Fault in the Structure

and far and I know very few of their addresses. So dear Laura lives here.’ She looked around appreciatively at the well-appointed room. ‘But I thought she was Mrs Gavin. Is she – she is not widowed, by any chance, I hope? One likes to know that kind of thing so that one may avoid tactlessness.’

‘Quite. Laura is married to an Assistant Commissioner of Police at New Scotland Yard, if it is still so called, and the marriage is a happy one.’

‘Indeed? How very interesting and nice.’

‘She is in London at the moment, as a matter of fact. Her husband is on annual leave.’

‘Oh, really? I am sorry not to greet her, but, indeed, Dame Beatrice, it is you I came to see, and, I ought to explain, upon a begging errand. Oh, no, not for money,’ Clarice hastily added, perceiving that her hostess had now assumed the expression of a benevolent snake and was making a move towards a Hepplewhite bureau-bookcase which stood against a side wall. ‘Not for money at all, unless – well, as you know dear Laura so well – unless you would care to subscribe to the funds by purchasing tickets for our next performance.’

‘Given by the dramatic and operatic society? I shall be delighted.’

‘Thank you so much. Perhaps a tiny cheque when I go. Oh, no sugar, please.’ She glanced down at her buxom figure. ‘One needs to watch one’s weight.’ She nullified this assertion by ignoring the thin bread and butter and reaching out for one of Henri’s delicious cream cakes. ‘No, I really came to beg a favour of you – two favours,’ she added, as though, by putting it thus, she removed any apprehension which the statement might have engendered. Dame Beatrice took a sip of tea and waited for the blow, or, rather, the two blows, to fall. ‘We are preparing to honour the fifth centenary of Caxton’s – of the setting up of Caxton’s printing press,’ Mrs Blaine went on.

‘So Laura has told me.’

‘What very delicious cakes these are! You do not make them yourself, by any chance?’

‘No. They are of Gallic origin. My own activities, I regret to say, are purely cerebral. I should be of no practical use to the Ladies’ Guild in the guise of amateur cake-maker and stall-holder.’

‘Ah, yes, the Ladies’ Guild,’ said Clarice, taking up the cue, as Dame Beatrice had intended that she should. ‘That’s just it. Caxton is being obstructive, so we wondered whether – your profession, you know – your power over the mind…’

‘Caxton is being obstructive? But, dear Mrs Blaine, I am a psychiatrist, not a necromancer or a medium for spirits; neither have I any personal experience of the ouija board.’

Clarice Blaine stared and then half-heartedly laughed, uncertain whether the remarks were made seriously or not.

‘No, no. You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Our Caxton is not the real Caxton, of course. He happens to bear the same name, that’s all. It was his name and, of course, the date, which gave me the idea for the Ladies’ Guild pageant.’

‘He calls himself William Caxton?’

‘That is his name. What makes it so interesting is that, in an amateur way, he also is a printer.’

‘Yes, these bizarre occupations do seem to run in families,’ said Dame Beatrice absently, her thoughts busy with A.C. Swinburne, T.E. Lawrence and now W. Caxton and R. Crashaw. She recollected herself. ‘Will you take another cup of tea? And do help yourself to the cakes.’

‘Thank you, yes, another cup, if you please, and, do you know, in spite of my doctor’s orders, I believe I will have another of these delicious morsels. Well, as I was saying, it seemed such a good idea to have a Caxton pageant, but, of course, we need Caxton himself to lead it. Can you believe, though, that he refuses, absolutely refuses to have anything to do with it? Well, as I said to him, how can we have a Caxton pageant without Caxton?’

‘You could get someone to impersonate him, could you not?’

‘Oh, but, Dame Beatrice, what an anticlimax when we could get the real man,’

‘But, dear Mrs Blaine, your Caxton is not the real man.’

‘He must be a lineal descendant. You said yourself that these things run in families.’

‘So I did. I should be interested to meet your William Caxton.’

‘And compel him to do his duty and lead our pageant? How delighted I am to hear you say so! Well, that is the first of my tiresome requests got out of the way. The last time I called on him he showed me the door, but he will find that I am not to be deterred by a mere exhibition of ill-manners. I shall beard him again in the person of someone…’ she looked with satisfaction at Dame Beatrice’s sharp black eyes, claw-hands and beaky little mouth – ‘someone whom he will find impossible to withstand.’

‘Well, I promise nothing. However, in so good a cause as the Caxton pageant,’ said Dame Beatrice, with a crocodile grin, ‘I shall do my best to persuade this young man. Is he young?’

‘In his thirties, I would say.’

‘To a centenarian like myself that must seem young.’ Mrs Blaine’s large and arrogant face wore an expression to which it was unaccustomed, an expression of doubt and perplexity. She essayed what she hoped was a light laugh and decided to change the subject.

‘We come now,’ she said, as she had said so often when taking the chair at her Ladies’ Guild, ‘to an equally important but totally different matter.’ Her face changed its expression to one with which Hamilton Haynings would have been uneasily familiar. ‘It concerns my second request and is a matter of extreme urgency and considerable delicacy. Dame Beatrice, the Caxton Festival cannot produce The Beggar’s Opera.’

‘I thought Dr Denbigh was producing it,’ said Dame Beatrice innocently.

‘You do not grasp my meaning. Neither I nor the Ladies’ Guild can countenance the production of such a piece in Chardle. It is not only vulgar, it is immoral.’

‘Dear me! What could poor John Gay have been thinking of to write such a thing?’