The Last Baronet

by Caroline Akrill

  ‘I think that would be a very good idea,’ said Mrs Maitland-Dell.

  Harry stepped behind the Cupressus Leylandii and reappeared bearing a small but exquisite wreath constructed of white freesias and miniature carnations. He stood back in a discreet and deferential manner as Mrs Maitland-Dell walked solemnly forward (only the slightest bit unsteady due to the rather high-heeled shoes she still favoured) and laid it reverently at the foot of the gravestone with all the sober dignity of royalty at the Cenotaph.

  Harry found this little ceremony so extremely moving that a tear formed in the corner of his eye and he was obliged to brush it away. Madam had looked so small and round and sad, stepping forward in her black velvet coat with the surprising little hat shaped like a cone sitting on her fluffy hair, holding the tiny wreath that was so dainty and nice. Not that Freddie would have appreciated it. Freddie had cared not a jot for flowers, for all that he enjoyed a stroll around the garden, morning and evening, regular as clockwork. No, Freddie’s chief enjoyment in life had been food; good food and plenty of it. But the food and the drink and the home comforts had done for Freddie, that and his laziness and his weight problem had done for him all right because first his wind had gone and then his heart and not even his expensive, customised Private Patients plan could save him.

  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ said Mrs Maitland-Dell, ‘and now, if you would be so kind as to wait in the car, I would appreciate a moment of private contemplation before we depart.’

  ‘Certainly, Madam.’ With a final respectful and somewhat relieved obeisance to the late departed, Harry Featherstone was thus dismissed and walked off briskly along the row of shiny new gravestones, replacing his peaked cap with a smart, military flourish, although not a soul was visible above the ground in the cemetery, and those below it were in no condition to observe social niceties.

  *

  Losing Freddie had placed a great deal of strain on the Maitland-Dell household. Bereavement affected people in funny ways, and sometimes, Harry knew, they never got over it but carried their sorrow around with them like a heavy suitcase for the rest of their lives.

  Harry was worried about Madam. She had quite lost her sparkle and her bubbly zest for life and had become pale and withdrawn. She was careful, of course, never to let Harry witness her distress, and did not allow it to affect the routine of the family, but Harry knew that in her private moments she gave way to grief. Harry saw the giveaway signs, the swollen eyelids, the puffy cheeks, the reddened eyes that no amount of D R Harris’s Miracle Eye Drops and Elizabeth Arden face powder could conceal. Harry could understand grief at the loss of a loved one, he knew that a period of mourning was an essential part of the grieving process, but he considered that the weeping and wailing over Freddie had gone on long enough.

  Since Freddie had passed on, Madam had lost interest in everything and everybody; even the family, heaven forbid, seemed to have lost its potential to charm. Harry could see that there was a very real danger of Madam becoming obsessed by Freddie deceased, and whilst in life Freddie had (by dint of some evasive action and a bit of smart manoeuvring) been manageable; in death, if Harry didn’t watch out, he was set to become invincible. At this rate Madam would take to table-rapping, the house would be turned into a shrine, and Freddie would be canonised. Something had to be done about it. But what? Harry Featherstone had absolutely no idea.

  The sun had come out in time for Madam’s little ceremony and, as a result, the Rolls Royce was a little steamed up. Through rivulets snaking down the windows the family watched Harry approach with their small flat noses pressed against the glass. When he opened the passenger door, the smallest Shih Tzu fell out into the gutter. Harry retrieved it and set it on the back seat where it was received with a great deal of snuffling and jumping up and down. When Harry got into the driver’s seat, the grey and white Shih Tzu, who was rather more athletic than the rest, attempted to jump onto the back of his neck but missed and fell back with a yelp, displacing the others and causing some consternation and argument, but eventually calm was restored and the family arranged themselves in an orderly row on the back seat from whence they regarded Harry in an expectant manner with their marble-like eyes shining and their mouths slightly open showing crumpled pink tongues and rows of tiny bottom teeth like seed pearls.

