1
Although a railway line ran right across the bottom of the garden it was nearly a mile away. It lay beyond the three small lakes and the stream that linked them, coursing chaotically away from the house through the descending slope of the landscape, created a century and a half before by an overbearing portrait that hung on the oak stairway that rose from the hall to the mezzanine landing. Like its creator, the garden was stiffly ordered and the planting rigorously maintained to the last leaf and blade. In fact, in this, my mother’s tenure, the gardener had been the last of the much loved staff to get his papers and go, such was the reverence paid to that profession in our family.
I was ten and I watched as my mother, with barely concealed tears, sat in the hall at the only remaining unpacked table on the only remaining unpacked chair and handed to each of the small line of faithful and equally tearful servants a small brown envelope. From each of these, a tiny wad of banknotes would soon appear in an apologetic and sadly inadequate gesture toward their future without us. The shouts and cries of the final world-rending battle that had placed us all here, now forcibly equalled, levelled and humbled and facing together this desolate consequence, still rang loud in my mind. I watched, recalling Mama’s exasperated exchange with Mr Milchers, our accountant, as to the amount we could afford over and above the wages owed, to give unto our helpers of ages past. Father’s funeral, by comparison, had been a far less sombre affair.
I now know that all around the country scenes like ours were enacted month in month out, as the last vestiges of the old aristocracy, even the new-moneyed factory lairds and industry barons were discovering one by one that a death in the dynasty meant more than the simple passing of a loved one into the kingdom of heaven and the handing down of generations of care from the old guard to the new. Like others before us and since, a third hand, an invisible all reaching all-knowing hand, had entered our particular hereditary chain. The hand of a stranger, one with no name and no title, but one with the novel right to tax the ownership of ages now stepped forward and stood betwixt departed father and dutiful son and deemed itself worthy of a levy on the worth of homes. I know that now. But back then, back then a world complete was taken from me, the only world I had ever known.
Of course, a country house makes money. They would not exist if they did not. At worst they cover their own expenses, or the lucky and more modern owner has investments way out beyond the boundary fence that can come handy to pick up a shortfall here or there. But ‘modern’ had never been father’s way of doing.
On father’s orders each of the tenant farms, all part of my natural and enormous childhood, still kept a pair of draught horses. Tractors; tractors were the solitary novelty that had arrived at home in twenty years and these only when the increasingly poor returns from the pastures had jeopardised our tenure sufficient to make them unavoidable. Those and the colour television that had appeared on spring day as a gift from an aunt whose despair at our domestic fustiness inspired occasional but radical interventions were but token concessions to a world of commerce that spun far faster than father’s own indignant orbit. The aunt, Aunt Martha, once threatened to have us centrally heated, but father’s stern rebuttal led to a whole year without her paying a single visit. Had it not been for my departure to boarding school at the age of eight and a half I doubt even now that the needful reconciliation would have taken shape at all.
The morning before that first solo and terrifying voyage, by train, into the unknown universe that was Plains Hall Preparatory School for Boys I spent wandering the fields and tracks on my beloved pony Wellesley. Affectionately known as ‘AW’ and a gift from my grandpapa whose own grandfather had served for a month as a young man under the great general himself, before wounds demanded his retirement and a new career as a warrior in the House as MP for Squireshire, AW was the rock and quern around which my daily life was ground.
AW was a beautiful beast for a future cavalry officer such as I. Destiny, as everybody knew, would lead me straight in that direction and onward unto duty, service and greatness. Tradition demanded it and my entire life had, to that moment, been lived in preparation for the call to death or glory. Indeed I was to be the tenth of father’s regimental strand to serve Queen and Country in a line as straight, true and unbroken as the finest drawn for any battle and nothing on this earth or any other was to deflect me from this my hallowed cause. Thus the rigorous routine of six a.m. reveille, mucking out, breakfast and chores that governed my childhood was nor more nor less than a gift to me from Pater that would serve me the best in my years to come in the Regiment.
It might strike a reader that this cannot have been a twentieth century upbringing, but, it had finely served my father and his and many before and even though the sixties jumped and jived around the perimeters of our world and the papers strafed his breakfasts with news of a home front under increasing threat from pop, free love and flowers, this is just the when and the way it was.
