Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  Regardless of George’s instructions, Mr Ratton maintained his façade of ownership and privilege at Tall Chimneys, unwilling to lose face in front of the servants and tenants. Indeed he increased his exacting requirements, coming down mercilessly on tenants who were behind-hand with their rents or lax with their building maintenance, holding sway over the household servants with an iron fist. Nobody dared challenge him. He began sending for the cocktail tray almost as soon as the tea things were cleared, and was often inebriated before dinner even started.

  Drunkenness made him vile and on the days when I had been with John, Ratton treated me with particular cruelty. One evening: ‘No dinner for Miss Evelyn this evening, Jones, she has been satiated already, at the gatehouse,’ he commented lewdly. Jones looked as though he would protest on my behalf, but I shook my head at him. I sat and watched Mr Ratton gobble his way through four courses of dinner. Another night: ‘Miss Evelyn will take her supper off the floor, like a dog; it is a position she is becoming accustomed to, I believe; she likes it on all fours.’ Poor old Jones sent the footman from the room on some invented errand, and stood uncertainly with my plate.

  ‘I will take no dinner this evening, thank you,’ I said, rising to my feet. ‘You will excuse me.’

  ‘No,’ he roared, ‘I will not. You will remain.’

  Dinner continued, Jones white-faced with tension and embarrassment. It was too easy for any staff member to find themselves subject to Mr Ratton’s capricious will and I didn’t blame Jones for keeping quiet. On the slightest pretext Ratton had been known to reject dishes, sometimes hurling them across the room. He might summon the cook to pour scorn on her culinary efforts, and thought nothing of sending poor old arthritic Jones back down the tortuous cellar steps for alternative vintages. We all heaved a sigh of relief when Mr Ratton finally drank himself into a stupor, or stumbled into the drawing room to sleep off his excesses and this, eventually, is how that evening’s debacle concluded itself. I returned to my rooms drained, shaking with a mixture of nerves and anger. On that occasion, as before when I had been denied sustenance, I found a cosy supper laid for me in my chamber; nice things on toast, a flask of frothy hot chocolate. The staff and I often gave each other sympathetic looks and were on the look-out for one another against our common enemy, but no word was ever said.

  My solution to these ordeals was simple: John began to join us for dinner, considerably improving that excruciating meal and enlivening the evenings in general. I would scurry through the gloaming to make tea in the library, enduring Mr Ratton’s moody silences or barbed remarks, then hurry up to my room to while away the time until the dressing bell. John would arrive in the drawing room for cocktails wearing his least disreputable suit, his hair wet from a sluicing in the kitchen, smelling of autumn leaves and ripe apples, his nails still rimmed with paint pigments. The meal, at our end of the table anyway, would be lively. John spoke entertainingly about his life and experiences in Paris, studying art, about the great and the good on the London scene as well as the shocking and the beyond-the-pale. Mr Ratton sat at the head of the table throughout, frowning and gloomy, squat and dull as an old toad. His complaints about the food and wine were always smoothly contradicted by John, his orders gently but firmly countermanded until all Mr Ratton could do was choke down his dinner and wash it down with copious quantities of wine. John would decline to stay behind for port, such practices, he said, being totally out-moded, and follow me into the parlour where we would play card games or try duets on the piano. Mr Ratton could make no contribution to these amusements, our games being invariably two-handed and he being tone-deaf. Towards nine o’clock I would say goodnight. What transpired between the two gentlemen after my departure I do not know; whether John plied Mr Ratton with drink until he was insensible, or knocked him out with his fist, or merely threatened to do so is a mystery. But Mr Ratton did not, as I constantly feared, attempt to take advantage of my vulnerable situation there, alone with him in the house, by gaining admittance to my rooms in the night.

  Occasionally I invited the rector’s family to join us for dinner and the invitation was returned, including John but excluding Mr Ratton who, after all, was only my brother’s agent who took liberties at Tall Chimneys he was not strictly entitled to. When the rector dined, he treated me as the lady of the house, the hostess, representing the family, and John as my guest. Mr Ratton was tolerated, his attempts to dominate proceedings gently but firmly quashed. Through the rector I became acquainted with other respectable families in the area. My social circle enlarged and my social life with it. I had occasion to call for the motor car to take me out to tea or dinner on several occasions, leaving Mr Ratton to his own, fulminating devices.

