Tied Up in Tinsel (3 page)

“That really
would
throw me completely off my stroke,” said Troy with some emphasis.

“You prefer to maintain a detached relationship with your subjects.”

“Absolutely.”

“I see your point, of course,” said Hilary.

“Good.”

He finished his muffin, damped his napkin with hot water, cleaned his fingers, and walked over to the window. The rose-embroidered curtains were closed, but he parted them and peered into the dark. “It’s snowing,” he said. “Uncle Flea and Aunt Bed will have a romantic passage over the moors.”

“Do you mean — are they coming tonight —?”

“Ah, yes. I forgot to tell you. My long-distance call was from their housekeeper. They left before dawn and expect to arrive in time for dinner.”

“A change in plans?”

“They suddenly thought they would. They prepare themselves for a visit at least three days before the appointed time and yet they dislike the feeling of impending departure. So they resolved to cut it short. I shall take a rest. What about you?”

“My walk has made me sleepy, I think. I will, too.”

“That’s the north wind. It has a soporific effect upon newcomers. I’ll tell Nigel to call you at half-past seven, shall I? Dinner at eight-thirty and the warning bell at a quarter past. Rest well,” said Hilary, opening the door for her.

As she passed him she became acutely aware of his height and also of his smell, which was partly Harris tweed and partly something much more exotic. “Rest well,” he repeated and she knew he watched her as she went upstairs.

She found Nigel in her bedroom. He had laid out her ruby-red silk dress and everything that went with it. Troy hoped that this ensemble had not struck him as being sinful.

He was now on his knees blowing needlessly at a brightly burning fire. Nigel was so blond that Troy was glad to see that his eyes were not pink behind their prolific white lashes. He got to his feet and in a muted voice asked her if there would be anything else. He gazed at the floor and not at Troy, who said there was nothing else.

“It’s going to be a wild night,” Troy remarked, trying to be natural but sounding, she feared, like a bit part in
The Corsican Brothers
.

“That is as Heaven decrees, Mrs. Alleyn,” Nigel said severely and left her. She reminded herself of Hilary’s assurances that Nigel had recovered his sanity.

She took a bath, seething deliciously in resinous vapours, and wondered how demoralizing this mode of living might become if prolonged. She decided (sinfully, as no doubt Nigel would have considered) that for the time being, at least, it tended to intensify her nicer ingredients. She drowsed before her fire, half aware of the hush that comes upon a house when snow falls in the world outside. At half-past seven Nigel tapped at her door and she roused herself to answer and then to dress. There was a cheval glass in her room, and she couldn’t help seeing that she looked well in her ruby dress.

Distant sounds of arrival broke the quietude. A car engine. A door slam. After a considerable interval, voices in the passage and an entry into the next room. A snappish, female voice, apparently on the threshold, shouted, “Not at all. Fiddle! Who says anything about being tired? We won’t dress. I said we won’t dress.” An interval and then the voice again: “You don’t want Moult, do you? Moult! The Colonel doesn’t want you. Unpack later. I said he can unpack later.”

“Uncle Flea,” thought Troy, “is deaf.”

“And don’t,” shouted the voice, “keep fussing about the beard.”

A door closed. Someone walked away down the passage.

“About the
beard
?” Troy wondered. “Could she have said beard?”

For a minute or two nothing could be heard from the next room. Troy concluded that either Colonel or Mrs. Fleaton Forrester had retired into the bathroom on the far side, a theory that was borne out by a man’s voice, coming as it were from behind Troy’s wardrobe, exclaiming: “B! About my beard!” and receiving no audible reply.

Soon after this the Forresters could be heard to leave their apartment.

Troy thought she would give them a little while with Hilary before she joined them, and she was still staring bemusedly into her fire when the warning bell, booty, so Hilary had told her, from Henry the Eighth’s sack of the monasteries, rang out in its tower over the stables. Troy wondered if it reminded Nigel of his conventual days before he had turned a little mad.

She shook herself out of her reverie and found her way downstairs and into the main hall where Mervyn, on the lookout, directed her to the green boudoir. “We are not disturbing the library,” Mervyn said with a meaningful smirk, “madam.”

“How very considerate,” said Troy. He opened the boudoir door for her and she went in.

