To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

  Tina put down the book on the bench under the tree overlooking the stream and went across to the pram where Harry’s new son was sleeping. Kim, named after a Rudyard Kipling character, was four months old. The boy had blue eyes the colour of cornflower and a smile that always looked up at his mother whenever she looked down into the pram.

  “What are you so damn cheerful about?” she said, picking him up. Ivy and Molly were off somewhere into the woods with the other children. Now she had stopped concentrating on the book she could hear their treble voices far away behind the trees. If she were not so lonely for Harry her day might have been perfect, the sun shining, birds and insects humming in the summer day, the lovely sound of water running over rocks, the smell of newly cut hay from the fields that still belonged to the St Clairs after so many centuries. Idly, Tina wondered what Barnaby was now doing with his life after selling out all his shares. For a while, there had been Brett Kentrich and Christopher Marlowe’s new show. Once the show was up and running there was nothing for Barnaby to do. Tina remembered. Remembered Harry when he had put his money into Happy Times. And watched it run on, night after night, with nothing more for Harry to do.

  Gently putting Kim back in the pram, Tina walked to the bench and picked up her book and began reading where she had left off, barely a word penetrating her brain.

  “Concentrate, you idiot,” she scolded herself, starting the same paragraph again.

  Before she had to take over the company in less than a year’s time she was going to know what she was talking about… Unless Keppel Howland found them.

  When the children started to drift back with Ivy and Molly, Tina was still dreaming of hope. She could hear them coming from half a mile away. Happy children with not a care in the world. Still too young to understand what had happened to their father. The terrible hollow that would never be filled in their lives once they realised he was never coming home.

  She recognised Frank’s voice over the others. The only one to have a father still alive. A father he would never even know about if she had her way.

  High up on the top road going along the spine of the Purbeck Hills, Tina heard the engine of a car and frowned. The car was her own Rolls-Royce that was meant to be outside the Greyhound railway hotel in Corfe Castle where the driver was staying. There was a pub in the hotel but the man must have grown bored and gone for a drive. Except the car was going towards Corfe Castle and she had not heard the car leave, the sound of a car or motorcycle engine so distinct in the silence surrounding the hills. She must have been concentrating reading the book on maritime law after all.

  The fact her car was going the wrong way brought back her feeling of disquiet. The last conversation with Percy Grainger started playing through her mind over again.

  * * *

  “I have some good news from our solicitors, Mrs Brigandshaw. They have come to an agreement in writing with the Department of Inland Revenue. Concerning the amount of death duty that will be payable from your husband’s estate at the end of the two-year waiting period when Harry is pronounced legally dead. And sorry, Mrs Brigandshaw but we have to face facts. Over three hundred thousand pounds in a deceased estate and the government take eighty per cent in death duty. The good news is we have agreed on the share price of your husband’s Colonial Shipping shares that’ll be used when the solicitors file probate in a year’s time. The nice point of the law says the shares will be valued on the date of death to establish the value of a deceased estate. Harry and his aircraft disappeared without a trace in September last year. The share price for the purpose of death duty will be that which prevailed on the 13 September 1928. Two weeks after the aircraft was last heard of in Khartoum.”

  “Please, Mr Grainger. You are sounding more and more like a lawyer. What does this all mean?”

  “The price of Colonial Shipping shares have risen on the London Stock Exchange by thirty-two per cent since the 13 September last year, negating a large amount of what you will owe the government. A large part of the death duty will be paid from the increase in the value of the shares.”

  “And if the shares go down?”

  “Don’t be silly. There is nothing wrong with Colonial Shipping. We are steaming ahead if you will excuse the pun. Why, our ships are ninety per cent full of passengers and eighty per cent full of cargo. We are very profitable.”

  “I’m not questioning your company, Mr Grainger. I may know nothing about business. But who determines the value every day of the shares?”

  “Why, the buying public. There are no sellers. Only buyers waiting to snap up our shares. In a year’s time, they will have gone up even more. This agreement means you are making money on the shares that if Harry had been found dead right away would have been sold to pay death duties… Don’t you understand?”

  “I rather think I do… Where is the rest of my husband’s money invested other than Elephant Walk and my house on Berkeley Square? The balance of the money he received when C E Porter took the company public some years ago.”

  “My word. You have been reading. Well, of course, the money was invested in shares. You and your husband live most comfortably off the dividends.”

  “And the price of the other shares?”

  “The average price on the 13 September 1928 as quoted on the London Stock Exchange at the time. They have also gone up considerably. You are very lucky, Mrs Brigandshaw.”

  * * *

  The nagging at the back of Tina’s mind would not go away. The value of a share was determined by a willing buyer from a willing seller she had read in one of the books. Not by the price listed the previous morning in The Financial Times. Yesterday’s price to her layman’s mind was still yesterday’s price. And, Barnaby had sold every one of his shares and put his money in the bank. And Barnaby was greedy. He had always been greedy. Barnaby knew something… What if her shares fell below the share price on the 13 September 1928? She would have to pay the government eighty per cent of a much higher price than she could sell them. The Department of Inland Revenue would take all her money. She’d be back to the railway cottage. With five children. Broke. And not knowing how to make a penny for the rest of her life. No one would marry a penniless widow with five children however much she flashed her eyes. Certainly not Barnaby. Why should he? Why should he indeed?

