‘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.’
It took him some time to come to it, though, because he would dodge about among innumerable parentheses. Finally, however, it emerged that he was writing a book. He had been approached by the head of a publishing firm.
‘Wonderful,’ Nicola said, ‘actually to be asked by a publisher to write.’
He laughed. ‘My dear child, I promise you it would never have come from me. Indeed, I thought he must be pulling my leg. But not at all. So in the end I madly consented and – and there we are, you know.’
‘Your memoirs, perhaps?’ Nicola ventured.
‘No. No, although I must say – but no – You’ll never guess!’
She felt that she never would and waited.
‘It’s – how can I explain? Don’t laugh! It’s just that in these extraordinary times there are all sorts of people popping up in places where one would least expect to find them: clever, successful people, we must admit, but not, as we old fogies used to say – “not quite-quite”. And there they find themselves, in a milieu, where they really are, poor darlings, at a grievous loss.’
And there it was: Mr Pyke Period had been commissioned to write a book on etiquette. Nicola suspected that his publisher had displayed a remarkably shrewd judgement.
