Brat Farrar Page 6

  And now here was someone just like Simon.

  The boy got up from where he had been sitting on the edge of the bed, and with no haste or embarrassment pulled from off his left hand the sock he had been darning. She couldn't imagine Simon darning a sock.

  "Good morning," he said.

  "Good morning," said Mr. Sandal. "I hope you don't mind: I've brought you a visitor." He moved aside to let Bee come in. "Do you know who this is?"

  Bee's heart hammered on her ribs as she met the boy's light calm gaze and watched him identify her.

  "You do your hair differently," he said.

  Yes, of course; hairdressing had changed completely in those eight years; of course he would see a difference.

  "You recognise her, then?" Mr. Sandal said.

  "Yes, of course. It's Aunt Bee."

  She waited for him to come forward to greet her, but he made no move to. After a moment's pause he turned to find a seat for her.

  "I'm afraid there is only one chair. It is all right if you don't lean back on it," he said, picking up one of those hard chairs with a black curved back and a tan seat with small holes in it. Bee was glad to sit down on it.

  "Do you mind the bed?" he said to Mr. Sandal.

  "I'll stand, thank you, I'll stand," Mr. Sandal said hastily.

  The details of the face were not at all like Simon's, she thought; watching the boy stick the needle carefully in the sock. It was the general impression that was the same; once you really looked at him the startling resemblance vanished, and only the family likeness remained.

  "Miss Ashby could not wait for a meeting at my office, so I brought her here," Mr. Sandal said. "You don't seem particularly — " He allowed the sentence to speak for itself.

  The boy looked at her in a friendly unsmiling way and said: "I'm not very sure of my welcome."

  It was a curiously immobile face. A face like a child's drawing, now she came to think of it. Everything in the right place and with the right proportions, but without animation. Even the mouth had the straight uncompromising line that is a child's version of a mouth.

  He moved over to lay the socks on the dressing-table, and she saw that he was lame.

  "Have you hurt your leg?" she asked.

  "I broke it. Over in the States."

  "But should you be walking about on it if it is still tender?"

  "Oh, it doesn't hurt," he said. "It's just short."

  "Short! You mean, permanently short?"

  "It looks like it."

  They were sensitive lips, she noticed, for all their thinness; they gave him away when he said that.

  "But something can be done about that," she said. "It just means that it was mended badly. I expect you didn't have a very good surgeon."

  "I don't remember a surgeon. Perhaps I passed out. They did all the correct things: hung weights on the end of it, and all that."

  "But Pat — " she began, and failed to finish his name.

  Into the hiatus he said: "You don't have to call me anything until you are sure."

  "They do miracles in surgery nowadays," she said, covering her break. "How long ago is it since it happened?"

  "I'd have to think. About a couple of years now, I think."

  Except for the flat American a, his speech was without peculiarity.

  "Well, we must see what can be done about it. A horse, was it?"

  "Yes. I wasn't quick enough. How did you know it was a horse?"

  "You told Mr. Sandal that you had worked with horses. Did you enjoy that?" Just like railway-carriage small-talk, she thought.

  "It's the only life I do enjoy."

  She forgot about small-talk. "Really?" she said, pleased. "Were they good horses, those western ones?"

  "Most of them were commoners, of course. Very good stuff for their work-which, after all, is being a good horse, I suppose. But every now and then you come across one with blood. Some of those are beauties. More-more individual than I ever remember English horses being."

  "Perhaps in England we 'manner' the individuality out of them. I hadn't thought of it. Did you have a horse of your own at all?"

  "Yes, I had one. Smoky."

  She noticed the change in his voice when he said it. As audible as the flat note in the cracked bell of a chime.

  "A grey?"

  "Yes, a dark grey with black points. Not that hard, iron colour, you know. A soft, smoky colour. When he had a tantrum he was just a whirling cloud of smoke."

  A whirling cloud of smoke. She could see it. He must love horses to be able to see them like that. He must particularly have loved his Smoky.

