"I don't know now how I could have forgotten," Nancy said, wondering. "The worst of pushing horrible things down into one's subconscious is that when they pop up again they are as fresh as if they had been in a refrigerator. You haven't allowed time to get at them to-to mould them over a little."
"I think a great many people have almost forgotten that Simon had a twin," Bee said, excusing. "Or that he has not always been the heir. Certainly no one has mentioned Patrick to me since the coming-of-age celebrations have been in the air."
"Why was Patrick so inconsolable about his parents' death?"
"I didn't know he was. None of us did. All the children were wild with grief to begin with, of course. Sick with it. But none more than another. Patrick seemed bewildered rather than inconsolable. 'You mean: Latchetts belongs to me now? I remember him saying, as if it were some strange idea, difficult to understand. Simon was impatient with him, I remember. Simon was always the brilliant one. I think that it was all too much for Patrick; too strange. The adrift feeling of being suddenly without his father and mother, and the weight of Latchetts on his shoulders. It was too much for him and he was so unhappy that he-took a way out."
"Poor Pat. Poor darling. It was wrong of me to forget him."
"Come; let us go and get those eggs. You won't forget to let me have Alec's address, will you? A Ledingham must have an invitation."
"No, I'll look it up when I go back, and telephone it to you. Can your latest moron take a telephone message?"
"Just."
"Well, I'll stick to basic. You won't forget that he is Alec Loding on the stage, will you?" She picked up her basket from the sideboard. "I wonder if he would come. It is a long time since he has been to Clare. A country life is not Alec's idea of amusement. But an Ashby coming-of-age is surely something that would interest him."
3
But Alec Loding's main interest in the Ashby coming-of-age was to blow the celebrations sky-high. Indeed, he was at this moment actively engaged in pulling strings to that end.
Or, rather, trying to pull strings. The strings weren't pulling very well.
He was sitting in the back room at the Green Man, the remains of lunch spread before him, and beside him sat a young man. A boy, one would have said, but for something controlled and still that did not go with adolescence. Loding poured coffee for himself and sugared it liberally; casting a glance now and then at his companion, who was turning an almost empty beer glass round and round on the table. The movement was so deliberate that it hardly came under the heading of fidgeting.
"Well?" said Loding at last.
"No."
Loding took a mouthful of coffee.
"Squeamish?"
"I'm not an actor."
Something in the unaccented phrase seemed to sting Loding and he flushed a little.
"You're not asked to be emotional, if that is what you mean. There is no filial devotion to be simulated, you know. Only dutiful affection for an aunt you haven't seen for nearly ten years-which one would expect to be more dutiful than affectionate."
"No."
"You young idiot, I'm offering you a fortune."
"Half a fortune. And you're not offering me anything."
"If I'm not offering it to you, what am I doing?"
"Propositioning me," said the young man. He had not raised his eyes from his slowly-turning beer.
"Very well, I'm propositioning you, to use your barbarous idiom. What is wrong with the proposition?"
"It's crazy."
"What is crazy about it, given the initial advantage of your existence?"
"No one could bring it off."
"It is not so long since a famous general whose face was a household word-if you will forgive the metaphor-was impersonated quite successfully by an actor in broad daylight and in full view of the multitude."
"That is quite different."
"I agree. You aren't asked to impersonate anyone. Just to be yourself. A much easier task."
"No," said the young man.
Loding kept his temper with a visible effort. He had a pink, collapsed face that reminded one of the underside of fresh mushrooms. The flesh hung away from his good Ledingham bones with a discouraged slackness, and the incipient pouches under his eyes detracted from their undoubted intelligence. Managers who had once cast him for gay young rakes now offered him nothing but discredited roues.
"My God!" he said suddenly. "Your teeth!"
Even that did not startle the young man's face into any expression. He lifted his eyes for the first time, resting them incuriously on Loding. "What's the matter with my teeth?" he asked.
"It's how they identify people nowadays. A dentist keeps a record of work, you know. I wonder where those kids went. Something would have to be done about that. Are those front teeth your own?"
"The two middle ones are caps. They were kicked out."
"They went to someone here in town, I remember that much. There was a London trip to see the dentist twice a year; once before Christmas and once in the summer. They went to the dentist in the morning and to a show in the afternoon: pantomime in the winter and the Tournament at Olympia in the summer. These are the kind of things you would have to know, by the way."
"Yes?"
The gentle monosyllable maddened Loding.
"Look, Farrar, what are you frightened of? A strawberry mark? I bathed with that kid in the buff many a time and he hadn't as much as a mole on him. He was so ordinary that you could order him by the dozen from any prep. school in England. You are more like his brother at this moment than that kid ever was, twins though they were. I tell you, I thought for a moment that you were young Ashby. Isn't that good enough for you? You come and live with me for a fortnight and by the end of it there won't be anything you don't know about the village of Clare and its inhabitants. Nor anything about Latchetts. I know every last pantry in it. Nor anything about the Ashbys. Can you swim, by the way?"
The young man nodded. He had gone back to his glass of beer.
"Swim well?"
"Yes."
"Don't you ever qualify a statement?"
"Not unless it needs it."
"The kid could swim like an eel. There's the matter of ears, too. Yours look ordinary enough, and his must have been ordinary too or I should remember. Anyone who has worked in a life-class notices ears. But I must see what photographs of him exist. Front ones wouldn't matter, but a real close-up of an ear might be a give-away. I think I must take a trip to Clare and do some prospecting."
"Don't bother on my account."
Loding was silent for a moment. Then he said, reasonably: "Tell me, do you believe my story at all?"
"Your story?"
"Do you believe that I am who I say I am, and that I come from a village called Clare, where there is someone who is practically your double? Do you believe that? Or do you think that this is just a way of getting you to come home with me?"
"No, I didn't think it was that. I believe your story."
"Well, thank heaven for that, at least," Loding said with a quirk of his eyebrow. "I know that my looks are not what they were, but I should be shattered to find that they suggested the predatory. Well, then. That settled, do you believe that you are as like young Ashby as I say?"
For a whole turn of the glass there was no answer. "I doubt it."
"Why?"
"On your own showing it is some time since you saw him."
"But you don't have to be young Ashby. Just look like him. And believe me you do! My God, how you do! It's something I wouldn't have believed unless I saw it with my own eyes; something I have imagined only happened in books. And it is worth a fortune to you. You have only to put out your hand and take it."
"Oh, no, I haven't."
"Metaphorically speaking. Do you realise that except for the first year or so your story would be truth? It would be your own story; able to stand up to any amount of checking." His voice twisted into a comedy note. "Or-would it?"