WHEN, about eight years ago, old Sir William Turton died and his son Basil inherited The Turton Press (as well as the title), I can remember how the y started laying bets around Fleet Street as to how long it would be before some nice young woman managed to persuade the little fellow that she must look after him. That is to say, him and his money.
The new Sir Basil Turton was maybe forty years old at the time, a bach elor, a man of mild and simple character who up to then had shown no interest in anything at all except his collection of modern paintings and sculpture. No woman had disturbed him; no scandal or gossip had ever touched hi s name. But now that he had become the proprietor of quite a large newspaper and magazine empire, it was necessary for him to emerge from the calm o f his father’s country house and come up to London.
Naturally, the vultures started gathering at once, and I believe that not only Fleet Street but very nearly the whole of the city was looking on eagerly as they scrambled for the body. It was slow motion, of course, deliberate and deadly slow motion, and therefore not so much like vultures as a bunch of agile crabs clawing for a piece of horsemeat under water.
But to everyone’s surprise the little chap proved to be remarkably elusive, and the chase dragged on right through the spring and early summer of that year. I did not know Sir Basil personally, nor did I have any reason to f eel friendly towards him, but I couldn’t help taking the side of my own sex and found myself cheering loudly every time he managed to get himself off the hook.
Then, round about the beginning of August, apparently at some secret female signal, the girls declared a sort of truce among themselves while they went abroad, and rested, and regrouped, and made fresh plans for the winter kill. This was a mistake because precisely at that moment a dazzling creature called Natalia something or other, whom nobody had heard of before, swept in from the Continent, took Sir Basil firmly by the wrist and led him off in a kind of swoon to the Registry Office at Caxton Hall where she married him before anyone else, least of all the bridegroom, realized what was happening.
You can imagine that the London ladies were indignant, and naturally the y started disseminating a vast amount of fruity gossip about the new Lady Turton (‘That dirty poacher,’ they called her). But we don’t have to go into t hat. In fact, for the purposes of this story we can skip the next six years, which brings us right up to the present, to an occasion exactly one week ago today when I myself had the pleasure of meeting her ladyship for the first time. By now, as you must have guessed, she was not only running the whole of The Turton Press, but as a result had become a considerable political force in the country. I realize that other women have done this sort of thing before, but what made her particular case unusual was the fact that she was a foreigner and that nobody seemed to know precisely what country she came from—Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, or Russia.
So last Thursday I went to this small dinner party at a friend’s in London, and while we were standing around in the drawing-room before the meal, sipping good Martinis and talking about the atom bomb and Mr Bevan, the maid popped her head in to announce the last guest.
“Lady Turton,” she said.
Nobody stopped talking; we were too well mannered for that. No heads w ere turned. Only our eyes swung round to the door, waiting for the entrance.
She came in fast—tall and slim in a red-gold dress with sparkles on it-the mouth smiling, the hand outstretched towards her hostess, and my heavens, I must say she was a beauty.
“Mildred, good evening!”
“My dear Lady Turton! How nice!”
I believe we did stop talking then, and we turned and stared and stood waiting quite meekly to be introduced, just like she might have been the Queen or a famous film star. But she was better looking than either of those. Th e hair was black, and to go with it she had one of those pale, oval, innocent fifteenth-century Flemish faces, almost exactly a Madonna by Memling or Va n Eyck. At least that was the first impression. Later, when my turn came to shake hands, I got a closer look and saw that except for the outline and colouring it wasn’t really a Madonna at all—far, far from it.
The nostrils for example were very odd, somehow more open, more flaring than any I had seen before, and excessively arched. This gave the whole nose a kind of open, snorting look that had something of the wild animal a bout it the mustang.
And the eyes when I saw them close, were not wide and round the way the Madonna painters used to make them, but long and half-closed, half smiling, half sullen, and slightly vulgar, so that in one way and another they gave h er a most delicately dissipated air. What’s more they didn’t look at you directly. They came to you slowly from over on one side with a curious sliding motion that made me nervous. I tried to see their colour, thought it was pal e grey, but couldn’t be sure.
Then she was led away across the room to meet other people. I stood watching her. She was clearly conscious of her success and of the way these Londoners were deferring to her. ‘Here am I,’ she seemed to be saying, ‘and I only came over a few years ago, but already I am richer and more powerful than any of you.’ There was a little prance of triumph in her walk.
