Travels With My Aunt

  ‘I looked after your dahlias.’

  And starved them of water, I thought, but I had to say, ‘Yes, of course, I will.’

  ‘I’ll bring you the food. Just one teaspoonful once a day. Don’t pay any attention if they come guzzling at the glass. They don’t know what’s good for them.’

  ‘I’ll harden my heart,’ I said. I waved away the turtle soup – it was over-familiar. Too often I had opened a bottle of it when I had no appetite even for eggs. I asked, ‘What kind of a study group?’

  ‘The problems of empire,’ he replied, staring at me with eyes enlarged and angry as though I had already made some foolish or unsympathetic reply.

  ‘I thought we had got rid of all those.’

  ‘A temporary failure of nerve,’ he snapped and bayoneted his turkey.

  I would certainly have preferred him as a client to Curran. He would never have bothered me about overdrafts: he lived carefully within the limits of his pension: he was an honest man even if I found his ideas repulsive, and then I thought of Mr Visconti dancing with my aunt in the reception room of the brothel behind the Messaggero after swindling the Vatican and the King of Saudi Arabia and leaving a wide trail of damage behind him in the banks of Italy. Was the secret of lasting youth known only to the criminal mind?

  ‘A man’s been looking for you,’ Major Charge said after a long silence. The admiral got up from his table and made unsteadily for the door. He was still wearing his paper crown, but when his fingers were already on the handle, he remembered it and scrunched it into a ball.

  ‘What man?’

  ‘You’d gone to the post office – or so I imagine. At any rate you turned right not left at the bottom of Southwood Road.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me. He rang and knocked and rang and knocked, making the hell of a din. Even the fish were scared, poor little buggers. There were two of them. I thought I ought to speak to them before they disturbed the whole street.’

  I don’t know why, but I thought at that moment of Wordsworth, a possible message from my aunt …

  ‘Was he black?’ I asked.

  ‘Black? What an extraordinary question. Of course he wasn’t.’

  ‘He didn’t give a name?’

  ‘Neither of them did. He asked where he could find you, but I had no idea you were planning to come here. You weren’t here last year or the year before. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before. All I could tell him was that I knew you went to the carol service at St John’s.’

  ‘I wonder who it could be,’ I said.

  I had a deep conviction that I was about to find myself again in Aunt Augusta’s world, and my pulse beat with an irrational sense of pleasure. When Miss Truman brought me two mince pies I accepted them both as though I needed them to sustain me for a long voyage. I even helped myself liberally to brandy butter.

  ‘I used real Rémy Martin,’ Miss Truman said. ‘You haven’t pulled your cracker.’

  ‘Pull it with me, Peter,’ I said with daring. She had a strong wrist, but I got the winning end, and a small plastic object rolled on to the floor. I was glad to see that it was not a hat. Major Charge leapt at it and gave a snort of laughter as merciless as a nose-blowing. He put it to his mouth and breathed hard, making a sound like a raspberry. Then I saw that it was shaped like a tiny po with a whistle in the handle.

  ‘Lower-deck humour,’ Miss Truman said in a kindly way.

  ‘It’s the festive season,’ Major Charge said. He blew another raspberry. ‘Hark! the herald-angels sing,’ he said in a tone of savagery, as though he were taking some kind of revenge on Christmas Eve and all its impedimenta of holy families and managers and wise men, a revenge on love, a revenge for some deep disappointment.

  I arrived at St John’s Church by a quarter past eleven. The service always began at half past eleven so as to distinguish it from the Roman Catholic Midnight Mass. I had begun to attend when I first became the bank manager, for it gave me a stable family air if I were seen at the service, and though, unlike Aunt Augusta, I have no religious convictions, I could be there without hypocrisy since I have always enjoyed the more poetic aspects of Christianity. Christmas, it seems to me, is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.

  For years now I have always sat in the same pew below a stained-glass window which was dedicated in 1887 to the memory of Councillor Trumbull. It shows Christ surrounded by children as he sits in the shade of a very green tree – the text, of course, is ‘Suffer little children’. Councillor Trumbull was responsible for building the square redbrick block with barred windows in Cranmer Road, which, once an orphanage, is now a detention centre for juvenile delinquents.

