Crooked Wreath (6 page)

“His fountain pen? Which table?” said Claire.

“Well, the little tin table on the terrace, darling; don't be silly …”

Ellen appeared from the terrace with a fat green Parker Duofold in her hand. “Is this it?”

“Is it a green pen, Peta?”

Claire could hear Peta's voice speaking on the other end of the line. “Yes, Claire, he says it's his green one. What, darling? Well, don't tell me while I'm trying to tell
her!
Claire, he says he wants it to disinherit us with this evening!”

“Tell them I'll bring it down to him,” said Ellen, unexpectedly. Her quick maternal ear caught the sound of her baby's weeping, and she ran upstairs, the pen still in her hand. Half an hour later, Bella and Peta, returning from the lodge, met her sauntering across the lawn towards it, the pen a vivid note against her brief red bathing-dress. “If she thinks she's going to talk Grandfather round,” said Peta a little bitterly, having just failed to do so herself, “she won't manage it in
that!
There's too much of Ellen to get away with too little of a bathing-dress; it looks as if it had been varnished on, and some of the varnish had chipped.” The futile sacrifice of the ox's blood was still a sore point.

Edward was on the terrace in untidy flannels and a white shirt. “Will this do for dinner, Bella? Philip's gone in to do likewise. I say, what's Ellen up to? She's gone off to the lodge with a look of grim determination on her face; target for tonight isn't in it!”

“We think she's going to have a Straight Talk with Grandfather; but she's an idiot to go in a tummyless bathing-dress.”

“Let's go and make faces outside the window and put her off,” suggested Edward, promptly.

Peta thought this a delightful suggestion and would have turned back immediately, but was hustled into the house by Bella with instructions to put on
something
for dinner because her bathing-dress was worse than Ellen's, only Peta was thin. “Heaven knows what stories the Turtle tells about you all down in the village!” Edward went off down to the lodge by himself. Ellen, however, was already leaving, walking along, a little bouncing in the tummyless bathing costume, down the sanded path. She said, taking his arm: “Where are you dashing off to?”

“I was dashing off to this very spot, actually, to jump up and down outside the window and make you giggle in the middle of your Straight Talk with Grandfather.”

Ellen laughed. “I never felt less like giggling in my life! It's as gloomy as a morgue in there!–he says the sun on the window makes it like an oven, and he's drawn the curtains across and shut out all the light; and he's in a filthy temper, I can tell you! I tried to point out to him that it was all too silly and I didn't mind in the least if Philip left me for Claire, but what I really couldn't stick was this sort of half-and-half business, but, of course, he wouldn't listen. He says it's our attitude to the whole affair that he minds, and that we have no sense of decency.”

“He meant your bathing-dress, I expect.”

Ellen glanced down nonchalantly at her well-rounded diaphragm. “Can
I
help it if my figure won't stay utility to fit the rubbish the government sells us now?”

Brough appeared from the sanded path which led to the front door, dragging a little garden roller behind him; he touched his cap to them and moved round to the back. Edward moved forward to pass her and go up to the French window, with its drawn curtain. “As I'm fully clothed, and practically
sub
-utility as far as fat's concerned, perhaps I could make more impression!” But she caught again at his arm. “I wouldn't go, Teddy, honestly I wouldn't. He won't pay the slightest attention to you and you'll only go into an automatic trance or something and make things worse. Come back to the house with me; it must be nearly dinner time anyway.” As he hesitated, she changed the subject and uttered the magic words: “How do you feel today, after your faint this morning?” He turned back immediately and went with her.

That evening they sat on the terrace looking down to the river and away from the lodges, tenderly nursing their sunburn and all very silent after the rather hysterical unease of the day. Only Ellen kept up a cheerful insouciance, half maddening, half heartbreaking. Bella fed biscuits to her dog, a small white whiskery animal called Bobbin which sat up with a rocklike steadiness, holding its mouth wide open to receive the fragments which, from a really astonishing distance, she threw to it. Edward created a diversion by eating one of the biscuits. “Rather nice, though a bit hard. Is this what the poor troops have, called iron rations?”

