House of Trelawney

by Hannah Rothschild

  Clarissa Trelawney tried to bring dignity to her ignominious position on the back of a cart. Sitting up tall, head held high, she was determined to act the part of the widow of a nobleman. Her leg, broken in the car crash, was in plaster. Her body was shrouded in black velvet while a heavy veil obscured her face. As the cart bumped over the soft, rutted ground, throwing her slightly to the left and right, Clarissa recalled her father-in-law’s funeral, when the estate workers and household staff, some three hundred in total, each dressed in their respective uniforms, had waved white handkerchiefs and lined the entire two-mile avenue of beech trees that ran from the castle steps to Vanbrugh’s rotunda. The footmen wore Trelawney livery: tailcoats of deep crimson with purple frogging and glinting polished-brass buttons stamped with the family’s coats of arms; the gamekeepers were in their green worsted plus fours, the grooms in hunting best, the housemaids in white starched pinafores and the labourers in tweed. Four bay plumed horses had pulled the glass-sided carriage and the pallbearers had been dressed in black crêpe with high top hats, while huntsmen dressed in pink led the Earl’s hounds across the park, sounding “Gone Away” on his horn.

  Hundreds of mourners had lined the drive to see off her father-in-law. The wake had lasted for a whole week. The kitchen staff struggled to feed guests and relatives who came from all over the world and included two former prime ministers, the Queen Mother, three royal princesses and one royal prince. It had taken place just after the Second World War and so many families, demented and decimated by loss and bereavement, had come to Trelawney in hope. Here, they all thought, was a family rich enough to withstand taxes, wars, divorces and death duties, whose stupendous wealth would act as ballast against outside forces. Clarissa was glad that so many of that generation, now entombed in their own mossy graves, were unable to witness how the mighty roar of the House of Trelawney had faded to this tiny whimper.

  Looking out from the privacy of her veil, she noted a few locals had turned up to gawk. In the old days all the men from the village bowed and the women had curtsied to the Earl and Countess. She caught sight of Alf Gander, a long-retired former stable boy, now in his eighties, wearing a threadbare tweed suit and poorly ironed shirt. As she passed, he doffed his cap and this unexpected measure of civility brought a lump to her throat. She would not cry for the loss of her beloved husband or the way of life that had ended with him. As the last bastion of the age of deference, she intended to maintain standards. Dignity was all she had left. At least Enyon was not there to see this motley raggle-taggle procession.

  Clarissa looked at the mourners bringing up the rear. Where were you when we needed you? she thought bitterly, watching their fake expressions of sadness. They had only come to witness a spectacle and for a free glass of sherry. First in line was the Duke of Swindon, whose own fortune had been denuded by a court case with yet another housemaid, this one Lithuanian, seeking support for another illegitimate child; Swindon must have nine out of wedlock by now. Windy’s breath was as famous as his libido—fourteen-day-old Stilton had nothing on his halitosis; few blamed his wife for outsourcing her conjugal duty. Walking behind Windy was Earl Beachendon, masquerading as a mourner but here mainly as an envoy for Monachorum and Sons, the auction house. No doubt Beachendon was after the Van Dyck, the only great painting left in the family’s collection. The noble lord was attended by three chinless daughters. Clarissa tried to remember their names. Something Shakespearean: Olivia, Ophelia and Desdemona. With those looks, she thought, their names were unfortunate; they should be Ethel, Doris and Doreen.

  Hot on their heels were a ragbag of aristocrats: the Wellington d’Aresbys, the Smith-Gore-Browns and the Plantagenet-Parkers. Not one had bothered to visit the Earl and Countess over the last few years. Clarissa took delight in seeing them slither and stumble on the muddy track, ruining their shoes. Let’s hope it’s your last good pair and may you rot in hell, she thought.

