The Catherine Wheel (9 page)

Florence Duke was standing there. She had been standing there ever since they came back from the cellars—not talking to anyone, just standing there drinking coffee, sip after sip, quite slowly until the cup was empty, and then sip after sip again after it had been filled up. She had the look of a woman among her thoughts, listening intently. It was plain that she was taking no part in what was going on around her—Geoffrey Taverner’s conversation with Marian Thorpe-Ennington, Al Miller’s noisy talk and laughter, or the sometimes angry, sometimes tactfully intended remarks of Fogarty Castell. Not even when he turned to her with one of his foreign gestures and said in a passionate undertone, “This Al Miller, we are going to have a scene with him, I tell you. Why can’t he take his drink quiet and go to sleep on it like the other one?”—not even then did she really come back. Her eyes looked past him as she said in that slow way she had,

“He’s all right. Let him alone.”

She reached for the coffee-pot and filled her cup again. Fogarty wondered if she was drunk. She wasn’t flushed. As much of her colour as she could lose was gone. Now and again the drink would take someone that way. Her hand was steady and she stood like the figurehead of a ship, a big, bold woman, solid and firm. But there was something…He shrugged, and went back to Al Miller, who hadn’t stopped talking.

“Where’s Eily? I want Eily. Got something I want to tell her.”

Fogarty threw up his hands.

“Didn’t I tell you she’s busy? You wait a bit and you’ll see her fast enough. Do you think my wife has three pairs of hands? You leave Eily be till she’s finished her work!”

Al hitched a leg over the corner of the table and sat there swaying. He began to sing in a weak falsetto.

“ ‘Eileen alannah, Eileen asthore—’ That’s the song for her! Irish song for Irish girl. We’ve got an Irishman up at the station, he sings it—name of Paddy O’Halloran. He says I can’t sing.” He caught Castell by the lapel and swayed. “Who says I can’t sing?” He lifted his voice again, “ ‘Eileen allannah—’ ” then as suddenly broke off. “I say I want Eily—something to tell her—”

“She’s busy like I said. You have another drink. What is it you’re wanting to tell her?”

Al let go of the lapel, fumbled for a handkerchief, and mopped his face. He said, “I don’t mind if I do,” and tilted the proffered glass. He took a deep draught and blinked. He said,

“I’m not drunk.”

Fogarty said nothing. He hoped this drink would do the trick, but of course you never could tell.

Al finished the tumbler and set it down just over the edge of the table. When it fell and smashed he laughed unsteadily and repeated his former remark.

“I’m not—drunk.”

“No one said you were.”

“Better not—thass what I told them. Nobody’s going to say I’m drunk. Give me the sack, will they—say I’m drunk and gimme the sack?” He put a hand on Fogarty’s arm. “I’ll—tell— you who’s get’n the sack. They are. I’m—get’n—out. No one’s goin’ to say—I’m drunk.” His voice rang loud.

“No one’s saying it.”

Al stared.

“If I was drunk—I’d talk. Not drunk—not talking—only to Eily. If there’s anything there—we’ll get it. If there ishn’t— no harm done—we’ll get married allersame—married on prosheeds.”

Fogarty said, “You come along with me, and I’ll get Eily. Another little drink, and then I’ll get her.”

Al shook his head.

“All right here.” Then he suddenly advanced his lips to Fogarty’s ear and said in a penetrating whisper, “Like to know— what I—wouldn’t you? Well, I’m—not tell’n.” He let go suddenly, lost his balance, and slumped down, half off a chair.

All this time Luke White had stood behind the table, his face expressionless, his manner unconcerned. He might have been listening to Marian Thorpe-Ennington telling Geoffrey Taverner the story of her three marriages. He might have been watching Jacob talking to Mildred Taverner. Or he might have been watching Jane and Miss Silver and Jeremy, or Florence Duke. He might have been listening to Al Miller. When Jacob came across and put down Mildred Taverner’s cup he lifted the tray and went out by the service door at the end of the room.

Castell had got Al Miller on to the chair. He wouldn’t talk any more for a bit. Luke looked back, holding the door with his shoulder, and then let it fall to again.

Florence Duke straightened up, felt at her sleeve in a vague, abstracted manner, and said slowly,

“I haven’t got a handkerchief.”

