A Game of Consequences Page 6

  ‘Not yet. Give us time. We need time. More time.’

  ‘Careful, laddie,’ Jeremy giggled, ‘or we may find that “time” is what we get.’

  FOUR

  The men’s light-hearted scheme came to nothing. No more was said about it because a group of businessmen came down to look over the estate, went back to town and a few days later made a firm offer. They had plans to develop it, it seemed. Their offer skinned Aurora’s price to the bone, but if the gentlemen were serious, and as businessmen they must be, both solicitor and agent advised Aurora that it would be only sensible to accept. The proposition was accepted, and in the ferociously business-like way of businessmen it was stipulated that contracts were to be exchanged within six weeks. What could be more serious and sincere than that?

  Aurora invited the Ransomes in for champagne cocktails to celebrate.

  ‘I’d like to have had a proper party and asked all the local nobs, only I don’t want anyone to know about it just yet. If they knew that the place is sold, they’d want to know who’s buying it. And if I don’t tell them they’ll think there’s something fishy going on’ (here Jeremy broke into a laugh) ‘and they’ll start poking around and asking questions and then there’ll be a fuss, if I know them. They won’t see that it’s the best thing that could happen to Nettlefold and will bring it into the twentieth century.’

  ‘If it comes off,’ interjected Jeremy.

  ‘Of course it’ll come off. It’s a wonderful prospect for the district. Think of the work it will bring and the money they’ll make. They’ll bless my name.’

  ‘They’ll bless it all right.’

  ‘Jerry, please!’

  ‘Well, you know how conservative the locals are. They won’t want it. And you can be damned sure the County won’t either. And between them they’ll see to it that the idea’s quashed, and your chaps simply won’t be granted planning permission. Mark my words!’

  ‘Balls,’ Aurora said rudely. ‘If you’ve got enough money, my dear, you can do anything.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tom. ‘I agree with Aurora. May one know what the proposition is?’

  ‘Well, keep it under your hat, my dears, won’t you? They’re planning to construct a fifty-acre fish farm, with a freezing plant, packing station, and cannery, plus a hundred-acre housing estate for the workers. Impressive, isn’t it?’ Aurora said, pleased with the expression of amazement on their faces.

  ‘Incredible … Fantastic … ’ murmured Kate. ‘No wonder you’re excited. I really do congratulate you, it’ll be wonderful.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Tom said in an awed tone. ‘That really does take money. It must be an enormous company.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ Aurora said happily. ‘You’d recognise it if I told you the name, but I won’t because these things are better kept quiet, aren’t they, Jerry?’ She gave his olive cheek a loving pinch. ‘I shan’t let this man depress me. Come on, drink up! Let’s make a night of it and get as drunk as skunks. Here’s to the future!’

  They raised their glasses, smiling. But Kate, with a deep interior sigh of dismay, thought: Oh God, another drunken evening with them falling about, and concluding in a row with vulgar abuse and violence. Tom seemed able to take it in his stride and even find it amusing. She couldn’t. She hoped she was not a prig but it sickened and embarrassed her.

  Tom drank to the future with a sinking heart. Now it would begin all over again: the strain and terror, the lurching stomach and the sense of defeat. But he wouldn’t have to face it yet. It wouldn’t be necessary for him to leave anyway until the school holidays. And then … ? Who knows? For some reason the austere bitter face of the dwarf presented itself vividly to his inward eye, as if to say: Remember me. I am here. I exist. I am your secret.

  Everybody was very quiet next day. It really had been quite an evening, ending as Kate had foreseen in a fight between their host and hostess. Tom took them Alka Seltzers with their morning tea and in a low key inquired how they were feeling.

  ‘Like death,’ Aurora said in a deep voice. ‘Which is hardly surprising since my dear husband tried to strangle me. You saved my life, Tom.’

  ‘Oh, come, isn’t that laying it on a bit thick?’ Tom demurred gently.

  ‘Thank you, Tom,’ said Jeremy, rising from the sheets to display a handsome plum on his cheekbone where a candlestick thrown by Aurora had struck him. ‘You’ll bear me out that far from trying to kill her, I was only trying to prevent her killing me. She missed my eye by half an inch; I could have been blinded for life. I was simply holding her off, wasn’t I?’