The Forresters stood in front of the fire with Hilary, who wore a plum-coloured smoking suit and a widish tie. Colonel Forrester was a surprised-looking old man with a pink-and-white complexion and a moustache. But no beard. He wore a hearing aid.

Mrs. Forrester looked, as she had sounded, formidable. She had a blunt face with a mouth like a spring-trap, prominent eyes fortified by pebble-lenses and thin, grey hair lugged back into a bun. Her skirt varied in length from midi to maxi and she clearly wore more than one flannel petticoat. Her top half was covered by woollen garments in varying shades of dull puce. She wore a double chain of what Troy suspected were superb natural pearls and a number of old-fashioned rings in which deposits of soap had accumulated. She carried a string bag containing a piece of anonymous knitting and her handkerchief.

Hilary performed the introductions. Colonel Forrester beamed and gave Troy a little bow. Mrs. Forrester sharply nodded.

“How do you find yourself?” she said. “Cold?”

“Not at all, thank you.”

“I ask because you must spend much of your time in overheated studios painting from the Altogether, I said
painting from the Altogether
.”

This habit of repetition in fortissimo, Troy discovered, was automatic with Mrs. Forrester and was practised for the benefit of her husband, who now gently indicated that he wore his hearing aid. To this she paid no attention.

“She’s not painting
me
in the nude, darling Auntie,” said Hilary, who was pouring drinks.

“A pretty spectacle
that
would be.”

“I think perhaps you base your theories about painters on
Trilby
and
La Vie de Bohème
.”

“I saw Beerbohm Tree in
Trilby
” Colonel Forrester remembered. “He died backwards over a table. It was awfully good.”

There was a tap on the door followed by the entrance of a man with an anxious face. Not only anxious but most distressingly disfigured, Troy thought, as if by some long-distant and extensive burn. The scars ran down to the mouth and dragged it askew.

“Hullo, Moult,” said Mrs. Forrester.

“I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure,” said the man to Hilary. “It was just to put the Colonel’s mind at ease, sir. It’s quite all right about the beard, sir.”

“Oh good, Moult. Good. Good. Good,” said Colonel Forrester.

“Thank you, sir,” said the man and withdrew.

“What is it about your beard, Uncle Flea?” asked Hilary, to Troy’s immense relief.

“
The
beard, old chap. I was afraid it might have been forgotten and then I was afraid it might have been messed up in the packing.”

“Well, it hasn’t, Fred. I said it hasn’t.”

“I know, so that’s all right.”

“Are you going to be Father Christmas, Colonel?” Troy ventured, and he beamed delightedly and looked shy.

“I knew you’d think so,” he said. “But no. I’m a Druid. What do you make of that, now?”

“You mean — you belong —?”

“Not,” Hilary intervened, “to some spurious Ancient Order wearing cotton-wool beards and making fools of themselves every second Tuesday.”

“Oh,
come
, old boy,” his uncle protested. “That’s not fair.”

“Well, perhaps not. But no,” Hilary continued, addressing himself to Troy. “At Halberds, Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus or whatever you like to call the Teutonic old person, is replaced by an ancient and more authentic figure: the great precursor of the Winter Solstice observances who bequeathed — consciously or not — so much of his lore to his Christian successors. The Druid, in fact.”

“And the Vicar doesn’t mind,” Colonel Forrester earnestly interjected. “I promise you. The Vicar doesn’t mind a bit.”

“
That
doesn’t surprise me,” his wife observed with a cryptic snort.

“He comes to the party even. So, you see, I shall be a Druid. I have been one each year since Hilary came to Halberds. There’s a tree and a kissing bough you know, and, of course, quantities of mistletoe. All the children come: the children on the place and at the Vale and in the neighbouring districts. It’s a lovely party and I love doing it. Do you like dressing up?”

He asked this so anxiously, like a character in
Alice
, that she hadn’t the heart to give anything less than an enthusiastic assent and almost expected him to say cosily that they must dress up together one of these days.

“Uncle Flea’s a brilliant performer,” Hilary said, “and his beard is the
pièce de résistance
. He has it made by Wig Creations. It wouldn’t disgrace King Lear. And then the wig itself! So different from the usual repellent falsity. You shall see.”

