A Charitable Body Read online

  “You don’t have respect for your great leader?”

  “On the contrary, I have a great respect for him. He’s ‘passing honest’ by the standards of his kind. If you stop him in his tracks, he accepts he’s been checkmated and he goes away and thinks up something else. Most of his tricks are either well-known or easily perceived with the naked eye.”

  “The thing I ask myself,” said Felicity, “is ‘What is the motivation?’ People tell me what he has done, but they never tell me why he has done it.”

  “Remember,” said Ben Hooley, becoming serious, “he isn’t just a distinguished outsider—a distinguished museum person, though he is that—called in to midwife a new Trust through its infancy. He’s a member of the family—maybe that should be plural, families—who owned the house. Perhaps he sees this as a kind of Restoration: King Charles the Second returning to his own country to take up the reins of power again. At any rate if the idea gets around that he is the head of the family, that he is the resident of Walbrook Manor, that the board is primarily a rubber stamp for his decisions—”

  “He won’t go round denying it.”

  “Exactly. Whoops! Here we go.”

  Sir Stafford had been knocking rather feebly on the table in front of him. He somehow didn’t look like a conspirator. Little knots of board members began drifting to their places where their piles of papers had been set out. Sir Stafford began to speak—his voice more powerful than his knocking.

  “We must get on. . . . There’s plenty to do, but first of all, let me welcome two new members. Felicity Peace is a published novelist and a literary scholar with several learned papers to her name, on Christopher Isherwood and Elizabeth Taylor—I presume that is not the well-known one but the much-praised novelist who is no longer with us. Let me also welcome Mary-Elizabeth Fiennes, Rupert’s . . . er, cousin, and someone you all know because she is absolutely the expert on the house which is at the heart of the Trust, and the family, which is hardly less important.”

  Felicity looked at Mary-Elizabeth. She saw a smallish woman, probably into her seventies, taking off her rimless spectacles and looking around the room with a nervous smile on her face. Two or three decades ago a man might have said “typical brown owl,” but Felicity disliked generalizations designed to malign by ridicule. She quite liked what she saw.

  “Thank you very much,” Mary-Elizabeth said. “I don’t know how I am to live up to that. But I do admit to being fascinated by the house, and also the family. But we are all interested in our families, aren’t we?”

  I’m not, thought Felicity. But I suppose everyone would be shocked if I said it out loud.

  “I just know that when I have a problem,” said Sir Stafford, “Mary-Elizabeth is the person I go to. Now, we have a crowded morning of discussion, and I have another matter, newly come up, to add to the Any Other Business agenda, so if we can make a start . . .”

  “Mr. Chairman,” said Felicity, “if this new matter is coming up towards the end of the meeting, could we know what it is now, and have any papers associated with it, so that we can read them in the coffee break?”

  Sir Stafford looked surprised and perhaps a little obstinate. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary. The item is not of major importance. Now, first item, minutes of the last meeting—”

  “Mr. Chairman,” said Ben Hooley, waving a fist, “I’d like to associate myself with Mrs. Peace’s suggestion. If we can’t have what little advance notice there can be now, I’d like my objection to be recorded in the minutes.”

  “Mine too,” said Felicity.

  “Mr. Gannett is taking the minutes. He will no doubt notice your objection and suggestion, and my reply. That’s the way we do things here. Now, in the minutes of the last meeting, that of November twelfth of last year . . .”

  Felicity sat biting her lip, resenting the way he had treated her—as if she were a clueless schoolgirl who had no idea how meetings should be conducted. They trudged through the minutes pointing out every misplaced inverted comma, every obvious typo, struggling manfully and womanfully over the smallest inconsistency. They went on to report progress on all matters that would mark the first proper opening of the house as a museum and exhibition gallery. Bookings for the education program were most encouraging, all the exhibits and photographs for the First World War exhibition now called Life in the Trenches had arrived, and Wes Gannett reported on his efforts to install them in time for the opening, and on the recruitment of the volunteer staff to ensure the safety both of the items on loan to the exhibition and the pictures and furniture that belonged to the house. The information purveyed to the board got more and more trivial, and the likelihood of the meeting being short enough to end before lunch became more and more unlikely. Finally they got to Any Other Business.

