House of Trelawney

by Hannah Rothschild

  Waves of indignation washed away any feelings of personal responsibility. It was, perhaps, too painful and humiliating to accept that he was to blame for their penury; it was easier to blame Jane’s lack of imagination. Looking at the suggested menus, he felt deeply sorry for his children having to eat the same things at the same time week after week. Where was the spirit of adventure, the sense of occasion? What was the point in living in such a beautiful house, in a peerless setting, only to sit down, night after night, between homework and bed, to a dish made of mince? His wife, Kitto reflected sadly, was and forever would be a product of suburbia. Anastasia said once that, asked to choose between a natural lake and a municipal pool, Jane would choose the chlorinated option, with narrow allocated lanes and warning signs clearly laid out. It had been a cruel but prophetic indictment. Kitto regretted, once again, putting duty before happiness. Thinking about Anastasia, his heart turned inside out. When she had been alive, he had managed to contain his longing; but in death, she was all-pervasive, infecting his thoughts. The day before, she’d appeared like an apparition on the far-distant horizon, and he’d held out his hand to her; but, as their fingers were about to touch, her image disintegrated. Three nights earlier he’d woken to feel her hot breath on his cheek and had lain still, not moving, inhaling her scent. Finally he’d opened his eyes and felt the crushing disappointment of her absence. Her only rival had been Trelawney; and ultimately the castle had won. Love, his father told him, was for ordinary people; the Earls of Trelawney had a more important calling and Kitto had to put duty before desire. Women would come and go. There would be other Anastasias, other passions. If Kitto couldn’t make money, he had to marry it. So Kitto proposed to Jane and thenceforth ruined his and Anastasia’s lives. Worse than that, he was failing to save Trelawney.

  It was a beautiful evening and Kitto decided to take his children foraging. Over the next few days—even when Jane returned—he’d teach them how to be self-sufficient and live off the land, something that he longed to do as a child but Nanny Smith had forbidden. Earlier that day he’d prepared a fire by the estuary and left a frying pan and various utensils in wait. Homework be damned! They could get up half an hour earlier or deliver the kind of excuses that all children and parents fall back on.

  Pooter nudged his leg and whined. Kitto realised he’d forgotten to feed him. Opening the cupboard, he found a packet of dried biscuits. How much did the dog get? A bowlful? Two? Was it mixed with anything else? Reading the back of the pack, he saw that dogs weighing over ten kilograms should have 900 grams a day. What did Pooter weigh? Kitto picked him up like a baby. He was pretty heavy—certainly more than ten kilograms. He measured out one and a half bowlfuls, hoping that was about right.

  The clock on the wall struck five. Kitto went down the long east corridor to the gunroom and picked out two twelve-bore shotguns, made specially for him by the gunsmiths James Purdey and Sons, engraved with the family coat of arms. They were worth nearly £50,000 on the open market. He had often thought of selling them, but his grandfather’s maxim came back: “Judge any man by the quality of his guns.”

  The imminent reversal of his fortunes made Kitto smile. His colleagues had guaranteed a £2 million profit on the sub-prime fund. Once he’d made the roof of the house watertight, filled the oil tanks, placed £100,000 in a deposit account as an inheritance for each of his younger children and taken Jane on a “hot” holiday, he’d reopen the Trelawney shoot. He’d stay on in the City; men like him were rare and hard to find. From a separate cupboard, he picked out two fishing rods and a box of flies. If they used spinners, the children would be sure to catch something, but that would defeat the purpose of the adventure: hunger would make them better shots, keener fishermen.

  “Dad, are you there?” Toby called down the hall.

  “In the gunroom,” Kitto replied. “Come and help me with this clobber.”

  Toby’s large feet echoed down the long corridor, slap-slapping all the way from the kitchen. His shadow loomed before he arrived, backlit by a bare bulb which made him appear taller, thinner and menacing. Kitto smiled to himself: no one would ever accuse his middle child of being frightening. Toby emanated kindness and bonhomie.

