The Forgotten Story (24 page)

He might let Tom see it, or first tell him about it, or better still go straight to Mr Cowdray.

But that was obviously showing a distrust for Aunt Madge. She would see that he had gone behind her back, and it would be horribly uncomfortable facing her afterwards. He could hardly go on living here unless he took the Will to her first thing in the morning.

Anthony began to see that the possession of such a document as he had found was more of a responsibility than he had bargained for. All very well for grown-ups to make decisions, but he was so young and so alone in the world. He didn't know when his father would be able to send for him, whether he even wanted him or not. Tom did not want him; Patricia could not have him; where would he go if he left here? Why turn against the people who gave him shelter? He almost regretted having found the envelope. If he had looked and there had been nothing there, then his conscience would have been clear.

But first get the painting back. This was something over which he had not expected to have any difficulty, and not until he had tried three times to fit the back into the frame did he realise that the frame had ‘ sprung'. He broke out into a new perspiration as he failed at the fifth attempt. The only way seemed to be to take the picture and hide it and hope that no one would notice that it was missing from the wall.

‘Stap me, boy; I thought you were asleep hours ago!' said a voice in his ear.

Anthony jerked his head up, and his heart and throat congealed, so that he could not even cry out. He could only hold the table and stare at Perry and try not to fall. Perry, in a nightshirt and big coat and his black hair all towsled.

‘What's the matter, boy; been sleep walking? Don't look so scary; I'm not going to eat you.'

Then he saw or pretended see for the first time the document Anthony had found in the picture. He picked it up and opened it.

‘What's this, eh? Don't say it's what … Hm. Where did you find it, in that picture? Glory be. What made you look behind old Granny. How's it work? Show me.'

‘I – I don't know. I – it just came to pieces. Er – Uncle Joe showed me once … but I forgot how he did it. I –'

‘What made you think there was something here? Rot me, what a place to look!'

‘I … saw Uncle Joe put something one day. It – never occurred to me it would be – anything important – till this search today. Then I thought I'd … just look.'

‘Um,' said Perry, staring at the paper and twitching his lips. ‘Can't say whether it's important or not, not just at a glance. Don't think it's much, you know. Fancy old Granny having a secret for us like that. But if you'd known the old Four-Master you'd know it was quite in keeping. Not that it's likely to be important. I'm pretty sure it's not much; but perhaps it will be as well to let old man Cowdray see it, eh, boy?' He pushed back his hair and met Anthony's gaze. ‘Did you read any of it?'

The boy said: ‘I only just glanced at the front and then I tried to put the picture back. I … can't get it back.' In order to hide his eyes he turned to the table and tried to force the picture into its frame.

‘Easy does it.' Perry slipped the document into his pocket and bent to help. But something had gone wrong with the frame when the back fell out. ‘Oh, blast that! We'll be waking the old lady. Leave it now, boy; it's time for our beauty sleep. Now if –'

‘Did you see my light?' Anthony asked.

‘No. You dropped something overboard, boy. Well, well, you never know what's going to turn up in this world, do you, now? Everybody searches the house and finds sweet Fanny Adams, and then you go adrift in your sleep and tickle up old Granny and out comes this. But I think it's a mare's nest, boy. I think it's nothing important. I think it's nothing much. Keep it to yourself for the time being, what?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Anthony.

They had come out of the office into the sitting-room. ‘Keep it from Aunt Madge, too, shall we?' he said in a conspiratorial whisper and dug Anthony in the ribs. ‘Just the two of us in the secret. Then tomorrow I'll lay off to board old Cowdray and we'll see what sort of a signal he runs up.'

His manner was so friendly that Anthony felt ashamed of himself. Ashamed of himself for feeling frustrated in his purposes. He knew now that in his heart, for all his professed loyalty, he had never had the least intention of handing over to his uncle and aunt anything he found in the picture, certainly not if it was a Will. They might give him shelter and food and reasonable consideration but they did not give him confidence. He might defend them before any outsider who presumed to criticise, but he could not defend them to himself.

