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  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Chetton Hall

  Chapter 2: The Countess’s Mile

  Chapter 3: Sir Philip’s Staircase

  Chapter 4: Daintree Manor

  Chapter 5: The Blenheim Wing

  Chapter 6: The Great Hall

  Chapter 7: The Green Drawing-Room

  Chapter 8: The Pink Damask Room

  Chapter 9: The Bedrooms

  Chapter 10: The Clock Room

  Chapter 11: The House of Commons

  Chapter 12: Parson’s Field

  Chapter 13: Brycenorton Towers

  Chapter 14: The Dutch Garden

  Chapter 15: The Dining-Room

  Chapter 16: The Courtyard

  CHAPTER 1

  CHETTON HALL

  Chetton Hall, that splendid monument of Jacobean domestic architecture, lay basking in the early evening sun. The coolest place was under the elms of the Countess’s Mile, where the wife of the fourth Earl had dallied on horseback with her groom, Richard Mont. Tiny breezes from the river drifted over Long Meadow, where the famous herd of Herefords, established by the sixth Earl, ‘Farmer Jack’, warmed their velvety hides and moaned contentedly. The lovers from Chetton Lacey who lay on the haystack in Parson’s Field felt the last ripples of the breeze on their burning flesh, and they too moaned in pleasure. But the breeze petered out long before it could reach the environs of the great house. Not a breath fanned the Dutch Garden, which looked frizzled and ill-cared-for. The great stone balustrade overlooking the fountain might, it seemed, have burned at a touch, and the steps leading down from it sent up a distorting curtain of heat haze. Only the fountain, where Charles James Fox had bathed when drunk, seemed to be actively enjoying the June warmth, dancing hectically in the sun’s rays and scattering an ecstasy of shimmering light.

  But the most splendid triumph of the sun was on the house itself. To turn from the fountain to the West Front was to be confronted with liquid gold. All the windows swam in light, and swayed like waters in a bay, flowing round the baroque splendours of the Queen’s Entrance, through which Anne of Denmark passed on her progress to the West Country. Behind the Front, cooler as was fitting, lay the massive Blenheim Wing, added by the first Earl in the years after that battle, in which he had fought. But it was the glorious central block, begun in 1610 by Sir Philip Spender, the King’s Secretary of Monopolies, that greeted the sun as an equal, confident in its beauty as any king’s favourite, monumentally self-possessed, arrogant in the knowledge of what it had been, what it was, and what it always would be.

  In the Green Drawing-Room the twelfth Earl of Ellesmere addressed his Countess.

  ‘Would you like another cup of tea, Elsie? I think I can squeeze one from the pot.’

  The Countess considered, her mouth set in a determined droop of discontent.

  ‘No-ow. It’ll only be stone cold. Practically cold anyway, once you’ve trailed it through all them bleeding corridors.’

  The Earl, a man of congenital good-nature and optimism, chuckled.

  ‘You’re not far out. I don’t know how they stood it here: nothing but half-cold tea and half-cold dinners. It’s not what I’d call a life of privilege.’

  ‘If that’s privilege, give me Clapham any day,’ agreed the Countess.

  ‘Makes you think how lucky we’ve been, eh, Elsie?’ said the Earl, settling his comfortable girth back in the green and gilt sofa and gazing around him with a good-humoured expression. ‘Our own home, nearly paid for, everything just as we like it, neat and ship-shape and cosy as a Christmas card . . . I don’t think this place could ever be cosy, do you, Elsie?’

  ‘Cosy?’ said the Countess, gazing disparagingly round the long and elegant drawing-room, designed and furnished for the third Earl by James Wyatt (who had seduced his Countess the while). She eyed gloomily the straight-backed green silk sofas and chairs, the stucco reliefs, the ormolu clock, the classic mantel. She shook her head gloomily.

  ‘Never in a million years. I can’t think why they put up with it, your lot. Can’t have been much like you, Perce. You always did hate a draught. But they existed in this draughty old barn, year in, year out. Nasty great hole. Cold as sin, even with the sun blazing away outside like now. Miles to walk, even if you only want to spend a penny. Nearest neighbour three miles or more away. Brrr. Gives me the shivers just to think of living here much longer.’

  The Earl nodded, and drained his cup.

