Christmas at Candleshoe (16 page)

‘Wasn’t the Admiral drowned before this house was built?’

‘Two or three years before that.’

‘Then he couldn’t have done any hiding of treasure here himself?’

‘Of course not – any more than he could have ordered his own monument, either in the chapel or here. Thomas’ younger brother Robert, who was his heir, built this house – and paid for it perhaps with money from Thomas’ treasure. He sold jewels and plate and coins that Thomas had won from the Spaniards, and gave the money to the masons and carpenters.’

Grant nods acceptively. ‘That sounds likely enough, Jay. I’d say a good many English houses were paid for that way in the days of Drake. But when Robert had Gerard Christmas carve a monument to Admiral Thomas in the chapel, why did he get him to make this affair as well?’

‘That’s just the point!’ Jay is eager. ‘There was treasure that couldn’t be sold – that couldn’t be owned to. Don’t you see? Thomas had been reckless about whom he robbed at sea. He had been a real pirate – not just a privateer pillaging only the Queen’s enemies. So there was a great deal of wealth that couldn’t possibly be owned to – not perhaps for hundreds of years. And that’s why Robert Candleshoe had Christmas build him this secret chamber. It was to house the treasure in until later members of the family could safely use it.’

Jay is urgent, but at the same time he is perfectly matter-of-fact. Grant feels that he himself may presently be persuaded into actually accepting the boy’s tall story. He looks again at the enigmatic structure before him, and it strikes him as being rather like a poem of the same tortuously minded age: an elaborate conceit, and a chilly one. ‘Don’t you think’, he asks, ‘that it’s rather an odd way of concealing treasure? A secure hiding place, surely, ought to be unnoticeable. This affair sets one a great puzzle at once.’

‘Their minds didn’t work like that.’ Jay gives himself courteously to explanation. ‘The story is that Robert and the Admiral’s widow – Thomas was married, although he had no children – quarrelled over the form the monument should take. The widow had her way in the chapel, and Robert said the design was extravagant; was what we should call theatrical, or in bad taste. So Robert had this one, which he called chaster, set up here in the gallery of his new house. But all this story of a quarrel was, of course, only a blind. It covered the making of a small secret chamber by Christmas and his men. Christmas was very reliable. He had carved the figurehead of Admiral Candleshoe’s ship, and he was in the family secret.’

‘As you and I are now – not to mention those fellows out in the garden?’ Jay’s story hangs together after a fantastic fashion – but it is surely a yarn very much out of a boys’ magazine. ‘You say you read all this in a book printed more than a hundred years ago? If it was known like that, and there was really supposed to be treasure, surely one Candleshoe or another would have looked into it?’

‘Looked into Christmas’ box? But you can’t. The entrance is a lost secret.’

Grant chuckles. ‘It always is – in tales like this, Jay. But plenty of Candleshoes would have broken in with a crowbar, surely, if they’d believed there was wealth behind these hunks of marble.’

‘They just didn’t – and for two reasons.’ Jay is now confident again in his story; his high state of tension has eased a little as he absorbs himself in retailing it; his right hand caresses Lightning, who has laid his nose between his paws and appears to be asleep. ‘It did come, you see, to be thought of as only a legend. That was in the eighteenth century, which was a very – a very rational time.’ This time, Jay smiles at his own ignorance. ‘Is that the right word?’

‘I think it is. And the other reason?’

‘When people do become that – rational, I mean, and scorning old stories – they become secretly superstitious as well. And there is a superstition about the Christmas box which none of the Candleshoes has cared to go against. This too is in the old book. And it is this: that when the family’s danger is greater than it has ever been, the Christmas box will open and – and save the situation. That part is silly, perhaps. But I like it, all the same.’ Jay’s eye is kindling again. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I don’t like the notion that there are a lot of crooks hanging around this place, thinking they will do themselves a whole heap of good by smashing up this gallery in a hunt for treasure from the Spanish Main. If they’ve got hold of the old story, it seems a pity.’

