A Strange Likeness. Paula Marshall

end?

      ‘It’s “Not Ned”, the Australian,’ proclaimed Gresham. ‘Here, Ned, here’s your look-alike.’ And he tapped on the shoulder the tall man standing beside him.

      Ned Hatton turned to confront himself. And it was a dam’d disturbing experience, he reported afterwards. All he said at the time was, ‘Jupiter! You’ve stolen my face.’

      Alan was amused as well as startled by seeing his own face without benefit of his shaving mirror.

      ‘As well say you’ve stolen mine.’

      ‘Not quite your voice, though,’ offered Manners. ‘Nor your clothes. But, dammit, you’re even the same height.’

      ‘I’m Alan Dilhorne, from Sydney, New South Wales,’ said Alan, putting out a large hand to Ned for it to be grasped by one very like his own. Yes, Manners had been right: Ned was softer.

      Fascinated, Ned shook the offered hand. ‘Well, Alan Dilhorne, what you most need is a good tailor.’

      ‘And a good barber,’ commented Gresham critically. ‘Although nothing could improve the colour—as shocking as yours, Ned.’

      General laughter followed this. Alan’s amusement at their obsession with his clothes and appearance grew.

      The bells rang for the start of the next act. None of his new friends took the slightest notice of them. Alan debated with himself. Should he go back, alone, to his box? Or stay with this chance-met pack of gentlemen and aristocrats whom in normal circumstances he would never have met at all?

      Fascination at meeting his exact double kept him with them. Almost exact was more accurate, for Manners was right: Ned was certainly not in good shape, would not strip well, and was, in all respects, a softer, smoother version of himself.

      ‘Well, my boys, let’s be off,’ said Gresham. ‘A dam’d dull play, and a dam’d unaccommodating audience. Give it a miss, Dilhorne, and come with us. Let’s find out if you can hold your drink better than Ned. Looking at you, I’d bet on it.’ He clapped the protesting Ned on the shoulder. ‘Come now, Ned, you know you’ve less head for it than Manners here, and that’s saying something!’

      He removed the stovepipe hat which Ned had just put on and tossed it into the street. ‘Last one to leave pays for the rest. First one buys Dilhorne a drink.’ And the whole company streamed convivially out of the theatre, bound for another night on the town.

      A couple of hours later Alan found that he could hold his liquor better than any of them, including Ned, which was not surprising, because although he appeared to keep up with them he took care, by a number of stratagems taught him by his father, not to drink very much.

      They had been in and out of several dives, had argued whether to go on to the Coal Hole or not, and at the last moment had become engaged in a general brawl with some sturdy bruisers guarding a gaming hell just off the Haymarket. Ned expressed a wish to go to Rosie’s. Gresham argued that Rosie’s was dull these days. Alan intervened to prevent another brawl, this time between the two factions into which the group had divided.

      His suggestion that they should split up and meet again another night met with drunken agreement. He announced his own intention to stay with Ned.

      ‘Mustn’t lose my face,’ he announced, and accordingly the larger group, under Gresham, reeled erratically down the road, to end up God knows where. Ned and another friend, whose name Alan never discovered because he never met him again, made for Rosie’s, which had the further attraction for Ned of being near to where they were, thus doing away with the need for a lengthy walk or a cab.

      Rosie’s turned out to be a gaming hell-cum-brothel similar to many in Sydney, though larger and better appointed. Hells like Rosie’s were sometimes known as silver hells, to distinguish them from the top-notch places to one of which Gresham had led the other party. Ned, though, liked the easier atmosphere of these minor dives rather than the ones which the great names of the social world patronised. Besides, they were rarely raided by the authorities.

      The gaming half of Rosie’s was a large room with card tables at one end and supper tables spread with food and drink at the other. The food was lavish, and included oysters, lobster patties and salmis of game and salmon. The drink was varied: port, sherries, light and heavy wines stood about in bottles and decanters.

      Alan, who was hungry, sampled the food and found it good. The drink he avoided, except for one glass of light wine which he disposed of into a potted palm, remembering his father, the Patriarch’s, prudent advice.

      Disliking bought sex—another consequence of his father’s advice—he smilingly refused Ned’s suggestion that he pick one of the girls and sample the goods upstairs.

      ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘Much too tired for exhausting games in bed. I think that I’d prefer a quiet hand of cards—or even to watch other people play.’

      ‘Suit yourself,’ said Ned agreeably. He was always agreeable, Alan was to find, and this was a handicap as well as a virtue, since little moved him deeply.

      ‘Play cards by all means,’ Ned continued. ‘Girls are better, though. I always score with the girls, much more rarely at cards. Don’t wait for me, Dilhorne. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at Stanton House.’ He had earlier invited Alan to visit him at his great-aunt Almeria’s, his base when he was in London.

      He went upstairs on the arm of the Madame, a pretty girl in tow, leaving Alan with the other highly foxed member of the party slumped on a bench near the gaming tables. Alan made himself comfortable in a large armchair which gave him a good view of the room. Sitting there, half-asleep, he watched two well-dressed members of the ton enter. One of them flapped an idle hand at him, and murmured, ‘Evening, Ned.’

      Alan did not disabuse him. He could tell that they were both slightly tipsy, at the voluble stage, and when they seated themselves at a table near him the larger, noisier one began chaffing the other about a visitor he was expecting to arrive at his office on the following morning—‘Or rather, this morning, to have it proper.’ He had apparently reached the pedantic stage of drunkenness.

      ‘From New South Wales, I understand, Johnstone.’

      The other laughed humourlessly. ‘Yes—if it isn’t bad enough that I have to earn a living at all, I’m expected to dance attendance on a pack of colonial savages who have set up in London and are sending one of their cubs to tell us our business. I understand that Father Bear went out there in chains. What a set!’

      ‘And when do you expect Baby Bear?’

      ‘Tomorrow, as I said. He sent me a note today, telling me that I am to have the honour of his presence at ten. The honour of his presence! And at ten! I don’t recognise the time. Well, Baby Bear will have to wait. He proposed the time, not me. The honour of his presence, indeed!’

      He choked with laughter again, spluttering through his drink, ‘Young Master Alan Dilhorne must fancy himself.’

      Alan had early begun to suspect exactly who Johnstone was speaking of, and this last sentence confirmed it. The true son of his devious father, he gave nothing away. Johnstone had risen, looked over at him and said, ‘A game of cards, Ned?’

      Alan nodded. At some point he would have to speak. He, and not his older twin, Thomas, had inherited their father’s talent for mimicry. He tried out Ned’s voice in his head. It was light and careless, higher than his own, a very English upper-class drawl. He thought that he could pull it off. Impersonating Ned would be harder than some of the tricks he had played at home—but it would give him a different form of amusement.

      Meantime, he warned himself, he must watch his vowels—it wouldn’t hurt to appear to be a little drunk. Johnstone and his pal called in another man so that they could sit down in pairs to play piquet. Johnstone against Alan, and his friend against the stranger. Alan prayed that Ned would not return; he had said that he would not, but one thing was very plain: he was not reliable and said whatever pleased him at the time.

      It