Innocence Read online

  He sipped the wine again, and out of the side of my eye I noticed Mike Schofield and how he was leaning farther and farther forward over the table, his mouth slightly open, his small eyes fixed upon Richard Pratt.

  ‘No. I was wrong. It was not a Talbot. A Talbot comes forward to you just a little quicker than this one; the fruit is nearer to the surface. If it is a ’34, which I believe it is, then it couldn’t be Talbot. Well, well. Let me think. It is not a Beychevelle and it is not a Talbot, and yet – yet it is so close to both of them, so close, that the vineyard must be almost in between. Now, which could that be?’

  He hesitated, and we waited, watching his face. Everyone, even Mike’s wife, was watching him now. I heard the maid put down the dish of vegetables on the sideboard behind me, gently, so as not to disturb the silence.

  ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘I have it! Yes, I think I have it!’

  For the last time, he sipped the wine. Then, still holding the glass up near his mouth, he turned to Mike and he smiled, a slow, silky smile, and he said, ‘You know what this is? This is the little Château Branaire-Ducru.’

  Mike sat tight, not moving.

  ‘And the year, 1934.’

  We all looked at Mike, waiting for him to turn the bottle round in its basket and show the label.

  ‘Is that your final answer?’ Mike said.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Well, is it or isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘What was the name again?’

  ‘Château Branaire-Ducru. Pretty little vineyard. Lovely old château. Know it quite well. Can’t think why I didn’t recognize it at once.’

  ‘Come on, Daddy,’ the girl said. ‘Turn it round and let’s have a peek. I want my two houses.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Mike said. ‘Wait just a minute.’ He was sitting very quiet, bewildered-looking, and his face was becoming puffy and pale, as though all the force was draining slowly out of him.

  ‘Michael!’ his wife called sharply from the other end of the table. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Keep out of this, Margaret, will you, please?’

  Richard Pratt was looking at Mike, smiling with his mouth, his eyes small and bright. Mike was not looking at anyone.

  ‘Daddy!’ the daughter cried, agonized. ‘But, Daddy, you don’t mean to say he’s guessed it right!’

  ‘Now, stop worrying, my dear,’ Mike said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

  I think it was more to get away from his family than anything else that Mike then turned to Richard Pratt and said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Richard. I think you and I better slip off into the next room and have a little chat?’

  ‘I don’t want a little chat,’ Pratt said. ‘All I want is to see the label on that bottle.’ He knew he was a winner now; he had the bearing, the quiet arrogance of a winner, and I could see that he was prepared to become thoroughly nasty if there was any trouble. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he said to Mike. ‘Go and turn it round.’

  Then this happened: the maid, the tiny, erect figure of the maid in her white and black uniform, was standing beside Richard Pratt, holding something out in her hand. ‘I believe these are yours, sir,’ she said.

  Pratt glanced around, saw the pair of thin horn-rimmed spectacles that she held out to him, and for a moment he hesitated. ‘Are they? Perhaps they are. I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, sir, they’re yours.’ The maid was an elderly woman – nearer seventy than sixty – a faithful family retainer of many years’ standing. She put the spectacles down on the table beside him.

  Without thanking her, Pratt took them up and slipped them into his top pocket, behind the white handkerchief.

  But the maid didn’t go away. She remained standing beside and slightly behind Richard Pratt, and there was something so unusual in her manner and in the way she stood there, small, motionless and erect, that I for one found myself watching her with a sudden apprehension. Her old grey face had a frosty, determined look, the lips were compressed, the little chin was out and the hands were clasped together tight before her. The curious cap on her head and the flash of white down the front of her uniform made her seem like some tiny, ruffled, white-breasted bird.

  ‘You left them in Mr Schofield’s study,’ she said. Her voice was unnaturally, deliberately polite. ‘On top of the green filing cabinet in his study, sir, when you happened to go in there by yourself before dinner.’

  It took a few moments for the full meaning of her words to penetrate, and in the silence that followed I became aware of Mike and how he was slowly drawing himself up in his chair, and the colour coming to his face, and the eyes opening wide, and the curl of the mouth, and the dangerous little patch of whiteness beginning to spread around the area of the nostrils.

  ‘Now, Michael!’ his wife said. ‘Keep calm now, Michael, dear! Keep calm!’

  GALLOPING FOXLEY

  * * *

  First published in Town & Country

  (November 1953)

  Five days a week, for thirty-six years, I have travelled on the eight-twelve train to the City. It is never unduly crowded, and it takes me right into Cannon Street Station, only an eleven and a half minute walk from the door of my office in Austin Friars.

  I have always liked the process of commuting; every phase of the little journey is a pleasure to me. There is a regularity about it that is agreeable and comforting to a person of habit, and in addition, it serves as a sort of slip-way along which I am gently but firmly launched into the waters of daily business routine.

  Ours is a smallish country station and only nineteen or twenty people gather there to catch the eight twelve. We are a group that rarely changes, and when occasionally a new face appears on the platform it causes a certain disclamatory, protestant ripple, like a new bird in a cage of canaries.

  But normally, when I arrive in the morning with my usual four minutes to spare, there they all are, these good, solid, steadfast people, standing in their right places with their right umbrellas and hats and ties and faces and their newspapers under their arms, as unchanged and unchangeable through the years as the furniture in my own living-room. I like that.

  I like also my corner seat by the window and reading The Times to the noise and motion of the train. This part of it lasts thirty-two minutes and it seems to soothe both my brain and my fretful old body like a good long massage. Believe me, there’s nothing like routine and regularity for preserving one’s peace of mind. I have now made this morning journey nearly ten thousand times in all, and I enjoy it more and more every day. Also (irrelevant, but interesting), I have become a sort of clock. I can tell at once if we are running two, three or four minutes late, and I never have to look up to know which station we are stopped at.

  The walk at the other end from Cannon Street to my office is neither too long nor too short – a healthy little perambulation along streets crowded with fellow commuters all proceeding to their places of work on the same orderly schedule as myself. It gives me a sense of assurance to be moving among these dependable, dignified people who stick to their jobs and don’t go gadding about all over the world. Their lives, like my own, are regulated nicely by the minute hand of an accurate watch, and very often our paths cross at the same times and places on the street each day.

  For example, as I turn the corner into St Swithin’s Lane, I invariably come head-on with a genteel middle-aged lady who wears silver pince-nez and carries a black briefcase in her hand – a first-rate accountant, I should say, or possibly an executive in the textile industry. When I cross over Threadneedle Street by the traffic lights, nine times out of ten I pass a gentleman who wears a different garden flower in his button-hole each day. He dresses in black trousers and grey spats and is clearly a punctual and meticulous person, probably a banker, or perhaps a solicitor like myself; and several times in the last twenty-five years, as we have hurried past one another across the street, our eyes have met in a fleeting glance of mutual approval and respect.