The Little Stranger (25 page)

‘The wall?’ I said, not understanding.

Caroline spoke. ‘Rod offered them farmland,’ she said quietly, ‘and they didn’t want it. They’ll only take the grass-snake field, over to the west. They finally made up their minds, you see, about the water and electricity: they say they won’t extend the mains to Hundreds simply for our use, but they’ll bring them out if it’s for the sake of new houses. It seems we might just be able to raise the money to lay the pipes and wires the extra distance to the farm.’

For a moment I was too dismayed to answer. The grass-snake field—as I knew Caroline and Roderick had named it, as children—was just within the park wall, about three-quarters of a mile from the house itself. It had been hidden from view in high summer, but with the thinning of the trees in autumn it became visible from all the south- and west-facing windows of the Hall, a distant swathe of green and white and silver, rippling and lovely as fingered velvet. The thought that Rod was seriously prepared to give it up bothered me horribly.

‘You can’t mean it,’ I said to him. ‘You simply can’t break up the park. There must be some alternative, surely?’

And again his mother answered. ‘Nothing at all, apparently, aside from selling the house and park completely; and even Roderick feels that that’s not to be thought of, not after we’ve given up so much already in order to hang on to it. We’ll make it a condition of the sale that Babb puts up a fence around the building-work—and then at least we won’t have to look at it.’

Now Roderick did speak. He said thickly, ‘Yes, we must have a fence to keep out the mob. Not that that will stop them, mind. They’ll soon be scaling the walls of the house at night, with cutlasses between their teeth. You’d better sleep with a pistol under your pillow, Caroline!’

‘They’re not pirates, you oaf,’ she murmured, without looking up from her plate.

‘Aren’t they? I’m not so sure. I think they’d like nothing better than to hang us all from the mainbrace; they’re just waiting for Attlee to give them the word. He probably will, too. Ordinary people hate our sort now, don’t you see?’

‘Please, Roderick,’ said Mrs Ayres uncomfortably. ‘Nobody hates our sort. Not in Warwickshire.’

‘Oh, especially in Warwickshire! Over the border, in
Gloz
tershire, they’re still feudal at heart. But Warwickshire people have always been good business people—right back to the days of the Civil War. They were all for Cromwell then, don’t forget. Now they can see which way the wind is blowing. I wouldn’t blame them if they decided to chop off our heads! We’ve certainly put up a pretty poor show of saving ourselves. ’ He made a clumsy gesture. ‘Just look at Caroline and me, prize heifer and prize bull. We’re hardly doing our bit to further the herd! Anyone would think we were going out of our way to make ourselves extinct.’

‘Rod,’ I said, seeing the look on his sister’s face.

He turned to me. ‘What? You ought to be glad. You’re from pirate stock, aren’t you? You don’t think you’d have been invited along tonight, otherwise! Mother’s too embarrassed to let any of our real friends see us as we are now. Hadn’t you figured that out yet?’

I felt myself blush, but more in anger than anything else; and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing any other discomfort, but kept my eyes on his as I ate—wanting to stare him out, one man to another. The tactic worked, I think, for he met my gaze with a flutter of his lashes, and just for a moment he looked ashamed and somehow desperate, like a boasting boy secretly daunted by his own bravado.

Caroline had lowered her head, and went on with her dinner. Mrs Ayres said nothing for a minute or two, then set her knife and fork together. And when she spoke again, it was to ask after another patient of mine, as if our earlier conversation had had no interruption. Her manner was smooth, her voice quite soft; she didn’t look at her son after that. Instead she seemed to cut him from the table—to plunge him into darkness, just as if she were reaching and snuffing out the candles in front of him, one by one.

The dinner, by then, was beyond recovery. The dessert was a bottled-raspberry pie, slightly sour, served with artificial cream; the room, after all, was damp and chill, the wind was moaning in the chimney, the table not the sort of pre-war one it was possible to linger over, even if the mood had been better. Mrs Ayres told Betty that we would take our coffee in the little parlour, and she, Caroline, and I rose and put down our napkins.

Only Rod hung back. At the door he said moodily, ‘I shan’t come with you, I’m sure you won’t mind. I’ve some papers I need to look over.’

‘Cigarette papers, I suppose,’ said Caroline, going down the passage to open the door to the little parlour for her mother.

