‘Be quiet, Mungo.’ Lord Auldearn was not amused. ‘Let us not have your dramaturgical lore outstay its welcome, David, is that note perhaps from our friend?’
One of the melancholy manservants had tiptoed into the dining-room, handed Lord Brightmony an envelope, and withdrawn. And Lord Brightmony was reading the message with unchanged features now.
‘Leonard writes that he is called away. And he judges that he will not be continuing his domestication at Mallachie.’
‘There is really nothing more to be said.’ Lord Auldearn, if exhausted, was also in high good humour; he might have been a company chairman winding up a successful shareholders’ meeting. ‘The only potentially awkward or delicate aspect of our affair proves to be a fabrication. Ian can return to his salmon, and Mungo to his typewriter. Mungo remains very much of the family, but with no explicit relationship given out to the world.’
‘I regret that I must disagree with your lordship.’
It was Mr Mackellar who said this, and the words represented his first contribution to the entire proceedings. Lord Auldearn glared at him.
‘Be so good as to explain yourself, sir.’
‘It appears to be taken for granted that my client, Mr Lockhart, emerges from all this as still the natural son of the late Lord Douglas Cardower. I have to submit that the assumption is highly injurious and prejudicial. Lord Douglas was a notorious libertine. Falsely to ascribe any man’s paternity to such a person is in my view slanderous and actionable.’
‘Then your view is stuff and nonsense, sir.’ Lord Auldearn was suddenly thunderous. ‘And your description of my late son so impertinent that I must ask you to quit this house at once.’
‘You will be so kind as to listen to me.’ Mackellar hadn’t budged from his seat. ‘I am not here as your guest – any more than as a damned journalist. I am here as the representative of a legal interest of which it is your duty, and Lord Brightmony’s duty, to stand apprised.’
‘Very well.’ Lord Auldearn was breathing heavily. ‘Have your say. And then withdraw – taking that futile youth with you.’
‘Roddy isn’t a futile youth!’ Mungo was staring at Mackellar S.S.C. round-eyed. ‘I don’t know what this is about. But it’s obviously important – and it’s Roddy who has had the gumption to get it here.’ Mungo was quite as angry as his putative grandfather. ‘What’s more, I think it was when he saw Roddy and Mr Mackellar that Leonard Sedley knew his nonsense was going to be no good, In fact, Roddy’s been the means of saving us from frightful howlers. Please apologise to him, sir.’
‘Very well. I apologise to Roddy.’ Lord Auldearn was looking at Mungo as if he couldn’t believe that this wasn’t a most authentic Cardower. ‘And Mr Macculloch—’
‘Mackellar,’ Mackellar S.S.C. said grimly.
‘And Mr Mackellar shall be heard.’
‘Thank you.’ With much deliberation, Mackellar drew a file of papers from a briefcase at his feet. ‘It will not, I judge, be necessary to exhibit these at this stage. But they are available if required.’ Mackellar paused weightily, and Mungo transferred his wondering gaze to the mysterious documents. It was like The Way of the World, he was thinking. A little black box is brought on in the final act, and with its aid everything is cleared up. In fact, and although Sedley had withdrawn in confusion, there was to be a bit of a sensation-drama after all.
‘My Lord,’ Mackellar said, ‘it appears to be your persuasion, and indeed that of your entire family, that Lord Douglas pursued his chosen courses so vigorously that he must be supposed to have fathered every fatherless lad in Moray and Nairn.’
‘That does seem the idea,’ Mungo broke in. He had only a dim intuition of what was coming, but he felt extraordinarily light-hearted. ‘Wide as his command, scattered his Maker’s image o’er the land.’
‘Mungo!’ Lord Auldearn said, ‘this is mere buffoonery. Persist in it, and you shall leave the room.’
‘I’m very sorry, sir. Mr Mackellar, please go on.’
‘It is true,’ Mackellar continued, ‘that certain coincidences of topography and nomenclature have aided your misconception. But as it is a question of your own lands and your own tenants, there appears to be involved a degree of inattention that is to be deprecated.’
