Perfect Gallows (26 page)

“That's what they told us at the medical.”

“Heavens! And we shall barely have ended our run! What a mercy it is not a day sooner!”

“Nonsense,” said Cousin Blue. “We would simply have told them he couldn't be spared. I'm sure they would have understood. But don't you think it a pity, Charles, that you aren't doing the play down here, the way we always used to?”

“And how would we get an audience out here in wartime?” said Cousin Brown.

“Why—we have one ready-made! Let's ask the Americans!”

“Absurd. Besides, all the dates are already booked.”

“But you're going to have dress rehearsals—why don't you have one here? Please do not sigh at me like that, Elspeth.”

“My dear May, from what you have seen of the Americans, from the so-called music they choose to play over that dreadful instrument, do you seriously believe they will wish to spend their time watching …”

“That's just what you said about my tours of the house, and look how successful they were. If Andrew were to have a word with his friend Mr Stephens …”

“Really!” said Cousin Brown. “Who is producing this play, may I ask?”

“We are, of course. It's always been a family thing. Charles and dear Andrew are acting in it and you are directing and now I'm helping to get an audience. All together. Quite like old time. Charles?”

Cousin Blue had presumably made the original suggestion on the spur of the moment, merely for the sake of interfering with already settled arrangements. Now she was enjoying Cousin Brown's irritation. Andrew mentally drew himself aside. The flimsy letter fluttered in his fingers. It had a temporary feel about it. It didn't have to last, only three weeks. Then it could go to the paper collection and be pulped and become another drab summons for someone else … Three weeks to do what he chose because he chose it, his own master …

“Don't you think, Andrew, it would be jolly to put on just one teeny wee performance down here?”

“Of course he does not. Now, May, I must ask you to stop interfering. We have more than enough to get done. Andrew …”

Cousin Brown paused, waiting for him to turn, but he stood looking up over the tiers of seats towards the head of the valley. All the lines of the landscape focused on him. The stage was meant for him, made for him. He would never get another chance.

“I suppose it's impossible,” he said, deliberately filling the syllables with longing and regret.

“Now, really …”

“Pretty good acoustics,” said Charles.

He had characteristically retreated up the steps during the argument and wandered along one of the lines of seats. He spoke as he was starting down again.

“We were very lucky,” said Cousin Brown. “Edith Evans told me they were the best she had ever heard, outdoors, and several other good judges have said the same. But it is still quite ridiculous …”

She stopped. Charles had climbed on to the stage, turned and struck a pose. He began to declaim:

“And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by

From this day to the ending of the world

But we in it shall be remembered,

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

Cousin Blue clapped.

“Let's give it a go, eh?” said Charles, not directly to Cousin Brown but giving instructions to anyone who happened to be in earshot. It was the first time Andrew had heard him speak with this kind of authority, though there was still an edginess in the drawled phrase, as if he felt this might be a moment of crisis, a step he had to take but didn't know if he'd get away with.

“There!” cried Cousin Blue. “That's two to one!”

“Well, all I can say is …”

“Wasn't that the bell?” said Cousin Blue. “Shh, everyone.”

She must have had very keen ears. Even in the silence the distant tinkle could only just be heard. Cousin Brown shaded her eyes. One of the maids—Florrie, Andrew thought—was standing on the Top Walk shaking her hand above her head. He couldn't see the bell.

“Two rings, I think,” said Cousin Brown.

“No, only one,” said Cousin Blue. “It was for you, Elspeth. Andrew dear, go up and wave to Florrie to show her we've heard.”

“It was two rings,” said Cousin Brown.

“I think you're getting a bit deaf, darling. Perhaps that's why you talk so loud.”

“Very well, we will both go. Charles, if you would be kind enough to help Andrew pack the banquet away …”

They unfastened the items of the feast, stowed them beneath the table and carried the whole contraption back into the shed. As they walked up between the ruined lawns Charles said, “I've been wanting to talk to you. Don't get much chance with May around the whole time, eh?”

