Mrs Hoop touched the side of her head. ‘He’s deprived,’ she murmured to Lake. ‘Like a babe in arms.’
‘Wake up,’ commanded Edward, shaking Beach roughly by the arm. ‘You’re not to lend that man your teeth, Mr Beach, and you’re not ever to sign a will in Mrs Hoop’s favour. D’you hear me now? They’re out to get what they can. They’ve ruined the lives of innocent people.’
‘What’s the trouble?’ said Beach.
‘These two are wicked in their ways. They’re up to no good. Don’t do anything against your will, Mr Beach, while you still have a will to command. I’m impelled myself. There’s good left in the world, Mr Beach: don’t be a party to evil.’
‘Listen to His Holiness,’ said Mrs Hoop.
‘If you could oblige me, Mr Beach,’ said Lake, holding out his hand.
‘What does he want?’ said Beach.
‘The borrow of your teeth,’ said Mrs Hoop casually, glancing at Edward.
‘Don’t lend them,’ said Edward. ‘And don’t sign a will as long as you live.’
‘You bought the will-forms yourself,’ Mrs Hoop reminded him, with bitterness in her voice. ‘You’re a Judas Iscariot.’
‘That traitor,’ said Beach. ‘What’s this bald-headed man want?’
‘The loan of your teeth, old Beach. He’s got a big engagement on tomorrow in the a.m. You’ll have them back in no time.’
Edward saw Lake with his hand held out, colour beginning to mount in his cheeks, and Mrs Hoop looking angry, and Beach glancing at the pair of them. He knew that he would never now return to the Hand and Plough and sit with Beach and Mrs Hoop. He had made an enemy of Mrs Hoop, and he felt a certain guilt that he had not previously warned Beach with the vehemence that he had found tonight.
‘Don’t ever marry her, Mr Beach,’ he exclaimed with passion now. ‘She is an enemy of love, like Septimus Tuam. What happened to your teeth?’ he demanded of Lake, staring intently at him. ‘How did you get that lump? Who hit you?’
‘An ungrateful person,’ said Lake. ‘Not that I see it matters.’
‘Was it your wife? Do you call your wife an ungrateful person?’
‘I am not married in any way whatsoever. I was assaulted by a strong-limbed girl who surprised me.’
‘I knew it!’ cried Edward. ‘I saw it there in your eyes: you are an enemy of love, like Mrs Hoop. You and she and Septimus Tuam. You ill-treated some beautiful woman.’
‘Brownie is hardly beautiful,’ said Lake, and laughed.
‘That is in the eye of the beholder. Don’t you know that?’
‘It is time you went home, Edward,’ said Mrs Hoop, ‘sounding off like that. Mr Lake came here as a guest. More tea, Mr Lake?’
‘You are an enemy of love, Mrs Hoop.’
‘Go home and rest, Edward.’
‘That is what I learned. I was sitting in the back garden of St Gregory’s playing draughts with Brother Toby and I felt impelled to go into the house, to wash my hands actually. Before I knew where I was, I was walking down the steps with a bag in my hand, thinking I was a great fellow and could take the world in my stride again. There was love for his fellow-men in the heart of Brother Toby as he sat there waiting for me, and in the heart of Brother Edmund too, and in all other hearts. There’s love in the heart of Lady Dolores and Mrs Bolsover and Mr Bolsover, and poor Mrs Poache. Love is everywhere, Mr Lake. There’s love in the heart of old Beach there, and there’s love in all the letters and the files, all over the love department. But there’s no love at all where Septimus Tuam belongs: there’s no love on the hoardings of Britain, Mr Lake.’
‘Quite,’ said Lake.
‘There are people who are the enemies of love,’ said Edward. ‘As Mrs Hoop is, and Septimus Tuam. You too, Mr Lake. Maybe you all should die.’
‘I’m not giving anyone my teeth,’ said Beach, rising to his feet. ‘I’m surprised at Emily Hoop.’
‘I’m scheduled to kill Septimus Tuam,’ said Edward in a meditative voice. ‘I might as well be hung for a sheep.’