  Some of the women I met were like me - occupying themselves with the running of their houses. They were very domesticated and I found I had much in common with them, swapping recipes and household tips. Others were much more social, going to Leeds or York on a regular basis to shop or meet friends for lunch. Several had houses in London or at least went there, for the season. They spoke of the Savoy and the Dorchester and gala dinners on Park Lane. I had nothing to add to these narratives and drank my tea in silence. A very few of them worked - one was a veterinary surgeon, another was a headmistress. I felt awed - and a little envious - of their accomplishments and success.

  The weeks went by, September closed and October was upon us, and then almost over. Every day I went to the gatehouse when my work in the house was done, carrying provisions or John’s linen which had been laundered at the house. Mr Ratton went about his business with a sore head and very bad grace; moody, sullen, resentful.

  John and I were intimate. I do not mean sexually intimate, but we were close. When you consider my early years it is not surprising I responded to the first gesture of friendship I had received since Joan had put out a tentative hand, aged five. And given my precarious situation with Mr Ratton of course I grabbed hold of the assurance of John’s protection. I had been starved of friendship since arriving at Tall Chimneys. I had been starved of care for my whole life; only Mr and Mrs Weeks had shown me any at all. Of course the gatehouse, with all its association of them, my idea of it as a refuge, also played its part; the gatehouse and John felt inextricably linked in my mind, both part and parcel of a sense of safety and home-coming. His smell, of manliness and paint pigments and turpentine, and some stuff he used to smooth his unco-operative hair, melded itself with the smell of the gatehouse; old wood, new bread, the resinous tang of the pines in the plantation, the smell of applewood burning in the grate and, in my fancy, the whiff of Mr Weeks’ pipe. If I said we were at ease in one another’s company it would be the truth but also a profound misrepresentation; there was, between us, a taut, singing wire of tension, not unpleasant, like violins tuning up before an explosion of music. I was critically aware of him as I had never been of any other person; my mind, my body, my senses somehow connected, in tune with his slightest movement or gesture, heightened so the least sigh, the smallest flicker of a frown, the crease at the corner of his eye which heralded a smile seemed to me like beacons across the moors; vivid, unambiguous signals I could neither ignore or misunderstand.

  He would work in the upper chamber of the gatehouse, where the light was good. Meanwhile I would read downstairs, tend to the little necessaries of house-keeping for him, make tea, write my letters. My inner ear hummed to the sound of his footstep overhead, to the faint click as he put down and took up different brushes, to the silences as he stepped back to consider his next stroke. Then his foot on the stair as he descended for food or tea would stir a potent brew of expectation somewhere behind my ribcage, spreading, melting as it went until I was a flood of syrupy anticipation and breathless with a wanting I could not name. If I was flushed, then, as I served his tea, or if my hand shook as I passed the bread and butter, I am sure he noticed, but he made no comment. I was an open book to him, I suppose.

  October was a gentle month of golden sunshine and rosy sunsets. T
he leaves turned and fell, from a canopy above they became a rustling carpet under my feet as I travelled between the gatehouse and Tall Chimneys. Mornings saw the first rime of frost; I woke to find a fire lit in my dressing room grate. At night the sky was a wide yawn of stars; John named them for me, our breath rising in the chill air. Once November was with us there was a distinct change. Many nights the hollow of earth which held the house and gardens and its belt of woodland became a boiling cauldron of dense fog; no wind penetrated the crater to disturb it. Some days it lingered until after ten, a thin sunshine eventually penetrating its vaporous cloud, burning it away until all was bright and fresh once more. The days got shorter. Always, of course, in our peculiar depression, the sun was late to arrive and early to leave but once the equinox had passed this phenomenon became more marked than ever. I had to walk up the drive to the rim to find the sun which shone on the gatehouse while Tall Chimneys was still deep in shade.

