly refuse point-blank to have our mother here. Fiona is a different matter entirely. I think we must tell her she will have to share mother’s room. That should put her off.’

‘Could we suggest she goes to stay at Campions for a bit?’

‘Diana wouldn’t like that. She wouldn’t agree.’

‘She doesn’t know anything about Fiona and Rupert.’

‘Don’t be too sure about that.’

‘You surely don’t think she does know!’

‘She not only knows; she condones it because of herself and Garnet. Rupert’s misdeeds are a cloak for her own and, of course, a welcome one.’

‘There ought to be a divorce, then Rupert and Fiona could marry and so could Diana and Garnet. A divorce would settle everything.’

‘Except the fate of Rupert and Diana’s children.’

‘Each party could take one of them.’

‘There speaks a childless man! Besides, what would Gamaliel do without his foster-son?’

‘His what?’

‘Oh, have you not fathomed the relationship between Garnet and Gamaliel? Gamaliel has adopted my twin brother. I am thankful it is nothing worse than that.’

‘Even supposing a divorce did take place, I am sure that Diana would never tolerate Gamaliel as a member of her household.’

‘Isn’t that what I’m saying? Anyhow, although the sighting-shots regarding mother and Fiona have been fired, nothing is settled yet. There is another thing, Parsifal. If we have my mother and Fiona here, we can say goodbye to anything grandmother may have decided to leave us in her Will.’

‘That Will is a will o’ the wisp. We have discussed it so often that I have abandoned all belief in it. I thought we were to hear something at the dinner party, but, beyond vague hints and what I took to be undertones of warnings, nothing tangible emerged.’

‘I think grandmother likes playing cat and mouse with our hopes. Wealthy people can be very cruel.’

‘All power leads to cruelty and the power of wealth is very great. Do you think she took a fancy to Gamaliel? Not that I would wish our future to depend on him.’

‘Oh, it will not. Gamaliel is well-meaning and amiable, but he is also the complete egoist. If our interests clashed with his, ours would go to the wall. Besides, why should he benefit us? We adopted him for our own reasons, not for his.’

‘That is the reason people have children, their own or by adoption. The child has no choice in the matter, and Gamaliel had none.’

‘Suppose grandmother wanted to take him to live in her house?’

‘Then he would be old enough to have a choice, and rightly so. We could hardly stand in his way.’

‘So long as we are agreed upon that.’

‘But if he should find favour and should decide to benefit us, you would not refuse his bounty, would you?’

‘Anything she leaves him will be held in trust for him, I expect. She would see to it that he could not touch it until he comes of age. By that time he would be off our hands and would (rightly) have no further use for us.’

‘That is in two years’ time, but she is not dead yet. I don’t think we need count any chickens.’

Gamaliel joined them. ‘We could have a picnic today,’ he said, ‘with some of the things my great grandmother packed up for me after the party.’

‘Why haven’t you gone to school?’ asked Bluebell.

‘The O level people are excused. We are to study at home for the rest of the week because the examinations begin on Monday.’

‘Well, you had better go off and study, then.’

‘No picnic?’

‘We will have lunch here on the terrace. Won’t that do?’

‘Oh, yes, if you say so. When shall I see my great grandmother again?’

‘You asked me that yesterday. You must wait to see her again until she invites you to her house.’

‘She has promised that her groom will teach me to ride.’

‘It will make you bandy-legged.’

Gamaliel looked down at his bare, brown, handsome limbs. He was wearing nothing but a pair of the briefest of shorts and looked superb.

‘I will go and study,’ he said. ‘I am not looking forward to my O levels. I am taking nine subjects, far too many. My mind has not that number of sides to it.’

‘If you pass in five we shall be satisfied. I myself think nine is too many,’ said Bluebell. ‘When we know how well you have done, we shall know what to choose for your A levels.’

‘The school will choose those for me if I stay on, but I don’t want to stay on. I am entitled to leave school at sixteen and that is what I want to do.’

‘I thought you wanted to be head boy next term. It would help your career to end up like that.’

‘It would not help the career I have chosen.’ He turned and went indoors.

