The Secret Countess

  ‘Coming back to us, then?’ enquired Sir Henry Forster, regarded by most people, himself included, as England’s foremost classicist. ‘Quite a good chance of a fellowship, I should think. I remember your paper for the Aristotelian Society. An interesting point you made there, about the morale factor in Horatius’s victory over the Curiatii.’

  ‘Keeping up your fencing, I hope?’ said the bursar, who had won ten pounds from his opposite number at Christchurch when Rupert and his team had taken the cup from Oxford.

  Rupert answered politely, but his mind was already on his interview with the man he’d come to see. Professor Marcus Fitzroy was not in hall, because he despised food as he despised sleep and undergraduates and anything else which prevented him from getting on with the real business of life, namely the total understanding and expert disinterment of those distant and long-dead peoples whose burial customs so powerfully possessed his soul.

  As soon as politeness permitted, Rupert made his way to the professor’s rooms in Neville Court. He found them marvellously unchanged. A shrunken head on the mantelpiece supported an invitation to a musical evening; jade leg ornaments, axes and awls, and Rupert’s own favourite, the skeleton of a prisoner immolated in the Yangtse Gorge, lay in their former jumble. Among the debris, a more recent strata of half-packed boxes, rolls of canvas and coils of rope indicated signs of imminent departure. The crumbling, highly archaeological-looking substance on a saucer seemed, however, to be the professor’s lunch.

  ‘You’re off tomorrow, then, sir?’ asked Rupert when greetings had been exchanged.

  Professor Fitzroy nodded. He was a tall man, sepulchrally thin, with a tuft of grey hair which accentuated his resemblance to a demented heron. ‘Pity you couldn’t come,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to take that ass, Johnson.’ The professor’s contempt for students had not extended to Rupert, who, on a couple of undergraduate expeditions, had shown himself to possess not only physical endurance and the investigative acumen one might expect of Trinity’s top history scholar, but also something rarer – a kind of silent empathy with the tribesmen and mountain people they had encountered. That a man like this should be wasted on an earldom and a rich marriage seemed to the professor to be an appalling shame.

  ‘You’re making straight for the Turkish border?’ enquired Rupert, holding down the lid of a crate for the professor to hammer in.

  ‘Yes, it’s only a quick trip,’ said Fitzroy disgustedly, for his real passion was for the wastes of Northern Asia – and the Black Sea, professionally speaking, did not rank much above Ealing Broadway. ‘I’ve been landed with a field course back here in September; these damned ex-servicemen are so keen.’

  ‘You said in your letter you hoped to go up to the cave monastery above Akhalsitske?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s an extraordinary place – everyone seems to have been there. Alexander, of course, and then Farnavazi when he set up court at Mtskhet . . . And then there’s the Byzantine stuff plonked down on top of it all,’ said the professor, waving a dismissive hand at the modern upstart that was early Christendom. ‘I’m going to look at the rock frieze in one of the inner caves. I’ve been corresponding with Himmelmann in Munich and he’s convinced there’s a link there with the Phrygian tomb monuments at Karahisor.’

  ‘But surely, sir, that’ll take you across the Russian border? Isn’t there some fighting still going on there?’

  The professor shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll bother me.’

  Rupert thought this possible. Professor Fitzroy, who had carried a mummified goat across the Kurrum valley in Afghanistan while being shot at by both sides during the Ghilzai’s rebellion, would probably not be greatly troubled by the remnants of a Russian civil war. In addition to a total indifference to hardship and danger, the professor possessed a brother who was something very high up in the Foreign Office and of whom he unashamedly took advantage to get his archaeological finds back through customs including – so rumour had it – a beautiful Circassian wrapped in a camel blanket whom he was said to have installed in his house at Trumpington.

  For a while they talked of what interested them both. Then Rupert, aware that he was holding the professor up, came to the point. ‘I was wondering, sir, if you’d do me a favour? A very considerable one, I’m afraid.’

  Professor Fitzroy straightened from the bedroll he had been tying and looked at the Earl of Westerholme. Most of his archaeological colleagues had been German and he had hated and despised the war. Yet when they’d heard that Rupert Frayne, with exactly ten hours’ solo flying to his credit, had won the MC for coming to the rescue of a wounded fellow pilot, Fitzroy had surprised himself by treating his whole staircase to champagne. Now he answered Rupert’s query with a single word: ‘Yes.’

