The China Governess (17 page)

It was a transparent mixture of prejudice, obstinacy and genuine dismay, and so like him that the young man could have wept.

‘Oh scrub it!' he exploded, and suddenly blurted out the one bald question that he had made up his mind never to ask outright.

‘Uncle, had no one
really
any idea whatever where I came from?'

Eustace gaped at him in amazement. When his urbanity dropped away from him, as now, he had an innocence of expression which was almost infantile. It was as if the world had never touched him at all.

‘But I told you,' he said earnestly. ‘I told you, Tim. I confessed it.' The young man watched him helplessly. There was no hope that he was lying. The chill truth shone from him as only truth does shine. ‘It was absurd and unrealistic of me perhaps,' he went on, betraying that he was still not entirely convinced of the fact. ‘I can see something of that now, but then . . . ! My goodness! What a time that was! The world was cracking up all round us, you see. Civilization, Beauty, Law and Order, all crumbling like the pillars of a city. You were just a little bundle of helpless jelly, so very vulnerable and appealing. It didn't seem very important what I did. I thought I'd provide for you as long as I could, you know, and there was that thwarted, childless woman so delighted to be able to mother you. I felt I did right afterwards because Alison and I both became so fond of you. I've said I'm sorry, Tim.'

‘Don't . . .' the boy put out his hand. ‘I'm not ungrateful, you know that. It's only that – I mean, you are absolutely dead sure that I can't possibly be a Kinnit?'

Eustace appeared to consider the remoter possibilities for the first time.

‘How could you be?' he inquired.

The utter reasonableness of the question struck Timothy with the impact of a pail of cold water. The final shreds of his romantic swaddling-clothes were washed away and he stood quivering and ashamed of himself for ever clinging to them. It was a moment of enormous danger which anyone in Eustace's position who had a reasonable degree of emotional imagination or experience must have found terrifying, but his protection was almost complete. He reacted in his own way and changed the subject.

‘I'm getting on,' he announced, nodding at the written page. ‘But it's not easy. There's very little data about Chandler's first
factory at Bristol. Oh well, it must wait for the moment. I'm very glad you came in, Tim. I wanted to have a word with you about poor Basil. He
drinks
these days, doesn't he?'

The young man stood looking at him. In his eyes was the half-horrified, half-amused expression with which so many people meet the solution of a lifelong enigma. Eustace the father-figure had turned into Eustace the dear old fuss-pot.

‘Basil? Oh, he takes his noggin,' Timothy said. ‘It's not serious.'

‘Ah, but I understand it makes him
talk
.' Eustace's glance had become frosty and the aesthetic lines in his face were very marked; he had also coloured a little as he always did when he was embarrassed. ‘Alison came in here an hour ago,' he said. ‘She'd been talking to Nanny Broome – that woman is only up here for a few days and we learn things about each other of which we've been happily ignorant for years! I don't take her too seriously but one thing she is reported to have said worries me very much.' He lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. ‘Have you heard an extraordinary story about Basil actually saying – when drunk of course – that you had been
rough
with that poor old woman who died here?'

Timothy frowned in irritation. ‘I heard something of the sort.'

‘Tim. It's not true?'

‘Of course not! Don't be silly, Nunk.' The old endearment from his childhood slipped out without him noticing. ‘Even if no one has faced this birth business until now, you can't suddenly decide you don't know me at all! Miss Saxon happened to be listening outside the kitchen door when I pulled it open. She fell into the room and on to the stones. Nan and I picked her up and dusted her down and she went off quite happy, but afterwards she told Geraldine that I had shaken her.'

‘And you hadn't?' The anxiety in the tone was wounding.

‘No! She was only creating a diversion; she'd been caught listening at a door! Do put it out of your head, it's so unimportant.'

‘I don't think so,' Eustace got up from his chair and walked up and down the small room. Something had frightened him.
Timothy found that he recognized the signs but was no longer made afraid himself by them. Eustace was pale and excited and the knuckles of his hands grasping the lapels of his jacket were white.

