Hargreave finally emerged from the room beyond the doorway to announce: ‘Sir Augustus will see you now in the library.’ The door was opened and the three of them went in without so much as a look in Hargreaves direction, which is why they did not notice the mocking smile on his face.
The library they entered had also been constructed in the Gothic style. Its walls were almost entirely covered by bookcases of mahogany and surmounted by shallow perpendicular arches, their shelves protected by framed glass doors. The lower parts were composed of cupboards for keeping albums of prints and drawings. Two large leaded casement windows lit the room from the west. Opposite the windows, over the fireplace, hung Gainsborough’s portrait of Sir Hercules St Maur in his youthful pride, leaning against an oak tree, a black spaniel at his feet, fowling piece tipped gracefully over one arm, the Abbey adumbrated in the blue distance behind him.
In the middle of the room was a great oak table covered with papers and, at one end, a chessboard with what looked like a game in progress. Behind it sat Sir Augustus. He was barely five years his brother’s senior, but he looked considerably older. He was thin and frail, an emaciated version of Julius, with a longer nose and more pronouncedly saturnine features. When he stood up to greet his visitors, George could see that his uncle was almost half a foot taller than his father. A tight white stock pushed up his chin and exaggerated the aspect of superiority. His pale skin had a waxy look to it. He wore a tight-fitting pale blue coat that came down to his feet. George could not tell if it was an overcoat or a dressing gown, but decided on the latter as it appeared to be made of silk.
Sir Augustus, moving slowly with the assistance of an ebony cane, limped out from behind the table and advanced on his sister-in-law whose hand he kissed with formal courtesy. Then he fixed his eyes on her son.
‘So! This is young Master George.’
George was conscious of two pale blue eyes staring at him with detached curiosity as if he were a flea under a microscope.
‘And you are to spend the next eighteen months or so in my charge until you are fit for Eton. You must be made robust. I hear that the new head man there, Dr Keate, is a great flogger. Have you ever been flogged, Master George? You have not tasted the birch?’ George shook his head indignantly. ‘I see you are no disciplinarian, Brother Julius. But, as I recall, the worst of it was not the floggings but the fights between boys. Did you know that in my time at Eton there was a boy killed in a fight? I witnessed some of it, but wearied long before the end. Thirty-three rounds. The boy who won was in almost as bad a way as his victim. He came back the following term though, you know. I wonder what became of him? I heard a rumour that he went into the Army and was killed in the Peninsula.’
During this speech Sir Augustus kept his eyes on George, looking for a reaction. George felt some alarm, but the events that his uncle was describing were so remote from his experience that it dulled any terror he might have felt. Eton was more than a year away. Perhaps before then he could contrive to escape its embrace.
‘I have secured the services of an excellent tutor for young George,’ said Sir Augustus, now addressing George’s parents. ‘A Mr Vereker. He is our curate at Tankerton Parva. My rector, as you know, is Dr Bulstrode and he spends all his time in the metropolis conducting antiquarian researches. He pays Mr Vereker a pittance to take the services and carry out parochial duties. Mr Vereker is also burdened, as these wretched curates so often are, with a wife and no fewer than four young children, so extra remuneration is much needed. He is a fair scholar. A Balliol man, I believe.’
‘We are very grateful to you for taking such pains on George’s behalf, Brother Gus,’ said Julius.
‘So I should hope, Brother Julius,’ said Sir Augustus, turning his back on him and studying the chessboard on his table. He picked up a white piece, contemplated a move, then returned it to its original position on the board. ‘And now, if you will excuse me, madam, gentlemen, I have some estate business to attend to. We meet at dinner, which is taken here at half-past five o’clock. Hargreave will show you to your rooms.’
They were dismissed.
