Parlour Four by J.I.M. Stewart

Author:J.I.M. Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Parlour 4
ISBN: 9780755133659
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

‘Please show me my birth certificate.’

Tom had walked into a room called for some reason the study, in which Arthur Patchett was accustomed to smoke a pipe and read a newspaper after the evening meal. Tom had given a formal knock on the door, and on opening it had wasted few words.

It was as bad a moment as had befallen Arthur for a long time. Either his wife had disregarded what had been in all but its phraseology a command, or she had badly underestimated

Tom’s ability to draw an accurate conclusion from some ambiguous phrase or hint of a mystery. Probably it was the second of these conjectures that was correct. It was possible, too, that Tom had for long a little wondered about himself. That he chanced to bear a considerable physical likeness to the twins might have militated against any distinct sense of his being among the Patchetts a kind of cuckoo in the nest. But consanguinity or the absence of it may intimate itself intuitively at some deep level of the mind, and thence erupt into consciousness upon some quite slender prompting occasion. All this Arthur Patchett dimly knew. He was reflecting on it as the boy briefly studied the document which had been extracted from a locked drawer by the man whom he had been brought up to address as Father.

‘It’s not all that informative,’ Tom said. ‘But it’s enough for a start. I’m no Patchett. That’s what it comes to, isn’t it?’

It was almost as if, at fifteen, Tom had suddenly grown up; and before his bald question Arthur, as might be expected, was extremely distressed. Muriel and he between them, he felt, had made a shocking mess of things. He had known, he repeated to himself, that from the earliest age at which Tom could understand what he was being told, his position as an adopted child ought to have been made clear to him, and then steadily treated as of no account in point of the normal loyalties and sanctities of family life. So much, at this critical moment, Arthur understood clearly. But just what was he to say to Tom now? What he did say was bound to be well intentioned, since he was steadily a well-intentioned man. He knew this to be so, and he plucked a certain measure of confidence from knowing it. And in that confidence he spoke.

‘Tom,’ he said, ‘dear Tom, you mustn’t feel let down. I know it’s hard, but you must stick to the knowledge that we think of you in every way just as we think of Dick and Harry. We’re one family, however we came to be so. And we’ll stay that way.’

‘Dick and Harry don’t know? They’ve been as ignorant as I’ve been?’

‘They certainly don’t know – my dear, dear boy.’

‘Then I’m going to be the first to tell them.’

As he said this, Tom tossed the fatal scrap of paper to the floor and turned and left the room.

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