Mr. Chartwell (11 page)

“I won’t do any ape typing,” said Esther, and then, “Gosh, noiseless typewriters?”

“And …” Dennis-John didn’t enjoy talking to his staff about delicate matters, especially his female staff, fearing crying scenes. He thought Esther looked like an easy crier. But looking at her he knew the subject had to be broached. He advanced on it without further delay, charging it. “Esther, it’s essential to present yourself presentably.”

Esther considered what he meant, didn’t know, and asked.

His thumb sought the area under his chin, stroking it. It was the motion used to get a cat to swallow a tablet. “Be presentable. The way you are now, with that outfit”—he swallowed his tablet—“it’s in need of revision. The outfit needs fundamental revision.”

She stared down at her clothes, down at the brown brogues water-faded in patches, stockings in grooves at the ankle.

Dennis-John noticed her pinching at her thighs, trying to hitch the stockings through her skirt. “You can’t go to Churchill dressed in your usual jumble-sale finery.”

“My jumble-sale finery …”

“Esther, it is not”—Dennis-John shook his head twice: two epic sweeps—“is
not
acceptable attire for such a serious, momentous occasion in the presence of such a serious, momentous man. So smarten up, yes?” He had a further suggestion, dealing it out. “You could even risk a foray into cosmetics.” A hand
moved around his face in a circle. “You know, the pastes women carry in their handbags … the pastes …” The hand rotated as he searched for the names, mentally ransacking the products his wife used. He found one: “Rouge! Like rouge.” Dennis-John finished his efforts. “Go and talk to your painted friend Beth. She’ll know.”

Esther remained in front of him. Half of her wanted to leave, sick of his rude commands. The other half wanted to stay for this reason, entertained.

Seeing her there dry-eyed, Dennis-John congratulated himself. No crying scenes. With unnaturally generous sympathy, he said, “Listen, Esther, no one’s expecting you to compete with Elizabeth Nel, but you’ll have to get over that because I’m confident you can make a decent job of it. Churchill isn’t difficult—he’s simply specific in his secretarial requirements. So just remember: Do everything right, do it silently, paste on some rouge, wear something coherent with other women your age, no apishness.”

“Who’s Elizabeth Nel?”

Dennis-John wasn’t through with his list: “Don’t even think about joking. If I find you’ve been making any jokes, japing around, I’ll take more from you than your job.”

“I don’t think I’d have the nerve to make any jokes.” Esther imagined it. “And if I’m honest I’d be too nervous to laugh if he told me a joke.”

“You will laugh should Churchill tell you a joke,” said Dennis-John. “You’ll laugh instantly, and for a courteous amount of time.” He waggled his mouth, deciding. “For ten laughing seconds.”

“Sorry, who is Elizabeth Nel?”

“Ah,” said Dennis-John. “Elizabeth Nel. She was a wartime secretary, a celebrity in the secretarial community. Nel was with Churchill on VE Day, taking his final night’s dictation. A true professional and a favourite of Churchill’s. Anyway, we will send you down to Chartwell on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth. That’s a Sunday. You’ll be needed for approximately one hour or so.”

“Sunday?” Sunday: It came over her in a snowfall of soot. Esther couldn’t explain it to him.

Dennis-John saw her basset-hound expression. A classic malingering expression.

“Transport.” Dennis-John thought of the obstacle and crashed through it. “We’ll send someone down with you, someone to drive you.”

“I could drive myself? I have a car so I could easily—”

“What you’ll easily do is get easily lost in the miles of rural roads. Chartwell House isn’t on your bedside table, Esther. It’s in the countryside of Kent.”

A click of fingers from Dennis-John, calling to another female library clerk. “Hey! I need you to get me whatsit … that new library clerk called … him, the new …” Another flurry of clicks came, first as research and then as the answer. “Yes, get me Corkbowl.”

The woman went, back seconds later. Corkbowl came, acting the serious professional to impress Dennis-John. He shot Esther a furtive grin and she smiled back.

Dennis-John wanted to know, “Can you drive?”

He could. He owned a cream Morris Minor, the glove box stuffed with rubbish. Corkbowl scratched at a cheek and there was the sound of stubble.

“You’ll be accompanying Esther to Chartwell House on Sunday afternoon. Corkbowl, I assume you’re a competent driver?”

Esther mouthed “Sorry” at Corkbowl.

Dennis-John didn’t wait for a response. He was typing again, head bent.