‘You’ve been wasting my time,’ exclaimed Lake, frightened to hear a youth speak so casually of murder, and ill-disposed to all members of the company since it was now clear that the old man did not wish to part with his teeth.
‘Why do you think I have time to waste?’ shouted Lake, leaving the room and banging the door behind him. He rushed from Mrs Hoop’s house and ran along the narrow street outside, not knowing what to do, since it was now past midnight.
Lake walked the streets of Putney without thinking of a solution to his problem. He rang the bells of several dentists’ houses, but achieved no success in his conversation with the men when they appeared in their night attire. Eventually, tired and full of spite against the three people who had misled him, he turned into a police station to report the threats that had been issued.
‘A man called Septimus Tuam is threatened with murder,’ said Lake. ‘I’m reporting the matter as a citizen should.’
The desk sergeant, dozing over a dossier, thought he was dreaming. ‘I’m getting right fed up with you,’ he cried in his sleep, and then woke up and asked Lake what he wanted. He heard the statement repeated in lisping tones and said to himself that he’d recognize that voice anywhere.
‘Name and address?’ snapped the desk sergeant, and Lake supplied him with both. ‘I’ll want proof of that,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘Letters, papers, driver’s licence.’
‘Certainly,’ said Lake cooperatively. ‘And here’s a business card with my daytime address and telephone number. I am always pleased to assist the police in any way whatsoever. The law must be kept, and seen to be –’
‘Thank you,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘Good night now, sir. And lay off the phoning.’
‘Phoning?’ said Lake and went on to tell the story of a meeting with three people and how the people had turned threatening. ‘It’s atrocious,’ said Lake, ‘things like that.’
‘There’s lots of atrocious things,’ said the desk sergeant in a sour voice. ‘Off you go then.’
‘I’m in a bit of a predicament, actually,’ said Lake.
‘We’ll look into the matter as best we can. It’s all extremely vague, with not a clue or a word of evidence that might be used. On no account telephone us, sir: the entire station has been at sixes and sevens –’
‘I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a set of dentures about the place?’
‘Dentures, sir?’
‘You wouldn’t have anything taken off a body or the like? What’s below in the cells tonight, sergeant. If there’s any criminal who’d –’
‘I’ve had a hard week,’ replied the desk sergeant, ‘ending up with a bit of night duty. Do you understand that? You’ve given me your information, sir, and I’d now be obliged if you’d move along. If a single further call comes through on the subject of your friend Septimus Tuam, there’ll be a load of trouble for you, Mr Lake. It is an extremely grave offence to hamper the police in the dispatch of their duties.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Impersonation on the telephone. False reports and insulting language. Coming into a police station in the middle of the night asking for false teeth. Get the hell out of here.’
Later that night Miss Brown’s eye fell on a small white object on the floor. That object she kept, placing it in a box full of childhood treasures: sea-shells, pebbles, and old, oddly shaped keys. In the days that immediately followed, Miss Brown often opened that box and held between her fingers the tooth that had so often smiled at her, a memento of deceit, a lesson in itself. At first she grieved over the tooth, but in time her eyes stayed dry as they stared at it. And then one day, years later and in a different place, Miss Brown laughed at the tooth and at her own great folly. She threw the tooth into a fire that burned beside her, and she said to herself that she had lived and learned.
23
Edward ate his breakfast gloomily. He was sorry that he had never taught old
Beach to play draughts properly, and he was sorry too, despite his reservations about Mrs Hoop, that there was nobody now except his landlady and Lady Dolores whom he knew at all well in London. He couldn’t visualize his future. He didn’t know whether his future lay in the love department or back in St Gregory’s, or out in some friendly colony, planting roots in the ground, and he supposed that if he faced facts he would recognize that his future lay within the hangman’s noose. He had dreamed in the night that he was being born all over again, and wondered what that meant. He had seen his mother’s open mouth, gasping for breath, and he had felt her slipping away from him as she died.
‘All right?’ said Edward’s landlady.
‘All right,’ said Edward. He rose from the table and went to his room. He put his bicycle clips on his ankles and his gloves in the pocket of his jacket. He descended the stairs and wheeled the bicycle out of the hall, down two steps and on to the street. He sighed, and rode away on it.
