Nest of Vipers mb-55 Read online

  We tried the second floor, climbed to the attics and, when we had descended to the ground floor again, explored what must have been the housekeeper’s room, the butler’s pantry and the servants’ hall. We inspected the enormous kitchen and its scullery and then returned to the entrance hall with its stone screen and the dado made up of the coats of arms of previous owners.

  ‘I’d have to spend thousands,’ I said again, ‘even to make it habitable.’

  ‘I know exactly what I should do with it if it were mine,’ said Niobe.

  ‘Pull it down and sell the park for building land? I doubt whether I’d be allowed to do that.’ I was glad to find her ready to talk rationally about the house and what I was to do with it. She had maintained what I took to be a grim silence up to this point. She had not even lived up to her name and wept. She was much given to tears when things went wrong.

  ‘No, I don’t think you would be allowed to sell the park for building plots,’ she went on. ‘There would be planning permission to get, and all sorts of involvements, I expect, and you never were much of an organiser, were you? No, I can tell you what to do with it, Chelion. In fact, I could do it all for you while you’re in Paris. I don’t want to stay on at the pool. It won’t be the same without you.’

  I was afraid she was going to turn tearful at this, so I said hastily. ‘Well, you can’t expect me to go on with a job like that, now I’ve no necessity to earn a living, but tell me what you’ve got in mind, however crazy it is.’

  ‘You’d have to pay me a salary, of course,’ she said, ‘but I’d be satisfied with the same money as I’m getting at the pool.’

  ‘Let’s hear this crack-brained scheme of yours.’ But, when she outlined what it was, I said, ‘Good Lord! That will never work!’

  ‘Of course it will work. You’ll get masses of tenants in no time. There will be a waiting-list. Elderly people who’ve sold up houses which are too big for them will give anything for accommodation they can rent instead of having to buy. There is the park for them to walk or sit about in, a lake you can stock with fish, a seaside town and its shops close at hand—’

  ‘Only close at hand if you’ve got a car. Elderly people may not be prepared to drive.’

  ‘Well, get a car. Get two cars, one self-drive and the other chauffeur-driven and charge car-hire prices. They would more than cover the chauffeur’s wages.’

  ‘Each flat would need its own kitchen and bathroom.’

  ‘I know that. Look, why don’t you leave everything to me, as I’ve suggested? I’m sure I can manage. I’ll be able to give a good account of my stewardship, I promise you. Now we’ve – how does it go? – said goodbye for ever, cancelled all our vows, done our best and worst and parted, and all that, there could be so easy a relationship between us.’

  ‘Oh, look here,’ I said, ‘what vows have we cancelled?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Chelion. Will you let me do as I suggest?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I’d have to put a ceiling on what I could allow you to spend, though, you know. I’m no Soames Forsyte to be employing an architect for whom the sky’s the limit.’

  ‘I’ll get plenty of estimates and then, when we reach your ceiling price – although I hope you won’t be niggardly – I shall stop the work. If necessary, we’ll finish it ourselves when you come back.’

  ‘You can count me out on that score. Interior decorating is well beyond my scope. I’ve always known it. Oh, well, get your estimates and then we’ll see,’ I promised. After all, I owed her something for having been engaged to her during the years when, I suppose, she could have found somebody who would have married her, and I was grateful, too, for the calm way she had accepted the break-up. She must have read some of my thoughts, not an unusual state of affairs, because our friendship, if such it can be called, had lasted so long. She said, without bitterness:

  ‘You need not think you have wasted the best years of my life.’ She said it with a lop-sided smile. ‘Nothing of the kind. Life begins at thirty, Chelion.’

  ‘Not for a woman,’ I thought. On impulse I kissed her, but met with no response. What is more, she remained dry-eyed.

  Chapter Two

  Nest of Vipers

  « ^ »

  (1)

  SO, by the time I got back from Paris, all the alterations had been completed, the repairs and the interior and exterior decorations had been done and my first batch of tenants had been installed. Niobe had managed to turn the house into ten flats and of these only two were unoccupied.