“You should be,” Corkbowl mouthed back.

“Esther, work!” barked Dennis-John, watching her with psychic powers from his scalp.

2.55 p.m
.

C
lementine was in the kitchen garden, pulling weeds from around the parsley. She picked some mint, bruised the leaves between her fingers, and breathed it in. A large orange cat basked near her, swatting the ground with its tail. Then the cat’s ears flattened back and it hissed.

“Jock, behave yourself.” She turned to see Churchill slowly advancing across the lawn towards her. Not long back from Westminster, he walked up through the orchard of pear and apple trees surrounding the lake. The orchard led in a path to the kitchen garden, where it connected with a stone archway. Black Pat, trailing behind Churchill, noticed the cat and picked up the pace, overtaking. The cat pressed down onto its stomach. As they got nearer it gave a livid squall and shot off, vanishing over the high brick wall Churchill had built himself.

“I don’t know what’s got into him,” Clementine said in surprise.

“Who knows,” said Churchill, knowing exactly, watching as Black Pat moved over the cat’s scent, nose to the ground and burning to give chase. Black Pat restrained himself, sitting next to Clementine, his back to her. Clementine pulled her shirt tighter. “My, I just caught a cold breeze.” She looked at the brilliant sky. “There’s a real chill suddenly, how curious.”

Churchill kicked at the dog, catching him hard in the side. He went to kick him again but Black Pat jinked out of the way. Clementine let her shirt go. “Ah, that’s better. It’s warmed up again.” She weeded as she spoke. “So how are you feeling today, Mr. Pug?”

“Oh, you know, Mrs. Pussycat. Not so bad.”

She didn’t look up from the plants. “Now, you mustn’t lie to me, Mr. Pug. I know Monday must be playing on your mind. Don’t you want to talk about it?”

Churchill surveyed the distance. Black Pat threw his head round, assessing what Churchill was looking at, and saw it wasn’t anything.

Churchill passed a hand over his scalp. “It’s nothing, Clemmie. I’m just being doomy.”

“Come on, Winston. Tell me.”

She stood up, a woven basket full of fruit over one forearm, and offered Churchill a strawberry. He stared at the strawberry sadly, picking at the stem as he spoke.

“It feels indulgent, but I suppose my father is on my mind a great deal these days. As Monday nears I seem to think about him more and more often. I would have liked him to live long enough to see I was going to do some good. I dearly wish I knew that he thought I had done well.”

Clementine’s tone was kind, knowing the difficult spectre of Lord Randolph Churchill across Winston’s life, its ceaseless presence. “I’m sure he would be very proud of you. I’m sure he was very proud of you when he was alive.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Churchill. “I feel so uneasy about everything. I can’t bear to think of it. It’s exhausting. All I want to do is lie doggo until it’s all over, to frowst in my bedroom.”

“Stop that.” Clementine put her hands fondly on his shoulders, the basket swinging on her elbow. “You’ve worried yourself into a hole and I won’t allow it. You must talk to me about it, I insist.”

“I know, I know.” Churchill turned the strawberry over. “It’s pure baboonery on my part.”

“Baboonery at its absolute purest, yes.”

Black Pat was upright on his back feet, dwarfing Churchill. A rough front paw swatted the strawberry from Churchill’s hands. The strawberry fell. A hind leg came out and ground it into a red spot on the grass. Churchill glowered with barbaric eyes. Black Pat said in a flat, moronic whisper, just loud enough to be heard, “Heh-eh-eh. Heh-
eh.
”

Hearing Churchill growl, Clementine looked quickly to see what he was frowning at, appeared to see nothing, and set about collecting her gardening tools, the fruit basket placed on a garden chair. Finished, Clementine looked at the pulp curiously. “Winston! That was a perfectly fine strawberry.”

“There was a beetle …” Churchill said hastily. “It caught me by surprise.”

Clementine cuffed his arm, smiling. “A beetle? Don’t be so silly. Now, won’t you come in for a cup of tea?”

“Ah.” Churchill exhaled heavily. “I suppose so, I suppose so.”

“Winston, you’re a good man. A
good man.
” Clementine smiled directly into his face, arresting his gaze, seeing buried between the years the younger ginger-haired man who had pursued her. “And as a good man you deserve a cup of tea
and
a slice of cake, perhaps even two if you pull yourself together. How’s that for an offer?”

6.20 p.m
.

