The Catherine Wheel

Jane Heron took a few graceful gliding steps and came slowly back round the circle of watching women. Clarissa Harlowe’s dress show was in progress, and she was showing a dress called Sigh no More. There was not very much of it above the waist, just a few opalescent folds, but the skirt was new and rather exciting. There were almost more yards of stuff in it than you would have believed possible, all coming in slim and tight to the waist, but they would swirl like spray in the wind when you danced. Jane lifted her arms in a movement which she contrived to make perfectly natural and took a few floating waltz steps. The skirt flew out. A woman close to her drew in her breath with a gasp. Another said, “Heavenly! But I mustn’t—I really mustn’t.” Mrs. Levington raised her rather harsh voice and called across the room to Mrs. Harlowe, “I’ll have it—but you mustn’t sell a copy for three months.” She turned as soon as she had spoken and beckoned to Jane.

“Come here! I want to see how it fastens.”

Jane came with the graceful submissive air which was part of the job. Inwardly she was thinking that Mrs. Levington wouldn’t get into the dress by at the very least four inches. She wasn’t fat, but she was solid—rather high in the shoulder, rather square in the hip. Handsome, of course, if you liked them that way. Jane didn’t.

It wasn’t her business to mind who bought Clarissa Harlowe’s dresses—they were out of her reach, and always would be. She was there because her really lovely figure added at least twenty-five per cent to the price.

Mrs. Harlowe came up, brisk, businesslike, smartly tailored.

“That will be quite all right, Mrs. Levington. You can have a fitting tomorrow at ten-thirty. No, I’m afraid I can’t make it any other time—we are very busy.”

Indifference bordering on rudeness, that was her line—“Take it or leave it—we can do better than you.” It was astonishing how it went down. It went down with Mrs. Levington now. She accepted her appointment quite meekly. Jane was dismissed.

The dressing-room was full of clothes and girls. One of them went out as Jane came in, a lovely blonde in a thin black afternoon dress made incredibly distinguished by its cut and some clever skirt drapery. Jane took off Sigh no More and hung it up carefully. She had a feeling that she would never look so nice in anything again. It was only her figure that was beautiful. Her face was too small, too colourless. When she looked in the glass she would see a pair of good grey eyes and quite a lot of dark hair, and that was about all you could say for Jane Heron apart from her figure. No one had any fault to find with that. It was slim without being thin. Everything about it was just right. Jane thought a lot of it, and well she might, since it provided her with the roof over her head and her daily bread and butter. It was a good biddable figure too, not the sort you had to pander to and placate. She knew girls who went in daily fear of their hip measurement, and who simply didn’t dare to look at a potato or a pat of butter. There was no nonsense like that about Jane’s figure. If she ate chocolate and suet pudding for a year she wouldn’t put on an ounce. Jeremy had given her a box of chocolates last week.

She turned round from hanging up Sigh no More and began to put on her own clothes. The show was nearly over—she wouldn’t have to go through again. She slipped into a dark skirt, pulled a jumper over her head, and put on her coat. Everyone was trying to dress at once. She had to stand on one leg at a time to change the shoes she had worn for her own dark ones. All the girls were dressing now, chattering nineteen to the dozen.

She managed to get the glass for a moment while she pulled on the small dark turban which went with her suit, and there she was—Cinderella after the last stroke of twelve—no features, no bloom, no colour, except for the lipstick which brightened her mouth. It was too bright really, but you had to make up a bit extra for a show. Jeremy would look sideways and say things about pillar-boxes. Well, let him—she didn’t care.

She came out on to the street and found it icy cold. It was going to freeze quite hard. She exchanged good-nights with Gloria and Daphne and took her way to the end of the street. Sometimes Jeremy met her there, but he wouldn’t tonight because of the show. There just wasn’t any saying how long it would go on.

She turned the corner, and he loomed up out of a doorway. It was heartening when you had been feeling like Cinderella. He slipped his hand inside her arm, and she said,

“Oh, you shouldn’t have come!”

Jeremy Taverner said, “Don’t be silly! How did it go?”

“Two of my things sold. That puts my stock up.”

“The usual frightful women?”

“They’re not all frightful.”

“I don’t know how you stand it.”

“Well, I don’t see there’s anything else I could do which I shouldn’t hate a good deal worse.”

“As?”

