Farthing (22 page)

house for a few days, while I complete my investigations, then I think I can assure you that if you’ve been telling the truth you can go free.”

“This is intolerable!” Kahn said. “We’re ready to leave. Lucy hates it here. Lord and Lady Eversley are leaving. We can’t stay here alone.”

“I think Mrs. Kahn will understand if you explain it to her,” Carmichael said. “Especially if you explain the alternative. British justice grinds exceedingly fine, and when it gets grist, it assumes it is there to be ground down. You had the opportunity to kill Sir James Thirkie, and those letters could be used to prove you had a motive. In a few days, we’ll have the real culprit.”

“Are you threatening me?” Kahn was white with anger.

“Far from it, Mr. Kahn. I’m trying to make you understand your position. I believe in at least the strong probability of your innocence. Do me the courtesy of believing in my good faith.”

19

I almost cried when David told me we had to stay. He was furious. He gets white around the lips when he’s really angry, and he was like that now. He paced around the bedroom fuming, and at the same time throwing off his London clothes, because he couldn’t feel comfortable wearing town clothes in the country. “He doesn’t even think I did it!” he said. “He just thinks there’s too much evidence to let me free, just because I’m a Jew.”

“What evidence?” I asked.

“My friend Chaim, who I’ve told you about, wrote to me that he thought I should make a bomb and blow up the Farthing Set, to prevent fascism from taking root in England. I told him it was nonsense, that we could never have fascism here because people were in essence too decent. But just having a letter like that in my possession damns me, apparently.”

“How did they know you had a letter like that?” I asked.

“They searched the flat,” he said. “They must have. It’s the only way. They searched the flat because I

was Jewish. I’m sure they didn’t search Normanby’s flat, or your Uncle Dudley’s house. And they read your letter from Hugh. The Inspector alluded to it.”

The thought of policemen searching our flat, touching our things, reading our most private letters, examining everything, made me feel rather sick. The year before, Eddie Cheriton had been staying up at

Stirling for the shooting, and the house had been burgled. When she described the burglars pawing through her things I felt exactly the same sort of disgust. The burglars left her clothes and things in a terrible mess, apparently, though she didn’t lose anything but a gold chain with a cross on it that her godmother had given her at her confirmation. I felt then that if that ever happened to me I’d have to throw away all the clothes that they’d touched. I felt the same now. I even wanted to sell the flat and move somewhere else, somewhere undefiled.

“What a violation,” I said, and I saw at once that David felt the same sort of horror.

“It’s nothing to what Jews have to go through on the Continent,” he said. “Nothing at all, you know that.”

“But that doesn’t make it acceptable,” I said at once. “The standard is not to be better than the worst thing available. It’s not much of a thing to be able to say it’s better than the deal Hitler gives the Jews!”

David came over and hugged me then, which was a comfort to me and I think to him as well.

“A few days in Farthing on our own won’t be too bad,” I said. “Mummy and Daddy will be in London, and so will half the staff. It’s years since I’ve been down here on my own.”

“The servants will resent us,” David said. “They probably long for their freedom in the quiet times.”

“The servants will make a big fuss of us, if my experience is anything to go by,” I said. “Their lives usually alternate between frantic panic, rushing about when everyone’s here, and boredom when nobody is.

Abby and I stayed here for a month on our own once when I had chicken pox, and everyone was lovely to me.”

“As soon as I’m properly dressed, we should go and say goodbye to your parents before they leave,”

David said. He always stuck to the rules in matters like that.

“Inspector Carmichael will have told them we’re staying,” I said. “Or if he has any sense, he’ll have told

Sukey and let her tell Mummy.”

“Why would that be better?” David asked, frowning. He was halfway into a pair of proper country trousers, linen ones with a crease.

“Because it’s Sukey who would have to do any organization necessary, not that there’d be much, beyond telling Mrs. Smollett to feed us. And Sukey can always tell Mummy things in a way that doesn’t make her angry, even if she doesn’t agree.”

“I’ve never really understood Miss Dorset’s status,” David said.

