A Mansion and its Murder (2 page)

When I was alone during my childhood, which did not happen as often as you might imagine, I would often take myself off to some distant paved space of which the architect of our monumental pile had provided plenty, and play skipping games based on the names of my three aunts.

I would chant, or rather mutter under my breath.

But only slightly, I said to myself.

Here
was what I meant, but ‘here’ didn’t rhyme with Clare. Sometimes when the aunts had annoyed me, my rhymes about them would get nastier, such as ‘Jane gives me a pain’ or ‘Sarah’s slightly squarer’ or ‘Clare is hard to bear’.

This may give the impression that my father’s sisters loomed much larger in my young life than they actually did. Jane lived at Blakemere, was indeed plain, but was not the acidulated spinster of popular mythology. She was busy, charitable, and advised me constantly on my behaviour, probably because no one else did. Sarah had fled the outsize nest and lived in an old farmhouse with a large garden near Wentwood, leasing out the fields and grazing pastures to other farmers in the area. She would have been called a bluestocking in an earlier age. She dabbled in botany, professed atheism, and always gave me excellent teas if I called on a visit. Clare had married beneath her – an artist of all things – and had gone to live in a part of London that was not even Chelsea. She was sometimes invited back to be pitied.

I think my aunts loomed larger in my childhood imagination than in its actuality because of what they represented: possibilities for myself when I grew up, something I began to think about in the years after Mr Gladstone’s momentous visit. I rejected the possibility represented by my aunt Jane, but neither of the other two destinies seemed particularly attractive either. Being a romantic, reading sort of child, I did not rule out the possibility of someone incredibly handsome of my own class (whatever that was – could you have landed bankers?) falling desperately in love with me, and our living happily ever after somewhere not too close to Blakemere. I did not even rule out the possibility of my being carried off by a dusky North African in white robes. On the other hand, I didn’t count on it.

The children I could most often find to play with in the intervals between lessons (the intervals were as long and frequent as the lessons, for my governesses were in the early days as ill chosen and ill supervised as my nannies had been) were generally the offspring of servants, gardeners, or higher employees of the family (secretaries, librarians, managers, and so on). Once they got over any awe they might feel at playing with the 
daughter of the house, they tended rather to pity me.

‘Don’t you
ever
see your mummy and daddy?’ they would ask.

‘Of
course
I do,’ I would reply stoutly, since it seemed to be the sort of thing to do, to have contact with your mother and father. When I grew slightly older my reply changed to: ‘
Quite
as much as I want to.’

My father, Claudius Meyer Fearing, was in his own estimation caught in a cleft stick: he was neither banker nor country gentleman. Others felt he had constructed the cleft stick himself: he was unhappy at the Bank because he was not in overall charge, and he was unhappy at Blakemere for the same reason. He seemed temperamentally unable to subject himself to the rigorous preparation necessary to be a successful banker, and he mostly occupied himself with the pleasanter side of a country gentleman’s life – shooting, fishing, and agricultural events (he never completely mastered horsemanship, so he didn’t hunt). He was, at that time, something of a congenital malcontent, and one who could give himself wholeheartedly to nothing. When he saw me he was kind to me, inquired about my lessons, occasionally even played with me. If I 
was not in front of his eyes I was not in his mind. Even when he encountered me unexpectedly in the high, wide corridors of Blakemere he seemed to have to remind himself who I was.

My mother had been married to provide an heir for Blakemere. She had, with some difficulty, produced me, and had then been told that she could have no more children. She had retreated into self-regard and self-pity (and
self-a
lot of other things as well), gradually making a sort of prison for herself – none the less a prison for being luxurious and undemanding. I could be as high-spirited, adventurous, demanding, or masterful as I wanted, but that would cut no ice with my mother. They were qualities admired in men, but they did not alter the fact that I was not, and could never be, a boy.

‘We have to think of the future.’

