Painting The Darkness (12 page)

As I waited to cross Southampton Row, a cab pulled up unbidden beside me and Dr Fiveash’s large bearded face protruded from the window. ‘You look soaked, man. Jump in!
’

For a moment, I hesitated, uncertain whether I desired anybody’s company, especially that of one who had been party to the day’s bitter counsel. Then I relented and climbed aboard
.

‘
It’s good of you to have stopped for me,’ I said
.

‘
Least I could do. I’m returning to my hotel in Bayswater. Will that suit you?
’

‘
I’ll come halfway if I may. Are you going back to Bath tonight?
’

‘
Tomorrow. I shan’t be sorry at that
.’

‘
I imagine not
.’

He slapped his thigh in suppressed irritation. ‘This is the very devil of a business! The very devil!
’

I felt almost as sorry for Fiveash as I did for myself. Norton had called into question some hitherto utterly reliable aspects of both our lives: in Fiveash’s case his professional competence, in mine a happy marriage. ‘Perhaps you feel as I do: helpless
.’

‘
It’s worse than that. I’ve been in practice for more than forty years. I’ve ministered to the Davenall’s aches and pains all that time without so much as complaining once how slow they’ve been to settle my bills. I nursed Sir Gervase through thirty years of self-inflicted ailments and never once told him what I thought of him. Now this happens – and that young wastrel Sir Hugo says he’ll happily risk me being branded as incompetent for the sake of keeping himself in whisky and soda. I do feel helpless, yes, but I also feel betrayed
.’

‘
By the Davenalls – or by fate?
’

He frowned. ‘You don’t think he is an impostor, do you?
’

‘
I’m in no position to say. But you are
.’

‘
Then take my word for it. He is not James Davenall
.’

‘
I’m happy to believe it; but, if he isn’t, how can he know what passed between you and the real James Davenall in utter confidence eleven years ago?
’

The frown deepened. ‘I have asked myself the same question. I spoke of it to nobody until this day. When I told Sir Hugo the true nature of his father’s illness, he might have guessed, but—
’

‘
Would scarcely be likely to tell anybody if he had
.’

‘
Quite so.’ He stared out at the jolting view of the street and grew more thoughtful still. ‘I referred James to a colleague of mine, Dr Emery, but his discretion is beyond question. Besides, I believe the poor fellow went to him under an alias.’ He looked back at me. ‘Is it possible Norton learned of it from James Davenall’s own lips, do you suppose?
’

‘
If they ever knew one another, Norton would have been recognized by the family. And why would he wait eleven years to come forward?
’

He nodded mournfully. ‘As you say
.’

‘
Do you keep any kind of records to which Norton might have had access?
’

‘
Naturally I keep records, but they are not left lying around for idle passers-by to read.’ His professional pride, already bruised, had been hurt again. ‘Forgive me. What I mean is that the records I keep on my patients are under lock and key. Besides, why should anyone think to consult them? How would they know what to look for?
’

I did not need to reply. Our theories were desperate enough to speak for themselves. We fell silent and stared from opposite windows of the cab, as it wound sluggishly through the waterlogged traffic of Oxford Street, at the same dismal prospect. We were as far as ever, if not further, from finding an answer
.

II

Two miles away, beyond one of the exclusive Palladian façades of Pall Mall, lay the windowless refuge chosen by Sir Hugo Davenall to revive his battered spirits. There, in the subfuscous billiards-room of a club whose committee could be relied upon to blackball any shopkeeper’s son who had the temerity to put up for membership, Sir Hugo and Freddy Cleveland sought to erase the disagreeable taste of the day’s proceedings with regular infusions of whisky and soda and half a dozen frames of pyramids.

Sir Hugo was angry. That much was apparent to Cleveland from the accuracy and ferocity with which he played his shots, and that much he did not resent. The sullen silences interspersed with biting sarcasm were quite another matter, however. Cleveland expected his friends to be as consistently frivolous as he was himself. Sir Hugo having fallen far short of this for several days past, he was in danger of being classified a bore. And Cleveland did not choose to associate with bores.

‘Why don’t you strike some kind of bargain with the fellow?’ he asked idly as Sir Hugo pocketed another ball with a violent thrust of the cue. ‘There’s surely room for both of you. He seems an accommodatin’ sort.’

