Mingled With Venom

Chapter 5

Hallucination or Fact?

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By walking through the woods to the cliff-top and then taking a track (well-marked thanks to Diana’s Easter-tide students earlier in the year) which followed the line of the coast, Parsifal took his homeward way intending to return by a longer route than the one he had used on his outwardjourney.

He had emerged from the tangle of trees and bushes which hid Campions from view when, hitching his haversack a bit higher, he remembered the sponge sandwich which was supposed to have been bestowed upon Diana.

He did not want to go back. Her spiteful reference to blackmail had put him out of countenance and he was still wondering how she knew that he sponged on Mrs Leyden. Meanwhile still in his possession was the edible gift. Bluebell, he knew, would be disappointed if it were not delivered. She had very few things to give away. He sighed, half at the thought of retracing his steps and carrying out his errand, half in sympathy with a wife who accepted poverty so unselfishly and with so much patience and good grace, and who had never reproached him over the years for failing to give her a child of her own or for being unable to keep her in the manner which, as Romula’s granddaughter, perhaps she had a right to expect.

Sighing, but conscious of where his duty lay, he turned about and made his way back through the tress. As he approached the back fence of Campions, he heard women’s voices and, from the fact that the dachshunds were not barking, he deduced that one of the voices belonged to Diana.

As he drew nearer he heard one of the women say, ‘There is no need for me to come in and sit down. I am not in the least fatigued. There is just one question I would like to put to you. Where did my grandson, Garnet Porthcawl, sleep last night?’

‘Good heavens, how should I know?’ The voice, Parsifal decided, was most certainly that of Diana. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I am not to be deceived or hoodwinked, Diana. You will answer me.’

‘But what business is it either of yours or mine where he slept?’

‘I would have supposed it was very much your business, since Rupert slept at my house and therefore was not at home last night to know what went on in his own.’

Parsifal decided that it was high time he made his presence known. He broke into song and stepped out briskly.

I will give my love an apple without e’er a core;

I will give my love a house without e’er a door;

I will give my love a palace wherein she may be,

And she may unlock it without any key,

carolled Parsifal in a thin but not unpleasing tenor. He emerged in view of the startled women.

‘Good gracious me!’ exclaimed Diana, who was leaning on the wicket-gate while Romula stood like a ramrod outside it. ‘What on earth have you come back for?’

‘Ah,’ said Parsifal. He unshipped his haversack and opened it. ‘Blue sent you a sponge sandwich.’ He produced a package. ‘I daren’t go back with it after she made it especially for you.’

‘I bet that isn’t true,’ said Diana, taking the gift as Parsifal handed it over the gate and Romula stepped back. ‘Thank her, all the same. She’s a better cook than I am, Gunga Din.’

‘Since you are here, Parsifal,’ said Romula, ‘you may escort me home, or as near my house as your way takes you. I shall be glad of your company along the cliff-top. I had a very unpleasant experience on my way here. As I have told Diana, I nearly fell on to the rocks below the cliff.’

‘Indeed, Mrs Leyden? I am sorry to hear that,’ said Parsifal, preparing to follow her along the woodland path. ‘Missed your footing on the cliff-top, did you? I really think you would do well to take a companion when you go on these treacherous walks.’

‘It is not the walks which are treacherous, Parsifal.’

‘Landslides?’

‘I have not known of one in this part of the countryside.’

‘Then somebody in a hurry, perhaps, brushed against you in passing and upset your equilibrium a little. People can be very clumsy at times.’

‘Parsifal, I shall require you to protect me.’

‘Of course, Mrs Leyden.’

‘Dead! And never called me Mother!’ said Diana.

Romula turned on her as though she could have struck her. ‘If I am found dead at the bottom of the cliffs, I shall come back and haunt you. You are a strumpet,’ she said. ‘Come, Parsifal.’

Thankful that the uncomfortable interval was over, Parsifal followed her until the trees thinned and they were in the open. ‘You don’t really mean that you were attacked on your way over here, do you?’ he asked, falling in beside her.

‘I don’t know what else I mean. Which way did you come?’

‘By the hill path. It is more difficult than this route, but a good deal shorter and, of course, more easily reached from Seawards. I shall have to rejoin it later on. I must pick up some things at the hotel.’

‘Oh, well, that will do for me, too. I can telephone from there and tell Lunn to bring the car. I have had a shock, Parsifal.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘I was bending down to dig up a root of sea-pinks with my little trowel—I have a blue pot at home in which I thought the little plant would look well—when I was heavily struck by a human body and sent over the edge of the cliff.’

