‘We have had a letter from Penelope.’
Mrs Rich gave this information to Charles Gaston upon his arrival at the vicarage on what had turned into a routine weekly call on its incumbent. Mr Rich was rapidly becoming a valetudinarian, accumulating small anxieties at a rate requiring regular reassurance that all was fundamentally as it should be in a man of advancing years.
‘A most amusing letter,’ Mrs Rich went on. ‘As you know, Penelope went off a fortnight ago to inspect her surprising French inheritance. She finds Le Colombier to be quite enchanting.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it.’ Gaston, who had long suspected Mrs Rich of having divined his feelings about her stepdaughter, was careful to give no particular emphasis to this reply.
‘But there is something a little out of the way, as well. Entering what she believed to be an untenanted house, she found herself in the presence of a young Englishman, engaged upon some sort of abstract painting. It was, Penelope says, like a small coup de théâtre. There is something slightly odd in the mere phrase.’
‘Fulke was a man of the theatre. Penelope may have been thinking of that.’
‘Very true. Well, the young man turned out to have been Fulke’s secretary, and to be named Bernie Huffer. He made a little joke to the effect that he “went with the house”. Fulke, it seems, had arranged that this Mr Huffer should remain at the villa for a time, to help Penelope with sorting through his papers. It seems to me—’ Mrs Rich paused for a moment, and in a manner somehow reminding Gaston that here was Mrs Martin still—’just a little bit strange.’
‘Do you mean not quite proper?’
‘There is an old woman who comes in to wash up and tidy round, and there is a boy who cuts the grass.’ Mrs Rich paused again on this oblique reply. ‘And Mr Huffer is quartered not in the house itself, but in the dovecot, where he has established a studio.’
‘You feel that to be reassuring?’
‘I hope I feel no need to be reassured, or not in the obvious sense. Penelope is not a child.’
‘That’s certainly true.’ Gaston reflected on the years he had let pass without venturing on a second proposal to Penelope in her widowed state. ‘And she doesn’t, I take it, describe this Bernie as being as enchanting as the villa?’
‘She appears to find him very entertaining. It is something we haven’t much gone in for at the vicarage.’
‘Will she be entertained by Fulke’s literary remains? I suppose that’s what is meant by his papers.’
‘I gather that there was a letter from Fulke awaiting her at Le Colombier. If it expressed some sort of wish that she should concern herself with the matter, she might feel that the task, like Mr Huffer, went with the house.’
‘It seems an odd idea to me.’ Gaston sounded really puzzled. ‘Penelope is fond of poetry, but has no consuming interest in present-day literature as a whole.’
‘I agree with you. But Penelope is bound to be conscious that Fulke has treated her, as Caspar’s widow, handsomely enough. Nevertheless there is certainly something unseemly, or at least unfortunately contrived, in her being put into double harness with a strange young man. I admit to hoping that she will herself see it as that, and lose not too much time in sending Mr Huffer about his business.’
‘I must go about mine.’ Gaston made a gesture in the direction of Mr Rich’s study. ‘What does her father think of it all?’
‘He has expressed no more than his belief that there is a respectable family of Huffers in Northumberland, although they are of German origin and keep an extra “e” in the name – like that writer, I suppose, who ended up as Ford Madox Ford. But my husband may have more disturbing thoughts as well. I have tried not to arouse alarm, and am sure you will do so, too.’
Dr Gaston found little to say in a professional way to his patient, or at least little that was new. But he felt that, as a friend of the family, he was bound to make some reference to the news that had come from France. So on this topic he embarked, although keeping Mrs Rich’s admonition well in mind.
‘I’m delighted,’ he said, ‘to learn that you have heard from Penelope, and that she seems to find her new possession very much to her taste.’
‘And her new companion, too. I can scarcely be said to understand the situation at all. Fulke Ferneydale acted very properly in doing something substantial for his brother’s widow – and the more so because poor Caspar seems never to have been able to put together sixpence of his own. But so to arrange matters as to provide her, into the bargain, with a young male associate in what appears to be a singularly isolated dwelling strikes me as being, to put it mildly, misconceived.’
‘But – as your wife has just been saying to me – Penelope is not an inexperienced girl. I don’t think you need have any cause for alarm.’ As he said this, Gaston realised that he mustn’t continue fibbing – and indeed that the vicar was already, so to speak, too surprisingly on the ball to make fibbing feasible. ‘Or for any immediate cause for alarm,’ he emended. ‘Penelope has behind her a sound education and a strong family tradition of right conduct in serious affairs. If this young man offends her sense of what is proper, she is likely to give him his marching orders at once. If I understand the thing aright, she is virtually his employer. It lies within her power to sack him on the spot.’
