Lempriere's Dictionary (39 page)

‘Me? But….’

‘The family begun by François in those months was your own. You are a true Lemprière, the other half of the partnership do you not see? The agreement is in perpetuity. Mister Lemprière, a full ninth of the Company is rightfully yours and a full tenth of that is ours. Read it for yourself.’ Her hands had a life of their own, jerking down with each point on the low table. Her ring rapped on the frontispiece of the pamphlet which lay there before them on the table top.

‘Forever, do you not see?’ Lemprière saw the earlier meeting between Thomas de Vere and his own ancestor in a new light, the edge in Thomas’ need to know what was happening, the urgency of it and the dammed-up restraint, waiting to be told his lot with François reeling like a drunkard, a mad man. It was there in Alice de Vere’s eyes, the same thing, her arm was on his arm and he knew it was absurd. All those men were long dead and their mad hopes with them. ‘Millions upon millions,’ she was saying and her hand was like a claw holding them together over the agreement. He could hear himself saying, ‘No, no, impossible,’ saying the things Peppard had said, that she would have heard before and known in any case even before that. It could not be done, it was too late. Her house might crumble about her ears as she claimed and still no one would listen. They were all dead. Lemprière was shaking his head and repeating himself. ‘Whoever owns the Company will not simply give it up. Not for this,’ and he held up the agreement which Lady de Vere suddenly snatched from him.

‘Then to hell with it!’ She stood upright quickly and almost ran to the fireplace. ‘To hell with you!’ she cried, as she threw the document into the flames where it was consumed and burnt to ash in an instant.

The old woman stood over the fire. Lemprière stared at her, then looked down. A piece of ash whirled out on a tiny thermal and lodged in the prickly brocade of her dress. ‘I must apologise Mister Lemprière,’ she said after a long silence. Lemprière mumbled something at his feet, sorry. Lady de Vere looked down too, then turned to him once again. Her carriage was as erect as before. When she spoke again her voice was even, almost as if nothing had taken place.

‘I would like to tell you about the drainage of the west pasture,’ she said in a different, clearer tone. Lemprière looked across at her, still startled as she held up her hand for forbearance. ‘Before you rejoin the guests Mister Lemprière, if you would.’

‘Of course,’ Lemprière said, although mention of the other guests sharpened his impatience. He wanted to be gone.

‘This house stands on a slight rise,’ Lady de Vere addressed him. ‘You would have noticed the incline in your approach.’ He had not, but was nodding. Pug’s pipe had occupied his attention, that and other thoughts. ‘The gardens surround it and beyond them, to the east and west, are two pastures, each of several acres. They are identical in most respects, both were cleared in the time of the fourth earl, the soil is similar, they suffer the same weather and both are low lying. When they were cleared, the east pasture formed good springy turf and was used for grazing within a year. But the west pasture turned out to be a bog swarming with all sorts of flies in summer, freezing over in the winter. Quite useless. The fourth earl accordingly decided to drain it, and, with some labour, managed to do so.
The west pasture was now good grazing ground, the whole operation a success. But after some weeks, Thomas’s man noticed that the east pasture was becoming wetter and in fact, before the year was out, it was as marshy as the west pasture had been before.’

‘They were connected by a channel underground?’ Lemprière speculated.

‘Quite possibly,’ said Lady de Vere. ‘Now, Edmund, being rather more practical than his mother, was determined to undertake the same project and a year ago did indeed drain the east pasture.’

‘The west pasture flooded?’

‘Of course. Now he has a small army of engineers with their machines in the west pasture. When the weather lifts he will pump out the west pasture, and then, I presume the east again, then the west. When I ask why he wants to spend his life moving a swamp back and forth over half a mile, he tells me it is progress. He is bringing the land back into use. The local farmers understand this lunacy Mister Lemprière, they commend him and believe him exceptionally farsighted. Neither I nor my son chose to act as fools, and yet I do not understand it. I only understand that both bur families, the Lemprières and the De Veres, were once powerful forces and now we are spent. That is all I understand now, Mister Lemprière.’

