‘And you?’
‘I ? Until I was seven years old I lodged with my father and adopted uncle in a two-roomed apartment in Smalls Yard, Cheapjack Lane, E.C.4.’
‘Learning the business?’
‘You may say so. But also learning, after admittedly a somewhat piecemeal fashion, an appreciation of English literature, objets d’art and simple arithmetic. My father ordered my education. Each morning he gave me three tasks to be executed before evening when he and Uncle Bert returned from their labours. After supper he advanced my studies until I fell asleep.’
‘Poor little boy!’
‘You think so? So did my uncle and aunt. My father’s maternal connections. They are a Colonel and Mrs Forrester. You will meet them also tomorrow. They are called Fleaton and Bedelia Forrester but have always been known in the family at Uncle Flea and Aunt Bed, the facetious implication having been long forgotten.’
‘They intervened in your education?’
‘They did, indeed. Having got wind of my father’s activities they had themselves driven into the East End. Aunt Bed, then a vigorous young woman, beat on my locked door with her umbrella and when admitted gave vent to some very intemperate comments strongly but less violently seconded by her husband. They left in a rage and returned that evening with an offer.’
‘To take over your education?’
‘And me. In toto. At first my father said he’d see them damned first but in his heart he liked them very much. Since our lodging was to be demolished as an insanitary dwelling and new premises were difficult to find he yielded eventually, influenced I dare say, by threats of legal action and Child Welfare officers. Whatever the cause, I went, in the upshot, to live with Uncle Flea and Aunt Bed.’
‘Did you like it there?’
‘Yes. I didn’t lose touch with my father. He patched up his row with the Forresters and we exchanged frequent visits. By the time I was thirteen he was extremely affluent and able to pay for my education at his own old school, at which, fortunately he had put me down at birth. This relieved us to some extent from the burden of an overpowering obligation but I retain the liveliest sense of gratitude to Flea and Bed.’
‘I look forward to meeting them.’
‘They are held to be eccentric. I can’t see it myself, but you shall judge.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well – trifling departures from normal practice, perhaps. They never travel without green lined tropical umbrellas of a great age. These they open when they awake in the morning as they prefer their vernal shade to the direct light. And then they bring a great many of their valuables with them. All Aunt Bed’s jewels and Uncle Flea’s stocks and shares and one or two very nice objets d’art of which I wouldn’t at all mind having the disposal. They also bring a considerable amount of hard cash. In Uncle Flea’s old uniform case. He is on the reserve list.’
‘That is perhaps a little eccentric.’
‘You think so? You may be right. To resume. My education, from being conventional in form, was later expanded at my father’s instance, to include an immensely thorough training in the more scholarly aspects of the trade to which I succeeded. When he died I was already accepted as a leading European authority on the great period of Chinese Ceramics. Uncle Bert and I became very rich. Everything I’ve touched turned to gold, as they say. In short I was a “have” and not a “have-not”. To cap it all (really it was almost comical), I became a wildly successful gambler and won two quite princely non-taxable fortunes on the Pools. Uncle Bert inspired me in this instance.’
‘Lovely for you.’
‘Well – I like it. My wealth has enabled me to indulge my own eccentricities, which you may think as extreme as those of Uncle Flea and Aunt Bed.’
‘For instance?’
‘For instance, this house. And its staff. Particularly, you may think, its staff. Halberds belonged from Tudor times up to the first decade of the nineteenth century to my paternal forebears: the Bill-Tasmans. They were actually the leading family in these parts. The motto is, simply, “Unicus” which is as much as to say “peerless”. My ancestors interpreted it, literally, by refusing peerages and behaving as if they were royalty. You may think me arrogant,’ said Hilary, ‘but I assure you that compared to my forebears I am a violet by a mossy stone.’
‘Why did the family leave Halberds?’
‘My dear, because they were ruined. They put everything they had into the West Indies and were ruined, very properly I dare say, by the emancipation of slaves. The house was sold off but owing to its situation nobody really fancied it and as the Historic Trust was then in the womb of time, it suffered the ravages of desertion and fell into a sort of premature ruin.’
‘You bought it back?’
‘Two years ago.’
‘And restored it?’
‘And am in process of restoring it. Yes.’
‘At enormous cost?’
‘Indeed. But, I hope you agree, with judgment and style?’
‘Certainly. I have,’ said Troy Alleyn, ‘finished for the time being.’
Hilary got up and strolled round the easel to look at his portrait.
‘It is, of course, extremely exciting. I’m glad you are still to some extent what I think is called a figurative painter. I wouldn’t care to be reduced to a schizoid arrangement of geometrical propositions, however satisfying to the abstracted eye.’
‘No?’
‘No. The Royal Antiquarian Guild (The Rag as it is called) will no doubt think the portrait extremely avant garde. Shall we have our drinks? It’s half past twelve, I see.’
‘May I clean up, first?’
‘By all means. You may prefer to attend to your own tools, but if not, Mervyn, who you may recollect was a signwriter before he went to gaol, would, I’m sure, be delighted to clean your brushes.’
‘Lovely. In that case I shall merely clean myself.’
‘Join me here, when you’ve done so.’
Troy removed her smock and went upstairs and along a corridor to her deliciously warm room. She scrubbed her hands in the adoining bathroom, and brushed her short hair, staring as she did so out of the window.
Beyond a piecemeal domain, still in the hands of landscape gardeners, the moors were erected against a leaden sky. Their margins seemed to flow together under some kind of impersonal design. They bore their scrubby mantling with indifference and were, or so Troy thought, unnervingly detached. Between two dark curves the road to the prison briefly appeared. A light sleet was blown across the landscape.
Well, she thought, it lacks only the Hound of the Baskervilles, and I wouldn’t put it past him to set that up if it occurs to him to do so.
Immediately beneath her window lurched the wreckage of a conservatory that at some time had extended along the outer face of the east wing. Hilary had explained that it was soon to be demolished: at the moment it was an eyesore. The tops of seedling firs poked through shattered glass. Anonymous accumulations had silted up the interior. In one part the roof had completely fallen in. Hilary said that when next she visited Halberds she would look down upon lawns and a vista through cypress trees leading to a fountain with stone dolphins. Troy wondered just how successful these improvements would be in reducing the authority of those ominous hills.
Between the garden-to-be and the moor, on a ploughed