The Honours (19 page)

Miss DeGroot inhaled.

‘Pull.'

Delphine slammed her forearm into the muzzle just as it kicked. The right barrel sent up a tremendous report. The shot rang through the woods, goldfinches scattering. She saw, through smoke and falling leaves, Dr Lansley sprawled face down in the dirt.

Delphine stared. The treehouse seemed to lurch.

A second later he was staggering to his feet. The shot had gone comfortably wide.

‘Jesus Christ!' Slapping earth from his tweed lapels. ‘Jesus Christ, what the Hell was that?'

Delphine dropped into the sanctuary of the crow's nest. Miss DeGroot lay on her back, hands clamped over her mouth, laughing silently till the tears streamed into her hair. The woods echoed with Lansley's swearing.

‘Oh my,' she said. ‘Oh my, girl. That was
fun
.'

CHAPTER 13

BIG GAME

July 1935

D
elphine followed Propp round the north shore of the lake. He was climbing a small hill on the water's edge, towards a dome of grubby, mossy brick. The maps all referred to it the same way: ‘the ice house'.

She sliced through a black clump of candlesnuff fungus with her crab stick. In the late evening sun, the woods rippled with amber light.

Mr Propp's disappearances were beginning to bleed into one another. He was away more than he was present. He sometimes talked vaguely about seminars in London, but he never took a motor car – Delphine had checked – and the station was too far to reach on foot, especially for one so old and portly.

After dinner, when Propp pulled on a dark grey greatcoat, slid his stick from the bronze umbrella stand and left the Hall through a side door, Delphine followed him. She kept her distance, pantomiming intense absorption in flowers or clusters of reeds. She watched him through the field glasses. They were still speckled with sand from the beach. When she twisted the focus knob, it crunched.

At the crest of the hill, he stopped. Delphine crouched in a patch of yellow rock-rose, congratulating herself on her consummate veldt-craft. Propp shielded his eyes as he looked back towards the Hall. Above him, great anvil-shaped clouds hung with scarlet and magenta
peaks and dark underbellies. In the dwindling sun, his tanned, bare head winked like a doubloon. When he turned and continued round the far side of the ice house, out of sight, she balled her fists.

He was unaware. She had him.

She waited for him to reappear.

Five minutes passed.

Delphine began to get fidgety. She had cramp in her thigh from squatting. She threw glances into the woods. What if he had circled round?

She sat. Something flickered in the trees. A red squirrel was corkscrewing up the trunk of a horse chestnut. She pressed a palm to her chest, exhaled.

Ten minutes passed. No sign. He had vanished.

Delphine stood as casually as she could. She made a point of not looking towards the ice house. Her right leg throbbed with pins and needles.

She ambled to the lakeside, pretending to admire the way the orange sun flowed molten into the water. Gnats seethed above the rushes. She scythed through them with her crab hook, then turned and began wandering up the hill.

Up close, the ice house was in even worse repair than the tomb. Spurts of yellow stonecrop dangled from cracks in the age-blackened brickwork. Moss clung in dark, sweaty clumps. Set deep in an embrasure was a door.

It was made of thick oak planks banded with black iron. Above a three-inch keyhole was a door knob bigger than her fist.

Surely Propp hadn't gone inside?

She scanned the lawns, the distant driveway. They were deserted.

Delphine knelt and peered through the keyhole. Blackness. She listened. Silence. She sniffed. Musty sourness.

She stood and stared at the door. There had to be a way in.

She kicked it. Her heel bounced off the oak. It was like kicking a church. She brandished her crab hook and spent a few fruitless minutes trying to find some angle whereby she could fit it inside the keyhole and pick the lock.

There was probably nothing inside. The door looked rusted shut
and the lock was so sturdy she doubted even a shotgun blast at point-blank range would shift it.

The light was fading. She shivered. Across the lake, Alderberen Hall was turning a dirty beige.

She gave in.

‘The whole thing's a rum business,' Delphine said later that evening, lifting the kettle off the fire with her crab hook.