  The renovations surprised and pleased me very much, but the inhabitants of my newly-furbished property pleased me a great deal less. Niobe had prophesied that there would be tenants, but those I found in possession of my house were ludicrously different from any I might have envisaged.

  I had thought of a retired naval or military man, a wealthy widow or two, a well-known actor or actress ‘resting’ between shows but still well able to afford the rent of a flat on my well-situated property, a business man still keen on a round or two of golf, a couple well-heeled enough to afford a spacious apartment while they waited to get possession of a house they were buying, and perhaps a wealthy recluse happy to find peace and security far from the madding crowd. Instead of these comfortable, predictable types, all my tenants turned out to be writers of one sort or another.

  ‘I thought you’d feel more at home with them, being a writer yourself,’ said Niobe. ‘Birds of a feather, and all that, you know.’

  ‘Birds of a feather can peck one another to death,’ I said ‘and these aren’t even “of a feather”. What has Evesham Evans in common with Constance Kent?’

  ‘They happen to be a respectable married couple, although I can’t think why she chose the pen-name of Constance Kent,’ said Niobe, going off at a tangent, as women will.

  ‘Oh, I can,’ I said. ‘The instinct for self-martyrdom is strong in some people. She probably sees Constance Kent, the real one, as her alter ego.’

  ‘Constance Kent was a murderess.’

  ‘Nonsense! She decided to carry the can for her father.’

  ‘I won’t argue with you. I am certain to get the worst of it. What have you against these people?’ Niobe’s voice had become slightly shrill and, as so often, there were tears in her eyes. ‘What’s wrong with them, I say?’

  ‘Nothing at all, provided they pay their rent and behave themselves,’ I said, weakly giving ground.

  ‘Why shouldn’t they?’ Her tone still had a sharp edge. Apparently I was supposed to approve her choice of tenants.

  ‘I have no idea. I’ll take your word for them,’ I said.

  ‘Well, then!’

  ‘Oh, let it go,’ I said.

  (2)

  As I had told Niobe, I had never intended to live in the house. A bachelor flat in Mayfair, with a manservant to cook, clean and act as my valet (a romantic dream engendered by the stories of P.G. Wodehouse) had been the target on which I had set my sights. When I saw the apartment which Niobe had set aside for me, I changed my mind.

  This apartment was on the ground floor and comprised the entrance hall and its noble Jacobean staircase, together with two large, handsome rooms, one of which had an overmantel carved by Grinling Gibbons.

  Niobe had contrived a luxurious bathroom for me in what had been the garden-room of the original mansion, the room, that is to say, where the cut blooms were placed ready to be sorted over so that a choice could be made for the drawing-room and dining-room vases. There was no kitchen as part of my flat, although everybody else had one, but when I pointed this out to Niobe she had a ready answer. My meals were to be cooked in the kitchen of the original owner and were to be served in a little dining-room Niobe had contrived out of what had been the game larder. A resident cook was already installed and she and her kitchenmaid had bedrooms up in the attics.

  ‘You can afford it, can’t you?’ said Niobe. ‘You and I will eat together. To share your cook will be one of my perks. I’ve gone to a great
deal of trouble on your behalf, you know. In return i expect free board and lodging and the same pay I was getting at the pool. I am prepared to run this place for you. Everything will go like clockwork. I’ve found my métier.’

  The idea of having her permanenty round my neck appalled me. For three meals a day I was doomed, it seemed, to sit at table with her and, apart from this, to me, most undesirable propinquity, it meant that the meals would be served at regular and stated times, I attempted to hedge.

  ‘I don’t think the mealtimes will work,’ I said. ‘I can’t be tied down to regular hours like that. No writer can.’

  ‘You have only to say you’re working,’ said Niobe. ‘I can manage the kitchen staff, you’ll find.’

  There seemed no more to be said. Short of turning her out of the house altogether and sacking the cook and the kitchen maid and foraging for myself (which would be a more serious interruption of my writing than sitting down to regular meals with Niobe) there was no self-assertive attitude I could take.

