But before he could leave, Tom came back accompanied by a tall thin youth with pale blond hair and narrow rimless spectacles.
‘This is my friend Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor.’
Brian said, ‘Oh dear,’ then covered it with a cough. There were friendly exclamations and hand-shakes, during which Scarlett-Taylor gave one abrupt smile but said nothing.
Gabriel said, ‘Have you been to Belmont yet, shouldn’t you ring Alex and say you’re coming?’
‘Oh we won’t be at Belmont,’ said Tom. ‘We’re house-sitting.’
‘What?’
‘Greg and Judy Osmore are away. They said we could look after their house. Here’s the key.’ He flourished the key.
Gregory Osmore was the younger son of Robin Osmore the solicitor.
‘I think Alex is expecting you,’ said Gabriel, ‘so you’d better ring up and say you’re not coming.’
‘But we’ve come!’
‘Not coming to stay, I mean.’
‘I said as much,’ said Scarlett-Taylor to Tom.
‘Oh well, I will ring Alex,’ said Tom, ‘only not now, Gabriel, please — ’
Scarlett-Taylor’s brief remark had betrayed that he was Irish. Brian with his usual quick tact said, ‘You’re Irish.’
‘Yes.’
‘How nice,’ said Gabriel. ‘The Emerald Isle. A hundred thousand welcomes, isn’t it? We had such a lovely holiday in Killarney once.’
‘It rained all the time,’ Brian said, smiling wolfishly.
Scarlett-Taylor looked at Tom.
‘We must be going,’ said Tom. ‘We’ve got this house to sit.’
Adam and Zed came in.
Tom said, ‘This is Adam.’
‘Dog,’ said Scarlett-Taylor. ‘Papillon.’ He picked Zed up.
‘Zed,’ said Adam.
Scarlett-Taylor then smiled his real smile, which was rather logical and intellectual, the smile of an older man. He handed Zed to Adam with a graceful formal gesture.
Adam did not smile, but looked approving.
‘What are you going to do here?’ said Brian.
‘Do?’ The question puzzled Tom. ‘Oh - have fun.’
They all reached the front door. ‘Come and see us.’
‘Yes, sure.’
Brian, as the door closed, said, ‘Fun? What’s that? Ah, youth, youth. Oh God, Ruby’s still here, can’t you get rid of her? And Stella’s upstairs! I’d forgotten that too!’
Tom pressed the key, which he had proudly waved before his brother, into the lock and turned it. It functioned. The door opened. Tom had not quite believed beforehand that this would happen. It was like something in a fairy-tale which was too good to be true. Some demon or wicked godmother would put a binding spell upon the door, or else it would open upon some weird alien scene, empty or else full of silent hostile people, then closing again, quietly and irrevocably, behind the hapless hero. None of this happened. The door opened. The rather dark interior of the house was recognizably that of Greg and Judy Osmore. It was also immediately clear that the house was empty. It smelt empty, already a little musty and full of echoes. Another less far-fetched of Tom’s fears had been that it would turn out that Greg and Judy were still there and had not gone away at all.
‘Whoopee,’ said Tom, softly and appreciatively, standing in the hall.
Emma followed him in.
Tom did not in fact know Gregory Osmore very well, but he had known him all his life, and in Ennistone that counted for a lot. Meeting Greg recently at a party in London, he had heard him lamenting about having to leave his house empty while he spent a month in America, with Judy, on a business course. Burglary and vandalism, once unknown in the town, were on the increase. Tom saw, quick as a flash, that sublime concatenation of duty and interest for which we so often wait in vain. He offered his services. He would spend the vacation working in Greg’s house and keeping it safe and happy. Greg and Ju agreed. For Tom, the plan had everything. Apart from anything else, it provided a very good excuse for not staying at Belmont. Alex would probably have put up with Scarlett-Taylor, but would Scarlett-Taylor have put up with Alex? Tom wanted to show his native town to his new friend. On the Belmont basis he had envisaged only a brief visit. Now, however, given this glorious independence, they could spend the whole vacation there, see a bit of the countryside, be amused by the dear silly old town, and get away from their cramped dingy London digs and their censorious landlady.
Tom and (to use his nickname) Emma were at the same college in London. Emma was a little older, now in his third year of studying History. Tom was in his first year of studying English. They had known each other vaguely for a while, then lately much better after Emma had taken lodgings in the same house as Tom. Emma wanted to see the Ennistone antiquities and to visit the Museum. He did not imagine he would be very interested in the Ennistonians whom Tom promised him as the chief entertainment. Emma looked a little critically upon Tom’s tendency to like everything and everybody.
‘Our house,’ said Tom. ‘Our very own for now. Oh good!’
He had never in his life been the proprietor of so much domestic space. He began to run about, opening doors, peering into cupboards, racing up and down stairs.
Emma glanced into the sitting-room, then found Greg’s study and began to look at the books. He noted with pleasure a number of historical works. (Greg had studied History at York.) Emma went over the shelves systematically. He pulled out Pirenne’s History of Europe and sat down, and was instantly absorbed in reading.
Meanwhile Tom was in a state of rapture. He investigated the kitchen. No crouching in grates or cooking on gas rings here. Tom liked cooking, in a random eccentric sort of way. He investigated the larder and the fridge. He went into the sitting-room and studied all the pictures and ornaments. He had been in the house before, of course, but only on social occasions, and he had never seen the sitting-room empty. Tom liked pictures, he liked things, he appreciated the visual world. He would have liked to be a rich man and be able to collect. However, he had no plans for becoming a rich man; he had as yet no plans.
Greg and Judy, who were still childless, lived in a pleasant part of Ennistone, on the far side of the town from the Common on the way towards the Tweed Mill. This area was called, for some reason, Biggins, and consisted largely of Victorian terrace houses, lately gentrified, their brick façades painted different colours. Of course the place to live in Ennistone was the Crescent, near the eighteenth-century bridge, the abode of Eastcotes and Newbolds and Burdetts. However, there were parts of Biggins which were regarded as very desirable residential areas, quite the equal of Victoria Park. The ‘best road’, called Travancore Avenue in memory of some Ennistonian who had served the Raj in that city, started in some splendour near the Crescent and ended more humbly but agreeably enough on the edge of the countryside, with views of the Tweed Mill. House agents described the residences, all sought after, as being ‘at the Crescent end’ (or ‘adjoining the fashionable Crescent’) or ‘at the Tweed Mill end’. Ivor Sefton occupied a late eighteenth-century villa at the Crescent end. The Gregory Osmores lived in a pretty little detached house behind plane trees at the Tweed Mill end. Greg had purchased this house when, after working in London as an accountant, he had (quite recently) become an all-purpose businessman in the management of the Glove Factory, where, it was said, he was certain to become quite a ‘big cheese’. His elder brother, equally successful, was a barrister in London.