Half a Crown

  He looked at her again. She was smiling out of the window at a village with a little inn and a duck pond. How little he knew her, after all, how little he could trust her. She had grown up in Normanby’s Britain. She took fascism so much for granted that she went to a rally for a pleasant evening out. He had wanted to unburden himself to her the night before. He had started to ask why she thought he had chosen Switzerland for her finishing school and not Germany or France. But her look of complete puzzlement when he asked her stopped him. He couldn’t tell her about the Inner Watch any more than he could tell her the truth about Jack. Her world didn’t have room for such things.

  “Primroses!” she cried triumphantly, as she spotted the first of the little yellow flowers in the bank of the hedge.

  “Shall we pick some here?” Carmichael asked.

  “No, let’s go on to Aunt Katherine’s and then pick some later, deeper in the countryside. They’ll have more chance of lasting to get home. But let’s stop here and smell them!” She was almost bouncing in her seat as Carmichael indulgently drew the car to a halt where the road widened at a white three-barred gate. As soon as the engine was off, the country quiet swelled to fill their ears. There was no sound but thrush song and the distant sound of running water.

  Elvira got out of the car, disturbing the thrush for a moment with the metallic clack. She knelt beside the car and thrust her nose into the little clump of primroses growing where the hedge began again after the interruption of the gate. Carmichael followed her out but stood for a moment looking over the gate at the neat little paddock in front of them. Two white horses were munching the grass contentedly. There was a little spinney on the other side of it, oak and beech from what he could see. He wondered if there might be a fox. It looked like good hunting country. A crow in a nearby beech tree let out a series of caws, puffing itself up like a bellows for each one.

  “Do smell,” Elvira said.

  Obediently he bent down to the tiny yellow flowers. The light sweet scent, indistinguishable from any distance, became intoxicating once he came within a few inches.

  “I kissed my love and I made him mine, the taste of his lips was honey and honey and wine,” Elvira sang, picking a little bunch of primroses.

  “Honey and honey and wine?” Carmichael asked, teasingly, as he straightened up again. “Is that what they’re singing these days? Honey once isn’t enough for your generation?” It wouldn’t be long now before she’d be singing songs like that in earnest; marrying and having children. What sort of a world would it be for them to grow up in? One with camps and fear, but also with primroses and pretty girls singing in the April sunshine.

  “Choruses are supposed to repeat things. Honey and wine always makes me think of the scent of primroses,” she said, turning the little bunch in her hand. “Isn’t it glorious here? I think I’d almost forgotten how beautiful England could be. The Alps were splendid, of course, breathtaking in a way that this isn’t. But this is special, even though it’s just ordinary, maybe because it is, just a field and the green of newly unfolded beech leaves, and primroses, and a stream somewhere away down in that little wood.”

  “Your father felt the same about it,” Carmichael said, remembering Royston. “I always thought he was a London man, and he was, London born and bred, but he surprised me one day talking about his Kentish aunt and the primroses.” He stopped. “I don’t want to bore you. I’ve told you all this before.”

  “You have,” she said, smiling. “It’s good to remember him happy.”

  “He’d have been so proud of you,” Carmichael said. “If only he could see you now.”

  “I’d have been a very different person if Dad had lived,” Elvira said, leaning on the top bar of the gate and staring off into the distance, frowning a little. “I wouldn’t have had the advantages I’ve had. I wouldn’t be going to Oxford. I’d be a Cockney girl, out at work by now.”

  “I’ve tried my best,” Carmichael said, awkwardly. “Your father would have known what to do, and yes, done different things for you. I did the best I could do in his absence.”

  “You’ve told me how he was killed, but I’ve never been there, to Coltham. Do you think we could go there today?”

  Carmichael hesitated, surprised. “The present Lord Scott, the son of old Lord Scott, lives there now. I don’t think we could just turn up in his drive. If I send an official request we could go another day. I’m sure he’d understand. But there isn’t anything to see, beyond the house, and the drive.” He hadn’t been back since the day Royston was killed. He could picture it now; the house, the roses, Royston’s body splayed out and Ogilvie bleating on about dents in the car. He shook his head a little and deliberately looked up into the blue sky where a few tiny clouds seemed to be gathering.