Mr Garforth was at the table, refilling the lamp with paraffin.

‘Don't talk like that,' he said. ‘You sound like an old colonel.'

‘Beats looking like one.'

‘Rubbish. I ent got the jowls.'

Delphine set the kettle down on the worktop. ‘The what?'

‘The jowls. The jowls.' He slapped his palms against his cheeks and smooshed them up and down. ‘I'm too young in the face.'

‘Too soft in the head, more like.'

‘Watch it.'

She took the lid off the little blue teapot and poured in hot water.

‘How much tea you got in there?' he said.

‘Two spoonfuls.'

‘Stick in another.'

She replaced the lid. ‘No.'

‘Go on. It's one spoon per person, then one for the pot.' He put down the paraffin canister and moved as if to get up. ‘Go on. Else it tastes like dishwater.'

‘Then you're not brewing it long enough. Two is plenty. If you make it too strong, you spoil the flavour.'

In front of the fireplace hung wet clothes, socks and longjohns and impossibly huge underpants, filling the cottage with sweet damp mist. Mr Garforth sat with his back to her. He was barefoot, wearing a pair of loose brown cotton trousers held up by braces, the top three buttons of his shirt undone. The hearth made noises like a game of marbles.

Delphine stood by the teapot, using a teaspoon to tap out a march against its spout while whistling a loose pastiche of Battle Hymn of the Republic.

‘That'll be ready now,' said Mr Garforth, without turning round.

She waited until she had completed a full verse and chorus before pouring the tea. She added three spoonfuls of brown sugar for Mr Garforth then a splash of milk in each mug.

‘There you go.' She set his down in front of him.

He picked it up and blew. Wisps of steam peeled from the surface. She watched him take a sip.

‘Aah.' His chair creaked as he settled back into it. Delphine glanced at her reflection in the window and realised she was smiling.

‘Fearlessness,' she said. ‘That's what a soldier most fears seeing in his enemy's eyes.'

‘Not even close.'

‘Drat.'

‘So,' he said, ‘what mischief have you got yourself into today?'

She levered the lid off the biscuit tin and pushed a digestive into her mouth. ‘Mwuffin.'

He swatted the air and shook his head, disgusted. ‘You've got the manners of a Zulu.'

Delphine chewed through the mouthful as fast as possible and swallowed. ‘Actually, the Zulu people are a race of
proud warriors
, and two, I've been busy doing schoolwork.'

‘A likely story.'

‘I know it is.' She grabbed a second biscuit then patted the lid back down. She walked round so she could see his face. ‘So . . . you know by the lake, the ice house?'

Mr Garforth stared at the table.

‘Hello?' she said. Sometimes he dozed off in the middle of the conversation. He could go to sleep with his eyes open.

He sniffed, looked at her. ‘Yes?'

‘So you know it?'

‘Of course I know it.'

‘What's it for?'

He opened his mouth, let his upper dentures fall onto his tongue, sucked them back into place. In the firelight, his ears looked like they were melting.

‘It's not for anything. It's a ruin.'

‘Someone must have built it.'

He took a sip of tea. ‘I suppose they must.'

‘Well, what did they build it for?'

‘What do you think someone builds an ice house for?'

Delphine hesitated. ‘Ice?'

‘Yes, well bloody done.' Mr Garforth thumped his mug back down on the table, sloshing tea. ‘Now, will you please stop going on about it.'

‘All right. There's no need to yell at me.'

‘This is my house and if I want to raise my voice, I will,' he said.

Delphine's face felt hot. She looked down into her tea.

‘Sorry.'

‘Don't go anywhere near it. It's not a bloody playground.'

‘I wasn't going to,' she said. ‘I just wanted to know what it was for.'

‘Nonsense. You wanted to break in. You wanted to poke your nose around and pry and interfere. You won't listen.'

‘I do listen.'

‘Liar!' He rounded on her, jabbing his finger. ‘I told you to kill rats. You took one as a pet. I told you not to go in the tunnels. You went in the tunnels.'

