In Distant Fields

by Charlotte Bingham

  Partita threw open a pair of magnificent double doors and when she saw within, Kitty fell silent. She had imagined a theatre that was housed within a house would be a very simple place; something constructed by the estate carpenters with a raised platform and perhaps some sort of simple proscenium, with homemade curtains and equally simple wooden seating, very like the sort of stages and auditoriums Kitty had sometimes visited in small halls to hear concerts and recitals with her mother. But even though it was dark and unlit at the moment, illuminated only by late winter sunlight that filtered through two large arched windows, Kitty could see enough detail to be impressed. The Great Hall was suddenly a magical place to be, a fairy-tale site where all at once the turmoil of the outside world became forgotten as those lucky enough were transported to the land of the imagination, a voyage of escape fuelled by dreams and fantasies, by play acting and pretence. Here was a world where bad things went punished and virtue was rewarded, where those who were wrong were put to right, those who fell in love lived happily ever after, and those who fell in battle rose again as soon as the curtain fell. More than that, there was this wonderful and strange aroma that hung about the place – a strange and cloying smell to which people became addicted; theatre.

  Partita was up on the stage now, having arrived there by way of the wooden steps to one side of the orchestra pit, indicating for Kitty to follow, which she did, only to see Partita disappearing behind the curtains.

  ‘Kitty? Come and give me a hand, would you?’ she heard her friend call from behind the tabs. ‘Kitty?’

  Finding her way through the heavy velvet drapes, Kitty went to help Partita raise the curtains. Once they were up and the rope attached to its safety hook, they stood together onstage while Partita pointed out the hand-painted scenery that was still in place. The light was too dim to see the flats and the backdrop properly, but even in the half-light Kitty could see the standard of the art work that was being done for the scenery.

  ‘Everyone on the estate has been called in to help with this,’ Partita said proudly, ‘They’re all off having tea in the servants’ hall at the moment, but they’ll be back soon, working all night to get it perfect. They love it, of course. Makes a change from all the everyday things they have to do.’

  On their way back up to their rooms Partita talked non-stop about the forthcoming production of The Pirates of Penzance, explaining that since both Sir Arthur Sullivan and Mr Gilbert were acquaintances of her parents and visitors to Bauders, they were perfectly happy to allow a private performance of their work, always provided, as Mr Gilbert had apparently declared to the Duchess’s amusement, they were not invited to witness it.

  ‘I take it you want to be in the production, Kitty?’ Partita asked her. ‘It really will be a lavish production, and Mr Roderick St Clare is coming from London to produce for us. So we really are lucky.’ She stopped, assuming a purposefully mischievous expression. ‘Mr St Clare is musical.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Kitty said, after a short pause, ‘if we are to do Gilbert and Sullivan.’

  She turned to look at Partita, who was laughing in such a manner as to suggest that Kitty had made a really funny remark. Kitty frowned at her, not understanding, which only made Partita laugh all the more.

  As always there was fierce competition for who was to play who in the forthcoming production, not to mention who was to do what. The rivalry might be decorous and above board, but that did not stop it being intense, particularly as far as Allegra and Cecilia were concerned. They had obviously decided to take against Kitty’s now permanent presence at Bauders, whilst being too well bred to make their feelings obvious. As it happened, they did not have to. Kitty was only too well aware of how they must be feeling and, wishing only to keep the peace, she made it plain she did not wish to appear in the musical.

  ‘I will tell you what I’ll do, Partita,’ she said. ‘I shall help in every other way possible, I promise you – and I shall learn from the experience. Then perhaps next time, maybe I could take a very small role.’

  ‘You’re being frightened off by Allegra and Cecilia. If it’s any comfort, Kitty, they’re quite the same with me.’

  ‘Yes, but you are their sister.’

  ‘Anyway, it isn’t up to you,’ Partita went on airily. ‘It’s really up to Mr St Clare.’

  ‘He can only select those who want to be selected.’

  Partita looked at her for a moment, about to argue with her, but she was prevented from doing so by a footman announcing the arrival of Elizabeth Milborne.