Lemprière wrestled with this peculiar story, trying to force a bearing on their previous discussion. It was somewhere in their not being fools. ‘If Edmund, the earl, drains the land, what will he then….’

‘Very good Mister Lemprière,’ her voice was steel-hard. ‘He will sell it, and the servants will be paid. If not, not. We all make our choices as we see them.’ Then Lemprière realised that the whole story was in explanation for her outburst; an apology, and he was full of regret that he could not go along with her, but it was impossible. Insanity.

‘Thank you for listening Mister Lemprière.’ She was walking over, extending her hand to him, no, picking something off the table. ‘Take it Mister Lemprière. A memento.’ He was being guided to the door and handed Asiaticus’s pamphlet. She was dignified. He was cowed. He could change his mind, tell her that they would fight the Company through every court in England and win too.

‘Thank you,’ he was saying, and would have said something more, but what? The door was closing.

‘Goodbye Mister Lemprière,’ spoken in a voice which hung in the air as the door closed,
click
, softly and he was alone in the corridor outside.

Thomas de Vere looked down on him from his gilt frame. The corridor was lit by girandoles whose light brought a spectrum of dingy yellows and browns out from the woodwork, linen-fold panelling, squabs and plain chairs finely carved from Grenoble wood. The floor was carpeted and
Lemprière padded its length with François’s imagined face a gargoyle eyeing him out of gilded amorinos; merchant, venturer, refugee, revenger. Madman. Something had happened to prise him out of sanity, to turn him on his former colleagues and friends, something at Rochelle.

He took the short flight of stairs at the corridor’s end and followed the unexpected angles of the passage beyond. What was the plan which he had laid out in his head and kept there, a hidden gift for the fourth earl, hanging in his shadowy thoughts? Nothing at all perhaps, or something vast, sprawling and invisible waiting, somewhere out there. He was walking through a high-sided clerestory whose glittering floor of
pietra dura
suggested another, abandoned use. A staircase at its end led Lemprière down to an area where the passages were narrower, with lower ceilings and the doors off them were plain wood. Unplastered stonework. He did not remember it, but continued, looking into the rooms he passed which all seemed to have different functions. Some were quite empty, some crammed with kitchen furniture or packing cases. There was not a soul in sight and Lemprière was beginning to realise he was lost when a soft
pop!
sounded in the passage from somewhere outside, then another and another. The sounds rolled around him in the passage, suggesting now one direction, now another. He moved forward, then remembered Septimus’s telling him what to expect during the evening. The sounds he was hearing were the fireworks, but whether they came from in front, behind, or to either side he could not tell. He seemed to have wandered into a basement and now set about retracing his steps. Lemprière turned and walked back towards the staircase, around the corner, then another, both of which he had expected to reveal the steps which would reunite him with the guests, Septimus and the others, Juliette. He continued, but the corners would only show him more of the same; echoing reception rooms, empty salons, long gloomy corridors and doors. Scores of doors.

Standing at the head of the latest passage, Lemprière was beginning to wish himself back in the safe embrace of his dictionary, home, when in the semi-light at the end of the corridor he noticed an object like an out-size pair of legs. He walked closer.

It was a step ladder. Directly above it, cut into the low ceiling, was a trap door. Lemprière looked at the trap door. He had wandered aimlessly about the corridors and passages for what seemed like hours. He had become more despondent by the minute. The choices as he saw them were simple. Reluctantly, he began to climb the step ladder which veered from side to side and back and forth as he reached the top and pushed at the trap door. It was unlocked and moved a few inches, but something was on top of it, something which seemed to increase in weight the harder Lemprière pushed. Added to this, the angle of his head dictated he should squint over
the top of his spectacles and the whole effort was effectively conducted blind. He was sweating inside the borrowed coat and the step ladder had adopted a wild gyration all its own as Lemprière raised the trap door at last and slid it to one side. A crash sounded somewhere above him and his head came into contact with something rough, some kind of fabric. He pushed against it and suddenly heard quick footsteps moving towards him, then the ladder gave way, he had kicked it out from under him. Why? his thought as he crashed down into the ladder wreckage below. The answer: someone in the room above had clubbed him violently over the head; someone in fact, his last quick thought as he settled into a welcoming bed of splintered step ladder, had knocked him out.

