A Scandal in Belgravia (23 page)

Tonight over dinner I talked it over with Jeremy. He was in favour of my using my old ministerial clout to barge straight in on them and ask my questions. I think he would rather have liked to come along to this bearding of father and son. He is getting quite involved in the matter, though in a much more light-hearted way. I told him I felt that would be counterproductive. Jeremy thought there would have to be some sort of trick to get the son out of the way so that I could talk to Lord John. I had to agree that getting to talk to Tim's father alone might well present a problem, but I pointed out that even if
James were got out of the way, there was presumably still the wife, who I had gathered was the more formidable of the pair. Ways of getting both out of the way and leaving me in the house did not present themselves readily.

“Who is James Wycliffe anyway?” asked Jeremy. “I mean
what
is he? What is his claim to fame?”

“He has been Lord Lieutenant of Avon,” I answered. “Otherwise he is described as ‘farmer.' ”

“You don't think my ringing at a prearranged time and saying ‘T'owd cow'ave got into clover meadow' would do the trick, do you?” asked Jeremy, his mock-rural accent gloriously bad.

“No, I don't. I think he must have scraped into
Who's Who
by a combination of his birth, his Lord Lieutenancy, and his being a very big farmer indeed. So I don't see him being the sort who drags on his wellies and stumps out after stray cows, let alone one who takes his lady wife along with him. But thanks for the thought. As for the accent, don't ring us . . .”

So tonight I am left pondering, without any firm plan, but with the strongest possible desire to get to see Tim's other surviving relatives.

• • •

Three days after I wrote the above, yesterday, I went down to Formby. I drove down with little more than the shadow of a notion of what I would do when I got there. I went, reluctantly, on my own. I loathe motorway driving on a weekday—loathed it, in fact, even when I had a chauffeur doing it for me in a ministerial limousine—so there was no chance of thinking as I went. Nor did the much narrower roads after I'd left the motorway encourage anything but dedicated concentration. At a few minutes after eleven I stopped at a gap in the grass verge
where there was a gate into a meadow and surveyed the ordnance survey map I'd provided myself with.

Formby is just two miles within Avon, near the boundary with Gloucestershire. Of course twenty years ago it would have been
in
Gloucestershire. When I was in the government I couldn't say it, but now I can: I abhor and detest the reorganisation of the British counties undertaken by the first administration of which I was a member. What a botched, misconceived, antihistorical job it was! Why, in fact, do it at all? Does anybody today say “I am an Avon man” with the pride he might say “I am a Yorkshireman” or “I am a Cornishman”? Of course not! I doubt even a young man, one who never knew the old counties, would say it. We have destroyed the pride of centuries for supposed administrative advantages which never materialised. Sermon over. So anyway here I was in Avon, of which James Wycliffe had been Lord Lieutenant. I calculated I was three miles from Formby, and a mere one and a half from Maddern Hall.

I set off for the Hall, driving slowly. The road was narrow, and of the rolling-English-drunkard variety. I passed through a hamlet called Nethley: a post-office-cum-shop and about eight small houses, one of them for sale. A quarter of a mile down the road, on my left, I found the gates to Maddern Hall—open, giving a view of a handsome early nineteenth-century manor house: not a large one, but a regular and satisfying one. It had a Jane Austeny feel to it which I relished—red brick, warm, inviting. The drive up was lined by trees, and around and behind it rolled acres and acres of excellent farming land.

And ahead of me along the road were three cottages, no doubt once tied to one or other of the various farms in the area. I drove on slowly, and saw that the one nearest the gates had a For Sale sign up. Now that could be a stroke of luck! The agents were named as Wetherfield and Markham, of Formby. I drove on and took the first turning that would take me there.

Formby was little more than a large village. The girl in the outer office of Wetherfield and Markham's looked at me
without recognition, and without a great deal of interest either. She nodded routinely when I named the cottage I was interested in, and rummaged in a drawer for the key.

“There's still furniture in the property,” she said in a rote-learned voice. “Mr. Wycliffe will arrange a house clearance, unless the buyer wants to come to some other arrangement.”

“I see. Is that Mr. James Wycliffe of Maddern Hall?”

“That's right.”

