The Last Houseparty (20 page)

“There is a complication here I haven't explained. Zena had it in for Vince. She did not want him to inherit. There were some superficial reasons for this: I got on with her; had the same political outlook as her circle, though we differed over Germany; and so on. But the basic reason was that she was a meddler; she took sides in the question, just as people who've never been to either university take sides in the Boat Race. (This, incidentally, was the basic motivation of her public activities also; she had always to be stirring things up.) Both Vince and I believed that if my uncle ever got around to declaring his intentions he would choose Vince, so from Zena's point of view the attack on you was a perfect opportunity for finally discrediting him. Of the human and moral aspects of the affair: what had been done to you; your mother's shock and horror; Vince's agony, whether guilty or not; of these she had no grasp at all. The whole episode was a useful set of cogs for her to bolt on to her machinations, and that was all.

“This—out of charity I will call it detachment—came out at the end of my uncle's tirade against her guests, during which he had become so agitated as to reach almost total incoherence. Zena laughed and said, ‘Charles has an amusing theory. He says the man was probably our little Prince. He says the rulers of Sorah are fond of little girls. And “dirty face”. Do you see?'

“My uncle snorted.

“Much more likely to have been Charles himself,' he said. ‘He goes in for that sort of thing. I told you we should never have had the bugger back.'

“Zena looked at him sideways and smiled. Though we were in my uncle's study she was sitting, as usual, on the floor and stroking the ears of one of her dogs. My uncle was standing with his insteps on the fender and his back against the mantelshelf. The sound of Mrs Blech's cello came faintly to us. Zena turned her head away. From where my uncle stood the movement might have looked as though she was about to say something she was ashamed of, but her face was directly towards me and she could see that I was watching the performance. Her left eye closed, momentarily.

“It can't have been Charles,' she whispered. ‘He was with me all night.'

“It was at this point that my uncle had his heart-attack. The fact that he did not die for another eighteen months (a complication from which many of the financial problems of Snailwood flow) does not alter the other fact that Zena, with those dozen words, killed him.

“She did not do it deliberately, of course. But she said what she said deliberately, and it was a lie. I am as sure of this as I am of anything. Why did she do it? Why tell that particular lie then, there? There were of course ignorant rumours around about an affair between her and Charles, and to judge by a farcical piece of behaviour in church that morning, these had come to my uncle's ears. He would certainly have minded very much. He had come late to the pleasures of the bed, and after some years of supplying them Zena had withdrawn her favours and was making so far unsuccessful efforts to provide him with other succubi. Your mother was to have been the latest, but I had intervened. My uncle would have been in a considerable state about all this, and Zena must have been aware of the danger of pushing him over the edge, though not in the manner in which he actually went.

“The only reason I can think of for her taking this risk with her marriage was that she needed to protect Charles Archer. He was the pivot, the central piece, of her political meddling-machine,
^****
though her position at Snailwood was vital to the machine also. To protect this last she would later simply claim that she had been teasing my uncle, and would have called on me to witness that she had winked when she had spoken. But by that time, she must have calculated, the case against Vince would be thought irrefutable. I think she may have guessed that I had spent the night with your mother (she was extremely percipient about matters of that sort) and was amused to make a similar claim in my presence. This is speculation. But lie she did. I am as sure of that as one can be of the veracity or untruthfulness of any other person.

“I am not saying she positively knew Charles was your attacker. I don't see how she can have. She is an amoral person, but not quite up to conniving at such an attack, I think. But I do believe that she had a great deal more information about Charles than the rest of us; I have since learnt that they knew each other when she was still a child (something she had always kept mum about) and I suppose it is possible that his penchant may have developed by that stage. Be that as may be, my strong impression is that she felt that she had to protect him.

“This scene (as perhaps you will have perceived from my manner of writing) has hung in my mind with intense clarity. It occurred in this very room where I now sit. I could reach out my hand at this moment to wipe the froth from the corner of my uncle's mouth, where he lay with his head across the fender. It is to me, though I cannot make it so to anyone else, far stronger proof than anything that has been alleged against Vince that Charles and not he was your attacker. I went to Charles within the week and confronted him with my beliefs. He denied the accusation, of course, but with a strange coolness and patience. He laughed when I told him of Zena's statement. The only outcome of the interview was that it cost me my parliamentary career.