  "What happened to Smoky?"

  "I sold him."

  No trespassers. Very well, she would not trespass. He had probably had to sell the horse when he broke his leg.

  She began to hope very strenuously that this was Patrick.

  The thought recalled her to the situation which she had begun to lose sight of. She looked doubtfully at Mr. Sandal.

  Catching the appeal in her glance, Mr. Sandal said: "Miss Ashby is no doubt prepared to vouch for you, but you will understand that the matter needs more clarification. If it were a simple matter of a prodigal's homecoming, your aunt's acceptance of you would no doubt be sufficient to restore you to the bosom of your family. But in the present instance it is a matter of property. Of the ultimate destination of a fortune. And the law will require incontrovertible evidence of your identity before you could be allowed to succeed to anything that was Patrick Ashby's. I hope you understand our position."

  "I understand perfectly. I shall, of course, stay here until you have made your inquiries and are satisfied."

  "But you can't stay here," Bee said, looking with loathing at the room and the forest of chimney-pots beyond the window.

  "I have stayed in a great many worse places."

  "Perhaps. That is no reason for staying here. If you need money we can give you some, you know."

  "I'll stay here, thanks."

  "Are you just being independent?"

  "No. It's quiet here. And handy. And bung full of privacy. When you have lived in bunk houses you put a high value on privacy."

  "Very well, you stay here. Is there anything else we can-can stake you to?"

  "I could do with another suit."

  "Very well. Mr. Sandal will advance whatever you need for that." She suddenly remembered that if he went to the Ashby tailor there would be a sensation. So she added: "And he will give you the address of his tailor."

  "Why not Walters?" said the boy.

  For a moment she could not speak.

  "Aren't they there any more?"

  "Oh, yes; but there would be too many explanations if you went to Walters." She must keep a hold on herself. Anyone could find out who the Ashby tailor had been.

  "Oh, yes. I see."

  She fell back on small-talk and began to take her leave.

  "We have not told the family about you," she said, as she prepared to go. "We thought it better not to, until things are-are what Mr. Sandal calls clarified."

  A flash of amusement showed in his eyes at that. For a moment they were allied in a secret laughter.

  "I understand."

  She turned at the door to say good-bye. He was standing in the middle of the room watching her go, leaving Mr. Sandal to shepherd her out. He looked remote and lonely. And she thought: "If this is Patrick, Patrick come home again, and I am leaving him like this, as if he were a casual acquaintance — " It was more than she could bear, the thought of the boy's loneliness.

  She went back to him, took his face lightly in her gloved hand, and kissed his cheek. "Welcome back, my dear," she said.

  8

  So Cosset, Thring and Noble began their investigations, and Bee went back to Latchetts to deal with the problem of postponing the coming-of-age celebrations.

  Was she to tell the children now, before the thing was certain? And if not, what excuse could she possibly put forward for not celebrating at the proper time? />
  Mr. Sandal was against telling the children yet. The unknown Kevin's verdict had left a mark on him, it seemed; and he was entirely prepared to find a flaw in the so-complete dossier that had been handed to them. It would be inadvisable, he thought, to bring the children into this until the claim had been sifted through the finest mesh.

  With that she agreed. If this thing passed-if that boy in the back room in Pimlico was not Patrick-they need never know anything about it. Simon would probably have to be told, so that he could be warned against future attempts at fraud, but by that time it would be of no more than academic interest; a quite impersonal affair. Her present difficulty was how to reconcile the children's ignorance with the postponing of the celebrations.

  The person who rescued her from this dilemma was Great-uncle Charles, who cabled to announce his (long overdue) retirement, and his hope to be present at his great-nephew's coming-of-age party. He was on his way home from the Far East, and, since he refused to fly, his home-coming was likely to be a protracted one, but he hoped Simon would keep the champagne corked till he came.

