by Peter Rimmer
“Now,” said Lord St Clair, feeling very pleased with himself. “The big surprise.” Putting his left hand up to the new switch on the wall, he pushed down the small knob handle, which turned the lights on, on the fully decorated Christmas tree. For a full ten seconds no one said a word, dumbfounded, even though all but the travellers knew what to expect, it was the first time the fairy lights had been switched on in the dark.
“Old Potty was quite specific in his will,” said Lord St Clair. “Electricity. That was how he put it. ‘My last few pennies shall light up Purbeck Manor.’ And there we are. The old house has at last been wired with electricity… Now, who is going to have a glass of sherry so we can raise our glasses to Sir Willoughby Potts, gentleman and friend to all of us?”
“It’s so beautiful,” said Lucinda.
“Must have cost a pretty penny,” said Robert.
“Aunt Nut would have loved the Christmas tree all lit up,” said Granny Forrester.
“Then we’ll drink to both of them. Sir Willoughby Potts and my late Aunt Nut, who was as sweet as a nut,” said Lord St Clair… “Robert. Lucinda. Welcome home.”
Robert woke the next morning in his old room. Everything was familiar, permanent. He had left one window slightly open to breathe fresh air snuggled deep into the blankets and soft eiderdown. There was snow on the outside of the window in a small ridge on the other side of the wooden sill. The world was quiet, at peace with itself. Not a single sound came through the tiny gap left by the open window. From inside the house, there was nothing, not a blemish on the silence. Putting thick socks on under the bedclothes, Robert made himself ready for the plunge into his clothes that he knew were ice-cold. His feet warmed and gave him a feeling of false security, the thought of breakfast making him brave. Someone, somewhere in the house, banged a door.
He made himself not think of the cold until he was fully dressed. Then he looked out of the window two storeys high, down over the white fields blanketed in snow. It was very beautiful.
All through last night, his eldest brother Richard had not appeared. Annabel was away but no one had said where. Genevieve was married, the only one of the girls to marry. Frederick was due home on furlough with his new wife that day if the trains ran from London in the snow. He had left the Indian civil service to work for his father-in-law, even though the man was in some kind of trade Robert had not heard of before. Frederick had gone to London for a week to show his wife the sights. Robert’s mother had said the girl was fluffy which was probably not a good start. Lady St Clair had thought her second son would have done better coming home to England to find a wife, instead of competing with all the other bachelors in India for the ‘fishing fleet girls’. The subject had been closed, the way the subject had been closed when Robert asked about Richard.
Over three helpings of roast mutton and all the trimmings, as Robert liked to think of the roast potatoes, four root vegetables and last year’s blackcurrant jelly, he had told them bits and pieces about Africa, giving them all Harry Brigandshaw’s best regards, and avoided the question of what he was going to do with himself now that he was back in England. Apart from the bit about ‘Silent Night’ being first sung in German, no one mentioned the looming war that had been a constant topic on the SS King Emperor all the way from Cape Town to Southampton. He rather hoped the war was going to happen soon before he found some country prep school in which to bury himself. He was going to join the Territorial Army right after Christmas, that much he had made up his mind. He rather thought it a good idea to learn how to kill other soldiers before they killed him. He hadn’t told anyone about that, not even Lucinda, who had grown quieter and quieter as the evening went on. He rather thought she was missing Harry Brigandshaw. They had all spent a lot of time together, day and evening.
It was all now so far away. In years to come most of what happened in Africa would slip from his memory. In his mind, he tried to wish Madge and Barend a happy life together but knew he was not being honest with himself. Maybe the memories of Africa would not fade as fast as he would have liked them to do. Everything looked so different from a distance, so final. He wished he was a better man. Stronger. Able to get a job on an African farm. To learn the business. Save some money. Borrow money to buy a small farm. But he knew he was no good. Too soft. Too inclined to enjoy the good things without working for them. He was a failure. They probably wouldn’t want him in the TA. Even the Territorial Army were choosy when it came to picking their officers.
By lunchtime, there was still no sign of Richard and Robert feared there was something seriously wrong. It was as if the rest of the family, other than Robert and Lucinda, were expecting something to happen. And whatever was going to happen was not going to be pleasant.
