Postern of Fate

‘I suppose we could have had it patched up,’ said Tuppence.

‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘we’d have had to practically replace the damaged building, or else we had to move. This is going to be a very nice house some day. I’m quite sure of that. Anyway, there’s going to be room in it for all the things we want to do.’

‘When you say the things we want to do,’ Tuppence had said, ‘you mean the things we want to find places for and to keep.’

‘I know,’ said Tommy. ‘One keeps far too much. I couldn’t agree with you more.’

At that moment Tuppence considered something—whether they ever were going to do anything with this house, that is to say, beyond getting into it. It sounded simple but had turned out complex. Partly, of course, all these books.

‘If I’d been a nice ordinary child of nowadays,’ said Tuppence, ‘I wouldn’t have learned to read so easily when I was young. Children nowadays who are four, or five, or six, don’t seem to be able to read when they get to ten or eleven. I can’t think why it was so easy for all of us. We could all read. Me and Martin next door and Jennifer down the road and Cyril and Winifred. All of us. I don’t mean we could all spell very well but we could read anything we wanted to. I don’t know how we learnt. Asking people, I suppose. Things about posters and Carter’s Little Liver Pills. We used to read all about them in the fields when trains got near London. It was very exciting. I always wondered what they were. Oh dear, I must think of what I’m doing.’

She removed some more books. Three-quarters of an hour passed with her absorbed first in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, then with Charlotte Yonge’s Unknown to History. Her hands lingered over the fat shabbiness of The Daisy Chain.

‘Oh, I must read that again,’ said Tuppence. ‘To think of the years and years and years it is since I did read it. Oh dear, how exciting it was, wondering, you know, whether Norman was going to be allowed to be confirmed or not. And Ethel and—what was the name of the place? Coxwell or something like—and Flora who was worldly. I wonder why everyone was “worldly” in those days, and how poorly it was thought of, being worldly. I wonder what we are now. Do you think we’re all worldly or not?’

‘I beg yer pardon, ma’am?’

‘Oh nothing,’ said Tuppence, looking round at her devoted henchman, Albert, who had just appeared in the doorway.

‘I thought you called for something, madam. And you rang the bell, didn’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Tuppence. ‘I just leant on it getting up on a chair to take a book out.’

‘Is there anything I can take down for you?’

‘Well, I wish you would,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’m falling off those chairs. Some of their legs are very wobbly, some of them rather slippery.’

‘Any book in particular?’

‘Well, I haven’t got on very far with the third shelf up. Two shelves down from the top, you know. I don’t know what books are there.’

Albert mounted on a chair and banging each book in turn to dislodge such dust as it had managed to gather on it, handed things down. Tuppence received them with a good deal of rapture.

‘Oh, fancy! All these. I really have forgotten a lot of these. Oh, here’s The Amulet and here’s The Psammead. Here’s The New Treasure Seekers. Oh, I love all those. No, don’t put them in shelves yet, Albert. I think I’ll have to read them first. Well, I mean, one or two of them first, perhaps. Now, what’s this one? Let me see. The Red Cockade. Oh yes, that was one of the historical ones. That was very exciting. And there’s Under the Red Robe, too. Lots of Stanley Weyman. Lots and lots. Of course I used to read those when I was about ten or eleven. I shouldn’t be surprised if I don’t come across The Prisoner of Zenda.’ She sighed with enormous pleasure at the remembrance. ‘The Prisoner of Zenda. One’s first introduction, really, to the romantic novel. The romance of Princess Flavia. The King of Ruritania. Rudolph Rassendyll, some name like that, whom one dreamt of at night.’

Albert handed down another selection.

‘Oh yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘That’s better, really. That’s earlier again. I must put the early ones all together. Now, let me see. What have we got here? Treasure Island. Well, that’s nice but of course I have read Treasure Island again, and I’ve seen, I think, two films of it. I don’t like seeing it on films, it never seems right. Oh—and here’s Kidnapped. Yes, I always liked that.’

Albert stretched up, overdid his armful, and Catriona fell more or less on Tuppence’s head.

