The Promise Ese (20) "You wouldn't believe the gadgets they have there now," she meant America, "but I don't think I could live in New York. It's almost too brash after the war. It's like polishing up one corner of the globe to blacken the others. All talk of 'old worlds' crumbling. And empires in decline." Clara bubbled with an urge to declaim, towards what end Hector couldn't see, unless she was trying to 'put him off'. He yawned uncontrollably. He had been most talkative earlier. She said, "Well then, dearie, have you been keeping my little nest warm?" She could trace a smell of his tobacco which bundles of fresh flowers struggled to overpower. "Remember I said you could stay here when... I don't know, when you felt restless or seedy, because it all seems easier when we are together, don’t you think? I leave my worries elsewhere and expect you to follow suit." She sat at her mirror. Pins and paste and show fell away. Hector's age diminished. Forty-five to twenty-eight. The flame light swashed Clara all over like an aurora. It was so much fun. He could play with this woman, he could whisper tasteless jokes he'd overheard. She'd giggle, they could be boys together, naughty and uproarious but still she was graceful and round as a queen in progress. She would lead and he would attend upon her, then like the court favourite, part the magnificent hangings, disarray pomp and powder, and crush the virgin in her. Intrigue. A complicated play of emotion. Hickox was 'helping out'. Hector felt like a kept man. These people live a cardboard carousel ride of a life. The swirling plucked at his cuffs, the mechanism sucked him in, the wily high-class, lover-swapping farce that the east-coasters affected in their mink-white palaces. Clara seemed less set. She seemed European. She hove to through the merciless gales of fashion. She was steady. She knew the game. Emily would console his failures, Clara dispel them. While Clara snored, he marvelled that such a heavenly creature could, Hector lay awake ruminating about the varieties of women attached to the varieties of men. Before his eyes the filthy, weather beaten faces of certain of the men murkily arose, like ghosts through blubber-smoke then the nondescript plumped-up faces of their female halves, a number of whom he had met, floated between, like moths looking to mate. The quieter ones on the ice it turned out generally had loud wives and the loutish ones had mice. As it should be. Yet one disruptive crew-member was met at the dock by a wife of leonine stature and all his bravado shrank. Hector wondered if, conversely, his men surmised things about their leader and his private relationships. Like Cook's wife or any adventurer's sweetheart, they wait and they manage. But then how does it run when they are reunited? How did his men slot in after the ordeal, to their family roles? How did they satisfy their women or were they not touched by it. A matter of practicality, he supposed, the women need children but they must want companionship as well, but then they have their female friends, family alliances, a sisterhood. Does that sort of bond exist as with men or maybe only men united in hardship? He fell asleep. * * * The next few weeks dragged over Carpenter an obscuring thick mist. A sunny and beautiful happiness with Clara swiftly mired in one theatrical sludge after another. Mackintosh a spy! He couldn't type fast enough anyway. Hector's dictation careened like an untethered pup, jumping then rolling before crashing and heavily sighing. At which point Mac cranked over his memory for the proper phrase. Occasionally a most inapt term crept in, evaded Hector's cursory read through then embarked on an ethereal concourse bailing insult and regret upon all it passed. Still Carpenter liked to have him at beck and call because of his unquestioned loyalty South. It was not surprising, then, Emily's distrust of his reportage which she partly relied upon for information as to her husband's whereabouts. As for Hectors ‘activities,’ the mystery remained. Mac stood a little in awe of Lady Carpenter who represented a filtered version of Sir Hector, with gusto, charm, determination, humour gone. A tincture of resignation drip, drip, dripped. Why she couldn't afford to be more generous, however, Mac was unable to fathom. He was hardly paid for his pains. He was stretched both ways like rubber but, for self-preservation, always exerted a backwards pull. He wouldn't give that extra inch even if Emily insisted upon names. They strolled along the Embankment, Nanny trundling Percy behind in his pram. Emily carried a packet of letters and newspaper cuttings that Mackintosh thought might arrest her suspicious nature. Acclaim for the film of Sir Hector's last expedition was gradually wheedling stray young men like sated woodworms, into the light of potential dangers. "Perhaps this public attention might compel elites to fund