Clutch of Constables Read online

  Miss Rickerby-Carrick said: ‘Isn’t this going to be fun,’ in a wildish tone that modulated into one of astonishment. Her gaze had shifted to the passenger from the second taxi who, with his back to the group, was settling his fare. He was exceedingly tall and very welldressed at High Establishment level. Indeed his hat, houndstooth checked overcoat and impeccable brogues were in such a grand conservative style that it surprised—it almost shocked—Troy to observe that he seemed to be wearing black gloves like a Dickensian undertaker. Some yards distant, his bell-like voice rang out enormously. ‘Thank you. Good morning to you. Good morning.’

  He lifted his suitcase and turned. His hat tilted a little forward: the brim shadowed his face but could not be seen to do so as the face itself was darker than a shadow: the latest arrival was a coloured man.

  Miss Rickerby-Carrick gave out an ejaculation. Mr Bard after the briefest glance continued talking to Troy. Mr Pollock stared, faintly whistled and then turned aside with a shuttered face. The motorcyclists for some private reason broke into ungentle laughter.

  The newcomer advanced, lifted his hat generally and moved through the group to the wharf’s edge where he stood looking upstream towards the bend in the river: an incongruous but impressive and elegant figure against a broken background of rivercraft, sliding water and buildings advertising themselves in a confusion of signs.

  Troy said quickly: ‘That makes five of us, doesn’t it? Three more to come.’

  ‘One of whom occupies that very affluent-looking car, no doubt,’ said Mr Bard. ‘I tried to peer in as I came past but an open newspaper defeated me.’

  ‘Male or female, did you gather?’

  ‘Oh the former, the former. A large manicured hand. The chauffeur is one of the stony kind. Now what is your guess? We have a choice of two from our passenger list, haven’t we? Which do you think?’ He just indicated the figure down by the river. ‘Dr Natouche? Mr J. de B. Lazenby? Which is which?’

  ‘I plump for J. de B. L. in the car,’ Troy said. ‘It sounds so magnificent.’

  ‘Do you? No: my fancy lies in the contrary field. I put Dr Natouche in the car. A specialist in some esoteric upper reaches of the more impenetrable branches of medicine. An astronomical consulting fee. And I fetch our friend on the wharf from Barbados. He owns a string of hotels and is called Jasper de Brabazon Lazenby. Shall we have a bet on it?’

  ‘Well,’ Troy said, ‘propose your bet.’

  ‘If I win you have a drink with me before luncheon. If you win, I pay for the drinks.’

  ‘Now then!’ Troy exclaimed.

  Mr Bard gave a little inward laugh.

  ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘I think that I might—’ He smiled at Troy and without completing his sentence walked down to the quay.

  ‘Are you,’ Troy could just hear him say, ‘joining us? I’m sure you must be.’

  ‘In the Zodiac?’ the great voice replied. ‘Yes. I am a passenger.’

  ‘Shall we introduce ourselves?’

  The others all strained to hear the exchange of names.

  ‘Natouche.’

  ‘Dr Natouche?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  Mr Bard sketched the very vaguest and least of bows in Troy’s direction.

  ‘I’m Caley Bard,’ he said.

  ‘Ah. I too have seen the passenger list. Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Do,’ said Caley Bard, ‘come and meet the others. We have been getting to know each other.’

  ‘Thank you. If you wish.’

  They turned together. Mr Bard was a tall man but Dr Natouche diminished him. Behind them the river, crinkled by a breeze and dappled with discs of sunlight, played tricks with the two approaching figures. It exaggerated their size, rimmed them in a pulsing nimbus and distorted their movement. As they drew nearer, the pale man and the dark, Troy, bemused by this dazzle, thought: ‘There is no reason in the wide world why I should feel apprehensive. It will be all right unless Mr Pollock is bloody-minded or the Rickerby-Carrick hideously effusive. It must be all right.’ She glanced up the lane and there were the cyclists, stock-still except for their jaws: staring, staring.

  She held out her hand to Dr Natouche who was formal and bowed slightly over it. His head, uncovered, showed grey close-cut fuzz above the temples. His skin was not perfectly black but warmly dark with grape-coloured shadows. The bone structure of his face was exquisite.

  ‘Mrs Alleyn,’ said Dr Natouche.

  Miss Rickerby-Carrick was, as Troy had feared she would be, excessive. She shook Dr Natouche’s hand up and down and laughed madly: ‘Oh—ho—ho,’ she laughed, ‘how perfectly splendid.’