  The carol service began with a gentler version than Major Charge’s of ‘Hark! the Herald-Angels sing’, and then we proceeded to the old favourite, ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

  ‘Deep and crisp and even’ the high female voices sang from the gallery – it has always seemed to me a very beautiful line, conveying the landscape of a small country England with no crowds, no traffic, to soil the snow, when even the royal palace stood among the silent and untrodden fields.

  ‘No white Christmas, sir, this year,’ a voice whispered in my ear from the pew behind, and turning I saw Detective-Sergeant Sparrow.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘If you can spare me a moment after the service, sir,’ he replied, and raising his prayer-book he sang in a very fine baritone voice:

  ‘Though the frost was cru-el,

  When a poor man hove in sight

  (perhaps Detective-Sergeant Sparrow like Miss Truman had once been in the Navy)

  Gathering winter fu-u-el.’

  I looked back at his companion. He was smartly dressed with a lean legal face. He wore a dark grey overcoat and carried an umbrella crooked for safety over his arm – I wondered what he would do with it or with the sharp crease to his trousers when the time came for him to kneel. He didn’t seem as much at home in the church as Detective-Sergeant Sparrow. He was not singing and I doubt whether he was praying.

  ‘Mark my footsteps, good my page,’

  the sergeant sang lustily,

  ‘Tread thou in them boldly,’

  and the voices in the gallery rose ardently to the unexpected competition from below.

  At last the proper service began, and I was glad when the Athanasian Creed, which they invariably inflict on us at Christmas, was safely over. ‘As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated: but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.’ (Sergeant Sparrow coughed several times in the course of it.)

  I intended – it is always my custom at Christmas – to go to Communion. The Anglican Church is not exclusive: Communion is a commemoration service, and I had as much right to commemorate a beautiful legend as any true believer has. The vicar was saying clearly, while the congregation buzzed ambiguously to disguise the fact that they had forgotten the words: ‘We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, have committed …’ I noticed that the detective-sergeant, perhaps from professional prudence, did not join in this plea of guilty. ‘We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings …’ I had never before noticed how the prayer sounded like the words of an old lag addressing the Bench with a plea for mercy. The presence of Detective-Sergeant Sparrow seemed to alter the whole tone of the service. When I stepped into the nave to go up to the altar I heard an outburst of argumentative whispers in the pew behind me and the words, ‘You, Sparrow,’ spoken very forcibly, so that I was not surprised when I saw that it was Detective-Sergeant Sparrow who knelt as my neighbour at the communion rail. Perhaps they had been uncertain whether I might not take advantage of the Communion to escape through a side-door.

  When his turn with the chalice came Detective-Sergeant Sparrow took a very long swig, and I notic
ed afterwards that more wine had to be fetched before the Communion was finished. When I returned to my seat, the detective-sergeant trod on my heels, and in the pew behind me the whispers broke out again. ‘My throat’s like a grater,’ I heard the sergeant say. I suppose he was apologizing for his performance with the chalice.

  At the end of the service they stood and waited for me at the church door, and Sergeant Sparrow introduced his companion. ‘Detective-Inspector Woodrow,’ he said, ‘Mr Pulling.’ He added with awe in a lower voice, ‘Inspector Woodrow belongs to the Special Branch.’

  I shook hands after a little hesitation on both sides.

  ‘We were wondering, sir, if you would mind assisting us again,’ Sergeant Sparrow said. ‘I told Inspector Woodrow how helpful you had been once before over the jar of pot.’

  ‘I suppose you are referring to my mother’s urn,’ I replied with as much coldness as I could muster on Christmas morning.

  The congregation poured out on either side. I saw the admiral go by. In his breast-pocket he had a patch of scarlet, which I suppose was the paper cap serving as a handkerchief.

  ‘They told us at the Crown and Anchor,’ Inspector Woodrow said to me in a stiff unfriendly tone, ‘that you have your aunt’s keys.’

  ‘We like to do things nicely,’ Sergeant Sparrow explained, ‘with the free consent of all parties concerned. It goes down so much better in court.’

