‘Oh yes,’ Ronald said.
‘Doesn’t show her years,’ Martin said. ‘Of course she’s got the money and the leisure. She depends on me a lot, you know. She’s had a lot of bad luck with men, and I think she appreciates me in a way. Wouldn’t you think so?’
‘Oh, I think she does.’
‘Look, Ronald, come along to my club for lunch. You see—’
‘Sorry, I’m not free.’
‘You see, there’s a personal problem I’d like to consult you about. Could you make it 1.30?’
‘Sorry, really I’m not free.’
‘I can’t make it tomorrow,’ Martin said, ‘because the housekeeper goes off in the afternoon and I’ve promised to read Jane Eyre to my old ma. She says she was forbidden Jane Eyre as a girl. I don’t see why, do you? You see, she can’t see well and the television isn’t much use to her. Then tomorrow night I’ve simply got to collect Isobel off a train. When can we meet?’
‘I’ll come and see you in your chambers one day next week. I’ve got to go now, Martin.’
‘I’ll ring you on Monday, then. Sure you’re not worried about Fergusson looking into this theft?’
‘No, but I doubt—’
‘It’s breaking and entering, and stealing, to be precise. They’ll be sending a couple of fellows round to ask questions.’
‘I see.’
‘You should have been more careful, Ronald. You can’t conduct a case…
When they were seated in the pub Ronald said, ‘You can tell Elsie that the cops will be looking for her.’
‘Now, she’s a nice poor girl,’ Matthew said.
‘Well, give the poor girl a fright. Tell her the cops will be after her finger-prints or something.’
Elsie Forrest climbed the stairs to an attic flat in Shepherd’s Bush, and pressed the bell on a door marked The Rev. Father T. W. Socket, M.A. The door was opened by Mike Garland, wearing a green and white striped dressing-gown over his suit, and looking, with his pink cheeks, like a lump of sticky bright confectionery. He blocked the door.
‘Father Socket is expecting me,’ Elsie said, ‘to do some typing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know whether it’s convenient, now. But come in.’
‘I like that!’ Elsie said as she walked into the large front sitting-room. ‘I’ve taken the afternoon off from the coffee bar especially to help Father Socket. So I should hope it is convenient.’
‘I daresay it will be,’ Mike Garland said. ‘Take a seat.’
Elsie was irritated when he said ‘Take a seat’, for on all the chairs in the room were cushions that she herself had made for Father Socket, and this obviously gave her rights which rose above formalities. She had not expected to see this strange man with his peculiar garb in Father Socket’s flat. She usually walked straight in-to the kitchen and put the kettle on the gas.
Elsie heard voices from Father Socket’s bedroom. She wondered if the Master was ill, but did not like to investigate in the presence of the stranger.
The room was hung with Chinese scrolls which reached to the low bookcases. These contained the books of which Elsie had made a list, and for each of which, under the Master’s instructions, she had made an index card. The Master was learned. He was a real priest, he told her, ordained by no man-made bishop but by Fire and the Holy Ghost; and a range of brightly woven vestments was hung in a cupboard in his bedroom to prove it.
Elsie had never before been to Father Socket’s on a Saturday afternoon. Thursday afternoon was her usual time, and it was then she typed his manuscripts, over and over again — for he was always revising them, never satisfied, like the true Master of writing that he was.
‘He ought to pay you for all that work,’ Alice had said. But to Elsie it was a labour of love typing out his papers on the subjects of the Cabbala, Theosophy, Witchcraft, Spiritualism, and Bacon wrote Shakespeare, besides many other topics.
‘It’s a labour of love,’ Elsie said to Alice. After all, Alice had Patrick; and it was nice for a girl to have someone on the spiritual side of life. Men like Father Socket lifted one up whereas young men so often pulled one down.
‘You’ve got queer tastes,’ Alice had said the day before, sitting in the window with Elsie, at dusk.
‘There isn’t any sex between Father Socket and me,’ Elsie said.
‘That’s a detail,’ Alice said.
‘He smells of a perfume, like musk or incense,’ Elsie said.