The hours that followed were among the most miserable and unsatisfactory of George’s young life. He had hoped, at the very least, that the prospect of parting from her child would provoke his mother to extreme tenderness and attention towards him. George would have welcomed her tears, so that he too could have an excuse to cry, but none came. Amelia St Maur was kindly, but brisk. It was as if she were already distancing herself from her son, so that the break, when it came, would be less agonising. George tried to do the same, but he would have preferred to show and be shown grief.
His room was large and luxurious. There was a four-poster bed with rich damask hangings of blue, faded almost to grey. There were great presses and cupboards with panels of exquisite marquetry. A painting on the wall depicted masked revellers in Venice. The grandeur did not console him. George saw nothing but a great space in which to be lonely. The one slight consolation that he could find in his misery was in the view from his window.
He looked down onto the balustraded terrace at the back of the house. A few wide, shallow steps led down to a lawn dotted with trees, a great oak tree to his right, several elms to his left, and, in the centre, a magnificent Cedar of Lebanon, not yet in its prime. Beyond this was a lake with a grassy peninsula jutting into its swan-haunted waters, on which stood a square, domed temple with an Ionic portico.
Conversation at dinner that evening was awkward. Mrs St Maur attempted to regale her brother-in-law with the latest society gossip from London, but her efforts were greeted by raised eyebrows and a cold stare from Sir Augustus, and embarrassment from her husband and son. It was the first time in his life that George had been ashamed of his mother, a new and puzzling sensation. He felt pity for her, an emotion which enhanced rather than dissipated his longing to stay with her. That night in his vast bedroom he wept himself to sleep and no one heard him.
*
II
George saw his parents off dry-eyed the following morning after breakfast. Sir Augustus did not come out to say farewell from the drive, but contented himself with waving a large white cambric handkerchief from behind the library window. When they had gone, George found himself completely alone for the first time in his life, with no one to tell him what to do. He did not have the courage to go to his uncle in the library, as he was already very much afraid of him. The servants, who all seemed to be male, were elusive. George encountered Hargreave once in the hall and was coolly ignored. The boy had been fond of teasing and bullying his parents’ servants in London, but they had been female for the most part, and he had been ‘Young Master George’. At Tankerton Abbey he did not know quite who he was. He stamped his foot and once more heard that rather satisfying echo.
Eventually, he decided that he must perforce amuse himself, so he set out to explore the Abbey that might-one day be his. The exploration was not as satisfying as he had hoped. The Abbey was large and rambling, with two floors, above which were a series of attics inhabited by the servants. However, most of its many rooms were locked. Those that were not were either empty or full of uninteresting lumber.
Only one of the unlocked rooms contained an item of interest. This was a hexagonal chamber at one end of the Abbey’s west wing, at the junction of a right-angle and flanked by locked rooms on both sides. The room had a bay window looking out on the park. The room was bare and curtainless, its dusty boards bleached by the sun. No pictures hung on its walls, but in the centre was a large statue. It was plain white and considerably chipped, made not from marble, as George had at first thought, but of plaster. Its base was about a foot high and had lettering incised on it.
It showed a life-sized naked boy, perhaps a little older than George, kneeling on a rough piece of ground, looking upwards, his hands raised and clasped together as if in supplication. Around the wrists were manacles connected by a hanging chain. Though the whole statue was white, George saw from the featu
res of the face and the tight curly hair that the boy was a Negro.
The legend on the base read: AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?
George walked all around the object, as if some aspect of it might offer an explanation. He had heard his parents occasionally refer to the slave trade; they would speak of ‘abolitionists’ with vague disapproval. He had even seen prints in shop windows with images not dissimilar to the statue. Once at a tea party to which his mother had taken him, he saw a sugar bowl with AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER? printed on it, together with: NO SLAVE SUGAR FOUND IN ME. When his mother saw George eyeing the bowl she had tut-tutted, and soon after they had left the party.
‘Did anyone tell you that you might enter this room?’
The words which came from behind him struck George like a blow in the back. His Uncle Augustus stood in the doorway, leaning on his cane, wearing his blue coat that came down to the ground. George noted that he wore Turkish slippers, exotically embroidered, with toes that curled upwards to a point. In his eyes, they contributed something dangerous, even mad to his uncle’s appearance.