  ‘What Madam needs is something to take her mind off Freddie.’ Harry turned on the ignition and lowered the windows to release an extraordinary and somewhat overpowering smell. That very morning, it had been his task to bathe the family in an expensive canine shampoo called Gold’n’Delicious (purchased by Madam from Town and Country Dogs in Knightsbridge, and manufactured expressly for long-haired breeds) which due to the family becoming overheated, now filled the car with the sickly aroma of rotting apples. ‘What Madam needs,’ said Harry, as soon as he had inhaled some fresh air, ‘is a diversion.’

  The family listened to this with the greatest attention and every semblance of cognisance (although a recently published survey of intelligence in dog breeds had unfortunately placed the Shih Tzu second to last, only fractionally above that well-known bonehead, the Afghan Hound, which had come out bottom).

  ‘What Madam needs,’ continued Harry ruminatively, ‘is something to look forward to; what Madam needs,’ said Harry in a sudden burst of inspiration, ‘is a holiday!’

  The family goggled a bit at this, showing whites of eyes. Noses twitched in anxiety and there was some paddling of front feet (a common sign of anticipation in the Shih Tzu) and even a couple of excited yaps, which precipitated a wholesale investigation of the spokesperson during which the golden and white Shih Tzu (a highly regarded and remarkably expensive member of the family due to his colour which, according to Tibetan legend, rendered him closer to Buddha) was inadvertently pushed off the seat and only managed to regain it after much difficulty; the intense interest of the rest of the family peering down at his predicament much impeding his ascent.

  For as long as Harry had been in service with Madam, he had never known her to take a holiday. Day trips with picnics had been much enjoyed, but nothing of a longer duration. Of course, Madam would never agree to leave the family and that was the rub; it would be more than Harry’s job was worth to mention the word kennels. ‘So if Madam won’t go on holiday without you,’ said Harry thoughtfully. ‘She’ll have to go with you, won’t she? We shall have to go somewhere where you can come as well, won’t we? We shall have to sort out a holiday in a nice hotel in the country, somewhere with nice big gardens, run by people who like dogs. We shall have to find somewhere congenial.’ Harry was pleased with the word congenial, but ‘that might pose a problem, that might,’ he allowed, ‘there being so many of you. So I shall have to put my thinking cap on. I shall have to make a few enquiries. It might not be easy, finding the right sort of place, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The first thing I’ve got to do is to sell the idea to Madam.’

  The family, having reorganised themselves into a picturesque group that would have been the making of any aspirant chocolate box or jigsaw photographer, were all eyes and ears (although their comprehension was virtually nil as the words holiday and congenial had not hitherto been a feature in their limited vocabulary of recognisable words).

  ‘A holiday, eh?’ said Harry in delight. ‘Now that would be congenial.’ He was just setting his mind to work on how a suitable holiday hotel for Madam and the family could be located, when the younger of the two black and white Shih Tzus (being the most alert and observant member of the family and in this a true descendant of the sacred lion dogs whose task it was to alert the ferocious mastiffs at the slightest whiff of intruders in the temples of Tibet) spotted Madam’s somewhat wobbly progress toward the Rolls Royce along the gravel path beside the sign proclaiming

  EVENTIDE PET CEMETERY

  (CREMATIONS ARRANGED)

  Because You Care, So Do We

  and caused pandemonium to break loose on the back seat.

  Shelving his deliberations unti
l a more opportune moment, Harry Featherstone climbed out of the driver’s seat as a preliminary to opening the passenger door to admit his employer. The yapping, yelping and yowling of the family was almost, but not quite, enough to wake the dead.

  NINE

  ‘I’ve never heard anything so bloody ridiculous in my life! Have you gone completely out of your mind? Has the knock on your head affected your brain?’

  ‘Not permanently. No, I don’t believe it has.’ After the catastrophe on the stairs of which Anna could recall very little, she had emerged from a rolling mist; a swirl of physical sensation, emotion and barely coherent thought, to find herself in a high, canopied bed, struggling to sit up, thwarted by an unfamiliar slippery silk nightdress and a pounding sensation in her left temple. A bearded face with small round spectacles and a wagging finger had appeared above her and she had felt herself pressed firmly back onto pillows grown heavy and dubious with age. ‘Ah, ye’ll no be going anywhere betides, young lassie. Ye’ll be just fine given a day or three. Ye’ve just a touch of concussion, is all there is to it.’ The broad Scottish accent had been strangely comforting and had brooked no disagreement.

