Chapter Three

The Coming of the Claimant

 

In the morning things always look different, and on this particular morning the scene of the previous night seemed more than ever ridiculous. Belting was the kind of house where at night it was easy to believe in machinations of a good old-fashioned kind, wills hidden in the secret drawers of desks, the return of the long-lost heir, even cupboards and passages leading from one room to another. In daytime, on a fine July morning, such thoughts seemed absurd. I drew the curtains, got back to bed, propped up the pillows behind my head, and looked around the room, pleased with what I saw. Lady W had agreed that my Thomas Lovell – which was the name I had invented for my bedroom based on a word fantasy worthy of Uncle Miles (I had once called the bedroom “beddoes,” Beddoes was a poet, drop the surname and you have his Christian name Thomas Lovell left) – might be done over to my own taste, and I had had the walls covered with a Japanese grass paper, against which I had put Hokusai prints, some Chinese wall mats, and several drawings by a modern Japanese primitive who had lost his reason and committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. Dotted around the room were bits of Japanese pottery. There was a lacquered desk at which I sometimes wrote poems, and a lacquered table with a chessboard top at which I worked out chess problems. I dare say these may sound incongruous accompaniments for a bedroom which contained also an old-fashioned washstand and an uncompromisingly Victorian brass bed. I can only say that at the time I got great pleasure from it.

I meditated for a while in my Thomas Lovell, and came to the conclusion that I had probably been rather silly. No doubt Stephen and Miles were doing what they thought best for Lady W, it would be wrong even to think anything else, and it was not for me to criticise them. I felt the force of this, although I was still determined that in some way or another Lady W must learn that the letter was a hoax. She was the kind of tough old lady who would always prefer the truth, however much pain it might cause her, to an easy lie, and if her sons had not been so much afraid of her they would have realised that. If necessary I would tell her myself, as I had said. With this settled in my mind I got up, washed and spoke aloud two lines of a poem by somebody or other that had got stuck in my mind:

 

What shall we talk of, Li-po, Hokusoi,

You narrow your long eyes to fascinate me.

 

I narrowed my own eyes in a fairly hideous Victorian looking-glass, looked out at the bright morning, and went downstairs in a good temper. In the breakfast-room I found Clarissa and Uncle Miles – Uncle Stephen had already gone to his Folkestone office – and it seemed that they too were anxious to forget last night’s scene. Clarissa was tucking into a great mound of scrambled egg at considerable speed, in the intervals of making telephonic arrangements for the vet to come and have a look at a couple of the dogs, sorting out notes for a talk she was to give to the Women’s Institute called “Getting the Best out of the Breed,” and arranging about lunch with one of the dailies who also did some cooking. Uncle Miles greeted me cheerfully, gave me one of his winks when Clarissa was not looking, and returned to consideration of the Daily Worker, which he took because he said they had the best racing correspondent in the country. Racing and cricket were Uncle Miles’ chief interests. Everything seemed to have returned to normal, even to Uncle Miles’ slightly furtive extraction from his pocket of a small book in which he began to make pencilled calculations, calculations that would, I knew, turn into elaborate doubles, trebles and accumulators, rather than simple win or place bets.

Later I tried to see Lady W, but Peterson told me that she never saw anybody in the mornings now, because it was not her best time. Uncle Miles had disappeared, and the yelping of dogs told me of Clarissa’s whereabouts. I did not mind being alone. For the first day or two of the holidays I liked simply to luxuriate in being back at Belting, I sank back into the delicious country idleness of life there. I took Max Beerbohm’s Works and went out into the garden. Almost at the door I met old Thorne.

“Just a minute, Mr Christopher.” I stopped, and he seemed uncertain how to go on. “Is there any truth in what I’m hearing, that Mr David’s alive and he’s coming back?”

There the question was, and what could I say? I tried to equivocate. “Who told you that?”

“Marley, he does a bit of gardening you know, said Miss Peterson told him. Said she had it from her ladyship.”

Thorne and Peterson were barely on speaking terms. I made what seemed to me an adroit reply. “As far as I know there’s no truth in it.”

“Because if Mr David’s coming back he wants to watch out for himself. There’ll be trouble.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“You won’t remember, no more will Mr Miles very like. But he wants to think about it. There’ll be trouble.”

