‘You’re not to speak of any of it, lad,’ he said. ‘It’s a pretty delicate situation.’
It was not like the Chief to find anything delicate.
I said, ‘What can I speak of?’
‘Don’t talk,’ said the Chief. ‘Just drink.’
‘I’m half seas over as it is,’ I said.
‘I’ll put you straight about everything before long,’ he said, and the Chief was eyeing the right-hand stair to the rear of the terrace, which John Lambert was descending. Looking at him, my first thought was: Well, here’s another condemned man. In his dinner suit, he might have been dressed for his coffin. He was operating on habit alone as he came down those stone steps, to be greeted by the host and hostess, with Usher waiting behind them.
Looking on, I said, ‘Well, Usher can’t very well do for him at a party, can he, sir?’
‘’Course not, lad,’ said the Chief. ‘It’d be considered very poor form.’
And he walked slowly back towards the terrace.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I followed the Chief back onto the terrace, where I crossed the wife, who was making towards Milly Chandler.
She said, ‘Can you smell the lovely musks and damasks?’
‘Is that what they are?’
There was a beat of silence.
‘John Lambert’s here,’ I said, indicating him with a nod.
‘I see him,’ she replied.
‘He looks rather seedy.’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s going off, do you suppose?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said the wife. ‘I thought your Chief might be putting you in the picture just now.’
I could only shake my head.
I sat down on one of the stone steps to the rear of the terrace — and when I sat down, I really sat down. I found a glass of claret near my perch, and drank it off. Someone had placed an oil lamp on the steps to supplement the Chinese lanterns, and it had drawn any number of drab-coloured moths. This terrace was really a room without walls; it was very hard to credit that a man who’d had the run of it, and the house too, was now in a cell in Durham nick.
Usher was speaking in low tones to John Lambert, who would meet his gaze by some great effort, and then turn away. It was rather cheering to know that two members of the upper classes did not always see eye to eye. The Chief, not being upper class, was not privy to this exchange, and he stood on the edge of the terrace looking spare. After a few minutes, Usher broke off, sighing, from the conversation and drifted towards the white-covered table, while John Lambert went over and sat on the far steps, so that he and I balanced each other as the two gloomy onlookers at the party.
It seemed to me that of all the people around the table, Lydia was in the greatest request. She had recovered from her early shock, and I saw that this was a world to which she was very well-suited, and from which she was being unfairly kept by her low-class husband.
Milly Chandler was saying to her: ‘I don’t agree with you about religion. I think it’s all lies.’
‘Is that why the vicar’s not here?’ asked the wife.
‘I notice you make a connection between God and vicars,’ Milly Chandler said. ‘I find that interesting. In fact, the Reverend Ridley’s not here for the simple reason that he’s a perfectly horrible man who once put his hand on my — well, let us say my derriere. It was after matins,’ she added, and at this she started doing a little dance with her glass held high in the air. As I watched her — and watched especially her white, rolling bosom (that ruby necklace was a very brave adventurer) — the manservant and three other servants new to me came down the stone steps carrying a sofa and a divan.
I thought: Christ, is this for me?
But Usher indicated the sofa to the ladies, and they sat down in it. He then invited the Chief and Bobby Chandler to the divan, while he remained standing, letting everyone see his perfectly pressed trousers, and the golden watch chain stretched across the silk ribbon that ran around his middle.
During all this, the wife was talking once again about the women’s movement, and Usher flashed me a couple of glances as she did so. What had the Chief told him of me?
As the wife spoke, the Chief looked down at the glass of champagne in his hand. He was not in favour of the women’s cause: the suffragettes were too pushing. And yet he sat silent. He knew something of what was happening, and was silent on that account. The Chief had once described himself to me as ‘self-educated’ and I wondered whether I fell into that bracket. I had been taught how to fire engines, but did that really count as an education? I knew a dart from a pricker or a paddle, and that ‘little and often’ was the best way with coal and water. But my work had never impressed Lydia, and she’d thought it a blessing when I’d been stood down from the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. Well, I’d known what I was taking on when I married her. She was always trying to climb, both for her sex and for herself. She wanted everything a woman could have, and everything a man could have, too.
The manservant came over again, and poured more claret. The stuff was too warm. They would have an ice chest somewhere for the champagne.
‘Might you stick the claret in the ice for a while?’ I said, but the man had already gone, and I was glad about that. You had a narrow squeak there, Jim! I thought. Cold claret! The stuff had to be warmish, like blood.
I walked after the manservant, and asked him where the water closet was — I had never called a jakes a water closet before. He directed me through a dark arch cut out of a yew bush, and I was in the territory of the kitchen garden. On low black trees that looked like old men, lemons grew. They glowed in the deep darkness, but lemons? Could that be right, even in the heat of this summer? I walked a little way of the gravel path towards them and saw that they were lemon-shaped yellow apples. Anything seemed possible as (having given up my search for the water closet) I pissed by the sweet-smelling compost pens.
When I returned to my former post on the terrace, Usher was speaking to the wife, and I did not like this connection between them. If it continued, I would have to put aside my claret, top-class vintage though it might be, and lay the bastard out.
‘Are you quite opposed to violence on behalf of your cause?’ he was asking Lydia.
‘Not absolutely,’ replied the wife. ‘Are you in the case of yours, Captain Usher?’
He gave a half-smile that made his handsomeness double. Lydia never called a man handsome, but you could tell when she thought it. I put my hand into my inside pocket, and there was a single paper there. Lydia said something else about the women’s movement, and Usher, lighting a cigarette, said, ‘Hear, hear!’ He seemed to be making out that he agreed with her, but how could he? A man like that was sure to be an Ultra.
I heard the faint sound of the Adenwold clock striking midnight as Milly Chandler stepped onto the lawn with a glass in her hand, calling out that she was looking for glow-worms. A bottle of whisky and a siphon were now on the go, and a cigar box started doing the rounds. As long as both of these stayed away from me, I would not be sick.
Instead, Bobby Chandler came over.
‘Lydia and the Captain are hitting it off rather well,’ he said, but I would not rise to the bait. Instead I asked him in a rather slurring voice about Hardy, the station master.
‘I’ve seen him once or twice,’ said Chandler. ‘My brother-in-law told me to look out for him as one of the leading curiosities of the village. To George, the man was a buffoon, plain and simple, but I wonder. He’s an amateur historian, you know — hides from the world. His only refuge is with those toy soldiers of his. Seen them, have you?’
‘A lot of people around here like midget objects,’ I said, for some reason.
More claret came.
‘Could you manage some more?’ asked the manservant, and I replied ‘Yes’ but I knew it would be a struggle. I was crippling myself with this stuff — it was beyond all reason. Was I alcoholic? If not, it was probably because of Lydia. That was the great thing about having a wife. She checked your drinking.