“Just for the interest of the thing, would you have given me money if I’d grovelled?”

“No. You tried the sentimental trick and I choked you off. Grovelling would have served you no better.”

“Will you order some more food? And drink? Not that I’m grovelling, mind you, but I am a guest.”

“And we both grew up under a system where a guest is sacred. For the moment I acknowledge that system.”

“Noblesse oblige. A motto dear to the heart of bourgeois with pretensions to high breeding.”

“I know a bit more about high breeding than I did when last we met. Thou shalt perish ere I perish. Ever hear that one? And if I fell for your beauty again—and you are still beautiful, my dear wife—I should certainly perish, and deservedly, of stupidity. I have made myself a promise: I shan’t die stupid.”

In due course the war did end. That is to say, the fighting with fire and explosives ended, and the fighting with diplomacy burst into action. The special task of what was called victory in which Francis was to play a part began to take shape. Something like peace had to be restored in the world of art, that barometer of national good and bad weather, that indefinable afflatus that a modern country must possess for its soul’s good. But that would not begin until many other things had been settled, and Francis put in for leave to make a visit to Canada on compassionate grounds. Grand’mère had indeed died in the early days of 1945, and Aunt Mary-Ben, being no longer anybody’s Right Bower, had not been long in following her. Indeed, Mary-Tess said, somewhat unfeelingly, that Grand’mère, arriving in Heaven, had needed somebody to manage eternity for her, and had rung the bell for Mary-Ben.

Francis was not surprised, or reluctant, when the family laid on him the task of going to Blairlogie and settling affairs there, and, in effect, ending the McRory family’s long connection with the place. His brother Arthur and his cousins Larry and Mick were still abroad in the services, and anyhow they were young for such work; G. V. O’Gorman (a very big man now in the world of finance) certainly could not be spared, and Sir Francis was too grand for an extended errand of that kind. Besides, Sir Francis had had a stroke, and although his condition was not grave, he tended, as his wife phrased it, to look wonky by the end of the day. After all, he was well over seventy, though nobody said quite how much “over” implied.

As for Mary-Jim (all the family had called her Jacko for years) she was now sixty-one, and although she had the ability to look the best possible for her age, her speech and behaviour were disturbing and Francis felt tenderness and affection for her, which was something other than the obligatory, forced worship he had offered her since childhood. If ever he was to speak to her about the Looner, now was the time.

“Mother: I’ve always wondered about my elder brother—Francis the First, you know. Nobody has ever said anything to me about him. Can’t you tell me anything?”

“There’s nothing to tell, darling. He was never a thriving child, and he died very young and very sadly.”

“What did he die of?”

“Oh—of whatever very tiny babies do die of. Of not living, really.”

“He had something wrong with him?”

“Mm? He just died. It was a long time ago, you know.”

“But he must have lived for at least a year. What was he like?”

“Oh, a sweet child. Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered. Odd to have a brother one’s never known.”

“A sweet child. I’m sure if he’d lived you would have loved him very much. But he died as a baby, you see.”

Francis got nothing more from his father.

“I don’t really remember anything about him, Frank. He died very young. You saw his marker up there in the graveyard.”

“Yes, but that suggested he died a Catholic. You’ve always insisted that I’m a Protestant.”

“Of course. All the Cornishes have been Protestants since the Reformation. I forget how he came to be buried there. Does it matter? He was too young to be anything, really.”

Is that so, thought Francis. You don’t know anything about it. You don’t even know that I’m a Catholic by strict theological reckoning. Neither you nor Mother know one damn thing about me, and all the talk about love was a sham. So far as my soul is concerned neither of you ever gave a sweet damn. Only Mary-Ben, and for all her gentle ways she was a fierce old bigot. None of you ever had a thought that wasn’t a disgrace to anything it would be decent to call religion. Yet somehow I’ve drifted into a world where religion, but not orthodoxy, is the fountain of everything that makes sense.

At Blairlogie, to which he made a last journey, taking sandwiches so that he would not have to eat at the dreadful table of “th’old lady”, Francis went at once to Dr. Joseph Ambrosius Jerome, now ninety, a tiny figure whose blazing eyes still spoke of an alert intelligence.

“Well, if you must know, Francis—and you once told me you knew about that fellow in the attic—he was an idjit. I was the one who arranged for him to live up there. Your grandfather would have thanked me if I’d killed him, but none o’ that for me. My profession is not that of murderer.”

“But it was such a wretched existence. Couldn’t he have been put some place to be cared for that wasn’t so much like a prison?”

“Had you had no education at Oxford? Don’t you remember what Plato says? ‘If anyone is insane let him not be openly seen in the city, but let the family of such a person watch over him at home in the best manner they know of, and if they are negligent let them pay a fine.’ Well—they did their best, but they paid a fine, right enough. That thing in the attic rotted St. Kilda. It cost them all dear in the coin of the spirit, in spite of your grandmother’s card mania, and your grandfather keeping himself busy in Ottawa.”

“Were they afraid that whatever ailed him might come out again in me?”

“They never said boo to me about it if they did.”

“But why not: I had the same parents.”

“Had you so?” Dr. J.A. burst into loud laughter. Not the cackle of a nonagenarian, but a robust laugh, though not a particularly merry one.

“Didn’t I?”

“You’ll not get that out of me. Ask your mother.”

“Do you suggest—?”

“I don’t suggest anything, and I’m not answering any more questions. But I’ll tell you something that few people ever get told. They say it’s a wise child that knows its own father, but it’s a damn sight wiser child that knows its own mother. There are corners of a mother no son ever penetrates, and damn few daughters. There was a taint in your mother, and so far it hasn’t turned up in you or Arthur—not that Arthur isn’t such a blockhead that a taint could pass unnoticed—but you’ve plenty of time yet. You may live to be as old as me, and God grant you manage it with a safe hide. What’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh: never was a truer word spoken. Have a dram, Frank, and don’t look so dawny. Whatever became of all that first-rate whisky your grandfather had tucked away in his cellar?”

“There’s some there still, and it must be dealt with. I’ll send it over to you, shall I?”

“God bless you, dear lad! That stuff’ll be proper old man’s milk by this time. And at my age I need regular draughts of that very milk.”

Clearing out St. Kilda was a weary job, and it took Frank, with two men to fetch and carry and drag loads of stuff to the auctioneer, and to the dump, three weeks to achieve it. He could not live in the house, though Anna Lemenchick was still on the strength as caretaker; he could not face Anna’s dreadful food. He stayed at the Hotel Blairlogie, which was miserable, but had no clinging memories. He insisted on dealing with the contents of every room himself: to the auctioneer, all the Louis furniture; to the presbytery, all Aunt’s holy pictures and such of her furniture as the priests might use. Francis left the nudes in the portfolio, thinking the priests might appreciate them. To the Public Library went the books and some further prints, and (this was in despair, and rather against the wishes of the librarian) the lesser oil paintings. The Cardinal pictures went to an art dealer in Montreal and fetched a goodish price. Victoria Cameron, now a woman of property, was invited to take anything she wanted, and, characteristically, wanted nothing but a drawing Francis had made, many years ago, of Zadok in top hat and white choker, driving Devinney’s hearse. In his own old room he had some things to dispose of, which would not have attracted the attention of anyone else, but which were full of meaning for him.