The Feast (28 page)

Hebe, Bruce and the car had been missed at seven o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, when Anna had
remembered
her
protegée
and went to claim her from Bint and
Eggie. She had not been seriously alarmed, for she had concluded that Bruce must have driven Hebe back to Pendizack, but she had not relished the indignation which would be waiting for her on her own return, should the child’s condition have been noticed. So she dismissed her taxi discreetly at the top of the drive and slipped down to discover, if she could, how the land lay, going first to the garage to see if her car was there. It was, and on her dressing table, when she reached her room, she had found the note from Bruce.

‘It was very short, Dick. I can’t show it to you, because I tore it up. Well … I was so angry. But it just said he’s gone and he isn’t coming back and he never wants to see me again. I’m sure I don’t mind. I’m through with him. But nothing about Hebe … nothing about Hebe … where she is now, I mean….’

‘Do you think any of Polly’s guests could enlighten you?’

‘How can I be sure? They all pretended they didn’t know. And, of course, I thought she’d gone with Bruce. But one can’t be certain … well … you know what Polly’s friends are. You can’t trust any of them.’

‘Quite so. And you still haven’t told me what
possessed
you to take her there.’

‘It was just an impulse. I meant to keep an eye on her.’

‘Your impulses fascinate me. I can’t help trying to guess. You wanted to shock Bruce, I suppose?’

Anna tittered a little.

‘Well … perhaps there was that element in it.’

‘You like shock tactics, don’t you? You use a moral cosh and crack your victims over the head with it.’

‘I’ve no time to go into all that. I’ve done my duty. I’ve told you. Now you can do as you think fit.’

‘I?’ Mr. Siddal looked startled. ‘My dear girl, it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I mean you can tell the Giffords … anything you like. I’m off. Say good-bye to Barbara for me.’

‘You mean you’re clearing out?’

‘Before I meet Sir Henry. Wouldn’t you?’

‘I haven’t your alacrity. You are a one, if I may say so.’

Mr. Siddal laughed, and she said sourly:

‘I’m glad you’re so amused.’

‘So much amused would be better grammar.’

‘Just eaten up with spite and malice, aren’t you?’

‘Too right, as they say in the Antipodes. Where shall you go?’

‘I don’t think I’ll tell you. I shan’t be in any hurry to show up until I’m sure there’s going to be no fuss about that child.’

‘Very wise. But if she’s been murdered it may be years before they dig her up in Polly’s garden. Still … the hue and cry will die down. You skip off and as soon as you’ve gone I’ll tell Sir Henry what you’ve done.’

‘But Dick … I did nothing. The child stowed away in my luggage carrier. I didn’t know she was there till we got to Polly’s.’

‘You didn’t mention that.’

‘Didn’t I? I’ve only just remembered it. I sent her back at once in the car with Bruce. If he didn’t hand her over … Sir Henry had better hunt for him.’

‘It’s all very confusing. Suppose I get it wrong? Perhaps after all I’d better say nothing at all. If you get away quickly … nobody saw you come back, did they?’

‘I don’t think so. What you say or don’t say is your responsibility. I’m clear, for I’ve told you.’

‘Have you paid and all that?’

‘No. I’ll write a cheque now. I’ll date it yesterday and you can say I gave it you before I went to St. Merricks.’

She fished in her bag for a cheque book and fountain pen, enquiring:

‘How much?’

‘How should I know? I don’t run this hotel.’

‘You let me have the rooms. I believe it’s six guineas. I took them for a week, so I’ll pay for the week. Say four guineas for Bruce? He had to sleep in a manger.
That’s ten guineas. No extras. We had no drinks because you don’t have a licence in this one-horse bordel of yours.’

‘Early morning tea?’ murmured Siddal with a sudden flash of business acumen.

‘Is that extra? How much? I had it twice; on Tuesday and Wednesday. Say two shillings.’

‘Didn’t Bruce have any? Didn’t Nancibel take any to Bruce?’

‘I wouldn’t know. But my name is not Cove, and I’ll put four shillings on the chance. Ten pounds, fourteen shillings. I think you’ve done pretty well, for we only came on Monday.’

‘Tips?’ murmured Dick Siddal.

Anna hesitated, and flushed a little. Then she looked again in her bag and produced ten shillings, which she gave to him.