“Well her title is housekeeper-companion, and she counts as one of the family because she’s a distant relation of Mummy’s. Her father was a second cousin or something, and a clergyman, and poor as a church mouse, of course, though if he’d lived he might have been a bishop I suppose. Anyway, he didn’t, he was killed—in the Boer War, I think, or it might have been the Spanish Armada.” I waved my hand vaguely to indicate that it was a long time ago and I couldn’t be expected to remember what war it was.

David almost smiled. “Anyway, Sukey’s mother was left with a baby, so Grandfather Dorset naturally took her in, and just as naturally put her to work. Sukey was brought up with Mummy, she’s a few years older than she is, and Mummy brought her with her when she married. Also,” I added, remembering that it was all right to talk to David about this sort of thing now, “they’re lovers, of course, in a Macedonian way.”

“Your mother and Sukey Dorset?” David asked, in a very surprised tone. He was adjusting his tie and he made an awful pig’s ear of it because what I said made him pull just when he shouldn’t.

“Hugh caught them in bed once, and I’ve seen them kissing myself,” I said.

“And does Lord Eversley know?”

“Daddy doesn’t interfere with Mummy very much. But it isn’t Bognor, I mean adultery—I’m sorry, darling; I don’t mean to be putting in my own silly words all the time except where there aren’t any proper words. It isn’t adultery because Daddy does know even if he shuts his eyes to it. Hugh thought maybe Mummy made it a condition when they got married, that she could bring Sukey.” In fact, Hugh and I had never considered it Bognor because it had been going on for longer than we’d been alive and we’d always just accepted it as part of how the world was.

I’d never really thought it through. “I suppose

Daddy could insist on getting rid of her if he really didn’t like it, though I don’t know what Mummy would do, maybe put poison in his coffee.”

And that was just the wrong thing to say, because just when I’d got David calmed down I reminded him

of murder and he tensed up again, worse than ever. He finished messing about with his tie.

“Let’s go down and make sure they understand the situation, and say goodbye to them,” he said.

We went down to the drawing room. We walked in on a blazing row. Mummy was sitting in her chair.

She glared at me as we opened the door. Daddy, his arm still in a sling, was standing by the fireplace.

Mark was sitting on the sofa, and Angela was standing by the window.

“I don’t want to go to Campion,” Angela was saying. “I want to go to London to sort myself out, and then up to Thirkie. Baby should be born at Thirkie.”

“It’ll be some months yet,” Daddy said, reasonably. “Old Lady Thirkie wants to see you; you can comfort each other. It’s a very long way to Thirkie. You could take the train to Campion, changing at

Newport, and be there by tea time.”

“James’s mother hates me, she always has,” Angela said. “I could take the train to London, though it’s absurd that the police have impounded the car. James didn’t die in the car, after all, he died in the dressing room.”

“It would be best for everyone if you went to Campion for a few days,” Mark said, in a very reasonable tone. “Only a day or so. Then you could go to London and get ready to go up to Thirkie for the funeral.”

“I don’t see any reason why I should go and humor that terrible old lady,” Angela said. She looked like a two-year-old about to have a tantrum.

“I think you’ll find it best,” Mark said, in a very significant way, though what he was saying was anything but significant.

“It’ll look good with the press too,” Daddy said.

All this time we’d been hesitating in the doorway and Mummy had been glaring at us, but hadn’t said a word.

“I didn’t agree to all this just so I could be bullied by all of you!” Angela said.

“Either come in or go away again, Lucy,” Mummy said. Angela gave a kind of gasp when she turned and saw us. “Angela, you’re doing little enough and for all the benefit you’re getting. I doubt a few days at

Campion will kill you.”

“Oh!” Angela shouted, and stormed out, pushing past us.

David gave me a “What was all that about?” look, to which I just shrugged my incomprehension.

“I suppose you’ve heard that we’re staying on for a few days,” I said, going in and sitting down on the sofa against the wall. David followed me and sat down next to me.

“Yes, Inspector Carmichael was kind enough to inform me,” Mummy said, not unthawing at all.

“In the war I believe there were several requisitions of private houses by government ministries. I shall think of this like that.”

“Oh for goodness sake, Mummy!” I began, but David cut me off.

“I’m terribly sorry to inconvenience you in this way, Lady Eversey. It’s a matter entirely out of my control, and I wouldn’t have imposed on you like this for the world.”

