At the Restoration the Stroves were deprived of much of their land, including the village of Skurfield itself, which was added to the Rapstone estate. These events naturally encouraged the gloomy and solitary nature of the Stroves. They became addicted to such private pursuits as spiritualism, social credit and studying the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. The lands they were left with deteriorated. They took to financing impractical schemes for reclaiming parts of Central Australia, or building garden suburbs in Matabeleland. Magnus Strove (died 1917) improved matters a good deal by buying up slum property in Worsfield at a time when the biscuit factories were expanding and inadequate housing was needed there for cheap labour. However, his son Doughty lacked his father’s remorseless energy and spent a great deal of time sunk in gloom, when he was not trying to convert his long-isolated valley to growing sunflower seeds for cosmetics or prospecting, without any particular optimism, for various mineral deposits. Doughty’s son, Magnus, however, had more of his grandfather’s business sense. In his first year at Knuckleberries he cornered the market in horror comics, which he sold at a wide profit-margin, and started an insurance scheme for those likely to be beaten. He had considerable charm and a quick head for figures.
Although rewarded on the restoration of the monarchy, the Fanners, like their neighbours, the Stroves, declined at the end of the eighteenth century. A succession of Sir Nicholas Fanners, although continuing to feast the tenantry, spent most of their nights at the gaming-tables and one Sir Nicholas contrived to lose the villages of Cragmire and Hulton Bathsheba by a single throw at hazard. During his time a wing fell into ruin, the grape house collapsed, dry rot overtook the folly and the squire spent his days, when he could no longer show his face at Boodles, laying wagers with his butler, Garthwaite, about the number of flies which might be caught in the spiders’ webs which festooned the dining-room ceiling. (The family fortunes having been founded on a friendship between a royal person and his steward, the Fanners were always most at their ease in the master-servant relationship, particularly now they had become masters.) On his death it was discovered that Garthwaite was owed £1,000 from gambling on spiders, a debt of honour which the next Sir Nicholas paid honourably, enabling the servant to open the grocery and provision shop in Hartscombe (Garthwaites) which survived for many years. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the Fanners sobered up considerably, went into politics and became fairly undistinguished parliamentary secretaries and junior ministers in a number of unmemorable Conservative administrations. They remained popular landlords and great organizers of garden fêtes, firework displays and children’s parties. The ruined part of the house was pulled down and tidied up, the greenhouses let out to a market gardener and Rentokil has done its best with the folly.
The presiding Sir Nicholas Fanner, at the time of this eventful birthday party, had just turned fifty. He was a tall, comfortable and amiable man who believed in buying his trousers large and loose enough to admit of their being hoisted on with the braces fixed ready and without the necessity of undoing any of the buttons. He was A.D.C. to a general who translated Horace during the war, and then became Chairman of the local Conservative Party (where he was criticized for a lack of determined hostility to the Attlee Government), and President of the All England Begonia Society. It had come as a surprise to many people, including Nicholas, when he married Grace Oliver. Everyone knew Grace; she was at every party, race-meeting and country-house weekend, although her father Tommy Oliver had decamped and left her mother in a state of penurious confusion. Grace borrowed clothes from her friends, did a succession of odd-jobs ‘helping-out’ interior decorators, charity organizers and Great Hostesses. She was known to be beautiful and thought to be impossible, but she was an asset at a party. Her tireless activity was felt to be in search of a great and glittering marriage and her final acceptance of the dullish Nicholas Fanner was widely held to be something of a defeat.
Charlotte (Charlie) Fanner was their only child. On her eighth birthday she was a puddingy girl who lacked her mother’s startling good looks and Nicholas’s comfortable ease of manner. A throw-back through history, he thought, who looked most like that Charles Fanner who earned the friendship of Edward IV, she had the same pale face, colourless hair and small eyes, but she was without the jokes which had endeared his old servant to the King.
