The Honours (9 page)

The Professor watched her for a moment.

‘Nothing else?'

‘No thank you. Sir.'

He lifted a hand, beckoned. Delphine pushed back her chair and walked to his desk. Between her desk and his, a tasselled rug the colour of beef paste lay across bare floorboards.

He slid a book from the bottom of the pile and thrust it towards her.

Delphine took it. The book was crimson and heavy.

‘What's this?'

The Professor did not look up from his work. ‘Read it then write a one-thousand-word essay on your understanding of its contents.'

She tilted it and read the spine:
Early Assyrian Art
. ‘This isn't about poisons.'

‘Very shrewd, Miss Venner. Only nine hundred and ninety-six words to go.' He crossed something out in a sharp slash of graphite. ‘And don't “sir” me. I'm not a knight and I don't care to be reminded of the fact. You may call me Professor Carmichael.' He glanced up. ‘Stop gawping. I have important work to complete and you are disturbing me.'

Delphine walked back to her desk in a daze. The stuffed hybrids watched as she sat down and opened the book in front of her. Its pages smelt of damp hay.

Mother slept. When her eyelids had fluttered during lunch Delphine had bit back her excitement. Now Mother lay in her bedroom, slumped across the made bed, her breathing so shallow it was almost invisible. Delphine closed the partition door and crept out into the corridor. In the alcove opposite, an alabaster minotaur stood with its arms folded, chin raised and askance, a thick ring hanging from its snout.

When she reached the landing, the Great Hall was empty. Everyone was with Mr Propp in the music room, awakening their kidneys. She went down the main staircase, across the chequerboard floor and out the front doors. The day was bright and gusty, twists of cloud scudding across a willow-pattern sky. She crossed the gravel and entered the stables through a side door.

Inside was dark. Drying canvases lay against walls or propped in easels, forming a cramped labyrinth. The air was warm and still and ripe with turps. She pulled the collar of her blouse up over her nose and picked her way over jam jars and slabs of wood rainbowed in daubs.

A narrow alley turned back on itself and opened out into a chamber. Four grey walls faced inwards. In the centre, beneath a single low-watt bulb, Daddy squatted on a three-legged stool with a cigarette in his lips, glaring at a big canvas. The palette in his right hand was a maelstrom of chocolate, russet and dirty gamboge. The colours bled down his forearm, onto the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt. Paint
tubes lay around him like spent shells. Three brushes stood in a jar of murky turpentine. His other hand, still wrapped in gauze, yawned hungrily.

‘Don't tread on that,' he said, without looking round. He gestured vaguely with his painting hand, fingers opening, snapping shut.

She looked down. The floor was a brittle topography of old paint-stiffened newspaper – crags and gullies and lakes of spilt colour. At the tip of her sandal, an empty tube of Prussian blue lay stamped out like a slug.

Daddy's painting hand plucked the cigarette from his mouth, then felt about on the crate beside his stool till it found the chipped rim of a mug. He lifted the mug to his lips; he swigged, then looked off to one side and said: ‘Ah.'

‘Daddy, I need to – '

‘Shh.' His torso canted left as he put down the mug. He straightened, swept a twist of damp, steely hair back behind his ear. The light of the naked bulb brought out the leanness in his arms and jowls. Delphine's eyes were beginning to water on account of the turpentine. She was sure Daddy ought not to allow flames in such a poorly ventilated space.

He put a fist to his mouth, cocked his head. The canvas, as far as she could see, was a mass of undifferentiated brown behind a few slashes of white. Daddy stared at it as if the act of concentrating alone would drag an image to the surface. Plaits of smoke rose from between his knuckles and folded against the bare beams of the ceiling.

He tipped his head back and groaned. Then: ‘Come here, darling. Mind my mess.'

Delphine held her breath. She began picking her way towards him, sticking to patches of bare floor, taking care not to tread on anything that might crack or crunch or squelch. She drew up beside him. He smiled.

‘There's my little Delphy.' His painting hand reared up and pinched her cheek. The gauze was rough against her ear.

‘Ow.' She rubbed the tender skin.