“We’ve made some changes,” said Colonel Forrester excitedly. “They’ve re-dressed it. The feller said he thought it was a bit on the long side and might make me look as if I’d opted out. One can’t be too careful.”

Hilary brought the drinks. Two of them were large and steaming and had slices of lemon in them.

“Your rum toddies, Aunt Bed,” he said. “Tell me if there’s not enough sugar.”

Mrs. Forrester wrapped her handkerchief round her glass and sat down with it. “It seems all right,” she said. “Did you put nutmeg in your uncle’s?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“You will think,” said the Colonel to Troy, “that rum toddies before dinner are funny things to drink, but we make a point of putting them forward after a journey. Usually they are nightcaps.”

“They smell delicious.”

“Would you like one?” Hilary asked her. “Instead of a White Lady.”

“I think I’ll stick to the White Lady.”

“So shall I. Well, my dears,” Hilary said generally. “We are a small houseparty this year. Only Cressida and Uncle Bert to come. They both arrive tomorrow.”

“Are you still engaged to Cressida?” asked his aunt.

“Yes. The arrangement stands. I am in high hopes, Aunt Bed, that you will take more of a fancy to Cressida on second sight.”

“It’s not second sight. It’s fiftieth sight. Or more.”

“But you know what I mean. Second sight since we became engaged.”

“What’s the odds?” she replied ambiguously.

“Well, Aunt Bed, I would have thought —” Hilary broka off and rubbed his nose. “Well, anyway, Aunt Bed, considering I met her in your house.”

“More’s the pity. I warned your uncle. I said I warned you, Fred.”

“What about, B?”

“Your gel! The Tottenham gel. Cressida.”

“She’s not
mine
, B. You put things so oddly, my dear.”

“Well, anyway,” Hilary said. “I hope you change your mind, Auntie.”

“One can but hope,” she rejoined and turned to Troy. “Have you met Miss Tottenham?” she asked.

“No.”

“Hilary thinks she will go with the house. We’re still talking about Cressida,” Mrs. Forrester bawled at her husband.

“I know you are. I heard.”

After this they sipped their drinks, Mrs. Forrester making rather a noise with hers and blowing on it to cool it down.

“The arrangements for Christmas Day,” Hilary began after a pause, “are, I think, an improvement on last year. I’ve thought of a new entrance for you, Uncle Flea.”

“Have you, though? Have you? Have you?”

“From outside. Through the french windows behind the tree.”

“Outside!” Mrs. Forrester barked. “Do I understand you, Hilary? Do you plan to put your uncle out on the terrace on a midwinter night — in a snowstorm, I said a snowstorm?”

“It’ll only be for a moment, Aunt Bed.”

“You have not forgotten, I suppose, that your uncle suffers from a circulatory complaint.”

“I’ll be all right, B.”

“I don’t like it, I said —”

“But I assure you! And the undergarment is quilted.”

“Pshaw! I said—”

“No, but do listen!”

“Don’t fuss, B. My boots are fur-lined. Go on, old boy. You were saying —?”

“I’ve got a lovely tape recording of sleigh bells and snorting reindeer. Don’t interrupt, anybody. I’ve done my research and I’m convinced that there’s an overlap here, between the Teutonic and the druidical and if there’s not,” Hilary said rapidly, “there ought to be. So. We’ll hear you shout ‘Whoa,’ Uncle Flea, outside, to the reindeer, and then you’ll come in.”

“I don’t shout very loud nowadays, old boy,” he said worriedly. “Not the Pirbright note any more, I’m afraid.”

“I thought of that. I’ve had the ‘whoa’ added to the bells and snorts. Blore did it. He has a stentorian voice.”

“Good. Good.”

“There will be thirty-one children and about a dozen parents. And the usual assortment of county and farmers. Outside hands and, of course, the staff.”

“Warders?” asked Mrs. Forrester. “From That Place?”

“Yes. From the married quarters. Two. Wives and families.”

“Marchbanks?”

“If he can get away. They have their own commitments. The chaplain cooks up something pretty joyless. Christmas,” said Hilary acidly, “under maximum security. I imagine one can hardly hear the carols for the alarm bells.”

“I suppose,” said his aunt after a good suck at her toddy, “you all know what you’re about. I’m sure I don’t. I smell danger.”