  “What are you doing?” Toby asked, looking at the array of guns, cartridges, fishing tackle, knives, flies and nets laid out on the table.

  “We’re going to catch or kill dinner and build a fire and cook it.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “There’s nothing else in the fridge.”

  Toby’s face broke into a broad grin. “Can we use your Purdeys?” he said, picking up one of the guns. Normally, the children had the use of older, less distinguished firearms.

  The sound of other footsteps echoed down the flagstone corridor.

  “Dad? Toby?” Arabella called.

  “Pretend to be dead,” Kitto told Toby. “I’ll stand over you with a shotgun.”

  Toby looked uncomfortable.

  “Oh, just lie down—do it,” Kitto insisted.

  Toby lay face down on the floor just before his sister arrived.

  Arabella walked in, looked at the guns, her father’s stricken face and her prostrate brother.

  “Very funny,” she said, aiming a kick at Toby’s flank.

  “How did you know?” Kitto asked.

  “You get older, your jokes don’t,” Arabella said. “What’s for supper?”

  Toby got up and brushed dust off his school trousers.

  “Up to you,” Kitto replied, handing Arabella a rod.

  “I’ve got homework.”

  “Tell your teacher the dog ate it.”

  “Can’t use that one again,” Arabella said.

  “Or that a piece of the battlement fell on it?”

  “And crushed my skull into a thousand pieces!” Arabella grinned, imagining Miss Bell’s horrified expression.

  “There was a flood in the east wing and we had to clear it out by hand.”

  “The portrait of the 3rd Marquess fell off the wall and crushed Granny.”

  “Come on, we’re wasting hunting time,” Kitto said, giving Arabella a box of flies and her brother some cartridges. “Get your coats and we’ll head down to the estuary. Arabella, you’ll try and catch a fish.”

  “I’ll get a sea bass,” Arabella said.

  “Not in a river, you pillock,” piped Toby.

  “You’re a pollock.”

  Arabella tried to hit her brother but Toby jumped out of the way.

  “Hey, hey!” Kitto held up his hands. “Save your killing instincts for dinner. Toby, you and I will take the guns up to the oak wood.”

  “I hope you’re not going to kill anything,” Arabella said, lip quavering. Aunt Tuffy believed the animal kingdom needed protection.

  “What’s the point of living in the country and eating from packets? We need to put the adventure back into our lives.” Kitto slapped his hands together. He hadn’t felt so invigorated for a long time. “We’ll meet back at the ruined temple.”

  “Which ruined temple?” Arabella said. “The whole place is full of falling-down, rotting buildings.”

  “The one at the end of the rhododendron walk.”

  “What’s a rhododendron?”

  “Big bushes with vulgar flowers.”

  “It only flowers in the late spring. How will she know?”

  “She couldn’t forget the enormous purple and pink frilly thing.”

  Arabella wasn’t worried about getting lost; she was hungry. “If we fail?” she asked.

  “We won’t,” Kitto said.

  As he walked side by side with his son, Kitto compared his style of parenting with his own upbringing. Enyon and Clarissa had been neglectful; for them children were to be seen, not heard, and preferably neither. Their son, stung by his own parents’ lack of interest, had promised to be differe
nt, but for him fatherhood had come to mean the odd walk, not losing his temper, keeping the oil tank full and remembering birthdays. In recent years, he’d failed most of these tests.

  “Did you do this kind of thing with your father?” Toby, reading Kitto’s mind, called out across the small brook that ran between them.

  “Your grandfather was far too busy!”

  “Doing what?” Toby asked. As far as he knew, “Gramps” had never had a job.

  “Attending the House of Lords, seeing to matters of the estate, house-parties. I don’t think he knew where the nursery was.”

  “Was Gran the same?”

  “She was even busier: three houses to run, menus, servants, friends, organising, organising, organising—that was her clarion call.” A pair of partridges flew up in front of them. Kitto shot them both with a left and right before Toby had managed to lift his gun. Pooter looked at his master expectantly and, when Kitto nodded, the dog ran to pick up the dead birds.

