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‘It’s going to be a wild night,’ Troy remarked trying to be natural but sounding, she feared, like a bit part in The Corsican Brothers.
‘That is as Heaven decrees, Mrs Alleyn,’ Nigel said severely and left her. She reminded herself of Hilary’s assurances that Nigel had recovered his sanity.
She took a bath, seething deliciously in resinous vapours and wondered how demoralizing this mode of living might become if prolonged. She decided (sinfully, as no doubt Nigel would have considered) that for the time being, at least, it tended to intensify her nicer ingredients. She drowsed before her fire, half-aware of the hush that comes upon a house when snow falls in the world outside. At half past seven, Nigel tapped at her door and she roused herself to dress. There was a cheval-glass in her room and she couldn’t help seeing that she looked well in her ruby dress.
Distant sounds of arrival broke the quietude. A car engine. A door slam. After a considerable interval, voices in the passage and an entry into the next room. A snappish, female voice, apparently on the threshold, shouted. ‘Not at all. Fiddle! Who says anything about being tired? We won’t dress. I said we won’t dress.’ An interval and then the voice again: ‘You don’t want Moult, do you? Moult! The Colonel doesn’t want you. Unpack later. I said he can unpack later.’
Uncle Flea, thought Troy, is deaf.
‘And don’t,’ shouted the voice, ‘keep fussing about the beard.’
A door closed. Someone walked away down the passage.
About the beard? Troy wondered. Could she have said beard?
For a minute or two nothing could be heard from the next room. Troy concluded that either Colonel or Mrs Fleaton Forrester had retired into the bathroom on the far side, a theory that was borne out by a man’s voice, coming as it were from behind Troy’s wardrobe, exclaiming: ‘B! About my beard!’ and receiving no audible reply.
Soon after this the Forresters could be heard to leave their apartment.
Troy thought she would give them a little while with Hilary before she joined them and she was still staring bemusedly into her fire when the warning bell, booty, so Hilary had told her, from Henry the Eighth’s sack of the monasteries, rang out in its tower over the stables. Troy wondered if it reminded Nigel of his conventual days before he had turned a little mad.
She shook herself out of her reverie and found her way downstairs and into the main hall, where Mervyn, on the look-out, directed her to the green boudoir. ‘We are not disturbing the library,’ Mervyn said with a meaningful smirk. ‘Madam.’
‘How very considerate,’ said Troy. He opened the boudoir door for her and she went in.
The Forresters stood in front of the fire with Hilary, who wore a plum-coloured smoking suit and a widish tie. Colonel Forrester was a surprised-looking old man with a pink-and-white complexion and a moustache. But no beard. He wore a hearing-aid.
Mrs Forrester looked, as she had sounded, formidable. She had a blunt face with a mouth like a spring-trap, prominent eyes fortified by pebble-lenses and thin, grey hair lugged back into a bun. Her skirt varied in length from midi to maxi and she clearly wore more than one flannel petticoat. Her top half was covered by woollen garments in varying shades of dull puce. She wore a double chain of what Troy suspected were superb natural pearls and a number of old-fashioned rings in which deposits of soap had accumulated. She carried a string bag containing a piece of anonymous knitting and her handkerchief.
Hilary performed the introductions. Colonel Forrester beamed and gave Troy a little bow. Mrs Forrester sharply nodded.
‘How do you find yourself?’ she said. ‘Cold?’
‘Not at all, thank you.’
‘I ask because you must spend much of your time in overheated studios painting from the Altogether, I said Painting From The Altogether.’
This habit of repetition in fortissimo, Troy discovered, was automatic with Mrs Forrester and was practised for the benefit of her husband, who now gently indicated that he wore his hearing-aid. To this she paid no attention.
‘She’s not painting me in the nude, darling Auntie,’ said Hilary, who was pouring drinks.
‘A pretty spectacle that would be.’
‘I think perhaps you base your theories about painters on Trilby and La Vie de Bohème.’
