Death and the Joyful Woman gfaf-2 Read online

  Armiger had a whiskey in his other hand; he hoisted it to George and downed it in one quick swig. Not a tall man, hardly medium height, but built like a bull, shoulder-heavy, neckless, with a large head perpetually lowered for the charge. He ran head-down at business, at life, at his enthusiasms, at his rivalries, at everyone who got in his way and everything that acquired a temporary or permanent significance for his pocket or his self-esteem. He was dark, with thinning hair brushed across his sun-tanned scalp, and the short black moustache that bristled from his upper lip quivered with charged energy like antennae. His bluish chin and brick-red cheeks gave him a gaudy brilliance no matter how conservatively he dressed. Maybe he’d consumed a fair quantity of his own wares, or maybe he was merely high on his pride and delight in his new toy, and his ebullient hopes for it. Come to think of it, it was very improbable that he ever got tight on liquor, he’d been in command of it and manipulated his fellow-men by means of it too long to be susceptible to it himself at this late stage. He glittered with excitement and self-satisfaction; the bright, shrewd eyes were dancing.

  “Well, how do you like my little place? Have I made a good job of it?”

  “Terrific,” said George reverently. “Do you think it’s really going to pay for transferring the licence out of the town? Looks to me a costly house to run.”

  “You know me, boy, I never throw money away without being sure it’ll come back and bring its relations along. Don’t you worry, I’ll make it pay.”

  He slapped George on the back again with a knowing grin, and was off through the crowd head-down, big shoulders swinging, distributing a word here and a handshake there, and radiating waves of energy that washed outward through the assembly and vibrated up the panelled walls to clang against the copper overhead. Self-made and made in a big way, Alfred Armiger; many a lesser mortal had been bowled over in that head-down charge to success. Some of the casualties were here tonight; more than one of the looks that followed his triumphal progress through his Tudor halls would have killed if it could.

  “He’s in high fettle,” said a voice in George’s ear. “Always is when he’s been walking on other people’s faces.” Barney Wilson of the architect’s department slid into the settle beside him, and spread lean elbows on the table; a long, saturnine young man with a disillusioned eye. “Don’t take too much notice of me,” he said with a wry smile, catching George’s curious glance, “I’m prejudiced. I once had hopes of taking this place over myself, pulling down the rubbishy part of it and making the rest over into a house for my family. I still grudge it to him. What does he need with another hotel? He has more than he can keep count of already.”

  “Biggish job for a private man, restoring this place, the state it was in,” suggested George, eyeing him thoughtfully.

  “Biggish, yes, but I could have done the necessary minimum and moved Nell and the kids in, and taken my own time over the rest. And the way sales trends are running these days, a place this size and in that sort of state was the only kind of place I had a chance of getting. Everybody wants a modern, easy-to-run semi or bungalow, they fetch fantastic prices everywhere, but these bigger properties are going for next to nothing. You can’t run ‘em without servants, or so everyone supposes, and they cost the earth to maintain. But the maintenance would have just been my job to me, and Nell was raised on a Welsh farm, she knows all about managing a lot of house-room with a minimum of effort. Oh, we thought we were in. I’d even started drawing plans for my conversion, believe it or not, I was that confident. What a hope! The minute I clapped eyes on his man at the auction I knew we’d had it. If it hadn’t been for him we could have got the place for the reserve, nobody else wanted it.” He gazed glumly into his beer and sighed. “But no, he had to snatch it from under our noses and turn it into this monstrosity. You can expect anything of a man who’d turn The Joyful Woman into The Jolly Barmaid!”

  “Is that what it used to be called?” asked George, surprised and impressed. “I never heard that.”

  “I’m well up in the history of this house, believe me. I read it up from the archives when I thought we were going to live in it. It was a pub, for centuries before it was used as a private house, and that was the sign, The Joyful Woman. Lovely, isn’t it? Goes right back to about 1600. And before that it was a private house again, and before that, until the Dissolution, it was a grange of Charnock Priory. But now it’s The Jolly Barmaid, and that’s that.”

