Hand in Glove (2 page)

“Do you think so? And why ‘Bloodbath’?”

“Well, they won’t have sent it for me. Good morning, Mr. Copper.”

“Good morning, sir. Would it be Miss Maitland-Mayne?” asked the driver, touching his cap.

Nicola said it would, and he opened the door.

“You’ll take a lift too, sir, I daresay. Mr. Cartell asked me to look out for you.”

“What!” the young man exclaimed, staring at Nicola. “Are
you
, too, bound for Ye Olde Bachelor’s Lay-by?”

“I’m going to Mr. Pyke Period’s house. Could there be some mistake?”

“Not a bit of it. In we get.”

“Well, if you say so,” Nicola said and they got into the back of the car. It was started up with a good deal of commotion and they set off down the lane. “What did you mean by ‘Bloodbath’?” Nicola repeated.

“You’ll see. I’m going,” the young man shouted, “to visit my stepfather, who is called Mr. Harold Cartell. He shares Mr. Pyke Period’s house.”

“I’m going to type for Mr. Pyke Period.”

“You cast a ray of hope over an otherwise unpropitious venture. Hold very nice and tight, please,” said the young man, imitating a bus conductor. They swung out of the lane, brought up short under the bonnet of a gigantic truck loaded with a crane and drainpipes, and lost their engine. The truck driver blasted his horn. His mate leaned out of the cab. “You got the death-wish, Jack?” he asked the driver.

The driver looked straight ahead of him and restarted his engine. Nicola saw that they had turned into the main street of a village and were headed for the Green.

“Trembling in every limb, are you?” the young man asked her. “Never mind;
now
you see what I meant by ‘Bloodbath.’ ” He leant towards her. “There is another rather grand taxi in the village,” he confided, “but Pyke Period likes to stick to Mr. Copper, because he’s come down in the world.”

He raised his voice. “That was a damn’ close-run thing, Mr. Copper,” he shouted.

“Think they own the place, those chaps,” the driver rejoined. “Putting the sewer up the side lane by Mr. Period’s house, and what for? Nobody wants it.”

He turned left at the Green, pulled in at a short drive and stopped in front of a smallish Georgian house.

“Here we are,” said the young man.

He got out, extricated Nicola’s typewriter and his own umbrella, and felt in his pocket. Although largish and exceptionally tall, he was expeditious and quick in all his movements.

“Nothing to pay, Mr. Bantling,” said the driver. “Mr. Period gave the order.”

“Oh, well…One for the road, anyway.”

“Very kind of you, but no need, I’m sure. All right, Miss Maitland-Mayne?”

“Quite, thank you,” said Nicola, who had alighted. The car lurched off uproariously. Looking to her right, Nicola could see the crane and the top of its truck over a quickset hedge. She heard the sound of male voices.

The front door had opened and a small dark man in an alpaca coat appeared.

“Good morning, Alfred,” her companion said. “As you see, I’ve brought Miss Maitland-Mayne with me.”

“The gentlemen,” Alfred said, “are expecting you both, sir.”

Pixie shot out of the house in a paroxysm of barking.

“Quiet,” said Alfred, menacing her.

She whined, crouched and then precipitated herself upon Nicola. She stood on her hind legs, slavering and grimacing, and scraped at Nicola with her forepaws.

“Here, you!” said the young man indignantly. “Paws off!”

He cuffed Pixie away and she made loud ambiguous noises.

“I’m sure I’m very sorry, Miss,” said Alfred. “It’s said to be only its fun. This way, if you please, Miss.”

Nicola found herself in a modest but elegantly proportioned hall. It looked like an advertisement from a glossy magazine:
Small Georgian residence of character
— and, apart from being Georgian, had no other character to speak of.

Alfred opened a door on the right. “In the library, if you please, Miss,” he said. “Mr. Period will be down immediately.”

Nicola walked in. The young man followed and put her typewriter on a table by a window.

“I can’t help wondering,” he said, “what you’re going to do for P.P. After all, he’d never type his letters of condolence, would he?”

“What can you mean?”

“You’ll see. Well, I suppose I’d better launch myself on my ill-fated mission. You might wish me luck.”

Something in his voice caught her attention. She looked up at him. His mouth was screwed dubiously sideways.

“It never does,” he said, “to set one’s heart on something, does it? Furiously, I mean.”

