To the Manor Born

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To the Manor Born Page 31

by Peter Rimmer


  Working her way round to the back, Cuddles found a well-kept kitchen garden that stretched into an apple orchard. The apple trees had been pruned the previous autumn; there was fruit on the trees.

  From the field behind the orchard came the sharp crack of a shotgun followed by a small animal squealing. The squeals stopped abruptly. Someone began to whistle. Cuddles knew she was too far into the wilderness to run back to her car.

  A man with a twelve-bore shotgun under one arm came into view. When he walked nearer, Cuddles could see he was carrying a dead rabbit. The rabbit’s neck had been broken and was flopping head down by the man’s side. The whistling stopped abruptly when the man saw Cuddles. The man smiled and swung the gun up over his shoulder so the barrel was pointing behind him and not at Cuddles. He looked in his forties, dressed in old clothes that twenty years ago might have been in fashion.

  “I’m John Lacey. Got a rabbit. Don’t see anyone around here any more. Have you been up to the old house? The roof leaks. Frightful bore. I heard your car. Sound travels in the country. We can have a cup of tea. Don’t keep anything stronger I’m afraid. Probably just as well. What can I do for you, missus?”

  Cuddles thought the man was nervous, speaking in short sentences.

  “Miss Prudence Morton-Sayner. Due to a carry-over from my childhood, people call me Cuddles. Do you live here all alone, Lord Ravenhurst?”

  “I haven’t used the title for years. The tradesmen are less generous to the gentry. Quite alone. Ever since that dreadful war came to an end. The tradesmen don’t come into the Lincoln marshes any more. Well, not here. Feed myself.” John Lacey held up the dead rabbit for inspection. “We had pretty much run out of money as a family before the war. A commander’s pay in the navy isn’t much… Do you know we were one of the most powerful earls in the sixteenth century? How the mighty have fallen.”

  They were walking in single file up the only trodden path. By the tone of his voice, the Marquess of Ravenhurst clearly thought the fallen mighty were better off as they were. The rabbit was losing blood out of its mouth, the blood dripping carelessly down the man’s front and left leg.

  “I grow my own fruit and vegetables and along with rabbits eat the odd unfortunate game bird that crosses my gunsight. I go into Grimsby once a month to buy dry provisions and post my month’s work. Once a year the chaps at Oxford post me a small cheque… I hope I’m not boring you. We go in through the kitchen. The fact is I can’t open the front door any more. Warped. Doesn’t matter. Bell doesn’t work and nobody knocks… Did you come all the way out here to see me? Well, you would, wouldn’t you? There’s no one else to see.”

  John Lacey, as he liked to be called, gave Cuddles a pleasant laugh and for the first time properly looked at her.

  “Do you want to tell me now what this is all about?” he asked.

  They were inside the kitchen, which was spotless. On the hob of the stove under a still glowing wood fire was a large pot of stew. John Lacey took off the lid and stirred his stew with a long-handled wooden spoon. Bending down, he picked up small logs of dry wood from the floor and fed them into the fire. The fire took up the left side of the old stove next to the baking oven. The stove was set inside an alcove with a chimney leading up through the ceiling. There were no lights in the room hanging from the almost black ceiling.

  “This was the gatekeeper’s house back in the old days when my family lived in the castle. You can see the ruins if you know where to look. I had a chap here last year who was studying old castles. Spent a couple of days. You’ll forgive me if I talk rather a lot but I’m told people do who live on their own. Of course, I talk to myself. Take a seat, please. I’ll make the tea when that old kettle on the hob boils again. The new wood will catch fire any moment… There it goes. Gives a nice taste to the tea, the wood fire. Or so I think. So used to it now. We don’t have milk. I don’t like having anything on the property bigger than myself and I can’t milk a cow. Tried once. The cow didn’t like my hands and kicked over the bucket… That was the trouble. We were taught things of no practical use. Certainly, nothing that could make us any money. One of the chaps up at Oxford gave up studying the humanities he had studied for three years and went into the City. Frightfully rich now. They say the stock market is going on up forever. They send me The Telegraph to the post office in Grimsby, which I read in date order when I come home. Every word. All I do for work is translating ancient Greek texts. For pleasure, I read The Telegraph and my library. The only thing of value left of the family which I won’t sell.”

