The Catherine Wheel (2 page)

A young clerk opened the door and announced,

“Miss Taverner—”

Mildred Taverner took a poking look at the room with its nine empty chairs and came in rather after the manner of an early Christian entering the arena. To be sure, John Taylor would have hardly fluttered the nerves of the most timid martyr, but Miss Taverner became immediately so tied up in explanation and apology that it is doubtful if she noticed his round face, his bald head, or any of the other features which might have had a reassuring effect.

“Oh, dear—I didn’t know I was going to be the first. Do you mean to say nobody else has come? I had no idea—I mean I expected my brother—he telephoned and said to be here punctually at the half hour. Nothing annoys him so much as to be kept waiting, and I do try, but it’s so difficult. Unless my watch should happen to be running fast—it does sometimes when the weather is warm, but not on a day like this. And I know I am five minutes late, because I broke a shoe-lace just when I was starting, so I didn’t expect to be the very first. ” She put a limp hand into John Taylor’s, and he noticed that she was wearing odd gloves, one being black and the other navy blue. The black one had a hole at the top of the first finger.

As she took one of the nine chairs she dropped her handbag, from which there immediately cascaded a bunch of keys, a pocket comb, a pair of nail-scissors, a bottle of aspirin tablets, three pencils, a couple of crumpled bills, and a rather dingy handkerchief.

She said, “Oh dear!” and crammed everything back in an agitated way and without any attempt at arrangement, so that the bag bulged and at first refused to shut.

John Taylor contemplated the performance in an interested manner. He hoped Jacob was getting a good view. He wouldn’t have picked Mildred Taverner himself, but then of course he didn’t know what Jacob was picking these relatives for. Miss Taverner appeared to be about forty-five years of age. She had a long, stringy figure, she poked with her head, and her fingers were all thumbs. Her fair reddish hair reminded him of Jacob’s. It had the same brittle look, and it stuck out at odd angles under a very unbecoming hat. Her rather colourless blue eyes avoided him. They were set under colourless brows in a long, pale face. She wore a navy-blue coat and skirt which had a general air of having belonged to somebody else. The skirt dipped at the back, and the coat rode up in front. Her neck was encircled by a wispy scarf of pink and blue checked wool.

Having taken all this in, he smiled pleasantly and said,

“Well now, Miss Taverner, this is excellent. We can make a good start before the others arrive.” He took up the family tree, upon which there appeared the names of Jeremiah Taverner’s eight children and their descendants, and consulted it. “Mr. Jacob Taverner wishes me to run over a few points with each of you. You are descended from—”

“Oh, yes, my grandfather was Matthew—the second one. The eldest was Jeremiah, after his father.” She bridled a little, caught his eye, and immediately looked away. “Oh dear, yes—I know all about the family tree. Old Jeremiah had eight children and he died in eighty-eight—Jeremiah, Matthew, Mark, Mary, Luke, Joanna, John, Acts. And Matthew is our grandfather—my brother Geoffrey’s and mine. He was a builder and contractor, and he did very well—quite rich, and very much respected, though a Nonconformist—I, of course, am Church of England. Oh, yes, my grandfather left a very good business, but my father was unfortunate.” She sighed and adjusted the wispy scarf. “We were in quite reduced circumstances after his death, so I joined a friend in a fancy work shop at Streatham. Geoffrey didn’t like it very much, but what was there to do? I wasn’t called up in the war, because I have always had a weak heart. Of course Geoffrey is so clever—you have to be in the Civil Service.”

The door opened and Geoffrey Taverner came into the room.

Looking through the chink which he had thoughtfully provided, Jacob Taverner inspected his cousin Geoffrey. Like his sister, and yet not so like after all. They were both fair, thin, and forty, but the sister looked like a bit of chewed string, whereas the brother would pass for a goodlooking man. He was a few years the younger. Where she drooped, he was well set-up and well tailored. As he came up to the desk, his expression changed from one of formal but courteous greeting for John Taylor to a definite flicker of annoyance as his eye fell upon his sister.

She broke at once into explanation and apology.

“I quite thought you would be here. I had no idea of coming in by myself—I was really quite upset when I found I was the first. Of course, as Mr. Taylor kindly said, someone has to be—but I wouldn’t have gone in, only I was delayed just as I was starting, so I thought I was late. My watch—”

Geoffrey Taverner said in a repressive tone,

“Your watch is always wrong.”