“That’s a dark saying, Auntie,” remarked Hilary.

Blore came in and announced dinner. It was true that he had a very loud voice.

Before they went to bed they listened to the regional weather report. It said that snow was expected to fall through the night and into Christmas Eve but that it was unlikely to continue until Christmas Day itself. A warm front was approaching over the Atlantic Ocean.

“I always think,” Hilary remarked, “of a warm front as belonging to a décolleté Regency lady thrusting her opulent prow, as it were, into some consequential rout or ball and warming it up no end. The ball, I mean.”

“No doubt,” his aunt tartly rejoined, “Cressida will fulfil that questionable role at the coming function.”

“Well, you know, darling, I rather think she may,” said Hilary and kissed his aunt good-night.

When Troy hung her red dress in her wardrobe that night she discovered that the recess in which it had been built must be flanked by a similar recess in the Forresters’ room so that the ancient wall that separated them had been, in this section, removed, and a thin partition separated their respective hanging cupboards.

Mrs. Forrester, at this very moment, was evidently disposing of her own garments. Troy could hear the scrape of coat hangers on the rail. She jumped violently when her own name was shouted, almost, as it seemed, into her ear.

“
Troy
! Odd sort of Christian name.”

Distantly, Colonel Forrester could be heard to say: “… no… understand… famous…” His head, Troy thought was momentarily engulfed in some garment. Mrs. Forrester sounded extremely cross.

“You know what
I
think about it,” she shouted and rattled the coat hangers, “I said you know…”

Troy, reprehensibly, was riveted in her wardrobe.

“… don’t trust…” continued the voice. “Never have. You know that.” A pause and a final shout: “… sooner it was left straight out to the murderers. Now!” A final angry clash of coat hangers and a bang of wardrobe doors.

Troy went to bed in a daze but whether this condition was engendered by the Lucullan dinner Hilary and Kittiwee had provided or by the juxtaposition of unusual circumstances in which she found herself, she was quite unable to determine.

She had thought she was sleepy when she got into bed, but now she lay awake, listening to small noises made by the fire in her grate as it settled into glowing oblivion and to faint sighs and occasional buffets of the nightwind outside. “Well,” Troy thought, “this
is
a rum go and no mistake.”

After a period of disjointed but sharp reflections she began to fancy she heard voices somewhere out in the dark. “I must be dozing, after all,” Troy thought but knew that it was not so. A gust of wind rumbled in the chimney, followed by a silence into which there intruded the wraith of a voice, belonging nowhere and diminished as if the sound had been turned off in a television dialogue and only the ghost of itself remained.

Now, positively, it was out there below her window: a man’s voice — two voices — engaged in indistinguishable talk.

Troy got out of bed and, by the glow from her dying fire, went to her window and parted the curtains.

It was not as dark as she had expected. She looked out at a subject that might have inspired Jane Eyre to add another item to her portfolio. A rift had been blown in the clouds and the moon in its last quarter shone on a morbid-looking prospect of black shadows thrown across cadaverous passages of snow. In the background rose the moors and in the foreground, the shambles of broken glass beneath her window. Beyond this jogged two torchlights, the first of which cast a yellow circle on a white ground. The second bobbed about the side of a large wooden crate with the legend: “Musical instrument. Handle with Extreme Care,” stencilled across it. It seemed to be mounted on some kind of vehicle, a sledge, perhaps, since it made no noise.

The two men wore hooded oilskins that glinted as they moved. The leader gesticulated and pointed and then turned and leant into the wind. Troy saw that he had some kind of tow-rope over his shoulder. The second man placed his muffled hands against the rear end of the crate and braced himself. He tilted his head sideways and glanced up. For a moment she caught sight of his face. It was Nigel.

Although Troy had only had one look at Vincent, the nonpoisoner-chauffeur-gardener, and that look from the top of a hill, she felt sure that the leader was he.

“Hup!” cried the disembodied voice and the ridiculous outfit moved off round the east wing in the direction of the main courtyard of Halberds. The moon was overrun by clouds.

Before she got back into bed Troy looked at a little Sèvres clock on her chimney-piece. She was greatly surprised to find that the hour was no later than ten past twelve.

