Читать книгу In the Blood - Philip Loraine - Страница 8

After a restless night—that same ache for a warm body which wasn’t there, might never be there again—Kate realized that work would automatically carry her along until mid-afternoon when it was her habit to take a few hours off, either in the garden or with feet up on her bed. She knew the kind of thoughts which would then seize hold of her, and took steps to circumvent them. She rang Daniel.

He sounded chirpy, full of energy, but this was a telephone manner he kept for her, and it could mask any kind of pain or despair. She said, ‘I’ve just been looking at the map. Doesn’t Sally live in the Vale of Evesham?’

He read out the address: Somerton Farm, Little Norton, near Sedgeberrow.

‘It’s not far from here—Roman roads most of the way. I think I’ll go there this afternoon. Want to drive up and join me?’

No, Daniel didn’t think so; he didn’t feel much like driving (his way, Kate was sure, of not referring to the useable leg, deteriorating. Dear God!) and he had a lot of stuff to type up for Dr Forrester, some Oxford professor whose book on Cardinal Wolsey he’d been researching. He said, ‘You go and see Sally, I’ll stick with the old professor.’

‘You’ve still got the letter, haven’t you?’

‘No. I put it in your glove compartment yesterday.’

‘Take care of yourself. Eat properly.’

‘Ava’s in the kitchen right now, making me a chicken pie.’ Ava (three times a week) had been named after the beautiful Ava Gardner whom her father had worshipped. She was a very plain girl, a reasonable cleaner and a less reasonable cook, but she was cheery and fond of Daniel, and that was what really mattered.

The fine spring weather had faded, and the Cotswold Hills in driving rain soon lost their claim to be picturesque and became grim; but as Kate tipped over the edge of them into the Vale, slivers of sunlight lay across the orchards, touching the fruit blossom with delicate promise. Kate hoped Sally’s husband was not engaged in that most perilous of businesses—a return of frost had already been forecast. He was not. Somerton Farm had shed its land except for an orchard and the garden, but the barns at its back were in good repair and a few new ones had been added. Ken Ferris was a distributor of agricultural seed and feed and fertilizer.

‘Nothing spectacular,’ said Sally, ‘but safe. Everything has to eat.’

She had always been a big girl; child-bearing and, Kate guessed, uncomplicated contentment had made her bigger: blonde and, yes, voluptuous, with an innocent face, innocent pale blue eyes. In her present state, Kate could and did envy her.

They had tea in an untidy, beamed sitting-room, rambling shambling, toys all over the floor. The two children, one and three years old, were being looked after upstairs by their paternal grandmother. ‘With them around,’ said Sally, ‘we couldn’t have got a word in edgewise.’ Kate gave her the creamy, blotched sheet of writing-paper. She shook her head over it. ‘That damned shelf, I should’ve guessed. Spent hours looking for it. Funny how a thing like this can bring back … a whole time of your life. Could’ve been yesterday.’

‘We can’t read the signature. We were pretty sure you’d know who wrote it.’

‘Mrs Howard, Rosemary Howard. She came to stay that weekend before your grandmother died.’

‘From Salisbury?’

‘Yes. She lived in The Close, but the house was too big for her, she was selling it.’ The pretty face seemed perplexed, blue eyes worried. ‘Does it matter?’ She was holding up the letter.

‘We’re just curious. Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t know.’ Perplexity disappeared into a laugh, as it probably always did, she wasn’t an introspective type. ‘Aren’t secrets best left alone? I mean, there’s got to be a reason for them being secrets in the first place. I always think, “Oh well, it’s no concern of mine anyway,” but then I’m incredibly lazy—lazy-minded.’

‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

‘Sort of. Not that I’ve ever known of a cat killed by curiosity. We’ve got eleven out in the barns—eleven at the last count, that is. Curious as hell and all very much alive.’

Kate said, ‘I think Daniel and I are intrigued because ours is a very odd family, full of feuds, hatreds, oh and lots of secrets—they’re kind of in the blood.’