He took a chair and addressed Mr. Taylor.

“I don’t quite know why we have been asked to come here. I answered an advertisement asking the descendants of Jeremiah Taverner who died in eighteen-eighty-eight to communicate with a certain box number, and after a brief interchange of letters my sister and I were invited to come here this afternoon. My first letter went, as I say, to a box number. The reply which I received had no signature, and I must say at once that I should like to know with whom I am dealing.”

“Certainly, Mr. Taverner. You are dealing with me.”

“And you represent?”

“Mr. Jacob Taverner, who is the son of Jeremiah Taverner’s eldest son, Jeremiah.”

Geoffrey appeared to consider this. After a moment he said,

“Very well—I’m here. What about it?”

John Taylor balanced a pencil.

“My client informs me that you have satisfied him as to your identity.”

“He has had copies of our birth certificates and of my parents’ marriage certificate—yes.”

“I am instructed to ask for a few further particulars. You are, I understand, the grandson of Matthew Taverner, Jeremiah’s second son.”

“That is so.”

“Do you remember him?”

“I have already been asked that. I said I did. I was about twelve when he died. My sister was older.”

“I remember him very well,” said Mildred Taverner. “He had a very bad temper before he had his stroke, but he was much nicer afterwards. He used to tell us stories about the old inn and give us peppermints out of a tin—the striped bullseye kind.”

The young clerk opened the door again, began to murmur inaudibly, and was swept aside. There came in a bright presence and a faint delicious waft of expensive French scent. Something very tall, very elegant, very feminine advanced with a vague but radiant smile. Dark blue eyes with incredible lashes came to rest upon John Taylor. A deep musical voice said,

“I’ll have to introduce myself—Lady Marian Thorpe-Ennington. Nobody ever gets it right the first time, and I’m sure I don’t wonder. I’m always telling Freddy he ought to drop one of the bits, but he says he can’t, in case the relations who might be going to leave him money have their feelings hurt and cut him out of their wills. So I just have to go about explaining, and spelling it. There’s an E at the end of the Thorpe, and two Ns in Ennington.” She sank gracefully into a chair. “And now do tell me—is it you I’ve been writing to?”

As she moved away from the door, a lank, uncertain figure appeared from behind her. It was a male figure, and it looked very uncomfortable in an awkwardly cut blue suit—too tight, too light, too jaunty. John Taylor, perceiving it, made a shot in the dark.

“Mr. Miller?”

Al Miller said, “That’s right.”

He had a cap in his hand and kept turning it and plucking at it in a manner extremely likely to shorten its life. He stood long enough to enable Jacob Taverner to see how nervous he was, and that he had dark hair with too much grease on it, a set of dark irregular features shining with perspiration, and a most distressing tie. All at once he seemed to realize that he was the only person standing, and came down suddenly on the edge of a chair, where he produced a brightly coloured handkerchief and mopped his brow.

He was still doing so when Jeremy Taverner and Jane Heron arrived together.

Behind his chink Jacob Taverner grimaced. He didn’t see they were going to be much use to him, but of course there was no saying. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. They were the youngest of the party by some years. He had seen all their birth-certificates and he knew. The Lady Marian woman was thirty-seven. Didn’t show it of course, and wouldn’t for the next ten years, if then. She was a looker all right—he’d give her that. Complexion out of a box, but quite a good skin underneath. Good hair—you didn’t often see that bright chestnut shade. Good teeth, and not spoilt with smoking like three-quarters of the women’s were nowadays. Fine figure of a woman—good curves. He liked a woman with curves himself, but he thought she’d have to watch her weight when she got into the forties. He hummed to himself inside his mind:

“There will be too much of me

In the coming by and bye.”

Al Miller, he’d be about thirty. Bit of a fish out of water, and a wet fish at that. Young Jeremy Taverner and him cousins— comic when you came to think of it. Goodlooking fellow, young Jeremy—credit to the family. Twenty-seven he’d be—or was it twenty-eight? No, twenty-seven. And the girl, Jane Heron, would be twenty-two. Graceful girl—very good figure—she’d have to have that to be a mannequin. Not much to look at otherwise—little pale face—scarlet lipstick—rather good turn of the head—dark hair—plain dark clothes.

