Some of the guests were subdued. Melanie Pickering was in shock – never in her life had she seen such a house, except on television, when she’d thought it was a fiction, less real than Southfork. She’d never believed there could be such a place and couldn’t imagine, now, how anyone could live there. Vanessa was equally amazed, though enjoying it all and flirting with Sam Anstruther, next to her.
A portrait of Sir Bernard Fellows and his wife hung on the wall behind Nigel. In it Sir Bernard, thirty-five, and recently married to Lady Mary, stood beside his young wife whose loose dress barely concealed the bump made by their coming first son. The baronet appeared manly and at ease, in favourite grey trousers and sports jacket, his large hand lightly on Lady Mary’s slender shoulder. Vanessa, glancing from the portrait to Lady Mary, sitting on her son’s right, quietly making sure that vegetables, in rose-patterned tureens, were positioned properly on the table, that glasses were filled and plates reached the right recipients, thought that she had not changed greatly. She still had the same erect carriage, had gained no weight though her fine complexion was more lined. Her colouring, like her fair hair, had faded, but the kind of alterations Vanessa saw in women in Kenton – increasing weight, varicose veins and the counterbalancing change of hair colour to a brighter shade of black, blonde or red – were all lacking in Lady Mary.
Earlier Juliet had explained something about where they were going. ‘Bernard Fellows is away – he often is – in the West Indies,’ she’d told Vanessa. ‘He’s got property interests there. He leaves the day-to-day running of the Samco Corporation to his son Nigel. His wife, Lady Mary, is what they call “the real thing”, meaning that her family have been noblemen and women since medieval times—’
‘Robber barons,’ interjected Howard.
‘The Fellowses,’ Juliet continued, ignoring him, ‘began a lot later—’
‘Got rich a lot later,’ Howard again interrupted. ‘All families began at the same time, I suppose.’
Juliet went on, ‘They were farmers in Yorkshire until about the end of the eighteenth century when one of them went into shipping in Liverpool and made a fortune. The children mostly married into the aristocracy but they went on making a lot of money from ships and shipping up to fairly recent times. They diversified and, as shipping declined, the other interests turned into Samco, which is a vast group of companies—’
‘My uncle worked at Prosser and Fellows shipyard till they closed down. Then he never had another job for fifteen years,’ Melanie butted in.
‘Anyway,’ Juliet concluded, ‘don’t be nervous of Lady Mary. She’s very nice. Nigel’s inclined to shout a bit but his heart’s in the right place.’
‘Don’t let them intimidate you,’ added Howard. ‘If you feel worried by the silver knives and forks and the paintings on the wall, just remember both those families earned their money by taking away other people’s. As soon as Melanie’s uncle was no good to them, they dumped him on the scrapheap. That shipping company in the late eighteenth century,’ he told Vanessa, ‘was known as the Fellows Line. For many years they sent cannons and Bibles to Africa and brought in sugar and tobacco from the West Indies. The middle part of the voyage was the infamous middle passage—’
‘Did that at school,’ Vanessa said swiftly.
‘I’m glad to hear someone did,’ Howard said.
‘Trade goods to Africa,’ recited Vanessa. ‘Slaves to the West Indies. Sugar, bananas, cotton back to England. A black kid beat me up for it,’ she added. ‘I told him it wasn’t my fault but he wasn’t listening. I suppose it was their fault, over there,’ she said, nodding in the direction of Durham House. ‘Pity they weren’t there, so he had to pick on me.’
‘That’s the way it goes,’ Howard pointed out.
‘It was all a long time ago,’ said Juliet. ‘And I shouldn’t mention it while you’re there.’ She added, ‘Mary’s a good friend of mine.’ Then she left the long table where they were having breakfast at Froggett’s and picked up a brush from the large dresser. Her palette was placed tidily beside it. She held it in her other hand, stepped back from her easel, which was at the back of the room, and contemplated the picture of two girls she was painting.
‘It might be better to get some really decent heating in the studio,’ Annie told her father. ‘Then Mother wouldn’t have to paint in the kitchen in the winter.’
‘The wiring wouldn’t stand it,’ Howard Browning remarked comfortably. ‘Anyway, she says she doesn’t mind. It’s less lonely in the kitchen.’
