The Longer Bodies Page 2

  ‘On your marks!’ The red-coated starter was raising the gun.

  ‘Get set!’ The two runners raised the back knee from the track and leaned forward with the weight of their bodies resting on the front foot and the hands. Steadily they gazed at the surface of the track ahead of them.

  The pistol cracked sharply, and they were off.

  ‘There you are, you see, Aunt.’ Malpas Yeomond turned to the old lady as the first man home breasted the flimsy tape. ‘England wins. We can run all right, but, all the same, we’ve lost the match. Look, Aunt. They took the shot, the discus, and the two jumps. We haven’t a chap on the ground today who can touch twenty-four feet for the long jump. Another two inches on our aggregate total would have given us the high jump, but we couldn’t produce them. Then there’s the pole vault—a perfect gift to them. And we lost the first sprint event through poor changing of the baton. Still, on actual pace we were sound. No, it’s the field events that do it—and they always will do it until something pretty drastic is done about training boys early enough for them. As long as men with a twenty-one-foot long jump or a six-foot high jump or a forty-foot shot, and chaps doing eleven-six over the pole vault, are in the championship class in England, our case is hopeless. By the way, we’d better shift. We’re blocking the traffic by remaining here.’

  The drive home was short, and Great-aunt Puddequet spoke little. She sat in a corner of the big car, busy with sports programme and Malpas’s gold pencil. The brothers discussed the events one by one. Dinner followed almost immediately upon their return to the house, and, to the general amazement, for she was in the habit of retiring to rest at about nine o’clock after a very light repast, the old lady, resplendent with diamonds, was pushed in her bathchair up to the dinner table. Clutched in her left hand was the programme of events she had bought on the sports ground. She laid it beside her plate, and said not a word throughout the meal except to squeal venomously at Timkins the butler for offering her wine.

  When the meal was drawing to its conclusion, she put down the apple she had begun to peel, and looked meaningly round the table.

  ‘What did you tell me they call that plate thing they throw about the field, Grandnephew?’ she demanded, looking at Hilary.

  ‘The discus, Aunt,’ he returned, with a promptness which did credit to his intelligence. ‘But England didn’t—’

  ‘I know they didn’t. Do you know how to throw it, Grandnephew?’

  ‘Well,’ replied Hilary cautiously, ‘I’ve seen it done, of course, and I know the theory of throwing it, but I’ve never actually had the thing in my hands.’

  ‘You could learn to do it.’ Mrs Puddequet nodded her grey head decidedly, and disregarded her youngest nephew’s dissenting voice.

  ‘And what about you, Grandnephew?’ she continued, turning her yellowish eyes upon Malpas Yeomond.

  ‘High jump,’ said Priscilla, from the other side of the table. ‘Used to win it at his private school. He’s ever so good at it.’

  ‘Oh, rot, Priscilla,’ said Malpas, grinning. ‘You’re thinking of a chap called—er—called Smuggins.’

  ‘She is thinking of a chap called Yeomond, Grandnephew,’ screamed old Mrs Puddequet furiously.

  ‘Answering to the name of Malpas,’ said Francis solemnly. ‘He’s a liar, Aunt. Take no notice of him. I saw him win it in about the year 1920. Did three-ten and a half at Tenby House School, with the matron and old Squarebags at the stands to see fair play. I always swear the matron shoved her end down two inches for him, but that’s neither here nor there. He won. You know you did,’ he concluded, kicking his elder brother vigorously.

  ‘And he did three feet—nearly four feet,’ said Great-aunt Puddequet thoughtfully. Her eyes brightened. ‘Very promising. And at the White City next year he will do nearly eight feet—or perhaps a little more.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Godfrey Yeomond, startled. ‘But, my dear Aunt, the world’s record figures for the high jump are—’

  ‘Six-eight and a half, pater,’ interpolated Hilary promptly. ‘H.M. Osborne of the United States holds the record, and it was clocked at Urbana in May 1924. Excuse me, Aunt. It’s printed here, I believe.’

  He turned to the end of his great-aunt’s programme.

  ‘Here we are.’

  ‘Well,’ screamed the old lady indomitably, ‘it’s a very poor record, in my opinion!’

  Her nephew and his sons gasped.