He did not sleep much that night, and more than once he wondered how Uncle Perry had come to hear the noise he had made with the picture frame, for Uncle Perry's bedroom was on the other side of the passage. He thought he could guess the answer to that.

The next morning
The Grey Cat
was in harbour. She had slipped in some time during the night and was a little nearer the quay than her usual anchorage.

Although he had been sorry to see her go, Anthony was far more pleased at her return. He was lonely, missed Patricia more than ever, and his meetings with Tom were too infrequent to be looked on as more than an isolated adventure. Now for a week or more there would be the gruff Ned Pawlyn to bring a breath of fresh air into the house. Never, he felt, had he so much needed it.

The captain and mate put in an appearance while he was at breakfast, and he at once dropped his knife and fork and rushed out to meet them. But it was not Aunt Madge's rebuke which made him stop and blink. Captain Stevens had as a companion a dark, thick-set man none of them had seen before.

‘Morning, ma'am,' said Captain Stevens, removing his cap. ‘This is Mr O'Brien. Mr Pawlyn went ashore at Hull. He said he felt the need of a change. Morning, sir,' he added, addressing Perry, who was just making a dishevelled appearance. But it was to Madge that the Captain gave his account of the voyage. Joe's widow not only held the money, she also held the reins of business, and although one or two of the older captains might feel a prejudice against dealing with a woman, there was no question of shifting any of the responsibility upon Perry. Aunt Madge was now the
J. Veal Blue Water Line
, and no one who wished to continue in her employment must make the mistake of thinking otherwise. And, however much she might neglect the re-opening of the restaurant – which entailed a resumption of the old routine of hard work – one had to admit that she seemed perfectly capable of continuing to conduct the
J. Veal Blue Water Line
on the basis that it was bequeathed to her. Captain Stevens had not been in the house ten minutes before she announced that a new cargo was waiting for him as soon as he had discharged his present one.

Four days went by after this disappointment and Perry said nothing to Anthony about the picture. Several times during the week the boy thought he saw his aunt regarding him curiously, and not once during the week did she ask him to go with her. But so far as Perry himself was concerned there was not the smallest indication that the incident had ever occurred. The boy began to wonder whether Perry intended to forget the whole occurrence and rely on his superior age and position to override any questions that were put him. If so, Anthony was determined that Uncle Perry should be mistaken.

But on the fifth day Perry came to him and waved the document in his face.

‘Well, boy, we were blown off our course a bit that time. I could see it myself when I read it, but I thought 'twould be fairer not to tell you until old man Cowdray had cast his optics over it, see?'

‘What is it?'

‘I told your aunt. I thought it for the best after all. I thought it not important, but I thought it for the best. We took it to old Cowdray. It's what I guessed. It's a copy of the Will we already have. Just the same, word for word. See, look for yourself.'

Anthony took the document and unfolded it quietiy.

‘Folk usually keep a copy for themselves. Solicitor makes it out same time as the original. It's for reference, d'you see?'

Anthony read through the first part of the Will. ‘Yes, but …' He broke off, keenly aware that his uncle was watching him while pretending not to. ‘But if it was just a copy like this, why should he put it behind the picture?' His intended question had been something quite different.

Perry chuckled and lit his pipe. ‘Come to that, why put anything there at all, where like as not it would never be found? You didn't know Joe as I did, boy. He'd got the mind of a squirrel. Liked hiding things. Some folk do. There was a man I knew in ' Frisco. When he died they found he'd papered his bedroom with dollar bills and stuck a wallpaper over them. Might never have been discovered but the man who took his room noticed a bit peeling. Friend found him two days later, room full of steam, three kettles going, still busy. When you've seen as much of the world as I have, boy, you'll know it takes all sorts.'

‘Yes,' said Anthony.

‘How was it you said you came to know of the hiding-place, did you say?'

Anthony tried quickly to remember what he had said. ‘Uncle Joe showed me. One day – I was in there, you see, and he showed me how it worked, just for fun.'

‘Was there anything in there then?'