‘Oh, sorry, madam. Very sorry.’

‘It’s quite all right,’ said Tuppence, ‘it doesn’t matter. Catriona. Yes. Any more Stevensons up there?’

Albert handed the books down now more gingerly. Tuppence uttered a cry of excessive delight.

‘The Black Arrow I declare! The Black Arrow! Now that’s one of the first books really I ever got hold of and read. Yes. I don’t suppose you ever did, Albert. I mean, you wouldn’t have been born, would you? Now let me think. Let me think. The Black Arrow. Yes, of course, it was that picture on the wall with eyes—real eyes—looking through the eyes of the picture. It was splendid. So frightening, just that. Oh yes. The Black Arrow. What was it? It was all about—oh yes, the cat, the dog? No. The cat, the rat, and Lovell, the dog, Rule all England under the hog. That’s it. The hog was Richard the Third, of course. Though nowadays they all write books saying he was really wonderful. Not a villain at all. But I don’t believe that. Shakespeare didn’t either. After all, he started his play by making Richard say: “I am determined so to prove a villain.” Ah yes. The Black Arrow.’

‘Some more, madam?’

‘No, thank you, Albert. I think I’m rather too tired to go on now.’

‘That’s all right. By the way, the master rang and said he’d be half an hour late.’

‘Never mind,’ said Tuppence.

She sat down in the chair, took The Black Arrow, opened the pages and engrossed herself.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘how wonderful this is. I’ve really forgotten it quite enough to enjoy reading it all over again. It was so exciting.’

Silence fell. Albert returned to the kitchen. Tuppence leaned back in the chair. Time passed. Curled up in the rather shabby armchair, Mrs Thomas Beresford sought the joys of the past by applying herself to the perusal of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow.

In the kitchen time also passed. Albert applied himself to the various manoeuvres with the stove. A car drove up. Albert went to the side door.

‘Shall I put it in the garage, sir?’

‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘I’ll do that. I expect you’re busy with dinner. Am I very late?’

‘Not really, sir, just about when you said. A little early, in fact.’

‘Oh.’ Tommy disposed of the car and then came into the kitchen, rubbing his hands. ‘Cold out. Where’s Tuppence?’

‘Oh, missus, she’s upstairs with the books.’

‘What, still those miserable books?’

‘Yes. She’s done a good many more today and she’s spent most of the time reading.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Tommy. ‘All right, Albert. What are we having?’

‘Fillets of lemon sole, sir. It won’t take long to do.’

‘All right. Well, make it about quarter of an hour or so anyway. I want to wash first.’

Upstairs, on the top floor Tuppence was still sitting in the somewhat shabby armchair, engrossed in The Black Arrow. Her forehead was slightly wrinkled. She had come across what seemed to her a somewhat curious phenomenon. There seemed to be what she could only call a kind of interference. The particular page she had got to—she gave it a brief glance, 64 or was it 65? She couldn’t see—anyway, apparently somebody had underlined some of the words on the page. Tuppence had spent the last quarter of an hour studying this phenomenon. She didn’t see why the words had been underlined. They were not in sequence, they were not a quotation, therefore, in the book. They seemed to be words that had been singled out and had then been underlined in red ink. She read under her breath: ‘Matcham could not restrain a little cry. Dick started with surprise and dropped the windac from his fingers. They were all afoot, loosing sword and dagger in the sheath. Ellis held up his hand. The white of his eyes shone. Let, large—’ Tuppence shook her head. It didn’t make sense. None of it did.

She went over to the table where she kept her writing things, picked out a few sheets recently sent by a firm of note-paper printers for the Beresfords to make a choice of the paper to be stamped with their new address: The Laurels.

‘Silly name,’ said Tuppence, ‘but if you go changing names all the time, then all your letters go astray.’

She copied things down. Now she realized something she hadn’t realized before.

‘That makes all the difference,’ said Tuppence.

She traced letters on the page.

‘So there you are,’ said Tommy’s voice, suddenly. ‘Dinner’s practically in. How are the books going?’