The only answer he received was a scowl as Sir Hugo took a swig from his glass before returning to the table.

‘Otherwise, I can’t see it goin’ well for you. Even I can’t swear any more that he’s not Jimmy. There is somethin’ about him, you know.’ Another ball was slammed down. ‘Somethin’ – I don’t know – uncanny.’

Sir Hugo’s uncommunicative state was scarcely to be wondered at. It was not simply that he hated Norton, although he did – as, for that matter, he had hated his brother James. It was not even that he did not know how to defeat him, although, by arrogantly leaving his cousin to solve the problem, he had, in truth, merely revealed his own incapacity. There was more to it than either of these uncomfortable realities: there was Norton’s ability to recall the past and use it as a weapon in the present. How potent a weapon it might prove Sir Hugo was only now coming to realize, as he stalked the table and listened to the faint hiss of the gasalier above his head, concentrating on it to shut out Cleveland’s chatter.

It was, he remembered, in the autumn of 1879 that dear cousin Richard suggested a weekend at Cleave Court might suffice for him to persuade his inexplicably reluctant father that the time really had come to have James pronounced dead in law as well as in fact.

He did not want to go. He hated Cleave Court. Whether it was full of his father’s hunting and shooting neighbours or empty and echoing only with the unheard footfalls of his vanished brother, whether greyly assailed by its characteristic rains or fatuously alive with birdsong and dew-prinked flowers, he loathed its every draughty chimney and creaking board. A sickly child they had thought him, a truculent ingrate unappreciative and unworthy of the privileges and obligations of a landed title, mercifully the younger of Sir Gervase’s two sons, to be consigned in due course to the Army and pulled into some kind of shape. It had gone otherwise, for them and for him, and he had found his element in the heady
heedless
whirl of London society, darling of every hostess, friend of all who were anybody, his worst indiscretions tolerated because, thanks be to James, he was the future baronet.

So he went to Cleave Court and was at once relieved to discover that he would be spared the tedious society of north Somerset gentry. Quinn, the butler, for whom Hugo felt a twinge of sympathy because the man never troubled to disguise his dislike of Lady Davenall, a dislike which Hugo often sensed he shared himself, reported that they had not ‘entertained’ since the previous Christmas and were not about to.

Lady Davenall herself exhibited maternal feelings in fits of startling unpredictability. She was in the midst of one such on this occasion. ‘I can make no excuse for your father, Hugo. Such improvidence is insufferable. You must have it out with him – man to man.’

Hugo could not see why the matter was so urgent. His father was only sixty-two – good for another ten years at least, he supposed. But he had not seen him in more than six months and, when he did so, he realized that Sir Gervase had suddenly become a frail old man: haggard and forgetful, beset by a facial tremor, all faculties impaired save his temper, which was as fearsomely changeable as ever. Over dinner, he was positively maudlin in his pleasure at Hugo’s company. Afterwards, when Hugo explained the purpose of his visit, his mood was in savage contrast.

‘I gather it’s a legal nicety, Papa. It simply removes any doubt over the succession.’

Sir Gervase seemed not to hear. He was slumped in a wing-back chair, staring at an oil painting of his great-grandfather, Sir Harley Davenall, and massaging his tremulous cheek with a bony hand.

‘You really must bring yourself to accept that James is dead.’

Sir Gervase flashed a glare at him. ‘Be damned!’

‘Papa!’

Suddenly, the old man lurched from his chair and flung his brandy-glass across the room. It smashed against the coping of the grate, the fragments showering across the hearth and the residue of spirit sizzling on the fire. Hugo was tense in every muscle. His father turned on him, eyes blazing, mouth working. ‘You young fool! Don’t you know why?’ He gestured wildly towards the rooms his wife had withdrawn to. ‘Don’t you know why she wants this?’

‘It’s simply—’

Sir Gervase moved with the speed of a cat pouncing. He grasped Hugo by the collar and dragged him bodily from his chair. Hugo heard his collar-stud snap free and bounce against a tray on the table beside them. He stared into his father’s face, a quivering mask of illegible emotion, and noticed, most alarming of all, that the old man was dribbling: his chin was bathed in saliva. ‘I’ll tell you why she wants this, the scheming bitch.’

