A Game of Consequences Page 5

  ‘Jerry’s in one of his morose moods. He hates it here, don’t you, my dove?’ his wife said, rubbing her face against his olive cheek like a cat. ‘Tom, you must help me keep him amused. We’ll have lots of parties. Wake them all up round here. Have fun the way we used to when I was a girl. Nobody has any fun any more, have you noticed?’

  ‘Or they have different ideas of fun,’ suggested Kate.

  ‘That’s what I mean: it isn’t fun any more.’ Aurora began to tell them of involved japes of old and fantastic scandals of those days. She was extremely amusing. They drank a lot and laughed a lot. The children had fallen asleep long before the grown-ups noticed how late it was: Biddy curled up on the floor and Dinah fallen like a rag doll across Jeremy’s thighs.

  Really the Ransomes hadn’t had such a good time since they’d quit their own home. Thank goodness they all got on so well, Tom thought, if he was going to have to make himself useful to them. Not a hard task, he had already discovered, for they were not the sort of people who were accustomed to looking after themselves. They seemed blessedly unorganised and impractical. They would be thankful to have someone to look after things for them; thankful, not in the sense of being grateful — he did not expect that — but in the sense of there being someone on whom they could depend, someone who would run about for them like an obedient little dog who never needed any attention beyond an occasional pat.

  He began the very next morning by taking them early-morning tea in the big red Chinese bed with its pagoda-shaped headboard.

  ‘What a heavenly man you are, Tom. Isn’t this a treat, Jerry? Those awful women don’t come in till nine so it’s nearly ten before we get breakfast.’

  ‘It would be,’ Tom agreed. ‘I’m going down to the village presently, is there anything I can get you? Chops? Steak? Fish? I’ll come back before I go and you can tell me then.’

  ‘I leave it to you. I leave it to you entirely. I simply can’t think of food at this hour of the morning. But unless it’s Mrs. Slaughter’s day, and I’m not sure that it is, try to get something that doesn’t need cooking. My skills are many and various but cooking is not one of them. I look upon a frying-pan with blank dismay.’

  ‘She does, you know. If man’s development had depended on Madam here we’d still be eating lumps of raw meat torn from the animal.’

  ‘No, we shouldn’t. Fortnums came into existence because there were people like me,’ Aurora said with an air of triumph.

  ‘I wish I could go on gassing but I must pick up my skirts, dears, and gallop down to the shops,’ Tom said, seizing the opportunity to escape.

  ‘Where’s Madam?’ Tom inquired later that morning, putting his head in at the library door.

  ‘No idea. If she’s not in the house she’s probably outside bullying the gardener to put back a tree he cut down,’ Jeremy said from behind The Times.

  ‘Well, when you see her will you tell her that the provisions are on the kitchen table: half a pound of smoked salmon, and some tongue and stuff for tonight. Okay?’

  ‘Fine. Thanks awfully. Come in and help yourself to a drink.’

  ‘I haven’t really got time … ’

  ‘Balls. You’ve been dashing about like a smoothing-iron since the crack of dawn; you must need a restorative.’

  ‘You tempt me beyond my strength — never a very difficult thing to do. Just a quickie then,’ Tom said, marrying bottle to glass. He took a grateful swallow. ‘Anything in the paper?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Must make fascinating reading.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Same old wars, riots, strikes, and murders. Nothing of interest.’

  Nevertheless it seemed to absorb his attention and Tom politely lapsed into silence, presently stealing a glance at the object with which his own thoughts were so often occupied (for how could one not always be thinking of something so immensely valuable lying just a hand’s breadth away, so to speak). Tom received such a shock that his heart almost stopped. It felt as though it had. But the effort he had to make at self-control caused it to thump painfully in his chest.

  The picture had gone.

  Perhaps the quality of his silence had changed, become more profound, for Jeremy lowered the paper and looked across at him. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. Why?’

  ‘You look distinctly odd to me.’

  ‘Do I?’ Tom passed a hand over his face as if to discover how it had betrayed him.

  ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

  ‘An effect of the light, I expect,’ Tom said, hastily emptying his glass. ‘I must be going.’ He stood up.

  ‘Oh don’t go yet. It’s so nice having you here to talk to.’

  Despite the turmoil of fright and anxiety agitating him, Tom had to laugh: ‘Are you putting me on, by any chance? We’ve scarcely uttered.’

  ‘That is precisely the point, the delight of a companionable silence. Like a club. It’s what one misses here, don’t you find? Or perhaps you don’t. But sometimes being alone is lonely; yet as soon as my wife comes into a room a restless kind of chatter starts, to which one is obliged to listen if only out of courtesy. It’s very tiring.’ He cast the paper down and leaned his head back until his chin jutted upward. He closed his eyes with a sigh. ‘Aurora has such a demanding personality, poor old love.’

  ‘Quite,’ Tom said softly, edging quietly towards the door, ‘quite … I quite agree … ’

  ‘Where are you off to now?’ demanded the other, screwing his head round.

  ‘Forgive me, I’ve a million things to do … ’

  ‘Yes, of course you have. Cut along then, you mustn’t let me keep you. I’ve enjoyed our chat.’

  At the door, Tom hesitated. In a vague inconsequential voice, he said: ‘Wasn’t there some sort of picture over there between the windows?’

  ‘Yes. There was.’

  ‘I thought I remembered half-noticing something when I came in here before.’ After a moment, he added casually: ‘What’s happened to it?’

  ‘Aurora put it away.’ Jeremy poured himself another drink.

  ‘Oh? Is it supposed to be valuable then?’ Tom innocently inquired.

  Jeremy threw back his head in mirth.

  ‘Christ, I shouldn’t think so! Not to Rory anyway, she couldn’t stand it around, it gave her the creeps, she said. I must say I didn’t much care for it myself. It’s beyond me why anyone calling himself an artist should want to paint anything so repellent. Extraordinary mentality. Still less can I comprehend why anyone would buy it.’

  ‘Well, tastes change, you know,’ Tom said, still in the same vague indifferent manner, as if he was merely carrying his end of the conversation. ‘Who did buy it, the brother?’

  ‘As Rory remembers being scared to death by it as a child, I should guess it was probably her grandfather. Probably half dotty like the rest of the family. I think there’s a slight kink somewhere in the family DNA, if you ask me.’

  ‘Really? That’s a pretty thought … ’ And after a moment added: ‘Who is supposed to have painted it then?’

  ‘Oh, Augustus Egg, I expect.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, I always say Augustus Egg; it’s such a ghastly name that I imagine he must have painted ghastly pictures. You’re the expert, you have a look at it.’

  ‘Yes, I will sometime. I could always get it vetted for Rory at Jennets, if she thought it might be of interest.’

  ‘That’s very decent of you. I’ll tell her.’

  ‘The least I can do. Christ, look at the time! I must fly.’ And he was gone. He had wanted to know and now he knew. It was still in the house somewhere. He had been afraid it had gone with the visitors, or been got rid of, or sent up for sale at Jennets or Sothebys. God, what agony that would have been!

  Though exactly what good it did Tom to have the picture in the house he would have been hard put to say. There wasn’
t any rational thought about it. Nothing sensible. Only silly dreams. But he could not get it out of his mind that his fortunes were somehow tied up with that painting. The discovery of a Velázquez was of such importance that it could not have been set in his path for nothing — life was not so meaningless as that. It was destiny. The great opportunity which most men are secretly waiting for all their lives. It was up to him to find some means of utilising his great discovery.

  *

  Jeremy was born out of his time. He was not suited to the present age, an age where people are so involved. Jeremy was too languid to get himself involved in anything. He should have lived in a day when aristocrats were admired, when merely to be a gentleman was sufficient raison d’être. He was like a character in a Russian novel of provincial life, idle and bored.