  Her attention turned to her daughter. If only Blaze had found happiness. For a woman, wealth was a poor relation to marital bliss. It was such bad luck to be born with that birthmark. God knows, Clarissa had tried to put it right, even taking her to Harley Street. Such a pity that the local charlatan had botched the job. Blaze could have been a great beauty but, at forty-one, she was past it; no one decent would want her now. Maybe she could bag a widowed duke—that would be nice; a title was so reassuring. It was all Blaze’s fault for rejecting convention, refusing to learn the piano or ballet, needlework or ballroom dancing. No wonder no decent man would marry her. Thank heavens she was beyond child-bearing age. Enyon had heeded his wife’s advice and made Blaze the temporary custodian of Trelawney, bypassing Kitto altogether.

  Their children had had the best in life: the right schools, nannies and ponies and dances. Kitto had been given a pair of Purdeys for his eighteenth birthday and Blaze a pearl necklace. What more could they ask for? Clarissa smarted at their ingratitude; I was too nice to them, she mused. Spoiled them. Should have sent them on more holidays with Nanny to her family in Northern Ireland.

  Clarissa knew she wasn’t liked, even by her children. But, having survived the war which had claimed her four brothers, being liked came low on her list of priorities. Her mother had taken the easy route out, drowning her sorrows and then herself. Clarissa was not going to let Hitler win. For her, victory was about survival and the perpetuation of the old order. Her father and her brothers had lost their lives to preserve a certain kind of England and she’d do anything to honour their sacrifice. She had equally set views about marriage. It was for life: for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. She was luckier than most; she loved her husband but, even if she hadn’t, her attitude to the union would have been the same—to make it work.

  * * *

  At the front of the procession, thirty feet in front of his mother, Kitto was leading the mourners towards the escarpment. He kept his eyes fixed on the golden orb above the Vanbrugh rotunda which glinted in the low autumn light, sending refracted rays across the latticework of hedge dividing arable and grass fields. The morning’s heavy early mist had lifted and, though the rain held off for now, the ground was sodden and squelched beneath his feet. Kitto felt his family’s eyes boring into his back and the weight of his mother’s blood-curdling disappointment on his shoulders.

  The revelation that he and Anastasia had had a daughter only deepened his feelings of misery and shame; how could he not have known, why hadn’t she told him? Now the child had come back to mock and witness his ineptitude. When they met, Kitto couldn’t bring himself to look at his daughter; her likeness to her mother was too painful. Conversation proved impossible; all they had in common were withered expectations and bereavement.

  Following the crash, Kitto had been banished by Jane from home and was living in the flat in Pimlico. Facing charges, including causing injury by careless driving when under the influence of alcohol, falsifying records of ownership, intention to defraud and theft, he spent his days trying to marshal a defence. He’d argue that, for eight hundred years, land and property had always gone to the eldest son. He had been as shocked as anyone that his own father had disinherited him in favour of Ambrose, with Blaze as an interim custodian.

  Debt collectors acting on behalf of the now insolvent Acorn Bank would claim a first charge on the estate and castle: Kitto had used the property as collateral against his last disastrous investment in their sub-prime mortgage fund and his family must now honour those debts. Ambrose publicly disowned his father, refusing even to pay his solicitor’s fees. Blaze, who had been appointed as custodian of the Trelawney Estate until her nephew reached the age of eighteen, also declined to cover her brother’s debts. Jane, as the wife of a bankrupt and therefore also liable, was forced to sell her last pieces of jewellery and to liquidate a small pension scheme.

  * * *

  Jane was also concentrating on not falling over, but it had little to do with the mud. Since the events of the las
t few weeks, she mistrusted even the ground beneath her feet. The appearance of Ayesha, with the same mouth and hair as her own husband and children, had come as an appalling shock; she’d known that Kitto and Anastasia had liked each other but never imagined it had led to anything serious. All those years after their marriage, Jane replayed the innuendoes. Her father-in-law’s wedding speech praising her fortune and wide hips. Anastasia’s decision not to attend. Her husband’s copious tears (despair not joy). Now the awful revelation that he had spent their marriage dreaming of someone else; and not just any other woman, but her best friend.

