Grave Mistake

‘Hopeless, my dear. If you ask me Field-Innis is getting beyond it. And he’s become very offhand, I don’t mind telling you.’

Verity half-listened to the so-familiar plaints. Over the years Sybil had consulted a procession of general practitioners and in each instance enthusiasm had dwindled into discontent. It was only because there were none handy, Verity sometimes thought, that Syb had escaped falling into the hands of some plausible quack.

‘– and I had considered,’ she was saying, ‘taking myself off to Greengages for a fortnight. It does quite buck me up, that place.’

‘Yes, why don’t you?’

‘I think I’d like to just be here, though, while Mr Gardener gets the place into shape.’

‘One calls him “Mr Gardener”, then?’

‘Verity, he is very superior. Anyway I hate those old snobby distinctions. You don’t, evidently.’

‘I’ll call him the Duke of Plaza-Toro if he’ll get rid of my weeds.’

‘I really must go,’ Sybil suddenly decided, as if Verity had been preventing her from doing so. ‘I can’t make up my mind about Greengages.’

Greengages was an astronomically expensive establishment; a hotel with a resident doctor and a sort of valetudinarian sideline where weight was reduced by the exaction of a deadly diet while appetites were stimulated by compulsory walks over a rather dreary countryside. If Sybil decided to go there, Verity would be expected to drive through twenty miles of dense traffic to take a luncheon of inflationary soup and a concoction of liver and tomatoes garnished with mushrooms to which she was uproariously allergic.

She had no sooner hung up her receiver when the telephone rang again.

‘Damn,’ said Verity, who hankered after her cold duck and salad and the telly.

A vibrant male voice asked if she were herself and on learning that she was, said it was Nikolas Markos speaking.

‘Is this a bad time to ring you up?’ Mr Markos asked. ‘Are you telly-watching or thinking about your dinner, for instance?’

‘Not quite yet.’

‘But almost, I suspect. I’ll be quick. Would you like to dine here next Wednesday? I’ve been trying to get you all day. Say you will, like a kind creature. Will you?’

He spoke as if they were old friends and Verity, accustomed to this sort of approach in the theatre, responded.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will. I’d like to. Thank you. What time?’

III

Nobody in Upper Quintern knew much about Nikolas Markos. He was reputed to be fabulously rich, widowed and a financier. Oil was mentioned as the almost inescapable background. When Mardling Manor came on the market Mr Markos had bought it, and when Verity went to dine with him, had been in residence, off and on, for about four months.

Mardling was an ugly house. It had been built in mid-Victorian times on the site of a Jacobean mansion. It was large, pepper-potted and highly inconvenient; not a patch on Sybil Foster’s Quintern Place, which was exquisite. The best that could be said of Mardling was that, however hideous, it looked clumsily important both inside and out.

As Verity drove up she saw Sybil’s Mercedes parked alongside a number of other cars. The front door opened before she got to it and revealed that obsolete phenomenon, a manservant.

While she was being relieved of her coat she saw that even the ugliest of halls can be made beautiful by beautiful possessions. Mr Markos had covered the greater part of the stupidly carved walls with smoky tapestries. These melted upwards into an almost invisible gallery and relinquished the dominant position above an enormous fireplace to a picture. Such a picture! An imperious quattrocento man, life-size, ablaze in a scarlet cloak on a round-rumped charger. The rider pointed his sword at an immaculate little Tuscan town.

Verity was so struck with the picture that she was scarcely conscious that behind her a door had opened and closed.

‘Ah!’ said Nikolas Markos, ‘you like my arrogant equestrian? Or are you merely surprised by him?’

‘Both,’ said Verity.

His handshake was quick and perfunctory. He wore a green velvet coat. His hair was dark, short and curly at the back. His complexion was sallow and his eyes black. His mouth, under a slight moustache, seemed to contradict the almost too plushy ensemble. It was slim-lipped, and, Verity thought, extremely firm.

‘Is it a Uccello?’ she asked, turning back to the picture.

‘I like to think so, but it’s a borderline case. “School of” is all the pundits will allow me.’

‘It’s extraordinarily exciting.’

‘Isn’t it, just? I’m glad you like it. And delighted, by the way, that you’ve come.’