‘I never!'

‘After everything I've done for you, you'd stand here in my own home and lie to me.'

Delphine focused on the white hairs in his nostrils. No one used the attic except her. She checked she was alone every time she used the tunnels. She had been
so
careful. He was bluffing. He had to be.

‘You're wrong,' she said. ‘I never went in those tunnels.'

His nostrils swelled and shrank. The little hairs shivered.

‘Swear on your mother's life.'

‘I swear I never went in the tunnels.'

‘On your mother's life.'

‘All right, then.'

‘Well?'

She looked him in the eyes. ‘I swear on my mother's life I never played in the tunnels.'

‘Not played. Went.'

Delphine threw a hand up. ‘Played, went. Whatever you like.'

He glared at her.

‘Right,' she said. ‘Fine. I swear on my mother's life I never went in the tunnels, there, are you satisfied?'

‘Get out.'

‘What? I said I never did it.'

‘Go on.' He turned his back. ‘I can't stand to look at you.'

‘Why are you being so horrible?'

He did not answer.

Delphine stood clutching her mug of tea. Mr Garforth plucked at his side whiskers with long, dirty fingers. Half his body was glutted with shadow. She set her tea down beside the sink.

She opened the door, waited. Mr Garforth closed his eyes. Delphine stepped into the night, slamming the door behind her.

CHAPTER 14

THE BATMAN

July 1935

O
ne morning before sunrise Delphine stood at the edge of a field, listening to the motion of the wheat. She knelt, unclasped her hands.

‘You're free,' she said.

Vicky looked up at her uncertainly.

Delphine placed Vicky on the ground. She ran a knuckle across the back of the rat's hairy ears.

‘Run.'

Vicky did not move.

‘Go!' Delphine gave her a nudge. ‘I'm setting you free, stupid. Go on. Boo!' She lunged. Vicky darted into the stalks and was gone.

Delphine rose and looked out across a rippling golden ocean. The wind pressed at her back, insistent, like a dare.

When Delphine entered the stables, Daddy was in a corner with Miss DeGroot. He was showing her a selection of canvases propped against the wall. She was cooing and touching his arm.

The room was hot. All his things were stacked neatly: canvases, brushes – sorted by size – paints, rags, jars of turpentine, the dull, greengrey book Mr Kung had left on the beach. The floor had been swept – she saw now it was stone, with shallow drainage channels leading to circular iron grates.

‘Such bold strokes!' said Miss DeGroot meaningfully, stepping back like a carpenter. She tugged on her gold silk neckerchief. ‘Like
chasms
.'

‘It's not finished yet,' said Daddy.

‘Oh, but you mustn't touch it!' She clutched his elbow. ‘This is raw, undiluted.' She drew a sharp, scintillating breath. ‘The utter dominance of the line.' She held the sentiment for a moment, then exhaled, replete. ‘Did you say you fought?'

Daddy seemed thrown by the abrupt switch of topic. ‘Oh. Yes.'

‘Really. You look far too young.' She cast a glance back over her shoulder and spotted Delphine. ‘Ah! Your other masterpiece.' She turned him like a show pony.

Daddy's sleeves were rolled up. He had black paint on his fingers.

‘What do you want?' he said.

‘I need to speak to you,' said Delphine. She had made up her mind. Whatever the truth behind Propp, Alderberen and Lansley's intentions, she felt ruin looming like a stormfront. She would demand the family leave. She would make it impossible to stay.

‘Not now.'

Miss DeGroot rolled her eyes. ‘Ignore him. He's in a mood because his latest painting doesn't need him any more.' She crossed the room, grasped Delphine's hand. ‘And how are
you
today?' After the incident in the treehouse, Delphine had expected a flicker of embarrassment, perhaps a wink acknowledging their conspiratorial sisterhood.

Instead, Miss DeGroot squeezed. ‘Good to see you,' she said. She marched back to Daddy. ‘You have a surprise for your daughter.'