Late in the afternoon of Charlie’s party, Grace, wrapped in a silk kimono and not yet fully made-up, looked out of her bedroom window and saw Leslie Titmuss, stiffly dressed in his best Sunday shorts and jacket, belted mac and Hartscombe Grammar cap, being regarded dubiously by Wyebrow, the Fanners’ manservant, a lugubrious fellow who had been Nicholas’s batman during the recent war.
When Leslie had been admitted, after some hesitation on the part of Wyebrow, Grace turned discontentedly into her bedroom, which contained a curtained four-poster, many photographs of minor royal persons and of Grace when young and beautiful taken by Cecil Beaton, drawings of her by Cocteau and Augustus John and, less pleasing to her at that moment, her husband Nicholas standing, almost apologetically, in his loose-fitting suit in the centre of a faded, rose-coloured carpet.
‘Please come down. Charlie wouldn’t like you to miss her party.’
‘I look terrible.’ Grace flinched at her reflection in the mirror.
‘To me you look beautiful.’
‘You always say that. You’ll say it when I’m old and covered with tramlines and my teeth have fallen out.’ Grace was displeased by the compliment.
‘Charlie would hate it, if you missed her party.’
‘It doesn’t mean anything to you, telling me I look beautiful. It’s something to say, like “How’re the crops?” or “Good planting weather.” I can’t face all those people.’
‘They’re only children.’
Grace moved away from the mirror and faced her husband with contempt. ‘Charlie’s party! Our great social event.’
‘We’ve got all the children from the cottages. Rapstone and Skurfield.’
‘How terrifically exciting! What do you want me to do? Slip into an evening-dress so you and I can play sardines? Look at me. I’ll scream if you tell me I’m beautiful!’
‘Charlie’s all tricked out.’ Nicholas’s words came tiptoeing carefully out, as though crossing a minefield. ‘In her party dress and so on.’
‘I hope you didn’t tell her she looked beautiful.’ Grace moved to the bed and flopped down on it, her long, chalk-white legs protruding extensively from her kimono. ‘It was never so boring during the war. At least there were the Americans. And we even got the odd bomb that missed Worsfield.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Her husband moved to the door.
‘What’re you sorry about now?’
‘I’m sorry we couldn’t keep the war going to entertain you a little longer,’ Nicholas found the courage to say, before he left her.
‘Go on, Miss Charlie. Your mother told you. You’re to make an entrance.’ Charlotte Fanner, miserably shy and lumpy in her party dress, which stuck out round her like bright orange chicken-wire, was being pushed from the darkness of the bedroom corridor to the top of the stairs by Bridget Bigwell, a small, agitated woman, who had been in service at the Manor for thirty-five of her fifty years.
‘Mummy’s not here.’ Charlie peered down the staircase in the way that someone contemplating a suicidal leap off the top of a building might look from the dark height to the brightly lit and crowded street below. In fact the hall was full of milling children and from under the big chandelier her father called up, a blood-chilling cry of ‘Pray silence, everyone, for the birthday Queen!’
With tears blurring her vision Charlie stumbled down to the crowd as they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in what seemed to her a tone of menace. She knew hardly any of the children from the cottages and she liked none of the girls from the convent school in Hartscombe where she went daily. She particularly dreaded an encounter with Magnus Strove, who called her ‘Apple Charlotte’ and pulled her hair. She d
ecided to pretend that it wasn’t her at all, that she was still safely up in her bedroom and it was all happening to someone else, someone she didn’t like, perhaps to a girl at school called Rachel Bosey whom she hated and had never spoken to at all. ‘Happy birthday, dear Rachel’ – she clenched her fists and sang savagely to herself – ‘happy birthday to you!’
In this state of non-participation Charlotte was swept into the sitting-room and thrust into a game of musical chairs. Wyebrow was operating the wind-up gramophone, playing the family’s old records, including the version of ‘You’re the top!’ made specially for her mother (including the lines ‘You’re the top! You can trump the A – ace, You’re the top! You’re the Lady Gra – ace’). One by one the children dropped out and sat stuffing themselves with such cakes as sugar rationing would allow. At the end Charlie found herself lolloping round a single remaining chair with a flushed and bright-eyed Leslie Titmuss, who seemed to scent victory. However Wyebrow, with a rare loyalty to the family, stopped the record when Charlie’s bottom was hovering nearest and Leslie departed sniffing with disappointment.
‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’ said Henry, who met him on his way out of the room. ‘You didn’t ever think you were meant to win, did you?’ To the company in general he said, ‘Come on. We’re going to play a decent game of murder.’ So, taking instructions from Henry, the children found an old opera hat, property of Nicholas, and drew from it many folded-up bits of paper. ‘There’s one for the detective,’ Henry told them, ‘and one for the murderer. All the others are blank, get it?’ When Fred opened his message it told him that he was the detective.
Simeon Simcox arrived rather too early to collect the boys, stood by the front door and waited for Wyebrow to open it. He heard the sounds of laughter and stooped to peer through the letter-box. When he had done so he saw the lit hall and a crowd of children picking bits of paper out of a hat. He thought of a way of amusing them and of a dramatic entrance. Accordingly he went down on his hands and knees on the doormat and, swinging one arm as a trunk in front of him and the other as a tail behind, was ready for the front door to open. When at last it did so he entered Rapstone Manor on his knees, trumpeting like an elephant, but the children had vanished in search of a murder and he found himself looking up at the startled faces of Wyebrow, Nicholas and Dr Salter, who had also arrived early, apparently to collect his child. Slowly, and in the circumstances with some dignity, the Rector rose to his feet. This, also, was an incident which would be remembered.
Fred had wandered upstairs and was walking along a corridor, not at all clear what his duties were in detecting a murder which hadn’t yet happened. He found the door of a chilly spare bedroom a little open and, looking in, saw Agnes hiding from the party, lying on the quilt reading a pile of old Vogues and Tatlers which were kept on the bedside table. She didn’t look up as he plonked himself on the bed beside her. He thought that she looked pretty in her party dress and she smelt of Wright’s coal-tar soap and, more faintly, of strawberries.
‘You know who that is?’ Agnes showed him the photograph of a beautiful fair-haired young woman enjoying a joke at a party in the Casino at Cannes.
‘She’s wearing pyjamas.’ Fred observed the picture closely.
‘Of course.’
‘Pyjamas in public!’
‘Poor Charlie.’
‘Why?’
‘To have a mother who was once so beautiful. For heaven’s sake, Fred, what on earth are you doing?’
For Fred had suddenly noticed Agnes’s sprawling legs and the slender white backs of her knees. Some memory of Henry’s book stung him and he leant down and started to plant what he hoped were small, delicate kisses on that part of her body.
‘Butterfly kisses,’ Fred explained. ‘Don’t they rouse you to a purring pitch of passion at all?’
‘It feels like having insects crawling all over you!’
Leslie Titmuss, whose paper had been blank, was walking down a dark, ill-decorated passage that led from the hall to the kitchens at the back of the Manor. Since being pipped in the finals of musical chairs he hadn’t enjoyed the party. Among the crowd he was as lonely as Charlie, his hostess, but they hadn’t spoken to each other. He had no clear idea of how this game of murder would turn out but he suspected it would be alarming and that he would be made to look foolish in front of the other children. As he walked he heard footsteps on the stone flags behind him. Leslie didn’t turn his head but pulled open the first door he came to and went in.
He found himself in a big, untidy cloakroom, littered with gumboots, shooting-sticks, raincoats, fishing-rods and a shepherd’s crook. There was a lavatory in a corner, beside which was a yellowing pile of Country Lifes. Leslie sat disconsolately on the large mahogany seat, merely for a place of rest, and looked fearfully about him.
Upstairs Bridget Bigwell walked along the corridor to turn down beds. She was opening the door of Grace’s bedroom when Henry, having found the main switch somewhere outside Wyebrow’s pantry, pulled it down and extinguished the lights. Bridget stepped into darkness and a mouthful of abuse from her Ladyship for what might, if the room had been illuminated, have been an even more unwelcome interruption.