Thorne’s nose was bent very much to one side, a fact that gave him a misleadingly crafty expression. I asked again what he meant, but he shuffled away muttering. Later, when Uncle Miles appeared, I asked him too.

“Don’t know what he’s talking about. I sometimes think old Thorne’s brain is going a bit soft. But since there’s no question of David’s appearance it’s what’s called an academic point. Meaning, a bit of nonsense.”

I said awkwardly – boys don’t find apologies easy – “I’m afraid I made a fool of myself last night.”

He beamed. “Stephen didn’t do so badly either.”

“I’m going to apologise to him. After all, he’s old – ”

“He’s a year older than I am.”

“I shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. But I still feel Lady W ought to be told what you’ve done. She’s tough enough to take it.”

Uncle Miles smiled so often that it was strange to see how his mouth turned down, how sombre he looked, when he was serious. “Yes, I can see you would feel that. Leave it till this evening, and we’ll talk it over with Stephen. I promise there’ll be no fireworks tonight.” He smiled, and it was as though the sombre look had been sponged away, so that the Uncle Miles I knew could return. “Is your name Dennis?”

“What?”

“Because I really came out to say ‘Tennis, Dennis.’ Meaning to say that you ought to be able to beat an old man by Miles.”

“I can only reply like the boy who was asked by his teacher if he could say what was Napoleon’s nationality.”

“What was that?” Uncle Miles asked incautiously. “He said ‘Of course I can’ and got top marks.”

These jokes look enormously silly put down on paper, but they were the sort of thing that amused Uncle Miles, and in those days they amused me too. It seems ridiculous to say that from the time I came to Belting Uncle Miles had been my best friend, when he was more than double my age, but I can’t find any better way of putting it. That evening when he got down on the floor and played with the mechanical bowler was only the first of many. He had a passion for all sorts of adolescent games from l’Attaque and Buccaneer to the sort of indoor cricket that you play on paper by picking words out of a book. I remember finding in his room one day a complete record of a series of Test matches between England and Australia, in which the England team were the actual players of those days, Hutton, Compton, Bedser and the others, with the addition of M Wainwright, who did remarkably well with both bat and ball. I had just reached the age at which I was beginning to find Uncle Miles’ make-believe absurd, but unlike most day dreamers he was quite a useful cricketer and tennis player in real life. Now, when we got our rackets and played on the old hard tennis court, he was delighted when he beat me. Afterwards we went and sat by the strippling ream – and now I have brought my narrative up to the point I had reached on the first page, and high time too, you may think.

Why did I feel embarrassed about that Max Beerbohm quotation, the one in which he said at the age of twenty-three that he would write no more? Well, during my six years at Belting I had learned a good deal about Uncle Miles, both from other people and from what he had told me himself, and I could see that the remark might have a personal application. I knew that at Oxford Uncle Miles had been one of the stars of the OUDS, that against his father’s wish he had insisted on making the stage his career, and that he had never done much good as an actor. Then there was something about a marriage that had broken up, although I didn’t know the details. On the grand piano there was a photograph of Miles, looking gay and eager, and with a fine thatch of dark hair. It was impossible for me to recognise in this photograph the little bald man I knew, whose mouth turned down at the corners, who played a cunning game of tennis, was devoted to county cricket, and spent an hour a day in placing bets on horses. But the chief reason for embarrassment was Uncle Miles’ novel. At the age of twenty-two he had published a novel called On the Road to Roundabout. There was no proper library at Belting, but books were to be found in almost every room, in no discernible order, and I had discovered a copy of Uncle Miles’ novel one day in, of all places, the Pam Moor. It was one of those light, bright, slight novels about nothing very much that young men published between the wars. Of course, he found me reading it.

“Thought I’d got rid of all those,” he said, and gave his occasional deprecating giggle. “Know how many copies it sold? A hundred and eighty-nine. What do you think of it? Don’t say, I can tell from the look on your face. Know what the reviewers said, the four who noticed it? They all said ‘promising.’ You can’t have a deadlier word than that, young Christopher, it’s the kiss of death. I never wrote anything else.”

You can see why it was a maladroit quotation from Beerbohm. But Uncle Miles did not seem to be upset by it. He said, to himself as much as to me, as he sat staring across the stream, “You don’t know what the Wainwrights are really like, do you? Or what Mamma’s like?” I lay on my stomach and listened. “She’s a remarkable woman, no doubt about that, but she never had any life outside the family, never wanted any of us to go away. And none of us did, until the war took us away.”

