The Quivering Tree (16 page)

‘And a steeple and weathercock!' I added.

How we laughed! Just like the old days.

‘How are you off for money?' Alfred wanted to know. I observed with a truly maternal satisfaction that he was feeling much better for our conversation, his old generous self once more.

‘Fine!' I answered nevertheless. How could I possibly ask someone committed to the outlay of £1,000 for the where-withal to buy shampoos and whipped cream walnuts? ‘I've got plenty!'

We parted fondly, our intimacy not only re-established, but deepened; and I cycled home famished but full of beans, confirmed in the absolute rightness of my plan to blackmail Mr Betts.

When, on Wednesday, straight after tea and before I weakened, I went down the garden, red-faced, heart beating faster than was comfortable, to let Mr Betts know that, going by the back way to feed Bagshaw, I had caught sight of lettuces and strawberries and goodness only knew what else in the back of the white van, and that as a consequence I was very sorry but I was going to have to blackmail him, his answer was not what I had expected.

‘Crikey!' he exclaimed. ‘Not the two of you!' And when I stood stupid, not understanding: ‘The Bunion – the Lady of Shallotts, who else? The Greta Garbo of the servants' hall. First her, now you!'

‘I didn't know she –'

‘Nothing goes on in this house she don't know about and takes her cut out of. You ought to know that by now! If I got ter pay all me profit out in hush-money, I might as well turn it in, call it a day. Not worth the blooming candle!' Despite the emphasis with which he spoke, Mr Betts did not sound really angry. He looked at me with a humorous disbelief. ‘Too shy to speak up fer a second helping, but not too shy to put the screws on me like a ruddy pro! An' looking such a little lady, too!'

That put my back up.

‘And you don't look like a thief, but you are!'

‘Name callin's never goin' to get us nowhere.' The gardener, who had been tying up some lupins which had flopped over, stopped doing it; went over to the bench where his jacket was lying, fished his pipe out of the pocket and sat sucking it, empty and unlit, like a baby. He remarked mildly, as if we were in the middle of a perfectly ordinary conversation: ‘That French horse you picked came in second. Didn't back her both ways, but tha's my funeral. You're still entitled to yer commission.'

I burst out that I didn't want his commission; that I didn't want to go on picking out horses when I knew nothing whatever about them and couldn't be sure if they'd win or if they'd lose. What I wanted, if I wasn't to die of starvation and get nits in my hair into the bargain, was a regular source of income I could rely on.

Mr Betts thereupon offered to lend me some money, but I replied that I would be grown up before I could pay it back, if then, and besides, my father had taught me that I must never on any account allow myself to get into debt. The gardener sucked at his pipe, then gave it as his opinion that it was a mistake to let dead people go on telling you what to do. Enough was enough. They had had their turn and now ought to lie quietly in their graves, letting people get on with things in their own way.

This upset me, because he seemed to be getting at my father, who wasn't, properly speaking, in his grave at all, but in heaven. It made me cruel.

‘You're an old man,' I pointed out. ‘If I borrow some money from you, by the time I can pay it back you'll be dead yourself.'

‘More fool me, then,' said Mr Betts.

The conversation was not going at all according to the scenario I had rehearsed so often beforehand. Planning it in my mind, everything falling out the way I intended it to fall, I had been entranced to discover how easy crime was. No wonder so many people went in for it.

‘The trouble wi' you is –' Mr Betts took his pipe out of his mouth and waggled it at me – ‘you don't think things through. As I understand it – right? – if I don't pay up on demand you'll up an' tell Miss Gosse I bin on the fiddle?'

‘Right!' I agreed between clenched teeth, feeling terrible to hear my threat put into words.

‘But where'll that get you? How'll you be better off? I'll get the push sure enough, but you won't be any nearer a steady income. New bloke gets taken on, stands to reason Miss G.'ll be watching him like a hawk arter what's happened. Ten to one she'll decide it's time to ferget how the garden was in her pa's day and have the whole vegetable plot put down to grass. Get herself a goat, maybe, to keep it down. An' that'll make two of 'em on the premises!'

Aggrieved by the insult, I stopped having qualms. The gardener was simply not playing the part I had allotted to him in the drama. It had never occurred to me that a blackmailer's victim might refuse to be blackmailed. It did not seem fair.