I ducked low over AW’s wither and rode him right into his stable, a delicious sin for which I would have been rightly reprimanded had there been anyone about, and swung smartly to the stable floor from his sweating back. As I did so a momentary tremor of fear encroached upon my soul. No rationale or reason for it followed. Nothing happened. No sound or sudden noise had made my spine stiffen and my belly freeze. I paused and looked around just to be sure, but there was no-one about but Alfie the groom who had seen me return and was approaching from the his cottage a short fifty yards or so away past the kennels full of milling foxhounds that were my father’s truest raisons d’etre.
I set about undoing the girth and whipped off AW’s saddle, leaving him bridled as I slung it over the lower half of the door for Alfie to deal with. He reached the door as I dropped the bit from AW’s mouth. AW nudged me in a friendly sort of way and blew a great spray of snot onto my shoulder as Alfie entered.
“Well, young sir,” he said. “You’ll be off tomorrow then.”
I slipped AW’s head collar over his nose, fastened the strap and tied him up short to the ring on the wall.
“Yes, Alfie.”
“He’ll be missing you.”
“I’ll miss him too.”
“I’ll take good care of him for you, sir, never you mind and I think young Penny from the farm is going to keep him fit for when you’re back.”
“Yes, Alfie, father said so.”
The sullenness of my reply aroused no apparent concern in Alfie. Perhaps he had not noticed.
I hated Penny. We would often ride together, Penny Pratchitt and I, but we were sworn adversaries at the Pony Club and had shared the honours equally over the last season’s one-day events and several show jumping competitions. She was a precocious talent. Father said she had no right to ride as well as she did and I passionately agreed. The trouble was that AW really liked her.
“He’ll enjoy that,” said Alf. “Got an eye for the ladies, he has, that’s for certain. Eh?”
I cringed at the thought, sensing that there was something more to Alfie’s talk than I could follow, but I could not think what. He took the bridle from my hand and went to gather up the saddle. It was my job to rub AW down and fill his water.
“You’ll be alright, you know,” said Alfie so enigmatically that I felt I should ask just what he meant. “It mightn’t be what you’d expect, but you’ll be alright.”
With that he turned slowly away swinging the saddle deftly under the pit of his arm as I’d seen him do a hundred times and disappeared in the direction of the tack room. I stopped and stared after him, for a while lost in a confusion of thoughts about tomorrow. AW snorted again and splattered a few more hot wet droplets of snot onto my face and I grabbed a handful of hay from the hayrack and began to rub the sweat from his chest, neck and back.
“View Halllllooooooo!” A strident, rousing contralto entered the stable from the yard.
Aunt Martha! I dropped the hay and ran from the stable like a shot, crossing the yard in seconds to where my glamorous, adorable and oft estranged maiden angel was marching elegantly towards me.
“Aunt Martha!” I almost sobbed as I buried my face in her Dior tweeds and she, the long lost explorer unexpectedly returned, swooped to hug me, Quinn, the prisoner to home and happiness among the jungles and deserts of familial neglect. “Where have you been?”
“Later Quinnton, later, I’ve had a simply marvellous time and I’ll tell you all about it at lunch. Now! Where’s your brave charger?”
I did not mention that a small sticky part of him was now working its way into the exquisitely tailored fabric of her dress, but instead led her to the stable and dived in. Hurriedly freeing the head collar to let him stand loose I scuttled back out and re-joined her, shutting the lower part of the stable door behind me. Aunt Martha leaned in as I jumped up and balanced on my arms and ribcage on the metal trim. She looked at AW with a careful eye and turned lovingly to face me.
“My. He’s looking well, isn’t he?”
“We came equal first in the Counties. And we won the Gollogan Cup.”
“Well!”
“But Penny beat us twice at show jumping.”
“I’m sure you did very well.”
“She’s got a new pony and he’s ever so quick.”
“You’ll have your work to do next season then.”
“Father says she’s to ride AW while I’m at school!” I said with a rancour whose force surprised me even as I spoke. “Is that fair? I mean she’ll know all his tricks.”
