The China Governess (16 page)

‘Don't make fun of me,' he protested. ‘I'm just impressed, that's all. I like lavishness. It's rare. By the way that name – Van der Graff – are they anything to do with the Ivory people?'

‘I'm afraid I just wouldn't know.'

‘Ah!' he held up a warning hand to her. ‘No wicked snobbery. Trade is in fashion. As a matter of fact I was coming to talk to you
about that.' He turned to Mrs. Broome and lifted the wreath into her arms, all but hiding her.

‘Run along with that to the scullery, Broomie. I shan't stay here tonight, by the way, because I've got to get the late plane to Nice, but I'll be back tomorrow rather late and I'd like to stay then. The room is ready I expect, so you won't have to worry about me.' It was a plain dismissal and Mrs. Broome went, but not defeated.

‘Me worry about
you
?' she said from the doorway. ‘That'll be the day!'

Toberman laughed and returned to Mrs. Telpher. ‘They used to sack them for that sort of remark,' he said. ‘I suppose you do now. How wonderful. Now look, Geraldine my dear, I don't know if this is of any interest to you at all but I thought I'd mention it. I'm going to Nice tonight to see a little fourth century bronze which Lagusse says is genuine. I've seen a photograph and it's more than promising. I shall just take one look and come home, because if it's real the only man who has both the taste and the money to buy it is in your country and I've got Philip Zwole flying there on other business and I want to brief him. He'll be overseas for the best part of a month and he'll spend quite a week in Johannesburg, so if there's anything you'd like him to take or any message you'd like to send by him, well, there he is.'

It was a request for introductions and Timothy, who had moved away, turned back irritably.

‘I imagine Geraldine can keep in touch, Basil,' he said.

It was a protest and sounded like one and Toberman received it with a stare of reproachful amazement while Mrs. Telpher looked at Timothy and laughed a polite rejection of the whole subject.

‘It's very kind of him,' she said. ‘If I do think of anything I shall certainly remember the offer.'

Toberman snorted. His dark face was swarthy with blood and his round black eyes were furious.

‘Don't be damn silly,' he exploded, turning on the other man.

‘Geraldine has just had her Miss Saxon die in a strange country. Presumably the woman had some things which ought to be taken to her home. I was merely offering a service. What other reason could I possibly have?'

‘None,' intervened Mrs. Telpher with all the Kinnit tolerance in her quiet voice. ‘I do appreciate it. It really is most kind.'

Toberman appeared mollified and bounced again. ‘Well then,' he said, ‘when I come in tomorrow evening I'll collect anything you want to send and give it to Zwole when I see him in the morning. I can understand you being windy about the poor old thing's family, Tim. You actually knocked her over, didn't you?'

Mrs. Telpher intervened.

‘Tell me about the bronze,' she said.

‘Why? Are you interested?' His sudden eagerness made her smile and she bowed her long neck. ‘I might be,' she conceded.

Timothy left them and went upstairs to the sitting-room whose lighted windows he had seen from the street. It was a civilized, lived-in room, part panelled and part booklined. A vast Turkey carpet with a faded tomato-soup coloured background hid much of the black oak floor, and the remarkable collection of upholstered furniture which had comfort alone in common was welded into harmony by plain covers in the same yellowish pink.

Miss Alison Kinnit and her friend Miss Aicheson were sitting where they always did, Alison on one of the angular couches with her feet tucked up beside her and Flavia in a big rounded arm-chair with a back like a sail on the opposite side of the hearth. There was no fire and the wide brick recess housed a collection of cacti, none of them doing very well because of the shade and the draught.

The likeness between Alison Kinnit and her niece Mrs. Telpher was considerable but the twenty years between their ages was not entirely responsible for the main difference, which was one of delicacy. Mrs. Telpher was a pale, graceful woman but Alison's pallor and fragility were remarkable. Her skin was almost translucent without being actually unhealthy and her bones were as slender as a bird's. She had always had an interesting face but had never been beautiful and now there was something a little frightening in the grey-eyed intelligence with which she confronted the world. Miss Flavia on the other hand was a more familiar type. She was one of those heavy ugly women with kind faces and apologetic, old-gentlemanly manners who all look as if they were John Bull's own daughters taking strongly after their father, poor
dears. She was older than Alison, sixty perhaps, and happy in the way that some elderly men who have had great trials and overcome them are happy: quiet-eyed, amused and not utterly intolerant.

