Perfect Gallows (15 page)

“What do you think?” said Cousin Brown.

“Did he stand like that before he saw the picture?”

“You noticed? Yes. In here, when I first brought him up.”

“I don't see how …”

“No more do I. We are presented with a few very striking details, but because of his loss of memory we have no way of testing them or anything else. I have only one straw to clutch at. I am convinced I have seen him somewhere.”

“On the stage?”

“I have been racking my brains and going through the diaries. It would have been some very minor part. Chekhov? Or is it that he has become a Chekhov character now?”

“He could have acted a bit and still be your brother. I mean, he used to.”

“Charles was an admirable Aguecheek. I have to admit to a bias. I do so much want you to be the one who inherits.”

“Elspeth,” called Cousin Blue. “Charles has just remembered … Hurrah! There's the gong! I must say all this excitement does wonders for the appetite. Dear Charles! So happy to have you back!”

It looked as if Cousin Blue must have started losing at bridge—at least butter seemed to be back on rations again. Cousin Brown and Uncle Vole each had about two-thirds of a cylinder left, Cousin Blue less than half that. Charles had an ounce-size cube in front of his place, but Andrew had a perfect cylinder, stamped with a small “a” what's more, to distinguish it from Uncle Vole's capital. Only the colour told him it was marge—quite fair, since his ration-book stayed in Southampton, but he'd become used to the luxurious crumbs from General Odway's table.

Cousin Blue did almost all the talking, mainly about the years before the First War, trilling and giggling as she sweetened every scene into panto-fairy prettiness—Christmases in the sun above the spread vineyards of Constantia, Mediterranean dusks viewed from under the awnings of
Diamond
, tennis parties at The Mimms, Fourths of June at Eton, Goodwood trips in the trio of Silver Ghosts. Cousin Brown's deep-voiced contradictions added an occasional demon-king note. Charles, between them at the bottom of the table, played a quavering Prince Charming—not a difficult part, but well done. Andrew began to see what Cousin Brown meant about the problem of disproving his story. You couldn't pin him down in a falsehood or contradiction, ask him about things Cousin May couldn't prompt him on—Eton, or his regiment, for instance. There were just one or two weak spots. You could go to Hull, find out if a shelter had been bombed that winter, check the hospital records … But here, even when he did admit to a memory, it was in a dreamy way, as if he couldn't be quite sure. He didn't make the mistake of remembering too much, either.

“You
can't
have forgotten tripping Canon Golightly into the perch-pond!” Cousin Blue cried. “It was one of the funniest things!”

“I'm afraid for the moment … perhaps it will come back.”

“Very likely,” said Cousin Brown.

Charles nodded, smiling, deaf to the tone of doubt. Andrew was not very well placed to watch him. Charles was at the far end of the table and Andrew was along the left-hand side, next to Uncle Vole. The noise of the old man's scrapings and gobblings drowned most of Charles's murmurs. Andrew hadn't seen his great-uncle for nearly three weeks now, and he looked a lot shakier than last time. The Schoolroom was almost too warm for comfort, but the trembling mottled hands seemed hardly able to hold the spoon and fork, and though Samuel only half-filled the glass it seldom reached the blue-lipped mouth without spilling. It took Andrew a little while to realize that though Uncle Vole's face was bent right down over his plate to eat, his eyes were rolled up under the bristling brows to peer along the table. The big silver ornament that usually stood in the middle was missing too.

About halfway through the meal Uncle Vole spoke for the first time. The wine was white, South African—it had been the cue for Cousin Blue's Constantia memories—and as Samuel floated silently up to fill Charles's glass for the third time Cousin Blue made a little ripple of tongue-clicks and shook her index finger urgently, just above table level. Charles put out his hand to cover his glass.

“Fill it up,” snarled Uncle Vole.

The glass was filled, but from then on remained untouched, though once when Charles reached absent-mindedly for it he snatched his hand back, clearly in response to a kick under the table. The glasses, Andrew now noticed were larger than usual. His own had only been filled once and there was a jug of water in his reach, but not in Charles's. Usually during suppers in the Schoolroom Samuel stood between the sideboard and the door to the lift, but this evening he had chosen a different place, rather awkward because the table was a bit too wide for the room, almost directly behind Cousin Blue's chair. He could see Charles's face from there.