“Good heavens, what a thing to say! Of course, one must. Continuously… Expectation,” said Nicola grandly, “is the springboard of achievement.”

“Rather a phony slogan, I’m afraid.”

“I thought it neat.”

“I should like to confide in you. What a pity we won’t meet over your nice curry. I’m lunching with my mama, who lives in the offing with her third husband.”

“How do you know it’s going to be curry?”

“It often is.”

“Well,” Nicola said, “I wish you luck.”

“Thank you very much.” He smiled at her. “Good typing!”

“Good hunting! If you are hunting.”

He laid his finger against his nose, pulled a mysterious grimace and left her.

Nicola opened up her typewriter and a box of quarto paper and surveyed the library.

It looked out on the drive and the rose garden and it was like the hall in that it had distinction without personality.

Over the fireplace hung a dismal little water colour. Elsewhere on the walls were two sporting prints, a painting of a bewhiskered ensign in the Brigade of Guards pointing his sword at some lightning, and a faded photograph of several Edwardian minor royalties grouped in baleful conviviality about a picnic luncheon. In the darkest corner was a framed genealogical tree, sprouting labels, arms and mantling. There were bookcases with uniform editions, novels, and a copy of
Handley Cross.
Standing apart from the others, a
corps d’élite
, were Debrett, Burke, Kelly’s and
Who’s Who.
The desk itself was rich with photographs, framed in silver. Each bore witness to the conservative technique of the studio and the well-bred restraint of the sitter.

Through the side window, Nicola looked across Mr. Period’s rose garden to a quickset hedge and an iron gate leading into a lane. Beyond this gate was a trench, with planks laid across it, a heap of earth and her old friend the truck — from which, with the aid of its crane, the workmen were unloading drainpipes.

Distantly and overhead, she heard male voices. Her acquaintance of the train (what had the driver called him?) and his stepfather, Nicola supposed.

She was thinking of him with amusement when the door opened and Mr. Pyke Period came in.

He was a tall, elderly man with a marked stoop, silver hair, large brown eyes and a small mouth. He was beautifully dressed, with exactly the correct suggestion of well-worn, scrupulously tended tweed.

He advanced upon Nicola with curved arm held rather high and bent at the wrist. The Foreign Office, or at the very least Commonwealth Relations, were invoked.

“This is
really
kind of you,” said Mr. Pyke Period, “and awfully lucky for me.”

They shook hands.

“Now, do tell me,” Mr. Period continued, “because I’m the most inquisitive old party, and I’m dying to know — you
are
Basil’s daughter,
aren’t
you?”

Nicola, astounded, said that she was.

“Basil Maitland-Mayne?” he gently insisted.

“Yes, but I don’t make much of a to-do about the ‘Maitland,’ ” said Nicola.

“Now, that’s naughty of you. A splendid old family. These things matter.”

“It’s such a mouthful.”

“Never
mind
! So you’re dear old Basil’s gel! I was sure of it. Such fun for me because, do you know, your grandfather was one of my very dear friends. A bit my senior, but he was one of those soldiers of the old school who never let you
feel
the gap in ages.”

Nicola, who remembered her grandfather as an arrogant, declamatory old egoist, managed to make a suitable rejoinder. Mr. Period looked at her with his head on one side.

“Now,” he said gaily, “I’m going to confess. Shall we sit down? Do you know, when I called on those perfectly splendid people to ask about typewriting and they gave me some names from their books, I positively leapt at yours. And do you know why?”

Nicola had her suspicions and they made her feel uncomfortable. But there was something about Mr. Period — what was it? — something vulnerable and foolish, that aroused her compassion. She knew she was meant to smile and shake her head and she did both.

Mr. Period said, sitting youthfully on the arm of a leather chair: “It was because I felt that we would be working together on — dear me, too difficult! — on a common ground. Talking the same language.” He waited for a moment and then said cozily: “And now you know
all
about me. I’m the most dreadful old anachronism — a Period piece, in fact.”

As Nicola responded to this joke she couldn’t help wondering how often Mr. Period had made it.

He laughed delightedly with her. “So, speaking as one snob to another,” he ended, “I couldn’t be more enchanted that you are
you
. Well, never mind! One’s meant not to say such things in these egalitarian days.”