“Edward, don't be so
aw
ful, how
can
you eat it? It's full of all sorts of strange animals, unfit for human consumption.”

Peta began to neigh horribly; Edward went rather green. “You don't really think there's horse and guts and things in it, do you?”

“Yes, of course there is,” said Claire. “It says so on the packet.”

“Horrible squirmy entrails, Teddy, all minced up!”

Edward clapped his hand to his stomach and abruptly rushed off indoors. “There now, Peta, you've gone and upset him again!” said Bella; but she was too hot and weary to do more than look anxiously towards the house from the depths of her deck chair. “I hope he'll remember to bring the little wireless out for the news; what time is it?–about twenty past eight?” For the next twenty minutes she fretted and lectured without, however, doing anything constructive, and was then rewarded by the sight of her grandson reappearing, apparently quite well and cheerful, from the house, and carrying the portable with him. He put it on the edge of the balustrade and, as nobody questioned him, said proudly to Peta: “I was frightfully sick!”

“I don't believe you were at all,” said Peta.

“Well, what do you think I've been doing all this time?”

“Having a fugue, I expect,” said Claire.

Edward turned slightly pale, but after a moment his face cleared. “Well, I haven't actually because now I come to think of it I can remember perfectly well. I've been putting a film in my camera. I noticed it on the front terrace and it reminded me about taking some photographs of the baby tomorrow, Ellen.”

“Well, there–so you
weren't
being sick!”

“Not all the time,” said Edward. “Naturally.”

Ellen's interest in the B.B.C. news bulletins was earnest, trustful and unflagging. She prided herself a little upon taking an intelligent interest (for a woman) in the progress of the war. When, therefore, at this moment Antonia's voice was uplifted in sorrow from her cot, she looked in despair at the rest of the family. “She would! Miles before her time! Now I shall miss the news.”

Claire scrambled to her feet. “I'll go for you, Ellen.”

Ellen would much rather that Claire did nothing for Antonia; but she would not permit herself to indulge in silly “feelings” and she said, as graciously as possible: “Well, all right–thanks very much. I'm afraid this means that you'll have to change her though. Anyway, the potty's under the cot, the little pink one with the teddy bear on it.”

Stephen Garde, walking with his quick, short steps through the open front door and across the hall to the terrace on the far side of the house, paused at the door of the drawing-room. “Hallo, Claire–what goes on?”

She was standing before the high white mantelpiece, staring down with dismay at a mass of broken glass, spilt water and scattered flowers. “Oh, Stephen–
look
at this!”

He glanced up at the wreath over Serafita's portrait. “Not Edward again?”

She looked at him helplessly. “I suppose it must have been. He did come in a little while ago. Peta's been teasing him; he
was
a little bit agitated …” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I do feel worried, Stephen; this is the second time today!”

“It's all an act,” said Stephen. “He's upset, like everyone else, over this wretched will business, and he just deliberately brings on these attacks. I don't say it's conscious, exactly, and I suppose he really is a bit out of hand when he's in the middle of them; but he does it on purpose–there's nothing he can't control if he tries.”

Claire shrugged, standing looking down at the mess. “Well, I wish he would try a bit more, that's all. It's terribly disconcerting having this sort of thing happen all the time; and Bella's favourite vase, too; not even a Serafita left-over. I suppose I shall have to clear it up, but I must go and tend to the baby first.” She came out with him and shut the door. “Don't say anything to Bella; there's fuss enough for one day. Did you see Grandfather?”

“No, I cheated. My clerk brought the will up on his way home this evening, and handed it in to your grandfather, and I skipped over the lawn so that Sir Richard shouldn't see me and make me go in and discuss it with him. That'll give him a night to sleep on it; he may have changed his mind by the morning. The trouble is that if he goes and signs it, I shan't be here to talk him out of it again; I shall be marching about being a soldier boy and meanwhile with his heart like this, anything might happen.”