Verity was overtaken by one of her moments of middle-aged shyness. ‘Oh. Good,’ she mumbled.

‘We’re nine for dinner: my son, Gideon, a Dr Basil Schramm who’s yet to arrive, and you know all the rest, Mrs Foster and her daughter, the vicar (she’s indisposed) and Dr and Mrs Field-Innis. Come and join them.’

Verity’s recollection of the drawing-room at Mardling was of a great ungainly apartment, over-furnished and nearly always chilly. She found herself in a bird’s-egg blue and white room, sparkling with firelight and a welcoming elegance.

There, expansively on a sofa, was Sybil at her most feminine, and that was saying a great deal. Hair, face, pampered little hands, jewels, dress and, if you got close enough, scent – they all came together like the ingredients of some exotic pudding. She fluttered a minute handkerchief at Verity and pulled an arch grimace.

‘This is Gideon,’ said Mr Markos.

He was even darker than his father and startlingly handsome. ‘My dear, an Adonis,’ Sybil was to say of him, and later was to add that there was ‘something’ wrong and that she was never deceived, she sensed it at once, let Verity mark her words. When asked to explain herself she said it didn’t matter but she always knew. Verity thought that she knew, too. Sybil was hell-bent on her daughter Prunella encouraging the advances of a hereditary peer with the unlikely name of Swingletree and took an instant dislike to any attractive young man who hove into view.

Gideon looked about twenty, was poised and had nice manners. His black hair was not very long and was well kept. Like his father, he wore a velvet coat. The only note of extravagance was in the frilled shirt and flowing tie. These lent a final touch to what might have been an unendurably romantic appearance, but Gideon had enough natural manner to get away with them.

He had been talking to Prunella Foster, who was like her mother at the same age; ravishingly pretty and a great talker. Verity never knew what Prunella talked about as she always spoke in a whisper. She nodded a lot and gave mysterious little smiles and, because it was the fashion of the moment, seemed to be dressed in expensive rags partly composed of a patchwork quilt. Under this supposedly evening attire she wore a little pair of bucket boots.

Dr Field-Innis was an old Upper Quintern hand. The younger son of a brigadier, he had taken to medicine instead of arms and had married a lady who sometimes won point-to-points and more often fell off.

The vicar we have already met. He was called Walter Cloudesley, and ministered, a little sadly, to twenty parishioners in a very beautiful old church that had once housed three hundred.

Altogether, Verity thought, this was a predictable Upper Quintern dinner-party with an unpredictable host in a highly exceptional setting.

They drank champagne cocktails.

Sybil, sparkling, told Mr Markos how clever he was and went into an ecstasy over the house. She had a talent that never failed to tickle Verity’s fancy, for making the most unexceptionable remark to a gentleman sound as if it carried some frisky innuendo. She sketched an invitation for him to join her on the sofa but he seemed not to notice. He stood over her and replied in kind. Later on, Verity thought, she will tell me he’s a man of the world.

He moved to his hearthrug and surveyed his guests with an air of satisfaction. ‘This is great fun,’ he said. ‘My first Quintern venture. Really, it’s a kind of christening party for the house, isn’t it? What a good thing you could come, Vicar.’

‘I certainly give it my blessing,’ the vicar hardily countered. He was enjoying a second champagne cocktail.

‘And, by the way, the party won’t be undiluted Quintern. There’s somebody still to come. I do hope he’s not going to be late. He’s a man I ran across in New York, a Basil Schramm. I found him –’ Mr Markos paused and an odd little smile touched his mouth – ‘quite interesting. He rang up out of a clear sky this morning, saying he was going to take up a practice somewhere in our part of the world and was driving there this evening. We discovered that his route would bring him through Upper Quintern and on the spur of the moment I asked him to dine. He’ll unbalance the table a bit but I hope nobody’s going to blench at that.’

‘An American?’ asked Mrs Field-Innis. She had a hoarse voice.

‘He’s Swiss by birth, I fancy.’

‘Is he taking a locum,’ asked Dr Field-Innis, ‘or a permanent practice?’

‘The latter, I supposed. At some hotel or nursing home or convalescent place or something of the sort. Green – something.’

‘Not “gages”,’ cried Sybil, softly clapping her hands.

‘I knew it made me think of indigestion. Greengages it is,’ said Mr Markos.

