Mr cadmus, p.5
Mr Cadmus, page 5
‘It is too horrible to contemplate. Imagine the beast of Barnstaple having been in Little Camborne.’
‘It is most unlikely to be the same man, Maud.’
‘Whyever not?’ Miss Finch almost sounded aggrieved.
‘It is not the same kind of crime. Rape and robbery do not mix.’
‘But he might be capable of anything.’
‘It will not be the same man. Trust me.’
Miss Finch was a little relieved, but still restless. ‘I wonder if Theodore is back yet. I saw him talking to that policeman.’
‘Who?’
‘Theodore. Mr Cadmus.’
‘I wonder at your using his Christian name so soon, Maud.’
‘But he is a friend now, Millicent. Did you not choose that Swedish hat for the raffle?’
‘You will be calling him Theo next.’
‘Oh, that would be going too far. And I cannot trust myself to set foot in his house while that – that thing – is there.’ She was referring to Isolde.
‘He lets it out of its cage, you know. I can hear it flapping about.’
‘Don’t.’
Mr Cadmus himself could now be seen approaching the Coppice, and Maud went to the door. ‘Theodore, we were just talking about you.’
‘Sweet things, I hope?’
She led him into the front room where Miss Swallow was waiting impatiently for his arrival. ‘Have you heard any more?’
‘The police have already begun to search the neighbourhood. They fear that he might have concealed a motor-bike.’
‘Then he will get away.’ Miss Finch was very sure.
‘Oh dear,’ said Millicent Swallow.
‘Your countryside is very big,’ he said. ‘Enormous.’
‘I have always hated motor-bikes.’ Millicent was now alarmed again. ‘Horrible big things. Somehow I always think of them as hairy.’
‘The men are hairy, dear. Not the bikes.’
‘I have tried to explain to you, Maud, that this man is highly unlikely to be the rapist.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
‘I agree with the gracious Miss Swallow. A rapist is not likely to turn into a robber. That would be too much of a pantomime.’ The two ladies stared at him. ‘Yes. I know about your English theatre. It is very diverting. Heroes and villains and such like.’
‘The difference is, Mr Cadmus …’ Maud Finch had reverted to a more formal address. ‘The difference is that in pantomime we know who the villains and the heroes are. We have no such luck in Little Camborne.’
‘But you have luck in other things, dear lady. Such luck with the pretty fields and streams.’ Mr Cadmus clapped his hands together, as if to terminate the interval. ‘I know. We will go for a walk to banish bad thoughts. It will be the thing to do.’
So, on this chilly December morning, they wrapped up well. One route across the fields was familiar to the two ladies. Just behind their road was a hill that led directly to a wood of tall pines, and so they walked among trees and clumps of bush to the summit. ‘At times like this,’ Maud Finch said, ‘I wish I had a dog. Just a little one.’ As the track came to the edge of the wood, it turned left towards a stile that led into a neighbouring field. The two ladies were quite used to surmounting it, but Mr Cadmus insisted that he ‘lend a hand’; this was a cause of momentary embarrassment, as he grasped each of them firmly and eased them across with a ‘Hola!’
They were still on the eminence of the hill, and from here they could see one of the tributaries of the Taw moving quickly between the meadows. ‘This is what I am here for,’ he declared. ‘An enchantment.’
‘But surely your island was charming,’ Millicent Swallow asked him. ‘I don’t recall its name, but—’
‘The name is not important. It has its charms, yes, but it was cruel. Hard rock. Beating sun and no shade between the dust and the bright blue sea. Only olive trees and goats.’
‘But that sounds delightful. Quite like Monte Cristo.’
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Swallow?’
‘It’s nothing. Out of an adventure.’
‘It is about a man,’ Miss Finch told him, ‘who wants to get revenge on all of his enemies.’
‘Is that so? He would be very ingenious, then?’
‘I can’t really remember the story now.’
‘Neither can I,’ Miss Swallow added. ‘But it made such an impression on me at the time.’
‘On my little island, we had many adventures. Smugglers. Pirates. And so forth. It was hard rock only suitable for hard people.’
‘But you are not hard, Theodore.’ Miss Swallow was almost affectionate.
