by May Woodward
“I remembered my horse was named Sparkle. My home was Eardingstowe in Somerset. I even recalled the green man carving on the hall clock…”
My, my, Richard scoffed; have we done ourselves proud with the detail in our guidebooks!
“I remembered the storm that was blowing when my dear little sister Margaret was born. And how my brother Carswell didn’t like the cook’s Potage à la Parmentier and would pour it into the mere…”
No wonder Jenny Greenteeth hates us! Richard took a long drink. And I might be on the lookout for a new chef when I return to Eardingstowe!
Richard had yet to meet this man claiming to be Aubrey. Of course, the person was an impostor, but that was beside the point. If someone wished to claim kinship with the renegades and lunatics the Somerlees had spawned over the centuries, he was welcome as far as Richard was concerned. But Uncle George’s legacy, and the two thousand a year which their pater had left to each of his younger offspring… Ah, now that was more of a tricky-woo; Richard had been spending Aubrey’s portion with glee for the last sixteen years.
Of course, thanks to the bounty of Smoky Mountain Richard was now one of the wealthiest men in the land… wasn’t as if he couldn’t pay the fellow back, for pity’s sake. Still, would be jolly awkward if it got out that the public face of Smoky Mountain had snaffled his unfortunate sibling’s inheritance.
And what does this restored hero recollect of that fateful day in October, 1854?
“I remember Lord Cardigan calling out the order to advance. I was riding into the valley in the second line. And I saw Captain Nolan trying to stop the charge.
“I remember a hail of cannonballs from every side. We were racing as fast as the wind, right through the enfilade, heading straight into the firing range of the Don Cossack battery. Men were screaming and falling dead all around me. A bullet tore out some of Sparkle’s mane. He whinnied but gritted his teeth and galloped on.
All I could hear was the gunfire and hammering of the hooves. Just imagine it… zing, zing, before my eyes, behind my head, everywhere. One shot after another, and the roar of the cannons in the battery coming ever closer.”
Oh my, Richard chuckled to himself, been reading his Tennyson, hasn’t he, in preparation for this fraud of his.
For a long time, Richard had been anticipating some trickster trying to impersonate Aubrey. It had seemed almost inevitable. Only surprising one hadn’t come forward before this. Well, Aubrey was a monied man in his own right, leave alone his blood-tie with the fabulously rich Baronet of Eardingstowe. Egads, you might do it just for the glory, never mind the inheritance!
Richard went on reading, starting to smile a little.
“My messmate, Captain Mortlake, was riding alongside me. When we got to the battery, we ducked under the limbers and spiked two of the guns with rocks.
“Then the Cossack cavalry rode down on us. They surrounded us, snarling, pitiless brutes that they were. We fought hand to hand. I struck swords with a Cossack. I can picture his vicious, scarred face as he bloodied me in the arm, and nearly knocked me from the saddle. But Mortlake raced up behind, sliced through the chap’s neck, and he tumbled lifeless.
“Mortlake and I helped drag away one of the guns our chaps had caught.
“I can still smell the sulphur, hear the cries of the wounded. I recall a dragoon lying across our way, his bloody head split open. I had to jump Sparkle over him – so disrespectful.
“Then a troop of Polacks appeared right before us. I thought we were about to die! ‘Heaven help us!’ I called out! But, by George, the Polish captain waved us past! The Polacks have no love for their Russian masters you know! Mortlake saluted, and shouted ‘Viva Polska!’
“Mortlake and I were at school together. I used to call him ‘Applejohn’. Lord knows why…
“Then four massive shells exploded overhead. The whole valley vanished in whiteness. I remember falling, terrible pain filling my head. And that is where my memory falters…”
This Mortlake character had survived the charge, was a major now, and would doubtless confirm all this had occurred as told. And his silly schoolboy sobriquet which only the real Aubrey would have known, and so on, and so on… Of course, this chancer’s going to set about proving his identity with rubbish only Aubrey and the family could know. Dashed awkward if he remembers publicly what I used to do in the rotunda…
‘I say! Rum business this, what?’ Richard looked up as someone spoke to him. ‘I hear your lost brother’s been found, Dickon!’