Roderick blinked at her, and again I had the feeling that he was trapped in his own bad humour and secretly abashed by it. I watched him turn away from us to begin the short, gloomy journey to his room, and I felt a rush of angry pity for him; it seemed brutal of us to let him go. But I joined his mother and sister, and found them adding wood to the fire.

‘I must apologise for my son, Doctor,’ said Mrs Ayres as she sat. She put the back of her wrist to her temple as if her head ached. ‘His behaviour tonight was unforgivable. Can’t he see how unhappy he makes us all? If he means to start drinking now, on top of everything, I shall have to ask Betty to keep back the wine. I never saw his father drunk at the table … I hope you know how very welcome you are in this house. Will you sit here, across from me?’

I did sit, for a time. Betty brought us our coffee, and we talked more about the sale of the land. I asked them again if there were no alternative, pointing out the disruption that the building-work would lead to, and the impact such a thing would inevitably have on life at the Hall. But they had thought it through already, and had evidently surrendered themselves to the idea. Even Caroline seemed curiously passive about it all. So I thought I would try Roderick again. It was bothering me, too, to picture him alone and unhappy on the other side of the house. Once my coffee was finished I put down my cup and said I would just look in on him to see if I could be any help with his work.

As I’d suspected, the work was all bluff: when I went in he was sitting more or less in darkness, with only the fire to light the room. I hadn’t knocked this time, so as not to give him the opportunity of refusing me, and he turned his head and said sulkily, ‘I thought you’d come.’

‘May I join you for a while?’

‘What do you think? You can see how frightfully busy I am.—No, don’t put on the light! I’ve rather a headache.’ I heard him setting down a glass and moving forward. ‘I’ll stoke this up a bit instead. God knows it’s cold enough for it.’

He caught up a couple of pieces of log from the box beside the fireplace and flung them clumsily into the hearth. They sent sparks flying up the chimney and cinders leaping out of the grate, and had the effect, for a moment or two, of damping the fire and making the room even darker. But by the time I had picked my way over to him and drawn up the other armchair the flames were beginning to lap and crackle around the damp raw wood and I could see him clearly. He had slouched back in his chair and stuck out his legs. He was still in his evening clothes, his woollen waistcoat and fingerless gloves, but he had loosened his tie and taken out a collar-stud, so that one side of the collar sprang up like a comedy drunk’s.

This was the first time I had been in his room since he had told me that fantastic story in my dispensary, and as I sat I found myself glancing uneasily around. Away from the light of the fire the shadows were so thick and so shifting as to be almost impenetrable, but I could just make out the rumpled blankets of his bed, with beside it his dressing-table and, close to that, his marble-topped washing-stand. Of the shaving-glass—which I’d last seen sitting on the stand along with his razor and soap and brush—there was no sign.

By the time I looked back at Roderick he’d begun fiddling in his lap with papers and tobacco, rolling himself a cigarette. Even in the shifting glow of the firelight I could see that his face was flushed and thick with drink. I began to talk, as I’d intended, about the sale of the land—leaning forward, speaking earnestly, trying to get some sense into him. But he turned his head and wouldn’t listen. At last I gave the subject up.

Sitting back, I said instead, ‘You look terrible, Rod.’

That made him laugh. ‘Ha! I hope that’s not a professional opinion. I’m afraid we can’t afford it.’

‘Why are you doing this to yourself? The estate’s falling to pieces around you, and look at you! You’ve had gin, vermouth, wine, and’—I nodded to his glass, which was sitting on a mess of papers on the table at his elbow—‘what’s in there? Gin again?’

He cursed quietly. ‘Jesus! What of it? Can’t a bloke get lit up now and then?’

I said, ‘Not a bloke in your position, no.’

‘What position’s that? Lord of the manor?’

‘Yes, if you want to put it like that.’

He licked the gum of his cigarette paper, looking sour. ‘You’re thinking of my mother.’

‘Your mother would be miserable,’ I said, ‘if she saw you like this.’

‘Do me a favour then, old chap, will you? Don’t tell her.’ He put the cigarette into his mouth, and lit it with a newspaper spill from the fire. ‘Anyway,’ he said, as he sat back, ‘it’s a bit late for her to begin acting the devoted matron. Twenty-four years too late, to be exact. Twenty-six, in Caroline’s case.’