‘Oh,’ said Dr Field-Innis. ‘That place.’

Much was made of this coincidence, if it could be so called. The conversation drifted to gardeners. Sybil excitedly introduced her find. Mr Markos became grand signorial and when Gideon asked if they hadn’t taken on a new man, said they had but he didn’t know what he was called. Verity, who, a-political at heart, drifted guiltily from left to right and back again, felt her redder hackles rising. She found that Mr Markos was looking at her in a manner that gave her the sense of having been rumbled.

Presently he drew a chair up to hers.

‘I very much enjoyed your play,’ he said. ‘Your best, up to date, I thought.’

‘Did you? Good.’

‘It’s very clever of you to be civilized as well as penetrating. I want to ask you, though –’

He talked intelligently about her play. It suddenly dawned on Verity that there was nobody in Upper Quintern with whom she ever discussed her work and she felt as if she spoke the right lines in the wrong theatre. She heard herself eagerly discussing her play and fetched up abruptly.

‘I’m talking shop,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Why? What’s wrong with shop? Particularly when your shop’s one of the arts.’

‘Is yours?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘mine’s as dull as ditchwater.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Schramm is late,’ he said. ‘Lost in the Weald of Kent, I dare say. We shall not wait for him. Tell me –’

He started off again. The butler came in. Verity expected him to announce dinner but he said, ‘Dr Schramm, sir.’

When Dr Schramm walked into the room it seemed to shift a little. Her mouth dried. She waited through an unreckoned interval for Nikolas Markos to arrive at her as he performed the introductions.

‘But we have already met,’ said Dr Schramm. ‘Some time ago.’

IV

Twenty-five years to be exact, Verity thought. It was ludicrous – grotesque almost – after twenty-five years, to be put out by his reappearance.

‘Somebody should say “What a small world”,’ said Dr Schramm.

He had always made remarks like that. And laughed like that and touched his moustache.

He didn’t know me at first, she thought. That’ll learn me.

He had moved on towards the fire with Mr Markos and been given, in quick succession, two cocktails. Verity heard him explain how he’d missed the turn-off to Upper Quintern.

But why ‘Schramm’? she wondered. He could have hyphenated himself if ‘Smythe’ wasn’t good enough. And ‘Doctor’? So he qualified after all.

‘Very difficult country,’ Mrs Field-Innis said. She had been speaking for some time.

‘Very,’ Verity agreed fervently and was stared at.

Dinner was announced.

She was afraid they might find themselves together at the table but after, or so she fancied, a moment’s hesitation, Mr Markos put Schramm between Sybil and Dr Field-Innis who was on Verity’s right, with the vicar on her left. Mr Markos himself was on Sybil’s right. It was a round table.

She managed quite well at dinner. The vicar was at all times prolific in discourse and, being of necessity as well as by choice, of an abstemious habit, he was a little flown with unaccustomed wine. Dr Field-Innis was also in talkative form. He coruscated with anecdotes concerning high jinks in his student days.

On his far side, Dr Schramm, whose glass had been twice replenished, was much engaged with Sybil Foster, which meant that he was turned away from Dr Field-Innis and Verity. He bent towards Sybil, laughed a great deal at everything she said and established an atmosphere of flirtatious understanding. This stabbed Verity with the remembrance of long-healed injuries. It had been his technique when he wished to show her how much another woman pleased him. He had used it at the theatre in the second row of the stalls, prolonging his laughter beyond the rest of the audience so that she, as well as the actress concerned, might become aware of him. She realized that even now, idiotically after twenty-five years, he aimed his performance at her.

Sybil, she knew, although she had not looked at them, was bringing out her armoury of delighted giggles and upward glances.

‘And then,’ said the vicar, who had returned to Rome, ‘there was the Villa Giulia. I can’t describe to you –’

In turning to him, Verity found herself under observation from her host. Perhaps because the vicar had now arrived at the Etruscans, it occurred to Verity that there was something knowing about Mr Markos’s smile. You wouldn’t diddle that one in a hurry, she thought.

Evidently he had asked Mrs Field-Innis to act as hostess.

When the port had gone round once she surveyed the ladies and barked out orders to retire.

Back in the drawing-room it became evident that Dr Schramm had made an impression. Sybil lost no time in tackling Verity. Why, she asked, had she never been told about him? Had Verity known him well? Was he married?

