The Last Houseparty (24 page)

“You take it from me, Miss Quintain. Whoever came to your room was the same fellow as arranged for the fire to start.”

“I wonder … old Lord Snailwood used to make a lot of fuss about keeping the clock going. In his eyes it was certainly a sort of symbol.”

“Only you told me he couldn't wind his own watch without breaking it.”

“Of course he could. That was just a manner of speaking. He even had that favourite story about McGrigor fixing a rat trap and an alarm clock to turn the lights off every night. He liked it because it was simple enough for him to understand. And it's almost exactly what he'd have needed to do …”

“I tell you what I think,” said Mr Mason, deliberately, even emphatically cutting her short. “I think you'd best stop asking yourself who and why. Stop telling yourself stories about Lord Snailwood.”

“You misunderstand me. I feel no animus towards the poor old man. After all, you could say that I have done him more harm than he ever did me. I pulled out all his roses.”

Despite the apparent sympathy in her words she spoke of her predecessor with far more than her usual mild contempt. Mr Mason gazed at her, then shook his head.

“It's just stories you've been telling yourself,” he said. “Like lying in bed running through a quarrel in your mind, and what you're going to say next time you meet the fellow—only it never works out.”

“Tell me something,” said Miss Quintain. “Do you remember in Harry's letter, where he says he simply cannot imagine Vincent opening the door of the nursery and walking towards my cot? I can't either, but I think I can if I put Lord Snailwood there. Can you? With either of them?”

Mr Mason looked at her in silence. It was impossible to tell whether, behind his mask of solemn calm, he was attempting the task or not.

“It's no use even asking,” he said at last. “You'd have to have stood in his shoes. You can't ever know.”

“But I have to know. I have to be sure it was that silly old man, so that I can also be sure it wasn't Vincent.”

“I tell you you won't ever. And what difference is it? You'll never meet this Vincent. He's gone. If it wasn't for doing my best to tell you the truth I'd say I'd seen him myself, out in the desert, dead.”

“I'm afraid it makes all the difference in the world. I was going to explain why when you asked me about the fire. May we go back to that point, please? I was going to ask you to do me a great kindness, and in spite of what you've just said I will still ask you. I was going to ask you to talk to me for a few minutes as if you were in fact Vincent. Whether you are or not. Just for a few minutes to pretend that things have gone differently between us, and you've told me about the coin and answered the other riddles and so on.”

She watched Mr Mason shake his large head.

“Please,” she said. “Oh, please. Let me explain why. It now looks almost certain that I am going to have to dispose of Snailwood.”

“Sell up? Now I'm sorry to hear that, really sorry.”

For the first time Mr Mason sounded positively surprised, as though he too had foreseen most of what might be said so far, but not this. Miss Quintain on the other hand seemed once again to assume the detached and formal personality she had devised for herself in order to confront the world.

“Not completely, I hope,” she said. “Rather a curious set of circumstances has arisen. For some time it has been clear that we might not be able to go on as we were. In a good year Snailwood barely breaks even, and in a bad year I have to use my private income to make up the difference. I have not minded, as opening to the public has enabled me to go on living here. But now … Never, never take on a house with battlements. They stand on top of the outer walls and the roof lies inside them. That means that if anything goes wrong the rain collects and then runs down inside the walls and not outside. Two years ago we discovered that that was what had been happening all along the West Wing, as well as the Nursery Tower. It had been going on for years, rotting the rafter ends, so that the roof is resting on nothing. I need a hundred and forty thousand pounds to put it right. If I spend that out of capital, I will no longer have the income to tide Snailwood through a bad year. You remember the first morning you came to see the clock, I was in a rush because I had an appointment? That was with an official from the Historic Buildings Council. They've given me a few minor grants in the past, but nothing like this. I never really believed they'd come to my rescue, and they didn't. Last month I got a letter from them saying that the house was considered of insufficient interest for them to be able to allocate the funds.”

Mr Mason, who had been listening with close attention, leaning forward now, grunted disappointment for her.

“I think they are probably justified,” she said, “though I was rather shaken when I read the letter. And there wasn't anyone else I could turn to. I've gone into all that, very thoroughly. I decided that what I would do was move out of the main house and simply let it fall down. I don't think that it will actually become dangerous until I'm dead and done with. I could live in one of the cottages, and simply keep the garden going. It would be a relief, in a way.”

“I can see that.”

