A Change of Heir (2 page)

He finished packing. It didn’t take long. He counted his small change. That didn’t take long either. It would be necessary, he saw, to find a friend on whom to park himself. To park himself, he would have to explain, while considering his position. He doubted whether he possessed a friend to whom that would sound very convincing. But he possessed several who, convinced or unconvinced, would be prepared to have him around for a while. This ought to be comforting. But the knowledge, somehow, didn’t altogether please him. Being regarded as quite an agreeable character was, of course, itself agreeable. ‘Rather endearing, really,’ was what he imagined people were inclined to say about him. It was undeniably useful, making an impression like that. Nevertheless a consciousness of it seldom failed to kindle in him a small, obstinate spark of what was conceivably divine discontent. Unfortunately sparks of that order hadn’t much utility. You couldn’t as much as toast a bloater by them when the gas had been cut off.

Gadberry went downstairs very quietly. With any luck Ma Lapin would be in her own quarters in the basement. She was a lazy old soul, and didn’t commonly get round to ‘doing’ her lodgers’ rooms – when she ‘did’ them at all – until much later in the morning. He might, of course, run into one or another of the lodgers themselves. But that wouldn’t greatly matter. Even if they guessed what he was up to they wouldn’t give him away. He was on very good terms with the lot.

He did, in fact, encounter one of them. It was the girl in the second-floor back. She danced, if you could call it that, in some pretty low spot he’d forgotten the name of, and he just hadn’t, somehow, been able to take the interest in her that she’d seemed to have in mind at one time. But she still wasn’t unfriendly, he sensed, even although it was now her habit to toss up her chin and turn away whenever they met.

She did this on the present occasion – and so speedily that she probably hadn’t even noticed the suitcase.

And then, in the hall, there was Bessie Lapin. He’d more or less expected that. The child seemed to lead much of her dismal existence there. Her hair was always in twists of grubby paper, her nose was always running, and her only occupation was sitting on the tiled floor, crooning or drooling over a battered doll. This was happening now.

‘Hullo, Bessie! Is your mum around?’

Gadberry put this question heartily, and in the hope of getting a reassuring report that Mrs Lapin was indeed buried in her own lower regions. But Bessie offered no reply at all. She just stared dully at Gadberry, and sniffed. That Mrs Lapin was really her mum seemed wholly improbable. Bessie, poor kid, was certainly the child of heaven knew whom, and planted indefinitely here heaven knew why.

‘Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?’ Gadberry asked. There was no particular reason why he should thus quote Matthew Arnold. It certainly wasn’t with any notion of teasing Bessie. So he was mildly horrified to see a slow flush spread over her whole face – as it will spread over the face of an adult who has been deeply mortified. He grabbed the handle of the front door and got outside quick.

He’d made good his escape. But halfway down the grubby flight of steps leading to the pavement he paused, frowning. It might even have been said that he paused, scowling. Then he turned round and re-entered the hall, put down the suitcase, and fumbled in a trouser-pocket. He held out a sixpence to the child, who got nimbly to her feet as he did so.

‘Bessie,’ he said, ‘you run out and buy yourself a lolly.’

Bessie advanced, snatched the coin, retreated rapidly, and edged round towards the open door while keeping as much distance between Gadberry and herself as possible. She displayed no more gratitude than one might expect from some small anthropoid creature at the zoo.

‘Mr Gadberry – is that you?’

Gadberry turned round and faced disaster. The door shutting off the basement staircase had opened, and Ma Lapin stood in it. She looked curiously at the suitcase and appeared to be about to animadvert upon it. Then her immediate business with her lodger recurred to her.

‘Telephone,’ she said. ‘It’s an agency.’

‘The St James’s?’ It was with a proper lack of excitement that Gadberry asked this. But his heart had given a bound. An engagement, even of an insignificant sort, would solve some immediate problems very nicely.

‘No. Something I never heard of. The Bernhardt. Party of the name of Falsetto.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, I’ll have a word with him.’ Gadberry, who was a little dashed, moved with dignity – but not too tardy a dignity – towards Mrs Lapin’s staircase. The only telephone of which the establishment boasted was in the basement – an arrangement which might be presumed to afford Mrs Lapin valuable insights into the lives of her lodgers. ‘Falsetto is quite an enterprising chap,’ he said – skirting, so to speak, Mrs Lapin’s back quarters on the way to her lower ones. ‘I’ve let him fix things up for me from time to time.’

