Perfect Gallows Read online

  “Sammy! Oi, Sammy!” called the man.

  Andrew put the suitcase down. From along the corridor came the sound of dragging footsteps, a sinister, quiet, approaching shuffle.

  “Nice and warm in here,” he said. “Like home.”

  “You’re missing home, I expect, sir,” said Mrs McHealy. “Not been away before?”

  “Not much.”

  “Weren’t you ever evacuated?”

  “Just for the blitz, but only out to Upton. My school’s still there, but most of us skived off home as soon as the bombing stopped, and nowadays I bike out to school every day.”

  Mrs McHealy nodded. She was a strong, slightly chilling presence, apparently making conversation not out of friendliness but in order to stop him asking about ration-books and such.

  “Our Hazel, she’s evacuated from London,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have it otherhow.”

  The footsteps reached the door. The darkie came in, wearing a linen jacket over his butler’s uniform, and on his feet a weird pair of shoes, a bit like carpet-slippers but with inch-thick pads of felt for the soles, which were far too wide and long for the uppers. Andrew guessed it was a way of polishing the floor as he went about his duties, but it was also a way of keeping his feet warm without breaking Uncle Vole’s rule about shoes. He smiled at Andrew, saw the suitcase, looked inquiringly at Mrs McHealy.

  “Now, love,” she said. “The young gentleman’s been saying how Sir Arnold told him to go home.”

  “He never meant it,” said the darkie. “He’s always telling people ‘Clear out.’”

  He too had a slight Hampshire accent, nothing like the pidgin darkie-talk he’d seemed to be using in the few words Andrew had heard him speak last night in the dining-room.

  “He said he didn’t want to see me again,” said Andrew.

  “How many times Sir Arnold told you that, Jack?” said Mrs McHealy.

  “Lost count,” said the groom.

  “Lay a place for Master Andrew, love,” said Mrs McHealy. “Or maybe you’d rather eat by yourself, sir. There’s the parlour.”

  “It’s nice and warm in here,” said Andrew. “We eat in the kitchen at home.”

  “Start you off with a bit of porridge?”

  Mrs McHealy bent creakingly to one of the lower ovens. She was older than Andrew had thought—they all were. Anyone younger would have gone off to war-work, like Cousin Blue’s maid. She spooned two rubbery lumps of grey goo from a large brown casserole. The darkie brought the bowl over to the table. Jack passed the milk and sugar, and Andrew, mindful of ration-manners with the three of them watching him, helped himself stingily.

  “Spare a bit more than that, eh, Mary?” said Jack.

  “I’ll have to take my ration-book with me,” said Andrew.

  “If’n you’re set on going,” said Mrs McHealy. “Still, spare you a full spoon—seven below stairs, we’ve a bit of slack.”

  The porridge was grainy, chewy, piping hot, quite different from Mum’s tepid slop. While he was eating Mrs McHealy took a tray of bread rolls out of another oven and flipped them on to a wire rack to cool.

  “When Mum tried baking it was more like bricks,” said Andrew.

  “Daresay it was,” said Mrs McHealy. “This wartime flour’s no earthly. How’d you fancy your egg, sir?”

  “Soft but not gooey, please.”

  “Sammy has his getting on raw,” said Jack. “Don’t see how he can stomach ’em.”

  The darkie grinned. His presence seemed to make the atmosphere more welcoming, and Andrew thought he himself had helped by judging the charm-flow right, but there was still a sense of caution, of wary inquisitiveness. He could feel the old groom watching him, but then switching his glance away the moment he looked up. The attention of the other two, though more tactful, was also perceptible.

  “Sammy says how you managed Sir Arnold was very nice last evening, sir,” said Mrs McHealy.

  “I did my best. I didn’t realize anyone was listening.”

  “You think we didn’t ought, sir?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Getting on fifty years Sambo’s lived in this house. Thirty-nine I been here, and now we’ve, got our Hazel too. Nineteen twenty-two you come, wasn’t it, Jack, and Florrie was here afore that, and Mabel soon after, not to mention others as live in the cottages, like Mr Feather, and Mrs Oliphant up West Lodge—her George was under-gardener when I come. My way of thinking, we’ve as good a right as any to know what’s coming to us. Sir Arnold, he’s not got long to live …”

  “Lucky to see another winter, ’cording to the doctor,” said Jack.