All the servants left at Purbeck Manor were part of the conspiracy, and when Robert asked the cook what was going on, he was sharply told to go and ask his mother, and that family matters had nothing to do with the staff. It was the first time the cook had ever been sharp with him, as buttering up the cook had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. Robert, from the age of five, had found that even cooks succumb to the art of flattery.
Cook watched Robert going off in a huff and felt sorry for the whole family. For twenty years she had been wondering why Master Robert was not as round as a barrel, the amount of food he put into one stomach. She called it ‘one of life’s little mysteries’ of which there were many in her way. But when she had been slaving in the kitchen all day, it had been nice of one of the children to come back and say the food was wonderful, even if she did know what the scallywag was after. There was nothing worse in her life than serving up good food and seeing it picked over. What she and the rest of the servants were going to do when the family finally disintegrated, she had no idea. She had been born in the servants’ quarters and hoped to die there. If any one of the children had married a lot of money, she and James would not be in a constant state of worry. And neither of them had children to fall back on either. And with this war just around the corner, she was at the end of her wits. The last thing she needed was questions about Master Richard, who as far as she could see had now gone stark raving mad, foaming at the mouth and rolling on the floor. If she had had her way they would have called the parish priest to cast out the devil, not that old fool Reichwald, who didn’t even have a cure for her piles. She watched Robert’s receding back, wondering what the world had finally come to. She would have a good moan with James when he came off duty for his first cup of tea.
By three o’clock, Robert and Barnaby were off to Corfe Castle station in the trap to meet his sister-in-law. Along with the electricity had come a telephone as father had said something about ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’. Frederick had phoned in the time of his arrival from London.
“What’s she like?” he asked Barnaby as they drove through the pure white landscape.
“Fluffy.”
“Mother always was rather good at picking one word… You’d better tell me about Richard. Why am I not allowed to see him, Barnaby?”
“He’s been having fits. Seizures, according to Doctor Reichwald. The slightest bit of excitement and he drops on the floor, foaming at the mouth. We all have to make sure he doesn’t swallow his tongue. Father said he wanted you and Cinda to enjoy your homecoming first. It’s quite a worry for all of us. It just happens. Look, he’s always been a bit simple, like a kid really, but there was nothing outwardly wrong with him. Nothing you could see.”
“My poor brother.”
“There’s nothing we can do. To get better, I mean… I think he’s going to die and then Frederick will be the heir.”
“Has she got any money?”
“Yes. A lot. Granny Forrester found out somehow. You know how she is. But keep it secret. I don’t think Granny’s told Mother.”
“Why did she tell you?”
“Because I’m her favourite.”
“I can tell you Cook doesn’t know,” said Robert.
“Then it’s you, me and Granny… Why didn’t you marry the sister?… What was her name?”
“For sixteen you shouldn’t even know about such things. Straight answer? She wouldn’t have me. I’m not good enough.”
“Don’t talk rubbish, Robert. You’re the cleverest one of all of us. The only one to go to Oxford.”
“But as Father says: What are the three most stupid things in the world? A degree in history. A man’s tits. And the Pope’s balls.”
“I have never understood that one.”
“Thank goodness for small mercies… You’d better jiggle Jug Ears along or we’ll be late. By the way, where’s the cat?”
“Which one?”
“Tiddles.”
“She’s dead.”
After a long time, and with the ruins of Corfe Castle now coming into view, Robert said quietly, “I loved that cat.”
“She was very old. Mother said she must have been twenty. Do cats live to twenty?”
“I don’t know… What’s Frederick’s wife’s name?”
“Penelope. Not Pen. Not Penny. Penelope. Very fluffy.”
“You don’t like her?”
“I never said that. You can’t dislike a person you don’t know.”
They drove on for a while.
“What are you going to do with your life, Barnaby?”
“I’m going into the army. All youngest sons go into the army. I take the Sandhurst exams next year.”
Inwardly, Penelope St Clair was shaking like a leaf as the train drew in at Corfe Castle station. Old man Pringle shuffled forward with a trolley and Frederick helped him load the two small cases.
“How’s Mrs Pringle?” he asked.
“Arthritis. Same as me. Cottage too close to river. Damp. You’ve got surprise. Mister Robert’s in trap with Master Barnaby. Merry Christmas.”