Mrs Lapin made no reply. Her glance had returned to the suitcase. Gadberry remembered with relief that he’d locked it. Ma Lapin, of course, might go up and take a look at his room. But by the time she had wheezed her way up there and down again, there was a good chance that he would have concluded his business with Falsetto and beaten it. This, indeed, might well be in Ma Lapin’s mind now.

He made his way to the telephone and picked up the receiver.

‘George – yes?’

‘Yes – George.’ Gadberry wasn’t aware that he’d ever given Mr Falsetto permission to
George
him. In fact he resented it. But then, despite his necessarily Bohemian life, he frequently found himself resenting things that would have been judged censurable either in the vicarage in which he had been born or in the school at which he had been educated. Such resentments weren’t much good when you had just reduced your capital assets by sixpence and knew that they now stood at eight shillings. ‘Nice of you to call me,’ Gadberry said firmly. This
George
business, after all, might be of good omen. Perhaps Peter Hall had been showing interest. Perhaps the author of
The Rubbish Dump
was out of jail and had written another play. Gadberry tried to remember Mr Falsetto’s Christian name, and had to decide that it had never been communicated to him. Perhaps it might be possible to take a guess at it. If one were unfortunate enough to be a Falsetto, what would it occur to one to call one’s darling boy? Well, there were Scottish names almost as outlandish: Colkitto and Patullo, for instance. So one might dower him with an ancient Scottish lineage by calling him Donald or Dugald. Gadberry decided to try one of these. ‘Dugald, old boy,’ he said, ‘you’ve got a show for me?’

‘Falsetto here.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Gadberry, although anxious to get down to business, wasn’t going to be put off. ‘Old boy,’ he reiterated chattily, ‘you have the advantage of me. In this business of names I mean. What do your intimates call you?’

‘Intimates?’ Mr Falsetto sounded suspicious and offended. ‘You kidding? I’m a family man.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Gadberry had been rather pleased with his turn of phrase, which he recalled as having been used by his father. But it had set Mr Falsetto on a wrong track. ‘I mean, old boy, what’s your Christian name? If you’re to call me–’

‘Christian name?’ Mr Falsetto’s voice conveyed a kind of blank interrogation. The concept appeared to be one with which he could do nothing.

‘First
name.
Given
name. The kind of name you’re naming when you call me George.’

‘Okay, okay. I get. Norval. My name is Norval. You call me that.’

‘Thank you. I’d like to.’

Gadberry was naturally pleased that his guess had been within the target area. Now he could get down to brass tacks. ‘Norval, old chap,’ he said, ‘what’s the show? What’s the part? Spill it. I can take it.’

‘Search me, George. But you go to see this Smith.’

‘Smith?’

‘Sure. John Smith. Now – at the Chester Court. That’s a hotel somewhere Kensington way, I guess.’

‘What’s this Smith – an impresario?’

‘I’d say not, George. Not with that name. And not in that hotel.’

‘Then why–’

‘Better call him a client, I guess. He paid my fee, and that makes him a client, don’t it? And then he went through all the files. Only I reckon it was only the photographs he was interested in. He wasn’t really digging the text.’

‘But that’s absurd!’ Gadberry was indignant. ‘You don’t think I’m going to go modelling, do you – posing in somebody’s raincoat or light summer suiting beside a lion in Trafalgar Square?’

‘I can’t say, George. It’s over to you.’

‘That’s the sort of thing this Smith must want, isn’t it? It’s the only thing makes them choose just like that. And, after all, I
am
an actor, Norval. Can’t you do a bit better–’

‘George, here’s this thing on my desk talking at me. My secretary says Sir Laurence–’

‘All right, Norval.’ Gadberry had no belief in Sir Laurence. ‘But just tell me what this man Smith
said
.’

‘Said? Well, I figure he didn’t kind of say much. Except that you were the nearest thing to his type he’d turned up. George, I’ll be seeing you sometime.’

‘Stop, Dugald! I mean Norval.’ Gadberry was reduced to a frank betrayal of agitation. ‘Would you say this fellow Smith was a–’

‘The Chester Court, George. You can find out for yourself, easy enough. Only let me know if it’s something not quite nice. The Bernhardt is a very strictly ethical concern. That’s how I started it in New York, and that’s how I’ve continued it over here.’