‘You always smell things,’ Alice said.
‘Patrick smells of goat, like a real bachelor.’
‘Go on with you. Patrick’s a man of the world. He’s been married.’
‘That boy Matthew Finch who’d been eating onions that time…. It’s terrible, the smell of onions. Because I used to sleep beside my uncle, we were all in the one room, in Sheffield where I was born. My uncle was the only one of them that didn’t drink, drink, drink. So I went with Matthew and yet afterwards I didn’t like myself for it. It’s all explained in psychology.’
‘Disgusting,’ Alice whispered. ‘Onions.’
They laughed as they sat in the darkening room, in a down-scale trill, one following the other.
It wasn’t funny at the time,’ Elsie whispered. ‘He didn’t go right on to the end in case I got a baby, I suppose. That’s what makes me really upset; when they go so far and no farther.’
‘You don’t want a baby without a man to marry you,’ Alice said.
‘It makes you feel there’s not much of a man in them when they only go so far.’
‘If Patrick wasn’t the man he is,’ Alice said, ‘he wouldn’t be much of a man.’
‘I always said he wasn’t much of a man to look at. Thin about the thighs. You can’t disguise it.’
‘But he’s so different to other men. Patrick treats you with a difference.’
‘Oh yes, he’s all talk. Still, talk makes a difference. Father Socket talks beautifully. That’s what gets me, Alice. The boys are after one thing and one thing only, but a man who’s a bit older and can talk, and if he’s got a beautiful voice…’
They sat hand-in-hand on the window seat and looked down on the lights of long Ebury Street.
‘Yes,’ Alice said, ‘I suppose the main thing about Patrick is the talk.’
‘Do you think he’s going to marry you?’
‘Of course. As soon as the divorce comes through.’
‘I can’t believe in that divorce, you know.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Are you sure he’s got a wife?’
‘He says so.’
‘You don’t look well, Alice.’
‘No, it’s difficult for a diabetic in pregnancy. I’ve got a craving for parsnips, too. I’d like a whole plate of parsnips.’
‘Aren’t you afraid of Patrick?’
‘Afraid? What is there to be afraid of?’
‘Well, nothing that you know about. It’s all those things you don’t know about him. They say, about his forgeries—’
‘Yes,’ said Alice’s voice in the dark, ‘I’m afraid of the things I don’t know. I don’t want to know.’
‘I feel the same,’ Elsie said as she sat, almost invisible, ‘about the Master.’
‘You’re not tied to him,’ Alice said, ‘like I am to Patrick.’
‘But there’s a bond between the Master and me.’
‘He’s got a hold on you,’ Alice said. ‘Shall we put the light on?’
‘Not yet,’ Elsie said. ‘I go on Thursdays and I do a bit of typing and then I stop. And he talks and reads poetry. Then I do a bit more typing. Then he reads me a bit of what he’s just written of his spiritual autobiography.’
‘Patrick recites poetry,’ Alice said.
‘Father Socket’s voice is beautiful. He was brought up in a big rectory and he broke away from the Church of England. It’s true you don’t have to go to church to believe in God. I agree with that. Father Socket knows psychology.’
‘Put on the light,’ Alice
said, and, when Elsie had switched on the light she jumped from her seat, and now they spoke aloud.
‘He ought to pay you for all that work. We’re both of us far too soft,’ Alice said.
‘It’s a labour of love,’ Elsie said. ‘I’m going to his flat tomorrow afternoon. He asked me specially to come, so I’ve put off the coffee bar.’
‘That’s money down the drain,’ Alice said. ‘At least Patrick gives me a bit of money.’
‘So he ought, in your condition. But where does he get the money?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alice said.
‘He’s hiding something from you,’ Elsie said.
‘There’s always something hidden,’ Alice said, in such a way that Elsie was startled, uncertain whether Alice knew about the letter concealed in her handbag. She looked at Alice, to make sure, but Alice was holding her stomach and pulling her face with indigestion.
