Simply Heaven (34 page)

‘If you’ve got any complaints,’ says Mrs Roberts, ‘you should take them up with Lady Mary. She’ll be down to breakfast at nine o’clock, like normal.’

This is going to deteriorate, fast. There’s one of those unstoppable force/unmoveable object situations developing in front of my eyes, and I’m not sure the house’s foundations are strong enough to take it.

‘Now, look, my lady—’ begins Mum.

I raise my voice. Pointedly. ‘We’ll be getting out of your way, then, Mrs Roberts,’ I say.

‘I want a cup of tea,’ says Mum.

‘You’ll get one at nine o’clock,’ I tell her. ‘And I’ll get you a kettle for your room this afternoon.’

‘You can’t let her talk to you like that,’ says Mum. Her voice is starting on that familiar build. If I don’t get her out of here within the next minute, the whole of Gloucestershire will know my olds have come to stay.

‘We’ll talk about it later,’ I say. I take her by the arm and guide her back towards the hall stairs.

‘What is going
on
?’

‘Don’t, Mum.’

‘Who
is
that woman?’

‘She’s the housekeeper.’

‘And you let her talk to you like that?’

She’s right, of course. Time was I would never have stood for that kind of talk.

‘For now,’ I say.

‘I wouldn’t put up with it.’

‘Sometimes it’s better to wait for your moment.’

‘Revenge is a dish best eaten cold?’

‘Indeed.’

We pause in contemplation. ‘So what time is it, anyway?’ she asks.

I check my watch. ‘Another hour till breakfast, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we just take a car and go to a greasy spoon?’

‘Good thinking, Mother. I don’t suppose the chauffeur would be up for taking us?’

‘What, that jobsworth? No chance. Let’s just take one of the cars.’

‘Don’t shout at me.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not insured.’

Mum gapes at me. ‘How long have you been here, again?’

‘Seven weeks. I know. I know. It’s just, Rufus keeps forgetting and I don’t think it’s a very high priority with anyone else.’

‘But you used to
love
your car.’

‘I know.’

‘Well, we’ll see about
that
,’ she says. ‘Where’s that husband of yours?’

‘No, Ma. When I said not to shout, I meant at Rufus either.’

‘Ah God,’ she says, ‘I’m too hungry to shout. I’m going to get him to drive us up to town.’

Relieved, I say: ‘He’ll be out in the grounds somewhere. He always checks that nothing’s fallen down in the night first thing.’

‘Great. I can get a chance to see the famous grounds, then. Hope they live up to the promise of the house. I mean, I know it’s hard, but you never know. Because if this is anything to go by, they’ll be something really spectacular, then, eh?’

‘Shaddap.’

‘An Englishman’s home is his pigsty. So what are we going to see? Triton fountains? Swimming pool? A collection of pink plastic flamingos? No, don’t tell me: there’ll be some hedges with big holes in and something dead somewhere.’

‘You can be a real smartarse, Mother.’

‘That’ll be where
you
get it from.’

‘It’s a thousand years old. Or so they keep telling me. You can’t expect it to look like new.’

We step out of the front door, and she says: ‘Well, OK. I wasn’t expecting it to look like new, but I was right about the something dead. Jesus. Who cut the dog in half?’

The courtyard is filled with the sulphurous smell of drains. Drains and dead vegetation, and something vaguely fishy, to boot.

‘I take it all back,’ says Mum. ‘It’s a paradise on earth.’

‘Something’s wrong,’ I tell her. ‘It doesn’t usually smell like this.’

‘Of course I believe you.’

I shout, ‘Rufus? Rufus!’

‘I’m over here,’ calls his voice, and it sounds – drained, empty. Weary.

‘Where?’

‘Here.’

I see him over by the moat. He’s sitting on the wet grass, knees pulled up to his chin, fingers linked at the back of his neck.

‘Hey!’ I say, and we start towards him. ‘What’s going on? What are you doing there and what in the hell is that smell?’

And then I stop, and stare. Because where there should be a limpid expanse of noble water there is, instead, a muddy ditch, brown trout gasping at the bottom.

Even Mum has the tact to withdraw at this point. She mutters something about checking on Dad and goes back inside. Rufus doesn’t move. He’s breathing deeply; his shoulders are heaving with the effort. I’m not sure if he isn’t actually crying.