‘That’s for Fred. You’ll never remember to hand it over, and that’s just too bad for poor Fred. Nancibel’s tip I’ll leave on my dressing table.’

‘Because you want to be sure she gets it?’

‘Exactly. Here’s the cheque. Try to remember to give it to Barbara. Good-bye. It’s been nice to meet again, Dick. People quite often ask what’s became of you, and now I can tell them.’

She swept the boot-hole with a malicious glance and took herself off, meaning to get out by the back door and slip round the house to her room.

But the back door was no longer accessible. Fred was standing just in front of it, listening to a harangue from Miss Ellis in the boiler room. Luckily his back was turned, or he would have seen Anna.

‘Every scrap of this must be taken out and put in the bins. Every scrap!’ Miss Ellis was saying. ‘The idea! Shoving all that junk on top of the fire. No wonder it’s out….’

Cautiously Anna tiptoed up the passage and through the baize door into the hall. Fortune favoured her, and she reached her room without meeting anybody.

Her packing took very little time. She put an insultingly large tip upon the dressing-table for Nancibel and slipped out to the garage with her typewriter and her suitcases. She opened the garage door, climbed into the car, and pressed the starter. Nothing happened, not even when she got out and cranked the engine.

‘Can I help?’ asked Duff.

He was going up to his loft to play his gramophone, and had heard Anna swearing inside the garage.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Something’s wrong with the bloody thing. Do you understand cars?’

He made a brief inspection and reported that there was no petrol in the tank. Anna’s comments on this mishap startled him nearly as much as Polly had startled Hebe, for pretty much the same reasons.

‘So what?’ she finished, inclined to laugh, in spite of her exasperation, at his shocked expression. ‘Don’t stand there with your eyes on sticks. Tell me what I’m to do. Bruce has walked out on me. I’ve got to get to London at once, and I want to get away quietly.’

Duff searched about for a witty and worldly reply. This was the first time that he had ever been alone with Anna, and he had an idea that she expected him to do something about it. But he could think of nothing to say except that there might be a can of petrol in the potting shed from which he could give her enough to get her up to the village. And he led her towards the kitchen garden.

‘I’ve quite a big petrol allowance,’ she explained, as she followed him. ‘I wrote in and said I needed to drive about the country to get copy for my books and earn lovely dollars, and they fell for it at once. It’s wonderful what cheek can do for you sometimes.’

Duff pulled up short and stared down the kitchen garden at a tawny head, just visible through the apple boughs.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. And then he shouted:

‘Hebe!’

‘Yes?’

‘What are you doing here? You aren’t allowed in the kitchen garden.’

‘I’m picking lavender,’ yelled the distant Hebe. ‘Your mother gave me leave.’

‘Then she’s back,’ gasped Anna.

‘Back? She’s never been away.’

‘Your father told me she was lost or something.’

‘Oh no. He didn’t take the trouble to listen. She was sick in the night, that’s all. Woke everybody up being sick in the night.’

‘Oh, I see.’

Anna reflected for a while and then said:

‘The old sod! Well … don’t let’s worry about this petrol. I needn’t really go to-day.’

She reached up, pulled a ripe fig off a neighbouring tree, and sank her white teeth into it. Duff knew that his mother intended to sell all the figs, but he felt that it would sound childish to say so. He assumed a slight swagger, took a fig himself, and asked why Bruce had gone off.

‘He had a call,’ said Anna vaguely. ‘Fresh fields and pastures new.’

Woods, thought Duff, who had inherited his father’s accuracy. But he was impressed by the apparent ease with which Bruce had got away, not gobbled up at all, but free to seek another experience elsewhere. He grew bolder. She was not the kind of woman he wanted; in some ways he found her repellent, but she offered him something which he had never had and concerning which he was exceedingly curious. If he could get away from her as soon as it was over … When they got back to the stable yard he asked if he should carry her cases back to her room.

‘Where were you off to,’ asked Anna, ‘when I
interrupted
you and led you astray?’

‘I was going to play my gramophone.’

‘Where?’

She gave a wondering stare round the yard.

‘Over the stables. I … we sleep up there,’
explained
Duff.

He hesitated, and then added airily:

‘Come along.’

Anna looked puzzled, until he indicated the ladder to the lofts.

‘Gerry wouldn’t approve,’ she objected.

‘Damn Gerry,’ said Duff. ‘It’s up the ladder and the door on the right.’

