Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

That sort of thing didn’t happen often, and though the men mightn’t be as awkwardly placed as Sir Drummond, they still behaved as if they all belonged to a sort of huge, vague club, whose basic rule was that the members didn’t tell their wives about each other. But clubs have snags, as well as advantages. Suppose Mummy were to talk to Aunt Minnie about me, and then Aunt Minnie snapped her fingers at Sir Drummond—well, I couldn’t imagine Sir Drummond sitting on one of his boards and putting forward a coherent financial argument against some enterprise of B’s, but I could imagine him going a bit red and pulling his moustache and saying, ‘Don’t care for the feller myself. Heard something the other day . . .’ And that might be enough. It was what Sir Drummond was for, after all, being a sound chap and hearing things.

I’m only using Sir Drummond as an instance. There were a dozen people Mummy could get in touch with, any of whom might have been able to put a spanner in B’s works. The point is that B couldn’t afford it. Though I gathered things had been going rather well these last months he was still always desperately short of money. He had a huge overdraft. He lived like a rich man, spent like a rich man, but if he’d been forced to sell up at certain moments he’d probably have been bankrupt. It was other people’s money, and it all depended on other people’s confidence.

He was reading the letter again.

‘I never really believed you, you know,’ he said. ‘I put her down as a stupid woman.’

‘Oh, she is, in some ways. But she’s brilliant at people. If you’ve got a weak spot she’ll find it. What are you going to do?’

He caressed a little bronze sculpture he’d brought back from his last trip to Germany—more like an egg than a head, though it had a nose and eyebrow-ridges.

‘Nothing for the moment,’ he said. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it any more. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Just one thing. I’m terribly sorry. It’s family still. Jane. I found a rather desperate-sounding note from her when I got downstairs. I think Mummy may be giving her hell. I wondered if you’d mind if she came and lived in my flat for a bit.’

He tested his coffee with his finger and licked it clean, glanced for a moment at Mummy’s letter and then stared at me, slowly, all over. I was baffled. He might have been irritated or furious, even, but it wasn’t like that. It was more as though he was seeing me for the first time and making up his mind whether to buy me.

‘It is gratifying to feel that there is one person in the world who trusts me,’ he said.

I didn’t understand at once, though Jane and I were used by now to the idea that some men get excited about twins. Casanova wasn’t the only one. I felt myself do one of my pillar-box blushes, but I made the words come.

‘If you really wanted to,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what she’d say.’

I had to wait while he took a long swig at his disgusting coffee. He did it on purpose, for pleasure, getting his own back in a small way for what Mummy had done to him. It struck me that he might even want to show her what he thought of her attempt to blackmail him by taking Jane away from her too.

‘I think it’s time we had a treat,’ he said at last. ‘Thank God Barbados is still in the sterling area.’

Mondays were always a bit desultory. The true week began on Tuesday, when the outside contributors came in for the editorial conference and Jack Todd made up his mind about the main features of next week’s issue. Haggard from the weekend at Hastings I read would-be-funny manuscripts—always an extra large batch in the Monday post—and passed on about one in ten to Tom. Ronnie found, in the Daily Worker of all places, a review of Uncle Tosh, treating it as a text for a satiric blast at the moral bankruptcy of capitalism. I guessed Ronnie had used his connections to get it mentioned at all, but I was still pleased, though it wasn’t a review that was going to sell many copies. The others were more interested in a gossip-column paragraph in the News Chronicle about Jack Todd leaving and Brian Naylor taking over. It hadn’t been officially announced yet.

Jane turned up wearing her art-student uniform—ponytail, chunky sweater, wide corduroy skirt. She looked about as haggard as I felt. Coffee came round at that moment. Although she’d been so urgent about talking to me she didn’t pick up my hint about moving off to somewhere private, but lolled against the make-up table in the middle room, leafing contemptuously through the proofs of not-yet-used cartoons which she’d found in an open drawer. Nellie came in and said that Jack Todd had decided to take the day off because of not wanting to be pestered by journalists ringing up to ask about the News Chronicle piece; but poor Tom—he’d obviously had a bad weekend and now had a greyish, sweaty look, as though he was going down with flu—was pretty well anchored to his telephone, fending off inquisitive Fleet Street cronies. I let Jane finish her coffee and then dragged her away to look for somewhere where we could talk.

The waiting-room was occupied by a pipe-puffing cartoonist who’d come to show his portfolio to Bruce Fischer. Mrs Clarke was in her room. My desk, out in the corridor, seemed far too public. Then I remembered what Nellie had said about Jack Todd not coming in so I put my head round the secretaries’ door and asked if we could use his room for twenty minutes. Nellie said she supposed so.

As soon as we were alone I put my arm round Jane’s shoulders. She didn’t respond.

‘Darling, I’m desperately sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it’s all my fault.’

‘What is?’

‘Whatever’s happening.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. I suppose you couldn’t have known.’

‘I guessed.’

She loosed herself from my arm and moved away.

‘You guessed this?’

‘What?’

‘I thought she’d written to him.’

‘He didn’t show me the letter.’

‘Oh.’

‘I gather she wants him to pay for the Banqueting Hall roof.’

A long pause. I sensed a deep reluctance in her. Apparently she’d been expecting I would have read Mummy’s letter. For some reason it was difficult for her to begin without that.

‘Do you do everything he says?’ she asked.

Quite unreasonably the thought crossed my mind that she was about to make the same ghastly suggestion I’d thought B’d been hinting at that morning. I couldn’t see any possible connection between this and our problems with Mummy.

‘Almost,’ I said.

‘If he told you to go away?’

‘That’s part of the bargain.’

‘Oh.’

‘But if I thought he was doing it because of Mummy, I’d fight.’

‘I thought you would.’

‘What did she say to him at the party? Do you know?’

‘She asked if he was going to marry you. He said of course not. He said you understood that. She told him he’d got to send you home. I don’t know what he said. She was raging.’

‘He’s ruder than anyone I’ve ever met when he wants to be. What do you think, Janey? About B and me, I mean? Do you mind?’

This was something we’d decided without discussion not to talk about. It was too tricky. In spite of our endless rows, Jane was the only person I’d ever properly loved until I met B, but I knew I couldn’t count on her feeling the same. It was so much easier for me. Almost everything that had happened to us, all our lives, had been unfair on Jane, and the only excuse had been that I was the sacrifice. In the end she might be free, but I never would. Even that makes it sound a better bargain for her than it really was—nobody could call inheriting Cheadle a specially painful sort of sacrifice. And now, well, part of the unwritten contract was that the central ritual of the sacrifice would take place on the day I married, and thus brought a man home to look after Cheadle and sire another generation on me, so that the sacrifice could be repeated in thirty years’ time; and a vital part of the magic was that I must go spotless to that altar. It may seem a bit loopy to talk like this, in this day and age, but though Mummy would have been completely incapable of expressing herself in those terms, it was how she thought, and so, in spite of ourselves, the way Jane and I thought too.[1] By having an affair with B I had broken the contract and spoilt, or at least risked spoiling, the magic, but I was still going to inherit Cheadle. And on top of all that I was having a glorious time. Jane wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t minded.