The Feast (17 page)

‘And he gave us sherry,’ said Blanche. ‘Oh, he was nice. But the milkman told our mother we were dead. He was further down the road and he saw us just before;
and he flattened out when he heard it coming and didn’t see us run into the shop. So afterwards when he looked and we weren’t there he thought we’d all been blown to bits.’

‘He went off and told our mother we’d been blown to bits,’ said Beatrix. ‘And of course we didn’t come home, because we stayed so late helping with the books; we didn’t realize how late it was. So she thought it was true and went in a taxi to the Town Hall. So it was a waste of three shillings.’

Robin and Sir Henry were so stunned by this narrative that they almost forgot why they had come.

‘It was more than three shillings,’ said Maud solemnly. ‘There was the fare back, when she had notified the Town Hall.’

‘That was only twopence,’ said Beatrix. ‘She came back in a bus.’

‘Of course the Town Hall couldn’t tell her anything about us,’ explained Maud. ‘We weren’t in the mortuary.’

‘But wasn’t your mother frightfully upset?’ asked Robin.

‘Oh very!’ said Maud. ‘You see she was still out when we got back so we couldn’t get into the house. And the people next door saw us on the doorstep. And the milkman had told them we were dead too. So they came rushing out and quite a crowd collected. And when she came back there was quite a crowd, and when they saw her they started yelling: “It’s all right! They’re safe!” And she doesn’t like the people next door; they’re very inquisitive. So she couldn’t get the door unlocked, because her key stuck. And a man took a photograph of her and sent it to the newspaper.’

‘And she said,’ continued Beatrix, ‘would they kindly go away and cease from trespassing in her garden. So the people from next door started to be very rude. But just then another fly bomb came over and everybody did go away as fast as they could.’

‘But it was one of the very happiest days in our lives,’ said Blanche, ‘because we got
The
Very
Rich
Hours
.’

The more I hear of that woman, thought Sir Henry, the less I like her.

‘We’ve just been to see old Mrs. Pearce,’ he said.

They all beamed at him, and Blanche asked if he had seen the little ship.

‘Yes. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? But I had very much wanted to see another treasure she had.’

‘Did you …?’ interrupted Robin.

Sir Henry again silenced him with a gesture, and
continued
:

‘A little black carved figure. Did you see it when you were there?’

‘The one she kept in the tureen?’ asked Maud.

‘Yes. I wanted to see it, but I couldn’t, because she sold it yesterday afternoon.’

‘It wasn’t as pretty as the ship,’ said Blanche
consolingly
.

‘No. But I’m sorry she sold it because it might have been very valuable, and the person who bought it gave very little for it.’

‘I’m sure she’ll never sell the ship,’ said Blanche.

‘I hope she won’t. Robin and I both think that it would be better not to talk about it too much. It isn’t a good thing if an old woman, living alone, is known to have valuable things.’

They all nodded wisely at this, and Maud whispered:

‘Robbers!’

‘So don’t tell anyone about Mrs. Pearce’s things, will you?’

They promised that they never would.

‘Did you mention the ship or the little figure to
anyone
yesterday?’

‘Lots of people …’ began Blanche, looking concerned.

‘But only the ship,’ put in Maud. ‘We forgot about the little figure.’

‘Yes,’ said Blanche, ‘I only remembered that when you said about it. But we told everyone about the ship … the Giffords, and Mrs. Paley and Miss Wraxton and our mother, and we wrote a description of it in our diary. We never thought of robbers. Shall we tell
everyone
not to tell?’

‘No,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Don’t worry. But don’t mention it to anyone else.’

He walked off, followed by Robin.

‘I think they were speaking the truth,’ he said, as soon as they were out of earshot.

‘I’m sure they were,’ said Robin. ‘But I had an idea … when they were talking … you don’t think … could it possibly be Mrs. Cove herself?’

‘I think it’s more than likely,’ said Sir Henry. ‘But I don’t see how in the world it’s ever going to be brought home to her.’