“Wait. I haven't finished. A rather extraordinary thing has turned up. One of the things I did when I was looking for funds was to write to a large estate agent in London. Six or seven years ago, you see, they'd written to me to ask whether I had any intention of disposing of Snailwood because they had a client who was interested in using it to house a picture collection. At the time I became rather excited, as it seemed a marvellous way to attract the extra visitors we need, but then it turned out that it was a private collection and he had no intention of letting the public look at it. So it all came to nothing. When I wrote to them again they answered saying that they would consult the original enquirer, but in view of the lapse of time they thought it unlikely he would still be interested. But ten days ago they telephoned to say that their client would be in England next week and would like to come and see the house. You see? If I could have got you …”

“Hold it. This fellow sounds keen, you think?”

“I do. My idea is that he shall have the house on a full repairing lease, and I will maintain the garden. We may have to come to an arrangement about closing the part just round the house, at least while he's here. I gather he's from the Middle East, but the agents refuse to tell me more than that. They say he's anxious to avoid publicity. You know, there've been some very sad stories about people like that buying up big English houses and then doing nothing about them, letting the garden go to ruin, years of work lost in a single summer. I couldn't bear it. But …”

“Yes?”

“May I call you Vincent now? Oh, please … I promise you, word of honour, I will never do so again. I promise you I will do my very best not even to think you might once have been Vincent. But now, just for these five minutes … Well?”

“Before I say yes …”

“Anything. Almost anything.”

“Like I said, you're going to need to stop telling yourself stories. About Lord Snailwood or whoever. To my mind, if you've got to think about it at all, you'd be best off going back to believing it was a bear.”

“I'm afraid I've given you the impression that I spend my whole time brooding on what happened, but really I often don't think about it from one year's end to the next.”

“Go back to that then.”

“I'll try. But since you came … you know, I'm a quite different person from the child in the nursery. Nobody owes her anything. She's gone, too. But you need never have asked me how I spelt my name. You need never have told me about meeting Harry in the desert. You did that to me. You owe me for that. Vincent.”

The large, head nodded slowly. The pale eyes continued to watch her.

“Very well,” she said. “The point is that I have no Snailwood blood in my veins at all. You, Vincent, have. There is a decision to be made about the house. I think if this man who is coming to see us accepts my terms, there is no problem. But supposing he does not. Supposing, in effect, he offers the choice between his taking over house and garden and doing what he likes with them, which will probably mean letting the garden go to ruin but putting the house in order, or on the other hand backing out and leaving me to my own devices, which as I've told you will mean letting the house go to ruin for the sake of the garden, then what shall I do? I've never felt the house was mine. It is yours, it is Harry's, it belongs to those curious old men whose portraits hang in the entrance hall.

“You, Vincent, are their last representative. The garden, on the other hand, is mine. Mine and Harry's. Not Harry's because he was a Snailwood. Harry's because he loved my mother and me. Suppose I had known you were dead, then the decision would have been fairly easy. As far as I'm aware there are no other Snailwoods. But if you had never come back here, and all I'd known was that you might be still around somewhere, then I would have found it much more difficult. And now, since you have come … A decision may have to be made. I truly believe this is the last chance. Will you help me, Vincent?”

He sat still, clearly choosing and ordering both words and thoughts. When he spoke his accent did not change, and if he could be said to have adopted any role it was more that of the kindly old family doctor than the prodigal returned at last to atone.

“Supposing I was this Vincent, come back like you say, this is what I'd tell you. You've done marvels, Miss Quintain …”

“You'd call me Sally.”

“I might and I might not. Like we've been saying, even if I was this Vincent, I wouldn't be that Vincent any more, if you follow me, no more than you're the kid in the nursery. No. But I'd say you've done marvels, and what's more you'll go on doing them, so long as you stick to what he told you in his letter—anything you choose to do with your own mind, that's what I'd want you doing.”

“Oh dear. I'm afraid that isn't quite enough. It's putting the decision back onto me, you see.”

He accepted the point and considered.

“I notice you call a lot of places in the garden names the boys gave them still,” he said.

“Well, yes. Harry did.”

“Anywhere in the house like that, with its own name they gave it?”

“No. No, I don't think so.”

“It was the garden counted with the boys, then? Playing this game of theirs, living this life nobody else could come in and touch and spoil without their say-so. I reckon for them the house wasn't much more than a place to come into, get out of the rain.”