‘Some loutish holiday-maker who could not wait until there was room to pass.’

‘Nonsense! I was not impeding anyone. I was not on the path; but on the grass verge between the path and the cliff-edge.’

‘You might have been killed! Did you see anybody?’

‘Of course I did not. Fortunately I fell into a dip which arrested my descent, but of course I am neither of the age, the build or the physical power to be able to climb to the top again. Fortunately the cliff-path is a favourite haunt of the holiday walkers, so I thought that if I called out and continued to do so, in the end some passer-by was certain to hear me and either render assistance or go in search of it.’

‘And somebody came.’

‘After what seemed a considerable interval, yes. Of all people it turned out to be Garnet. He said he was out for his morning constitutional. I took this to mean that he was on his way to see Diana, but when, after he had climbed down and assisted me to the top, I told him that I myself was on my way to Campions, he must have thought it better to change his mind. He accompanied me through the woods as far as the Campions garden fence and then left me.’

‘You have had a lucky escape.’

‘Lucky do you call it?’

‘Miraculous, then. But surely it could not have been intended as an attack on you? It must have been either a sheer accident or dangerous, thoughtless horseplay.’

‘I have my ill-wishers, Parsifal. You reached Campions before I did, it seems. You were paying a return visit when we met.’

‘But, look!’ said Parsifal in an incredulous tone. ‘You’re not accusing me of pushing you over the edge of the cliff, are you? I came by the inland route, over the hill, as I told you. I was never on the cliff-top at all.’

‘If I thought you were my assailant, should I have asked for your escort on my homeward way? I wondered whether you had seen anybody in the woods, that is all. But, of course, you entered them from the other side, did you not?’

‘Yes, I saw nobody.’

‘You are very late back,’ said Bluebell. ‘Gamaliel, poor boy, says he is starving. Did Diana keep you talking too long? She is lonely and tends to become loquacious, as lonely people usually do when they get a sympathetic listener.’

‘Let us have our lunch. I will tell you all about it later. It is not for Gamaliel’s ears. I do not want to upset him so near to his examinations. Where is Garnet? He will be hungry too.’

‘He will not be in for lunch. He went out soon after you had left and said he would have a bread and cheese lunch at a public house.’

‘Oh? Did he say where he was going?’

‘Out for a walk, and that he would call at Headlands on his way and ask how our grandmother felt after the party.’

‘I suppose he really went to see Diana. He slept with her last night while Rupert was at Headlands, I expect. At any rate, he did not sleep here.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose they must make the most of their opportunities, as I expect Rupert and Fiona did,’ said Bluebell tolerantly. ‘How oddly things arrange themselves! If only Garnet had desired Fiona instead of Diana, how beautifully simple everything would be.’

‘Not for us and Gamaliel. We should have had to find other lodging and how that could have been afforded I hardly know. From our point “of view, things are much better left as they are.’

When the picnic lunch, at which he was in high spirits, was over, Gamaliel went off to resume his studies. Parsifal and Bluebell cleared the table and washed the dishes and then settled in deckchairs on the balcony above that where they had lunched.

‘One gets a wider prospect from up here,’ said Parsifal.

‘Yes. You are going to tell me about your visit to Diana.’

‘About that there is nothing to tell. I was with her a very short time and did not stay long at the house. It was Mrs Leyden who delayed me.’

‘You have not been to Headlands?’

‘No, I met her at Diana’s gate. I think they were having an altercation.’

‘That means she knew Diana slept with Garnet last night.’

‘That was the lesser of her complaints. She claims that she was attacked on her walk along the cliff-top and might have been killed.’

‘Attacked? But people don’t do that sort of thing around here.’

‘Our own people, no, but one cannot go bail for holiday-makers and there are already plenty of them around here.’

‘What does she say actually happened?’

Parsifal, who had a good verbal memory, quoted Romula’s words.

‘Oh, it must have been an accident,’ declared Bluebell. ‘All the same, surely the person who did it could have stayed to find out whether she was hurt.’

‘Perhaps not, if he thought he might have killed her. I would put him down as a sort of pedestrian hit-and-run.’

‘Oh, well, yes, perhaps.’

‘She claims, moreover, that she was not on the path when she was pushed. That means the way was clear. There was no need for any pushing.’

‘She is getting on in years. Do you think she made the whole thing up? She may have a persecution complex. Elderly women sometimes get some very peculiar notions in their heads.’