It was obvious that they had been talking about Timothy; not because they seemed guilty when he came in but because they were so interested and so clear about who he was and what was happening to him. In the normal way they were apt to be completely absorbed by their own affairs of the moment and these might be literary, charitable or political – one never knew which. The fact that Miss Flavia had stuck to her romantic name all her life said much for her character. Now she turned slowly in her chair and looked at Tim through her glasses.

‘Certainly battle-scarred but I hope not woebegone,' she said in her fluting, county voice. ‘What does the other fellow look like? Come and sit down and tell us all about it. Shall I get him a drink, Alison?'

‘Would you like one, dear?' Alison nodded at him, screwing up her face with mimic pain at the damage to his face. ‘We won't. But it's there in the cupboard if you'd like it. Mrs. Broome told us you'd been in the wars. Where have you been? You look awfully distrait.' Her own voice was clipped and academic, and friendly without warmth.

‘Down to Ebbfield again,' he said as casually as he could as he seated himself on the edge of the round ottoman which took up a huge amount of space in the fairway between the fireplace and the door. ‘I saw a man called Councillor Cornish: he seemed to think that you or Aich must have sent me.'

‘And did we?' Alison glanced inquiringly at her friend.

‘I don't recall it.' Miss Aicheson's nice eyes regarded him innocently. ‘Yet the name is familiar. Is he an Ebbfield councillor?'

‘I imagine so. He's responsible for building a block of flats.'

‘Oh, of course. The skyline committee, Alison. He's the poor wretched man with the dreadful temper. I remember.' Miss Flavia was delighted. Her charitableness had never been more marked. ‘I can imagine him remembering me but I can't think why he should suppose I should have sent you to him. People with chips on their
shoulders do get wild ideas, of course. Well, did he help you? What did you ask him?'

Timothy appeared to be wondering and Alison, mistaking his reaction, intervened tactfully.

‘Aich is on top of the world. She's had a letter from the Minister.'

Miss Aicheson's red face was suffused with shy pleasure. ‘Oh, it's nothing. Only an acknowledgment, really,' she said, ‘but it's from White's, not the House, and it's signed, and there's even a little postscript in his own hand thanking me for my “lucid exposition”. I'm very bucked. I admit it.'

Timothy frowned. His young body was tense and as he sat with his long legs crossed he tapped on his knee with nervous fingers.

‘Is that the Minister of Housing? Is this the Ebbfield business?'

Alison's laugh silenced him.

‘Oh, no my dear, Ebbfield is very small beer. This is the Plan for Trafalgar Square.'

Miss Aicheson made a happy succession of little grunting noises. ‘Ra-ther a different caper!' she announced with satisfaction. ‘I expect the over-earnest little men will get their own way at Ebbfield and it can't be helped because that part of London is spoiled already. One just does what one can in a case like that and doesn't break one's heart if one fails.'

‘Cornish didn't strike me as being a
little
man.' Tim appeared astonished at his own vehemence and Alison turned her wide grey eyes upon him, surprised also.

Flavia Aicheson waved the protest away with a large masculine hand. ‘Very likely not,' she agreed. ‘I can't visualize him at all. I only remember how angry he was and how nearly rude, so that all the rest of the conference was on edge with embarrassment. He was over-earnest, though, wasn't he? These dear chaps remember some picture from their childhood, some little injustice or ugliness, and let it grow into a great emotional boil far, far more painful than the original wound . . . Don't let them influence you, dear boy.'

She and Alison exchanged glances and suddenly became utterly embarrassed themselves.

Miss Aicheson made an effort, her face scarlet and her voice unsteady with nervousness.

‘This inquiry into your birth is a very difficult and awkward experience for you, Timothy, and Alison and I both feel (although of course we haven't been discussing you, don't think that!) the real danger is of you losing your sense of proportion and swinging violently either one way or the other. Left or Right.'