  Mr Pollock kept his hands in his pockets and limped aside thus avoiding an introduction.

  Since there seemed to be nothing else to talk about Troy hurriedly asked Dr Natouche if he had come by the London train. He said he had driven up from Liverpool, added a few generalities, gave her a smile and a slight inclination of his head, returned to the river and walked for some little distance along the wharves.

  ‘Innit marvellous?’ Mr Pollock asked of nobody in particular. ‘They don’t tell you so you can’t complain.’

  ‘They?’ wondered Miss Rickerby-Carrick. ‘Tell you? I don’t understand?’

  ‘When you book in.’ He jerked his head towards Dr Natouche. ‘What to expect.’

  ‘Oh, but you mustn’t!’ she whispered. ‘You mustn’t feel like that. Truly.’

  ‘Meant to be class, this carry-on? Right? That’s what they tell you. Right? First class. Luxury accommodation. Not my idea of it. Not with that type of company. If I’d known one of that lot was included I wouldn’t have come at it. Straight, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘How very odd of you,’ said Mr Bard lightly.

  ‘That’s your opinion,’ Mr Pollock angrily rejoined. He turned towards Troy, hoping perhaps for an ally. ‘I reckon it’s an insult to the ladies,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, go along with you,’ Troy returned as good-naturedly as she could manage, ‘it’s nothing of the sort. Is it, Miss Rickerby-Carrick?’

  ‘Oh no. No. Indeed, no.’

  ‘I know what I’m talking about,’ Mr Pollock loudly asserted. Troy looked nervously at the distant figure on the riverage. ‘I own property. Once that sort settles in a district—look—it’s a slum. Easy as that.’

  ‘Mr Pollock, this man is a doctor,’ Troy said.

  ‘You’re joking? Doctor? Of what?’

  ‘Of medicine,’ Mr Bard said. ‘You should consult your passenger list, my dear fellow. He’s an MD.’

  ‘You can tell people you’re anything,’ Mr Pollock darkly declared. ‘Anything. I could tell them I was a bloody earl. Pardon the French, I’m sure.’ He glared at Troy who was giggling. The shadow of a grin crept into his expression. ‘Not that they’d credit it,’ he added. ‘But still.’

  The young man on the motorcycle sounded a derisive call on his siren. ‘Taa t’—ta ta ta. Ta-Taa.’ He and his girlfriend were looking towards the bend in the river.

  A rivercraft had come into view. She was painted a dazzling white. A scarlet and green houseflag was mounted at her bows and the red ensign at her stern. Sunlight splashed her brass-work, red curtains glowed behind her saloon windows. As she drew towards her moorings her name could be seen, painted in gold letters along her bows.

  M.V. Zodiac.

  The clock in a church tower above the river struck twelve.

  ‘Here she is,’ Mr Bard said. ‘Dead on time.’

  III

  The Zodiac berthed and was made fast very smartly by a lad of about fifteen. Her skipper left the wheelhouse and said goodbye to his passengers who could be heard to thank him, saying they wished the voyage had been longer. They passed through the waiting group. A woman, catching Troy’s eye said: ‘You’re going to love it.’ And a man remarked to his wife: ‘Well, back to earth, worse luck,’ with what seemed almost excessive regret after a five day jaunt.

  When they had all gone the new passengers moved down to the
Zodiac and were greeted by the skipper. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, very neat in his white duck shirt and dark blue trousers and tie. He wore the orthodox peaked cap.

  ‘You’d all like to come aboard,’ he said. ‘Tom!’ The boy began to collect the luggage and pile it on the deck. The skipper offered a hand to the ladies. Miss Rickerby-Carrick made rather heavy-going of this business. ‘Dear me!’ she said, ‘Oh. Oh, thank you,’ and leapt prodigiously.

  She had a trick of clutching with her left hand at her duncoloured jumper: almost, Troy thought, as if she carried her money in a bag round her neck and wanted continuously to assure herself it was still there.