Daddy buried his painting hand in his trouser pocket. He dropped his gaze.

‘Another time, perhaps.'

‘Oh, come on! Don't be such a sourpuss! No time like the present and no present like time. We might all be dead tomorrow.'

Daddy sighed with his whole body. ‘I made you something.'

Delphine felt a momentary weightlessness. She fought it back.

‘Did you?'

Daddy nodded. He blew out the corner of his mouth, a strand of steely hair rising, dropping.

Miss DeGroot smiled one of her laidback, worldly smiles.

‘Why don't I fetch it for you?' She pointed at Delphine. ‘Close your eyes now.'

Delphine looked at Daddy. To her surprise, he smiled.

‘Go on, Delphy.'

She closed one eye. ‘Okay.' She closed the other.

‘And keep them shut!' Miss DeGroot's voice, with its warm vowels and faint, borderless twang, moved to the back of the room. ‘Peep and you'll ruin the magic.'

‘I won't.'

‘Cover your eyes so I know you're not cheating.'

Delphine pressed her fingers to her eyelids. Purple blotches swelled in the darkness.

‘Marvellous!' Miss DeGroot sounded genuinely delighted. She began rummaging through a heap of heavy-sounding objects. Delphine smelt tobacco smoke. Either Miss DeGroot or Daddy had lit a cigarette.

There was a
shhhhhh
noise, then a clatter and lots of bangs.

‘Whoop, there we go!' called Miss DeGroot. ‘You've got so much trash. Aha!' She fell quiet. Delphine waited. Quick footsteps returned to Daddy. ‘Now . . .
very
slowly take your hands from your eyes and hold them out in front of you – don't peek, now! That's it. Bring them down and make a bowl. A little lower. There!' Delphine's cupped hands trembled. ‘In your own time, Gideon.'

Something hard pressed into the moist flesh of her palm. She kept her hands as still as she could manage. She heard Daddy smack his lips. He stepped away.

Delphine waited for instruction.

‘Well?' said Miss DeGroot.

‘Can I look?'

‘Feel it first.'

Carefully, Delphine tipped the object into her left palm and brought her right hand over the top. The thing was a little bigger than a bar of soap. One side felt rough, like a scab, the other smooth, like a tooth. It was light. Delphine frowned.

‘Can I look now?'

‘Don't you want to guess what it is?'

‘I can't.'

‘Have a go.'

She ran her fingertips along a network of interlocking grooves. ‘Pine-cone?'

Miss DeGroot hooted with laughter. ‘As a present? Give your daddy some credit.'

Delphine felt a jab of resentment. Before things got bad, Daddy used to bring her all sorts of treasures: conkers, little rusted keys, beautiful peculiar stones. Mother had fussed, insisting on washing them, but Delphine received each like a rare and fragile artefact plundered from the tomb of an ancient king. She laid them out, curated them, speculated on their origins, invented histories. A pine-cone, especially one this big, would make a fine gift. The best gift.

‘Go on,' said Miss DeGroot, ‘try again.'

‘I don't know.'

‘Stop thinking at it. Let your intuition do the heavy lifting. Perhaps you're an undiscovered latent.'

She exhaled heavily. ‘Is it a hairbrush?'

‘No!' This time, she heard Daddy chuckle too. ‘You can do better than that!'

She closed her hands tight around the object. Tough notches dug into her skin. An image of Mr Kung patting Zeno flashed into her mind.

‘Is it a tortoise?'

Silence.

Miss DeGroot said flatly: ‘You peeked.'

Delphine opened her eyes. Sitting in her palms was a small tortoise, carved from bark.

‘Oh!' She almost dropped it.

Miss DeGroot stood clutching Kung's book, a cigarette perched in her lips. Mazy tentacles of smoke wafted through her blond hair. Her expression softened.

‘You really did guess, didn't you?'

Delphine lifted the tortoise up to her eyes. It was carved from a hunk of black poplar, the thick grey bark forming the shell, the light
smooth wood beneath compromising the tortoise's head, legs and belly. It was covered in a thin coat of matt varnish. It was quite, quite lovely.