“Serving in a shop—nursemaid—companion—”

“There are lots of jobs for women.”

“Darling, I’m not trained for any of them.”

He said in an angry voice,

“Don’t call me darling!”

“Did I?”

“You did. I don’t like it.”

She laughed easily.

“It doesn’t mean anything—one does it all the time. It just slipped out.”

He said still more angrily,

“That’s why!”

The hand inside her arm gripped her quite painfully. She said,

“Darling, you’re pinching me!” Then, with a sudden change of voice and manner, “Don’t be a tiresome toad, because I want to talk to you—I really do.”

In spite of being called a tiresome toad in the sort of voice which makes an intimate and flattering term of it, Jeremy remained angry.

“I don’t see why you weren’t trained for anything. Girls ought to be.”

“Yes, darling, but I wasn’t. My mother married a more or less penniless parson with his head in the clouds, and they never thought about it. They never had any time to think about anything, because the parish was much too big and poor. And they died when I was fifteen, and my grandfather took me in and sent me to the sort of school where they concentrate on your manners and don’t bother about sordid things like earning your living.”

“Which grandfather?” said Jeremy in a different voice.

“Oh, the Taverner one—mother’s father—your grandfather’s brother—old Jeremiah Taverner’s eighth child and sixth son. I know the whole lot off by heart. The eldest was Jeremiah after his father, and then there were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and the two girls, Mary and Joanna. Your grandfather was John, and mine was Acts. And if we hadn’t met by accident six months ago at the dullest party on earth we shouldn’t have known we existed. I mean you wouldn’t have known I did, and I wouldn’t have known you did.” She came up close, so that her shoulder rubbed against his arm. “You know, the other six probably all left descendants too, and I expect most of them will have seen the advertisement and answered it. I do wonder what they’re like—don’t you?”

Jeremy said, “It must have been a whale of a family row.”

“Oh, I don’t know—people drift away—”

“Not to that extent. My grandfather used to talk about his twin, Joanna, but I don’t think he ever saw her. He was clever, you know—took scholarships, and got into one of these research laboratories. That’s how my father came to be a doctor. He was killed in nineteen-eighteen. My mother married again and went to Australia, leaving me with the old boy. So we were both brought up by our grandfathers—Hi! There’s your bus!”

They ran for it, and managed to scramble on, but it wasn’t possible to go on talking. Jane was lucky, because the bus passed the end of her road. When they got off they had only to cross the street and go about a third of the way along Milton Crescent to No. 20.

She let herself in with her key and took Jeremy up three flights of stairs to the attic floor. There were two attics which had once been maids’ bedrooms, and there was a boxroom and a bathroom. Jane had both the attics, and alluded to them as “my flat.” The back one was the sitting-room. With the light switched on and the curtains drawn it always gave her a thrill, because it wasn’t in the least what you would expect. There was an old walnut bureau, and two Queen Anne chairs with seats of Chinese brocade. A walnut mirror surmounted by a golden eagle hung above the bureau. There was a very good Persian rug, and a comfortable sofa heaped with many-coloured cushions. The oddly named Mr. Acts Taverner had, in fact, started life as a purveyor of secondhand furniture and finished up by achieving the kind of antique shop which provides its owner with a good deal of pleasure without bringing in a great deal of cash. Jane’s furniture was what she had been able to salve from the sale.

“Now,” she said, turning round from the window. “Put on the kettle, there’s an angel—I’m dying for a cup of tea. And then I’ll show you what I got this morning.”

Jeremy put a match to the gas ring and stood up.

“I know what you got—an answer from Box three hundred and whatever it was, because I got one too. I brought it along to show you.”

They sat down side by side upon the sofa and each produced a sheet of rather shiny white paper. The notes were headed Box 3093. One began “Dear sir,” and the other “Dear madam.” Jane’s ran:

“Your answer to the advertisement inviting the descendants of Jeremiah Taverner who died in 1888 to communicate with the above box number received and contents noted. Kindly inform me of the date of your grandfather Acts Taverner’s decease, and state whether you remember him clearly, and to what extent you were brought into contact with him.”

Except for a variation in the name the two letters were identical. Jeremy and Jane gazed at them frowning. Jeremy said,

“I don’t see what he’s getting at.”

“Perhaps he’s writing a family history.”

“Why should he?”