Half the morning went by and Nancibel did not appear in the stables to make Bruce’s bed. He had hung about in the yard, after he had washed the car, in the hope of a pleasant interlude. But she did not come, and at last he went in search of her. He looked in at the kitchen window and saw her standing by the table, peeling potatoes in an oddly dispirited way. To his gay greeting she made no reply.

‘When are you coming to do my room?’ he asked.

‘Fred will do it,’ she replied coldly, her face still averted. ‘The work has been rearranged.’

‘What’s the matter?’

She did not answer. So he went round through the back door and the scullery into the kitchen, and planted himself in front of her.

‘What’s happened?’

She looked at him then. She gave him one brief glance before returning to the potatoes.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see.’

There was a long silence which neither of them was willing to break. Nancibel dared not speak lest she should burst out crying again. Bruce found himself, unexpectedly, with very little to say. He had thought that he was
prepared
for this crisis, and he had already rehearsed his own defence. For he had known that it was inevitable, sooner or later. She was bound to find out, and when she did she was bound to be angry. But he had expected a tirade of reproach and abuse, and this mournful silence was disconcerting. It stung him at last into saying the worst thing he could possibly have said.

‘Jealous?’ he enquired.

He would have done anything to recall the word as soon as it was out of his mouth. Only a thorough-paced rotter would have made such a suggestion. And his whole intention had been to convince her that he was not a rotter but an artist getting experience.

It galvanized Nancibel, however. It dried her tears and loosened her tongue.

‘Please get out of this kitchen,’ she commanded. ‘You’ve no business here, and Mrs. Siddal wouldn’t like it.’

‘I’m a servant, aren’t I? The kitchen’s my place, isn’t it?’

‘No. You eat in the dining-room, so your place is in the lounge.’

‘You let me sit in here yesterday.’

‘I didn’t know you were that kind of boy.’

‘What kind of boy?’

‘You get off to the lounge and tell them how you rose up out of a slum. Ladies may stand for it. I don’t have to. I think you are disgusting.’

‘You’ve got very old-fashioned ideas, Nancibel.’

‘No, I haven’t. Some things don’t go out of fashion.
Everybody has always despised a boy that lives off an old woman, and they always will.’

‘She’s not old.’

‘Twenty years older than you, if she’s a day. You wouldn’t look at her if she didn’t pay you.’

‘I drive her car.’

‘Very hard work, I’m sure. Well … if you drove a bus you could sit in this kitchen. There’s a shortage of bus drivers. I don’t wonder you were ashamed to say you came from a decent home.’

‘You don’t understand,’ protested Bruce. ‘A writer has to have experiences….’

‘I daresay. Well, you’re having one now. You’re getting the experience that a girl like me doesn’t have any use for a boy like you. If you didn’t know that before you’ve learnt something useful, and you can put it in a book.’

‘I damn well will put it in a book.’

‘Yes. When you’ve altered it a bit so’s to make it sound better. You’d never dare to put anything in a book that was quite true. Look what you’ve put in your book about you and her! That she was beautiful and aristocratic!
Her
beautiful and aristocratic! It’s enough to make a cat laugh!’

‘You’re plain, downright jealous and that’s all there is to it.’

‘You say you want to be somebody. You’ll never be anything but a wretched little show-off that everybody despises and laughs at behind your back.’

Mr. Siddal appeared at the kitchen door, plaintively demanding his elevenses. Perceiving that some drama was afoot he came into the room and sat down at the table. His innocent eye strayed from one furious young face to the other, and he concluded that the boy had been getting the worst of the argument.

Nancibel went to the teapot on the stove and brought him a cup. He told her to give Bruce one too, which she did before taking herself off, with her potatoes, to the scullery.

‘I hear you’re writing a book,’ said Siddal genially, as he pushed the sugar bowl across to Bruce. ‘A novel. Mainly autobiographical, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Bruce loudly.

‘No? That’s unusual. That’s interesting. Anna’s young …
protegés
generally write three books. The first is on the little victim theme. It has promise. It is well written. It gets astonishingly good reviews. It is very frank and tells how their childhood has been warped, either in a preparatory school or a public school, or both, or else in Wapping or on Cold Comfort Farm. At secondary and grammar schools they don’t seem to go in for warping children nearly so extensively. I don’t know why. The hero of your novel now … was he warped at Eton or in Stepney?’