She looked at Daddy. ‘Is he really for me?'

Daddy smiled. He looked almost bashful.

‘Who else would it be for?'

Delphine stared numbly.

‘Can I give him a name?'

Daddy nodded. She looked at the tortoise. Her mind was blank.

Daddy crushed her to his chest. She smelt linseed oil and the woody fug of sweat. The air went out of her and she focused on the hard, light tortoise balanced in her hand.

His grip relaxed. Delphine stepped away. Sometime during the hug, Miss DeGroot had made her silent exit.

Delphine tested her balance. She felt like an empty tube of paint.

‘Daddy. Who's Arthur?'

He took his hand away. ‘You know who Arthur was, darling. He was Lord Alderberen's son.'

Delphine watched his eyes. She felt the taboo between them like a physical thing, thickening. She pushed at it.

‘Did you fight with him?' She licked her lips. ‘Beside him, I mean?'

‘Yes,' said Daddy. ‘I was his batman.'

‘What's a batman?'

‘It means I helped him with things.'

‘Like a servant?'

Daddy paused. ‘Like a friend.'

Delphine looked across at the canvas Miss DeGroot had been admiring. It was a mass of jagged black lines and dirty swirls. She could make out something like a scarab's mandibles.

‘Did he die?'

‘Yes.'

She waited for more, but apparently it wasn't that kind of story. Daddy looked at his shoes. The studio was mausoleum quiet. Daddy walked to the pile beside the wall and dug out his tobacco tin. He rolled a cigarette, lit it.

He said: ‘You were good, on the beach.' She met his eye. He nodded. ‘You were good.'

‘You didn't see him. Not at the beginning. He was just . . . standing there. Like someone queuing at the pictures.'

Daddy squinted against coils of smoke.

‘The balance of his mind was upset. The Kwan-Dong army burned his house down. They burned his whole town down to the foundations. Killed his family too. He had a daughter – about your age. We were his last hope.'

‘Daddy, I think . . . ' She looked away, remembering Mr Garforth's glare, the lacerating cold of the wind as she had left the cottage.

‘Go on.'

She eyed Daddy's expression like someone preparing to jump a ravine. She thought of Kung's notes, of the conversation she had heard all those months ago, of Propp, prodding at Peter Stokeham's tomb. Miss DeGroot might be right – perhaps the
whole
country wasn't in danger – but those things had still happened. She hadn't imagined them.

‘I know you don't think so, but . . . I think the Society is bad somehow. Maybe not all the time. Maybe they don't
all
mean to be, but . . . I've been gathering proof. Something dark is coming.'

Daddy took a long pull on the stub of his cigarette. She waited for him to shout, or laugh.

‘I know exactly what you mean,' he said. ‘Sometimes I feel the same way.' He thumped a fist against his stomach. ‘Down here. The dread. Like you've been kicked by a horse.'

‘Yes!'

‘It's a trick.'

‘What?'

‘Delphy.' Daddy tossed his cigarette butt to the floor. ‘Fear stops you from burning brightly. When I went in the sea . . . it all got washed away. I can think better. I can
see
better.' He beamed. ‘I'm almost
clean
. Soon, you and me and Mummy, we can leave. Just a little longer and . . . we can go home.' His eyes sparked at the word. ‘Won't that be nice?'

Delphine thought for a moment. ‘I'd like that.'

‘And we will live happily ever after.'

‘But Daddy, I – '

‘And if you ran away . . . ' He clutched her shoulder. ‘If you abandoned me . . . you would spoil all that. Do you understand?'

Delphine thought of the dank tunnels that ran under the estate, Mr Kung's vomiting water on the beach and Propp's singing before a sucking, flooded grave. She looked into Daddy's furious blue eyes. She thought of her bedroom.

She nodded.

‘So you won't make a fuss?' said Daddy. ‘You'll work hard and listen to Mr Propp?'

‘Yes, Daddy.'