‘There is truth in what you say, Gaston. But you might well add to your sketch of my daughter that, through one reason and another, she has moved into her thirties a little short of experience in the broader sense of the term. Caspar, although I had a high respect for him, seems unlikely to have been a very exciting man to marry. It is a point we do well to bear in mind. To be quite frank with you, her continued widowhood over a substantial stretch of time has been something of a disappointment to me.’
Not unnaturally, these cogent remarks from one who was commonly no more than a fretful old man held Gaston for some moments dumb, so that it was the vicar who continued the conversation still.
‘We rightly acknowledge to our Creator that a thousand ages in his sight are like an evening gone. But profane literature has its lessons to. Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni. I am frequently conscious that my own life reflects something of what Horace intends.’
‘We have all in our time let opportunities slip, no doubt.’ Gaston paused for a moment before adding anything to this commonplace (but, as it happened, deeply felt) remark. Henry Rich presumably had behind him – if very far behind him – an acquaintance not only with Horace but with Catullus and Martial too. Or he must at least possess a bookish knowledge of some of the vagaries of sex. ‘But there is another point, if not a very pleasant one, which we have to bear in mind. This Bernie Huffer appears to have been the latest of Fulke Ferneydale’s secretaries. And I happen to have assured knowledge that they were all very good-looking young men.’
‘And catamites to boot, no doubt.’ The Reverend Mr Rich came out with this quite astoundingly in his stride. ‘But that may not greatly mend matters. On the contrary, Gaston. There are homosexual men who derive satisfaction from having women fall in love with them. There are also men who are attracted by one sex or the other according to what turns up. I imagine that to have been true of Fulke Ferneydale himself. Was it not so?’
‘It was so, or approximately so. You simplify a little, but on the broad facts of the case I possess, as it happens, quite conclusive information. It was a matter of Fulke having made me, for a time, something of a confidant. And the situation does become alarming’ – here Gaston cast Mrs Rich’s admonition to the winds – ‘if it holds true of this Bernie Huffer as well. That Penelope should become even a little attached to such a person would be very unfortunate indeed.’
‘Have you a reliable locum, Gaston?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘A reliable locum.’
‘Certainly I have. A retired man, always willing to lend a hand.’
‘Then get into an aeroplane – they go all over the place nowadays – and find out how the land does lie.’ Mr Rich paused as if considering the sufficiency of this. ‘And then act as you can. My wife and I, let me say, are not without a sense of what you feel about my daughter.’
As Gaston drove back to his surgery he reflected in some anxiety on these two conversations. It was surprising that old Henry Rich, despite all his hypochondria and his twaddle about the Problem of Time, had thought to better purpose over Mr Bernie Huffer than had his capable and intelligent second wife. It was not conceivable that Mrs Rich had never heard of what Tommy Elbrow the gardener had termed Fulke Ferneydale’s versatility: the breadth, as it might be called, of that celebrated author’s erotic interests. But even confidentially to himself she had made no mention of this now – presumably because, Fulke being safely dead, his proclivities were without relevance to Penelope’s present situation. But what did Penelope herself know? Here was an entirely open question. Caspar Ferneydale would certainly have deemed it proper to refrain from any communication to his wife of what he would undoubtedly regard as a reprehensible streak in his brother’s character, and it might well be that Penelope had gathered only that Fulke possessed some untidy and unedifying sexual life. If Mrs Rich knew this to be the limit of her stepdaughter’s knowledge she might decide to leave it at that, and might think of Bernie Huffer merely as a young man who, given the present set-up at Le Colombier, was likely to make a nuisance of himself after the fashion to which young men are always liable. But this was an inadequate view of the kind of risks that might be blowing around. Surprisingly, old Mr Rich had appeared to be as aware of them as Gaston was. But Gaston, in addition, felt that there lurked in the situation possibilities – even bizarre possibilities – which he himself was far from clear about.
And how was he going to act when he emerged from that aeroplane and found himself on French soil? He would, presumably, hire a car, and in it make his way to Le Colombier. But how, or as what, was he to present himself to the villa’s new proprietor? He couldn’t renew his acquaintance with Penelope Ferneydale amid a shower of lies designed to suggest that chance alone had brought him into her presence. He must appear all nakedly in the role of a knight errant – either as this or (what would be even worse) as the ambassador of an apprehensive and misdoubting parent. And in one or other of these guises he might prove to be blundering into a situation over which Penelope was entirely in control. The whole exploit might be simply a cooking of his own goose or a queering of his own pitch.
In fact Charles Gaston didn’t like his own position at all, and he might have hesitated but for the knowledge that he liked Penelope’s even less. As it was, immediately he was within reach of his telephone he rang up that useful locum, and then rang up Heathrow. It was then some further time before he realised how early his action had in fact been determined. A single phrase in Penelope’s letter as it had been reported to him had made it inevitable that he should thus in haste set out.