  Knowing that whenever Elizabeth arrived at Bauders there was a limit to the amount of time she would have at her disposal, instead of bullying Kitty into appearing in the opera, Partita at once set about organising what had to be done.

  ‘I would love to know why there is such a hurry,’ Kitty gasped as she returned to the music room with all the sheets of music she had run to fetch from the Duchess, who had been marking up the parts. ‘Suddenly everything is in double time.’

  ‘I should have explained!’ Partita called back, in the middle of directing two of the footmen, who were repositioning the grand piano in the best light for Elizabeth, who was already sorting out the sheets of music handed to her by Kitty. ‘Elizabeth is forbidden to practise in her house since her father cannot stand the noise – which is perfectly absurd because Elizabeth is a quite wonderful pianist.’

  ‘My father doesn’t like wrong notes,’ Elizabeth explained, with a quick embarrassed glance to Kitty. ‘Or repetitions. If I have to go over and over some passage in practice he comes in and starts banging the piano with a stick.’

  ‘You should see their piano,’ Partita laughed.

  ‘Is Elizabeth going to play for the production then?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘No – just for rehearsals. We can’t get the orchestra until the last minute for rehearsals.’

  Once the piano had been set in a favourable light, and with no more time to waste, Elizabeth sat down and played right through the entire score of the opera with barely a wrong note. With other things to do for her mother, Partita took herself off, leaving Kitty the job of sorting all the part music into sets for each of the characters, as well as books for the chorus.

  As she set about her task, Kitty listened attentively to Elizabeth’s playing.

  ‘Do you play much at such events as this will be?’ Kitty asked when Elizabeth took a short break between songs. ‘You must do.’

  Elizabeth shook her head, and smiled ruefully. ‘That – I am very much afraid – would most certainly not be allowed,’ she replied. ‘My father, you know? – he would have no time at all for such a notion.’

  ‘Doesn’t he appreciate your talent?’

  ‘My father sees my playing the piano as a beastly nuisance.’ She laughed almost gaily. ‘He has absolutely no interest in music, and it was only thanks to Mamma’s determination that I managed to learn the piano at all.’

  ‘People who play like you don’t learn the piano,’ Kitty replied. ‘You are surely born playing it.’

  ‘That is true actually,’ Elizabeth agreed, finding the music for ‘Ah Leave Me Not to Pine’. ‘I could play from a very early age, and it is also true that when my mother heard me playing she insisted I had lessons, but since they could not take place at home, I had to be taken to my teacher by pony and trap. I had to travel ten miles there and back every time I had a lesson.’

  Kitty stared at Elizabeth, feeling ashamed. Cecil Milborne sounded much worse than Evelyn Rolfe.

  ‘I’m so glad you can play for us,’ she said, trying in some silly way to make up for how she was feeling.

  Mr Roderick St Clare was a small, quick-speaking man with a shock of long fair hair that kept falling over his eyes, only to be quickly and impatiently tossed back overhead or brushed from his eyes in a gesture of irritation. He conducted proceedings, from auditions through to rehearsals, dressed in a loose flowing white shirt and ancient velvet trousers, held up with a multi-coloured sash tied around the wa
istband.

  ‘An otter,’ Partita murmured with some satisfaction, her eyes taking on the kind of look that Kitty was already beginning to recognise. ‘He reminds me of an otter.’

  Mr St Clare had cast Partita as Ruth, which delighted her, Livia Catesby was to play Mabel, with Cecilia as Edith, and Allegra as Kate. Kitty was to lead the chorus.

  As for the males, Almeric had been cast to play the Pirate King, Bertie Milborne the Major General, Valentine Wynyard Errol the Police Sergeant, and best of all, as far as Partita was concerned, Peregrine had been selected to play Samuel, the Pirate King’s lieutenant.

  Harry was cast as Frederic, the youngest pirate, a choice that caused considerable debate in the servants’ hall.

  ‘This is the sort of thing that’s the thin end of a very large wedge, Mr Wavell,’ Mrs Turton, the cook, opined in the servants’ hall. ‘Your boy will not just learn to strut and preen this way and that, he will learn to lounge. That is what bein’ in a play does for young men. It teaches them to lounge, and that’s all before they start to preen.’

  ‘It really is not for me to say, Mrs Turton,’ Wavell replied. ‘This is no affair of mine and I have no jurisdiction one way or the other.’

  ‘He’s your boy, Mr Wavell, ain’t he?’ Mrs Turton persisted.

  ‘This is Her Grace’s business, and His Grace’s idea, not mine, Mrs Turton. I am not consulted in such matters. Mr St Clare requested Harry about this entertainment, on the authority of Her Grace.’

  ‘It will only make trouble for others, Mr Wavell, you mark my words.’

  Mrs Turton eyed Wavell over the top of her teacup, an item she always had so much in hand that Wavell had come to imagine that she had actually been born with its handle wrapped tightly around her fingers. Wavell set down his own now empty teacup and rose gracefully from the table, leaving Mrs Turton and lesser members of staff to continue the debate as to whether or not his son should be allowed to partake in the forthcoming entertainment. Privately Wavell considered that Harry should not be allowed, but not for the reasons put forward by Cook. Wavell knew what he wanted for his son and that did not include what he classed as artistic folderol – in that way Mrs Turton was perfectly right to be critical.

  But he also knew what was best for him and what was best for him would in the end be best for Harry as well. If the Duchess wanted Harry to sing, sing he would.

  In common with every other young man who had grown up on the estate, Harry loved the Duchess with the whole-hearted devotion with which someone might love a star of the stage, or some society beauty whose postcard image could be bought in souvenir shops around London.

  Now a small but complete silence had fallen in the Duchess’s morning room, for the simple reason that Harry had just fallen and twisted his ankle monkeying about on stage. It was nothing really, just a bit of a twist, a bit of swelling, but the Duchess insisted on having her doctor, who happened to be passing, make sure that the ankle was not broken.

  ‘It’s as Her Grace says,’ Harry told Dr Jones. ‘I have twisted it, not broken it. It is truly nothing.’

  The Duchess gave Harry a land look, but Dr Jones’s expression did not match that of Her Grace. The good doctor’s face reflected restrained impatience.

  ‘We cannot always be sure of the diagnoses of others. As I remember it, Harry, last time you broke your leg it had to be re-set, once by me, and once by Her Grace.’

  ‘The last time was a hunting accident,’ the Duchess put in. ‘Everyone has an accident or two out hunting, Dr Jones.’

  The look in Circe’s eyes was not as benevolent as it was usually, since she did not like Dr Jones’s attitude. To her mind, Dr Jones was an ignorant inebriate, and not good for the estate, whatever the Duke and Hawkesworth might like to pretend. Jones could not even deliver a baby. Indeed, when a baby was on the way in any of the villages, it was the midwife who was sent for, never the doctor. The only birth he had ever attended had ended in disaster, and the graveyard.

  ‘I am minded, Your Grace, that when this young man broke his leg, it was not as a result of a hunting accident, but as a consequence of galloping one of His Grace’s horses over rough country with no saddle or bridle and only a harness to steer, and a cabbage stalk for a whip. That is not what I would call a hunting accident but a foolish, careless unnecessary accident,’ Dr Jones intoned.

  ‘Master Harry’s race that day was as a result of a wager laid between His Grace and the rest of the house party at the time, and the money won was given to the cottage hospital at Welton,’ the Duchess said, tapping an impatient finger on a nearby table to emphasise her point. ‘Gracious, Dr Jones, there has to be some sport allowed around the estate, or there will be no visitors to the house; and if there are no visitors there will be no donations to the hospital. There has to be give and take on an estate of this size, and without sport these places do not survive. Henry hunted here, Elizabeth hunted here, Anne would have hunted here, had she not been so busy having babies, poor dear queen. Swings and roundabouts, Dr Jones, swings and roundabouts.’

  Harry half closed his eyes. He always loved the way the Duchess referred to the kings and queens of England by their first names, just as if she had played with them as a child, but Dr Jones looked unconvinced by both swings and roundabouts. He turned away, shortly followed by the Duchess and Harry, and as he did so the sound of music being played came drifting towards the three of them. It was not just any music either, it was music with a distinctly cheerful sound and a song that Harry happened to know well.

  ‘For I am a Pirate King! And it is, it is a glorious thing To be a Pirate King!’

  ‘I think I can be trusted to bandage Harry’s ankle in my own special way,’

  ‘Very well, Your Grace, you bandage Harry’s ankle in whatever way you think fit. I was actually on my way down to the kitchens, where Mrs Dewsbury has poured hot fruit juice over her leg when, if you remember, you called me in here, Your Grace.’

  ‘Since you were passing, it was the least I could do, truly it was.’ Circe watched the doctor leaving. ‘Just remember not to put butter on Mrs Dewsbury’s leg,’ she murmured, a little too loudly. ‘It will only fry it.’ Then to Harry she said, ‘Come on, I will finish your bandaging. We had to make sure nothing was broken, that’s all.’

  Circe bandaged the ankle in her own special way, and minutes later she watched with some satisfaction as, despite the fact that she knew he was in some considerable pain, Harry was able to make his way about the stage as if nothing at all had happened.

  After which there was a sudden commotion at the great doors. The Duchess turned.

  ‘Gussie? Back from London, so soon?’

  ‘Mother.’

  The Duchess smiled and held out her arms to her younger son. Gus gave her a quick perfunctory hug while at the same time looking around at the busy activity that was beginning to make the whole place seem like the West End of London, while the Duchess looked Gussie straight in the eyes, her expression unwavering.

  ‘Gussie, would you not, please, not call me “Mother”, dearest? It makes me feel as if I should be serving you brown soup.’

  Gus looked innocent, his large grey-green eyes widened, and he put his head on one side, pulling a mock-serious face. ‘Oh, had you rather I called you something else, Mother, dearest?’ Despite every effort on his behalf, Gus burst out laughing.

  ‘Gus, you are just as naughty as when you went away. Austria was meant to have cured you of all that naughtiness. Why have they not cured you of your mischief, may I ask?’

  ‘Austria has cured me of most things, Mamma, so it has, Mamma, so it has.’ Gus looked round at the army of workmen busying themselves in every direction. ‘But you, I see, have not been cured of your love of the theatre.’ He looked back at her and grinned, at the same time lowering his voice. ‘Anything to get out of having to join the hunting field, eh, Mamma?’

  ‘Gus! Ça c’est interdit! Please. It is utterly forbidden.’

  ‘I want to play one of th
e policemen – a policeman’s lot is not a happy one, happy one.’

  Gus looked round what was now a theatre, and let out a sigh that was half contented and half filled with melancholy.

  ‘I feel I am home just in time,’ he confided to Circe.

  The Duchess turned away. She hated to talk about anything too serious. She only wanted to talk about The Pirates of Penzance.

  ‘How was the skiing, Gus, you never did tell?’

  ‘Very white.’

  ‘And how is your German?’

  ‘Very Prussian.’

  ‘So.’ A small pause while his mother sat down and put her head to one side while rehearsals continued apace on the stage. ‘So, what will you do next, I wonder?’

  Gus also knew enough not to tell his mother that he had already chosen which regiment he and his friends intended to join, so he pulled another mock-serious face and said, ‘I am going to become a pirate! I shall sail under the black flag, owing nothing to anyone, taking all and sundry prisoner – except of course those who are orphans.’

  He was alluding to the story in The Pirates of Penzance when everyone whom the pirates try to take prisoner turns out to be an orphan, it being well known that pirates – in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, anyway – never rob or steal from orphans.

  As it happened it was just the right note for Gus to strike. His mother laughed as, rehearsals temporarily at a halt, everyone started to drift into the library, where drinks were served, after which they went into luncheon. Guests helped themselves from silver dishes, while Wavell directed the servants as a bandmaster might on a regimental parade ground.

  As for Gus, the younger Knowle boy, of the sunny nature and the sweet smile, whom some newly arrived guests were now greeting with love and affection, hugging him delightedly, the thought occurred to him, and would not go away, that he was not really home at all, but on a roundabout horse, and the horse was going up and down, as roundabout horses do, and any minute now the music was going to stop.