Gay Phoenix (6 page)

All this was very satisfactory to remember. It was, in fact, so satisfactory that Arthur Povey sometimes experienced a certain annoyance at not being able to remember it more clearly. Since those first dreadful moments in which he had stood staring down at his dead brother on the deck of the
Gay Phoenix
, the course of his life had been crowded, eventful, and often extremely alarming. It had also been a triumphant success, and in the light of all this it didn’t surprise him, let alone disconcert him, that his memory commanded much of it in vivid and almost hallucinatory detail. There was something patchy about the effect, all the same. For example, he didn’t really remember with any certainty how he had come to think up the turn he had so successfully put on in the Adelaide hospital. It must have started up in his mind like a creation, he supposed. But the moment of its inception eluded his recollection. So did much in the stages of its development. But then he had been in a pretty bad way – physically, of course – by the time he brought the
Gay Phoenix
to port. No doubt he had a little piled it on – his exhaustion and all that. But he had been through experiences – totally unplanned experiences – which hadn’t been funny in the least. So his memory was a trifle shaky as a result.

‘Bless me, if it isn’t Master Arthur!’

These words – which were all too plainly potentially disastrous in themselves – were the more alarming because of something quite unaccountable in the circumstances of their delivery. Arthur Povey, although now, as it were, fairly well established at the wicket, was still subject at least to an intermittent feeling that he must continue very carefully to play himself in. At these times an inconveniently strong sense of nervous strain might result, and to cope with this he had developed what proved to be a tolerably sufficient, and certainly very simple, resource. Just as batsmen at the crease are rather oddly permitted to do, he would declare himself unwell and retire for an interval to the pavilion. In Povey’s case, when he was in England, the pavilion would be some vast and expensive (although gastronom-ically primitive) seaside hotel. England is a free country; you don’t have to carry papers and identify yourself wherever you go; you simply choose any name you fancy, don a pair of large dark glasses, stuff some convenient receptacle with ten-pound notes, and find yourself as free as the wind. The wind, of course, is sometimes displeasingly chilly even in Eastbourne or Torquay. But unless you happen to be experiencing at the time a period of such extreme celebrity or notoriety that the press is after you hotfoot, you are as safe as houses for as long as you please. And the sort of people who frequent such hotels, although necessarily in the enjoyment of a substantial prosperity, were remote in their social contacts from those circles which Arthur as Charles was beginning at other times confidently to frequent.

So here he was – sitting in sunshine on a broad terrace, with his monstrous hostelry behind him, and nothing except a small table, a balustrade, and the English Channel in front. Yet these shocking words had been more or less breathed in his ear.
Bless me, if it isn’t Master Arthur!

He turned his head, and found himself at gaze with Butter. His memory was at least good enough to recall Butter at once. He did so even although he certainly hadn’t set eyes on the man for a very long time indeed. Butter had been a junior and somewhat anomalous manservant in the ancestral Povey home, hovering between house and garden according to the varying needs of the establishment. It didn’t look as if Butter had much flourished since. Although now so plainly middle-aged, he occupied – Povey saw at a glance – a lowly station in the hierarchy of this hotel. He wasn’t even a fully accredited waiter. He was one of the unassuming characters who go around emptying ashtrays, and whom nobody thinks to tip. This was surprising in itself. Povey had a distinct recollection of Butter as rather an astute and quick-witted young man, who had more than once proved uncommonly useful in getting him out of a scrape. Probably he had taken to drink. Members of the lower classes who were a little too clever for their station but could find no way out of it often sought to resolve their sense of frustration that way.

The present moment, however, was plainly inappropriate forgeneral reflections of this sort. Here was a crisis – not of a whollyunprecedented kind. Arthur Povey, accustomed to living dangerously, took it in his stride.

‘No, no,’ he said, easily and pleasantly. ‘My name isn’t Arthur. You’ve mistaken me for somebody else. And rather impulsively, I’d say, since you could see nothing but the back of my head.’

‘But that’s just it, Master Arthur!’ Unexpectedly, yet with an odd effect of the rolling back of the years, this depressed menial person flashed at his former employer’s younger son a momentary wicked grin. ‘It’s the way the hair grows on the crown of your head. Up and forward-like – and I remembered it at once. I could always tell you from Mr Charles at a glance, that way on. Very rare it is – hair growing that way. At least among the gentry. Almost a plebeian note, it might be called.’

