Perfect Gallows (4 page)

“Clear out!” he said. “Clear out and don't come back. I'm through with you.”

Andrew pushed back his chair and stood looking down, while the old man huddled himself back round the stove, so close that a smell of scorching cloth prickled the air. Pity. It might have been useful to stay long enough to see him get properly drunk. He wouldn't have been an ordinary drunk either. There was something extra about him, something rare—personality, energy, rage at being so near the end. Andrew knew he mightn't be able to watch anything like that again.

But at the same time he felt triumphant. He'd got exactly what he wanted. He could go home. It was the naming of his secret name that had done the trick.

He bowed politely.

“Thank you for your hospitality, sir,” he said. “I will leave first thing tomorrow.”

TWO

The bugle call began in his nightmare and ended with him lying awake, stiff with the terror of it, slowing realizing the meaning of the soft, warm, unfamiliar bed, but baffled still by the sound, fairly distant but oddly loud and distorted. The distortion had been part of the dream. A war-film, first war, playing the young doomed officer about to lead his men over the top. Some of the time he was in the film, on set, and some of it he was in a cinema, watching the screen. The bugle call for the attack came through the cinema loudspeakers, but at the same moment came the understanding that the director had taken advantage of a real war to save money on extras and sets. One of the bullets now beginning to whine on the sound-track was going to kill the young star dead.

The terror continued as real as the sound. A secret name was no protection in dreams. Andrew lay unable to move until the bugle call ended and the music began. “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” also horridly distorted by the loudspeakers. Soldiers, somewhere out in the dark. Reveille. Yanks—Andrew recognised the tune from having heard it on AFN—you wouldn't get music like that in a British camp.

He sighed and slowly relaxed. Terror subsided into the usual, permanent, unspoken dread of call-up, some time next autumn. Adrian would be no protection there, either.

To push the thought out of his mind he reached into the icy air outside the Lanaircell blankets, pulled his clothes off the chair beside the bed and teased them down either side of his body. Waiting for them to warm through he considered the problem of getting away before Cousin Brown was up and about. He'd need something to eat. It must be three miles to the village, lugging his suitcase, and then God knows how long before a bus came. He didn't want to argue with Cousin Brown about leaving, though he would if he must. Sometimes you had to hurt people. It was necessary.

He thought about the end of yesterday evening. He'd come into the Saloon and found the two Cousins huddled either side of a log fire, most of whose heat must have gone up the huge chimney. There was a portrait of the whole family over the mantelpiece, painted in this very room, but that had been summer, about fifty years ago, to judge by the clothes. Now Cousin Blue was playing patience on a sort of tray hitched to the arm of her chair, but Cousin Brown had got out three albums and made Andrew sit beside her on the settee to look through them. Programmes, photographs, newspaper cuttings, all of productions by something called The Mimms Players. Kids at first, dressing up on the garden lawn. Then growing up, and a stone stage, still outdoors, with yew hedges behind it. The obvious plays,
Dream
,
Rivals
,
As You Like It
. Elspeth and May Wragge in the cast list, and sometimes Charles Wragge. A gap for the first war, and then only Elspeth. Big parts for her—
Electra
,
Ghosts
, the Scotch play—
Ghosts
indoors, on a special stage in what Cousin Brown said was the Ballroom. Money spent on scenery, costumes and lighting. And real actors, names Andrew knew, people he'd seen, though they must have been just beginning then. Grander and grander … And then the war, and back to unknowns. Village halls. You couldn't get an audience out to The Mimms in wartime, Cousin Brown said. Last production
Dear Brutus
, 1940.

Andrew had started to look through the albums both bored and wary. Kiddy-plays, amateurs, Bottoms and Starvelings. Soon he'd seen that though The Mimms Players might have begun like that, Cousin Brown had made it into something different. It wasn't only because she had the money. She was obsessed with the theatre. It was the most important thing in her life. She was, Andrew realized, the first person he'd met who actually understood what he meant when he announced he was going to be an actor, took him seriously, knew that it mattered. When they'd finished looking at the albums they talked about other productions—she'd of course seen dozens of plays he'd only read, or read about until long after Cousin Blue had gone sighing off to bed. There had been no further sign of Uncle Vole. Andrew hadn't told her what had happened in the dining-room. As soon as he got home he would send her a letter, explaining.