  “Ah, yes, this is that little matter I mentioned,” said Sir Stafford, riffling idly through some sheets of paper he had retrieved from his files. “It is the matter of Dr. Turnbull, who was voted onto the board several months ago—I think in July of last year. Most of you will have been here then . . .”

  He looked around the little group, and some nodded like glove puppets.

  “She’s not here today,” Ben Hooley pointed out.

  “No—and that is rather the point. This is the third meeting in a row Dr. Turnbull has missed. She has sent the usual forms of excuse, but the truth is she has missed every chance to take up her seat with us and to become au fait with what we are doing. The latest letter pleads silver-wedding celebrations involving a cousin and his wife and is one of Dr. Turnbull’s ‘long-standing commitments.’ I should have thought we were qualified for her attention under the same heading. I have tried to set up a meeting with her, but to no avail. The fact is we have put on the board someone whom nobody knows—is that right?” Sir Stafford looked around the table.

  “I think I’ve met her,” said Ben Hooley. “Passing handshake is all.”

  “She is one of my patients,” said a fresh-faced man whom Felicity had identified as Dr. Cullingworth. “She’s never ill. Best kind of patient: just a number with nothing wrong with her. A statistic only.”

  “This all does underline what I’ve said,” said Sir Stafford. “We have put on the board someone whom nobody knows, and who knows none of us. I fear the fault is primarily mine, and I do, naturally, apologize for recommending the lady. I suggest we remove her quietly and write suggesting that we need active members of the board, and we recommend that she postpone joining up until her work and private life allow her time to take a full part in our decision-making processes.”

  “But what if she doesn’t accept your suggestion and decides to remain a member?” demanded Janet Porritt. “As far as I can see, that is her decision, not ours. We must be more careful in the future.”

  “In the Charity Commission’s booklet there are situations gone into that might be used if it was thought—” began Maya Tyndale. But she had awoken dim memories in Sir Stafford, who now began rummaging in his papers and finally came up with a green booklet, which he waved, crowing.

  “Here it is. ‘If he or she is absent for all meetings held over a period of six months, his or her membership can be declared invalid—’ Got her! . . . Sorry, that was unsympathetic. But we can activate this provision and get ourselves a more useful member.”

  “Hmmm,” said Ben Hooley. “Shouldn’t be difficult. Her expertise is history with particular emphasis on the twentieth century, as I vaguely recall. No, shouldn’t be a problem there.”

  “I don’t think that we should lay emphasis on the twentieth century,” said Sir Stafford in his most querulous tones. “That only applied to this year, with the Life in the Trenches exhibition going on. Say next year or the year afterward our exhibition is on eighteenth-century portraiture—if our reputation is good enough by then to get people to lend us their pictures—then we’d need some other sort of expertise. We want someone broad-ranging, or with the contacts and expertise to allow him, or her, naturally, to recommend some
one we could use on an ad hoc basis.”

  “We’ll give you discretion,” said Janet Porritt in her most fawning tones, “on how to approach Dr. Turnbull. You have so much experience in tricky situations. It’s invaluable.”

  And on that cozy note of anal-licking the meeting broke up, with Felicity and other sympathetic members feeling they had been led into colluding in something dubiously legal and faintly discreditable. But why Sir Stafford should want what they had just decided stumped them. Over coffee in the manor’s cafeteria, Felicity, Ben Hooley, and Wes Gannett churned over the decision.

  “I don’t get it,” Felicity said. “Presumably Sir Stafford was in on the decision to ask this Dr. Turnbull to stand. Now he’s changed his mind and wants the appointment taken away from her, without giving her a chance to respond. He has had virtually no contact with her, nor she with any of us. Maybe her reasons for missing the meetings have been stronger than they appear. What has changed Sir Stafford’s view of the job, the person, the current situation?”