A few minutes later we went in to dinner, and to my surprise I found mys elf seated at her ladyship’s right. I presumed that our hostess had done this as a kindness to me, thinking I might pick up some material for the social column I Write each day in the evening paper. I settled myself down ready f or an interesting meal. But the famous lady took no notice of me at all; she spent her time talking to the man on her left; the host. Until at last, just as I was finishing my ice-cream, she suddenly turned, reached over, picked up my place card and read the name. Then, with that queer sliding motion of the eyes she looked into my face. I smiled and made a little bow. She didn’t smile back, but started shooting questions at me, rather personal question s—job, age, family, things like that in a peculiar lapping voice, and I found myself answering as best I could.
During this inquisition it came out among other things that I was a lover of painting and sculpture.
“Then you should come down to the country some time and see my husband’s collection.” She said it casually, merely as a form of conversation, but yo u must realize that in my job I cannot afford to lose an opportunity like this.
“How kind of you, Lady Turton. But I’d simply love to. When shall I come?”
Her head went up and she hesitated, frowned, shrugged her shoulders and then said, “Oh I don’t care. Any time.”
“How about this next week-end? Would that be all right?”
The slow narrow eyes rested a moment on mine, then travelled away. “I suppose so, if you wish. I don’t care.”
And that was how the following Saturday afternoon I came to be driving d own to Wooton with my suitcase in the back of the car. You may think that perhaps I forced the invitation a bit, but I couldn’t have got it any other way. And apart from the professional aspect, I personally wanted very much to see the house. As you know, Wooton is one of the truly great stone houses of the early English Renaissance. Like its sisters, Longleat, Wollaton, and Montacute, it was built in the latter half of the sixteenth Qentury when for t he first time a great man’s house could be designed as a comfortable dwelling, not as a castle, and when a new group of architects such as John Thorpe and the Smithsons were starting to do marvellous things all over the country.
It lies south of Oxford, near a small town called Princes Risborough not a long trip from London—and as I swung in through the main gates the sky was closing overhead nd the early winter evening was beginning.
I went slowly up the long drive, trying to see as much of the grounds as possible, especially the famous topiary which I had heard such a lot about. And I must say it was an impressive Sight. On all sides there were massive yew trees, trimmed and clipped into many different comical shapes—hens, pigeons, bottles, boots, armchairs, castles, egg-cups, lanterns, old women with flaring petticoats, tall pillars, some crowned with a ball, others with big rounded roofs and stemless mushroom finials — and in the half darkness the greens had turned to black so that each figure, each tree, took on a dark, smooth Sculptural quality. At one point I saw a lawn covered with gigantic chessmen, each a live yew tree, marvellously fashioned. I stopped t he car, got out and walked among them, and they were twice as tall as me. What’s more the set was complete, kings, queens, bishops, knights, rooks and pawns standing in position as for the start of a game.
Around the next bend I saw the great grey house itself, and in front of i t the large entrance forecourt enclosed by a high balustraded wall with small pillared pavilions at its outer angles. The piers of the balustrades were surmounted by stone obelisks—the Italian influence on the Tudor mind—and a flight of steps at least a hundred feet wide led up to the house.
As I drove into the forecourt I noticed with rather a shock that the fountain basin in the middle supported a large statue by Epstein. A lovely thin g, mind you, but surely not in sympathy with its surroundings. Then, looking back as I climbed the stairway to the front door, I saw that on all the little lawns and terraces round about there were other modern statues and many kinds of curious sculpture. In the distance I thought I recognized Gaudier Brzeska, Brancusi, Saint-Gaudens, Henry Moore, and Epstein again.
The door was opened by a young footman who led me up to a bedroom on the first floor. Her ladyship, he explained, was resting, so were the other guests, but they would all be down in the main drawing-room in an hour or so, dressed for dinner.
Now in my job it is necessary to do a lot of week-ending. I suppose I spend around fifty Saturdays and Sundays a year in other people’s houses, an d as a result I have become fairly sensitive to unfamiliar atmosphere. I can tell good or bad almost by sniffing with my nose the moment I get in the front door; and this one I was in now I did not like. The place smelled wrong. There was the faint, desiccated whiff of something troublesome in the air; I was conscious of it even as I lay steaming luxuriously in my great marble bath; and I couldn’t help hoping that no unpleasant things were going to happen before Monday came.