She was as uncomfortable as a young girl and, since the problem was emotional, quite as inexperienced. The boy got up.

‘That's all right Aich,' he said kindly. ‘I shan't go Red or Fascist.'

The two ladies sighed with relief. ‘Of course you won't,' Miss Flavia said heartily. ‘You're far too sensible. Well now, about the investigation: any progress?' She hesitated and a little wistful smile, as feminine and pathetic as any Nanny Broome could muster, suddenly crept over her homely face. ‘Don't forget that in one way it could be very romantic and exciting, Timothy,' she murmured. ‘I mean – one never knows.'

Alison burst out laughing. Her grey eyes were as hard but also as innocent as pebbles in a stream.

‘Dear Aich!' she said. ‘Isn't she wonderful, Timothy? She's thinking: “Even the Minister must have been young in 1939!”'

Miss Flavia's colour increased to danger point and she shook her head warningly.

‘That's not funny, Alison,' she said. ‘Vulgar and not funny at all.'

At once Alison Kinnit lost her poise and became contrite.

‘Sorry, Aich,' she said, hanging her head like a delicate child. ‘Really truly.'

Timothy went out of the room without them noticing that he had gone.

EUSTACE KINNIT WAS
the author of many books and pamphlets on various aspects of the china collector's art as well as being an enthusiastic correspondent on the subject. The small study where he did his endless writing was at the far end of the gallery which ran round the staircase-well on the same floor as the sitting-room. There was a sliver of light under the door as Timothy approached after leaving Miss Alison and her friend, and he stood outside for a moment, hesitating, with an anxious expression in his eyes which was new there. Any sort of nervousness was foreign to his temperament and he bore it awkwardly. Presently he pushed his hand over his hair, stiffened his shoulders, and walked in more abruptly than he would have done at any other time in his life.

Eustace was sitting at his desk in a bright circle of light from the shaded lamp, his pen squeaking softly as it ran swiftly over the page. Timothy, who had seen him in exactly the same position so often and who loved him so well that he had, as it were, never seen him at all, observed him objectively for the first time.

He was a spare, tidy man of sixty or so with a sharp white beard, and a sweep of white hair above a fine forehead. His eyes were like his sister's but more blue and infinitely more kindly and the lines at their sides radiated in a quarter circle. As he wrote his knee jogged all the time. It was a ceaseless tremor which made a little draught in the otherwise still and muffled room. He took no notice of the newcomer until he had finished his paragraph, putting in the final stop with care. Then he put down his pen, lifted his head and removed his spectacles. These were in white gold, made to his own austere design, and were one of his few personal vanities. As they lay on the page they were as typical of him as his signature.

‘Hello,' he said happily. ‘There you are. It went off very well.
Nothing too barbaric but respectably splendid and decent. I think she was pleased.'

‘The funeral?'

‘Eh? Oh my goodness, yes! What did you think? I meant Geraldine, too. There's no way of telling what the other poor woman felt about it!' His laugh was schoolboyish and charming. ‘Are you all right? I can't see you very well over there. Turn the light on will you? Good Heavens, boy! What have you done?'

Timothy had touched the switch by the door obediently and as the light fell on his face Eustace's horrified reaction to the damage was so completely out of proportion to it that the younger man was irritated.

‘It's nothing,' he protested, shying away. ‘Only a scratch or two.'

‘Not a road accident?' Eustace was speaking of something he was always dreading and fear flared in his voice embarrassingly.

‘No, of course not. I merely got a hiding from one of those damn detectives of yours. What on earth made you pick them, or was it Alison?'

‘The Stalkeys? I heard something of the sort from the women.' Eustace opened his eyes very wide. ‘I can't believe it.'

He spoke gravely, meaning the words literally, and managed to look both so hurt and so completely incredulous that the exasperated colour poured into the boy's face, hiding some of the injuries in a general conflagration. Eustace sighed as if somehow he had been reassured. ‘That's much better,' he said unreasonably. ‘But you shouldn't make sweeping statements like that. If you attacked the man I suppose he defended himself. They're a very old-established firm and excellent people or we shouldn't have employed them for the second time. Even so I don't know if it was wise. We're only trying to help you, Tim, you know that.'