Postern of Fate Read online

  Four great gates has the city of Damascus...

  Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear...

  Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard

  That silence where the birds are dead, yet something pipeth like a bird?

  (Gates of Damascus - James Elroy Flecker)

  Book I

  Chapter 1

  MAINLY CONCERNING BOOKS

  'Books!' said Tuppence.

  She produced the word rather with the effect of a bad-tempered explosion.

  'What did you say?' said Tommy.

  Tuppence looked across the room at him.

  'I said "books",' she said.

  'I see what you mean,' said Thomas Beresford.

  In front of Tuppence were three large packing cases. From each of them various books had been extracted. The larger part of them were still filled with books.

  'It's incredible,' said Tuppence.

  'You mean the room they take up?'

  'Yes.'

  'Are you trying to put them all on the shelves?'

  'I don't know what I'm trying to do,' said Tuppence. 'That's the awkward part of it. One doesn't know ever, exactly, what one wants to do. Oh dear,' she sighed.

  'Really,' said her husband, 'I should have thought that that was not at all characteristic of you. The trouble with you has always been that you knew much too well what you do want to do.'

  'What I mean is,' said Tuppence, 'that here we are, getting older, getting a bit - well, let's face it - definitely rheumatic, especially when one is stretching; you know, stretching putting in books or lifting down things from shelves or kneeling down to look at the bottom shelves for something, then finding it a bit difficult to get up again.'

  'Yes, yes,' said Tommy, 'that's an account of our general disabilities. Is that what you started to say?'

  'No, it isn't what I started to say. What I started to say was, it was lovely to be able to buy a new home and find just the place we wanted to go and live in, and just the house there we'd always dreamt of having - with a little alteration, of course.'

  'Knocking one or two rooms into each other,' said Tommy, 'and adding to it what you call a veranda and your builder calls a lodger, though I prefer to call it a loggia.'

  'And it's going to be very nice,' said Tuppence firmly.

  'When you've done with it I shan't know it! Is that the answer?' said Tommy.

  'Not at all. All I said was that when you see it finished you're going to be delighted and say what an ingenious and clever and artistic wife you have.'

  'All right,' said Tommy. 'I'll remember the right thing to say.'

  'You won't need to remember,' said Tuppence. 'It will burst upon you.'

  'What's that got to do with books?' said Tommy.

  'Well, we brought two or three cases of books with us. I mean, we sold off the books we didn't much care about. We brought the ones we really couldn't bear to part with, and then, of course, the what-you-call-'ems - I can't remember their name now, but the people who were selling us this house - they didn't want to take a lot of their own things with them, and they said if we'd like to make an offer they would leave things including books, and we came and looked at things -'

  'And we made some offers,' said Tommy.

  'Yes. Not as many as they hoped we would make, I expect. Some of their furniture and ornaments were too horrible. Well, fortunately we didn't have to take those, but when I came and saw the various books - there were some nursery ones, you know, some down in the sitting-room - and there were one or two old favourites. I mean, there still are. There are one or two of my own special favourites. And so I thought it'd be such fun to have them. You know, the story of Androcles and the Lion,' she said. 'I remember reading that when I was eight years old. Andrew Lang.'

  'Tell me, Tuppence, were you clever enough to read at eight years old?'

  'Yes,' said Tuppence, 'I read at five years old. Everybody could, when I was young. I didn't know one even had to sort of learn. I mean, somebody would read stories aloud, and you liked them very much and you remembered where the book went back on the shelf and you were always allowed to take it out and have a look at it yourself, and so you found you were reading it too, without bothering to learn to spell or anything like that. It wasn't so good later,' she said, 'because I've never been able to spell very well. And if somebody had taught me to spell when I was about four years old I can see it would have been very good indeed. My father did teach me to do addition and subtraction and multiplication, of course, because he said the multiplication table was the most useful thing you could learn in life, and I learnt long division too.'

  'What a clever man he must have been!'

  'I don't think he was specially clever,' said Tuppence, 'but he was just very, very nice.'

  'Aren't we getting away from the point?'

  'Yes, we are,' said Tuppence. 'Well, as I said, when I thought of reading Androcles and the Lion again - it came in a book of stories about animals, I think, by Andrew Lang - oh, I loved that. And there was a story about "a day in my life at Eton" by an Eton schoolboy. I can't think why I wanted to read that, but I did. It was one of my favourite books. And there were some stories from the classics, and there was Mrs Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock, Four Winds Farm -'

  'Well, that's all right,' said Tommy. 'No need to give me a whole account of your literary triumphs in early youth.'

  'What I mean is,' said Tuppence, 'that you can't get them nowadays. I mean, sometimes you get reprints of them, but they've usually been altered and have different pictures in them. Really, the other day I couldn't recognize Alice in Wonderland when I saw it. Everything looks so peculiar in it. There are the books I really could get still. Mrs Molesworth, one or two of the old fairy books - Pink, Blue and Yellow - and then, of course, lots of later ones which I'd enjoyed. Lots of Stanley Weymans and things like that. There are quite a lot here, left behind.'