  “Florrie was polishing outside the door while he was telling Miss Elspeth and Miss May,” said Mrs McHealy. “You see, while Master Nick was alive we all thought it was going to him in the end, spite of everything, but then he went and got killed in Italy, poor lad …”

  “Isn’t Sir Arnold going to leave most of it to my cousins?” said Andrew.

  “Sambo says no. He’ll never leave the house to a woman. There’s one up in London, in Charles Street, he might leave them that. But this house here and the money to go with it, that’s got to go to a man.”

  “Not that we know for certain sure,” said Jack.

  “But that’s what Sambo thinks, and he knows Sir Arnold better ’n most, don’t you, love?”

  “Baas never took any account of women,” said Samuel.

  “So you see, sir, when Sir Arnold takes it into his head to have a look at the next heir, after Master Nick, that is, and there isn’t nobody else far as we can find, it’s only natural we’ll be taking an interest. And pardon me saying so, my mind you’ll be making a big mistake skulking off home. You stood up to Sir Arnold last night. Can’t do yourself much harm standing up a bit more by hanging on, can it?”

  Mrs McHealy hadn’t stopped cooking while she talked, working at the stove and speaking over her shoulder through the sizzle of frying. The lovely hot-lard smell filled the room. Now, before Andrew could answer, there was a clatter of running steps along the corridor and a girl about ten years old dashed into the kitchen. She had wiry dark hair and skin the colour of milky tea.

  “Morning, Gran,” she said.

  “There’s some’ll be late for their own funeral,” said Mrs McHealy.

  “Few minutes yet,” said Jack.

  Ignoring them the child ran to the darkie and slung her arms round his waist. He bent to kiss her forehead. His grizzled hair and her black tangle had exactly the same texture. Mrs McHealy stumped over to the table with a plate in each hand—fried bread, bacon, egg. Nifty though Mum was at wangling extras and bringing odd bits home from the NAAFI it was still only bacon or egg in Fawley Street.

  “You go and eat,” said the darkie, turning the child round and pushing her towards the table. She came a few steps, saw Andrew and stopped in her tracks.

  “It’s only Master Andrew, ducky,” said Mrs McHealy. “And this is our Hazel, what’s off to the panto with the choir, and if she don’t start now she’ll get either no breakfast or no choir-treat.”

  “The panto in Southampton?” said Andrew. “How are they getting there?”

  “Coach from the Golden Harp,” said Jack.

  “D’you think there’d be room for me? I’ll pay. I don’t mind standing.”

  Jack didn’t answer, but looked for directions to Mrs McHealy. She shook her head, not in answer to Andrew’s question but at the whole idea of his going.

  “You see,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but I don’t think I want to inherit this house. I’ve got my own life I want to live.”

  “It isn’t only the house,” said Jack. “There’s a pile of money goes with it. How much, Sammy?”

  “Nine and a half million pounds.”

  “That’s before death duties, acourse.”


  Andrew was lifting a carefully composed fork-load of toast, bacon and egg towards his mouth as the darkie spoke. His hand didn’t quiver as it rose. He chewed, enjoying the perfect mixtures of tastes, and shook his head.

  “You’re being very kind,” he said. “But, well, I know it sounds stupid but I don’t want the money either. And I really do want to go back to Southampton. There’s something I want to do there.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” said Jack.

  Perhaps that was true, but Andrew didn’t care. Perhaps it was the drama of the refusal, the immense sacrifice for the sake of his career, that appealed to him. Logically there was nothing impossible about starting rich, in fact there were obvious advantages, but his long-planned chart of his rise to stardom didn’t include them. Perhaps tomorrow he would curse his choice, but for the moment the notion of the coach to Southampton with a load of children actually bound for the panto where he could have been helping was far more solid in his mind than the fantasy of wealth. In any case, there was no certainty that Uncle Vole would leave him a penny. These people were only servants. What did they know? He shook his head again, smiling.