  From amidships and hard-by the wheelhouse the passengers descended, by way of a steep little flight of steps and a half-gate of the loosebox kind, into the saloon. From there a further downward flight ended in a passage through the cabin quarters. Left of this companion-way a hatch from the saloon offered a bird’s-eye view into the cuddy which was at lower-deck level. Down there a blonde woman assembled dishes of cold meats and salads. She wore a starched apron over a black cotton dress. Her hair, pale as straw, was drawn back from a central parting into a lustrous knob. As Troy looked down at it the woman turned and tilted her head. She smiled dazzlingly and said: ‘Good morning. Lunch in half an hour. The bar will be open in a few minutes.’ The bar, Troy saw, was on the port side of the saloon, near the entry.

  The boy came down with Troy’s suitcase and paintbox. He said: ‘This way, please,’ and she followed him to the lower deck and to her cabin.

  No. 7 was the third on the starboard side, and was exactly twice the size of its bunk. It had a cupboard, a washbasin and a porthole near the ceiling. The counterpane and curtains were cherry-red and in a glass on the bedside shelf there was a red geranium mixed with a handful of fern and hedgerow flowers. This pleased Troy greatly. The boy put her suitcase on the bunk and her paintbox under it. For some reason she felt diffident about tipping him. She hesitated but he didn’t. He gave her a smile that was the very print of the woman’s and was gone. ‘He’s her son,’ thought Troy, ‘and perhaps they’re a family. Perhaps the Skipper’s his father.’

  She unpacked her suitcase and stowed it under her bunk, washed her hands and was about to return to the saloon when, hearing voices outside, she knelt on her bunk and looked through the porthole. It was at dockside level and there, quite close at hand, were the shiny leggings and polished boots of the smart chauffeur, his brown breeches and his gloved hands each holding a suitcase. They moved out of sight, towards the boarding plank, no doubt, and were followed by shoes and clerical grey trousers. These legs paused and formed a truncated triangular frame through which Troy saw, as if in an artfully directed film, the distant black-leathered cyclists, still glinting, chewing and staring in the cobbled lane. She had the oddest notion that they stared at her, though that, as she told herself, was ridiculous. They had just been joined by the boy from the Zodiac when all of them were blotted out by a taxi that shot into her field of vision and halted. The framing legs moved away. The door of the taxi began to open but Troy’s attention was abstracted by a loud rap on her cabin door. She sat down hurriedly on her bunk and said: ‘Come in.’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s active face appeared round the door.

  ‘I say,’ she said. ‘Bliss! A shower and two loos! Aren’t we lucky!’ Before Troy could reply she had withdrawn. There were sounds within the craft of new arrivals.

  ‘Thank you very much…Er—here—’ the voice was lowered to an indistinguishable murmur. A second voice said: ‘Thank you, sir.’ A door was shut. Boots tramped up the companion-way and across the deck overhead. ‘The chauffeur,’ Troy thought, ‘and Mr. J. de B. Lazenby.’ She waited for a moment listening to the movements of the other passengers. There was a further confusion of arrival and a bump of luggage. A woman’s voice said: ‘That’s correct, stooard, we do have quite a bit of photographic equipment. I guess I’ll use Number 3 as a regular stateroom and Number 6 can accommodate my brother and the overflow. OK? OK, Earl?’

  ‘Sure. Sure.’

  The cabin forward of Troy’s was No. 6. She heard sounds of the bestowal of property and a number of warnings as to its fragility, all given with evident good humour. The man’s voice said repeatedly: ‘Sure. Sure. Fine. Fine.’ There was an unsuccessful attempt to tip the boy. ‘Thanks all the same,’ Troy heard him say. He departed. There followed a silence and an ejaculation from the lady. ‘Do you look like I feel?’ and the man’s answer: ‘Forget it. We couldn’t know.’

  Troy consulted her passenger list. Mr Earl J. and Miss Sally-Lou Hewson had arrived. She stowed away her baggage and then went up to the saloon.

  They were all there except the three latest arrivals. Dr Natouche sat by himself reading a newspaper with a glass of beer to hand. Miss Rickerby-Carrick, in conversation with Mr Pollock, occupied a seat that ran round the forward end of the saloon under the windows. Mr Caley Bard who evidently had been waiting for Troy, at once reminded her that she was to have a drink with him. ‘Mrs Tretheway,’ he said, ‘mixes a superb Martini.’

  She was behind the little bar, displayed in the classic manner within a frame of bottles and glasses many of which were splintered by sunlight. She herself had a kind of local iridescence: she looked superb. Mr Pollock kept glancing at her with a half-smile on his lips and then turning away again. Miss Rickerby-Carrick gazed at her with a kind of anguished wonder. Mr Bard expressed his appreciation in what Troy was to learn was a very characteristic manner.