  With cold fear suffocating all her other feelings, she finally understood the implication of the solicitors’ agreement with the Department of Inland Revenue. Percy Grainger might think her an uneducated fool but she was not.

  Hurrying with her book back to Kim’s pram she put the heavy volume at the baby’s tiny feet, gave him a kiss on the forehead and yelled for her children. At least the Rolls-Royce was on its way back to Corfe Castle. They were going back to London. To find out exactly how much she would owe the taxman. So she could sell enough shares to have cash in the bank ready to pay him when the time came.

  “Men can be so bloody stupid,” she said as Ivy and Molly came through the woods with the other four children. Were it not for having to push the pram she would have run all the way back to Corfe Castle to get in the car and drive back to London. Instead, they all walked back to the railway cottage. Ivy was sent on foot to Corfe Castle with a note from Tina asking the driver to pick them up at her parents’ house as soon as possible. Then she began to pack. The void of doom in her stomach was making her sick.

  * * *

  While Tina and Molly were packing the children’s clothes, Barnaby stopped his brand-new Rolls-Royce at the foot of the hill below the ruins of Corfe Castle. Looking up at the centuries of decay since Cromwell tore down his family castle stone by stone, he found it hard to believe there was anything up there other than overgrown rubble where some of the bigger blocks of stone still pushed out of the overgrown grass and moss. As a child, he had played cowboys and Indians with his friends through the ruins. The other game they had played was hide-and-seek. Never once had any of them found an entrance that led down into the rubble.

  Sile
ntly, they all got out of the car each armed with a big torch. Often the lights went out in the Manor house and battery-powered torches were part of their lives, a change from the earlier candles Barnaby had once carried up to bed. Merlin looked subdued. The interview alone with their mother had been less friendly than the display on the terrace. Genevieve had been taken off by Freya to get her out of the way while his father showed them the tablets. Barnaby was still sceptical. Such historical treasure would surely have been found a long time ago and vandalised. Even the pyramids had finally been penetrated and looted even if some of the content had ended up in Cairo’s Egyptian museum. Tablets depicting the Crusade would be known throughout Christendom. They were all on a wild goose chase armed with their torches. His father was senile after all, his mind playing him tricks. At least the nineteenth-century parchments would go some way in keeping Hank Curley from the truth. That the real parchments, or whatever the story was first meant to have been written on, were a figment of Robert’s imagination. A good, vivid imagination which was why people liked his books and bought so many copies in England and America. The sudden thought of Curley arriving at Purbeck Manor at the end of the month made Barnaby start thinking of new ways to handle the situation. Relying on his native wit had got him out of enough holes in the past, he told himself, why should this one prove any different. “I’ll just have to keep my wits about me,” he said to himself, smiling as he followed his father and two brothers up the steep path that led to the top of the hill and what was left of Corfe Castle.

  * * *

  They were all puffing from exertion when they reached the top of the path and went through the gap in the overgrown piles of rubble that had once been the keep of the castle, their father still leading the way looking like a man who knew exactly where he was going. In the centre of the circle that had once been the inner fortress stood an oak tree so ancient there was only one limb sprouting leaves, the great bowl of the tree surrounded by yew trees and undergrowth that had finally sapped the life out of the old oak. Why his ancestors had let a tree grow in the centre of the castle was a question that had never entered Barnaby’s head. It was there. Had always been there and a place he could get to as a child when he wanted to relieve himself away from the eyes of his friends. He remembered, as they all followed father across to the foot of the old tree, there was always a faint smell of urine behind the thick bushes at the base of the tree, Barnaby not being the only small boy to use the place as a toilet.

  Now, late in the summer evening with the sun going down on a beautiful day there was not even a sign of an inquisitive tourist or anyone else.

  “If there is anyone around we’ll have to come back tomorrow,” his father had said when they stepped out of the car at the bottom of the footpath. “We can’t let anyone see where we are going.”

  Barnaby watched his father now stride to the part of the yew tree behind which was his favourite spot to use as a toilet.

  “It’ll be smelly, father,” Barnaby said wrinkling his nose from the memory.

  “I want you all behind the bushes. Now. Quickly.”

  At the foot of the old oak, behind the yew, was another pile of old rubble and signs of old, used toilet paper. The place now stank, Barnaby thought, let alone smelled.

  Their father was pulling away clumps of grass and picking up pieces of old stone, carefully putting the stones down so the moss that had grown on top of the old Purbeck stone would not be torn off.

  “Now careful. When we return all this has to be put back where it was including the bits of toilet paper.”

  “Where are we going, for goodness’ sake?” asked Merlin. To Barnaby, their mother’s dressing down had made Merlin visibly irritable.