  An hour later, while making his way down King’s Parade, Rupert heard his name called and turned. Beckoning him from beneath a muslin parasol was an enchantingly pretty girl with blonde curls and huge, blue eyes, dazzlingly arrayed in pleated white linen.

  ‘Zoe!’

  Delightedly, Rupert went over and took the hand she offered in both his own. Zoe van Meck had been the nicest, the most sensitive, of the VADs who’d nursed him, and he remembered with admiration the efforts she had made to overcome her tender heart and achieve the degree of efficiency the job required. ‘My goodness, you look devastating! Going on the river?’

  Zoe nodded. ‘I’m just on my way to Cat’s.’

  ‘Unchaperoned?’ said Rupert, pretending to be shocked.

  ‘Well, not quite; I’m going with a party,’ she said, smiling up at him, ‘my aunt and uncle live here; it comes in very handy for May Balls and things.’

  Her voice was a little breathless, for suddenly seeing Rupert like that had stirred up something she’d believed safely buried. The tendresse which so many of his young nurses had felt for the Earl of Westerholme had gone rather deeper with Zoe van Meck – so much so that she had been almost relieved when she was transferred from the officers’ quarters down to the men’s wards on the floor below. But after her move she had seen almost as much of Rupert as before, for as soon as he was even partially ambulant, Rupert had insisted on going down to talk to the men. The only time she’d seen Rupert lose his temper was when the bossy ward sister, obsessed by rank and protocol, had attempted to turn him back. She could see him now, sitting still as stone by Corporal Railton’s bed until he died – and Railton hadn’t even been one of his own men, just a lad he’d met on the hospital ship coming home.

  ‘You’re not married yet?’ asked Zoe.

  ‘At the end of this month,’ said Rupert, his voice expressionless.

  Zoe sighed. She’d had three offers of marriage at the Peterhouse Ball alone and a young merchant banker sent her roses every day – yet at this moment she would gladly have changed places with Muriel Hardwicke.

  And partly from mischief, partly to give her thoughts a more cheerful turn, she said, ‘And how do you like your new relatives?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Rupert, puzzled.

  ‘Muriel’s family, I mean, up in Yorkshire.’

  Rupert frowned. ‘Muriel doesn’t have any family, Zoe.’

  Zoe dimpled up at him. ‘Oh yes she does! I was up there for Verena’s ball and she took me into the village. Old Mrs Hardwicke was truly splendid, especially after she’d had her morning stout, but I think my favourite was Uncle Nat . . .’

  Rupert took her arm. ‘I’ll escort you to St Catherine’s,’ he said. ‘And now, please tell.’

  And Zoe, accepting his escort with alacrity, told.

  Mrs Bassenthwaite’s illness hit Proom hard. True, it was a while since the housekeeper had taken a very active part in the running of Mersham, but in her quiet way she had held the strings together. Deprived of a working companion of nearly thirty years’ standing, Proom found that a great many extra tasks fell on his shoulders. Normally, in the spate of work building up for the wedding, he would have relied on his right-hand man, James. But James had been a
cting strangely of late. Nothing could make James incompetent, but these days Proom would often see him in his pantry, the polishing cloth hanging from his hand, staring listlessly at the silver. He scarcely ever seemed to whistle, and when Peggy had enquired in her friendly way after his trapezius muscle he had turned from her without a word.

  Then one morning he didn’t come down to work at all. The new hallboy, engaged as a result of the affluence Muriel had brought to Mersham, was despatched to the men’s attics and came down to say that he had knocked on the first footman’s door and been told to scram, and scram fast.

  Proom himself went to investigate.

  James was sitting on his bed, wearing only his pyjama trousers. Over the years he had turned his attic into a replica of the gymnasium where his heroes built up, with patience and dedication, their splendid, monumental bodies. There was a long mirror, and a set of iron dumbells racked in pairs from the smallest five pounder to the hundred-pounder that James now worked with ease. There was a chest expander with coiled springs like the hawsers of an ocean liner, a stationary bicycle it had taken him thirty weeks to save up for and a pair of scales discarded by the old weigh house at Maidens Over. And on the walls, everywhere, pictures . . . Pictures of Mhatsi Adenuga, the fabled ‘Abyssinian Lion’, his oiled and ebony muscles held in a classic ‘double biceps’ pose . . . of the great Sandow, supporting on his shoulders a platform containing nineteen people and a Pekinese . . .

