House of Trelawney

by Hannah Rothschild

  Blaze followed the coffin into the mausoleum. She looked up at the mighty blocks of stone and took comfort in the fact that this edifice was strong, unlike so many areas of her life. Her father’s will had left her in charge of Trelawney until her nephew turned eighteen. There was no income attached; the Earl had inherited many millions but died a pauper. Blaze wondered about the business of death and if there was money to be made from selling plots in the burial ground to rich Americans or Chinese. Was it possible over the next months to create a stream of income to enable Ambrose and his heirs to keep the house? For a while she would support Kitto, his family and her mother, but could not meet her brother’s sizeable debts. Her most useful contribution would be to make the estate into a viable concern.

  “Blaze, Blaze,” her mother said, bringing her back to the present.

  Looking around, she saw fifty faces gazing expectantly at her and suddenly remembered the poem chosen by her father. Walking into the semicircle of mourners, she took the piece of paper out of her pocket.

  “My father left instructions for me to read this sonnet by Shakespeare.” Blaze couldn’t remember Enyon ever reading a book or expressing any interest in literature and had been taken aback.

  “Who will believe my verse in time to come,

  If it were fill’d with your most high deserts?

  Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

  Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

  If I could write the beauty of your eyes

  And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

  The age to come would say ‘This poet lies:

  Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’

  So should my papers yellow’d with their age

  Be scorn’d like old men of less truth than tongue,

  And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage

  And stretched metre of an antique song:

  —But were some child of yours alive that time,

  —You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.”

  * * *

  She had never thought of her father as a sensitive person; he was far too vital, too full of activity and energy. This poem, an acknowledgement of a deep secret passion, surprised her and, for the first time, she thought of Enyon as a fallible, susceptible human being rather than a distant and altogether frightening figure of authority. Had she seen him in this light before, maybe she would have forgiven his transgressions. Maybe things could have been different. A bubble of emotion caught in her throat; she would never see her father again or make up for lost time.

  Startled by a loud wail, she looked up to see Kitto stumbling out of the mausoleum, keening into the wind and rain before resting his head against a red porphyry column. The congregation, their sensibilities honed by centuries of aristocratic propriety, pretended not to notice. But Blaze didn’t see the man; she remembered the child who had come to his sister’s rescue when she had fallen off her pony or got lost in the dark, and the years of resentment fell away. She ran through the tufts of grass and clumps of bramble until she reached her brother. Dropping to her knees, she peeled his fingers away from the great stone column and wrapped her arms around him so that his head rested on her shoulder. His tears trickled down her neck and she felt his slight, bony arms fasten around her back.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

  She didn’t answer, but held him closer. Through his clothes, Kitto’s body felt childlike; there was little hint of muscle or fat. Blaze felt unbearably sad. They had spent the last twenty years separated by mutual distrust. Far from making any of them rich, wealth had impoverished them all.

  Blaze looked up and saw her mother coming towards them, a velvet-clad figure on crutches bent in the wind. “You are making a spectacle of yourselves,” Clarissa hissed at her children. “Come away now.”

  Kitto winced.

  “We’re going back to the castle,” Blaze told her mother, and pulled Kitto to his feet. Behind Clarissa she could see her nephews and niece looking anxiously towards them. Blaze smiled reassuringly and, with a free hand, motioned for them to stay. Jane kept her eyes on the ground, resolutely uninvolved.

  Brother and sister stumbled down the slippery track, Kitto holding her hand tightly.

  “Did you know about Ayesha?” Blaze asked.

  Kitto stopped and looked at his sister in amazement. “I had no idea; I would never have left her. Did you?”

  Blaze shook her head.

  “We only made love once,” Kitto said. “I don’t think she liked it.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “On my twentieth birthday.”

  Blaze did the maths, hoping in vain for a different answer.

  Arriving at the castle, Blaze led Kitto into the kitchen, a no-go area which, being Cook’s domain, had always been strictly out of bounds to the family. Now the window blind hung in ribbons. The copper saucepans and jelly moulds had turned green from lack of polish. The mighty pine table was piled high with detritus. The chairs were like wounded soldiers, all held together with bits of masking tape and twine. The windows were dirty and moss grew out of the sills. On the side, covered with newspaper, were trays of cocktail sausages to feed the guests. Also lined up were bottles of port and cheap white wine. Blaze wondered how anyone could live in such squalor.

  Glenda Sparrow came out of the storeroom, dressed in black with a red apron. She looked at Kitto and at Blaze.

  “Lady Blaze, haven’t seen you round these parts for a long time.” Twenty years had passed since their last meeting following the event neither wanted to witness.

  The clock on the kitchen wall said 1:55. “I think you should leave before the mourners return,” Blaze told Kitto. “I’ve got a car outside. I’ll ask my driver to drop you at the station and come back for me and Ayesha.”

  Kitto went towards the door. “I’ve got a place in Pimlico. Will you come and see me?”

  “I’ll come tomorrow.”

  “And the next day?”

  “And the one after that.”

