Richard and Judy Bookclub - 3 Bestsellers in 1: The American Boy, The Savage Garden, The Righteous Men. Andrew Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ “But Mr Harmwell is as free as you or I.”

      The maid curtsied and left the room. The boys followed, banging the door behind them.

      “And how free is that?” I said.

      Miss Carswall giggled. “Free enough in all conscience. I approve of freedom. I am a natural radical.” She rose and came to stand beside me. She glanced out of the window, and the excitement left her face. “Look. Sophie’s coming.”

      We moved apart and re-arranged our limbs and our feelings. Mrs Frant passed the window as she made her way along the terrace towards the side door.

      I coughed. “Do I understand from Harmwell’s continued presence that Mr Noak stays for a while longer?”

      “Yes, had you not heard? At least until after the ball.” Miss Carswall laughed; she appeared wholly self-possessed. “I had the reason from Sophie who had it from Mrs Kerridge, who had it from Harmwell himself. You recall that Kerridge and Harmwell are sweet on one another? It is touching, is it not, and especially at their time of life? Anyway, according to Harmwell, Mr Noak is contemplating the purchase of some property from my father. A warehouse in Liverpool, or some such thing. And there is talk of other investments – you know what gentlemen are like when they begin to talk of their investments. They become like girls talking of their beaux – there is the same blend of fantasy with obsession, the desire for secrecy, the lust for acquisition.”

      She had moved away from me now, and sat down again on the sofa. I felt half relieved, half cheated. A moment later, Mrs Frant came into the room and held out her hands to the fire.

      “Mrs Johnson is still at Clearland-court, I collect?” she said to Miss Carswall.

      “I believe so. I had understood from Sir George that she was staying with them until after the ball. Why?”

      “I was walking near the ruins and I saw a man in the garden of Grange Cottage.”

      “Her gardener?”

      “But she has no gardener now. Only the one maid of all work, Ruth, and she is not there at present. I was too far away to see him clearly but he seemed to catch sight of me, and moved away at once. Do you think we should inform Mrs Johnson?”

      “It would be the neighbourly thing to do,” Miss Carswall said. “Could you describe him?”

      “Tall and well built. He wore a long brown coat and a broad-brimmed hat. I can tell you nothing about his face. He was so far away, and the collar was turned up, and the brim of the hat was –”

      “I will write a note to Mrs Johnson,” Miss Carswall cut in. “If she thinks there is something suspicious, she will consult with Sir George about what to do. I would not for the world want to worry her, but one cannot be too careful in such matters. Perhaps we should send someone to investigate before we raise the alarm.”

      “If you like,” I said, “I could walk there now.”

      To tell the truth, I welcomed the chance of escaping from that snug parlour. I always found it unsettling to see Mrs Frant and Miss Carswall together, and rarely more than I did on that occasion. I was not proud of my feelings yet I could not pretend that I did not desire them both: though not entirely for the same reasons, and not in the same way.

      I found my hat and stick and set out. I was surprised how soon I reached Grange Cottage. Perturbation of the mind and discomfort of the body encourage rapidity of movement. In a sense, perhaps, I was attempting to hurry away from the unholy confusion of my own feelings.

      Nothing had changed since my previous visit. The building had the desolate appearance of an untenanted house – somehow reduced in importance by the absence of its owner as is a body by the absence of its animating spirit.

      The shutters were still up. I tried the doors: all were locked. As I had done before, I walked round to the kitchen yard at the back. I inspected the muddy patch beside the pump, and found only a confusion of ridges and furrows, brittle with frost, where before there had been an outline of a man’s footprint.

      By and by, I returned through the park, walking more slowly than before. I scarcely knew the reason for my unease – whether it was what I might have left behind at Grange Cottage or what I might be walking towards at Monkshill. I skirted the lake by the longer, western route and took the opportunity to investigate both the approach to the ice-house and the shell grotto. I found nothing out of the way, and nor had I expected to do so. I was not following a rational purpose: I wanted to postpone my return, I suppose, and that part of the mind that is mysterious even to its owner was obliging enough to suggest plausible excuses for delay.

      In the end, though, my powers of invention were exhausted. I took the path to the house, walking ever more slowly. Images of Mrs Frant, images of Miss Carswall, whirled through my mind. I could not think clearly, and even derived a gloomy pleasure from my plight: was I not the very pattern of a romantic hero?

      As I was walking along the wall of the kitchen gardens, immersed in gloomy thoughts, the boys ran whooping like redskins through a doorway. They hurled themselves into me with such force that I staggered and almost fell.

      “I beg your pardon, sir,” said Edgar, glancing at Charlie.

      The boys burst into giggles. I pretended to roar at them and they scampered away with cries of simulated terror. I chased them through the walled gardens and seized both of them by the scruffs of their necks.

      “Juvenal tells us maxima debetur puero reverentia,” I said. “Translate, Edgar.”

      “The greatest reverence is due to a boy, sir.”

      “But Juvenal is inaccurate on this occasion. The greatest reverence is due to a boy’s master.”

      I pretended to cuff them and they ran off, shrieking. Soon they would grow older and more serious. Time was running out for their boyhood. For that matter, time was running out for us all, and running faster and faster. I thought of Mr Carswall and his watch: for all his wealth the old man was time’s slave, as completely in its power as any of his niggers had ever been in his. As for me, my sojourn at Monkshill was slipping away. In a few short weeks, I would take Edgar Allan back to Stoke Newington, and leave behind whatever was happening here.

      Worst of all, I would leave Sophia Frant and Flora Carswall. At that moment, the prospect of losing them seemed an insupportable fate. They had become my pleasure, my pain and my necessity. They had become my meat and drink, my Alpha and Omega. I was enslaved to them, I told myself, and to what they represented: and in my addiction I was no better than an opium-eater tapping a coin on the druggist’s counter as he waits for his heaven and his hell in a pill-box.

       Chapter 50

      The following day, Mr Noak sent down to say that he was unwell. He had a severe cold. Harmwell explained that his master would be obliged to keep to his bed for at least a day or two. Owing to boyhood illnesses, Mr Noak’s chest was weak. The greatest care was needed if he was to avoid fever, a severe and debilitating cough and possibly pneumonia. The news spread throughout the house long before Mr Carswall announced it formally at dinner, which gave Miss Carswall ample opportunity to consult her brown duodecimo volume.

      “You must not be anxious, Papa,” she said when he told us the news with СКАЧАТЬ