‘Come on. Let's not have whingeing.' He took a last drag on his cigarette then stubbed it out in a terracotta dish.

‘Daddy.'

He put his palette down and took a tobacco tin from the crate. He began rolling a cigarette.

‘Yes?'

‘I need to tell you something.'

Daddy worked the cigarette paper back and forth between the thumb and fingers of his left hand. Dry paint flaked from his fingernails.

‘Tell.'

‘The first day Mother and I got here. Before you arrived.' Perhaps it was the fumes, but she felt the start of a headache. ‘I was walking around the house. I overheard a conversation.'

Daddy stuck the cigarette between his incisors like a toothpick. He retrieved a matchbook from his pocket.

‘You've been listening at keyholes again, haven't you?'

‘No, I . . . ' She was about to fib, but something in his eyes made her reconsider. ‘There was a hole in the wall. The west wing is full of holes. I never meant to spy – they were talking so loudly.'

Daddy flipped open the matchbook and tore out a match. ‘Who?'

‘I think . . . one of them was Mr Propp.'

He dragged the match down the rough strip. It did not light.

‘You shouldn't eavesdrop. We're guests here.'

‘Daddy, he said there's going to be a war.'

‘Then there probably is.'

He struck the match and it lit with a noise like someone ripping open a present. His face rippled purple and orange. He made a cave with his hand and brought the flame to the tip of his cigarette.

‘He said they've been taking trips over the channel for secret talks.'

‘Who was he saying this to?'

‘I . . . I don't know. An old man.'

‘An old man.' Daddy blew smoke over his shoulder. ‘Go to the library. You're to spend the afternoon reading silently.'

‘But – '

‘I won't have you slandering our hosts.'

‘But he said – '

‘You've told me what he said.'

‘You're not listening! They – '

‘Out. Now.' He picked up his palette.

Delphine took a deep breath, bunched her fists.

‘Daddy, I think the Bolsheviks are plotting to kill me.'

Daddy leant back on the stool. His shoulders began to shake. The tremors moved to his arms and head and it was only when he opened his mouth that she realised he was laughing. He took a pull on his cigarette and swung round to face her.

‘Oh, Delphy.' His painting hand settled on her shoulder. Gauze crackled as it gripped. ‘One whiff of a foreign accent and you think you're Richard Hannay.'

She tried to slip loose from his grasp. His hand clung.

‘It's not a joke! Mr Propp is a spy.'

‘He's not a spy. He's a teacher and a thinker and a healer. He's going to make us all well again.'

Delphine stared into her father's eyes and saw only clean burning zeal.

‘But I
heard
him,' she said.

‘Perhaps you misheard.'

‘But he was so angry.'

‘Perhaps he had good reason.'

Delphine could feel her resolve melting. What had seemed a minute ago like a fat and damning dossier now felt wispy as a fading dream. She looked down at her sandals.

‘I want to go home.'

‘Come now, Delphy, what did I say about whingeing?' Fingers grabbed her chin and tilted her head up. He breathed yellow smoke in her face. ‘For now, this is our home.' He had shaved unevenly. Black bristles dotted the curve of his upper lip. ‘I know it feels new and strange, but you mustn't worry. Everyone here wants to make the world a better place. Be a good girl and play your part.'

Smoke stung her eyes. ‘But I'm scared.'

‘I won't let anything happen to you. Please. Give the Society a chance. It would make me very happy. You want me to be happy, don't you?'

Her head was pounding. Over Daddy's shoulder, the canvas churned crimson, raven's wing, Passchendaele brown. She let her arms go limp.

‘Yes, Daddy.'

CHAPTER 6

UNHAPPY AND FORSAKEN TOAD

April 1935

M
r Garforth hunched over a rumbling cauldron, boiling blood off gin traps. Delphine watched him from the doorway of the cottage. He wore a pair of grubby cloth gloves. Steam condensed on his cheeks and brow, droplets tugging at his whiskers. Using the head of a pick, he hooked out a pair of dripping steel jaws, rinsed them with a ladle of cold water, then tossed them into the dirt with the others.