  “No, it doesn’t matter,” Elvira said, and opened her car door again. “Let’s get on to Aunt Katherine’s.”

  She was quiet for a while as they wound their way through the lanes, then as they came nearer to her aunt’s house she began to exclaim at the silly names of the villages: Monk’s Horton, Wormshill, Frinsted, Eltham.

  Katherine Pendill, Royston’s mother’s sister, lived in an old stone farm cottage on the Coltham estate. It was picturesque; a single story, stone and thatch. The pump outside had seemed a quaint touch until Carmichael had realized it was all the plumbing the place had. The old lady was expecting them and flung the door open as the car drove up. “It’s like a witch’s cottage in a fairy tale,” Elvira said. “I always think that when I get here.” She jumped out of the car. “Aunt Katherine, how are you?”

  “All the better for seeing you,” her aunt replied. She was in her seventies, long-widowed, white-haired, and with a long nose and chin. “My, what a big girl you are. You have a look of your father now, though you have your mother’s coloring, of course. And how are you, Inspector Carmichael?”

  “I’m very well, thank you,” Carmichael said, stretching as he clambered out of the car. He did not try to correct her use of his title. He had been an inspector the first time she had met him, and he would remain an inspector forever in her mind. He rather liked it, as he had liked being an inspector.

  “Come in, come in,” the old lady said. “I’ve scones ready, and I’ve saved the last pot of last year’s elderberry jam because I know how much you like it.”

  Inside, the cottage was dark. There was a strong smell of baking in the air. A huge ginger cat was curled up on the best chair, and Mrs. Pendill scolded him until he jumped off and walked with offended dignity to curl up again next to the fireplace. On previous visits Elvira had rushed around examining everything; now she sat down and took a scone and jam and a cup of strong tea. Carmichael accepted the scone but couldn’t bring himself to drink the tea.

  After the scone, Elvira presented the cuckoo clock, to her aunt’s delight and astonishment. It was hideous, Carmichael thought. It looked like a little wooden chalet, covered in fretwork, and the bird came out through the central door. The hands and numbers were scrolled brass, as was the key. Mrs. Pendill hung it in the pride of place over the mantelpiece, wound it, then they all waited for the cuckoo to tell them it was noon.

  “Now what are you going to make of her?” Mrs. Pendill unexpectedly asked Carmichael as they waited.

  “I’m sorry?” he asked.

  “My great-niece. Elvira. She’s well grown now, it’s time she started a job of work, or settled down and got married. You’re not planning to marry her yourself?” The old woman’s blue gaze was penetrating.

  Elvira blushed, and Carmichael felt his own cheeks heat. “Certainly not. I think of Elvira as my adopted niece,” he said, stiffly.

  “Good. I wouldn’t really hold with that. But I did wonder if that’s what you were raising her up for, the way I’ve sometimes heard about men doing. You’re not an old man, and you never have married.”

  Carmichael had no idea how to answer this, so he said nothing. The cuckoo began to chime in the silence, startling them all. The ginger
cat leapt up and ran outside, tail bristling. They all laughed.

  “I’m coming out this summer, being presented to the Queen, Auntie,” Elvira said.

  “You’ll meet the young Queen?” her aunt asked. “Well, that’s an honor.”

  “Yes....” Elvira looked tentatively at Carmichael, as if for help. He shrugged. “Then afterwards I’m going to Oxford in the autumn.”

  “And what will you do there?” her aunt asked.

  Elvira looked surprised to be asked, as if to her Oxford was only a university and not a town. “I’ll go to college, and learn, of course.”

  Mrs. Pendill sniffed. “Always a one for your books. But I thought you were finished with school? How can you go to the college? Isn’t that for men, and for people of good family?”

  “Women have been going to Oxford since the last century,” Elvira said. “And you are supposed to be the child of someone who went, but Uncle Carmichael fixed that for me.”