A
t home Esther levered off her stained brogues with her heels, kicking them away. A distracted singing came from the kitchen. The parquet floor in the hall was marked with soil, something she noticed as she walked, the singing becoming clearer. A pain in her foot made her lift it up to inspect, wobbling on one leg: It was a sharp piece of gravel, gravel dotted around, now a hole in her stockings.

Black Pat sat at the kitchen table, playing patience with the deck of ancient cards from the sideboard. A vase from the windowsill was on the table, the flowers emptied into the sink. Black Pat took a finishing swig from the vase, singing through his swallow. He poured in more beer from the bottle next to him. He started to sing again with a crooning tilt to his forehead.
“A bone in the fridge may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

“In the popular version Marilyn Monroe sang about a kiss on the hand,” Esther said, slipping to the fridge.

“ ‘Talk to me, Harry Winston, tell me all about it!’ ”

Esther turned with a hand on the fridge door. “If that’s a Marilyn impression, you’ve made her sound like something from the crypt.”

Black Pat made a playful face at the cards, this conversation fun for him if not for anyone else. “Well, we all lose our charms in the end.” Bothered by an itch, he shook his massive head, plush ears smacking against his skull. The bottle of milk in the fridge door was reached for and then forgotten as Esther confronted a giant bone squatting there on a baking tray.

“Oh my God.”
She bent into the fridge. “What’s this?”

“A pineapple.” Black Pat checked over a shoulder to receive appreciation for the joke, a scene for canned laughter. No laughter, just a cold wait for an explanation. The cards clapped down. “It’s a bone, obviously.”

“Yes, but what is it doing in my fridge?”

“Causing a crisis.”

Another joke was wasted on this unresponsive audience.

A paw reached out, claws beckoning. “Look, the crisis is easily solved, give it here.”

Esther handed it over and Black Pat made a ravenous noise. He cracked at the bone with the egg-sized molars at the rear of his mouth. An eye tightened in a squint. The bone crushed into fragments. Black Pat’s muscular tongue worked to get at the marrow inside. Splinters scattered over the table and cards, teeth grating. A quick pause for inspection aroused his appetite
and the mauling resumed. Esther got a glass of water, the first sip taking her to a chair on the opposite side of the table.

Black Pat had hollowed the bone into a pipe now, both ends ground off and the marrow emptied.

“That’s quite unlovely to watch,” Esther said.

“Don’t watch then,” said Black Pat. “Shut your eyes.”

“I will still be able to hear you doing it.”

Black Pat put his lips to the bone and jeered down the pipe at her:
“Booo!”

His muzzle was crusted in a dark substance. She peered at it. “What’s that on your face?”

“Blood,” he replied straightforwardly. He saw her expression. “Mud?”

Was this better? … It didn’t seem to convince her. Then he said, “What are you doing this evening?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She debated with the water, swirling it in her glass. Some splashed out. She dried a hand on her thigh. “Probably what I do every night. Nothing much.”

“I thought so, yep.” Black Pat was on his hind legs, the beer vase squeezed in an elbow. The bone was a tour guide’s baton, held to the back door. “Follow me.”

The rosy-gold garden yellowed in the late sunlight, midges and little insects yellow specks. There in the centre of the lawn, a collection of stones and bricks, on top a wire tray badly fashioned from chicken wire. Underneath burnt small, snapping flames.

“A fire?” Esther sprang towards it.

“I’ve built”—Black Pat announced it with a ringmaster’s arm—“a
barbecue.
”

“It’ll burn the grass!”

“Who cares about the grass?” said Black Pat.

Resigned, Esther sat on her knees and prodded the fire with a slim twig. The lawn around it was scorched. It prickled through her stockings, the blades made tough and pale by the sun. Esther shifted onto her bottom, taking a look at the gravel hole at her foot. She stretched her legs out, rocking her ankles and enjoying the blanket heat of the evening. Black Pat was busy with a shrub near the fence, one paw scooping through it. The paw found an object and Black Pat slammed his head through the foliage. A pillowcase in his teeth, he came up. Esther looked at Black Pat, not delighted to see the pillowcase.

This pillowcase, it was immediately apparent, had been stolen from the pillow in the boxroom. And it contained something, a swinging bulge inside.

Remembering the tea towel and the spoon, and already rinsed with the futility of arguing, Esther said, “That’s my pillowcase you’ve buried in the garden, I hope you know.”