  Great-uncles do not normally cut much ice in the families in which they survive, but to the Ashbys Great-uncle Charles was much more than a great-uncle: he was a household word. Every birthday had been made iridescent and every Christmas a tingling expectation by the thought of Great-uncle Charles's present. There were reasonable bounds to the possible presents of parents; and Father Christmas's were merely the answer to indents.

  But neither reason nor bounds had any connection with presents from Great-uncle Charles. Once he had sent a set of chopsticks, which upset nursery discipline for a week. And once it had been the skin of a snake; the glory of owning the skin of a snake had made Simon dizzy for days. And Eleanor still ran to and from her bath in a pair of odd-smelling leather slippers that had come on her twelfth birthday. At least four times every year Great-uncle Charles became the most important factor in the Ashby family; and when you have been of first importance four times a year for twenty years your importance is pretty considerable. Simon might grumble and the others protest a little, but they would without doubt wait for Great-uncle Charles.

  Besides, she had a shrewd idea that Simon would not be willing to offend the last-surviving Ashby of his generation. Charles was not rich-he had been far too liberal a giver all his life-but he was comfortably off; and Simon, for all his careless good nature and easy charm, was an exceedingly practical person.

  So the postponement was taken by the family with resignation, and by Clare with equanimity. It was held to be a very proper thing that the Ashbys should wait until the old boy could be present. Bee spent her after-dinner leisure altering the date on the invitation cards, and thanking heaven for the mercifulness of chance.

  Bee was at odds with herself these days. She wanted this boy to be Patrick; but it would be so much better for all concerned, she felt, if he proved not to be Patrick. Seven-eighths of her wanted Patrick back; warm, and alive, and dear; wanted it passionately. The other eighth shrank from the upheaval of the happy Ashby world that his return would bring with it. When she caught this renegade eighth at its work she reproved it and was suitably ashamed of herself; but she could not destroy it. And so she was distrait and short-tempered, and Ruth, commenting on it to Jane, said:

  "Do you think she can have a Secret Sorrow?"

  "I expect the books won't balance," Jane said. "She's a very bad adder-up."

  Mr. Sandal reported from time to time on the progress of the investigations, and the reports were uniform and monotonous. Everything seemed to confirm the boy's story.

  "The most heartening thing, using the word in its sense of reassurance," Mr. Sandal said, "is that the young man seems to have no contacts since he came to England. He has lived at that address since the Philadelphia's arrival, and he has had neither letters nor visitors. The woman who owns the house occupies one of the front rooms on the ground floor. She is one of those women who has nothing to do but sit back and watch her neighbours. The lives of her tenants seem to be an open book to the good lady. She is also accustomed to waiting for the postman and collecting the letters he drops. Nothing escapes her. Her description of myself was, I understand, hardly flattering but quite touching in its fidelity. The young man could therefore have hardly had visitors without her being aware of it. He was out all day, of course; as any young man in London would be. But there is no trace of that intimacy which would suggest connivance. He had no friends."

  The young man came willingly to the office and answered questions freely. With Bee's consent, Kevin Macdermott had "sat in" at one of these office conferences, and even Kevin had been shaken. "What shakes me," Kevin had said, "is not the fellow's knowledge of the subject-all good con. men are glib-but the general cut of his jib. He's quite frankly not what I expected. After a little while in my job you develop a smell for a wrong 'un. This chap has me baffled. He doesn't smell like a crook to me, and yet the set-up stinks."

  So the day came when Mr. Sandal announced to Bee that Cosset, Thring and Noble were now prepared to accept the claimant as Patrick Ashby, the eldest son of William Ashby of Latchetts, and to hand over to him everything that was due to him. There would be legal formalities, of course, since the fact of his death eight years ago had been presumed; but they would be automatic. As far as they, Cosset, Thring and Noble, were concerned, Patrick Ashby was free to go home whenever he pleased.

  So the moment had come, and Bee was faced with breaking the news to the family.