Sitting on the loo seat Leslie was expecting something horrible to happen. When the lights went out he didn’t scream. He sat on breathless, motionless, listening, but he heard nothing until a pair of young hands came out of the darkness and fastened round his neck. Then he screamed fit to blow the roof off, giving out huge echoing yells, remarkable for a boy of his size, with which he further terrified himself.
It couldn’t have been very long before the lights came on again. Children came out of doors and clattered downstairs. Wyebrow, Bridget and Nicholas all made for the downstairs passage. When they reached it Dr Salter was already there, as was the Rector. The Doctor opened the door and they found Leslie Titmuss alone, lying huddled on the floor, still screaming.
‘Cheer up, young fellow! You’re not dead yet,’ the Doctor told him. Behind him the children were gathering, looking down with interest at the small, yelling victim on the floor, but it was Simeon who knelt by the boy and put his arms about him and comforted him until the screaming turned to a low sobbing and then died away.
5
The Will
Not long after Charlie’s party a tall, doleful-looking man came to call on Simeon at the Rectory. ‘Ah, Titmuss.’ Simeon rose from behind his desk where he had been drafting a letter of protest to the Bishop on the Church’s complacency about sub-standard housing in Worsfield. ‘This won’t take long, it’s about my boy.’ Mr Titmuss didn’t sit. He was a man who had spent twenty years as a clerk in the Simcox Brewery in Hartscombe and he regarded the Rector, in spite of everything, as part of the management.
‘Young Leslie.’ Simeon fumbled for a pipe. ‘Extremely helpful lad. He lends a hand with our nettles here occasionally.’
‘Not any more,’ said Mr Titmuss. ‘I’m afraid all that must be put an end to. It won’t suit, you see.’ He spoke in a deliberate and extremely boring voice, which caused his utterances to be dreaded at the meetings of the Parish Council. He was, undoubtedly, a direct descendant of one of those dedicated Skurfield Puritans who attacked Rapstone Manor with crowbars and reaping-hooks during the Civil War.
‘It won’t suit?’ Simeon frowned. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’
‘I suppose you know what tricks your family has been playing?’
‘Tricks?’
‘Your boy playing games. Near scared my lad to death. We’ve had to have Dr Salter to him.’
‘Oh, yes. I was there. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s his mixing with people as he didn’t ought to mix with.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Coming up here puts thoughts in the boy’s head which is more than he can contend with.’
‘Leslie’s not in any sort of trouble, surely?’ The Rector frowned anxiously.
‘Not if he keeps to himself. But it’s al
l this play-acting and helping with the nettles, and listening to books being written and stupid games at the Manor. That’s not going to be any help to my boy. You ought to know that.’
‘Surely you’d like him to widen his horizons?’
‘I would not.’ Mr Titmuss was quite firm about that.
‘No?’
‘I would like him to stay at home in Skurfield when he’s back from school and mind his own business. Minding your own business is what I set great store by, Rector, as I’m continually trying to point out in Parish Council meetings. Them as chooses to live in South Africa can take care of themselves.’
‘Well. Perhaps not entirely…’
But Mr Titmuss was looking at the florid lady-bather, the present from Cleethorpes, beside Karl Marx on the Rector’s mantelpiece. ‘You had that ornament long, have you?’ he asked deliberately.
‘Not… not very long. No.’ Simeon hesitated and no doubt sounded guilty.
‘May I ask you a personal question, Rector?’ Mr Titmuss said, after a long pause.
‘Please. Please do.’
‘Have you ever, in actual fact, been to Cleethorpes?’
‘Now you mention it, I can’t say I have.’ The Rector was doing his best to sound casual.
‘Well, I have visited that resort. And I bought a memento, a keepsake to mark the occasion. It was very like this lady-bather here. Unfortunately it has gone missing.’
Paradise Postponed Page 6