Aunt Martha laughed.
“Never fret, Quinnton dear. She’s not half the rider you are. Besides, he’s your pony and that, makes all the difference.”
“I suppose so.” However, the doubt that Penny would fail to gain the advantage of getting to know my precious steed in my absence lingered cruelly in my mind.
“Anyway, what else is news? I want to know everything you’ve been up to while I’ve been away.”
“Oh, nothing much, just the same old things really. Alfie’s got a new car. And he’s got married and moved into Keeper’s.”
“Has he now?”
“Aunt Martha?”
“What, Quinn darling?”
“Where have you been, really? Mother says…”
“I’ve been on a long, long holiday, darling. I told you. I’ll tell you all about it at lunch.”
We spent the rest of the morning walking in the gardens, front and back, inspecting the various vegetable patches between the kitchen and the kennels, examining my very own plot of potatoes, carrots, radishes and runner beans and chatting a lot about very little. It was a pleasant couple of hours, but there was something missing from the jaunty friendship we had shared just a year before. Today Aunt Martha seemed detached and distant and I had more than once to repeat my questions to her. Eventually we meandered back to the house and in through the kitchen, another minor sin, where Cookie was preparing a light September lunch that we would soon all assemble to share as a family. Father, she informed us, was in the day room taking his habitual sherry with mother and was expecting us at table in five minutes at one o’clock.
Together we scurried along the flag floored downstairs corridors, up the short and winding stone stairs, around the hall, past the billiard room and the library and across the drawing room, into the dining room in time to see my parents enter through the day room door. My mother beamed at me and smiled at her sister in law.
“Well, that’s good timing. Have you had a lovely walk?” She said.
“Yes thank you mother, very nice.”
“Quinn’s been showing me his garden. He’s a fine show of spuds,” said Aunt Martha.
“Potatoes, Martha. They’re called potatoes. For heaven’s sake, the boy’s hoping for an education.” Father had obviously identified the source of a problem. “Do call things by their proper names, Martha.”
“Of course Roland, I’m sorry, potatoes. He’s a dab hand, by the look of it.”
Father ignored her flattery of me and took his seat at the head, mother obligingly took hers at the opposite end and Aunt Martha and I assumed ours on either side of the long, pale green damask covered mahogany dining table. Silence fell and we all bowed our heads as father intoned Grace.
“For that which we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.”
Before anyone could speak, as though on cue, the deep rumbling clatter of the kitchen lift broke familiar and gentle into sunny quiet of the room. The ‘downstairs’ door opened softly and Zoë, the maid, stepped lightly in and went to receive that which we were about to from the serving hatch.
I suppose it must have been a concession of sorts to the modern age that father allowed Cookie to serve everything onto plates in the kitchen and Zoë to distribute them in the dining room. Perhaps it was an economy. We may have been broke even then, all that time ago and merely keeping up an appearance. Zoë was after all our only upstairs servant. In the morning she served the breakfast and did the beds and thereafter cleaned, apparently ceaselessly, throughout the day, breaking only to perform serving duties at mealtimes. When she herself found time to eat I do not know, but she was always bright, always happy and always reserved for me the wickedest of her wicked glances.
I knew she was a minx because that was what father had called her one day when I surprised them in the library as she was cleaning his desk. It was unusual to see them in the same room, both at once, together, but he was obviously giving her a ticking off as I had seen him slap her hard on the bottom when I walked in unannounced. She had looked so contrite. I was familiar with the feeling, or so I thought, and I swore there and then that she had once escaped a pernicious Mother Superior and found her refuge here with us and from that moment, she held a high place in my affections. A few years later, I would have interpreted differently the fleeting glint of a glance she gave me as she hurried from the room, but for now her sanctity had a year or two to run unchallenged.
Swiftly, she gathered up two plates and placed one before Aunt Martha and the other in front of mother. As she returned to collect father’s and mine she glanced over her shoulder and winked at me, a saucy, minxy, temptress wink that of course went way over my head. Father coughed.