  ‘By the throat!’ his wife exclaimed.

  ‘How else could I keep you at arm’s length?’

  ‘You wanted to kill me. You’d lost your temper.’

  ‘Can you wonder? It would have been justifiable homicide, and with Tom as witness for the defence I’d have got off scot-free.’

  ‘One of these days he’ll do it, and it won’t be funny,’ Aurora growled.

  *

  ‘What do you think happened to me in Marks & Spencers today?’ Kate said in a sparkling manner. She had been much more cheerful since they’d heard that Upperdown was being taken over by the fish-farming industrialists; it brought the prospect of the return to London much nearer, and the thought of being back in town at the centre of things, with Tom really looking for work and herself no longer having to face this wearisome journey ten times a week, gladdened her heart.

  ‘Tell,’ said her husband, dressing the snowy mound of rice with a chicken ratatouille, and passing her the dish of french beans.

  ‘I dashed along there in the lunch hour to see if I could find any cotton frocks for the children and as I was looking along the racks I suddenly noticed a man eyeing me. Yum yum, I’m starving,’ she broke off to say, forking the food into her mouth, ‘this is good. Rather attractive in a male sort of way I thought and looked away. But when next I glanced up there he was still watching me. I moved further along to another counter, and he followed. And suddenly, Tom, I began to feel decidedly uncomfortable,’ she said, opening her eyes wide; ‘It occurred to me that he might be a store detective and I wondered uneasily if I could have possibly picked up something accidentally. I made for the door, and he came after me, not hurrying, in a quite leisurely fashion. They always wait till you’re outside before they pull you in. So I stopped, and waited to see what he would do. He came towards me slowly, keeping his eyes on me all the time with a serious expression. I wondered what the hell this man was going to do. He was literally no more than a foot away when he said — the crust of the man! — the very last thing I expected to hear — ’ Kate’s face began to break up despite herself: ‘he said, “I suppose you’d be furious if I was to kiss you; but I’m going to all the same.” And he did.’ She clapped her hand to her mouth.

  ‘So what did you do, black his eye?’

  ‘I burst out laughing,’ said Kate, bursting out laughing. ‘“God, but you had me scared,” I said. “I didn’t know if I was about to be stabbed between the raincoats and the dressing-gowns or arrested for shop-lifting, you great eejut!” The minute he opened his mouth I knew it was Patrick. But imagine me not recognising him!’

  ‘Patrick who?’

  ‘Mahoney, of course. Who else would act the goat like that after — it must be fifteen years. He’s changed, gone grey and given himself a beard and moustache. But it’s still the same old Paddy.’ She gave her husband a teasing glance: ‘He wanted to know if you were the man I married in the end.’

  ‘He evidently had no difficulty in recognising you again, which shows you can’t have changed much.’

  ‘He wanted to take me to lunch, but I couldn’t, there wasn’t time. So we had a quick drink instead. Then he drove me back to the office and we said goodbye.’

  ‘Aren’t you seeing him again?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Nothing was said about it. It was just a chance meeting, rather a nice thing to happen, and I’m glad to have seen him once more. It
kind of rounds things off.’

  ‘Didn’t he want to know where you live?’

  ‘No. It ended there, when he dropped me off at Peabody & Langley’s.’

  But that was where Kate was wrong.

  To her surprise, ten days later Patrick telephoned her at Peabody & Langley to ask her out to lunch. There seemed no good reason why she should not accept, so she went.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said when she told Tom that night.

  ‘Of course not, silly.’

  ‘It made a change,’ she explained on an apologetic note.

  ‘Of course it did. You’d be a fool to have refused a good meal,’ Tom said, scrunching her paw in his. ‘You wouldn’t expect me to resent your seeing a man you were in love with before we met.’

  Tom was not jealous; he trusted Kate. Why shouldn’t he? Besides it had all been such a long time ago, when Kate was a mere girl. One’s ideas change as one grows up.

  It was just as well he was unperturbed, because Patrick took to asking Kate to lunch quite frequently. He wanted her to stay in town and have dinner with him and do a theatre some evening, but Kate — as she told Tom with a conscious air of virtue — had declined.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think that’s going too far. It would mean putting up in town overnight.’