  Kitto threw his arms around his sister’s neck.

  “Do you ever wish you’d been born someone else?” he whispered into her ear.

  Blaze nodded. A lump was building in her throat. Equal in height, the siblings rested their heads together.

  “I’m sorry, darling. I shouldn’t have stayed away so long,” she said.

  “I’m even sorrier, Blazey. I should have known better.”

  Disentangling from each other, they walked out of the kitchen and down the back corridor. Blaze’s driver got out of the car and opened the door.

  “Please take my brother to St. Austell and put him on the London train. Here’s money for his ticket,” Blaze said, handing over two £50 notes.

  As the car set off down the drive, Blaze could see Kitto’s white face pressed against the window and his hand raised in a gentle wave.

  14

  The Wake

  SATURDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER 2008

  Summoning up her courage, Blaze walked around to the front of the castle and, pushing open the massive oak doors, stepped into the hall. Her first impression was that little had changed. As usual, during summer or winter, a huge open fire burned. The chimneypiece, measuring at least ten foot by ten foot, was framed on each side by half-naked Nubian gods carved in marble. On the wall to the right hung the Van Dyck portrait of the 16th Earl and his family, surrounded by hundreds of sporting trophies, ancient weapons and plates of armour.

  Put another log on the bloody fire if you’re passing, her father’s voice called through time, and Blaze, from habit, dragged a large log from a pile by the door and threw it on to the embers. The fire licked appreciatively and she stepped back to avoid the sparks.

  With a deep breath, she went through the s
econd set of mahogany doors, into the smaller hall and up the main stairs. The first thing she noticed was a damp, musty smell. Looking down at the stair treads, she saw that the once-red carpet was worn to white threads and in the middle was frayed right through to the wooden steps. Up to the left and right, many of the picture frames had slipped and the canvases had bowed or sagged, making generations of noblemen and women appear drunk and misshapen. Reaching the landing, she noticed that the Turkish carpet was stained in huge patches like dirty clouds and, on the ceiling thirty feet above, chunks of beautiful woodwork, intricately carved by Grinling Gibbons, had fallen away, with the sky visible in places.

  At the top of the stairs she turned right into the library. In the dim autumn light she was relieved to find her favourite book-lined room looked the same. The huge sofas covered in green velvet bowed in the middle and the material had worn away to the palest lime; it was almost exactly as she remembered it. Glancing towards the far door, she pictured the sixteen-year-old Anastasia, wearing a red silk slip, making her first grand entrance and silencing the room.

  Rounding the corner, Blaze had to push hard against the double doors into the first of the great ballrooms. After some persuasion she managed to slip through a narrow opening. Her breath caught in her throat. The cut-velvet curtains hung in ribbons, the French eighteenth-century panelling had split. The only hint of paintings were from dark square or rectangular outlines on the walls. Some pieces of furniture remained; the huge side tables were covered in a layer of dust and detritus, and a grand piano sat in a pool of water. Ivy had inveigled its way through the glass and spread its tendrils around the shutters and into the room, a beautiful, menacing acid-green foliage creeping over the floor. Blaze walked faster, through that room and into the next and then the next. As door after door was pushed open to reveal stories of decay and dilapidation, she felt a rising sense of panic and confusion. What had happened? And so quickly? Could time and three children have done this? Was nature this angry and powerful? She imagined the ivy wrapping its leaves around her feet and pulling her back down into the earth.

  Through the window she saw the mourners returning and retraced her steps. In the second ballroom there was her mother hobbling on crutches towards her, a diminutive, emaciated figure whose imperious deportment made her appear far taller and more stately than she actually was. Clarissa stopped three feet in front of her daughter but didn’t lift the heavy veil which covered her face.

  “Has he gone?”

  “About half an hour ago,” Blaze answered.

  “Thank God. I was worried he might hang around and attract even more attention.”

  “He’s having some kind of breakdown.”

  “As long as it happens elsewhere.” Clarissa turned and walked away.

  “Mother, wait,” Blaze said. “We haven’t even spoken about Father.”

  Clarissa stopped but didn’t face her daughter. Her shoulders and back remained erect.

  “What is there to say?”

  “Words of comfort, perhaps,” Blaze said. “You’ve lost a husband, I’ve lost a father.”

  “You lost a father the day you walked out of here.”

  “I didn’t walk out,” Blaze shouted. Trying to control herself, she said more quietly, “Are you going to deny what happened that day?”

  Clarissa turned around slowly and lifted her veil. “Nothing happened.”

  “How can you say that?” Blaze shook her head in astonishment.

  “Because it’s true,” Clarissa said with finality, shifting her weight on her crutches. “Now come along, we have people to entertain.”

  * * *

  “Good God, girl, you haven’t aged a bit,” a large man said to Ayesha. “Is there a portrait in the attic?” He roared with laughter at his own joke, showering the young woman with shards of sausage roll. He had a strange face, with each part looking like it belonged to another—a narrow chin, pendulous cheeks and beady little eyes. He reminded Ayesha of a game called Consequences that she used to play with her mother: each person had to draw a section of a face and fold it over.