  “And tend the kitchen garden, prune the fruit trees and shoot the odd rabbit.”

  “You saw! You can keep apples for six months if you stack them on trays so they don’t touch. By spring, they are small and shrivelled but still nice to eat. I bottle the plums. Would you like some of last year’s plums? How far have you come from today?”

  “I drove up from London. I’m a social consultant.”

  “I say, what’s that?”

  “People who wish to move in good society but don’t know how pay me for my services. I show them how to behave. Introduce them to the people they wish to meet… Have you been to America, Mr Lacey?”

  “That’s better, Cuddles. What a lovely name. There’s so much in a name. No, of course not. The furthest I went was to Berlin before the war. Spent three happy years roaming the capitals of Europe after I came down from Oxford in 1907. Met a couple of chaps from America who were up at Oxford. There was even a chap from Southern Rhodesia who was reading geology. I tutored students in English that paid for my food and a small room. Sometimes there was enough for a good pint of German beer in Berlin or a bottle of wine in Paris. They were the happiest years of my life. Apart from Greek, I speak rather good German and French even if I have to say so myself. An educated man they used to call us when it mattered more than the ability to make money… Now, there we are. By leaving the kettle on the hob, it boils quickly once the fire gets going. That wood was nice and dry.”

  During the one-sided conversation, John Lacey had hung the rabbit up by its back legs placing a small silver cup under its head to catch the blood.

  “Hang them for two days in the summer. The hares I hang for a week. We had an old cook before the war when my mother was still alive who liked to see maggots in the hare’s eyes before she would butcher and jug the hare in its own blood. Said it was the only way to judge if the hare was high enough before cooking the meat. Best jugged hare in the world… I let the tea leaves draw for five minutes. We will have to wait for a little for our tea.”

  “Have you read about America in The Telegraph?”

  “They don’t report much about America. More about the colonies. India. Africa. That sort of thing.”

  “There is a rich man in America who wishes for his daughter to be married to a peer. Are you married, Mr Lacey?”

  “Don’t be silly. The only love of my life was German but we couldn’t marry as I did not have any money. The rich marry the rich. The educated poor stay single.”

  “He is Irish. His money probably dubious but real. Stella is twenty-two and very pretty.”

  “Stella is a nice name.”

  “I want you to marry her.”

  “Whatever for? Why would a pretty, young girl want to do that in the first place? I’m old at forty in her eyes. And very poor. I doubt I have ten pounds in the bank.”

  “To become a marchioness. The father wants one of his sons to become president of the United States of America. He likes status. He really wants his daughter married to a duke.”

  “My word, he does have ambition… Did he steal his dubious money?”

  “Not quite. He sells favours and bootleg whisky. Controls the pension fund of a large trade union. You have heard of prohibition and trade unions?”

  “Even The Telegraph has heard of American prohibition and the trade union movement. How rich is this man?”

  “And he’s Irish.”

  “Oh, my goodness. What a pity they
don’t have trade unions for educated men with no money. But then they wouldn’t get any fees would they, let alone take enough money to build up a jolly pension fund.”

  “Twenty million dollars according to a friend’s estimate. C E Porter is a business partner so to speak. And getting richer with every truckload of whisky into the States from Canada, according to C E.”

  “And he wants his daughter to marry an Englishman? Do I have to meet this Irishman?”

  “Only if you sign a marriage contract. In the contract, you will receive one million dollars as a wedding present.”

  “Do I have to live in America?” Cuddles thought she heard a little sarcasm in his tone of voice.

  “You can live where you like. May I pour the tea?”

  “I’ll find the sugar… Bless my soul… Are you serious?”

  “Deadly. I get nine thousand pounds as a finder’s fee. It would have been ten thousand if you had been a duke!”

  To Cuddles’s relief and amusement, the sixteenth Marquess of Ravenhurst burst into peals of happy laughter. Now, it was all up to Stella. Or so she hoped.