Capsized carracks floating down the Thames, their undersides blistered with barnacles and the imagined crowd chanting ‘Ballast! Ballast! Ballast!’ amongst other unkind reminders of his too-human failure while Sir Anthony spun in his grave and he, proud and isolate on the podium would colour crimson, twist his scarred thumbs and shift his feet from side to side. Unwelcome lessons in humility. But to be bested by a mechanical toy; it was insupportable and compounded too by the attentions of kindly matrons who had clustered about clucking and cooing, ‘Eben! Eben!’, as the mix of blood and ink had filled his palm, offering snow white handkerchiefs to dip in the condemned man’s life blood, taking souvenirs for the tea time chit chat which would chase his name through their salons and well appointed eateries for weeks, months, years! Captain Guardian knew that the decision to abandon ship was irrevocable, never to be taken lightly, but now was the time for such a decision. Thank the Lord for Mister Byrne, the devil take Maillardet and his creation.

His comrades had kept a sensible distance, even Pannell, as he suffered himself to be led away clutching a wad of handkerchiefs to his inscribed hand, scattering promises to return them as he followed a bustling, aproned woman out through a side door and began to gather his thoughts, even now hearing sniggers from the puffed up fops and rouged macaronis, ghastly. He would have snickered too at an old buffoon dancing the horn pipe with a collection of cogs, levers and cheap plaster, mechanical trash now, ha! That heartened him, ouch, the woman dabbed cold water on the flesh of his palm, it had been calloused hard as shark’s skin once but not now, no, ouch again. Something soft about life ashore, just look at the youngsters. And it
was
the ship.

‘Hold still sir, there now.’ Gruff thanks were in order and he gave them. As the vile toy had drawn its lines he had become increasingly certain, matching it in his mind’s eye with the image of the
Vendragon
, they were one and the same. No two ships were exactly alike, really there could be no mistake, and he might have trusted his own judgment too - would that he had - but he had taken a closer look to see it plain. Identical down to the angle of the hold-covers, the same ship. Guardian had known then for certain that he recognised the vessel from somewhere, and that was odd too for it was an Indiaman, almost the only ship he had never sailed in. But from where? His palm had begun to throb and he clutched the handkerchiefs more tightly. The prospect of handing these blood-soaked badges back to their owners did not enthrall him. The sniggers and covered smiles of his fellow guests…. There might even be sympathy, but that was too awful to contemplate.

‘Thank you,’ he said again to the woman who was waiting for some sort of decision on his part. She left and Captain Guardian decided that a brief tour of the house might be in order. He could rejoin the others after the fireworks, a decent interval. Scout out the territory, yes.

So began Captain Ebenezer Guardian’s tour, an extended exercise in procrastination which would take him through the clatter of the kitchen and silence of the cooler, flagstoned corridor beyond it to peristyled interior courtyards with modillioned columns where the only sound was the slap or clump of his feet over
pietra dura
or homely floorboards and on, to long deserted galleries with mirrored
spiegelkabbinetts
, Vauxhall plate by the look of it, but all old and mottled like the neglected work of the stuccadores in the salon which followed where carefully-moulded antique scenes had crumbled into accidental obscenity or nothing at all, up short staircases which led to rooms and passages of obscure function, with the boiserie worm-eaten and uncleaned, and where restorative efforts at
trompe l’oeil grisaille
fell so far short of their intention as to highlight the general decay even more. It all might have depressed his fragile spirits but for the fact he paid these abundant evidences of the De Veres’ decline little or no mind at all.