The Catherine Wheel (17 page)

Jeremy and Jane drove down from London. It was one of those grey afternoons when the clouds are low and a seeping vapour comes out of the ground to meet them. It wasn’t a fog yet, but there was no saying when it might take a turn that way. They ran through Cliff just after four, and out on the other side within sight and hearing of the sea. Jeremy was looking to his right, watching, as he had watched before, for the pair of tall stone pillars which marked the entrance to Cliff House. As they came in sight, weather-beaten and damaged, the one topped by an eagle, the other with the bird and half the capital gone, he slowed down.

“I’m taking you to tea with Jack Challoner.”

Jane said, “Oh!” in rather a startled manner, and then, “Why?”

“He’s a pal of mine. I rang him up. He said, ‘Bring her along to tea,’ and I said, ‘Right you are!’—just like that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want you to say no. It’s a mouldy old place, but I’d rather like to see it. Jack’s a good chap.”

“Isn’t Inspector Abbott staying there?”

“Yes. He’s some sort of cousin. I don’t suppose he’ll be there. Anyhow we’re not suspects.”

They had passed between the pillars and were pursuing a long, neglected drive with a tangled shrubbery on either side, windswept and stunted. The house when they reached it was gaunt and forbidding—a square, bare eighteenth-century block with the same neglected look as the drive.

An old man admitted them to an icy cavern of a hall, took them across it, and down a passage to a small room with a blazing fire, curtains already drawn, and two oil lamps giving out plenty of light, heat, and smell. A red-haired young man with rather a flat, freckled face heaved himself out of a shabby armchair and clapped Jeremy on the shoulder.

“Hullo, hullo! How do you do, Miss Heron? It’s frightfully good of you to come—it really is. I get the pip when I’m here by myself. Frank’s out chasing murderers, and I don’t suppose he’ll be back for tea, so you and Jeremy are probably going to save my life. Do you like muffins? Matthews always keeps them going because he likes them himself. I say, these lamps do stink, don’t they? That’s me, I’m afraid. Matthews always tells me not to turn them up, and then I forget and they smell to heaven. Of course, what this place wants is about ten thousand pounds spent on it. Nothing’s been done for donkeys’ years. My great-greatgrandfather ruined himself playing cards with the Prince Regent, and nobody’s had a penny ever since. He married an heiress and got rid of every farthing she had. Fun whilst it lasted!”

He was pulling chairs round as he spoke. The one Jane got had a broken spring. The curtains were Victorian—maroon velvet gone the colour of old blood, with a ball fringe ripped and hanging in loops. The carpet looked unswept, but that may have been merely an effect of age and decay. Jane thought how grim it would be to be saddled with a house like this. Jack Challoner seemed to bear up, but she felt sorry for his wife when he married.

As if her thought reached him, he laughed and said,

“What we want is another heiress—only I’d have to keep her carefully away from the place till it’s too late to draw back. No girl in her senses would take on a mouldy old ruin like this. I mean, she’d have to be frightfully in love, wouldn’t she? And I’m not the sort that girls fall frightfully in love with. Look here, would you like to see how bad it is? Jeremy said he’d like to—I can’t imagine why.”

Jeremy hadn’t sat down. He was leaning against the mantelpiece looking down into the fire. He turned now and said,

“Tales of my grandfather. His mother used to tell him stories about your people. It was Sir Humphrey Challoner in her time— somewhere in the eighteen-forties. I’d like to see the family portraits, you know.”

“All right. But we’d better go now, or there won’t be any light. “ He turned to Jane. “What about you? Wouldn’t you rather stay by the fire? I say, I do call you Jane, don’t I? I’ve known Jeremy for centuries.”

He was about the same age as Jeremy, but he seemed younger. He reminded Jane of a large friendly puppy.

They went back through the icy hall to a stark dining-room full of dreadful Victorian furniture. Above a massive sideboard hung the portrait of a gloomy gentleman in a stock and side-whiskers.

“That’s old Humphrey,” said Jack Challoner. “What sort of stories did your great-grandmamma hand down about him? He was my great-grandfather.”

Jeremy said slowly,

“He disinherited his son, didn’t he?”

“Yes—his eldest son, Geoffrey. Nasty family scandal. Geoffrey took after his grandfather, the old boy who ruined us—went the pace—was mixed up in some smuggling affray and got himself bumped off. After which everyone breathed more freely, and my grandfather, John, came in for the title and the place.”