‘Nobody told me that I might not, sir,’ said George.
Sir Augustus sniffed to express his displeasure and turned on his heel.
George stood shivering with fear in the room with the statue for some minutes. He began to understand that it was not so much Sir Augustus that he feared as the knowledge that he could no longer be a child. That, he realised, was why he mourned the departure of his parents. He felt a vague affection for them, as they did for him; what he missed most, though, was that they had bestowed on him the privilege of innocence.
George felt like stamping his foot, but he did not. He simply waited until he felt his fear and anger drain away into the silence, to be replaced by a small, cold resolve. Suddenly he felt very hungry. No one had summoned him to luncheon. He left the room and came down the front stairs.
In the hall he encountered Hargreave, who pretended not to see him. This was not to be borne.
‘Hargreave!’ Hargreave turned slowly to face George who was on the stairs a few feet above him.
‘Master George?’
‘Why was I not informed about luncheon?’
‘Sir Augustus does not take luncheon.’
‘Never?’
‘Never, Master George.’ Having given this answer, Hargreave moved swiftly in the direction of the servants’ quarters as if to forestall any further interrogations.
George descended the stairs and stood perfectly still in the hall. The silent breezes chilled him. Outside the sun shone. Its slanted rays pierced the armorial window on the landing of the grand staircase, dappling the grey stone floor with soft paw marks of gold and blue light. As he was waiting for his will to return to him, George studied these evanescent colours, vestiges of the St Maur arms painted in light: azure, a gryphon or passant.
To his right was the door to the library where George, with the intuitive faith of the young, was sure he would find his uncle. He knocked on the door, but received no reply. After a moment’s hesitation he entered. The room was hot, bright and drowsy, but it was not empty. In the chair behind the table sat Sir Augustus with a large white handkerchief draped over his long, waxy features, hiding his eyes from the glare of the sun. Motes of dust turned slowly in its beams. Sir Augustus, evidently asleep, took long breaths whose expulsion slightly disturbed the white cambric, like an irregular heartbeat.
George gazed in wonder at his sleeping uncle. The sight pleased him, as the sight of all figures of authority in a vulnerable state pleases. On the table were as usual the papers and the chessboard. George had begun to learn chess from his father and had shown some promise. He came closer to the table while his uncle slept on.
For some minutes George studied the chessboard. There were five white pieces on the board and three black. It did not take George long to see that white could checkmate in two moves. It was a comparatively simple problem, a child’s problem. He began to feel an irresistible urge to make the White Queen’s move which would secure victory. If he could make the move while his uncle slept, he could baffle the man, become almost his equal. For a moment or two fear contended with ambition. He could not reach the chess piece from where he stood. He had to creep around to the side of the table on which his uncle sat and reach up from there.
He made the journey soundlessly. Now his eyes were only on the White Queen. He was reaching up to move it three squares along the board when he found his wrist suddenly gripped by something cold and hard. The sleeping figure reared up, the cambric falling from his uncle’s face. The long, stern features were immobile, the eyes were fixed on him, the strong cold grip held him immobile.
‘Who told you it was your move?’ said Sir Augustus.
After a pause George replied, ‘It didn’t matter. Even if it was black’s turn, he’d have been mated in two moves.’
‘Who said you could be white?’
Very slowly Sir Augustus released his hold on George’s wrist while at the same time lifting the index finger of his right hand to command him to stay.
‘I wanted to know about luncheon, sir,’ said George, fully conscious of the inadequacy of his reply.
‘I never take luncheon,’ said Sir Augustus.
‘Hargreave told me.’
‘Did he, by God! Then why are you troubling me?’
‘I am not used to being without it, sir.’
‘Then you should grow accustomed to it. Heaven knows you’re plump enough. I suspect your mother of making a mollycoddle of you, sir.’