“And it doesn't keep that out any more. I wonder … You know, Harry often used to drag me out to mess around in the rain. Mummy couldn't understand it at all … Oh, yes. I think that answers my question, answers perfectly. Thank you very much indeed. Mr Mason.”

“Very glad to be of service, Miss Quintain. Was that all?”

“Not quite,” said Miss Quintain, flicking the files briskly together and laying them aside. “I'm afraid this may be just as much a nuisance to you in a different way. The agents rang yesterday morning to confirm that their client was coming next Wednesday. At the same time they said that he had specifically asked whether the clock was going. He would like to see it strike noon.”

“Wednesday? Not a hope. Not a hope in heaven.”

“I know it sounds trivial, but the fact that he's bothered to ask …”

“Five weeks, five full weeks I'm talking about, not just the Mondays I've been doing, that's how much work there is. Why, there's the pinions for the first quarter still to come from Croydon, and …”

“I'm sorry. I knew it was asking a lot. It's only … I do want this to go off well and I've an uncomfortable feeling that it matters. Such stupid little things make the difference. After all, it's not going to affect the man's pictures whether the clock's going or not, is it? But what I wondered was couldn't you fix it so that it just struck noon? Just the fourth quarter and the fight? You told me that the figures for those were in quite good shape.”

Mr Mason had continued shaking his head as she began, but his look changed. He held up his hand to stop her.

“Well, now,” he said at last. “Just the noon strike—surprising how often I've had to fake a strike for one reason or another, but that'd have been only the bells. There's the carousel to turn. Lot of work there still. And I haven't more than looked at the hour-strike train …”

He shook his head and fell silent. His normal stillness, his impression of self-control once willed and now a habit, accentuated as he considered the problem. It was as if the machinery of the flesh needed to be motionless so that the burning spot of light at the end of the beam, to produce which was the function of the machine, did not quiver from its task.

“Touch and go,” he said suddenly. “I'll need to come and camp up here … what's up, then?”

“Nothing … it doesn't matter. Just something about Vincent. It's extraordinary—I can only remember one thing about him that I saw with my own eyes, something quite unimportant, the very first time I met him.”

Mr Mason grunted. With his habitual slowness he took his pencil from one pocket and from another a neatly opened envelope, on whose back he began to compile a list. Miss Quintain watched him, cautiously, as if poised to remove the slight smile from her lips should he glance up.

XII

“I
really don't think we want to come in here,” said the nurse, cooingly. “Your new nursery's much nicer.”

Sally paid no attention, but walked stiffly to the middle of the almost circular room and looked round. The nursery was not changed. Only the minor bric-à-brac—the paper parrot, the Mickey Mouse clock and so on—had vanished. The bed was gone too. Sally paused in her inspection as if registering each change, but not otherwise reacting in any interpretable fashion. It was clear though that the dynamics of her relationship with the nurse, and perhaps with the whole world, had altered. The vague, unschematised wilfulness, described by her mother and other adults as making her a difficult child, seemed to have found a direction, a channel. She knew what she wanted. The slow hours were no longer her enemies.

“What have you done with Mary's cot?” she said.

“You don't want that stupid thing. Mummy's going to buy Mary a real cot.”

“What have you done with it?”

“I put it away. Your mummy …”

“I want it.”

“Want isn't the same as get.”

Sally turned away, bringing her head round slower than her body, as if concerned to see that the nurse understood the nature of her disobedience. She went to the central window seat and with an effort lifted out the chest that contained the Meccano set. She put it on the floor and then looked into the other two window-seats. The cot was in the left-hand one. Still apparently emotionless, she took it to the chest, which she opened. The spanners and screwdrivers were held in clips inside the lid. She took one of each and, clumsy with inexperience, fitted the spanner-end over a nut and attempted to turn it, first one way and then the other. Vincent had fastened it with an adult's strength. Sally looked up.

“You'd better get your knitting,” she said.

“Mummy won't be pleased if she finds you here.”

“She's busy with the Countess.”

After trying a different nut Sally opened two of the matchboxes, took out an unused nut and screw and discovered by experiment which way they tightened and loosened.

It took her the whole morning to demolish the cot, working in complete absorption and silence. When she had finished she sorted all the nuts and screws into their proper boxes, arranged strips and girders according to length and replaced them with their fellows, wrapped the motor in its grease-proof paper, put all back in the chest and returned it to its old place in the window-seat.

“Finished now,” she said.

“That's a good girl,” said the nurse.