‘Stepney.’

‘H’m … yes. I see. Well … the next book on the list doesn’t have to be so tragic. It’s a comedy, a bitter comedy, and very
mondain.
With a continental background. It deals with the vicious and corrupt lives led by expatriots in Capri or Majorca or the Maritime Alps. The hero is the biggest bum of the lot, but he has the saving grace of being able to despise himself nearly as much as he despises everyone else. The heroine is the only woman in the book with whom the hero does not sleep. She sometimes dies rather pathetically.’

Siddal paused to stir his tea, and Bruce could not
restrain
himself from asking what the third book was about.

‘The third book?’ Siddal seemed to start out of a reverie. ‘Nobody knows. Nobody has ever read it. One hears that it has been written. I think it gets
published
. But I’ve never been able to get hold of one. So I can’t tell you. It’s one of the things I hope to do before I die—to read a third book by one of Anna’s young friends. I can’t think what they can be about; religion, possibly. If you ever get as far as a third book, I do hope you’ll send it to me. More tea?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Bruce.

A frieze of Gifford children appeared for a moment on the skyline. They were running across the cliffs which rose immediately behind the house, and this glimpse of them reminded Sir Henry of a question he had been meaning to ask ever since Sunday afternoon, when he had been up there himself.

This part of the coast, known locally as The Other Cliffs, and on the Ordnance Survey map as Tregoylan Rocks, was much less frequented than the more accessible slopes leading to Pendizack Point, Rosigraille Cove and Porthmerryn. To reach them it was necessary to go far inland, almost to the village, in order to skirt the deep ravine which ran down beside the Pendizack drive. The ravine ended in a narrow creek, immediately below the back of the house, and the Other Cliffs rose to a great height on the far side of this creek so that the back windows looked out upon an overhanging wall of rock. The whole peninsular, upon which the house was built, must have fallen from this rock face into the bay in some prehistoric time.

The cliffs, at the top, were covered with a mass of blackthorn, bramble and gorse which had quite
obliterated
the old coastguards’ paths, so that walking there was not pleasant. But Sir Henry had gone there in order to escape from the atmosphere of catastrophe which had enveloped Pendizack on Sunday afternoon; and, while he was fighting his way through the gorse, he came upon some curious cracks and fissures in the ground. They were quite far inland, but they had raised in his mind a doubt as to the safety of the whole area, and he now asked Robin about it.

Robin said that they had been there since the mine exploded, the mine which had been washed up into the cave at the end of the creek, just before Christmas. He could not say if the cracks had appeared immediately,
for he had not seen them himself until the Easter holidays, when he and Duff discovered them. He fancied that somebody had been to inspect them; his mother had mentioned in a letter, during the summer term, that somebody had appeared and asked the way to the cracks. He did not know what the verdict had been, and when they reached the terrace he asked Gerry, who was mending a striped umbrella.

‘What cracks?’ asked Gerry, lifting a crimson face from his task.

The cause of his embarrassment was obvious, for an angry roar, proceeding from an open window on the first floor, made conversation on the terrace quite difficult.

‘… Do you realize that I’ve been waiting for you all the morning? I want to dictate some letters. Where have you been? Oh! … For heaven’s sake, speak up!
Where
have
you
been
?
’

‘You know!’ shouted Robin. ‘The mine cracks. On the Other Cliffs.’

‘… Can’t answer the simplest question. I tell you plainly I sometimes think I ought to have you
certified
….’

‘Never heard of them,’ shouted Gerry.

‘Didn’t Mother write about them? We found them at Easter. They’re up among the brambles … long cracks about six inches wide….’

‘Six inches?’ put in Sir Henry. ‘Why … the ones I saw were a yard wide or more. And seemed to go very deep.’

‘Then they must have grown,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve not been up there since Easter.’

‘… Well, never mind! Never mind! You’re back now. And you’ll oblige me by a prompt answer to this question:
Where
did
you
sleep
last
night
…
?
’

Gerry began to look quite agonized and made no further attempt to understand about the cracks.