‘I had not thought of that. All the same, perhaps she ought not to take these lonely walks while so many strangers are about. One does hear of muggings and kidnap and suchlike unpleasant things, and I don’t suppose her wealth is any secret.’

‘I believe I am what is called unworldly, but I wish I thought that some of it would come our way.’

‘I wonder whether it would be a good idea if I walked over to the village Post Office and telephoned Headlands to ask whether she got back safely and how she feels after her experience?’

‘It could do no harm, I suppose, and it might please her. All the same, I do not care that she should have any excuse to class us as sycophants.’

‘There is no question of that where I am concerned, Blue,’ said Parsifal, suppressing the fact that he often begged from Romula. ‘She knows that I have no expectations under her Will.’

‘She might think I sent you. Oh, that Will! If only she had made her intentions known at the dinner party we should all be relieved from the burden of uncertainty.’

‘I do wish your mother and Fiona were not coming here.’

‘I know what you mean. It affects Garnet, too. Grandmother may think he ought to forbid them in the house. After all, he is the master here. Oh, well, go and do your telephoning if you think fit.’

‘And if she does ask me to call?’

‘I will expect you when I see you.’

‘I think it might be a few pence well spent.’

‘It is better not to think so, but off you go.’

Outside the little Post Office he met an acquaintance. ‘Why, good afternoon, Miss Pabbay,’ he said. ‘So you are not yet back in London? How is Mrs Leyden after her accident?’

‘You had better come back with me and find out.’

‘I was about to telephone.’

‘Oh, I have Lunn and the car just up the road. Excuse me while I buy some stamps. We’ve run out and I think she wants to write to her lawyers.’

‘That sounds interesting.’

‘Or ominous, depending upon how you look at it.’

Romula received Parsifal with unusual cordiality. ‘It is kind of you to call and enquire after me,’ she said, ‘but I am fully recovered.’

‘Perhaps you should inform the police of your dangerous experience.’

‘I have already done so by telephone, but, of course, I could give them little information. I do not even know whether my assailant was a man or a woman.’

‘Surely no woman would behave in such a manner?’

‘If you knew the way some women behave nowadays, you would not ask such a stupid question. Is my grandson giving house room to my daughter and Fiona?’

‘Well, really, that is nothing to do with Blue and me,’ protested Parsifal, looking alarmed.

‘I am aware of that. Pensioners seldom hold the whip-hand.’

‘We pay our way, thanks to some help from you.’

‘Barely. You live rent-free, I suppose, and are largely dependent upon the allowance which comes to Bluebell out of my purse.’

‘I am sorry you grudge it to her.’

‘Who said I grudged it? I think it is a pity you do not earn enough to keep her in the style she deserves, but that cannot be helped. No doubt you do your best, such as it is, if only as a beggar when the big bills come in.’

‘Yes, I do my best. It is not easy to follow one’s star. I still hope to make something of myself as a poet.’

‘As a poet, yes, perhaps. As a business man—well, that is beyond your grasp, although, as I say, you know how to beg. You had better put pressure on Rupert to pay for Fiona’s keep. I shall do nothing to help if she leaves me. But I won’t threaten you. You were of service to me this morning. How is my Black Prince?’

‘Gamaliel? Oh, he flourishes. I am sure he would have wished to be remembered to you had he known I was coming here this afternoon.’

‘Cupboard love!’

‘Oh, no! You do him an injustice.’

‘Yes,’ said Romula, after a pause during which Parsifal found himself surprised by his own bold comment. ‘Yes, I believe I do. Of course, your adopting him confirms me in my original estimate of you that you are neither prudent nor far-seeing, but he is an amusing and pleasant person. I may remember him later on.’

‘Well, I’m thankful you’re not prudent,’ said Bluebell, when she heard the story after tea on the terrace was over and Gamaliel had taken his books into Garnet’s room in order to con them while Garnet banged away on his ancient typewriter. ‘If being prudent means blackmailing her into getting Rupert to pay for Fiona’s keep, I hope you never will be prudent. Think no more of her unkind remarks and do not build your hopes for Gamaliel too high.’

‘You haven’t had any extra news while I was paying my visit to her?’

‘The only extra news would be the actual arrival of mother and Fiona and they have not come. Of course the quarrel with grandmother may have been made up by now.’

‘You sound as though you would regret that.’

‘Well, I should not be averse to the company of other women in a house which contains myself and three men.’

‘So it was not the money side of it which concerned you? It is a good thing you leave the financial side to me. I don’t know where we should be if you did not place the allowance your grandmother makes you in my hands.’

