It is astonishing to me now how nearly I came to proposing marriage that night and yet I refrained. Our interests were different, of course – tatting and dahlias have nothing in common, unless perhaps they are both the interests of rather lonely people. Rumours of the great bank merger had already reached me. My retirement was imminent, and I was well aware that the friendships I had made with my other clients would not long survive it. If I had spoken would she have accepted me? – it was quite possible. Our ages were suitable, she was approaching forty and I would soon be halfway through the fifth decade, and I knew my mother would have approved. How different everything might have been if I had spoken then. I would never have heard the disturbing story of my birth, for she would have accompanied me to the funeral and my aunt would not have spoken in her presence. I would never have travelled with my aunt. I would have been saved from much, though I suppose I would have missed much too. Miss Keene said, “I shall be living near Kofiefontein.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t really know. Listen. It’s raining cats and dogs.[31]”
We got up and moved into the drawing-room for coffee. There was a Venetian scene copied from Canaletto[32] on the wall. All the pictures in the house seemed to represent foreign parts, and she was leaving for Kofiefontein. I would never travel so far, I thought then, and I wished that she was staying here, in Southwood.
“It seems a very long way to go,” I said.
“If there was anything to keep me here… Will you take one lump or two?”
“No sugar, thank you.” Was it an invitation for me to speak? I have always asked myself since. I didn’t love her, and she certainly didn’t love me, but perhaps in a way we could have made a life together. I heard from her a year later; she wrote, “Dear Mr. Pulling, I wonder how Southwood is and whether it’s raining. We are having a beautiful sunny winter. My cousins have a small (!) farm of ten thousand acres and they think nothing of driving seven hundred miles to buy a ram. I am not quite used to things yet and I think often of Southwood. How are the dahlias? I have given up tatting. We lead a very open-air existence.”
I replied and gave her what news I could, but I had retired by then and was no longer at the centre of Southwood life. I told her of my mother’s failing health and how the dahlias were doing. There was a rather gloomy variety in royal purple called Deuil du Roy Albert which had not been a success. I was not sorry. It was an odd name to give a flower. My Ben Hurs were flourishing.
I had neglected the telephone, feeling so sure that it was a wrong number, but when the ringing persisted, I left my dahlias and went in.
The telephone stood on the filing cabinet where I keep my accounts and all the correspondence which my mother’s death caused. I had not received as many letters as I was receiving now since I ceased to be manager: the solicitor’s letters, letters from the undertaker, from the Inland Revenue[33], the crematorium fees, the doctor’s bills, National Health forms, even a few letters of condolence. I could almost believe myself a business-man again.
My aunt’s voice said, “You are very slow to answer.”
“I was busy in the garden.”
“How was the mowing-machine, by the way?”
“Very wet, but no irreparable damage.”
“I have an extraordinary story to fell you,” my aunt said. “I have been raided by the police.”
“Raided… by the police?”
“Yes, you must listen carefully for they may call on you.”
“What on earth for?”
“You still have your mother’s ashes?”
“Of course.”
“Because they want to see them. They may even want to analyse them.”
“But Aunt Augusta… you must tell me exactly what happened.”
“I am trying to, but you continually interrupt with unhelpful exclamations. It was midnight and Wordsworth and I had gone to bed. Luckily I was wearing my best nightdress. They rang the bell down below and told us through the microphone that they were police officers and had a warrant to search the flat. ‘What for?’ I asked. Do you know, for a moment I thought it might be something racial. There are so many rules now for races and against races that you don’t know where you stand.”
“Are you sure they were police officers?”
“Of course, I asked to see their warrant, but do you know what a warrant looks like? For all I know it might have been a reader’s ticket to the British Museum library. I let them in, though, because they were polite, and one of them, the one in uniform, was tall and good-looking. They were rather surprised by Wordsworth – or perhaps it was the colour of his pyjamas. They said, ‘Is this your husband, ma’am?’ I said, ‘No, this is Wordsworth.’ The name seemed to ring a bell[34] with one of them – the young man in uniform – who kept on glancing at him surreptitiously, as though he were trying to remember.”
“But what were they looking for?”
“They said they had reliable information that drugs were kept on the premises.”
“Oh, Aunt Augusta, you don’t think Wordsworth…”
“Of course not. They took away all the fluff from the seams of his pockets, and then the truth came out. They asked him what was in the brown-paper package which he was seen handing to a man who had been loitering in the street. Poor Wordsworth said he didn’t know, so I chipped in and said it was my sister’s ashes. I don’t know why, but they became suspicious of me at once. The elder, who was in plain clothes[35], said, ‘Please don’t be flippant, ma’am. It doesn’t exactly help.’ I said, ‘As far as my sense of humour goes, there is nothing whatever flippant in my dead sister’s ashes.’ ‘A sort of powder, ma’am?’ the younger policeman asked – he was the sharper of the two, the one who thought he knew the name of Wordsworth. ‘You can call it that if you like,’ I said, ‘grey powder, human powder,’ and they looked as though they had won a point. ‘And who was the man who received this powder?’ the man in plain clothes asked. ‘My nephew,’ I said. ‘My sister’s son.’ I saw no reason to go into that old story which I told you yesterday with members of the Metropolitan Police. Then they asked for your address and I gave it to them. The sharp one said, ‘Was the powder for his private use?’ ‘He wants to put it amongst his dahlias,’ I said. They made a very thorough search, especially in Wordsworth’s room, and they took away samples of all the cigarettes they could find, and some aspirins I had left in a cachet box. Then they said, ‘Good night, ma’am,’ very politely and left. Wordsworth had to go downstairs and open the door for them, and just before he left the sharp one said to him, ‘What’s your first name?’ ‘Zachary,’ Wordsworth told him and he went out looking puzzled.”
“What a very strange thing to have happened,” I said.
“They even read some letters and asked who Abdul was.”
“Who was he?”
“Someone I knew a very long time ago. Luckily I had kept the envelope and it was marked Tunis, February, 1924. Otherwise they would have read all sorts of things into it about the present.”
“I am sorry, Aunt Augusta. It must have been a terrifying experience.”
“It was amusing in a way. But it did give me a guilty feeling…”
There was a ring from the front door and I said, “Hold on a moment, Aunt Augusta.” I looked through the dining-room window and saw a policeman’s helmet. I returned and said, “Your friends are here.”
“Already?”
“I’ll