  “Under the bole of the tree,” said Lord St Clair. “There’s a passage cut between the tree’s roots when we get rid of the stones. The trapdoor was once of oak. I made an iron door when I inherited the title. The old wooden one was rotten, the big stones about to fall in the hole. That first time I had to move all the stones myself. The second time when I fitted the iron door, old Warren gave me a hand. Took us all day in the depth of winter when there wasn’t any likelihood of people being around. Old Warren and I have never mentioned that day since so don’t ask him.”

  “What happens if someone comes when we are inside?” said Barnaby to humour his father. He still thought the expedition was going to end in one big laugh.

  “It’ll be dark and the trapdoor will be back in place. The door will still be covered in rocks we stuck to the iron. In the old days, someone covered the trapdoor when anyone was inside… We were Catholics before the time of Henry VIII. Like many Frenchmen. After Henry founded the Church of England with himself as defender of the faith, we said we followed our King but we didn’t. We stayed faithful to the Pope in Rome until the 18th century when the eleventh baron decided all the deception wasn’t worth the risk. That God was God, Pope or no Pope. Before that this was the priest’s bolthole. Before that the chamber where our first family history was written… Here we are, you see. My beautifully camouflaged trapdoor… Barnaby… Come and help me lift it out. I was a lot younger when I picked this damn thing up all those years ago. Robert go check outside if all is clear. Be quick about it.”

  “Are you going to take Curley down there?” said Robert looking down into the hole when he came back from his brief reconnaissance.

  “Of course not. Only family. Come on.”

  Barnaby was now not sure if he wanted to go down the hole. He followed in last and pulled the trapdoor shut over his head. Once down inside Barnaby shone his torch on a flight of ancient, well-worn stone steps that curled down into what seemed like the bowels of the earth. The others had climbed down the wet steps while Barnaby had let the trapdoor down into place over his head, cutting out the last of the evening light and the smell of stale urine.

  For ten long minutes with their torches showing them the way, they climbed down the gently circling flight of ancient stone steps. Once past the top few, the stones were bone dry, the walls dry. There was an echo from the sound of their movement coming back up to them from far down below. Strangely, Barnaby told himself, he felt quite at home. As if the darkness below was friendly. As if somehow, long ago in history, he had climbed down the same steps before.

  “These iron brackets were for lighted torches,” his father said, pointing out the old brackets with the light of his torch. Then they were down in a chamber.

  “This is where the Catholic priest stayed when the King’s men visited the castle. Queen Elizabeth would have chopped off all our ancestors’ heads and then where would the four of us have been? Not even born. Can you see the tablets through the dirt, Robert?”

  “What tablets? It’s just a wall.”

  “Give me your handkerchief… Now can you see? This is the one I wanted to show you. The words are in French but the picture carved on the stone underneath speaks for itself.”

  “What is it?” said Merlin.

  “The corpses of massacred Mussulmen, their wives and children. The knight standing on top of the pile with his sword on high is our illustrious ancestor, Sir Henri Saint Claire Debussy… Look carefully at what people, our own people, do in the name of religion. In the name of God. The same God of those dead Mussulmen. That’s why Mr Curley will never be shown this chamber. This is the ugly side of our family. The skeletons in our closet. Robert wrote about the brave side of our founder. This is the ugly side. As you can imagine, this tablet was not copied on to those parchments in my study. Without realising it, I told Robert the truth when I had no idea he understood or would ever remember. This is why every Baron St Clair when he inherits the title is made by his father’s will to visit this room. So we will never do that again. I always hope it has made us a better family knowing the ugliness in our own being. The ugliness in all of us, now and in the future. Whichever one of you becomes the eighteenth baron you don’t have to come here again. Just remember what you have seen… Now we can go and have a pint in
the Greyhound before it closes. After, of course, we have covered the trapdoor and made the old rocks good and smelly so no one will want to pick them up and find what is underneath. We may think of ourselves as aristocrats but we still have to piss like everyone else. If at any time you get too big for your boots remember that. And remember the content of this chamber. What is written and the picture that is carved into the face of the rock that is the thirty-second tablet. The last tablet. The one someone must’ve thought was Sir Henri’s greatest triumph but in fact was a terrible sin before God.”

  * * *

  At the end of the month, Hank Curley arrived from Boston, Massachusetts, having sailed to England on the RMS Olympic. Robert met the train with the Rover 14 at Corfe Castle station. Barnaby had stayed in London to watch the rehearsals of Christopher Marlowe’s new musical that was to run concurrently at Drury Lane with A Walk in the Woods at the Aldwych. For the first time, Brett Kentrich was not the leading lady of a Christopher Marlowe musical. In July, ten months after Harry Brigandshaw’s aircraft disappeared, she had married Christopher Marlowe in a lavish wedding at St Giles church in Ashtead, Surrey. She was to continue in the female lead of A Walk in the Woods at the Aldwych.

  Barnaby had spent a day in London showing Hank Curley the sights and starting the process by warning the American to watch out for the family ghosts at Purbeck Manor, telling him the place was haunted. Only then had he put him on the train for Corfe Castle with his luggage.

  While waiting for the train, Robert talked to Pringle the stationmaster.

  “How’s Mrs P, Pringle?”