‘Yes, you are clever with money, Parsifal.’

‘So you don’t mind having Fiona here?’ said Parsifal, finding it unnecessary to disclose Romula’s views of him as a businessman.

‘Since you ask me, no. It is pleasant for a woman to have the company of other women. There are things they have in common which a man would not understand.’

‘I see. I have always thought, until now, that Gamaliel and I sufficed you.’

‘So you do. I said it would be pleasant to have some female society for a change. I did not say it was a necessity and I am far from thinking so. Would you mind taking on the washing-up? It is only three small plates and the cups and saucers, not anything greasy or unpleasant. The light is just right for a picture I want to paint. There are some new visitors at the hotel, you say, so it may be profitable to get a few pictures done while they are here, especially as, if mother and Fiona do come, I shall have less time to myself than I have at present.’

‘One of his new visitors, so Trev Poltrethy informed me this morning, is a very wealthy and important woman who is staying for a whole month. She has her own chauffeur who has been accommodated at the pub further up the hill. He is to report for duty each day.’

‘An important woman? Have we heard of her?’

‘Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. Her secretary, a Mrs Gavin, and two friends, travelled down with her, but Poltrethy gathers that the holiday marks a reunion of the three younger women, who have now gone off together. Dame Beatrice belongs to a much older generation than the others, and wishes them to enjoy a more adventurous time than the hotel can provide.’

‘Perhaps each of the others will buy a picture later on. When one member of an adult party shows interest, the others often feel inclined to follow suit. They are sure to return and pick her up, so I will have pictures ready.’

‘Then away with you, my dear, and put brush to canvas. Of course I will wash up the dishes.’

Bluebell collected her materials and, so burdened, did not attempt the route by way of the garden, the stepping stones and the smugglers’ track, but went through to the front of the house and took the steep but made-up slope which led to the village street and so down to the hotel and its small grey beach.

‘Somebody pushed my great grandmother over the edge of the cliff?’ said Gamaliel to Garnet on the following morning. ‘But who would do a thing like that to an old lady?’

‘How do you know anything about it, Greg?’

‘Oh,’ said Gamaliel, with a gesture which showed the pinkish palm of his hand, ‘I heard my mother and father talking about it. They also said you had done yourself a bit of no good by having Fiona here. Does that mean she will not give you her money when she dies?’

‘No, of course it doesn’t. In any case, she isn’t going to die for years and years yet.’

‘It must have frightened her very much, that fall. Old ladies are easily scared.’

‘Not this one. She was mad at herself, not scared.’

‘But how could she be mad at herself? She ought to have been mad with the man who pushed her.’

‘I’ll tell you something, Greg. There wasn’t any man. Nobody pushed her. She said there was because they are—I mean my mother and Fiona and even Mattie Lunn—they are always warning her that she ought not to be taking these cliff walks alone at her age. Her sight isn’t good, you see, and also, if she takes a fancy to a plant or a flower, she is apt to scramble after it. The cliff-path is perfectly safe for ordinary walkers, but not for a half-blind old lady who seems to think she’s a goat.’

‘So you think she slipped and was not pushed?’

‘Yes. She confesses she was digging up a plant. She shouldn’t have been doing that, anyway. Conservation, you know, and all that.’

‘So Allah, the conserver and the judge, pushed her over the cliff to teach her a lesson, but because He is all-merciful, all-compassionate, and because Mohammed is His prophet she was not hurt.’

‘Eh?’ said Garnet, taken aback by this evidence of discipleship. ‘What’s all this about conservers and judges?’

‘My conception of my faith. I am a Mohammedan with Hindoo thoughts. When my boxing career is over I shall found a new religion. My people are good at religion. Swing low, sweet chariot. Jewish, Old Testament. Virgin Mary have a baby boy. Christian, New Testament. The bird of Time has but a little way to fly. Persian, Omar Khayyam. If the red slayer think he slays. Buddha, by understanding English poet of enlightened kind. Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads. Hindoo poem of Rabindranath Tagore. Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law. Aleister Crowley, a bad man, perhaps, but with his ideas I have sympathy, as I have with witchcraft watched over by the Great Mother and the Horned God. All religions are good in their own way, and my religion will be a mixture of them all. Meanwhile, I am thinking like Muhammad Ali, the Muslim way.’

‘I don’t know why you say you won’t pass your O levels,’ said Garnet.

‘I think too much, that is why. O levels do not require thought, only a good memory to produce what my teachers have said.’

