Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (9 page)

‘What did you want me to do?’ I said cautiously.

‘Just a little matter of explaining a legal term to my mother. . . . You know about Powers of Appointment?’

‘Something,’ I admitted.

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ cried Cedric with ogreish gaiety.

I followed him out on to the landing which he crossed to a door I had never previously seen opened. It gave on to a small room which had been equipped as a sort of feminine study. It contained a beautiful Louis Quinze writing-desk at which Mrs. Ellison was seated.

My first reaction was that the old lady ought not to be bothered with any business matter at all. She looked too ill. She was wearing an old-fashioned black dress sewn with jet ornaments and her face against the dark fabric was chalky white.

‘Now, Mother,’ said Cedric in a very jolly tone, ‘I’ve brought along our referee.’

‘He can’t know whether they were married,’ she said, mumbling.

Cedric’s face hardened, but he maintained a surface of bluff patient good-humour.

‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘We must keep to the point. One thing at a time. We want to straighten out the legal aspect first—don’t we, Mother? Don’t we?’

‘Very well,’ said Mrs. Ellison wearily.

Cedric said: ‘Shall I pose our problem or will you?’ Without waiting he answered the question in his own favour, and began to address me. ‘Supposing a man were to leave a part of his estate to X for life and after her death as X should appoint between the children of Y and Z—that would be quite a usual form of gift, wouldn’t it?’

‘It’s an ordinary Special Power,’ I said, relieved to be asked anything so easy.

‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ said Cedric, ‘but isn’t it called a Special Power, as contrasted with a General one, because X cannot give the money to anybody except that one limited class of persons, the children of Y and Z.’

‘That’s right.’

I saw that he already knew as much as, and possibly more than I did, about the subject. It was crazy to suppose that if he had really wanted information he would not have gone to an accredited lawyer.

‘And it would be rather a serious thing if X tried to dispose of the property outside that class—eh?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the disposition would be void. Presumably there would be a gift over in default of appointment and that would take effect.’

It was evident that in some way I had run contrary to his puppeteering and had given the wrong answer. I had the impression that he wanted me to help in making his mother believe that there was something near-criminal in exercising a Power of Appointment invalidly. But he abandoned this tack for the time being.

‘Now, here’s where we really want your assistance, David. In the context of a case, such as the one I’ve imagined, how would the law interpret children?’

I was baffled by the seeming pointlessness of the question.

‘The usual way,’ I said.

He gave a cough of pretended embarrassment. Then assuming a sort of roguishness, he said:

‘I’m sure we can be frank here. It can’t be any secret to you at your age or to mother at hers that children are born outside marriage as well as within it.’

I could have kicked myself for appearing so naïve. But I retrieved a little self-respect by giving the text-book answer.

‘ “Children” in a will or other legal instrument means
prima facie
“legitimate children”. Unless there was something unusual in the will which created the Power of Appointment X couldn’t give any share to an illegitimate child of Y or Z.’

‘There, Mother,’ said Cedric. ‘That’s just what we wanted to know.’

The old lady sat fumbling with a gold fountain-pen. I had a moment of insight in which I felt the air of the little room grow heavy with the distillations of enormous wealth. She seemed weighed down, logged by the vapour of gold, and its concomitants of greed and jealousy and hatred.

‘Cedric,’ she said with an effort, ‘you can’t prove a person a thief—you can’t prove a person—you can’t—’

‘For God’s sake, Mother,’ he interrupted harshly, ‘who’s talking about thieves?’

I was disgusted, but I had not the self-assurance, nor even the knowledge, of how older people treated each other to dare to interfere. But Mrs. Ellison could manage without my support. Unsticking her tired mind from its groove, she tried again successfully.

‘You can’t prove a person a thief simply by reading out the law on theft.’

I suppose she made her point in this oblique form because she did not like referring to bastardy. At any rate she made it. At the same time I belatedly realized what was afoot and at whom all these manœuvres were aimed. Even then it was a shock to me, for I had never shaken off my first impression that Varvara was a melodramatic creature who saw a conspiracy behind every accident.

Cedric was saying: ‘Very well, Mother, I won’t tire you by chopping logic. In any case, if you take that line, we can hardly discuss the factual evidence in front of the boy.’ (I had gone down a bit from my status as legal adviser.) ‘I’ll come to see you again tomorrow.’

‘Not tomorrow, Cedric,’ said Mrs. Ellison faintly.

‘Tomorrow,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Alone.’