“Ah well, I must pull myself together. It is strange to think that if I am lucky with my war you may never have to read this. I hope so. I would love to see what you are going to make of yourself as a grown woman.

“But assuming, as one must in life, ill luck, how does this affect you?

“First, and most importantly, I believe strongly that you are more likely to achieve that inward harmony which, in my opinion, is all that can be called a purpose in our existence, if you understand the objects that throw those apparently menacing shadows across the darker passages of your life. Your mother disagrees with me about this but, though you have not one drop of my blood in your veins, you are in many ways more like me than you are like her. If you feel the same, I would suggest you consider whether to consult an analyst.

“Secondly, your own mental attitude towards Vince; since you scarcely knew him, this may not seem to matter much; but though I have done my best to rid myself of any urge to lay obligations on you after my death, I cannot escape my own inward need to try to pass on to you my belief that though you were appallingly wronged, the fault did not lie with my cousin. That he is, literally, innocent. I want you to be, in your own mind, his friend; but I do not want you to lie to yourself about this, or to feel guilty about it; supposing the attack had never taken place I would have wanted your mother to be friends with Vince, but I think it quite likely that they would never have hit it off, and the fault would not have lain with either of them, nor would I have loved either less.

“Thirdly, there is the remote but important possibility that one day somebody will turn up claiming to be Vince. If it is him there will probably be no doubt of the fact, but just in case I have left a set of instructions in Box J807 in the Midland Bank at Marlow; the key is in the envelope at the back of the ‘Sally' file. So that there can be no question of anyone gaining knowledge of them beforehand, I suggest you leave them there until the eventuality arises. But let us suppose that Vince himself turns up, what are you to do?

“My only instruction is that you must do whatever you think right. Right for yourself as well as for him. This will depend on how you react to the earlier part of this letter; but I do not want you to do anything because you believe it's what I would have wanted, or would myself have done. I shall not (alas) be watching you. You must, literally, please yourself. In the J807 box you will find my reasons for believing that Vince before he left assigned his rights in Snailwood to me, and did so deliberately and with the knowledge that I would understand this to be so. Unless he has changed very much he won't go back on this, but people do change, quite remarkably. You may well find yourself with difficult practical and emotional and ethical problems. I can only state my confidence that the latter two you will solve in a manner that would have made me proud of you, had I indeed been watching.

“That is all, my darling. As I say, I hope that you will never read this letter. If you do, despite my own beliefs I do not forbid you to pray for me. The nearest I will come to an order to you is to say ‘Be happy'.

H. Q.”

The final sheet was written in the same hand and on similar paper, but with different ink and apparently also in more of a hurry.

“August 21

“Zena's meddling-machine. I may have underestimated both her and it. I was yesterday summoned to London and interrogated for more than two hours on my connections with her, Charles, and ‘the Snailwood Gang'. There is now some prospect of my being transferred back from the Intelligence Corps to my regiment, as not a fully trustworthy person. This, together with several rumours I have heard and discounted, suggest that Zena may have had something more serious to protect than her schoolgirl fantasies of power. Her pro-German activities in the USA lend colour to the supposition. If there is anything in this, if indeed my chance remark about Charles becoming Gauleiter of England has any truth in it, then the logic of their finding a sacrificial victim in order to protect Charles may be very strong indeed. By the time you read this you will be in a better position than I am to judge what weight to give to this point.

“Unless this transfer takes place I sail for the Med. tomorrow. With luck I shall be gone before the wheels of administration have turned over.

H.”

When he had finished reading Mr Mason picked up the sheets from beside him, tapped them tidy and replaced them in the folder. He took his glasses off and put them away in their metal case, then sat for a while, expressionless, staring at nothing. The sense of mental energies gathering to a focus, apparent when he considered some mechanical problem, was quite absent; indeed, if anything, the opposite seemed to be taking place, a dissipation or diffusion of his normally stolid personality into a dreamy trance. At length he sighed, shook his head regretfully, blew air up his face, packed the remains of his lunch away, and returned to the work of fitting fresh timber to the burnt segment of the carousel.

^*
do hope you enjoy this kind of accidental Freudian pun. I do.

