A Countess Below Stairs (5 page)

Then, in the summer of 1918, returning alone from a reconnaissance, he was set upon by a flight of Fokkers, and though he managed to dispatch two of them, his own plane was hit. The resulting crash landed him in hospital, first in St Omer, then in London. Some time in the months of pain that followed they gave him the DFC for bringing his plane back across the lines in spite of his wounds, but his observer, a moon-faced kid called Johnny, died of his burns and the manner of his dying i was to stay with Rupert for the rest of his life. {

And while he lay in hospital, tended by a series of devastating VADs, the war ended and Rupert found himself still alive.

Alive, and Seventh Earl of Westerholme, owner of Mersham with its forests and farms, its orchards and stables. Owner, too, of the crippling debts, the appalling running costs, the mortgage on the Home Farm.

It was only the memory of George on the last leave they’d spent together, that prevented Rupert from instructing his bailiff to sell then and there. George, his eyes glazed, his uniform unbuttoned after an evening of conventional debauchery at Maxim’s, turning suddenly serious. ‘If anything happens to me, Rupert, try and hang on to Mersham. Do your damndest.’ And as Rupert remained silent, he had added a word he seldom used to his younger brother. ‘Please.’

So Rupert had promised. Yet as he pored over the documents they brought to him in hospital he saw no way of bringing the estate, so hopelessly encumbered, back to solvency. And then, suddenly, this miracle … this undreamt of, unhoped-for chance to make Mersham once again what it had been and see that all the people in his care were safe.

Thinking with an upsurge of gratitude of the person who had made this possible, his apprehension lifted and, stepping on the accelerator, he turned in past the empty gatehouse, drew up on the wide sweep of gravel and braced himself against the onslaught of the lion-coloured shape now tearing down the steps towards the car. He was home.

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‘Welcome home, my lord,’ said Proom, coming forward to greet him. ‘I trust you had a comfortable journey?’

‘Very comfortable, thank you, Proom,’ said Rupert. He broke off: ‘Good heavens!’

Proom followed his master’s gaze. On either side of the grand staircase with its Chinese carpet and crystal chandeliers, stretching upwards like ranking cherubim, were Rupert’s footmen in livery, his housemaids in brown, jus kitchen maids in blue, his scullery maids and hall boy and housekeeper and cook. Compared to prewar days they were a mere handful, but to Rupert, accustomed now to the simplicities of wartime living, they seemed to reach to infinity.

‘As you see, I’ve assembled the indoor staff, my lord,’ said Proom somewhat unnecessarily. ‘It was their wish to greet you personally after your ordeal.’

If Rupert’s heart sank, there was nothing to be seen in his face except pleasure and interest. He went forward, his hand outstretched.

‘Mrs Bassenthwaite! How well you look!’

‘And you too, my lord,’ lied the old housekeeper. They had read about him in the papers for, surprisingly, it was Rupert not George who had been twice mentioned in dispatches, had won the MC while still a subaltern and become - even before his final act of bravery - a legend to his own men. Now the old woman who had known him since his birth saw in the new lines round his eyes, the skin stretched tight across the cheekbones, the price paid

by those who force themselves against their deepest nature, to excel in war.

‘And Mrs Park! Well, if you’re still presiding over the kitchens it will be worth coming home.’

He walked on slowly, greeting all the old servants by name, cracking a joke with Louise, asking, with a grin, after James’ pectoral muscles, enquiring if the second footman felt his wound.

He had reached the half-landing and Proom, very much the major domo, was at his side, introducing a new maid.

‘This is Anna, my lord. She is from Russia and has joined us temporarily.’

Rupert only had time to register a pair of intense, dark eyes in a narrow, thoughtful face before the new girl curtsied.

All the girls had bobbed curtsies as he passed, but Rupert was about to encounter for the first time this weapon of social intercourse in Anna Grazinsky’s hands. One arm flew gracefully outward and up like an ascending dove, her right foot, elegantly flexed, drew a wide arc on the rich carpet - and she sank slowly, deeply and utterly to the ground.

Panic gripped Rupert. Even Proom, immuned as he was to the devastating effect of Anna’s curtsies, stepped back a pace. For here was homage made flesh; here, between the bust of an obese Roman emperor and a small, potted palm, Rupert, Seventh Earl of Westerholme, was being offered commitment, servitude, another human being’s all.