Gazing beyond her out of the window, twisting a fair lock of hair, as she probably had since she was a girl, Sally replied, ‘My family’s as dull as boiled potatoes. She really had it in for her son, Mark, didn’t she?’

‘Always.’

‘I found them a bit … weird, him and his wife.’

‘They are weird. Pompous too.’

‘And living abroad all that time. In Corsica, or was it Italy?’

‘Both, I think.’

‘I imagined him in Australia, Canada, that’s where black sheep usually get sent. Or wasn’t he a black sheep?’

‘I suppose he must have been. I don’t know much more than you do, Sally.’ And the purpose of her visit was to ask questions, not to answer them. ‘Any idea where this Mrs Howard went when she left Salisbury?’

‘She was talking about the south coast, last place I’d want to live. One of those stuffy towns, Eastbourne or Bognor. She wanted to be near her son and daughter-in-law—well, she was over eighty. He was a solicitor down there.’

Kate raised her brows. ‘Andrew? As in the letter?’

‘Yes, of course, Andrew. How dumb of me!’

‘She advised Grandmother to talk to him before taking any “steps”. I wonder if she did.’

‘I know she did; he came over one afternoon. Lots of curly black hair and very pleased with himself—I thought he was the pits.’

‘Even his mother says he’s a bore.’

‘That too, probably. He just thought he was God’s gift. Tried to feel me up in the kitchen, I damn near kicked him in the balls.’ She poured more tea. ‘Come to think of it, I suppose I was a bit curious about some things …’

‘Such as?’

‘This is going to sound nosey, but I never could understand the money side of it. Why did your grandmother have to bury herself away in a tiny cottage? She was used to that enormous house, what’s it called?’

‘Longwater. She lived there most of her life—until Mark decided to come home and take it over.’

‘Why didn’t she stay? She could have had a whole wing—biggest granny flat in the business.’

‘And live with Mark and Helen. You can’t share a house with people you dislike, however big it is.’

‘No, I suppose not. Is it true he never came back to see her, not once in all those years he was away?’

‘Yes, it’s true. He might as well have been in Australia.’ She had realized that Sally was incapable of sticking to one subject for more than a minute. Questions had to be simple and direct: ‘So you didn’t hear what those two old women were discussing—all that business about opening Pandora’s Box, and letting sleeping dogs lie because they could be dangerous?’

‘Not a thing. It wasn’t my business, and they’d shut themselves up in the sitting-room.’ She smiled. ‘I do remember Mrs Howard coming into the kitchen and asking me if your grandmother was talking … well, a bit wildly—obviously meaning did I think she was getting weak in the head.’ She looked at the letter: ‘I suppose this bears that out, doesn’t it? I said as far as I was concerned Mrs Ackland was as bright as a button. She was—even on the day she died.’

‘Must’ve been quite a shock, her death.’

Sally sat lost in thought, again twisting the lock of hair. Kate noticed that there’d soon be more than one chin, but she probably didn’t care. Eventually she said, ‘Yes, it was a shock all right, in lots of ways. I mean, why was I sent out shopping on that afternoon? For all kinds of things we didn’t really need, not urgently anyway. And nothing I could get in the village either, I had to go into town.’

‘And when you got back she was dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘The police must have thought that a bit odd.’

‘They didn’t seem to. I mean, it tied in with their theory, didn’t it? Accident. Blind old lady, steep staircase, companion not on hand to help her.’

With every step Kate took, every odd piece of information that came her way, she realized how little she and Daniel knew about the most basic facts. ‘And was that the Coroner’s verdict, accident?’

‘Yes.’

‘No sign of a heart attack or anything?’

‘None. That’s why a lot of people thought it was suicide.’

‘Did you?’

‘Good God, no. Why would she want to do that? She wasn’t ill or broke, she certainly wasn’t round the bend. And anyway a staircase would be such a … an uncertain way of doing it. Supposing it didn’t come off, you’d end up with a broken leg, hip, you name it.’