Bluebell seated herself in one of the basket chairs on the verandah and gazed out to sea. Beyond the narrow cove with its bare rocks and its smugglers’ cave rose a high green hill up which a narrow, well-worn path climbed slantingly to a rounded shoulder below which the sea rolled in against a tiny spit of sand. From the shoulder of the hill, but out of sight from where she sat, Bluebell knew that a narrower path, rough, steep and uneven, made a walker’s short cut to the woods around Campions, the house occupied by Rupert and Diana. There was a much longer way to it by a road through the village past the hotel and the pub, a road which branched off into a bridle-way. This would be the route, Bluebell reflected, by which her mother and Fiona would travel, for surely Romula would not refuse them the services of her car and chauffeur, however bitterly she had quarrelled with them.

Parsifal stood irresolutely beside his wife’s chair for a few moments and then said: ‘I feel like a good stiff walk. How would it be if I toddled over to Campions and had a word with Diana? She will be on her own with Rupert at his desk or out botanising and the two children at school. She may have gathered more of your grandmother’s intentions than we did and she will be interested to hear the news about your mother and Fiona.’

‘To take a walk will only follow your usual custom. It is barely half-past nine, so on your way back you could call at the hotel for a packet of their crab sandwiches. Gamaliel likes those and they will help to make lunch out here into more of a picnic. Ask Garnet whether you shall also bring him some beer. Gamaliel likes that as well, and Garnet will pay for it. There will be a bottle for you, too, I dare say, and perhaps you could bring me a bitter lemon drink if you are bringing beer. Take Diana the smaller of my two sponge sandwiches. It will make an excuse for calling on her.’

Parsifal took a haversack and his favourite ashplant, descended to the basement and the back door, went through the garden to the stepping-stones in the tumbling little stream and mounted the grass-grown steps cut long ago by the smugglers. At the top an ill-defined path followed the line of the cove and led to the back door in the oldest part of the hotel. He went to the bar and gave his order for the sandwiches and drinks, then he crossed the road which led down to the shore and the fisherman’s boats and climbed the hill which overlooked the tiny harbour. As he walked, the open sea came in sight, but he lost it again when he turned inland to take the path which led to his objective.

The little bare trackway mounted and dipped, mounted and dipped until, at the top of the hill, it reached an open space whose outcroppings of rock offered the chance of a seat and a view, once again, of the sea. Far to east and west, the long headlands ran out into the Channel, helping to shelter innumerable tiny coves, each with its spit of beach. There were also a couple of large, clean, sandy bays, sought after every summer by holiday-makers with children.

Parsifal unhitched his haversack, dropped it upon the ground and seated himself upon a flat outcrop. Around him were bracken and gorse and patches of ciliate heath, the Cornish heather, green-growing but not yet in flower. Far out in the Channel a ship the size of a toy was voyaging from Southampton to Cork. Parsifal took a notebook from the breastpocket of his bush shirt and put down some rough notes and a first line which he intended to extend into a sixteen-line poem for one of the women’s magazines which sometimes took his work.

When he resumed his way the path became rougher and less well-defined. At one place an almost perpendicular descent of ten or twelve feet necessitated sliding down it on the seat of his khaki shorts, but after that the going was easier and it was not long before he came upon a broad stretch of turf and could see the woods which surrounded Campions.

He did not expect to find anybody about except Diana, and there she was in the big, uncared-for garden surrounded by what Parsifal might have thought were Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians except that they happened to be dachshunds and numbered only five, the sire, the bitch and three ecstatic puppies.

He paused at the wicket-gate which opened on to the rough lawn, for the whole tribe of dogs had set up a staccato chorus and had lolloped up to the gate at his approach.

Diana followed and screamed at them. Pandemonium reigned until she got them under control and into their wire-mesh cages. Then she came up to the gate again. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘Surprise, surprise!’

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ said Parsifal. ‘If I’m not interrupting anything I’d like to speak to you.’

Diana unlatched the gate. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘What’s it all about?’

Parsifal did not answer until they were seated in a large room which would have been pleasant had it been tidier. ‘I’d better come straight to the point,’ he said. ‘Have you heard that my mother-in-law and Fiona have had a fracas with Mrs Leyden and are going to leave her house?’

‘No, I hadn’t heard. I can’t say I’m surprised after the way she behaved at the dinner party. I have nothing against Gamaliel, but the fact remains that he is ‘family’ only by adoption. I am certain she called us all together to tell us something. That something, or so Rupert and I concluded, was to do with her Will and who was to get what, so long as they behaved themselves. But, except for vague hints and what Rupert and I interpreted as veiled threats, nothing of any interest came out at all. Right?’

‘Right. She took this sudden, and, as you say, irrational interest in Gamaliel and, by this time, may have changed all her plans.’

