The Girl in Blue (4 page)

‘Why
don’t you, Bill? I know he’s got his work and you give him an allowance of a
sort, but a man of Jerry’s age.., what is he now? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?…
ought to have capital. He might want to do all sorts of things with it.’

‘You
never said a truer word. To start with he’d marry that Upshaw female he’s gone
and got engaged to.’

‘I didn’t
know he was engaged.’

‘A girl
called Vera Upshaw.’

‘Any
connection of Charlie Upshaw?’

‘His
daughter.’

‘I used
to know Charlie rather well years ago. Before he died, of course. Didn’t he
marry Flora Faye?’

‘He
did.’

‘Is the
daughter on the stage?’

‘No.
She writes. Not the sort of stuff I like, but I believe many people do. Slim
volumes with titles like
Daffodil Days
and
Morning’s At Seven.
Whimsical
essays.’

‘Good
God.’

‘Yes,
that’s how I feel, too, but that isn’t the reason why I don’t want Jerry to
marry her.’

‘Why
don’t you?’

‘Because
she’s utterly wrong for him. Do you remember that second breach of promise case
of yours?’

A quick
blink of Crispin’s mild eyes showed that that unfortunate episode of the days
when he had been a well-heeled young man about town was still green in his
memory.

‘Why
bring that up, Bill?’ he asked reproachfully. He liked the dead past to bury
its dead.

‘Vera
Upshaw reminds me of the girl who soaked you so much on that occasion. The same
type. Lovely as an angel, but as hard as nails and sedulously on the make. All
she wants is Jerry’s money, or rather the money she’s found out he’s going to
get some day.’

‘How do
you know?’

‘She
said so. She told him definitely that she wasn’t going to marry him till I
coughed up his capital. Which is why I’m not coughing it up.

This
evidence that his brother was not lightly to be parted from cash in his
possession lowered Crispin’s spirits, which at one time had tended to rise, and
he sat chewing his moustache.

Willoughby
took advantage of this lull in the conversation to abandon the topic of G. G.
F. West and his amours.

‘But
let’s talk of something else,’ he said, ‘beginning with what brings you up here
like this, when it’s unheard of for you to come to London. Is it business?’

‘No,
not exactly business, Bill.’

‘Income
tax?’

‘No,
not income tax.’

‘Something
wrong at Mellingham? Trouble with the lodgers?’

‘I wish
you would not call them lodgers.’

They
lodge, don’t they?’

‘Yes,
curse them.’

‘Well,
then. By the way, you aren’t full up, are you?’

‘No.
Two of them left last week. Said they found it too quiet.’

Then
that’s all right, because I’m sending you an addition to the menagerie. An
American woman called Clayborne. Bernadette Clayborne, commonly known as
Barney. She’s the sister of Homer Pyle, a New York lawyer I’ve occasionally
worked with. Homer brought her over a couple of days ago, and they’ve been
staying with me. He wants a quiet retreat for her in the country, and he made a
point of it being a good way from London. Mellingham ought just to suit her.’

So
bitterly had Crispin spoken of the two paying guests who had defected, thus
depriving him of much-needed rent, that one would have supposed that he would
have received this announcement with joyous enthusiasm. Instead, he was plainly
stunned, and expressed his dismay with a batlike squeak.

‘But I
don’t want women at Mellingham!’

‘Of
course you do. Home isn’t home without the feminine touch.’

‘She’ll
expect breakfast in bed.’

‘Not
Barney Clayborne. She’s the kind of woman who goes for a five-mile walk before
breakfast to get up an appetite. How well do you know your Chaucer?’

‘My
what?’

The
father of English poetry.’

‘Oh,
that Chaucer?’

That’s
the one. Have you studied him lately? I ask because, if so, she will remind you
of the Wife of Bath. You know the sort of thing — bright, breezy and full of
beans.’

‘My
God!
Hearty?’

‘Yes, I
suppose you would call her hearty.’

‘I won’t
have her near Mellingham!’

Think
well, Crips.’

‘I won’t!’

‘Your
mind is made up?’

‘Yes,
it is. You don’t understand, Bill. You’re a big, beefy chap, and you don’t know
what it is to have sensitive nerves. A hearty woman would drive me insane.’

‘Well,
it’s a pity, for she would have been paying double your usual rates. Homer is
loaded with money, and he’s got to get his sister settled before he leaves for
Brussels. He’s a member of P.E.N. and he has to attend the conference they’re
having there, so I was able to make the terms stiff.’

For a
moment or two Crispin sat plunged in thought. Then he said, ‘Oh’, and the
monosyllable indicated clearly that his iron front had crumbled beneath the
impact of second thoughts. He said All right, the woman could come, but there
was no elation in his voice, and he went on to put into words his sentiments
concerning those who enjoyed the hospitality of Mellingham Hall.

‘Curse
and damn all paying guests! And curse Mellingham! I wish I could sell the foul
place.’

‘Why
don’t you?’

Crispin
uttered a laugh of the variety usually called mirthless, and Willoughby
regarded him with some concern.

‘Your
asthma bothering you again?’

‘I was
laughing.’

‘Are
you sure? It didn’t sound like it.’

‘And
perhaps it would interest you to know what made me laugh. “Why don’t you?” you
say in that airy way, as if selling Mellingham was a thing that could be done
over the counter. Who wants a house nowadays that’s miles from anywhere and
about the size of Buckingham Palace? And look at the way it eats up money.
Repairs, repairs, everlasting repairs — the roof, the stairs, the ceilings, the
plumbing, there’s no end to it. And that’s just inside. Outside, trees needing
pruning, hedges needing clipping, acres of grass that doesn’t cut itself, and
the lake smelling to heaven if the weeds aren’t cleaned out every second
Thursday. And the tenants. Those farmers sit up at nights trying to think of
new ways for you to spend money on them. It’s enough to drive a man dotty. I
remember, when I was a boy, Father used to take me round the park at Mellingham
and say “Some day, Crispin, all this will be yours.” He ought to have added, “And
may the Lord have mercy on your soul.” Bill, can you lend me two hundred and
three pounds, six shillings and fourpence?’