Septimus Tuam lay quietly on his bed, reflecting that his post office account had reached the total of four thousand seven hundred and forty-two pounds seventeen shillings. He had thought of that the night before, and been pleased. He had thought of it again that morning when the cablegram had arrived from Mrs FitzArthur. Blanche FitzArthur was returning: Blanche FitzArthur would be in London tonight and had said in her cablegram that she wished to see him as soon as she arrived. Twice a year, at Christmas and on his birthday, Septimus Tuam reflected that Mrs FitzArthur was arguably the most generous woman he had ever known. He tapped his teeth with his right thumbnail, considering how best to act.
‘I think a tea-shop would be best,’ he said into the telephone an hour later. ‘I have very little time, as an old aunt of mine is returning from the United States. She demands my instant attention, so she says. The elderly –’
‘I have something to tell you, too,’ said Eve.
‘Tell me at four o’clock,’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘Why not do that, dear?’
Eve replaced the telephone receiver, wondering about James, and then the telephone rang again and James said:
‘I am here in Gloucestershire. I have written a letter of resignation. It only remains to file a suit for divorce, if that is the expression.’
‘What are you doing, James?’
‘I am talking to you from a public call-box. I am going to start up this market garden again. It’s as good a thing to do as any other.’
‘You are doing nothing. You’re clowning around while a man is going to his death-bed.’
‘Now look here, sir –’
‘Look nowhere,’ cried Mrs Poache. ‘Why hasn’t there been an arrest?’
‘I warned you last night,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘I’ve given you fair do’s. We’re coming to get you.’
The desk sergeant replaced his receiver and ordered that a car be sent for the female impersonator who was disrupting the business of the station. ‘I have the gen on him,’ he said. ‘Voluntarily given. Though God knows, he’s probably moved up to Scotland by now.’
‘Was it a trunk call, Sarge?’ said a young constable.
‘How the hell do I know if it was a trunk call?’
‘Better come with the car, Sarge,’ said an older man, ‘for purposes of identification.’
‘Maybe I had,’ said the sergeant.
Mrs Poache, believing that the police had somehow managed to trace her telephone calls and were now coming to arrest her, put on a hat and left her house. She stood at the corner of the road, glancing this way and that, feeling a little frightened. She imagined she’d see the police car draw up by the house and policemen swarming all over the place. But she walked about for half an hour, keeping an eye on the house, and nothing happened. She returned apprehensively and with a lowness of spirit, and, feeling that she had betrayed Septimus Tuam, she resolved to make no more telephone calls to the desk sergeant.
‘We have this morning received the resignation of Mr Bolsover,’ said Mr Linderfoot, ‘so we can in fact dispense with what you were to tell us, Lake. Thank you for your help.’
The board-men were relieved that matters had turned out as they had: all awkwardness, embarrassment, and effort had thus been avoided. James Bolsover, being unfit to cope with the pressure of his work, had chosen wisely and well. What use, the board-men thought, in hanging on when all was in clear and simple disarray? What point in being captain of a sinking soul? They had all felt, at one time or another in their rise to the heights of the business world, that the journey might be too much for them; and they sympathized briefly with the one who had fallen by the wayside before their very eyes.
‘What of this Lake?’ Mr Clinger had asked before Lake’s arrival in the board-room. ‘Is he a likely successor?’
‘He’s a lively wire,’ said Mr Linderfoot. ‘I’ll certainly say that.’
‘He has balded early,’ said another man.
‘Do we hold it against him?’ asked Mr Clinger.
‘Baldness is hardly a flaw,’ said Mr Linderfoot. He was thinking of Miss Brown; in his mind he had just composed a note to her, not knowing that she had already telephoned the office to say that she would not be returning to it. ‘It’s not a chap’s fault,’ said Mr Linderfoot, ‘if he hasn’t any hair, is it?’
‘I merely remarked upon the fact,’ the other man said. ‘May I not?’
‘It has nothing to do with the issue,’ said Mr Clinger firmly, ‘whether or not the man has balded early. We do not hold it against Linderfoot that he is uncommonly fat, or against Poache that he is silent.’