‘My good man, you are talking nonsense.’ This time, Arthur Povey spoke with a justified frigidity. ‘I advise you to go about your business. Do so, and think no more of the matter. I should be most reluctant to lodge a complaint.’

‘I’m sure you won’t do that, sir. It wasn’t your style, anything of that sort.’ Butter showed no sign of budging. ‘And quite thick we were, in an earlier time.’

There was a moment’s silence. Povey, who had a martini in front of him, allowed himself an unhurried sip. But his mind wasn’t equally leisured, since the situation was developing in a manner that made rapid thinking necessary. It was perfectly true about his hair. The point, although extremely trivial, was one he ought to have attended to. What ought he to do now? The discreet thing would be to have one more shot at simply shaking Butter off.

‘I’ve no doubt you’ve made an honest mistake,’ he said, with a return to a benevolent manner. ‘Quite an amusing mistake, really. All that about hair, and so on.’ He finished his drink, and then pointed to the empty glass. ‘Just ask them to bring me another of those, will you?’ He put his hand in a pocket. ‘And here’s for your trouble.’

Butter picked up the glass obediently, and accepted the coin. But he stayed put, with that wicked grin on his face again.

‘The name’s Butter,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t recall it, sir?’

What Povey recalled was that Butter was a man of guile. At any moment he might manoeuvre his adversary into a false position. Blank denials, if they had later to be retracted, might prove very awkward indeed.

‘Butter?’ Povey repeated. ‘Not so common as Butterfield or Butterworth. But I may well have come across the name.’

‘And your own name, sir. It wouldn’t be Povey?’

This had been a masterly pounce. Blankly to deny one’s true name on challenge seemed a more drastic deception than simply registering in a hotel under a false one. Or so, whether logically or not, it seemed to Arthur Povey now. The result was a moment’s hesitation; and this, in turn, had the effect of somehow giving the game away. He saw that he must fall back on what might be called his second line of defence.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said briskly. ‘I’m here incognito, if you know what that means. But my name is certainly Povey. And your own, for that matter, does now come back to me. You had a job at Brockholes as a lad, hadn’t you? And we did get on together quite well. Only you’ve got your Povey boys sadly muddled, I must say. Perhaps it’s not surprising after all those years.’ As he said this, Povey put both his hands on the little table in front of him and drummed on it gently. ‘I’m Charles Povey, not Arthur.’

‘Charles
Povey?’ Butter repeated the name slowly. It was as if he had been taken aback and was playing for time.

‘Your employer’s elder son, not his younger one. I suppose you remember
that
? My brother Arthur is dead, Butter. He lost his life at sea.’

‘I remember Master Charles, all right. And I’ve heard a bit about him since. Became uncommonly wealthy, they say.’

‘Not all that wealthy, Butter. But certainly I’m quite prosperous as business people go.’ Povey managed an unconstrained smile. ‘At least I can run to this sort of hotel – and a decent tip to an old acquaintance.’

There was a moment’s silence. Povey’s smile had brought back Butter’s wicked grin. Or perhaps the reference to a tip had done that; its hint of more cash possibly passing had been a confession of weakness and a mistake. Butter was discernibly baffled, all the same. His gaze had passed from Povey’s face to Povey’s hands; had passed to his mutilated left hand.

Povey allowed a couple of seconds for the penny to drop.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I can see you’ve remembered something. And about the right man this time, I hope.’

‘Master Charles’ hand was like that. Happened when he was quite a grown lad, it did.’

‘It did, indeed. And that clears things up, I think.’

‘It must have taken nerve, that must.’

‘What’s that?’ It had been less Butter’s words that startled Povey than the sudden respect of the tone in which they had been uttered.

‘But nerve you always had, Master Arthur. It looks as if it won’t do to lose it now.’

‘Butter, you are talking complete rubbish – and offensive rubbish at that. I am prepared to treat it as that, and let the matter drop if you go away at once. But I warn you that a magistrate might take a much more serious view of your behaviour. It could look very like an attempt to extort money under threat.’

‘Come, now, Povey – who has talked about money? Nobody but yourself with your bloody tip. And it’s a fair cop, you know. That hair, that finger, Charles Povey being up to the neck in the lolly, and somebody’s brother lost at sea. It adds up only one way.’

‘And just what does it add up to?’ Arthur Povey had turned very pale. He was angry, but he also had to acknowledge to himself that he was thoroughly frightened as well. The feeling came to him chiefly as a sense of isolation and loneliness. Those first moments on board the
Gay Phoenix
when he had realized his brother was dead and that his only companion was the ocean came back to him vividly as he braced himself to look challengingly at Butter now.

