A Scandal in Belgravia (24 page)

“What happened?”

“Well, the trouble was Tim didn't think Father was the person to give him advice either.”

“I'm not altogether surprised. He seldom talked about him. They weren't close, were they?”

“No. Tim was quite right. He was a free spirit, and he had to make his own decisions. But you couldn't expect Father to see it like that. There was a blistering telephone conversation the night before he died. The atmosphere in the house was positively crackling. Caroline and I were in the sitting room and I tell you: we shivered! We couldn't hear what was said, but we could hear Father shouting. He could be tremendous at moments like that . . . Terrifying . . . But of course in the long run it wouldn't have done any good. Tim would have gone his own way.”

“Who would have gone his own way?”

Caroline Wycliffe had come in with a coffee pot and cups on a tray, and began setting out cups before us and pouring.

“Tim would, dear. We were talking about Tim.”

There was an immediate frosting in the atmosphere.

“What an unfortunate topic of conversation when we have the good fortune to have a cabinet minister visit us!”

“Ex,” I said. “I knew your brother-in-law well, Mrs. Wycliffe.”

“As far as I'm concerned the least said about Tim the better,” she said, her mouth in a hard, straight line.

“Dammit, Caroline, I loved Tim!” protested her husband. “I'm not going to have him talked about as if he should be swept away under the carpet!”

“I was fond of Tim myself,” said Caroline coldly, “at least when he wasn't being outrageous. I'd be the first to admit that he was wonderfully clever at talking me around. But in view of some of his activities I don't think he is a suitable topic for social chitchat.”

“For God's sake, Caroline! Your father was an admiral! Do you think that sort of thing isn't a matter of everyday occurrence in the navy?”

She shook her head, as if in acknowledgement that this was one subject on which she could not bully her husband round to her opinion. She took up a cup and got up from the sofa.

“I'll take this in to Father.”

“Still pretty bright?”

“Not too bad.”

“He's having one of his good days,” said James in explanation. “Generally speaking he's declining fast into senility.”

“Really? I saw him not long ago in the House of Lords.”

“Ah well—senility no bar there, eh?” James laughed heartily, then thought he'd been unfeeling. “But that will be the last time, I'm afraid. Dereham, whose cottage you looked at, used to take him. Father's old butler, with him for years. Only five years younger, as a matter of fact, but much spryer. They let him look after Father right up to the entrance of the Chamber. I think a lot of people thought he
was
a peer. He had a stroke three weeks ago. Sad. I don't think Father's taken it in yet.”

I had listened to Mrs. Wycliffe's footsteps and they had not gone upstairs. I said: “He looked very frail.”

“That's right. He has one of the drawing rooms down here as his room—he eats and sleeps there nowadays. It's a big burden
on Caroline, though we get help now and then. Mind you, in some ways it's a relief.”

“Oh?”

“He's not looking over our shoulders the whole time. When he lost his seat in 1966 it was the end of the world for him: he was absolutely adrift, poor old man. He put all his energies into the running of this place: acquired more farms, spread himself, reformed work practices. Trouble was, he wasn't really very good at running a large farming business.”

“Penny-pinching,” said Caroline, coming back and taking up her coffee. “Sorry to say it about the old man, but that's the size of it. Penny-pinching just doesn't do in farming, and it puts the local people's backs up.”

“But Father never was awfully good with
people,
was he, Caro? He got his life Peerage in 1973. Lord Edmonton. Nobody thinks of him as that, though, and he often even forgets it himself. Still, it gave him a toehold on political life again. About that time he made over Maddern and all the estate to us, to avoid death duties. Always resented taxes, poor old Father. So we ran the place, but we always had him looking over our shoulders. Meanwhile he stayed on here, practically alone with Dereham, who lived in the cottage and was pretty much the last of the staff. Funny situation: they spent all day here together, quarrelling and getting on each other's nerves, but somehow needing each other.”

“Rather like one of these modern plays,” said Caroline surprisingly.