He went on through the hall to the back terrace. Claire ran upstairs and, sitting impatiently holding the baby on the pink potty with the Teddy Bear on it, watched, from Ellen's balcony window, Brough come away from the lodge wheeling his barrow with an assortment of rakes and brooms in it. He disappeared behind the hedge surrounding his own little house, and after a minute or two reappeared with his bicycle, mounted, and rode off out of the gates. Brough was on fire watch duty that night at The Swan, down in the village, and sundown or no sundown, fire watch for Brough began an hour before closing time.

And so the hot day came to a close and in the cool of the evening hot tempers also were a little cooled, strained wartime nerves relaxed and hearts that were essentially affectionate and kind, recoiled at the recollection of their own unkindliness and vowed for the future contrition and amendment and all sweet charity. The next day they would all go to Grandfather … The next day they would all say sorry to Grandfather … The next day they would acknowledge to Grandfather that they had all been beastly pigs …

But the next day it was too late. The next day Claire, walking carefully up the sanded path to the French window of the lodge, carrying Sir Richard's breakfast tray, stopped suddenly and stared; put down the tray in the middle of the path and, running up close to the window, rattled at the lock and peered in through the glass; and a moment later was running as fast as her legs would carry her, back down the path and across the wide green lawns towards the house.

5

E
LLEN WAS
standing on the balcony outside her room. “Good Lord, Claire–what on earth's the matter?”

Claire stopped short, her hand to her aching side. “Oh, Ellen–it's Grandfather! He's–I think he's … He's sitting at his desk and he–he looks terribly peculiar. Is Philip there? Do tell him.”

Ellen turned back and a moment later Philip appeared from the bedroom, settling his collar down over his tie as he came. “What's all this, Claire?”

“Oh, Philip, do come quickly! I'm sure something's wrong with Grandfather!” She ran back across the lawn, not waiting for him. He disappeared and a minute later was leaping, three at a time, down the front steps; recollecting something, he turned back, making a little circle, hardly altering his pace, and reappeared from the house carrying his medical bag. Ahead of him, Claire swerved across the gravel drive and up the path to the French window; he followed her, avoiding the tray which still lay in the middle of the path, and they both paused, breathless at the window, staring in. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn back and just inside Sir Richard sat at his desk, quite motionless, very strange and stiff; his lips were blue and in the crumpled fingers of one thin hand he held a bright green fountain pen.

Philip rattled at the window. When closed, it automatically locked, and he wasted no time; he kicked in a pane, thrust his arm through the hole, and pushed up the latch from inside. He slung his bag on to the desk, and bending over his grandfather, put his fingers on the still hand, then to the shoulder. “He's dead, of course … He's been dead for hours.”

Claire recoiled, wide-eyed. “Oh,
Phil
ip!”

“He must have had an attack and passed out straight away; no time to do anything. It's
too
frightful,” said Philip, turning aside his head, giving it a little shake as though to rid his brain of the realization slowly being forced in upon it. “We ought never to have let him come down here at all. He ought not to have been here alone. It's my fault, Claire, that is; I should have made more fuss. But good God, who would have thought he'd pip off like this so soon? And on this one night of all nights, when he was alone! I–I thought–well, I mean, with ordinary care he ought to have lasted for years.”

“It's all of our faults, Philip, not only yours. I suppose after the commotion yesterday …?”

“Yes, it may have affected him. I don't know,” said Philip doubtfully. He took his hand from the old man's shoulder, and the stiff figure tipped gently forward and remained propped up, rigid as a wax dummy, against the desk; the arms spread themselves, brittle and angular, across the polished surface, one blue hand still clutching the gay green fountain pen. Claire closed her eyes against the gruesome pathos of it. “Oughtn't we to–to
do
something, Philip? He looks so–so dreadful.” She added: “The others'll be down any minute.”

“No, I told Ellen not to say anything. I thought you were just telling us that Grandfather was ill, and I didn't want Bella rushing down, fussing. Still, we'll have to go and tell them, I suppose, so we'd better just–just lay him down and–and cover him up …” He took hold of the dead man by the shoulders. “Claire, could you bear it …?”