  And on the bed, James, staring blankly into space. James who, through years of unremitting labour, had turned his scrawny, undersized body into something that could be set with honour beside these giants. No one, not even Proom, knew what it had cost James. The freezing hours before dawn doing the endless leg curls, the agonizing bench presses, never giving up even when, week after week, the scales held steady and the next weight proved immovable. But he’d done it . . . and now . . .

  Proom’s footsteps, silent as always, made no impression.

  ‘What’s up then, James? Why aren’t you downstairs?’

  No answer.

  ‘Come on, lad, what is it? Are you ill?’

  James shook his head.

  ‘Well, if you aren’t, there’s work to be done. Sid’s brought the Venetian glass down from the store room, but I’m not trusting anyone but you to set it out.’

  Again that wretched shake of the head. ‘What’s the use?’ said James tonelessly. ‘What’s the blinkin’ use? All this stuff—’ he waved his hands. ‘I might just as well throw it in the sea. I’m fifty inches round the chest, Mr Proom, and that’s not bad going seeing I was thirty-six when I began. But there’s not a darn thing I can do about my height. I can flog my guts out and I’ll still be five foot eight, and will be till the day I die.’

  ‘Well? I myself am only five foot nine. I cannot see the relevance of your remark.’

  James turned. ‘Didn’t she tell you? She’s going to bring in matched footmen.’

  ‘Miss Hardwicke did mention it. She’s going to bring back powdering too. It’s old-fashioned but you never minded it, if I recall.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. I’m all for a bit of class. But I’m not going to be a footman. They’ve got to be over six feet. Six foot two she wants them, if possible.’

  Mr Proom shrugged. ‘It never seemed to me wise to employ servants for their size or the shape of their calves, but that is neither here nor there. Whatever happens, you’ll still be first footman in this house.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said James tonelessly. ‘She’s not going to sack me, you understand. “His Lordship speaks so highly of my work.”’ James’s parody of Muriel’s genteel tones was devastating in its accuracy. ‘There’ll always be some odd jobs I can do about the place. “Mr Proom will find you something useful to do, I’m sure.”’

  The butler was silent. No one more than he, who had trained James from the age of twelve, knew the blow Muriel had aimed at James. James’s skill with the silver, the unobtrusive bravura of his work at the sideboard, his knowledge of wines, all had been instilled by him. The little Cockney lad had turned himself from a scruffy lamp boy into one of the most highly trained servants in the land – and now this!

  ‘You’re ready for promotion, anyway,’ said Proom at last. ‘I’d hoped you’d stay and take over from me. I know her ladyship intended it. But . . . well, we’ll have to do it different. It’s no use speaking to Lady Byrne because Hawkins’s got his own team, but there’ll be a vacancy somewhere. When they hear you’re on the market, offers’ll come flooding in, you’ll see.’

  ‘I’d like not to go too far away. I reckon I’ve got used to it here,’ said James, coming as close as he could to expressing his sense of desolation at leaving the companions of a lifetime and the man who’d made him what he was. ‘Do you think her ladyship might take me on at the Mill House?’

  Proom frowned. The dowager’s departure from Mersham, the restricted circumstances in which she would find herself, were a hard cross for him to bear. ‘I doubt if she’ll be taking more than a gardener-handyman. But something’ll turn up. Let’s just get this wedding behind us, shall we? You’ll stay for that?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll stay for that.’

  Mr Proom returned to his cottage at dinner time with a heavy heart. Mrs Bassenthwaite was gone, James was going; he doubted if Mrs Park would last much longer with Win away. Miss Hardwicke had promised him an increased staff to train, but it was already clear that her ideas would not accord with those of Mersham.

  He opened the door of his mother’s room. The bed was perfectly tidy, the flowerpots intact, even the appendix floated quietly in its bottle, but Proom was at once aware that something was wrong. He went over to the bed. Mrs Proom was cowering back against the pillows, shrunken and tiny as a child, and she was crying.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter, Mother?’

