A Family Affair (15 page)

‘I think I’d rather not.’ Bobby spoke quite nervously. It seemed to him that something was happening to the anemones. He could have sworn that they were changing colour and stirring drunkenly. ‘It looks – doesn’t it? – as if there’s no telling whether there was ever a real Stubbs or not.’

‘One is aware of alternative hypotheses, sir.’ Billington articulated these words with prudent precision. ‘Either the late Sir Thomas’ lady was having a bit of a joke in the first place, or there was a proper Stubbs and it vanished between this and Burlington’ – Billington paused impressively – ‘
H
ouse.’

‘That’s it,’ Sir Thomas said, and his glance wandered across the table. ‘Nice flowers these, eh? Striking colours.’

‘Lovely,’ Bobby said, his nervousness increasing. He realized that, from Sir Thomas Carrington’s point of view, the topic of the Stubbs had exhausted itself. And clearly a great deal of talk about Rugger was going to follow. Having been given a very decent lunch in the expectation of this, he couldn’t with any honesty now think to cut and run for it. And Rugger, after all, still interested him quite a lot. But it did seem important to make at least one further bid for any remaining facts about the picture business that might be lurking either in Sir Thomas’ mind or in Billington’s. Bobby tried to think of the sort of questions his father would ask. Perhaps there was some single and vital question that hadn’t occurred to him. It would be very annoying to return to Dream and almost immediately have his father saying incredulously, ‘You mean to say you didn’t ask
that
?’ Perhaps he had been rash to feed all that brandy to the anemones. Perhaps one additional swig at it would have produced inspiration. ‘About the fellow who came to value your pictures,’ he heard himself say. ‘He wanted to take away the Stubbs – if it was a Stubbs – and have it cleaned for you. Do you remember anything else about him?’

‘Don’t want to remember him at all, my dear lad.’ Sir Thomas sounded impatient, but checked himself. ‘Not that he seemed at all a bad fellow. Gent, and all that. And went up in the world shortly afterwards. ‘That right, Billington?’

‘Yes, Sir Thomas. You remarked it in
The Times
. What they call the University News, it was in. And it was Oxford or Cambridge he went to, not one of the modern hestablishments. Very well-spoken, ’e was – very well-spoken and polite. Name of Sansbury, I remember.’ Billington turned to Bobby, ‘Ever heard of him, sir? An intellectual, ’e was. Mightn’t be your type.’

‘I’ve heard of him from my father, as a matter of fact.’ Bobby noticed that the anemones, their phase of inebriation over, were now curling up exhausted. Bobby felt rather exhausted too. But he braced himself, and turned to Sir Thomas. ‘And now about handling the scrum,’ he said.

Judith Appleby had discovered that, in a distant fashion, she was a relation of Lady Canadine. It was something she was frequently able to do – for the simple reason that her family, the Ravens, had through several generations been of a strikingly prolific habit, and had married all over the place. And
Who’s Who
had revealed that Lady Canadine (wife of the former owner of an improper garden ornament) had been a Raven. The thing was as simple as that. A remote Raven, but a Raven, all the same.

Unfortunately this tenuous consanguinity didn’t look like taking her very far. She couldn’t recall ever having met either of the Canadines, so the dim fact would scarcely licence a casual call. Moreover if Bobby was going to face some difficulty in manoeuvring Sir Thomas Carrington into being communicative about an entirely innocent painting by George Stubbs, she wasn’t herself likely to find it any easier to broach with an elderly female of conventional mind (as Lady Canadine, she felt, was sure to be) an affair turning upon anything so indelicate as the purloined statue. It was true that Judith herself was by profession a sculptor, and there might be something in that. Could she, for example, simply drive up to Netherway (which was the Canadines’ house) and announce that she had heard of the fame of a particularly fine Graeco-Roman work in the possession of the family? She doubted it. Her technical interest in such objects would be best kept in reserve.

