Touch Not The Cat (23 page)

"Brooke?"

It came out in a kind of yelp. He looked up, surprised. "Yes. Why? Do you know it?"

But I had myself in hand. "No. Sorry, I spilled some hot water on myself. It's nothing. Have a biscuit. You were saying?"

"This isn't the Shakespeare play. It's a poem called
Romeus and Juliet,
by Arthur Brooke, and it seems to be—hey, it's dated 1562!" He sounded excited. "I say, I wonder if this could possibly be Shakespeare's source for his play, or something like that. I don't know the dates, but surely 1562—hell, yes, that's long before he was writing, isn't it? When did Elizabeth come to the throne?"

That was the kind of thing we knew at Ashley. "1558," I said, reluctantly. "It might be, I suppose, but I can't see . . . Look, Emory, leave the books, will you? I haven't had a chance to look at them yet, and I really think we should go through them pretty carefully, and get someone who's an expert. They might be valuable. Wait till I've checked them; we don't want to risk marking them—"

"'Might be valuable,' indeed! Anything first printed in 1562 stands a damned good chance of being valuable, I'd say."

"Well, don't start counting chickens till we know a bit more about it. I'll tell you what, Emory, I'll write, first thing in the morning. I think someone at Hatchards, or even perhaps the British Museum—"

"Why don't you just telephone someone now, this minute? This is your line of country. Isn't there someone local who might at least have a rough idea? What about what's-his-name, Leslie Oker, over at Ashbury? He'd have some idea, surely?"

"I don't really think—" I began, unwillingly, but he ignored me.

"At least he'd have some way of looking it up. Do you know his number?"

He already had the directory in his hand, so there was not much point in stalling further. I gave him the number. He pulled the telephone towards him and began to dial. His movements were quick, incisive, excited. At least, I thought, as I sat across from him sipping my tea, I would be able to read the thing before I had to send it away. Emory could hardly insist on taking it from me. From the length of the poem, and the apparent tedium of the verses, it wasn't a task I particularly looked forward to, but I would do it, even if I had to stay up all night. For that this, at last, was "William's Brooke," I was quite sure.

Emory was talking rapidly into the telephone. "Yes, Arthur Brooke,
'The Tragicall History of
Romeus and Juliet,
written first in Italian by Bandello and nowe in Englishe by Arthur Brooke.' It's dated 1562. There's a piece at the bottom of the title page which says,
'In aedibus Richardi Tottelli
Cum Privilegio.'
Yes. Yes, quite small . . . about four by eight . . . tan leather with a brown edge to the paper. No, no inscription, except the owner's bookplate, and that's reasonably historic, too. Put in by William Ashley, his own bookplate. He died in, let me see—?"

He raised a brow at me, and I supplied it. "1835."

"1835," said Emory into the telephone. "Yes, well, I don't know about such things, but I'd say it was in pretty good shape. No, no crest or anything on the cover. Oh, the title page is a bit yellow, with some of that brown spotting."

"Foxed," I said, behind him.

"My cousin says you call it foxed. Not badly, no, but I've only just glanced at it. . . .

Yes?"

Silence from Emory, while the telephone talked. It was a loud telephone, and, even with the receiver held tightly to my cousin's ear, I could catch something of what Leslie was saying. But even without that, I could have caught the gist of it from my cousin's face, where growing excitement fought with worry and slight apprehension. Eventually, after a few more brief queries, and expressions of thanks, he rang off, and turned back to me.

"He knows the book." He spoke very quietly, with a calm belied by the gleam in his eyes.

"That is, he knows of it; he's never seen a copy in his life. And for a very good reason. There are only three copies of this particular edition known. One of them isn't perfect; it's at Cambridge. A second is at Oxford, in Duke Humphrey, and I'm not sure about the third. If this is a fourth . . ." A short laugh, which betrayed his excitement. "He says he has no idea how valuable it might be, but there's only one thing certain, that it is very valuable indeed. There's a snag, of course, there'd have to be. It may have been re-bound. He couldn't tell, from my description. If it has, of course, its value will be diminished—but it would still fetch a lot of money . . . enough, anyway, to see us through. What's the matter, Bryony? You look as if you hardly cared."