‘I'm – not sure. I think – He said he sometimes put things in there.'

‘Well, 'twas a good thought to try.' Perry chuckled again, but his mouth twitched. ‘A bright idea, if you follow me. I wonder you didn't think of it before, though. I suppose you'd have given it to Aunt Madge if I hadn't come up and frightened the wits out of you?'

‘Yes … I … I'd hardly thought. I didn't really expect to find anything, you see.'

Perry seemed satisfied. ‘ Well, pity it wasn't a deed of gift making over to us a thousand pounds, what?' He dug him in the ribs again where he knew him to be most ticklish. ‘A thousand pounds each. Then we'd have gone off on the spree, just the two of us together, boy. How would that suit?'

‘Fine,' said Anthony quietly.

‘We'd go off to Marseilles and Alexandria; those are the places for a good time cheap. I knew a girl once … And then we'd go across the Atlantic to Canada. We wouldn't wait for your old father to send for you; we'd go and find him. That would give him a shock, wouldn't it? We'd turn up at his camp one day, just when he came back from his diggings, and somebody'd say: “ Dick, here's a young man called to see you,” and he'd say: “I wonder who in tarnation that can be?” And he'd go inside and you'd be standing there waiting for him …'

There was a good deal more of this before the conversation ended. Perry was trying to divert the boy's mind and partly succeeding. While something in him rejected the vision as a spurious one, Anthony was yet beguiled by it because it approached so near to many he had had himself. The mood in which he fell in with Uncle Perry's clumsy romancing and laughed at his jokes was therefore only partly assumed; and Perry the deceiver was himself deceived.

Never in his life would Anthony quite regain the frankness and freedom of manner he had lost during his stay with the Veals, that fresh, clear-eyed candour which feared nothing and withheld nothing. Always there would remain as a mark of these days a hint of reserve which would make him a little difficult to know. People would say of him: ‘He's charming, but hard to understand'; and they would never know that they were reaching back into an untidy kitchen of Victorian days with Perry manoeuvring and bluffing and pushing back his hair and Aunt Madge's shadow in the doorway, and the water lapping against the old stone quay outside.

Further delay, the boy felt, would not help him or anyone else. Already he was greatly to blame for having waited so long. He must move at once.

He did not know where Maenporth was, but he slipped out just before supper and asked Jack Robbins, who told him that it was a few miles beyond Swanpool.

That evening there were visitors to supper: Captain Stevens of
The Grey Cat
and Captain Shaw of
Lavengro
, which had come in a couple of days after the other ship. They were both due to leave again soon, and Aunt Madge had shaken herself out of her sloth and cooked them a supper reminiscent of the restaurant in its best days. But this was even better because it was free and Joe had always charged them full price.

Captain Shaw, a fat man with a trace of Mongol blood in him, grew expansive with the wine and began to pay Aunt Madge extravagant compliments which she lapped up like a dignified tabby offered a bowl of cream. Then, having made himself popular, he began to undo the good work by referring to Joe and the way he had starved his beloved ship; if they ever revictualled in Falmouth they always ran short of provisions and supplies before the voyage was done, and if they victualled at any other port Joe always complained of extravagance and took a percentage off the captain's wages.

Aunt Madge was nothing if not jealous of her late husband's reputation, and she began to look as if the cream had turned sour. Perry grinned and twitched and rumbled in the background like an extinct volcano, content it seemed to let someone else have the limelight and divert Madge's attention from him.

Presently the party adjourned to the sitting-room upstairs, and Anthony went with them and sat and looked through another volume of
The Quiver
while they played whist. At nine-thirty he wished them all good night and went slowly up to bed.

He sat on his bed in the dark for fifteen minutes, and then picked up his shoes and came down again. Never since he had been here had anyone climbed the second flight of stairs to see if he was in bed – the fact that his light was out was deemed good enough – so he felt fairly safe in taking the chance. And if they had gone to bed before he returned, as seemed probable, he knew a way of prising open the scullery window and there shouldn't be much difficulty in wriggling his body through.