I played the trump card Mr Betts himself had put into my hand.

‘You said yourself you're paying Mrs Benyon not to say anything. Why her and not me?'

‘Because
she
scares the living daylights out of me,' Mr Betts explained. ‘And you're such a dear little gal, I don't think.'

‘Oh!'

I knew that I wasn't a dear little gal. I knew that I wasn't a child and I wasn't a grown-up either, something between the two that there wasn't a word for. I knew I was too old to cry like a child, but like a child I did, wailing that I couldn't possibly manage on a shilling a week with biscuits alone costing sixpence for half a pound and that was only the plain sorts, goodness only knew how much you had to pay for Bourbons or Milk 'n Honey. It wasn't good for growing girls to go hungry. It stunted their growth. Perhaps that was why Miss Gosse had legs like she had, and I would grow up with them too if I didn't get enough to eat. I couldn't ask my mother to send me more pocket money. Since my father died she didn't have nearly as much money as she had had when he was alive, and it cost a lot more to live in London than it had in St Giles. What on earth was I to do? My brother was building a house from which he didn't expect to get any change out of a thousand pounds and Mr Johnson in Dove Street charged IS 6d for a shampoo: IS 6d! – it was unbelievable. When I had tried to wash my hair myself the geyser had refused to light and I could easily have blown Chandos House to smithereens, to say nothing of myself. My ululation petered out with the information that whilst it was true Miss Locke had volunteered to wash my hair for me once a week for nothing, somehow I didn't think much of the idea –

Mr Betts waited for me to finish. Then: ‘You look a picture, I must say!' When I had achieved a semblance of equanimity he inquired, in a tone of mild interest: ‘How much were you figuring on touching me for?'

Having done my sums over and over in preparation for just such a question, I was ready with the answer. I told him that, taking my own shilling pocket money into account, I reckoned I could just about get by on 4s 6d – that was to say, 3s 6d weekly was what I had looked forward to receiving from him as the price of silence.

The gardener regarded me with disgust.

‘That all? All that tarradiddle over 3s 6d?' Shaking his head: ‘You got t' learn to set yer sights higher 'n that, gal, if you want to get anywhere in the world! You should've asked five bob at the lowest.'

I pointed out forlornly that since he had refused to let me blackmail him at all, the size of my demand was now of academic interest only.

‘I wouldn't say that,' Mr Betts said. He got up from the bench and told me to follow him, rolling along with his bowlegged gait to a small building which stood against the garden wall a little distance from the greenhouse and was called the bothy. It was built of bricks, with a high-pitched roof, the whole covered with Virginia creeper so that it looked quite romantic, but inside the dim interior there was nothing but an old pot-bellied stove at the further end, some stored deckchairs, and Mr Betts's garden tools and horticultural supplies. There was also a queer old-fashioned nest of drawers on a stand which was where Mr Betts kept his packets of seeds, and it was towards this that he now led me. Selecting one of the drawers in the lowest tier, he levered it out, emptied it of the few seed packets that happened to be there and turned it upside down to get rid of some shrivelled-up bits and pieces that clung to its sides. A spider fell out on to my shoe and scampered away, its eight legs pumping indignantly.

Mr Betts replaced the drawer, leaving it open a mere inch or so. He dug into his trouser pocket and produced a handful of change from which he selected a two-shilling piece, a shilling, and four sixpences which he dropped through the slit; shut the drawer smartly. He informed me that so long as he was at Chandos House or I was – whichever way it turned out – there would be five bob in the drawer, at my service. I could rely on it. ‘If I see it's gone, I'll fill it up again, and tha's how we'll go on.' He must have seen the expression on my face for he added sharply: ‘An' don't let me hear no more about blackmail, nor about borrowing neither. You're a little lady an' one o' the things I reckon a lady's got t' learn is how to accept a present from a pal in the spirit it's given, no strings attached an' no thanks necessary. An' no more water-works neither –' he ordered, as my chin began to quiver uncontrollably – ‘or Mrs Benyon the Bunion'll be chargin' down here wanting to know what I done to you. An'
then
the fur'll fly!'