“Ah. I once knew his brother.”

She looked quite blank, as well she might, being hardly over twenty. Even in the country scandals do eventually die.

“Any questions or offers should come through us,” she intoned, in the sort of voice better suited to making “tuppence off” announcements in supermarkets.

“Of course. I wouldn't dream of troubling Mr. Wycliffe,” I lied.

I told her I would have lunch before I went to view the cottage, and asked where I might go. She said, “There's the Plough,” rather in the manner of someone behind the counter of a Soviet food store reciting the one sort of sausage they had in stock. So the Plough it was, and it seemed warm and comfortable enough, with a real fire going and a few early-lunchtime drinkers. It would probably have been safer to order a sandwich, but to get on the landlord's good side I ordered steak and kidney pie (with chips, naturally), and a pint of his best bitter.

“I'm on my way to look over a cottage out near Nethley.”

“Oh aye? Would that be old Mr. Dereham's as was?”

“I'm not sure. Belongs to Mr. James Wycliffe, I gather.”

“That'll be it. It's all Mr. James's now, or it is in effect. . . . Very nice gentleman, is Mr. James.”

There seemed to be an “as opposed to” implied here, so I crinkled up my forehead as if in thought and said: “I have a feeling my late wife knew his wife.”

“Ah!” said the landlord, and tapped his nose. “Different
kettle of fish entirely, is Mrs. James. More than a touch of the tartar. A fair woman, mind you, but likes her own way. You take my advice: if you buy the cottage, you keep on the right side of her! . . . Haven't I seen you before somewhere?”

“Not round here. You could have seen me on the television.”

“Ah, that'd be it. It's always on in the back of the bar. I only see it with half an eye.”

“That's much the best way to see it.”

He showed a rare and commendable lack of curiosity about what I did when I appeared on the box. I could have been a glove-puppeteer for all he cared. I took my plate of steak and kidney and chips to a table in a corner, and read a paper while I forked it in. It was about what one would expect in a pub which had no competition in the provision of lunches in its village. I got the landlord to put an extra half-pint in my glass, but he was too busy to talk. Then I was ready to drive back to Maddern Hall.

I parked outside the cottage and made the ritual tour of inspection. It was conservatively furnished, a little dark, as cottages always are, but well-equipped and—until recently, I guessed—lovingly cared for. The garden, too, had been weeded and tidied not so long before. I wondered idly whether a country cottage might not be a good idea: I could write here, come for weekends, potter around in the garden. I wondered whether Jeremy would come. Probably, but I'd always be thinking he'd prefer to be in London, with friends of his own age. The inspection over, I locked the place up, reversed the car up the road, then turned into the gates of Maddern Hall and drove up the handsome, tree-lined approach to the house. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came—though the only ghost that might be watching my approach was the ghost of Timothy Wycliffe.

I paused for a moment as I got out of the car and surveyed the well-kept lawns, the few but meticulously weeded flower beds, and the lush acreage stretching into the distance, dotted with
farms, and with barns, hen runs, and piggeries. Then I walked up to the entrance and rang the bell.

“Yes?”

It was a daily woman who opened the door—aproned, with a duster in her hand.

“My name is Proctor, and I was wondering if Mr. or Mrs.—”

“What is it, Mary?”

The voice was well-bred, confident, unimaginative. I looked past the daily woman at the figure who now came into the oak-lined entrance hall. Unmistakably this was Mrs. Wycliffe. She was tall, with an indisputable air of command. There was no ostentation about her: she was simply dressed in a jumper and skirt of the kind that Ann often sported, and she wore no jewellery—swine before pearls had presumably been the Wycliffe business motto. She had square shoulders and an erect stance, and she was without question a woman who expected and exacted deference.

“Mrs. Wycliffe?” I said, smiling deferentially (I had had much practice). “I don't think we've met but I'm—”

“Proctor. Peter Proctor. Well, this is a surprise. And an honour, of course. Do come in.”

As I stepped over the threshold I breathed a sigh of relief. Marjorie Knopfmeyer had not passed on my interest in Timothy Wycliffe. Otherwise this woman, I felt sure, would be neither surprised nor welcoming. First hurdle over.

