‘Of course,’ he said, ‘with pleasure.’ He glanced again at the wife, and his eyes had a sort of supplicating look that was piteous beyond words. He was so mild and passive a man in every way that even now I could see there was no anger in him, no danger, no chance of an explosion.
After dinner I was ordered straight to the card table to partner Miss Carmen La Rosa against Major Haddock and Lady Turton. Sir Basil sat quietly on the sofa with a book.
There was nothing unusual about the game itself; it was routine and rather dull. But Jelks was a nuisance. All evening he prowled around us, emptying ashtrays and asking about drinks and peering at our hands. He was obviously shortsighted and I do
ubt whether he saw much of what was going on because as you may or may not know, here in England no butler has ever been permitted to wear spectacles – nor, for that matter, a moustache. This is the golden, unbreakable rule, and a very sensible one it is too, although I’m not quite sure what lies behind it. I presume that a moustache would make him look too much like a gentleman, and spectacles too much like an American, and where would we be then I should like to know? In any event Jelks was a nuisance all evening; and so was Lady Turton who was constantly being called to the phone on newspaper business.
At eleven o’clock she looked up from her cards and said, ‘Basil, it’s time you went to bed.’
‘Yes, my dear, perhaps it is.’ He closed the book, got up, and stood for a minute watching the play. ‘Are you having a good game?’ he asked.
The others didn’t answer him, so I said, ‘It’s a nice game.’
‘I’m so glad. And Jelks will look after you and get anything you want.’
‘Jelks can go to bed too,’ the wife said.
I could hear Major Haddock breathing through his nose beside me, and the soft drop of the cards one by one on to the table, and then the sound of Jelks’s feet shuffling over the carpet towards us.
‘You wouldn’t prefer me to stay, m’lady?’
‘No. Go to bed. You too, Basil.’
‘Yes, my dear. Good night. Good night all.’
Jelks opened the door for him, and he went slowly out followed by the butler.
As soon as the next rubber was over, I said that I too wanted to go to bed.
‘All right,’ Lady Turton said. ‘Good night.’
I went up to my room, locked the door, took a pill, and went to sleep.
The next morning, Sunday, I got up and dressed around ten o’clock and went down to the breakfast-room. Sir Basil was there before me, and Jelks was serving him with grilled kidneys and bacon and fried tomatoes. He was delighted to see me and suggested that as soon as we had finished eating we should take a long walk around the grounds. I told him nothing would give me more pleasure.
Half an hour later we started out, and you’ve no idea what a relief it was to get away from that house and into the open air. It was one of those warm shining days that come occasionally in mid-winter after a night of heavy rain, with a bright surprising sun and no breath of wind. Bare trees seemed beautiful in the sunlight, water still dripping from the branches, and wet places all around were sparkling with diamonds. The sky had small faint clouds.
‘What a lovely day!’
‘Yes – isn’t it a lovely day!’
We spoke hardly another word during the walk; it wasn’t necessary. But he took me everywhere and I saw it all – the huge chess-men and all the rest of the topiary. The elaborate garden houses, the pools, the fountains, the children’s maze whose hedges were hornbeam and lime so that it was only good in summer when the leaves were out, and the parterres, the rockeries, the greenhouses with their vines and nectarine trees. And of course, the sculpture. Most of the contemporary European sculptors were there, in bronze, granite, limestone, and wood; and although it was a pleasure to see them warming and glowing in the sun, to me they still looked a trifle out of place in these vast formal surroundings.
‘Shall we rest here now a little while?’ Sir Basil said after we had walked for more than an hour. So we sat down on a white bench beside a water-lily pond full of carp and goldfish, and lit cigarettes. We were some way from the house, on a piece of ground that was raised above its surroundings, and from where we sat the gardens were spread out below us like a drawing in one of those old books on garden architecture, with the hedges and lawns and terraces and fountains making a pretty pattern of squares and rings.
‘My father bought this place just before I was born,’ Sir Basil said. ‘I’ve lived here ever since, and I know every inch of it. Each day I grow to love it more.’
‘It must be wonderful in summer.’
‘Oh, but it is. You should come down and see it in May and June. Will you promise to do that?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come,’ and as I spoke I was watching the figure of a woman dressed in red moving among the flower-beds in the far distance. I saw her cross over a wide expanse of lawn, and there was a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her, and when she was over the lawn, she turned left and went along one side of a high wall of clipped yew until she came to another smaller lawn that was circular and had in its centre a piece of sculpture.
‘This garden is younger than the house,’ Sir Basil said. ‘It was laid out early in the eighteenth century by a Frenchman called Beaumont, the same fellow who did Levens, in Westmorland. For at least a year he had two hundred and fifty men working on it.’
The woman in the red dress had been joined now by a man, and they were standing face to face, about a yard apart, in the very centre of the whole garden panorama, on this little circular patch of lawn, apparently conversing. The man had some small black object in his hand.
‘If you’re interested, I’ll show you the bills that Beaumont put in to the old Duke while he was making it.’