Andrew mumbled sympathetically.

“Bloody nuisance about this will,” said Charles. “Old Oyler seems to have made a complete mess of things. But let's assume it'll sort itself out in the end. I'm afraid Father didn't get round to making any provisions for you—daresay that was why he'd sent for Oyler day he died, pop something in.”

“It doesn't matter. I'll be all right.”

“Every chance you will, dear boy. If you want my opinion, you've got the talent all right. Still, no harm in having a bit of a financial cushion, especially while you're starting. Otherwise things can be bloody rough. I know what I'm talking about. So I just wanted to tell you that as soon as this will business is sorted out I'll get the lawyers to draw something up, see you're all right.”

“That's very kind of you,” said Andrew.

“Not at all. Plenty to go round. I shan't miss it. You've taken the whole rum business very well, to my mind. I mean, supposing I hadn't shown up …”

“It was always a sort of fairy-tale. I never really believed it.”

“Bit like that for me too … Life's a rum do … Tell me, any idea what the row was about, the one that started it all off?”

“I think it was something to do with a girl.”

“Not surprised. The old boy had a weakness there, all right. His fault, I take it.”

“He did it on purpose to settle a grudge with his brother. That's why he built the house too, to rub it in.”

Charles shook his head, frowning.

“Never been able to understand that,” he said. “You get it a lot in the classics—what's the point? Never played the Prince myself—done Horatio a couple of times—supposed to be every young actor's dream, but I don't think I could've taken the chap seriously.”

Andrew liked Charles and felt comfortable with him, partly because Charles in his vague way seemed to take it for granted that Andrew was already a professional actor. In addition to that there was an unspoken set of complicities—the men of the family against the dominating women, the late-come outsiders against the Cousins who had lived their whole lives at The Mimms, and, subtler than either of those, a shared understanding of each other's right to present an outer self to the world, perhaps quite different from their inner selves. Whether Charles was an impostor or not, he still had almost thirty years of hidden life behind his new façade. It was odd that he should reveal such a glimpse at this moment. Perhaps he had something else he wanted to say, but was trying not to rush it.

Two things struck Andrew. First he had been shown a possible way to find out some of the truth about Charles. How many productions of
Hamlet
had been staged between the wars? A hundred? Trace all you could. List the Horatios. You'd have a very good chance of netting at least one of Charles's. You could go to agents, look at photographs. You might even start with Cousin Brown's diaries—perhaps that was the perfor­mance she faintly recalled, and asking her would jog her memory …

The second thing was that he wouldn't do anything about it. It was what Charles had just said that decided him. Revenge. Uncle Vole's malice had been built into this house, binding its mortar, nailing beams and floorboards. Once you knew the story you couldn't forget it. That was why he'd insisted on seeing Andrew before he changed his will, to make sure that he would continue to live and breathe the old grudge, both victim and perpetrator. The house was a trap as Samuel had said. It waited for its victim. Andrew had escaped that morning by speaking with the power of Adrian's voice, but the trap still gaped.

Now along came Charles, and stood at the entrance. Why stop him? Why even warn him? He was immune to Uncle Vole's malice. He could breathe the air of The Mimms, sleep in its sheets and not be poisoned. Best of all, in a way, if he was an impostor. Break the chain. Close the circle. Finish.

Charles cleared his throat.

“Better spell it out, I suppose,” he said. “What I was saying just now about setting you up financially—it all depends on getting the will sorted out.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Something you might be able to help with there.”

“Oh?”

“Tell me, what d'you make of old Mkele?”

“Samuel? I like him very much.”

“Talked to him about any of this?”

“Well, not recently. It's been a bit awkward.”