I could not tell him that I was conscious of only one overmastering wish, to have him go and leave me alone with the book and let me read it. I picked it up and began to turn the pages.

"Why, of course I'm pleased! It's marvellous, Emory! And I see no reason at all why you shouldn't sell it. The only thing we mustn't do is rush it, and even if we do send it to Christie's to sell, you know they might take ages. They wait for the right book sale, and that mightn't be for months."

"Yes, I understand that. But they could give us some idea, surely, of what it might bring?

One can borrow on expectation, you know."

"Fair enough," I said. "I think the best thing to do is to send the book up to an expert, and let him have a look at it. No, Emory, please—" This as his hand reached for it again. "You'll have to leave this to me. I promise you I'll see about it tomorrow, but I want to ask Mr. Bryanston about it first."

"Mr. Bryanston? What does he know about it?"

"Quite a bit, you'd be surprised. And then I'm going to ring up Mr. Emerson, and see just where we stand."

His brows drew down quickly. "He can't have any objection, surely?"

"I didn't mean about this. I meant about the trust."

It was blackmail of a kind, and it worked. He hesitated, then smiled and nodded, and to my great relief, at last got to his feet and took his leave. He was going back to Bristol this evening, he told me, and yes, he would keep his promise and stop badgering me about the trust.

"But for heaven's sake, you will see about this book straight away, won't you? And if you can get into the Court and look at what else is there—?"

"Yes. As soon as I can."

"And let me know?"

"Of course," I said. "Or James?"

"Of course." The echo held an inflection of surprise, as if it went without saying. As, I reflected, it did. I had been right. And that left me—and my lover—where?

"Emory?"

He was in the doorway. He turned. "Yes?"

"Where's Francis? Have you any idea?"

"Not the least. I dare say he'll turn up when he feels like it. It's obvious he can't have heard the news yet. Why, do you need him for something?"

"It would be nice," I said carefully, "if he were here, don't you think?"

"Well, of course," said his brother, then kissed me again and went away.

I watched him right out of sight past the orchard and beyond the maze and the Overflow, then I went upstairs and began to hunt for a photograph which Walther could show to the police in Bad Tolz.

Ashley, 1835

He turned his head on the pillow, searching with his cheek for the hollow where her head had lain. The linen was cold now, but still smelled faintly of lavender.

"Eh—" he said it aloud, in her phrase "—eh, but I love thee."

The moon had set, but faint shadows moved with the breeze, as the creepers fretted at the walls.

The shutter masking the south window moved, creaking, as if some ghostly hand had pushed it. For a half-dreaming moment he thought he saw her again, kilting her skirts to climb the low sill, then standing tiptoe, laughing, watching herself in the glass.

"What is it?"

Then the shutter went back with a slam, jarring him full awake. The room was empty.

. . . Comfort me, counsel me.

—Romeo and Juliet,
III, v

It was a good photograph, taken the last time the twins had been at Ashley Court together, showing them both with Rob Granger on the banks of the Pool. They had been fishing for eels, and the picture showed Rob just tipping the bucketful of wriggling creatures out on the grass, while the twins stood over him. James was laughing, while Emory, looking away into the middle distance, was sober. Both were good likenesses, even though the photograph was four years old. If either of the two had been seen at Bad Tolz, there would be very little difficulty in identifying him.

I wrapped the picture up and found an envelope to fit it. A very commonplace action, but it felt like burning a whole fleet of boats, and crossing a delta of Rubicons. Then I sat down and resolutely addressed the envelope to Walther. I had only the haziest idea as to how much it should cost air mail to Bad Tolz, but finished by putting enough stamps on to carry it well east of Suez. That done, I locked William's books away in a drawer, and, without giving myself time for further thought, set straight out to post the letter.

The pillar-box was nearly half a mile away, where the side road from One Ash, winding past the church, met the main road. I took the shortcut across the farmyard.

In the old days of the farm's prosperity this had been the stackyard, with the row of stacks spaced beyond the big Dutch barn crammed full to the roof with straw. The cool caverns of the old cart sheds had housed the farm machinery, and whole families of cheerful hens that perched, crooning, on mudguards and shafts, and laid enormous clutches of eggs in various secret places which took, Mrs.