Mummy inclined her head a little. She always approves of good manners, from anyone.

“Of course you can’t help it,” Daddy said. “And you’re welcome to stay here for as long as suits you.

Lucy knows her way about. Ride, if you like, or borrow a gun any time you want to.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir,” David said, stiffly.

Mark got up then. “If you’ll excuse me, Lady Eversley, I should see if Daphne’s ready to go.

Eddie’s driving us to the station, and we wouldn’t want to keep her waiting. I do hope you have a nice stay at

Farthing, Lucy, Mr. Kahn.” He nodded to us. “I’ll see you two in London.” He bowed over Mummy’s hand, as if they didn’t see each other practically every day.

“Is everyone off?” Daddy asked.

“Tibs and Dudley are coming with us in the car,” Mummy said. “The Francises and the Manninghams have left. That’s everyone.”

“Sukey coming with us?” Daddy asked.

“She’s driving down separately in my car with Jackson, once he comes back from taking the servants to the station.”

“You mean we’re going all the way to London in the chuffer?” Daddy asked in dismay. The chuffer was the Rolls, a splendidly grand car that Daddy hardly ever used because he didn’t think it had enough room for his legs.

“You’ll just have to put up with it. If we’re taking Tibs and Dudley, we ought to take them in style.”

“I’d give odds they’d rather go in comfort,” Daddy grumbled. He turned to us. “How’s your little Hillman for leg room? Fit in it all right?”

“I find it very comfortable,” David said. “There’s plenty of room in the front, but as we always drive it ourselves, I’m not so sure about the back.”

“Probably better driving yourself than keeping chauffeurs eating their heads off about the place,” Daddy said. “Bad as horses. How many servants do you get by with?”

“Just three,” David said. “A cook, a housemaid, and a kitchenmaid. We send all our clothes out to laundries, as you can in London.”

“You dress yourselves?” Daddy asked, clearly marveling at the concept.

“I suppose you find it very difficult to keep servants,” Mummy put in, looking pityingly at us.

The annoying thing about that is that it was true. Ordinary Jewish families, like David’s family, don’t have any trouble. They hire Jewish servants. One of the best ways of getting Jews out of Europe actually is to bring them in as servants. I know a professor of physics who was smuggled into England as a valet. He went on to work in physics, obviously, but plenty of people who had their own small businesses in

Germany and France are only too happy to work in service in England, at least for a few years.

Our own

Mrs. Smollett is an example. I know for a fact she wasn’t a cook in Poland, and she didn’t live in a ghetto either; she owned her own restaurant on one of the most stylish streets in Warsaw.

David and I, however, didn’t have it so easy. The advantage to Jewish servants of being in a Jewish household was that the food would be right, and they’d be able to keep the Sabbath—which means doing nothing at all between sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday.

We didn’t keep the

Sabbath—David didn’t even before he met me—though we often had a pleasant quiet sort of day on

Saturday, just lazing around at home reading and making love. We also didn’t keep the dietary laws, though I wouldn’t have minded and I sometimes had the feeling David wanted to. His breaking them was a deliberate taboo-breaking thing for him. He ate pork because he wanted to be seen as English, not because he wanted to eat it. I resented it when people served it to him specially. He never talked about it, except once, when he said how he wished that people would read the rest of the things Jews aren’t supposed to eat and take to serving us buttered lobsters or shrimp on toast.

We had very good servants now, who understood us, and we were happy with them, but in our first few weeks of marriage there’d hardly been a week in which someone hadn’t given notice because we were either too Jewish for them, or not Jewish enough.

“Yes, servants these days are terrible, especially in London,” David said, in almost Mummy’s own tone.

“They hear they can get more working in a factory, or a shop, and they’re off. There’s so little old-fashioned loyalty about. We’ve had to find servants from the country and train them ourselves, except for our cook, who’s a Frenchwoman and simply devoted to us.”

Mummy absolutely lapped this up, but I had to look away, because if I’d caught David’s eye I’d have started to laugh. I’d never seen him do this kind of imitation in front of someone before, though he did it often enough when we were alone, or with friends who’d appreciate the joke.