The Honours (8 page)

The door opened onto a quiet hallway. Everyone was still at lunch. Delphine stepped out, clutching the dust sheet to her chest. She staggered through empty corridors like a ghost.

In the bathroom, steam clouded as she brushed ash from her hair. Her clothes lay in a sticky black grot, ruined.

She was about to take the scrubbing brush from its brass hook when she noticed a scrap of writing-paper stuck to one of her discarded socks. She stooped and unpeeled it.

It was badly charred, but she recognised the elegant handwriting immediately. A few words were still legible, pristine in a dark halo of burnt paper:

r sleeps in Avalon

*
Propp had underlined this word three times in red ink. The third stroke ended in a blot, as if his pen had lingered while he contemplated adding a fourth.

CHAPTER 5

I CANNOT BEAR A GUN

April 1935

I
t was a cloudless morning. Delphine and Mr Garforth stood in rippling shade on the east side of the meadow. The wind broke against a bank of elms sleeved in ivy and fell away to the gentle chook and baw of broody hens inside their sitting boxes.

The plywood boxes were arranged in rows of seven, raised from the ground, with sloping roofs, like little beach huts. In front of each one, Mr Garforth had driven a Y-shaped hazel stick into the grass. From each stick trailed a length of butcher's string. He tapped his cane against the side of the nearest box.

‘It's ten o'clock.'

Delphine knelt at the first box. Three neat air holes had been drilled in the door. She twisted the latch at the top and the door fell open to form a ramp. A Light Sussex hen, with plump white body and black speckled wings, sat on a nest of hay. It turned one eye towards the light and let out a low, rather surly, cluck. Just as Mr Garforth had shown her, Delphine slid one hand under the hen's warm breast and lifted it clear of a nest containing twenty small olive eggs. The hen pumped its wings and kicked. Delphine placed a palm on its back. She waited. The bird calmed.

‘Good,' said Mr Garforth.

Holding the hen in one hand, she tethered it to the first hazel stick, looping the string round its leg in a slipknot. She set the bird
down beside a dish of water and closed the box. She looked at Mr Garforth. He nodded. She moved to the second box, turned the latch and repeated the process. Mr Garforth watched as she worked down the line. He leant on his stick, occasionally tilting his head and narrowing his eyes to indicate qualified approval.

She tethered the seventh hen, scattered a few handfuls of mixed grain.

‘Why won't you teach me?'

Mr Garforth raised his downy eyebrows. ‘I am teaching you.'

‘To shoot.'

Laughing, he took one hand from his cane and swiped at the air.

‘Come on. There's two more rows to be done.'

‘I'm serious.'

‘So am I.' He walked to the next row of sitting boxes and tapped his cane against the roof. ‘If we don't get them out on time they'll empty their backsides over their own eggs.'

Delphine hid her reddening cheeks by pretending to massage her temples. She worked down the next row of broodies in silence.

When the last hen was pecking at grain, she looked at him again.

‘I already know all about guns.'

‘How could you possibly know about guns?'

Delphine gazed down at the feeding hens and thought of a sheriff crouched amongst boulders on a windswept mesa, picking off Red Indians with his 1873 Winchester lever-action rifle, their hallooing war cries in his ears and the taste of salt on his lips as he loaded another magazine, took aim, squeezed the trigger. She thought of a detective inspector brandishing his heavy police pistol as he thundered down a wooden jetty after scar-puckered platinum smugglers. She thought of Rogers of the Machine Gun Corps, ripping through Boche with his Vickers gun while the boys dragged Jenkins into cover and used a pocket knife sterilised in a candle flame to dig shrapnel out of his thigh. She thought of pages crackling beneath her fingertips, the taste of butterscotch candies, her toes warm under the quilt, the smell of ink and paper; the refuge; the horror.

‘Research,' she said.

‘Research.'

Delphine waited for him to say more. When she glanced up, he was watching her with thin, canny eyes the colour of tea.

‘Well then, expert,' he said, ‘answer me this: when a soldier looks into his enemy's eyes, what does he most fear to see?'

Delphine tutted. ‘That's not a gun question.'

‘Certainly it's a gun question.'

She hesitated. ‘Hatred.'

Mr Garforth shook his head. ‘You don't know anything.'

‘What's the answer, then?'

‘It's no good telling. You have to
learn
it.'

‘So teach me,' she said. ‘
Please
.'

Mr Garforth walked to the third and final row of sitting boxes. ‘Give me one good reason.'

Delphine knelt by the first door in line. The latch was stiff.

‘We might get invaded.'

‘By who?'

