‘Don’t go saying such ignorant things, dear,’ was her comment. ‘You need a tonic. You’re run down like. I thought you was pale when you was drinking your cup of tea yesterday. See the doctor. That’s what you want to do. Don’t worry about that ghost stuff. I never heard such a thing in all my days. You’re sickly, that’s what you are.’
Billson seemed partially disposed to accept this display of incredulity, either because it must have been reassuring to think she had been mistaken about the ‘ghost’, or because any appeal to her own poor state of health was always sympathetic to her. At that early stage of the day, she was in any case less agitated than might have been expected in the light of the supernatural appearance she claimed to have witnessed. She was excited, not more than that. It was true she muttered something about ‘giving notice’, but the phrase was spoken without force, obviously making no impression whatever on Mrs Gullick. For me, it was painful to find people existed who did not ‘believe’ in the Stonehurst ghosts, whose uneasy shades provided an exciting element of local life with which I did not at all wish to dispense. My opinion of Mrs Gullick fell immediately, even though she was said by Edith to be the only person in the house who could ‘get any work out of’ Mercy. I found her scepticism insipid. However, a much more disturbing incident took place a little later in the morning. My mother had just announced that she was about to put on her hat for church, when Albert appeared at the door. He looked very upset. In his hand was a letter.
‘May I have a word with you, Madam?’
I was sent off to get ready for church. When I returned, my mother and Albert were still talking. I was told to wait outside. After a minute or two, Albert came out. My mother followed him to the door.
‘I do quite understand, Albert,’ she said. ‘Of course we shall all be very, very sorry.’
Albert nodded heavily several times. He was too moved to speak.
‘Very sorry, indeed. It has been a long time …’
‘I thought I’d better tell you first, ma’am,’ said Albert, ‘so you could explain to the Captain. Didn’t want it to come to him as a shock. He takes on so. I’ve had this letter since yesterday. Couldn’t bring myself to show you at first. Haven’t slept for thinking of it.’
‘Yes, Albert.’
My father was out that morning, as it happened. He had to look in at the Orderly Room that Sunday, for some reason, and was not expected home until midday. Albert swallowed several times. He looked quite haggard. The flesh of his face was pouched. I could see the situation was upsetting my mother too. Albert’s voice shook when he spoke at last.
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I’ve been goaded to this.’
He shuffled off to the kitchen. There were tears in his eyes. I was aware that I had witnessed a painful scene, although, as so often happens in childhood, I could not analyse the circumstances. I felt unhappy myself. I knew now why I had foreseen something would go wrong as soon as I had woken that morning.
‘Come along,’ said my mother, turning quickly and giving her own eyes a dab, ‘we shall be late for church. Is Edith ready?’
‘What did Albert want?’
‘Promise to keep a secret, if I tell you?’
‘I promise.’
‘Albert is going to get married.’
‘To Billson?’
My mother laughed aloud.
‘No,’ she said, ‘to someone he knows who lives at Bristol.’
‘Will he go away?’
‘I’m afraid he will.’
‘Soon?’
‘Not for a month or two, he says. But you really must not say anything about it. I ought not to have told you, I suppose. Run along at once for Edith. We are going to be dreadfully late.’
My mother was greatly given to stating matters openly. In this particular case, she was probably well aware that Albert himself would not be slow to reveal his future plans to the rest of the household. No very grave risk was therefore run in telling me the secret. At the same time, such news would never have been disclosed by my father, a confirmed maker of mysteries, who disliked imparting information of any but a didactic kind. If forced to offer an expose of any given situation, he was always in favour of presenting the substance of what he had to say in terms more or less oracular. Nothing in life – such was his view – must ever be thought of as easy of access. There is something to be said for that approach. Certainly few enough things in life are easy. On the other hand, human affairs can become even additionally clouded with obscurity if the most complicated forms of definition are always deliberately sought. My father really hated clarity. This was a habit of mind that sometimes led him into trouble with others, when, unable to appreciate his delight in complicated metaphor and ironic allusion, they had not the faintest idea what he was talking about. It was, therefore, by the merest chance that I was immediately put in possession of the information that Albert was leaving. I should never have learnt that so early if my father had been at home. We went off to church, my mother, Edith and I. The morning service took about an hour. We arrived home just as my father drove up in the car on his return from barracks. Edith disappeared towards the day-nursery.
‘It’s happened,’ said my mother.
‘What?’
My father’s face immediately became very grave.
‘Albert.’
‘Going?’
‘Getting married at last.’
‘Oh, lord.’
‘We thought it was coming, didn’t we?’
‘Oh, lord, how awful.’
‘We’ll get someone else.’
‘Never another cook like Albert.’
‘We may find someone quite good.’
‘They won’t live up here.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll find somebody. I’ll start on Monday.’
‘I knew this was going to happen.’
‘We both did.’
‘That doesn’t help.’
‘Never mind.’
‘But today, of all days, oh, lord.’
