‘I know!’ he says, seizing upon a little pedal car and squeezing himself with difficulty into the driver’s seat. ‘I’ll be Yuri Gagarin, and this is my space-car, and I’ve just landed on Mars.’
For like every other boy of his age, Roddy worships the young cosmonaut. Earlier in the year he was even taken to see him when he visited the Earl’s Court exhibition, and Mortimer had held him aloft so that he could actually shake hands with the man who had voyaged among the stars. Now, crammed awkwardly into the undersized car, he starts to pedal with all his might while making guttural engine noises. ‘Gagarin to Mission Control. Gagarin to Mission Control. Are you reading me?’
‘Well who am I supposed to be then?’ says Hilary.
‘You can be Laika, the Russian space dog.’
‘But she’s dead. She died in her rocket. Uncle Henry told me.’
‘Well just pretend.’
So Hilary starts scampering around on all fours, barking madly, sniffing at the Martian rocks and scratching in the dust. She keeps it up for about two minutes.
‘This is really boring.’
‘Shut up. This is Major Gagarin to Mission Control. I have safely landed on Mars and am now looking for signs of intelligent life. All I can see so far are some – hey, what’s that?’
A bright object on the nursery floor has caught his eye, and he pedals towards it as fast as he can: but Hilary gets there first.
‘A half-crown!’
She covers the coin with her hand and her eyes shine with triumph. Then Major Gagarin steps out of his space-car and stands over her.
‘I saw it first. Give me that.’
‘Not on your life.’
Slowly but purposefully, Roddy places his right foot over Hilary’s hand and begins to press down.
‘Give it to me!’
‘No!’
Her voice rises to a scream as Roddy increases the pressure, until there is a sudden crack: the sound of bones crushing and splintering. Hilary howls as her brother lifts his foot and picks up the coin with calm satisfaction. There is blood on the nursery floor. Hilary sees this and her screams get shriller and wilder until they are loud enough to wake even Nurse Gannet from her cocoa-induced stupor.
∗
Downstairs, the dinner party is by now well advanced. The guests have whetted their appetite with a light soup (stilton and steamed pumpkin) and have made short work of their trout (poached in dry Martini with a nettle sauce). While waiting for the third course to arrive, Lawrence, who is seated at the head of the table, excuses himself and leaves the room; on his return, he stops to have a few words with Mortimer, the guest of honour, who is seated at the centre. Lawrence’s intention is to make a discreet inquiry into the condition of their sister.
‘How d’you reckon the old loony’s bearing up?’ he whispers.
Mortimer winces, and his reply has a reproving tone: ‘If you’re referring to Tabitha, then you’ll find that she’s behaving herself perfectly. Just as I said she would.’
‘I saw you both having a bit of a chinwag this afternoon on the croquet lawn. You looked rather serious, that’s all. There wasn’t anything up, was there?’
‘Of course not. We’d just been for a walk together.’ Mortimer sees an opportunity to change the subject at this point. ‘The gardens are looking magnificent, by the way. Especially your jasmine: the scent was quite overpowering. Wouldn’t mind learning your secret, one of these days.’
Lawrence laughs cruelly. ‘Sometimes I think you’re as bats as she is, old boy. There’s no jasmine in our garden, I can vouch for it. Not even a sprig!’ He glances up and notices a huge silver tureen being carried in at the far end of the dining room. ‘Hello, here comes the next course.’
∗
Midway through her saddle of curried hare, Rebecca hears a diffident cough at her side.
‘What is it, Pyles?’
‘A word in private, if I may, Mrs Winshaw. It’s a matter of some urgency.’
They withdraw into the transverse corridor and when Rebecca returns, a minute later, her face is pale.
‘It’s the children,’ she tells her husband. ‘There’s been some silly accident in the nursery. Hilary’s hurt her hand. I’m going to have to take her to the hospital.’
Mortimer half-rises from his seat in panic.
‘Is it serious?’
‘I don’t think so. She’s just a bit upset.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, you’ll have to stay here. I doubt if I’ll be much more than an hour. You stay and enjoy your party.’
∗
But Mortimer does not enjoy his party. The only aspect of it which he was enjoying in the first place was the company of Rebecca, upon whom he has come to depend more and more in the last few years as a means of shielding himself from his hated family. Now, in her absence, he is forced to spend most of the evening in conversation with his sister Olivia; dry, sour-faced Olivia, who is so implacably loyal to the Winshaw pedigree that she even married one of her own cousins, and who now drones on remorselessly about the management of her estate and her husband’s impending knighthood for services to industry and the political future of her son Henry who has at least been clever enough to see that it’s the Labour Party which offers him the best prospect of a cabinet position by the age of forty. Mortimer nods tiredly throughout her monologue, and takes an occasional glance at the other faces around the table: Dorothy shovelling food into her mouth; her sheep-faced fiancé sitting morosely beside her; Mark’s ratty, calculating eyes maintaining their restless vigil; sweet, bewildered Mildred telling some shy anecdote to Thomas, who listens with all the frosty indifference of a merchant banker about to withhold a loan from a small businessman. And there, of course, is Tabitha, sitting erect at the table and not saying a word to anyone. He notices that she consults her pocket watch every few minutes, and that more than once she asks one of the footmen to check the time on the grandfather clock in the hallway. Otherwise, she sits perfectly still and keeps her eyes fixed upon Lawrence. It’s almost as if she is waiting for something to happen.
∗
Rebecca returns from the hospital just as coffee is about to be served. She slips in beside her husband and squeezes his hand.
‘She’ll be fine,’ she says. ‘Nurse Gannet is just putting her to bed.’
Lawrence stands up, raps on the table with his dessertspoon and proposes a toast.
‘To Mortimer!’ he says. ‘Health and happiness on his fiftieth birthday.’
Muted echoes of ‘Mortimer’ and ‘Health and happiness’ resound throughout the room as the guests drain off whatever is left in their glasses. Then there is a loud and contented sigh, and somebody says:
‘Well! It has been a most pleasant evening.’
All heads turn. Tabitha has spoken.
‘It’s so nice to get out and about. You’ve no idea. Only – ’ Tabitha frowns, and her face assumes a lost, downcast expression. ‘Only … I was just thinking how nice it would have been, if Godfrey could have been here tonight.’
There is a long pause; broken eventually by Lawrence, who says, with an attempt at jovial sincerity: ‘Quite so. Quite so.’
‘He was so fond of Mortimer. Morty was most definitely his favourite brother. He told me so, many times. He much preferred Mortimer to Lawrence. He was quite decided about it.’ She frowns again, and looks around the table: ‘I wonder why?’
Nobody answers. Nobody meets her eye.
‘I suppose it’s because … I suppose it’s because he knew – that Mortimer had no intention of killing him.’
She watches her relatives’ faces, as if looking for confirmation. Their silence is horror-struck and absolute.
Tabitha lays her napkin down on the table, pushes her chair back and rises painfully to her feet.
‘Well, it’s time I was getting to bed. Up Wood Hill to Blanket Fair, as Nanny used to say to me.’ She walks towards the dining-room door, and it becomes hard to tell whether she is still talking to the guests or merely to herself. ‘Up the long and winding stairs; up the stairs, to say my prayers.’ She turns, and there can be no doubt that her next question is addressed to her brother.