My Friend Cousin Emmie Read online

  Twice and I had first met in the office of an engineering works in Scotland in 1945, when I, as secretary, was responsible for what Twice called ‘the bumph’, and he had been much impressed by the filing system that I had worked out to meet the specific demands of the firm. Lionel Somerset, the colleague who had recently been sent out from England to organise the newly-established office of Allied Plant Limited in St Jago Bay, was a young man with no qualifications for the post, as far as Twice and I could see, other than that he was the son of one of the directors of the firm, had spent two years playing cricket without distinction at one of the older universities and had a social manner which led him, after meeting for the first time men of wealth or influence such as Sir Ian, to refer to them ever afterwards as: ‘Dulac of Paradise? Oh yes, a great friend of mine’, and which led him to refer to Twice as ‘Alexander, my oily wallah.’ Twice and I referred to the first form of reference as the conferring of the ‘G.F.O.M.’ and to the second as ‘Somerset’s subordinates’, so that men like Sir Ian were ‘Sir Ian Dulac, G.F.O.M.’, while Twice, ten acres of plant near Birmingham, with some three hundred acres of satellite plant scattered throughout Britain, and the Board of Directors of Allied Plant Limited were all referred to by Twice and me as ‘Somerset’s subordinates.’ This, of course, was private parlance and we really got along very well with Somerset when we met him at cocktail parties and things.

  During recent weeks, however, Twice had been worrying a little about the muddle in the office at St Jago Bay, had described to me the nature of the enquiries which were flowing in in such numbers, and I had planned a filing system with which he was attempting to ‘inoculate’ Somerset, or, in other words, Twice was attempting to persuade Somerset that the system was all Somerset’s own idea and that the sooner it could be installed in St Jago Bay, the less likelihood there would be of Allied Plant Limited going bankrupt.

  ‘He announced today that he had accepted the system in principle,’ Twice replied to my question now.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that Somerset doesn’t understand it, that it is too much effort to study it, but that as soon as his P.A. – short for Personal Assistant, meaning Roddy Maclean – starts work he will be instructed to implement it forthwith,’ said Twice.

  ‘Roddy is to be known as his Personal Assistant?’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘The things that bloke thinks of!’ I took thought for a moment. ‘You know, Twice, Roddy Maclean is going to make rings round that poor Somerset.’

  ‘That had occurred to me. Roddy has already charmed him out of his back teeth practically,’ Twice said and laughed.

  ‘You laugh? I thought you despised Roddy’s charm?’

  ‘Not at all. Charm is a bit like a loaded gun – one’s opinion about it alters according to where it is pointed. When Roddy pointed his charm at me over his neglect of the turbines up at the factory, I began to think of some of the less refined holds in all-in wrestling, but when he points it at Somerset by reading through your instructions for that filing system and then saying: “This is a marvellously organised system that you have worked out, sir”, as I gather he did, my opinion alters completely. He absolutely convinced Somerset that the thing was all his own work although you and I know that Roddy knows that you worked it out. That means that he had the measure of Somerset inside half an hour.’

  I giggled. ‘Good for Roddy!’

  ‘I simply don’t know what to think about that youth,’ Twice said thoughtfully. ‘He has obviously got his head screwed on, as Sir Ian calls it. Somerset was near to raving about him. I suppose he was just misplaced up there in the power-house.’ He gave vent to one of his mischievous chuckles. ‘Somerset has a new word, by the way.’

  Like the Greeks, albeit I imagine that this was his sole resemblance to that classic race, no matter what the subject, Somerset had a word for it, but the thing that fascinated Twice and me about Somerset’s words was that on many subjects of quite wide range he had only one word and made it suffice for all occasions. Thus, on any accountancy matter, Somerset said: ‘A mere question of a journal entry’; on any horsy matter he said: ‘She has a very nice action behind’, regardless of the fact that sometimes the ‘she’ happened to be a gelding, while on any political matter he always said in a secretive way: ‘They know at the top’ as if to imply that he himself was included in the ‘they’. These phrases were of endless delight to Twice and myself, so that, now, it was almost with held breath that I said: ‘No! What?’