Grant speaks mildly. But he is startled to see the ironic twist that must be given to his own first near-shot at the actual state of affairs. He had thought of the crooks as after real booty – and at a sort of cross-purposes with the children, who are interpreting the situation in terms of their own private imaginings. But now it appears that the crooks are pursuing and the children defending the same fairy gold. It is wildly improbable that there is any truth in Jay’s history or legend. Far more likely, although the boy does not realize it, is the story of the dispute over alternative monuments. Crooks however may well be persons of indifferent education, incapable of weighing evidence in a matter of this sort. Somehow they have got hold of Jay’s story, and it has not occurred to them to disbelieve it.

‘They must have got hold of the book, you see.’ Jay continues patiently to explain. ‘It was a great mistake to put such a thing in a book – even if it was to be, as they call it, privately printed. Wicked people were sure to get hold of a copy one day.’

‘That may be true.’ Grant looks again at the Christmas box, and a fresh consideration strikes him. ‘Jay – have you measured? Is there more space to account for behind this monument than would be occupied by the old chimney-shaft?’

Jay nods; his anxiety to convince keeps him patient still. ‘Yes, indeed. It would be difficult to show you in the dark, and you have to make measurements if you are really going to be sure. But I’ve worked it out that there is space for a room fifteen feet one way and eight feet the other. Robert Candleshoe could have got quite a lot of treasure into that.’

‘Quite enough to set the place on its feet again.’ Grant finds that, however heated he must suppose Jay’s imagination to be, he has no disposition to distrust the boy’s measurements. ‘But why have you kept quiet about all this? Why are you chancing it that you and your friends will be able to beat this enemy alone? I’d say it would have been better to tell Miss Candleshoe and Mr Armigel. Or do you think them too cra–’ Grant checks himself. ‘Do you think them too old to be reliable?’

There is a moment’s silence. Jay is having one of his rare hesitations. He tugs at Lightning’s ear, and the hound’s tail, stirring in acknowledgement, sends up a little eddy of dust from the floor. ‘Shall I tell you? I’m trusting you very far.’

‘Sure. But you can go on trusting me, Jay.’

‘Well, you see it’s like this. When I was quite small, I used to imagine things.’

‘I see.’ Grant looks warily at the boy. ‘And you grew out of it?’

‘Of course. But at that time both Miss Candleshoe and Mr Armigel, who were more – more observant then, thought that I imagined things too much. They are very kind. But of course it is a long time – a very long time – since they were young like you and me.’

‘It certainly is.’ Grant feels unreasonably flattered.

‘And then – when, as I say, I was much younger still, and really
quite
small – they were worried about this. They used to say that being alone here was bad, and that I ought to be sent away. I discovered, by listening when I shouldn’t’ – Jay flushes faintly – ‘that Miss Candleshoe was inquiring about boarding-schools.’

‘That was pretty handsome of her, wasn’t it?’

Jay’s flush deepens. ‘You mean because I am only an orphan whose mother was – was an employee here? Yes, of course. But my mother died in an accident, you know, almost before I can remember her; and Miss Candleshoe has considered me a responsibility.’ Jay articulates this last word very precisely. ‘She is, I say, very kind. And because she has very little money now, I believe she would have sold something valuable here – we have still, you know, a few such things – to send me to this school. So at once I had to become different.’

‘Different, Jay?’

‘Not imagining things. I had to become a – a practical boy, who knew what could still be done with animals, and in the garden, and so that we can all continue to live here although there is less and less money. Have you asked Mr Armigel about me?’

Grant finds this direct challenge embarrassing. ‘Mr Armigel has spoken of you.’

‘Then he has certainly told you that I am not a boy who imagines things. Has he not?’

Grant grins. ‘Sure.’

‘It is a thing that pleases him, and Miss Candleshoe too. They feel that they have handled me well. But if I now told them the truth about this plot against the treasure in the Christmas box–’

‘They would pack you off to that school after all?’

‘There would be a danger of it, I think. Of course, they are both very old now, and you can’t tell any longer how they will take things. That is why I have been anxious too about your mother. They might sell her Candleshoe, quite suddenly, in order to follow out some foolish plan of their own.’

‘I believe they might.’ Grant considers the boy soberly. ‘See here, Jay – you are American born, just as I am. But I take it that your future is going to be here in England. And you know the English reckon it an advantage for a kid to have been at the kind of school Miss Candleshoe was probably thinking of?’