  “You think I am my mother, Anastasia.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m her daughter, Ayesha.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “She died.”

  “What a waste.” He looked her up and down slowly. “Who’s your father?”

  “Kitto,” Ayesha said.

  This revelation led to a fresh blast of sausage-roll pieces. “Jesus H. Christ,” the man said. “I’m Peter Plantagenet-Parker, by the way. Call me Planty-Pal.”

  Ayesha smiled politely and picked shards of pastry out of her hair.

  “Windy, Windy, come here,” the sausage-sprayer shouted.

  Another man, equally florid and flaccid-jawed, came over.

  “You’re jolly pretty,” Windy said. His breath was so rancid that Ayesha had to step backwards quickly. “The Duke of Swindon at your service.” He took her hand and kissed it wetly.

  “Who does she remind you of?” Plantagenet-Parker asked.

  “That girlfriend of Blaze’s.”

  “A hole in one, old bean. Guess who her father is?”

  “I wish it had been me! I fancied that girl rotten—we all did.”

  “Her father is Kitto.”

  “Lucky fucker.”

  “Are you older or younger than Ambrose?” Plantagenet-Parker asked Ayesha.

  “Older,” Ayesha said. She wanted to run away from these two men and their innuendoes.

  “Just as well primogeniture is firmly in place. How many children do you have the wrong side of the blanket, Windy?” Plantagenet-Parker enquired.

  “Get stuffed.”

  “They all did!” Plantagenet-Parker roared with laughter at his own joke. Swindon tried, playfully, to hit him.

  “Will you excuse me?” Ayesha said and, without waiting for an answer, she slipped between the two men and worked her way towards the door.

  “Ayesha, my dear, come here,” Great-Uncle Tony called. He was talking to a tall, thin woman with a velvet beret clamped over long, grey, waist-length hair. She wore wellington boots and a thick overcoat even though the fire was chucking off heat.

  “Lady Wellington d’Aresby, meet my great-niece Ayesha Scott.”

  Her Ladyship held out a hand which Ayesha shook.

  “We were trying to decide whether we like weddings or funerals better,” Tony explained. “I think weddings are depressing because you know that they’re going to go wrong and all the misery is ahead. With funerals, all the hell of living is over.”

  “Marriages don’t always go wrong,” Lady Wellington remonstrated.

  “Show me one happy one,” Tony challenged her.

  “Clarissa and Enyon’s was pretty good.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Do tell.”

  Tony looked knowingly at Lady Wellington and then at Ayesha. “Pas devant l’enfant,” he said.

  “Will you excuse me?” Ayesha ran out of the castle and into the drive and didn’t stop until she reached the huge Cedar of Lebanon some two hundred yards up the hill. Resting her head against its gnarled bark, she took several large gulps of clean air and realised that she was crying.

  “Are you OK?” someone asked.

  Ayesha hadn’t noticed anyone by the tree and, looking up, saw a strikingly handsome young man in jeans and a faded shirt. “I didn’t mean to alarm you,” he said. His voice was deep and gentle. Ayesha liked his broad face framed by unruly sandy hair and his gold-flecked eyes. Realising there were tears on her cheeks, she wiped them away with the back of her hand. The man took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said and blew her nose loudly. She remembered her mother telling her off for this “unladylike” habit of “trumpeting” her colds a
nd checked to see if the man was shocked. To her surprise he was looking at her solicitously and with great kindness, unlike most of the people she’d encountered since coming to England.

  “Were you close to the Earl?”

  “He was my grandfather but I never met him.”

  After a moment of confusion, the man nodded.

  “You must be Ayesha.”

  Ayesha was taken aback. How did this total stranger know who she was?

  Reading her mind, he answered, “This is a small place, news travels fast. I’m Mark Sparrow. Glenda, the cook, is my grandmother. I came to see if she needed any help.”

  “The cook?” Ayesha’s heart sank. Her mother had warned her against wasting time on people of no consequence.

  “There’s a pub in the village—would you like a drink?”

  “I would like a cup of tea,” she said and, turning, set off down the drive. Mark hurried after her. At the pub, he found them a table in a corner and tried not to stare too intently. He had never seen a more beautiful woman. She caught his admiring glance and smiled back at him. Mark knocked his glass of water over and they both reached for it at the same time. Their hands overlapped. Instinctively he closed his fingers around hers. Ayesha tried and failed not to be aroused. They stared at each other. She heard her mother’s reproving tones but it was too late.

  “What do you do?” she asked.

  “I work in computers. Games.” He hesitated, desperate to try and make himself sound more accomplished, more desirable. “I’m finishing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in my spare time.”

  “Is that a hobby?”

  “The better I can understand the human brain, the greater the chance of inventing a machine to copy and replicate it. I run a team who are working on the Memristor, a memory transistor which will help computers store and process data even when they are turned off. In the past, they lost memory; now, like human brains, they’ll be able to retain and analyse information at all times.”