“We always encouraged him to be active in the Lords—to get him out of our hair. Caroline is a marvellous administrator, and I—well, I suppose I supply the human touch. Amiable old buffer. Anyway eventually we had to move in. Dereham couldn't look after him on his own any more, let alone the place, which was going to rack and ruin. So we've been with him for some years now, but we've always felt him looking
disapprovingly at practically everything we've done. At least until recently.”

“You have a son to take over?”

“Grandson. Son was in on computers at an early stage. Has Caro's brain, luckily. No interest in the place at all. But Ben, fortunately, has loved it from the moment he opened his eyes and started taking notice. He's here now, learning about the place from the fieldwork upwards. Lovely to have him here.”

“I've never understood,” said Caroline, “how it helps to learn the business of running a large estate to go out into the fields and hoe turnips. A course in accountancy would be more use, but I suppose he'll do that eventually. Ah well, I'm old-fashioned, thank goodness. If that's what Ben wants, let him do it. He's a help with Father, too.”

“I'd like to pay my respects to Lord John—Lord Edmonton—before I go,” I said.

“I don't think so,” said Caroline quickly. Then she flushed at her rudeness. “I'm sorry, but I always feel it's not kind to old people . . . it makes an exhibition of them . . . I mean when they're a shadow of their former selves.”

“Nonsense, Caroline. You know Father is tickled pink by anything connected with politics. He'll be immensely flattered that he's still remembered.”

“No, I don't think it would be a good idea at all.” Her head swung around. “What on earth is that?”

Her eye had been caught by something through the window. She got up and James and I rose from our seats with her. Parked just behind my own Volvo was a rather dirty old van with “D. O'C
ONNOR
,
MILKMAN
” on the side. In the back was a large shape covered with a tarpaulin, and getting out of the driver's seat was Marjorie Knopfmeyer. I recognised her with a lift of the heart: could she be my way out of a ticklish situation? We were all in the entrance hall when she rang the doorbell and marched straight in.

“Caroline! James! I've got the most marvellous present for you, which you're going to
hate
—oh, Good Lord—Peter!”

She was surprised, but the next moment she shot me a dazzling smile that was instinct with intelligent apprehension of the cause of my being there.

“Oh, you know Mr. Proctor, Marjorie?” James burbled on. “Oh yes, he said you'd met. He's just dropped in . . .”

“Of course I know Peter. Good friends. Now the thing is this: I'm back at the cottage now, as you know, but I find I've been left this marvellous piece by Ferdy—
The Fall of Icarus.
One of his really fine works. He sold it to a very rich lady, one of our Gloucester neighbours, and since she had no near relatives she left it back to me in her will. Wonderful windfall, but I've nowhere to put it at the cottage—
far
too large. So I thought: that's just the thing for the lawns in front of Maddern. It's meant for outside, of course. So I got the milkman to lend me his van and here it is. You'll loathe it, Caroline, but it's rather valuable and generally considered one of Ferdy's masterpieces. You'll have sculpture buffs peering at it through the gates. Come on, come and have a look. Could you get Ben to help me unload it?”

She took her sister-in-law firmly by the arm. Caroline said: “How interesting. We'll all go and have a look.” She shot a glance at her husband which I had no difficulty interpreting, but she let herself be led away. In the hall James fussed for a moment and then said:

“Like to have a little talk to Father? Old chap would be pleased as Punch. Loves anything to do with politics. I'll make it right with Caroline.”

I thanked him and he led me to a dark door under an archway in a covered nook at the rear of the hall. When he opened it he took me into a room flooded with light, with windows giving on to lawns and fields, yet somehow I could not rid myself of the notion that I was being led into the dark tower's darkest inner sanctum.