Something
had told the experienced Willoughby that this jeremiad was going to culminate
in some such query, and he exhibited no great concern. He was accustomed to
meeting people eager to share his wealth. The exactness of the figures stirred
his curiosity a little. Most of those anxious to become his debtors were not so
precise.

‘Odd
sum,’ he said.

‘It’s
for the repairs people.’

‘Won’t
they wait?’

‘They’ve
been waiting two years.’

‘Then
they ought to have got the knack of it by now.’

‘Don’t
joke, Bill. It’s all very well to make a joke of it, but it’s deadly serious.
They’ve sent a man down. He’s at the house now.

‘You
mean you’ve got the brokers in?’

‘Yes,
it’s a terrible situation. I live in hourly fear of my paying guests finding
out.’

‘Give
them a good laugh, I should think.’

They
would all leave.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘It isn’t
nonsense, they would. So if you won’t let me have that money —’Of course I’ll
let you have it. What did you think I was going to do? Though I still feel it’s
funny, you having a broker’s man on the premises, and it’s a shame to let him
go.’

Crispin
gave a short quick gulp like a bulldog trying to swallow a chop whose
dimensions it has underestimated. It was plain that a great weight had been
lifted from his stooping shoulders, but mingled with the joy, relief and
ecstasy that surges over him, a borrower of money cannot help experiencing a
certain sensation of flatness when his request is granted as soon as uttered.
Arab traders in eastern bazaars get this feeling when an impatient customer
refuses to haggle. Crispin had anticipated a lengthy session of argument and pleading,
and for an instant his emotions were those of one who, descending a staircase
in the dark, treads on the last step when it is not there.

Then
joy, relief and ecstasy prevailed, and he expressed them with a glad cry.

‘That’s
wonderful of you, Bill. You’ve saved my life.’

‘A mere
sample of the way I’ve been behaving since yesterday afternoon. Did you ever
read
Oliver Twist?’

‘I
suppose so, as a kid.’

‘Remember
the Cheeryble brothers?’

‘Vaguely.
Sort of elderly boy scouts, weren’t they?’

‘Exactly,
and after yesterday afternoon I’m both of them rolled into one.’

‘What
happened yesterday afternoon?’

‘Look
at this.’

Crispin
eyed the small object without enthusiasm. It was the miniature of a thin girl
in the costume of a past age, and thin girls had never had a great appeal for
him. He had always preferred the more opulent type. Both the breach of promise
actions of his youth had been brought against him by plaintiffs in the
light-heavyweight division. It was difficult to find anything to say, so he
merely made a sound as if he were starting to gargle, and Willoughby continued.

‘Our
great-great-grandmother.’

‘Oh?’

‘Unless
it’s great-great-great or even more greats than that. I’m never any good at
working these things out. When was Gainsborough?’

‘In the
Regency, wasn’t he?’

‘I
believe so. This is by him. It’s called
The Girl in Blue.
Our
great-great-grandmother and her sister were twins, and he did miniatures of
them both, one in blue, the other in green. I’ve had the other one for years and
have been scouring the country for this one. It came up at Sotheby’s yesterday.
I had to outbid a lot of dealers who spotted how much I wanted it and ran the
price up, but I did the stinkers down in the end and got it.

Crispin
found it difficult to repress a sigh. Reason told him that anyone as rich as
Bill had a perfect right to collect objects that took his fancy, even if they
were nothing much to look at and he had to outbid a lot of stinkers who were
running the price up, but it gave him a pang to think of money that might have
come in his direction being frittered away on miniatures of
great-great-great-grandmothers.

‘But I
mustn’t bore you with my petty triumphs,’ said Willoughby. ‘I’ll write that
cheque.’

‘It’s
awfully good of you, Bill.’

‘Just
routine with us Cheerybles. Here you are.

Crispin
took the precious slip of paper, fondled it for a moment like a mother crooning
over her first-born, and put it away in the pocket nearest his heart. As he did
so, the door in the wall, communicating, he presumed, with Ashby’s office or
that of Pemberton, opened and a head came through.

‘Could
you spare a minute, Bill?’ said the head.

That
Delahay business?’

‘Yes. A
couple of points I’d like to take up with you.’

The way
I’m feeling today,’ said Willoughby, ‘I don’t mind if you take up three points,
or even four. I’ll be back in a second, Crips.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Much though Crispin always
enjoyed the company of his brother Willoughby, this sudden deprivation of it
did nothing to diminish the glow of happiness which their most recent
get-together had sent coursing through him. He was not familiar with the works
of the poet Browning, but had he been he would have found himself in cordial
agreement with the statement of his Pippa in her well-known song that God was
in His heaven and all was right with the world. Puts the thing in a nutshell,
he would have said. He did happen to know that bit in the Psalms about Joy
coming in the morning, and he would have contested hotly any suggestion that it
didn’t. He was, in a word, in excellent shape, in fact, sitting pretty with his
hat on the side of his head.

This
uplifted mood, it should be noted, was in the deepest sense a triumph of mind
over matter, for he had come to London with a stiff neck, the result of sitting
in one of the draughts with which the home of his ancestors was so well
supplied. It had been a source of considerable anguish on the train, but now he
found that if he held his head quite motionless and kept thinking of the cheque
that crackled in his pocket, the pain was practically non-existent.