‘It is not your business, sir, to deprecate anything,’ Lord Auldearn snapped. ‘It is your business to get on with your attorney’s trade. Pray do so.’
‘One moment.’ Lord Brightmony had raised an arresting hand. He was (Mungo thought) quite as chilly an aristocrat at bottom as was his alarming father. But his religious slant did appear to make him chary of the sin of pride. ‘It is understood in the family,’ Lord Brightmony went on, ‘that I look after the Scottish estates. And for a long term of years I have been less attentive to such matters than is right. If there was some negligence, it is only too likely that I am responsible.’
‘That is as may be.’ Mackellar was a little thrown out of his stride by this confessional episode. ‘The fact remains that there is an Easter Fintry and a Wester Fintry in this part of the world. Just as there is an Easter Golford and a Wester Golford, an Easter Milton and a Wester Milton, an Easter—’
‘We take your point,’ Lord Auldearn said. ‘Proceed.’
‘And there are Guthries on every gooseberry bush.’ Mackellar S.S.C. paused, as if startled by his own use of this reckless figure of speech. ‘At least there are, or were, Guthries of Easter Fintry and Guthries of Wester Fintry – the two families being unrelated. With the Guthries of Wester Fintry I have no concern. But no doubt Lord Douglas had, in pursuance of his customary diversions.’
‘It is a certain Eliza Guthrie whom we have thought to see at the root of this perplexed business.’ Lord Auldearn spoke in quite a new voice. ‘Did she come from this confounded Wester Fintry? No doubt she did. She was simple-minded, and there was an obscure scandal to the effect that Douglas put her through a mock marriage ceremony which he pretended was valid. Rubbish straight out of a Victorian novel. I had to pay those damned Guthries money to keep quiet, and eventually to go away. An irregular marriage can be a very tricky thing here in Scotland.’
‘You’re clean out of date, sir.’ Roddy McLeod spoke loudly and unexpectedly. The charge of futility had very properly rankled in him. ‘The law hasn’t admitted such a thing these thirty years. You don’t know your own law any more than you know your own tenants. And now we’d better let Mr Mackellar continue.’
‘I can be very brief,’ Mackellar said, with the ominous weightiness of one who sees some considerable oratorical flight ahead of him. ‘Turning to the Guthries of Easter Fintry—’
‘One more moment.’ Lord Brightmony had again raised his arresting hand. ‘It is a point about poor Leonard, perhaps unknown to some of you. In the period we seem to be considering, he was much more Douglas’s intimate than mine. And I fear the truth is indeed appearing. Poor Leonard has been proposing to make much irresponsible mischief out of his knowledge of the deplorable seduction of Eliza Guthrie.’
‘My client’s mother was Isobel Guthrie of Easter Fintry.’ Mackellar had got into his stride again. ‘She was the sister of the present Miss Elspeth Guthrie, my client’s aunt, and now, as then, of this same Easter Fintry. It is very likely that neither you, my Lord, nor Lord Brightmony has ever troubled to set eyes on the place. I will remark, therefore, that Easter Fintry is a gentleman’s residence of modest character, and no longer encumbered with land.’
‘Good God, man – are you an estate agent too?’ Lord Auldearn’s patience and residual civility were wearing thin. ‘Get on with it.’
‘I am sorry to say that in early womanhood Miss Isobel Guthrie had the misfortune to form an attachment to a married man, a member of a highly respectable profession, then resident in Elgin. My client,
Mr Mungo Lockhart, was in fact the issue of this brief irregular connection. A few months after his conception, a certain Andrew Lockhart, being possessed of a full knowledge of the facts, married Miss Isobel Guthrie
and thus provided the child in the womb with a legal father. Unhappily both he and the child’s mother were drowned not very long after my client was born. And since then, as you know, Mungo has lived with his aunt.’
‘Why has not all this been made known before?’ Lord Auldearn asked sternly. ‘Why should these facts not have been communicated to my grandson’s friend, Mr Mungo Lockhart – who, despite an intermittent indulgence in unseasonable levity, is quite obviously a responsible young man, and of the soundest practical judgement?’