He went out, not saying goodbye. I was terribly at a loss, but Mrs. Ellison braced herself in a final effort to rescue me.

‘Thank you, David, for your good advice. You’ll help a lot more silly old women in your time.’

Her courtesy moved me. I knew that I wanted really and effectively to help her.

‘Don’t do it,’ I said, the words coming out almost of themselves.

‘Don’t do what?’ asked Mrs. Ellison, surprised through her fatigue.

‘Whatever he wants you to do.’

She did not reply for so long that I feared she must think me daft or impertinent. But at length, with a jump in thought as wide as my own, she said:

‘If you have sons, David, never insist on making business men out of them. Either it doesn’t succeed . . . or it succeeds too well.’ She bent her head forward which at first I took as a sign of dismissal. In the next second, however, I realized that she could no longer hold it upright; she was on the verge of collapse. I rushed to the door and shouted, ‘Nurse! Nurse!’

Fillis appeared with a creditable promptness. She took one look at Mrs. Ellison, then said:

‘Stay here and watch that she doesn’t fall out of that chair.’

I was terrified that the poor old lady would die during her absence. But she was gone for less than a minute. The hypodermic which she carried must have been kept perpetually charged against emergencies. This was clearly one, for Nurse Fillis ripped up the buttons on the long sleeve of her patient’s dress, sending them flying to all quarters.

The injection took effect quickly. Mrs. Ellison sat up looking almost normal. Nurse Fillis said soothingly:

‘Now in just a moment we’re going to get you to bed.’

That she refrained from saying ‘beddy-byes’ emphasized the gravity of the crisis. When she took Mrs. Ellison’s arm on one side and draped it over her shoulder, I naturally suggested that I should give support on the other. Probably she knew exactly how to manage such operations and I should only have hindered her. At any rate she waved me aside.

I was left with a great deal of new-won knowledge to digest. Automatically I sat down at the little desk, in the place which Mrs. Ellison had vacated. Twenty minutes later I was still there, pondering uneasily, when Nurse Fillis came back.

‘What are you doing?’ she said sharply.

‘Nothing particular.’

‘You’ve no right to be in here.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Mrs. Ellison keeps a lot of extremely valuable and private papers in this room.’

It was too much. I thought again of my aunt. She might have allowed me to be bamboozled and patronized within reason by Cedric Ellison, for she had strong ideas about the subjection of the young to their elders, but she would not easily have forgiven me for submitting to Nurse Fillis’s cold-blooded insult.

For once my own sentiments agreed. Unlike most people, I have always been more exasperated by blank rudeness than covert sneers. Rage gave me an instinct for the place to strike.

‘Nurse,’ I said, ‘I’d like to ask you something. Have you had so many friends in your life that you can afford to make enemies quite gratuitously?’

Her eyes dropped miserably. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I only spoke like that because I’m on edge.’

Then it was my turn, of course, to feel that I must make amends.

‘That’s not surprising. It shook me up. I hope Mrs. Ellison’s better now?’

‘Yes. She’ll be all right.’

‘Was she actually in danger?’

‘There’s always danger in her condition . . . if she gets overexcited.’

I said: ‘She was worried, and a bit frightened too, I think.’

‘Medically we call it over-excitement,’ she said stubbornly.

‘That damned fellow was shouting at her like a bargee. I suppose that’s exciting in the same sense as being shot at, but it’s not the way I’d describe it.’

I had quite a lot more to say, but I never said it because Nurse Fillis had gone out of the room with tears on her cheeks.

After a few wet days the weather had again become fine and hot. At the beginning of my stay I had generally sat out on the roof-garden but lately I had taken to going down to the real one. I found it curiously attractive with its mingled smell of soot and flowers, and the noise of the London traffic coming through like the beat of an enormous waterfall. The proportions of the garden mingled impressively with those of the house; it was long and narrow, a strip of, say, a hundred and twenty yards by thirty, and this exaggerated the height and sheerness of those plastered cliffs. Lying in a deck-chair with half-closed eyes, one felt that one was looking up at a mountain with windows. The roof-garden seemed to hang halfway up to the sky. And indeed the impression was not entirely illusory, for there must have been a drop of over thirty feet between the second floor and the railings of the area.

Varvara did not come back for tea. But about half-past five her shadow fell silently across my chair.

‘How did it go?’ I asked.

‘I suffered,’ she replied sombrely. ‘Lord Jesus, how I suffered!’

‘Why?’

‘The women mocked me. They came out like slaves, but underneath I could hear them laughing.’