  “Business is business, I suppose,” said George sententiously.

  “Business be damned! He’s willing to run this place at a loss rather than let his son have any part of it, that’s the beginning and the end of it.”

  “Was his son going to have some part of it?”

  “He was coming in with me. We put together all we could raise between us to bid for it. We were going to convert the barn into a studio for him and Jean, and Nell and I and the kids were going to have the house. You know the barn? It’s right across the yard there, beyond where he’s laid out the carpark. It’s stone, built to last for ever. It would have made an ideal studio flat. But somehow his loving father got to know about it, and he thought a few thousands well spent to spite his son.”

  The Armiger family quarrel was no news to George, or indeed to any native of the Comerbourne district. It was natural enough that Armiger, self-made, ambitious and bursting with energy as he was, should intend his only son to follow him in the business, and marry another beer heiress who would nearly double his empire. Natural enough also, perhaps, that the boy should react strongly against his father’s plans and his father’s personality, and decline to be a beer baron. The story was that Leslie wanted to paint, and most probably the rift would have been inevitable, even if he hadn’t clinched his fate by getting engaged to a humble clerk from the brewery offices instead of falling in with his father’s arrangements for him. Variations on the theme were many and fantastic from this point on; what was certain was that Leslie had been pitched out of the house without a penny, and the girl had either left or been sacked, and they had married at a registry office as soon as they could. Once married they had dropped out of sight, their news-value exhausted. What was news was that Armiger should still be pursuing them so malevolently that he grudged them even a home.

  “There must have been a limit to what he was prepared to throw away in a cause like that,” suggested George mildly. “He likes his money, does Armiger.”

  Wilson shook his head decidedly. “We went to our limit, and he was still as fresh as a daisy. Maybe he does love his money, but he’s got plenty of it, and he loves his own way even more.”

  “Still, Leslie shouldn’t have any difficulty in getting credit, with his expectations, , , “

  “He hasn’t any expectations. He hasn’t got a father. This is final. And believe me, the news went round fast. They know their Armiger. Nobody’s going to be willing to lend money to Leslie, don’t think it. He has the thousand or so he got from his mother, and what he can earn, that’s all. And can you think of anyone round these parts who’s going to ally himself willingly with somebody on whom Armiger’s declared total war?”

  George couldn’t. It wasn’t just the money and power that would frighten them off, it was the sheer force of that ruthless personality. There are people only heroes would tackle, and heroes are few and far between. “What’s young Leslie doing?” asked George. Come to think of it, that made young Leslie a hero; and starting heavily handicapped, too.

  “Working as packer and porter and general dog’s-body at Malden’s, for about eight pounds a week,” said Wilson bitterly. “He’s never been trained to earn his living, poor devil, and painting isn’t going to pay the milkman. And a baby on the way, too, so Jean will have to give up her job soon.”

  Armiger had erupted into the saloon bar again, sweeping newcomers towards the free drinks, dispensing hospitality in the grand manner. They followed the compulsive passage of the cannon-ball head through the crowd, their eyes guardedly thoughtful. He seeme
d to have a party with him now, he was busy seating them in a far corner of the big room.

  “Parents usually come round in the end, however awkward they may be,” said George without too much conviction.

  “Parents, yes. Monoliths, no. Leslie never had but one parent, and she died nearly three years ago, or she might have ventured to stick up for him when the crash came. Not that she ever had much influence, of course, poor soul.”

  Wilson was craning to see past undulating shoulders to the group in the far corner, and the passage of a waiter with a loaded tray had just opened a clear corridor to the spot. Others were equally interested in the spectacle. A woman’s voice said dispassionately: “Vulgar little monster!” and a man’s voice, less dispassionate, murmured: “So that was Kitty’s red bus I saw in the carpark. I thought there couldn’t be two like it round here.”

