The Grotesque (8 page)

We went round to the back of the church to the priest’s cottage, and knocked on the door. Patrick Pin had not seen Sidney. Hunched in the dark little entrance of his cottage, the fat priest tried hard to get us inside, but I refused. We retraced our steps to the car, then drove out to Ceck’s Bottom, on the possibility that Sidney had gone to see George. Off to our left, over the marsh, the moon hung huge and low and yellow against the sky. I began, then, to form an idea of what might have happened to Sidney, though I said nothing to Cleo.

I parked in the yard, beside the swill lorry. George’s farmhouse was a square, squat, yellowing structure, and this night it seemed to glow, somehow, with an eerily vivid and unwholesome luster. I pushed open the back door and shouted his name. There was no answer. We went in, and the wind, which had freshened considerably in the last few minutes, slammed the door behind us with a bang. The kitchen was empty. A naked bulb hung from a length of twisted cord in the middle of the room and shed a dull, harsh light on the few sticks of furniture, the flagstoned floor, the rusting stove with its tin chimney rising crookedly through a hole in the ceiling and rattling dully as the wind came gusting down. A first volley of rain beat up against the window, which was uncurtained, one smashed pane patched over with a piece of damp cardboard. “George!” I shouted, and again there was no answer. It was weirdly disturbing, and my scalp for a moment prickled with a vague sense of dread—his lorry was in the yard and the light was on, but where was the man himself? I told Cleo to wait in the kitchen while I went through the house; but all the rooms were empty. “He’s not here,” I told her as I came back into the kitchen. The rain was lashing the windows by this time, and we could hear the pigs grunting on the far side of the yard. There was suddenly an ugly noise overhead, and Cleo turned to me, her eyes bright with alarm. It was a raspy, grating, scraping sound, and it seemed to accelerate, and as it did so it grew thunderously loud—it was a slate, I realized, dislodged by the wind, sliding down the roof. A second later it shattered on the stones of the yard, just outside the kitchen door. “Let’s go back,” said Cleo, with a shiver. It was all very uncanny. We returned to Crook in silence.

We left the front door unlocked that night, and we left the lights on in the drawing room. But Sidney did not come back.

❖

“I suppose,” said Harriet at breakfast, “we should telephone his mother. Perhaps he’s gone home.”

“But why, Mummy?” said Cleo, looking up from her boiled egg, the shell of which she was listlessly tapping with the back of her spoon. “Why on earth would he go home without telling anyone?”

“I don’t know, darling,” said Harriet. “And please don’t play with your egg.” She threw up her hands. “I simply don’t understand the boy, do you, Hugo?”

I was behind my
Times.
I lowered it briefly. “Frankly no,” I said. “But you’re right, Harriet. Mrs. Giblet should be telephoned. I think you should do it.”

Harriet sighed. “Yes, I suppose I should.”

“Do it now, Mummy,” said Cleo. “I just hate all this not knowing.”

❖

Poor Cleo. I’d said I didn’t understand why Sidney had not returned to Crook. In fact I’d begun to form a pretty good hypothesis. That it was connected to his dealings with Fledge, this, I think, was clear; and it was my opinion that Fledge had attempted to blackmail the boy. It would hardly be the first time, after all, that a servant had tried to extort money from a “gentleman” in such a situation. No, my guess was that Sidney, having no cash with which to pay off the man, and unable to explain to his mother or anybody else why he needed the cash, had decided that the only solution was simply to drop out of sight for a while. I was relieved, frankly; this spared me the rather odious task of breaking up the relationship, for by the time Sidney surfaced again Cleo would have lost all interest in him—and I didn’t expect him to surface again for a long time. In retrospect, this assumption on my part merits a loud, ironic snort. As for Fledge, I would wait until Cleo had gone up to Oxford, and then I’d sack him, as planned.

There remained one rather annoying loose end to tie up, and that was Sidney’s mother. Ever since Harriet had telephoned her the old woman had been calling us from London three times a day for news. As I had an appointment in the city at the end of the week, with Sykes-Herring, I agreed to go and see the woman. Not a task I relished, and I think you can understand why. How, after all, to tell the boy’s mother that I was sure he was all right, without telling her
why
I thought so?