I go to him, lower myself down to sit next to him, pressing up against his side.

‘Oh, baby,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

Rufus doesn’t speak.

I can see what has happened now. The crack which the limo fell into last night has extended all the way across the park, and enters the moat just outside the courtyard walls. And I’m thinking: yes, but for a moat a couple of hundred metres long and four deep to drain completely overnight … the water had to go somewhere. I’m thinking: what the hell is down there? But I don’t say anything to Rufus because he’s not in the mood for idle chitchat.

Eventually, he stirs, says: ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve this.’

‘Oh, Rufus,’ I say. It’s funny how many words you can encapsulate into just two. Because I’m saying:
what on earth are you on about?
And:
don’t be stupid
, and:
I love you so much that I don’t even know how to begin to tell you
, and:
it’ll be OK, darling, we’ll find some way
, and:
I do understand that this is a major disaster, darling, you don’t have to tell me
, and:
shit, shit, shit, shit, shit
.

‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘I married you for your body not your house. If you let
yourself
go to seed, it’ll be another matter.’

‘I’m so sorry. I should have told you the truth. I’m such a selfish, lying … and now you’re trapped with all this and I wanted to give you something so much better.’

‘Ne’mind. Look on the bright side. At least you won’t have to give me any money when I divorce you.’

Rufus half laughs. ‘Don’t even joke about it. You’ve no idea.’

‘I’ve got
some
idea.’

‘We’ll go bankrupt,’ he says, and his tone is uncomfortably matter-of-fact and emotionless.

‘No, Rufus. We won’t do that.’

He twists round to look at me and says: ‘You can’t say that, Melody. You don’t know. You don’t know
any
of it. I’ve dragged you into it and now you’re going to be dragged down by it along with the rest of us, and I’m really, really sorry.’

I try reasoning. Sometimes that works, I’ve found. ‘Rufus, you’re demoralised. Anybody would be.’

‘No,’ he says, with an edge of finality to the word. ‘I mean, yes, I’m demoralised, but my state of mind doesn’t alter the facts. We’re stuffed. Insolvent. Out of business. Broke. Bust. Cleaned out. Ruined.’

‘Insurance?’

A shake of the head. ‘Not for subsidence. Not around here.’

‘They can do that?’

‘Of course they can do that. That’s the point of insurance. They only insure you for things that aren’t likely to happen, not for things that might. They double your premiums for being old, you know, as well. It’s how they make profits.’

‘Jesus.’

‘This is going to cost – Mel, we’re not going to be able to find that sort of money. And Health and Safety won’t let us open for the season with the building unsafe, so there’s no prospect of any income.’

‘Can’t you borrow?’

Rufus’s laugh sounds out across the mud like a funeral knell. His meaning takes a moment to sink in.

‘OK. So how much do we owe?’

He names a figure that makes me gasp.

‘How?
How?
How does
anybody
borrow that sort of money?’

‘By being at school with someone whose family own a bank. And, of course, it wasn’t that much when he borrowed it.’

‘He?’

‘Daddy. Borrowed it in the nineteen seventies. Old mate’s interest rate. That sort of thing still went on, back then. He wanted it for one of his get-rich-slow schemes. I think it was the ostrich farm. That or the Alaskan goldmine. Or maybe the offshore trust with the unbelievable rate of return based on the fact that the man who was running it was tucking it all into a trust of his own in the Caymans. That one shook him, I can tell you. Said he’d never do business with a Harrovian again. But then, you know, there was Big Bang, and the nineteen eighties, and all the big banks started noticing that the small private banks were run by old Etonians without a brain cell to rub together, and so did the con merchants, and before you know it, your bank’s gone down with all hands and your debt belongs to some chap in Hong Kong who doesn’t have the same reverence for the Old School as Daddy’s friends had, and the silly old bugger hasn’t bothered to have limited liability to Lloyd’s when they go bust because everyone knows it’s just a licence to print money, and you’re running along only just managing to make the interest payments, and the roof’s falling off, and everyone in the village thinks you’re a laughing stock, and your forebears are spending money like it’s going out of style and just scattering bits of priceless jewellery about the place like they’ve come from Claire’s Accessories because they will not –
will not
– get their heads around the fact that there isn’t any any more, and running up tabs at all the local shops if you try to impose some sort of allowance on them because it doesn’t count as spending money, only it does, God knows it does, especially when they hide the accounts when they come in and you don’t know anything about it till there’s a bailiff on the doorstep, and I’m in
despair
, Mel. They just don’t listen to a word I say. They think that the fact that we’re an old family is enough, that Bourton has always been here so it always will be, and they don’t understand that you can’t just
have
money, you’ve got to
make
it. It took me five years just to get them to open up to the public. I don’t know what to
do
…’

Oh God.