The latch gave. ‘Bolsheviks.'

‘You don't even know what that means.'

‘I do.'

Mr Garforth leant forward on his cane. ‘Go on, then.'

Delphine lowered the door. She lifted out the soft, white hen.

‘Well, I didn't say it would definitely be Bolsheviks. They were just an example.'

‘What on earth makes you think there'll be an invasion?'

She fumbled the string and had to grope around for it, hen clutched to her chest.

‘Nothing.' She worked the loop over sharp, splayed toes, pulled it tight. ‘Anyway, if you teach me to shoot I can help control vermin.'

‘Like Bolsheviks?'

‘Like foxes.'

‘They're not “vermin”. I don't like that word. They do what they must to feed their families. They're predators.'

‘You still shoot them.'

‘Sometimes,' he said, ‘but mostly I use traps. A trap doesn't need to be fed, doesn't mind waiting, and while men sleep, a trap is at work. Well-laid traps do the work of twenty men.'

‘Poachers, then.'

‘The answer is no.'

Delphine moved to the next box. ‘You're worried about breaking the law.'

‘Nonsense. It's my land and I do as I please.'

‘It belongs to the 4th Earl of Alderberen.'

‘Do you see him anywhere?' Mr Garforth scanned the horizon.

‘So teach me.'

‘No.'

‘Hey, these eggs are cracked.'

Mr Garforth came and squinted into the gloomy box, grunting as he stooped.

Delphine stood holding the broody. ‘Are they ruined?'

He gripped his cane and heaved himself back upright.

‘They're not cracked. They're chipped.'

Delphine wrinkled her nose. The hen pedalled its legs; she stroked behind its blood-red comb till it settled.

‘I don't understand.'

Mr Garforth rolled his eyes. ‘They're ready to hatch, you halfwit.'

‘Oh.'

‘Yes, “oh”.' He retrieved a stub of chalk from the pocket of his waxed jacket and drew a cross on the roof of the box. ‘When we come round tomorrow they might be the first of the new covey. Shut the door before they chill.'

Delphine closed the box and tethered the broody to its hazel stick. She watched it pecking at the dirt.

‘Do they know?' she said. ‘That the eggs they're sitting on aren't their own.'

He pressed an index finger to his dry lips. ‘Shh!'

‘Oh, shut up.'

His grin exposed yellow dentures. ‘They're chickens. They don't know anything. Long as they've got their routine, they're happy. Now, come on.'

Delphine took the last of the broodies from its nest and scattered some more grain. She stood back with her hands clasped behind her tailbone, listening to murmuring clucks and the rustle of beaks
in grass. Mr Garforth walked up and down the lines of hens like a colonel inspecting his troops. Every so often he would bend and riffle through a hen's plumage with his thumb. Near the end of the second row, he sat down and took hold of a broody with his big hands. Gently, he rocked it back and forth until it defecated in a short grey spurt.

‘Right.' He took out his pocket watch. ‘That's time.'

She walked back to the first broody, picked it up and slipped the tether from its leg. Checking that its feet were clean, she placed it in front of its box. The bird took a last few glances right and left, then strolled back up the ramp onto its nest. She lifted the ramp, twisted the latch shut, then moved to the next box. She worked through the boxes in the order she had opened them, each time allowing the hen to walk back in of its own free will, but keeping her hands poised either side in case it tried to escape. She noticed the hen with the chipped eggs returned to its nest with an especially haughty swagger.

When the last box was shut, she fetched a bucket and trowel and began to move amongst the hazel sticks, scooping up chicken poo.

‘It wouldn't have to be loaded,' she said. ‘You could just show me how to hold it. Like you did before. Uh . . . I mean, I wouldn't be aiming at you this time.'

Mr Garforth picked a bit of hay off of his trousers. He turned and looked across the meadow. Beyond the sitting boxes were the wire enclosures, ready for when the poults hatched. He scratched his backside, his nails digging into a fresh white stain.

He said something, but the wind caught his voice and all she heard was ‘father'.

‘I'm sorry?'

He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I said what does your father make of all this? Is he happy with the idea of his daughter running round the estate with a shotgun?'

Delphine tilted the trowel; a thick dollop of excrement slid into the bucket. It stunk of ammonia and spoiled milk. Beads of sweat tickled her forehead.

‘Daddy is extremely busy.'

‘Too busy to ask for permission, yes, I understand.'

She stabbed the trowel into the earth below another chicken poo.

‘Actually he's a very famous artist.'

‘So you keep saying.'

‘He's working on a new project. The Earl has let him use part of the old stables as a studio.' She downed tools and rose. ‘Please. Just show me the basics.'