‘I’m not interested in that.’ This time Jay’s reply is like a flash.

‘Do you know what would happen if my mother did buy Candleshoe?’

‘Builders and decorators and insolent servants from London.’

‘Maybe so.’ Grant reflects that a streak of something very lordly is evident at times in Jay’s speech. ‘But she’d consider herself as taking over the livestock too.’

‘The livestock?’ Jay glances at Lightning – and then back at Grant as comprehension comes to him. ‘You mean me?’

‘Just that. And if you weren’t a polite kind of boy your reply would be “Damn her impudence” – wouldn’t it? But she would think the world of you as her very own discovery, and probably want to send you to an even grander–’

‘I prefer, please, to be nobody’s discovery but my own.’ Jay looks at Grant with a directness that shows him to attach a clear significance to this statement. Then he seems to feel that some softening civility should be added. ‘Your mother is a tremendously wealthy person?’

‘Wealthier, I’d say, than Lord Scattergood and half the other marquesses of England rolled up together.’

‘That must be very nice.’

Grant laughs aloud. ‘You mean, don’t you, “My God, how awful”? They do seem, Jay, to have made an utter Englishman of you.’

Jay frowns. ‘All that – about England and America, I mean – is something that I must think about at another time.’

‘Quite right, son. Just at this moment, you do seem to have quite enough on your plate already. But listen. There really are crooks hanging about Candleshoe. They’ve wrecked my car. And I’ve seen one of them myself, sending signals to others. If we bring in the police and clear them up, nobody can possibly say you’ve been imagining things.’

‘There would be a – an inquiry into the Christmas box. It might be opened. The treasure might be taken by – by the Government, by the Queen. Doesn’t that happen to treasure trove?’

‘I don’t know what the law would say about it, Jay. But suppose there really is a treasure. Mightn’t it be of more use to the Government, or to the Queen, than just lying behind all that marble? And it wouldn’t be of much significance to any one so very old as Miss Candleshoe, would it? And there don’t seem to be any other Candleshoes within sight. The family looks like being extinct, and the old Admiral’s hoard still untouched.’

‘I have thought about all that.’ Jay is cautious again. ‘But I see it differently, somehow. I think I believe in the legend, in a way. That there will be a crisis, I mean, and that Candleshoe will be saved by the secret of the Christmas box being revealed at that moment.’

‘Isn’t that what’s called imagining things?’

Jay opened his eyes wide. ‘I didn’t say I
had
stopped imagining things. I’d as soon stop living. Wouldn’t you?’

Grant Feather, who is going to be a great writer and transform what he likes to call ‘the creative situation’ on the North American continent, feels rather shattered by this coup on the part of the son of Candleshoe’s deceased housekeeper. He takes another look round the Long Gallery and is constrained to admit that a boy who, having the run of such a place, yet refused to give his fancy some rein in it would be sadly wasting his opportunities. Not Jaques alone haunts the cobweb and tattered canvas of that derelict stage; Rosalind and Celia too lurk in the wings – and Touchstone, and the lioness, and the green and gilded snake. They have been there a full two years, likely enough – ever since Robin Hood and Friar Tuck made way for them. And here, behind the boldly incised marble of Gerard Christmas, lies half the treasure of the Spanish Main. Had Admiral Candleshoe one leg or two? Impossible to tell, since even that other and more informative monument submerges him up to the neck in his petrified ocean. But it is a good guess that in Jay’s mind he is still not wholly distinct from Long John Silver, and that this mouldering gallery has often been the deserted deck of the
Hispaniola
, with Israel Hands lying in a pool of blood in the scuppers. It has been too the Admiral Benbow tavern near midnight with Jim Hawkins bending over the dead mariner, and hearing suddenly upon the frozen road –

Grant gives a jump that brings Lightning to his feet, his spine once more bristling. From somewhere beyond the confines of the dimly lit gallery comes a faint but crisp tap-tap. For a moment the sound seems to penetrate from beyond the enigmatical marble curtains before which Grant and Jay stand – and for a moment too it suggests overpoweringly a stick in the hands of a blind man. Then there is a murmur of voices and the illusion dissipates itself. Miss Candleshoe has entered the gallery. Old ladies, as well as blind pirates, get about with the aid of a stick.