  There were three people with Armiger. The man was everything that Armiger was not, and valuable to him for that very reason; George was familiar with the contrast and all its implications. Into houses where Armiger’s bouncing aggression would not have been welcomed Raymond Shelley’s tall grey elegance and gentle manners entered without comment; where negotiations required a delicacy of touch which Armiger would have disdained to possess, he employed Shelley’s graces to do his work for him. Nominally Shelley was his legal adviser, permanently retained by the firm; actually he was his other face, displayed or concealed according to circumstances. Middle-aged, quiet, kind, not particularly energetic or particularly effective in himself, but he supplied what Armiger needed, and in return Armiger supplied him with what he most needed, which was money. He was also Kitty Norris’s trustee, having been for years a close friend of her father. And there was Kitty by his side now, in a full-skirted black dress that made her look even younger than her twenty-two years, with an iridescent scarf round her shoulders and a half of bitter in her hand. So that, thought George, admiring the clear profile pale against the subdued rosy lights, is the girl who gave our Dom a lift home the other night. And all Dom could talk about was the car! How simple life is when you’re as young as that!

  The third person was a handsome, resigned-looking, quiet, capable woman of forty-five, in a black suit, who was just fitting a cigarette into a short black holder. The movements of her long hands were graceful and strong, so was her body under the severely-tailored cloth. She let the men talk. Intelligent, illusionless eyes swept from face to face without noticeable emotion; only when she looked at Kitty she smiled briefly and meaningly, owning a contact with her which set the men at a slight distance. Women as efficient as Ruth Hamilton and as deeply in the business secrets of their employers frequently entertain a faint contempt for the temples they sustain on their shoulders and the gods they serve.

  “His secretary,” said a man’s voice in an audible whisper somewhere behind them. “Has been for twenty years. They say she does more than type his letters.”

  That was no new rumour, either, George had heard it bandied about for at least ten of the twenty years. The only surprising thing about it was to hear it mentioned at all; it had been taken for granted, whether believed or discounted, for so long that there was no point in trying to squeeze a drop of sensation out of it now. Nor was anyone ever likely to know for certain whether it was true or not. The legend had been more or less inevitable, in any case, for Miss Hamilton had virtually run Armiger’s household as well as his office ever since his wife’s long, dragging illness began, and that was a good many years ago.

  Wilson emptied his pint and pushed the tankard away from him. “Jean is quite a girl. But sometimes I wonder how Leslie ever managed to see her in the first place, with Miss Norris around. Not that I think he made any mistake, mind you. Still, look at her!”

  George had been thinking much the same thing, though he did not know Jean Armiger. Young men frequently reject even the most dazzling of girls, he reflected, when thrust at them too aggressively by their fathers, and if Armiger’s mind was once made up he would certainly tackle this enterprise as he did every other, head-down and bellowing. Still, look at her!

  She was the last person at whom he did turn and look when he left the saloon bar at about ten o’clock. She hadn’t moved, she’d hardly spoken; she sat nursing the other half, but only playing with it, and though Armiger had vanished on one of his skirmishes and Miss Hamilton seemed to be gathering up her bag and gloves and preparing to leave, Kitty sat still; so still that the sparkles in the glittering scarf were motionless, crumbs of light arrested in mid-air. Then the swing-door closed gently on the grave oval of her face, and George settled the collar of his coat and strolled across the hall towards the chill of the September night.

  Old Bennie Blocksidge, a lean, tough little gnome, was crossing the hall with an empty tray, all the copper witchballs repeating his bald pink dome as he passed beneath them. He stopped to exchange a word with George, jerking his head in the direction of the side door which led out to the courtyard.

  “He’s in high feather tonight, Mr. Felse. No holding him.”

  “He” could be no one but Armiger. “I noticed he’s vanished,” said George. “Why, what’s he got up his sleeve now? I should think he’d had triumph enough for one night.”

  “He’s just gone off with a bottle of champagne under his arm, any road up, off to show off his new ballroom to some bloke or other. That’s the old barn what was, off across the yard there. Wanted to open it this week, he did, but they’ve only just finished the decorations. Sets great store by it, and so he ought, it’s cost him a packet.”

