Corpse in a Gilded Cage

by Robert Barnard

  Yes, the Minister agreed that the precedent was there for such a step. Of course he could not commit his right honourable friend the Chancellor in any way, but he agreed that in the circumstances this might well prove to be the best means of ensuring that this notable example . . . and so on, and so forth.

  It was at this point that the Member for Bullwark South intervened. The Member for Bullwark South was the hammer of the Speaker, and even sensitive members of his own party were inclined to cringe, turn their heads away, or whimper, when his chain-saw tones were heard (as they so often were) asserting the views of ‘the working people of this country’, roaring coarse abuse at the more shamelessly capitalistic and absentee Tory members, praising the Russians for their enlightened intervention in Afghanistan, or merely shouting slogans after the Speaker had ordered him out of the House. The Member for Bullwark South was, not to put too fine a point on it, a loud-mouthed bully, and he had never yet been known to intervene during questions to the Minister for the Arts, save once, to demand a subsidy for the Finsbury Park Cooperative of Black Handicapped Female Action Painters. But he intervened now.

  ‘Would the Minister confirm that the same special terms that were offered to the Maynewaring family of Teesdale would also be offered to the present Earl of Ellesmere and his family?’

  Now this was a sneaky one. The inheritor of Teesdale Manor had been the chairman of the local Conservative Association, a one-time MP, and Master of Foxhounds. He and his family had been allowed to live on at Teesdale for a peppercorn rent—though of course there was absolutely no connection between who he was and the special consideration shown in his case—none at all. The Minister began to flounder.

  ‘The two cases are very dissimilar . . . The present family are somewhat distant connections of the previous Earls . . .’

  ‘Second cousins!’ said Bullwark South, triumphantly. ‘Same as the Maynewarings!’

  ‘The conditions of the Teesdale transaction—’

  ‘ ’ighly hadvantageous conditions!’

  ‘—were dictated by special conditions—’

  ‘You bet they were!’

  ‘I have no evidence the present Earl wishes to reside at Chetton . . .’

  ‘Why doesn’t the Minister admit straight out that this is class justice, and it’s because the present Earl is working-class that he’s going to get a different deal from local Conservative Chairmen and suchlike.’

  ‘The man’s a gaolbird!’ shouted an obscure Tory backbencher.

  ‘Double standards!’ bellowed Bullwark South, in his element.

  The Minister felt that the matter was getting out of hand. There had been fears at the time that the Teesdale decision might have unfortunate consequences. But still: when all was said and done, there was no doubt that the present occupant was the legal Earl, and the legal heir. The Minister was in favour of primogeniture. He had himself inherited his seat from his father.

  ‘In any discussions I have on the future of Chetton, I will see that the wishes of the present Earl are respected,’ he said.

  • • •

  The gardening at Chetton went so well it continued into the afternoon. Lunch was some substantial doorstep sandwiches constructed by Dixie, washed down with some bottled ale that Chokey had discovered in the Butler’s Pantry. Afterwards they stretched out on the grass for half an hour or so, and then they went at it again. This time Dixie fulfilled her promise, and though she did not join them, she did bring a chair out into the courtyard, and there she sat, like some Russian noblewoman supervising the serfs at harvest time.

  The children had drenched the Dutch Garden during the morning, but rather than come round to the lawns and be under their mother’s eye, they had taken themselves off to the kitchen gardens, to weed the vegetables. The rest had resumed mowing and snipping, for the lawns and hedges seemed endless once they had started in on them. Sometimes, since Phil seemed such an unexpectedly tough nut to crack, one or other drifted over to talk to his wife. Dixie dealt easily with Michele’s advances: they were, after all, two of a kind, and Dixie had the experience and the weight. She was more genial with Trevor, but killingly on her dignity with Lady Joan. She had a friendly chat with Chokey, but after he drifted back into the house she simply sat there, like some complacent Buddha, or vast Tongan monarch surveying her island fiefdom. She began to feel quite drowsy.

