The Tryst

and pictures and conversation with him. His favourite exercise was lying on the sofa smoking a cigarette and passing remarks in foreign languages with his clever friends. But he spent most of his time in London, or running around on the Continent. Which suited us just fine, because when he did take it into his head to come down with a party of guests then all hell broke loose. Breakfast at eight, that was a meal in itself, six or more courses. Lunch at half past one, about eight or ten courses there. Tea in the afternoon, then dinner at eight thirty, with twelve courses. Then there were the rooms to be cleaned and heated, for these folk weren’t like Rupert, who slept with the window open all year round and could never abide a fire. There were baths to draw, linen to air and iron, provisions to order, and if everything wasn’t just right and dead on time someone would catch it. But luckily Maurice’s visits were rare and didn’t last long, for he and his sophisticated pals soon got bored with the simple pleasures of the country. As for Master Rupert, he was so easy to care for you’d hardly know he was there, as my mother used to say. His rooms were in the east wing of the Hall, where the guest rooms were, but he was the easiest guest you’d ever hope to entertain, for he was always out, walking or riding from dawn to dusk. As for his meals, he’d bring home a trout he’d hooked, and be content with that and a plain roast. He went out shooting or fishing every day, depending on the season.

‘As I said, Maurice and Rupert didn’t see eye to eye on anything, and whenever Maurice appeared at the hall we knew that sooner or later there would be ructions. Maurice was far too genteel ever to raise his voice, but he had a way of describing what his brother thought or did that made it sound ridiculous. For instance he might tell his guests, “Now if any of you are depraved enough to be up with the lark tomorrow morning, if you happen to glance out of your window, you may see a figure tripping stealthily across the lawn. Do not be alarmed. It is neither fawn nor satyr, but merely my brother Rupert, off to commune with Nature, that great dynamo whence he draws those mystic powers, which, as you have doubtless remarked, cause him to hum and crackle with energy and charm.” We had all this from the butler, who waited at table and could do Maurice to a T. Rupert gave as good as he got, though, only there was none of this sly insinuating manner about him. He’d come right out and say what he thought. “This country is decaying like fine timber with dry rot. There’s nothing to show on the surface as yet, but at the heart the old vigour and vibrancy is gone. And the fungi that have caused this, the canker that is consuming our great heritage, is composed of tiny crawling creatures like you and your friends, Maurice. Men who have sold their souls to progress and the mob, who go whoring after strange gods and neglect the spirits of their native land, who spice their corrupt and decadent conversation with foreign catchphrases yet have so far forgotten their own tongue that they call their cowardice pacifism, their ignorance science, their treachery socialism and their lack of virility civilization.” Oh, he didn’t mince his words, our Rupert, I can assure you! But Maurice and his friends didn’t seem to mind. They just smiled in a superior way, as though Rupert were some sort of country show they’d come down on purpose to see.’

The old man broke off to relight his pipe.

‘Are you following all this?’ he asked.

Steve shrugged.

‘Go on. I like hearing you talk.’

‘Well, that’s very convenient, because it happens to be the thing I like best myself. Anyway, according to the terms of old Jeffries’ will, with the two brothers at loggerheads nothing could be changed, which suited us down to the ground. My mother and the rest of the staff all kept their places and I wasn’t robbed of the only life I’d ever known, not yet. Then that last summer, just before the war, much to everyone’s surprise Maurice suddenly came to live at the Hall. Naturally this caused problems, not just for Rupert, who expected to have the place pretty much to himself, but for the staff, who had grown rather too used to idleness. No one seemed able to explain Maurice’s abrupt change of heart. By this time I had turned sixteen, and was helping out in the garden. They hoped I would take after my father, who they said could make a dead plant sprout again. At any rate, one day I was hoeing some beds when I heard somebody say, “… because I’m in love!”. It was Mr Maurice’s voice, coming from the alley just behind the hedge where I was working. I heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel, and then another voice replied, “In love! Why, Maurice, I fall in love at least once a week, on average, but I shouldn’t dream of deserting my friends and burying myself away in the depths of the country like some hermit.” Naturally all this whetted my curiosity. The head gardener was nowhere about, so I set off along the service path, which ran parallel to the walk that the two gentlemen were on. The hedge between us was so high that although we were just a foot or two apart, they were no more aware of me than of the man in the moon. I missed the next few words, but I caught up with them in time to hear Maurice saying, “… the most ravishing female I have ever set eyes on.’ “But who was she?” the other man enquired. I’d recognized him by now. It was one of Maurice’s closest friends, a young man named Aubrey Deville. “That’s just it,” Maurice went on, “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