^**
About your mother: do not judge her for being a loose woman, which in a sense she is. I love her obsessively. I don't believe she loves me in the same way, and why should she? I am a man to live with and go to bed with. I may be quantitatively more than that implies, but not qualitatively; I mean I think she would choose me for those purposes rather than some other man, but she's really a bit puzzled by my feelings for her and can only pretend to share them. Now that I am to be posted abroad she may not remain faithful to me. I hope she won't after my death.

^***
By the by, look after Purser if it is in your power to do so. For all his absurd mien he is a good fellow and a friend.

^****
More about this on separate sheet at end of letter.

X

1

B
efore Zena's reign—BZ in Harry's phrase—churchgoing at a Snailwood week-end was not a serious problem. Everybody went. The sort of person who did not expect to attend mattins on a Sunday morning was not the sort of person invited to Snailwood As for guests who might need to know the times of worship at the nearest synagogue, they were as likely as those enquiring where they could assist at a druidical sacrifice.

Under Zena's rule anything became possible, from the out-and-out atheism of visitors such as Shaw, through the soggy credos of the modern young whose theology consisted of believing that Christianity had been a good notion until St Paul had made the mistake of thinking about it and thus ensured that churchgoing became rather a bore, to the devotional rigour of Father D'Arcy's Catholic converts, who preferred to be accommodated with a chapel where the most elaborate ritual was attended by worshippers of the bluest blood

Despite this, enough people from Snailwood, family and visitors, usually came to the parish church for three pews to be reserved for them. Servants, gardeners and so on occupied another four pews west of the cross aisle. Zena was always there, despite having been to eight o'clock Communion every other Sunday. She wore a demure dark suit and unpretentious hat, sang psalms and hymns and responses in a true if metallic soprano, and put five pounds in the plate. For all these reasons the Reverend Barnabas Bird regarded her with even greater favour than parish priests were apt to feel for the titled mistress of the great house, and when, occasionally, reporters from the yellow press came and asked questions about the effect on a simple village of high jinks up at the castle, they found themselves filling their note-pads with uninterestingly virtuous deeds performed by her ladyship.

Lord Snailwood always came too, partly in order to be able to complain throughout luncheon about everything to do with the service, but mainly to read the first lesson. The fact that he was standing up at the lectern and the congregation was seated and facing towards him while he read seemed to give him the pleasing illusion of being listened to.

The Sunday of that week-end mattins proceeded at a lagging pace. The morning was already warm. Sun streamed against coloured windows. Lush smells of growth, not yet weary with summer, penetrated into the aisles and mixed with the church smells, cold stone and wood-polish and brass-polish and disturbed dust and Sunday tweeds, too thick for such a day. Mr Bird chanted the prayers lingeringly through his nose, and the choirboys dragged out the Amens as if competing to see who could whine on longest without losing breath. When it came to the psalms the organist played so as not to hurry the congregation, while the congregation waited for the organ to give them a lead. Among the Snailwood pews the extra lethargy of having been up at least till two and in some cases till four or five in the morning seemed to increase the sense of time having sidled so close to eternity that each second could be viewed as in itself endless; but a definite somnolence infected all the congregation, so the “superduperdo” cannot have been wholly to blame. Zena herself sang steadily and earnestly, as if by her sole efforts she was towing the others through a morass of sound in which, without her, they would have become stuck completely.

“… and ever shall be. Amen.”

The stretched vowel of the last syllable was like a sigh of relief. The congregation, apart from Lord Snailwood, sat or slumped. The organ tweedled on while he walked with his twitching stride to the lectern, drew his spectacles from a side pocket and put them on, shut the case with a decisive snap, but then began to leaf impatiently to and fro through the big Bible as if he couldn't find anything fit to read in it, although he had before the service been up and marked his place with a green embroidered band. At last he settled, clearing his throat as a signal to the organist to stop playing.

“Here beginneth the first verse of the third chapter of the book of the prophet Hosea. Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine.”

It says much for the denaturing power of ritual—assisted in this case by Lord Snailwood's manner of delivery, jerky and apparently inconsequent though here speaking words provided for him by a far more purposeful character, that even the stimulus of a word such as “adulteress” was insufficient to penetrate the nodding lethargy of his listeners. Only the vicar looked up, hesitated and exchanged a frown of puzzled alarm with his curate, Mr Deller.