It was not said to anyone, and nobody took any notice. She walked round the table and out at the service door.

Back in the room Jane was saying,

“I expect you think it’s a very odd kind of party. We’re all cousins, descended from old Jeremiah Taverner who used to keep this inn. It belongs to Jacob Taverner now. That’s him over there by the table. He’s giving the party. He’s a grandson, and the rest of us are great-grandchildren. Most of us haven’t ever seen each other before. Jeremy and I have of course, but that’s all. Because of family rows. Cousin Jacob advertised for his grandfather’s descendants, and here we are.”

Jeremy said, “A job lot!” and Jane gave her pretty laugh.

“Would it amuse you to be told who’s who?”

Miss Silver coughed and said with perfect truth,

“It would interest me extremely.”

Down in the kitchen Eily was putting away the glass and silver. She wasn’t being as quick as usual, because every now and then a very bitter salt tear escaped from between her fine dark lashes and ran down slowly over a white cheek. Sometimes the drop splashed upon spoon or glass, and she had to polish it again. Annie Castell was busy over the range. All her movements were slow and dragging. It was a wonder how she ever got done. There was no word spoken between them until at the end of it she turned round and said in her toneless voice,

“What’s the good of your standing there crying? It never helped anyone that I heard tell.”

Eily said, “There’s no help at all—”

Annie Castell took the lid off a saucepan with porridge in it, gave it a good stir round, and covered it again. Then she said,

“It’s that Luke?”

Eily said, quick and choked, “If he touches me, I’ll die.” She snatched a breath, “Or I’ll kill him.”

Annie Castell made a clicking sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, but she didn’t say anything for a piece after that. She heard Eily fetching her breath quick, but she didn’t say anything. In the end she put a question,

“Has he touched you?”

Eily began to cry like a lost thing.

“He came up into the room where I was. I was turning down Miss Heron’s bed. And I said to go away, but he wouldn’t. And I said I’d tell, and he dared me. He said”—she fought for her breath and got it hard—“he said if I went to anyone else, he’d come in the night and cut his heart out.”

Annie Castell was clearing the kitchen table. When she had everything off it she took an old clean cloth out of the drawer and spread it. She took knives and forks and laid them neat and orderly, and set glasses. Then she said,

“Men talk a deal of nonsense.” And, after a pause, “I’d lock my door nights.”

“Do you think I don’t?”

Annie nodded. She said,

“Mrs. Bridling left her scarf. Fetch it through from the scullery and put it handy on the dresser and come and have your supper. No knowing when Luke and Fogarty’ll be down. You have your supper and get off to bed.”

Eily said nothing. She went to the scullery, and she came back again empty-handed.

“It isn’t there.”

A slow frown came between Annie Castell’s eyes.

“It’s there, at the end of the drip-board. I let it out of my hand when I was bringing it through.”

“It’s not there.”

Annie Castell said, “She must have come back for it. Sit down and have your supper.”

Miss Silver looked about her at the room which Captain Taverner was so kindly relinquishing.

“Very comfortable,” she said—“and most good of you. Mrs. Duke next door, and then Miss Mildred Taverner, you say? And Lady Marian and her husband opposite?”

Jeremy said, “Not quite. It’s Jane who is just over the way from you, and the Enningtons beyond her. The bathroom’s on Jane’s other side.”

“So very convenient. You are really too kind. These old houses are sometimes so confusing. There are some more bedrooms, are there not, across the landing?”

Jeremy wondered why elderly ladies took so much interest in other people’s affairs. He said,

“Yes. Mr. Taverner’s over there, and Geoffrey, and I suppose the Castells, and that girl Eily.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“And Mr. Miller?”

Jeremy was packing his bag. Jane was sitting on the end of the bed. She wrinkled her nose and said,

“Thank goodness, no! He’s gone.”

Jeremy turned round with a shaving-brush in his hand.

“How do you know?”

“Eily told me. He was—well, you saw what he was—and just to keep him quiet, that wretched Castell wanted Eily to come and see him, and she wouldn’t. She had already had a scene with Luke White, and Al was the last straw. She ran out of the room in the end, and a little while after Fogarty told her he’d gone home.”

Miss Silver put her head on one side like a bird and repeated the last word in an interrogative manner.

“Home?”

“Ledlington. He’s a porter at the station—I told you. He’s got a room in some back street.”