  ‘You could stay with your parents. Or Sue. Or Gillian. Or one of your other chums. I should go, if I were you.’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘I don’t see why you should have to turn down a pleasurable occasion; you don’t get so many of them coming your way.’

  ‘Nor do you, if it comes to that.’

  ‘Oh me, I’m all right.’

  *

  With Aurora always running around the place there had been little opportunity for Tom to make a foray into their part of the house to look for the Velázquez, which had to be somewhere. Sometimes Jeremy went up to town, sometimes Aurora, but rarely together; and when they did, there were still the Ladies of the Household and Bedchamber (as Jeremy named them) buzzing around with their hoovers and electric polishers.

  But today the Eskdales had gone to Winchester; the cleaning women had finished their chores; and for a blessed hour or two Tom had the place to himself. It was the chance he had been waiting for.

  When it came down to it there were not so very many places to look where he had not already been. Tom tried to think where, if he were Aurora, he would put it — something he did not like, something he did not want to see … A cupboard, a wardrobe?

  There was a large 17th century armoire on the landing. He turned the massive iron key in its ornamental lock and opened the door with its carved panels of leaves and birds. Tom pushed aside the row of garments hanging from the rail and was confronted with the portrait of El Primo and the mastiff leaning against the back-board. It was all right, safe and unharmed. Tom gazed at the treasure in an ecstasy of relief and joy.

  For how long he knelt there staring at it he had no idea. He was so lost to the world that he ejaculated a startled cry when a voice exclaimed: ‘Ha, caught you, my lad!’ from Aurora on the stairs behind him.’

  ‘God, you could frighten a man to death doing that! I didn’t hear you … ’ he gasped, clapping his hands to his chest and closing his eyes, and a moment later rose to his feet, with remarkable presence of mind brushing the clothes back into place as he did so and closing the door.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway, Tom?’

  ‘Looking for you.’

  ‘In the wardrobe? My dear boy!’

  ‘That was dreadful, but you know my disgustingly vulgar habit of picking up pieces of china to look at the mark and opening drawers to see which way the lining runs or feeling under the rim of a table. I hardly realise I’m doing it. And this is such an admirable example of the period, with these characteristic panels, that I couldn’t resist examining it. Do forgive me.’

  ‘I forgive you; thousands wouldn’t,’ she said, laying her voluptuous white hand on his arm with a crooked smile. ‘It’s good, is it?’ she murmured, stroking the panelled front, twisting the key in the lock and drawing it out to give it an abstracted stare. ‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’

  ‘Why, this very point. About all this mass of stuff you will have to go through and decide what is to be kept and what sold. I wondered if I could be of any use to you in the process. It is a fairly onerous task for anyone,’ Tom said, watching from the corner of his eye Aurora dropping the heavy key into her handbag. The implications of that were not very agreeable; a little like a slap in the face. But he took it in good part. He decided she might quite well not have realised what she was doing. She would not have meant to insult him: she liked him. She was saying now how much she appreciated his thoughtfulness.

  ‘I just thought it might help if I went through some of the stuff with you, I could give you an idea of what the various pieces might be worth,’ Tom said.

  ‘How lucky Kate is to have a husband like you,’ Aurora sighed without a trace of irony. ‘Jeremy never lifts a finger to help. I mean, I’m quite mad about him, but you’ve seen for yourself what he’s like. He’s just a dead weight round my neck. It’s all left to me.’

  ‘You see, he doesn’t know about these things, Rory dear, so he couldn’t really be of any help however much he wanted to.’

  ‘I know one thing, I shall miss you when you’ve gone. Meanwhile I’ll be very glad of your advice while you’re still here. We must fix something up,’ she said in the pleasantly vague way she had.

  ‘Right! Just say the word.’

  ‘And, Tom,’ she turned back to say, ‘you mustn’t think I mind you walking around the place when we’re not here. You’re quite one of the family now.’

  But as it turned out, the occasion for making this proposed tour of the interior never arose. Without warning or explanation, as is the way of these affairs, the prospective purchasers withdrew. Just as tiresome Jeremy had foretold, and his wearily repeated, ‘I told you so,’ only aggravated Aurora’s sense of grievance.