Richard sighed to himself. He set the newspaper aside. This story was going to be massive and outshine even the warring Fritz and Frenchies. Richard and the Somerlees were going to be exposed to national, maybe global attention.
‘Will you even recognise him after being gone for so long?’
‘I don’t know, Bertie. Do join me. Collins, another glass for Sir Bertrand please. How is dear Lady Grace?’ Richard made a feeble attempt to change the subject.
‘Oh, fine, fine… but your brother, Dickon! Must be devilish exciting to have him back after all these years? Scary, too, perhaps? Bit like a spectre from the grave, what? Well, I daresay you’ve been mourning him as dead. How many years is it?’
‘Sixteen. He disappeared during the Battle of Balaclava. We heard he was taken prisoner by some Serbs. Then… nothing. Until now. Yes, Bertrand, I have been mourning him as dead.’
‘Heavens, heavens!’ His friend shook his silver head. ‘How do you truly feel about his return, old boy? Well – he’ll be a stranger to you!’
‘Indeed, he will.’
Richard thought back over the years. He remembered a boy with black hair, nine or ten years younger than himself. Adored his big brother Dickon and toddled around after him. But because of the age gap Richard and Aubrey had not been close. One was away at school when the other was in the nursery. One went into Parliament, the other the army.
Richard could call to mind few moments of togetherness with Aubrey. Mannerisms? A particular way of waving his hand or tossing back his head? Words or phrases which were uniquely his? No, nothing that Richard could recall. The sound of Aubrey’s laughter, his voice? No – it was gone.
‘Suppose you’ll recognise him?’
‘What do you think? A man changes with age! Now just take me if you will,’ Richard said, raising a brow. ‘Sixteen years ago I was dashing, I daresay. Now I’m forty-five, about two stones heavier, gammy-eyed, more silver than gold in my hair these days, ruddy face… will Aubrey recognise me is more to the point?’
‘Oh, come, come!’ Sir Bertrand said, and chuckled. ‘I’ve a decade on you, and you’re in fine fettle, sir, fine fettle! And you know – I’ve heard the Jewish upstart is thinking of a cabinet post for you.’
‘I heard Derby was too, but it never materialised.’
‘Ah, well.’ Richard’s friend sighed. ‘What’s Lady Amathia think of this… well… upheaval in your lives?’
‘I haven’t been home since I had the news Aubrey had been found.’ Richard stared into his glass. ‘We are expecting another little blessing, you know,’ he said. ‘Could have done without something like this upsetting her nerves at such a time.’
‘Well… you’ve done well in that department, my good fellow! Four is it so far?’
‘Yes. Girls. Not banking on anything different this time.’ He sincerely hoped it would be a son, though: because then he would never have to sleep with her again.
‘I say, Dickon!’ A pair of new voices joined the discussion. ‘We’ve just heard the news about your brother. Incredible, what? Home from Balaclava after all these years! Found in a monastery? Lost his memory? Amazing! What do you feel about it, old man? Think you’ll recognise him after all this time?’
Over an hour passed before Richard was left alone. The butler brought him a fresh decanter of brandy. He asked if Sir Richard would be dining in this fi
ne evening.
‘I think not. I’ll take myself for a stroll I think, Collins. I’m returning to Somerset upon the morrow and shall relish my last night in town.’
Donning his top hat, cape and cane, out into Pall Mall he stepped. He hailed a cabriolet and set off for the Haymarket. A night of felicity before a return to morbid domesticity. Ghastly thought.
He lay awake for a long while after his lovemaking.
The night-house’s chic boudoir was roofed with a ceiling of mirrors. Reflected lamplight, crimson and magenta in colour, glowed down on him. He glanced at the oriental features of the young lady whose head lay on the pillow beside him. Richard must have transported her to another world with his passion. She was asleep.
Convivial noises reached his ears from the Café Royale’s salon downstairs. There, clients and girls mingled before repairing to the chambers above.