This was true. In fact, since their one meeting in the woodland garden the night before Uncle Vole's death Andrew hardly remembered speaking to Samuel alone. It was impossible at rehearsals, of course, and though he used to breakfast in the kitchen on days when he was helping at the farm the atmosphere there had changed. Before Samuel's intervention at the will-reading the servants had talked openly among themselves about whether Charles was “our Mr Charles”, taking sides—Florrie, for instance, saying it didn't matter either way, because he was a nice gentleman who'd had a hard time and he was due for a bit of luck—but amicably, feeding each other crumbs of evidence, for and against. It was a welcome topic, a change from the weather and the war. Since that day, though, Mrs Mkele had made it clear, largely by the weight of her silences, that Andrew, for all his privileges as “family”, would only be welcome in her kitchen so long as he minded what he said and asked about.

“Awkward, I dare say,” said Charles. “Can't make the fellow out. I wasn't sorry when he brought that business up when old Oyler read us the will. He might have done it a bit more tactfully, but as Elspeth said it was best to have it in the open, and cleared up. But since then … Not that he isn't perfectly respectful, does what he's told and so on. But he's still brooding on it. What's more he wants me to know he is. He's never said a syllable, but I can tell.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Let me put it to you man to man, what I'm driving at is this. The important thing is to get Father's will cleared up. I can't hang around waiting for young Oyler to come back, so I'm getting a lawyer of my own and I'm going to tell him to take things out of old Oyler's hands. May will back me, and I dare say we can bring Elspeth round. The one thing we can't afford is to have somebody go spreading it around that I'm a fake. I can quite see that when I first turned up some of you must've thought that was a possibility, but I'd think it ought to be clear by now. Of course old Mkele's getting on a bit. Father's death must have been a great shock to him. I'm not saying the courts would give a deal of weight to what a fellow like that says, if that's the particular bug that's biting him. But none of us wants the matter to come to court in the first place. Once the whole pack of lawyers get their hands on it it'll take years to clear up and cost the earth. Why, I can't even guarantee what I just said, that there'd be enough to go round to spare a bit for you. It'd be a damned shame, but there. You follow?”

“All right. I'll do my best.”

“Good lad. Let's not beat about the bush. You try and get it into his head that if he goes on the way he's been doing he'll have to go.”

They had reached the point where the winding path up the slope joined the Top Walk. Charles halted and turned, with the Africa statue towering above him. His head was craned slightly forward and he stared at Andrew with a faint version of Uncle Vole's furious glare—over the last few weeks he seemed to have picked up or fallen into a number of the old boy's mannerisms. Only the malice was missing. The look said, “Well? Is it a deal?”

Andrew gazed back. It was a perfectly fair offer. It didn't even prove that Charles was a fake, that he should make it—the real Charles would have been just as anxious not to get the estate enmeshed in an endless law-suit. From Andrew's point of view it was almost ideal—far better than inheriting the whole estate and all that it meant, trailing that with him—rooms, statues, servants, memories—through his career; better too than Cousin Brown's offer of support, which would have been better than nothing, but carried the bargain that she should somehow have her own long-thwarted career inside him. This way he would owe no one anything.

The sky darkened. Raindrops streaked the stone of the statue. “Let's get in,” said Charles. “You don't want it to look as if I've put you on to him.”

“That's all right. There's a book I was reading to him but we never got through. I'll finish it off this afternoon—there won't be any harvesting—and we'll just get talking.”

“Good lad.”

FOUR

Mrs Mkele was alone in her parlour listening to
Variety Bandbox
while her fingers knitted without help from her mind. She was clearly in no mood to be interrupted.

“Sambo?” she said. “He'll be in the wine-cellar.” She turned the volume up.

Andrew went back along the corridor. Now that the Americans were gone these lower regions of the house seemed echoingly empty, but subterranean voices reached him from one of the inner doorways. He went in, through the narrow vaulted chamber where he had once found Samuel doling out the family butter ration. The voices, Samuel's and Hazel's, came from the larger space beyond. They were not speaking English. He paused to listen. It was a language lesson, Samuel saying a few words in the form of a question, and Hazel repeating them, slightly altered to give the answer—Is this the old lady's cooking-pot? No, that is not the old lady's cooking-pot. That sort of thing. He coughed, and the voices stopped.