Their reception of the news showed my parents were already to some extent prepared for this blow to fall, anyway accepted, more or less philosophically, that Albert’s withdrawal into married life was bound to come sooner or later. Nevertheless, it was a disturbing state of affairs: the termination of a long and close relationship. No more was said at that moment because – a very rare occurrence – the telegraph-boy pedalled up on his bicycle. My parents were still standing on the doorstep.
‘Name of Jenkins?’
My father took the telegram with an air of authority. His face had lightened a little now that he was resigned to Albert’s departure, but the features became overcast again as he tore open the envelope, as if the news it brought must inevitably be bad.
‘Who can it be?’ said my mother, no less disturbed.
My father studied the message. He went suddenly red with annoyance.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said to the boy, in a voice of command.
My mother followed him into the hall. I hung about in the background.
‘For goodness’ sake say what’s happened,’ begged my mother, in an agony of fearing the worst.
My father read aloud the words, his voice shaking with irritation:
‘Can you house me Sunday night talk business arrive tea-time Giles.’
He held the telegram away from him as if fear of some awful taint threatened him by its contact. There was a long pause. Disturbing situations were certainly arising.
‘Really too bad of him,’ said my mother at last.
‘Damn Giles.’
‘Inconsiderate, too, to leave it so late.’
‘He can’t come.’
‘We must think it over.’
‘There is no time. I won’t have him.’
‘Where is he?’
‘It’s sent from Aldershot.’
‘Quite close then.’
‘What the devil is Giles doing in Aldershot?’
My parents looked at each other without
speaking. Things could not be worse. Uncle Giles was not much more than a dozen miles away.
‘We heard there was some trouble, didn’t we?’
‘Of course there is trouble,’ said my father. ‘Was there ever a moment when Giles was not in trouble? Don’t be silly.’
There was another long pause.
‘The telegram was reply-paid,’ said my mother at last, not able to bear the thought that the boy might be bored or inconvenienced by this delay in drafting an answer. ‘The boy is still waiting.’
‘Damn the boy.’
My father was in despair. As I have said, all tragedies for him were major tragedies, and here was one following close on the heels of another.
‘With the Converses coming too.’
‘Can’t we put Giles off?’
‘He may really need help.’
‘Of course he needs help. He always needs help.’
‘Difficult to say he can’t come.’
‘Just like Giles to choose this day of all days.’
‘Besides, I never think Giles and Aylmer Conyers get on very well together.’
‘Get on well together,’ said my father. ‘They can’t stand each other.’
The thought of this deep mutual antipathy existing between his brother and General Conyers cheered my father a little. He even laughed.
‘I suppose Giles will have to come,’ he admitted.
‘No way out.’
‘The Conyerses will leave before he arrives.’
‘They won’t stay late if they are motoring home.’
‘Shall I tell Giles he can come?’
‘We must, I think.’
‘It may be just as well to know what he is up to. I hope it is not a serious mess this time. I wouldn’t trust that fellow an inch who got him the bucket-shop job.’
Uncle Giles did not at all mind annoying his relations. That was all part of his policy of making war on society. In fact, up to a point, the more he annoyed his relations, the better he was pleased. At the same time, his interests were to some extent bound up with remaining on reasonably good terms with my father. Since he had quarrelled irretrievably with his other brother, my father – also on poorish terms with Uncle Martin, whom we never saw – represented one of the few stable elements in the vicissitudes of Uncle Giles’s life. He and my father irritated, without actually disliking, each other. Uncle Giles, the older; my father, the more firmly established; the honours were fairly even, when it came to conflict. For example, my father disapproved, probably rightly, of the form taken by his brother’s ‘outside broking’, although I do not know how much the firm for which Uncle Giles worked deserved the imputation of sharp practice. Certainly my father questioned its bona fides and was never tired of declaring that he would advise no friend of his to do business there. At the same time, his own interest in the stock market prevented him from refraining entirely from all financial discussion with Uncle Giles, with whom he was in any case indissolubly linked, financially speaking, by the terms of a will. Their argument would often become acrimonious, but I suspect my father sometimes took “Uncle Giles’s advice about investments, especially if a ‘bit of a gamble’ was in the air.
‘Shall I say Expect you teatime today?’
‘How is Giles going to get here?’
‘I won’t fetch him. It can’t be done. The Conyerses may not leave in time.’
My mother looked uncertain.
‘Do you think I should?’
‘You can’t. Not with other guests coming.’
‘Giles will find his way.’
‘We can be sure of that.’
My mother was right in supposing Uncle Giles perfectly capable of finding his way to any place recommended by his own interests. She was also right in thinking that Albert, after confiding his marriage plans to herself, would immediately reveal them in the kitchen. Edith described the scene later. She was having a cup of tea before church when Albert made the official announcement of his engagement. Billson had at once burst into tears. Bracey was having a ‘funny day’ – though a mild one – brought on either by regret at the necessity of resuming his duties, or, more probably, as a consequence of nervous strain after a spell in the house of his Luton sister-in-law. Accordingly, he showed no interest in the prospect of being left, as it were, in possession of the field so far as Billson was concerned. After issuing his pronouncement, Albert turned his attention to the mousse, the cooking of which always caused him great anxiety. Billson moved silently from kitchen to dining-room, and back again, laying the table miserably, red-eyed, white-faced, looking as much like a ghost as any she had described. She had taken badly Albert’s surrender to the ‘girl from Bristol’. The house had an uneasy air. I retired to my own places of resort in the garden.