‘No? Perhaps I am the exception.’ They had come into another field, slowly making their way down the slope, when he stopped. ‘Hello. What is this?’ It was a thermos flask together with a torn t-shirt and an empty tobacco tin. ‘Perhaps our robber did not have a motor-bike, after all.’
Miss Finch and Miss Swallow looked at each other in alarm. ‘You don’t mean to say,’ Maud Finch asked, ‘that he has been here?’
‘Someone has, dear lady.’
‘Surely it must be a tramp?’ Millicent Swallow was becoming agitated.
‘Yes. This is a possibility. Let us walk on.’
‘Do you really think that is wise?’ Maud Finch was also becoming nervous.
‘What we must do,’ Miss Swallow said, ‘is to go back quickly to the Coppice and telephone the police.’
‘I agree with Millicent. Remember, Mr Cadmus, that he may still have his gun.’
‘You must speak to them. I am a mere foreigner, after all.’
‘But I saw you speaking to that policeman.’
‘A moment of madness. He never asked me for my name.’
They walked back quickly. Miss Swallow seemed to be alarmed by every rustle in the undergrowth around them, and sometimes looked back to make sure that they were not being followed. ‘Look. Over there,’ she said suddenly. ‘There’s someone running through the field. The other side of the stream.’ They stopped and peered in that direction, but they saw nothing. ‘There was someone,’ she said. But there was nothing in sight, only the motion of the wind that gusted through the hollow coppices in a strange simulacrum of the human voice.
From her cottage Miss Finch called the police station, and went over the incidents of the eventful day one more time with the added excitement of the tobacco tin and the torn t-shirt.
Chapter 6
Dum Di Dum Di Dum
The three of them had agreed to share a Christmas lunch. Mr Cadmus had joined them for the service at St Leonard’s, where among the parishioners assembled in the pews there was general satisfaction at the arrest of a young man on suspicion of the robbery at the post office. He came from the neighbouring village of Lower Tawbridge, once more arousing an ancient discord between the two communities. In the remote past they had two distinct meeting places, that of the Camborneans at the Scole Stone and that of the Tawbridgites at Crab Oak. The opponents now played an annual football match on a field located on the boundary between them.
‘What’s a young lad doing with a gun in the first place?’ Jack Abbot was asking no one in particular.
Mr and Mrs Watson, now recovered of their former good humour, were still at the centre of attention, and it was expected that Tony would say a few words about their ordeal when he addressed the congregation.
Tony was in fact at that moment confiding in Miss Finch. ‘I have found a really admirable stained glass woman in Bideford. What would you say to “Christ in Majesty”?’
‘Isn’t that a little high?’
‘Not at all. Very English.’
Miss Finch herself was the object of general village approval. Her telephone call to the police, after the discovery in the field, had assisted in the arrest of the young man from Lower Tawbridge.
After the service was over they ‘slipped back’, as Miss Swallow put it, to the Coppice for Christmas lunch. It had been agreed that the two ladies would prepare the food, while Mr Cadmus would provide the drink. Miss Finch had made the pumpkin soup and the Christmas pudding, while Miss Swallow had cooked the turkey and the rest of the traditional lunch. By common consent they had agreed to use Miss Swallow’s cottage as their dining room; it was less forbidding than that of Miss Finch, and did not contain the cantankerous Isolde.
All went well. Mr Cadmus had chosen two bottles of delicious Sauvignon for the soup and, for the turkey, several bottles of Merlot had been purchased at Oddbins in Barnstaple. The ladies were not accustomed to drinking at lunchtime but he insisted on filling and refilling their glasses at every opportunity; they did not resist, however, on the shared understanding that this was a very special occasion.
‘When I was at the ladies’ academy in Caxton,’ Miss Finch said, ‘some of the girls stayed with us over Christmas. Ex-pats and so forth.’
‘You were a teacher?’ Mr Cadmus asked her.
‘Of mathematics. And sometimes of astronomy. The school had its own telescope.’
‘I knew it! I knew you were a woman of learning!’
‘You must tell Mr Cadmus how I placed you there,’ Millicent said. ‘It was touch and go.’