  * * *

  Sir Jacob Rosenzweig had sat alone in his office after Ralph Madgwick left weighing the future against the past experiences of his life. They were going to see each other. That much was clear. Rebecca was twenty-one years old and free to do as she wished. With his elbows on his desk and steepling his fingers up to his mouth, Sir Jacob began to smile. He had probably been a fool turning the fickle emotion of young love into forbidden fruit. Had he let them be, they would have been sick of each other a long time ago. Unless there was a financial or family reason to stay together, lovers mostly moved apart looking to rejuvenate the same feeling somewhere else. Instead of silently fighting his daughter making the image of love seem a condition that would last forever which it never did in practice, Sir Jacob decided to be the bringer of glad tidings. He got up from his desk, put on his overcoat and hat, picked up his cane with the engraved silver handle and told his secretary he was going out.

  “You have an appointment at twelve o’clock.”

  “Cancel it for me, Miss Cohen.”

  Outside in the cold street, it was snowing. Inside the taxi it was warm. Sir Jacob still thought of the New York cab as a taxi. He told the driver to go to Abercrombie Place. He hoped Ralph Madgwick had not yet made contact with his daughter.

  Sir Jacob and Rebecca still lived alone in the sprawling apartment. Hannah had stayed in Golders Green. Probably with her old lover. They had all gone through the years living a lie. Why they had come together in the year before Rebecca was born he had never been sure. Probably Hannah had had a fight with her lover. At the time, he had been too surprised and too busy to find out. It had been like having an affair with his own wife. Pleasant at the time and soon forgotten. His other children, all older than Rebecca would most likely stay in England. The three boys worked well at the family bank. All three had married nice Jewish girls with rich Jewish fathers. He never asked as he never cared to talk about anything outside the business but if they had any sense they would have other girls on the side where brief love still mattered more than the family money.

  “You are an old cynic, Jacob. An old cynic,” he told himself as he thought further for a while about his family as the cab drove through the wide streets of New York City, mostly in a straight line, which rarely was possible in the old streets of London. “Or a realist.”

  Sir Jacob was fully composed when the cab drew up at his apartment block. Striding into the building and up the lift with a forced smile on his face, he found Rebecca alone in the flat. The servant had gone out for some reason, which did not matter.

  “What on earth are you doing home in the morning? Father, why do you look in such a good mood?”

  “I have good tidings, Rebecca. Good tidings for you. Ralph Madgwick is in New York. He paid me a visit at the office. Madgwick and Madgwick are forming a company in New York and have offered Rosenzweigs twenty per cent of the equity that I have decided to take. Our contacts will bring them valuable clients so we will be adding value to the company as a shareholder… You didn’t know Ralph was here? I was wrong about young Ralph. A nice young man. He did the right thing by calling on your father first. A young gentleman. I have decided to ask him to dinner.”

  “Here?”

  “Wherever else, Rebecca?”

  “You came to tell me that?”

  “Of course. Isn’t it important? No more little misunderstandings between you and me. You are a grown woman. This is America.”

  “But he is not Jewish!”

  “I thought you knew that right from the start… Maybe back then you were too young to be serious which is why I acted by going to see Wallace Madgwick. Fathers have to guide their daughters. Always remember your father has your best interests at heart.”

  “Oh, daddy!” said Rebecca running into his arms. She was crying.

  When Sir Jacob left an hour later to go back to his office, he felt, in the words so often used at his old boarding school in the countryside, a right cad.

  “Mr Madgwick gave me his card earlier this morning, Miss Cohen. On it was written his telephone number as you see. Please make a phone call and ask Mr Madgwick for dinner at my apartment tonight. Seven o’clock. Informal dress. You know the directions if he drives his own car. Tell him my daughter is very much looking forward to seeing him this evening.”

  “Very good, sir… I was unable to put off your twelve o’clock, Sir Jacob.”

  “Good. When the man arrives show him in to my office.”

  When he picked up the paper and read the financial page, Sir Jacob felt uneasy at what he read. The stock market had risen yet another point. It was all too easy.

  Sir Jacob Rosenzweig was no longer smiling and read through the rest of the financial pages.

  * * *

  When Ralph Madgwick put down the phone ten minutes later, he was mentally scratching his head.

  “The old bastard’s invited me to dinner.”

  “Who?” said Rosie Prescott.

  “Sir Jacob Rosenzweig. At his fancy apartment. With Rebecca.”