M
rs. Giblet occupied a house in Bloomsbury, not far from the British Museum. After keeping my appointment with Sykes-Herring, and then eating lunch at the home of my elder daughter, Hilary, I took a taxi there. The sun had abandoned its efforts to bring light to the sordid metropolis, and retreated behind a thick mass of gray cloud. The weather served only to accentuate the aura of faded gentility that clung to Mrs. Giblet’s street, which in turn deepened my own ill-humor, for I hate London. The knocker was a snarling griffin in tarnished brass; it provoked the shrill yap of a dog and a sort of muffled shuffling within. The door opened a crack and a timid face peered out. “Good afternoon,” I said. “I believe Mrs. Giblet is expecting me.”

The door opened a further crack to reveal a mousy girl in a housemaid’s uniform from the 1920s with a feather duster clutched in her paw.

“Who is it, Mary?” cried a raspy voice from the upper regions. The mouse peered at me in terror. “Sir Hugo Coal,” I said. “Sir Hugo Coal!” she cried, surprisingly lustily.

“Who?”

“Sir Hugo Coal!” I shouted. “It’s about Sidney.”

“Show him into the parlor,” came the voice.
“I’m coming down.”
I was then relieved of hat and coat and led down a narrow hallway, heavily carpeted, between walls crammed with sepia-toned photographs of young men in uniform and sour-looking family groups clustered in gardens. Various pieces of huge dark furniture constricted the passage, and the place smelled of boiled fish. I was shown into the parlor, where the gloom of that overcast day was filtered through windows curtained in dingy lace.

“Mrs. Giblet will be with you shortly,” said the mouse, unnecessarily, and flicked her duster at a dead clock squatting massively on the mantelpiece. I removed a hank of animal hair from an overstuffed armchair and sat down. The air was musty, and whatever natural light did manage to penetrate the room was promptly swallowed by the unrelieved somberness of the hangings and furniture.

Some minutes passed; for me they were not happy minutes. I glanced at my watch. Nothing, I told myself, would keep me from the 3:47.

At last Mrs. Giblet appeared, leaning on a stick and clutching to her bosom a silky-haired, pug-nosed lapdog. The creature fixed me with an alert and hostile stare as I rose to my feet. With barely a glance at me, Mrs. Giblet made her way to a wing chair. Lowering herself ponderously into its depths, she wheezed heavily for several moments and regarded me from rheumy, china-blue eyes as her puckered lips worked over what I guessed were freshly inserted teeth. The voice, when it came, was rasping and steely and quite clearly accustomed to command. “Sherry, Sir Hugo? Or something stronger?”

“Sherry, if I may, Mrs. Giblet.”

She nodded at the mouse, who scuttled away. Mrs. Giblet was what is popularly known as a battle-ax, a type I distinctly dislike (I knew several in Berkshire). Confirmed terrorists themselves, they are notoriously difficult to intimidate. Shrewd, too. She set her stick upright before her and folded her hands upon the handle. Her fingers were glittering with stones, the nails painted scarlet. Between their hooded flaps her eyes too were glittering. Her mouth was smeared with lipstick and her throat swung bagged and crosshatched from a wrinkled knob of chin flanked by rouged jowls loosely depending from lumpy cheekbones. Powerful gusts of stale scent emanated from the crannies of her person; the little dog was curled in her lap like a hairy tumor. The mouse returned with two glasses of sherry and was told to fetch the bottle. Mrs. Giblet fumbled in the depths of her clothing and produced a packet of Capstan Full Strength. “Cigarette, Sir Hugo?” she wheezed.

“Thank you,” I said. There followed some business with matches and ashtray. When we were both alight, and the sherry bottle close to hand on a small round table with three clawed feet, I said, “Let me tell you what has happened.”

“That would be a start,” she said.

I sipped my sherry. It was very bad stuff. I frowned. “There isn’t a great deal that you have not already heard from my wife,” I began. “Sidney left our house on Monday evening at around seven o’clock, having told my daughter Cleo he was cycling into the village to post a letter to you.”

Mrs. Giblet at this point lifted a hooked finger. “It is now Friday, Sir Hugo, and I have received no letter from Sidney. Even allowing for the idiosyncrasies of the Post Office, I think it would have come by now.”

“Oh I agree, Mrs. Giblet. Clearly Sidney did not post the letter, if indeed there was a letter to post.”

“You think,” she said, with a rising inflection, “that Sidney had some other reason for going into the village?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Giblet. I think it possible. I’ve wondered if he might have had a reason for suddenly dropping out of sight?” I thought this would serve as an “opening.”

“Such as what, Sir Hugo?” Her tone was very arch; apparently not.

“My dear Mrs. Giblet, I have no intention of casting aspersions on Sidney’s character or motives. However, I find it hard to believe that some accident befell him; we should surely have found him if it had.”

