Death of a Unicorn

‘Do you think so? I mean it’s often all started with wrong people, hasn’t it? The original Millett was a master dyer, but he really made his pile out of loot when the monasteries were dissolved. And even now, well, look at the Lanners. So respectable you could stuff sofas with them. But old Greg Lanner was just a South African bandit who was lucky not to get himself hanged several times before he found that gold-mine. I bet you half the people you write about in the Round really owe their money to ancestors who weren’t much better than him.’

‘I do not think it is fair to hold that against the present Lord and Lady Lanner.’

‘But it’s still where the money came from, isn’t it? I suppose you could say the system’s a bit like a glorified sewage farm. You put in dirty money one end and as it washes through the generations—you know, like filter-beds, with those arm things going round and round—it gradually gets cleaner and cleaner until it’s fit to set before the king.’

I thought this was a lovely image—it had come to me on the spur of the moment. Pity I’d finished Uncle Tosh. It would have been just right for him. Mrs Clarke sighed.

‘My late husband was very clever about money,’ she said. ‘He had a lot of excellent friends in the City. Naturally, I have been asking them what they know about the gentleman of whom we are speaking.’

‘I thought it was sugar. Something to do with by-products. And before that there was a plantation in Barbados. I thought.’

‘I know Barbados quite well. I go to the West Indies most winters. They like to read my accounts of their doings. But I can tell you that although there was some money to be made from plantations during the war, since then it has been very difficult. And in any case it was only the well-managed estates . . . There is some very strange blood, besides . . .’

She was obviously finding it difficult. So was I. Luckily at that moment the boy arrived from the printers with several pages of achingly tiny type about next week’s cinemas and theatres for me to check and correct.

B had said nothing to me about Mummy after the party and I hadn’t asked. We’d talked about other things, but I’d known from small signs that he felt I’d gone beyond the terms of our contract. Mummy had left without saying goodbye. I’d have liked to try and make contact with Jane, but she was going down to Cheadle for the weekend, while B and I were off to a bridge congress in Hastings.

This turned out totally dire. It sheeted with rain. B was playing with an unfamiliar partner and they kept having misunderstandings which he couldn’t grumble to me about because I wouldn’t have understood a word. There were no reviews of Uncle Tosh in any of the Sunday papers. We got back to London, both in a vile mood, at three o’clock on Monday morning. B got up at six to do his exercises, so out of sheer obstinacy I went up to my flat to write. I’d started straight off on another book as soon as I’d finished Uncle Tosh, not because I had a passion to write it but simply out of the habit of doing that sort of thing then. It had begun as a kind of cod romance, set in Edwardian times, strongly influenced by Cold Comfort Farm but peopled with marchionesses and sinister millionaires; then, mysteriously, I’d found myself actually believing more and more in my own grotesques and I was beginning to think that I would have to take the leg-pulling element out and turn it into a proper novel.

There was a folded scrap of paper on my doormat. Jane’s writing. A page from a pocket diary.

‘Where are you? Must talk. Can’t ring from Ch. St. Will come to N & D 10.30 Monday.’

Blearily I settled down at my typewriter, but I’d done less than a couple of pages when the telephone rang. It was B.

‘You’re early,’ I said.

‘Can you come down? Now.’

‘All right.’

He was in his dressing-gown reading a company report. A large cup of very pale coffee steamed beside his armchair—he was waiting for it to get completely tepid and then he would drink it. On the low table beside him were several neat piles of letters and other papers. The ripped envelopes lay on the floor. He picked up one of the letters and glanced through it. Mummy’s handwriting was large and jagged. You could recognise it from yards away.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘It really isn’t fair on you.’

He did his toad smile.

‘Believe it or not she’s trying to blackmail me.’

‘But it hasn’t got anything to do with you. It’s entirely my look-out.’

‘For money.’

‘Oh. How much am I worth to her?’

‘No exact figures. She appears to think that as I have taken something out of the Cheadle estate I ought to put something back, in the shape of a new roof to the Banqueting Hall.’

‘She’s disgusting.’

‘There is a hint of other elements in the transaction.’

‘I’ve a good mind to go straight down to Cheadle and beat her up.’

She appears to be still in Charles Street.’

‘Terrific. I can . . .’

‘No.’

‘You aren’t going to take her seriously!’