And there was another difficulty. The Canadines were the only people who hadn’t made at least some degree of public fuss about their loss. Lord Canadine’s noble friend, Lord Cockayne; Sir Thomas Carrington, a pillar of the landed gentry; Mr Meatyard, equally a pillar of the higher mercantile class; Mr Hildebert Braunkopf, that bastion of the refined ethical conscience in the picture trade: all these (before, so to speak, losing their nerve) had ventilated their deprivations to the police. But Canadine appeared to have done no more than mention his embarrassing loss among his private friends. Cockayne had known about it, and it was only through him that the Appleby’s had heard of the indecorously animated statue at all. That its owners had elected to be so reticent about its disappearance made any direct inquiry into the affair additionally tricky.

At this point Judith Appleby had abandoned
Who’s Who
, and tried
Gardens of England
and
Wales
. Netherway was celebrated, it seemed, for a large collection of steam engines, very old yew trees, and alpine plants. Alpines, it struck her, were the most likely to be Lady Canadine’s concern, so she applied herself to the Alpine Garden Society’s
Quarterly Bulletin
. This confirmed her guess. Lady Canadine was an authority on the choicer androsaces and other naturally saxatile plants. Judith was quite good at this sort of language. It was going to be plain sailing, she told herself. And she drove off to Netherway at once.

It was a three-hour drive; if she stopped at a pub for a sandwich, she could make her appearance at a civil hour in the afternoon. And as the little car skimmed over the downs, she could marshal her knowledge of the saxatiles. Did Lady Canadine feel that
Draba mollissima
throve best in tufa holes? She herself had enjoyed modest success in growing
Phyteuma comosum
that way. Her uncle Everard Raven – whom Lady Canadine perhaps remembered – had planted
Chamaecyparis obtusa
nearly seventy years ago, and so dense were these delightful green bun-shaped balls that their spread was no more than twelve or fifteen inches to this day. And how enchantingly slow-growing was the Noah’s Ark tree! She had planted one on the birth of each of her children, and the children had always put on five inches to the trees’ one. That would be the sort of thing – but produced with a steady deference for Lady Canadine’s superior knowledge. For Judith’s visit, if it were to be colourable, must be given the character of a pilgrimage.

But although Judith Appleby was interested in gardens she was rather more interested, after all, in sculpture and the history of sculpture. So she found herself beginning to wonder about the piece of garden statuary which Lord Canadine had, it seemed, inherited. She began to wonder about it in the whole context of the series of bizarre frauds and robberies which her husband had described to her. Superficially, it seemed the least odd of these affairs. The simple theft of an object of value was all that was in question – except for the further point that the object had been tastelessly fooled around with by some former owner, and that this had made the publicizing of its loss impolitic. But what was odd – and Judith was in no doubt about this – was the existence in anybody’s garden, over a long period of time, of an object of high antiquity and great value. According to the account of the matter given to John by Lord Cockayne, the present Lord Canadine had been quite unaware of the statue’s value until casually informed of the fact some time after its disappearance. There was nothing impossible about this, but it did seem a little surprising. It might at least be of interest to discover who Canadine’s informant had been.

The antiquity of Netherway’s yew trees, at least, could not be challenged. They formed gloomy groves in a large park – which was a disposition of things curious in itself. The steam engines (which Judith had vaguely expected to find housed in converted stables, or the like, after the fashion of a private museum) formed rather similar groups and clumps of their own; only as they were freshly painted in the appropriate colours of the railway companies to which, at one time or another in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they had severally belonged, the effect they rendered was rather more gay. They might, indeed, have been guests at a garden party; in threes and fours they stood more or less nose to nose, as if exchanging obligatory small talk with practised ease. Rudyard Kipling, Judith recalled, had been fond of writing fables in which locomotive engines and steamships turned chatty between each other or between their several components. But the effect here was less of that than of
la
révolution surréaliste
. A little old-hat, in fact. It was a freakish mind that had perpetrated such a manifestation in an English park.

The Canadines were much less grand than the Cockaynes, and probably a good deal less prosperous as well. The latter fact seemed reflected in the house now coming into view; it was a respectable Queen Anne mansion, but didn’t look in the best repair. The grounds, on the other hand, were perfectly tended, and it was already possible to glimpse a formal garden which gave a similar effect.