The first of them—though more of a surprise than an unpleasantness—occurred ten minutes later. I was sitting on the bed putting on my socks when softly the door opened, and an ancient lopsided gnome in black tails slid into the room. He was the butler, he explained, and his name was Jelks, and he did so hope I was comfortable and had everything I wanted.
I told him I was and had.
He said he would do all he could to make my week-end agreeable. I thanked him and waited for him to go. He hesitated, and then, in a voice dripping with unction, he begged permission to mention a rather delicate matter. I told him to go ahead.
To be quite frank, he said, it was about tipping. The whole business of tipping made him acutely miserable.
Oh? And why was that?
Well, if I really wanted to know, he didn’t like the idea that his guests felt under an obligation to tip him when they left the house—as indeed they did. It was an undignified proceeding for the tipping and the tipped. Moreover, he was well aware of the anguish that was often created in the minds of guests such as myself, if I would pardon the liberty, who might feel compelled by convention to give more than they could really afford.
He paused, and two small crafty eyes watched my face for a sign. I murmured that he needn’t worry himself about such things as far as I was concerned.
On the contrary, he said, he hoped sincerely that I would agree from the beginning to give him no tip at all.
“Well,” I said. “Let’s not fuss about it now, and when the time comes we’ll see how we feel.”
“No, sir!” he cried. “Please, I really must insist.”
So I agreed.
He thanked me, and shuffled a step or two closer. Then, laying his head on one side and clasping his hands before him like a priest, he gave a tiny apologetic shrug of the shoulders. The small sharp eyes were still watching me, and I waited, one sock on, the other in my hands, trying to guess what w as coming next.
All that he would ask, he said softly, so softly now that his voice was like music heard faintly in the street outside a great concert hail, all that he would ask was that instead of a tip I should give him thirty-three and a third per cent of my winnings at cards over the week-end. If I lost there would be nothing to pay. It was all so soft and smooth and sudden that I was not even surprised.
“Do they play a lot of cards, Jeiks?”
“Yes, sir, a great deal.”
“Isn’t thirty-three and a third a bit steep?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“I’ll give you ten per cent.”
“No, sir, I couldn’t do that.” He was now examining the finger-nails of hi s left hand, and patiently frowning.
“Then we’ll make it fifteen. All right?”
“Thirty-three and a third, sir. It’s very reasonable. After all, sir, seeing that I don’t even know if you are a good player, what I’m actually doing, not meaning to be personal, is backing a horse and I’ve never even seen it run.”
No doubt you think I should never have started bargaining with the butler in the first place, and perhaps you are right. But being a liberal-minded person, I always try my best to be affable with the lower classes. Apart from t hat, the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit to myself that it w as an offer no sportsman had the right to reject.
“All right then, Jeiks. As you wish.”
“Thank you, sir.” He moved towards the door, walking slowly sideways like a crab; but once more he hesitated, a hand on the knob. “If I may give a little advice, sir may I?”
“Yes?”
“It’s simply that her ladyship tends to overbid her hand.”
Now this was going too far. I was so startled I dropped my sock. After all, it’s one thing to have a harmless little sporting arrangement with the butler about tipping, but when he begins conniving with you to take money away from the hostess then it’s time to call a halt.
“All right Jeiks. Now that’ll do.”
“No offence, sir, I hope. All I mean is you’re bound to be playing against her ladyship. She always partners Major Haddock.”
“Major Haddock? You mean Major Jack Haddock?”
“Yes, sir.”
I noticed there was a trace of a sneer around the corner of Jelks’s nose when he spoke about this man. And it was worse with Lady Turton. Each time he said ‘her ladyship’ he spoke the words with the outsides of his lips as though he were nibbling a lemon, and there was a subtle, mocking inflection i n his voice.
“You’ll excuse me now, sir. Her ladyship will be down at seven o’clock.
So will Major Haddock and the others.” He slipped out of the door leaving behind him a certain dampness in the room and a faint smell of embrocation.
Shortly after seven, I found my way to the main drawing-room, and Lady Turton, as beautiful as ever, got up to greet me.
“I wasn’t even sure you were coming,” she said in that peculiar lilting v oice. “What’s your name again?”
“I’m afraid I took you at your word, Lady Turton. I hope it’s all right.”
“Why not?” she said. “There’s forty-seven bedrooms in the house. This is my husband.” A small man came around the back of her and said, “You know, I’m so glad you were able to come.” He had a lovely warm smile and when he took my hand I felt instantly a touch of friendship in his fingers.
“And Carmen La Rosa,” Lady Turton said.
