The Last Baronet

by Caroline Akrill

  ‘Let them call the manager! Tom,’ Emily gripped his arm in entreaty, ‘say I did it. Say I got something from the kitchen; spices, pepper, things like that; you wouldn’t tell, would you? You wouldn’t squeal?’

  Tom sighed. ‘And what if Ma sees you, Em? How’s she going to react? What about Dad? He’ll go ballistic.’

  ‘They won’t see me. Nobody will see me because I’ll be in disguise. Did you bring your balaclava?’

  ‘I think this is a really prattish idea, Em; I want you to know that.’

  ‘Tom, did you bring your balaclava?’

  Tom crossed to the chest of drawers in resignation. ‘Just don’t expect any support from me, little sister. You’re on your own in this. I’m having nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Just give me the balaclava, Tom.’

  ‘You are going to end up in deep shit if you go ahead with this, Em. You are going to be in shit right up to your bloody neck.’

  ‘I am not going to end up in shit! I am going to end up saving a life! I am going foil the pursuit of the unspeak…’ Emily was abruptly silenced by a black balaclava received full in the face.

  ‘I told you,’ said Tom unfeelingly, ‘no Oscar Wilde.’

  *

  ‘The very minute I saw that obelisk at the side of the road for the second time, I knew you were lost, Henry,’ said Penelope Lamb. ‘You always were a hopeless navigator, simply hopeless; I thought we should never get here.’

  ‘Well, here we are now, my darling.’ Henry, laden with suitcases, followed his wife into the great hall. ‘Here we are now, my dearest.’

  ‘And very welcome you are too.’ Yvonne, comfortably installed behind the reception desk and revelling in the responsibility of making the late arrivals feel instantly at home, consulted the reservation list. ‘And you must be Mr and Mrs Lamb because everybody else is ticked off. Not that you’re late,’ she hastened to assure them, ‘there’s still an hour to go before dinner and plenty of time for baths and a nice strong drink of whatever you fancy. Let me just get you signed in then I’ll ring Rupert to help with the bags and we’ll get you nice and settled in your room. We’ll soon have you all warm and cosy, Mr and Mrs Lamb, don’t you worry, because it’s turned quite cold again, don’t you think? Still, we don’t want it mild at Christmas, do we? We want a bit of a nip in the air; the forecast said there could be snow in the north except this isn’t the north, is it? This is the east,’ Yvonne gave a little trill of laughter. ‘Oh, Mr and Mrs Lamb you’re going to have such a lovely time; honestly you are; I just know it.’

  Penelope looked at Yvonne, her gaze taking in the skin-tight dress, the racehorse legs, the plunging neckline, the sprig of real mistletoe in the bird’s nest hairstyle. Penelope pursed her lips. After which Penelope Lamb looked at Henry.

  Henry Lamb smiled winningly.

  *

  From the window of a bedroom above the courtyard Tony Pomeroy had watched the arrival of a solid looking woman followed by a smaller man with curly hair carrying a lot of luggage. Earlier he had watched a man exercising a pack of small, long-haired, comical looking dogs. It was quite an establishment that was prepared to accept such eccentricity, he thought admiringly, and his heart warmed towards it. Tony’s heart was already feeling quite warm, its warmth greatly assisted by a large Famous Grouse with a chunk of ice, which had been delivered promptly to the door by room service in the shape of a leggy young thing in a skimpy black dress and a frilly apron whose hair was skewered to the top of her head with a clump of mistletoe.

  The suite, tastefully decorated in and around its elaborately carved beams in old rose, apple green and cream, had waxed floors and stripped oak furnishings, with satisfyingly fat pillows and plump duvets on a bed set in a beamed alcove. A crooked little stairway led to a private bathroom which, despite its period features, managed to contain every modern convenience. In the stone fireplace, what at first glance had appeared to be a log burning fire had turned out to be electric; nevertheless, its pretend blaze waving merrily behind a brass guard in front of a glowing Persian rug upon which were set two comfortable armchairs and a polished oak coffee table, made the room feel like a home.

