Nothing was ever said, but Silas dealt with the estate duties, running just then at forty per cent, without selling off a single sprig of heather and from then on our friends began to shut up rather about Esslemont Life. After the war, of course, it became nothing short of pitiful to compare the Esslemonts and ourselves. And now this: Silas was about to float. I was not entirely sure what that meant, only that somehow it was the sale we had been expecting for three generations, and yet also the most blatant swank Silas could have dreamed up to rub our noses in it.
Indeed, rubbing our noses in it, or rather inviting us to rub them in it ourselves, was a yearly fixture for Silas. At the first Armistice Ball, on Armistice Day itself, the hats had brimmed and spilled with banknotes. Partly champagne bravado, but partly too our belief, soon to be shown up for the foolishness it was, that very soon and for evermore we should be as before. I wonder how many of us, sober in dreary meetings with our agents, thought back to that night and wished that some of what we had stuffed into the out-held hats was safely under our mattresses still. When the invitations came for the ball in 1919, I for one never dreamed that the hats would come round again. The embarrassment, the crawling mortification and shame as we scraped together what we could, for none of us had come prepared and clearly none of us walked around with cushions of banknotes about our persons any more. 1920 was better, since at least we knew it was coming, and Hugh made sure he was well buffered by Silas’s brandy before the moment came to toss in the five twenty-pound notes he had drawn from his bank for the purpose. In 1921, I thought of declining, but Hugh would not hear of it and we were not the only ones there looking hurt, proud and grimly determined all at once, watching Daisy and Silas through narrowed eyes as they floated around amongst their stricken guests without a care.
All in all, as we shut our London houses and decided against restocking our salmon rivers, we felt that Silas was letting the cruel, cold light of a most unwelcome dawn shine into the burrow where the rest of us were still huddled, and knowing that we should all soon have to waken to this dawn made neither it, nor Silas its harbinger, any less blinding.
So we had to go once a year, pride saw to that, but must we be always dashing off there in between times? Might I refuse? It was terrifically short notice, and to decline it would excite no surprise. ‘Darling Daisy,’ I wrote, ‘how sweet of you to think of us.’ I imagined her rucking open the envelope with her thumb, scanning the prose for a pip of sense and then ripping the sheet across and dropping it into the basket, as I had done an hour before and should do again tomorrow and the day after that. I dipped my pen and had just set it against the paper once more when the telephone at my elbow shrieked.
This telephone in my room was a new departure and was thought by Hugh and by Pallister our butler to be taking modern manners to the furthest point of decency. I should never admit to either of them how it made me jump each time it erupted beside me, like a sleeping baby whose nappy pin had given way and pierced it, just as inconsolable, just as demanding of being picked up and made a fuss of with one’s whole attention for some length of time not of one’s own choosing. I composed myself and lifted the earpiece.
‘Dan? Dan, is that you?’ Daisy’s voice was as brisk as ever, talking over the girl at the exchange. ‘Listen, I’m ringing to make certain you’re going to come, darling. I should have sent you a proper letter to explain things but I did so want to speak face to face. And then I was suddenly convinced this morning that you wouldn’t come and if you don’t I have simply no idea what I shall do, so you must. And don’t call me a goose for caring, because I did think it was all a joke at first, as one would, but it’s Silas, you see. Silas has gone very peculiar and is talking about capitulation. So whatever Hugh says, you quite simply must come.’
Even from Daisy, renowned as she was for enormous plumes of enthusiasm, this feverishness needed an explanation.
‘Darling, is everything all right?’ I began, then I listened as a kind of chalky gulping came over the line, a sound which might have been the very end of a long bout of sobs but which, since Daisy had just spoken, must in fact be laughter.
‘Oh Dandy,’ she said at last. ‘Haven’t you heard? You’re impossible! Nothing is all right or ever will be again. Dandy, the Duffys have long been booked this Friday to Monday because poor darling Silas has a contingent of bankers and other unspeakables to be sucked up to. Yes, even as far as actuaries, darling – don’t ask – whom I couldn’t have borne to inflict on anyone else. So I asked the Duffys. And a few satellites. They’re dreariness made flesh but so respectable I thought they would be perfect. And then Cara is such a dear and always cheers up Silas no end, although Clemence has undoubtedly washed ashore on a tide from the Arctic. Naturally, I assumed that they would cancel after last week – Do you really not know?’
‘I really think I mustn’t,’ I said, since nothing had made a whisker of sense so far.
‘Hence the late summons to you and Hugh. But they’re still coming, if you can believe it. And in her letter confirming it she said she wanted to speak to me most particularly and she imagined I would know what about. As of course I do. And she further imagined that I would agree it could all be dealt with quite amicably. Which I most certainly do not. Anyway, all four of them will be here on Friday. Dandy, you’ve got to come.’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but -’
‘You were so splendid that time on Cuthbert’s yacht, darling, and I just know that you will be able to get to the bottom of it and do it again.’
‘The bottom of -?’
‘All of it,’ Daisy yelped, and I jerked the earpiece away from my head. She continued on a rising note. ‘Find out what Mrs is doing, where on earth she got the idea. Or find out what really happened, speak to the servants if you must. Always assuming we have any left. McSween is threatening notice. McSween! Because he was on duty with the luggage that day. The under-gardener is beside himself. As are we all. It’s unspeakable, it must be stopped, and you are the only one who can stop it. You’re the only one whom no one will suspect of anything.’ She was beginning to speak more slowly now. ‘I shall never forget it; you sitting there on deck under that ludicrous hat piping away like a choirboy and everyone else simply squirming with shame, wondering how you dared. I was the only one who knew, I think, that the innocence wasn’t an act. You’ll be perfect.’
I flushed. The memory of it was still painful. She asked how I had dared? I hadn’t dared, of course. I was just chatting, no earthly clue what I was saying, but Cuthbert Dougall’s yacht had sailed out from Anstruther harbour the very next day and never been seen again (and it was a testament to the vileness of Cuthbert that neither his mother nor his sister, our dear friend, felt anything but gratitude towards me).
‘I see,’ I said. ‘I’ll be splendid. In the way a new novel is splendid if it happens to be just the right thickness to wedge under a wobbly table. I’m very flattered, I assure you.’
‘Well, so long as I’ve offended you anyway,’ said Daisy, ‘it won’t hurt to tell you that I’m willing to pay.’
‘Pay?’ I said. ‘Pay me? And in return I do what?’
‘Sort it,’ said Daisy. ‘As that divine nanny of yours used to say. Sort it. Get to the bottom of it, then take a deep breath and tell us all. Preferably at dinner. Throw your head back and howl. I give you carte blanche, because of course it’s all nonsense and we can’t actually be in a compromising position. Ask Hugh to tell you about it, then come on Friday and sort it for me.’ She rang off.