Rupert instinctively looked round for the red roses that should have been raining down from the gallery, the bouquet which anyone not made of iron must surely bring in from the wings. For unlike Proom, who had merely suffered uncomprehendingly, Rupert recognized the origin of his new housemaid’s curtsy. Thus had

Karsavina sunk to the ground after her immortal rendering of Giselle; thus had Pavlova folded her wings after her Dying Swan.

‘You have studied ballet, I see,’ said Rupert gravely.

Anna, delighted to have her gifts appreciated, lifted her head, said, ‘Yes, my lord,’ and smiled.

For the new earl was nice. She had thought he might be from his photograph and his dog, and he was. An intelligent, sensitive face with wide grey eyes, a high and slightly bumpy forehead and unruly, leaf-brown hair. She liked the lines etched into his face to give it maturity and strength, the courtesy with which he spoke.

And so she smiled at him — into him, he could have said - managing to combine the look of a baby monkey rendered ecstatic by the unsolicited gift of a sudden nut, with that of a guardian angel receiving uplifting tidings about the Fate of Man. Fighting desperately to turn this routine encounter with a new domestic into normal channels, Rupert said, ‘Your family all left Russia safely, I hope?’

‘My mother and brother are well, thank you. My father died at Tannenberg.’

It was only when the light in her eyes was extinguished, at the mention of her father, that Rupert realized how brightly it had burned.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said gently. ‘It was a frightful battle, that. We were very slow, I’m afraid, in realizing how horrific the Russian casualties were. But you are happy here, I hope?’

‘Oh, yes, very,’ she said, and catching Proom’s eye added belatedly, ‘my lord. Everybody is most kind to me. Only about the bathrooms am I not happy,’ she said, her ‘r’s beginning to roll badly, as they always did when discussing this most vexed of topics.

.‘What is wrong with the bathrooms?’ enquired Rupert, startled.

‘What is wrong,’ said the new housemaid very seriously, ‘is that there are not any of them. Not anywhere in all the attics. Perhaps you did not know this?’

Rupert frowned. Had he known it? Had he ever been in the attics in which his servants slept? Well, this was just the sort of thing which, from next month on, would be most competently dealt with. And, remembering the good news he was bringing his mother, and resisting an urge to offer the new housemaid the use of his own bathroom in the master suite, Rupert moved on up the stairs.

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‘Oh, my dear, I’m so happy for you! So terribly, terribly happy!’ The dowager’s eyes were misty as she looked at Rupert. ‘It was what I wanted for you so much, someone to share your life.’

Mrs Park, remembering Rupert’s light appetite, had sent up a meal as exquisite as it was delicate: salmon in oyster sauce, croquettes of leveret with peas, and wild strawberries which Anna had found and picked in the woods behind the lake. With it they had drunk the Leitenheimer 1904 which Proom had saved for just this day and now the family was alone, taking coffee and liqueurs in the library.

‘I know.’ Rupert smiled at his mother and tried for the fifth time to push Baskerville off his feet. ‘And I know you’ll like Muriel. I can’t imagine a more suitable mistress for Mersham. Not that she will want to oust you.’ He stretched a hand out to his mother. ‘Mersham’s big enough for both of you, heaven knows!’

‘No, dear.’ The dowager shook her head. ‘There’s no house big enough in the world for two women. But you know I’ve always meant to move into the village when either of … when you got married. Colonel Forster’s promised to rent me the Mill House and I shall be very happy there. Now tell us about Muriel. Everything. Where did you meet her?’

‘In the hospital. She was a VAD and truly, mother, I think she saved my life. The other nurses were sweet but they all seemed to be straight out of finishing school.’ Rupert grinned ruefully, remembering curly-headed Belinda Ponsonby who had perched on his bed half the night smoking and sobbing about her boyfriends; Fiona Fitz-Herald who had dropped a scalding hot water bottle on to his gauze dressing and tiny, tender-hearted Zoe van Meek who had stuck a hypodermic halfway in his arm and fainted. ‘Muriel was always so calm and efficient and in control. You’ve no idea what it meant to me.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I didn’t dream that she had come to care for me,’ he went on, and the dowager smiled for Rupert had always been unaware of the charm he held for women. ‘It wasn’t just that I knew she was an heiress - you know how people gossip in a hospital - but she’s also extremely beautiful. And an intellectual! She has this passionate interest in eugenics.’

