Busman’s Honeymoon (41 page)

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been selfish about that. But you’ll take the case, Biggy, and do your best?’

  ‘To please you, I will. I shall enjoy cross-examining you. If you think of any awkward questions to put to yourself, let me know. Now be off with you. I’m getting old, and bed’s the place for me.’

  ‘So that’s that,’ said Peter. They stood on the pavement, shivering a little. It was nearly three in the morning and the air was sharp. ‘What now? Do we seek a hotel?’

  (What was the right answer to that? He looked at once tired and restless—a state of body in which almost any answer is the wrong one. She decided to risk a bold shot.)

  ‘How far is it to Duke’s Denver?’

  ‘Just over ninety miles—say ninety-five. Would you like to drive straight down? We could pick up the car and be out of Town by half-past three. I’d promise not to drive fast and you might be able to get a bit of sleep on the way.’

  Miraculously, the answer had been the right one. She said, ‘Yes; let’s do that.’

  They found a taxi. Peter gave it the address of the garage where they had left the car and they trundled away through the silent streets.

  ‘Where’s Bunter?’

  ‘He’s gone on down by train, with a message to say we I might be a little late.’

  ‘Will your mother mind?’

  ‘No. She’s known me for forty-five years.’

  ‘And the moral of that is,’ said the Duchess….

  LEWIS CARROLL:
Alice in Wonderland.

  The great north road again, mile upon mile, through Hatfield, Stevenage, Baldock, Biggleswade, north and east to the Hertfordshire border—the same road they had travelled four days earlier, with Bunter sitting behind and two-and-a-half dozen of port stowed under his feet in an eiderdown. Harriet found herself dozing. Once, Peter’s touch on her arm roused her to hear him say, ‘That’s the turn for Pagford....’ Huntingdon, Chatteris, March—still north and east, with the wind blowing keener over the wide flats from the bitter northern sea, and the greyness that heralds the dawn lifting coldly into the sky ahead.

  ‘Where are we now?’

  ‘Coming into Downham Market. We’ve just passed through Denver—the original Denver. Duke’s Denver is about fifteen miles further on.’

  The car swung through the little town and turned due east.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just upon six. I’ve only averaged thirty-five.’

  The fen lay behind them now, and the country was growing more wooded. As the sun rose. they slipped into a tiny village with a church from whose tower a clock struck the quarter.

  ‘Denver Ducis,’ said Peter. He let the car dawdle down the narrow street. In the cottages, lighted windows showed where men and women were rising to go early to work. A man came out from a gate, stared at the car and touched his hat. Peter acknowledged the salute. Now they were out of the village, and running along beside a low wall, with high forest trees hanging over it.

  ‘The Dower House is on the other side,’ said Peter. ‘It’ll save time to go through the park.’ They swung into a tall gateway, with a lodge beside it. The growing light showed the stone beasts crouched upon the posts, holding each a shield of arms. At the noise of the horn, a man hurried out of the lodge in his shirt-sleeves and the gates swung back.

  ‘Morning, Jenkins,’ said Peter, and let the car stop. ‘Sorry to bring you out so early.’

  ‘No call to be sorry, my lord.’ The lodge-keeper turned to call over his shoulder. ‘Mother! here’s his lordship!’

  He was an elderly man, and spoke with the familiarity of long service. ‘We were expecting you any time, and the sooner the better for us. Will this be her new ladyship?’

  ‘Got it in one, Jenkins.’

  A woman appeared wrapping a shawl about her and curtsying. Harriet shook hands with the pair of them.

  ‘This is no way to bring your bride home, my lord,’ said Jenkins, reprovingly. ‘We had the bells run for you on Tuesday, and we were meaning to give you a good welcome when you came.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ said Peter, ‘but I never could do anything right from a boy, could I? Talking of that, are the boys all well?’

  ‘Doing first-rate, my lord. thank you. Bill’s got his sergeant’s stripes last week.’

  ‘Good luck to it,’ said Peter heartily. He let the clutch in, and they moved on up a wide avenue of beeches. ‘I suppose it’s a mile from your gate to the front door?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘And do you keep deer in the park?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘And peacocks on the terrace?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. All the story-book things.’

  At the far end of the avenue, the great house loomed grey against the sunlight—a long Palladian front, its windows still asleep, and behind it the chimneys and turrets, rambling wings and odd, fantastic sprouts of architectural fancy.

  ‘It’s not very old,’ said Peter apologetically, as they turned away, leaving the house on their left. ‘Nothing before Queen Elizabeth. No donjon keep. No moat. The castle fell down a good many years ago, I’m thankful to say. But we’ve got specimens of all the bad periods since then and one or two of the good ones. And the Dower house is impeccable Inigo Jones.’