Jeremy said, “My grandfather said his mother used to talk about Geoffrey.”

Jack Challoner laughed.

“I suppose she would! I’m afraid it was your Taverner lot that led him astray. By all accounts the Catherine-Wheel was a regular Smugglers’ Arms. There’s a portrait of Geoffrey upstairs. Like to see it?”

They went up the big stairway, Jack Challoner carrying a tall candelabrum with twisted arms and candles which must have been in it since before the war, they were so dusty and yellow.

The silver had probably not been cleaned since then either. Jack tapped it with a laugh.

“Only Sheffield plate, or it would have gone up the spout long ago.”

Jane said quickly, “It might still be worth quite a lot.” Then, catching herself up and colouring, “My grandfather had an antique shop.”

She got a cheerful shake of the head.

“Drop in the bucket. It’ll have to be the heiress.”

They went on up the stairs. There was still daylight of the sort which doesn’t do very much to a dark corner. Geoffrey Challoner’s portrait hung in a very dark corner indeed—the black sheep tidied away out of sight. Jane wondered in an odd fleeting way whether anyone had been used to come and look at it there. His mother might have, if she had been alive. She wondered.

Jack Challoner set the candelabrum on the floor, produced matches from a bulging pocket, lighted the five discoloured candles, and lifted it high.

“You can’t see in this corner even in the morning. That’s why I brought the contraption,” he said. “Well, there’s our black sheep. Painted before the scandal of course, when he was twenty-one. Coming of age of the heir, and all that.”

The candlelight fell on a young man in a shooting-jacket carrying a gun under his arm and holding a brace of pheasants. The birds were very well painted, the iridescent feathers still bright. Geoffrey Challoner looked out from the canvas, very much the proud, goodlooking young man with the world before him. The chance shot in the dark which was to come as a relief to his family was still a couple of years away.

Jack Challoner said, “If you’re looking for a family likeness you won’t find one. It was my grandmother who brought the red hair into the family, and we shall probably never be able to get rid of it. She had eight daughters, all carroty.”

“No,” said Jane, “there isn’t any likeness, is there?”

And as she said it she knew it wasn’t true. There was a likeness, and a strong one, but it wasn’t the likeness that it ought to have been. She looked at Jeremy, and looked away quickly. Lengthen his hair, give him those little side whiskers just coming down on to the cheeks, put him into those clothes, and he might have sat for the portrait. She was aware of something, some tension. She couldn’t risk a second look.

Jack Challoner said, “He’s more like Jeremy than me, isn’t he?”

They went downstairs and ate muffins out of a cracked Worcester dish, and drank tea from a solid hideous Victorian teapot all curves and bulges. It had a silver strawberry on the lid, and had probably served the red-haired Lady Challoner and her eight carroty daughters.

When they had said good-bye and were going slowly down the long drive Jeremy said,

“Mouldy old place, isn’t it?”

“Frightful! I’m sorry for Jack.”

Jeremy laughed.

“You needn’t be. He’s a cheerful soul, and he’s only there once in a blue moon.”

Jane laughed too.

“Will he marry an heiress? He doesn’t look the sort.”

“He will not. He’s in love with a girl called Molly Pemberton, a tremendously good sort. She hasn’t got a penny, and neither of them will give a damn. He’s down here now because someone wants the place for a sanatorium, or an orphanage, or something. Sea air—ozone—dollops of it. He’s seeing lawyers and trying to make up his mind to the wrench.”

He stopped the car just inside the two tall pillars.

“Jane, I want to talk. The Catherine-Wheel is crawling with constabulary and cousins, so I think we’ll have it out here. When are you going to marry me?”

He had let go of the wheel and taken her hands. She didn’t pull them away, but they were rigid and stubborn in his.

“I haven’t ever said I’d marry you at all.”

“Does it want saying?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Then say it!”

“Jeremy, let go!”

“Say it! Jane—darling—say it!”

She had meant to let him hold her hands for as long as he liked in a perfectly calm and friendly manner, but she couldn’t do it. His voice did things to her when it changed like that. Suddenly friendship was all gone. A horrid undermining flood of emotion had swept it away. In a split second it would sweep her into Jeremy’s arms, and if he kissed her she would say anything he wanted her to say. She snatched her hands away and strained back into the corner.