“So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley: and I said to her thou shalt abide for me many days.”

Lord Snailwood's voice was beginning to rise both in pitch and volume.

“Thou
shalt
not play the harlot. Thou shalt
not
play the harlot …”

The sentence is not actually repeated in the Authorised Version, but the congregation were used to Lord Snailwood's tendency to experiment with emphasis as he read, and if dissatisfied to try an alternative. The vicar reached for the shelf by his knee, took out his own copy of the scriptures and searched for the passage being read. Those who were watching him—very few apart from Mr Deller—may by now have realised that something unpredicted was up; the rest dreamed serenely on, though Zena had begun to smile slightly. Finding that the third chapter of Hosea is one of the shortest in the Bible, only five verses, the vicar relaxed slightly but, insofar as he could without seeming to stare, continued to watch his patron with more than ordinary attention. When the Earl plunged on into Chapter Four the vicar scanned rapidly down its nineteen verses, which in no very clear terms denounce the failures of the priesthood as somehow responsible for the whoredoms of Israel. He sat up, now obviously apprehensive, and almost rose to his feet.

“By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing
adultery
, they break out, and blood toucheth blood,” proclaimed Lord Snailwood.

For a moment it seemed that he was about to conclude, but the apparent process of closing the book turned out to be only a switch of prophets. Some fifty pages flopped across. The congregation, readying itself to stand for the
Te Deum
, blinked, at least inwardly, and started to pay definite attention.

“Ezekiel, Twenty-three, Forty,” said Lord Snailwood, gabbling a little with inward excitement and perhaps redder about the ears than usual.

“And furthermore, that ye have sent for men to come from far, unto whom a messenger was sent; and lo they came: for whom thou didst wash thyself, paintedst thy eyes, and deckedst thyself with ornaments. And satest upon a stately bed, and a table prepared before it, whereupon thou has set
mine
incense and
mine
oil …”

Once more the vicar consulted his Bible, though no doubt he had at least a vague memory of this juicier and hence more notorious passage.

“And a voice of a multitude being at ease was with her,” read Lord Snailwood. “And with the men of the common sort were brought, Sabeans from the wilderness, which put bracelets upon their hands and beautiful crowns upon their heads. Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries, will they now commit whoredoms with her, and she with them? Yet they went in unto her …”

By now the vicar had made one real movement as if to interrupt, but once again subsided. The whole congregation was paying close attention, if not to the words, at least to the event; so they all saw Sir Charles Archer rise from his place directly beside the aisle, one pew behind where Lord Snailwood always sat, and despite his need to support himself on his stick walk briskly up to the lectern and attempt to close the Bible.

“… unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women,” shouted Lord Snailwood, laying his hand upon the page and turning to confront Sir Charles.

“Here endeth the First Lesson,” said Sir Charles calmly. His voice, able to command large public meetings in the open air, was resonant enough to rouse any remaining dozers. Mr Bird and Mr Deller leapt eagerly to their feet, the choir following suit with a rattle of kneelers and the flop of a book or two. The organist, momentarily taken by surprise, produced a wheezing note before managing to drown all other noises with a chord. The congregation rose and announced that they praised God and acknowledged Him to be the Lord, though their eyes were still held by the spectacle of Lord Snailwood and Sir Charles confronting each other at the lectern, until Sir Charles turned and came stiffly back to his pew. After a moment Lord Snailwood followed suit. Mr Bird, singing full blast, crossed the choir and spoke to Mr Deller, who immediately left his place and occupied the lectern, standing there throughout the
Te Deum
, apprehensive but spiritually prepared to hold his ground in case Lord Snailwood should take it into his head and return to read selected passages from the New Testament, the seventeenth chapter of Revelation being the most obvious choice.

When the congregation sat for the second lesson Zena reached out and patted the back of her husband's hand, as if he had done something rather clever and amusing, for him. He did not appear to respond.

With the Daimler out of action space was short in the Snailwood cars to carry the party home from church. Normally, though some might walk down the hill, all rode back in order to attend in the courtyard by noon. This Sunday Miss Blaise said she would prefer in any case to walk.