  “Ah,” said Gannett. “I think I could make a guess at that.”

  “Go on,” said Hooley.

  “When you set up a trust, you aim to get balance. You want a selection of the people who might have expertise that will make them of use: in this case architectural and artistic knowledge presumably with a good academic title behind it. Then maybe a historian, as now, an actual builder, one specializing in historic buildings, someone with museum experience, and so on. So that’s what Sir Stafford went for in the beginning—had to go for, rather than just appointing a number of cronies he’d gained in the course of a long life spent in museums.”

  “I see that,” said Felicity. “And?”

  “And once the trust is set up, all the preliminary work is done and so forth, a few significant changes can be made, and the board can be turned into what it should not be—a coven of cronies.”

  “Unquestionably approving whatever Sir Stafford chooses to do?” suggested Ben Hooley.

  “Exactly.”

  “And what does Sir Stafford want his poodles for?” asked Felicity.

  Wes Gannett shrugged. “I’ve no idea, or nothing concrete. The old boy would keep whatever it may be well away from me. It could be something quite ordinary and simple, with no sinister overtones. It could be just pocket money from something or other—say the song cycle we heard at the concert. Remember, Sir Stafford is not paid to be the chairman of the board. He’s got the flat for a rent that is hardly more than peanuts, but that is presumably only until the museum is firmly established—say another year or so.”

  “But the song cycle would be ‘forever’—or at least well beyond Sir Stafford’s death,” said Ben Hooley.

  “Yes. But remember that officially it belongs to the Trust. And remember that songs and song cycles are not the most marketable things in the world—unlike symphonies, concertos, if they are by ‘names.’ Play a song cycle a couple of times on Radio Three, program it for a Prom concert, interest one or two of the regional orchestras in it—and that’s about it, unless it’s a masterpiece with a life stretching out to infinity. I’m no expert, but it didn’t sound to me as if that was the case.”

  They looked at each other, still unsure whether they were onto something. Then they downed their coffees and left the little cafeteria, wondering if Sir Stafford regarded them too as “poodles.”

  When she had said good-bye to Wes and Ben, Felicity took herself for a walk around the grounds of Walbrook. A healthy sprinkling of families were visiting the manor, and several solemn single visitors, looking as if they were casing the joint to see if it was worth a visit next time Auntie Mary came to stay. It was a quarter to two. The manor and grounds would surely lose some of their visitors when the lunch hour was over. Slowly, and still mulling over the possibilities for fraud presented by the house and its contents, many of which, she suspected, had as yet not been assessed or cataloged, Felicity pointed her steps in the direction of the house. At the top of the incline she could see families walking away or getting into their cars, some of the solitary ones going back to work, others, she guessed, aiming for a pub lunch. She turned, satisfied, and went into the house.

  Inside what was now called somewhat overstatedly the Great Hall was a small shop, where people were buying postcards and picture books, fridge magnets and pictorial mugs. When they had been relieved of their money, they drifted through the main door and down to the car park by the stables. The house was emptying nicely. Felicity paid her entrance fee, smiled at the attendant’s comment that she had every right to go in free, then walked briskly through the ground-floor rooms. She made note of any small changes since she’d last seen them, mostly new placement of pictures and adjustments to the accompanying labels. Then she went back to the Hall and mounted the stairs.

  The first sight that met her eyes was a giant picture on the landing wall of ten or twelve soldiers under bombardment in a trench. She immediately wanted to turn away: the men’s eyes had a look of sheer mental shutdown, of being no longer in the world. Peering into one or two rooms, she saw photographs from the Allied front where she glimpsed men with the same terrible symptoms of war-sickness. She glanced quickly into all the rooms, then went back to the top of the stairs: the first floor was devoid of visitors.

