The Day of the Storm (25 page)

“I don't want to talk about Eliot.”

“Did he tell Morris to come after me?”

“I don't know.”

“He could, you know. He hates my guts. It fits.”

“I … I think he's jealous of you. He doesn't like your being so close to Grenville. He doesn't like Grenville being so fond of you. And…” I looked down at my drink, turning the glass in my hand, feeling suddenly nervous. “There's something else.”

“From your expression one would think you'd murdered somebody. What is it?”

“It's … the desk. The desk downstairs in your workroom. I saw it this morning, when you were telephoning.”

“I wondered why you'd suddenly gone cantering out into the rain. What about it?”

“The desk and the Chippendale chair. They come from Boscarva.”

“Yes, I know.”

His calmness shocked me. “You didn't
take
them, Joss?”

“
Take them?
No, I didn't take them. I bought them.”

“Who from?”

“A man who runs an antique shop up beyond Fourbourne. I'd been to a sale about a month ago, and I dropped in to see him on the way back, and I saw the chair and the desk in his shop. By then I knew all Grenville's furniture and I knew they'd come from Boscarva.”

“But who took them?”

“I regret to have to shatter your innocence, but it was your cousin Eliot.”

“But Eliot knew nothing about them.”

“Eliot most certainly did. They were in one of the attics, as far as I remember, and he probably imagined they'd never be missed.”

“But why…?”

“This is like playing the truth game. Because Eliot, my love, my darling child, is head over heels in debt. That garage was financed by Ernest Padlow in the first place, it cost a bomb and it's been losing money steadily for the past twelve months. God knows what use fifty pounds would have been to Eliot, a mere drop in the ocean one would have thought, but perhaps he needed a little ready cash to pay a bill or put on a horse or something … I don't know. Between you and me, I don't think he should be running his own business. He'd be better working for some other guy, being paid a regular salary. Perhaps, one evening, when you're sitting over drinks at Boscarva, you could try and persuade him.”

“Sarcasm doesn't suit you.”

“I know, but Eliot makes me edgy. Always has done.”

I felt, obscurely, that I must stand up for Eliot, make excuses for him.

“In a way, he thinks that Boscarva and everything in it already belong to him. Perhaps he didn't feel it was … stealing…?”

“When did they realize the things were missing?”

“A couple of days ago. You see, the desk belonged to my mother. Now it belongs to me. That's why we started to look for it.”

“Unfortunate for Eliot.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose Eliot said I'd taken them.”

“Yes,” I admitted miserably.

“What did Grenville say?”

“He said that you'd never do a thing like that.”

“And so there was another monumental row.”

“Yes.”

Joss sighed deeply. We fell silent. The room was growing cold again, the fire beginning to die down. I got up and went to put another log on it, but Joss stopped me.

“Leave it,” he said.

I looked at him, surprised. He finished his drink and put the empty glass down on the floor beside him, and then pushed back the blanket and began, carefully, to get out of bed.

“Joss, you mustn't…”

I flew to his side, but he pushed me away, and slowly, with infinite caution, got to his feet. Once there, he grinned triumphantly down at me, a bizarre sight, bruised and battered, and dressed in bandages and a crumpled pair of jeans.

“Into battle,” he said.

“Joss, what are you going to do?”

“If you'll find me a shirt and a pair of shoes, I'll get dressed. And then we're going to go downstairs, and get into the truck and drive back to Boscarva.”

“But you can't drive like that.”

“I can do anything I want,” he told me, and I believed him. “Now find my clothes and stop arguing.”

He would not even let me take Mollie's car. “We'll leave it there, it'll be all right. Someone can fetch it in the morning.” His own little truck was parked around the corner, up a narrow alley. We got in, and he started the engine and backed out on to the road, with me giving directions because he was too stiff to turn around in the seat. We headed up through the town, along streets that had become familiar to me, over the cross-roads and up the hill.

I sat, staring ahead, with my hands clasped tightly in my lap. I knew that there was still something else we had to talk about. And it had to be now, before we reached Boscarva.

For some reason, as though he were immensely pleased with life in general, Joss has started to sing.

“The first time ever I saw your face

I thought the sun rose in your eyes

And the moon and stars…”

“Joss.”

“What is it now?”

“There's something else.”

He sounded shocked. “Not another skeleton in the cupboard?”

“Don't joke.”

“I'm sorry. What is it?”

I swallowed a strange obstruction in the back of my throat.

“It's Sophia.”

“What about Sophia?”

“Grenville gave me the key of the studio so that I could go and choose a picture to take back to London. I found a portrait of Sophia. A proper one, with a face. And Eliot came to find me, and he saw it too.”

There was a long silence. I looked at Joss but his profile was stony, intent on the road ahead. “I see,” he said at last.

“She looks just like you; or you look just like her.”

“Naturally enough. She was my grandmother.”

“Yes, I thought that was probably it.”

“So the portrait was in the studio?”

“Is … is that why you came to live in Porthkerris?”

“Yes. Grenville and my father fixed it between them. Grenville put up half the capital for my shop.”

“Your father…?”

“You've met him. Tristram Nolan Gardner. He runs an antique shop, in the New Kings Road. You bought a pair of balloon-back chairs from him. Do you remember?”

“And he found from my cheque that I was called Rebecca Bayliss.”

“Right. And he found out, by cunning question and answer, that you were Grenville Bayliss's granddaughter. Right. And he found out that you were catching the train to Cornwall last Monday. Right.”

“So he rang you up and told you to meet the train.”

“Right.”

“But why?”

“Because he felt involved. Because he thought you seemed lost and vulnerable. Because he wanted me to keep an eye on you.”

“I still don't understand.”

“You know something?” said Joss. “I love you very much.”

“Because I'm being stupid?”