  Mary Pomeroy was humming a nostalgic tune, which someone had been playing on a piano when they had arrived, as she unpacked the suitcases. Tony thought this a very good sign. Despite his earlier misgivings he saw it as cast iron proof that it had been the right decision to remove his wife from the reminders and the remains of his late Mother-in-Law. Tony began to feel optimistic that, separated at last from the memento mori, Mary might actually begin to recover from her depression. After another mouthful of Famous Grouse Tony began to anticipate the astonishment of his family when he appeared at the Boxing Day Meet splendidly mounted and attired in the Melton Full Hunt Coat. He couldn’t wait. Mounted on a smooth-running thoroughbred (instead of the miniature carthorse that had been his learning vehicle) he was confident that his newly (and painfully) acquired riding skills would invoke gasps of amazement from his nearest and dearest. After all, he could now post to the trot and had mastered the canter. Piper didn’t do a gallop, but Janine had assured him that it was the same as a canter, only faster. ‘Just sit low and lean forward,’ she had told him. As long as there were no jumps, he would be home and dry. The thought of his hunting clothes hidden away in the boot of the Range Rover, together with the last dregs of Famous Grouse, gave him an extra warm glow which lasted until he saw his wife take from the bottom of her suitcase the casket containing her mother’s ashes and set it in pride of place on the dressing table.

  *

  ‘Eight of the little buggers!’ Rupert said in a savage tone. He had entered the kitchen through two sets of swing doors on a tide of irritation. ‘I’d like to get my hands on the person who took that little reservation!’

  ‘I think it was Vivian. He probably didn’t understand what he was being asked. I think the question was did we have any objection to small, well-behaved dogs. I believe that was how Mr Featherstone phrased it.’ Anna was dressed in traditional kitchen whites with a long apron smoothing her hips. She rolled up, by means of a strip of baking parchment, a delicate mushroom roulade for the vegetarian guest and transferred it with infinite care onto a baking tray.

  ‘But eight of them, eight! They are all over the bloody place and the woman is impossible to deal with; she insists on having them with her all the time and there will be God only knows what all over the carpets and dog hairs all over the bloody upholstery.’ Rupert, having renounced the responsibility for anything to do with soft furnishings and left it all to Anna, was now inclined to be zealously protective.

  ‘They seem to be very clean, well-groomed little dogs, actually,’ Nicola observed. ‘I think they are rather sweet.’ She regarded him solemnly from behind a line of miniature trifles topped with fat swirls of cream onto which she was arranging plump glacé cherries and jewel-like strips of angelica.

  ‘Perhaps we should regard them as decorative conversation pieces,’ suggested Anna. ‘They do add to the atmosphere, and animals certainly help to break the ice amongst strangers. Mavis is already totally smitten.’

  ‘Mavis has not just taken an order for two boiled hens, a cup of steamed rice, a chopped carrot, a little mild pate and eight slices of wholemeal toast without crusts! All to be delivered by room service at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon!’

  Anna kept her eyes on the spinach moulds she was turning out into a serving dish. ‘Somebody will have to tell David about the hens.’

  ‘I’ll tell him when I take him some supper.’ Nicola had not yet moved into Home Farm. Anna had persuaded her to get in a firm of cleaners and decorators first. Len was organizing the installation of a modern bathroom and sorting out some units for the kitchen. The kitchen range had already been dismantled and rebuilt.

  Anna had expressed concern about Plan B. ‘Nicola, you can’t go to Home Farm if there is even the slightest doubt in your mind,’ she had said. ‘Rushbroke Hall is your home after all. You
must promise you won’t do it unless you are absolutely sure what you are getting into, unless you are absolutely certain it is going to work out.’

  ‘How can I possibly be absolutely certain it is going to work out?’ Nicola had replied. ‘How do any of us know if any relationship is going to work? Surely such knowledge can only be retrospective? All I can say is that David needs someone to care for him and I need a home and a place for my horses. I believe I have the best of the bargain. And I know enough about David to know that he is a good man, and kind. I may not have learned much in my life but I do know that we can survive most things if we are brave, and if we are kind. I may not be wise, I cannot promise that I will always be good,’ Nicola had said, ‘but I hope that I shall always be kind, and I am not afraid.’

  With which Anna had to be content.