  Rosie Prescott had to turn away from Ralph to stop him seeing the smile that had sprung to her face. Once Rebecca and Ralph properly got to know each other, she would stand a much better chance.

  “When?” she asked innocently.

  “Tonight. Seven o’clock.”

  Somehow Ralph felt cheated. He had planned to visit Maryanne at the florist shop. To arrange a clandestine meeting with Rebecca. To meet in secret behind her father’s back until Rebecca was prepared to run away with him and he won the war. Suddenly it was all going to be easy. The chase was over. It was as if her father had stolen some of the fun.

  * * *

  Patrick Fitzgerald, Stella’s father, had read three books in his life, all with difficulty. One had been a biography of Cecil John Rhodes the British imperialist who had made one of the nineteenth century’s great fortunes by understanding the foibles of men. It was a phrase that had caught Patrick’s eye: Every man has his price.

  The price, when Patrick read the book, was not always counted in money. One man, a Jew, had sold Rhodes his mining company to get himself membership of the Kimberley Club, the first Jewish member in its history. Patrick had become a great admirer of the arch-imperialist who had died in his late forties with two countries in Africa called after him: Northern and Southern Rhodesia. Patrick was unable to aspire to a country even though the idea had appeal.

  When Patrick met John Lacey the day after Sir Jacob Rosenzweig supped with the devil, he had little concern about the man himself. The Marquess of Ravenhurst was a commodity he was going to buy for a million dollars. The Marchioness of Ravenhurst would dispel in the press the image they portrayed of Patrick Fitzgerald as a semi-literate from the bogs of Ireland. The rich Americans were as gullible to a title as a starving man to food, despite the Republican foundation of the American constitution.

  His da
ughter’s engagement had been four small lines in the best English newspaper. In America, Patrick had leaked the story to every newspaper and magazine in the country who would listen. The woman in England who had bought him the peer for a nine thousand pounds fee had researched the Lacey family back to their illustrious roots, giving the papers something to write about.

  American girl to marry old title. American girl to be British aristocrat. American girl a marchioness.

  The headlines were legion. The story the same. Patrick Fitzgerald’s daughter was marrying English aristocracy. Never once did the articles mention the bogs of Ireland or how Patrick had come by his money.

  So far as Patrick was concerned, John Lacey, the man, could turn out to be an idiot for all he cared. The story had given the Fitzgerald family more good press than money could buy. Unpaid for advertising was priceless when it came as good story in the news columns of the press: especially the kind of slush the public liked to read about the rich and famous. Seamus, his eldest son, would be a shoo-in at the next Congressional elections. His name, plastered across the press with the story of his sister’s coming marriage, was now familiar to millions, his Democratic nomination a virtual certainty.

  Patrick, when he put his hand out for the first time to his future son-in-law, was well satisfied with his prize.

  “Welcome to Boston, duke.”

  “I am a marquess, Mr Fitzgerald.”

  “What’s the difference, duke?”

  “A matter of rank.”

  The contempt in the American’s eye and tone of voice was so obvious to John Lacey as it must have been to everyone else at the railway station that included a brass band and a full pack of newspapermen. John turned to Stella to find the same look in her eyes, the look not even mingled with a tinge of pity.

  John, backing away for a moment into his own small world contemplated the rest of his life. However, he was able to look at it through the eyes of his future wife and her family. He had been bought, lock, stock and barrel for a million of their bucks. The solitude of his old home in the Lincoln marshes was more attractive than it had ever been before. Around him on the platform was bedlam. The band’s brass symbols were crashing sound into his head. Men with pen and notebooks were shoving forward all asking questions at the same time. Just a cacophony of sound. His nightmare had finally begun. He was committed. The papers were signed. The engagement to this Stella written in stone. Even with the help of an army, there was no way out. Greed, his own stupid greed, mingled with a little lust for the girl, had ruined the rest of his life. He who had read so many mistakes of the past had made himself the main player in what he now had little doubt would turn out a Greek tragedy. From England, and his brief visits to London at Cuddles’s invitation to meet Stella in the midst of her social swirl, everything had looked different. In London, he was still the sixteenth Marquess of Ravenhurst with the right to take his seat in the House of Lords. In America, he was a freak. To add to his misery the brass band began to play Land of Hope and Glory, the trombonist messing up the tune.

 

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