  He would read the paper or some dull solid book, and then sit staring in front of him, as if lost in thought. But what he was thinking about for such lengthy periods Aurora had no idea. Even Jeremy himself could not have said. He did not know what was going on in his own mind, it seemed more or less empty, just transient thoughts fluttering through at random on their way somewhere else … He did not actually think at all in an abstract sense. For abstract thought is very hard work, from which even a trained brain may flinch.

  If ever Jeremy constructed a sequence of thought it would probably have been to evolve a mathematical formula for gambling. Gambling was really the only occupation that interested him, that really stirred him to life (setting aside sex, of course, as coming into a different category).

  He may have been an idle man, but he could not be regarded as a lazy one when it came to gambling. He could sit at a gaming-table, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four hours, without noticing the passage of time, as long as his luck held or his money lasted. The trouble began when his money ran out and he took to writing cheques and signing IOUs, and Aurora was expected to come to the rescue — time and time again. ‘You might just as well stay at home and flush the money down the loo!’ she would cry on a note of contempt.

  Aurora did not understand the fascination, the passion of it. The last few seconds of the race, the final trickle of the white ball into its socket, the turn of a card: moments of exquisite tension, one’s heart hammering in one’s side, whilst one’s exterior remained imperturbable and impassive, betraying nothing by so much as the twitch of a muscle in the jaw or the contraction of a finger.

  Jeremy had gone into stockbroking, in the first instance, because it was gambling on the largest possible scale. He might have stuck with it if actual money had changed hands across the floor. But because it didn’t, it lacked for him the vital, the essential, element.

  For some reason he never understood, Jeremy had to see the actual currency, or actual counters representing currency, passing back and forth, coming in and going out. He liked to feel it, to handle it, to see it ranged in columns before him or stacked on the baize cloth. To place a bet over the telephone or in a betting-shop lacked all charm for Jeremy. He had to be there where it was happening; the immediacy of it was what produced the excitement, what made the old adrenalin race through the veins like champagne.

  Money paid into his bank from some source had no thrill for him at all, seemed as unreal as fairy gold.

  But the real thing, the heart of the matter, more than the measuring of his skill against his human opponents, was the mysterious contest with Luck, the Janus-faced bitch-goddess; in which the mere winning or losing of money was only a symbol of some greater triumph or defeat with the stuff of life itself in some larger metaphysical sense.

  Perhaps on a deeper more unconscious level it was a kind of inquiry into whether life had meaning or not.

  For days at a time Jeremy would vanish into one of his clubs, and return modestly good-humoured or sombre, according to the run of the cards.

  It was these long gambling sessions which led to Aurora spending so much time with him abroad, where there were always fresh sights and new faces to distract him and opportunities for serious gambling could always be broken up by moving on to another country. Thus it had been until their unexpected return to Upperdown with Aurora feeling that here was a real opportunity to get this estate, which was costing her so much money, off her hands at last, if only she put her back into it. All the debts could then be paid off and she would once again be a wealthy woman, as she had been in the days of Piers, in the time of Aldo. Where had it all gone? she wondered.

  The house desperately needed doing up, and Aurora was torn between feeling that some things should be done and an extreme reluctance to spend another penny on the place. It seemed such a waste, when whoever bought it would most likely rip out all her renovations and patchings-up anyway.

  All day long she ran about, carting furniture up and down stairs to hide a mildewed wall, turning things around, getting estimates, chivvying Norman to clean-up the drive, weed the rose-garden, drain the lake, plant out flowers near the house to create a good impression — all to be done at once on the same day!

  Her affairs were in such confusion, owing to the two sets of Death Duties, that Aurora herself was not sure how much money she had now, particularly as she was careful to tell Jeremy that she had considerably less than she thought she had in reality; none of which he believed anyway. He was quite sure she had plenty of money and was hiding the truth from him out of stinginess. It was a kind of guessing game they played with each other.

  The property was in the hands of two big London estate agents besides Ellis & Hand, and Aurora simply could not understand why they never sent down the right sort of people to look at it.

