Sheiks and Adders (4 page)

‘I don’t expect so. But, if you are, I’ll let you know.’

‘You’ll let me know!’ Lady Appleby stared at her husband. ‘You don’t mean you propose to
go
to this thing tomorrow?’

‘Well, yes – as a matter of fact I do.’

‘Then you’d better take Jane Birch-Blackie with you.’

‘I think not. My role will be that of a lone hunter.’

‘In the appropriate sort of fancy dress?’

‘Time is rather short for that. I think I might go as a Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. I have the togs for that in a drawer.’

‘But that wouldn’t
be
fancy dress, since I suppose you’re still entitled to wear those things if you want to.’ Judith didn’t make this point with any emphasis, since she knew that her husband’s suggestion was one there was not the least likelihood of his carrying out. ‘Not that it wouldn’t be rather fun,’ she added. ‘You’d scare them all stiff.’

‘I’m far from wanting to do that.’

‘John, is there anything sensible you
do
want to do about this affair?’

‘Well, yes – I believe there is.’ Appleby hesitated. ‘There was something odd about the way that girl was upset. You might say I’m minded to take a second bite at the Cherry.’

‘Very well.’ Lady Appleby, if not particularly diverted by this joke, appeared to judge it tactful to acquiesce in any proposal put forward by one so much at a loose end as her superannuated husband appeared to be. ‘I have to go shopping in Linger tomorrow morning. I’ll get you a ticket from Odger’s.’

‘And pay for it?’

‘Yes, certainly.’ Judith rose from the dinner table. ‘And I shan’t even ask for my money back,’ she added handsomely, ‘if all this derring-do proves to be a mare’s nest.’

Later that evening, Appleby looked up Richard Chitfield of Drool Court in a work of reference. It was very much a business man’s entry, and rather colourless to any reader not hung up on the romance of commerce and industry. Mr Chitfield was the chairman of a group of companies, the activities of which were not particularized, and he was a director of a dozen others. Several City guilds had made him a liveryman, and he was declared to ‘control extensive interests’ in the Caribbean and the Middle East. He was, in fact, an important man in a far-flung and probably blameless and uninteresting way. Nothing was said about his parentage or education, but as a young man he had married the daughter of Councillor Parker-Perkins, and had apparently kept her on the books ever since. He had a son and two daughters, and his recreations were given as fly-fishing and ‘private theatricals’. This last and rather old-fashioned phrase was the only remotely unexpected piece of information intimated. It tied in, no doubt, with what was going to happen at Drool Court next day. All in all, Appleby had no reason to feel that he was going to be very interested in the father of Cherry and Mark Chitfield.

Because we speak of the Court of St James’s or the Court of Versailles, we are inclined to suppose that when a house is called a ‘Court’ it must be very grand indeed. But for centuries the word has frequently been tacked on to the proper name of what may be quite a modest manorial dwelling or principal house in a village. And of course if you buy a couple of fields and put up a habitable structure of some sort in the middle of them you are free to call the result ‘Windsor Court’ or even ‘Plantagenet Court’ if you have a mind to it.

Drool Court as it now existed was of no great antiquity, although something with the same name had stood on the same ground since the time of the first Elizabeth. Everything now visible was the work of Sir Guy Dawber (an architect of the present century who may be supposed to have eschewed the sister art of painting for an obvious reason) and therefore in the somewhat severe tradition associated with modern country houses in Gloucestershire. There was a great deal of it; when you got inside the principal rooms were lofty and imposing; from without, however, the entire structure had the appearance of being unkindly squashed beneath heavily impending roofs. It was all very solid and English and permanent. If you came upon it unawares during the course of a rural ramble, and took the trouble to find out to whom it belonged, you would be wholly unprompted to hurry to a telephone, call up your stockbroker, and require him to extricate you with all speed from any of the numerous concerns controlled by Mr Chitfield. On the other hand you would not be likely to feel in the presence of anything that charmed the eye or stirred the fancy. And if the occasion of your visit were different, and you were turning up in the expectation of participating in a Watteau-like
fête-champêtre
of easy and light-hearted
divertissement
, it is probable that you would judge the
mise en scène
not particularly appropriate to the mood required.