‘Partnership, Povey.’

‘Partnership! What the devil do you mean?’

‘Your partner, I am. That’s what the sum adds up to. And not your sleeping partner, mind you. I’m not that sort – prepared to sit back and collect regular. A bit dull, straight blackmail, if you ask me. I wouldn’t care for it. Scope – that’s what I need. I’ve always known it. Just give me scope, I used to say. But nobody listened. “He’s a damn sight too clever,” they’d say. “I don’t trust him.” Silly of them. Even when they weren’t fools themselves. I wouldn’t call you a fool, you know. But there were times when your wits were the better for having mine added to them. Like when you stole your brother’s money box and couldn’t think who to put the blame on. I got you clear of that one, didn’t I? Coming events, Povey. Coming events casting their shadows before.’

These remarks considerably impressed Arthur Povey. His recollection of the unfortunate affair of Charles’ money box was not particularly vivid, perhaps because his boyhood had been fairly prolific in episodes involving the irregular transfer of private property. But he did remember, on that occasion as on others, calling Butter to his aid. And if Butter had been clever then, this interview was affording striking testimony that he wasn’t other than clever now. His reasoning had been as sharp as his observation. Within ten minutes of spotting that small idiosyncrasy on the crown of the head of a hotel guest casually remarked, he had cracked Arthur Povey’s secret and possessed himself alike of the basic facts and of the motive of his imposture. The missing index finger hadn’t stumbled him for a moment. He had simply opined (what was perfectly true) that it had taken nerve to mutilate oneself in that way.

Arthur Povey had got thus far in weighing up these unexpected and alarming facts when it occurred to him that his conversation with Butter had already become injudiciously prolonged. In a hotel of this kind a guest is no doubt privileged to chat affably to a passing servant for as long as he chooses, regardless of the extent to which he is thus keeping that servant from his proper occasions. But in the present colloquy any close observer might already have sensed something a little odd. Indeed, a solitary man a little way down the terrace, although ostensibly dividing his attention between a drink and a newspaper, seemed to Povey to have been sending a searching glance in his direction from time to time. Povey had become very sensitive to anything of this sort. Since his brother’s death, he had achieved what he had set out to do. But as that achievement would be judged highly nefarious if brought within the knowledge of the law, it followed that for Povey, in a strictly literal sense, the price of liberty was eternal vigilance. It was a condition from which he was coming increasingly to feel that it would be agreeable to take occasional time off.

‘I think,’ Povey said, ‘we had better continue this discussion elsewhere.’

‘Fair enough.’ Butter picked up an ashtray from the table, tipped its contents into a bucket he carried, and restored it after a perfunctory rub. ‘But don’t fancy you can cut and run, mate. Not so that it will do you any good. I have my resources, I have. Be up with you in no time.’

‘I have no intention of cutting and running. And I’ll meet you as soon as you finish work.’ Povey had regained a measure of confidence. ‘Anywhere you like.’

‘Much obliged, I’m sure, sir. And spoken like a perfect gentleman, if the expression may be allowed me.’ Butter accompanied this ironic obsequiousness with his most malicious grin. ‘Cock and Bottle, then, at nine sharp. Opposite the bandstand, it is. So facing the music you’ll be, in a manner of speaking, Mr Charles I-don’t-think Povey.’

Arthur Povey went in to dinner in a mood of some discouragement. The head waiter was solicitous in his attentions and suggestions, since he had somehow divined this guest’s outstanding financial rating. Povey, however, found he wanted to eat very little. The wine waiter had to hover at his side for a full five minutes – a circumstance extremely irritating to other and thirstier diners – while he scanned the establishment’s entire vinous resources with his attention really wandering elsewhere. He then ordered a bottle of the most expensive claret on the list. This was an unsophisticated act, which lowered him considerably in the wine waiter’s estimation. It was also injudicious, since the further conference with Butter that lay ahead of him eminently called for a clear head. A waiter of inferior consequence wheeled up a trolley of elaborately bedizened scraps, orts and broken meats. Povey eyed these starters with gloom, and plumped for the simplicity of a small pallid chilly fish masquerading as a trout. The waiter evinced a disposition to throw in some mushed-up cauliflower and a spoonful of olives which appeared to aspire to the condition of dried peas. Povey rejected these otiose delights so sharply that several people looked round at him. Then he began his gloomy meal.