‘I’m sure it is.’ Fleetingly, Gadberry wondered why, if this were so, Mr Falsetto appeared to be resigned to an expatriate condition. ‘But what’s the chap
like
? At least tell me that.’

‘Like, George? Well, I’d say he’s like any other guy in dark glasses and a beard. So long, George.’

‘But look here–’ A click on the line constrained Gadberry to break off. Whether for the purpose of receiving Sir Laurence or not, Mr Norval Falsetto had put down his telephone.

Gadberry went thoughtfully upstairs again. With Mr Falsetto, he supposed, anybody became George – or Richard or Robert, as the case might be – on the occasion of his having brought the Bernhardt a fee. He recalled that it had been with some misgiving that he had placed himself on the Bernhardt’s register. He’d had more than an inkling of its being something which, in the higher ranges of his profession, just wasn’t all that frequently done. And Mr John Smith of the beard and the dark glasses didn’t sound attractive; in fact he spoke loudly of an unattractiveness so pronounced that it remained exactly that even when viewed from the standpoint of a highly disagreeable indigence. He probably wanted to command, for a modest fee, some boring and senseless service. He might yearn, for example, while bizarrely attired and to the accompaniment of the music of Wagner, to be bitten or beaten or bashed about by a young man of personable appearance.

These and other morbid hypotheses were abruptly banished from Gadberry’s mind by the consciousness that he was once more in the presence of Mrs Lapin. As he had guessed would happen, she hadn’t stirred out of the hall. Nor had Bessie; the child had simply retreated to a corner and turned on her drooling act. The compromising suitcase formed a centrepiece to the composition.

‘Well,’ Gadberry said briskly, ‘Falsetto sounds as if he may have something attractive. But I don’t want to be in a hurry. There’s talk of taking
The Rubbish Dump
to Moscow. Of course I’d be needed for that.’

‘A good riddance, if you ask me. Clean crazy, plays of that sort are.’ Ma Lapin folded her arms across her bosom; it was clear that she was in one of her nasty moods. ‘Theatres of cruelty, theatres of the absurd! Who ever heard of such things in old Cocky’s time? That Lord Chamberpot ought to come down on them heavy. That’s what I say.’

Bessie Lapin began to cry – whether nostalgically at the mention of C B Cochran or in terror at the thought of the Lord Chamberpot, it was impossible to say.

‘Well, well,’ Gadberry said cheerily, ‘we all have our tastes and fancies, Mrs Lapin.’ He frowned as he recalled the probability that precisely this reflection might be applied in charity, no doubt, to Mr John Smith. But Mr John Smith was neither here nor there. There could be no question of his seeking out so shady a character at the Chester Court or anywhere else. Gadberry advanced resolutely upon his suitcase. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’d better be getting along.’ He caught Mrs Lapin’s eye. ‘For the time being, that is,’ he added rather obscurely.

‘Do I understand, Mr Gadberry, that you are leaving us for some days?’ Mrs Lapin had shifted her position. In fact she was now planted in front of the door which would lead her lodger to freedom. ‘Perhaps a country-house weekend with the aristocracy? Or a professional engagement at Chequers, it might be? Mr George Gadberry gives his celebrated farmyard imitations to the assembled Prime Ministers of the Empire?’

‘Nothing of the sort, Mrs Lapin.’ Gadberry contrived the appearance of taking these crude jibes as sallies of refined wit. He was not, of course, in the habit of offering farmyard imitations; it was a form of the mimetic art, he supposed, that had retreated from the music hall to the village institute round about the time that he was born. Mrs Lapin herself, it occurred to him, could put up a very fair show as an enraged turkey. But this was all the more reason for speaking her fair. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I expect to be back by lunch time.’ He picked up the suitcase – contriving, as he did so, a great appearance of its being as light as a feather. ‘I’m simply taking a few things round to the cleaner’s. Rather a grubby part of London, this.’ He saw that here was an unhappy remark, for Ma Lapin was showing signs of mounting truculence. ‘No offence intended,’ he added hastily.

‘’E give me a tanner!’ Quite unexpectedly, Bessie Lapin had thrust out a pointing finger at Gadberry. Both her gesture and her tone were of an accusatory nature. The child might have been saying ‘’e give me a clip on the ear’, or even ‘Ma, e did something rude’. There was a moment’s silence. ‘’E give me a tanner to buy a lolly, ’e did,’ Bessie elaborated with undiminished severity. She held up the coin as if it were some damning piece of evidence.