“I don’t know—people do. Let’s write our answers, then perhaps we’ll find out.”

His frown deepened.

“Look here, you’d better let me write.”

“Jeremy, how dull!”

“I didn’t want you to answer the advertisement.”

“I know—you said so.”

She jumped up and began to get out the tea-things—a dumpy Queen Anne teapot, two Worcester cups and saucers, one of them riveted, a dark blue lustre milk-jug, an engaging tea-caddy painted in pastoral scenes.

Jeremy said slowly, “What does he want?”

“A family reunion, darling—all our cousins. Perhaps some of them will be rays of sunshine. You are not doing much in that line, you know, my sweet.”

He came over to her and stood there in a very up-in-the-air kind of way.

“I think you had much better drop it. I’ll write if you like.”

Jane lifted her eyes. They held a definite sparkle.

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me say, ‘How dull!’ ”

“Jane—”

“Well I’m saying it again—dull, dull, dull—ditchwater dull.” Then she stepped back and tapped a warning foot. “You wouldn’t like me to lose my temper, would you?”

“I don’t know—”

Dark lashes fell suddenly over the sparkling eyes. A little flush came up under the pale skin.

“I’m too tired.” Then, with a sudden change of manner, “Oh, Jeremy, don’t be a beast!”

Jacob Taverner sat there, as thin as a monkey and with the same alert, malicious look. A good many different climates had tanned and dried his skin. He had kept his hair, and whether by luck or good management, it was not very grey. It wasn’t dyed either. No hairdresser would have made himself responsible for its odd dried-grass appearance. His eyes behind the sparkle were hazel. For the rest, there wasn’t a great deal of him. He had dropped an inch from his original five-foot-six. Arms and legs had a frail, spidery look. He wore the sort of old clothes which only a tramp or a millionaire would be seen dead in. He wasn’t quite a millionaire, but he was getting on that way, and he was seeing his solicitor, Mr. John Taylor, about the disposition of his property. Not that he intended to die—by no means—but having managed to enjoy a great many different things in the course of his seventy years, he now intended to amuse himself with the always fascinating possibilities of will-making with a difference.

Mr. Taylor, who had known him for some forty-five years, knew better than to try and thwart this latest of many preoccupations. Sometimes he said, “Certainly,” sometimes he said, “I should advise you to think that over carefully,” and sometimes he didn’t say anything at all. When this happened, Jacob Taverner chuckled secretly and the malice in his eyes grew brighter. Silence meant disapproval, and when John Taylor disapproved of him he felt that he had scored, because John Taylor represented middle-class respectability, and when it was possible to give middle-class respectability a brief electric jolt he always enjoyed doing it.

They sat with the office table between them and John Taylor wrote. A pleasantly rounded little man with everything very neat about him, including a head very shiny and bald with a tidy little fringe of iron-grey hair at the back.

Jacob Taverner sat back in his chair with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and laughed.

“Do you know, I had fifty answers to my advertisement. Fifty!” He gave a sort of crow. “A lot of dishonest people in the world, aren’t there?”

“There might not be any dishonest intention—”

Jacob Taverner puffed out his cheeks, and then suddenly expelled the air in a sound like “Pho!” Contempt for his solicitor’s opinion was indicated.

“Taverner’s not all that common as a name, and when you tack Jeremiah on to it—well, I ask you! ‘Descendants of Jeremiah Taverner who died in 1888’—that’s what I put in my advertisement. I had fifty answers, and half of them were just trying it on.”

“He might have had fifty descendants,” said Mr. John Taylor.

“He might have had a hundred, or two hundred, or three, but he didn’t have half of those who answered my advertisement. He had eight children—I’m not counting four that died in their cradles. My father Jeremiah was the eldest. The next five sons were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, and the two girls were Mary and Joanna. Mary came fourth between Mark and Luke, and Joanna was a twin with John. Well, there’s quite a lot of scope for descendants there. That’s what first put it into my head, you know. Old Jeremiah, he kept the Catherine-Wheel inn on the coast road to Ledlington, and his father before him. Up to their necks in the smuggling trade, they were, and made a pretty penny out of it. They used to land the cargoes and get them into Jeremiah’s cellars very clever.” He chuckled. “I remember him, and that’s the way he used to talk about it—‘We diddled them very clever.’ Well, he died in eighty-eight and he left everything to my father, his eldest son Jeremiah.” He screwed up his face in a monkey grimace. “Was there a family row! None of them ever spoke to him again or had any truck or dealings with him. He let the inn on a long lease, put the money in his pocket, and set up as a contractor. He made a pile, and I’ve made another— and because of the family quarrel I can’t make a decent family will without advertising for my kith and kin.”