Was Charles aware that he was performing to so intent an audience? If so, he gave no sign. When Cousin Elspeth finally pushed her chair back he instantly rose to help Cousin Blue with hers and then almost dashed to the door to open and hold it, courtier-fashion, clearly expecting to follow the Cousins and Andrew out.

There was a snorting bellow from the table.

“Hey! You two! Where you off to?”

“Don't be too long,” trilled Cousin Blue from the doorway. She hissed a couple of words to Charles, who nodded, closed the door and came back to the chair which Samuel was holding for him on Uncle Vole's right. Samuel poured the first glasses of port, wheeled the dumb waiter with the used dishes into the lift and squeezed in beside it. The doors hissed shut and the lift whined down. There was nowhere for him to listen from up here, Andrew realized.

They sat in silence, Uncle Vole sucking and sluicing, Charles frowning as he sipped, apparently lost in a puzzling dream, but tense enough to spill when the old man spoke.

“Charles, uh?”

“Yes, sir. Pretty well sure of it now.”

“More 'n I am, I can tell you. Know who this other little bugger is?”

“Er … Andrew … our cousin, May said?”

“Tell yer he hoped I was going to leave him the house till you turned up?”

“Good lord! No, I don't think she … My memory, you know.”

“Drink up, man. Let's see what yer made of. I've told yer now. What d'yer think about it?”

“About …?”

“Andrew, yer fool! Not leaving the little bugger the house!”

“Oh … I suppose … but my dear Andrew, I can't say how sorry I am that things should have turned out like this.”

Andrew let Adrian do the shrug and smile—our hero at life's gaming-table, losing his whole estate with a laugh.

“Not much money in acting, eh?” cackled Uncle Vole.

“It's a dog's life,” said Charles.

“What yer know about it?”

“Well, ah …” said Charles, twisting his empty glass by the stem, frowning as though he wasn't aware of having drunk the wine.

“
He's
the one's going to be an actor,” said Uncle Vole.

“Have you been on the stage, sir?” said Andrew.

“Me? Well … you know, I do seem to remember …”

“Jesus bloody Christ!” said Uncle Vole. “D'yer mean all I've got is a choice between a couple of fairies?”

Charles flicked a glance at Andrew, one eyebrow slightly raised. It was natural—Uncle Vole's line in theatre-criticism would have baffled any stranger—but was there, as well as the appeal for help, a momentary hint of collusion, as if from a colleague? Of course, all Charles might be vaguely remembering was his long-ago performances here at The Mimms, his Aguecheek, his Demetrius.

“Sir Arnold doesn't care for actors,” said Andrew. “He says we're all queers. In fact the first time I came here he told me to go away because he said I was a bugger who wouldn't get drunk and couldn't talk women.”

He spoke in a clinical voice as if telling a fellow-doctor the symptoms of a madness. The tone must have stung a bit.

“Little pansy runt,” snarled Uncle Vole. “Fill yer glass, man. Not you, boy. You stick to water. Don't want to make you spew on the table.”

Charles did as he was told and tilted his chair back, cradling his glass in his hand.

“Women,” he murmured.

He took a gulp and nodded, as if having made up his mind.

“They're all the same,” said Uncle Vole.

“Ah, yes, but all different too,” said Charles. “F'rinstance, I remember a French lass. Said she was French, that is, but she had a Chinese look. What was her name? Mimi? Fifi? Something like that. Did an act with a knife-thrower …”

Uncle Vole grabbed the decanter, sloshed himself some more port and huddled forward to listen. The story was obviously a recitation piece, similar in a much posher way to the Dame's saga about the siren, but Charles told it teasingly, falling into apparent reveries and having to be snarled awake, or rambling off on diversions about circus life. Though he said he had slept with the girl and described doing so he didn't claim to have played a part in the main incident, which concerned the anatomical reasons for her preference of a hunchback clown to the circus strong man.

Uncle Vole sat twitching and snuffling.

“Bitches are all the same,” he said. “Seen it time and again, back in the Cape, white women getting on heat for a nigger boy. Why, me own cook here, simple country girl you'd have thought, she got it into her head she wanted to marry my Zulu boy. Everyone else said she was stark raving, not me. I knew what she was after. Provided it doesn't spoil her cooking, I said, having all that dark meat in her pot. Get it? All that dark meat in her pot.”