‘It could be most damaging. Most. He's got to be stopped, Tim. He's got to be stopped at once. Where is the silly fellow?'

‘He's in the house. He's flying to Nice in the dawn and coming back here to sleep tomorrow night. Don't bother with him. He does chatter and nobody takes any notice of him. Really it doesn't matter.'

‘You're wrong. She's dead you see. It makes it very awkward. Very dangerous.' Eustace paused in the midst of his walk and was thinking, his eyes narrowed and his lips moving. ‘I'll speak to him,' he said at last. ‘Don't you say anything. It's my responsibility. Leave it to me. He must give up alcohol if he can't trust his tongue.'

The younger man turned away wearily. ‘I don't care a damn what he says!'

‘That's nothing to do with it my boy. Don't you see? I gave Dr. Gross my word that there could be no possible need for a post-mortem.'

‘That was a bit god-like of you, wasn't it?'

‘Wasn't it?' Eustace's gentle laugh escaped him. ‘Something warned me at the time that I was being presumptuous. However, I did it. Gross came over as soon as I telephoned and when he found that she was dead he came in here to me and said something about mentioning the death to the Coroner. Well, I've known him for years, as you know, and rightly or wrongly I dissuaded him. I pointed out that he had attended her so he was behaving quite properly in giving a certificate if he was certain nothing abnormal had occurred, and I took it on myself to guarantee that nothing had. After a certain amount of humming and haa-ing he agreed.'

‘Why did you go to all that trouble? Because Geraldine is so rich?'

Eustace looked hurt. ‘Tim, that was a sneer!' He shook his head and added with disarming frankness, ‘I don't know why one does go out of one's way to oblige Money. It's a funny thing and very
wrong but everybody does it. Yet, you know, it wasn't quite that. I think I wanted to save us all embarrassment. Geraldine has trouble enough on her hands with that poor child in hospital.'

He paused and alarm appeared in his kindly eyes again.

‘Basil must hold his tongue though. What a stupid man he is! It could be particularly awkward, since the woman was a governess. I noticed that at once.'

Tim looked at him blankly for a moment before he laughed.

‘On the principle that the Kinnit family is governess prone?'

‘Don't be a fool, my boy!' Eustace actually stamped his foot. ‘Use your imagination. Nothing colours a new scandal like an old crime story. In the last century the Kinnits were involved in a Coroner's inquest and a trial which concerned a governess, Thyrza Caleb. The name is not forgotten after a hundred years. It would certainly cause comment if we appeared in a new one now which also concerned a governess. It's obvious. That was why I wrote the announcement for the newspapers myself. I was very careful not to let the name Kinnit appear. “Kinnit” and “governess” are not good words together. We live in an age of mischievous publicity; it's stupid to ignore the fact. Basil must stop drinking and be quiet. I'll see to it myself.' He sat down at the desk again and took up his pen. ‘You go and have a good sleep,' he said. ‘You're not like yourself tonight.' Tim turned to the door.

‘I'm not like anybody, that's the trouble.'

‘What's that?' Eustace was looking over his glasses. ‘Turn that light down will you as you go. I like just the one lamp on the page. What did you say just now?'

‘Nothing of any interest. Good night.'

‘Good night, Tim.' He was already writing. ‘Don't brood,' he said without looking up. ‘And don't forget, not a word to Basil. I'll do that.'

Timothy went out into the passage again and walked round the staircase well to the other side of the house. The door of the sitting-room was closed but he heard Toberman's unmistakable laugh and Miss Aicheson's high hollow voice as he passed it. The rest of the building was as quiet as only London's night-time deserted areas can be quiet. From every side the roar was still audible, but now it
came from far away and in the middle there was stillness and the grateful pandemonium quelled.

His own room possessed a staircase of its own which ran up from the end of the right wing where Eustace, Alison and any guests staying the night had bed and bathrooms. It had always been his room and as a child he had been thrilled by the sense of importance and security which the staircase gave him. One entered it through a small door which one could pretend was secret and the stair wound up in a full half turn to the big low room with the uneven oak floor and the tiny washroom and shower built in an oversized cupboard, the panelled bed and the bookshelves filling the wall beside it.