The Conyers party was scheduled to arrive about one o’clock, but the notorious uncertainty of motor-cars had given rise to much head-shaking on the probability of their lateness. However, I was loitering about the outskirts of the house, not long after the telegraph-boy had disappeared on his bicycle over the horizon, when a car began painfully to climb the lower slopes of the hill. It could only contain General and Mrs Conyers. This was an unexpected excitement. I watched their slow ascent, which was jerky, like the upward movement of a funicular, but, contrary to my father’s gloomy forecast, the steep incline was negotiated without undue difficulty. I was even able to open the Stonehurst gate to admit the vehicle. There could be no doubt now of the identity of driver and passenger. By that period, of course, motorists no longer wore the peaked cap and goggles of their pioneering days, but, all the same, the General’s long check ulster and deerstalker seemed assumed to some extent ritualistically.
‘It is always cold motoring,’ my mother used to say.
The car drew up by the front door. The General, leaping from it with boundless energy, came to meet me, leaving his wife to extract herself as best she could from a pile of wraps and rugs, sufficient in number to perform a version of the Dance of the Seven Veils. Tall, distinguished, with grey moustache and flashing eyes, he held out his hand.
‘How do you do, Nicholas?’
He spoke gravely, in a tone no different from that to be used with a contemporary. There was about him a kind of fierceness, combined with a deep sense of understanding.
‘We are a little earlier than I expected,’ he said. ‘I hope your father and mother will not mind. I drove rather fast, as your mother said you lived at the back of beyond, and I am always uncertain of my own map-reading. I see now what she meant. How are they educating you up here? Do you go to school?’
‘Not yet. I have lessons with Miss Orchard.’
‘Oh, yes. Miss Orchard is the governess who teaches all the children round here. I know her well by name. What children are they?’
‘The Fenwicks, Mary Barber, Richard Vaughan, the Westmacott twins.’
‘Fenwick in the Gloucesters?’
‘Yes, I think so – the regiment that wears a badge at the back of their cap.’
‘And Mary Barber’s father?’
‘He’s in the Queen’s. Richard Vaughan’s is in the “Twenty-Fourth” – the South Wales Borderers.’
‘What about the father of the Westmacott twins?’
‘A Gunner.’
‘What sort of a Gunner?’
‘Field, but Thomas and Henry Westmacott say their father is going to get his “jacket” soon, so he may be Royal Horse Artillery by now.’
‘An exceedingly well-informed report,’ said the General. ‘You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is one of the secrets of success in life. Now take us to your parents.’
This early arrival resulted in my seeing rather more of General and Mrs Conyers than I should have done had they turned up at their appointed hour. First of all there was a brief examination of the Conyers car, a decidedly grander affair than that owned by my father, a fact which possibly curtailed the period spent over it. Since there was still time to ki
ll before luncheon, the guests were shown round the garden. Permitted to accompany the party, I walked beside my mother and Mrs Conyers, the General and my father strolling behind.
‘Has your ghost appeared again?’ asked Mrs Conyers. ‘Aylmer was fascinated when I told him your parlourmaid had seen one. He is very keen on haunted houses.’
Her husband was famous for the variety of his interests. In this particular connection – the occult one – there was some story, probably mythical, about General Conyers having taken advantage of his appointment to the Body Guard to investigate on the spot some allegedly ghostly visitation at Windsor or another of the royal palaces. This intellectually inquisitive side of the General’s character specially irked Uncle Giles, who liked to classify irreparably everyone he knew, hating to be forced to alter the pigeon-hole in which he had himself already placed any given individual.
‘Aylmer Conyers may be a good tactician,’ he used to say, ‘at least that is what he is always telling everyone – never knew such a fellow for blowing his own trumpet – but I can’t for the life of me see why he wants to lay down the law about all sorts of other matters that don’t concern him in the least. The last thing I heard was that he had taken up “psychical research”, whatever that may be.’
My father, although he would never have admitted as much to Uncle Giles, was inclined to agree with his brother in the view that General Conyers would be a more dignified figure if he accepted for himself a less universal scope of interests; so that when the General began to make inquiries about the Stonehurst ‘ghost’, my father tried to dismiss the subject out of hand.
‘A lot of nonsense, General,’ he said, ‘I assure you.’
General Conyers would have none of that.
‘External agency,’ he said, ‘that’s the point. Find it hard to believe in actual entities myself. Ought to be looked into more. One heard some strange stories when one was in India. The East is full of that sort of thing – a lot pure invention, of course.’