These were the memories Maud hated. Millicent herself had a tendency to exaggerate and over-dramatise the incidents of her life, to the extent that she entangled herself with preposterous stories.
‘No doubt it was.’ Miss Finch did not care to prolong the conversation. ‘It was so long ago now. I was at Caxton for fifteen years.’ She sighed. ‘They will all have forgotten me by now.’
‘Nonsense, Maud. You were the star teacher.’
Those had been the days when Maud sought refuge with the help of Millicent, in the hope of forgetting her recent past. With the memory of the dead baby, she still could not cross the Thames.
‘But your knowledge will have sown a million seeds, dear Miss Finch.’
‘I don’t think algebraic fractions feed many minds, Mr Cadmus.’
‘No. Your passion for learning. Your delicacy of feeling. If only I could have heard your lessons on the Milky Way!’
Miss Finch was touched, and allowed her glass to be filled once more. ‘I suppose I unveiled some mysteries.’
‘Ah, sweet mystery of life.’ Miss Swallow was already in reminiscent mood. ‘Nelson Eddy sang it.’
‘And you, Miss Swallow, you also have seen something of life.’
‘I cannot deny it, Theodore. I have had my fair share of feeling.’
‘A toast,’ he said, ‘let us have a toast to feeling.’
They raised their glasses. ‘It is better,’ Miss Swallow said, ‘to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’
‘You have said a beautiful thing, Miss Swallow. It brings tears.’ Indeed, at that moment she brushed her eyes with her handkerchief.
‘I think,’ Miss Finch said, ‘it is from Tennyson. Or someone similar.’
‘May I say what I believe? I believe that both of you ladies came to Little Camborne with wounded hearts. Am I correct?’
Miss Swallow blushed and reached once more for her handkerchief, but Miss Finch, having no particular desire to reminisce, resisted his blandishments.
‘I came here, Mr Cadmus, because the properties in Little Camborne were left to me by my aunt.’ But then she picked up her glass, and relented. ‘Old ladies are supposed to have their secrets.’
‘Old? Never old. You have a youthful mind. You are like the Christmas holly. Evergreen. And you, Miss Swallow – Millicent – I see in your eyes that you are a young woman still.’
‘That’s not what I see. Every time I look into a mirror I wonder how I grew so old so quickly.’
‘Do not say that, Miss Swallow.’
‘But I must say that. When I think of all the time I’ve wasted, doing nothing really, I could weep.’ Maud Finch noted that her friend had drank freely and was more animated than usual. ‘I have never really done anything at all.’
‘You do not do, dear lady. You are.’
‘I am afraid that is a little too deep for me. What am I?’
‘You are a magnificent creation!’
‘Oh dear.’
Maud Finch gazed at him, wide-eyed. This was perhaps going a little too far, even for Christmas Day.
‘Both of you are the most splendid ladies I have ever known.’ He held out his arms. ‘You are enchantment.’ As he spread out his hands he knocked over the glass of Merlot from which he had been drinking, and some of the wine spilled from the table onto the beige carpet beneath.
‘Salt!’ Maud Finch cried out. ‘Put salt on it!’
Millicent Swallow rushed into the kitchen and came back with a packet of Saxo that she sprinkled liberally over the wine stains. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that this excitement calls for another drink.’
They were all now in a thoroughly good mood. ‘You must have had admirers, Maud.’ Mr Cadmus raised his glass to her.
‘I dare say I did, you naughty man. But you must not press me too far.’
‘You still get a Christmas card from that old flame,’ Miss Swallow said. ‘I can’t remember his name.’
‘Do you mean Frank?’
‘The teacher.’
‘The headmaster, Millicent. He was a very distinguished man.’
‘So what became of him?’ Mr Cadmus was very sharp.
‘The drink,’ she said. ‘He was a victim to gin.’
‘I have seen your Gin Lane by the renowned Hogarth.’
‘Nothing so sordid. Just a gentle decline.’
‘You told me that he used to wet himself.’
‘Millicent!’ She put her fingers up to her ears. ‘Spare Mr Cadmus the details.’
He laughed. ‘Not at all. I am becoming interested in poor Mr Frank. When did you see him last?’