‘I’ve no idea. It was a thousand years ago,’ Verity said. ‘He was one of my father’s students, I think. I ran up against him at some training-hospital party as far as I can remember.’

Remember? He had watched her for half the evening and then, when an ‘Excuse me’ dance came along, had relieved her of an unwieldy first-year student and monopolized her for the rest of the evening.

She turned to the young Prunella, whose godmother she was, and asked what she was up to these days, and made what she could of a reply that for all she heard of it might have been in mime.

‘Did you catch any of that?’ asked Prunella’s mother wearily.

Prunella giggled.

‘I think I may be getting deaf,’ Verity said.

Prunella shook her head vigorously and became audible. ‘Not you, Godmama V,’ she said. ‘Tell us about your super friend. What a dish!’

‘Prue,’ expostulated Sybil, punctual as clockwork.

‘Well, Mum, he is,’ said her daughter, relapsing into her whisper. ‘And you can’t talk, darling,’ she added. ‘You gobbled him up like a turkey.’

Mrs Field-Innis said, ‘Really!’ and spoilt the effect by bursting into a gruff laugh.

To Verity’s relief this passage had the effect of putting a stop to further enquiries about Dr Schramm. The ladies discussed local topics until they were joined by the gentlemen.

Verity had wondered whether anybody – their host or the vicar or Dr Field-Innis – had questioned Schramm as she had been questioned about their former acquaintanceship, and if so, how he had answered and whether he would think it advisable to come and speak to her. After all, it would look strange if he did not.

He did come. Nikolas Markos, keeping up the deployment of his guests, so arranged it. Schramm sat beside her and the first thought that crossed her mind was that there was something unbecoming about not seeming, at first glance, to have grown old. If he had appeared to her, as she undoubtedly did to him, as a greatly changed person, she would have been able to get their confrontation into perspective. As it was he sat there like a hangover. His face at first glance was scarcely changed, although when he turned it into a stronger light, a system of lines seemed to flicker under the skin. His eyes were more protuberant, now, and slightly bloodshot. A man, she thought, of whom people would say he could hold his liquor. He used the stuff she remembered, on hair that was only vestigially thinner at the temples.

As always he was, as people used to say twenty-five years ago, extremely well turned out. He carried himself like a soldier.

‘How are you, Verity?’ he said. ‘You look blooming.’

‘I’m very well, thank you.’

‘Writing plays, I hear.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Absolutely splendid. I must go and see one. There is one, isn’t there? In London?’

‘At the Dolphin.’

‘Good houses?’

‘Full,’ said Verity.

‘Really! So they wouldn’t let me in. Unless you told them to. Would you tell them to? Please?’

He bent his head towards her in the old way. Why on earth, she thought, does he bother?

‘I’m afraid they wouldn’t pay much attention,’ she said.

‘Were you surprised to see me?’

‘I was, rather.’

‘Why?’

‘Well –’

‘Well?’

‘The name for one thing.’

‘Oh, that!’ he said, waving his hand. ‘That’s an old story. It’s my mother’s maiden name. Swiss. She always wanted me to use it. Put it in her Will, if you’ll believe it. She suggested that I made myself “Smythe-Schramm” but that turned out to be such a wet mouthful I decided to get rid of Smythe.’

‘I see.’

‘So I qualified after all, Verity.’

‘Yes.’

‘From Lausanne, actually. My mother had settled there and I joined her. I got quite involved with that side of the family and decided to finish my course in Switzerland.’

‘I see.’

‘I practised there for some time – until she died to be exact. Since then I’ve wandered about the world. One can always find something to do as a medico.’ He talked away, fluently. It seemed to Verity that he spoke in phrases that followed each other with the ease of frequent usage. He went on for some time, making, she thought, little sorties against her self-possession. She was surprised to find how ineffectual they proved to be. Come, she thought, I’m over the initial hurdle at least, and began to wonder what all the fuss was about.

‘And now you’re settling in Kent,’ she said politely.

‘Looks like it. A sort of hotel-cum-convalescent home. I’ve made rather a thing of dietetics – specialized actually – and this place offers the right sort of scene. Greengages, it’s called. Do you know it at all?’