George blushed. His plumpness was the one subject about which he felt deeply sensitive.
‘However, if you must fill your belly, go down to the kitchens and find Mrs Mace, the housekeeper. Say that I sent you. No doubt she will find you some cold beef or bread and milk, or whatever takes your fancy.’
‘Where are the kitchens, Uncle?’
‘Find them yourself, sir. You have a habit of going where you’re not wanted. This will present you with no difficulty.’ George began to walk away. ‘Hold hard, Master George! I’ve not finished with you yet. My condition for allowing you to gorge yourself at my expense is this: this afternoon you are to go into my park to find the hanged man and bring him back to me. Do you understand?’
George nodded.
‘No, you do not understand, but you may in time. When you have found it you will bring it to me here, half an hour before dinner at five o’clock. Now be off with you!’
George was a little ashamed of himself at having to go in search of Mrs Mace and the kitchens, but he did. They and she were easy to find, and they were both warm. Mrs Mace, a large, motherly soul who was prepared to make a pet of George, gave him some bread and cold beef and pickles. The occasion was somewhat marred by Hargreave, who stood and stared at George as he ate. When he had gone, George asked Mrs Mace whether she was the only woman in the house and she replied that she was. He then asked if Sir Augustus was a good man.
‘He’s Sir Augustus, Master George, but I don’t hardly ever see him. Not since the mistress passed away.’
‘How did Lady St Maur die, Mrs Mace?’
‘The Lady Circe, that was her name, she came from the West Indies, where your uncle has plantations, but England didn’t suit her. Sir Augustus may not have been wise to bring such a woman into the country. They say she wasted away. There’s some say that she was no better than she should have been. That’s all I know about that, Master George. Now, you finish that beef and them pickles and go out and play like a good boy.’
George wanted to ask Mrs Mace about the hanged man, but thought on reflection he had better keep that business to himself.
As he left the Abbey, it occurred to George that he was walking out alone for the first time in his life. In London he had always been accompanied by his mother or a governess, or a servant who had been assigned to him. In this place, he might be the heir presumptive, but he had no servants. A clear sky was menaced by heavy accumulations of grey cloud
. Beneath were trees and open ground and serpentine paths shaped by a master gardener to furnish ways where he might walk. Everything was available to him, but he had no directions, and no one would take his hand. He began again to feel indignant about his abandonment, but before the tears started, as they so easily had done until now, he realised that he must move or perish. The fall from Eden had already taken place without his consent.
The decision he made was a rational one. The only part of the park he knew was what he had seen from the window of his room, which was at the back of the house. The park was deserted. George could not see any living inhabitants: no people, no deer, not so much as a squirrel. If there were birds, then the wind was too high for him to hear their song. It made a sound in the trees like the distant crash of waves. The clouds were beginning to blow high and fast across the sky; the sun shone with fitful brilliance.
George walked around to the back of the house where the shallow stone steps led down to the lawn that sloped towards the lake. He stared at the view as if it were hostile territory. Nearly all of it had been planted and landscaped deliberately and this somehow increased the threat, though he could not tell why. There was one tree, however, which looked older, and not quite part of the Repton scheme. It was the oak, and it seemed oddly familiar. It was only as he approached the tree that George recognised it as the one against which Sir Hercules had been leaning in the Gainsborough portrait, a black hunting dog at his feet.
The more he looked at the oak the more it seemed to him that this tree was less real than the one in the painting. It looked like a bloated imitation of Gainsborough’s oak, a dissolute elder brother. Something black flickered behind it, which might have been a dog’s tail. George looked all around the tree but could find nothing.
A gust of wind ruffled the lake, turning it from mirror-glass to hammered pewter; a few spots of rain from a passing cloud stung him. It was a moment of decision. George could have returned to the safety and shelter of the house, but he knew he would find nothing for his delight but empty rooms and the threatening presence of his uncle.
A Book of Horrors - [Anthology] Page 28