“I thought Hugh started his own business.”

“So he did, but where did he do it? Folkestone. And he went on living here.”

“What were they really like, Hugh and David?”

“They weren’t like what Mamma may have told you. Hugh was tough in a sort of way, and he was always talking about what he was going to do, but he never did it. Did she tell you he wrote plays?”

“Yes.”

“So he did, but I’ll bet she didn’t tell you what they were like. He was dotty about Ibsen, and these plays were Ibsen and water. No producer would look at them, and I don’t wonder. Of course Mamma insisted that he was a misunderstood genius, but I don’t think she really ever believed it herself. It was David who was the apple of her eye, he was so handsome. Hugh was pretty wild.”

“How do you mean?”

“He had all sorts of bright ideas that were going to make a fortune. One was to charter a lot of river boats which he was going to buy cheaply and rent out during the summer. Another was some sort of patent de-ruster. Another was a racing system, something to do with backing second favourites.” Uncle Miles snorted, with the contempt of a man who has tried all racing systems. “And what did he turn out to be? An estate agent, and he was no good at that, when he died they found out the firm was bankrupt and it had to be closed down.” His voice had become slightly shrill.

“What about David? You say he was the one Mamma really liked.” It was always a slight effort to me to say “Mamma”.

“David was a charmer, it’s true, but he never did anything either. Very shy, and then when he’d got over the shyness he’d be – flippant, I suppose you’d call it. Went to art school, but he wasn’t much good. Then he wrote poems and sent them to little magazines. A few of them were printed, and of course Mamma was in the seventh heaven over that, but it never amounted to anything. He and Hugh were very close, he relied on Hugh in lots of ways.” Uncle Miles turned towards me, and on his little red face there was the pain of talent unacknowledged. “Mamma’s told you they were both geniuses, I dare say. Take it from me, Christopher, they weren’t. Hugh was good company, talked a lot, got on well with people. David was a kind of shrinking violet, tremendously sensitive and all that, but what did either of them ever do? Nothing. I was the only one who ever did anything, ever published a book. And I was the only one who got away from home, too. Even if I was never a good actor, I did get away. I only came back after Hugh and David died. Mamma wanted me to, and it seemed I ought to. I thought I should be able to come back just for a few weeks, but I never got away again. She eats you up, you know. She eats you up.”

There was bitterness in his voice now. I was uncomfortable, because I had never known him like this. “What about your father?”

“He was never much interested. Four sons, and not one a professional soldier. Anyway, Mamma swamped him too.”

“Uncle Miles. Why would it be such a catastrophe if he – this man – if he were David? I know he’s not,” I added hurriedly. “But supposing it were true, why should you and Stephen be so upset?”

Far, far away a small car beetled in off the main road, and began to crawl along the drive. Uncle Miles pulled up some bits of grass, put a couple of pieces in his mouth. “I’ve made a mess of things,” he said. “But it’s not all been my own fault. I want something back out of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Money.” With an attempt to regain his usual flippancy he said. “To be frank about it, young Christopher, filthy lucre. When Mamma dies Stephen gets the house, you get your whack, old Thorpe and Peterson get something and so on, but there’ll be a tidy sum for me. I don’t know how much, but – well, a tidy sum. Now, supposing David came back, what do you think would happen, who d’you think would get the house then?”

“I see.”

“Horrible old Muncle Iles with his eye on the chain mance,” he said. “That’s what you think. But it isn’t quite like that. I’ve earned my inheritance, Christopher, and I want it.”

“I suppose so.” He was right, it did seem to me horrible to be concerned with money in that way. I liked Uncle Miles, but what he was saying now seemed to me disgusting.

The beetle car clattered across the cattle grid and turned into the drive of pollarded yews that led up to the courtyard in front of the house.

“If I could have my time over again – ” Uncle Miles said. The beetle stopped in the courtyard and two men got out. He got to his feet. “What’s that?”

“Probably the vet to see Clarissa.”

“It’s not the vet,” he said quite sharply. He began to walk with his springy, slightly hurried step, towards the house. I followed him more slowly. As he neared the house Uncle Miles broke into a trot, holding the panama hat on to his head with one hand. I trotted too, rather ridiculously, after him.