‘Sybil – Mrs Foster – goes there quite often.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So she tells me.’

He looked at Sybil who sat, discontentedly, beside the vicar. Verity had realized that Sybil was observant of them. She now flashed a meaning smile at Schramm as if she and he shared some exquisite joke.

Gideon Markos said, ‘Pop, may I show Prue your latest extravagance?’

‘Do,’ said his father. ‘By all means.’

When they had gone he said, ‘Schramm, I can’t have you monopolizing Miss Preston like this. You’ve had a lovely session and must restrain your remembrance of things past. I’m going to move you on.’

He moved him on to Mrs Field-Innis and took his place by Verity.

‘Gideon tells me,’ he said, ‘that when I have company to dine I’m bossy, old hat and a stuffed shirt or whatever the “in” phrase is. But what should I do? Invite my guests to wriggle and jerk to one of his deafening records?’

‘It might be fun to see the vicar and Florence Field-Innis having a go.’

‘Yes,’ he said, with a sidelong glance at her, ‘it might indeed. Would you like to hear about my “latest extravagance”? You would? It’s a picture. A Troy.’

‘From her show at the Arlington?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How lovely for you. Which one? Not by any chance “Several Pleasures”?’

‘But you’re brilliant!’

‘It is?’

‘Come and look.’

He took her into the library where there was no sign of the young people: a large library it was, and still under renovation. Open cases of books stood about the floors. The walls, including the backs of shelves, had been redone in a lacquer-red Chinese paper. The Troy painting stood on the chimney-piece – a glowing flourish of exuberance, all swings and roundabouts.

‘You do collect lovely pictures,’ she said.

‘Oh, I’m a dedicated magpie. I even collect stamps.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Passionately,’ he said. He half-closed his eyes and contemplated his picture.

Verity said, ‘You’re going to hang it where it is, are you?’

‘I think so. But whatever I do with it in this silly house is bound to be a compromise,’ he said.

‘Does that matter very much?’

‘Yes, it does. I lust,’ said Mr Markos, ‘after Quintern Place.’

He said this with such passion that Verity stared at him.

‘Do you?’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely house, of course. But just seeing it from the outside –’

‘Ah, but I’ve seen it from inside too.’

Verity thought what a slyboots old Syb was not to have divulged this visit but he went on to say that on a househunting drive through Kent he saw Quintern Place from afar and had been so struck that he had himself driven up to it there and then.

‘Mrs Foster,’ he said, ‘was away but a domestic was persuaded to let me catch a glimpse of the ground floor. It was enough. I visited the nearest land agency only to be told that Quintern was not on their or anybody else’s books and that former enquiries had led to the flattest of refusals. Mine suffered a like fate; there was no intention to sell. So, you may say that in a fit of pique, I bought this monster where I can sit down before my citadel in a state of fruitless siege.’

‘Does Sybil know about all this?’

‘Not she. The approach has been discreet. Be a dear,’ said Mr Markos, ‘and don’t tell her.’

‘All right.’

‘How nice you are.’

‘But I’m afraid you haven’t a hope.’

‘One can but try,’ he said and Verity thought if ever she saw fixity of purpose in a human face, she saw it now, in Mr Markos’s.

V

As she drove home, Verity tried to sort out the events of the evening but had not got far with them when, at the bottom of the drive, her headlamps picked up a familiar trudging figure. She pulled up alongside.

‘Hullo, Mrs Jim,’ she said. ‘Nip in and I’ll take you home.’

‘It’s out of your way, Miss Preston.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Come on.’

‘Very kind, I’m sure. I won’t say no,’ said Mrs Jim.

She got in neatly and quickly but settled in her seat with a kind of relinquishment of her body that suggested fatigue.

Verity asked her if she’d had a long day and she said she had, a bit.

‘But the money’s good,’ said Mrs Jim, ‘and with Jim on half-time you can’t say no. There’s always something,’ she added and Verity understood that she referred to the cost of living.

‘Do they keep a big staff up there?’ she asked.

‘Five if you count the housekeeper. Like the old days,’ Mrs Jim said, ‘when I was in regular service. You don’t see much of them ways now, do you? Like I said to Jim, they’re selling the big houses when they can, for institutions and that. Not trying all out to buy them, like Mr Markos.’