At last she fell asleep and woke to the sound of opening curtains. A general pale glare was admitted.

“Good-morning, Nigel,” said Troy.

“Good-morning,” Nigel muttered, “madam.”

With downcast eyes he placed her morning tea tray at her bedside.

“Has there been a heavy fall of snow?”

“Not to say heavy,” he sighed, moving towards the door.

Troy said boldly, “It was coming down quite hard last night, wasn’t it? You must have been frozen pulling that sledge.”

He stopped. For the first time he lifted his gaze to her face. His almost colourless eyes stared through their white lashes like a doll’s.

“I happened to look out,” Troy explained, and wondered why on earth she should feel frightened.

He stood motionless for a few seconds and then said “Yes?” and moved to the door. Like an actor timing an exit line he added, “It’s a surprise,” and left her.

The nature of the surprise became evident when Troy went down to breakfast.

A moderate snowfall had wrought its conventional change in a landscape that glittered in the thin sunshine. The moors had become interfolding arcs of white and blue, the trees wore their epaulettes with an obsequious air of conformity, and the area under treatment by tractors was simplified as if a white dustsheet had been dropped over it.

The breakfast-room was in the east wing of Halberds. It opened off a passage that terminated in a door into the adjoining library. The library itself, being the foremost room of the east wing, commanded views on three sides.

Troy wanted to have a stare at her work. She went into the library and glowered at the portrait for some minutes, biting her thumb. Then she looked out of the windows that gave on to the courtyard. Here, already masked in snow and placed at dead centre, was a large rectangular object that Troy had no difficulty in recognizing since the stencilled legend on its side was not as yet obliterated.

And there, busy as ever, were Vincent and Nigel, shovelling snow from wheelbarrows and packing it round the case in the form of a flanking series of steps based on an under-structure of boxes and planks. Troy watched them for a moment or two and then went to the breakfast-room.

Hilary stood in the window supping porridge. He was alone.

“Hullo, hullo!” he cried. “Have you seen the work in progress? Isn’t it exciting: the creative urge in full spate. Nigel has been inspired. I
am
so pleased, you can’t think.”

“What are they making?”

“A reproduction of my many-times-great-grandfather’s tomb. I’ve given Nigel photographs and of course he’s seen the original. It’s a compliment and I couldn’t be more gratified. Such a change from waxworks and horses for roundabouts. The crate will represent the catafalque, you see, and the recumbent figure will be life-size. Really it’s extraordinarily nice of Nigel.”

“I saw them towing the crate round the house at midnight.”

“It appears he was suddenly inspired and roused Vincent up to assist him. The top of the crate was already beautifully covered by snow this morning. It’s so
good
for Nigel to become creative again. Rejoice with me and have some kedgeree or something. Don’t you adore having things to look forward to?”

Colonel and Mrs. Forrester came in wearing that air of spurious domesticity peculiar to guests in a country house. The Colonel was enchanted by Nigel’s activities and raved about them while his porridge congealed in its bowl. His wife recalled him to himself.

“I daresay,” she said with a baleful glance at Hilary, “it keeps them out of mischief.” Troy was unable to determine what Mrs. Forrester really thought about Hilary’s experiment with murderers.

“Cressida and Uncle Bert,” said Hilary, “are coming by the 3:30 at Downlow. I’m going to meet them unless, of course, I’m required in the library.”

“Not if I may have a sitting this morning,” said Troy.

“The light will have changed, won’t it? Because of the snow?”

“I expect it will. We’ll just have to see.”

“What
sort
of portraits do you paint?” Mrs. Forrester demanded.

“Extremely good ones,” said her nephew pretty tartly. “You’re in distinguished company, Aunt Bedelia.”

To Troy’s intense amusement Mrs. Forrester pulled a long, droll face and immediately afterwards tipped her a wink.

“Hoity-toity,” she said.

“Not at all,” Hilary huffily rejoined.

Troy said, “It’s hopeless asking what sort of things I paint because I’m no good at talking about my work. If you drive me into a corner I’ll come out with the most awful jabber-wocky.”

And in a state of astonishment at herself Troy added like a shamefaced schoolgirl, “One paints as one must.”

After a considerable pause Hilary said: “How generous you are.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Troy contradicted.

