Hand in Glove

‘The gentlemen,’ Alfred said, ‘are expecting you both, sir.’

Pixie shot out of the house in a paroxysm of barking.

‘Quiet,’ said Alfred, menacing her.

She whined, crouched and then precipitated herself upon Nicola. She stood on her hind legs, slavering and grimacing and scraped at Nicola with her forepaws.

‘Here, you!’ said the young man indignantly. ‘Paws off!’

He cuffed Pixie away and she made loud ambiguous noises.

‘I’m sure I’m very sorry, miss,’ said Alfred. ‘It’s said to be only its fun. This way, if you please, miss.’

Nicola found herself in a modest but elegantly proportioned hall. It looked like an advertisement from a glossy magazine. ‘Small Georgian residence of character’ and, apart from being Georgian, had no other character to speak of.

Alfred opened a door on the right. ‘In the library, if you please, miss,’ he said. ‘Mr Period will be down immediately.’

Nicola walked in. The young man followed and put her typewriter on a table by a window.

‘I can’t help wondering,’ he said, ‘what you’re going to do for P.P. After all, he’d never type his letters of condolence, would he?’

‘What can you mean?’

‘You’ll see. Well, I suppose I’d better launch myself on my ill-fated mission. You might wish me luck.’

Something in his voice caught her attention. She looked up at him. His mouth was screwed dubiously sideways. ‘It never does,’ he said, ‘to set one’s heart on something, does it? Furiously, I mean.’

‘Good heavens, what a thing to say! Of course, one must. Continuously. Expectation,’ said Nicola grandly, ‘is the springboard of achievement.’

‘Rather a phoney slogan, I’m afraid.’

‘I thought it neat.’

‘I should like to confide in you. What a pity we won’t meet over your nice curry. I’m lunching with my mamma who lives in the offing with her third husband.’

‘How do you know it’s going to be curry?’

‘It often is.’

‘Well,’ Nicola said, ‘I wish you luck.’

‘Thank you very much.’ He smiled at her. ‘Good typing!’

‘Good hunting! If you are hunting.’

He laid his finger against his nose, pulled a mysterious grimace and left her.

Nicola opened up her typewriter and a box of quarto paper and surveyed the library.

It looked out on the drive and the rose garden and it was like the hall in that it had distinction without personality. Over the fireplace hung a dismal little water-colour. Elsewhere on the walls were sporting prints, a painting of a bewhiskered ensign in the Brigade of Guards, pointing his sword at some lightning, and a faded photograph of several Edwardian minor royalties grouped in baleful conviviality about a picnic luncheon. In the darkest corner was a framed genealogical tree, sprouting labels, arms and mantling. There were bookcases with uniform editions, novels, and a copy of Handley Cross. Standing apart from the others, a corps d’élite, were Debrett, Burke, Kelly’s and Who’s Who. The desk itself was rich with photographs, framed in silver. Each bore witness to the conservative technique of the studio and the well-bred restraint of the sitter.

Through the side window, Nicola looked across Mr Period’s rose garden, to a quickset hedge and an iron gate leading into a lane. Beyond this gate was a trench with planks laid across it, a heap of earth and her old friend the truck, from which, with the aid of the crane, the workmen were unloading drain-pipes.

Distantly and overhead, she heard male voices. Her acquaintance of the train (what had the driver called him?) and his step-father, Nicola supposed.

She was thinking of him with amusement when the door opened and Mr Pyke Period came in.

III

He was a tall, elderly man with a marked stoop, silver hair, large brown eyes and a small mouth. He was beautifully dressed with exactly the correct suggestion of well-worn scrupulously tended tweed.

He advanced upon Nicola with curved arm held rather high and bent at the wrist. The Foreign Office, or at the very least, Commonwealth Relations, was invoked.

‘This is really kind of you,’ said Mr Pyke Period, ‘and awfully lucky for me.’

They shook hands.

‘Now, do tell me,’ Mr Period continued, ‘because I’m the most inquisitive old party and I’m dying to know – you are Basil’s daughter, aren’t you?’

Nicola, astounded, said that she was.

‘Basil Maitland-Mayne?’ he gently insisted.

‘Yes, but I don’t make much of a to-do about the “Maitland”,’ said Nicola.

‘Now, that’s naughty of you. A splendid old family. These things matter.’

‘It’s such a mouthful.’

‘Never mind! So you’re dear old Basil’s gel! I was sure of it. Such fun for me because, do you know, your grandfather was one of my very dear friends. A bit my senior, but he was one of those soldiers of the old school who never let you feel the gap in ages.’

Nicola, who remembered her grandfather as an arrogant, declamatory old egoist, managed to make a suitable rejoinder. Mr Period looked at her with his head on one side.

‘Now,’ he said gaily, ‘I’m going to confess. Shall we sit down? Do you know, when I called on those perfectly splendid people to ask about typewriting and they gave me some names from their books, I positively leapt at yours. And do you know why?’

Nicola had her suspicions and they made her feel uncomfortable. But there was something about Mr Period – what was it? – something vulnerable and foolish, that aroused her compassion. She knew she was meant to smile and shake her head and she did both.

Mr Period said, sitting youthfully on the arm of a leather chair: ‘It was because I felt that we would be working together on – dear me, too difficult! – on a common ground. Talking the same language.’ He waited for a moment and then said cosily: ‘And you now know all about me. I’m the most dreadful old anachronism – a Period Piece, in fact.’

As Nicola responded to this joke she couldn’t help wondering how often Mr Period had made it.

He laughed delightedly with her. ‘So, speaking as one snob to another,’ he ended, ‘I couldn’t be more enchanted that you are you. Well, never mind! One’s meant not to say such things in these egalitarian days.’

He had a conspiratorial way of biting his under-lip and lifting his shoulders: it was indescribably arch. ‘But we mustn’t be naughty,’ said Mr Pyke Period.

Nicola said: ‘They didn’t really explain at the agency exactly what my job is to be.’

‘Ah! Because they didn’t exactly know. I was coming to that.’