  “What do you say, Sambo?” said Mrs McHealy. “Wake up, love. Gone into one of his moods.”

  Andrew looked up. The darkie was standing where he had been a moment ago, but was waggling his head from side to side with a slow, loose, lolling motion, as though his neck were broken. I might use that for something one day, Andrew thought.

  “I said what do you say,” said Mrs McHealy more loudly.

  “This house is a trap,” said the darkie in a bloodless mutter. “Baas, he built it for a trap.”

  “Cheerful,” said Jack.

  “Wake up,” snapped Mrs McHealy.

  The darkie blinked, pulled his head straight and nodded.

  “You give Master Andrew his ration-book, Mary,” he said.

  Mrs McHealy snorted and seemed about to argue. The snort became a sigh and she waddled round the table to the dresser that ran most of the length of the inner wall, displaying on its shelves enormous oval plates made to carry whole roast joints. She lifted the lid of a soup tureen, groped and brought out a wad of ration-books tied together with pink tape. Slowly she undid the knot and took Andrew’s book from the top of the pile, but instead of handing it over she began to leaf through it, holding it at arm’s length, like old Mr Singleton studying a pawn-ticket.

  As Andrew was cleaning the last salty bacon drippings from his plate with a corner of toast his eye was caught by the ration-book at the top of the pile. That odd knack which somehow picks out letters which don’t make sense before one’s started to read the paper on which they’re written—a misprint in a theatre programme, for instance—made him look again. MARY JANE MK—. The pink tape lay across the rest of the name. Mrs McHealy chuckled as he moved it aside. MKELE.

  “There’s a lot get caught that way,” she said. “Thinking I married a Scottie whenas it was really that big buck nigger over there. Do you a couple of rolls for the journey? Marge and Bovril, but better than an empty belly.”

  “Thank you very much. And thanks for breakfast.”

  “Don’t mention it. But mark my words, you’re making a big mistake, running off. Not too late to change your mind.”

  “I made up my mind when I was five.”

  (It had been at another panto, in a proper theatre—he wasn’t sure which one—in peace time. He could have shut his eyes now and seen the glitter of the fairy queen.)

  “Time we was off,” said Jack. “Where’s that Hazel?”

  “Gone into a dream on the what-not, I’ll be bound,” said Mrs McHealy.

  But at that moment the child, who had gobbled her egg and stolen away a few minutes earlier, came clattering back. All attention was now on her. Andrew picked up his case and waited, then followed the others down a long corridor and out into a courtyard paved with blue-black brick where the pony, covered with a blanket, waited enduringly between the shafts of the trap. From some distance beyond the house music, just discernibly ‘Pistol-packin’ Momma’, penetrated the freezing grey dawn.

  THREE

  Children were playing in the ruins of the bombed houses at the eastern end of Fawley Street—evacuees who’d been allowed home, or simply sneaked home, for Christmas. Some of them would contrive to stay on for a bit when term began, till their absences from school were noticed and officials came to collect them. A few would escape even that net. Andrew paused for a minute to watch them scooping up the sprinkling of snow and trying to mould snowballs from it. As the snow was half brick-dust the snowballs spattered apart on the way to their targets, but the children still screamed when an icy fragment touched flesh, shouted at a hit and hooted at a miss.

  Mum would be at the NAAFI, so he could slip in and dump his case—hide it for the mo then go and see Cyril and come home to present her with the fait accompli. Then there’d be the problem of what to tell her about The Mimms. First part easy—amuse her by acting the parts, Cousin Blue’s sighings and probings, Cousin Brown’s boom, Uncle Vole’s gobblings and spite. She’d take his side over all that. But second part … Did he have to tell her anything about the scene in the kitchen? The money?