‘I saw Beerbohm Tree in Trilby,’ Colonel Forrester remembered. ‘He died backwards over a table. It was awfully good.’
There was a tap on the door, followed by the entrance of a man with an anxious face. Not only anxious but most distressingly disfigured, as if by some long-distant and extensive burn. The scars ran down to the mouth and dragged it askew.
‘Hullo, Moult,’ said Mrs Forrester.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure,’ said the man to Hilary. ‘It was just to put the Colonel’s mind at ease, sir. It’s quite all right about the beard, sir.’
‘Oh good, Moult. Good. Good. Good,’ said Colonel Forrester.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the man and withdrew.
‘What is it about your beard, Uncle Flea?’ asked Hilary, to Troy’s immense relief.
‘The beard, old chap. I was afraid it might have been forgotten and then I was afraid it might have been messed up in the packing.’
‘Well, it hasn’t, Fred. I said it hasn’t.’
‘I know, so that’s all right.’
‘Are you going to be Father Christmas, Colonel?’ Troy ventured and he beamed delightedly and looked shy.
‘I knew you’d think so,’ he said. ‘But no, I’m a Druid. What do you make of that, now?’
‘You mean – you belong –?’
‘Not,’ Hilary intervened, ‘to some spurious Ancient Order wearing cotton-wool beards and making fools of themselves every second Tuesday.’
‘Oh, come, old boy,’ his uncle protested. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Well, perhaps not. But no,’ Hilary continued, addressing himself to Troy, ‘at Halberds, St Nicholas or Santa Claus or whatever you like to call the Teutonic old person, is replaced by an ancient and more authentic figure: the great precursor of the Winter Solstice observances who bequeathed – consciously or not – so much of his lore to his Christian successors. The Druid, in fact.’
‘And the vicar doesn’t mind,’ Colonel Forrester earnestly interjected. ‘I promise you. The vicar doesn’t mind a bit.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ his wife observed with a cryptic snort.
‘He comes to the party even. So, you see, I shall be a Druid. I have been one each year since Hilary came to Halberds. There’s a tree and a kissing-bough you know, and, of course, quantities of mistletoe. All the children come: the children on the place and at The Vale and in the neighbouring districts. It’s a lovely party and I love doing it. Do you like dressing-up?’
He asked this so anxiously, like a character in Alice, that she hadn’t the heart to give anything less than an enthusiastic assent and almost expected him to say cosily that they must dress up together one of these days.
‘Uncle Flea’s a brilliant performer,’ Hilary said, ‘and his beard is the pièce de résistance. He has it made by Wig Creations. It wouldn’t disgrace King Lear. And then the wig itself! So different from the usual repellent falsity. You shall see.’
‘We’ve made some changes,’ said Colonel Forrester excitedly. ‘They’ve re-dressed it. The feller said he thought it was a bit on the long side and might make me look as if I’d opted out. One can’t be too careful.’
Hilary brought the drinks. Two of them were steaming and had slices of lemon in them.
‘Your rum toddies, Aunt Bed,’ he said. ‘Tell me if there’s not enough sugar.’
Mrs Forrester wrapped her handkerchief round her glass and sat down with it. ‘It seems all right,’ she said. ‘Did you put nutmeg in your uncle’s?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
‘You will think,’ said the colonel to Troy, ‘that rum toddies before dinner are funny things to drink but we make a point of putting them forward after a journey. Usually they are nightcaps.’
‘They smell delicious.’
‘Would you like one?’ Hilary asked her. ‘Instead of a White Lady.’
‘I think I’ll stick to the White Lady.’
‘So shall I. Well, my dears,’ Hilary said generally. ‘We are a small house-party this year. Only Cressida and Uncle Bert to come. They both arrive tomorrow.’
‘Are you still engaged to Cressida?’ asked his aunt.
‘Yes. The arrangement stands. I am in high hopes, Aunt Bed, that you will take more of a fancy to Cressida on second sight.’
‘It’s not second sight. It’s fiftieth sight. Or more.’
