The Forgotten Story (23 page)

She greeted him very sourly and Perry informed him that his aunt had decided on a day's spring cleaning and that he was lucky to have missed it. This did not look quite like spring cleaning as he understood it. There were no buckets of water or brushes or dusters about, and nothing looked any fresher, but he spent the rest of the afternoon and evening putting things back and was told just before bedtime that on the following day the house was to be gone through by Miss Veal's representatives in case Uncle Joe had made a later Will.

It seemed to him that this would result in all the things he had put back being pulled out again and that they might have saved themselves the trouble. But of course they were such a house-proud pair that they naturally wouldn't want the searchers to find any dust.

It was on the tip of his tongue to remind them to look behind the picture in the office where he had once seen his uncle put a document, but he supposed that would be one of the first places they would have looked as soon as Joe died. Probably Perry was looking there the morning when he had wakened him. By now he had become quite used to the smell of Uncle Joe's tobacco coming from Uncle Perry's pipe.

He still wondered sometimes who had made the hole in the floor and when. The hole had not just happened of its own accord, and the cork was a biggish one which had been cut to fit. He wondered if Perry had ever had the room. Several times he had intended to mention it to Tom Harris, but each time it slipped his memory. Last time he went to Penryn there had been another man there who seemed to know a good deal about his household, and he had not altogether liked that.

Then by chance he met little Fanny. The men had come to make the search: Mr Cowdray, an auctioneer from Penryn and his assistant; and he had gone out for a walk, taking the road through the town and towards the sea front.

He had not seen Fanny since the day she left and, having always associated her with a cap and apron, he scarcely recognised the little figure in brown with the curly feathers round the collar and the prim little muff. She would have passed him by with her eyes down, but he stopped and said, ‘Hullo, Fanny,' and asked her how she was getting on. She looked at him aslant, as so many people did nowadays and said, ‘Oh, all right.'

‘Sorry you left,' he said awkwardly. ‘What did you go so quickly for?'

‘Well, I ain't one to stay where I'm not wanted.'

‘I've got no one to sew my buttons on now,' he said.

She looked less unfriendly.

‘I'm home, helping mother. I ain't going out to service again, not just yet. You got anybody in my place?'

‘No.'

Anthony put his hands in his pockets and kicked at a stone. ‘Often thought of asking you something,' he said. ‘Who had my bedroom before I came?'

Fanny looked at him sharply. ‘Nobody. Why?'

‘Oh, nothing.'

Fanny fumbled with the parcels in her basket.

‘Did Uncle Perry ever sleep there?' he asked.

‘No, he didn't, and you don't need to mention yer Uncle Perry to me! Anyway, I was only there eleven month, and that was a month too long. After Mr Veal died …' Her eyes glinted a moment and she looked suddenly grown up. ‘ 'Twas the cook's room. Afore my time. When I went there there wasn't no cook.'

‘Did Aunt Madge have it when she was cook, then?'

‘'Ow should I know? I suppose so. Yes, I should think. A sight better'n the poky little ' ole they gave me.
She'd
see to that. D'on't
she
sew your buttons on for you?'

‘Um? No. No, I manage myself.'

‘I suppose
she's
just the same, eh? Waggin' about like a queen.'

He was surprised at the hostility which had come into the girl's voice.

‘Oh, she's all right,' he said defensively. ‘Why shouldn't she be?'

‘Why shouldn't she be! 'Deed, yes! She's fell on 'er feet'andsome, 'asn't she?'

‘I don't see what you mean.'

She tossed her head. ‘Well, you wouldn't, would you? You're 'er nephew. You'd stick up for 'er if she was ' anged for 'igh treason.'

‘No, I wouldn't,' he said doggedly.

‘You say you wouldn't, but you would. I know. Hoity-toity, off we go to church together!'

The boy felt himself going red. ‘It's nothing to do with you, anyway. What's wrong with us going to church? You've only got a grudge against her because she gave you the sack.'

‘No, I 'aven't. I wouldn't lower meself.'

‘If you haven't, what did she sack you for then?'