‘Quite so, quite so.’ This encomium (although it was perhaps really a requiem over a departed Mungo Cardower) impressed Mr Mackellar considerably. ‘I must explain that I have been bound by the terms of a trust. My client’s natural father felt that his social and professional responsibilities made it inexpedient for him to acknowledge his child. But he established – as was very proper – a fund for the child’s education, the administration of which he placed in my hands. The true circumstances were to be communicated to my client upon his twenty-first birthday, or earlier at my discretion, provided that both the donor and his wife were dead. That situation has now come about. Mr Macgonigal died many years ago, and Mrs Macgonigal within the last fortnight.’
‘You did say Macgonigal?’ Mungo heard himself ask. He was slightly dazed.
‘Certainly, Mungo. Macgonigal.’
‘And what, please, was his highly respectable profession?’
‘He was a dentist in very good practice. And I am happy to communicate to you the fact that, at the likely close of your university career, there will be a residual credit of some £300 available for payment into your bank.’
‘Thank you very much.’ Macgonigal the dentist’s son stood up and walked over to Lord Auldearn. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘here I am. And on my own feet.’
‘May they take you over plenty of hurdles yet.’ Gravely, Lord Auldearn rose and shook his lost grandson’s hand.
Later in the evening, Mungo and Ian walked down to the cottage. The river, almost invisible, was flowing past them with a deep strong murmur.
‘Do you think,’ Ian asked, ‘we’ll ever see Sedley again?’
‘Bugger Sedley! Of course not. And not ever speak of him, either. An Iago’s bad enough. A downright incompetent Iago is the end.’
‘He was busying being an artist, and all that. It was hard cheese on him coming up against another top-class specimen – a staggeringly intuitive type.’
’Don’t be a bloody idiot,’ Mungo said. Being a little drunk with happiness, he privately thought that Ian had quite hit the nail on the head. He was silent for some moments. ‘Ian,’ he said, ‘this has been a marvellous day.’
‘Unflawed?’
‘Utterly.’
‘I don’t believe you – that you’re all that damned pleased to have got clear of us.’ Ian’s mockery was familiar and comfortable in the dusk. ‘Your imagination was touched. It must have been – at the thought of being descended from chieftains and kings.’
‘Not my imagination, and not even my pride. My vanity, perhaps. Talking of imagination, isn’t it odd that it was the Cardowers – wary aristocrats, and all that – who went wildly to town on it, and not your scribbling friend? I caught the infection, I admit, but not until your people had done a lot of meaningful goggling at me.’
‘It was an understandable error. It’s ridiculous that there should have been two families called Guthrie.’ Ian was silent for a moment. ‘None of it would have happened if some unknown don hadn’t decided to shove us both into Howard 4, 4.’
‘Solemn thought.’
‘That £300 would go some way towards setting you up in a pub. The Macgonigal Arms.’ Ian, being a Scot of sorts, was sentimental at heart. He enjoyed the luxury of having somebody to whom he could offer outrage like this. He began further and obscurely to indulge this feeling by skimming flat stones across the river in a manner that would have scandalised his uncle’s water-bailiff. ‘Now,’ he said inconsequently, ‘will you consent to pay your addresses to my sister?’
‘To Mary? If only I could!’ Mungo chucked himself down supine on the river-bank, raised his legs in air, and in that position executed certain ankle-tapping steps of a Scottish reel. ‘I’m in love with Anne, and I’m going to dance at her wedding.’
