improved by their children. Through Laurence, and also of later years through Caroline, Helena’s mental organization had been recast. She was, at least, prepared for the idea that Ernest was not only to be tolerated in a spirit of what she understood as Christian charity, but valued for himself, his differences from the normal. Helena actually admired him a little for what she called his reform. But when he gave up his relations with men she had half expected an external change in Ernest; was disappointed and puzzled that his appearance and attitudes remained so infrangibly effeminate, and she understood that these mannerisms were not offensive to people like Laurence and Caroline. Helena possessed some French china, figurines of the seventeenth century which she valued, but the cherishing of Ernest while he was in her presence came hard enough to present her with an instinctive antagonism; something to overcome.
Ernest had folded while she packed nearly everything. What couldn’t be packed was ready to be carried to the car. ‘Let’s have a cigarette, we’ve worked hard.’
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that machine belongs to Caroline. We had better have the man up to make sure we haven’t left anything of ours, or taken away what’s theirs.’
Ernest, curling himself on a low footstool, lifted the cover off the machine. ‘It’s a tape-recorder. Caroline probably used it for her work.’
‘I have implicit trust in you, Ernest. I’ve come to you before anyone. I don’t want to inconvenience you of course, and if it’s a question of expense —’
‘Thank you, Helena. But I can’t promise — I’ll try of course — this time of year we have our bookings, our classes. Maybe Hogarth will agree to come to London.’
‘I’m so grateful to you, Ernest.’
He fiddled with the tape machine, pressed the lever. It gave a faint whirr and the voice came with an exaggerated soppy yak: ‘Caroline, darling… .
Within a few seconds Helena had recognized Laurence’s voice; a slight pause and it was followed by Caroline’s. The first speech was shocking and the second was nonsense.
Ernest said, ‘Hee, silly little dears.’
Helena lifted her coat, let Ernest help her on with it.
‘Will you send for the man, Ernest? Give him a pound and ask if everything’s all right. I’ll take some of the loose things down to the car. No, ten shillings will do.’
She felt almost alone in the world, wearily unfit for the task of understanding Laurence and Caroline. These new shocks and new insights, this perpetual obligation on her part to accept what it went against her to accept… . She wanted a warm soft bath in her own home; she was tired and worried and she didn’t know what.
Just as she was leaving, Ernest phoning for the housekeeper said, ‘Look, there’s something. A notebook, that’s Caroline’s I’m sure.’
A red pocket notebook was lying on the lower ledge of the telephone table. He picked it up and handed it to Helena.
‘What a good thing you saw it. I’d quite forgotten. Caroline was asking specially for this. A notebook with shorthand notes, she asked for it.’ Helena flicked it open to make sure. Most of it was in shorthand, but on one of the pages was a list in longhand. She caught the words: ‘Possible identity.’
‘This must be connected with Laurence’s investigations,’ Helena said.
She turned again to that page while she sat in the car waiting for Ernest with the bags, but she could make nothing of it. Under ‘Possible identity’ were listed:
Satan
a woman
hermaphrodite
a Holy Soul in Purgatory
‘I don’t know what,’ said Helena, as she put it away carefully among Caroline’s things. ‘I really don’t know what.’
SEVEN
Just after two in the mild bluish afternoon a tall straight old man entered the bookshop. He found Baron Stock alone and waiting for him.
‘Ah, Mr Webster, how punctual you are, how very good of you to make the journey. Come right through to the inside, come to the inside.’
Baron Stock’s large personal acquaintance — though he had few intimate friends — when they dropped in on the Baron in his Charing Cross Road bookshop were invariably greeted with this request, ‘Come to the inside.’ Customers, travellers and the trade were not allowed further than the large front show-place; the Baron was highly cagey about ‘the inside’, those shabby, comfortable, and quite harmless back premises where books and files piled and tumbled over everything except the three old armchairs and the square of worn red carpet, in the centre of which stood a foreign-looking and noisy paraffin stove. Those admitted to the inside, before they sat down and if they knew the Baron’s habits, would wait while he placed a sheet of newspaper on the seat of each chair. ‘It is exceedingly dusty, my dears, I never permit the cleaners to touch the inside.’ When the afternoons began to draw in, the Baron would light a paraffin lamp on his desk: the electricity had long since failed here in these back premises, ‘and really,’ said the Baron, ‘I can’t have electricians coming through to the inside with their mess.’ Occasionally one of his friends would say, ‘It looks a simple job, I think I could fix your lights, Willi.’ ‘How very obliging of you.’ ‘Not at all, I’ll do it next week.’ But no one ever came next week to connect up the electricity.
‘And how,’ said the Baron when he had settled Mr Webster on a fresh piece of newspaper, ‘is Mrs Jepp?’
Mr Webster sat erect and stiff, turning his body from the waist to answer the Baron.
‘She is well I am pleased to say, but worried about her grandson I am sorry to say.
‘Yes, a nasty accident. I’ve known Laurence for years of course. A bad driver. But he’s coming home next week, I hear.’
‘Yes, he had a handsome escape. The poor young lady’s leg is fractured, but she too might be worse, they tell us.’
‘Poor Caroline, I’ve known her for years. Her forehead was cut quite open, I hear.’