  ‘It’s all here, everything one could want,’ she pointed out to Tom. ‘It only needs putting into order again: nothing, to people with money. Fifty acres of woodland, four hundred and fifty of arable land, and then five acres of beautifully laid-out garden, plus stables and outhouses,’ she recited as if she was rehearsing it for a future occasion.

  ‘It’s true,’ Tom said later to Jeremy as they strolled through the grounds after the rain; ‘a well-stocked kitchen-garden and really productive glasshouses are a great selling-point just now. Like swimming-pools ten years ago. It might pay her to restore them.’

  ‘You talk like Ellis.’

  ‘One has to think of these things.’

  ‘I don’t. It’s nothing to do with me. I’ve thrown my hand in.’

  ‘You want to get it off your hands, don’t you? Or your wife’s hands, if one must be punctilious.’

  ‘She does, certainly. She has this insane idea that she’s going to get a lot of money for it. She won’t, of course. And if she did, a huge wallop of it would be snatched away in Capital Gains and agent’s and solicitor’s fees and Death Duties and God knows what. That is, IF it ever sells, which is improbable in the extreme.’

  ‘Don’t be so pessimistic, man.’

  ‘Not pessimistic: realistic. Look at it. Think what it would cost in these times to put it to rights — a small fortune. A large fortune even. It would be financial suicide.

  ‘The only way I can see for her ever getting rid of it is for some wealthy lunatic to take a fancy to it. And there are not too many of those knocking about nowadays. Not like the old days when every well-to-do family seemed to have one. Now that the rich have had all their money taken away in taxes, the lunatics seem to have vanished too, have you noticed? Such a pity. They really made England what it was. I mourn their passing,’ Jeremy kicked a stone out of his path.

  ‘I think the lunatics have taken over.’

  ‘Oh no, those are the madmen. Quite different from your gentle amiable lunatic supported in his wayward fantasies by coffers of gold. No, there’s no one now to buy a place like this. It’ll hang round Rory’s neck like an albatross until we’re ruined.’ He glanced up as a crow flew cawing overhead and alighted heavily in a wych elm. ‘The only way we’ll ever get rid of it is if it should burn down.’ Tom laughed.

  ‘That’s a charming prospect!’

  ‘I’m con
vinced of it. Believe me, I’m not joking. I’d put a match to it myself, if I thought I could get away with it. I really would.’

  ‘It can’t be so difficult. People do do it. Every day, I expect.’

  ‘And get found out.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s like murder: we never hear about the successful ones.’

  Jeremy laughed: ‘Are you trying to persuade me?’

  ‘Merely following your line of thought.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have an idea how to go about it. Would you?’

  ‘Hardly. One would need to give the matter some pretty serious cogitation if one really wanted to do it.’

  ‘We are a couple of reasonably bright chaps, wouldn’t you say? It shouldn’t be beyond our combined ingenuity to come up with something.’

  ‘I’m sure we could. It would be rather fun. Like working out a chess problem.’

  ‘It is fraud, of course.’

  ‘It isn’t fraud to think about it, don’t be so pernickety, lad. Besides, who cares about insurance companies? It’s like income tax. If one can get the better of them, one does.’

  ‘You’re right. There I’m with you, it’s a citizen’s moral duty.’

  ‘Will Madam see it like that?’

  ‘Good God, you’re not proposing to let her into it, I hope. The very thought makes my blood run cold. You know what Rory’s like; she’d want to organise the whole thing herself. And the next thing is it’d be blabbed all round the village. We shouldn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘Whatever you say. She’s your wife, squire.’

  ‘Let’s go back and drink to the success of the Albatross Destruction Company.’

  ‘Limited,’ added Tom.

  ‘Oh, strictly limited.’

  ‘And what have you two been up to?’ said Aurora, encountering them in the hall.

  ‘Trying to think up some way of doing the Tax man out of his whack of Capital Gains on Upperdown,’ Tom replied promptly.

  ‘Have you really? How terribly good of you. And did you come up with anything?’

  Tom shook his head.