  ‘Constructively-minded!’ Twice told me triumphantly. ‘It was about the new letter-headings – the samples he got were blue printed on brighter blue, and when I sort of objected—’

  ‘In what words precisely did you sort of object?’ I asked.

  ‘I asked him why he didn’t have SWALK for “Sealed with a Loving Kiss” printed on the backs of the envelopes while he was about it. It was then that he said I was too conservative and not constructively-minded, but I said, constructively-minded or not, I preferred to write engineering stuff on white paper headed in black.’

  ‘And what paper are you having?’

  ‘White headed in black of course!’ said Twice, as if I had asked some entirely unnecessary question.

  ‘Pity. I think the blue on blue with a few forget-me-nots quoting for a sewage disposal plant would have looked very sweet.’

  ‘But, anyway, he says that Roddy is constructively-minded, so that should offset me and my old-fashioned ideas.’

  We began to talk of other things, and Dee in particular, and suddenly, seemingly apropos of nothing, I said: ‘You know, Somerset was right about Roddy Maclean.’

  ‘Right? In what way?’

  ‘With his constructively-minded. Oh, I know it is a mere claptrap cliche with Somerset and means nothing, but accidentally it is true about Roddy. Do you remember that night when we had that hair-tearing row aboard the Pandora? And I kept saying Dee was destructive?’

  ‘I’m not likely to forget it. I don’t know what got into us that night, but go on.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what I am trying to say, really. But Dee strikes me as being against – well, life, I suppose – destructive; and Roddy strikes me as being for it, on the side of life, constructive.’

  ‘He is certainly for it if the look in his eye at the typists’ tea session is anything to go by,’ Twice said.

  ‘Do the office girls like him?’

  ‘Like isn’t quite the word. When he comes into the office, I always expect a serpent to wriggle in through the air-conditioner wearing an ugly leer and with the apple of discord hanging from its fangs.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘I know you do,’ Twice assured me.

  ‘If the girls didn’t like him, they wouldn’t be normal,’ I said defiantly. ‘In fact, everybody likes him except you and Cousin Emmie. What company you choose!’

  ‘It’s in the power-house I dislike him and nothing to do with Cousin Emmie. And, anyway, he is not all that universally popular. Isobel Denholm doesn’t like him either.’

  ‘That’s probably sour grapes. Roddy doesn’t like red hair,’ I said.

  ‘Never mind. Yours is getting greyer every day.’

  ‘But seriously, Twice, Roddy going into the office down there is not going to worry you?’

  ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘But I wish it were easier to know what one thinks about people. Such a little thing can tip the scales. Up there in the power-house, when Roddy neglected those turbines that day, I was prepared to believe that nothing was too low for him. I suppose it is absurd, but that is really how I came to connect him with the pilfering.’

  ‘It is absurd. Extremism is always prone to the absurd and you are an engineering extremist. We agreed about that long ago.’

  ‘Then, today, when I heard how he had bent Somerset so beautifully and painlessly to his will, the pendulum swung the other way.’

  ‘It really boils down to the fact th
at you like turbines and don’t want them bent and you don’t like Somerset and would like to see him bent into a figure eight,’ I said; ‘and in the light of turbines you don’t like Roddy and in the light of Somerset you do.’

  ‘Complicated, isn’t it?’

  ‘Relationships are always complicated. And the corollary of the whole theorem is that you like turbines better than Roddy and you like Roddy better than Somerset.’

  ‘That’s not saying much. I like most things and people better than Somerset.’

  ‘And I like Roddy better than turbines,’ I said.

  ‘I, like you better than turbines,’ said Twice.

  ‘And I like you better than Roddy,’ and at this we began to laugh, for, on the whole, Twice and I find a great deal to laugh at although lots of other people would not consider that great deal to amount to very much. Dee was one of those other people, for she now came in while we were laughing and, of course, said: ‘What are you laughing at?’