  The suffused blue eyes stared wretchedly up at him, the tears continued to flow silently down the raddled cheeks.

  Mr Proom was appalled. His mother furious, unreasonable, mad, he could cope with. His mother unhappy and pitiful was more than he could bear.

  ‘I know . . . I’m . . . a nuisance to you, Cyril.’ The tears continued to well up, spill over. ‘But I’ll try to be better, Cyril . . . You’ll see, Cyril, I’ll be better.’ She stretched out a hand, clawed desperately at his arm.

  ‘Mother, what is all this about?’

  Another spate of those heartrending and silent tears . . .

  ‘I won’t do nothing bad no more, Cyril, I won’t throw nothing. Only don’t send me away. Don’t send me to the workhouse.’

  ‘The workhouse? Are you mad, Mother?’

  ‘She said . . . as ’ow I must be lonely. But I’m not, Cyril.’ The little speckled claw dug deeper into his arm. ‘I’m not lonely, I’m used to it here.’

  ‘Who said this?’ asked Mr Proom but already, sickeningly, he knew.

  ‘’er that’s going to marry ’is lordship. ’er with the eyes that don’t blink. She said . . . ’as ’ow I’d be happier with people like myself. But I wouldn’t, Cyril. I wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘I’m quite sure you wouldn’t, Mother,’ said Mr Proom, trying for a little joke.

  But the terrified old woman was beyond his reach. The sobbing was building up now, she was beginning to gasp and choke – she’d make herself ill.

  He began to pat her hand, to soothe her, but as she gradually became calmer Proom’s own fears increased. Had anyone asked Proom what he thought about his mother, he would have said that the old lady was a nuisance the like of which had probably never been equalled. If Mrs Proom’s Maker had seen fit to take her to his bosom one night as she slept, Proom, after giving her a fitting funeral, would have regarded himself as the most fortunate of men.

  An honourable release through death was one thing. Putting the old lady into a home for deranged old people was another. Proom knew he could have gone straight to the earl and been listened to, but making trouble between a man and his intended wife was not
something he cared to do. No, it looked as though he too would have to leave Mersham. Only where, with a burden such as this, could he possibly go?

  The problem of what to wear at the fancy dress ball at Heslop did not concern the Herrings, for they had not been invited. Indeed, the Herrings had expressly been bidden not to arrive until the day before the wedding, and had been informed precisely from which train it would be possible to collect them. Even so, nothing could damp the pleasure of that family of layabouts and spongers at the thought of being taken up again by their posh relations.

  For the Herrings’ star, which had never been conspicuously high, had of late plummeted catastrophically. The Herrings owed rent to their landlord, their grocer had forbidden them his shop and they had been turned out of their local pub. The supply of suckers on which Melvyn relied to keep body and soul together seemed, in the weeks before his noble cousin’s wedding, to have mysteriously dried up and, in the proposed visit to Mersham, Melvyn saw a clear sign that Fate was about to smile on the Herrings once again.

  ‘Don’t worry, Myrtle,’ he said now. ‘Aunt Mary’s a soft touch, really. She’ll see us all right.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Myrtle, who was standing by the stove in a mauve satin peignoir liberally sprinkled with grease, mixing the lethal concoction of peroxide and vinegar with which she dyed her hair. ‘But ’ow the dickens are we goin’ to get there? There isn’t a hope in hell of raising the rail fare for the four of us.’

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ said Melvyn.

  ‘Well, not that locking us in the lavatory one while the guard comes round, because that’s got whiskers on it,’ said Myrtle. ‘And what about clothes? I ain’t got a stitch to wear and the twins’ll have to have new trousers.’

  Melvyn sighed and looked at his obese and pallid offspring sitting on either side of the sticky kitchen table reading comics. Donald was methodically sucking a long black stick of liquorice into his mouth. Dennis was licking at a dribbling bar of toffee. Like certain caterpillars whose short lives are dedicated to achieving simply the maximum possible increase in size, the twins seemed to have done nothing but eat and burst out of their clothes since they were born. Watching them, Melvyn had to abandon another of his half-formed schemes – that of smuggling them to Mersham in a cello case in the guard’s van. Even a doublebass case would not take more than half of either of his sons . . .