This was a powerfully built woman who looked as though she might have something to do with horses. She nodded at me, and although my hand was already half-way out she didn’t give me hers, thus forcing me to convert the movement into a noseblow.
“You have a cold?” she said. “I’m sorry.”
I did not like this Miss Carmen La Rosa.
“And this is Jack Haddock.”
I knew this man slightly. He was a director of companies (whatever that may mean), and a well-known member of society. I had used his name a few times in my column, but I had never liked him, and this I think was mainly because I have a deep suspicion of all people who carry their military title s back with them into private life-especially majors and colonels. Standing there in his dinner-jacket with his full-blooded animal face and black eye brows and large white teeth, he looked so handsome there was almost something indecent about it. He had a way of raising his upper lip when he smiled, baring his teeth, and he was smiling now as he gave me a hairy brown hand.
“I hope you’re going to say some nice things about us in your column.”
“He better had,” Lady Turton said, “or I’ll say some nasty ones about him on my front page.”
I laughed, but all three of them, Lady Turton, Major Haddock, and Carmen La Rosa had already turned away and were settling themselves back on the sofa. Jelks gave me a drink, and Sir Basil drew me gently aside for a quiet chat at the other end of the room. Every now and then Lady Turton would call her husband to fetch her something—another Martini, a cigarette, an ash tray, a handkerchief—and he, half rising from his chair, would be forestal led by the watchful Jelks who fetched it for him.
Clearly, Jeiks loved his master; and just as clearly he hated the wife. Each time he did something for her he made a little sneer with his nose and drew his lips together so they puckered like a turkey’s bottom.
At dinner, our hostess sat her two friends, Haddock and La Rosa, on either side of her. This unconventional arrangement left Sir Basil and me at t he other end of the table where we were able to continue our pleasant talk about painting and sculpture. Of course it was obvious to me by now that the Major was infatuated with her ladyship. And again, although I hate to say it, it seemed as though the La Rosa woman was hunting the same bird.
All this foolishness appeared to delight the hostess. But it did not delight her husband. I could see that he was conscious of the little scene all the time we were talking; and often his mind would wander from our subject and he would stop short in mid-sentence, his eyes travelling down to the other end of the table to settle pathetically for a moment on that lovely head with the black hair and the curiously flaring nostrils. He must have noticed then how exhilarated she was, how the hand that gestured as she spoke rested every now and again on the Major’s arm, and how the other woman, the one who perhaps had something to do with horses, kept saying, “Nata-li-a? Now Nata-li-a, listen to me!”
“Tomorrow,” I said, “you must take me round and show me the sculptures you’ve put up in the garden.”
“Of course,” he said, “with pleasure.” He glanced again at the wife, an d his eyes had a sort of supplicating look that was piteous beyond words. He was so mild and passive a man in every way that even now I could see there was no anger in him, no danger, no chance of an explosion.
After dinner I was ordered straight to the card table to partner Miss Carmen La Rosa against Major Haddock and Lady Turton. Sir Basil sat quietly on the sofa with a book.
There was nothing unusual about the game itself; it was routine and rather dull. But Jeiks was a nuisance. All evening he prowled around us, emptying ashtrays and asking about drinks and peering at our hands. He was obviously short-sighted and I doubt whether he saw much of what was going on because as you may or may not know, here in England no butler has ever been permitted to wear spectacles nor for that matter, a moustache. This is the golden, unbreakable rule and a very sensible one it is too, although I‘m not quite sure what lies behind it. I presume that a moustache would make him look too much like a gentleman, and spectacles too much like an American, and where would we be then I should like to know? In any event Jelks was a nuisance all evening; and so was Lady Turton who was constantly called to the phone on newspaper business.
At eleven o’clock she looked up from her cards and said, “Basil, it’s time you went to bed.”
“Yes, my dear, perhaps it is.” He closed the book, got up, and stood for a minute watching the play. “Are you having a good game?” he asked.
The others didn’t answer him so I said, “It’s a nice game.”
“I’m so glad. And Jeiks will look after you and get anything you want.”
“Jelks can go to bed too,” the wife said.
I could hear Major Haddock breathing through his nose beside me, and the soft drop of the cards one by one on to the table, and then the sound of Jeiks’s feet shuffling over the carpet towards us.
“You wouldn’t prefer me to stay, m’lady?”
“No. Go to bed. You too, Basil.”
“Yes, my dear. Good night. Good night all.”