  Her disappointment was severe. She was aggrieved and dejected and very bad-tempered. Quarrels broke out over everything and nothing. The fact is, Aurora was as heartily sick of Upperdown as Jeremy was. She’d had enough of it. She longed to get away, and would have fled, except that to do so would leave the problem of the ruinous cost of Upperdown unsolved.

  The only person who remained his same sanguine self was Tom. His feelings were of relief for the respite. Upperdown was a haven to him.

  Jeremy sought him out: ‘Come on, Tom, let’s for Christ’s sake get out of here for a few hours, or that woman will drive me out of my mind. We’ll go down to The George, I’ve got things I want to talk over with you in peace and quiet.’

  ‘Right.’

  But they reckoned without Aurora’s uncanny intuitive sense. No sooner had they climbed into the Jaguar and slammed the doors, than she came running down the entrance steps, crying:

  ‘Oh, there you are! I wondered where you’d got to. Where are you going?’

  The sole response came from the Jaguar growling into life. ‘Wait for me!’ she called, springing forward and wrenching open the door before the car moved, ‘I want to come too. Move over, Tom.’

  Jeremy swore audibly and got out, banging the door behind him. ‘What’s the matter with old Jerry, there’s plenty of room for the three of us if we squeeze up a bit. Oh, he’s gone. What an old grouch he is. Never mind, you drive,’ she said in a merry imperious style, nudging Tom into the driver’s seat. ‘We’ll go without him and serve him right. Off we go!’

  With a rueful glance at Jeremy, Tom obeyed. It was obvious that Madam had already had more than a drop of the tincture, even if gusts of it had not wafted to him on her breath.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘How about The Wykeham Arms?’

  ‘That would be very nice. I’ll tell you something, I’m glad Jerry didn’t come. We can be alone together for once. Do you know y
ou’re a very attractive man.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I do. It’s not for nothing they call me Handsome Ransome.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed it before — ’

  ‘But now it’s dark you can see it,’ he suggested.

  ‘You’re sweet, you always behave so well. I’ve really got something going for you,’ she said, leaning against him amorously and draping an arm round his neck. ‘Do you like me, Tom?’

  ‘Oh, like is hardly the word, Rory.’

  ‘Why don’t we stop here for a little cuddle then, darling?’

  ‘Nothing I’d like better,’ Tom assured her, gently removing her hand and treading on the accelerator, ‘but if we do we’ll never make it to the pub before it closes. There’ll be time enough for a cuddle on the way back. It’s a question of priorities.’

  ‘That’s good thinking, Tom. Get the priorities right.’

  At the bottom of the High Street he took the turning which led to the river-pub. He helped her out and down the path. ‘Oh my handbag,’ she said, turning in the rose-wreathed porch. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said. Extraordinary the amount of junk women carry around with them, it was as heavy as a shopping-basket. That was because they never emptied them out. He opened it to see what was inside. That at least will make it lighter, he thought, removing the iron key and slipping it into his pocket. He’d been waiting for an opportunity to get it back, he wanted to have it in his possession. It was unlikely Aurora would miss it, she was always losing things.

  Aurora was sitting up at the bar in chummy conversation with ex-Commander Bill Bastable of HMS Medusa and now landlord of The Wykeham Arms. He served Tom and then moved away to serve another patron. They shifted to a little table near the door, where one could watch the people come and go.

  From a group standing in the big curved window overlooking the river below came a loud burst of laughter. Aurora’s head turned sharply with an extraordinary look on it almost of terror. And then loud and clear, she hailed one of them, twice.

  Someone raised a hand, less in greeting than in the manner of a waiter responding to an impatient customer. Remarks continued to be exchanged among the group for some further minutes, and then a lanky creature in boots, patched denims, and a visibly grubby sheepskin jacket, detached itself from the others and slouched across, head down and shoulders hunched, hands deep in pockets. The face had the pallor of fatigue. The only touches of colour were the dark red of the narrow-lipped mouth and the dark blue of the narrow eyes under the shag of mahogany red hair which looked as though the only grooming it ever received was the combing of the fingers running through it now.