Lorna Gray - The Antique Dealer’s Daughter

In a moment he was past me, a hand lightly brushing my sleeve in encouragement to follow, and perhaps reassurance. He met the commotion in the claustrophobic gloom of the passage. I was behind him. We weren’t witnesses to another assault though. At least not one by a human. Danny Hannis was there with a captive white blur wriggling away under his arm. He must have just snatched his dog up after it had been discovered attempting to worry the old man’s ankles. The Colonel was there now beyond him, a bullish head on a short neck, who must have once stood taller than his son. He was the sort of man who in his youth must have strutted about grim-jawed with all the might of his military training, but now he was reduced to being all torso and frail limbs. He seemed to develop a list as he marched along the passage towards us to the point that his shoulder veered helplessly into a line of gin traps. He was brandishing a fist like a prize fighter. I wasn’t quite sure who he was preparing to beat: the dog or the farmhand.

The Captain curbed it all by saying quite cheerfully, ‘Hello, Hannis,’ before adding, ‘Father, do you have to announce your return by battering an estate worker?’

‘Particularly when the estate worker in question only came in to see what Miss Sutton was up to.’ Danny was not, it must be said, particularly cowed by the Colonel’s anger. Perhaps it was a common enough mood that no one here thought to take it seriously.

‘What was she up to?’ I felt the Captain’s gaze switch curiously to my face.

Danny abandoned retreat to tell him quite coolly in a tone that was rather unpleasantly man-to-man, ‘I saw her go nosing into the tithe barn and then here, and then that car dashed off.’

There was something there that uncomfortably gave the suggestion of suspicion. I tried to hide my irritation. The Captain, on the other hand, really did conceal nothing. I felt the readjustment quite plainly as he reconsidered my flight from the gallery upstairs. It made my cheeks flush quickly and hotly since, on the subject of behaving oddly, Danny was rather more guilty than I, given the fact he must have been hiding in the machine barn while his dog had escorted me on my way.

I told Danny, ‘In which case you’ll be interested to know I thought I was looking for Mrs Cooke. Only I found a goat instead. And since we’re talking cars, did you have to nearly run me down in the lane with that beast of a machine?’

I felt my mouth work into silence in a peculiar way as it dawned on me just as soon as I spoke that of course it hadn’t been Danny who had roared along the lane at me. It had almost certainly been the bald-headed imposter arriving to begin his search. I risked a glance at the Captain. He’d guessed it from the change in my expression. That control was in evidence again on his face. This time from the cool turn of his gaze towards me his manner appeared to wish to project itself onto me. Well, as it was, I could appreciate the impulse that might drive a son to shield his ageing father from the shock of learning that his home had been invaded, particularly coming as it did in the wake of a belated return to the site of recent bereavement and the added distress of Mr Winstone’s attack.

I did my best to help. I stood there mutely and let the Captain tell me briskly, ‘Hannis isn’t allowed to drive the car. Something about the nature of his cornering has put my father off. I can’t imagine why.’

The remark made Danny’s grin return briefly in the dark. There was concealment somewhere in there of a different sort that seemed like a conspiracy to avert a different stress for the old man. I thought Danny knew I’d noticed. He added with perfect blandness, as if pre-empting another accusation, ‘And before you ask, it can’t have been Pops behind the wheel just now because the doctor took one look last night and prescribed bed and quiet. So with that in mind, he’s gone into town with Mum on the bus.’

There was no grin this time, but beneath the rough hair, his eyes gleamed. We attempted a general movement towards the light of the stairwell. Only unfortunately, for all the old man’s air of increasing infirmity, the Colonel was still as sharp as a tack.

As he stepped out into the better light of the space beneath the stairs from the peculiar tomb of violent implements that seemed in some way a physical representation of his grief, I saw his face clearly for the first time. In other ranked soldiers I had met, even when dressed in ordinary clothes, their profession had always been distinguishable by the peculiar suppleness around their mouths when they spoke; something like an exaggeration of the movement of the jaw that belonged to men who spent a lot of time in the officer’s mess and got a lot of practice at guffawing. I couldn’t imagine this old soldier had ever guffawed in his life.

His son didn’t look like he belonged to that class either. He certainly wasn’t smiling when his father queried coldly, ‘You saw this man?’

Because I was stupid, I asked blankly, ‘Which man?’

‘Father, this is the young woman who made me run for the train. Miss Sutton.’ Just beyond my right shoulder the Captain’s voice was low and mildly persuasive, as though his father was in danger of bullying me like he did Danny Hannis. For a moment I thought the son was saving me, but when I turned my head I found that although his eyes were a considerably less dramatic shade of hazel compared to his father’s grey, at that moment they shared rather too much of the family intensity for my comfort. There was something odd there; a kind of dismissive impatience when he added, ‘I think, Emily, you said you were about to prepare my father’s lunch?’

Flushing, I said lamely, ‘Why yes, I—’

‘This man who nearly ran you down.’ The Colonel’s interruption was decisive. ‘He was here? At this house? Was it the same fellow who …?’

He meant to ask, of course, if this were the same fellow I had encountered on Mr Winstone’s garden path. Standing by the table with the lamp on it, the old man’s gaze was unwavering. I couldn’t help answering now. I risked a glance at the Captain as I said awkwardly, ‘He wasn’t the same man.’

I caught the moment the son raised his eyes to heaven.

The Colonel was waiting. I could see that he was used to having his orders obeyed. I could also see that his hand was trembling a little where it hung by the polished lip of the table. I said unwillingly, ‘He looked like a city man who had taken a wrong turn off the main road.’ I couldn’t help the stray of my eyes towards the Captain’s own city attire. There was a twitch of enquiry in response to the unintended insult. I added hastily, ‘I mean his suit was grey and he wasn’t terribly tall and he was balding.’

‘Age?’ This was from Danny.

‘About fifty, I think. He had a pappy complexion.’

‘Pappy?’ The Colonel frowned at the term.

‘You know, fleshy but soft, like a shrivelled potato.’

‘You have excellent powers of observation.’ I believe the Captain was mocking me. Little did he know how much I had been privately congratulating myself for learning the lessons of yesterday and managing to commit this man’s features to memory. The Captain asked, ‘And what did he take, do you know?’

He’d asked me this once before. He knew what I would say. ‘Nothing that I know of,’ I said, ‘except my case, of course. He took my suitcase.’

‘Yes, yes,’ the Captain agreed impatiently, ‘and with it, all your clothes. So that when we next see you, I presume you’ll be clad in your aged aunt’s wardrobe, which last saw the light of day in the era of bustles or something like that. Have pity for me while you do it. I wasn’t planning a trip to the country when I dropped Father at the station yesterday and my change of mind came up on me, shall we say, rather abruptly and without leaving time to pack.’