Perfect Gallows Page 18

  Andrew dribbled another dose between the lips and waited.

  “It wasn’t my father I swore I’d do for so much as my swine of a brother. I knew I’d have to wait my time. Four years I sat through Chapel, foul-mouthing under my breath, thinking about it. First I knew I’d need money. When I was twelve my father put me into a ship-chandler’s. I worked at that job like a good ’un. Stole what I could, but only when I knew it was safe. Spent a bit on whores—balls dropped afore I was thirteen—saved the rest …”

  His voice was a scrape, barely loud enough to hear, with in-dragged wheezing every few words. When he rested Andrew gave him more brandy, imagining in his own throat the voice that would sound like that and yet be heard in the furthest seats.

  “Didn’t tell yer. Brother seven years older than me. Been others between, but they’d died. Got engaged. Older than he was. Chapel, of course. Plain as a boot. Father put him up to it. She’d a part share in a coal-yard coming to her. Father wouldn’t let ’em marry till my brother was twenty-five. Three more years. I was fifteen.”

  Now the voice strengthened slightly, as if with remembered energies.

  “Summer Sundays they’d go for a row on the river. Not alone, of course. Chapel. If her cow of a mother was stuck they’d take me. Only a kid, so that counted. He never touched her. I can see us now, him with his oily pink neck and his little bowler and his stiff white collar and his waistcoat with the watch-chain like Father wore, sweating at the oars, and her lolling under her sun-brolly at the tiller and looking at him and thinking how she was stuck with him cause it was her last chance, and me hunkered up in the bows, watching her past his head, thinking too. Brandy.”

  Revenge, Andrew thought. You get it a lot as a motive. Reading the lines you wonder what the point is. But here is this old man, dying, sending for me so he can have his revenge on my family one more time … The blue lips moved again.

  “August nineteenth was her birthday. Tuesday, with a big party. Her Mum had to bake all Sunday, Sabbath or no Sabbath. A week before, on the Saturday, I took the twelve quid I’d saved and put it on a horse called Breaker. Came in at six to one. Then I knew it was my hour. There ain’t no God up among the stars, that’s all horse shit, but there’s a little god inside you and when he tells you Go you must go, or he’ll be sour on you the rest of your days. I bought myself a passage to the Cape, ship sailing Monday. Not my own name. Booked another for Boston, sailing Liverpool, Tuesday, just the deposit. Used my own name for that. Bought a padlock, bottle of bubbly, pie, peaches, glasses, napkins, all the trimmings. Made sure of my boat.”

  A long pause, different somehow in nature. He wasn’t simply resting but remembering, savouring.

  “Sunday. Chapel in the morning, then dinner. Amy used to have dinner with her lot, then we’d go by and pick her up and on down to the boat-house. Between us and her we went close by the chandler’s where I worked. Told Ozzie I’d a present for Amy’s birthday I wanted him to have a look at. I’d a key to the shop, cause of being first in to sweep out. The old man had a store-room at the back, kept it padlocked, but I’d made myself a key. Saturday night I’d been down and changed the padlocks. Took him into the shop, opened the store-room. After you, Ozzie, booted his back and shut the door. Locked it, picked up my basket I’d hid under the counter, on down to Amy’s, told ’em Ozzie’d be meeting us at the boat-house. Soon as we were out of the house I told Amy fact was Ozzie’d come over queer at dinner, but if I’d let on to her Mum she’d have been kept home to help with the baking. Sin to waste an afternoon like that, and the boat all booked. She didn’t like baking. I was only a kid, wasn’t I?’

  More brandy and another rest, the lips pursing and falling back.

  “Oh, it was perfect weather. It had to be—my little god was working. Bloody stiff pull in a boat that size, but I needed the room in the bottom. Ran in among some reeds I’d spotted earlier trips. ‘What are you doing?’ Got the bubbly out. Winked. ‘Going to America Tuesday, so you’ve got to drink my health. Sorry old Ozzie ain’t here too.’ She was a stupid cow. Catch Ozzie drinking bubbly, on a Sunday too, even with the reeds to hide him. He’d have rowed straight home to tell Father. She didn’t think about any of that, only the romance of me going to America and her being in the secret, and trying her first champagne. She might be Chapel, but I’d been watching her, Sunday by Sunday. She said it tasted like lemonade. Never knew you were supposed to get it chilled, so we drank it warm while I told her about America and how I was going to make my fortune and bring her back a necklace of real pearls. Best afternoon of my life. Brandy.”