Jeiks opened the door for him, and he went slowly out followed by the butler.
As soon as the next rubber was over, I said that I too wanted to go to bed.
“All right,” Lady Turton said. “Good night.”
I went up to my room, locked the door, took a pill, and went to sleep.
The next morning, Sunday, I got up and dressed around ten o’clock and went down to the breakfast-room. Sir Basil was there before me, and Jeiks was serving him with grilled kidneys and bacon and fried tomatoes. He was delighted to see me and suggested that as soon as we had finished eating w e should take a long walk around the grounds. I told him nothing would give me more pleasure.
Half an hour later we started out, and you’ve no idea what a relief it w as to get away from that house and into the open air. It was one of those warm shining days that come occasionally in mid-winter after a night of heavy rain, with a bright surprising sun and not a breath of wind. Bare trees seemed beautiful in the sunlight, water still dripping from the branches, and we t places all around were sparkling with diamonds. The sky had small faint clouds.
“What a lovely day!”
“Yes—isn’t it a lovely day!”
We spoke hardly another word during the walk; it wasn’t necessary. But he took me everywhere and I saw it all—the huge chessmen and all the rest of the topiary. The elaborate garden houses, the pools, the fountains, the children’s maze whose hedges were hornbeam and lime so that it was only goo d in summer when the leaves were out, and the parterres, the rockeries, the greenhouses with their vines and nectarine trees. And of course, the sculpture. Most of the contemporary European sculptors were there, in bronze, granite, limestone, and wood; and although it was a pleasure to see them warming and glowing in the sun, to me they still looked a trifle out of place i n these vast formal surroundings.
“Shall we rest here now a little while?” Sir Basil said after we had walked for more than half an hour. So we sat down on a white bench beside a water-lily pond full of carp and goldfish, and lit cigarettes. We were some way from the house, on a piece of ground that was raised above its surroundings, and from where we sat the gardens were spread out below us like a drawing in one of those old books on garden architecture, with the hedges and lawns and terraces and fountains making a pretty pattern of squares and rings.
“My father bought this place just before I was born,” Sir Basil said. “I’ve lived here ever since, and I know every inch of it. Each day I grow to love it more.”
“It must be wonderful in summer.”
“Oh, but it is. You should come down and see it in May and June. Will you promise to do that?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’d love to come,” and as I spoke I was watching t he figure of a woman dressed in red moving among the flower-beds in the far distance. I saw her cross over a wide expanse of lawn, and there was a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her, and when she was over the lawn, she turned left and went along one side of a high wall of clipped yew until she came to another smaller lawn that was circular and had in its centre a piece of sculpture.
“This garden is younger than the house,” Sir Basil said. “It was laid out early in the eighteenth century by a Frenchman called Beaumont, the same fellow who did Levens, in Westmorland. For at least a year he had two hundred and fifty men working on it.”
The woman in the red dress had been joined now by a man, and they were standing face to face, about a yard apart, in the very centre of the whole garden panorama, on this little circular patch of lawn, apparently conversing. The man had some small black object in his hand.
“If you’re interested I’ll show you the bills that Beaumont put in to the Duke while he was making it.”
“I’d like very much to see them. They must be fascinating.”
“He paid his labourers a shilling a day and they worked ten hours.”
In the clear sunlight it was not difficult to follow the movements and gestures of the two figures on the lawn. They had turned now towards the piece of sculpture, and were pointing at it in a sort of mocking way, apparently laughing and making jokes about its shape. I recognized it as being one of the Henry Moores, done in wood, a thin smooth object of singular beauty that had two or three holes in it and a number of strange limbs protruding.
“When Beaumont planted the yew trees for the chess-men and the other things, he knew they wouldn’t amount to much for at least a hundred years.
We don’t seem to possess that sort of patience in our planning these days, do we? What do you think?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t.”
The black object in the man’s hand turned out to be a camera, and now h e had stepped back and was taking pictures of the woman beside the Henry Mo ore. She was striking a number of different poses, all of them, so far as I could see, ludicrous and meant to be amusing. Once she put her arms around one of the protruding wooden limbs and hugged it, and another time she climbed up and sat side-saddle on the thing, holding imaginary reins in her hands. A great wall of yew hid these two people from the house, and indeed from all the rest of the garden except the little hill on which we sat. They had every right to believe they were not overlooked, and even if they had happened to glance our way—which was into the sun—I doubt whether they would have noticed the two small motionless figures sitting on the bench beside the pond.