Mr Garforth sighed and clutched at the air. ‘I said no. Why do you keep asking?'

She looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Because I'm a delinquent and if you won't teach me I'll steal a gun and go shooting anyway. With your help there's less chance I'll kill myself.'

He breathed in very slowly. His eyes went to his boots, which were brindled with hen faeces and mud. When he looked back up it took him a moment to speak. He lifted an index finger.

‘Tomorrow, when I do my evening rounds, you can come along. If,' he brandished the finger like a cudgel, ‘
if
I have to crack off a shot, I'll explain to you afterwards how I did it. Purely theoretical, mind. I've got work to do. But if you want to observe . . . that's my final offer.'

‘Done!' said Delphine. She grabbed the bucket and began marching back across the field. ‘I'll put these on the compost then I've got to get back. Mother says I have to start taking lessons with a tutor. I expect it'll be some stern governess with fishy breath.' She pulled a face. ‘First class is at eleven.'

Mr Garforth flapped his grimy hands. ‘Off you go, then. Get cleaned up!'

She turned, and her march became a run. Soon, she had left the wire fences and huts behind and she was racing north over open fields, back towards the house. Sunlight silvered the swerve of a brook amongst ancient grey alders. The smell of fresh-cut grass sang in her nostrils, the wind in her ears one long scream.

In the chimera room, all the animals watched Delphine. Delphine watched the Professor.

He was big – not flabby big, just large – and his cardigan strained
to contain his broad shoulders. His hair was messy, his beard patchy brown. The only sound was the hiss of his pencil stub as he sat at a table jotting notes from the selection of books spread out in front of him, tracing sentences with a thick finger before returning to the foolscap in a whisper of lead.

He did not seem old enough to be a professor. The look of him was all wrong. He ought to be a wrestler, or a lumberjack. Perhaps he was another foreign spy, in league with Mr Propp – a mountain-man from the Urals, sent to bump off Lord Alderberen. There was definitely something funny about him – something that itched at her brain.

Delphine felt a slap of recognition. She had met him before.

He was the man from the train – the one with the crossword and the cigar, the one who had offered to pay for her ticket. The memory brought a stampede of associations: the stuffiness of the carriage, the frozen world outside, the hope. She fought back vertigo.

Delphine steadied herself on the Portuguese card table that served as her desk. She gazed around the room. Glass display cases lined the walls, full of novelty taxidermy: a tortoise with three viper heads, a cat with a lion's mane, a scorpion dove, a chimp with bat wings, a unicorn, and a creature that the little bronze plaque beneath called a ‘wolpertinger': a rabbit with antlers, fangs and downy aquamarine wings. Each animal was posing in a diorama that implied its natural environment – the chimp-bat hunched on a tropical limb, the tortoise-hydra trudging through red volcanic sand.

Chips of coloured glass glinted in their eye sockets. The animals seemed to be watching her, and she didn't much care for it.

‘Excuse me,' she said.

The Professor looked up from his studies. ‘Hello.'

‘I think we've met before.'

He scratched the bridge of his nose; his eyes and mouth converged on it, as if in conference. ‘Anything is possible.'

‘It was just before Christmas. I didn't have a ticket. You helped me get away without paying.'

‘Did I indeed?' The Professor planted his boulder-like elbows at
the extreme edges of the desk and laced his fingers. ‘Then it is providential we find ourselves in each other's company once more. Don't interrupt me during my studies and you may consider your debt repaid in full.' He returned his attention to the books spread before him.

‘Aren't you going to teach me something?'

He set down his pencil heavily. ‘If I must. What would you like to learn?'

Delphine produced a piece of paper. ‘I made a list.'

The Professor leaned forward. ‘Go on.'

She gripped the edge of the table, inhaled.

‘Major sieges: 500 BC to Present, ballistics, what plants cure a fever, what plants can you crush up to make a poison, how to make a pit trap, how to skin an elephant, pressure points that stop the human heart, explosives, ju-jitsu, camouflage, espionage, code-breaking, how to survive if you crash-land in the Peruvian rainforest, how to survive if you crash-land in Arctic tundra, how to survive if you crash-land in the Soviet Union, Russian, French, sword technique, piracy, tunnelling, the Lincoln assassination, squids, the secrets of Freemasonry . . . ' She turned the page over. ‘Animal calls, bomb-making, navigation, uh . . . poisoning . . . no, I've said that. Did I say that? How to make different poisons. How to catch a fish when you haven't a net. Sailing. Oh, and how to drive a tank.'