A trout flaps and struggles in a tiny pocket of sludgy water below us. Poor creature: slowly suffocating in the place that should have been its haven.

I try a tentative suggestion. ‘Well, you know, you could always sell something …’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. There must be something. Isn’t that a Brueghel on the corridor up to the Lady Chapel?’

‘Oh, darling,’ says Rufus, ‘that would be so nice. You’re so nice. Solutions. God.’

‘Well. Why not?’

‘It’s a copy. Not even a very good one. That’s why it’s hung in that dark old corridor, so you can’t see too clearly.’

‘Oh.’

‘The original went for death duties some time in the nineteenth century.’

‘Oh. How about the Caravaggio?’

‘Granny would eviscerate anyone who touched that.’

‘Oh,’ I say again.

I pick a stalk of grass, start shredding it between my thumbnails. ‘Babe, we can find something. I know we can. It won’t come to that.’

‘It will, you know.’

He puts his head in his hands and to my shock I realise that he’s doing it to hide the fact that he really is crying. My heart does a huge, dizzying lurch. Seeing someone you love cry is the worst thing. It’s the time when the lies, the mutual fantasies that bind love together, are shown in all their tawdry worthlessness, like paste diamonds under strong light. When the belief we all cling to that we are one as two, that love confers invincibility, is shown for what it is: a hopeless expression of the search for heaven. Because I love him, I love him with all my life, but I can’t reach him. Maybe that’s what love is for: it’s a confidence trick we play on ourselves to fool us into believing we’re not alone.

I reach out and take him in my arms, press kisses on his temples, stroke away his tears with faltering fingertips. Whisper soft assurances like you would to a child.
Hush, my love, be still. I’ll take care of you. I’ll bind you safe and keep you warm
.

‘I so want to walk away,’ he says. ‘My whole life I’ve wanted to walk away. Run away. When I was a child. Looking at the damp streaming down my bedroom wall and the rats scurrying off when you turned the light on in the cellar and the plaster coming off in chunks from the Great Hall ceiling and the elms crashing down in the park and the houses in the village emptying out one by one and the peacocks dying on the lawns and mould inside the wardrobes and silverfish pouring out from under the lino and beetles in the carpets and paint peeling from every single wall, and everyone told me, over and over again, how lucky I was, what an awesome responsibility and an incomprehensible privilege. Mummy and Granny, talking about sacrifices and determination, battles and wars, bravery and grit, all of it so that I could be the heir to Bourton Allhallows, and take on the noble duty of preserving it to pass on to my sons. And I knew even then that it wouldn’t be possible, that there was dry rot in the timbers and woodworm and Dutch Elm and deathwatch beetle and something very, very wrong with the foundations, and that I was going to be the last one. That I wouldn’t be able to keep it going any longer. It’s beyond anything. There isn’t a lottery win, or an upturn in the market, or a mystery benefactor or a surprise legacy that could sort this out. It’s just a matter of time.’

It’s all right, my love. I’m with you
.

‘And yet even though I’ve known it was inevitable,’ he says, ‘I feel like a traitor. If I have to walk away, I will be betraying everything. All the ones that came before me, and all the ones that will come after, will look on me as the coward, the one who wasn’t up to the job, the one who sold his birthright. That’s all that’s kept them going, you know, over the last hundred years. Each son, terrified that he was going to be the one. Each one of us pretending he loved the place that smothered his ambitions. It’s destroyed Daddy, and it turned Granpa into a raging drunk, and it’ll get me in the end, whatever I do to stop it.’

I’m speechless. I’d not thought of it this way. I’ve thought of all these people as rendered helpless by privilege, and now Rufus is wanting me to believe that they’ve been sucked dry by a house. Are people really like that? Is this what happens to great families, as the bloodline to the high-achieving villains that once headed them gets thinner and thinner? At what point in a family’s history does the stuff they have accrued become more important than the family members, the offspring merely custodians of bricks and mortar, rather than individuals in their own right?