  If you are one of two people who has been laughing at, with and to one another, it is very difficult to explain to a third person just what you were laughing at, so I answered feebly: ‘Oh, nothing much, Dee.’

  ‘I suppose you were telling Twice about me being in a temper this morning about not going to the factory?’ she accused me, glowering at us.

  I at once had an urge to rush upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom, but before I could move or speak, Twice said: ‘Dee, I gather you have been out with Isobel being absolutely bloody about Janet and me all day, jeering and laughing about us until your heads nearly fell off!’ and he glowered back at her, his face an absurd parody of her own with its sullen brows and pouting lower lip. For a long second she stared at him startled before saying gravely: ‘Oh, Twice, who told you that? Honestly, Isobel and I didn’t—’ I found it frightening that she was what I can only call so far out of human touch that she could not at once see that Twice was not being himself but a parody of herself. She paused, looking from one of us to the other, the suspicion growing in her eyes that he was not to be taken seriously, and her voice trembled as she then said, ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry.’

  ‘So well you might be,’ Twice told her. ‘As a matter of fact, Janet did tell me you spent half the morning sulking, and it’s damn’ silly of you, too silly to laugh at even.’

  Her lip began to tremble and tears to gather in her eyes.

  ‘Janet didn’t tell me about it so that we could laugh. She told me by way of persuading me to take you up to the factory as soon as I could, and as soon as I can I will take you.’

  Listening, I began to feel sorry for Dee, who stood there with the tears beginning to flow now. I felt sorry for her as one feels sorry for the insect in the path of the road roller, for Twice seemed to me to be deploying far more force than the occasion demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she quavered at him.

  ‘You are not a damned bit sorry,’ he told her, ‘except for yourself, Dee, and it’s not good enough. . . . Where are you going?’

  Upstairs.’

  ‘Then be down for dinner in half an hour and looking pleasant.’

  She stared at him while he stared back at her, while I gripped my hands together in my lap, looked down at them and let Twice and Dee stare one another out.

  ‘Twice, would you like me to go away back to England?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I should hate that, Dee. It would mean that you, Janet and I have failed to get on together, and I don’t like to fail, especially at getting on with people I like.’

  She was sobbing now. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing except try to look past yourself and straight at other people and then you may see that Janet and I aren’t complete hypocrites.’

  ‘But I didn’t say you were, Twice!’

  ‘You implied it and it’s extremely insulting.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that, Twice. I just thought—’ She paused.

  ‘You just thought about nothing but Dee Andrews, isn’t that it?’ She hung her head. ‘It’s a lousy bad habit,’ Twice told her. ‘I’d get even more miserable than you if I thought about nothing but me all the time, for I feel I would be even worse thinking matter. Stop crying, Dee. Run upstairs and get ready for dinner.’

  As soon as she had gone, I said: ‘But, Twice, you were terribly rough on her! You were like a steamroller going over a fly.’

  ‘Yes, maybe, but all that has happened is that the fly has gone into the crevice in the road for a bit and will emerge in due course as large as life and twice as ugly. You said earlier that relationships are complicated, but this one with Dee is a Chinese puzzle. In spite of everything, I still want to get her sorted out, but I’m afraid only she herself can do it. It’s rot to think that anything we can do or say will make any difference.’

  However, from my point of view, the fly that was Dee’s touchiness was better hidden in a crevice in the road than flaunting itself all the time on my sight, for, as I had said to Roddy on board the ship, maggots that I cannot exterminate are more bearable if hidden from me, and for quite a time after Twice’s outburst Dee had at least the appearance of more equable temper. She and Isobel spent a lot of time at Mount Melody, frequently ending their day at the club or down at the Peak, so that when Roddy left Paradise for his new post in the Bay Dee did not miss him as much as I had at first feared that she might.

  On the last Saturday evening that Roddy spent at Paradise, Dee came home from Mount Melody at about six o’clock, and I said: ‘Why didn’t you bring Isobel to dinner? Isn’t she going to the Club Dance tonight?’

  ‘Yes, but she had to go down to the Peak to dine with some kitchen-equipment-selling man and she is coming up again afterwards. We have been at the club until now.’