Mr Garforth bought the traps from Mr Wightman, the blacksmith, for twenty-nine shillings a dozen. They were big enough for rabbits but he used them for rats. He said the smaller traps were apt to amputate a limb, letting the rat escape. He said they were too light, and if you forgot to peg them down a rat might drag a gin off into the undergrowth.

Once he was done boiling the traps he would bury them in the ground for a week to get rid of the scent of humans. Then he would replace any sprung traps along runs or around the sitting boxes. Delphine said it seemed like a lot of fuss. Mr Garforth said there was fuss and then there was fuss, and if rats gnawed their way into a box they could devour all the eggs and strip the broody to a skeleton in a single night. He said he'd heard stories from men back in France who'd had to burn the bodies of horses that had frozen to death on the battlefield, and once the fire was lit hundreds of rats began
pouring out of the horses' mouths. He said he knew of a private who lost a hand when a rat bite went bad, another who woke to find a black rat gnawing at his eyelid.

‘Gas is nasty, granted,' he said, throwing a gin trap onto the pile, ‘but there's not a soldier living who didn't learn to fear and hate rats. If you see one, kill it. They're vermin.'

‘I thought you didn't like the word vermin,' said Delphine.

‘I don't,' said Mr Garforth, ‘and I don't like rats.'

Delphine chewed her twist of liquorice and said nothing. She thought of how she had checked the traps for him that morning, walking through crunchy, fragrant fields, collecting the traps that had caught something, springing and resetting the ones that hadn't. She thought of how she had found the dead weasel, blunt gin teeth champing its spine, and, in front of it, in a plum-dark pool of blood, a shivering infant rat, barely bigger than her thumb. She thought of its downy hair, of how it had not tried to run away.

She had tightened her grip on the coal shovel Mr Garforth had given her for dispatching anything still alive. She had held it above the rat; the shovel had cast a Zeppelin-shaped shadow. She had braced herself for the coup de grace.

Then she had scooped the creature up and carried it back to the Hall. She had put it inside an old liquorice allsorts tin with a saucer of water and a handful of porridge oats. She had stabbed holes in the lid and hidden it under her bed.

She watched Mr Garforth work the fire with a set of bellows. He added more water to the cauldron, then handed her the bucket to refill at the pump.

The rat would probably be dead by the time she got back. Part of her hoped that it was, if only to assuage the guilt she felt every time she looked at Mr Garforth. How could she witter on about defending King and Country when she didn't have the guts to kill a single baby rat?

When she reached the pump she found a white feather had stuck to her sandal. She peeled it off and tried to fling it away, but it wafted back and landed at her feet.

The pump squeaked as she filled the bucket. Delphine dipped
her hands into the icy water, washing them again and again and again.

Later that afternoon, she hid inside the wall and watched the old lady sleeping: the swell and sink of the duvet, the skin that hung from the ancient jaw like gills. Delphine found herself thinking of a shrunken head she had seen at the carnival when she was very little – the smell of damp sawdust and canvas, the hushed dark of the tent, and a scrunched brown thing, rather like a toffee apple, framed by matted hair, its lips fastened with twine. She remembered gazing, transfixed by the sad, lidded eyes, waiting for it to draw breath, to speak. How Mother had scolded Daddy for showing his daughter something so frightening! And so Delphine, not wishing to get him in more trouble, had kept quiet when, for the next three weeks, the head stood watch at the end of her bed, heavy and silent as a bag of suet, vanishing whenever she opened her eyes.

Delphine watched the old lady and felt a prickling wonder. She could not imagine being so old, existing inside such ruin. The old lady turned, made a noise in the back of her throat. Veins tattooed her bare scalp. Beneath mottled amber lamplight, she was a wreck, breaking up on the tide that came with each stuttering breath.

Delphine drew back from the spyhole, rested against the wall. The air in the passageway was muggy and perfectly still.

She heard a whine from the other side of the wall. Delphine put her eye to the spyhole and saw Mr Propp.