‘Papa! For God’s sake—’

Suddenly, he was bouncing in his chair, released from Sir Gervase’s grasp, let fall like a mouse from an eagle’s beak. His father loomed above him, the great predatory outline of him carved in the shape he had feared all his life, his outstretched right hand frozen in the taloned hold he had so abruptly abandoned. Then he, too, was falling, tilting sideways and plunging floorwards with no attempt to break his descent. He crashed to the carpet, overturning the table and its trayload of decanters as he did so, then sagged on to his back and lay motionless amidst the scatter of wood and glass.

It took several days to establish that he would not recover. Hugo had already tired of visiting the shrunken speechless husk of his father that they propped up on pillows in his bed every morning when Lady Davenall announced that, on Dr Fiveash’s advice, Sir Gervase would be removed to a nursing home in Bristol, whence he was not expected to return.

‘I dare say it’s for the best,’ she remarked brightly over
breakfast
. ‘And Dr Fiveash is prepared to state your father’s no longer in control of his mental faculties, which means we can proceed to have you pronounced his heir.’ It was difficult to tell what prevented her commenting how worth while Hugo’s visit had been.

‘I may as well return to London, then.’

‘Yes, dear, you may as well. But I do have a couple of errands for you to run in Bath first. I’ve arranged for you to call on Baverstock this morning. You know, the solicitor in Cheap Street.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Why, to put the probate proceedings in train, of course.’

‘But surely you’ll use Richard.’

She smiled blithely. ‘No. I prefer a local man.’

Hugo was dismayed, but had not the energy to argue. ‘Very well.’

‘And Dr Fiveash wants to see you. He suggests his surgery at two o’clock this afternoon.’

‘What does he want?’

‘I can’t imagine. I suggest you go along and find out.’

So he went, albeit reluctantly, to Fiveash’s large comfortless house on the outskirts of Bath, perched precariously on the steepling slope of Claverton Down, and found the doctor awaiting him in his consulting-room. Always a bustling serious man, Fiveash seemed, on this occasion, more preoccupied and anxious than ever. He walked up and down by the window, slapping his hands together and sucking his beard, till, in the end, Hugo felt obliged to broach the subject for him.

‘Is it about my father, Doctor?’

‘Yes, yes. It is. Indeed it is.’

‘My mother has told me there’s no prospect of a recovery.’

‘None. No, none at all.’

‘We have adjusted to the fact. A stroke was—’

‘It was not a stroke.’ Fiveash turned and regarded Hugo solemnly.

‘Not a stroke? Then, what?’

The doctor took a deep breath. ‘Your father has syphilis. Has had for many years. This is only the most distressing – and final – stage of the illness.’

‘Good God.’

‘I felt you ought to know. I imagined you might wish your mother to remain in ignorance of it.’

‘Yes. That would be best.’

‘It should not prove unduly difficult. The nursing home I have recommended can be relied upon to handle such matters delicately. A stroke may cover a multitude of sins – so to speak. There is, however, something else I feel you ought to know.’

‘Well?’

‘When I first diagnosed your father’s illness, I had to tell him that, in the interests of his wife – and of any unborn offspring – he should, from that time on, refrain from all … conjugal relations.’

‘When was this?’

‘Before you were born.’

‘You mean—’

‘I mean that I have reason to believe your mother may have been infected by your father, although she has never displayed any symptoms. There exists, therefore, a slight risk that you have inherited the disease, although I would say that risk was very slight indeed. In any event, your father should never have allowed your mother to conceive again in view of what I had told him. It was … grossly irresponsible. More to the point, I feel obliged to acquaint you with the warning signs in case …’

Fiveash continued, but Hugo was not listening. Already, he was pondering something of which the doctor could have no inkling. A husband required to live in celibacy with his wife. A wife left to attribute that celibacy to the worst imaginable reasons. One son lost whom his father would not accept was dead. Another son whom he did not want for his heir and whom he was about to tell …

He had overstruck the shot. The cue ball cannoned over the red and bounced clear of the table, clattering away across the wooden floor.