Richard had paid for one of the establishment’s most superior rooms. Drapes of scarlet Indian silk swathed the four-poster’s canopy, windows and dressing-chamber. A half-empty bottle of Moselle stood in the ice-bucket.
He reached for his coat which lay sprawled across the seat of the divan. From the breast pocket, he took the things which had been troubling him all day.
One was a watercolour miniature of Aubrey set in an oval frame. Richard remembered the sitting. A local artist had taken all the Somerlee children’s portraits on the occasion of their parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary.
The subject was pictured in half-profile. He would have been, what, about nine? Peachy-fair complexion. Midnight-dark curls. Eyes as blue as sapphires. Little Master Perfect. No spot or blackhead had dared come near him. Pater’s favourite. Mater’s sweetest cherub. No, he was never coming back. Never.
Richard laid the little likeness down.
He turned up the lamp. Then unfolded the letter which he had also been carrying. He had to hold it close to the light, so poor now was his eyesight.
‘My dearest Dickon, from your ever-loving Clemmie. Despite your continued silence when I write, brother, I shall not despair of mending our fractured relationship somehow.’
Richard slapped his feet out of bed. He paced to the window and plucked back the curtain.
The hour was about two in the morning, but Leicester Square was still vibrant and wideawake. Patrons from the Café Royale swaggered about below and splashed in the puddles. One top-hatted chap seemed to be taking his be-feathered Judy home with him. The establishment boasted a liquor licence, and even a policeman standing guard at the discreet entrance – tipping his helmet to the politicians, noblemen, foreign diplomats, admirals and colonels on their way in or out.
On the other side of the square, the Alhambra Palace and Burford’s Panorama remained open through much of the night. What a marvel the Panorama was – like a magic lantern show on a giant-sized scale; onto the screen were projected photographs of a horse, say, in each stage of galloping up to and leaping a fence, or a bird furling out its wings and taking off into flight; the series of frames zapped across so fast it was like watching a real horse or bird in action. One day we’ll have real moving pictures, you’ll see, Richard had been told.
The world was changing so speedily you felt dizzy. Even the current fashion fad of putting frilly skirts on furniture got on Richard’s wick. Amathia had done it to a perfectly nice pier table in the Eardingstowe Great Drawing-Room.
‘People one hundred years from now will think we’re such prudes we want to hide their legs!’ he had snapped.
He put the letter before his face again. The streetlamp below the window gave illumination. But he’d read it so many times the words read themselves.
‘I pray, Dickon, that you can forgive what I did. The dreadful deception. The terrible worry I gave you. I can live with the disapproval of society. My estrangement from my husband troubles me not, for Philoctetes is nothing to me. But that you have cut me out of your life, Dickon, is a daily sorrow.’
He laid down Clemence’s note.
He doubted he would be able to sleep if he returned to his bed. Should he join the revelry downstairs? No thank you; he might bump into a Party whipper-in wanting to know why he hadn’t responded to Monday’s protocol. One night lately, he had encountered a senior member of the Colonial Office wearing frilly drawers, emerging from one of the private parlours, who had asked him if he knew how to fasten garters. Yes, you could get Mary-Annes here too if you fancied that kind of thing.
He flopped onto the divan and laid back his head.
Clemmie and Lizzy had returned to England five years ago. They’d set up home at the Schwangli house in Mayfair. Moreover, Clemence had come with her head held high. Three doctors had declared her sane. Not just any doctors, either. That was Lysithea’s doing. She was a friend of the Austrian Emperor. Well, not friend exactly. Franz Josef didn’t have any. But she was the nearest thing; her Swiss husband was said to have saved the young Franz from an assassination attempt and had been rewarded for his trouble. As had his widow.
One of Franz Josef’s court physicians, and two from Vienna’s Narrenturm Asylum – the most progressive institution for the mentally deranged on the blooming planet – had examined the countess’s niece. She was a little highly strung, perhaps, but sane.
Richard could have told them that for half the fee. Nor could he blame Clemmie for her flight. Even admired her for it. Everyone tacitly did – a gutsy young Grace Darling. And did that prickle? If he was honest – yes. She’d made him seem a fool. Cruel, even.
