Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (44 page)

Gerald got up from his chair and began walking up and down. 'That's all very well,' he said. 'I'm sure you've given me a true picture of what happened, but there's nothing to connect it with Melpham. It was Portway's duty as a scholar to speak out at once if he found out that there had been a fraud. As it was, you suggest this man, who yoù say was a very good man, submitted to blackmail in order to hide up what it was his duty to reveal.'

Frank turned on Gerald irritably. 'Goodness isn't all of a piece,' he said, 'any more than badness. Canon Portway was a very good man. He'd never admit he was wrong. Not even in little things. If he was faced with it he just walked out of the room. And this, which was a public thing, that touched his scholarship. No, duckie, you don't understand people very well. Besides, he had to think of old Professor Stokesay. That'd have been a terrible thing for him when he loved his son so. No, Canon Portway would have done anything rather than that.'

Gerald went to the window and stared at the trees of Earl's Court Square. 'There's nothing to connect it with Melpham, nothing,' he said, and turned round sharply to face Frank.

'There's a thing I
do
remember,' said the little fat man. 'He wouldn't talk of Melpham. I asked him once. In Norwich it was, I remember. He was getting old then long before his time. He'd come in from his sermons complaining of rheumatism and the cold. There'd have been no fire either if I hadn't made one and given him crumpets as he liked them. He'd talk then, a bit rambling but always clever. I asked him about Eorpwald once, how that pagan god fitted in with the Church in those days and so on. I gave up all my book-learning when I went into the Navy and I never went back to it. I found more important things to do, but I always liked to learn things. He snapped me up then. He said the whole thing was a mystery and he hoped it'd remain so. It wasn't a thing he saw any good in discussing, be said. And then he asked me a strange thing. Never to talk about the Melpham burial to the Barkers. I didn't make conversation with them anyway and I'd no more have mentioned a learned thing to them than flown. I thought he was wandering. But perhaps he wasn't, duckie, after all. Anyway, you'd best go and see the Barkers. Mrs Cressett she is now. I should see the old man on his own. He's a hard man, but he's old, and the old wander in their talk. You'll get nothing out of her, nor out of him if she's by.'

Gerald sighed. 'I suppose I must,' he said. 'Well, thank you, Mr Rammage, for all...'

Frank cut him short. 'If you've no more to ask, I'll say good day to you. The cleaning and polishing there is to do!' He showed Gerald out.

As Gerald was getting into his car, a voice came from the front steps behind him. 'Can I have a word with you, please, Professor Middleton?'  He saw Larwood's eyebrows rise slightly and turned to find Vin Salad standing on the steps in black crêpe-de-chine pyjamas, a jade-green silk dressing-gown, held tightly, draped round him. His face was covered in vanishing cream.

Gerald's back stiffened slightly; he'd had about as much of that sort of thing as he could take. 'Oh, good morning, Salad,' he said in his most officerly voice. 'I'm afraid I can't stop now. I'm late for an appointment.'

'It won't take a sec,' said Vin. He looked down at his costume. 'I hardly cared to call out to you in this negligee,' he added. 'You asked me to keep an eye on that Larrie Rourke. Well, he's liable to be in bad trouble any day.'

'Yes,' said Gerald, 'he appears to have stolen my wife's car. But since he's left her house, I don't know that it matters.'

'Oh, I don't know anything about that,' Vin said, 'but he's in with some Irish boys now. A very bad crowd. Burglars and things. He'll be taken up any day, I should think.'

'Well, since he's cut loose from my family it's hardly my affair,' Gerald answered.

Vin flounced his head. He was hurt at the Professor's manner. 'Oh well, I'm sure I don't know,' he said; 'I was only anxious to oblige. I should tell your son to keep away from him if I were you.'

'Thank you,' said Gerald. He started to get into the car, then turned and said, 'How's Mrs Salad?'

Vin smiled. 'Ever so lively, thank you. She's always hoping to see you.'

'Oh,' Gerald answered. 'I'll look in one of these days.'

Vin's eyes narrowed. 'That's nice,' he said. 'It's lucky she's such a patient old lady.' He turned and went indoors.