  Jane had gone straight from the airport to a small hotel in Victoria, where she’d spent four days considering her options only to realise that she didn’t have any: she had always been at someone else’s mercy—first her father, then her husband—living and abiding by other people’s rules. And now she was a 41-year-old woman with an ancient degree. Hardly hot property in the jobs market. She imagined her CV: Middle-aged woman, can clean, muck out, drive. Dependable, steady and kind. She couldn’t imagine anyone beating the door down to employ her. There was another worrying aspect; what did she want now? She couldn’t leave her children and had no way of supporting herself or them. This sense of crushing failure had been followed by a series of short, sharp jabs: the death of her father-in-law, Kitto’s disinheritance and Blaze’s appointment as regent over Trelawney. Jane was no longer the chatelaine; she was a guest, a usurper. Twenty years ago, she’d got what she wanted—Kitto, the prestige and the most beautiful house in England. Plain Jane Browne, the also-ran, far inferior to her two glamorous friends, had triumphed. She remembered walking up the aisle, her head held high on a feeling of smug superiority. But time proved she’d not been good enough to keep any of it. No doubt, Jane thought bitterly, Anastasia would have made it work.

  She could not look at her mother-in-law, sitting upright only a few feet in front of her. Nor could she look thirty feet beyond the cart at her husband’s back. She kept her eyes fixed on her feet and the slap-slap-slap of her shoes against the mud. This, she thought, is the sound of shame.

  * * *

  “Do you find it unbearably cold?” Tony asked Ayesha. His nose, turned violet by the weather conditions, was running.

  “Balakpur was freezing in winter,” Ayesha said.

  “What are your first impressions?” Tony asked.

  Ayesha, after only a few weeks in England, had learned to keep her true feelings hidden. “It’s rather different to how I imagined and not at all as my mother painted it.” Anastasia had described Trelawney as a wonderland. But what Ayesha saw was crumbling buildings, faint vestiges of glamour and a desperate attempt by its inhabitants to hang on to a past way of life.

  Tony lost his footing, stumbled and fell.

  “My best bloody suit,” he said as Blaze, Tuffy and Ayesha peeled him off the ground. Behind them the funeral procession came to an unwieldy halt. In front, Clarissa rapped on Enyon’s coffin and Manshanks slowed the pony and cart.

  “Shift my husband forward and we’ll put Anthony on the other side,” she told the groom.

  Tony allowed himself to be helped onto the cart. Without looking at her brother-in-law, Clarissa handed him a large white handkerchief.

  “Get a grip, for all of our sakes.”

  Tony fumed. He loathed his sister-in-law and her unbearable airs and graces. There was never anything so appalling as a truly common woman elevated above her station.

  * * *

  Toby was thinking about his girlfriend Celia; nowadays he thought about little else. Even when his father’s car had hit the lorry, amidst the noise of screaming, crushing metal, tyres skidding, while they were careering towards certain death, Toby’s mind was consumed by Celia. What if I die and never see her again? The absence of her frightened him more than the loss of his own life. Was his body large enough to contain all the emotions she inspired in him? There were occasions when his heart swelled and beat so fast that he thought the tsunami of feelings might burst out of his skin.

  The funeral arrangements had caused their first argument: Glenda Sparrow was not invited.

  “Your grandmother suggested she wave the coffin off from the back door,” Celia said, unable to disguise her indignation.

  “She comes from a different generation,” Toby said, unsure whether to defend Clarissa or make the Sparrows feel better about the slight.

  “This is 2008, not the 1900s. We have all sorts of things now like the wheel, the washing machine and lipstick in a tube.”

  “If it were up to me—” Toby said, but Celia wouldn’t let him finish.

  “She cleaned his house for forty years and washed his plates and his underwear. Our families have been neighbours for generations. What planet are you lot on? You’re big-house people with small-fry manners. You know the worst of it? She’s going to come and prepare stuff for all of you to eat after the funeral. Service is so ingrained in her that she can’t stop.”

  Toby didn’t dare tell her that his grandmother would be shocked and appalled by the revelation of an affair between a Trelawney and the grandchild of one of their staff.