Jeremy reached for his pyjamas and pushed them down on the top of his shaving tackle.

“Long odds against his making it. Drunk and incapable in a ditch would be the form, I should think. As a matter of fact I saw him go, and if he doesn’t sober up, I shouldn’t think he’d get half a mile. He was still singing ‘Eileen alannah.’ ”

Jane said, “It’s nonsense Eily staying here. She ought to marry John Higgins and get out of it.” She turned to Miss Silver. “He’s another of the cousins, but he won’t come here. Perhaps he’s afraid of not being able to turn the other cheek to Luke White. He’s a sort of local preacher when he isn’t being Sir John Layburn’s head carpenter. Eily and he are in love, and he’d make her an awfully good husband. Quite a nice change after Luke and Al.”

Jeremy picked up his case.

“I’ve plumped for the room half way down the stairs.” He took Jane by the wrist and pulled her up. “If you’re good, you can come and help me unpack. Good-night, Miss Silver.”

They went down the short flight to the room where they had talked before dinner. A bed had been made up on the deep old-fashioned couch. It really looked very comfortable.

Jeremy shut the door, and said with frowning intensity,

“Why on earth are you spreading yourself like that?”

“Why on earth was I spreading myself like what?”

“Like you were to Miss Silver.”

“I wasn’t!”

He said contemptuously,

“Of course you were! I want to know why.”

Jane softened. She had been looking rather haughtily at a point just above his head. She now allowed her eyes to meet his for a moment, then looked down and said in a tentative manner,

“Jeremy—”

“Well?”

“There’s something—and I don’t know whether to tell you—” She paused, and added thoughtfully, “or not.”

Jeremy threw his bag on to the couch. He turned back to say,

“Look here, what’s all this?”

“Well, perhaps it’s nothing—”

“All right, if it’s nothing, you’d better go to bed.”

“No—I’ll tell you. It’s only—you know I met Miss Silver at Mrs. Moray’s, and I thought just what anyone would think, that she was a sort of Edwardian specimen governess and really ought to be under a glass case in the British Museum or somewhere, but rather a lamb, and we’d been getting on like a house on fire.”

“Darling, is all this going to get us anywhere? Or shall I just go quietly off to sleep until you arrive at the point?”

“I have arrived at it. That’s what she seemed like, and that’s what I thought she was. But she isn’t. At least she is really. That’s why it’s so convincing. I mean, she used to be a governess and all that sort of thing, so it’s the most marvellous protective colouring—like insects pretending to be sticks—”

“Jane, you’re raving!”

“No, darling, I’m only leading up to it gently.”

“Leading up to what?”

She gave a little gurgle of laughter, put her lips quite close to his ear, and said,

“She’s a detective.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“No—really. Mrs. Moray said she was marvellous. Charles said so too—they both did. They said the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard thought no end of her.”

“You’re not spoofing?”

She said indignantly, “As if I would!”

“You might. Then—”

They looked at each other. Jane nodded.

“I know—that’s what I’ve been thinking—about her being here. It might be accidental like she said, or it mightn’t. She might be detecting.”

Jeremy said in an exasperated tone,

“I told you there was something fishy about this place. You oughtn’t to have come.”

“The theme song!” She blew him a kiss. “So I thought if there is any dirty work going on, she might just as well know which of us is which and have some sort of an idea of the lay-out. Because—well, I didn’t tell you about Luke White, did I?”

She proceeded to do so, finishing up with, “It really was horrid. And don’t keep saying I oughtn’t to have come, because that’s nonsense. It’s Eily I’m thinking about. You could see what a shock she’d had. You know, really it isn’t civilized to go round throwing your weight about saying you’ll cut people’s hearts out and drench them with blood if they marry somebody else.”

Jeremy said, “Not very,” in rather an odd tone of voice.

Then he tipped Jane’s chin up and kissed her in a good hard kind of way. It was agreeable, but undermining. It was still more undermining when he said in a different voice,

“Let’s get married soon.”

Jane didn’t want to be undermined, but she felt it coming on. She hadn’t ever realized before how dreadfully easy it would be to say yes. She kissed him back once, and pulled away. And ran out of the room.