The gilt sunlight which sometimes happens in November poured through the window of Father Socket’s flat on Saturday afternoon. Elsie waited, withering, in the sitting room, listening to the voices coming now from the spare bedroom where apparently the stranger was lodged. Father Socket must have put him up for the night, and here he was staying on to the afternoon and keeping him back from his work.
Then she knew, of course, with a kind of exasperation, that the stranger was one of the Master’s friends, and that they were all perverts, and she had really known it all along.
The voices rose to the pitch of a quarrel of which Elsie could not make out all the words. She went and stood by the door, the better to hear. ‘… where to draw the line, Mike… appearance’s sake… the girl is…’ and then a door closed, muting the voices to a querulous rise and fall. This filled her with irritation and impatience. She was inclined to leave the flat with a banging of doors, or at least to bang one door as a token. But then she thought of the letter in her handbag, and what palpitations she had gone through to obtain it, what risks taken. She had looked forward all the previous day and part of the night to her triumphant casual opening of her handbag and the producing of the letter before the astonished eyes of the Master.
Last week he had said, ‘Do you know the man well?’
‘I’ve seen him in the coffee bar. He’s quite nice. He works in a handwriting museum.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Father Socket, ‘in the City.’
‘He isn’t very strong. He takes fits. He’s quite nice-looking, but a bit odd, you know, fussy in his ways. You can tell from the way they put their sugar in the coffee, and stir it, and place the spoon back in the saucer. And his paper neatly folded with his umbrella and all that. A confirmed bachelor. Not that I mean anything by that. He’s a friend of a friend of mine, an Irish fellow called Matthew Finch.’
‘And this man’s name?’
‘Ronald somebody. Well, Matthew was in the “Oriflamme” with him the other night, and talking to Alice. He was talking about this letter that Patrick Seton wrote. Ronald is to test it for forgery. The police gave it to him and___’
‘Not the police, surely. It would be in the hands of the police solicitor. Unless the case is in abeyance, in which case, possibly the police…’
‘One or the other. So Ronald’s got this letter that Patrick forged. Alice was upset and I saw her next day. She wants to try to get the letter back through Matthew. Matthew is keen on Alice.’
Father Socket had thought this unwise. So, when she came to talk it over with him, had Elsie.
‘Alice may even go a long way with Matthew,’ she said, ‘to get that letter.’
‘Do you know where this Ronald lives?’ Father Socket had said.
‘I could find out.’
‘I should like to have a look at that letter myself,’ he said.
‘Would you?’ she said.
Here, then, she was with the letter in her handbag, and Father Socket quarrelling in the spare bedroom with the big man in the green and white striped dressing-gown, and she sitting waiting like a fool, having lost an afternoon’s work at the coffee-bar.
She opened the door of the sitting-room and bumped into Father Socket just as he was about to enter. His small face looked puffy and red. He looked suspicious at finding her so near to the door and seemed convinced she had been listening to the quarrel.
‘I’ve been waiting a long time, Father,’ she said.
‘Oh, poor creature! Oh, poor creature! I am so very sorry. Come and sit down.’
He wore his best cassock and his broad hips swung under it as he put to rights a deep pink chrysanthemum which had fallen from its vase.
He turned and jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the stranger in the other room. The gesture startled Elsie, for she had never seen the Master anything but utterly dignified. He mouthed and breathed a message to her, contorting his face as if she were a lip-reader. ‘My — friend’s — up — set. Won’t — remove — dressing-gown.’
‘Who is he, Father?’ Elsie said in a normal voice.
He hunched his shoulders and flapped his hands to hush her.
She whispered, ‘Who is he?’
The Master jerked his thumb once more over his shoulder and was about to convey a reply when Mike Garland walked in. He still wore his bright dressing-gown.
‘Ah, Mike,’ said Father Socket, pulling himself straight, ‘come and meet my amanuensis Miss Elsie Forrest. Dr. Garland, Miss Forrest.’
‘We’ve already met, at the door,’ Elsie said.
‘How do you do,’ Mike said. He sat down defiantly.