  ‘Blasphemy,’ said Francis, under his breath, kicking Malpas with great joy.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ Great-aunt Puddequet went on in her raucous, cracked, high-pitched old voice, ‘that grown men cannot jump twice as high as a little boy of ten at a private school? Rubbish, Grandnephews! I don’t know what the world’s coming to nowadays!’

  Malpas took up the cudgels.

  ‘It isn’t quite a case of jumping twice as high, Aunt. You see—’

  ‘Take the force of gravity, for example,’ broke in Francis, trying, in spite of his amusement, to do his bit towards clearing the great names of the world’s champions from an undeserved slight.

  ‘And the law of what-do-you-call-it,’ said Hilary helpfully.

  ‘And, of course, the binomial theorem of radio-electricity,’ interpolated Priscilla, keeping both eyes fixed demurely on the tablecloth.

  ‘You may all be silent,’ said Great-aunt Puddequet, with sudden decisiveness, ‘and listen to me. I am going home at the end of this week. Immediately I arrive I shall summon Queslake to draw up my will.’ She glanced around the table in order to observe the effect of her words. The assembled company gazed back at her. At the sight of their facial expressions, Priscilla was compelled to check a desire to giggle.

  ‘To draw up my will,’ repeated Great-aunt Puddequet, staring deliberately at each of the family in turn. ‘The bulk of the property and almost the whole of my private fortune I intend to leave to one of my grandnephews.’

  She paused.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Francis, unable to think of anything adequate, but feeling that in order to retain the high dramatic tension something ought to be said by someone other than Great-aunt Puddequet herself.

  Great-aunt Puddequet regarded the interrupter malevolently.

  ‘The one who is first chosen to represent England in one of these field events you have all talked so much about,’ she said. ‘I ought to mention that the three girls—’

  ‘Three?’ enquired Hilary.

  ‘Certainly. Your sister Priscilla, Celia Brown-Jenkins, and Amaris Cowes.’

  ‘Oh, Celia and Amaris, yes,’ said Malpas. ‘I seem to remember them vaguely. Celia was a pretty little kid, I believe, and Amaris rather a piece of frightfulness in looks. Glasses and things.’

  ‘Your creed appears simple, but is fundamentally sound, Grandnephew,’ retorted Great-aunt Puddequet tartly. ‘Perhaps I may be allowed to continue without interruption. The three girls will each receive one hundred pounds, irrespective of their attainments’—she glanced contemptuously at the mildly pretty and faded face of Elizabeth Yeomond, whose marriage to Godfrey she had strongly opposed, and which opposition, vitriolic in expression, had called forth an (at the time) unforgivable retort from the bridegroom-elect—‘their manners’—she glanced at the averted face of Priscilla, who was laughing—‘or their conduct.’ She shut her lips tightly together. They all knew that the reference to conduct had been called forth by the recollection of Amaris Cowes, who, at the age of twenty-two, had run from the Welwyn Garden City, where all is peace and joy and light, to sordid Bloomsbury. There, in defiance of the family minor prophets, including Great-aunt Puddequet herself, she continued to enjoy life among the artists in an altogether brazen, and, so far as her nearest and (presumably) dearest were concerned, an exceptionally irritating and successful manner.

  ‘One hundred pounds?’ said Priscilla, who had overcome her risible faculties by a strong effort. ‘That is very kind of you, Aunt. I shall buy!—’

  ‘Two new dinner frocks and a thé
dansant,’ said her unregenerate brother Hilary, grinning behind his hand. ‘Cheer up, sister!’ he added, sotto voce. ‘Mean old cat!’

  His great-aunt regarded him with disfavour. Her hearing was inconveniently acute at times.

  ‘Of course, should you find yourself heir to my property and fortune, Grandnephew,’ she remarked, in a tone which indicated that she considered such an event extremely unlikely, ‘you will be at perfect liberty to give any or all of the inheritance to your sister. Far be it from me to comment upon your implicit generosity!’

  Propelled by the stalwart Godfrey Yeomond, the bathchair containing the rich relation then left the dining room. Mrs Yeomond, smiling her unvarying, faded smile, went after it.

  The family dropped its jaw. Malpas spoke.

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said he. The others nodded gloomily.

  ‘Senile dementia,’ said Francis, shaking his head. ‘Poor old girl.’

  ‘Of course, she can’t be serious,’ said Hilary. ‘International champions! My God!’

  Priscilla began to laugh again.