  ‘What exactly do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘A happy Christmas, Mr Pulling.’ The vicar put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Have I the pleasure of meeting two new parishioners?’

  ‘Mr Sparrow, Mr Woodrow, the vicar,’ I said.

  ‘I hope you all enjoyed our carol service.’

  ‘Indeed I did,’ Sergeant Sparrow said heartily. ‘If there’s one thing I like it’s a good tune with words I can understand.’

  ‘Just a moment while I find copies of our parish magazine. Quite a bumper Christmas number.’ The vicar dived back into the dark church looking like a ghost in his surplice.

  ‘You understand, sir,’ Sergeant Sparrow said, ‘we could have easily got a search-warrant and made a forcible entry, but besides ruining a good lock – it’s a Chubb, very prudent of Miss Bertram – it looks bad in evidence, you understand what I mean, for the good lady. If it comes to evidence. Which we hope will not be the case.’

  ‘But what on earth are you looking for? Not pot again surely?’

  Inspector Woodrow said in a grave hangman’s tone, ‘We are pursuing an inquiry at the request of Interpol.’

  The vicar came hurrying back to us waving copies of the parish magazine. He said, ‘If you would both just turn to the last page you will find a tear-out subscription form for the coming year. Mr Pulling already subscribes.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, I am sure,’ Detective-Sergeant Sparrow said. ‘I haven’t a pen with me at the moment, but just leave it with me. A very tasteful and original design – all that holly and the birds and gravestones.’

  Inspector Woodrow took his copy with evident reluctance. He held it in front of him as a witness holds a Bible in court, not quite certain what to do with it.

  ‘It’s a very swinging number,’ the vicar said. ‘Oh, forgive me. Poor lady. I’ll be back in one sec.’ He pursued an elderly lady down the path to Latimer Road calling, ‘Mrs Brewster, Mrs Brewster.’

  ‘I think before he returns,’ Inspector Woodrow said, ‘we had better go somewhere and discuss things.’

  Sergeant Sparrow had already opened the parish magazine and was reading it with absorption.

  ‘You can come home with me,’ I said.

  ‘I would prefer to go to Miss Bertram’s with no further delay. We can explain matters in the car.’

  ‘Why do you want to go to my aunt’s flat?’

  ‘I’ve told you. There has been an inquiry from Interpol. We don’t want to disturb a magistrate on Christmas night. You are next of kin. Your aunt by giving you her keys has left the flat in your care …’

  ‘Has something happened to my aunt?’

  ‘It is not impossible.’ He was never satisfied unless he made four words serve for one. He said sharply, ‘The vicar is coming back … For God’s sake, Sparrow, pay attention.’

  ‘Now I hope you won’t either of you forget your subscription,’ the vicar said. ‘It will go to a good cause. We are furnishing a Children’s Corner in time for Easter. I would have preferred to call it a chapel, but we have some old Protestant battle-axes in Southwood. I’ll let you into a very deep secret. I haven’t even told my committee. The other day I obtained in Portobello Road an original drawing of Mabel Lucy Atwell’s. We shall unveil it at Easter, and I am wondering if we couldn’t persuade Prince Andrew …’

  ‘I’m afraid, Vicar, we shall have to go,’ Inspector Woodrow said, ‘but I hope your Corner will be a great success.’ It was beginning to rain. He looked at his umbrella, but he didn’t open it. Perhaps he was not confident that the neat folds could ever be properly reproduced.

  ‘I will be calling on you both one day very soon,’ the vicar said, ‘when I have your addresses on the subscription form.’

  ‘Sparrow!’ Inspector Woodrow spoke quite sharply.

  Sparrow closed the parish magazine with reluctance and followed us at the run because of the rain. As he sat down beside Woodrow in the driver’s seat, he explained apologetically, ‘There’s a story called Who’s Guilty? I thought it might be a murder story – I like a good murder story – but it was only about an old lady who was unkind to a pop singer. You can’t tell anything from titles nowadays.’

  ‘Now, Mr Pulling,’ Inspector Woodrow said, ‘when did you last see your aunt?’ The phrase sounded vaguely familiar.