‘What actually did kill her?’

‘She hit her head on that ugly great newel-post at the bottom of the stairs. All pointed corners. I’d have sawn it off and chucked it out as soon as I clapped eyes on it.’

They fell silent. Kate had a feeling that there was no more to be learned from this straightforward, uncomplicated young woman; in any case it was time she went back to Hill Manor and got herself ready for the evening. She was just wondering how best to take her leave when, from upstairs, there came a shriek of rage, rising to an ear-splitting crescendo. Placidly, Sally said, ‘That’s Tom.’

A thudding of footsteps followed, and a moment later the door opened to reveal a small, roly-poly woman of perhaps sixty, only just able to carry a large child, exactly like Sally, and at the moment scarlet with rage. She nodded to Kate and said to her daughter-in-law, ‘Sorry, I can’t do a thing with him.’

‘Little bugger,’ observed his mother fondly, taking him in her arms and giving him a massive hug. He stopped screaming instantly. Kate seized the perfect opportunity for escape.

Daniel, when she phoned him that evening, wasn’t surprised that Sally had heard nothing of what had been said by their grandmother and her friend. ‘If she’d been that kind of person,’ he wisely observed, ‘old Lydia would never have employed her.’ He was much more intrigued by the identity of R, late of Salisbury and now living somewhere on the south coast. ‘Rosemary Howard, eh? With a solicitor son, Andrew Howard. You can leave that to me, I’ll find them.’ And, when Kate expressed doubt: ‘Do you mind! I am a researcher.’

Like his sister, he thought it odd that Sally had been sent out to do some unnecessary shopping on the afternoon of their grandmother’s death. Who or what had Lydia not wanted her to see? Or were more things about to be said which had to be kept secret? In any case, their next move was obvious: they must find Rosemary Howard and they must talk to her—pray God she wasn’t dead! There’d be no guessing as far as she was concerned; she knew, her letter proved that. What a mercy the terrible shelf had preserved it from being burned by Sally, or they’d have had no reason to embark on this fascinating quest. Contrarily, and only for a split second, Kate found herself wishing that Sally had burned it. She was surprised by the wish which had sprung from some inner recess of her mind, almost as if to warn her.

Daniel sensed this. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Suddenly you sounded … I don’t know—as if you’d gone off the whole thing.’

‘Don’t be silly, I’m as curious as you are.’ She was. And if there were any further reservations lurking in that same recess she could banish them with ease: because there was no mistaking her brother’s passionate interest; she hadn’t heard him sound so involved for years, and involvement, in his present condition, was worth anything.

Ironically, she was about to surpass him in this respect, propelled by a bizarre series of events, the first being a telephone call from Steve early next morning.

At the sound of his voice her stomach confounded her by turning somersaults, something it no longer had any right to do. He said, ‘I’m missing you like hell, Kate.’

‘Me, too.’

‘So bloody easy to say all those pompous things.’

‘Yes, but … you were right, Steve, we both knew you were right.’

‘Sod that too, but we’ll soldier on. Look, I’m not calling you just to whinge. What’s the name of the disease that’s attacking your brother’s legs? Raynor’s Syndrome?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’ve got a board-meeting, I’m late. Look at page four of The Times, column three. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Be in touch.’ His receiver was replaced.

Page four of The Times, column three, contained a brief report headed, ‘Raynor’s Breakthrough’. It appeared that Dr Wesley Allard of the Blake Clinic, Oakland, California, had just released information which seemed to prove that two of his patients suffering from the rare nervous condition known as Raynor’s Syndrome were showing signs of total recovery. Treatment had been long and arduous, had included physical and drug therapy, and, in both cases, surgery involving the central nervous system. Though the disease was rare and had hitherto baffled the medical profession, Dr Allard’s claim would, if substantiated, bring hope to hundreds of sufferers worldwide.

