‘Is this to the point, Mr Soresby?’
The sizar flushed. His hands were hidden under the table but he must have tugged at his fingers, for there was a familiar crack.
‘I beg your pardon, sir. I – I do not know where to turn, I am beside myself. I scarcely know what I am saying.’
‘Mr Archdale says you wish to speak to me. What about?’
Soresby nodded vigorously, and his ragged hair flapped on either side of his face. ‘You have seen my room, sir.’
Holdsworth looked blankly at him. ‘Yes. You know I have. When I accompanied Mr Richardson.’
Soresby nodded. ‘Almost all the rooms in Yarmouth Hall look out over the lane. But my garret looks the other way. I wonder, is it possible that while you were there you chanced to look out of the window?’
There were three in the little party that entered G staircase in New Building. Mr Richardson was there to represent the college. He led the way, followed by Augustus because he was still, in theory, in Mr Whichcote’s employ. Behind them came Mulgrave, who came for his own amusement. Mr Richardson did not know that the gyp no longer had a connection with Mr Whichcote.
On the landing, Augustus unlocked the outer door with the keys that the bailiff’s man had brought from Mr Whichcote. Once inside, Richardson stood in the middle of the sitting room and looked about him.
‘Mr Whichcote writes that he wishes you to pack his brown portmanteau. A change of linen, his blue coat and his shoes with the silver buckles.’ The tutor paused to consult the letter. ‘Also, the wine in the gyp-room cupboard and his tea caddy. Mulgrave, pack the wine and tea, the boy can do the clothes. Mr Whichcote also requires some items from the study. I will deal with those.’
Richardson took the keys, unlocked the study door and went inside. He pushed the door closed behind him. Mulgrave glanced at Augustus and winked. The weal on his cheek made his face lopsided. Augustus went into the bedroom and laid the clothes out on the bed. He wondered why Mr Mulgrave had winked at him.
‘Boy!’
He looked up at Richardson in the bedroom doorway, with Mulgrave hovering behind him.
‘Do you recall your master having a small black valise? With his crest stamped on the leather?’
‘Yes, your honour. It was in the study.’
‘It’s not there now.’
Augustus looked blankly at him.
‘It must be somewhere,’ Richardson said sharply. ‘Your master asked most particularly for it. He wished me to take charge of it.’
‘Well, I don’t know, sir.’
The tutor bit his lip. ‘It is most vexing. Inexplicable, too. But he may have put it somewhere else. Under the window seat, perhaps, where the coals go. Look there.’
Augustus found nothing but an empty scuttle. Afterwards the three of them searched the rooms but to no avail. Richardson spoke sharply to Augustus as they were leaving and took charge of the keys.
‘Take the portmanteau to your master. At Mr Purser’s in Wall Lane.’
‘What shall I say about the valise, sir?’
‘Eh? Nothing. You may leave that to me – tell him I shall call on him.’
Richardson walked quickly away. Mulgrave had followed them downstairs. He stared after the tutor, and the weal on his face buckled as he smiled.
‘Well, boy,’ Mulgrave said.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘You must be in want of a position?’
Augustus nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Oh yes, sir.’
‘I could make use of a sharp boy. If you don’t mind hard work, you could be a gyp yourself one day.’ He took a half-guinea from his pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand. ‘Well? Shall we shake hands on it?’
Augustus stared at the little gold coin. ‘But sir – the money?’
Mulgrave smiled again, and the weal changed shape. ‘You do right by me, and I’ll do right by you. Come – give me your hand.’
On his way back from Turpin’s Coffee House, Holdsworth took shelter from a heavy shower of rain in King’s College Chapel. High above his head, the fan-vaulted ceiling was dusky with shadows. It seemed an ill omen indeed, that a midsummer day should be so gloomy at noon.
He was not alone, for others came and went and talked among themselves. A beggar was discreetly plying his trade among them, but he sheered away when Holdsworth scowled at him.
Rain, rain, damnable rain.
It had been raining for several days before Georgie drowned at Goat Stairs. One evening, the boy said that rain was God’s tears, and that God must be sad indeed to be weeping so hard. Holdsworth had told his son that such foolish thoughts were better ignored and that rain was nothing more than the precipitated vapours of watery clouds. Georgie had laughed at him. He did not believe his father. Maria said Georgie should not play outside, for the rain had made the Bankside cobbles greasy and dangerous.
‘Pooh,’ Holdsworth had said. ‘We must not mollycoddle the lad.’
The chapel was full of noises – footsteps, meaningless words and unattached echoes. He walked up and down, careless of other people and brushing against those who did not get out of his way.
Had he sunk to this? Even Georgie, even Maria, had become distractions from the terrible intelligence that Soresby had brought him. He thrust clenched hands into his coat pockets, pushing at the lining. His right hand touched the corner of a folded paper, the unread letter from Lady Anne.
The letter was no longer important. Soresby’s information overshadowed everything else. It lay festering in Holdsworth’s mind. It was an infection. A poison. But he had it in his power to suppress it, for Soresby did not understand its full significance. Besides, the sizar was vulnerable, which made him malleable if Holdsworth chose to dismiss what he said as a malicious attempt to curry favour with a slanderous fabrication.
But would that be enough, for surely he could never suppress it from his own memory? Such a course would merely make everything worse in the long run – for him, undoubtedly, and perhaps even for Elinor. There was only one certainty about the whole black business: that whatever use he made of Soresby’s information, the result would be unhappiness.
His head throbbed. It seemed to him that the light was oozing out of the chapel, leaving a grey mist behind. He was quite alone. He could not see his way. He was filled with a terrible presentiment of his eternal helplessness.
So, he thought, this is what it comes down to in the end: a man’s future haunts him as well as his past.
47
‘Thank you, sir,’ Elinor said, hoping her face did not betray her feelings. ‘My husband is no better, but at least he is no worse. Most of the time he sleeps, or the next best thing to it. When he awakes, though, he is unquiet in his mind.’
‘That’s not to be wondered at,’ Holdsworth said.
‘Yes – but why should he want to see Mr Soresby, and so urgently? It may be the opium, of course. It can encourage strange fancies, can it not?’
‘No doubt that has something to do with it.’
She looked sharply at him, catching in his tone something she did not quite understand. ‘I am glad you are come – there is something I wish to tell you.’
But there was a knock on the door and Susan entered with the tea things.
‘Are you sure I am not intruding, ma’am?’ Holdsworth asked.
‘Not at all, sir.’ She smiled at him and instantly felt guilty, not so much for the smile as for the quite inexcusable happiness that had prompted it. He did not return the smile, and her happiness vanished as swiftly as it had come. But the guilt remained. ‘Dr Carbury’s asleep,’ she went on in a colder voice. ‘I had already ordered tea for myself. It