  There was no point in delaying a decision: she had come up the stairs hoping to find this floor empty, which would enable her to slip up to the attic. At the end of one of the corridors, a poky staircase had a rope stretched across its lower steps with a sign saying NO ADMITTANCE. She marched quickly toward it, put the rope aside and then back across the entrance when she was on the lower steps. Carefully she made her way up the stairs, then through the door at the top. She felt for a light switch and found one: the musty attic was at once illuminated by a dim light. . . . Gradually the power increased: the attic was lit by new age bulbs.

  To her right there was open space: a near-empty floor area with only two small trunks, odd pages of printed paper (wrapping perhaps from a printer or a publisher), and opened envelopes and balls of paper. On the other side of the entrance door the sloping roof had been enclosed with a moderately secure-looking wooden wall—three storage rooms, thought Felicity, each with a door. Quietly she trod along the dusty corridor and tried each of the doors: no luck, except that by the doorknob of each of the locked rooms and cupboards was a square of paper, each with a letter on it. First W, second Q, third F. Felicity didn’t waste much time on them: the W and the Q told her that this must be for Walbrook itself and the two families who had ruled from here over the local tenantry and farmers for several hundred years.

  She thought suddenly that she had seen enough, had risked her place on the board sufficiently, and it was time to go. She switched off the light and crept down the stairway. From the lower steps she saw a couple disappearing into one of the rooms in the Life in the Trenches exhibition. She watched them go in, then let herself back into the public part of the house. Looking up the central corridor she saw the door to the Quarleses’ grace-and-favor flat. So near and yet so far!

  She slipped down the Grand Staircase and out into the fresh air. A few yards away from her, on the path leading to the car park, was Mary-Elizabeth Fiennes. She was walking in a discontented, almost resentful posture, and when Felicity caught up with her, she thought she saw tears on her face.

  “Hello,” she said, feeling she should be a little bit formal. “I’m Felicity Peace. We didn’t really get a chance to get acquainted this morning.”

  Mary-Elizabeth brushed her cheeks. “Oh . . . Hello. Stafford isn’t very good at making sure that we know each other, is he? I used to live here, you know.”

  “And have found it rather a strain coming back, I should think.”

  Mary-Elizabeth’s head was nodding vigorously. “Yes! Isn’t it silly to be surprised? That was bound to be how I felt. I’d been living in the house since I was a child. I suppose it’s natural that I feel a terrible wrench. I loved the house, and the fact that it w
as owned by my cousin’s father and then by my cousin was part of its attraction. I was always reminding Rupert that he was lord of the manor and getting him up to scratch, urging him to do the decent thing. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not.”

  “He didn’t have the same family feeling, then?”

  “No, he didn’t. I don’t know why not. Whenever I pulled out the lord-of-the-manor card, he said that as far as he knew, there was no such title, he had taken the manor over from his father with the utmost reluctance, and he would be much happier if the house was open to the public and he could move out to a comfortable flat with all mod cons. He and I, I should say. He always said that one way or other I would have a home for life, and he’d make it clear in his will that that was always to be the case.”

  “That was very generous, and very considerate too. Shows he does have some family feeling, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. But for the people, not for the house.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said Felicity, thinking that Rupert had got things the right way round.

  Mary-Elizabeth had said it in a way that suggested she was nourishing her discontent. They had reached the car park and Felicity tried to detain the rather elfin elderly lady.

  “Well, we’ll be seeing quite a lot of each other, won’t we? I wondered if I could do a bit of research on the family and the house.”

  “Oh, you’d have to square that with Stafford, not me.”

  “I suppose so. I don’t know any reason why he should object.”

  “I often don’t see any reason behind what Stafford does,” said Mary-Elizabeth, her voice a genteel dagger.

  “I just want to see the documents of the house—what work was done when and by whom, relations with tenant farmers—that kind of thing.”

  “I used to be the unofficial and inefficient secretary to the place, and I filed all documents like that in my own ineffable system.”

  “Where were they kept?”

  “Periodically I’d have a great big clear-out of the study and take piles of documents and less official papers to file away.”