“You know, I love these yews.” Sir Basil said. “The colour of them is so wonderful in a garden because it rests the eye. And in the summer it breaks up the areas of brilliance into little patches and makes them more comfortable to admire. Have you noticed the different shades of greens on the planes and facets of each clipped tree?”
“It’s lovely, isn’t it.”
The man now seemed to be explaining something to the woman, and pointing at the Henry Moore, and I could tell by the way they threw back their heads that they were laughing again. The man continued to point, and then the woman walked around the back of the wood carving, bent down and poked her head through one of its holes. The thing was about the size, shall I say, of a small horse, but thinner than that, and from where I sat I could see both sides of it—to the left, the woman’s body, to the right, her head protruding through. It was very much like one of those jokes at the seaside where you put your head through a hole in a board and get photographed as a fat lady. The man was photographing her now.
“There’s another thing about yews,” Sir Basil said. “In the early summer when the young shoots come out… ” At that moment he paused and sat up straighter and leaned slightly forward, and I could sense his whole body suddenly stiffening.
“Yes,” I said, “when the young shoots come out?”
The man had taken the photograph, but the woman still had her head through the hole, and now I saw him put both hands (as well as the camera) behind his back and advance towards her. Then he bent forward so his face was close to hers, touching it, and he held it there while he gave her, I suppose, a few kisses or something like that. In the stillness that followed, I fancied I heard a faint faraway tinkle of female laughter coming to us through the sunlight across the garden.
“Shall we go back to the house?” I asked.
“Back to the house?”
“Yes, shall we go back and have a drink before lunch?”
“A drink? Yes, we’ll have a drink.” But he didn’t move. He sat very still, gone far away from me now, staring intently at the two figures. I also was staring at them. I couldn’t take my eyes away; I had to look. It was like seeing a dangerous little ballet in miniature from a great distance, and you knew the dancers and the music but not the end of the story, not the choreograph y, nor what they were going to do next, and you were fascinated, and you had to look.
“Gaudier Brzeska,” I said. “How great do you think he might’ve become i f he hadn’t died so young?”
“Who?”
“Gaudier Brzeska.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
I noticed now that something queer was happening. The woman still had her head through the hole, but she was beginning to wriggle her body from side to side in a slow unusual manner, and the man was standing motionless, a pace or so away watching her. He seemed suddenly uneasy the way he stood t here, and I could tell by the drop of the head and by the stiff intent set of the body that there was no laughter in him any more. For a while he remained still, then I saw him place his camera on the ground and go forward to the woman, taking her head in his hands; and all at once it was more like a puppet show than a ballet, with tiny wooden figures performing tiny, jerk y movements, crazy and unreal, on a faraway sunlit stage. We sat quietly together on the white bench, and we watched while the tiny puppet man began t o manipulate the woman’s head with his hands. He was doing it gently, there was no doubt about that, slowly and gently, stepping back every now and then to think about it some more, and several times crouching down to survey the situation from another angle. Whenever he left her alone the woman would start to wriggle her body, and the peculiar way she did it reminded me of a dog that feels a collar round its neck for the first time.
“She’s stuck,” Sir Basil said.
And now the man was walking to the other side of the carving, the side where the woman’s body was, and he put out his hands and began trying to do something with her neck. Then, as though suddenly exasperated, he gave the neck two or three jerky pulls, and this time the sound of a woman’s voice, raised high in anger, or pain, or both, came back to us small and clear through the sunlight.
Out of the corner of one eye I could see Sir Basil nodding his head quietly up and down. “I got my fist caught in a jar of boiled sweets once,” he said, “and I couldn’t get it out.”
The man retreated a few yards, and was standing with hands on hips, head up, looking furious and sullen. The woman, from her uncomfortable position, appeared to be talking to him, or rather shouting at him, and although t he body itself was pretty firmly fixed and could only wriggle, the legs were free and did a good deal of moving and stamping. “I broke the jar with a hammer and told my mother I’d knocked it off the shelf by mistake.” He seemed calmer now, not tense at all, although his voice was curiously flat. “I suppose we’d better go down and see if we can help.”
“Perhaps we should.”
But still he didn’t move. He took out a cigarette and lit it, putting the us ed match carefully back in the box.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Will you have one?”
“Thanks, I think I will.” He made a little ceremony of giving me the cigarette and lighting it for me, and again he put the used match back in the b ox. Then we got up and walked slowly down the grass slope.