  'All right,' said Tommy. 'You were tempted. You felt it was a good buy.'

  'Yes. At least - what d'you mean "a goodbye"?'

  'I mean b-u-y,' said Tommy.

  'Oh. I thought you were going to leave the room and were saying goodbye to me.'

  'Not at all,' said Tommy. 'I was deeply interested. Anyway, it was a good b-u-y.'

  'And I got them very cheap, as I tell you. And - and here they all are among our own books and others. Only, we've got such a terrible lot now of books, and the shelves we had made I don't think are going to be nearly enough. What about your special sanctum? Is there room there for more books?'

  'No, there isn't,' said Tommy. 'There's not going to be enough for my own.'

  'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Tuppence, 'that's so like us. Do you think we might have to build on an extra room?'

  'No,' said Tommy, 'we're going to economize. We said so the day before yesterday. Do you remember?'

  'That was the day before yesterday,' said Tuppence. 'Time alters. What I am going to do now is to put in these shelves all the books I really can't bear to part with. And then - and then we can look at the others and - well, there might be a children's hospital somewhere and there might, anyway, be places which would like books.'

  'Or we could sell them,' said Tommy.

  'I don't suppose they're the sort of books people would want to buy very much. I don't think there are any books of rare value or anything like that.'

  'You never know your luck,' said Tommy. 'Let's hope something out of print will fulfil some bookseller's long-felt want.'

  'In the meantime,' said Tuppence, 'we have to put them into the shelves, and look inside them, of course, each time, to see whether it's a book I do really want and I can really remember. I'm trying to get them roughly - well, you know what I mean,
sort of sorted. I mean, adventure stories, fairy stories, children's stories and those stories about schools where the children were always very rich - L.T. Meade, I think. And some of the books we used to read to Deborah when she was small, too. How we all used to love Winnie the Pooh. And there was The Little Grey Hen too, but I didn't care very much for that.'

  'I think you're tiring yourself,' said Tommy. 'I think I should leave off what you're doing now.'

  'Well, perhaps I will,' said Tuppence, 'but I think if I could just finish this side of the room, just get the books in here...'

  'Well, I'll help you,' said Tommy.

  He came over, tilted the case more so that the books fell out, gathered up armfuls of them and went to the shelves and shoved them in.

  'I'm putting the same sized ones together, it looks neater,' he said.

  'Oh, I don't call that sorting,' said Tuppence.

  'Sorting enough to get on with. We can do more of that later. You know, make everything really nice. We'll sort it on some wet day when we can't think of anything else to do.'

  'The trouble is we always can think of something else to do.'

  'Well now, there's another seven in there. Now then, there's only this top corner. Just bring me that wooden chair over there, will you? Are its legs strong enough for me to stand on it? Then I can put some on the top shelf.'

  With some care he climbed on the chair. Tuppence lifted up to him an armful of books. He insinuated them with some care on to the top shelf. Disaster only happened with the last three which cascaded to the floor, narrowly missing Tuppence.

  'Oh,' said Tuppence, 'that was painful.'

  'Well, I can't help it. You handed me up too many at once.'

  'Oh well, that does look wonderful,' said Tuppence, standing back a little. 'Now then, if you'll just put these in the second shelf from the bottom, there's a gap there, that will finish up this particular caseful anyway. It s a good thing too. These ones I'm doing this morning aren't really ours, they're the ones we bought. We may find treasures.'

  'We may,' said Tommy.

  'I think we shall find treasures, I think I really shall find something. Something that's worth a lot of money, perhaps.'

  'What do we do then? Sell it?'

  'I expect we'll have to sell it, yes,' said Tuppence. 'Of course we might just keep it and show it to people. You know, not exactly boasting, but just say, you know: "oh yes, we ve got really one or two interesting finds." I think we shall make an interesting find, too.'

  'What - one old favourite you've forgotten about?"

  'Not exactly that. I meant something startling, surprising. Something that'll make all the difference to our lives.'

  'Oh Tuppence,' said Tommy, 'what a wonderful mind you've got. Much more likely to find something that's an absolute disaster.'

  'Nonsense,' said Tuppence. 'One must have hope. It's the great thing you have to have in life. Hope. Remember? I'm always full of hope.'

  'I know you are,' said Tommy. He sighed. 'I've often regretted it.'

  Chapter 2

  THE BLACK ARROW

  Mrs Thomas Beresford replaced The Cuckoo Clock, by Mrs Molesworth, choosing a vacant place on the third shelf from the bottom. The Mrs Molesworths were congregated here together. Tuppence drew out The Tapestry Room and held it thoughtfully in her fingers. Or she might read Four Winds Farm. She couldn't remember Four Winds Farm as well as she could remember The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room. Her fingers wandered... Tommy would be back soon.