I said, ‘Your mother loves you dearly. Don’t be stupid.’

‘You know all about it, of course.’

‘I know what she’s told me.’

‘Yes, you’re great chums, you and she, aren’t you? What
has
she told you? How frightfully
disappointed
I’ve made her? She’s never forgiven me, you know, for letting myself get shot down and lamed. We’ve been disappointing her all our lives, my sister and I. I think we disappointed her simply by being born.’

I didn’t answer, and for a time he was silent, gazing into the fire. And when he spoke again, it was in a light, almost casual tone. He said, ‘Did you know I ran away from school when I was a boy?’

I blinked at the change of subject. ‘No,’ I said reluctantly, ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Oh, yes. They kept it quiet, but I bolted twice. The first time I was only eight or nine; I didn’t get far. The second time, though, I was older, maybe thirteen. I just walked out, no one stopped me. I got as far as the public bar of an hotel. I telephoned Morris, my father’s chauffeur, and he came and got me. He was always a pal of mine. He bought me a ham sandwich and a glass of lemonade, and we sat at a table and talked it through … I had thought it all out. I knew he had a brother who ran a garage, and I had fifty pounds of my own, and I thought I might go shares in the garage—live with the brother and be a mechanic. I really knew, you see, about engines.’

He drew on his cigarette. ‘Morris was awfully good about it. He said, “Well, Master Roderick”—he had the most terrible Birmingham accent, just like that—“Well, Master Roderick, I think you’d make a fine mechanic, and my brother would be honoured to have you, but don’t you think it would break your parents’ heart, you being heir to the estate and all?” He wanted to take me back to school, but I wouldn’t let him. He didn’t know what else to do with me, so he brought me back here, and gave me to Cook, and Cook got me quietly up to my mother. They were imagining that Mother would look after me, make things easy with the old man—like mothers do in the pictures and on the stage. But, no: she just told me what a great
disappointment
I was, and she sent me down to Father, to explain to him for myself what I was doing here. The old man ramped like the devil, of course, and thrashed me—thrashed me right by the open window, where any outdoors servant could have seen.’ He laughed. ‘And I had only run away because a boy was thrashing me at school! A beastly boy, he was: Hugh Nash. He used to call me “Ayres-and-Graces”. But even he had the decency to whip me in private …’

His cigarette was burning itself out in his fingers, but he sat still, and his voice dipped. ‘Nash went into the Navy in the end. He was killed off Malaya. And do you know, when I heard he’d been killed, I felt relieved. I was already in the Air Force by then, and I felt relieved—just as if I were still at school, and another boy had told me that Nash had been taken out of class by his parents … Poor Morris died, too, I think. I wonder if his brother did all right.’ His voice grew harsh. ‘I wish I
had
gone shares in that garage. I’d be a happier man than I am now, pouring everything I’ve got into this bloody estate. Why the hell am I doing it?
For the sake of the family
, you’re going to say, with that wonderful insight of yours. Do you really think this family’s worth saving? Look at my sister! This house has sucked the life out of her—just as it’s sucking it out of me. That’s what it’s doing. It wants to destroy us, all of us. It’s all very well my standing up to it now, but how long d’you think I can go on like that? And when it’s finished with me—’

‘Rod, stop it,’ I said, for his voice had risen suddenly and he was becoming agitated: realising his cigarette had gone out, he’d leaned forward to put another paper spill to the fire, and he had thrown the spill violently down so that it bounced back over the marble fender and lay burning at the edge of the rug. I picked it up and tossed it into the grate; then, seeing the state of him, I reached for the edge of the fire-curtain—for his was one of those fireplaces that had a piece of fine old mesh hung across it, like a nursery guard—and drew it closed.

He sat back in his chair, his arms folded defensively. He took one or two furtive puffs on his cigarette, then tilted his head and began to glance around the room, his eyes seeming very large and dark in his lean, pale face. I knew what he was watching for, and felt almost sick with frustration and dismay. There had been no mention of the old delusion before this; his behaviour had been troubling, unpleasant, but rational enough. But I could see now that nothing had changed. His mind was still clouded. The drinking, perhaps, was simply to give him courage, and the truculence was a desperate form of bluster.