‘But you know what I mean. Second sight since we became engaged.’
‘What’s the odds?’ she replied ambiguously.
‘Well, Aunt Bed, I would have thought –’ Hilary broke off and rubbed his nose. ‘Well, anyway, Aunt Bed, considering I met her in your house.’
‘More’s the pity. I warned your uncle. I said I warned you, Fred.’
‘What about, B?’
‘Your gel! The Tottenham gel. Cressida.’
‘She’s not mine, B. You put things so oddly, my dear.’
‘Well, anyway,’ Hilary said. ‘I hope you change your mind, Auntie.’
‘One can but hope,’ she rejoined and turned to Troy. ‘Have you met Miss Tottenham?’
‘No.’
‘Hilary thinks she will go with the house. We’re still talking about Cressida,’ Mrs Forrester bawled at her husband.
‘I know you are. I heard.’
After this they sipped their drinks, Mrs Forrester making rather a noise with hers and blowing on it to cool it down.
‘The arrangements for Christmas Day,’ Hilary began after a pause, ‘are, I think, an improvement on last year. I’ve thought of a new entrance for you, Uncle Flea.’
‘Have you, though? Have you? Have you?’
‘From outside. Through the french windows behind the tree.’
‘Outside!’ Mrs Forrester barked. ‘Do I understand you, Hilary? Do you plan to put your uncle out on the terrace on a midwinter night – in a snowstorm. I said a snowstorm?’
‘It’ll only be for a moment, Aunt Bed.’
‘You have not forgotten, I suppose, that your uncle suffers from a circulatory complaint.’
‘I’ll be all right, B.’
‘I don’t like it, I said –’
‘But I assure you! And the undergarment is quilted.’
‘Pshaw! I said –’
‘No, but do listen!’
‘Don’t fuss, B. My boots are fur-lined. Go on, old boy. You were saying –?’
‘I’ve got a lovely tape-recording of sleighbells and snorting reindeer. Don’t interrupt, anybody. I’ve done my research and I’m convinced that there’s an overlap here between the Teutonic and the Druidical and if there’s not,’ Hilary said rapidly, ‘there ought to be. So. We’ll hear you shout “Whoa”, Uncle Flea, outside, to the reindeer, and then you’ll come in.’
‘I don’t shout very loud nowadays, old boy,’ he said worriedly. ‘Not the Pirbright note any more, I’m afraid.’
‘I thought of that. I’ve had the “whoa” added to the bells and snorts. Cuthbert did it. He has a stentorian voice.’
‘Good. Good.’
‘There will be thirty-one children and about a dozen parents. And the usual assortment of county and farmers. Outside hands and, of course, the staff.’
‘Warders?’ asked Mrs Forrester. ‘From That Place?’
‘Yes. From the married quarters. Two. Wives and families.’
‘Marchbanks?’
‘If he can get away. They have their own commitments. The chaplain cooks up something pretty joyless. Christmas,’ said Hilary acidly, ‘under maximum security. I imagine one can hardly hear the carols for the alarm bells.’
‘I suppose,’ said his aunt after a good suck at her toddy, ‘you all know what you’re about. I’m sure I don’t. I smell danger.’
‘That’s a dark saying, Auntie,’ remarked Hilary.
Cuthbert came in and announced dinner. It was true that he had a very loud voice.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_6680132c-41bc-57e3-aaa7-1e49dc318778)
Christmas Eve (#ulink_6680132c-41bc-57e3-aaa7-1e49dc318778)
Before they went to bed they listened to the regional weather report. It said that snow was expected to fall through the night and into Christmas Eve but that it was unlikely to continue until Christmas Day itself. A warm front was approaching over the Atlantic Ocean.
‘I always think,’ Hilary remarked, ‘of a warm front as belonging to a décolleté Regency lady thrusting her opulent prow, as it were, into some consequential rout or ball and warming it up no end. The ball, I mean.’
‘No doubt,’ his aunt tartly rejoined, ‘Cressida will fulfil that questionable role at the coming function.’