  ‘Some weeks – months – ago. In Boulogne. Why?’

  ‘You travel about a great deal with her, don’t you?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘When did you last hear from her?’

  ‘I’ve told you – Boulogne. Do I have to answer these questions?’

  ‘You have your constitutional rights,’ Sergeant Sparrow began, ‘like any citizen. Duties too of course. A voluntary statement always has a better sound in court. The court takes into account …’

  ‘For God’s sake hold your tongue, Sparrow,’ Inspector Woodrow said. ‘Aren’t you surprised, Mr Pulling, that you’ve heard nothing from your aunt since Boulogne?’

  ‘There is nothing about my aunt which surprises me.’

  ‘You aren’t anxious – in case something might have happened to her?’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘She has kept some very queer company. Have you ever heard of a Mr Visconti?’

  ‘The name,’ I said, ‘is somehow familiar.’

  ‘A war criminal,’ Detective-Sergeant Sparrow added unwisely.

  ‘Please keep your eye on the road, Sparrow,’ the inspector said. ‘General Abdul – you’ve heard of General Abdul, I presume?’

  ‘… Perhaps, yes, I seem to know the name.’

  ‘You were with your aunt in Istanbul some time ago. You arrived by train and you were expelled after a few hours. You saw a Colonel Hakim.’

  ‘I saw some police officer or other certainly. An absurd mistake.’

  ‘General Abdul made a statement before he died.’

  ‘Died? Poor fellow. I didn’t know. I can’t see how his statement can concern me.’

  ‘Or your aunt?’

  ‘I’m not my aunt’s keeper.’

  ‘The statement concerned Mr Visconti. Interpol has circulated the details. Until now we had always assumed that Mr Visconti was dead. We had written him off.’

  ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘before we go any further, I must tell you that I haven’t got my aunt’s keys with me.’

  ‘I had hardly expected that. I wanted only your permission to enter. I assure you that we’ll do no damage.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t allow it. The flat is in my charge.’

  ‘It would look so much better if it ever came to
a jury, Mr Pulling,’ Sparrow began, but the inspector interrupted him. ‘Sparrow. Take the next turning on the left. We will take Mr Pulling home.’

  ‘You can call on me after Christmas,’ I said, ‘that is, if you have a search-warrant.’

  20

  I HAD expected the inspector and Detective-Sergeant Sparrow to come and see me, but they didn’t even telephone. A picture postcard turned up unexpectedly from Tooley. It was the view of a rather ugly temple in Katmandu and she had written on it, ‘I am on a marvellous trip. Love Tooley.’ I had quite forgotten that I had given her my address. There was no reference to Christmas (the season, I suppose, had passed unnoticed in Nepal), and I felt the more proud of her casual remembrance.

  When Boxing Day was over I drove to the Crown and Anchor a little before closing time in the afternoon. I wanted to see the flat in case the inspector turned up with his search-warrant. If there were any discreditable remnants of Wordsworth still lying about the place I wanted to remove them, and I carried a small weekend case with me for the purpose. All my working life I had been strictly loyal to one establishment, the bank, but my loyalty now was drawn in quite another direction. Loyalty to a person inevitably entails loyalty to all the imperfections of a human being, even to the chicanery and immorality from which my aunt was not entirely free. I wondered whether she had ever forged a cheque or robbed a bank, and I smiled at the thought with the tenderness I might have shown in the past to a small eccentricity.

  When I reached the Crown and Anchor I looked cautiously in at the window of the saloon bar. Why cautiously? I had every right to be there – it was still opening time. The day was grey with a threat of snow and the customers were all pressing against the bar to get their last refill before three o’clock. I could see the back of the girl, who was still in jodhpurs, and a large hairy hand laid against it. ‘Another double’, ‘Pint of best bitter’, ‘Double pink’. The clock stood at two minutes to three. It was as though they were whipping up their horses on the last straight before the winning post, and there was a great deal of irregular crowding. I found the right key to open the side-door and climbed the stairs. On the second landing I sat down for a moment on my aunt’s sofa. I felt as illicit as a burglar and I listened for footsteps, but of course there was only the buzz and murmur of the bar.