Everyone began to go to bed. The downstairs rooms were left to darkness and silence except for the glimmer of a wall-lamp in the small square hall. Old houses settle slowly to their rest. Floors upon which many generations have walked, furniture which has been a very long time in use, walls which have borne the stress and weight of old beams for centuries, have a way of lapsing into silence by degrees. There are small rustling sounds, creakings, movements—a whispering at the keyhole of a door, a stirring amongst spent ashes of a fire, a sighing in the chimney—and all in the darkness which has been there night after night for perhaps three hundred years. Thoughts, feelings, actions which have left their impress come to the surface. The life of today no longer dominates these empty rooms. The past comes stealing back.

Upstairs Miss Silver braided her hair and pinned it up neatly for the night. She had spent a very instructive evening. She folded her crimson dressing-gown, made in the last year of the war from utility cloth but most warm and comfortable and ornamented with the handmade crochet lace which was practically indestructible and had already served two previous gowns. Her slippers were new, a present from her nephew’s wife Dorothy, who had brought them home from the East. So very kind, and just the right shade of red. They had black pompoms on the toes, and of course these would not wear so well as the slippers but could be replaced. She arranged them neatly side by side before getting into bed, after which she put on a warm blue shawl with an openwork border over her long-sleeved woollen nightdress, and read a chapter from the Bible before blowing out the candle and composing herself to sleep.

Mildred Taverner also wore a long-sleeved nightgown of a woolly nature. She had embroidered a spidery bunch of flowers on either side of the front opening, which she had trimmed with little ruches of lace. She lay in the dark and wished that she had drunk less champagne. The bed really was not steady at all, and she felt far from well. She tried to remember what she had said to Jacob Taverner.

In the big double bed over the way Freddy Thorpe-Ennington could just hear his wife’s voice going on and on. He wasn’t asleep, because he could hear Marian talking, and he wasn’t awake, because he wouldn’t have been able to answer her even if he had wanted to. He didn’t want to. He wanted her to stop talking and put out the light, which hurt his eyes. He wasn’t drunk—he had walked upstairs, hadn’t he? All he wanted was to go to sleep. Why couldn’t Marian let him alone and put out the light? He wished she would stop talking, because every now and then he couldn’t help hearing what she said. She said things like, “Freddy, my sweet, you know you really shouldn’t drink so much,” and, “You’ll feel rotten tomorrow—you know you will.” He didn’t want to hear what anyone said. He wanted to go to sleep.

Marian Thorpe-Ennington finished creaming her face and put on the chin-strap which she wore at night though it was really dreadfully uncomfortable, tied a cap over her hair to preserve the waves, and slipped her hands into soft wash-leather gloves. When she had done all this she took off the cape which she had been wearing to protect her nightgown. It was worth protecting—white triple ninon smocked at the shoulders and at the waist in a delicate apple-green. She put on the matching apple-green coatee and took a casual look at herself in the glass. The chin-strap rather spoilt the effect, but anyhow you had to cream your face, and it wasn’t as if there was anyone to see you. Freddy, poor sweet, never knew how you looked or what you had on.

This happened to be true, because having once made up his mind that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he remained in that simple belief, and nothing she did or omitted to do had the slightest effect upon it.

Marian Thorpe-Ennington gave a fleeting sigh of regret to the days when her complexion owed its astounding brilliance to her own youth and to the soft water and softer airs of Rathlea and when she didn’t have to bother about a double chin. Then she got into bed, kissed the back of Freddy’s head, and blew out the candle.

On the other side of the landing Geoffrey Taverner was reading in bed. He wore neat grey pyjamas, and a grey dressing-gown edged with a black and white cord. He had only two pillows and he had been at some pains to arrange them comfortably. He wore pale horn-rimmed glasses. He was reading a thriller with the intriguing title of Three Corpses and a Coffin.

In the room next to Miss Silver Florence Duke hadn’t undressed. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. There was a lighted candle on the chest of drawers which served for a dressing-table. The flame moved in the draught from the window. It made the candle gutter. The flame, the guttering wax, and the candle itself were reflected in the tilted glass. There were two wavering tongues of fire, two little caves running with melted wax, two candles thickened with what old wives’ tales call winding-sheets. Florence Duke stared past them at the wall.