There were, however, extensive lawns and gardens, with a small park beyond them, and beyond that again the wooded region of Sir John Appleby’s first entanglement with the Chitfield fortunes. Had Richard Chitfield been one of the chief noblemen of the country, and generously prompted to entertain everybody who could by any stretch of imagination claim acquaintance with him, these pleasure grounds could have accommodated the whole crowd with no difficulty at all. As it was, and at least at the time of Appleby’s fairly prompt arrival, the scene was far from thronged and little in the way of entertainment was as yet going forward.

It was in the character of Robin Hood that Appleby presented himself at the wrought-iron gates of the mansion and handed his ticket to a young woman whom he conjectured to be the elder of the Chitfield daughters. His costume wasn’t the consequence of his having reflected, only the day before, that he must frequently have played Robin Hood games as a boy; it represented the first feasible set of garments to have turned up during a rummage of the dressing-up cupboard at Long Dream. The Appleby children having long ago abandoned that sort of entertainment, everything had smelt faintly of the moth balls of a former age, and Appleby was aware of carrying this round with him now. At least the outfit was tolerably complete. There was even a long-bow – which, however, had lost its string, with the result that it couldn’t be slung in the prescriptive manner across his shoulder and had to be treated as a walking-stick. This contributed to a faint sense of the ridiculous which he was constrained to own in himself. It was an unaccustomed feeling, and Appleby felt vaguely annoyed by it. He increasingly misdoubted the whole odd exploit which he had undertaken.

The young woman who took his ticket handed him a programme in return. And she gave him an appraising look as she did so.

‘There’s going to be a licensed bar open later,’ she said.

‘Is there, indeed?’ This brisk assessment of his predominant interest as likely to be in alcoholic refreshment naturally didn’t gratify Appleby very much. ‘I suppose outlaws are given to clinking the cannikin whenever the opportunity occurs. If I’d come as a knight, it would be another matter. A true knight is a total abstainer, as Chaucer tells us. “Himself drank water of the well, as did the knight Sir Percivel”. So you see–’

‘No more of this, for goddes dignitee.’ The young woman (thus revealing an academic background) was understandably abrupt. ‘You must be the man my sister met in the wood.’

‘Yes, Miss Chitfield, I am. My name is John Appleby.’

‘I can’t think why you’ve bothered to turn up to all this nonsense. Did Cherry put on one of her turns?’

‘I wouldn’t describe it as that at all. But she was a little upset. And that brings us back to knights. Is the young man called Tibby still going to be obliged to dress up as one?’

‘Oh, yes – I suppose so. He and Cherry had some idiotic affair cooked up, and it would have been perfectly okay and raised the required laugh and tepid applause. But my father just wouldn’t have it. I can’t think why.’

‘Neither can Cherry.’ Appleby glanced across the gardens and prepared to proceed, since several people were approaching behind him. ‘By the way, when does something begin to happen?’

‘Have a look at that programme. Not that it will help you much, since it’s all going to be a bit of a muddle. People are supposed to wander around as if it’s a garden party. But they’re also supposed to watch things in a kind of open-air theatre that has been set up beyond the tennis court. And there’s a raffle and a man departing in a hot-air balloon for China or heaven knows where, and an auction sale of pretentious junk, and a band from some regiment or other, and heaven knows what else as well. My father goes in for what you might call overkill. So take your pick, Sir John. Or my lord of Lancaster, perhaps I ought to say.’

‘I believe that’s a discredited view of Robin Hood’s true rank.’

‘The English love a lord – so their top bandit has to be one. And Shakespeare, you know, is believed by some to have been a whole committee of lords. And now move on, and let me cope with those tiresome people behind you. How I damn-well wish it was bedtime.’

Thus dismissed (not without a touch of the younger Miss Chitfield’s uncertain command of the usages of polite society), Appleby did move on. But then Miss Chitfield called after him.

‘Oh, I forgot! There’s archery down in the meadow. Just your thing, I’d imagine.’