  “And how long will it take? You’re eighteen now; time to think about settling down. Switzerland and cuckoo clocks are all very well, but where’s it going to leave you when you get old?”

  “If I have my degree, I can always teach. Or I might go into journalism,” Elvira said, raising her chin emphatically. “In any case, a degree is four years, and after that I intend to have a career.”

  The old lady’s eyes met Carmichael’s past Elvira, and suddenly they were complicit. “Don’t you ever mean to marry and have children?” she asked.

  “If I meet the right man. But with a degree I’ll be able to earn my own living whether or not that happens.” She turned to Carmichael. “I know I’m not a rich girl, even though I’ve been brought up like one since my father died. You’ve been very kind, as kind as a real uncle could possibly have been.”

  “Kinder than her own family could have hoped to be,” put in Mrs. Pendill.

  “I intend to see you properly provided for, Elvira,” Carmichael said, taking a gulp of abominable cold tea in his confusion.

  “Her idea is better,” her aunt said. “Be independent, as so few of us can be these days. I’m seventy-six years old. I was born in the old Queen’s day. I remember Queen Victoria visiting Coltham as if it was yesterday. Things have changed, with motorcars and airships and autobahns, but they haven’t changed so much when it comes to how people live. I was a servant at the Court until I married. I worked in the stillroom. I know how gentry live. You’ll meet the young Queen as I met the old one. Did I tell you what she said to me? She was walking in the garden and she saw me out by the kitchen door, picking parsley. She asked me my name, and I told her, and she asked what I did, and I said I was the stillroom maid. Then she said she’d liked my jam, and then she said, ‘Keep on as you have been doing, Katherine, and you’ll do very well.’ Maybe the young Queen, Queen Elizabeth, will have something to say to you that you can remember all your life.”

  “Maybe she will,” Elvira said. She looked pleadingly at Carmichael.

  “I think perhaps we’d better be going,” Carmichael said, rescuing her.

  The farewells took a long time, and they heard the clock strike again before they emerged from the cottage. The clouds had covered the sun. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” Elvira said, after she hugged her aunt good-bye.

  “It won’t rain until tomorrow,” Mrs. Pendill said, definitely. “All that education and they didn’t teach you how to read the weather?”

  Carmichael drove off, with Elvira waving beside him. After a moment she laughed, and he laughed too, and it reminded him of a hundred times with Royston when they had got through a sticky interview and back into the car where they could laugh about it. “You’re just like your father,” he said.

  “I thought I was going to sink through the floor when she asked if you were bringing me up to marry me,” Elvira said.

  “So did I!” said Carmichael. “The idea had never occurred to me. I’d never even thought that other people might be thinking it.”

  “I’m sure they’re not. Not anyone who hasn’t spoken to Queen Victoria, that is.” Elvira hesitated. “You know, she’s right about it being an honor to meet the Queen. I’d been thinking of it as a ritual and a bit of a chore, but for someone like Aunt Katherine it is an honor, and it should be for us too. I don’t know. Sometimes I have no idea what class I belong to or where I ought to belong, but she really is right about that.”

  “I’ve met the Queen once or twice,” Carmichael said. “She’s very nice from what I’ve seen.”

  “That’s not really the point, is it? What’s important is that she’s the Queen. Mr. Normanby’s the Prime Minister, but she’s the one who really matters. He might run the country, but she is the country.”

  “It’s next week, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Next Tuesday. Poor Betsy will still be in plaster, but her mother wants to go ahead regardless. I don’t know how she’ll carry her flowers. Maybe they’ll let her do without.”

  A few drops of rain spattered the windscreen. “We’d better get those primroses before they’re all soaked,” Carmichael said.

  “It doesn’t really matter about taking them back, not if it’s raining. I’ve got this little bunch anyway. The important thing is that they’re growing out here, that England’s still here, so beautiful, so green. If it’s going to rain, we might as well head back to London. Oh look! This little village is called Ospringe! Do you think it’s pronounced like offspring, or like orange?”

  Carmichael turned north at Ospringe, onto the Gravesend road.