Charles produced the guffaw demanded, finished his glass and refilled it. Uncle Vole sat cackling, then swung to Andrew. “Learnt to talk better than milk-sop yet?”

“I could, but I'm not going to.”

“Still not been with a woman?”

“I have.”

“Tell us, then.”

“No.”

“Made a mess of it, of course.”

“No.”

“Don't want us to watch your maiden blushes?”

Of course Uncle Vole was pretending to set up a sort of competition with The Mimms as the prize, and Andrew could easily have talked about Lily in a way that would warm the old brute's blood for a minute or two, but he had no intention of doing so, any more than he would have talked to anyone (except Mum, and she was dead) about what he was going to do and be as an actor. Both were gifts, powers he could command thanks to the mysterious daemon inside him, which must not be taken for granted by talking about them. It wasn't the physical ability to perform that mattered—everybody had that, almost. It was the power that had made Lily say yes, that had made Jean stand still and be kissed—and was also going to make the crammed tiers of a theatre stop their breathing at a gesture, their souls swaying all with one movement, reeds in his wind … There's a very extraordinary thing about Ariel, Cousin Brown had said. No other character in the play, not Miranda, not even Caliban, knows he exists. If they did then Prospero might lose his power over him. And it is Ariel who makes the whole plot happen. All the characters dance to his tunes, heard or unheard.

“I just don't talk about them,” said Andrew.

“More'n one, hey?”

Andrew nodded to Charles, returning the flash of collusion, and rose.

“Siddown, you,” said Uncle Vole.

“Thank you for supper, sir,” said Andrew, and left.

Despite what she'd said on leaving the Schoolroom Andrew was surprised to find Cousin Blue in the Boudoir, looking through a leather-bound photograph album. She glanced up at his entrance, saw he was alone, and sighed.

“No bridge tonight, Cousin May?”

“Poor May's had a squabble with General Odway,” said Cousin Brown.

“These Americans,” said Cousin Blue. “Really, I think the Russians would be more considerate. They are much too fond of winning. If they lose, they seem to think that someone must be cheating them.”

“He didn't!” said Andrew, all sympathetic shock.

“Let us not talk about it,” said Cousin Blue. “Come and see what I have found. I was going to show them to Charles.”

Cousin Brown was frowning her way through one of her diaries, still apparently hunting for a play in which she might have seen Charles act, so Andrew settled on the bungy sofa beside Cousin Blue. She was wearing a lot of flowery girlish scent, he noticed.

It wasn't like an ordinary snapshot album. The pictures were brown and not shiny, but very clear. Each of them filled a whole page. The first showed a big white bungalow with a mountain behind it. Spiky and cactusy plants grew in the garden. You could guess how bright the sunlight was from the blackness beneath the heavy verandah. Under the photograph a clear round hand had written the words “South Mimms”. The next picture was of children having tea on a rug in the same garden under the shadow of a leaning tree with deep-fissured bark. A white nursemaid supervised from a canvas chair. “M., C., Nanny Bounce, E.” said the caption.

“That was us,” said Cousin Blue. “I was only a baby, so of course I don't remember.”

“Who took them?” asked Andrew.

“Mother did. It was her hobby. She was rather clever at it. She did all the messing about afterwards—what's it called?—too.”

“Developing.”

“Of course.”

They leafed slowly on. Andrew looked at the photographs with interest. You never knew. Just possibly some time he might come across a part which needed a feel for that particular way of life, and the album seemed to hold it trapped in its own time, not just the moustaches and the women's hats and the glittering carriages and the sporting guns, but the whole feel of a society in its landscape. It was something about the sky, perhaps. You could feel the country going endlessly on and on. Andrew could even imagine, far away up north, a white man who might actually have come to one of the parties, sitting in a native hut and listening to an old blind witch-doctor telling him the story of Nada. In fact there were very few darkies in any of the pictures. Sometimes a servant with a tray of drinks. Once a line of men and women doing something in a vineyard. It was almost a shock when Cousin Blue turned a page and twisted the album round because the photograph was higher than it was wide and had been pasted in sideways.