Appleby answered this pleasantry merely by elevating his long-bow in the air. He found that he was now manipulating the awkward thing as if it were an alpenstock. And in the distance he had just caught sight of Colonel and Mrs Birch-Blackie. He might have guessed they’d be around, and in his present absurd rig he had no wish whatever to encounter them. He’d minimize the risk of this, he told himself, if he steered clear of that licensed bar.

What had been erected beyond the tennis court was not exactly a theatre, but it was a good deal more than a bare stage or platform. It had an air, indeed, of simplicity and even improvisation, as if it had been run up on the orders of an indulgent parent to meet some passing theatrical ambition on the part of his children. But there was something a little deceptive about this. The whole effect was unobtrusively elegant, and there seemed to be an equally unobtrusive provision of more stage apparatus than would be at all necessary for any casually organized amateur pageant. The frame and setting being provided, that was to say, were themselves professional work of a superior and expensive sort. Richard Chitfield – this was Appleby’s conclusion – was the sort of person for whom are designed those advertisements which loudly proclaim themselves as addressed only to persons who will put up with nothing other than the best. Something of this impression had already been conveyed in the conversation of each of his daughters in turn.

There were now a good many people around, and the large paddock which had been appropriated to the purposes of a car park was filling up rapidly. Most of the vehicles were a good deal grander than Judith’s little Fiat, which her husband had borrowed for the afternoon. The crush was contrary to Appleby’s expectation. Had he been required to give a guess in advance he would have said that this particular manifestation of the charitable concern of Mr Richard Chitfield was bound to be a flop. A fancy-dress ball was one thing, and the English mind had been habituated to the idea for a good many generations. Masque-like entertainments, whether within doors or without, with the spectators taking an intermittent part in whatever action was generated, had gone out of fashion long ago, but could doubtless be promoted and got off the ground for the benefit of persons of antiquarian inclination. But the present rather nebulous entertainment – particularly, perhaps, because so much an affair of broad daylight – was surely something that many people would shy away from.

But it looked as if in these thoughts Appleby was arguing from his own disposition. The participants, or subscribers, or whatever they were to be called, already made a respectable crowd, and were beginning to get on very well together. Many were of course known to one another – and Appleby himself, indeed, was aware of familiar faces. So there was the amusement of failing – or pretending to fail – to recognize acquaintances. Not many people, moreover, appeared to be on their own, and this made Appleby himself feel slightly self-conscious. Acute observers might point him out to one another as a detective hired to mingle with the guests and keep the Chitfield spoons and forks out of their pockets. And what, indeed, was he if not a detective – and one of an officiously self-appointed sort? Or at the least he must be said to have turned up out of vulgar curiosity, since he had to admit that his expectation of deriving simple pleasure from the sundry diversions presently to be on offer was low. It was while thus sunk in gloom, and hard upon rounding a corner of the little theatre, that Appleby came face to face with another Robin Hood.

There was nothing out of the way about this. Why not two Robin Hoods – or half-a-dozen, for that matter? But this second Robin Hood appeared much struck by the
Doppelgänger
effect: so much so that he halted in his tracks and gave way to audible mirth. There is a species of Englishman who, when motoring on the continent in a car identical with your own, is unable to pass you by without much waving and horn blowing of an unwarrantably familiar sort. For a moment Appleby thought that here was behaviour of that censurable order. Then he realized that the person with whom he was thus suddenly twinned up was entitled to as much laughter as he cared to indulge in. For Tommy Pride was a family friend. He was also the Chief Constable of the county – or whatever passed itself off as a county in an England of late barbarously chopped up into newfangled regions fondly supposed to conduce to enhanced administrative convenience.

‘Good God!’ Colonel Pride exclaimed when he had done with laughter. ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’

Appleby more or less agreed that he was the celebrated explorer, and reflected that Pride’s sally, though not strikingly original, was agreeably congruous with the Chief Constable’s simple cast of mind. Or rather with his seemingly simple cast of mind, since in point of fact Pride was quite as acute a character as the considerable responsibilities of his office required.