One Saturday morning, when we were having breakfast, Miss Locke leaned across the table and said to me: ‘Don't make any arrangements to be out today, Sylvia, unless you want to miss Miss Gosse's sweetheart. He's coming to lunch.'

‘Helen!' Miss Gosse cried, and then, to me, with that mixture of dismay and indulgent affection which I had come to recognize as her usual reaction to one of Miss Locke's enormities: ‘Pay no attention, Sylvia. Mr Denver's an old friend of my father's. He lives in a hotel at Cromer and he's coming to see us. It's only Miss Locke's idea of a joke.'

‘No joking matter.' Miss Locke shook her head and her short curls jumped about engagingly. She always looked her best in the morning, tending to grow progressively more severe and Ancient Greek as the day wore on. This particular morning she looked particularly good, having herself visited Mr Johnson in Dove Street after school the day before to have her hair cut.

It was a relief to me that he had done it so well. There could not be many customers in Norwich who wanted their hair cut in Miss Locke's style, and I had been anxious lest he make a botch of it and I be held responsible. ‘Since he washes your hair so superbly that you turn down all my offers to do it for you for nothing,' Miss Locke had said in her mocking way, ‘he must be the best hairdresser in town.'

Thank heaven, he had cut it beautifully. Thank heaven and my father, that is, whom I had asked to put in a private word with God to endow Mr Johnson with the special skills needed to do a good job; Miss Locke, as I was only too well aware, having that disconcerting tendency to put people off their stride. She looked young and mischievous, as if having her hair cut had somehow, at the same time, improved her complexion, which was what usually made her look not exactly secondhand but a bit shopsoiled.

‘His name is Mr Maurice Denver,' she announced. ‘He is handsome, clever, immensely rich, and he has been dying to lay his fortune at Miss Gosse's feet ever since she was a child, as young as you, if not younger. But always – can you credit it? – the foolish woman has spurned his honourable advances, can you possible think why?'

‘Helen!' Red-faced, Miss Gosse cried out again, her boot-button eyes shining. I was blushing as well, it was something Miss Locke was always making me do, but not out of embarrassment this time, not really: more out of pleasure at being invited in on a family joke. Well fed at last, thanks to Mr Betts's darling generosity, I had settled down at Chandos House. I had got used to Miss Gosse's and Miss Locke's little ways, as I hoped they had got used to mine. After the strains and stresses of school, the prick of ambition, the minefield of play-ground friendships, I rode home each afternoon savouring in advance the gentleness that was left of my day: tea with a favourite book propped against the tea cosy; the garden to wander about in, the piano to play, homework which I enjoyed – being, except for arithmetic, good at school; the quivering leaves, their round faces innocent of guile, welcoming me to my bedroom. It was a peace to which even Mrs Benyon, in her odd way, contributed: an ogress as in the fairy stories, to be kept sweet with frequent poultices of ‘Pale Hands I Loved' her strange, scented breath puffing over my shoulder.

I could not tell how clever Mr Denver was just by looking at him, nor how rich, though certainly, with his malacca walking-stick, his shantung suit and his panama hat which had a ridge, very precise, running from front to back across its top, he looked prosperous enough. He did not look at all as if he had just come from Cromer, but rather from much further away – from planting tea in Burma or rubber in Malaya or whatever else they planted in the stories of Somerset Maugham. One thing, however, was beyond question: handsome he was not. Miss Locke must have got him mixed up with someone else, unless, of course, being her, she was jealous that Miss Gosse had a suitor when she had none. On second thoughts, I doubted that she was jealous over Mr Denver who was an old man whose cheeks hung down and whose stomach stuck out, egg-shaped. He moved along the hall polished by Mrs Benyon to an extra degree of slipperiness with careful slowness, shuffling one foot after the other as if he feared to crack the precious shell.

He relinquished his hat to Miss Locke with some reluctance, I thought, looking quite sad to see it hung up, abandoned, on one of the knobs of the hallstand. I could sympathize with his feelings, for it had given him a certain consequence. Without it he was a king without his crown, his head, for the most part, bald and splodged with large freckles out of each of which a few white hairs sprouted irresolutely, like house plants it was time to harden your heart against and consign to the dustbin since they were beyond help.