When his clothes were warm he eased himself out of his pyjama bottoms and into pants, socks and trousers. Then the top half. It was a game, but also an exercise in muscular control. A watcher in the room must not be aware what you were up to, so you must make only the visible movements natural to a sleeper, including getting your head right under the blankets in order to push it through the neck of your vest. He varied the imaginary play from which the scene came. This time he was in a prison hospital, about to escape and prove his own innocence …

He flung back the bedclothes and sprang forth. Phee, it was cold! Uncle Vole had sneered at Fawley Street, but all his millions couldn't buy that snugness. Andrew eased back the heavy curtain. Still almost dark … But now from somewhere down in the house he heard a rhythmic click and clump. A carpet sweeper. The servants were up. There'd be someone he could ask about food. He switched on the bedside light, stuffed his pyjamas into his already-packed suitcase, laced his shoes, crept out. None of the door-fittings rattled. Not a plank creaked, nor any of the treads in the staircase. He used the banister to feel his way.

A yellow light shone in the main downstairs corridor, off which all the big rooms opened. Beneath it an old woman was working the sweeper, some kind of housemaid, though she wasn't wearing the smart black-and-white uniform as the other old girl had who'd shown him his room yesterday. Or perhaps she was, only it was hidden beneath her thick tweed overcoat and shawl. Her frosted breath rose in a cloud as she thumped the sweeper to and fro. Intent on her work she didn't notice his approach.

“Good morning,” he said.

She looked up—wispy hair, puckered lips, sunken pale cheeks. She glanced at the suitcase.

“Going, then? Thought you was here till Monday.”

She wasn't wearing her dentures.

“Sir Arnold changed his mind.”

“How many'd he had?”

She tilted an imaginary glass to her lips.

“I was wondering if there's any hope of a lift to the village.”

“No bus, Tuesdays.”

“Oh.”

“Jack's taking Hazel down for the choir-treat, mind you. Suppose you'll be wanting early breakfast. They don't have it till nine, upstairs.”

“Well …”

“You'll have to see Mrs McHealy. Green baize door and down the stairs. Follow your nose—she's baking.”

The door was next to the dining-room. Just inside it on the left was what looked like a pantry, with a scrubbed table bearing compartmented trays of cutlery, cruets, candlesticks, glasses, decanters. Beyond that a wide flight of stairs with slate treads descended, apparently underground. At the bottom a lino-floored corridor led left and right. The smell of baking bread was easy to trace. He followed it along into a large square room with a huge Aga cooker on the further side, and on the right two tall barred windows, their glass reflecting the room because of the dark outside. So he wasn't in the bowels of the earth—the house must stand on a hill which sloped away at the back.

In the middle of the room was a long scrubbed table at which sat the man who had driven the pony-trap last night, with a steaming mug in front of him. He was older than Andrew had realized in the dark, with a gipsy-looking face, very coarse grey hair and strong brows, a slight hunch to his shoulders. He looked up as Andrew came through the door and coughed unconvincingly. The woman standing at the Aga turned at the signal.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Mrs McHealy?”

“That's right, sir. Breakfast for upstairs isn't till nine.”

Her voice was soft country Hampshire, not the harder Southampton accent which Andrew could do in his sleep. The “isn't” was “idn't” and the “r”s had a burr to them. Mrs McHealy's eyes, pale blue in a flattish, doughy face, had glanced at the suitcase and back. Andrew tried anxious charm.

“Won't someone be driving to the village before that?”

The man at the table stirred but said nothing.

“And I think you've got my ration-book,” said Andrew. “Sir Arnold asked me to leave, you see. I said I'd go as soon as I could.”

“Where's my Sambo?” said Mrs McHealy. “Give him a shout, Jack. You'll be wanting a bit of breakfast in any case, won't you, sir?”

“Sammy! Oi, Sammy!” called the man.

Andrew put the suitcase down. From along the corridor came the sound of dragging footsteps, a sinister, quiet, approaching shuffle.

“Nice and warm in here,” he said. “Like home.”