  ‘Now I’ll show you my quarters,’ she said blithely. ‘Are we agreed upon my wages?’

  ‘They are not exactly excessive. You might have done better if you had brought a breach of promise case!’ I laughed as I said it, but she remained grave.

  ‘That isn’t a nice thing to say, Chelion. You must know there could never be any question of that. I have my pride and some self-respect.’

  Her own apartments were also on the ground floor. She had converted what had been the housekeeper’s dayroom, the butler’s pantry and the servants’ hall into a very cosy little flat which she showed me with pride. What pleased me less, since it brought her into closer contact with my own little realm than I deemed advisable, was that she had allocated to herself as an office – ‘I must have a room to which they can come to pay their rent and bring their complaints, Chelion’ – the room to the right of the front door opposite to that which I had decided to use as my library and study. However, since she was willing – eager, in fact – to take the whole running of the venture off my hands, it seemed unreasonable to cavil at what was, after all, a perfectly sensible arrangement, so I assented to it without argument except to query the word complaints.

  ‘What the hell would they have to complain about?’ I asked.

  ‘One another, mostly, I expect,’ said Niobe composedly. ‘Did you ever know a collection of writers who didn’t hate each other’s guts?’

  ‘I don’t know a collection of writers.’ It was true. In spite of my year in Paris, I had not finished my novel, let alone sold it, and therefore I was not eligible to join any literary society except a local one which did not expect many of its members to achieve publication unless they paid for it themselves.

  As for my tenants, their talents proved to be so various that, with unconscious snobbery (as I see it now), I would hardly have called some of them writers at all, although there is no denying that every one of them did actually write for a living and, what is more, made enough money to pay the rent.

  To take them in my own order of importance: at the top of the list came Evesham Evans. He was a not very successful member of the Ernest Hemingway school of fiction and looked and dressed for what he saw as the part. He was untidy, gruff, bluff and self-consciously addicted to the bottle and the four-letter word. When he roamed the grounds in search of inspiration he habitually carried a sporting-rifle over his arm although, except for some grey squirrels and a colony of rooks, there was nothing to shoot in my park. I think he put on an act to bolster up his ego because his wife earned more than he did.

  Next in my order of meritorious authorship came Mandrake Shard. That this was his real name seems open to doubt, but all his letters, both business and personal, were addressed to him under this cognomen. He wrote highly successful spy stories and an occasional play of the same nature for the BBC. He was a mild, almost furtive, tiny little character; he dressed like an undertaker and was a Methodist lay preacher. I went to hear him once and was surprised and immensely (although secretly amused by his doctrine of hell fire and his promises of a heaven, which seemed a combination of Blackpool on a bank holiday and a recital by a Welsh male-voice choir. There was no doubt, however, of his financial success as a author. By accident I once saw his royalties statement and was staggered.

  Although Evesham Evans’s tough novels had their small following, from the money point of view, as I have said, he was less successful than was Constance Kent, his wife. She was a grim, soldierly woman, older, I think, than he was, and, of all things, she specialised in would-be sultry love-stories which, however, remained so definitely within the bounds of an almost Puritan propriety that it might be said of any heroine of hers: ‘Kind are her answers, but her performance keeps no day.’ However, many women must have found vicarious satisfaction in her work, for once, out of curiosity, I went to the public library for a copy of one of her books and discovered that, although more than a score were in the catalogue, not one was left on the shelves.

  We had three other couples on the hooks, but they came low on my list. I place above them a bachelor whose pen-name was Latimer Targe. He wrote up real-life crimes, especially murders, in a form which the masses could assimilate without effort. Privately I thought of him as Mr Sunday Papers and there was no doubt that, although his syntax was shaky and his style deplorable, he was not only readable but, in his obvious affection for his murderers, definitely endearing. I suppose that among all my tenants, he was, perhaps, my favourite, although that is not saying much.