‘Something unforeseen has arisen,’ Father Socket said to Elsie, ‘and so I’m afraid I’ve brought you here on a wild-goose chase, my dear, this afternoon. However, I will make some tea and I must read you my new translation of Horace. Where did I put it?’
‘I’ll make tea,’ Elsie said.
‘I shall prepare some tea,’ Mike said. Elsie noticed as he left the room that he wore lipstick.
‘Have you received any information from young Matthew?’ Father Socket said to her softly when Mike had left the room.
‘Matthew?’
‘Or young Ronald? — The letter I mean. I don’t’ of course want Mike to know anything about this. —But you haven’t had time to investigate the possibility of obtaining it….’
Elsie clutched her handbag, indignant and very put out, especially by Mike’s lipstick. ‘No, I haven’t any news,’ she said. ‘I expect the letter is locked away somewhere safely.’
Father Socket sighed and looked at the carpet.
‘Poor Patrick Seton!’ he said. ‘He does need taking care of. I feel if I could get matters in hand I could do something for Patrick.’
‘He isn’t any good to Alice. I don’t mind if he gets sent for trial!’
‘Hush,’ said Father Socket, looking at the door.
‘I’d like to see Alice rid of him,’ she said, sitting down in a hard high chair, ‘good medium though he is, he’s—’
‘Ah,’ said Father Socket, ‘Patrick has many enemies.’ Again he jerked his thumb over his shoulder and mouthed, ‘He’s — one of— them.’ He pulled his spine straight in his chair and said, ‘But I am not an enemy. What Patrick needs is control. Someone ought to control him. Find out about that letter, my dear, find out. If once we know where it is—where young Ronald keeps it, I daresay we should be able to obtain it. I am thinking in dear Patrick’s best interests. I have no wish to impede the course of the law of the kingdom, but the laws of the spirit come first, we ought to serve God rather than man, we must—— Ah — tea!’ He rose to admit the tinkling tea-tray with Mike rosily proceeding behind it.
During tea, Elsie ate a slice of walnut cake very quickly because she was so very upset inside at the sight of Mike in his highly sexual attire. She clutched her handbag all the closer, and was damned if she would part with the letter now that Father Socket had let her down so badly. Be damned to his paternal solicitude for dear Patrick. She should have known before, indeed she had really, inside, known all
along that the Master was homosexual as Alice had said. She could have put up with it, even preferred it, if he had no sex at all, was above sex, but if there was one thing she detested…
Father Socket, meanwhile, said, ‘Let me read you my little translation of the much-translated Horace, one, nine. Mine pays special attention to alliterative quantities…’
The impudence of it, Elsie thought, talking round me all these months, and reading his poetry, and there I’ve been typing out his papers, page after page, Thursday after Thursday…
‘Mount Soracte’s dazzling snow,’ boomed Father Socket in his reading voice, ‘piling upon the branches…’
‘Stroking my hair and saying, “There, my child,” week after week, and putting on,’ thought Elsie, ‘the holiness and spiritual life and all that.’
‘So, Thaliarch…’ said Father Socket.
Elsie swallowed the last of her cake and washed it down with the last of her tea. She gathered together her gloves and clutched her handbag. Father Socket, without interrupting his reading, moved one hand to bid her sit still. In her distress she had swallowed a whole walnut off the top of the cake, and it went down in a lump, causing her face to go red. Mike Garland looked at her and smiled with one half of his mouth.
Father Socket read ‘on,
‘All else trust to the gods by whose command
Contending winds and seething seas desist,
Until the sacred cypress-tree
And ancient ash no longer quake.’
Father Socket interrupted himself to tap the paper with his forefinger. ‘Now the cypress tree was sacred,’ he said, ‘and although Horace…’
Elsie rose and sped to the door.
‘Elsie!’ said Father Socket, in a kind of wail, letting his paper drop.
‘Elsie!’ he called after her as she opened the outside door and ran down the stairs. ‘What’s wrong with the girl? — Elsie, this is quite a proper decent poem, I assure you. It is Horace, it is merely—’