  So drowsy, in fact, that she failed to notice when the routines of rural labour, the timeless, Constable-esque activities, were interrupted. Her eyes were reduced to slits, and sometimes her head nodded down into her splendid chest. She noticed a police car driving towards the house, but the police were always going backwards and forwards. She paid it no special attention. The slits of her eyes closed. Dixie dozed.

  But the car, in fact, never reached the forecourt where Dixie sat. It had stopped near the working party, and a policeman had got out and hailed the figure of the Earl of Ellesmere, who was hacking at tall grass with a scythe towards the far end of the largest lawn. Phil, grimy and sweaty, had ambled over amiably, glad of the break.

  If Dixie had been noticing she would have seen the policeman enter into serious conversation with Phil, gesturing towards the car. Then she would have seen Phil walk over, lean through the passenger window, and talk to somebody in the car. Then she would have seen a young man get out of the car, seen Phil give him a hug, and seen the two of them in conversation for some minutes. Then she would have seen Phil look in her direction in some uncertainty, square his shoulders, and begin ushering the newcomer along the path towards her.

  As it was, when she opened her eyes Phil and the young man were no more than a few yards away. The boy was about twenty—dark, sallow, lustrous-eyed, with a soft down on his cheeks signifying a premature attempt at sideburns. His clothes were standard casual, but clean, and his wedge heels suggested that he chafed at his short stature. Before Dixie had entirely collected her senses, the two were up to her.

  ‘Oh, Dixie, old girl, I want you to meet Raicho,’ said Phil, with a brave front of confidence.

  ‘What-so?’ Dixie’s forehead was creased, as if a vague bell had been rung.

  ‘Raicho. You know—you’ve heard of him. Raicho, my son.’

  ‘YOUR SON!’

  Dixie’s voice warbled from bass to soprano, replete with all the outraged disbelief of Lady Bracknell at her most handbageous. Then Dixie put on one of her scenes.

  CHAPTER 12

  PARSON’S FIELD

  Dixie had risen to her feet, and stood facing them, hands on hips, biceps bulging beneath her pink blouse. As always when she threw a scene, she was oblivious of all else but the cause of her rage, and now she was certainly oblivious of the figure of Peter Medway, standing casually on the steps of the Great Entrance, watching her.

  ‘And what the bleeding hell does he think he’s doing here?’ she yelled.

  ‘He’s my son, old girl,’ Phil patiently explained. ‘You know: I told you about him years ago.’

  ‘Oh, I knew you had a by-blow somewhere or other. That wasn’t my question, was it? I asked what the bleeding hell he’s doing here, now?’

  ‘Just come to pay a call, haven’t you, son?’ said Phil, turning to Raicho, his face wreathed in a paternal smile. ‘He’s in Europe, you know. It’s natural he should want to see his dad.’

  ‘Pardon me while I split my sides. Natural he’d want to see his dad? When his dad hasn’t clapped eyes on him since he was six months old?’ As Dixie ladled on the irony her face became red with passion. Dixie crossed, or Dixie with a grievance, was never a pretty sight, and she reminded Medway of a sergeant-major apoplectic with outrage. ‘I’ll tell you what he’s here for. He’s after the loot—like the rest of this shower.’ Dixie gestured in the direction of her family and friends, who one by one had straggled over to watch developments, or merely to enjoy the histrionic display, and were now assembled on the edges of the lawn, simply inviting Dixie’s wrath.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Dixie. How could he have kn
own?’

  ‘Who are you calling daft? How could he have known? He read it in the f— newspapers, same as the whole bleeding country has by now.’

  ‘It was in the newspapers yesterday, old girl. Can you really see the news getting over to Canada, him whipping over here and getting down to Chetton the day after?’

  ‘ ’Course he could. Christ, Phil: we’re not living in the age of the paddle-steamer. He flew. Anyway, you said he was in Europe.’

  ‘He’s just come—’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. He was in England, saw the papers yesterday, and down he pops to Chetton. For all we know he could have been down here on Saturday night and done in your dad. Get this, Phil: he’s after the money.’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything about the money, Dixie. He just came to see me.’

  ‘Christ, you’re so bleeding soft you’d win the sucker of the year marathon. He’s come down wanting his cut! Got the message? Over and out.’

  ‘You want your head reading, Dixie. Anyway, even if he does, he’s as much right as anyone else.’

  Dixie glared at him in outrage.

  ‘He’s what? As much right as anyone else. As much as—’ Dixie looked around for a child to clutch to her bosom, but her infant phenomena were still occupied far away among the vegetables, so she was baulked of a fine Mrs Crummles-like effect in the pathetic line. ‘As much as Gareth and Cliff? As much as Karen and Damon?’

  ‘He’s mine, old girl, I’m sure of that. And he’s my eldest.’

  A nerve seemed to click in Dixie’s forehead.

  ‘You’ll regret that crack, Phil. You must be out of your mind, or just plain wicked. We’re your family. We’re the ones you’re supposed to provide for, though God knows you haven’t done much providing in the last few years. You’ve been playing it close, Phil—’

  ‘Playing it close, Dixie?’

  ‘Yes, you have. Even with me, and don’t think I haven’t noticed. But get this straight. You’ve inherited this pile—it’s all yours, what you can keep from the bleeding government. Yours! It’s not your ma’s—she’s had her go. It’s not your sister’s or your brother’s, however much they’d like you to think it should be. And it’s certainly not little Johnny-come-lately’s here.’

  She took a step towards the dark, sallow boy standing by his father. He seemed inclined to take a step backwards, but by an effort of will he stood his ground, and looked her in the face, his large black eyes taking in every detail of that visage, distorted as it was with passion.

  ‘Get this straight, you. We’re your father’s family—me and my kids. What he’s come into is ours, and we’re going to get rid of all these leeches here and enjoy it. You’ve come here to line your pockets, but you’d better think again, sonny boy.’

  ‘I’d never even heard—’

  ‘Put a sock in it. You heard of the gravy train and you came here to jump on it. Well, get this into your pretty head: there’s too many on that train already, and you’re not joining it. And I tell you one more thing, for your own good: KEEP OUT OF MY SIGHT!’

  And she swung round and lumbered up the main steps, past Peter Medway and into the shadow of the Great Hall.

  ‘Dixie’s a bit upset,’ said Phil.

  • • •

  ‘That,’ said Hickory, ‘was a performance and a half.’

  He had been alerted by walkie-talkie from the gate about the arrival of Raicho Spender, and had watched the scene, fascinated, from a window of the Pink Damask Room.

  ‘She certainly held nothing back,’ agreed Peter Medway. ‘An awful lot seemed to have been bottled up there.’

  ‘Greed, lust for power, jealousy, spite . . . The Lady Macbeth of East London, that’s who that lady is.’

  ‘Except for the intelligence,’ said Medway. ‘Without that, I can’t see her as the moving power behind the murder.’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘She hasn’t got a brain in her head. She’s so bloody ignorant she probably thinks Marco Polo invented the mint with the hole.’

  ‘You shouldn’t confuse ignorance with unintelligence. Oh—I’m not saying she did it, but she has got plenty of intelligence, the sort that shades off into animal cunning. Notice how she got the point about the boy at once: where’s he been recently? where was he on Saturday night? She didn’t need time to get her ideas organized. Before very long we’re going to have to ask him the same questions ourselves . . . What a pity we can’t be flies on the walls at the cosy reunion chat of father and son.’

  • • •

  ‘Well!’ said Phil, as the thundercloud began to lift from the courtyard of Chetton, ‘you’d better meet the others.’ He led Raicho over to the group on the lawn. ‘This is your Aunt Joan and Uncle Digby. This is your Uncle Trevor, but since he’s only four or five years older than you I should think that just Trev would do. This is Michele. This is Sam, and that there is Chokey. Old friends of the family.’

  Raicho went round, silently shaking hands with one after another. His reception was mostly tight-lipped, though Trevor seemed to think it a great giggle, and carried it off good-humouredly. If Raicho registered that his reception was less than rapturous, he gave no sign. Perhaps he had expected nothing else.

  ‘Your grandma’s in the house,’ said Phil. ‘Having a zizz if I know the old girl. Well, Raicho: fetch your bag and we’ll find you somewhere to kip. This place has got more bedrooms than the Hilton, though not so many mod. cons.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s all right?’ asked Raicho. His accent was pure Canadian, but his voice was low and unstrident. He was gazing round at the stupendous pile that was Chetton, apparently unable to take it all in except in stages.

  ‘ ’Course it’s all right. This place has seen worse family rows in its time than this one, I can tell you. One of the Victorian Earls shot his son in the shoulder in a quarrel about gambling debts. Charming lot we spring from. Anyway, the place is so big you and Dixie never need cross each other’s paths again. Might be a good idea to go in by the side bit, eh?’

  So while the others evaported into the main block, in little knots, whispering, assessing the situation, and conspiring, Phil and Raicho fetched his bag from over by the lawn and made for the Blenheim Wing. The police contingent in the house had been stepped down, but a constable watched them as they prospected round, and he saw that Raicho’s dark eyes were wide as saucers as he took in the immensity and pompous self-assertion of the place. Finally they settled on a large bedroom not too far from Sam’s and Chokey’s, an imposingly gloomy room once used by the seventh Earl (who had wanted to get as far away from his wife as possible, and who had dreamed here of his overmastering passion, which was to harry Mr Gladstone out of public life). Phil stood by the window, while Raicho unpacked with the practised skill of the young who travel light.

  ‘Most of it’s just been washed,’ he said. ‘I’d only recently got back home.’

  ‘See that,’ said Phil, when the young man had put his basic travelling wardrobe in place, and had come over to the window; ‘it’s all ours—’ he pointed—‘practically to the horizon over there. All ours till the Chancellor of the Exchequer sends in his bill.’

  ‘Who’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t got a Chancellor over there? Bet you’ve got the same thing under a different name. He’s the money man in the government.’

  ‘Oh yes, we’ve got one of those.’

  ‘Well, he’s got his beady little eyes on this place. Like to stroll around the ancestral acres while they’re still ours?’

  ‘Sure I would. But aren’t you tired after all that gardening?’

  ‘So-so,’ said Phil, and then added: ‘Anyway, I don’t fancy meeting up with Dixie just at this moment. If I keep out of her way she’ll have to come off the boil. Should be nice in the cool.’

  So they walked the estate in the early evening sun, to the chagrin of Peter Medway, who had hoped they would settle down in a room by whose door he could station him
self. As they walked Raicho told his father about himself.

  ‘Mum married again—but I guess you know that,’ he said. ‘It was when I was ten. He’s an army guy: a bit rough, but we get on OK. I didn’t change my name, though. I’m still Spender. Mum had another kid—a girl called Sally. She didn’t want to saddle the next one with a Bulgarian name. I used to get ribbed. Anyway Mum herself has practically forgotten the language.’

  Phil looked at his son. Short, self-contained, with the beginnings—young as he was—of a sort of toughness which Phil knew he himself had not had at that age. Not ruthlessness exactly, but still, Raicho was the sort of young man who would get what he wanted. Phil did not know what his son wanted, but he thought he might suit his immediate purposes.

  ‘What have you been doing these last few years?’ he asked, as they walked down past the fountain (watched, had they known it, by Peter Medway, as well as by several members of the Spender family from the windows of the house). ‘I kept up for a bit, when I sent the payments, like. But they sort of dropped off, so I lost touch. Wasn’t even sure of your address.’

  ‘Mum never complained about the payments. She was married by then. I finished school a year ago, and I’m planning to go to university—to major in computer sciences. I’ve taken a year off in between—sort of sabbatical. I’ve been working, then travelling since April. I had six weeks in Bulgaria. Mum had made contact with some relatives there. Great place, marvellous bathing. Then I took the ferry to Turkey, then on to Greece. It was fantastic—another world from Canada.’

  And Raicho told Phil about his early years, his mother’s working in a department store to keep them, her marriage, the moving around from army base to army base.

  ‘I’m not blaming you,’ he said carefully. ‘But somehow I never seem to have had a settled home.’