  “First course!” Kitto said, holding up the brace. Toby jumped the brook and followed his father into the undergrowth where he found him bent over something large and white, the size of a football.

  “What’s that?” Toby asked.

  “A puffball mushroom—delicious.”

  “They’re everywhere.” Toby pointed through the gloaming wood littered with white globes.

  “Enough food for a week,” Kitto said. “We’re going to eat like kings.”

  “Are you sure they’re not poisonous?” Toby sounded doubtful.

  “How could you live in the country and not understand the basics?” Kitto straightened his back and placed the puffball carefully into his shooting bag.

  “How do you know this stuff?” Toby asked.

  “I spent the holidays with our gamekeeper, a wonderful man—his name was Peter Daw. There wasn’t a corner of this estate—a tree, a deer, a rabbit warren—that he didn’t know. He taught Blaze and me to shoot, fish and forage, as well as all the Cornish songs.”

  “I’d like to learn.” Toby didn’t, but would do almost anything to prolong his father’s attention.

  Kitto sang as he gathered three more puffballs.

  “A good sword and a trusty hand!

  A merry heart and true!

  King James’s men shall understand

  What Cornish lads can do!

  And shall Trelawny live?

  Or shall Trelawny die?

  Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men

  Will know the reason why!”

  * * *

  As he sang he strode ahead of his son into the woods. Toby hurried to keep up. With this noise, he thought, there’d be no game to shoot and he was getting hungry.

  “That’s the Cornish anthem—we sing it at school. Was that written about our family?”

  “It’s spelt differently, but it’s about us. One of our relatives was imprisoned in the Tower for supporting the King back in the seventeenth century. There was always a Trelawney at key battles and important moments in Cornish history.” Kitto stopped. Toby watched his father deflate suddenly; Kitto’s shoulders sagged, his chin dropped.

  “What’s wrong, Dad?” Toby felt a shiver of fear; his father looked old and frail.

  “I’ve been a frightful failure.”

  Unsure how to respond, Toby touched his father’s arm.

  Kitto gulped hard, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. “I thought being the oldest son was about sitting tight. Turns out that wasn’t nearly good enough.”

  Toby tried to change the subject. “I’m hungry.”

  Kitto looked at his younger son. “You’ll never understand: you can escape.”

  Toby had no idea what his father was talking about. “Arabella will wonder what’s happened to us.”

  “You and Bella are so lucky. Ambrose and I have been dealt an impossible hand.”

  “I need some food.” Toby hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and his stomach was rumbling.

  Kitto pulled himself together. “Let’s stay parallel and walk up through this section of wood. With any luck we’ll get a couple of pigeons or a rabbit.”

  They walked silently through the stunted oaks that lined the river. The ground underneath was covered with a thick mossy carpet broken only by the odd outcrop of granite. The small valley was steep-sided and tree-lined. The sun had sunk over the top of the hill and a faint damp mist steamed from beneath the ground. The river hissed and bucked over great rocks. Up ahead on a far bank, a heron, grey, etiolated, waited patiently for a fish to rise. In the distance they could hear rooks coming home to their nests, their mournful cries soaring above all other noises. Toby saw a movement out of the corner of one eye. Raising his gun, he slipped off the safety catch. Seconds later a pale brown head poked out behind a tree. Toby saw innocent brown eyes, a white throat and two buds of antlers: it was a young fallow deer. He lined the muzzle of his gun up between the deer’s eyes and stroked the trigger with his right finger. It was an easy shot, but Toby couldn’t bring himself to kill the animal: he’d rather go hungry. A loud report rang out to his left. Toby’s heart contracted. Had his father seen the deer? A pigeon fell to the ground some distance away and Pooter bounded after it. Toby hoped the deer was a long way off by now.

