'The young Siegfried,' she said, and sighed again.
The programme ended with the March from Die Meisters?nger. After enthusiastic applause, people began to leave their seats. He waited to see if she would give him any lead, but she did not. She gathered up her wrap, moved out of the row of chairs, and with a slightly accelerated step, moved along with other people and disappeared in the crowd.
Stafford Nye regained his car and drove home. Arrived there, he spread out the Festival Hall programme on his desk and examined it carefully, after putting the coffee to percolate.
The programme was disappointing to say the least of it. There did not appear to be any message inside. Only on one page above the list of the items, were the pencil marks that he had vaguely observed. But they were not words or letters or even figures. They appeared to be merely a musical notation. It was as though someone had scribbled a phrase of music with a somewhat inadequate pencil. For a moment it occurred to Stafford Nye there might perhaps be a secret message he could bring out by applying heat. Rather gingerly, and in a way rather ashamed of his melodramatic fancy, he held it towards the bar of the electric fire but nothing resulted. With a sigh he tossed the programme back on to the table. But he felt justifiably annoyed. All this rigmarole, a rendezvous on a windy and rainy bridge overlooking the river! Sitting through a concert by the side of a woman of whom he yearned to ask at least a dozen questions - and at the end of it? Nothing! No further on. Still, she had met him. But why? If she didn't want to speak to him, to make further arrangements with him, why had she come at all?
His eyes passed idly across the room to his bookcase which he reserved for various thrillers, works of detective fiction and an occasional volume of science fiction; he shook his head. Fiction, he thought, was infinitely superior to real life! Dead bodies, mysterious telephone calls, beautiful foreign spies in profusion! However, this particular elusive lady might not have done with him yet. Next time, he thought, he would make some arrangements of his own. Two could play at the game that she was playing.
He pushed aside the programme and drank another cup of coffee and went to the window. He had the programme still in his hand. As he looked out towards the street below his eyes fell back again on the open programme in his hand and he hummed to himself, almost unconsciously. He had a good ear for music and he could hum the notes that were scrawled there quite easily. Vaguely they sounded familiar as he hummed them. He increased his voice a little. What was it now? Tum, tum, tum tum ti-tum. Tum. Tum. Yes, definitely familiar.
He started opening his letters.
They were mostly uninteresting. A couple of invitations, one from the American Embassy, one from Lady Athelhampton, a Charity Variety performance which Royalty would attend and for which it was suggested five guineas would not be an exorbitant fee to obtain a seat. He threw them aside lightly. He doubted very much whether he wished to accept any of them. He decided that instead of remaining in London he would without more ado go and see his Aunt Matilda, as he had promised. He was fond of his Aunt Matilda though he did not visit her very often. She lived in a rehabilitated apartment consisting of a series of rooms in one wing of a large Georgian manor house in the country which she had inherited from his grandfather. She had a large, beautifully proportioned sitting-room, a small oval dining-room, a new kitchen made from the old housekeeper's room, two bedrooms for guests, a large comfortable bedroom for herself with an adjoining bathroom, and adequate quarters for a patient companion who shared her daily life. The remains of a faithful domestic staff were well provided for and housed. The rest of the house remained under dust sheets with periodical cleaning. Stafford Nye was fond of the place, having spent holidays there as a boy. It had been a gay house then. His eldest uncle had lived there with his wife and their two children. Yes, it had been pleasant there then. There had been money and a sufficient staff to run it. He had not specially noticed in those days the portraits and pictures. There had been large-sized examples of Victorian art occupying pride of place - overcrowding the walls, but there had been other masters of an older age. Yes, there had been some good portraits there. A Raeburn, two Lawrences, a Gainsborough, a Lely, two rather dubious Vandykes. A couple of Turners, too. Some of them had had to be sold to provide the family with money. He still enjoyed when visiting there strolling about and studying the family pictures.