‘And to think,’ she said, brightly changing the subject, ‘that in five days’ time it will be 1982.’
‘I’m looking forward to 1984.’ Miss Swallow had begun to perspire.
‘I don’t think it will be like the book, dear.’
‘No?’
‘I presume it will be like any other year.’
‘That would be terribly disappointing.’
‘But my dear Maude, who knows what any year will bring?’ Mr Cadmus was becoming more confiding. ‘An adventure? A journey? A romance?’
‘Nothing,’ Millicent Swallow said, ‘ever seems to happen to me.’
‘Then you must prepare yourself to be changed. Wish for a strange event. Then it will occur.’
Miss Swallow got up very suddenly. ‘Oh dear. We have forgotten the Christmas pudding.’
The pudding had been placed on the kitchen table, and was now quite cold. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘I will set it on fire.’ He poured a large quantity of brandy over it, and then lit it with a match. Miss Swallow screamed as a blue flame leaped upwards and seemed almost to touch the ceiling. Mr Cadmus laughed and clapped his hands. ‘Now we will be wild. We must have music! Music! Where are your records, Millicent?’
Maud Finch, also now curiously animated, knew where her neighbour’s collection was to be found. She took out an LP of Frank Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! and, to the sounds of ‘Anything Goes’, Mr Cadmus began to waltz Miss Swallow around the room. He may have led her too quickly since, after a minute or so, she staggered and fell back into an armchair with an expression of surprise and delight. Mr Cadmus was still upright. ‘Miss Finch,’ he said, ‘may I have the honour?’
‘Wait a moment, Theodore.’ She went over to the gramophone, and moved the needle to the beginning of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’. ‘This is my favourite.’ They began a dignified and even solemn minuet, not inappropriate to the music, but it was interrupted when Miss Finch succumbed to a violent attack of hiccups. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, between spasms.
‘Drink out of a cup backwards,’ Millicent suggested, ‘or hold your breath.’
‘No, no. I have the perfect cure for dear Miss Finch. Allow me.’ He put out both of his hands, and tweaked the lobes of her ears between his thumb and forefinger. ‘That is the Mediterranean way.’ Miss Finch gave one immense sneeze, and the hiccups then subsided. ‘This makes the trick, you see.’
‘Does the trick,’ she replied. ‘Grazie mille.’
‘Oh, my dear lady, you speak Italian!’
‘Oh no. I went to Rome many years ago.’
‘There is always something new and enchanting to learn about you.’
‘When I was a mere girl,’ Miss Swallow said, ‘I went to Madrid. It was very hot.’ She was staring into space.
‘You are both women of the world.’
‘That sounds naughty.’ Miss Swallow pretended to be shocked.
‘If only it were true,’ added Miss Finch. ‘Get me another drink will you, Theo?’
‘By all means. And you, Millicent?’
‘Oh no. Really, I couldn’t.’
‘Not in this season of great joy?’
‘It would be rude not to, Millicent.’
‘Well. If you put it like that—’
So both ladies were given large glasses of brandy. The pudding had been forgotten. Two hours later Millicent Swallow was sick into the hedge which separated her property from that of Cadmus, while Maud Finch leaned against the wall and gazed into the night sky ablaze with stars. ‘Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid,’ she began. ‘Dum di dum di dum.’
Chapter 7
The Earthquake
One evening in early spring Maud Finch observed a stranger going up the path to Theodore Cadmus’s front door; he was wearing a trilby and long white raincoat, and carried a leopard-skin suitcase. ‘Now this is very foreign,’ she said to herself. ‘I wonder what he is doing here?’
The man put down his suitcase and stared at the door for a few seconds before ringing its bell. When Cadmus opened the door Maud Finch heard an exclamation in Italian that might have been one of anger or astonishment.
‘Che cosa fai qui?’
The stranger’s reply was soft and melodious. It sounded like an entreaty. There followed a short silence before the stranger was allowed to enter. Quickly she went over to the wall that divided her cottage from that of Theodore Cadmus, and put her ear to it. At the same moment, on the other side, Millicent Swallow had executed the same manoeuvre.