Jane felt the air come in cold and salt from the sea. It hadn’t taken her five minutes to undress. Now she was here in the dark with the wind blowing in, a wind from a long way off. She lay in the dark and watched the oblong of the window form upon the darkness until it hung there like a picture in a frame. The frame was there, but the picture was all a soft blur of grey, without form and void. That was in the Bible, in Genesis. Her thoughts began to drift. Under the drifting thoughts she was warm and happy. Jeremy had kissed her as if he loved her—very much. Cousins oughtn’t to marry—perhaps it wouldn’t matter if they did—perhaps—

She came awake with a start. There was a soft knocking on her door, and then the door opening, the wind rushing through, and Eily’s voice saying,

“Miss Heron—please—”

Jane sat up. The door shut, the wind stopped rushing. She said,

“What is it? Look here, shut the window, and I’ll light a candle.”

The window closed, and at once the room felt still. The curtains came together, and by the candle-light Jane saw Eily in her blue dress. She had some things gathered up in her arm, a nightgown, a dressing-gown. She stood half way between the window and the bed, catching her breath, her eyes fixed on Jane’s face, her own as white as milk.

Jane said, “What is it?” again.

Eily came up close.

“Miss Heron—if you’d let me stop here—I’d sit in the chair and not make a sound.”

“What is it?”

Eily said in a shaken voice,

“There’s no key in my door.”

“Do you mean there isn’t one ever, or there isn’t one now?”

The shaken voice sank low.

“It’s gone. Aunt Annie told me to lock my door. She didn’t need to say so—I’ve always locked it—since that Luke’s been here. But tonight there’s no key—it’s gone.”

“You must tell your aunt.”

“I can’t—they’re in the one room together, she and Uncle. If you’ll let me stay—”

“Of course you can stay. Get your things off and get into bed! It’s big enough for half a dozen.”

Eily caught her breath.

“I didn’t mean that—or to trouble you—only to stay in the room. He said to ask you.”

Jane took her up quickly.

“He? Who?”

“It was John, Miss Heron—John Higgins.”

“When?”

“Miss Heron, you’ll not tell? There’s no harm, but you’ll not tell? There’s once in a while he’ll come out here and go by whistling to let me know he’s there. It’s a hymn tune he whistles—Greenland’s Icy Mountains—and I’ll look out of my window, and he’ll say, ‘Are you all right, Eily?’ and I’ll say, ‘Yes.’ But tonight—oh dear, he was in a way!”

“Why?”

Eily shrank.

“You know what happened up here tonight with that Luke. I went down and I told my Aunt Annie. Mrs. Bridling that comes in to help when we’re busy, she’d finished up and gone home, and I was putting away the silver. I didn’t know there was anyone there. But Mrs. Bridling came back. She’d left her scarf, and she came back for it, and she heard what I said when I thought it was just Aunt Annie and me, the two of us alone.”

“How do you know?”

Eily sat down on the edge of the bed. It was just as if she couldn’t hold herself up any more. There seemed to be the weight of the world on her. She went on telling Jane about Mrs. Bridling.

“She went right back to Cliff and saw to Mr. Bridling—he’s in his bed and can’t get out of it. Then she began to think about what she’d heard me tell Aunt Annie, and when she’d thought about it for a bit she went along next door and told John Higgins, and John came out here right away. I’ve never seen him in such a taking.”

“I don’t wonder. Eily, why don’t you marry him like he wants you to? He does, doesn’t he?”

Eily looked at her, a long mournful look.

“And have his blood on me the way Luke said?” She shook her head. “I’d rather jump off the cliff—I told him so tonight.”

“And what did he say to that?”

Eily’s voice went lower still.

“He said I’d lose my soul and go to hell, and he said he’d come after me—there or anywhere. And he said, ‘God forgive me, but it’s true.’ I’ve never seen him like it before. What’s the matter with men, Miss Heron, to get worked up about a girl the way they do? There’s Al, and Luke, and even John—what gets into them at all?”

Jane bit her lip. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. She remembered Jeremy kissing her that hard way.

Eily went on in her pretty grieving voice.

“He wanted me to come out by the side door. He said he’d take me out to Mrs. Bridling and we could be married in three days. And I said I couldn’t leave Aunt Annie. You’d never think he’d carry on the way he did. I just said no, and no, and no, and at the last of it he said would I give my solemn promise I’d go along to your room and ask you to let me stay, and he’d come out in the morning and talk to Uncle, so I said I would—” Her voice trailed away.