  ‘Who’s holding the baby now?’ she enquired, with sisterly chivalry.

  Chapter Two

  The Gathering of the Clan

  I

  MALPAS YEOMOND REREAD Great-aunt Puddequet’s letter for the fourth time.

  ‘She’s certainly worked the thing out rather well,’ he said. ‘Me the high jump, Frank the long, H. the discus, her grandson chap the javelin, Brown-Jenkins the pole, and Cowes the weight.’

  ‘What do we do about it?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘Might as well go down there as she suggests, and find out what the idea is,’ said Francis. ‘The Brown-Jenkins people and the Cowes will go, I expect.’

  ‘I can’t think what possessed Mary to marry a fellow with a name like Brown-Jenkins,’ said Godfrey Yeomond. The family were at dinner on the first Tuesday in April. He frowned into his wineglass. ‘Why on earth couldn’t he have stuck like a man to the Jenkins, and left the Brown alone?’

  The gentle Mrs Yeomond, who was the only person present at table to take any particular notice of her husband’s remarks, shook her head hopelessly.

  ‘Or, of course, he could have dropped the Jenkins, and put an “e” on the Brown, dear,’ she observed timidly.

  ‘I wish, Pater, you’d write to both the relations and see what they’re going to do about it,’ said Francis. ‘We really don’t want to go down into Hampshire and sweat about and look fools if the Brown-Jenkins and the Cowes are not bothering.’

  ‘Ought to put the old girl in a home,’ muttered Malpas darkly.

  ‘I believe I’ll go and see them,’ said Godfrey, deciding at length that the port was nonpoisonous. ‘Always better to see people. I’ll run down tomorrow. Far more satisfactory. They live less than twenty miles apart, and Jenkins’s place is just over thirty from here, so I can manage them both on the same day I should think, if I don’t hang about at either house too long.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Malpas slowly, ‘that, if these other people fall for the damned silly scheme, we must have a stab at it too.’

  ‘Please yourself, my boy,’ said his father. ‘It’s merely a question as to which branch of the family shall inherit about half a million pounds.’

  ‘I don’t know that I hanker after the cash,’ said Francis thoughtfully. ‘It isn’t that. But I should hate to stand down in favour of Dick Cowes. Remember him as a fearful worm. Had the cheek at school to bend me over for six when he was head of the house. Beastly weed he was, too!’

  ‘And the Brown-Jenkins tribe are bounders,’ said Hilary, in round, handsome terms. ‘After all, why shouldn’t we have a cut? Jolly decent holiday down there. Take our motorbikes, and walk sometimes, and I dare say there would be some quite decent cricket if one knew where to look for it. Wonder how long we shall stay?’

  ‘I shall come too,’ said Priscilla unexpectedly. ‘I shall be company for Great-aunt Puddequet. Besides, the Digots live quite near, and there will be some quite decent tennis on their courts. I was at school with Margaret Digot, and Rex Digot is ever such a nice kid.’

  ‘Yes, I should certainly go, if I were in your place,’ said Godfrey to his sons. ‘At the worst, you’ll get plenty of fresh air and exercise. At the best—well, if your great-aunt should take a fancy to one of you!—Of course, the idea itself is absurd, but then, what are the old for, if not to impose their absurd ideas on the young?’

  ‘The hon. member,’ said Priscilla wickedly, ‘then resumed his seat amid tumultuous applause.’

  II

  ‘Look here,’ said Clive Brown-Jenkins with spirit, ‘when I say valve-rubber do I mean inner-tubing?’

  ‘You should run about after yourself, then,’ said his sister Celia with finality. She stuck both hands into her jumper pockets and walked into the house.

  Clive stood up and wiped a hand covered with lubricating oil across an already grease-stained countenance. He grunted discontentedly and spun the front wheel of his upturned bicycle. He was a big, squarely built boy of twenty, with an untidy thatch of hair and perpetually grease-stained hands. His father had put him into the office of his own works, but Clive was a born mechanic, and invariably looked like it. He was strong and hardy, and resembled a rough cob; his face was good humour itself when he smiled, but in repose it wore a determinedly bulldog expression and showed the hard line of an obstinate jaw. He had big hands and feet, big strong teeth, and appraising grey eyes. His was a fighter’s face. He was continuously at loggerheads with his father, from whom he inherited his temperament, and each had a secret respect and affection for the other.