Plates perfectly deposited with their rightful owners, we all dug in. The conversation scurried about in fits and starts, but Aunt Martha was no more forthcoming about her whole year’s absence than she had been before. Mother roundly silenced me when I asked and I suspected that I saw relief in Aunt Martha’s face as she realised the beans would remain un-spilt. As always, the talk turned to hunting, hounds and horses.
“You don’t want to care too much about a beast, Quinnton.”
Father was speaking in response to my fears. Aunt Martha had cautiously confronted Father about leaving AW to the tempting charms of my competitor and neighbour, an edict I would have never dared question alone. Zoë served the cheese.
“I remember an old brown gelding. Kept him after the war, didn’t I, m’dear, before they mechanised the regiment. What was his name?
“Kingston,” interjected my mother. “It was just before Quinn was born.”
“I know dear, I know. Dark as the night he was. Kingston! That was it, fine type, good bone and a jump to match.”
“Oh Roland, don’t. You’ll frighten the boy. Quinn, don’t listen to him. It’s a horrible story.”
“Never mind that, it’s quite true. Truth should out lest it escape on its own, eh.” He turned again to me, “We were hunting on Burydown, got a scent in Hilltop Copse, over by the ditch that you take to come out of the woods and onto Up Acre. Know the one?”
I nodded the ditch was a terrifying chasm that, on AW, you could only take at full speed. He continued.
“Bloody farmhand had left a roll of barbed wire on a stake right under the bank. Flew the bank, of course, cleared the ditch and whollop, smack bang onto the wire! Damned stake went clean into his chest, punctured his lung, I’d say.”
“Good heavens,” said Aunt Martha as though she had not heard the tale before. Father, as Master of Hounds and she as Whipper-In had been regular hunting companions before the television row. She might even have been there. Mother looked pale.
“Poor old feller, lying there with blood spurting out of his nostrils, trying to get up with two feet of pole in him. Damn bad show. Had to put him out of his misery, of course, so I slit his jugular with me knife and called the knackers. Drastic events call for drastic actions, eh, m’boy?”
“Yes, father.”
“Well, never forget it.”
“Roland, really, the boy’s only eight.”
“Don’t forget it, m’lad, what?”
“No sir.” I replied earnestly.
Eight I may have been, but the image washed down into my mind as freely as the life had flowed from the breast of poor Kingston. I could almost see the blood soaked divots flying into the air and the wounded horse kick and scrape at the ground, trying to rise up, its jagged burden fixed mortally in its chest. Mother tried to mollify the horror she undoubtedly felt with her usual and safest jibe.
“Don’t pay him the slightest heed Quinn darling. He’s always boasting blood and guts.”
“Nonsense, the boy has to learn about life, what?”
“Yes father.” I could barely decide what to make of it all. I had been blooded. Father had made certain I was there on my first outing, right with him as the hounds tore the hide and heart from the copper red dog fox we had caught in that self-same field. I had kept my eyes open right to the last moment as his white kerchief, dripping in the sunlight with warm sparkling blood, was swathed roughly across them to signify to all my coming of age as the newest member of the Squireshire Hunt.
The kitchen lift rattled and from nowhere, Zoë scuttled predictably to the hatch and delivered the contents, coffee, to the table.
“Can I get down please, father?”
“What?”
“I have to pack for school.”
“What? No more cheese?”
“No thank you father.”
“Well, alright, just you show ’em, eh, that school of yours. Tote-Simpson’s a name, my boy. Bear it with pride.”
“I shall, father. Goodbye.”
“Hm.”
And that was the last sound I ever heard him utter. When later, on the next morning, I was packed and ready on the front steps and Alfie appeared to ferry me to Hamlet Station in our immaculate and ancient Rolls-Royce, father was nowhere to be seen. When I turned and knelt on the broad back seat and looked back through the vast rear window I fancied I saw him pass behind the open double doors, behind a very weepy Aunt Martha, behind my dear and resolute Mama and I was both saddened and relieved. His fury would have been no great farewell. His silence in his few remaining years would be his greatest gift to me. Indeed that silence was their gift to me, a lifetime’s gift from all who knew.