The tops of the Quantocks peeped above the passing hedgerows, shimmering from behind a curtain of heat-haze. The slopes were coloured mauve and buttery-yellow with flowering heather and gorse.
The Somerlee brougham rattled homewards through cider-country. Through the open carriage window drifted the scent of new-mown grass and ripening hay. Overhead, a bird-arrow was heading towards a feathery daytime moon. Hazel, blackthorn, dogwood and elder were all in full leaf. White butterflies hovering in the roadside foliage caught Richard’s eye. But his mind was elsewhere.
He hadn’t seen much of Clemmie since her return from the continent. A few times their eyes had met across a busy public room. Enough to nod – but not so far smile or speak.
Hellfire – she’d even made her peace with Dwellan House. Written to apologise. Apologise, would you have it? And offered to pay for a spanking new shelter for its garden. At which that infernal snob Warburton had gushed his gratitude. Even announced publicly that he’d been mistaken about Her Grace robbing him.
So, now Clemence was chirpily visiting Aunt Cassandra and the other lifelong friends she’d made as if naught had happened. Sickening.
The carriage swayed over a narrow bridge which crossed a sluggish waterway, and on through villages where forelocks were tugged, and caps doffed at sight of the Yew and Quatrefoil coat-of-arms. A column of geese waddled across the lane, bringing Richard’s transport to a brief standstill.
He took out Aubrey’s framed miniature once more. Whatever headaches this epiphany was going to cause Richard – as much would it affect Clemence. A smile curled the baronet’s lip. Just the trauma, eh, to send her fragile mind into meltdown again?
Most of the household was in the forecourt to greet him when he arrived. The domestic staff was ranged in tiers up the colonnade steps, the line bobbing up and down in bows and curtseys like a draught-wafted curtain as his presence passed. Tall, handsome footmen. Petite, pretty housemaids. Weather-beaten outdoor staff. Nice to know the estate could afford them.
As he glanced from face to face – most of them unknown to him since they rarely crossed paths – he was weighing up how many might remember young master Aubrey. Not many. Flitcroft of course. He’d been at Eardingstowe longer than anyone. Mrs Dean. They were the only ones as far as he could tell. Frampton the gamekeeper, who had taught the Somerlee boys to shoot, was long dead. So too Nanny Jude.
‘Flitcroft,’ he said as the staff began to disperse, ‘is Her Ladyship at home?’
‘Yes, sir, in the sitting-room, keenly awaiting your homecoming.’
‘Yes… I’m expecting my man-at-law, so admit him to my office when he arrives,’ he said, making a cowardly retreat on a day when the Light Brigade had been much in people’s thoughts. He was not looking forward to hearing what she’d have to say about this Aubrey business.
In his study he sat, tugging and twisting his cravat. Only the butler and a few dust-clearing and grate-cleaning servants were trusted to enter this sanctum. None had access to the drawers in the chiffonier whose only key remained with the master when he was away from home.
He took a bottle of laudanum from the cache and drank… and drank…
Richard watched as the shaking hands on the desk before him settled. Had the autumnal mist lifted from his mind? How the dog days did start to whine when he was without this nectar.
Presently, the solicitor arrived.
‘Brandy, Mr Boscawen?’
‘No thank you, sir.’
Richard cast the man a suspicious look. Did those around him think he drank too heavily?
‘Well, Mr Boscawen!’ Richard perched on the edge of the desk. ‘What are your thoughts on this person purporting to be Aubrey? If you won’t have a drink, have yourself a puff or two of good, clean tobacco.’ He offered the box and lit the cigar Boscawen picked.
The solicitor peered at the baronet through his first exhalation.
‘You are convinced the person is a fraud, then, before you meet him?’
‘Of course! If the Serbs had him all along – why no ransom demand or anything? He’d have been no use to ‘em.’
‘Well, if he had no memory, sir, they’d not have known who he was!’
‘Wouldn’t have been difficult to find out. Hussar uniform. Distinctive enough. So, you’d think they’d enquire were there any hussars in the charge unaccounted for. Not hard, surely?’