He had his back to Delphine. He lowered his dumpy body into a chair at the bedside. The old lady was awake. She was crying. Mr Propp gripped her hand and smoothed her long pale fingers. As he leant in, shadows picked out tiny dents all over his bald head. Tears streamed across the old lady's cheeks. She howled, a faint, ululating sound that made Delphine's skin prickle.

Propp's lips squeaked as he kissed the old lady's brow.

‘Shh shh shh shh.' His voice was steady and sonorous. ‘
Shutov k'ancni
.' He held her.

Delphine felt drowsy. She was falling prey to his mesmeric arts. She told herself to resist, yet a second impulse willed her to succumb.
Part of her wanted to give in to him, wanted to be important enough for him to notice and control.

Slowly, the old lady slackened and fell asleep. Mr Propp rested the back of his palm against her cheek, muttering the same incantation: ‘
K'ancni. K'ancni. K'ancni
.'

He slid his hand away, reached for something on the bedside table. Delphine heard a metallic scrape, like coin on coin. Propp lifted his plump frame from the chair. He took his heavy silk robe from a hook on the door. From the seat of his pinstripe trousers hung a leather holster. In his right hand was a revolver.

‘Mr Propp has a gun.'

Mother did not break stride. ‘Delphine.
Not now
.'

‘He has a gun. I saw.' Delphine struggled to keep pace as they marched through the long gallery that ran west to east along the ground floor, connecting the smoking room to the old banqueting hall. Mother had insisted she ‘dress appropriately' for the symposium – a stupid pond-weedy heap of a frock that made it hard to run.

‘Saw?
Saw
? What do you mean you “saw”?'

‘I saw him put a Webley Mark 6 revolver down the back of his trousers.'

‘Oh, don't be so ridiculous!'

‘It might have been the new Mark 4 .38. I only saw it for a second.'

‘Really.'

Delphine accelerated so she could turn and look Mother in the face. ‘Please. I think he might be – '

‘Enough!' Mother jerked to a halt and snatched Delphine's wrist. ‘You will
not
start again with your, your . . .
fantasies
.'

‘But Mr Propp – '

‘Very well may have a gun. Many, in fact
most
of Lord Alderberen's male guests will have brought at least one with them for their stay here.'

‘Not a shotgun. A revolver.' Exasperated, Delphine mimed a pistol with her free hand and aimed it at her mother's head. ‘And he was carrying it with him.'

Mother stopped beside a bust of Cicero. She swatted Delphine's hand away.

‘
Even if
I did consider you remotely trustworthy, I don't see what business it is of mine and, more to the point, yours, if Mr Propp chooses to carry his own property about his person. If he did have some underhand purpose in mind, I scarcely think he would have let a nosy little girl stand there and watch while he armed himself.'

‘He didn't know I was . . . that is . . . ' Delphine caught herself. ‘I'm not sure that he saw me. I was coming down the corridor, towards his room. He was standing there. He must have just locked the door. He had his back to me.'

‘Delphine,
please
.' Mother took a step back, silver evening dress hanging from her shoulders like a popped balloon in a thorn bush. ‘Not tonight, of all nights.' She hooked a finger through the chain round her neck. ‘This is your father's first symposium. It's so important to him.'

‘He's not even here.'

‘He will be. And until he is we have a duty to be seen as a decent, respectable family.' The magnitude of the task seemed to settle on her like a great, black bird. ‘Don't you want him to be happy? Don't you want him to get well?'

‘Of course, I – '

‘Then please. Just play your part until he arrives.'

And with that, she began dragging Delphine towards the doors, the smoke, the symposium.

The banqueting hall was a long, rectangular room, its oak-panelled walls decorated with zodiac tapestries, paintings of late medieval battle scenes, circular gilded shields of watered steel (Delphine thought they might be Indian) and – bracketed to the wall above the fireplace – a huge, gemmed war hammer. Thirty or more guests jawed and puffed, poets and business owners and composers and politicians and philosophers and old soldiers, tweed and flannel and silver Asprey cigarette cases, eyeglasses on silk ribbons and glass eyes in sallow sockets and white shrapnel scars, walking sticks and gleaming cufflinks and facial tics, pipes and cigarettes and alcohol, sloshing, gleaming, flowing.

