The Daughters of Mrs Peacock (27 page)

‘Here's Mr Crabbe to see you, Mrs Peacock. Isn't that nice?'

‘Eh?'

‘Mr Crabbe, dear. Master Nicholas that was.'

‘I heard,' said Mrs Peacock.

She sat, very straight, in a tall-backed chair by the fireplace, in which a slow coal fire was burning. Her primly-shod feet rested on a low stool, and her arms on the arms of the chair, her splayed hands enclosing the rounded mahogany ends. She had grown stouter in old age, and
the flesh of her face hung loosely like leather bags on the prominent bone-structure. Draped in black taffeta, her head surmounted by a gleaming white cap, she stared fixedly, morosely, at the garden.

Nicholas stood before her like a suppliant, awaiting her pleasure.

‘Well, Granny, how are you?'

At the sound of his voice she turned a dim grey gaze upon him.

‘Good morning, Robert Crabbe.'

‘Good afternoon, you mean, don't you, Mrs Peacock,' said Miff-Miff obtusely. ‘And it's not Mr Robert, you know. It's Nicholas.'

‘Hold your tongue,' said the old woman. ‘I don't need a girl to teach me what's what.'

‘Very well, Mrs Peacock dear. If you don't need me at the moment, I'll slip away.'

‘Robert,' said Nicholas, as the door closed on Miff-Miff, ‘was my father, you know.'

Mrs Peacock was seized with a paroxysm of coughing. When it was over she glared with dull anger at Nicholas, seeming to accuse him.

‘I'm Nicholas,' he said. ‘Your grandson, Granny. You remember Nicholas.'

‘Eh?' She seemed not to have heard him. ‘I see how it is, Robert Crabbe. You've killed one wife and now you want another to kill.'

He could find no answer to that. He let it go.

‘He shan't have her,' declared the aged voice, ‘no matter what Edmund says. Partner? No such thing. He's a trickster. Always was.'

‘Let's get things clear,' said Nicholas gently. ‘You're dreaming, Granny. I'm me, not my father. He died three years ago. I'm Catherine's son, Nicholas. Her youngest.'

‘Catherine? What's Catherine to you?'

‘My mother,' said Nicholas firmly.

‘Your mother? Catherine's youngest? Then you must be young Nicholas. Yes, and you're the very spit and image of your father, I do declare! Well, Nicholas, aren't you going to kiss your old granny? … That's right. Best let bygones be bygones, since what's done can't be mended.'

‘Nice to see you looking so well, Granny.'

‘I daresay.'

‘My mother sends her best love,' said Nicholas, in a loud cheerful voice. ‘So do they all, Granny. Aunt Sarah, Aunt Julia, Cousin Emily, everybody. Who do you think I saw the other day? Cousin David. David Linton. Had lunch with him. He was asking after you.'

‘What?'

‘David Linton. Your grandson. Sarah's boy. Grownup children of his own now, you know. When you see Granny Peacock, he said, don't forget to give her my love, Nicholas.'

She was not listening.

‘There's something for you on the chimneypiece, boy.'

‘Thank you, Granny.' He made a parade of looking on the chimneypiece and pocketing a half-crown. ‘Thanks awfully,' he said, reverting to schoolboy idiom.

In the old days this ritual had been a sign that the
audience was over, but today, as he neared the door, her querulous voice stayed him.

‘Look in that drawer, Nicholas my dear. The big bottom one. There's a bundle there, unless Mary Smith has been poking and prying. Letters and rubbish. Peacock and Crabbe. Crabbe indeed! No wonder they had to shut up the office when Edmund went.'

The only piece of furniture in the room, apart from chairs and a table, was a Jacobean oak chest of three drawers, the lowest and deepest of which had been designed to accommodate the plumed Cavalier hat of its first owner. To humour her whim, though he would have been glad to escape, Nicholas opened this drawer. It ran smoothly to meet him, with scarcely a sound. Inside it was a heap of miscellaneous papers: letters to the firm, all sorts and sizes, with spidery copperplate copies of some of the answers. Gathering up a handful he spread them on the table, drew up a chair, and sat down.

His eye travelled idly over the faded calligraphy, picking out a few sentences here and there. Dear Sirs, I have compromised with my Uncle in the matter referred to in your note of this morning. He is to sign the Transfer: I am to return the Interest. Will you be kind enough therefore … Newtonbury July 1st 1877: Dear Sirs, We have seen our Client, who has a great reluctance to litigate with a Brother and has in consequence given us authority to arrange the accounts with you and settle the sum to be accepted; and if your Client will give you the same authority, and a little latitude, we shall have no difficulty in finally adjusting the business when we next meet…. Dear Sirs, In the matter of Brown and Jarvis
and Another, we have signed and registered Judgment on the Warrant of Attorney, and it will not be necessary to revive the Judgment at the expiration of the year as the Warrant of Attorney contains a clause dispensing with a
scire facias.
Annexed are our charges herein. Yours faithfully.

‘Very interesting, Granny,' said Nicholas. ‘I'm glad you kept them.'

Something else had been kept, which he could not bring himself to mention. It did not belong among these letters: it must have slipped in by mistake. A silhouette of a little girl, cut out in black paper and pasted on a piece of cardboard. It was a miracle of delicately suggestive art: the young ingenuous profile, the slightly parted lips, the eyelashes, the rhythm of neatly dressed hair tied with a ribbon at the coltish nape. Turning it over he made out a faded pencil inscription:
Emily Ann Bartlow, 1834, aged 10 years.

He glanced covertly at his grandmother, her eyes now closed, her hands folded in sleep; then looked again at what she had once been. He sighed, listening to the enormous silence; glanced towards the wide garden window; and stared at the shadow of evening that moved, like time itself, no pace perceived, over the sunlit grass.

Gerald Bullet (1893-1958) was a British man of letters. He was known as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, critic and poet, who wrote both supernatural fiction and some children's literature. Bullet was born in London and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. After Cambridge, Bullet began reviewing for
The Times Literary Supplement
and other journals, and then embarked on a career as an assiduous short-story writer and poet, small-time publisher, and editor and author of some forty published books. Bullet's 1932 detective novel
I'll Tell You Everything
was written jointly with J. B. Priestley. During World War II Bullet worked for the BBC in London, and as a radio broadcaster after the end of the War. In 1956 he adapted his most popular novel,
The Jury
, in to a film called
The Last Man to Hang?

A Man of Forty
Eden River
The Daughters of Mrs Peacock
The Elderbrook Brothers
The Jury
The Pandervils
The Quick and the Dead

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain,1957, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd

Copyright © 1957 Gerald Bullet

All rights reserved
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The moral right of the author is asserted.

eISBN:9781448210077

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