Annie shook her head.
‘You’ll get a good lunch tomorrow,’ he went on. ‘Nigel killed a bullock a few weeks ago – that’s what you’ll be eating.’
Now Melanie sat at the table at Durham House, stiff and still, hardly daring to take up a knife or fork until she saw Amanda Head do it first, and thinking about tall, handsome Nigel Fellows actually killing a cow. Did he do it with the same knife as he’d carved with? she wondered. Probably not. There was probably another, bigger one, or an axe. Or perhaps they gave it an injection while it wasn’t looking, as with dogs and cats. She was about to mention this to her neighbour and glanced at her sideways, but Amanda, cutting up meat and forking it into her mouth, was hunched over her plate and didn’t seem to want to talk. She had lovely fair hair but her dress was out of date, thought Melanie, and she’d have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the sulky look on her face.
Further down the table Annie was surprised to feel Charles Head’s hand on her thigh and sat still, imagining it to be an accident. Her gaze caught that of Matilda Head, Charles’s wife, sitting opposite.
‘We must take the girls out to see the vixen and her cubs after lunch,’ Lady Mary said.
‘That would be very nice,’ Charles Head said. ‘I’d enjoy coming myself but I think Nigel and I will have to shut ourselves up for an hour or so to discuss business.’
As he had not removed his hand from Annie’s thigh she picked it up and dropped it. She was horrified that as she did so he managed to give her fingers a squeeze.
‘Yes. I’ve got to drag him off,’ Nigel said, carving the last slice for his own plate and sitting down, the joint having been promptly taken away by the waiting housekeeper and placed on a sideboard.
‘Perhaps when you’ve finished your discussion?’ said Lady Mary.
Charles shook his head and as he did so Annie felt the hand back on her thigh. ‘We must start back to London fairly early,’ he said. ‘Got to be back by Amanda’s bedtime – to be exact, in time for her French lesson, then bedtime—’ His mouth opened slightly as Annie again removed his hand, and gave him a swift kick on the ankle. He drank from his wine glass and continued, ‘Matilda’s all for education, though she never had much herself.’
‘I was too dim,’ agreed Matilda Head, a glowing blonde in a purple twinset. ‘But I’d love to see Amanda do well.’
Amanda hunched herself even further over the table. She carefully put her knife and fork together on the plate. Melanie quickly did the same.
‘I was dim,’ said Jasmine cheerfully from beside her husband. ‘Annie wasn’t, though. The teachers all used to threaten me with her and say I couldn’t be trying. It was no fun.’
‘Never mind, Jas,’ Annie said. ‘I’ll write to the school magazine and tell them I’m running a snack bar in South London.’
‘Are you enjoying it?’ asked Nigel. ‘Isn’t there something better you could do?’
‘I like it,’ said Annie. ‘And Vanessa and I have plans to expand – I think we can start delivering sandwiches and fruit to offices and workplaces generally, go in for healthier fillings, good home-made soups. We might get some trade from the sports centre and possibly other contracts.’
‘You’ve no business training?’ Charles glanced at her sideways. He had a large nose, no chin and a great deal of honey-coloured hair. His eyes were small, blue and unfriendly. He hadn’t appreciated the kick on the ankle, Annie deduced.
‘No. None at all. I’ve re
ad about most of Britain’s successful businessmen being totally untrained, though. I’m comforted by that. But I must admit it’s nerve-racking.’ Annie did not wish to challenge this man whose anger, she felt, was not very far below the surface. ‘I expect you have business school training?’
‘Harvard,’ said Nigel. ‘Thank goodness he has – I’ve no academic experience myself. Didn’t even do very well at school.’
Further up the table Vanessa looked up at Sam Anstruther from her big, blue eyes. Enjoying the attention, Sam explained how temperature and humidity had to be carefully controlled to preserve valuable books and manuscripts. ‘A city like New York has big variations in heat and humidity – more than over here, I guess,’ he said.
‘I’ve a cousin in New York,’ volunteered Vanessa. ‘He’s a poet. Maybe you’ve got some of his books in your store. Dickie Barton, that’s his name.’
‘Richard Barton, would that be?’ Sam opened his eyes wider. ‘Sure – I’ve heard of him. Yeah, that’s right. I’d heard he came from a poor background in London.’