  11

  When we got back to London, Uncle Carmichael took me to Cartier and bought me a string of pearls, much nicer than Betsy’s, and the prettiest little lapis-lazuli-and-gold pendant. I thought he’d either forgotten what Aunt Katherine had said or forgiven it, but he insisted on the shop assistant, a frightfully superior young lady, doing up the clasps for me when I tried them on. I’d never thought of him in other than a fatherly way, and I couldn’t, not even experimentally. There was some reserve about him that made it seem almost blasphemous. If he had been doing what Aunt Katherine suspected, which she must have got from some horrible Victorian story, I don’t think I could have gone through with it. Though if he had, he’d have been a different person and I suppose it would have been different.

  “Thank you,” I said, as we got back into the car, me clutching the little velvet-lined pouch in its bag. “And thank you for everything, for looking after me since my father died. When I said I wanted a career and to be independent, I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful. It’s just that I don’t want to be dependent.”

  “I do understand,” he said. “It’s harder for a girl than a boy, but you’re going the right way about things to my mind, wanting your own life. I’m just glad I can help you do what you want, this Oxford thing. As I said this morning, I think Sergeant Royston would have been very proud of you.”

  I felt different with him, somehow, as if he’d finally noticed that I’d grown up and wasn’t a little girl anymore, and while that was terrific, it was a little bit sad too.

  “Will you come to the dinner before the presentation?” I asked, as he pulled up in front of the Maynards’ house.

  “Next Tuesday?” He frowned as he pulled on the hand brake. “Next Wednesday is the opening of this idiotic peace conference, so every loon in Europe will be in London. I’ll be run ragged. But I dare say I can manage dinner. Where is it, the Ritz?”

  “The Dorchester,” I said. “You’re paying for it, you should know.”

  He turned towards me. “I dare say I am, but I don’t argue with what Mrs. Maynard sends me. That’s why she was so polite this morning, no doubt. She started to say that you should have stayed with Betsy, but when I pointed out that Betsy should have stayed with you she soon saw my point.” He smiled, tightly. “Send me a card. But I’ll see you before that. I’ll be bringing your handbag over to return Betsy’s pearls.”

  “Mine are much, much nicer,” I said, and leaned
over to kiss his cheek.

  My banged knee twinged a little as I got out of the car, but I covered it, and waved cheerfully as Uncle Carmichael drove off.

  Goldfarb opened the door to me. Only Mr. Maynard, as head of the family, had his own front door key. “There are flowers arrived for you, Miss Elvira,” he said, as I took off my hat.

  “For Betsy, surely?” I was surprised.

  “For both of you. Miss Betsy’s are in her room, and yours are in the drawing room. I believe Madam would like to see you in there when it’s convenient.” Goldfarb inclined his head a little in a very regal way.

  “Do I have time to freshen up a little and look in on Betsy?” I asked.

  “Miss Betsy is sleeping,” he said.

  I ran upstairs, used the lav and touched up my face, then put my little bunch of primroses into a bud vase in my room, before bracing myself to talk to Mrs. Maynard.

  Mr. and Mrs. Maynard were both in the drawing room, along with the biggest bouquet since the Royal wedding. It was mostly carnations, variegated ones, but there were also dog daisies, roses, love-in-a-mist, freesia, and half a dozen other things. It was huge, more than a double armload. It was so big that it had been put in an urn that was normally only used in the ballroom. In April, it was beyond all dreams of extravagance.

  “How are you, Elvira, my dear?” Mrs. Maynard asked, smiling one of her insincere smiles and actually getting up and taking my hand. “Sit down, sit down.”

  “I wasn’t hurt, I’m just concerned about poor Betsy,” I said, sitting on the sofa beside her.

  “The doctors have fixed her up right as rain, don’t worry,” Mr. Maynard said heartily. “I’m only sorry that when we were so concerned over her we allowed your welfare to slip between the cracks.”

  I hadn’t forgotten the time I’d spent in the police station in Paddington, but I didn’t especially hold it against the Maynards. “It was natural that you’d be worried about Betsy. She was injured.”