He cocked an attentive ear, and heard Lady Marian say,

“My grandmother—Mary Taverner? Oh, yes, of course I remember her. I’m supposed to be exactly like her. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage, and married my grandfather. We’ve got a portrait of her at Rathlea, and everyone says I might have sat for it.” She turned a radiant smile upon the room as if she were collecting applause.

John Higgins received the full impact as he opened the door. It put a slightly bewildered look into his very bright blue eyes. She had looked right at him and smiled, but now she looked away. She was talking to the gentleman behind the desk. He stood where he was and waited for her to be done. Her laugh floated out.

“She was a great beauty, and my grandfather adored her. But an awful warning all the same, because when I remember her she weighed about sixteen stone. And she didn’t care.” The words were heavy with drama. “Fatal of course—quite fatal. Because there’s nothing like worry to keep you thin—and it’s so difficult to worry, isn’t it?” There was the least, faintest touch of Irish on the last word. The beautiful eyes went here and there, for sympathy this time. “She never could worry, and nor can I. She lived to be ninety, and I suppose I shall too. Marvelous stories she used to tell me about her acting days and all.”

John Higgins stood there looking and listening. He couldn’t possibly have put it into words, but she gave him the kind of feeling you got when the sun first came to having any strength in the spring. He wouldn’t have known what to say about it, but you can know a lot of things you don’t know how to say. He didn’t say anything, he just stood with those very blue eyes fixed on her, and the thick fair hair which wouldn’t lie down no matter what you did to it standing up in a shock all over his head, which was a couple of inches above that of anyone else in the room. Jacob, looking through his chink, put him at six-foot-three, and young Jeremy somewhere between six foot and six-foot-one.

Marian Thorpe-Ennington was still talking when the doorhandle rattled and the door bounced open. The woman who came in looked big and tall even by John Higgins. She had fine eyes, a lot of dark hair, and the sort of bright, fixed colour which takes a lot of toning down. She was handsome still, but her looks were coarsening. Her dress did nothing to conceal the fact—a royal blue coat and skirt, a white lambskin coat with a plaid lining, a cheerful scarf with a scarlet overcheck, and the sort of hat which you can’t get away with unless you are young and slim. She looked all round her, said, “What—am I the last? Well, good afternoon, all!” and came up to the table.

“Mrs. Duke—Florence Duke—that’s me—Floss to my friends. I’m Mark Taverner’s granddaughter—old Jeremiah’s third son. Solicitor’s clerk he was. Never made much of a living, but always very kind to us children. I had two brothers killed in the war. My father died when I was a baby. He was a clerk too—William Duke—so we lived with my grandfather.” The words came out one after the other like bubbles rising in oil, not fast but steadily.

Jacob thought, “She’d be a hard woman to stop if there was anything she wanted to say.”

John Taylor put the same question to her which he had put to the others.

“You remember your grandfather, then.”

“Remember him? I should say I do! I don’t know what we’d have done if he hadn’t taken us in, because my mother was delicate. I was too as a child, though you wouldn’t think so to look at me now, would you?” She gave a deep rich laugh. “Small for my age too, and so thin I looked as if you could blow me away. Well, it only shows there’s hope for all—doesn’t it?”

She showed magnificent teeth as she laughed again.

Then her colour deepened. She held her head well up and said,

“If you’re thinking about my name—Duke I was born, the same as you’ll see if you’ve got a list of us all, as I suppose you have.”

John Taylor said, “Yes.” He wondered what was coming.

She went on speaking in her deep, deliberate voice.

“Ellen Taverner was my mother, and William Duke was my father, so Duke I was born. And Duke is what I’ve gone back to. I married, and I got a bad bargain, so I went back to my own name that I didn’t have any reason to be ashamed of. My grandfather was dead by then, and I went behind the bar to keep myself. And there’s nobody can say a word against me—I’ve got nothing to hide. I’ve a little business of my own now, a snackbar, and doing well.” She looked from one to another, not aggressively but with a large tolerance. “There you are. It’s best to say what’s to be said and be done with it to my way of thinking, then nobody can cast it up at you afterwards that you weren’t straight with them. That’s all.”