  She was getting on. Yes, surely she was getting on. If only she didn't stop and pull out old favourites and read them. Very agreeable, but it took a lot of time. And when Tommy asked her in the evening when he came home how things were going and she said, 'Oh very well now,' she had to employ a great deal of tact and finesse to prevent him from going upstairs and having a real look at how the bookshelves were progressing. It all took a long time. Getting into a house always took a long time, much longer than one thought. And so many irritating people. Electricians, for instance, who came and appeared to be displeased with what they had done the last time they came and took up more large areas in the floor and, with cheerful faces, produced more pitfalls for the unwary housewife to walk along and put a foot wrong and be rescued just in time by the unseen electrician who was groping beneath the floor.

  'Sometimes,' said Tuppence, 'I really wish we hadn't left Bartons Acre.'

  'Remember the dining-room roof,' Tommy had said, 'and remember those attics, and remember what happened to the garage. Nearly wrecked the car, you know it did.'

  'I suppose we could have had it patched up,' said Tuppence.

  'No,' said Tommy, 'we'd have had to practically replace the damaged building, or else we had to move. This is going to be a very nice house some day. I'm quite sure of that. Anyway, there's going to be room in it for all the things we want to do.'

  'When you say the things we want to do,' Tuppence had said, 'you mean the things we want to find places for and to keep.'

  'I know,' said Tommy. 'One keeps far too much. I couldn't agree with you more.'

  At that moment Tuppence considered something - whether they ever were going to do anything with this house, that is to say beyond getting into it. It had sounded simple but had turned out complex. Partly, of course, all these books.

  'If I'd been a nice ordinary child of nowadays,' said Tuppence, 'I wouldn't have learned to read so easily when I was young. Children nowadays who are four, or five, or six, don't seem to be able to read and quite a lot of them don't seem to be able to read when they get to ten or eleven. I can't think why it was so easy for all of us. We could all read. Me and Martin next door and Jennifer down the road and Cyril and Winifred. All of us. I don't mean we could all spell very well but we could read anything we wanted to. I don't know how we learnt. Asking people, I suppose. Things about posters and Carter's Little Liver Pills. We used to read all about them in the fields when trains got near London. It was very exciting. I always wondered what they were. Oh dear, I must think of what I'm doing.'

  She removed some more books. Three-quarters of an hour passed with her absorbed first in Alice Through the Looking-Glass then with Charlotte Yonge's Unknown to History. Her hands lingered over the fat shabbiness of The Daisy Chain.

  'Oh I must read that again,' said Tuppence. To think of the years and years and years it is since I did read it. Oh dear, how exciting it was, wondering, you know, whether Norman was going to be allowed to be confirmed or not. And Ethel and - what was the name of the place? Coxwell or something like that - and Flora who was worldly. I wonder why everyone was "worldly" in those days, and how poorly it was thought of, being worldly. I wonder what we are now. Do you think we're all worldly or not?'

  'I beg yer pardon, ma'am?'

  'Oh nothing,' said Tuppence, looking round at her devoted henchman, Albert, who had just appeared in the doorway.

  'I thought you called for something, madam. And you rang the bell, didn't you?'

  'Not really,' said Tuppence. 'I just leant on it getting up on a chair to take a book out.'

  'Is there anything I can take down for you?'

  'Well, I wish you would,' said Tuppence. 'I'm falling off those chairs. Some of their legs are very wobbly, some of them rather slippery.'

  'Any book in particular?'

  'Well, I haven't got on very far with the third shelf up. Two shelves down from the top, you know. I don't know what books are there.'

  Albert mounted on a chair and banging each book in turn to dislodge such dust as it had managed to gather on it, handed things down. Tuppence received them with a good deal of rapture.

  'Oh, fancy! All these. I really have forgotten a lot of these. Oh, here's The Amulet and here's The Psamayad. Here's The New Treasure Seekers. Oh, I love all those. No, don't put them in shelves yet, Albert. I think I'll have to read them first. Well, I mean, one or two of them first, perhaps. Now, what's this one? Let me see. The Red Cockade. Oh yes, that was one of the historical ones. Tha
t was very exciting. And there's Under the Red Robe, too. Lots of Stanley Weyman. Lots and lots. Of course I used to read those when I was about ten or eleven. I shouldn't be surprised if I don't come across The Prisoner of Zenda.' She sighed with enormous pleasure at the remembrance. 'The Prisoner of Zenda. One's first introduction, really, to the romantic novel. The romance of Princess Flavia. The King of Ruritania. Rudolph Rassendyll, some name like that, whom one dreamt of at night.'

  Albert handed down another selection.

  'Oh yes,' said Tuppence, 'that's better, really. That's earlier again. I must put the early ones all together. Now, let me see. What have we got here? Treasure Island. Well, that's nice but of course I have read Treasure Island again, and I've seen, I think, two films of it. I don't like seeing it on films, it never seems right. Oh - and here's Kidnapped. Yes, I always liked that.'