‘Dunno about the “poor”,’ Vanessa said. ‘His family always had more than ours and we’re not poor, as such. Well – maybe by your standards – but Dickie was the only one so he always got the best. They really worried about his education. Course, that wouldn’t have helped me much. I was always dim at school.’
‘The University of Life is one that most of us academic people could never get into, that’s what I’ve always thought,’ Sam said.
‘Well, that’s the only one I could get into,’ Vanessa told him cheerfully.
‘Nigel once had a most impressive school report,’ commented Lady Mary. ‘I could scarcely believe it when the Chaplain wrote of the spiritual progress he appeared to have made that term, his intelligent work in the confirmation class and regular attendance at non-obligatory services in chapel—’
‘I was keeping the Chaplain happy,’ Nigel said. ‘In fact I had a stray dog in the crypt. It was an elaborate system – early Communion, then round the back, through the little door at the side and down into the crypt – breakfast and early morning walk. During the day I’d nip in with my lunch in a hankie, another walk and a quick pray. Then Evensong – same story. I was hanging around the chapel all day long. Then they found the dog and religion went out of the window.’
‘How old were you?’ asked Annie.
‘Nine or ten,’ Nigel told her.
‘And what happened to the dog?’ asked Charles Head.
‘I never found out,’ said Nigel. ‘I couldn’t ask – they didn’t know I was responsible. Pity – if I could have hung on a little longer I could have smuggled him back here in the holidays.’
‘Tough luck,’ said Charles Head. He turned to Annie again and asked, ‘So – what’s your ambition? To own a chain of South London snack bars?’ His tone was not pleasant.
‘Why not?’ she said and had to put up with a nasty glare in return.
Charles beamed at his wife, ‘There sits a woman,’ he said, ‘who has never in her life wanted to own a chain of snack bars. She’d spend the profits, though, gladly. That’s to say if there are any,’ he said returning his gaze to Annie. ‘Tell me, honestly, would you advise me to invest Samco’s money in the venture – make a bid for the company, perhaps? How about that, Nigel, a takeover bid for Annie’s snack bar?’
Annie gave Charles a stony look. Her eye caught that of Max Craig, who sat next to Matilda Head. He was a pale and chubby late middle-aged man with brown eyes and a balding head. He had not accepted any beef, but had made his meal of the vegetables accompanying it. He was drinking only water and had not tried to talk to Matilda, on one side of him, or her daughter, on the other. His eyes were remote as if, Annie thought, he had some sorrow, perhaps known to the others, for they were making no attempt to talk to him. He looked back at her steadily.
Annie glanced past his shoulder and stared out over the terrace and down the lawn to the trees which marked the end of the garden, their trunks masked by light mist rising from the ground. In the distance Annie could see a motionless figure. She frowned, trying to remember something. She looked again; the figure seemed to be advancing. Whoever it was had been first by the lake beyond the trees and was now coming slowly up to the house.
Nigel, sensitive to what was happening on his land, caught Annie’s gaze, and said loudly. ‘Funny – who’s that?’ He called down the table, ‘Adam – somebody’s down by the lake. Any idea who it is? Should he be there?’
Adam peered across the table, past Max Craig. ‘Hard to see. Doesn’t look like one of ours. Shouldn’t be anyone there anyway. I’ll go and take a look.’
‘Finish your lunch,’ ordered Nigel. ‘He seems to be coming up here anyway.’
‘In that case I feel even more inclined to take a look,’ said Adam Cranley.
Annie was aware that Lady Mary’s face opposite her, which was perfectly composed, had an air of tension about it.
‘I do think you should be allowed to finish your lunch,’ said Lady Mary but Adam stood up, saying, ‘Best to go now, I think.’
Jasmine covered the silence by saying, ‘Adam’s paranoid about these animal rights people. He’s afraid they’ll sneak in and release birds from coops, stretch wires across ditches, trail smelly fish about and so forth.’