Astounded, Kate had to read the few paragraphs twice. The news was so unexpected that it shocked her; for a moment or two she felt nothing at all. Then excitement, hope, joy broke over her in a glittering wave; but as the wave withdrew came the instant thought of cost. Useless to pretend that ‘long and arduous’ treatment at a clinic in California was going to be cheap; but surely there were ways, there had to be ways.

She knew she’d be able to think of nothing else all day, and so took the precaution of showing the article to Alex. Though delighted, he tried to warn her of a few of the setbacks and disappointments she might have to face, but Kate was beyond reason, lost in a euphoria of determination and optimism.

After long and agonizing inquiry, she found a telephone number where she could reach the surgeon who had first operated on Daniel and who had returned to the fray three times since then. Yes, he’d heard about the putative cure and was keeping his fingers crossed for Dr Allard whom he knew and liked. But the great difficulty was going to be the matter of cost. Like Alex, he could sense that this overexcited girl had to be seized and bound into the straitjacket of expediency. ‘Kate, the Blake Clinic isn’t a charitable institution, and it isn’t funded by the state. Wesley Allard’s research on this project lasted for eight years, and it’s got to be paid for.’

‘We’ll manage somehow, we’ve got masses of good friends.’

‘My dear, will you listen to me? In both the cases cited, treatment lasted about ten months. The Blake charges, say, three-hundred dollars a day, excluding any treatment, drugs or therapy, and excluding surgery which was appallingly protracted. We’re talking about something well over a third of a million dollars, much more if there are complications, and you’d have to be financially prepared for complications.’ He could tell from the silence on the other end of the line that he had at last got through to her.

In a much duller voice she replied, ‘But you hear of it all the time. People, children, being sent off for incredibly expensive operations—funded by generous neighbours, all that.’

‘And rarely costing a quarter of what this would cost. I’m not trying to put you off, God forbid, I’m only trying to save you a lot of wasted time and heartache.’

She telephoned Daniel’s two specialists; and then his National Health doctor in the country. She telephoned various medical men she barely knew (one of them an infrequent guest at Hill Manor) and several more who were complete strangers. She even called the Ministry. Everywhere she met with the same kindness—there was no mistaking her desperate anxiety—and the same warnings. At the end of it, exhausted, she went for a long walk, barely noticing the heavy mist which soaked her.

Alex had money of course, and would probably lend her some, even if it meant postponing a dream cherished for seven years: six new bedrooms and a new kitchen created from the stables. No, she could never ask him. Steve earned a lot of money, but had a mother to keep and was desperately trying to save for what he called his ‘disaster fund’. Her mother had a small income of her own which, added to Alistair’s army pension, enabled them to live decently, without extravagance, in Aberdeen.

By the time she returned to the hotel, steeled to cope with Friday evening, always a hassle, the idea had entered her mind. By the time she reached Daniel at Woodman’s late on Sunday it had possessed her; she knew exactly what she must do.

Her brother, who had long ago heard about Dr Allard’s cure, was appalled to find that she had now discovered it: doubly appalled by her proposed solution: ‘The Cousins! Kate, you can’t!’

‘Watch me.’

‘I’d rather … Kate, I mean this—I’d rather go on the way I am.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t.’

‘I would. Please listen to me. I know it’s a … a spineless attitude, but I’m … used to myself now. It’s taken a bit of doing but I’ve done it. I don’t think I could take being in hospital again, for months—all that change and confusion. Also, I’m afraid of drugs—you know I am, and I’ve had enough bloody surgery to last me a lifetime. I’m a coward.’

‘That’s the last thing you are. You’re just scared of the cost like everyone else.’

‘Not half as scared as The Cousins are going to be!’

‘They wouldn’t even notice it, they’re stinking rich. And I’m not asking for charity, I’m asking for a loan. They’ll get it back, every penny. I’m going up to Longwater first thing in the morning.’