  The rest was shorter this time.

  “We had some pie and more bubbly. ‘Now I want you to kiss me good-bye. I’ve never kissed a woman before and I want to know what it’s like. Least you can do for a brother-in-law.’ Didn’t give her a chance to say no, just slid my arm round her waist and started in. ‘That was nice, let’s do it again.’ She was waiting-ripe. Didn’t take long to work her up. We tried drinking out of the same glass, and then we ate a peach together, juice running over our faces, down on to our clothes. Gave me an excuse to start taking ’em off—I’d paid a whore to show me how everything fastened—clothes women wore those days. Don’t, she kept telling me, but I’d kiss her quiet while I undid the stupid little hooks and she never moved a finger to stop me. She was clay in my hands. I could’ve done anything I wanted with her, anything at all. Clay in my hands.”

  Rest.

  “Didn’t let her go till it was getting on dark. Four times I did her, each go better ’n the last, and each time I went in I put up a prayer. ‘Give us a kid, little god. Make it a son.’ Nobody came by. There was only us, and the reeds, and the boat-cushions in the bottom of the boat. Then I told her to get herself dressed and I pulled back to the boat-house, whistling under the stars, and her sighing and blubbing in the stern. You’ll be all right, my girl, I thought. First you’ll think you can get away not telling anyone, and then you’ll find what’s happening inside you and you’ll think you’re shamed for ever, but Ozzie’ll marry you all the same, cause of the coal-yard. Father will see he does. Nothing to blub about. Walking up from the river I kept my arm round her waist and talked lovey-dovey about her coming out with me to Boston. Took her up past her house till we came to the chandler’s. ‘Got a present for you.’ Pulled out the keys and told her where to look. There was a street lamp shone in through the shop window, so she could see. She was a stupid cow—she still didn’t twig. Soon as she was in the shop I went whistling off to where I’d stowed my gear. Slept on a bench that night. Next afternoon I was leaning on the stern rail, looking back up the river where we’d been.”

  He stopped, exhausted, but a flutter of his fingers showed he had something more to say. Andrew waited, interested but still disappointed. It was too obvious. A scene like this should have something jarring in it, something almost wrong but still dead right … The story, he knew, had been told before, often. It had the same feel of being shaped by performance as Mrs Oliphant’s account of her husband’s death. Uncle Vole had brooded it into that shape over the years, told it round diggers’ fires on the veldt, in the pauses of poker sessions on Diamond, and then only in the private theatre of his skull. Now, for the last time, aloud. When he started to speak again rhythm and tone were different. This time he was telling Andrew something new.

  “Soon as I started to make my pile I wrote and hired a nark back home, find out what had happened. Answer, Father hadn’t made ’em wait after all. They’d married that November and they’d had a kid in May. A boy. My son.”

  The eyes shot open, glaring up with all their old malice. “Your grandad.”

  Andrew simply nodded to show he’d understood. The eyes closed.

  “Never had another and I know why. Amy expected Ozzie to do for her same as I’d done in the reeds, and Ozzie wasn’t up to it. In the end she scared him, so he couldn’t do it at all. Still wasn’t enough for me. I
’d got to rub it in, so that they woke up mornings thinking about it and went to bed nights with it still buzzing in their brains. Took me a while to think how. Then it came to me. Something Samuel said, if you want to know. I decided when I’d made my pile I’d come back to England and build myself a house, no expense spared, close as I could get to Southampton, make a splash in all the papers so they’d know it was there, go on doing things, charities, all that, so my name would always be in front of ’em. Sir Arnold Wragge of The Mimms. Then on they’d never walk into their grubby little two up two down without their guts twisting inside them, thinking of me. That’s why I built this home. That’s what it means. That’s why I’ve sent for the lawyer, to change my will. I’m leaving it to you.”