  He put his hard hand down on the whizzing wheel and arrested its gyrations. Then he rubbed the ball of his strong, dirty thumb over a suspiciously rough place on the tyre.

  A moment later Celia reappeared.

  ‘Do you mean this wormy-squirmy stuff?’ she enquired, proffering a tin box.

  ‘Thanks,’ grunted Clive. He worked away in silence for about twenty-five minutes. Celia stood and watched him.

  ‘Going far tomorrow?’ she asked at last.

  Clive screwed the nozzle of the hand pump on to the top of the valve of the back wheel and pumped steadily for several seconds. When he had disconnected the pump and tested the tyre with thumb and forefinger, he stood the bicycle upright against the side of the house and replied tersely:

  ‘Brighton. Club test. By the way, did my white sweater get washed last week?’

  ‘How should I know?’ said Celia. ‘I don’t look after your things. Better go and ask Mum. Anyway, the laundry hasn’t come home this week yet, because I wanted my organdy frock for this afternoon, and I can’t have it.’

  ‘Your sweater is quite clean and nicely aired, dear,’ said a woman’s voice from inside the house. ‘I never send woollen garments to the laundry. They are really too bad with them. When do you want it?’

  ‘Tomorrow at five in the morning,’ replied Clive. ‘Hang on; I’ll come and get it now. I shall be back to dinner.’

  ‘Lunch, dear.’

  ‘Oh, all right, lunch.’

  ‘It will be ready by one-thirty, dear, so you won’t be late, will you?’

  Clive grunted and went into the house.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ said his father from the dining room. ‘Come here, I want you.’

  Clive followed his mother up the stairs, obtained possession of his sweater, put it neatly with the rest of his kit, stopped at the bathroom for a wash, and then went downstairs to his father.

  Brown-Jenkins Senior lowered his stockinged feet from the arm of the settee to the carpet, and observed:

  ‘Now, then. Are you going down into Hampshire, or aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ replied Clive.

  ‘Then you’re a damned fool,’ said his father, picking up the newspaper. ‘Half a million. That’s more than I’ve got to give you, by a damn sight. I’ve done damn well, but I ’aven’t—haven’t—done as well as that. Now don’t be a B.F. Your U
ncle Godfrey was here an hour ago. His boys are going down to Hampshire next week. What about it?’

  ‘I shan’t go,’ said Clive. ‘Cranky old girl!’

  ‘Well, she is, but there’s nothing cranky about her money, my lad, so don’t you forget it. Thought you’d got your head screwed on tighter than that. Still, if you don’t trouble about it, no more shall I. Get out.’

  Clive returned to his bicycle and Celia. His mother was standing there talking.

  ‘But I don’t think you are invited, dear,’ said Mary Brown-Jenkins. She was the feminine counterpart of Godfrey, her brother, but had worn not quite so well.

  ‘I don’t care whether I’m invited,’ said Celia. ‘If that Yeomond girl can go—and Uncle Godfrey said she had made up her mind about it—then I can go. Besides, you know what an awful ass Clive is when he’s left to look after himself. And he will go in to meals with oily dirt under his nails if he isn’t watched. The Yeomonds would get up and leave the table, and then what would you feel like?’

  Clive’s grunt behind them terminated that portion of the conversation.

  ‘You needn’t worry yourselves,’ said he coldly. ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘Not going?’ cried Celia. ‘Oh, but you must go! Look what a chance it is for us to get to know some nice people. Priscilla Yeomond knows people down there and everything. Uncle said so. And if you don’t go, Cliff, I can’t. You might be a sport. Besides, think of the will! I wouldn’t say no to all that money!’

  ‘Now, look here, young Celia,’ said Clive, setting his jaw, ‘once and for all! If any of you people think that a cranky old girl of ninety is going to jockey me into turning myself into a monkey on a stick for the sake of her rotten cash, you’re wrong! I’m not breaking my neck over that pole jump to please anybody, and if Dad thinks differently—’

  ‘But, Clive, it isn’t altogether the money. Think what a score for Uncle Godfrey if one of his boys got the house and property, and you didn’t! He’d never get over it. You know how they look down on us because Dad started as a hand and worked his way up, and because I haven’t been “finished” and you haven’t been educated at Oxford like the Yeomonds.’