  ‘Right you are, as usual, Elsie. If I want to walk miles I’d rather do it on Clapham Common.’

  He placed his hand over the olive-green cardigan that covered his substantial tummy and gazed around him with unabated good humour. His face took on that reflective expression well-known to regular customers at the Clapham iron-monger’s where he had worked prior to being summoned to his high destiny—for he was a man whose homely philosophizing was appreciated in his own circle, where they had an old-fashioned liking for someone who could voice what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.

  ‘From now on, Elsie, this is going to make us count our blessings. Look on the bright side. Not take things for granted. We’re going to appreciate having had to go through all this when we get home.’

  ‘When we get home,’ repeated the Countess, whose expression had taken on new shades of lugubrious foreboding. She was well known in Haig Street, Clapham, as the Cassandra of the locality, with a relish for dissecting present discontents and a gift for the accurate prediction of woes to come. Few went to the bad in Haig Street, Clapham, without their downward path having been mapped out in advance by Elsie Spender. ‘When’s the operative word. It’s been—what?—six weeks already, and they’ve been the longest six weeks of my life. I want to see an end to it, Perce.’

  ‘I’ll talk to old Lillywaite tomorrow,’ said the Earl. ‘Give him an ultimatum.’

  ‘Hmmm. You’ll be lucky if you get a straight answer out of him. You know lawyers. I’m telling you, Perce, I’m not spending a winter in this great barn, not for all the tea in China. I’d have gone home long ago except it’d have meant leaving you here on your own. Two peas rattling around is bad enough, but one would have been ridiculous. You’d have gone off your rocker.’

  The Earl looked at her with genuine, ripe affection.

  ‘That’s my Elsie. Best wife a man ever had. Anyway, you can’t go now. Not with the kids and the grandchildren coming. It’s going to be the birthday party of a lifetime, and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. It’ll be a joy just to see their faces when they clap eyes on this place. Their eyes will pop—eh, Elsie?’

  Chuckling again, the Earl of Ellesmere ambled over to the tall windows that dominated the west wall of the drawing-room.

  ‘Not to mention when they see the grounds,’ he added. ‘Some garden, eh?’

  He gazed with some complacency over his domain, over the formal gardens, the balustrade and steps leading down to the fountain, over the elegant avenue of trees and on to the meadows and fields beyond, stretching almost to the horizon. Perhaps he felt, in the pit of his stomach, some slight twinge that told him that to be master of Chetton was something.

  ‘One thing about this place,’ he said at last. ‘The kiddies will have plenty of room to play about.’

  The Countess had shifted her motherly bulk from her chair, and now came over to join him companionably by the window. But she was not a woman who allowe
d her disposition to be lightened by her husband’s sunnier one. She viewed the rolling prospect without favour.

  ‘Countryside!’ she said, witheringly. ‘I’ve always hated the countryside. I haven’t said so because it doesn’t do, but I have. I’ve always hated picnics: nothing but wasps and ants and creepy-crawlies. Of course the Common is different, because there’s always people around. Country is miles and miles of nothing, with cows on it. I hate cows. And I’m not having the kiddies playing with them cows over there.’

  ‘Trust Dixie for that,’ said the Earl. ‘She’ll see they don’t go anywhere near.’

  At the mention of her daughter-in-law the Countess’s lugubrious countenance became twisted into a moue of distaste.

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said, gazing ahead with vatic foreboding. ‘I don’t think you’re going to impress Dixie with this place, Perce. It’s not her style at all. Remember her in the Brighton Pavilion?’

  The Earl gave a reminiscent laugh.

  ‘Don’t I ever! Came on a bit strong, I must admit. Embarrassing. Still, it was only her fun.’

  ‘Fun! Dixie doesn’t have an ounce of fun in her.’

  ‘Anyway, you could be wrong about Dixie. You never can tell which way she will jump. She might be tickled pink with this place.’

  ‘That’d be a laugh. Can you imagine Dixie queening it here, Perce? Hobnobbing with the gentry? If she gets ideas of anything like that she can give them up sharpish. I don’t like to say this about my own daughter-in-law, but Dixie is common. Common as dirt. She’s worse: she’s blatant.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ admitted the Earl. ‘I have to admit that I prefer Dixie in small doses, though the kiddies are lovely kiddies, and always welcome. Still, Dixie won’t worry us this weekend. There’ll be all the others, and plenty of space to get away from her in, and the birthday party Saturday—we’ll have too much to do to get annoyed by Dixie.’

