Chapter 24 London
Chapter twenty-four
London
For Crispin, the quiet evening in the bosom of his family had an air of unreality.
It was a cold evening, and his father was reading The Times by the fire.
Penny had surprised them by lingering instead of disappearing to a meeting.
She sat in the corner, studiously pasting articles into a scrapbook.
His mother would soon come in from her little painting studio at the back of the garden, smelling of turpentine.
None of them knew that everything had changed.
Crispin hadn’t bothered going back to the office in the afternoon. Instead, he had got on a tram and rode around London in a daze.
All around him were people, utterly ordinary people, just as he himself had been before he’d been singled out by Destiny.
How strange to think that he had sat making little marks on paper all day long, quite content. Could he ever be happy going back to it now?
And what would the life of a spy be like?
Lonely, certainly, but he had always been lonely.
Without fame, certainly, but he had never expected to gain any real measure of that.
Short? But he had lived in the shadow of death all of his life.
Then he asked himself what he really had to hope for if he accepted.
But there his heart answered for him, skipping a beat as it had when the Home Secretary, a man of many famed exploits, had looked straight at him and had said that Crispin was wanted.
He, Crispin Fairweather, had been measured and found not wanting, but wanted.
“The devil!” his father exclaimed, just as his mother wandered in, trailing the long kimono she liked to paint in.
“I do hope you aren’t referring to me, darling,” she said mildly. Even at the end of a long day, she looked as if she were modelling for a picture by Leighton. Which, come to think of it, she had done in the old Grosvenor Gallery days.
“Not you, dear, the ruddy Daily Mail! They’ve got their dirty hands on something that ought to have remained private!”
Penny looked up briefly, dipped her brush into her paste, and went back to her clippings. Crispin noted this.
Stephen spread out the broadsheet for all to see, glaring. Crispin got up to look at the headlines.
DRAGON HEIRESS ATTACKED BY DISGUISED RUFFIAN
KIDNAP ATTEMPT FOILED BY brAVE DRAGON
WHO IS BEHIND THE PLOT TO KIDNAP THE ORMDALE BEAUTY?
To crown it all, there was a reproduction of the very same drawing Crispin’s father had confidentially shown him.
“How—“ his father sputtered, before an expression of dreadful realisation came over his face.
Crispin took a step backwards, cutting off Penny’s escape route. She had almost made it to the door, clutching her scrapbook.
“Oh, Penny,“ groaned Stephen.
Crispin crossed his arms and did not flinch under Penny’s scowls.
“I do hope you are not responsible for the inelegant headlines, Penny,” said their mother, taking the last piece of toast from the supper tray.
“It’s the editor who chooses the headlines!” she protested. “And he added things to the article, as well. The original was better.”
Stephen put down the paper, deadly serious. “Penelope, did you break into my desk?”
“No! Of course not. I used your key.”
He went pale. “I have classified documents in there from the War Office. Haven’t I told you about the Official Secrets Act?”
“Only about a hundred times,” she said impatiently. “And I wouldn’t touch those—I’m not stupid. I knew this had nothing to do with your work!”
Stephen sighed. “Penny, it might not be classified information, but the Worms family are our relations!”
“Your cousin Emily married one of them, yes—it’s not as if we are terribly close,” insisted Penny. “And Edith rather flubbed me off when I asked about being introduced to her editor at The Strand.”
“Brutal, my dear,” murmured their mother.
“Can’t you see this was a great breach of trust?” their father asked in a pained voice. “They entrusted me with that description so I could make discreet enquiries.”
“What does it matter about discretion?” Penny objected. “If they want to find this fiend, well—all London knows about him now! They should thank me!”
“But—why the Daily Mail?“ their mother said plaintively. “Didn’t the Pankhursts’ paper suit you? I thought their offices were simply lovely. Surely the Mail offices are rather hard on the soul?”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Penny said, looking at her family with cold fury.
“You’re all quite happy for me to paddle about in the shallows, it’s the thought of me actually getting on in the world that sets you off.
“ She narrowed her eyes at Crispin, who still obstructed her exit. “I do hope Crispin doesn’t need reminding that I’m fully capable of flipping him over—the only reason I don’t is because I don’t want to bring on one of his attacks. ”
Crispin looked at his parents, who nodded helplessly at him. He stepped aside.
Penny opened the door, then turned for the parting blow. Everyone braced themselves.
“The problem with this family,” she announced, hugging her scrapbook, “is that we’re stuck thirty years in the past! We might as well be Victorians!”
Penny left, and the Fairweather parents exchanged a grimace.
“I don’t know which is worse,” their mother said. “Being called a Victorian or knowing I really am one.”
Crispin sat down. “Oh, I don’t know, I thought the jibe at me was a much better hit.”
But for the first time, Penny’s reminder of her physical superiority had not hurt him. Penny had not been asked to spy for the British Empire, after all. He could afford to be generous.
“In my day, Sylvia, fathers inspired awe,” Stephen said wistfully, sitting down again. “Do you remember?”
“Yes, I do, and it was dreadful. I hardly dared look my father in the eye until I was about thirty, and hardly even then. Are you going to have a crisis of masculinity, darling?” asked Sylvia. “Would you mind just passing that potted liver first?”
“I don’t think Victorians have those, Mother,” said Crispin, passing the coveted item. “Buck up, Father, it’s my generation that’s full of neurasthenics and neurotics. They can’t build the sanatoriums fast enough for us, I’m told.”
“You’re cheerful enough about it,” Stephen remarked. “I suppose your work is suiting you, then? No fear of you coming down with a nervous disorder?”
Crispin did not let himself pause, but inwardly he wondered if his father knew anything about the Home Secretary’s offer. “None at all.”
Sylvia let out a long sigh. “I do wish…”
“Yes, Mother?”
“That you were a little more mixed, the two of you.” She looked at Stephen almost sadly. “Penny got all the sharp bits, and Crispin all the smooth.”
Crispin just smiled.
“Did I, Mother?” he asked meekly.