another push on the penguins realm." Money had dried up but had the public's enthusiasm entirely withered? Woo them with aeroplanes and wireless. "Yes," she dripped. "Sir Hector can 'gauge a mood', as the expression goes, and I've been hearing of nought but the wonderful lure of 'whizz-bangery'. Mac, you've been there. What possible gains can the aeroplane hope to win? Much of the area has been explored. He tells me its not ambition for himself, but to serve the ambitions of younger men fielding their own destinies. He may as well operate a cruise-line. I know... that’s another option of his on the plate." Even a hint of Lady Carpenter's having borrowed Sir Hector's style of slangy expression flummoxed Mackintosh, but he likened the long-term effects of Sir Hec's boomy oratory to shell-shock. A wife would suffer most. "Anything else?" She sat down dead on a bench and arched her eyebrows at Mac. He sat down next to her, conspiratorially. A breeze wafted diesel smells from a bridge. Nanny had lifted Percy up to the railings and was pointing out barges, dredges and pleasure craft that spangled the river. "I know for certain," Mac began to whisper up-breeze, "he remains on friendly terms with both Hickox and Miss De Lune. They dine at the Connaught and dance." A ridiculous picture of wasp-waisted, swan-necked Claire DeLune and bullish, eager Hector swirling around the dance floor of The Connaught Hotel momentarily gagged Emily, then she said: "It's getting worse. How can he expect support from high places when he's cavorting like a...goose. What about this Mr Hickox. What does he do while they waltz?" Mackintosh hadn't the heart to dispute Emily's genteel idea of dancing. A waltz it certainly was not, the two-step. "He just sits, watches, catches up with acquaintances. Rarely are the three alone. Once...," Mac hesitated, "An associate of Sir Hector's brother joined them. A face I had seen in the papers, I mean the court papers whilst the proceedings were underway [the criminal proceedings] maybe a witness, maybe a co-accused, a name I don’t quite remember...” In fact he did. It was Smith. Mackintosh wriggled uncomfortably, his sentence drowned out by a bridge hooter. He overheard Nanny squeal excitedly: "Look Percy, it’s opening for that boat to pass through!" as a clunky but sleek vessel puttered beneath the pitched span. Emily shuddered. It was a dark boat, like the arctic ones. Jack Carpenter, the less bankable of the two brothers, plucked shady associates as if they were uncultivated, rambling strawberries. As if he could judge their tartness by their sheen, he gathered freely. If he was the power behind the ‘face’... Emily stopped herself from mumbling, "Poor Hector," in that futile tone that run-ragged mothers used. He wasn't her Boy any longer, as he kept reminding. What was kinder for the children - the scandal of divorce or a taint of criminality? Even after a divorce, everyone would still acknowledge them as the 'explorer's' children. Just being fathered by a man who 'almost made it to the pole' handicapped them enough, she supposed. She said: “Maybe it was by chance, this encounter?" For reply he merely cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. "They have had a prior acquaintance then...” A weary dread began to shrivel her investigations. Mac recalled the nameless one passing around slips of paper, one which wound its way to the office. He groped in his pocket. "I have something here that may help you identify Sir Hector's dinner partner," he said, whipping forth a frail leaf torn from a cash-book. One side had an address pencilled on it. Emily took the note and flattened it on her knee. ‘106 Leathwaite Road’ she read and thought, is it London, is it Leeds, Edinburgh, Basle? The corners of her lips turned down with frustration, sorrow, incomprehension. Percy tottered to his Mother, she said, abstracted: "Hello dear." Nanny called, "I'm blowing my nose, Madam," and fussed with her supply of sundry white cloths. Not a handkerchief among them. Then suddenly the child lunged at the railings and had it not been for an athletic amanuensis he might have cleared them like a rebel chimpanzee. Mac passed him back to his 'very, very sorry Sir’ Nurse. Flicked by the breeze from Percy's curious fingers, a paper snowflake curtsied over and over then corkscrewed towards the tons of water surging below scattered, indistinct groups of pedestrians. But one, bemusedly, noted its descent and probable dissolution. Emily imagined her 'clue' disintegrating like sugar somewhere astern the snaking black boat. Chapter2 He would have to keep it between Jack and himself. Surely this 'small matter of business' involved nothing more than the 'laying out' of some borrowed capital and Hectors 'roping-in' of a titled guarantor. Smith had been alarmingly non-specific. Definitely not what one expected of an accomplished angler, they chose their baits