His Aunt Matilda was a great chatterbox but she always enjoyed his visits. He was fond of her in a desultory way, but he was not quite sure why it was that he had suddenly wanted to visit her now. And what it was that had brought family portraits into his mind? Could it have been because there was a portrait of his sister Pamela by one of the leading artists of the day twenty years ago. He would like to see that portrait of Pamela and look at it more closely. See how close the resemblance had been between the stranger who had disrupted his life in this really outrageous fashion an his sister.
He picked up the Festival Hall programme again with some irritation and began to hum the pencilled notes. Tum tum, ti tum -
Then it came to him and he knew what it was - it was the Siegfried motif. Siegfried's Horn. The young Siegfried motif. That was what the woman had said last night Not apparently to him, not apparently to anybody. But it had been the message, a message that would have mean nothing to anyone around since it would have seemed to refer to the music that had just been played. And the motif had been written on his programme also in musical terms.
The Young Siegfried. It must have meant something. Well, perhaps further enlightenment would come. The Young Siegfried. What the hell did that mean? Why and how and when and what? Ridiculous! All those questioning words. He rang the telephone and obtained Aunt Matilda's number.
'But of course, Staffy dear, it will be lovely to have you. Take the four-thirty train, it still runs, you know, but it gets here an hour and a half later. And it leaves Paddington later - five-fifteen. That's what they mean by improving the railways, I suppose. Stops at several most absurd stations on the way. All right. Horace will meet you at King's Marston.'
'He's still there then?'
'Of course he's still there.'
'I suppose he is,' said Sir Stafford Nye.
Horace, once a groom, then a coachman, had survived as a chauffeur, and apparently was still surviving. 'He must be at least eighty,' said Sir Stafford. He smiled to himself.
Chapter 6
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
'You look very nice and brown, dear,' said Aunt Matilda surveying him appreciatively. 'That's Malaya, I suppose. It was Malaya you went to? Or was it Siam or Thailand? They change the names of all these places and really it makes it very difficult. Anyway, it wasn't Vietnam, was it? You know, I don't like the sound of Vietnam at all. It's all very confusing. North Vietnam and South Vietnam and the Viet-Cong and the Viet - whatever the other thing is - and all wanting to fight each other and nobody wanting to stop. They won't go to Paris or wherever it is and sit round tables and talk sensibly. Don't you think really, dear -
'I've been thinking it over and I thought it would be a very nice solution - couldn't you make a lot of football fields and then they could all go and fight each other there, but with less lethal weapons. Not that nasty palm burning stuff. You know. Just hit each other and punch each other and all that. They'd enjoy it, everyone would enjoy it and you could charge admission for people to go and see them do it. I do think really that we don't understand giving people the things they really want.'
'I think it's a very fine idea of yours, Aunt Matilda,' said Sir Stafford Nye as he kissed a pleasantly perfumed, pale pink wrinkled cheek. 'And how are you, my dear?'
'Well, I'm old,' said Lady Matilda Cleckheaton. 'Yes, I'm old. Of course you don't know what it is to be old. If it isn't one thing it's another. Rheumatism or arthritis or a nasty bit of asthma or a sore throat or an ankle you've turned.
'Always something, you know. Nothing very important. But there it is. Why have you come to see me, dear?'
Sir Stafford was slightly taken aback by the directness of the query.
'I usually come and see you when I return from a trip abroad.'
'You'll have to come one chair nearer,' said Aunt Matilda. 'I'm just that bit deafer since you saw me last. You look different... Why do you look different?'
'Because I'm more sunburnt. You said so.'
'Nonsense, that's not what I mean at all. Don't tell me it's a girl at last.'
'A girl?'
'Well, I've always felt it might be one some day. The trouble is you've got too much sense of humour.'
'Now why should you think that?'
'Well, it's what people do think about you. Oh yes, they do. Your sense of humour is in the way of your career, too. You know, you're all mixed up with all these people. Diplomatic and political. What they call younger statesmen and elder statesmen and middle statesmen too. And all those different Parties. Really I think it's too silly to have too many Parties. First of all those awful, awful Labour people.' She raised her Conservative nose into the air. 'Why, when I was a girl there wasn't such a thing as a Labour Party. Nobody would have known what you meant by it. They'd have said "nonsense". Pity it wasn't nonsense, too. And then there's the Liberals, of course, but they're terribly wet. And then there are the Tories, or the Conservatives as they call themselves again now.'
