Havisham: A Novel by Ronald Frame

Author:Ronald Frame
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781250037275
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2013-11-05T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SEVEN

A few weeks later.

* * *

‘I hear’, I said, ‘that your knowledge is very impressive, Mr Compeyson.’

‘Met a brewer once. Things’ve stuck in my head.’

‘I’ll teach you what I know,’ I heard myself telling him. ‘If that’s any use.’

‘“Use”? You’re schooling me?’

I felt I was in danger of blushing.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll need your advice. I mean, I would appreciate if you –’

‘I’d be honoured. Couldn’t be taught by better, could I?’

* * *

Before my father’s physical decline, production of strong beer was running at over twelve thousand barrels per annum. I made that my own target.

I was buying another five public houses, at prices between £230 and £480 each. Including another thirty-six tied premises, the number of publics we supplied had risen to eighty-six.

* * *

On his visits to the town Charles put up at the Blue Boar. He ate there, unless I had invited others to dinner at Satis House, when I would persuade him to join us. But in Cinderella fashion, he was the first to leave. All this punctilious formality, this terrible fear of committing an improper deed. All this intense frustration he let build up inside me. I asked him to stay on awhile in the house, so that we might walk in the garden or sit by the fire, talking, dreaming of life.

But no, he must be getting back.

‘If you really have to.’

‘We can’t always do as we want.’

‘No?’

‘There are rules. Precepts.’

‘You’re right.’

But I said it sadly.

* * *

It occurred to me that perhaps they hadn’t been what they’d seemed to me, those three men who appeared at the front door in their threatening poses, asking for Arthur.

I had no trust in anything Arthur said. All I could take as honest was his determination to embarrass me, to provoke my conscience, because it was I and not he who had inherited the greater part of the Havisham wealth.

Organising a few stage stooges to appear on the doorstep of Satis House, that would have been nothing at all to someone of Arthur’s deviousness.

‘It’s only fifty.’

‘Another fifty pounds you’re asking me for. Added to the hundred.’

‘I got my sums wrong.’

Here’s yet another scene.

‘How long d’you imagine this is going to go on?’

‘It’s just to tide me over.’

‘You never tell me. What these “expenses” are.’

‘That’s because you don’t want to know. Tell me you do.’

‘Your life doesn’t interest me, Arthur.’

‘Maybe I’m keeping another household.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve got a nice little wife. And we’re planning a brood of children.’

He continued laughing.

‘That is a joke,’ I said.

‘What is?’

‘You married. And a father.’

‘And you see yourself married, I suppose?’

I looked away.

‘All nicely set up?’ (How bitter his voice sounded.) ‘With the man of your dreams?’

* * *

First, Charles told me the house in Blackheath was shedding masonry. Then, that the building was being pinned up. For weeks the air had been thick with dust; the mortar wouldn’t dry. The floorboards would have to be replaced. An elderly uncle was about to descend, needing to convalesce.

‘From Norfolk?’ I asked.

‘Norfolk?’

‘Your relatives. In Norfolk.

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