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ Anna said, ‘if that’s what you mean. ‘I’ve made preliminary enquiries. I’ve discussed the current situation with the bank. I’ve talked to Nicola. I’ve approached the local council to see how they feel about change of use. I do realise it is a vast undertaking, but I think it will work. I think I can make it work.’

  ‘You can make it work? You? With your vast knowledge of conversions, of building works, of running hotels, of starting a business from scratch? You will make it work?’ In the empty dining room of The Harbourmouth Hotel, Rupert stared in incredulity across a table with legs stained to look like oak, whose raw, yellow chipboard top was hidden by a blue plastic tablecloth laid with tablemats decorated with fish, flanked with fish knives and forks, presided over by laminated menu cards decorated with the hotel logo of a grinning cod wearing a chef’s hat and a striped apron. ‘My God, Anna, you are priceless.’

  ‘So you don’t want anything to do with it?’ Anna said. ‘Well, I can appreciate that. I shall just have to find someone else, but I wanted to ask you first. I thought you might be ready for a challenge. I imagined you wanted more out of life than being an assistant manager at a smelly little fish restaurant that likes to call itself a hotel.’

  ‘It may be a smelly little fish restaurant to you,’ Rupert said angrily, ‘but to me, it’s a job! It’s a safe job! It pays a regular wage, it provides me with somewhere to live, and it’s secure. People like me value security, Anna. People like me don’t have sodding great legacies to fall back on when the going gets tough!’ On the fake black-painted beams above his head a prickly cluster of paternosters bloomed and beside them a dried puffer fish dangled like a petrified balloon covered with spikes, its tiny beak frozen for eternity into a little round “o” of shocked surprise.

  ‘You would still have somewhere to live,’ Anna pointed out. ‘And I would pay you a wage, a decent wage. I’d pay you far more than the pittance you earn here.’

  ‘And for how long, Anna? For six months? For twelve months? Until the money runs out? Until the bank forecloses on you? And after that? What then, Anna? What price security then, Anna?’

  ‘You would find another job easily enough. It isn’t as if I’m asking you to take any financial risk; I’m not asking you to invest in the place.’

  ‘Good! Because I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t touch it with a bloody barge pole! Anna, it’s a crazy idea! It’s fucking madness! You’d be insane to do it! You’ll lose everything! It won’t work!’

  ‘It will work.’

  ‘It won’t! It can’t! It’s too much of a risk! You don’t have the experience!’

  Anna rather felt she had covered this ground before. The door of the dining room opened and a young waitress arriving for her shift took one look at Rupert’s face and backed out, wide-eyed, closing the door behind her with exaggerated care.

  ‘But you have the experience, Rupert! You will be able to look at the structure and the fabric of the building with a trained eye! You are no stranger to building works.’ Anna knew that Rupert had spent the first three years of his working life in the family building firm, working on site with the men, carting bricks, digging out footings, hammering down battening, levelling concrete, learning the trade from the bottom, until he had decided that the construction industry was not for him. His father, though bitterly disappointed, had managed to be philosophical about his subsequent decision to study catering and hotel management instead and, wise man that he was, seeing recession as inevitable and recognising that speculative builders such as himself would be especially vulnerable, had chosen to encourage, rather than remonstrate.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry you don’t want to be involved, Rupert. I’m honestly, genuinely sorry, because I had hoped you might be willing to take a chance with me on this. I mean it, Rupert, I really wanted you to be a part of it.’ Because, unexpectedly, surprisingly, Anna had wanted him to be a part of it. When it actually came down to it; when the first absurd, ridiculous, wonderful idea began to harden into reality, it had been hard to imagine him not being part of it. It had been impossible, in fact, to imagine tackling a project like Rushbroke without him. And yet...