“Then Harry and Vincent can go with you,” said Zena. “Just to make sure you're in time for the photograph. And the rest of us will simply have to cram in as best we can. Don't dilly-dally, darlings. Start now.”

She turned to organise the loading of the Sunbeam and her own Vauxhall. Miss Blaise and the cousins took the path that led away from the road and out of the little wicket beside the enclosure where dead flowers from the graves were dumped.

“I'd like to get a move on,” said Harry. “Joan's in a bit of a stew. Something's wrong with little Sal, and she's sent for Dr Hughes.”

“Nip on ahead, Hal,” said Vincent. “I'll bring Nan.”

“No, it's all right. I'll go over the wall at Far Look-out. That'll save five mins. I say, wasn't Uncle Snaily on form? Good thing your Sabean wasn't there from his wilderness, what? Is it actually true he fetched Dolly F-J back from Bullington to dance with him?”

“Didn't you see them?” said Miss Blaise.

“Oh, for some reason or other I didn't see much of what was going on after we met you down by the Bloodstone.”

“Dolly was there all right.”

“That lewd woman?”

“Rather! Prince Yasif apologised ever so prettily to Lady Snailwood, but he stuck to Dolly for the rest of the evening and didn't dance with anyone else. And then they disappeared.”

“I wonder whether that was what stirred Uncle Snaily up to look for dirty bits in the Bible.”

“I saw him glowering at them last night,” said Miss Blaise. “But he seemed to be in a glowery mood. He glowered like anything at darling Prof. Blech, who was making us all so jolly.”

“On the other hand he may have disapproved of my paying so much attention to his wife's secretary.”

“I thought it was the whole party,” said Miss Blaise. “That bit about the voice of a multitude being at ease, it's quite right. I noticed it when we went down to listen to the nightingales—what a vulgar noise humans make, particularly when they are enjoying themselves. What's wrong with Sally?”

“No idea. Measles or something, I should think. She's that age. Zena won't approve of uninvited germs, any more than Uncle Snaily approves of invited Jews.”

“I thought yesterday she was rather a sulky-looking kid,” said Miss Blaise. “But if she was sickening for something …”

“Oh, Sally's rather a good egg underneath. She's had some painful things happen to her, that's all. Don't you think so, Vince?”

“She'll get over it.”

2

The photograph of the house party was another Sunday morning ritual, as regular as churchgoing and in some ways more solemn.

It was Purser's demeanour, statelier, more self-confident, more at ease with his minor mysteries than Mr Bird with his major ones, that was responsible for this effect. On wet Sundays chairs and benches would be ranked beneath the cloister arches directly facing the clock tower while Purser manipulated his camera out in the open, under a large golf umbrella held by Robson (always described as Lord Snailwood's batman though his lordship had never served with any regiment). This was often unsatisfactory, especially for large parties, as the position of the pillars meant that the guests had to line up four or five deep, those at the rear standing on benches, an arrangement which raised their heads into the shadow of the arch and meant that in the finished photograph the faces of the more important guests seemed to be framed against a screen of waistcoats. Experiments with two large old mirrors from the doors of wardrobes, propped to reflect daylight into the upper recesses, effected some improvement.

It might have been thought easier to wait for a break in the clouds, but this would have destroyed an essential element in the ritual. The party assembled at eleven-fifty for the photograph, and when it was over they were rewarded by seeing the clock strike noon. In a mysterious way this had become the climax of the whole week-end. From then on whatever was done or said seemed to be tinged with a note of farewell.

On fine days the problems of lighting were of a different kind, in that the clock faced south, and hence the guests assembled to watch it faced north, and hence the camera pointed directly into the noon sun. It might have seemed sense to arrange the group beneath the tower and then let them turn to watch the spectacle when the photography was over, but Lord Snailwood refused to countenance this on the grounds that it was “a lot of unnecessary fuss”. In some of the earlier photographs the faces of the group were, as a result, almost indecipherable, but Purser had become increasingly skilled at overcoming this difficulty, devising an enormous hood to shade his lens and deploying his two mirrors to useful effect. It was seldom nowadays that anything went wrong, apart from the occasional guest who eluded Zena's round-up.