He had a conspiratorial way of biting his underlip and lifting his shoulders: it was indescribably arch. “But we mustn’t be naughty,” said Mr. Pyke Period.

Nicola said: “They didn’t really explain at the agency exactly what my job is to be.”

“Ah! Because they didn’t exactly know. I was coming to that.”

It took him some time to come to it, though, because he would dodge about among innumerable parentheses. Finally, however, it emerged that he was writing a book. He had been approached by the head of a publishing firm.

“Wonderful,” Nicola said, “actually to be
asked
by a publisher to write.”

He laughed. “My dear child, I promise you it would never have come from
me
. Indeed, I thought he must be pulling my leg. But not at all. So in the end I madly consented and — and there we are, you know.”

“Your memoirs, perhaps?” Nicola ventured.

“No. No, although I must say — but no. You’ll never guess!”

She felt that she never would, and waited.

“It’s — how can I explain? Don’t laugh! It’s just that in these extraordinary times there are all sorts of people popping up in places where one would least expect to find them: clever, successful people, we must admit, but
not
— as we old fogies used to say — ‘not quite-quite.’ And there they find themselves in a
milieu
where they really are, poor darlings, at a grievous loss.”

And there it was: Mr. Pyke Period had been commissioned to write a book on etiquette. Nicola suspected that his publisher had displayed a remarkably shrewd judgment. The only book on etiquette she had ever read, a Victorian work unearthed in an attic by her brother, had been a favourite source for ribald quotation. “ ‘It is a mark of ill-breeding in a lady,’ ” Nicola’s brother would remind her, “ ‘to look over her shoulder, still more behind her, when walking abroad.’ ”

“ ‘There should be no diminution of courteous observance,’ ” she would counter, “ ‘in the family circle. A brother will always rise when his sister enters the drawing-room and open the door to her when she shows her intention of quitting it.’ ”

“ ‘While on the sister’s part some slight acknowledgment of his action will be made: a smile or a quiet ‘Thank you’ will indicate her awareness of the little attention.’ ”

Almost as if he had read her thoughts, Mr. Period was saying: “Of course, one knows all about these delicious Victorian offerings — quite wonderful. And there
have
been contemporaries: poor Félicité Sankie-Bond, after their crash, don’t you know, and one mustn’t overlap with dear Nancy. Very diffy. In the meantime…”

In the meantime, it at last transpired, Nicola was to make a typewritten draft of his notes and assemble them under their appropriate headings. These were: “The Ball-Dance,” “Trifles That Matter,” “The Small Dinner,” “The Partie Carré,” “Addressing Our Letters & Betters,” “Awkwiddities,” “The Debutante — Lunching and Launching,” “Tips on Tipping.”

And, bulkily, in a separate compartment, “The Compleat Letter-Writer.”

She was soon to learn that letter-writing was a great matter with Mr. Pyke Period. He was, in fact, famous for his letters of condolence.

They settled to work: Nicola at her table near the front French windows, Mr. Period at his desk in the side one.

Her job was an exacting one. Mr. Period evidently jotted down his thoughts piecemeal, as they had come to him, and it was often difficult to know where a passage precisely belonged. “Never
fold
the napkin (there is no need, I feel sure, to put the unspeakable ‘serviette’ in its place), but drop it lightly on the table.” Nicola listed this under “Table Manners,” and wondered if Mr. Period would find the phrase “refeened,” a word he often used with humorous intent.

She looked up to find him in a trance, his pen suspended, his gaze rapt, a sheet of headed letter-paper under his hand. He caught her glance, and said: “A few lines to my dear Désirée Bantling.
Soi-disante
. The Dowager, as the
Telegraph
would call her. You saw Ormsbury had gone, I daresay?”

Nicola, who had no idea whether the Dowager Lady Bantling had been deserted or bereaved, said: “No, I didn’t see it.”

“Letters of condolence!” Mr. Period sighed with a faint hint of complacency. “How difficult they are!” He began to write again, quite rapidly, with sidelong references to his note-pad.

Upstairs a voice, clearly recognizable, shouted angrily: “. . and all I can say, you horrible little man, is I’m bloody sorry I ever asked you.” Someone came rapidly downstairs and crossed the hall. The front door slammed. Through her window, Nicola saw her travelling companion, scarlet in the face, stride down the drive, angrily swinging his bowler.

He’s forgotten his umbrella, she thought.