I heard the words, spoken in my grandfather’s measured, I would now say pompous, tones, through a partially opened window in the library. I had retreated alone, to the little square courtyard just beside it, where I had marked out a hopping game. The library had a long, windowless wall just beside the courtyard, so if hopping palled I could play ball against it. When I heard the words I paused, then peeped round
the corner, and edged along to where the window was. I stood beside it and peeked cautiously in. The bookcases in the library rose to the ceiling, and were filled with unread, unreadable leather tomes. It was only much later I realised that many of the books were literally unreadable: the upper shelves were mere painted books, in the trompe l’oeil manner. I was very surprised by this because I had never imagined my grandfather, then well dead, had a sense of humour.

Along the long library table the family was ranged: Grandpapa, Grandmama, my father, my mother (wonder of wonders!), Aunt Jane, Aunt Sarah, my grandfather’s private secretary, Cousin Anselm who was a Father of Sons, and therefore of importance to the family firm, and my dear, dear uncle Francis – Uncle Frank, I always called him.

Who was tipping himself backward in his chair, smiling, and stroking his lovely fair beard – short and rather sporty – his eye glinting as he smiled with the utmost complacency at the family Inquisition.

‘I’ve always rather gone for the idea of “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,”’ he said. Retribution was immediate and, for him, probably very satisfying.

‘Since you were a boy,’ thundered my grandpapa, ‘you have twisted the Scriptures for your own selfish ends.’

‘Twisted?’ said Uncle Frank, unperturbed. ‘I should have thought “Take no thought for the morrow” was pretty clear and explicit. It is a great satisfaction to me to be able to say that I never do.’

‘To call the Bank “evil” that has made the family fortunes – and that means
your
fortunes – is unforgivable. It is rank ingratitude.’

Uncle Frank’s lovely fair eyebrows raised themselves satirically.

‘Nevertheless for me it
is
an evil, and I see no reason why I should regulate my conduct by any concern for its future.’

My grandmother leant forward. She was by birth a Meyer, one of a prominent converted Jewish banking family. Her lean face was handsome still, her eyes alight with intelligence. She was, I am sure, much cleverer than my grandfather, though she constrained herself within the usual boundaries laid down for married women at the time.

‘Fearing’s Bank is one of the great financial institutions of this country,’ she said emphatically. ‘On it thousands of lives and livelihoods depend.
It is time you faced up to your responsibilities, Francis. You have had time enough to sow your wild oats.’

‘The trouble is, I seem to have more wild oats than most to sow,’ smiled Frank.

‘Marriage will cure that.’

Uncle Frank laughed out loud. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. And to what end? Claud and Harriet have a daughter.’ (Here my mother sobbed.) ‘If you insist on sons, Clare and Alfred – at long last – have two, or is it three? There are’ – here he nodded in the direction of Anselm Fearing – ‘cousins. Not cousins galore, but cousins enough. Why should I be the sacrificial lamb?’

‘Because if you do not do as we insist, your debts will not be paid,’ said my grandfather fiercely. Uncle Frank gave a little chuckle. I had the feeling that this threat was not unexpected – was a traditional move in the family chess game.

‘That will look good in the newspapers, won’t it?’ Uncle Frank said mockingly. ‘“Banker’s son arrested for debt.” “Bankruptcy proceedings against Fearing’s Bank scion.” Well, at least it would rid you of a modicum of your stuffiness.’

His mother leant forward.

‘You are forgetting, Francis, that there will
come a time when we shall be forced to choose between paying your bills and letting you be disgraced publicly, and the latter will be the less painful alternative.’

‘But that time has hardly been reached yet, Mama,’ said Frank. I snatched another look: he was still wonderfully relaxed and genial – a soft toy surrounded by rigid dolls. ‘My debts, on the scale of younger son’s debts in general, are fairly modest: a European tour when one reaches one’s majority is traditional, though my tour had its untraditional side; my expeditions have mostly been small in scale and have benefited human knowledge; my London flat is hardly expensive in the family’s scale of expenditure. How can you sit in’ – he waved his hand around – ‘
this
place
and talk about having to choose whether to pay a few quite reasonable bills for me?’