Fanny's eyes went smaller. Her thin face pinched itself up like the closing of a hand.

‘She didn't 'appen to tell you that, I s'pose.'

‘No.'

‘Well, why don't you ask ' er instead of me? Try it on, Mr Clever, an' see what she says.'

‘Afraid to tell me?' he challenged.

‘I don't tell things like that to kids. You be careful of your aunt. She's got a dirty mind, she ' as.'

‘It must have been something awful you did.'

‘ 'Twasn't nothing of the sort. 'Twas 'er dirty mind an' nothing more to it. 'Er and Mr Perry between 'em. Wasn't my asking, I can tell you.'

‘Didn't you want to leave?'

‘Oh, I should've lef' whether or no! Didn't like it well enough the way it was going.'

‘What happened?'

She hesitated and again arranged her parcels. ‘I'll be going now. I got to go. Ma's expecting me.'

‘Go on,' he said persuasively. ‘Tell us. Be a sport. Wasn't it your fault at all?'

This cunning appeal was too much for Fanny.

‘Course it wasn't! You know what your uncle is. 'E started tickling me. Same as 'e's done before; same as 'e's done to you; there weren't nothing to it. But she came round the door quiet like, and she was
mad
. Thought she was goin' to 'ave a fit. I'm well out of that ' ouse, I can tell you!' Her eyes, in which there was a trace of embarrassment, searched his thoughtful face for blushes or condemnation, but this time neither came. ‘You know now, Mr Clever. But don't say it was my fault, because it weren't. And if Mr Veal'd been alive nothing wouldn't've happened.' She paused again, waiting for his response, seeking it because it did not come. ‘You're welcome to your nice big bedroom at that 'ouse. I wouldn't 'ave it as a gift, I can tell you. Never know what's goin' on in that 'ouse, do you?'

With this parting shot, and still unsatisfied, Fanny gave her basket a contemptuous jerk and went on her way.

When he returned home, studiously late this time, the searchers were gone, and he could tell from the faintly self-righteous expression showing over the top of Aunt Madge's boned collar that they had been unsuccessful.

At supper Perry laughed and joked like his old self, but Anthony's responses were slow. He was still thinking about what little Fanny had said. Sometimes he turned his thoughtful blue eyes on the jovial man at the table, and his mind conjured up the scene Fanny had described. That she might have been lying never occurred to him; the incident rang true. It had happened like that.

After a time he began to think of the spy-hole in his bedroom, and his eyes turned on his aunt, whose knife and fork were working up and down like pistons. Her table manners were studiously refined in company but not so select in the bosom of her family, and her plump little cheeks were puffed out with what she was chewing.

Somehow, almost in the last few hours, the matter of the envelope in the picture had become real to Anthony. For a long time he had forgotten the incident, even when there was the wrangle over the Will; or perhaps it would be more true to say that the memory had remained at the bottom of his mind as an unimportant one. Lately it had come to the surface, floating about without serious or connected thought. He had felt that someone besides Uncle Joe was bound to know of the existence of the cache and to have examined its contents. Now he began to think he had taken too much for granted.

He wondered what to do. He might just say at the end of the meal: ‘Oh, about this Will; I suppose you've looked behind the oil-painting in the office, haven't you?'

But that put the initiative in their hands. He didn't fancy that. He might leave the issue three weeks until Pat came again. Or he might ask Tom Harris's advice. But Tom, he knew, was away, staying with his sister at Maenporth. He wouldn't be back for a week.

There was of course one other way. He could look for himself.

Ever since he came to Falmouth there had been nights on which he had been sleepy and others when he could not settle off and tossed and turned for hours. This was one of the latter, so he had no difficulty in keeping awake until half-past eleven, which was about the customary time for the others to retire. From then on, however, began a struggle. The minutes were dragging at his eyelids, and although he felt a bit strung up, yet at the same time he was falling asleep. He had had to lie in the dark all the time, because from the bottom of the stairs you could see a light under his door.