“Well!” Mrs. Forrester said. “We shall see what we shall see.”

Hilary snorted.

“I did some watercolours,” Colonel Forrester remembered, “when I was at Eton. They weren’t very good but I did them, at least.”

“That was something,” his wife conceded, and Troy found herself adding that you couldn’t say fairer than that.

They finished their breakfast in comparative silence and were about to leave the table when Blore came in and bent over Hilary in a manner that recalled his own past as a headwaiter.

“Yes, Blore,” Hilary asked, “what is it?”

“The mistletoe, sir. It will be on the 3:30 and the person wonders if it could be collected at the station.”

“I’ll collect it. It’s for the kissing bough. Ask Vincent to have everything ready, will you?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Good.”

Hilary rubbed his hands with an exhilarated air and proposed to Troy that they resume their sittings. When the session was concluded, they went out into the sparkling morning to see how Nigel was getting on with his effigy.

It had advanced. The recumbent figure of a sixteenth-century Bill-Tasman was taking shape. Nigel’s mittened hands worked quickly. He slapped on fistfuls of snow and manipulated them into shape with a wooden spatula: a kitchen implement, Troy supposed. There was something frenetic in his devotion to his task. He didn’t so much as glance at his audience. Slap, slap, scoop, scoop, he went.

And now, for the first time, Troy encountered Cooke, the cook, nicknamed Kittiwee.

He had come out-of-doors wearing his professional hat, checked trousers and snowy apron with an overcoat slung rather stylishly over his shoulders. He carried an enormous ladle and looked, Troy thought, as if he had materialized from a Happy Families playing card. Indeed, his round face, large eyes and wide mouth were comically in accord with such a notion.

When he saw Troy and Hilary he beamed upon them and raised a plump hand to his starched hat.

“
Good
morning, sir,” said Kittiwee. “
Good
morning, ladies.”

“ ’Morning, Cooke,” Hilary rejoined. “Come out to lend a hand with the icing?”

Kittiwee laughed consumedly at this mildest of jokelets. “Indeed,
no
sir,” he protested. “I wouldn’t dare. I just thought a
ladle
might assist the
artist
.”

Nigel thus indirectly appealed to merely shook his head without pausing in his task.

“All going well in your department?” Hilary asked.

“Yes, thank you, sir. We’re doing nicely. The Boy from Downlow is ever such a bright lad.”

“Oh. Good. Good,” Hilary said, rather hurriedly, Troy thought. “What about the mince pies?”

“Ready for nibbles and wishes immediately after tea, sir, if you please,” cried Kittiwee, gaily.

“If they are on the same level as the other things you’ve been giving us to eat,” Troy said, “they’ll be the mince pies of the century.”

It was hard to say who was the more delighted by this eulogy, Hilary or his cook.

Vincent came round the east wing wheeling another bar-rowful of snow. At close quarters he turned out to be a swarthy, thin man with a haggard expression in his eyes. He looked sidelong at Troy, tipped out his load, and trundled off again. Kittiwee, explaining that he had only popped out for one second, embraced them all in the very widest of dimpled smiles and retired into the house.

A few minutes later Blore came into the courtyard and boomingly proclaimed that luncheon was served.

Cressida Tottenham was blond and extremely elegant. She was so elegant that her beauty seemed to be a second consideration: a kind of bonus, a gloss. She wore a sable hat. Sable framed her face, hung from her sleeves, and topped her boots. When her outer garments were removed she appeared to be gloved rather than clad in the very ultimate of expensive simplicity.

Her eyes and her mouth slanted and she carried her head a little on one side. She was very composed and not loquacious. When she did talk she said “you know” with every second breath. She was not by any means the kind of subject that Troy liked to paint. This might turn out to be awkward: Hilary kept looking inquisitively at her as if to ask what she thought of Cressida.

To Mr. Bert Smith, Troy took an instant fancy. He was a little old man with an impertinent face, a bright eye and a strong out-of-date cockney habit of speech. He was smartly dressed in an aggressive countrified way. Troy judged him to be about seventy years old and in excellent health.

The encounter between the new arrivals and the Forresters was interesting. Colonel Forrester greeted Miss Tottenham with timid admiration, calling her “Cressy dear.”