Works of J.I.M. Stewart
‘Staircase in Surrey’ Quintet
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
The Gaudy (1974)
Young Pattullo (1975)
Memorial Service (1976)
The Madonna of the Astrolabe (1977)
Full Term (1978)
Other Works
Published or to be published by House of Stratus
A. Novels
Mark Lambert’s Supper (1954)
The Guardians (1955)
A Use of Riches (1957)
The Man Who Won the Pools (1961)
The Last Tresilians (1963)
An Acre of Grass (1965)
The Aylwins (1966)
Vanderlyn’s Kingdom (1967)
Avery’s Mission (1971)
A Palace of Art (1972)
Mungo’s Dream (1973)
Andrew and Tobias (1980)
A Villa in France (1982)
An Open Prison (1984)
The Naylors (1985)
B. Short Story Collections
The Man Who Wrote Detective Stories (1959)
Cucumber Sandwiches (1969)
Our England Is a Garden (1979)
The Bridge at Arta (1981)
My Aunt Christina (1983)
Parlour Four (1984)
C. Non-fiction
Educating the Emotions (1944)
Character and Motive in Shakespeare (1949)
James Joyce (1957)
Eight Modern Writers (1963)
Thomas Love Peacock (1963)
Rudyard Kipling (1966)
Joseph Conrad (1968)
Shakespeare’s Lofty Scene (1971)
Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography (1971)
Plus a further 48 Titles published under the pseudonym ‘Michael Innes’
Select Synopses
Staircase in Surrey
The Gaudy
The first volume in J.I.M. Stewart’s acclaimed ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet, (but the second in time), ‘The Gaudy’ opens in Oxford at the eponymous annual dinner laid on by the Fellows for past members. Distinguished guests, including the Chancellor (a former Prime Minister) are present and Duncan Pattullo, now also qualified to attend, gets to meet some of his friends and enemies from undergraduate days. As the evening wears on, Duncan finds himself embroiled in many of the difficulties and problems faced by some of them, including Lord Marchpayne, now a Cabinet Minister; another Don, Ranald McKenechnie; and Gavin Mogridge who is famous for an account he wrote of his adventures in a South American jungle. But it doesn’t stop there, as Pattullo acquires a few problems of his own and throughout the evening and the next day various odd developments just add to his difficulties, leading him to take stock of both his past and future.
Young Pattullo
This is the second of the ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet, and the first in chronological order. Duncan Pattullo arrives in Oxford, destined to be housed off the quadrangle his father has chosen simply for its architectural and visual appeal. On the staircase in Surrey, Duncan meets those who are to become his new friends and companions, and there occurs all of the usual student antics and digressions, described by Stewart with his characteristic wit, to amuse and enthral the reader. After a punting accident, however, the girl who is in love with Duncan suffers as a result of his self-sacrificing actions. His cousin, Anna, is also involved in an affair, but she withholds the name of her lover, despite being pregnant. This particular twist reaches an ironical conclusion towards the end of the novel, in another of Stewart’s favourite locations; Italy. Indeed, Young Pattullo covers all of the writer’s favourite subjects and places; the arts, learning,
mystery and intrigue, whilst ranging from his much loved Oxford, through Scotland and the inevitable Italian venue. This second volume of the acclaimed series can be read in order, or as a standalone novel.
Memorial Service
This is the third novel in the Oxford quintet entitled ‘Staircase in Surrey’. Duncan Pattullo returns in middle age to his old college. The Provost is heavily engaged in trying to secure a benefaction from a charitable trust which the old and outrageous Cedric Mumford influences. One significant complication is the presence in college of Ivo Mumford, Cedric’s grandson. He is badly behaved and far from a credit to the college. His magazine, ‘Priapus’ proves to be wholly objectionable. Stewart explores the nature of the complicated relationships between the characters with his usual wit, literary style and intellectual precision and turns what might otherwise be a very common and ordinary situation into something that will grip the reader from cover to cover.
The Madonna of the Astrolabe
In the fourth of J.I.M. Stewart’s acclaimed ‘Staircase in Surrey’ quintet the gravity of a surveyor’s report given to the Governing Body is the initial focus. The document is alarming. The Governing Body, an assembly of which Pattullo was in awe, was equally awed by the dimensions of the crisis revealed. It would seem that the consideration was whether there would literally be a roof over their heads for much longer. The first rumblings from the college tower brings the thought well and truly home to Pattullo. ‘Professor Sanctuary,’ the Provost said evenly, ‘favours the immediate launching of an appeal . . .’ And so it begins . . . In J.I.M. Stewart’s superbly melding of wit, mystery, observation and literary prowess a gripping novel develops that will enthral the reader from cover to cover. This can be read as part of the series, or as a standalone novel.
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