‘Damned rude!’ I said. ‘But perhaps you imagined it.’

Varvara continued morbidly: ‘My top clothes are not right. That I know. But they laughed also at my drawers. Only Andrew did not laugh.’

‘Surely he wasn’t there at the fitting?’

She chose not to answer.

‘At least,’ she said, brightening, ‘I shall soon be dressed so that I do not shame my friends. People will think that I am an English girl of breeding.’

I said: ‘I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll give up being yourself.’

‘That is what Andrew tells me. He says I must keep my personality because it is distinguished. Manners are being worn rather
farouches
this season,’ she said, obviously quoting.

‘Andrew has always had a line in flattery,’ I said.

‘And you, David, in spitefulness,’ replied Varvara calmly. ‘It angers you to see people doing what you cannot do, and being what you will not be. And yet you are too proud of yourself to change.’

I cannot remember any home-truth which, for the moment, hurt me more. Part of the impact was pure surprise. Hitherto I had always regarded Varvara as a kind of Valkyrie, a creature full, no doubt, of great thoughts and violent, headstrong, consuming hatreds, but not one to whom you would look for psychological insight. She probably saw that I was shaken, for in her next remark she relented a little.

‘I like you better than Andrew,’ she said. ‘But I do not admire you so much. I pray for you, David.’

‘Not for Andrew?’ I asked, trying to sound cynically indulgent.

‘It would be no good,’ said Varvara. She paused before reverting to an earlier line of thought. ‘With Andrew I shall make social advances.’

It was taking time and accumulation of evidence to make me realize that she cared about such things. The difficulty lay in overcoming the sentimental belief that noble savages do not envy the trappings of civilization.

Going into the house to dress for dinner, I found a cable for me in the hall. It was signed by my uncle, and it said:

‘Called home confer India Office week mid-July. Will notify arrival. Love self and Edna.’

This was most unexpected. Never before, so far as I could remember, had my uncle returned to England in between his spells of leave. Much as I liked him, my first reaction was fear lest my stay at Aynho Terrace should be cut short. Presently, however, I realized that if he had only a single week, and that mortgaged to official duties, it was most unlikely that he would want to disturb the existing arrangements. On that basis his presence would be pure gain.

About half-past nine when twilight was falling, we were sitting alone on the roof-garden looking over the parapet. On the lawn a fat cat was stalking birds. It did not adopt the usual feline method of getting down on the belly and relying on stealth to conceal hostility. This cat strolled towards the prey with an air of disengaged benevolence; when it was near enough, without any tensing or winding-up, it would give a curious stiff-legged bound straight at the victim. In this way it soon killed an unwary sparrow.

Varvara had been watching. Was it some symbolic association of ideas which suddenly caused her to say: ‘I suppose my uncle was here this afternoon?’

‘Yes, I saw him. I’ve something to tell you about that.’

‘He has tried to suborn you against me?’

‘More or less. . . . The point is, I’m afraid you were right, and he has some scheme for preventing you getting any of the family cash. It was damned clever of you to size the situation up so quick. Has your grandmother ever talked to you about her intentions?’

‘Intentions?’

‘What she means to do in her will.’

‘My grandmother,’ said Varvara, ‘would think that vulgar.’ It was true, of course. Only members of the lower middle classes went around dropping hints about legacies given and revoked in a pathetic desire to obtain respect for their latter years.

‘It’s rather a tricky position,’ I said, wondering without relish how I was going to explain the part about bastardy.

‘I am an heir,’ said Varvara in a stubborn tone. ‘Therefore my uncle tries to undo me.’

No doubt in Doljuk there was a simple standardized procedure for undoing heirs; say, with an axe or a horse-pistol.

I was not sure how far she would understand that in the West there were other techniques of spoliation.

‘Heir isn’t a word which means as much as it used to in English Law,’ I said tentatively. ‘Property in general isn’t bound in a line of descent. It’s disposed of at the will of its owner. And anybody who can control or influence that will . . .’

I need not have bothered about her comprehension. Once a few questions had cleared her mind of the patriarchal conception of society, she caught on surprisingly quickly to such complicated conceptions as settlements and Powers of Appointment. She may have thought them sissified, but she saw that in England they governed the physical possession of wealth, just as surely as did the sword elsewhere.

Presently, as was inevitable, we came to the crux of the matter, the contention on which Cedric relied to exclude her from Mr. Ellison’s will. I was relieved that she took the point so calmly.