  ‘Dixie’ll make herself felt.’

  ‘Only if you let her, and get het up by her. Still, I admit it’s a pity Phil couldn’t be with her. Phil always seemed to dilute her, somehow.’

  ‘He’ll be out in three weeks,’ said the Countess. ‘It’s something that she’ll be visiting him tomorrow. He’s had precious few visits from her while he’s been in, that I do know. It’ll probably put her in a foul mood. Those poor little mites . . .’

  Her face softened at the thought of her grandchildren. Like most grandparents, she indulged the smallest ones of her family, the more so as she very seldom saw them.

  ‘They need their dad,’ agreed the Earl. ‘It’s been hard for them, him not being there. Still, one thing you’ve got to hand to Dixie; they’re well-behaved.’

  ‘Frightened out of their wits, more like.’

  ‘No: be fair, Elsie. There’s not many parents these days have the control over their kids that Dixie has.’

  ‘Control’s one thing, but I for one don’t like to see kids too terrified to say a word when their mother’s around. It’s not natural. I know our kids weren’t brought up like that.’

  In silence they continued to gaze over the lustrous green and golden landscape, but their minds were far away from cows or haystacks. The thoughts of both of them were on their children and grandchildren, most of whom would be arriving the next day to celebrate the Earl’s sixtieth birthday, his first in the state to which he had been called. Both of them were looking forward to the visit, as a relief from the grandiose monotony of Chetton Hall. But at the backs of their minds gnawings of doubt and uncertainty persisted. The Earl shifted from foot to foot, uneasily.

  ‘It’s a pity about Phil,’ he said finally.

  As always when the subject of her favourite child came up, the Countess raised her defensive prickles. Her mouth became set in a firm line.

  ‘Phil was unlucky,’ she pronounced. ‘I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If there’s any pity about Phil, it’s that he married that Dixie. After they’d waited so long, too. You can dig a grave, but you don’t have to jump straight into it yourself. But he’s a good boy, Phil.’

  ‘Easy-going,’ agreed the Earl placatingly. ‘Takes life as it comes. Never one to make trouble. Too much so, sometimes. That’s how a type like Dixie can get the upper hand. But he’s popular, that nobody can deny. I bet he’s well liked where he is. And you could say the same about Trevor, in a way.’

  ‘Ye-e-es,’ said the Countess, more dubiously. ‘In a different sort of way.’

  Their eyes were taking in the trees of the Countess’s Mile, their leaves just beginning to lose the brilliant green of spring, but their minds were contemplating the figure of their younger son.

  ‘If anybody deserved to go to gaol it’s Trevor,’ said the Earl, without rancour. ‘By gum!—he sails close to the wind sometimes. The sums he’s had off the social security people—just lies barefaced and they believe him.’

  ‘I hate to think what would happen if full employment came back,’ said the Countess. ‘He wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Not that he doesn’t make money, now and then. But I wouldn’t call what he does work.’

  ‘More like a sideline. To the social security.’

  ‘It’s embarrassing,’ protested the Countess. ‘Downright embarrassing. I wouldn’t know where to look if the neighbourhood found out.’

  ‘You can bet your bottom dollar they know,’ said her husband. ‘Trevor’s name cropped up in the Prince Leopold just a day or two before all this landed on our plates, and old Fred Jarvis winked at me and nudged me in the ribs. Cheeky old sod! He’s just the sort to go to these cinema clubs where they show that kind of stuff. You can bank on old Fred having put it all around Clapham by now.’

  The Countess sighed.

  ‘I don’t know how I’ll look the neighbours in the face, though Trevor doesn’t seem to have any sense of shame. And this girl he’s bringing with him, this Michele: she must be a right one if she appears in those pictures. First Prince Andrew, now our Trevor . . . She looked like the sort with only one thing on her mind.’

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘Number one. And willing to use whatever she’s got to advance it. Bloody cheek, really, isn’t it, Trevor inviting her along without so much as a by-your-leave, when we’d only met the girl for five minutes. Not to mention Dixie calmly announcing that she’d bring Chokey along.’