Daniel made a face. ‘I found out where Rosemary Howard lives—Bournemouth. I hoped we could drive down and see her first thing in the morning.’ He looked like he had at the age of eight, a disappointed small boy, but she was adamant. ‘Later, we’ll do that later.’ And then, overcome by exhaustion, by what seemed to be the opposition of the entire world, and now by her brother’s maddening disinterest: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Daniel, this is important, it’s the most important thing in our whole lives. Finding that letter was just a … a crazy chance.’

Daniel nodded; then said, as much to himself as to her, ‘“A fool must now and then be right, by chance.” Cowper—at least I think it is.’

In her grandfather’s day, and even in the years when Lydia had lived there alone—after her husband’s death but before the accident which changed her life—the drive at Long-water had always seemed friendly, arousing excited anticipation; now, under the aegis of Mark and Helen Ackland, that same drive had subtly changed its character; though it remained exactly the same, the new intention was simply to impress: curving around the serpentine lake which gave the house its name, crossing the famous Palladian bridge, climbing the hill before plunging into a stand of ancient beeches, and only then granting the arriving guest a first, breathtaking glimpse of the north front with its splendid pillars, classical architrave and all the rest of it. Or perhaps, Kate thought, the change was in her own attitude, and in the difference between childhood and growing up.

Whatever the reason, she had no intention of approaching The Cousins via the enormous front door. This would be opened by their noxious butler, Smart, who would regard her with a disdain which out-cousined The Cousins, making them seem hospitable by comparison. She parked her car in the shade and plunged into a shrubbery to the east of the house, remembered intimately as the scene of countless adventures in Amazonian forests or tiger-haunted Indian jungles, according to the whim of her inventive brother. This way she would approach the garden front, wandering up on to the terrace, and so, unannounced, into their lives. For God’s sake, she’d telephoned and made an appointment, wasn’t that enough?

However, she nearly laughed out loud when she reached the topmost terrace to find The Cousins disposed about the lily-pool as if the curtain had just risen on an old-fashioned West End play. Mark and Helen sat at a white cast-iron table on which reposed a silver coffee-pot with accoutrements, including, she noticed, an extra cup for herself. Her uncle had thickened and coarsened since she’d last seen him, and his fairish hair was receding which made his red, admittedly handsome, face seem larger. Her aunt had not changed at all; her dark hair, which never looked dyed, was still arranged in what Kate always thought of as the ‘haute-county’ style (much in evidence at Hill Manor Hotel): ageless, accentuating an almost ageless neck; and her beautiful face, equally well-preserved, remained youngish, pale, patrician. Both seemed to be designed to decorate the society pages of Country Life, or Queen, or the Tatler—as indeed they frequently had and did. Her beige linen dress was perfection; she invariably wore pearls. All in all, she made her husband, in a brownish kind of safari suit, look lumpen.

It was said that in their youth Mark and Richard had been alike, but Kate felt sure that if her father had lived for another thirteen years he would never have shared the coarsening process which had overtaken his elder brother; he was too neat and slim, and had never been much of a drinker which Mark patently was.

Mother and father seemed to have distanced themselves from the two of their three children who were present. Giles, at twenty, resembled his father and would become as gross; for the moment, his fair, confident good looks gave some indication as to why Mark had always been considered so handsome and attractive. Miranda, the younger daughter, was sixteen, usually an uncertain age and in her case a disastrous one; she was fat and had bad skin, and no one would have guessed she was in any way related to the exquisite woman at the table. Brother and sister both wore tight trousers which, as Giles well knew, emphasized his strong legs and his crotch; whether the girl knew that they merely emphasized her hips and bottom was open to doubt. Lucy, the middle child, now eighteen, had opted out.

This family group was arranged to face away from the house, and Kate was overcome by a wicked certainty that here was a conscious display of backs calculated to greet her with utter indifference. Well she’d certainly scotched that little trick, for now she faced them head-on and reflected in the lily-pool. Father and the two children showed surprise, but Helen, in her usual accents of petrified gentility, said, ‘Why Kate, how nice to see you, and what a most attractive dress!’