He was so anxious to get to this sanctuary, to shut the door and clear his mind, that he did not notice Nanny Broome who was standing by the passage window, her dark dress mingling with the heavy curtains.

‘Mr. Tim?' The voice, almost in his ear as he passed, surprised him and he shied away from her. ‘Mr. Tim. I've got to tell you something.'

‘Not now, Nan, for God's sake!' The words came out more savagely than he meant and she responded in her own particular fashion. Her eyes flashed and her lips hardened. ‘Oh well then, you must find it out for yourself and I shan't take the blame!' she said tartly. ‘I'm sorry I wasted my time waiting for you.'

She was not really put out; he could tell that from her voice. She was in one of her slightly naughty and entirely feminine moods, excited and truculent. The threat might mean anything; in his present loneliness he did not care.

He left her without speaking, shut the door of the staircase carefully behind him, turned on the switch which lit the bedroom above and ran up into it, to come to a sudden halt on the threshold. Someone was there, lying on the bed, the shadows of the high foot-board hiding her face. He knew who it was before he went over and looked down.

Julia was lying on her back, her hands behind her head, her eyes wide open and very dark. There was no expression whatever on her face and he got the impression that she was not breathing.
She watched him silently, only her grave eyes, dark with exhaustion from the emotional struggle she had lost, flickering to show that she was alive.

Timothy stood looking a moment and then made as if to turn away from her, his face working, and she put up her arms and pulled him down.

For a little while he let the tide of relief and peace close over him but as the surge rose up in his blood he took hold of himself and pushed her away as he struggled to get up.

‘No. Stop it,' he whispered fiercely. ‘Not here I tell you. Not in this hole and corner. I won't let you. You're mine as well as your own. We've got something to lose. “With my body I thee worship” and don't forget it, my – my
holy
one.'

‘I don't care.' She was shaking and her face was wet against his cheek. ‘I was promised. I was
promised
. I can't go on. I can't. Not any more.'

‘Be quiet!' He took her shoulders and forced her away from him back against the pillows. ‘Listen and for God's sake try to understand. I've just been involved in a sort of . . .
birth
. It has been happening to me all day. I feel that until today I've been in a . . . an eggshell. But all through today I've been breaking out of it. Everything I've ever taken for granted has come apart in my hand. Do you know that even until tonight I secretly believed that somehow it would turn out in the end that Alison
was
my aunt and Eustace
was
my father? Well, they're not. What is more, it must always have been perfectly obvious that they were not. Eustace is a honey, a sweetie, a charmer, but he couldn't be anybody's father. I saw it quite clearly – almost in an off-hand casual sort of way – when I went in tonight. I've known him all my life and never appreciated before what every adult must have felt about him. Julia, don't you see what this is
doing
to me? I'm altering. I'm coming down to earth. I don't know what I'm going to turn out to be.'

She was rigid and the tears were forcing themselves between her closed lids. ‘What about
me
? Oh Timothy. What about me?'

‘Understand.' It was the ultimate appeal, as young as childhood and as old as the world. ‘I must exist. I can't float about unattached
and meaningless. I'm a component part. I'm the continuation of an existing story, as is everybody else. I thought I knew my story but I don't. I have been misinformed in a very thorough way. I've got to go on and find out who I am, or I'm unrecognizable even to myself.'

The girl's eyes opened and her hot little mouth was salty as she pulled him to her.

‘I'm here. Don't shut me out. I shan't change. I
can't
change. I love you. I'm all love.'

‘How do I know?' He was pulling back from her in terror. It was the last question of all.

There was a long silence and then she sat up, suddenly the stronger of the two. ‘Well,' she said with the courage of certainty, ‘if the rest of the world has changed for you, have I? Look and see. Love isn't love if it alteration finds. That's how you know, I thought.'

It was a gesture of curious generosity. Its blessing flowed over him cool and comforting. He sat down on the bed and held her hands and looked at her and she met his eyes and presently they began to laugh.