Soon after twelve he found he couldn't wait any longer. He lit the candle and climbed out of bed, putting on his coat and trousers over his nightshirt and taking care to avoid the loose boards as he moved about. Then, just to be on the safe side, he slid under the bed and pulled out the cork. There was no light below.

Opening his door was difficult, for if it was done slowly the creak was enough to wake the dead, and if it was done too quickly the sudden draught made the upper sash of the window rattle violently. But he had practised earlier that evening and he was successful in making no noise. He wedged it open with a spare sock and, shielding the name of the candle with his hand, began to go down.

With no idea of ever having to make a secret descent he had often played at going up and down without treading on a creaky stair, and he knew by heart the numbers to avoid: one, three, nine and twelve going down; four, seven, thirteen and fifteen coming up.

On the landing below it was necessary to pass Aunt Madge's and Uncle Perry's doors, for these two doors faced each other and the office was between Aunt Madge's room and the drawing-room, from which a door led off into it. As he had only been in the office once there was no means of knowing whether this door creaked; there was no guarantee that it was not locked, but he had seen the adults go in and out freely during the daytime.

With his hand stretched out to grasp the knob he realised that the best means of entry for him was the parlour. This would mean passing two doors instead of one but would keep him further away from Aunt Madge, and he did know that the drawing-room door did not squeak.

He slipped into the sitting-room, and as he did so the French clock under its glass shade on the mantelshelf chimed the half-hour after midnight. The room still had an occupied smell, and some of the ash from Perry's pipe lay in a grey heap upon the top bar of the grate. The embroidered bag with Aunt Madge's sewing in it was slumped upon a chair with something of the shapelessness of its owner. When he put back the bound volume of
The Quiver
this evening he had not turned the key in the bookcase and the door gaped an inch open.

After a pause to gather his courage he turned the knob of the door leading to the office, and the door to his relief opened easily and silently. Feeling uncomfortable about his way of escape, he left this open behind him and set the candle down on the office desk. The picture of the old lady faced him on the opposite wall. It was the head and shoulders of a little grey-haired woman in a lace cap and her small black eyes seemed to be fixed upon something just over Anthony's shoulder, as if there were a person standing behind him. He saw that he would need a chair.

He carried one across. He felt very uncomfortable about the curtains not being drawn, but he could not move them without risking noise and the window looked out over the harbour. No man was tall enough to stand with his feet in the mud and stare in at a second-storey window; nevertheless one could not get over the feeling that someone might.

The chair creaked under his weight and the picture-hook nearly fell off the rail, but at last he was safely down with the old lady between his hands.

He carried her to the table which had once been littered with papers and set her face downwards. There was no obvious catch as he had expected or anything which suggested to the casual gaze that the back was detachable. He tried to remember what he had seen his uncle do. There was no glass in the frame. He unscrewed the two hooks by which the picture was hung but this had no effect. Then he turned the old lady over to face him and the painting and the back fell out of its frame upon the table.

The noise made him sweat, and little pricklings of nervousness ran out to his finger-tips like pins and needles. After a moment he summoned up the courage to continue and as he lifted the picture away from its back he saw the envelope which his uncle had put there.

So his latest idea had been the best. He had been wrong not to think of it before, not to look before. Perhaps he was still going too fast. This was probably something to do with the shipping line; he had seen …

He slid the document out of its long envelope and opened it with a crackle of parchment. He read hastily through about half and that was enough. He put his find on the table and picked up the frame to put it back, his mind already leaping ahead to what he should do next.

The point was, whom should he trust? His duty was to hand it to Aunt Madge, his inclination, to keep it until Pat came home. Or again he might take it tomorrow to Aunt Louisa. But he didn't like her well enough, for all that she seemed to be working with Pat's good at heart. And taking it to her was too much like rank treason. Aunt Madge and Uncle Perry looked after him and were not unkind. They might be as peculiar as some people thought, but they were honest in all their dealings and they had been kind to Pat and not wanted her to leave home. Since Pat left, Aunt Madge had made quite a fuss of him; the fact that he could not somehow take to her was surely his fault, not hers. To give this document to the opposite side was a rank betrayal he could not quite face.