“No doubt. Please go on, Sir Hugo.”

I was feeling distinctly nettled. I remained civil, however. “When he had not returned by ten, Cleo and I drove into the village, but we found no sign of him. No one has reported seeing him that night, or subsequently. We telephoned the police the following morning. They have since begun a systematic search of the district.”

“Tell me please the name of the man in charge of the search for my son.”

“Limp,” I said. “Inspector Limp.”

It did not inspire confidence. “Ah,” she said. She pondered. There were deep bags under her eyes, semicircular flaps of rather bluish skin on which the years had etched delicate crow’s-foot patterns. “And how does this—Limp—strike you, Sir Hugo?”

“He is not,” I said, choosing my words with some care, “a very prepossessing character. Nevertheless, I’ve no reason to doubt his competence.” In fact, Limp was about as stimulating as a bucket of water. But as I said, I had no reason to doubt he could mount a search for a missing person.

“I see. So Sidney remains lost in the countryside and a man called Limp is trying to find him. With dogs, Sir Hugo?”

“I believe so.”

“And what do
you
think has happened to him, Sir Hugo?”

“Mrs. Giblet, I may as well ask you the same question. I honestly have no idea. I’d thought at first that he might have got lost in the marsh.”

“The marsh?”

“The Ceck Marsh. It’s dangerous in spots—boggy.”

“I see.”

“But then of course we’d have found him by now.”

“Not if he’s been swallowed by one of your bogs, presumably.” The idea did not appear to distress her unduly.

“In that case we should have found his bicycle.”

“Perhaps he went down with his bicycle?” Those filmy old eyes glittered at me from under their hoods. The old bat seemed to be positively relishing this.

“That seems unlikely,” I said.

“Which is why, Sir Hugo, you think Sidney has gone off somewhere of his own volition.”

“It’s possible, Mrs. Giblet, I say no more than that.”

“But why would he do such a thing, Sir Hugo?”

“I thought you might be able to answer that, Mrs. Giblet.”

“I have no idea.”

“No more do I.”

“Ah.”

We had been staring straight at one another during this exchange. The old woman was utterly insensitive to my hints. I would have liked to speak frankly, but she wasn’t making it easy. Now she dropped her eyes, and leaving her cigarette to dangle loosely from the corner of her mouth, clamped both hands atop her stick— into the crook of which, I now noticed, was set a tiny white skull, carved from a piece of ivory. Again she fell to pondering. I glanced at my watch. I would have to leave in five minutes if I was going to catch the 3:47. “And his bicycle?” she said at length. “They haven’t found his bicycle?”

“No sign of the bicycle,” I said.

“That’s bad,” she murmured.

“On the contrary, Mrs. Giblet,” I replied, “that’s good. You see, I’m quite sure that Sidney is safe, and will come forward very shortly and clear up this distressing mystery.” This at least was honest. “In the meantime”—I rose to my feet—“Inspector Limp has assured us that his description is being circulated to every police station and hospital in the Home Counties.”

There was another long silence from the old woman. She heaved a deep sigh, her great bosom rose once, then fell, and those rheumy blue eyes flickered to mine. Wordlessly she picked a small bell from the table and shook it violently. The mouse appeared and helped her to rise from her chair. “Sir Hugo,” she said, extending a hook, “so good of you to come and see me. Excuse me if I’ve been short with you—a mother’s anxiety, I’m sure you understand”— and her whole face, the entire complex structure of flaps and jowls, heaved upward like a hulk being lifted from deep water and hung, trembling, for a moment, in an expression of genuine charm, before settling once more to its habitual aspect of irascible gloom. What a fierce old bird she was! I began to understand how Sidney had come by his tendencies. “Not at all, Mrs. Giblet.
Nil desperandum,
eh?”

“
Nil desperandum,
Sir Hugo,” she said, taking my hand in hers and patting it once or twice. “Keep me informed.”

“I shall.”

I made the 3:47 with a minute to spare.

T
here is something I have learned since being paralyzed, and that is that in the absence of sensory information,
the imagination always tends to the grotesque.
Fledge knows it too—this is why he turns my wheelchair to the wall. He knows that when I sit gazing at a panel of old oak, at its knots and whorls and striations, and hear behind me only the murmur of soft, muted voices, perhaps the rustle of silk, an intake of breath, and even—from Harriet—a snort of mirth, then the scene I construct will be one of venereal depravity, of sex in an armchair in the middle of the afternoon.