Mr. John Taylor looked incredulous.

“You don’t mean to tell me you don’t know anything at all about any of them!”

Jacob Taverner put his head on one side and grinned.

“Would you believe me?”

“No, I should not.”

Jacob laughed his queer dry laugh.

“You don’t have to. I know a thing or two here and there, as you might say. Some of them went up in the world, and some of them went down. Some of them died in their beds, and some of them didn’t. Some of them got killed in both wars. Between the little I knew and what was in the fifty letters, I’ve got them more or less sorted out. Now, to start with—my own generation don’t interest me, and they’re mostly gone. So far as my money is concerned you can wash them out. They’ve either made enough for themselves or they’ve got used to doing without. Anyway I’m not interested. It’s the next generation, old Jeremiah’s great-grandchildren, that I’ll be putting my money on, and this is what they boil down to. It’s not the whole of them— you’re to understand that. I’ve picked them over and I’ve sorted them out.”

“Do you mean you’ve been interviewing them?”

“No, I don’t. I didn’t want to be mixed up in it personally—not for the moment. As a matter of fact I’ve taken the liberty of using your name.”

“Really, Jacob!” Mr. Taylor looked decidedly annoyed.

His client gave that odd laugh again.

“You’ll get over it. I haven’t compromised you—only invited the ones I’ve picked to come and meet you here this afternoon.”

John Taylor tapped his knee.

“To meet me—not you?”

“Certainly not to meet me. I am the great Anon, as far as a personal appearance goes. You can give them my name, but I want to have a look at ’em before they have a look at me. You will interview them, and I shall lurk”—he jerked a scraggy elbow—“behind that door. I shall hear without being heard. You will place nine chairs with their backs to me, and I shall be able to look through the crack and see without being seen.”

John Taylor leaned forward and said in a perfectly serious voice,

“You know, Jacob, sometimes I really do think that you are mad.”

He got a grimace and a burst of laughter.

“My dear John, I pay you handsomely to prevent anyone else saying so. Besides it isn’t true. I have merely retained my youth, while you have become a fogy. It amuses me to gambol, to disport myself, to play tricks. I have a lot of money. What’s the good of it if I don’t make it amuse me? Well, I’m going to—that’s all. And now, perhaps, you will let me get down to brass tacks and tell you about the people who are coming to see you this afternoon.”

Mr. John Taylor pursed his lips, pulled forward a sheet of note-paper, and took up a nicely pointed pencil. His manner showed resignation, with an underlying suggestion of protest.

Jacob let out one of his cackling laughs.

“All set? Well then, off we go! Taverner’s the name—Geoffrey and Mildred—grandson and granddaughter of Jeremiah’s second son Matthew—brother and sister—somewhere in their forties.”

John Taylor wrote them down.

“Got ’em? Now we come to the next brother, Mark. Granddaughter of his in the female line—Mrs. Duke—Florence—Mrs. Florence Duke.”

John Taylor made no reply. He wrote down, “Mrs. Florence Duke.”

Jacob rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

“Jeremiah’s fourth child was a daughter, Mary. This is where we go up in the world. She ran away to go on the stage and married the Earl of Rathlea—old family, poor wits, twopence half-penny in his pocket, and a tumbledown castle in Ireland. The family didn’t know whether they were coming or going. First she disgraced them by going on the stage, and then they disgraced her by being in trade. One way and another there was no love lost, and what you might call a pretty clean cut. Well, Mary’s gone, and the title’s gone—last male heir killed in the war. But there’s a granddaughter, Lady Marian Thorpe-Ennington.”

John Taylor looked up quickly.

“Lady Marian—”

Jacob nodded.

“Lady Marian O’Hara—Lady Marian Morgenstern—Madame de Farandol—Lady Marian Thorpe-Ennington.”

“My dear Jacob!”

Jacob Taverner grinned.

“Famous beauty—or was. Lively piece by all accounts—varied taste in husbands. Married Morgenstern for his money—no one could possibly have married him for anything else—and he diddled her out of it.”