‘By now they had reached what we called the fountain, a rock pool with carp swimming in it. They sat down on the stone bench there and after swearing his friend to the strictest secrecy, Maurice told him the whole story. It had started about a month before, he said, when he came down to the Hall for one of his brief visits. “You may recall, Aubrey, that after dinner we went to the billiard room and stayed there until two or three in the morning. Well perhaps it was the excitement of watching my brother being made an ass of by young Sullivan, but at any rate I found that I simply could not get to sleep. At last I gave it up and sat down at my writing-desk to catch up on my correspondence. The desk stands directly before the window, and thus commands an excellent view of the lawn. Well, I had been sitting there for some time when my eye was suddenly drawn by a movement outside. My first thought was that it must be a fox or a badger, but I very soon saw that the figure was human. The house had been as still as a grave for several hours, and I knew that it could not be one of us. I feared it might be an intruder, perhaps a poacher or even a housebreaker.

‘ “The moon that night was just a day or two off the full, and the lawn gleamed brightly except where the shadows of the two great beeches fell, as dark and dense as clay. At first the figure was in the shadow of the easterly beech, a mere glimmer of whiteness in the night, but as I watched it moved out into the open. It was a woman, Aubrey! She was wearing a sort of white shift which left her arms and lower legs bare. Her hair was all let down, too, so that she looked as though she had just risen from her bed. She moved slowly and gracefully across the lawn, looking about her at the house and the gardens as though it was the most natural thing in the world. My brain was in an absolute turmoil, yet I could not move, could hardly even breathe! I simply sat there, transfixed, as she crossed the lawn and was swallowed up by the shadow of the other tree. No sooner had she vanished than I felt as though I had been released from a spell. I dressed hurriedly, rushed downstairs and ran out on to the lawn, but there was no one there. I searched the whole garden, which was illuminated as brightly as on a winter day, but I could find absolutely no trace of the woman. At last I returned to my room and watched the lawn until it grew light, but all in vain. And as I sat there, exhausted and hollow-eyed, I realized with dismay that I had fallen in love. Her frank bold freedom, her candour, her purity! She is the woman I’ve always dreamed of, the woman for whom I’ve been searching all my life! Ah, Aubrey, if only you’d seen her! But you must see her. You shall see her!” ’

The old man broke off as the chimes of the squat walnut-cased clock on the mantelpiece struck six.

‘I like that sound,’ Steve murmured.

‘You should have heard the clock that stood in the housekeeper’s parlour at the Hall,’ the old man told him. ‘Its chimes were as mellow as the drops of wine I used to taste out of the gentlemen’s glasses sometimes after dinner. And all day long and all through the night the pendulum swung to and fro, tick, tock, tick, tock. Ah, things were different then! There were sixty minutes to the hour in those days. Now the time is nothing but rubbish, short measure and shoddy quality. Still, we must try and make better use of it next week, or we’ll never be done.’

Steve walked home that evening with a faint smile on his lips. Naturally he didn’t believe a word of what the old man had told him. Countryside under the sea! Houses that grew like plants! People who kept snacking all day but were so poor they didn’t even have electricity like the stotters! Matthews couldn’t even get his story straight. He’d talked about a big house, but before that he’d said he used to live in a cemetery. Steve had slept in a cemetery once, up Stoke Newington way. It hadn’t been too bad, until a gang of Irish gypsy kids shut him up in one of those little houses they had for the dead people. As for old Matthews, Steve was beginning to suspect that he was a bit round the twist. What he’d said about his skull being like a golf ball, that made sense all right! Steve had found a golf ball in a park once. It had been cracked along one side, and when he’d prised it open he’d found a crazy mess of tiny rubber threads inside, all squashed together higgledy-piggledy. That was what the old man’s skull must be like inside all right, a right mess. But Steve wouldn’t let on to the old man that he’d sussed him out. He had too much to lose. There was the warmth, the food, the tea, the money, the weekly appointments that gave him a future to look forward to. Above all, there was the old man’s fear. Steve loved to feel it, to bask in