  Rupert, having vented his ire, began to roam around the kitchen, inspecting crisp and fragrant onion tarts, tasting the carrot and coriander soup, peering at the creamy salmon mousse and the sweetly perfumed melons awaiting their port sorbet, opening the warming oven to view the ribs of beef left to settle in their juices prior to carving, checking the pierced gastro trays of vegetables ready for steaming in the combi oven. He peered into the bain-marie, at the hand-made custard and the hollandaise sauce, poked at the butter pats floating amidst the ice cubes in their water tub, checked (for the umpteenth time) the condition of the stilton shrouded in its snowy cloth, straightened the lines of freshly baked rolls cooling on their wire racks, breathing in all the time the varied and wonderful aromas overlaid with the particularly pungent, aromatic and spicy smell of the apple and cinnamon plait which was the hot pudding alternative to the cold delights of the vanilla bavarois with sharp red cherries in liqueur, and the trifles. The smell, the sight, the richness and abundance, after all they had endured, after all they had been through, threatened, quite suddenly to overwhelm him with emotion. He took Anna’s hands in his own and looked at them. Short fingernails, a little chapped, the wrists striped with burns, spotted with scalds. The hands of a cook. ‘Well, this seems to be it,’ he said. ‘This is what it has all been about. We have got this far. Now it is sink or swim time. Make or break.’

  Mavis skittered into the kitchen on her heels like a startled pony. Her hair was a burning bush, her apron worn over a black angora tunic suitably decorated with silver crescent moons and stars. ‘Sorry to disturb, Mr Truscott, Miss Gabriel, only I need some more cheese straws and olives and I’ve been asked for a Campari by that nice washed-out Mrs Pomeroy, and I’m not sure if I should be using the spirit measure or the sherry.’

  *

  ‘You mean you actually knew her, Norman, you knew Lady Lav?’ Yvonne said incredulously.

  ‘I knew her well,’ said Norman. ‘We were very close at one time. Of course, she wasn’t Lady Lavinia Rushbroke then, she was just plain Lilly Lamont, although plain wouldn’t have been the word to describe her then; she was beautiful, absolutely lovely, and she had a lot of fans, many admirers; older men, in particular, were mad about her.’

  ‘Well, she still is lovely,’ Yvonne allowed. ‘She’s got good bones, smashing hair, and ever such nice eyes; you’ve only got to look at her to know she was a beauty in her day.’

  ‘She was,’ Norman stared into the fanned flames of the fire, a faraway look on his face. ‘Oh, she certainly was.’

  ‘Was you one of the men who was mad about her, Norman?’ Yvonne had knocked at Norman’s bedroom door with a sherry and some cheese straws on a tray, wanting to keep an eye on him in case he was feeling lonely and awkward and a bit shy about coming down to dinner. Norman, who loathed sherry, especially the sweet variety, and only ever drank it to please Elsie, would have vastly preferred a bottle of beer or a scotch and dry but, seated in his handsome fireside chair beside the fire in his exceedingly comfortable room, he sipped it gamely. ‘I was mad about her, Yvonne. But I was just a young and inexperienced third violin. I was beneath her notice. After the war, when I was first violin and we were playing duets together, we had an affair. I was passionately in love with her, besotted, but it was hard to tell if she felt the same - she was - how can I put it; always so light-minded, detached. At the time I was not very well off. I didn’t know if I could support a wife. I suppose I would have asked her to marry me eventually but then I was sent off on loan to another band for a few weeks, just to help them out, and when I came back she had gone. Gone off to get married, they told me. I was devastated.’

  ‘That must have been a blow for you, Norman. But you must know that she is proper doolally now. She doesn’t even know what day it is. All she seems to do is sit at the piano. Most of the time she’s away with the fairies.’

  ‘She was a bit absent-minded even then, as I recall. It didn’t matter to me. I loved her.’

  He had realised almost at once, of course he had. She had greeted him with all the long-remembered charm, patted a chair beside her, but there had been no recognition in her eyes. When he had asked her if she was indeed Lilly Lamont she had laughed delightedly, fluttered a hand in a painfully familiar gesture. ‘Used to be, my dear, used to be Lilly Lamont.’ When he had said ‘I’m Norman. Norman Simkins. I used to play first violin with Sidney Fenton. We worked together. We used to be friends,’ she had been effusive, but it was clear that she had forgotten. She did not know him. And after all the years cherishing the memory of her, polishing it, it had been an almost unbearable blow to find her again like this. So he had said, ‘Play for me, please’ and she had played Someday I’ll find you and Moonlight Becomes You, and the tears had run down his face in streams.