Annie glanced at her. Jasmine had, so to speak, gone over to the other side since her marriage. In her youth she’d been happy to go about with their father, pushing holes in fences built by landowners across public rights of way and had bravely stood beside him as he told thirty angry huntsmen and women, surrounded by a pack of baying hounds, that they couldn’t ride up the bank and through the orchard at Froggett’s in pursuit of a fox. Now she was all for the rights of the landowner, particularly her husband, to hunt, shoot and fish as he liked on his own land or, in the case of hunting, on other people’s land as well.
That, reflected Annie, wasn’t the only Browning principle which had bitten the dust since Jasmine had married Nigel five years before. The Brownings believed in art, socialism, plain living and high thinking. Jasmine now didn’t give a hoot for art unless it was connected with the saleroom or hung on her own walls. She wouldn’t give even one cheer for democracy and socialism and, as for plain living and high thinking, at the Fellowses’ many houses – Durham House itself, the big London house in Bedford Square, the Kensington mews house – plain thinking and high living were the order of the day and that was how Jasmine liked it. Even for a rich man Nigel Fellows lived high – he bought his wife the most expensive jewellery, even though there was much family jewellery available if she wanted to deck herself out: the yearly grocery bill alone would have kept the average family going for years; the couple took many holidays of the most luxurious kind.
Annie wasn’t particularly surprised by this reversal in her sister, although her parents were. Even in her teens Jasmine had shown signs of being more luxury-loving than was considered appropriate at home. At sixteen she’d spent her summer holidays in the petfood factory at Cottersley working on a machine which stuck labels on cans. With the money she earned she had bought a white dressing table with a triple mirror, cheap gilded knobs and a slide-out make-up tray. She’d had this put in her room, where it didn’t go well with the sprigged wallpaper, plain woven curtains and faded Turkey rug. No comment had been made about this by her parents but they all knew that Jasmine’s dressing table was in the nature of a criticism of her home life. Annie thought she must be a throwback to some ancestress a hundred years ago who had liked a good hot dinner, plenty of gilt or pearl buttons on her dresses, a tune you could hum or whistle and a jolly good laugh. And that person, reflected Annie, had probably been thrown out of the family by earlier Brownings and Cunninghams wearing flowing Liberty dresses and loose cravats, ancestors who furnished their houses with glum furniture by William Morris and attended Fabian Society lectures. She herself had no opinion about Jasmine’s life-style, although she thought there might be a bill to be paid
later for all the fun and luxury. In fact Annie wondered if Jasmine hadn’t hinted at the kind of bill she might be expecting as they’d crossed the fields towards Durham House earlier on. Walking along in her green wellingtons Jasmine had said rather gloomily, ‘They’re all looking to me to produce a son and heir. Five years and no result, that’s beginning to be the message, though everyone’s too polite to say so. I think they’re wondering if I’m sterile – Nigel isn’t suspected. That isn’t the way it works. I don’t really fancy a baby but I suppose I’ve got to do it. Of course, the joke is that Nige isn’t the heir to the title or the land, most of it, anyway. If only Sim would turn up and get married I’d be off the hook.’
She referred to Simon Fellows, Nigel’s elder brother. ‘Haven’t they tracked him down, yet?’ asked Annie.
‘No. They’ve got people looking for him in all the likely and unlikely countries of the world. Sometimes they get a rumour there’s an Englishman mouldering in some gaol in Manaos or Macao or somewhere like that, but it’s never Sim. That’s why Lady Mary’s so sad, of course, though she hides it. Never speaks about it but she’s afraid all the time that he’s dead. It’s awful for everybody and I suppose I’ll have to have the damn baby soon.’ She paused, opening the gate to the grounds of Durham House with a practised hand, muttering, ‘Could be easier said than done, though.’ She then shepherded Vanessa and Melanie, who had been walking behind, through the gate and up the path to the house, so Annie had no chance to ask her what she meant by the last remark.
The invitation to lunch had been delivered by Lady Mary and Jasmine, who had ridden over to Froggett’s before breakfast. This habit of theirs upset Howard, who got up early to feed the hens and goats and have the fresh morning to himself. Juliet also disliked it, being a late-night painter and, in the mornings, a determined bohemian slugabed. She did her best work at night, she claimed, and objected to Lady Mary’s habit of dropping by in jodhpurs and a bowler hat while she was asleep or, at best, drinking tea in bed.
In Search of Love, Money & Revenge Page 10