  ‘The Bar at the Folies Bergère may as well shut up shop,’ he said to Troy. ‘Manet would have changed his drinking habits. You, by the way, could show him where he gets off.’ And he gave Troy a little bow and a very knowing smile. ‘You ought to have a go,’ he suggested. ‘Don’t,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Please.’ He laughed and leant across the bar to pay for their drinks. Mrs Tretheway gave Troy a woman-to-woman look that included her fabulous smile.

  Even Dr Natouche lowered his paper and contemplated Mrs Tretheway with gravity for several seconds.

  At the back of the bar hung a framed legend, rather shakily typed.

  THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC

  The Hunt of the Heavenly Host begins With the Ram, the Bull and the Heavenly Twins. The Crab is followed by the Lion The Virgin and the Scales, The Scorpion, Archer and He-Goat, The Man that carries the Watering-pot And the Fish with the Glittering Tails.

  ‘Isn’t that charming?’ Mr Bard asked Troy. ‘Don’t you think so?’

  ‘The magic of the proper name,’ Troy agreed. ‘Especially those names. It always does the trick, doesn’t it?’

  Mrs Tretheway said, ‘A chap that cruised with us gave it to me. He said it was out of some kid’s book.’

  ‘It’s got the right kind of dream-sound for that,’ Troy said. She thought she would like to make a picture of the Signs and put the rhyme in the middle. Perhaps before the cruise was over—

  ‘To make it rhyme,’ Mrs Tretheway pointed out, ‘you have to say “pote”. “The Man that carries the Watering-pote”.’

  She pushed their drinks across the bar. The back of her hand brushed Mr Bard’s fingers.

  ‘You’ll join us, I hope,’ he said.

  ‘Another time, thanks all the same. I’ve got to look after your lunch. It’s cold—what do they call it—smorgasbord, for today. If everybody would help themselves when they’re ready.’

  She went over to the hatch into the cuddy. Tom, the boy, had gone below and handed up the dishes to his mother who set them out on the tables that had been pushed together and covered with a white cloth.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Mrs Tretheway repeated. ‘Please help yourselves,’ and returned to the bar where she jangled a handbell.

  Without consulting Troy, Mr Bard ordered two more dry Martinis. This was not Troy’s favourite drink and in any case the first had been extremely strong.

  ‘No, really, thank you,’ she said. ‘Not for me. I’m for my lunch.’

  ‘Well,’ he s
aid. ‘P’rhaps you’re right. We’ll postpone until dinner time. Let moderation be our cry.’

  It now occurred to Troy that Mr Bard was making a dead set at her. Gratifying though this might or might not be, it did not fit in with her plan for a five days’ anonymous dawdle along the British Inland Waterways. Mr Bard, it was evident, had twigged Troy. He had this morning visited her one-man show for the opening of which, last evening, she had come up from London. He had been cunning enough to realize that she wanted to remain unrecognized. Evidently he was disposed to torment her about this and to set up a kind of alliance on the strength of it. Mr Bard was a tease.

  There was a place beside Dr Natouche at the end of a circular seat that ran under the forward windows of the saloon. Troy helped herself to cold meat and salad and sat beside him. He half-rose and made her a little bow. ‘I hope you are pleased with the accommodation,’ he said. ‘I find it perfectly satisfactory.’

  There was an extraordinary quality in Dr Natouche, Troy suddenly decided. It was a quality that made one intensely aware of him, as if with the awareness induced by some drug: aware of his thin, charcoal wrist emerging from a white silk cuff, of the movements of his body under his clothes, of his quiet breathing, of his smell which was of wood: cedarwood or even sandalwood.

  He had neatly folded his newspaper and laid it beside his plate. Troy, glancing at it, saw herself having her hand shaken by the Personage who had opened her show. Was it possible that Dr Natouche had not recognized this photograph? ‘I really don’t know,’ she thought, ‘why I fuss about it. If I were a film star it would be something to take-on about but who cares for painters? The truth of the matter is,’ Troy thought, ‘I never know what to say when people who don’t paint talk to me about my painting. I get creaky with shyness and hear myself mumbling and am idiotic.’

  Dr Natouche, however, did not talk about painting. He talked about the weather and the days to come and he sounded a little like one of The Pleasure Craft and Riverage Company’s pamphlets. ‘There will be a great deal of historic interest,’ he said, calmly.