“No, because you're being marvellously innocent. Sophia wasn't only Grenville's model, she was his mistress as well. My father was born at the beginning of their relationship, long before your mother arrived. Sophia married, eventually, an old friend she'd known from childhood days, but she never had any more children.”

“So Tristram…?”

“Tristram is Grenville's son. And Grenville is my grandfather. And I am going to marry my half-cousin.”

“Pettifer told me that Sophia meant nothing to Grenville. That she was just a girl who'd worked for him.”

“If it meant protecting Grenville, Pettifer would swear that black is white.”

“Yes, I suppose he would.” But Grenville, in anger, had been less discreet. “‘You are not my only grandchild!'”

“Did Grenville say that?”

“Yes, to Eliot. And Eliot thought he meant me.”

We had reached the top of the hill. The lights of the town were far behind us. Ahead, beyond the huddled shapes of Ernest Padlow's housing estate, lay the dark coastline, pricked with the tiny lights of random farms, and beyond it the black immensity of the sea.

I said, “I don't seem to remember you asking me to marry you.”

The little van bumped and lurched down the lane towards Boscarva. “I'm not very good at asking things,” said Joss. He took his hand off the wheel and put it over mine. “I usually just tell people.”

As once before, it was Pettifer who came out to meet us. As soon as Joss switched off the engine of the van, the light in the hall went on, and Pettifer opened the door, as though he had known instinctively we were on our way.

He saw Joss open the car door and ease himself out, in obvious discomfort and pain. He saw Joss's face …

“For heaven's sake, what happened to you?”

“I had a difference of opinion with our old friend Morris Tatcombe. I probably wouldn't look like this except that he had three of his chums with him.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine. No bones broken. Come on, let's go in.”

We went indoors and Pettifer closed the door.

“I'm glad to see you, Joss, and that's the truth. We've had a proper how-do-you-do here and no mistake.”

“Is Grenville all right?”

“Yes, he's all right. He's still up, in the drawing room, waiting for Rebecca to come home.”

“And Eliot?”

Pettifer looked from Joss's face to mine.

“He's gone.”

Joss said, “You'd better tell us about it.”

*   *   *

We ended up in the kitchen, around the table.

“After Rebecca had gone, Eliot went down to the studio and came back with that portrait of Sophia. The one we looked for, Joss. The one we never found.”

I said, “I don't understand.”

Joss explained. “Pettifer knew Sophia was my grandmother, but no one else did. No one else remembered her. It was all too long ago. Grenville wanted it to stay that way.”

“But why was there only one picture of Sophia with a face? There must have been dozens Grenville painted of her. What happened to all of them?”

There was a pause while Joss and Pettifer looked at each other. Then it was Pettifer's turn to explain, which he did with much tact.

“It was old Mrs Bayliss. She was jealous of Sophia … not because she had any notion of the truth … but because Sophia was part of the Commander's other life, the life Mrs Bayliss didn't have no time for.”

“You mean his painting.”

“She would never have anything to do with Sophia, more than a frosty good morning if she happened to meet her in the town. And the Commander knew this, and he didn't want to upset her, so he let all the pictures of Sophia go … all except for the one you found. We knew it was somewhere around. Joss and I spent a day looking for it, but we never turned it up.”

“What were you going to do with it if you found it?”

“Nothing. We just didn't want anyone else to find it.”

“I don't see why it was so important.”

Joss said, “Grenville didn't want anyone to know about what happened between him and Sophia. It wasn't that he was ashamed of it, because he'd loved her very much. And after he's dead, it won't matter any longer, he doesn't give a damn who knows then. But he's proud, and he's lived his life according to a certain set of standards. We probably think they're old-fashioned, but they're still his own. Does that make sense to you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Young people now,” said Pettifer heavily, “talk about a permissive society as though it were something they'd invented. But it's not new. It's been going on since the beginning of time, only in the Commander's day it was handled with a little more discretion.”

We accepted this meekly. Then Joss said, “We seem to have gone off at a tangent. Pettifer was telling us about Eliot.”

Pettifer collected himself. “Yes, well. So down to the drawing room Eliot went, and stormed in, with me behind him, went straight to the mantelpiece, and dumped it up there, alongside the other picture. The Commander never said a word, just watched him. And Eliot said, ‘What's that got to do with Joss Gardner?' Then the Commander told him. Told him everything. Very quiet and very dignified. And Mrs Roger was there too, and she just about threw a fit. She said all these years the Commander had deceived them, letting Eliot believe that he was his only grandson, and he'd get Boscarva when the Commander died. The Commander said he'd never said anything of the sort, that it was all surmise, that they'd simply been counting their chickens before they were hatched. Then Eliot said, very cold, ‘Perhaps now we can know what your plans are?' but the Commander said that his plans were his own business, and
quite right
he was too.”

This little bit of championship was accompanied by Pettifer's fist coming down with a thump on the kitchen table.

“So what did Eliot do?”

“Eliot said in that case he was going to wash his hands of the whole lot of us … meaning the family, of course … and that he had plans of his own and he was thankful to be shed of us. And with that he collected a few papers and a brief-case and put on his coat and whistled up his dog and walked out of the house. Heard his car go up the lane and that was the end of him.”

“Where's he gone?”

“To High Cross, I suppose.”

“And Mollie?”

“She was in tears … trying to stop him doing anything stupid, she said. Begging him to stay. Turning on the Commander, saying it was all his fault. But of course, there wasn't anything she could do to stop Eliot. There's nothing you can do to stop a grown man walking out of the house, not even if you do happen to be his mother.”

I was torn with sorrow and sympathy for Mollie.

“Where is she now?”

“Up in her room.” He added gruffly, “I made her a little tea tray, took it up to her, found her sitting at her dressing-table like something carved out of stone.”