  One morning Mr Ratton appeared more agitated than usual, some item in the newspapers seeming to disturb him. We still received the American press, a week or so late, of course, and he stubbornly persisted in reading it along with the London news. After a while he left the room, taking the newspapers with him, and soon I heard the motor car start up and begin the climb up the drive towards the village.

  I thought nothing of it, rejoicing only in Mr Ratton’s absence. A party of guests was expected the following weekend and there was much to do; rooms to be aired, beds to be made, fuel for the fires brought in, much bustle and activity in the kitchens. Mrs Flowers and I worked hard all morning. I took a bite of lunch at one, something I did not normally do but as the servants were stopping for a break I had a plate of cold cuts sent up. Then, all being more or less in readiness, I wrapped a warm shawl around my shoulders and walked up to the gatehouse. The day was bright but there was scant warmth in the sun. The gardens, as I passed through them, looked skeletal, the summer’s growth having been cut back. The earth was bare, the fountain, drained for the winter, dry and bleak.

  When I arrived at the gatehouse John, too seemed agitated. As I entered he swept a letter off the table and stowed it in the drawer of Mrs Weeks’ old dresser. I unpacked the food I had brought for him and he began to eat it while I chattered about the preparations for the house guests.

  ‘Do you know who’s coming?’ I asked him. ‘Is it the artistic cohort? Am I to expect a further onslaught from Josiah Morely?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ he smiled, but it was a somewhat troubled, distracted smile. He knocked the top off the bottle of cook’s home-brewed beer. ‘I have heard from George this morning,’ he went on, ‘but he doesn’t mention the guest list.’

  ‘Mr Ratton has gone out in the car,’ I said. ‘He seemed in a state about something. He must have gone to town. He’s been gone a long time.’

  ‘Had he received a letter also?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘He seemed upset about something in the newspapers.’

  Normally, after eating, John would go back up to the upper room and recommence work, leaving me to tidy round, read or do some sewing. Today, however, he seemed reluctant to get back to work. He watched me re-arranging his crockery for a while, and laughed at my efforts to make a few fronds of greenery and some dried Allium heads look attractive in the ewer. Presently I settled by the fire with my book, but still he remained in the room with me, occasionally pacing, sometimes sitting and staring into the flames, but mainly with his eyes both fixed on me and also focussed on something far off.

  Eventually I said ‘I ought to go, and leave you in peace. I’m clearly a distraction, today.’ I marked my place in my book and stood up.

  ‘You are a distraction,’ he agreed, ‘but no more today than any other day. It’s just that today, now, at last, when it’s much too late and it can’t possibly matter, I’m giving in to it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I stood before him, my book still in my hand. It came to me with a sickening rush that all these weeks, thinking we had been allies, believing our friendship to have been a mutually gratifying arrangement I had, instead, been a nuisance, a wearisome annoyance. ‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered, taking all these things as read.

  ‘Sorry? What for?’ He rose to his feet, now, raking an agitated hand through his hair which was long, again, and ready for a cut. As he raised his arm I noticed a tear in the seam of his shirt. I made a mental note to repair it for him, next time it came to laundry.

  ‘I thought I’d been helpful, in a small way,’ I said, in a thin voice, ‘taking care of the house for you so you could get on with the work.’

  He laughed. ‘Get on with the work?’ he almost shouted.

  I nodded.

  Suddenly he grasped my hand and led me towards the stairs in the corner of the room. ‘Come and see how the work progresses,’ he said, sourly.

  I had never been in the upper chamber before; as intimate and unchaperoned as we had been, John and I, in all the preceding weeks, that had seemed a familiarity too far. There was a fireplace, smaller than the one below, but no fire burned in it. Light poured in from windows on four of the six faces of the hexagon. In front of one of them, a rough table held paints, bottles of turpentine, other paraphernalia of John’s work. Against the far wall was a divan, tumbled with bedding. At its foot a chair carried his spare clothing. Everywhere else canvasses were propped onto easels or leaning against the walls. Each one was daubed with some initial design, experimental sketches began strongly but then petered out, colour washes suggested background but no detail overlaid them.