Gerald looked out of the window of the Montpelier Square house some days later. The rain running down the panes blurred his vision. Despite the summer season, he had been forced to turn on the central heating. Inside the house everything seemed warm and snug. The first contribution to the
History
-
Hilda Ferguson's chapter on the influence of the Crusades on English social life - had arrived. It looked most interesting. It seemed to Gerald that he could start the chapter of
The Confessor
on Stigand's relations with Rome. The words were already formed in his head. A catalogue of the Wroxesley sale lay on the table - there were notes on two Guardi drawings he had never seen. Nevertheless, he rang and asked Larwood to have the car ready in five minutes. He gave the address of Harold Cressett.

It would have been less depressing, he thought, to have left some warm, sunbaked merchant's house in Pompeii to set sail for Ultima Thüle or the bright Lords' hall for the darkness of the voyage to Vinland. Indeed, the hideous hybrid terrain of the by-pass seemed more monstrous to Gerald when he reached it than all the fantastic lands of medieval travellers. Mr Barker's huge, motionless red face stared out of the window at the ruined glass-houses. One rolling eye was fixed on Gerald as he came up the path. So, Gerald thought, must Polyphemus have looked out at the voyagers from his cave.

Mrs Cressett answered the door - comfortable, neat, but ready to bar the way. The compensation money now seemed assured. Numerous well-wishers had sent them substantial cheques. The time had come when she would keep out intruders, snoopers, reporters, and other busybodies. Alice Cressett had never believed in knowing people - strangers, neighbours, family, or anybody else - you could never tell what they were trying to get out of you. A small kingdom ruled by herself with a rod of iron was what she liked, and all this contact with the great public tended to undermine her sense of omnipotence. It seemed also to have undermined Harold - he was getting out of hand. The sooner they got away from the smallholding and established the boarding-house in Cromer, the better she would be pleased. A nice little kingdom with ten or twelve chosen subjects - preferably old people - would just suit her natural talent for ruling.

She was not over-friendly to Gerald then, although her eye took in the car and chauffeur. When she learned that he was John Middleton's father she felt constrained to ask him in.

'I saw you on the television,' said Gerald, 'and I was so interested to learn that you had been at Melpham. You probably don't remember it, but I was there the day the discovery was made. You very kindly bound up my sprained ankle.'

'Oh yes, I remember, sir.' Alice's expression remained fixed and comfortable, like a mother doll carved out of wood. She led him into the parlour. 'How do you do, Mr Barker?'  Gerald said. 'I remember well your driving me up to Melpham Hall. We had a very interesting little chat.' He seemed somehow impelled to lie about the events of that day.

Alice Cressett chuckled. 'Well, you won't have another,' she said. 'Father's paralysed. He's lost his speech. But he understands very well. Don't you, Father? You'd be surprised how much he
does
understand, sir.'

Gerald felt quite downcast at this check to his inquiry. 'I'm writing a book about Melpham. I'm a history professor, you know. I was hoping perhaps your father could have told me a little about the exciting circumstances of the discovery.'

Mrs Cressett looked more satisfied than ever. 'He could have done,' she said, 'but he can't now.'

'Oh, I expect he told you most of what he knew,' Gerald said. 'He was with Gilbert Stokesay, wasn't he, when they first came on the coffin?'

Mrs Cressett went to the sideboard and got out a bottle of beer and glasses. 'You'll take a glass of beer, won't you?'  she asked. Then she said, 'He couldn't have told me that because he wasn't there. It was one of the village lads that was with young Mr Stokesay. Father only came later when they needed all hands to raise the coffin.'

'How strange!' Gerald said. 'I could have sworn that someone told me he made the discovery.'

'They told you lies, then,' she said.

Gerald sat puzzled for a moment, then he took a long chance. 'Oh! I know. I got that impression from your father himself when he drove me up there that day.'

For the first time Mrs Cressett shifted her ample bottom a little uncomfortably on the chair. 'Oh!' she said. 'Well, if you know so much there's no occasion to ask me.'

There was an awkward silence. Gerald thought of the paralysed mother in
Thérèse
Raquin
and wondered if Mr Barker too might give a sign. 'I always hoped Canon Portway would publish his reminiscences. It would have been most valuable to have had
his
first-hand account of the excavation. I believe you were in his service a long time, Mrs Cressett.'

'More than twenty years, sir. And Father? Let me see. I believe he was over forty years with the family. You was more than forty years with the Portways, weren't you, Father?'  She waited a moment to register the unspoken and then said, 'Ah! I thought so. More than forty years Father was with them, sir.'