Kate suspected that this remark was addressed less to her than to her unattractively-trousered daughter, she was that sort of woman. She and old Lydia together must have made quite a pair!

Mark was meanwhile hrrumphing about, moving chairs and making welcoming noises: ‘Don’t see nearly enough of you,’ and other meaningless pleasantries. Giles, who had at least been expensively educated, stood up and struck an attitude which further enhanced his looks and figure. Miranda waved plump fingers but didn’t otherwise move. If either son or daughter imagined they were going to be privy to the ensuing conversation their mother disabused them by saying, ‘Giles, you might go to the stable and see what that ass, Kimble, is up to. And take Miranda with you.’ Thus do the Helens of this world wave their dainty, razor-sharp wands. Evidently no time was to be wasted in getting down to business.

Telling herself yet again that she was not seeking charity, Kate started by asking whether they’d read in the papers that some Californian doctor appeared to have found a cure for the disease, Raynor’s Syndrome, which was ruining Daniel’s life.

‘Oh,’ replied Helen (pronounced ‘Eu’), ‘we wondered if that’s what he’s got.’ They knew damn well it was, and the pretence gave Kate just that edge of anger needed to liberate eloquence. Yes, she was eloquent, carried away by youth and passionate determination; so that it only dawned on her slowly and painfully that she might just as well have remained mute; have stayed at Woodman’s with Daniel, or driven off with him to Bournemouth in search of Rosemary Howard. (‘A fool must now and then be right, by chance.’ No mistaking the fool in this case: as wrong as could be and without the shadow of a chance.) The Cousins had known from the beginning why she wanted to see them—they were quite used to beggars—and after all it wasn’t a great feat of conjecture for a mind like Helen’s once she’d read the newspaper; they had long ago decided just how to answer her.

Uncle Mark was first to bat for the Establishment. It seemed that the entire roof, including most of the lead coping, required urgent attention: worse when it came to the east wing where the actual timbers would have to be replaced. A financial disaster of the kind which only struck one if one happened to own a Grade One Listed Property. Somehow this led to the fact that he was responsible for the employment of over two hundred people, and for the direct upkeep of a hundred and seventy-six properties, a proportion of them nothing but almshouses for old employees, bringing in little or no rent. (This, no doubt, included Daniel and Woodman’s.) And now, as Kate had probably noticed, the south plantation was dying of some wretched, continental disease, would have to be bulldozed, burnt and replanted …

And, added Helen, perhaps fearing her husband might flag, there was Cortiano. (There was where?) Not an enormous house (pronounced ‘hice’) with some return from olives and vines. But the outlay was considerable, the place had to be leased—no one in Corsica ever sold land—and there were more employees to be paid, taxes … Kate had never realized that they’d held on to the Corsican property, perhaps as a nice retreat for secluded holidays.

Now, continued Mark, having regained his breath, if Kate could believe anything so preposterous, the District Council had suddenly announced that the bridge at Little Layton needed rebuilding, and it was his responsibility, nothing to do with them at all.

And then, chimed in Helen again, there was the whole absolutely fearsome cost of the children’s education, with Giles already at Cambridge and both his sisters proposing to follow in his footsteps. Uncle Mark summed it all up in tones of the deepest despondency: ‘They’ve got us over the barrel, Kate. We’re stretched—damn tight. Of course we’d have leaned over backwards for a family matter like this, but it isn’t feasible, it simply is not feasible.’

The humiliation which rose up in Kate, threatening to choke her, had nothing to do with the selfishness and meanness of spirit which lay behind all this verbiage; it had nothing to do with The Cousins at all. The fault lay within herself; that she had ever been so stupid, so childishly optimistic, as to believe that they really might have helped Daniel. God in heaven, anyone would think she knew nothing whatever about the world and its ways! There had never, ever, been the faintest chance of one poor cripple’s fate even impinging on their armour-plated indifference: and the hated brother’s son at that!