‘I managed to see Laurence yesterday,’ Ernest said, ‘remarkably well, isn’t he, considering?’
‘Thank God,’ Helena said.
‘He gave me this’ — a red pocket notebook — ‘and told me what he knew about your mother’s friends.’
‘D’you know, Ernest, I don’t think there’s anything to fear. I kept my eyes open those few days I spent at the cottage, but I noticed nothing suspicious. Laurence must have been mistaken, I can’t help thinking. And apparently Mrs Hogg has come to the same conclusion; she actually descended on my mother while I was out. Mother was very calm about it — simply sent her away. I’ve no doubt — though Mother didn’t say so — that Mrs Hogg came about Laurence’s letter.’
‘That’s exactly what I should have thought. Exactly that.’ Ernest was now folding Caroline’s blue dressing-gown, very meticulously. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I happen to know vaguely one of the men in Mrs Jepp’s gang.
‘Oh, who’s that?’
‘Mervyn Hogarth. Eleanor used to be married to him. Now, he’s most odd. Laurence thinks Mrs Hogg may be related to him.’
Helena said it was unlikely. ‘I’ve never heard her mention the name Hogarth.’ She took the notebook from him and turned its pages. The meagre dossier Laurence had prepared had a merciless look of reality. It revived Helena’s fears. She was happiest when life could be reduced to metaphor, but life on its lofty literal peaks oppressed her. She peered at the stringent notes in Laurence’s hand.
‘What do you think of this, Ernest? Is my mother involved or not?’
‘Why don’t you ask her?’
‘Oh, she would never say.
Ernest said, ‘Laurence thinks we should investigate. I promised him we would, in fact.’
Helena read aloud one of the unbearable pages of the notebook:
‘Mervyn Hogarth: The Green House, Ladle Sands. Lives with crippled son (see Andrew Hogarth). No servants. Ex-library workshop. Bench tools. Mending (?) broken plaster statuettes. St Anthony. S. Francis. Immac. Concept. — others unrecognizable. No record in S.H. Ex Eleanor.’
‘I can’t make this out,’ she said, ‘broken plaster and the saints — are they Catholics, the Hogarths?’
‘I think not,’ Ernest said.
‘What does “S.H.” stand for?’
‘Somerset House. There’s apparently no record of them there. They may have been born abroad. I shall ask Eleanor, she’ll know.’
‘Laurence has explained all these notes to you?’
‘More or less. Please don’t upset yourself, Helena.’
‘Oh, I did hope there was nothing more to be feared. Explain all this to me, please.’
She kept turning the pages, hoping for some small absurdity to prove the whole notion absurd that her aged mother should be involved in organized crime. She had a strong impulse to tear up the book.
‘There wasn’t time to go through the whole of it with Laurence. He wants me to go and stay nearby for a couple of weeks, so that I can investigate under his supervision and consult him on my daily visits.’
‘No,’ Helena said, ‘that won’t do. We can’t weary Laurence in his state. I want him moved to London at the first opportunity.’
Ernest agreed. ‘It would be very inconvenient for me to leave London at this time of the year. But Laurence was keen. Perhaps there’s some other way —’
Helena looked at Ernest reclining now on Caroline’s divan in such a hollowed-out sort of way. Shifting sand, we must not build our houses on it. But Helena was not sure whether he didn’t possess some stable qualities in spite of the way the family regarded him. She realized her inexperience of Ernest: Caroline had a more lucid idea of him.
‘Of course,’ Helena said, ‘it would cheer Laurence up tremendously, someone visiting him every day. Now that they’re out of danger I can only manage twice a week. Caroline too, you would visit Caroline too?’
‘I’m not sure that I can get away.
‘Ernest, I will pay your expenses of course.’ She was almost glad of his resistance, it proved him to be ever so slightly substantial.
‘If you would,’ he said, ‘it would be a help. But I shall have to talk to Eleanor. This time of year is difficult, and we aren’t doing so well just now.’
‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t confide in Eleanor.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t mention any family business.’
They talked back and forth until it became needful to Helena that Ernest should go to reside at Hayward’s Heath for two weeks.
‘We must get to the bottom of this intrigue without upsetting my mother,’ she declared. ‘Laurence understands that perfectly. I’m sure his recovery depends on our doing something active. We must be doing. I know you are discreet, Ernest. I don’t want Mother to have a stroke, Ernest. And we must pray.
‘I’ll try to see Hogarth,’ he promised. ‘Maybe I can get him to meet me in London.’
He was pouring out their second cups, with that wrist, of which there was a lot showing, poised in a woman’s fashion which nibbled at Helena’s trust in him.
‘I have no misgivings,’ she declared, ‘I have implicit trust in you, Ernest.’
‘Dear me,’ said Ernest. She thought how Caroline with her aptitude for ‘placing’ people in their correct historical setting had once placed Ernest in the French Court of the seventeenth century. ‘He’s born out of his time,’ Caroline had explained, ‘that’s part of his value in the present age.’ Laurence had said placidly, and not long ago, ‘Ernest never buys a tie, he has them made. Five-eighths of an inch wider than anyone else’s.’
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life. It is possible for parents to be corrupted or improved by their children. Through Laurence, and also of later years through Caroline, Helena’s mental organization had been recast. She was, at least, prepared for the idea that Ernest was not only to be tolerated in a spirit of what she understood as Christian charity, but valued for himself, his differences from the normal. Helena actually admired him a little for what she called his reform. But when he gave up his relations with men she had half expected an external change in Ernest; was disappointed and puzzled that his appearance and attitudes remained so infrangibly effeminate, and she understood that these mannerisms were not offensive to people like Laurence and Caroline. Helena possessed some French china, figurines of the seventeenth century which she valued, but the cherishing of Ernest while he was in her presence came hard enough to present her with an instinctive antagonism; something to overcome.
Ernest had folded while she packed nearly everything. What couldn’t be packed was ready to be carried to the car. ‘Let’s have a cigarette, we’ve worked hard.’
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that machine belongs to Caroline. We had better have the man up to make sure we haven’t left anything of ours, or taken away what’s theirs.’
Ernest, curling himself on a low footstool, lifted the cover off the machine. ‘It’s a tape-recorder. Caroline probably used it for her work.’
‘I have implicit trust in you, Ernest. I’ve come to you before anyone. I don’t want to inconvenience you of course, and if it’s a question of expense —’
‘Thank you, Helena. But I can’t promise — I’ll try of course — this time of year we have our bookings, our classes. Maybe Hogarth will agree to come to London.’
‘I’m so grateful to you, Ernest.’
He fiddled with the tape machine, pressed the lever. It gave a faint whirr and the voice came with an exaggerated soppy yak: ‘Caroline, darling… .
Within a few seconds Helena had recognized Laurence’s voice; a slight pause and it was followed by Caroline’s. The first speech was shocking and the second was nonsense.