‘You go first,’ said Anna. ‘What a wolf you are!’

‘You think so?’ said Duff, not displeased.

‘I’m sure Gerry would never send a woman up a ladder first.’

Duff had never thought of ladders quite in this light, but he managed to return the ball by observing that some women might feel themselves insulted unless given the opportunity.

‘Any woman would,’ agreed Anna, with a laugh. ‘But Gerry doesn’t know that. Nor ought you at your age.’

They climbed the ladder and he took her into the large, untidy loft occupied by Gerry, Robin and himself. She looked round her, smiling slightly.

‘Almost monastic,’ she said.

‘Madly austere,’ agreed Duff, and then frowned because he was trying to break himself of the adverb since his father mocked him for it.

Gerry, he remembered, had gone out with Angie and Robin had the boat. This
tête-à-tête
could go on for hours before anybody came.

‘What’s the book?’ she asked, picking one up from a
packing
case beside a bed. ‘
Steps
to
the
Altar
!
Gerry, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ said Duff.

‘Can one sit on these beds, or do they shut up?’

‘No. It’s only Bruce’s bed that does that.’

He broke off in confusion. Anna sat down on the bed and opened
Steps
to
the
Altar.
An inscription on the title page informed her that it had been given to Duff by his mother on March 5th, 1944.

‘What a liar you are,’ she said. ‘Why did you tell me it was Gerry’s? I suppose you made your first
Communion
in 1944.’

‘I was confirmed,’ said Duff, reddening.

‘Oh, confirmed? What happens when you’re
confirmed
? Do remind me. I thought they only did that to women after childbirth.’

‘Oh no, that’s churching. You are confirmed by a Bishop. He puts his hand on your head. And …’

‘Oh, I remember. And if you get his right hand it’s lucky, and the left hand is unlucky. I got the left hand, and I was terrified.’

‘What?’ cried Duff. ‘Have you been confirmed?’

‘Of course I have. Why not? And vaccinated, and presented at Court. My parents spared no expense over my education. I had a white veil. That I do remember. Why should you think I haven’t been confirmed?’

Duff was unable to answer and felt that, altogether, he was cutting a sorry figure. His reputation as a wolf must be slipping. He looked at her doubtfully and
wondered
what a genuine wolf would do. At the back of his brain a dry little voice whispered that no genuine wolf would waste five minutes on Anna. Wolf does not eat wolf. And while he hesitated, unwilling to see
himself
as a lamb, there was a sound of steps on the ladder. Somebody was coming up.

‘Put on a record,’ whispered Anna.

Duff rushed to the gramophone and put on the first record that came to hand. But the machine needed winding and the needle had to be changed. The
footsteps
creaked up the ladder. Then they turned aside. They went into Bruce’s loft.

He started the record. Mozart’s Symphony in G Minor sprang to urgent life and throbbed out its muted
lamentation
. He crossed the room and applied his eye to a small hole in the wooden partition between the lofts.

‘Who is it?’ murmured Anna, under cover of the music.

‘Nancibel.’

‘What is she doing in there?’

He did not answer. Nancibel was kneeling by the bed, her face buried, and he thought she was crying. He remembered the jokes in Pendizack kitchen about Bruce and Nancibel. And it occurred to him that perhaps Bruce might not have escaped so easily after all;
something
of value might perforce have been left behind. Presently they heard Nancibel go away. But the music went on, spinning its swift web of sorrow, fine as gossamer, keen as steel. To resist it was impossible to Duff. He hung over the gramophone and let himself sail away down the current of sound.

Dusty motes danced in the shafts of sunlight from the little windows. Anna’s enigmatic smile became a trifle fixed. She yawned. She tapped her foot upon the ground. Duff at the gramophone gave her a reproving scowl, for the noise disturbed him.

Presently she got up and went away. Nor did he try to keep her. She could wait. He was sure that he should not enjoy her as much as he was enjoying the G Minor.

Gerry and Evangeline were desperately in love. The need for affection, all the frustration of two lifetimes, had merged into a mutual torrent of rejoicing and liberation. Each was, in sober truth, the whole world to the other. Happiness had transformed them. Gerry’s spots were rapidly fading, and Evangeline had blossomed into a comeliness which was almost beauty. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes sparkled and her hair shone. Gerry
declared
that she had already grown a little fatter.