“And Merry Christmas to you and yours, Pringle.”
“I’ll tell Albert.”
“Albert! I thought he went off to Africa.”
“Our Albert’s rich. Owns shares in a gold mine. And mining supply company. Dynamite. Says ’e’s going to be millionaire.”
“Where’s he staying?”
“In cottage. Same as usual. Says he can’t beat his mother’s cookin’ no matter how much money he got. Our Tina thinks he’s wonderful.”
“Dynamite, you say? Fuses. All that sort of thing. How very interesting.”
It was as if she did not exist. People talked around her. Over her. Never included her in their conversations. And now she had to meet another St Clair. They all frightened her to death and Lady St Clair left her quite tongue-tied. The only one who had given her even a smile was Granny Forrester. The family and people around them were all so close. She even knew they were poor. Father had found that out, but he said they were honest. Which is probably why they were poor, he’d said. Why being honest made a family poor she didn’t understand.
Three years before, her father had endowed her with exactly half a million pounds. Put in three per cent Consols it had grown, as she spent very little, and in the six months that they had been married, Frederick had not asked her for a penny. She had told him about the money and he had just smiled… The strangest thing in all of it was he loved her. She didn’t love him yet. Maybe she never would. Her father had done everything for her as usual. He knew about Richard and the fact he would never marry.
“Have a son or two, luv. That way my grandson will be Lord St Clair. When you got my kind of money you got to think up things to spend it on. Owning mines in India and halfway around the world is one thing. Owning the Nineteenth Baron St Clair is something else.”
“I don’t love him.”
“What the ’ell has that got to do with the price of cheese?”
They went through the rigmarole of being introduced. Robert seemed far away, as if he had not yet fully returned from Africa. Barnaby, the youngest son, was more interested in talking to the man called Pringle about a girl called Tina. No one had introduced her to Pringle, but then he was a servant and not even a St Clair retainer. Robert was talking to Pringle about thick sandwiches and pickles. It was all over her head. Then they squeezed everyone into the trap for the seven-mile ride to Purbeck Manor on a road that had probably been laid during the last Crusade. Even the soft layer of snow failed to stop the road jangling her bones. Her teeth snapped shut frequently. She bit her tongue once and tasted blood. Going away to London for a week had been worth it but this time coming back to Purbeck Manor she knew what to expect. Maybe when she had the baby she would become part of the family. If she survived the road. The doctor in London had confirmed her pregnancy when she had gone to him on an excuse. She thought it would be better to tell Frederick when they left Purbeck Manor after Christmas. They were going back to India, which was good. Anywhere was good where she was not excluded. The boy and the two men chatted all the way back to the manor house, without once bringing her into the conversation. And she felt sick. She had heard of morning sickness during pregnancy but not feeling sick half of the day. She missed her mother. Without them even noticing her she began to silently cry.
Frederick wondered why his wife was crying but was too embarrassed to bring up the subject in front of his brothers. He went on talking as if nothing had happened. He thought of holding her hand but he had never done that before. Apart from his mother, Aunt Nut and Granny Forrester, he had never known a woman in his life. Sisters were different. They were sisters. He had lived in bachelor quarters in India for more than ten years. This being married to a woman he knew nothing about was difficult. What did women think? What did they want to do? The only time you ever touched each other was under the sheets when the lights were out and the black night had fallen. Then a world opened he did not admit to in the morning. What he did in the night could have nothing to do with the demure young woman who greeted him politely at breakfast as if nothing had happened. After the first time, he tried to look into her eyes the next morning but she wouldn’t look back at him. He rather thought she was ashamed. He knew he was.
Annabel had been thirteen when he left home to join the Indian civil service. She had been a giggly schoolgirl as far away from what he did at night with Penelope as the moon. Until his marriage and joining the Anglo-Indian mining company he had never had enough money to go home to England on leave. He sold his leave passage and sent the money to his mother every three years, went up into the hills of Kashmir and told his bachelor friends what a good time he had had in England. None of them questioned him and he rather thought the others did the same thing. If their families were rich they would not be in the Indian civil service in the first place.