  Mum would love to be rich, not because she was greedy for money but because she was greedy for life. She’d always been like that, even before the closing-in of the war. He could remember her doing the pools back then—secretly, if Dad was ashore, and then secretly sneaking down to meet the postman on mornings she was expecting a win. (£6. 17s. 4d. had been her biggest). Andrew had grown as used to Dad’s absence now as he was to Mum’s presence; before the war the strangest times had been when there was this intruder in the house, with Mum hustling into practices she’d slipped out of while he’d been away—grace before dinner, serviettes on the table, shoes in the house and not slippers, little hidden gestures to Andrew to fit in—like a French farce when the husband comes home. How much had Dad noticed, smoking his thin black cigar and reading the Gazette in what Andrew regarded as his chair?

  It was only since the news had come about Singapore that Andrew had learnt to think of his father as a character, half a married couple with one son. A strong character, with secrets. No smiles. Anger, sometimes, if that was what it was. Now, as so often before, Andrew brought the Mae West episode out of its mental cupboard and looked at it again. It had been seven years ago, almost. Dad, just home, tanned and alien. Andrew, longing to impress, beginning his new-learnt imitation. He’d done it for Mum only the week before and she’d laughed and laughed—why hadn’t she warned him? She must have known the other meanings in the lines … In order to think about it calmly he made it a scene from a play. Strindberg or someone. Dad’s relish in his own anger, in his power, but also some secret in his life that had put the crack of pain into the whistling belt. You’d find out in Act Three—a visiting sailor would let slip about the yellow house behind the harbour in Veracruz, with the shutters always closed, where Dad lived a quite different sort of life, where the Mae West lines would seem harmless as fairy-tales …

  It had hurt like hell of course, and Adrian was only a name then. He still hadn’t discovered his other uses. Not that he’d have been much help against pure pain. Now, though, Andrew could take pleasure in the discovery that there was an echo of the scene right back in Uncle Vole’s boyhood. No elder brother to hold him down. No need to vow revenge, either. It was all outside himself now, part of a play. And he was going to make his own success, which you couldn’t measure in money, not even in millions. OK, so he wouldn’t tell Mum about that part of it. He picked up his case and walked on.

  Fawley Street? One cut above a slum? Rubbish, if you didn’t count the bombed bit. Most of them had electric doorbells, and till the war there’d been a woman come twice a week to scrub out, and to black the stove. Of course they didn’t look so hot after five years of war, though Mr Toomey had smuggle
d a bit of Cunard red out of the docks and done his front door over Christmas. Apart from the yelling children the street was empty.

  Andrew put his case down on the doorstep of Number 19, turned into the tiny front garden and lifted the upside-down flower-pot behind the hydrangea. No key. He’d half expected that—she’d have taken it to the NAAFI as she wasn’t expecting him home. So he’d have to go round and leave the case in the coal-shed. Question was, had he best write a note for Mum telling her not to lock up, in case Cyril took him on for that evening’s performance, in which case he’d get home at all hours? He needn’t explain, not till after …

  While he thought about it his hand, unordered, tried the door handle. The door moved. It wasn’t locked. Forgotten? Still at home? Sick? The key was on the inside of the lock. Silently he put his case down in the hallway and tiptoed on into the kitchen.

  The stove was hot. The kettle, drawn to one side, had an inch of tepid water in it. Plates stacked by the sink, unwashed, two lots. Someone in for tea last night, then.

  Upstairs, footsteps and the click of a door. More steps. The hiss of water into the toilet—not Mum’s gush and dribble. The doctor? No, the feet had worn no shoes. The footsteps moved back and the door clicked again. Before it closed he heard Mum’s sleepy murmur, and the man’s chuckle.

  He stood mindless. He didn’t ask Adrian to occupy his surface, to smile an ironic smile and nod, but that was what happened. Yes, she’d got very worked-up about him going to stay away for a week, wouldn’t take No for an answer. Stupid Andrew. People don’t exist solely for you. They have lives of their own.

  Leave her a note, letting her guess he knew? What was the point? She wouldn’t be glad to see him back next day, either, not till Monday tea, when she’d be all hugs and laughter He’d need some money.

  There was three-pounds-something in the pewter tea-pot on the mantel­piece. He helped himself to a ten-bob note and two half-crowns—she never bothered to count what she’d put by—then went softly back into the hall, picked up his case and left. The children were still shrieking among the ruins.