Granger used to say, an expert egg-diviner to discover. Now the afternoon sun beat down through the gaps in the perished roof of the barn, striking a rusty harrow left there to rot, and the raw green paint of Rob's cultivator, a stack of oil drums and a pile of chain. An old wagon with a broken shaft stood like an exhibit from some badly kept museum. Two of the sheds had been fenced across with hurdles, and pigs slept there in the slatted sunshine. In another stood Rob's battered fifth-hand Ford Cortina, and the fourth opening was filled with a stack of fire wood.

The hens remained, diminished in numbers but not in stately cheer; they clucked and strutted and raked among the fallen straw, ignoring Rob's collie which lay curled asleep on the mat outside his cottage door. As I crossed the yard the collie woke and smiled with lolling tongue and tail beating the ground, but he didn't move. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Henderson at Rob's window, then the door opened and she appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Miss Bryony! Won't you come along in and take a cup of tea? The kettle's just on the boil for Rob, and I've made a batch of scones."

My first impulse, with the package for Walther weighing heavily in my hand, was to make some excuse and go on my way, but something made me hesitate. The smell of the freshly baked scones came meltingly out on the air, along with the scent of woodsmoke and polish and the smell of ironing. I could see the laundered clothes hanging on the kitchen pulley. Details hardly noticed, but adding together to something deep out of the past that answered, like an echo to a bell, the distress in me that I had hardly recognized as yet, and had barely yet begun to suffer: James and my dead father, and the evidence of the silver pen; my rejection of my secret friend, and now, in this envelope in my hand, something that might be his betrayal. Before I even knew I had spoken, I said, "Thank you, I'd love to," and headed for the door.

"Come along in then, dearie," said Mrs. Henderson, "and I'll make the tea. Rob's just got in."

She vanished into the doorway. I followed her.

Rob was there at the sink, in his shirt sleeves, washing his hands. I saw he had taken the bandage off his left hand, and had been carefully cleaning the injured thumb. He greeted me rather shortly, as he had done that morning, then his eyes fixed on my face and he straightened, speaking in quite a changed voice.

"Is something wrong, then?"

I opened my mouth automatically to deny that any thing could be wrong, but somehow no words came. Instead of the brittle, conventional denial of "Nothing at all. What should be wrong?" I found myself saying with all the force of unhappiness, "Oh, Rob, it's all so awful," and I put a hand to my eyes.

His hand, still damp, took me very gently by the elbow and steered me to a place at the table.

"What you need's a cup of tea. It's making now. So come your ways and sit down."

I don't remember that I ate anything, but I drank the strong, scalding tea, and watched Rob and Mrs. Henderson eating scones and bramble jelly, and listened to the two of them talking over the commonplaces of the day—the shirt she would take home to mend, the pie she had made for him to heat at suppertime, the mousehole that she had found when she swept the back bedroom. The two of them addressed remarks in my direction from time to time, but never anything I had to answer; the talk went around and over me with the instinctive tact of longstanding affection. They were hedging me about with kindness, and I knew why the sunlight in the stackyard, the cottage smells, the sound of Rob's warm country voice, had suddenly and unaccountably broken me down. I had been here before. As a little girl I had come often to the Grangers' house, sometimes for comfort and refuge from the boys' games, sometimes just for a "visit"

with Mrs. Granger on the days when Rob's father was safely distant at market or down at the Bull. It had been the farm kitchen then, not the cottage, but it was the same: the faded rug, the old dresser with the green and blue plates, the brown teapot, the smells of baking and freshly ironed clothes, and the warmth and welcome that all these things added up to. I had loved these visits, tea with "bought cakes" (which as a child I had thought so much better than anything we had at home) and sardines on toast and tinned fruit and condensed milk, while Mrs. Granger listened to Rob and me boasting about what we had done and dared that day at school in the village. I had never understood her faded edginess and her air of always listening for an unwelcome footstep; nor did I guess why, if Mr. Granger came back while I was still there, I was expected to get up and go straight home. Nor had Rob's sullenness meant anything except "Robbie's sulks." What happened when Matt Granger came home at night was a well-kept secret, and had never touched little Miss Bryony. Well, that was over now, and the familiar warmth lapped me round, and from somewhere came comfort and calmness.