  ‘Sidney Fenton’s music always suited her. She had the right voice for it. We were strong on nostalgia; our sort of music appealed to an earlier generation; I suppose that’s why the older men worshipped her.’

  ‘Well I think it’s ever so romantic, Norman, even though it’s sad as well. But you could tell Sir Viv, couldn’t you; not about being in love if you don’t want, but the rest of it; how you worked together and all that? It would give you something to talk about because he’s especially asked me to see if you’d sit with him and Len at dinner. He seems to have taken quite a shine to you after his little upset and he does love a bit of company. Lady Lav’s supposed to be playing the piano, but as you never quite know if the penny’s dropped or not, it’s a bit touch and go, if you know what I mean. Still, there’s always the CD player to fall back on.’

  ‘Or the violinist,’ said Norman, vacating his fireside chair in order to change for dinner with some reluctance, ‘if the worst comes to the worst.’

  RUSHBROKE HALL

  COUNTRY HOUSE HOTEL

  CHRISTMAS HOUSE PARTY

  Programme of Events

  Christmas Day

  Thursday 25th December

  From 8 am

  Breakfast will be served in the Yellow Dining Room

  12.30pm

  You are invited to attend a

  Champagne reception in the Great Hall.

  13.30hrs

  Christmas Lunch will be served in the Yellow

  Dining Room

  There will be musical entertainment

  17.00hrs

  Afternoon Tea will be served in the Residents’ Lounge

  19.00hrs

  You are invited to attend

  A Carol Service in the Rushbroke Chapel

  20.30hrs

  A Buffet supper will be available

  in the Yellow Dining Room

  THIRTY TWO

  ‘Well, Mother, what do you think of this? I expect you are in your element here. This is the perfect place, isn’t it?’ Mary Pomeroy set the casket of ashes down beside her on the stone seat. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was all your own idea, infiltrated into my dear husband’s subconscious in the still of the night. Well, if it was, it was inspirational. The whole place is inspirational.’ Mary Pomeroy pulled the hooded collar of her Aquascutum camel coat up around her ears in order to more comfortably drink in the beauty
of the house; its warm brick and fine windows, its romantic pepper-pot turrets and majestic chimneys. The air of tranquillity that surrounded it, accentuated by the wide moat with its crumbling brick bridges, its ancient yew and the gnarled, old rose bushes and standards in the rose garden where she now sat, was like a balm to Mary. Peace seeped out of the very stones beneath her feet like a blessing.

  The previous night, after their wonderful meal, she had climbed into the unfamiliar bed and slept soundly until she had awoken to astonishment and morning tea at eight. This, for Mary Pomeroy, accustomed to waking four, five or six times during the night, restless and overheated, to rearrange the bedding, to make tea, to roam the house in despair and distraction, was like a miracle. It was a miracle.

  Was there, as Mary’s mother had always maintained, a tangible atmosphere, a stillness about old houses that was entirely absent in their modern counterparts? And if it existed, as Mary thought it might, of what was it composed? Of continuity perhaps, of acceptance certainly, of the sense of the ongoing, unstoppable rhythm of life, the endless pattern of births and marriages and deaths, of joys, of celebrations, of grief and heartache experienced through many generations. I should like to live in a house like this, thought Mary, so that I can feel its quiet centre; so that I can steady myself against the stillness of its antiquity.

  You see, Mother, how I am coming round to your way of thinking, said Mary silently. You can see that I am getting there in the end. For her Mother had not liked (apart from her admiration of the kitchen) Mary’s spacious, modern house with its large bland rooms, its picture windows, its open staircase and flush hardwood doors. She had also not approved of the way Mary had allowed herself to be totally absorbed by her family, by the way she had allowed them to mop up all of her days like a sponge so that not a drip of time remained for herself. It was true that Mary had gradually dropped, due to the demands of her children, her husband, her home, not only her part-time job as a speech therapist and her water-colour painting, but also her friends and the fringe interests that made her a person in her own right instead of just an adjunct to somebody else; somebody’s mother, somebody’s wife. And yet Mary had made these decisions, they had been hers alone; she had been free to choose. Nobody had forced the issue.