“I've just been looking at your cottage that's for sale,” I explained. “The girl at Wetherfield and Markham's told me it was yours, and I thought I should come over and pay my respects. Lord John—as he then was—was a minister when I first entered the Commons.”

“Well, I'm
most
pleased you're interested in the cottage, and so will James be.” The tone was distinctly warm, even genial. “Do come through. Holiday home?”

“That's right. Not just that, though: place for getting down to my memoirs.”

“James. Surprise guest. Peter Proctor.”

She had ushered me into a long, airy living room, pleasantly furnished with family pieces and rather dull pictures. James Wycliffe got up from the sofa, shook my hand with an expression of surprise, and we went through the ritual of greetings and explanations. He was a heavy, slightly florid man, with the kindly air of a person who knows he is not a great brain. He gave the impression of being someone who had never been his own master, and didn't much regret it. He had a dog at his feet, and he looked the type who would always have a dog somewhere in the vicinity.

“We were just going to have coffee,” said Mrs. Wycliffe. “I'm Caroline, by the way. You'll have some with us, won't you? Excuse me—I won't be too long. We don't have any staff to speak of any longer.”

“Well!” said James Wycliffe, settling down again into his sofa. “This is a pleasant variation to the day's routine. Damned pleased you're interested in the cottage. Even if you're not, it was civil of you to drop in. Mind you, we don't have all that much to do with politics these days.”

“Me neither. I'm a dead letter, like your father. I was telling your wife that he was a minister when I first went into the Commons. I know your sister slightly, by the way—charming woman. And I was great friends with your brother.”

His face fell at once, in what seemed utterly genuine regret. My first impression was that he was a man innocent of guile.

“Tim. Poor old Tim. I've never stopped grieving for him. Now there was a man with gifts. There was a man who could win people to him. I'm a plain sort of chap, but even I could see that. What a waste! How did you know him?”

“At the Foreign Office. He and I started more or less together. We were very different types—like you I'm a plain sort of chap. I got where I did get through a thoroughly boring
competence. But I couldn't fail to see his distinction, and be influenced by him.”

“Didn't know you'd started in the F.O.”

“Just for a few years. I got out and went into industry. Couldn't stand Eden's way with his staff. Tim was thinking of getting out before he died, wasn't he?”

“Oh yes. Not for that reason, I don't think. He realized he was a fish out of water there. He used to say he'd gone in because he was interested in foreign countries, and he'd found that the F.O. was the last place that anyone with that interest ought to go. Damned witty chap, Tim. My father and I both told him it would be disloyal to get out during Suez, and I'm glad to say we convinced him. But the F.O. was never the place for him: he wasn't discreet or hypocritical enough for the high-ups there.”

“I felt that at the time. I was always warning him that he was much too . . . open. He was thinking of going to work for the Hatherley Trust, wasn't he?”

“That's right. He was to be their spokesman. Damned good job he'd have made of it too. Better than the chap who
did
run it who was always on television at one time, whatever his name was. . . . Of course one can say that now. . . .”

“Not at the time?”

“Definitely not at the time! A hot potato if ever I knew one, especially if Father was around. And I've got to admit we both tried to step on it firmly at the time. But times have changed, haven't they? Attitudes have changed.”

“I think they have, to some extent. But you say you were against his working for them when the matter came up?”

He shook his head in self-depreciation.

“Wasn't a question of what I was against. Tim and I were great friends, but he'd never have come to me for advice. Quite right too. I'm a frightful old stick-in-the-mud, always have been. It was a question of what Father said.”

“No, I suppose Lord John wouldn't have been too happy.”

“Putting it mildly. We were staying with him in the Kensington house at the time. We had a house in Formby then, and acted as unofficial liaison with the constituency people. All the time the crisis was on we were back and forth, back and forth. Father and Caroline were always very close politically—she was secretary, nursemaid and cheerleader to him, all unpaid. She'd have made a damned good MP if things had been different in the party then. Anyway, I remember we were just congratulating ourselves on having persuaded Tim he shouldn't resign till after it was all over when he dropped into a phone call to me just what he intended to do when he did resign. I'm not too bright, but I felt a bit uneasy about it. When I told Father he hit the roof.”