'And what's the matter with them?' asked Stafford Nye, smiling slightly.
'Too many earnest women. Makes them lack gaiety, you know.'
'Oh well, no political party goes in for gaiety much nowadays.'
'Just so,' said Aunt Matilda. 'And then of course that's where you go wrong. You want to cheer things up. You want to have a little gaiety and so you make a little gentle fun at people and of course they don't like it. They say "Ce n'est pas un gar?on serieux," like that man in the fishing.'
Sir Stafford Nye laughed. His eyes were wandering round the room.
'What are you looking at?' said Lady Matilda.
'Your pictures.'
'You don't want me to sell them, do you? Everyone seems to be selling their pictures nowadays. Old Lord Grampion, you know. He sold his Turners and he sold some of his ancestors as well. And Geoffrey Gouldman. All those lovely horses of his. By Stubbs, weren't they? Something like that. Really, the prices one gets!
'But I don't want to sell my pictures. I like them. Most of them in this room have a real interest because they're ancestors. I know nobody wants ancestors nowadays but then I'm old-fashioned. I like ancestors. My own ancestors, I mean. What are you looking at? Pamela?'
'Yes, I was. I was thinking about her the other day.'
'Astonishing how alike you two are. I mean, it's not even as though you were twins, though they say that different sex twins, even if they are twins, can't be identical, if you know what I mean.'
'So Shakespeare must have made rather a mistake over Viola and Sebastian.'
'Well, ordinary brothers and sisters can be alike, can't they? You and Pamela were always very alike - to look at, I mean.'
'Not in any other way? Don't you think we were alike in character?'
'No, not in the least. That's the funny part of it. But of course you and Pamela have what I call the family face. Not a Nye face. I mean the Baldwen-White face.'
Sir Stafford Nye never had been able to beat his great-aunt when the subject was genealogical.
She went on: 'I always thought that you and Pamela had taken after Alexa.'
'Who was Alexa?'
'You're great-great and many more great's grandmother. An hungarian countess, or a baroness, I'm not quite sure. Your great-great-great-grandfather fell in love with her when he was at the embassy in Vienna. Yes, hungarian. That's what she was. Very sporting. They are, hungarians. She went on huntings, great rider.'
'Is there a portrait of her in the gallery?'
'On the first floor. A little on the right of the top of the stairs.'
'I'll have a look when I turn in.'
'Why don't you go and look now, so we can talk about her later?'
'If you want to, I'll go now,' he smiled at her.
He left the room and went up the stairs. Yes, she was sharp, old Mathilda. This was the face. This was the face remembered and had seen. A pretty girl brought home by his great-great-great-grandfather, if that were enough great's...
She must be about twenty. She came here and was very gay, rode splendorously, danced magnificiently, and men fell in love with her. But she had been faithful, at least that was what everybody said. She went with her husband to many foreign embassies and always came back with him. They had children, three of four, it seemed. Through one of these children her face, her nose, the curve of her neck, went down to him and his sister Pamela.
'Did you find her?' Lady Matilda asked when her nephew came back to her. 'An interesting face, isn't it?'
'Yes, and very pretty too.'
'It's better to be interesting than pretty. But you weren't in Hungary nor in Austria, were you? You wouldn't find someone looking like her in Malaya. She wouldn't be there sitting at a table, taking notes or proofreading speeches, or anything like that. She was a wild creature by conviction. Had adorable manners and was well-bred, but she was wild. Wild as a bird. She didn't know the meaning of the word danger.'
'How do you know so much about her?'
'Oh, I haven't known her in person. I was born a few years after her death. But even so, I always took an interest in her. She was bold, you know? Very bold. There were many strange stories about her, about the things she got involved.'
'And how did her husband react to that?'
'I guess he worried too much,' said Lady Matilda. 'But, they say he adored her. Talking of which, Staffy, did you ever read "The prisoner of Zenda"?'