  Her instinct was to tell Simon first, privately; but she felt that anything that set him apart from the others in this matter of welcoming back his brother was to be avoided. It would be better to take for granted that for Simon, as for the others, the news would be a matter for unqualified happiness.

  It was after lunch on a Sunday that she told them.

  "I have something to tell you that will be rather a shock to you. But a nice kind of shock," she said. And went on from there. Patrick had not committed suicide, as they had thought. He had merely run away. And now he had come back. He had been living for a little in London because, of course, he had to prove to the lawyers that he was Patrick. But he had had no difficulty in doing that. And now he was going to come home.

  She had avoided looking at their faces as she talked; it was easier just to talk into space, impersonally. But in the startled silence that followed her story she looked across at Simon; and for a moment did not recognise him. The shrunk white face with the blazing eyes had no resemblance to the Simon she knew. She looked away hastily.

  "Does it mean that this new brother will get all the money that is Simon's?" asked Jane, with her usual lack of finesse.

  "Well, I think it was a horrible thing to do," Eleanor said bluntly.

  "What was?"

  "Running away and leaving us all thinking he was dead."

  "He didn't know that, of course. I mean: that we would take his note to mean that he was going to kill himself."

  "Even so. He left us all without a word for-for-how long is it? Seven years? Nearly eight years. And then comes back one day without warning, and expects us to welcome him."

  "Is he nice?" asked Ruth.

  "What do you mean by nice?" Bee asked, glad for once of Ruth's interest in the personal.

  "Is he nice to look at? And does he talk nicely or has he a frightful accent?"

  "He is exceedingly nice to look at, and he has no accent whatsoever."

  "Where has he been all this time?" Eleanor asked.

  "Mexico and the States, mostly."

  "Mexico!" said Ruth. "How romantic! Does he wear a black sailor hat?"

  "A what? No, of course he doesn't. He wears a hat like anyone else."

  "How often have you seen him, Aunt Bee?" Eleanor asked.

  "Just once. A few weeks ago."

  "Why didn't you tell us about it then?"

  "It seemed better to wait until the lawyers were finished with him and he was ready to come home. You couldn't all go
rushing up to London to see him."

  "No, I suppose not. But I expect Simon would have liked to go up and see him, wouldn't you, Simon, and we wouldn't have minded? After all, Patrick was his twin."

  "I don't believe for one moment that it is Patrick," Simon said, in a tight, careful voice that was worse than shouting.

  "But, Simon!" Eleanor said.

  Bee sat in a dismayed silence. This was worse than she had anticipated.

  "But, Simon! Aunt Bee has seen him. She must know."

  "Aunt Bee seems to have adopted him."

  Much worse than she had anticipated.

  "The people who have adopted him, Simon, are Cosset, Thring and Noble. A not very emotional firm, I think you'll agree. If there had been the faintest doubt of his being Patrick, Cosset, Thring and Noble would have discovered it during those weeks. They have left no part of his life since he left England unaccounted for."

  "Of course whoever it is has had a life that can be checked! What did they expect? But what possible reason can they have for believing that he is Patrick?"

  "Well, for one thing, he is your double."

  This was clearly unexpected. "My double?" he said vaguely.

  "Yes. He is even more like you than when he went away."

  The colour had come back to Simon's face and the stuff on the bones had begun to look like flesh again; but now he looked stupid, like a boxer who is taking too much punishment.

  "Believe me, Simon dear," she said, "it is Patrick!"

  "It isn't. I know it isn't. You are all being fooled!"

  "But, Simon!" Eleanor said. "Why should you think that? I know it won't be easy for you to have Patrick back-it won't be easy for any of us-but there's no use making a fuss about it. The thing is there and we just have to accept it. You are only making things worse by trying to push it away."

  "How did this-this creature who says he is Patrick, how did he get to Mexico? How did he leave England? And when? And where?"

  "He left from Westover in a ship called the Ira Jones."

  "Westover! Who says so?"

  "He does. And according to the harbourmaster, a ship of that name did leave Westover on the night that Patrick went missing."