“No—no!”

“Jane!”

She pushed him away.

“No—no—I won’t!”

“Why?”

“Cousins oughtn’t to marry.”

“I’m not your cousin.”

He spoke quite quietly, but it was like a thunder-clap. It stopped the giddy feeling. She blinked and said,

“What?”

Jeremy said it again.

“I’m not your cousin.”

Jane produced another monosyllable. She didn’t seem to have enough breath for anything else. Said,

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you. I’ve been going to. There hasn’t been much chance up to now. But we might as well be comfortable. Stop doing the ‘Unhand me!’ act and relax.”

Jane relaxed. The flood of emotion had subsided. It seemed, as Jeremy had just said, comfortable to have his arm round her. This place behind the pillars was dark. The Cliff road was dark and empty. She said,

“Why aren’t you my cousin?”

“Because I’m not a Taverner at all. My grandfather was Geoffrey Challoner’s son. That’s why I wanted to see the picture. Even I can see that I’m like him.”

“You’re frightfully like him.”

He laughed.

“I ought to be Sir Jeremy Challoner, with that old ruin tied round my neck, you know. Geoffrey was the elder son.”

“Jeremy—how exciting!”

“It is rather. My grandfather told me. You remember he was one of the twins, John and Joanna. Well, old Jeremiah Taverner died in eighteen-eighty-eight. His wife, Ann, lived another three years. She never said a word while her husband was alive, but this is what she told my grandfather John before she died. Geoffrey Challoner used to come to the Catherine-Wheel a lot. He was wild and he was in debt, and he got mixed up in the smuggling trade, partly for the fun of the thing, and partly because he wanted to make enough money to run off with Mary Layburn. She was Sir John Layburn’s daughter—same family John Higgins works for—and they had been engaged, but old Challoner and Sir John fell out over politics and the engagement was broken off. That’s what started Geoffrey running wild. The Layburns sent Mary away to a strict aunt in London, but Geoffrey followed her and they were secretly married. Ann Taverner was positive to my grandfather about the marriage. She said she had seen the certificate, but she couldn’t remember the name of the church. ‘One of those grand London churches,’ she told him. Well, about six months after that Geoffrey had to skip over to France. A coastguard had been hurt, and he had been recognized. They planned to let the thing blow over, and then for him to come back and get Mary. Unfortunately the man died—not at once, and not with any certainty from his injuries. But the Layburns pressed the matter. They wanted to keep Geoffrey out of the country, and a warrant was issued. That meant Geoffrey couldn’t come back. And Mary Layburn was going to have a child. She came to Ann Taverner and told her she couldn’t hide it any longer. She didn’t dare tell her people she was married. Fathers were fierce in the ’forties. She was a gentle, timid girl, and she said he’d kill her.”

“What happened? Go on—quickly!”

“Ann Taverner told Jeremiah, and he sent word over to Geoffrey in France. They used to run the cargoes pretty regularly when the moon was dark. Geoffrey sent word back that he’d come on the next run—that would be three weeks away—and he said Mary must manage till then. When the time came Ann was to let Mary know, and she was to slip out of her room when everyone was in bed and come out to the Catherine-Wheel. None of them seem to have thought it was anything to make a song and dance about, but I don’t suppose the poor girl had ever been out by herself at night before. She arrived terrified and upset, and Ann was afraid of what might happen. It was awkward enough without that, she said, because she herself was expecting her sixth child at any moment. As it turned out, that child was born about midnight. The midwife was in the house—Ann Taverner’s cousin and a very discreet woman. At one o’clock there was a noise of fire-arms under the cliff. The run had been spotted or given away, and the coastguards were there. Geoffrey Challoner was fatally wounded. Jeremiah and one of his men got him away into the Catherine-Wheel by the secret passage, and he died in Mary’s arms. It finished her, poor girl. She had her baby before its time, and was dead by morning. With the midwife’s help Ann Taverner passed the child off for a twin of her own child. Hers was a girl, Joanna. She was John Higgins’ grandmother, and the Challoner baby was a boy—my grandfather John.”

Jane drew a quick excited breath.

“Did old Jeremiah know?”

Jeremy stared.

“Must have done.”