As we came past the tennis court and on to the gravel I saw the two men properly for the first time. One was hook-nosed, tall, dressed with a sort of spurious elegance in a suit that gave the impression of being too small for him. He looked at the front of the house, then at his companion, then at Uncle Miles, with a perpetual small smile in which there was something uneasy. But it was at sight of the other man that a shiver went up my back as though the day were cold, for I knew without anything being said that it was he who had written the letter from Paris. He was just above medium height, and he carried himself with a natural grace that contrasted with his companion’s uneasiness. He wore an old and shabby blue suit and his face was worn and lined, but when he looked at us, as he did now at Uncle Miles and me standing beside him, I saw or thought I saw the boyish seriousness on the face of the photograph on the grand piano. He stepped forward with his hand outstretched and said, in a voice that was easy and pleasant with a ripple of laughter beneath it, “If it’s not old Miles, looking all hot and bothered at sight of me. Miles, old chap, how are you?”

Uncle Miles retreated a step, as though the outstretched hand was the reared head of a poisonous snake. His voice was hoarse as I had never heard it as he said, “What sort of game is this?”

“Oh, come on now, Miles, I haven’t changed that much.” He turned to me and said, “And who are you?”

“My name’s Christopher Barrington. I’m – ”

“You’ll be the son of, let me think, of Jimmy Barrington and old Jonathan’s daughter, right? I’m David Wainwright.” He grasped my hand. “And this is my friend Silas Markle. Markie, meet Christopher Barrington and my brother Miles. I’d know Miles anywhere, although he doesn’t seem to be so sure of me at the moment.”

The hook-nosed man bobbed his head and said something, and then two things happened. A little way behind the visitors stood a number of topiary birds, and from a ladder just behind one of these descended in an uncertain manner old Thorne. At the same time Clarissa turned the corner of the house that led to the stables, three bull terriers in tow on leads.

“Mr David,” Thorne said. “It is you, then, you’ve come back to us.” He advanced upon the stranger, who clasped him warmly, while the old man repeated over and over, “I knew you’d come back, I always said you’d come back.”

Clarissa approached. If there had been uncertainty about Miles, there was none in her. She recognised the enemy immediately. “You wrote that letter,” she said, and there could be no mistaking the hostility in her voice.

The stranger disentangled himself from Thorne. “You’ll be my sister-in-law Clarissa. We haven’t met before, but I must give myself the pleasure of greeting a new relative.”

“Just try it and I’ll set Brush and Bounce on you.” At mention of their names the bull terriers snarled appreciatively or threateningly. The stranger took a couple of steps towards her, then stopped and said rather lamely, “Not what I’d call a friendly reception, eh, Markle?”

Clarissa stood square as a stone. I never liked her, but I almost admired her at that moment. “You had our letter, Mr Stiver or whatever your name is. You got your money, though you’d have had none if I’d had my way. Now you’re here for more. I can tell you there’s nothing doing. You and your friend can get back in that car and go back where you came from, do you understand? I’ll count ten, and if you’re not in the car and driving away by then I shall set the dogs on you. Believe me, you’ll wish you’d got in the car if I do.”

The stranger looked at Markle, Markle shrugged his lean shoulders slightly, and I don’t know what might have happened then, had the situation not been totally changed by a diversion. A moment before I had heard the sound of a window opening, but had been too absorbed in the scene before me to look round. I think Uncle Miles had been the only one looking towards the house, for he raised and dropped his hand in a hopeless gesture at the same moment that Lady W called from the open window: “David. David, my boy.”

She was there at the window, her white hair wild and her arms like two long sticks outstretched, and it was as though her voice had broken a spell. The stranger cried joyously, “Mamma,” ran to the house and disappeared within the entrance hall. Clarissa looked for a moment as if she would release the dogs regardless of the fact that Lady W was watching, and then marched over to Miles and snapped that he should hold the dogs. When he asked where she was going, she flung over her shoulder the words that she was going to telephone Stephen. Thorne also had made his way towards the house, no doubt to spread the news. Markle, who had not spoken, now took out a cigarette case and offered its contents to Miles, who refused with an angry shake of the head, and then to me. When I also refused he snapped the case decisively shut and said, “We may as well go in. Cooler indoors than out. Will you lead the way, young man?” There was something unpleasant, in the tone rather than the words, but still there seemed nothing for it but to go into the house. I left Uncle Miles tugging away at the dogs’ leads, trying to get them round to the stables. They were waiting for their mistress.