  I looked at them all, dismayed. ‘I thought you’d been making good progress,’ I cried. ‘You said so, indeed.’

  ‘Of course I said so,’ he echoed, pacing around the room throwing despairing looks at all his false starts, picking up and throwing down paint brushes and tubes of pigment. ‘I could hardly confess to the truth, could I?’

  I looked at him blankly. This tortured man wasn’t the John I knew, this sudden lack of concord between us felt like a stranger suddenly thrust into our midst, a cuckoo who would eat up all the trust between us. The silence stretched out. Outside, I could see, the thin sunshine of earlier had been eclipsed by cloud. The moor, under its grey mantle, looked dour and forbidding. The room was chilly, and I had left my shawl downstairs. I wrapped my arms around me.

  ‘I see you’re not going to ask,’ he grumbled, almost to himself.

  I didn’t want to ask. To name it would make it real and I was afraid of what it might look like - too different, I feared, from all my girlish imaginings and romantic day-dreams. And yet, it appeared John wanted it named, needed it, indeed, to be revealed in order for him to move forward, as one needs a bad tooth to be drawn. Compassion for him eclipsed my selfishness. ‘What is the truth?’ I asked at last.

  ‘The truth is,’ he said, pacing with more and more energy round the room, his hands often in his hair, ‘the truth is, while you are downstairs I can do nothing. I try and paint but I am listening to your footsteps on the flagstones. I have an idea in my head but the sound of your hands straightening furniture sends it right out again. I can see the scheme, right there,’ he indicated a space about a foot in front of his face, ‘it’s as clear as day to me but then I hear you cough, or laugh, and all I can see is you. You fill my vision from one horizon to the other.’ He came to a stop in front of me. ‘You,’ he said again, fiercely, accusingly. ‘You,’ he repeated for a third time, his hands on my shoulders, then on my face, ‘You,’ he spoke again for the last time, his voice hoarse, his arms around me, his mouth in my hair, whispering into my ear. Then his mouth was on mine, and neither of us spoke any more.

  It was very late when I got back to Tall Chimneys, way past the usual hour for tea. There was a very odd atmosphere in the house, as though a great event had taken place but was now over. Things were not as they should be; the front door stood ajar, Jones was not in his usual place in the hall. No fires were lit, no lamps lighted, no curtains drawn against the on-com
ing night. The library was cold and dark, the tea tray absent. When I went searching for Mrs Flowers the servants’ hall was deserted, the makings of dinner abandoned in the kitchen. The kitchen cat mewed plaintively next to her empty dish; I cut up some chicken for her and poured her some milk. I began to call out, and ran from room to room, but no voice answered mine. Mrs Flowers’ little suite of rooms was empty, her wardrobe cleared of clothes, the patchwork quilt she had made herself gone from the bed. Round in the stable yard the horses were restless in their stables but had been left with hay and water. The motor car stood in the yard. This surprised me. I had not heard it pass the gatehouse but then, during the afternoon, my thoughts had been concentrated on the inside of that little cell. The four horsemen of the apocalypse could have passed by and I don’t think I would have heard them.

  Eventually my steps led me back to the library. I fumbled my way through the darkness, to find the lamp on the table by the sofa, imagining ghouls and monsters in the looming shadows of the book cases and cabinets. When I switched the light on I screamed and almost fell over a foot stool. Mr Ratton stood on the hearth rug before the cold grate. I don’t know how long he had been there, patiently waiting, or why he had not answered my calls.

  ‘There’s no-one here,’ I gasped, sinking down on the sofa. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘You are here, and so am I,’ he corrected me, pedantically, ‘although you are very tardy. The tea hour has been and gone. You were detained, I suppose, at the gatehouse.’

  An uncomfortable feeling crept over me, he had been to the gatehouse, entered, even, stood and listened at the bottom of the stairs. In spite of myself a deep blush crept over me, my whole body felt flushed and hot, as it had done earlier, but with a different cause.