‘We held it against Bolsover that –’
‘Bolsover was a different case,’ cried Mr Clinger. ‘He came with white stuff on his clothes. His ways got on to our nerves. The fellow was driving us to an early grave.’
At that moment Lake tapped on the door of the board-room. He entered and stood before the eight men with his mouth closed; and when he heard what Mr Linderfoot had to say he closed his eyes as well, with relief. He had heard of fortune favouring the brave and of Lord Luck being on the side of businessmen who did not flinch. ‘Thank you,’ he said, keeping his lips as close together as possible. So Bolsover had read the writing on the wall, had he? Well, it was only to be expected, really. He thought to himself that he would walk from the board-room and go straight to a good dentist and have his predicament attended to. In an hour’s time he would be able to smile as he was used to smiling; and he would go along then and say a few words to Mr Linderfoot in private, and see if perhaps Mr Linderfoot had a few words to say to him. Afterwards, he would stroll into the office that had once been Bolsover’s and see what changes he would make when the time came. Brownie, it seemed, had gone for ever, which in the circumstances was understandable enough. Nostalgically, Lake remembered the words of his father and smelt again the smoke from Jack Finch’s pipe: he wished they could see him now, with his cup brimming up so nicely, fulfilling his promise.
Three policemen then entered the board-room and crossed to where Lake was standing. Two of them stood on either side of him, while the third read out a charge in a rapid voice. They arrested him and led him from the room.
Afterwards, Lake reflected that the promised land he had prepared for himself over several years had evaporated in a matter of seconds, like a mirage. The board-men, hearing a charge that was difficult to understand, witnessed the sensational removal of one of their employees by uniformed officers, and at once saw Lake as a criminal. They thought of fraud and embezzlement, confidence trickeries, theft, devious financial manipulation of many kinds. Within thirty seconds Lake became an outlaw in their minds, an untouchable in their world of business.
Edward followed Mrs Bolsover from her house to the tea-shop called the Bluebird Café. He saw the little car bobbing ahead of him through the traffic, but he had little difficulty in keeping up with it, or in finding it again when it passed from his sight. He followed Mrs Bolsover into the Bluebird Café, and sat at a table close to the one she chose herself. He hid
behind an old copy of the Daily Telegraph which he carried with him for that purpose, guessing that Septimus Tuam would shortly appear and knowing that Septimus Tuam possessed a swift and sharp eye. Septimus Tuam did in fact arrive, but Edward heard little of the conversation that followed.
‘This aunt of mine is coming back. Mrs FitzArthur. I haven’t much time, dear.’
‘I’ve told James,’ said Eve.
‘James?’
‘My husband. I’ve told him all about us.’
Septimus Tuam sighed. He wished they wouldn’t do that. He said:
‘Why did you do that, dear?’
‘So that I could ask him for a divorce.’
‘Divorce? What on earth do you want to divorce the man for?’
Eve looked surprised. ‘Tea,’ she said to a waitress who had come and stood by the table. ‘Nothing else for me.’
‘I’d like an éclair,’ said Septimus Tuam.
The waitress went away. Eve said:
‘I want to divorce James so that you and I can get married. Is there any other reason for divorce in such circumstances?’
‘But what about those kiddies of yours for a start, dear? How can we organize all that?’
‘We must work all that out. Divorce takes place every day.’
‘Divorce is not good for children. You must surely know it. Thank you,’ added Septimus Tuam to the waitress, who had placed four éclairs within his reach. ‘Is it real cream?’
‘Indeed it is, sir,’ said the waitress.
‘Divorce is a modern thing,’ said Eve. ‘There are children everywhere whose parents have been divorced, who live quite contentedly with one or the other. Anyway, why are we arguing?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘Of course I had to tell James. I couldn’t go on, not having James know. I’m not that kind of woman.’
‘That’s why I love you,’ said Septimus Tuam, with cream on his stern lips. He said it automatically, and regretted the words at once: they were words ill-suited to the occasion.
‘I am faithful at heart,’ said Eve. ‘As I have said before, I believe in marriage.’