  ‘You really expected me to be a part of it? Me? You wanted me?’ Rupert stared at her in disbelief. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course I’m serious.’ Anna began to assemble soothing words with which to explain just how much she needed him; his support, his skills, his experience, the familiarity of his tetchy, volatile companionship. She needed to say that without him the task she had set herself would be that much more daunting. She wanted to tell him how desperately she needed an ally in this because deep inside she was not nearly as confident, as positive, as she might seem. She was ready to confess that the previous night she had woken up suddenly and in fright, her body drenched in sweat, her heart racing away in her chest like a bolting horse, and to describe how she had sat at the open window, staring out into the darkness, forcing herself to concentrate on the regular, rhythmic rasp of the outgoing tide on the shingle, until at last there had been a degree of control, until the panic had subsided. She wanted to explain all of this but before she knew it, Rupert had moved around the table and pulled her close, into a ferociously tight embrace, so that she felt the very bones of his body pressing into hers. He said in a constricted voice. ‘Anna, don’t do this. If you don’t want to stay here, we can find another place together. You know how I feel...’

  Abruptly she turned her head away, struggling out of his grasp. ‘Rupert... don’t... nothing is different, not in that way. You have to accept it. We tried... it didn’t work.’

  ‘It worked for me.’

  ‘It has to work for both of us.’

  ‘So you don’t want me then?’

  ‘Of course I do!’

  ‘Oh, yes! As the bloody hired help! As a paid employee in a venture that hasn’t a sodding hope in hell of getting off the ground! That’s what you want!’ Rupert slammed his fist onto the table, making the wine goblets jump, the cutlery rattle.

  There seemed no point in denial. Why was everything to do with Rupert so difficult? Why had she even bothered to mention it when she had known what his reaction would be? Anna walked across the room to the deep bay window overlooking the quay where cheerful young fishermen were sorting the morning’s catch into orange plastic boxes, to where whiting and dabs poured in silver streams and mackerel flipped through the air, arching and flashing in the sunlight, still gasping, still beautiful, still alive. ‘OK,’ she said with a casualness she did not feel. ‘I expect I shall survive without you. After all, you’re not the only hotel manager in the world. You’re not the only pollock in the ocean.’

  In response, Rupert flopped down on a chair and put his head in his hands. Fervently, he wished he didn’t love her. He wished with all his heart that loving someone was something
you could turn off like a tap. He felt drained by his feelings, exhausted by them, and worse, he had begun to suspect that there was someone else. The unexplained absences; the lost weekends, the mysterious days off without any explanation, when even the most innocuous enquiry was blanked, had become a torment to him. He wondered if this tyrannical, uncontrollable insanity would ever leave him. He wanted it to stop. He wanted his life back. Now there was this. This bloody ludicrous, idiotic notion. He said in a despairing voice, ‘I have never been able to fathom you, Anna. I don’t pretend to understand how your mind works, but just lately you’ve been impossible. Ever since that crazy horse jumped out of the hedge you’ve been different; you’ve changed, Anna, you’re weird. I don’t know what it is; I don’t know what’s happened, but I do know you’ve become obsessed with that place, with those people. They’ve had some sort of psychotic effect on you. You don’t seem to be here most of the time; it’s as if you’re in a dream.’

  ‘This is not a dream, Rupert, this is real! It is what I have been waiting for! It is my chance to make a difference; to earn a place for myself. I know I’m not making much sense,’ Anna said with a sigh. ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’ She did not turn from the window but looked out beyond the quay, out to the harbour, watching the little boats move round on their moorings with the turn of the tide. She couldn’t tell him any more, not now. And really, how could he understand, without knowing the facts; without being told the full story. Nevertheless, ‘Rupert, I don’t know how this will turn out. I only know that I have to do this, that I cannot not do it. My life may be better for it or it may be worse. Whatever happens though, it will be changed, as I am changed. Come with me, Rupert,’ she entreated. ‘Please.’

  He came and put his arms around her and laid his head on her shoulder in what, in another person entirely, might have been capitulation or quiescence but, being Rupert, managed to be neither. ‘Don’t be naive, Anna. How can I? Why should I? If there’s no future for us together, what would be the point?’