‘Well, to get back to the subject of my grandmother’s fall down the cliff—’

‘You say it was only a fall, not a push.’

‘If she’d really been pushed, she would have landed on the rocks below. No, no. She lost her footing and fell just a dozen feet or so. She bellowed for help because she couldn’t scramble back to the path again, although you or I or an active girl or woman could have done it easily.’

‘And you helped her up to the top.’

‘Yes, that’s about it. She’s a proud and obstinate old lady and she would never admit that other people had been right and that she ought not to take these walks and scrambles alone.’

On the following day, however, Garnet was compelled to alter his opinion about Romula’s mishap on the cliff path. He set out early in the morning from Seawards and took the rough, hilly route which Parsifal had followed to reach Campions and concealed himself in the woods there until he saw Rupert come out by the wicket gate. He waited until the sound of Rupert’s car could no longer be heard and then announced himself to Diana, who had come to the wicket gate to let her dogs out for a run in the woods.

‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Will you give me some breakfast?’

Diana was in shorts and a bolero which showed her midriff. Garnet thought she was beginning to show her age, too. For the first time he saw her as a pathetic figure, a woman trying to protect herself against the onset of middle age. She let the dogs loose and held the gate open for him.

‘Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time; sometimes you’re not,’ she said.

‘You mean there’s no breakfast for me?’

‘Of course I don’t mean that.’ He followed her in to the house. ‘Will eggs and bacon do?’

‘Yes, and I’ll cook them if you’ll allow me. I know how I like them done.’

‘All right. Do some for me, too. I never eat breakfast with Rupert. He’s always in such a hurry.’

‘Gone to Truro, has he?’

‘No, botanising for this new book of his. Sometimes I wish he’d fall into a quarry and break his neck.’

‘Or over the cliffs like my grandmother,’ said Garnet, dealing with his cookery in an expert manner. He began to laugh. ‘The old fraud,’ he concluded.

‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Diana.

‘What I said to Gamaliel yesterday. She was no more pushed over the cliff than I was. She lost her footing and tumbled down, that’s all, but she made up that story to forestall criticism. My mother and Fiona are always warning her against taking these cliff walks on her own.’

‘But Garnet, I think she was pushed.’

‘Oh, well, all right, if you think so.’

‘Garnet, I don’t just think. I know.’

‘Don’t tell me you got behind her and did the pushing, because I shan’t believe you.’

‘Maybe not, but what would you say if I told you that the same thing happened to me?’

‘What! You’re joking!’

‘All right. Is this a joke?’ She came up to the stove and spread out the palms of her hands almost under his nose. They were badly lacerated. ‘Gorse prickles,’ she said. ‘I was lucky enough to grab a bush as I went over the edge. I’d gone out with the dogs to give them a run and I had knelt down to look at Beethoven’s paw, because he was limping, when somebody gave me a dirty great shove in the back and sent me flying.’

‘Good Lord! Did you see anybody?’

‘No. The dogs set up hell, of course, and the next thing I knew was that I’d fetched up clutching this gorsebush.’

‘But nobody would push you over a cliff.’

‘The fact remains that somebody did.’

‘One of the dogs lurched against you and you imagined the rest.’

‘I hope your eggs and bacon choke you!’

‘Oh, well, they’re ready. Where’s the toast?’

‘There isn’t any. You’ll have to make do with bread.’

‘That cliff-path ought to be patrolled. There must be some kind of maniac about, unless—’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless somebody with a grudge wants to murder somebody in our family.’

‘Why pick on me and your grandmother?’

‘Somebody knows something about her Will and possibly the same person knows about you and me.’

‘The only person who cares anything about our relationship is your grandmother herself. At least, that is what I suppose. Oh, no, she isn’t, though! What about the black boy? He resents our relationship, I’ll bet, and he thinks, after the way he greased round her at that dinner party, that he stands to gain something when she dies.’

‘Don’t talk such utter nonsense! Gamaliel doesn’t have any expectations at all.’

‘Yes, he does—well, most likely he does. At the dinner party Mrs Leyden promised that she would have him taught to ride and made a tremendous fuss of him.’

‘Gamaliel’s a good kid, one of the best.’

‘That’s what you think. You and Parsifal have your occupations and Blue has her painting. How much do any of you really keep tabs on that boy? I tell you, Garnet, you have no idea what goes on in his mind, no idea at all.’

Remembering a recent conversation with Gamaliel—‘A bad man, perhaps, but with his ideas I have sympathy’— Garnet began to wonder whether she was right. What did he know of what went on in Gamaliel’s mind?