We came upon them silently, through an archway in the yew hedge, and it was naturally quite a surprise.
“What’s the matter here?” Sir Basil asked. He spoke softly, with a danger ous softness that I’m sure his wife had never heard before.
“She’s gone and put her head through the hole and now she can’t get it out,” Major Haddock said. “Just for a lark, you know.”
“For a what?”
“Basil!” Lady Turton shouted, “Don’t be such a damn fool! Do something, can’t you!” She may not have been able to move much, but she could still talk.
“Pretty obvious we’re going to have to break up this lump of wood,” the Major said. There was a small smudge of red on his grey moustache, and this, like the single extra touch of colour that ruins a perfect painting, man aged somehow to destroy all his manly looks. It made him comic.
“You mean break the Henry Moore?”
“My dear sir, there is no other way of setting the lady free. God knows how she managed to squeeze it in, but I know for a fact that she can’t pull it out
. It’s the ears get in the way.”
“Oh dear,” Sir Basil said. “What a terrible pity. My beautiful Henry Moor e.”
At this stage Lady Turton began abusing her husband in a most unpleasant manner, and there’s no knowing how long it would have gone on had not Jeiks suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He came sidling silently on to the lawn and stationed himself at a respectful distance from Sir Basil, as tho ugh awaiting instructions. His black clothes looked perfectly ridiculous in the morning sunlight, and with his ancient pink-white face and white hands he was like some small crabby animal that has lived all its life in a hole under the ground.
“Is there anything I can do, Sir Basil?” He kept his voice level, but I didn’t think his face was quite straight. When he looked at Lady Turton there was a little exulting glimmer in his eyes.
“Yes Jelks, there is. Go back and get me a saw or something so I can cut out this section of wood.”
“Shall I call one of the men, Sir Basil? William is a good carpenter.”
“No, I’ll do it myself. Just get the tools and hurry.”
While they were waiting for Jelks, I strolled away because I didn’t wan t to hear any more of the things that Lady Turton was saying to her husband
. But I was back in time to see the butler returning, followed now by the other woman, Carmen La Rosa, who made a rush for the hostess.
“Nata-Ji-a! My dear Nata-li-a! What have they done to you?”
“Oh shut up,” the hostess said. “And get out of the way, will you.”
Sir Basil took up a position close to his lady’s head, waiting for Jelks. Jeiks advanced slowly, carrying a saw in one hand, an axe in the other, an d he stopped maybe a yard away. Then he held out both implements in front of him so his master could choose, and there was a brief moment—no more than two or three seconds—of silence, and of waiting, and it just happened that I was watching Jelks at this time. I saw the hand that was carrying the axe come forward an extra fraction of an inch towards Sir Basil. It was so slight a movement it was barely noticeable—a tiny pushing forward of the hand, s low and secret, a little offer, a little coaxing offer that was accompanied perhaps by an infinitesimal lift of the eyebrow.
I’m not sure whether Sir Basil saw it, but be hesitated, and again the h and that held the axe came edging forward, and it was almost exactly like that card trick where the man says ‘Take one, whichever one you want,’ and you always get the one he means you to have. Sir Basil got the axe. I saw him r each out in a dreamy sort of way, accepting it from Jeiks, and then, the instant he felt the handle in his grasp he seemed to realize what was required of him and he sprang to life.
For me, after that, it was like the awful moment when you see a child running out into the road and a car is coming and all you can do is shut your eyes tight and wait until the noise tells you it has happened. The moment of waiting becomes a long lucid period of time with yellow and red spots dancing on a black field, and even if you open your eyes again and find that nobody has been killed or hurt, it makes no difference because so far as you and your stomach were concerned you saw it all.
I saw this one all right, every detail of it, and I didn’t open my eyes again until I heard Sir Basil’s voice, even softer than usual, calling in gentle protest to the butler.
“Jeiks,” he was saying, and I looked and saw him standing there as calm as you please, still holding the axe. Lady Turton’s head was there too, still sticking through the hole, but her face had turned a terrible ashy grey, and the mouth was opening and shutting making a kind of gurgling sound.
“Look here, Jeiks,” Sir Basil was saying. “What on earth are you thinking about. This thing’s much too dangerous. Give me the saw.” And as he exchanged implements I noticed for the first time two little warm roses of colour appearing on his cheeks, and above them, all around the corners of his eyes, the twinkling tiny wrinkles of a smile.