Bathgate?’
‘Who else? Nigel and I are old friends. When the family started all this business I went to see him and asked if he thought you’d do it. Nigel said he knew you were on leave, and he thought it would be nice for you.’
‘He knows nothing whatever about it.’
‘He said you liked meeting queer people. He said you’d revel in Papa as a subject and gloat over his conversation. It only shows you how little we understand our friends, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Troy, ‘it does.’
‘But I can’t help wondering what you’d make of Panty.’
Troy had by this time determined to ask Thomas Ancred no questions whatever, and it was with a sense of impotent fury that she heard her own voice: ‘Did you say “Panty”?’
‘She’s my niece, you know. My sister Pauline’s youngest. We call her Panty because her bloomers are always coming down. She’s a Difficult Child. Her school, which is a school for Difficult Children, was evacuated to Ancreton. They are quartered in the west wing under a very nice person called Caroline Able. Panty is frightful.’
‘Oh,’ said Troy, as he seemed to expect some comment.
‘Yes, indeed. She’s so awful that I rather like her. She’s a little girl with two pigtails and a devilish face. This sort of thing.’
Thomas put his long forefingers at right angles to his head, scowled abominably and blew out his cheeks. His eyes glittered. Much against her will, Troy was suddenly confronted with the face of a bad child. She laughed shortly. Thomas rubbed his hands. ‘If I were to tell you,’ he said, ‘of the things that little girl does, you would open your eyes. Well, a cactus, for instance, in Sonia’s bed! Unfortunately she’s Papa’s favourite, which makes control almost impossible. And, of course, one mustn’t beat her except in anger, because that’s not proper child psychology.’
He stared thoughtfully into the fire. ‘Then there’s Pauline, my eldest sister; she’s the important type. And Milly, my sister-in-law, who perpetually laughs at nothing and housekeeps for Papa, since her husband, my eldest brother, Henry Irving, died.’
‘Henry Irving!’ Troy ejaculated, thinking with alarm: ‘Evidently he’s mad.’
‘Henry Irving Ancred, of course. Papa had a great admiration for Irving, and regards himself as his spiritual successor, so he called Hal after him. And then there’s Sonia. Sonia is Papa’s mistress.’ Thomas cleared his throat old-maidishly. ‘Rather a Biblical situation really. You remember David and Abishag the Shunammite? They all dislike Sonia. I must say she’s a very bad actress. Am I boring you?’
Troy, though not bored, was extremely reluctant to say so. She muttered: ‘Not at all,’ and offered Thomas a drink. He replied: ‘Yes, thank you, if you’ve got plenty.’ She went off to fetch it, hoping in the interim to sort out her reactions to her visitor. She found Katti Bostock in the dining-room.
‘For pity’s sake, Katti,’ said Troy, ‘come back with me. I’ve got a sort of monster in there.’
‘Is it staying to dinner?’
‘I haven’t asked it, but I should think so. So we shall have to open one of Rory’s tins.’
‘Hadn’t you better go back to this bloke?’
‘Do come too. I’m afraid of him. He tells me about his family, presenting each member of it in a repellent light, and yet expecting me to desire nothing more than their acquaintance. And the alarming thing is, Katti, that the narrative has its horrid fascination. Important Pauline, acquisitive Sonia; dreadful little Panty, and Milly, who laughs perpetually at nothing; that’s Millamant, of course, who wrote the letter. And Papa, larger than life, and presenting himself with his own portrait because the Nation hasn’t come up to scratch –’
‘You aren’t going to tell me you’ve accepted!’
‘Not I. Good Lord, no! I’d be demented. But – keep an eye on me, Katti,’ said Troy.
III
Thomas accepted the invitation to dinner, expressing himself as delighted with his share of tinned New Zealand crayfish. ‘We’ve got friends in New Zealand and America too,’ he said, ‘but unfortunately tinned fish brings on an attack of Papa’s gastroenteritis. If we have it he can’t resist it, and so Milly doesn’t let us have it. Next time I go to Ancreton she’s giving me several tins to take back to my flat.’
‘You don’t live at Ancreton?’ Troy asked.
‘How could I when my job’s in London? I go there sometimes for week-ends to give them all an opportunity of confiding in me. Papa likes us to go. He’s having quite a party for his birthday. Pauline’s son, Paul, who has a wounded leg, will be there, and Millamant’s son, Cedric, who is a dress-designer. I don’t think you’d care for Cedric. And my sister Desdemona, who is at liberty just now, though she hopes to be cast for a part in a new play at the Crescent. My other sister-in-law, Jenetta, will be there too, I hope, with her daughter, Fenella. Her husband, my eldest brother Claude, is a Colonel in the occupation forces and hasn’t come home yet.’
‘Rather a large party,’ said Katti. ‘Fun for you.’
‘There’ll be a good many rows, of course,’ Thomas replied. ‘When you get two or three Ancreds gathered together they are certain to hurt each other’s feelings. That’s where I come in handy, because I’m the insensitive one and they talk to me about each other. And about Sonia, I needn’t say. We shall all talk about Sonia. We’d hoped to unveil your portrait of Papa on this occasion,’ he said, looking wistfully at Troy. ‘Indeed, that’s really what the party’s for.’
Troy mumbled something indistinguishable.
‘Papa had a lovely time last week looking out the Macbeth clothes,’ Thomas continued. ‘I wonder if you remember his costume. Motley did it for us. It’s red, a Paul Veroniseish red, dark but clear, with a smoky overcloak. We’ve got a miniature theatre at Ancreton, you know. I brought down the original backdrop for one of the inset scenes and hung it. It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it,’ Thomas went on innocently, ‘that you did the original designs for that production? Of course, you remember the one I mean. It’s very simple. A boldly distorted castle form seen in silhouette. He dressed himself and stood in front of it, resting on his claymore with his head stooped, as if listening. “Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,” do you remember?’
Troy remembered that line very well. It was strange that he should have recalled it; for Alleyn was fond of telling her how, in the small hours of a stormy morning, a constable on night duty had once quoted it to him. Thomas, speaking the line, with an actor’s sense of its value, sounded like an echo of her husband, and her thoughts were filled with memories of his voice.
‘– He’s been ill off and on for some time,’ Thomas was saying, ‘and gets very depressed. But the idea of the portrait bucked him up no end, and he’s set his heart on you to paint it. You see, you did his hated rival.’
‘Sir Benjamin Corporal?’ Troy muttered, eyeing Katti.
‘Yes. And old Ben makes a great story about how you only paint subjects that you take a fancy to – pictorially, I mean. He told us you took a great fancy to