‘Fair or dark?’ asked Uncle Sebastien, that life-long connoisseur of women.

‘Fair. Truly golden-haired with deep blue eyes. I don’t know if I’d ever have dared to propose with Mersham in the state it’s in, but she made it so easy for me.’ And Rupert frowned a little, trying to remember, for it had all been rather dream-like, his courtship of Muriel from his hospital bed. So much so that he couldn’t actually recall how they had got engaged. He’d just woken from a disturbed and pain-filled sleep and she’d been there beside him, holding his hand, promising to care for him and make of his beautiful home a place of which he would be deeply proud. ‘She’s so generous, too. She wants to see to the indoor running costs straight away - not even wait for the wedding. That’s why I asked you to engage only temporary staff.’

‘It all sounds delightful,’ said the dowager, ‘and of course completely explains why the sexton’s wife didn’t want him to give away his top hat. Now tell me, dear, when’s the wedding to be? And where? Because I must go at once and call on her parents.’

‘Well, mother, that’s the point. You see, Muriel’s an orphan.’

‘Oh, my dear! The poor, poor girl.’ Though genuinely devastated, the dowager was not averse to the removal of so pushing a figure as the mother of the bride. ‘How very sad for her! How dreadful!’

‘Yes, she’s had a very lonely life. But the thing is, mother - and please say if it’s inconvenient or you aren’t up to it — we wondered whether we could be married here. In the village church.’

The dowager’s eyes glowed. ‘But of course! How lovely\ Oh, Rupert there’s nothing in the world I’d love more. You can’t imagine how pleased everyone will be. And the servants too; they’ve worked so hard.’

‘You mustn’t tire yourself, of course -1 know Muriel means to spare you as much work as possible. But we both feel a quiet country wedding is what we want and very soon. There’s so much to do here and nothing to wait for. In fact, we hoped we could call the banns next week and be married at the end of July.’

‘As quickly as that?’ The dowager was startled. ‘Still, I don’t see why not.’

‘Muriel was wondering if she could come down almost straight away? If it’s not correct for me to stay in the same house with her I could go over to Heslop and stay with Tom. I want him for my best man anyway.’

‘Oh, I’m sure there’s no need for that. Perhaps just the night before the wedding. Goodness, how exciting it all is! We must have an engagement party straight away so that she can meet her new neighbours. What about the bridesmaids, has she decided?’

‘She was going to ask Lavinia Nettleford, I think. I believe she nursed with her. You know her, I expect?’

The dowager frowned, trying to distinguish Lavinia among the brood of girls that the Duke of Nettleford, much to his chagrin, had fathered in darkest Northumberland.

‘Is she the eldest one?’

‘I believe so. And there’s a schoolfriend of Muriel’s: Cynthia Smythe. But Muriel says she’d be very happy for us to choose another one — maybe a little girl to act as flower girl and carry her train.’

The dowager smiled. ‘Well, we don’t have to look very far there, do we?’

‘Of course!’ Rupert was delighted. ‘Ollie\ Mother, you’re a genius!’

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It was close on eleven before the overjoyed dowager and Uncle Sebastien went up to bed.

‘Come.’ said Rupert, left alone with his dog, and Baskerville. still not quite believing that the bad times were over, loped after him through the French windows, his great muzzle glued to Rupert’s side.

It was a night to dream about: windless, warm and scented, with a streak of gold and amethyst still lingering in the sky. Rupert’s route took him down the terrace steps, across the lawns and through a wicket gate on to the mossy path which led around the lake. Here his ancestors had planted exotic, fabulous trees which nevertheless grew and flourished in. this sheltered English valley: jacarandas and Lebanon cedars, maples and tulip trees whose roots stretched to the edge of the now smooth and pearly water.

Baskerville left the path to chase rabbits, returned to make slobberingly certain that his master had not been spirited away again and raced back into the woods. Rupert passed the Temple of Flora, white in the gathering darkness, the gothic folly, said to be haunted by his guilty forebear, Sir Montague Frayne - and stopped dead.

He had come to a little grass-fringed bay, clear of the reeds which thronged the northern shore. A girl was standing by the edge of the lake, already up to her knees in water. She had her back to him and her dark hair fell in a loose mantle to her waist. As he watched, she bent to the water, dipped her arms in it and began a strange and curious ritual. With one arm she pulled back the mass of her hair, while with the other she rubbed her neck, her shoulders, her narrow back…