Judith braked sharply. She had become aware that in front of her was a level crossing, and that it was closed against her. A little barrier had come down, and a little bell was ringing and a little light was flashing. A moment later, the train appeared. It struck her as belonging to a locomotive world midway between miniature railways and model railways. The elderly man perched on the cab of the engine was quite as big as the engine itself. He was wearing a grey bowler hat. He removed it and bowed gravely to Judith as he went past. The train vanished within one of the clumps of yew trees; the barrier went up; Judith drove on. There could be no doubt that she had been saluted by Lord Canadine.

Lady Canadine was charmed. Or in a dim way she was charmed – for she moved and spoke with a vagueness suggesting that she had in fact withdrawn from a world grown too perplexing long ago, and had left behind only an apparatus of social responses entirely adequate in their way to anything except unexpected exigency. Judith certainly didn’t rate as that; Lady Canadine most perfectly comprehended the ramifications of the Ravens, and was charmed to meet a kinswoman – and especially a kinswoman who had heard of her notable success with
Globularia cordifolia
and
Alyssum serpyllifolium
. Lady Canadine had lately been doing a lot with dry walls. But with these the problem, of course, was air pockets. Air pockets harbour slugs.

In discussion of these and similar learned matters, Judith and her involuntary hostess spent an agreeable if slightly trailing hour. Judith ventured to assert the excellence of equal parts of turfy loam, peat, sharp sand and stone chippings. Lady Canadine accepted this, but with the proviso that the sand must come from Bedfordshire. Her husband frequently ordered large quantities of builder’s sand – it had something to do with his railway – and thought she ought herself to make do with that. But adequate drainage was almost impossible with builder’s sand. Lady Appleby must have discovered that long ago.

Judith murmured diffidently that, on the contrary, this was a most valuable accession to her knowledge of the subject. Inwardly, she reflected that it wasn’t, unfortunately, at all the knowledge she had come to collect. She wondered whether she would be asked to stay to tea – and a covert glance at her watch told her she was bound to be. Possibly Lord Canadine himself would be easier to tackle. But Canadine was perhaps the kind of man who didn’t turn up at his wife’s tea table; who felt that marital decorum was satisfied by reunion half an hour before dinner. No doubt he had to grease and oil his rolling stock before tucking it up for the night. And Lady Canadine, correspondingly, would have to make the round of her troughs. Troughs, she had been obliged to confess, were coming to engage more of her regard than even dry walls. There were no air pockets in troughs.

Judith was wondering whether from troughs she could steer the conversation to sarcophagi, and from sarcophagi to sculpture, when Lady Canadine said something which, although not in the least out of the way, alerted her guest instantly.

‘I wonder,’ Lady Canadine suggested, ‘whether you would care to see the water garden?’

‘Very much. I am so interested in submerged aquatics. And in marginal aquatics, as well.’

‘The formal pond in the sunken garden has very little that is notable at present. But I should like to show you our little series of informal pools in secluded situations. They were designed by my father-in-law many years ago.’

This sounded so promising – at least compared with anything that had been mentioned so far – that Judith found herself quickening her pace. Lady Canadine seemed to find this eagerness commendable, and contrived to move quite briskly herself. When she next spoke, however, it was on a slightly despondent note.

‘The margins are so difficult, are they not, with artificial pools? Really attractive aquatics of scrambling habit are not easy to hit upon.’

Judith had hardly had time to agree with this, and to put in a good word for Bog Bean, when the first of what Lady Canadine called the informal pools was before her. It lay at the foot of a steep little gully or ravine which, although unexpected on its particular terrain, seemed itself not to have been artificially constructed. A small stream tumbled down it, and it was by this that the series of pools was fed. This first pool was full of water lilies of an apple-blossom pink, and Judith duly admired them. But she scarcely heard Lady Canadine remarking instructively that
Marliacea
Carnea
has a robust constitution. She had a sudden strong persuasion that – for what the point was worth – she was approaching the modest and retired spot from which Lord Canadine’s Graeco-Roman goddess had been ravished away. The second of the pools, certainly, had every title to be called secluded; it was approached by a narrow path which wound upwards between shrubs so unobtrusively that a casual glance might miss it altogether. Here again there was a pause for appropriate remarks. Lady Canadine’s impulse of showmanship, however, now showed signs of declining.