“I remember. The will made a sensation. He left everything to charities—and a secretary.”

“Bit of a sell for my cousin Marian. She married a young de Farandol after that—racing motorist—got himself killed just before the war. Not much money from him. Now she’s married to Freddy Thorpe-Ennington whose father’s pickle manufactory has just gone smash. She hasn’t had much luck, you see. And now we come down in the world again. The next son, Luke— well, there are quite a lot of his descendants running around. Luke wasn’t what you’d call respectable—he took to the roads and died in a workhouse. But one of his daughters married a railway porter at Ledlington, and they had one son. I’ve picked him. His name is Albert Miller, commonly called Al.”

“What made you pick him up?”

John Taylor’s tone was mildly interested. He was prepared to maintain, professionally, to all comers that Jacob Taverner was not legally mad. A man who has amassed nearly a million pounds can be allowed his eccentricities. In his private capacity, John was interested to see how these eccentricities worked, and how nearly they might be said to approach the borderline.

Jacob withdrew a pin from the lapel of his shocking old jacket and made small stabbing passes with it in the air.

“Wrote the names on a bit of paper, shut my eyes, and prodded at ’em. Didn’t want more than one or two out of any line. The pin went right into Al at the first go, clean through the M in Miller, so I took him. It’s a good pin. Do you know how long I’ve had it— forty-five years. And when in doubt I’ve always shut my eyes and pricked, and it’s never let me down once. Never lost it but once, and I thought I’d have gone off my head. Dropped it in my own office, and they said they couldn’t find it—slipped out of my hand as I was sticking it back into my coat, and they said they couldn’t find it. I had every man jack of ’em up, and I said, ‘Man, woman, or boy, who finds that pin gets ten pounds, and if it isn’t found, everyone gets the sack.’ A matter of two hours afterwards a smart boy comes along and says he’s found it. I took a look at the pin he brought and I said, ‘I’ve no room for fools in my office. You can get out and you can stay out.’ ”

“Why was he a fool, and how did you know it was not your pin?”

Jacob cracked his fingers.

“How do you know your children from anyone else’s? When you’ve lived with anything for forty-odd years, nobody’s going to take you in. And he was a fool because he brought me a brand-new pin out of a packet. Thought himself smart, and all he got was the sack.”

“But you did get it back?”

Jacob put the pin carefully into his lapel.

“I paid a blackmailing young woman five hundred pounds for it. I’d have paid double. She thought she’d scored me off, but I got back on her. Nobody’s ever scored me off and got away with it—nobody. It’s too long a story to tell you now. We’ve done the descendants of Matthew, Mark, Mary, and Luke, and now we come to the twins, Joanna and John. We’ll take Joanna first. Her lot is interesting. She married a man called Higgins, and a daughter of hers married a man called Castell—Fogarty Castell—Portuguese father, Irish mother. And I’ve picked a Higgins grandson, John Higgins—carpenter by trade—bit of a local preacher in his off time. Well, I’ve picked him, and I’ve picked the Castells. I said I wasn’t going to have anyone in my own generation, but they are the exception that proves the rule. I’ve picked ’em because they’ll be handy. Now for number seven, John. I’ve got his grandson, Jeremy Taverner— regular soldier—Captain Jeremy Taverner. Then there’s number eight, Acts—old Jeremiah took all his children’s names out of the Bible—I’ve picked a granddaughter of his, name of Jane Heron. She’s in a shop—tries on the dresses and walks round in ’em so the fat old women and scraggy old maids think they’re going to look like she does. There’s twice at least this afternoon you’ve called me mad, John Taylor, but I’m not so mad as the women who go to dress shows and buy the clothes off a girl with a figure they probably never had and certainly don’t have now. Well, that’s the lot, and I’m off into the next room. Here’s the family tree to keep you straight. By the way, the Castells won’t be coming. I’ve my own private arrangement with them, and they’re down at the inn. The others are just about due.

Amusing to see who comes first, don’t you think? Might be the one that’s hardest up—but then sometimes that sort’s proud. Poverty, greed, or maybe just plain punctuality—any one of the three might bring ’em here on the dot. Now you get those chairs set out so that I can look and listen, and you ask ’em what I told you to ask ’em, and tell ’em what I told you to tell ’em. And devil take the hindmost!”