  The light fell and scents trembled on a gentle breeze: the musk of a fox, the ripening winter wheat, a distant bonfire. The family sat in companionable silence by a small fire, frying slabs of puffball mushrooms and the breasts of pigeon and partridge. They had not bothered to pluck the birds; Kitto showed them how to slit the chest and extract the tender meat: he called it the lazy hunter’s dinner. Arabella had failed to catch a fish, but had picked two big pocketfuls of blackberries for pudding. She was so hungry that she decided to delay becoming a vegetarian until the following day.

  “Aunt Tuffy told me about a friend who went mushroom picking. He died and the rest of his family are on kidney dialysis forever,” she said.

  “You need to know what you’re looking for.”

  “Aunt Tuffy said there are thirteen different types of worm you can get from eating wild animals. Tapeworm, roundworm, bovine TB.”

  Kitto held up his hand. “Stop! You’re ruining my dinner. Anyway, what does she eat?”

  “Only things from packets. Not because she likes what she calls ‘that crap,’ but because it saves valuable time shopping and washing-up.”

  Kitto roared with laughter. “We should bring her with us one evening. Feed her something proper.”

  Arabella said nothing; she didn’t want to share her new best friend with anyone.

  Earlier, Kitto had put a bottle of Meursault into the estuary to cool and he drank it straight from the bottle. They lay on their backs listening to the calls of evening: the song of the wood pigeon and thrush nightingale, a mating toad, the last rooks and some squabbling magpies.

  “Dad?” Toby nudged his father. “Are you awake?”

  “Yes, just thinking,” Kitto said.

  “What about Grandad and Grandma?” Toby sounded anxious.

  “What about them?”

  “Their dinner—Mum gives it to them at seven.”

  Kitto sat bolt upright. He had forgotten about his parents. Jane’s list swam into vision: “Replace used logs in their log bin; lay their fire; take hot water at 6 p.m. for their bath; light their fire and close the curtains; bring their supper at 7 p.m. sharp and collect dirty plates at 8 p.m. Try not to let Enyon see you complete these tasks.”

  He looked at the empty frying pan and the scraped plates, hoping against hope that some morsel was left.

  “What are we going to do?” Toby asked. “Is there any food in the house?” He knew there wasn’t—all the kitchen cupboards were empty.

  Kitto jumped to his feet. “Let’s go to the local Chinese.”

  “Gr
eat, I’ll have some sweet and sour and some dim sum,” said Arabella, not full enough after their wild dinner.

  Kitto kicked away the last logs and stamped on the embers. “Just to be sure, fill that pan and pour it on the remains,” he told Toby. “I’ll run up and get the car. Cut across the field and meet me at the corner.”

  It was 9:40 p.m. when they arrived at the Earl and Countess’s apartment. Enyon and Clarissa were dressed in black tie, sitting side by side in front of the four-bar fire. Clarissa was wearing a fur stole and her husband had a blanket across his knees.

  “You should fire Mullion,” Kitto’s mother said crossly. “This is the second night he has forgotten to feed us. We might starve.” Her voice cracked slightly, her hands shook and the end of her nose was red with cold. The mangy fur wrap slung over a tulle dress and pearls offered little protection against the elements.

  “Mother, you look freezing,” Kitto said, and went to her room to fetch a blanket. The bed had not been made, but his parents were so thin that their bodies left only a light indent on either side. Their curtains had been half drawn and, when Kitto went to close them, the material disintegrated in his hand. It was September yet a bitter draught whistled through the loose window frames. Next door, he saw his children helping their grandparents to the table and was touched by their solicitude and gentleness. Toby took two slightly grubby napkins from the sideboard and laid them across their laps. Arabella undid the cartons of food and spooned the contents on to two plates.

  “Is this a colour found in nature?” the Earl asked, peering at the bright-orange sweet and sour prawns.

  “It’s Chinese,” Toby explained.

  “Chinese?”

  “Chinese food.”

  “Do you have a new chef?” the Countess said, poking at some noodles with her fork. “I don’t like spaghetti.”