‘Maria and Fiona must believe that she has, otherwise they would never have quarrelled with her and threatened to leave her house.’

‘It is more than a threat, I’m afraid. They propose to come and plant themselves on us.’

‘Well,’ said Diana, sharply, ‘you’ve got plenty of room for them at Seawards.’

‘We wondered whether, if we took my wife’s mother, you and Rupert would have Fiona.’

‘Oh, now, look here, Parsifal!’

‘Just a moment. Hear me out.’

‘There is no point in my doing that. Your mother-in-law is your business, of course, and I quite see that you must do what you can for her. Fiona, on the other hand, is nobody’s business. Mrs Leyden adopted her unofficially and she is nobody else’s responsibility. If she chooses to quarrel with her benefactor, that’s up to her. She can’t expect any of us to interest ourselves in the matter.’

‘So you won’t have her here if we agree to have Blue’s mother? I wonder what Rupert will say when I put the point to him? After all, this is his house, not yours.’

His tone was so full of meaning that Diana looked venomous, but, instead of the outburst of which Parsifal knew she was capable, all she said was: ‘There are reasons why neither Rupert nor I would want to have Fiona here. You may or may not understand what I mean. If you don’t, there is no explanation I should be willing to give you; if you do, then you should have known better than to suggest such an arrangement.’

‘I see,’ said Parsifal, ‘and I apologise. I’m afraid that, from our point of view, it was any port in a storm.’

‘This port,’ said Diana, ‘is open only to well-found, properly insured vessels, not to drifting wrecks that no underwriter will look at.’

‘I see,’ said Parsifal again. ‘Oh, well, that’s that, then.’ He picked up his haversack which he had dumped by the side of his chair, where it struck no incongruous note in the untidy room, and walked towards the door. ‘I just thought I’d put you in the picture.’

‘Shall you let Gamaliel go and live with Mrs Leyden if that is what she wants?’ asked Diana, before he reached it.

Parsifal turned round. ‘It will depend upon what he wants,’ he said. ‘Blue and I would not stand in his way.’

It was Diana’s turn to say that she saw.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Oh, well, we have very few expectations for ourselves or our children. She thinks Quentin and Millament come of tainted stock since Rupert’s father did not marry his mother. Unto the third and fourth generation is her contention, I suppose, plus visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, but it’s hard luck on our two brats, especially as the last thing they did at the dinner party was to make a hit with the giver of the feast.’

‘Millament couldn’t help knocking over her glass.’

‘Quentin couldn’t help spilling his soup. They are not usually clumsy or boorish at table. All the same, they hardly endeared themselves at a time when it mattered most that they should. Come and sit down again, Parsifal, and we’ll have a glass of sherry.’

‘Thank you, Diana, but I must be getting back. I have to stop and pick up some food from the hotel. Gamaliel has school lunch at soon after twelve, but he has permission to be at home today to study for his exams, and will be getting hungry.’

‘Well, will you make me a promise?’

‘To say nothing to Rupert about my visit here this morning?’

‘You are always so intuitive, Parsifal. No wonder you are a poet.’

Parsifal knew the compliment was a false one and that in reality Diana despised both him and his work, but he felt gratified, none the less, by her words. ‘I won’t say anything at all to Rupert unless he asks me a direct question,’ he said. ‘If that happens, I shall, of course, feel bound to give him a straight answer.’

Diana looked at him. ‘I think he’ll pay for Fiona’s keep if I put it to him in the right way. You’d be glad of that, so you need not threaten me,’ she observed.

Parsifal looked astonished. ‘Very glad indeed of it. It would ease matters all round. But, well—’ he began.

‘I know all about Rupert and Fiona. That’s why—I may as well speak frankly—neither Rupert nor I could possibly have her here,’ said Diana, still eyeing him.

‘It will be better for her and Blue’s mother to remain together. It was only a question of the expense,’ said Parsifal, still looking mystified by Diana’s sudden offer of help.

‘Think no more about that. It will be taken care of. If ever you go to prison, Parsifal, it will be for blackmail.’

‘Blackmail?’ said Parsifal blankly, more and more indicating that he was out of his depth.

‘Well, isn’t that what this visit of yours has meant?’

‘Certainly not, Diana! How can you suggest such an ugly interpretation of my call! I simply have no idea what you’re getting at.’

‘Sorry! I thought you were cleverer than you look,’ said Diana spitefully. ‘Are you calling at Headlands as well as coming here?’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘I thought perhaps your grocery bill was due.’