  The couples were ‘Polly’ Hempseed, a light-hearted young man whose real name was Conway. Under his pseudonym, he wrote the sob-stuff page in a woman’s magazine. His partner, a down-to-earth and, some would say, unattractive woman a year or two older than her paramour, was called Cassie McHaig and this, I think, was her real name. As it somewhat blatantly suggests, she was a Scot, but, except at moments of excitement or crisis, one would hardly have guessed it from her accent. She was a weekly columnist on one of the West Country papers and wrote forthrightly on such matters as naughty politicians and the even naughtier public services, including such sitting birds as British Rail, the Post Office and the extravagances in public spending. I was sorry for her. Polly had a roving eye.

  Then there were the Irelath Moores. He was a poet who lived mostly on a generous allowance from his father, a Canadian-Irish cattle rancher. Irelath’s girl, who was called Sumatra and who came from Bali, wrote (only I always thought that Irelath did the work and she merely signed it) the beauty hints for a glossy monthly. Her photograph, which looked like the reproduction of a picture by Sir Gerald Kelly, always appeared at the top of her column and was the best advertisement which could ever have been conceived to bear witness to the veracity of her claim to be a beauty specialist. She was the loveliest thing I have ever seen, small, slender, beautifully made with an entrancing smile and the most engaging, childlike simplicity of both manners and conversation.

  Our last couple – for their passionate friendship warrants, and, indeed, calls for, that description – were two women named Billie Kennett and Elysée Barnes. One reported crime for a local paper, the other wrote up the latest fashions and even illustrated her work with her own charming sketches. She was also employed at times as a model and I think that she made a good deal of the money which kept them both. Billie, who was short, square and dark, a karate expert and a confirmed Women’s Libber, adored her to what, for outsiders, was often an embarrassing degree, but which Elysée accepted with nonchalance and tacit approval, although, having once made a pass at Elysée myself, I have the impression that, when the right man comes along, she’ll ditch Billie like a pair of torn tights.

  All these people had apartments in the house, but Niobe had also converted the stables into a small bungalow which she had named The Lodge. This had been rented by a female recluse. Miss Minnie was, and remained, an enigma. She had opted for the bungalow, Niobe told me, as soon as she had seen the advertisement of it. She claimed that she edite
d the esoteric journal of a small religious sect called the Panconscious People, but had volunteered no other information about herself. However, Niobe claimed that, like Edmund Blunden’s barn, Miss Minnie was old, not strange.

  To mark my return home I had a house-warming party for which I gave word of mouth invitations, calling at each apartment as the simplest and most direct means of getting to know something about my tenants.

  I chose a Sunday for my visits to them and set aside the following Sunday for the party. This was because some of the tenants were out and about on their lawful occasions during the week and in the evenings, but on Sundays, as Niobe had told me, all were to be found in residence.

  Evesham and Constance gave me a drink, so did Polly and Cassie and the two girls, Billie and Elysée. Sumatra and Irelath refused the invitation, although charmingly. Sumatra said, ‘Sunday is sacred to love-making, Chelion, so, although we are pleased to see you, please go away.’ Irelath said, ‘We’re only young once, Chelion. Can’t afford to let the golden days slip by. Obliged for the invitation all the same.’

  Mandrake Shard thanked me for my invitation, which he accepted, but told me apologetically that he did not drink. ‘Used to be an alcoholic. Daren’t touch the stuff now, my dear fellow.’ I promised we would lay on coffee. Coffee, of the instant variety, was also supplied to me by Latimer Targe when I called with my invitation. He said he had run out of whisky. He accepted the invitation and volunteered to ‘bring a couple of bottles, old man, if you like, in case you run short. I know what these literary types can put away when the drinks are on the house’. I assured him that there would be no shortage, but I thanked him for the kind thought and decided that I did not like him very much after all.

  Niobe had volunteered to help the cook manufacture the cocktail snacks, but I had vetoed this. ‘Snacks for a dozen people, most of whom probably eat like wolves?’ I said. ‘It would take both of you all the week, and cook would probably give notice. No, my dear girl. I think we’ll let a caterer cope,’ I added firmly.