“You're missing home, I expect, sir,” said Mrs McHealy. “Not been away before?”

“Not much.”

“Weren't you ever evacuated?”

“Just for the blitz, but only out to Upton. My school's still there, but most of us skived off home as soon as the bombing stopped, and nowadays I bike out to school every day.”

Mrs McHealy nodded. She was a strong, slightly chilling presence, apparently making conversation not out of friendliness but in order to stop him asking about ration-books and such.

“Our Hazel, she's evacuated from London,” she said. “And I wouldn't have it otherhow.”

The footsteps reached the door. The darkie came in, wearing a linen jacket over his butler's uniform, and on his feet a weird pair of shoes, a bit like carpet-slippers but with inch-thick pads of felt for the soles, which were far too wide and long for the uppers. Andrew guessed it was a way of polishing the floor as he went about his duties, but it was also a way of keeping his feet warm without breaking Uncle Vole's rule about shoes. He smiled at Andrew, saw the suitcase, looked inquiringly at Mrs McHealy.

“Now, love,” she said. “The young gentleman's been saying how Sir Arnold told him to go home.”

“He never meant it,” said the darkie. “He's always telling people ‘Clear out.'”

He too had a slight Hampshire accent, nothing like the pidgin darkie-talk he'd seemed to be using in the few words Andrew had heard him speak last night in the dining-room.

“He said he didn't want to see me again,” said Andrew.

“How many times Sir Arnold told you that, Jack?” said Mrs McHealy.

“Lost count,” said the groom.

“Lay a place for Master Andrew, love,” said Mrs McHealy. “Or maybe you'd rather eat by yourself, sir. There's the parlour.”

“It's nice and warm in here,” said Andrew. “We eat in the kitchen at home.”

“Start you off with a bit of porridge?”

Mrs McHealy bent creakingly to one of the lower ovens. She was older than Andrew had thought—they all were. Anyone younger would have gone off to war-work, like Cousin Blue's maid. She spooned two rubbery lumps of grey goo from a large brown casserole. The darkie brought the bowl over to the table. Jack passed the milk and sugar, and Andrew, mindful of ration-manners with the three of them watching him, helped himself stingily.

“Spare a bit more than that, eh, Mary?” said Jack.

“I'll have to take my ration-book with me,” said Andrew.

“If'n you're set on going,” said Mrs McHealy. “Still, spare you a full spoon—seven below stairs, we've a bit of slack.”

The porridge was grainy, chewy, piping hot, quite different from Mum's tepid slop. While he was eating Mrs McHealy took a tray of bread rolls out of another oven and flipped them on to a wire rack to cool.

“When Mum tried baking it was more like bricks,” said Andrew.

“Daresay it was,” said Mrs McHealy. “This wartime flour's no earthly. How'd you fancy your egg, sir?”

“Soft but not gooey, please.”

“Sammy has his getting on raw,” said Jack. “Don't see how he can stomach 'em.”

The darkie grinned. His presence seemed to make the atmosphere more welcoming, and Andrew thought he himself had helped by judging the charm-flow right, but there was still a sense of caution, of wary inquisitiveness. He could feel the old groom watching him, but then switching his glance away the moment he looked up. The attention of the other two, though more tactful, was also perceptible.

“Sammy says how you managed Sir Arnold was very nice last evening, sir,” said Mrs McHealy.

“I did my best. I didn't realize anyone was listening.”

“You think we didn't ought, sir?”

“I don't mind.”

“Getting on fifty years Sambo's lived in this house. Thirty-nine I been here, and now we've, got our Hazel too. Nineteen twenty-two you come, wasn't it, Jack, and Florrie was here afore that, and Mabel soon after, not to mention others as live in the cottages, like Mr Feather, and Mrs Oliphant up West Lodge—her George was under-gardener when I come. My way of thinking, we've as good a right as any to know what's coming to us. Sir Arnold, he's not got long to live …”

“Lucky to see another winter, 'cording to the doctor,” said Jack.

“Florrie was polishing outside the door while he was telling Miss Elspeth and Miss May,” said Mrs McHealy. “You see, while Master Nick was alive we all thought it was going to him in the end, spite of everything, but then he went and got killed in Italy, poor lad …”