to tempt specific fish. If any forthcoming propositions included a goodwill jaunt to say St Moritz, Carpenter would consider it a prudent marriage of agendas. He could take Clara - flush her from the footlit world, a world of shadow and glare, to the matt-pink drawing-room world, consistently ill-lit and monochrome. Was one milieu any less stagy than the other? She could strut with equal aplomb across flooded decks of marble or linoleum. Least he could be grateful to Jack for introducing them if not for almost stalling his run on respectability and financial ease. If not for almost diverting his name from history towards oblivion. If not... The spectral courtroom haunted Hector's consideration. His brother Jack dwarfed by the mint-condition mahogany of the dock and their mother, a night-clad apparition, bemoaning this one benighted son, at the very moment her feted one came bowling into the invalids closet to present his Antarctic book bound in packing-case and etched with the grit from their hut. He then became her hope. The son who noisily faltered, who lacked talent, the ostentatiously ambitious, least intellectually-smooth son, the sailor brawny and bold who blustered his way out of trouble. Jack would sink deep into the slough but Hector forge tackle and escape. Now Jack had arisen again, had he? * * * Blandford Forum evolved to suit its name. Blocks of unremarkable rubble in the centre of a miserable green patchwork where Jack Carpenter had retired after his gaol term to roost like an anonymous hen in a shop as roomy and convenient as a coop. It sold curios such as the ponderous Jacobean broth-scalder that a nervous couple had moments before sheepishly exposed to his scrutiny. Jack could plainly read desperation in their faces. Their spoons were their hoard. But when Hector walked in, he began to neatly wind the dull cutlery back in its flannel shroud for old spoons were as good as dead. "Come back tomorrow," he told them smartly. "I will have checked my catalogues by then. These spoons, you must appreciate, bear no crests. But you never know..." The couple seemed meekly satisfied and edged their way past the gentleman with elbows tight like folded wings so as not to disturb the many pretty objects jostling for shelf space. Hector sheltered under his hat as if their eyes were spitting rain. As soon as the pair had dropped onto the street, however, he took of his hat and his eyes were wide. Jack spoke: "For the first time in my life, I can honestly say I am dumbfounded. You should have let me know you were coming." Hector had vowed never to see his disgraced brother again. "Well you would more likely write dumbfounded than put it in speech," rejoined Hector. They warily sized up each other. Must feed them enough in prison, Hector thought. Then what could be surmised about one, fit the other. An applied quiescence in the juvenile enthusiasms that so attracted people, a self-control so recently perfected, grief. But Jack also saw a humbled man, the epitome of foreboding. Jack suggested they adjourn to a mossy courtyard at the rear of the shop, for a smoke. Hector agreed and there against limey, cobbled bricks softened by cool sun, their spherical arguments rebounded. Sharp metal splinters from old farm contraptions clawed at their clothes and crinolines stacked like fish traps. Jack bulged on the three-legged stool which he had positioned to catch the sun-stream. "That fellow, Smith...” Hector shifted his burden of misapprehension from shoulder to the open palm of his hand. Only because he strongly believed in his brothers masterminding the 'Smith show’ did he describe the circumstances of the three encounters with Smith, blithely. Then he looked quizzical, relieved to have told it to someone whom he felt instinctively understood. "Which Smith?" Jack asked, tautly. "How many do you know?" "As Rawlings, I know several in this town, as Carpenter, I know only two." What degree of faith could be placed in his brother's testimony? He had fiendishly tricked some money from a decent elderly lady. She had trusted him, cocooned him in a lace chrysalis, then brimming with lavish expectations of what butterfly he would become, discovered a brown and hairy spider gnawing at her silk ribbons, devouring them utterly. Dishonour. Incarceration. Hector's epic soul recoiled from such meannesses. "Everyday," he began, "a man comes across Smiths of many kinds - blacksmiths, wordsmiths, gunsmiths but the Smith that confronted me the other evening, was none of these." "Why do you presume this business has my stamp on it," Jack barked, irked by Hector's cryptic, wounded-doe appeals for information. "I've never so much as scraped plates for any underworld chieftains. And whatsmore Smith is no longer known to me, so if you wish me to advise you on a plan of action, I can only do so as an impartial observer."
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