  So that was what was to become of young Leslie’s studio. George stepped aside to allow free passage to two people who had just followed him out of the saloon bar, and watched Miss Hamilton and Raymond Shelley cross the hall together and go out through the swing-doors and the nail-studded outer portals which stood open on the night; and in a few moments he heard a car start up in the carpark, and roll out gently on to the road, and caught a glimpse of Shelley’s Austin as it swept round and headed for Comberbourne.

  “Told us not to disturb him, neither,” said Bennie, sniffing. “Says he’ll be back when he’s good and ready. Ordered his car for ten, and here it is turned ten, and he says,’tell him he can damn’ well wait till I’m ready, if it’s midnight.’ Clayton’s sitting out there in the Bentley cursing like a trooper, but what’s the good? There’s never no doing anything with him. If you like your job you just go with him, nothing else you can do.”

  “And you do like your job, Bennie?”

  “Me?” said Bennie with a grin and a shrug. “I’m used to it, I go with the stream. There’s worse bosses than him, if you just go along with him and don’t worry. These youngsters, they fret too much.”

  “Well, let’s hope he soon drinks his champagne and lets Clayton take him home.”

  “It was a big ‘un, a magnum. He thinks in magnums.”

  “He does indeed!” said George. “The Jolly Barmaid was a classic example of Armiger’s inflated habits of mind. “Good night, Bennie.”

  “Good night, Mr. Felse.”

  George walked home into Comerford, and gave his wife and son a brief account of his evening’s entertainment.

  “Your girl-friend was there, Dom,” he said, glancing mischievously at Dominic, who was in his homework corner still bent over a book, though it was a late start rather than an exaggerated sense of duty that had kept him at it until this hour. He slapped the Anglepoise lamp away from him and quickly switched it off, to hide the fierce blush that surged up into his cheeks, and assuming his protective colouring with the dexterity of a cornered animal, said eagerly: “No, was she? Did you see the car? Isn’t it a beauty?”

  “I wasn’t looking at the car.”

  “Gosh, can you beat it! No soul!” said Dominic disgustedly, for once removing himself to bed without having to be driven. He had told his parents about coming home in the Karmann-Ghia because he was experienced enough to know that even if they had not witnessed his arrival them
selves, someone among the neighbours was sure to have done so, and to retail the information over pegging out the washing or giving the lawn its last autumn mowing. Better and safer to give them an edited version himself, and the car made wonderful cover, but if his father was going to spring nasty little surprises like that sudden dig tonight, Dominic was going to have to stay in dark corners, or keep his back turned on his family.

  Bunty Felse awoke just after midnight from her first light doze with a curious question on her mind, and stroked George into wakefulness with the gentle ruthlessness wives employ instead of open brutality.

  “George,” she said as he grunted a sleepy protest into her red hair, “do you remember that singer girl at Weston-super-Mare last summer. The one who dragged Dom into her act, the way they do?”

  “Mmm!” said George, dazed by this seeming irrelevance. “What about her, for goodness’ sake?”

  “He noticed her all right, didn’t he?”

  “Couldn’t very well miss her,” admitted George, “she was round his neck. How on earth did she get him up there? Some trick, I don’t remember. I know I blushed for him.”

  “Yes, you did,” said Bunty significantly. “He didn’t. He bragged about it for days, the little ass. He said she was a dish.”

  “That’s all those paperbacks he reads.”

  “No, I think it’s pop records. The point is, apparently this Norris girl really is a dish. But he never said so. Why?”

  “No accounting for tastes,” mumbled George. “Maybe he doesn’t think she is a dish.”

  “Why shouldn’t he? Everybody else does. You do,” said Bunty, and was drifting off to sleep again, still worrying over the discrepancy, when the telephone beside their bed rang.

  “Damn and blast!” said George, sitting up in bed wide awake and reaching for the instrument. “Now what’s up?”