J
ames Wycliffe led me over to a high-backed chair placed near a blazing fire, with the figure in it hidden from me. I could feel the son's nervousness from his hand on my arm. The room was light and airy, with windows on two sides giving a glorious view of lawns, hedges, and fields beyond. As I approached the chair I seemed to see only rugs, but there in the middle was the shrunken figure I had seen at the House of Lords—a wizened, depleted body, with sunken cheeks and downcast eyes, something once a man, but now, it seemed, diminishing out of life.

“Father, you have a visitor,” said James, in that hearty tone so many children eventually adopt to their ageing parents. “It's Peter Proctor who used to be minister of . . . of—”

“Energy, among other things,” I said. I hope I felt suitably humbled that a life-long Conservative could not remember what I had been or what I had done. I was further chastened by the first words that emerged from the chair.

“Dreadful crew. No style. No style at all.”

There was malice in the voice, vitriol even, that was unaccountable and frightening.

“Yes,” I said meekly. “I suppose we do lack style.”

“Still a minister, are you?”

“Not any longer.”

“Rats leaving a sinking ship.”

“Thrown off, actually,” I said. Then I added, trying not to be cowed: “Though I've often wondered what a sensible rat on a sinking ship is supposed to do if not leave.”

“I was thrown off a sinking ship. . . .” The voice was now brooding, thick with grievance, and it seemed to reach me through aeons of time, heavy with rancour and vindictiveness. I was conscious of James Wycliffe tiptoeing out of the room, no doubt making his escape from an encounter that was not bearing out his notion that his father would be “tickled pink” by a visitor from the world of politics. The voice droned on.

“That bounder Macmillan . . . ungrateful swine. . . . He'd have done anything to save his own skin. . . . Still, he had style. Eden had style. Churchill had style.”

“I served under Selwyn Lloyd,” I said to redress the balance. It was the wrong thing to say. I was astonished by the furious hiss from the chair.

“I should have had that job! I should have been Foreign Secretary! It's what I'd prepared myself for all my life! I was kept down in piddling jobs—Minister of Planning, Minister for Local Government. Beneath me! . . .” The fury in the voice was chilling. But then he seemed altogether to cast a chill on the warm, sunny room. The head withdrew itself within the blankets for a moment. The voice was more normal when he said: “You were in the Foreign Office?”

“Yes, under Morrison and Eden, then under Lloyd.”

“Lloyd! I should have gone there!”

“I worked with your son Timothy.”

“Rotten apple . . . no loyalty . . .” I was suddenly conscious of dark, venemous eyes turned towards me, transfixing me. “You the chap that's been going round asking questions?”

This really pulled me up sharp. I had no answer prepared.

“Yes.”

“Damned interference. No business of yours.”

“He was my friend.”

“I know all about Tim's friends.”

“Friend, not lover. . . . How did you know about my questions? Your children don't.”

“Dereham picked it up when we were at the House of Lords. Told me about it on the way home. Chuckled. He knew a thing or two that he shouldn't have known. . . . Dereham's dead. They think I haven't taken it in, but I have. I know he's dead . . . be dead myself before the year's out. Then you can write what you like. Until then you'd better be damned careful!”

He seemed to have shrunk further into the rugs, and it was as if the vicious tones were issuing from a dark hole. I tried to talk normally to the hole, as if I were interviewing the old man on the telephone.

“You had a row with Timothy just before he was killed, didn't you?”

“James and Caroline been talking?” He pulled himself round painfully and looked at me. For the first time I saw full-face and felt the vicious power of his eyes. I seemed to be shrivelled by a rage and a resentment that had been preserved intact over the decades. “They said nothing to the police. They're mediocrities, but loyal ones. Caroline has all her wits about her.”

“You had a row about the job Tim was going to take, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“You thought it would be . . . bad publicity for you?”

“Should have thought that was damned obvious. Every time he made a statement to the press, spoke on the wireless or television—if they'd let him on there, which I doubt, because they had different standards then—it would have been ‘said Mr. Timothy Wycliffe, son of the present Minister of Planning,' ‘son of the Local Government Minister.' . . . It would have been ruinous. He should never have thought of it. The boy had no sense of loyalty.”