Michael Dibdin - The Tryst

‘What you asking me all this for? This ain’t got fuck to do with it! You’re supposed to be telling me about what happened, about that man, not asking me a lot of shit like you was the police or something!’

The old man seemed to wilt visibly under the boy’s furious gaze. His hands dithered aimlessly about in his lap.

‘I’m sorry, lad. Sorry. I won’t ask again, I promise.’

He turned away and poked the fire, clearing his throat apologetically. After a while Steve sat down again.

‘You said we got to stick to the story,’ he muttered.

‘Quite right, quite right.’

‘Well, you better,’ the boy warned. ‘Because I seen him again, that man. When I got here tonight. He was standing right outside, staring at the house like it was made of glass and he could see everything you do!’

Steve considered this a fair return for the pain the old man had given him. Tit for tat was the rule the world ran on, he knew that much. You had to do your bit to keep things in balance or there was no saying what might happen. Besides, it was only relatively untrue, for he had seen the grinning man again, though not that evening and not outside Matthews’s house. It had happened earlier in the week, when Steve was on his way back from collecting the stotters’ social security cheques from the letter-box in the council block they used as a convenience address. This was in White City, a fair old step from the newspaper round, so it had been all the more startling to find the grinning man there, striding along the pavement on the other side of the road. There was no mistaking that frenetic motion, though, like someone having an epileptic fit on his feet. He didn’t appear to have noticed the boy, so Steve decided to follow him and see where he was going. Ernest Matthews had made it clear that he was terrified of this man, and he would therefore presumably welcome any information Steve could provide about him. Keeping a safe distance, and dodging into doorways or behind parked cars whenever necessary, Steve followed the grinning man all the way up Wood Lane. Just before the canal the man turned right and continued for another half-mile or so before disappearing into an imposing gateway. Steve approached with great caution, fearing that it might be a trap. Inside the gates, at the end of a short drive, was a large brick building which looked like a prison. The man was nowhere to be seen. Attached to a wire fence at the side of the building was an orange sign with black lettering which read ‘WARNING HAZCHEM’.

‘Outside the house!’ Matthews echoed. ‘Staring at it! This is new. This is not good.’

His hands rubbed together as if trying to comfort each other. Too late, Steve realized that he would not now be able to tell the old man what he had found out. That was the problem with telling stories. It seemed all right at the time, but then they got out of control. Still, it wasn’t important. For now he was content to relish this new sense of power. All his short life, Steve had been the one to be terrified by others. To find himself creating fear rather than suffering it was a delicious sensation, and completely justified by the principle of tit for tat. Steve still had a long, long way to go before he had repaid all the fear which he had been made to feel! And it was all right, because his story had been untrue. If Hazchem, as Steve now thought of him, had really been watching the house and he hadn’t told Matthews, that might have been serious. But how could something that had never happened do anyone any harm?

‘Ah, lad, I should never have involved you in this terrible business,’ the old man sighed, shaking his head once more. ‘I should never have invited you into the house that day. It was wrong of me, very wrong. But it can’t be helped now. You are in, and he knows you are, so the only thing to do is get on as quickly as we can, so that at least you know the danger. Now next I must tell you something about the family. They weren’t county, like you might suppose, but in trade. Jeffries’ Biscuits used to be a household name at the time, though you won’t find them nowadays. They came in square metal tins with a paper label with the name spelt out in big black capitals with edges and shading and a picture of a boy sitting on a hill looking at a sunset, all in royal blue and red. Maurice and Rupert, the two sons, used the empty boxes as forts, up in the playroom. They had toy artillery pieces that fired little pins, and clockwork trains that ran all round the room, under the legs of the furniture and through tin tunnels painted with shrubs and grass. They had warships too, made of lead, and others they made themselves, cut out of cardboard and glued together and painted grey. I used to go up there when the family was away. Many an afternoon I spent wandering through those rooms full of furniture draped in huge dust-sheets, like an Army camp. Sometimes I’d get lost and catch a beating for being late to tea, for everyone had to be punctual in those days, gentry and staff alike. There were no exceptions.

‘Now all this makes Maurice and Rupert Jeffries sound like children, but in fact by the time I’m talking of they were almost twenty and both at university. Their mother had passed away some years earlier and there were no other children, so when old man Jeffries died, the same year as the king it was, the staff at the Hall were anxious they’d all be dismissed. I remember my mother discussing it with the butler and the cook. “This’ll mean change!” they agreed. “The young masters won’t want to keep this old place.” You see country houses then were two a penny. No one wanted them, because the land didn’t pay no more. And so it looked as though the Hall would be given up and we’d all be turned out to seek positions elsewhere. My mother and the other staff were resigned to this prospect, for they knew how the world wagged. But I’d spent my whole life at the Hall and in the village and countryside round about. I couldn’t believe that all that could be taken away from me by the whim of two young striplings barely older than I was myself. My mother tried to explain, but to me it sounded as crazy as hearing that the river which ran down our valley would stop flowing because someone had signed a bit of paper to that effect. Nevertheless, that was the position, and turned out we would no doubt have been if it hadn’t been for cunning old Jeffries.

‘Maurice’s and Rupert’s father had left a will stipulating that his estate was to be divided equally between the two sons, but that no part of it was to be sold, let or otherwise alienated or disposed of without the signature of both. No great stumbling block there, you might think. Twin brothers, brought up together from the cradle, should have been able to agree on what to do. Ah, but that was it, you see! They couldn’t. Never had been able to, never would be able to. If Maurice wanted one thing, then as sure as night follows day Rupert would set his heart on the opposite. No one knew the reason why, only that it was so. I once heard the butler say that if one of them asked for port wine he knew to offer the other madeira. It was the same when they went to university. No sooner had Maurice announced that he was going to Cambridge than his brother promptly settled on Oxford. Which was all to the good, as it turned out, for that was not so far away, and Rupert was able to spend much of his time at the Hall. He was our favourite, by a long way. He relished all the country had to offer, the hunting and shooting and fishing, and he took an interest in everyone who lived and worked on the estate. He knew all the villagers by name and would stop and inquire after their health. He used to organize a big tea for them once a year, too, which was considered a great treat in those days. Maurice, on the other hand, was a townee through and through. Even when he did venture down to the Hall, days would pass without him setting foot outside the front door. It was all books and pictures and conversation with him. His favourite exercise was lying on the sofa smoking a cigarette and passing remarks in foreign languages with his clever friends. But he spent most of his time in London, or running around on the Continent. Which suited us just fine, because when he did take it into his head to come down with a party of guests then all hell broke loose. Breakfast at eight, that was a meal in itself, six or more courses. Lunch at half past one, about eight or ten courses there. Tea in the afternoon, then dinner at eight thirty, with twelve courses. Then there were the rooms to be cleaned and heated, for these folk weren’t like Rupert, who slept with the window open all year round and could never abide a fire. There were baths to draw, linen to air and iron, provisions to order, and if everything wasn’t just right and dead on time someone would catch it. But luckily Maurice’s visits were rare and didn’t last long, for he and his sophisticated pals soon got bored with the simple pleasures of the country. As for Master Rupert, he was so easy to care for you’d hardly know he was there, as my mother used to say. His rooms were in the east wing of the Hall, where the guest rooms were, but he was the easiest guest you’d ever hope to entertain, for he was always out, walking or riding from dawn to dusk. As for his meals, he’d bring home a trout he’d hooked, and be content with that and a plain roast. He went out shooting or fishing every day, depending on the season.