Somewhere amongst it all was Propp.

Under her ghastly frock, Delphine was sweating. The rank, warm flavour of cigarettes caught in her throat. She stood with Mother beside the wide fireplace, part of a loose group gathered around Dr Lansley. If only she could slip away, just for a minute, to find Propp.

Dr Lansley stood with his eyes half-lidded, one glove pressed to his chest, the other swishing a cigarillo side to side. His dinner jacket squeezed his figure into a lithe S, deaf-aid cable trailing from one ear.

In the past fortnight, Mother's manner towards Dr Lansley had chilled. They now acknowledged one another with the barest of pleasantries, and were rarely seen in the same room save for mealtimes. Perhaps Mother – fool though she was – was finally growing leery of Mr Propp's associates.

An older lady in a flowing green gown turned to address Mother.

‘And how are you finding life at Spim?
^*
'

‘We're very honoured Lord Alderberen invited us.'

Dr Lansley's lips formed a half-smile, his little black moustache glinting.

‘Oh, come now, don't be modest,' he said, gazing into the fire. ‘Of course Lazarus invited you. Your husband's practically family.' His voice dropped a note. ‘I hear he and Arthur were very close.'

Mother sipped her Tom Collins and grimaced as if it were vinegar. ‘They served together, yes.'

A silence fell over the group. Alice the maid passed with a tray of drinks. Everyone took one. Delphine gritted her teeth. Without a distraction, she would never get away. She cleared her throat.

‘Um, excuse me, Doctor?'

Dr Lansley looked at her without turning his head. Mother pretended to scratch her temple, glaring at Delphine pointedly behind her hand.

‘Mother is fascinated by these figures.' Delphine pointed to two oak-carved statuettes either side of the fireplace. They were three feet tall and gangly, clad in mismatched bits of armour. She could
not tell if they were supposed to be human, or if the ragged shapes on their backs were wings. ‘She wondered if you knew anything about them.'

Dr Lansley's eyes narrowed. He looked from Delphine to Mother.

‘Is that true, Anne? I thought you'd grown tired of my little lectures.'

‘Well, I . . . ' Mother coughed into her drink. ‘My daughter exaggerates. I mean, I don't really know . . . '

Delphine began slipping away.

‘Ah, Delphine, don't wander off.'

‘They're Tudor origin,' Dr Lansley said, directing the group's attention back towards the fireplace, ‘Henry the Seventh without a doubt. Look how their hands are clasped. Standard-bearers. Ten-to-one they held banners at tournaments. I'd stake my late mother's life on it.'

‘Just getting some more Vimto.' Delphine held up her empty glass, but Dr Lansley was passionately placing the statuettes in their proper historical context, and nobody heard.

‘Funny little devils,' said the woman in green. ‘Like bats.'

Delphine escaped.

She headed for the edge of the room, where the crowd was lighter. She clipped an elbow and someone tutted. She could not see Mr Propp anywhere.

She leant against the wall and found herself next to Professor Carmichael.

The Professor clutched a sheaf of paper close to his face, mouthing words. His champagne-coloured suit was several sizes too small, stretched taut over his wide shoulders. He had slicked back his unruly brown hair with brilliantine; as he squinted in the light of the chandelier, it shimmered like kelp.

‘Professor?'

The Professor started, glancing around before locating Delphine at his left.

‘God almighty, girl.' He exhaled heavily. ‘Don't sneak up on people like that.'

‘What are you doing?' She had to shout to be heard over the chatter.

‘What am I doing?
What am I doing?
Bugger off is what I'm doing. You ought to be in bed.'

‘I'm on important business.'

His frown faltered. ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

Delphine hesitated, wondering how much to tell him.

‘I'm looking for Mr Propp,' she said.

‘Not very hard, obviously. He's just there.'

The Professor nodded towards the centre of the room. Delphine turned to look, but bodies blocked the way. She wedged a heel against the skirting board and lifted herself up.