  Nunc Dimittis.

  “Well, watcher got to say?”

  “It’s been very interesting, sir.”

  The eyes opened, furious.

  “Watcher mean, interesting? That all you got to say?”

  Andrew paused, mastering the rage inside him, keeping his face marble. The rage was intense, a focused blaze, far stronger than what he’d felt running up through the plantation when he’d heard Jean’s scream and Brian’s laugh. This old wretch, this useless left-over, trying to sucker himself on to Andrew, to attach the long loathsome trail of his own life, all the way back to that afternoon in the Itchen reeds, for Andrew to drag on through the years. It was not going to happen. Mum was dead. There was going to be no past. He let the pause stretch while the clock tocked in the corridor outside and the painful breath wheezed to and fro. At the twanging instant he spoke, icy but amused.

  “It has been useful to me as an actor to listen to an old man on his death-bed.”

  Instantly, with no pause at all, the body beneath the bedclothes convulsed. That spasm jerked the shoulders up and sideways, with the head seeming to lunge snarling for Andrew’s wrist. The movement stopped. In fact it had been only a twitch of a few inches, but its suddenness and speed had given it that sense of violence, the last spurt of life’s energies exploding out of an ember. The right arm scrabbled to support the body, failed. The body flopped back. The lungs dragged at air, choked on the indrawn breath. The face suffused blue-purple and lay staring at the ceiling.

  After a couple of seconds Andrew took the right wrist and tried to find the pulse. None. With his index finger he pulled an eyelid down. It came at his touch and stayed. He closed the other eye and stood staring down.

  We did that, he thought. Adrian and Andrew. We spoke the word, and it was done. A clean cut. No past. Gone.

  He waited half a minute more, filled with the wonder of it, then turned and ran to the door. The nurse was standing along by a window into the courtyard, frowning at the crossword she was doing on the sill.

  “Quick!” he blurted (worried, scared, only-a-boy). “Something’s happened!”

  She scuttered to the room, saw the still-purple face on the pillow, paused and went quietly over. She felt for the pulse, raised an eyelid and closed it, and stood back.

  “He was telling me a story,” he said. “Then suddenly he sort of choked.”

  “Now don’t you go fretting—it was none of your fault. Could’ve happened any instant. A wonder he’d lasted that long.”

  “Shall … shall I go and tell my cousins?”

  “And if somebody could phone up the doctor …”

  “All right.”

  Cousin Blue sobbed gustily. Cousin Brown went to her desk and began a list of things to be done. Charles, after a few grave murmurs, stared out of the window. Andrew had found the three of them in the Boudoir, apparently in the pause of an argument. Now all he could do was wait. Jean would be coming along for a rehearsal in ten minutes, and he could slip out and explain …

  Cousin Brown rose and left the room with the list in her hand. Cousin Blue dabbed her eyes, blew her nose and crossed to the window where Charles was standing. She put her hand on his shoulder, a gesture implying ownership as much as affection, and looked at the familiar view in silence. Cousin Brown came back into the room.

  “How very peculiar,” she said. “Please ring that bell, Andrew—two pushes. I telephoned Oyler to tell him of Father’s death and to ask him to come out as soon as he was able, but it appears that he had already arranged to do so this very afternoon.”

  “On a Saturday?” said Cousin Blue.

  “Samuel apparently telephoned him on Thursday, saying that he was speaking with Father’s authority. He would have preferred to come yesterday, naturally, but was told that was too soon. Furthermore, he was not to let any of us know that he was coming.”

  “Really!” said Cousin Blue. “It seems to me that Samuel is becoming a thorough …”

  She stopped as the door opened and Samuel came quietly in.

  “You rung, miss.”

  “Yes,” said Cousin Brown. “I’m afraid I have some sad news. My father has died.”

  “We are all very sorry, miss.”

  “Thank you. And you have known him a long time and been a very faithful friend and servant. Would you please see that the others are told?”

  Samuel nodded and turned as if to leave.