  ‘Many people there?’ Twice asked.

  ‘Not many. Roddy and the Cranstons and Vickers, and Nurse Porter was there but not for fun. Joe the barman cut his hand on a beer bottle yesterday and she came to give him a scolding for not going to the clinic to get it dressed again today. She is a nice sort of person, isn’t she, Miss Jan?’

  ‘Very nice,’ I agreed, although I felt that this was hardly an adequate description of the redoubtable Nurse Porter.

  She was not at all redoubtable in appearance, but this was deceptive. She was a charming young St Jagoan of half-African, half-East Indian blood which gave her the fine Aryan bones of the latter and the large liquid brown eyes and fluid voice of the former, but she became very redoubtable indeed against the background of the clean white concrete clinic where she held sway, doing, with equal calm, anything from stitching up cutlass wounds to setting broken bones or extracting bougainvillaea thorns from the large pads of Dram. The estate also maintained a doctor, but one of Nurse Porter’s favourite phrases was: ‘Tchah! We won’t bother Doctor with that!’ whereupon she would set to work. Every day of the week was programmed for specific treatments, and every Saturday morning the door of the clinic was closed for an hour while Nurse Porter went to the Great House to make her weekly report to Madame, and in this hour Madame caught up with all the news of her coloured employees as well as their medical situation. ‘Mr Cranston was talking about this pilfering that is going on in the office. Twice,’ Dee said next in the manner she adopted when she spoke of the technicalities of sugar-processing, as if she were embarking on a subject of which I knew nothing and expected me to maintain a well-bred silence in the presence of my more knowledgeable betters. Now, although it may not be my place to say it, I am extremely good, unlikely as this may seem, at maintaining silence when it pleases me, although I will not go so far as to say that it is a well-bred silence. Indeed, I think I am silent only when I have the hope that by listening to other people I may learn something that I want to know, and now, as I stared vacantly in front of me, Twice’s glance moved over my impassive face before he looked at Dee and said: ‘Oh?’

  ‘Whoever is doing it got away with the badminton money out of Miss Freeman’s desk today,’ Dee told him.
‘Eleven pounds fifteen it was.’ She became suddenly censorious. ‘Roddy is quite awful sometimes, Twice.’

  I felt myself grow tense as Roddy’s name came so patly behind the news of the fresh pilferage, and Twice was looking at me as he asked: ‘Awful in what way?’

  ‘When Mr Cranston was wondering who the pilferer could be, Roddy said it was probably Cousin Emmie!’

  This was too much for me, and my solemn demeanour gave way before a gust of laughter which caused Dee to look at me not entirely pleased and ask solemnly: ‘Did you know there was pilfering going on at the office then?’

  Ever since the loss of the housekeeping money had been reported to Sir Ian, Twice had been carrying a marked five-pound note in his shirt pocket in common with most of the other members of the staff, but I was not going to reduce Dee’s thunder to a fire-cracker by mentioning this.

  ‘No, I didn’t know,’ I told her, ‘but I was laughing at Roddy’s suggestion about Cousin Emmie.’

  ‘I don’t think it was very funny of him,’ Dee said disapprovingly.

  ‘Do you think it funny, Twice?’

  Twice smiled a little. ‘I think the absolutely unlikely is always a little funny, Dee,’ he said.

  ‘Unlikely or not, I don’t think Roddy should have said it,’ Dee said, glowering at us. ‘It might make people start to think things about Cousin Emmie, people like Mrs Cranston. I mean, people can very easily be made to think things about people.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ I said, looking at Twice. ‘Relationships between people are always complicated, and quite silly remarks can matter, but I don’t think what Roddy said will matter in the case of Cousin Emmie, Dee. That she should pinch the badminton money is too absolutely unlikely altogether.’

  ‘I still think that Roddy shouldn’t have said it,’ Dee persisted in her sullen censorious way.

  After dinner was over and she had gone back round to the Club Dance, Twice looked up from his book and said: ‘I wish I knew what to think about that young devil Maclean.’