‘It’s not just a question of debts,’ said my grandfather. ‘
Two
children in the county—’

‘Wild oats. And like the gentlemen we aim to be I chose not to dispute the paternity.’

‘Scandals of a distasteful kind, infinite offense caused to respectable families in the neighbourhood—’

‘Turnips and stuffed shirts.’

‘You are not fit to tie their bootlaces,’ said my
grandpapa, who had a grand way with clichés. ‘If you do not agree to marry, and marry sensibly and well, the alternative will be to give you a fixed allowance with the sternest warning that this you must manage yourself, and that no new debts will on any account be settled by me or by the Bank.’

There was a silence while this was considered.

‘Oh? And what sort of sum were you thinking of for this allowance?’

There was a further pause, intended to be impressive. ‘We were thinking of the sum of one thousand pounds per annum.’

There was a great yelp of laughter, and the sound of a chair being pushed back.

‘I thought this was meant to be a serious discussion. I might as well be on my way. Pleasure calls!’

‘You can mock!’ said my grandfather’s weighty tones. ‘But think over what we have said, or it will be infinitely the worse for you. I cannot imagine what any man could have against marrying a sweet girl like one of the Coverdales, or one of the Blacketts.’

‘Mary Coverdale is a very pretty girl,’ came my uncle Frank’s voice from over by the door. ‘I know many pretty girls.’ 

There was the sound of a door slamming, then sounds of the family conference breaking up in what was the nearest the Fearings could get to disorder. I retreated to my hopping game, but I was mentally composing a new skipping rhyme:

I had never to my knowledge seen Mary Coverdale, and had no idea whether she was a large young lady. It didn’t sound like it, but truth had very little to do with my skipping games. I might in time find a better rhyme for Mary. My mother’s name, by the way, was Harriet, as you’ve heard, and the only reason I didn’t include her in the games was that the one rhyme I could think of for it was ‘chariot’, and that didn’t seem very fruitful.

I was hopping lonely as a cloud in the little courtyard that bordered the blank wall of the library when to my surprise I saw my mother. More surprising still, she and my father were walking together down the wide lawns constructed from the endless carts of earth brought to the site before ever a stone of
Blakemere was laid, to improve its position and to provide beauteous gardens stretching down to the River Whate. They were walking and talking. Together.

My mother and my father never walked and talked together. They appeared together in public, at dinners and suchlike, when my mother did not cry off on grounds of poor health (that is, poor temper). On those occasions they had little to say to each other, in private still less. My mother, what is more, seldom left the house – seemed to dislike the open air. I watched, fascinated. After some minutes, as they seemed about to begin the descent to the river, my mother stopped, doubtless unwilling to contemplate the haul back up. They talked for a few moments longer. Then they paused, turned around toward the house, and saw me.

My mother looked straight ahead. At me and through me. My father’s brow furrowed. Then they began talking again, and started off in my direction. Some yards away from the courtyard they paused again, my father making an earnest point. I was as sure as I could be that they were talking about me, but I went on hopping and jumping on my chalked squares on the courtyard. Then I heard my mother gulp, sob, and walk
faster than was her wont in the direction of the East Door to the house.

My father watched his unloved and unloving wife for a moment or two, then shrugged. Her departure seemed to lift a weight off his shoulders. The furrowed expression went from his face, and he started toward me with a smile.

‘And what are you up to, Sarah Jane?’

‘Hopping … Papa.’

‘So I see. And what is the idea of it?’

I adopted a bored, explaining-the-obvious-to-adults tone.

‘Well, you hop on
these
squares, then you come down with both feet on
these
squares, and you mustn’t let your shoes touch the lines of the squares.’

‘I see. Like this?’ And he poised himself at the starting point and went through a rough approximation of my game. ‘Was that right?’