  “One moment,” said Cousin Brown. “I gather you spoke to Mr Oyler on Thursday and made arrangements for him to come and see Father this afternoon.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “And you asked him not to let any of us know he was coming?”

  “Only what Baas Wragge told me to say,” said Samuel, not at all defensive.

  “But why? It seems very peculiar.”

  Samuel hesitated, looking gravely at the four of them in turn. “He said to tell Mr Oyler to bring out the old will,” he said. “He was planning to change it.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” said Cousin Blue.

  “I do not agree,” said Cousin Brown. “All we know about the old will is that he made it when he was in a rage with Clarice …”

  “Your silly little wife, Charlie,” said Cousin May.

  “Ah,” said Charles.

  “It would be entirely sensible for Father to make a new will,” said Cousin Brown. “He would no doubt leave instructions for the clarification of Charles’s position, and also make some provision for Andrew. Did he say anything to you about any of this, Andrew?”

  “Andrew is hardly a reliable …”

  “May!”

  “Dear Andrew, I am not talking personally, of course. But anyone who thought he might inherit rather a lot of money would be bound to be a bit influenced …”

  “It’s all right,” said Andrew. “I mean, well, actually he spent most of the time telling me about the row he had with the rest of the family. I sort of got the impression that he knew he was, well, dying, and he just wanted to rub it in he’d been in the right.”

  “Of course he was,” said Cousin Blue. “That goes without saying. Samuel, I have to tell you that in my opinion you are grossly exceeding your duties and we are far from pleased with you. You are not to tell anyone else this ridiculous tale. You agree, Charles?”

  “Er, well … isn’t it all a bit late? I mean, er …”

  “It is clear,” said Cousin Brown, “that Father intended to do something for Andrew. That is no doubt why it wouldn’t do for Oyler to come out until this afternoon. Father wanted to speak to Andrew first. Samuel, did he tell you anything about how he proposed to change his will?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Well?”

  “He said for me not to tell anyone.”

  There was a long silence while they looked at him. Cousin Blue was about to break it when Samuel held up his hand.

  “Baas Wragge is dead,” he said. “No good me saying anything now.”

  “You know, I seem to think that’s right,” said Charles. “Let’s see what’s in the will, eh? Then we’ll know where we are.”

  “Very well,�
�� said Cousin Brown. “Andrew, I think you had better stay here this afternoon. Mr Oyler will no doubt wish to speak with you. And Samuel, I think you would be well advised to tell Mr Oyler what you know, too.”

  “I must think, miss.”

  “I’d better go and rescue Jean,” said Andrew. “She hasn’t got a pass.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” said Cousin Brown. “Now, Samuel, what time …”

  Andrew slipped away. He had to wriggle through a sort of traffic jam on the stairs, where the GIs carrying the officers’ personal belongings down from the upper floors had become enmeshed with others ferrying cases of equipment out of the lower rooms. There were still the same furious outbursts but their tone had changed. The frustration was now of hustle. I’ll make her go alone, he thought. The trailers had looked like rubbish, back-row stuff. No harm in reminding her what it used to be like without me.

  SIX

  Old Mr Oyler was a surprise—not all that old, for a start. Andrew had been expecting someone ancient, parchment-dry, with a reedy voice and gold-rimmed spectacles. He turned out to be around sixty, a large man with jutting bones, like a starved cart-horse. Certainly he appeared exhausted, with deep-sunk eyes and wet purplish lips. When he spoke the air in front of him was filled with spray. To Andrew he had the look of a visiting preacher, the sort about whom the chapel-goers murmur afterwards that he used to be a very fine man.

  Altogether the scene was a bit like Chapel. The furniture in the Boudoir had been rearranged with Mr Oyler facing his congregation across Cousin Brown’s desk. His clerk, a nut-coloured little woman, sat at his elbow. The family were in the front seats and the servants behind. Flies tapped and buzzed on the window-panes. Orders and music—Cousin Blue’s nice war-music—came faintly from the camp tannoy. Brief spells of sunshine shafted between speeding clouds. It was difficult to stay awake.