  ‘That’s different, Elsie. Chokey’ll have been visiting Phil. That’ll buck him up no end. They’re pals.’

  ‘Funny sort of pal. It was Chokey landed him in.’

  ‘Now that’s nonsense, Elsie. I know that’s not how Phil sees it, and Chokey’ll always be welcome as Phil’s friend. It’s not as though we haven’t got room. We could lodge the whole Eighth Army here and there’d still be beds to spare. At least Joan and Digby won’t be bringing anyone along with them.’

  ‘No,’ admitted the Countess. ‘That wouldn’t be Joan’s way at all.’

  ‘There’s one of our children we don’t have to make apologies for,’ said the Earl, with a somewhat insecure heartiness. ‘Hard little worker. Really got ahead. Set herself a goal, and achieved it. They’re a lovely young couple.’

  There was silence in the Green Drawing-Room.

  ‘It’s funny,’ said the Countess at last, ‘but I could never really take to our Joanie. I tried, but I couldn’t. They say it’s sometimes like that with mother and daughter. I don’t know if it was me or her, but I think it was her. There’s something . . . I dunno . . . petty about her. Something mean-minded.’

  The Earl, who was a kind-hearted man and an affectionate father, felt impelled to enter a protest.

  ‘Come off it, Mother: Joan’s just got her standards.’

  ‘Oh yes—and doesn’t she let everyone know it. I get fed up with her bleeding standards. Do you know, the last time I visited her—by invitation, as usual!—I was coming home on the bus, and there were these two women behind me, talking about one of the teachers at the local Junior School, and how fussy she was, and how she went on an
d on about the kiddies washing their hands after they’d been to the lav. And I sat there thinking: I bet that’s our Joan. And it was! They said her name: Mrs Ferguson, they said. I could have sunk through the floor! Isn’t that just like our Joan, getting all het up about a little thing like that?’

  ‘She always was a clean little girl, I remember,’ said the Earl. ‘Fastidious, like.’

  ‘You could call it that. Fussy’s my word for it. She didn’t get it from me. I’m not pernickety, and I’m not houseproud. She drives me up the wall the way she goes on when she comes round to us.’

  The Countess turned from the window, and for the first time she surveyed the Green Drawing-Room with something approaching satisfaction.

  ‘She’ll have her work cut out if she’s going to draw her finger along all the dust there is in this mauso-bloody-leum. I’ll just hand her a duster and I’ll say: “You get to it, my girl, and I’ll see you next Christmas twelvemonth.” ’

  ‘She does overdo it,’ admitted the Earl, grinning at his wife’s retreating back as she waddled back to the sofa and took up her knitting. ‘And Digby is a bit the same. Neat. Precise. They’re well matched, really. You can’t imagine Digby without a tie on or a handkerchief in his top pocket, any more than you can imagine Joanie going round with her hair in curlers. Still, you’ve got to remember his job. You have to keep up a good appearance in the insurance business.’

  ‘You don’t have to be prissy. And I’d call Digby prissy.’

  The Earl turned back to the window, and gazed once more at the cows, flicking their tails at the flies in the Long Meadow.

  ‘You don’t think we went wrong with our kids somewhere, do you, Elsie?’ asked the Earl.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE COUNTESS’S MILE

  If the twelfth Earl of Ellesmere ever felt a sense of history and of his place in it, it was not as a rule in the magnificent residence of his family, whose splendour overawed him and whose distances tired him. It came to him, if at all, out of doors, perhaps when surveying the acre upon acre of his fiefdom, perhaps when walking in the cool reaches of the Countess’s Mile. Sometimes in the early morning, when he had made a pot of tea for himself and his wife, had trailed it from the servants’ hall, down corridors endlessly winding, across the Great Entrance Hall, up Sir Philip’s Staircase, and down the narrow domestics’ passage that led him finally to the State Bedroom—after all this (which was a continuation of a duty regularly undertaken at Clapham, where it involved perhaps one-tenth of the labour) he would often calm his nerves with a stroll in the morning cool. And along the Countess’s Mile he would sometimes experience some lift of the soul, some message from the ethos of the place, that would make him pause in his track, put his hand on the trunk of an elm, gaze through the trees and across the Long Meadow towards Chetton Lacey, and say to himself: