England Made Me (30 page)

Hall staked five crowns.

‘Do you know a soprano, Miss Farrant? I'm held up for a soprano. Mrs Wisecock hasn't the stage sense.'

‘Thank the Lord,' Anthony said, ‘I've bought my tickets.'

‘Bought your tickets?' Hall said sharply.

‘Otherwise there'd be no London for yours truly. Do they include food with the fare?'

‘No drinks, my boy,' Gullie said.

Kate said: ‘You've bought the tickets?' She thought: He's beaten them after all: only this tune to remember then, because it would never be repeated. Tony happy, the mist rising, the firelight doubled by the panes, the thin hum of the electric power. ‘Give me five'; in his hand a straight flush. ‘I'll double you.' He'll remember this, Kate thought; year after year he'll talk about tonight, playing poker with Krogh, drawing five cards, drawing a straight flush. The story going round the world, in how many clubs, always unbelieved. ‘Double.'

‘I go down,' Gullie said.

But already she had begun to plan how they might be together again. She knew she might have prayed; the temptation was there, to fall back on eternity, on other people's God, the emotional cry in the dumb breast, the nudity of confession: I love him more than anything in the world; no, inexact, go nearer truth: I love no one, nothing but him; therefore give him me, let me keep him; never mind what he wants, save me, the all-important me, from pain: do I call it pain, agony, parting here, parting there, messages on post-cards, the storm, the wires down, no more thought in common. But she wouldn't pray, she took what comfort and credit she could for not praying; it wasn't that one disbelieved in prayer; one never lost all one's belief in magic. It was that she preferred to plan, it was fairer, it wasn't loading the dice.

‘Double again.'

‘I'll put you up five.'

‘I'll go down,' Krogh said.

‘Double.'

‘I'll call you,' Hall said.

‘Well, you can't beat a straight flush.'

‘No,' Hall said, ‘I can't beat that.'

Anthony said: ‘This'll take me across. I'll be able to have a good blind on this.'

Hall began to shuffle the cards again.

‘I'm out,' Gullie said.

‘We've had enough,' Kate said. ‘It'll take you all night to win that back, Mr Hall. Let's have another drink and go to bed.' Something in the sight of him sitting there, his prominent cuffs, his thin hands clutching the cards, irritated her. She said: ‘Cheer up. You'll win it back another day. Was he always like this, Erik?' she asked. ‘Always so serious?' She explained to Captain Gullie: ‘They were almost boys together.'

‘I've seen him in a false nose,' Krogh said, ‘but I don't think it altered him.'

‘Were the police after you, Mr Hall?'

Hall said sullenly: ‘It was those festas they have. I believe in doing in Rome as the Romans –'

‘Mr Hall's getting classical,' Kate said. His malice across the table, like a small oppressive flame, danced in the corner of the eye. One wanted either to put it out or fan it to something larger.

Hall said: ‘I'm going home. Good night, Miss Farrant.'

‘I'll walk back with you,' Anthony said.

‘Stay a bit, Captain Gullie. It's still quite early. Have another drink. Tell me, tell me,' Kate said, ‘oh, tell me about tartans, Captain Gullie.'

‘That reminds me,' Gullie said, dropping his voice, ‘of something that fellow Minty was telling me.'

‘Minty?' Krogh asked. He rose from the table and joined them. ‘What's that about Minty?'

Hall stood in the doorway buttoning his coat. It was a little too tight in the waist; it constrained him. He said sharply: ‘Don't you worry, Mr Krogh.'

‘An odd untrustworthy fellow. Runs the old Harrovian Club here. Don't know how it got into his hands. The Minister can't stand him. He was trying to make out you were MacDonalds. Well, of course, I looked it up.'

‘Good old Minty,' Anthony said. ‘Good-bye, Kate. I'm off early.'

‘Good-bye.'

‘Good-bye, Mr Krogh, and thanks for your help. You didn't really need me here. Good-bye, Gullie. See you in London one of these days, I expect.'

But she had no plan, and she couldn't let him go. She caught him up by the lift. Hall went down before him and he waited for her.

‘What's up, old thing?'

Kate said: ‘There are things I want to talk to you about.' She thought: Every day he'll forget her, but the idea gave her no comfort. (Every day he'll forget me.) She said: ‘I haven't seen much of you. There was a lot I wanted to say to you,' with desperate sentiment, ‘about the old days.'

‘This time,' Anthony said, ‘I'll be a faithful correspondent. Three pages every Sunday.'

His bonhomie infuriated her; it flashed back at her from the long mirror-lined corridor, it grimaced sideways at her from the mirrored stairs, it sparkled from the lift's chromium doors. She said: ‘That's the best I get, three weekly pages, when I've worked for you for years. Everything I've done was to help you, and now because a little bitch –' she despised her own tears; they were too cheap an appeal; she wouldn't dry them, wouldn't call attention to them, just let them drip across her face as if she'd walked through a storm without her hat.

‘But, Kate,' Anthony said, ‘I'm fond of you.' He glanced with hurried embarrassment down the lift shaft. ‘Hall's waiting for me. I must be off.' He grabbed weakly at her hand. ‘I love you, Kate. Really I do. More than anyone in the world. But Loo. I'm in love with her. I'm crazy about her. You'd like her if you knew her, Kate.' He became reasonable and sententious. ‘Love and in love, Kate. There's the difference.'

‘Oh, go to hell,' Kate said, and ran back up the passage, smearing away her tears with her hand as she ran. She heard him shout: ‘Coming, Hall,' down the shaft, ring for the lift. She stopped outside the door, cleaned and prepared her face as if she were wiping it free of Anthony.

When she opened the door, Krogh said: ‘Where's Hall?' She was surprised by his sharpness and anxiety. She said: ‘He's gone with Anthony.'

‘It's stuffy in here,' Krogh said. ‘Hall smokes such bad cigarettes.' He threw up the double panes and leant out of the window. ‘I wanted Hall.'

‘Well, I ought to be making tracks,' Captain Gullie remarked weakly, twisting his empty glass, drooping over the card-table, the ivory chips, the deep ash-tray crammed with damp butts.

‘Don't go,' Kate said. ‘Have another drink.' She poured out three glasses, but Krogh didn't come. ‘Here's how,' she said like an echo of Anthony.

‘Foggy,' Krogh said.

‘You might have sent them home in the car.'

He said sharply: ‘Hall wanted to walk. He told me he wanted to walk.' He pulled down the window.

‘A car's no good in one of these fogs,' Gullie said. ‘It's quicker to walk. You might drive over into the lake before you knew where you were.' He began to deal out some cards. ‘Do you know the Imp of Mischief Patience, Miss Farrant?'

‘I don't like Patience.'

‘You'll like this one. You've got to cover the knaves first, do you see? They are the Imps, ha, ha.'

‘Whose note-case is that? Is it Anthony's?' Kate asked.

‘No,' Krogh said, ‘that's Hall's. I saw it too late.'

‘I shouldn't have thought Hall was one to leave his money about,' Gullie said. ‘Did you see how he held his cards, ha, ha. Close-fisted, what?' The idea tickled him no end; anything tickled Gullie; he enjoyed himself wherever he went with the reckless abandonment of a child; any table could set Gullie in a roar.

‘There'll be tears before night,' Kate said.

‘Eh, what's that?' Gullie said. He swerved gallantly away from the Imps of Mischief. ‘What's that, Miss Farrant?'

‘What's the matter, Erik?' Kate said. ‘Have a drink. You're tired.'

‘I'll buzz off,' Gullie said. ‘Imp of Mischief, ha, ha.'

‘No, don't go,' Krogh said. ‘I don't want to go to bed yet. It's early.'

‘There's the lift.'

‘Hall's coming back for his money,' Gullie said. ‘Let's hide it.'

Kate said with bitter irritation: ‘What a little Imp of Mischief you are.'

But the lift stopped at the floor below.

‘Nearly got it out that time,' Gullie said, reshuffling the cards. ‘Tried to teach a Frenchman once. Wasn't a bit of good. He always cheated. Can't see the fun of playing Patience if you cheat.'

Krogh suddenly slid open the great folding doors, walked through to his study, his bedroom. They could see him, past the collected editions, past the Milles sculpture, taking aspirin. ‘What is it, Erik?' Kate said.

‘A headache.' He turned back towards them, tooth-mug in hand, and called through the two rooms: ‘What's this parcel?'

‘Ties,' Kate said.

‘I've got enough ties, haven't I?'

‘Tony chose them for you this afternoon.'

‘Tony?' he said.

‘Open it. They are good ties if Tony chose them.'

‘I don't need them. Send them back.'

‘He paid for them.'

Krogh said: ‘He shouldn't have done that. You ought to have stopped him, Kate.'

‘He's grateful to you. He wanted to do something.'

Krogh said: ‘Why does everyone give me things? I can buy them, can't I? Hall gives me cuff-links. I've got enough cuff-links.'

‘All right,' Kate said, ‘I'll send them back.' She came through to the bedroom and took the parcel. ‘You've emptied the aspirin bottle. What's the matter, Erik?'

‘Only a headache.'

‘Let me see what he bought.' She opened the parcel; they lay there in striped discretion; he had good taste in clothes. ‘You might as well wear them.'

‘No. I've got enough. Send them back.'

She carried them through to her own room and laid them in a drawer between her vests. A lift-bell rang, she could hear Gullie in the drawing-room click the cards; she thought: I haven't a plan, he's gone, the last thing I said was ‘Go to hell.' Sadly she reproached herself for a lack of care: from childhood she had been brought up by servants who told fortunes in tea-cups, by nurses who threw salt over the left shoulder, to be careful of last words. Quarrel if you must, but make it up before night. ‘Go to hell,' that was for the beginning of an evening, not the end, for greeting, not for parting. In childhood one had been more careful; death was closer; one hadn't this hard grip on life. She touched the ties tenderly, tucking them in.

‘There's Hall,' Gullie said to them as they came back together, ‘what did I say? I knew he'd come back.' The lift stopped; it was Hall.

He came in hat in hand, thin and cold, narrow and unfriendly, the fog like dust in his red eyes. It had got in his throat. He was hoarse when he said: ‘I left my note-case.'

‘There it is, Hall,' Krogh said. He didn't seem to want to take it, smoothing his throat with his yellow-gloved hand; it was as if he wanted to say something, but no one would give him the cue.

‘I'll walk home with you, Hall,' Gullie said, but it wasn't that.

‘Did Anthony come back with you?' Kate said. She had the impression as he smoothed his throat of some great pain hopelessly demanding sympathy even from her, but she distrusted him and wouldn't give it. ‘Isn't he here?'

‘No,' Hall said, ‘I left him and came back.'

‘Have a drink, Hall,' Krogh said.

‘Thank you,' Hall said. ‘It gets your throat, out there. But here, with a drink,' he sketched a smile at them, roughly, unconvincingly, ‘everything's all right again, everything's O.K.'

‘He'll be home now,' Kate said. ‘I'll just give him a ring.'

‘Do you play Patience, Hall?' Gullie asked, laying out the Imps of Mischief.

‘Patience? No,' Hall said, and ‘no,' the voice said, coming up the wire, ‘Captain Farrant's not come in.'

‘Tell him,' she said, ‘to give me a ring when he comes in. His sister. Even if he's late. Tell him I'm waiting up to speak to him. Yes, however late.' She excused herself to them. ‘It's a superstition.' She said with sad affection: ‘It beats all. He's calling himself a captain now.'

PART VII

M
INTY
stood at the door, took the names, noted the wreaths: the huge wreath from Krogh, the small one from Laurin; he noticed that there was none from Kate, none from Hall. The coffin slid smoothly along its runway beneath the angular crucifix. The doors opened to receive it; the flapping of the flames was picked up by the microphone beside the altar and dispersed through the great bleak building. Minty crossed himself: they might just as well have left the body in the water. He had a horror of this death by fire.