When he resigned to join his father-in-law’s company, that many referred to as an empire within an empire, he was thirty years old, tall, thin, with dark brown hair and wore a military moustache, perfectly cut and tinged with grey. He was a junior magistrate, having taken his law degree at night by correspondence. He could only practise in India, and some would have called it a second-class degree of limited use, which it was. Everything in India needed someone up the ladder to die so everyone could shift up a rung. Progress was made by someone stepping into a dead man’s shoes. The trappings of colonial life made the monotony and low salaries worthwhile. In India, every Englishman was a sahib, a gentleman, and when in India they lived as gentlemen would live, with servants and housing that fitted their rank. Part of the system was to make sure the Europeans appeared above the Indians. They lived in married quarters or exclusive men’s clubs founded on the same principles as an officers’ mess or a top West End club that carefully selected its members. Never, ever, were the British allowed to fraternise socially with the natives except on specific, laid down occasions when everyone was very polite to each other. Apart from the Indian Mutiny, it had worked surprisingly well for two hundred years; something like twenty thousand Britons running the entire subcontinent, with Indians to serve below the British in the civil service. Backed by regiments of the British
Army, and regiments of the Indian Army officered by Britons, the rule of law prevailed, and everyone got on with the daily business without, for the most part, trying to kill each other. Frederick thought it was probably the only way to stop the multitude of states, factions, castes and religions squabbling with each other. The only way to trade profitably was under the rule of law. The British maintained the peace, provided an unbreakable legal system, and made a fortune at the same time, and Frederick rather thought he had paid his dues. After years of doing the hard work, it was his turn to make a fortune. He was going to be worth his father-in-law’s while. Penelope’s money belonged to her. Maybe their children. He himself would never touch a penny. By the time they reached Purbeck Manor, the girl he had married and only knew in the dark of the night had stopped crying. It was snowing hard.
Barnaby, thinking of his girlfriend Tina Pringle, helped Penelope from the trap. Either snow was melting on her face or the girl had been crying. Halfway to the big front door with its side door entrance, the girl clutching his arm stopped and was sick into the snow. Embarrassed, he waited for his brother Frederick to do something. All of them instead made it look as though nothing was happening.
Through into the sitting room with a Christmas tree, Penelope found a chair near the log fire and sat herself down. Someone gave her a cup of tea, which she drank gratefully. Never in her life had she wanted her mother more. The rest of the family were talking nineteen to the dozen, and Lord St Clair was repeating a story about Daisy, his prize sow. Every mouth she looked at was open and talking. No one was listening to a word. They were all having a thoroughly good time.
Lucinda was wondering what it was going to be like for the rest of her life, an old maid with nothing to look forward to but the second-hand happiness of other people. She had seen her new sister-in-law was feeling out of it but was not in the mood to be friendly. If anything, she was jealous of the girl, though what the poor thing would find worthwhile in being the wife of ramrod stiff Frederick she had no idea. She thought her second eldest brother was as cold as a fish. He looked ten years older than she knew him to be. She had never known him. As a child, she remembered this man that went away to some place called India… She tried to join in the happy family conversation but her mind was still at Elephant Walk with all its possibilities that had turned to nothing. And now they said there was going to be a full-scale war and all the joining men would be killed. She was firmly on the shelf, where she would stay. At Purbeck Manor, her father allowed her one small glass of sherry the whole evening. She missed the three stiff gins before supper and most nights feeling slightly tiddly. She missed the dogs. She missed the damn geese, she told herself. A good lion roar from right next to the window would send her into ecstasy. Above all, she would like to be warm right through to the marrow of her bones. She was sick of standing in front of roaring fires, toasting her front to perfection while her bottom froze from the draught coming in under the doors and sending freezing winds whistling round every room in the old house. Even in bed, her feet had not been warm since she came home. And as for poor Robert with that damn prep school of his, she did not wish to think. Inside the masters’ common rooms she had heard they only put three lumps of coal on the fire in the depth of winter. The poor brass monkeys wouldn’t stand a damn chance. And that was something else, she told herself. Now she was home she must stop swearing, even to herself. Or God would punish her. It was all her fault why God punished her anyway. She was a bad girl from all that drinking and mental swearing in Africa. And then she had a clear picture of Harry’s face in her mind and she wanted to cry. Well, she wasn’t going to cry. She was going to grin and bear it. Seeing Robert standing back from her father’s story about his pigs she walked across to him. They had Africa in common. They would always be close.