  “You’re all the same—so intent on saving this house and following some antiquated moral code that you forget what actually matters.”

  Toby tried to think of a good explanation: anything at all. He couldn’t. It was the first time he’d heard anyone question the way things were done in his family and he felt unable to marshal any defence.

  “People matter, places shouldn’t. And the worst thing of all is just to keep on doing things because that’s what was done before. You lot aren’t even old-fashioned or quaint. You’re myopic Jurassic has-beens,” Celia said before leaving the castle, slamming the door behind her. He’d seen her at school but she had ignored him.

  Ambrose, reliably irritating, hummed the opening bars to an Eminem song, over and over again. Arabella moaned and grumbled. She hated wearing her school uniform.

  “Tuffy doesn’t have to wear a skirt.”

  “Tuffy’s an old dyke,” Ambrose taunted.

  Arabella was full of indignation. “Just because she thinks about things other than sex doesn’t mean she’s that way inclined.”

  “Dykey dykey doo doo,” Ambrose chanted. He’d never had a way with words.

  “Ignore him, Bells,” Toby urged. But Arabella couldn’t and, picking up a clod of wet earth, shoved it into her eldest brother’s face. There followed an unseemly tussle, ending with the cortège waiting while Toby helped his flattened, muddied sister get to her feet and dry her face on her coat.

  * * *

  Gordon Sparrow watched the funeral procession from behind the hedge. That week he’d had a letter from the chief executive of Acorn Bank explaining the “unfortunate” situation. Acorn had a liquidity issue brought on by the financial crisis. Seventy-five per cent of its retail depositors had decided to withdraw their cash, leaving the bank insolvent, and the board of trustees were asking the government to step in. Gordon had invested £123,575 into Acorn’s share-save scheme, having been promised it was fail-safe. Now he read that he’d only get £2,000 in compensation, with the slim possibility of a further £25,000 from a government guarantee scheme.

  Gordon reread the letter so many times that it fell to pieces in his hands. Fifty years working in a job he hated; fifty years of saving and scraping; fifty years dreaming of retirement; fifty years wasted. There was nothing “unfortunate” about the situation. How dare anyone use such bland language? How could he tell his beloved wife that he’d failed her, that she wouldn’t be able to retire after all? He’d have to keep working. His job wasn’t a means to an end; it was the bitter end.

  His eyes followed the Trelawneys as they walked up the track towards the brow of the hill. They would not get away with this. Not as long as he had breath in his body. If he’d owned a gun, he’d have stepped out in front of Kitto and
blown the man’s brains out.

  * * *

  The Trelawney hilltop burial ground was bare and windswept, sandblasted by centuries of salt spray from the sea below. As with the rest of the estate, it had become overgrown and fallen into disrepair. As the family made their way up by foot, they were unsure what lay ahead. Two local gravediggers and an architectural historian had been sent in advance to prise open the Vanbrugh vault and find space for the 24th Earl, the first for seven generations not to build his own sarcophagus. Over ten centuries, the burial ground had expanded into a confusing but delightful smorgasbord of obelisks, gazebos, sugar loaves, sham ruins, pagodas, kiosks, screens, temples, grottoes, hermitages, towers, roundhouses, menageries, cascades and pavilions, built in a variety of styles—Egyptian, Chinese, Druidical, Indian, rural, Moorish, grotesque and even occasionally classical—all purloined and adapted by their lordships in an attempt to keep up with or, better still, outdo their ancestors; to leave their mark or occasionally just to add to a noble tradition.

  The congregation traipsed through the assortment of buildings and stood by the door to the Vanbrugh rotunda as Kitto and his children lifted the coffin from the cart and shuffled it inside. The interior was cavernous and elaborate. Vanbrugh, inspired by the grand Mogul tombs he had seen on a visit to Surat in 1683, had indulged the memory. Standing nearly one hundred feet high, it consisted of fifty columns surrounding a domed cylindrical cone. It held the graves of the 18th Earl, his wife and daughters, leaving plenty of room for others.