'Did Canon Portway ever say anything to you about why he hadn't published more on Bishop Eorpwald's tomb?'

Mrs Cressett looked at him very straight. 'We were servants, sir,' she said.

'The best in the world, according to Mrs Portway,' Gerald went on.

Mrs Cressett seemed now to be anxiously listening for something.
'She
was a very good mistress, sir,' she said. 'Ah, Father knows you're talking of her. He worshipped Mrs Portway, sir. Do you know how she is these days?'

'I'm afraid she was very ill indeed when I left her at Merano last month. They didn't think she would live!'

Mrs Cressett clicked her tongue. 'I don't know how Father'll take that,' she said. However he took it, Mr Barker still gave no overt sign. 'Did she speak of us on that day?'  Mrs Cressett asked.

'Oh, yes,' Gerald replied, 'a great deal, and most warmly.'

'Ah!' said Mrs Cressett with satisfaction. She even filled up Gerald's glass.

'She
seemed to think her brother-in-law was worried about some aspects of the excavation,' Gerald said. Mrs Cressett looked at him with an expression of polite but blank failure to understand. 'And Mr Rammage agreed when I saw him.'

He watched carefully to see the effect of Frank's name, but Mrs Cressett said rather strangely, 'Ah, you know all the lie of the land, sir.
You
spare no trouble.'

Gerald was about to follow up his remark when there was a noise at the back door. Mrs Cressett's listening attitude seemed to relax. She got up from her chair. 'Excuse me, sir,' she said and was gone.

Gerald looked at Mr Barker's red moon face and his staring eye. The eye looked back at him and once it swivelled round. No sign, however, came.

From the kitchen Gerald could hear the voices of Mrs Cressett and her husband. She was examining the groceries he had been sent out to buy. Suddenly her voice was raised. 'Danish butter?'  she cried. 'What's that butter doing there?'

'I thought we'd have a little butter now,' Mr Cressett mumbled.

'Oh did you?'  Mrs Cressett said. 'You'll get butter when I choose to give it to you.' Then her voice became slow and soothing again. 'You'll take it back and change it for marge,' she said. 'No, not now. John Middleton's father's here and he'll want to talk to you.'

As Mr Cressett came in, he smiled feebly at Gerald. 'We're very grateful,' he said. He was so used those days to being expected to feel grateful that he did not particularize.

Gerald laughed. 'There's nothing to thank me for. I've nothing to do with my son's good works. I'm only glad it all looks like turning out so well for you.'

'It looks like turning out badly for Mr Pelican,' Mrs Cressett said with relish.

Gerald said, 'I was talking to your wife about the old days at Melpham. I suppose Mr Gilbert was backwards and forwards most of the time from Bedbury, Mrs Cressett. Did Mr Barker ever work over there?'

Mrs Cressett got up and, taking a handkerchief, she blew her father's nose. 'We don't know the half of what you did, do we, Father?'  she asked. Then she said, 'If you'll excuse me, sir, I'll leave you to talk to my husband. He brought the wrong things back from the shop and I must go and change them.' Mr Cressett seemed about to speak, but she gave him a look and was gone. Gerald was left to talk uneasily to Harold Cressett and to pray in vain that Mr Barker might be miraculously revived to give a sign.

After five minutes or so Mr Cressett found his self-confidence, which under the spell of his own voice became considerable; he embarked upon a lengthy and very factual discourse upon the government of the British colonies. Coming from one of Mr Cressett's outdated sources, it would have been most valuable to a student of the Empire before the Statute of Westminster; for seekers after contemporary knowledge, it would have been nothing; for Gerald with his preoccupation it was irritating beyond measure. After a quarter of an hour, he managed to excuse himself and depart.

The day after his return to England, Gerald had telephoned to Elvira, but he could get no reply. He felt it his duty to inform her of her grandmother's condition and he tried again each day. At the end of a week he was answered by the charwoman, who told him that Miss Portway was away on holiday. He left a message asking her to telephone him as soon as she returned.

The morning after his fruitless visit to the Cressetts she rang him up. 'I was told that you wanted to speak to me.' Her voice sounded edgy and unfriendly.

'Yes,' Gerald replied, 'I was very anxious to let you know how I left your grandmother. She was ...'