  Harriet, stumbling sleepily up the impeccable Inigo Jones staircase in the wake of a tall footman, was aware of a scurry of high heels on the landing and a cry of delight. The footman flattened himself swiftly against the wall as the Dowager Duchess shot past him in a rose pink dressing gown, her white plaits flying and Ahasuerus clinging for dear life to her shoulder.

  ‘My darlings, how lovely to see you!—Morton, go and get Franklin out of bed and send her to her ladyship immediately—You must be tired and famished—How dreadful about that poor young man!—Your hands are frozen, my dear—I do hope Peter hasn’t been driving at a hundred miles an hour this horrid cold morning—Morton you silly man, can’t you see Ahasuerus is scratching me? Take him off at once—I’ve put you in the Tapestry Room, it’s warmer—Dear me! I feel as though I hadn’t seen either of you for a month—Morton, tell them to bring breakfast up here instantly—and what you want, Peter, is a hot bath.’

  ‘Baths,’ said Peter, ‘real baths are definitely a good idea.’

  They walked along a wide landing, with aquatints along the wall, and two or three tables in Queen Anne Chinoiserie with Famille Rose jars upon them. At the door of the Tapestry Room was Bunter—who must either have got up very early or never gone to bed, for he was dressed with an impeccability worthy of Inigo Jones. Franklin, also impeccable, but slightly flurried in her manner, arrived almost at the same moment. The grateful sound of running water broke refreshingly upon the ear. The Duchess kissed them both, announcing that they were to do exactly as they liked and that she wasn’t going to bother them; and before the door shut they heard her energetically scolding Morton for not having gone to see the dentist and threatening him with gumboils, pyorrhoea, septic poisoning, indigestion and a complete set of false teeth if he persisted in behaving like a baby.

  ‘This,’ said Peter, ‘is one of the presentable Wimseys—Lord Roger; he was a friend of Sidney’s and wrote poetry and died young of a wasting fever, and all that kind of thing. That, as you see, is Queen Elizabeth; she slept here in the usual way and nearly bust the family bank. The portrait is said to be by Zucchero, but it’s not. The contemporary duke, on the other hand, really is by Antonio Moro, and that’s the best thing about it. He was one of the tedious Wimseys, and greed was his leading characteristic. This old harridan was his sister. Lady Stavesacre, who slapped Francis Bacon’s face. She’s no business to be here, but the Stavesacres are hard up, so we bought her in....’

  The afternoon sun slanted in through the long windows of the gallery, picking out here a blue Garter ribbon, there a scarlet uniform, lighting up a pair of slender hands by Van Dyck, playing among the powdered curls of a Gainsborough, or throwing into sudden startling brilliance some harsh white face set in a sombre black periwig.

  ‘That awful ill-tempered-looking brute is the—I forget which duke, but his name was Thomas and he died about 1775—his son made an imprudent marriage with a hosier’s widow—here she is, looking rather fed-up about it. And there’s the prodigal son—rather a look of Jerry about him, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, it’s very like him. Who’s this one? He’s got a queer, visionary sort of face, rather nice.’

  ‘That’s the younger son, Mortimer, he was as mad as a hatter and founded a new religion with himself as its only follower. That’s Dr Gervase Wimsey, Dean of St Paul’s; he was a martyr under Queen Mary. This is his brother, Henry—he raised the standard for Queen Mary in Norfolk at her accession. Our family’s always been very good at having a foot in both camps. That’s my father, like Gerald, but much better looking.... That’s a Sargent, which is about its only excuse for existence.’

  ‘How old were you then, Peter?’

  ‘Twenty-one; full of illusions and trying hard to look sophisticated. Sargent saw through that, damn the fellow! Here is Gerald, with a horse, by Furse; and downstairs, in the horrible room he calls his study, you will find a picture of a horse, with Gerald, by Munnings. Here’s my mother, by Laszlo—a first-class portrait of her, a good many years ago, of course. Not that anything but a very rapidly moving picture could really convey her quality.’

  ‘She fills me with delight. When I came down just before lunch I found her in the hall, putting iodine on Bunter’s nose, where Ahasuerus had scratched him.’

  ‘That cat scratches everybody. I saw Bunter—he was very self-conscious about it. “I am thankful to say, my lord, that the colour of the application is exceedingly transient.” My mother is rather wasted upon a small household. She was at her best with the staff at the Hall, who all went in mortal terror of her. There is a legend that she personally ironed our old butler’s back for lumbago; but she says it wasn’t a flat-iron but a mustard-plaster. Have you seen enough of this Chamber of Horrors?’

  ‘I like looking at them, though they make me feel sympathetic to the hosier’s widow. And I’d like to hear some more about their histories.’

  ‘You’ll have to get hold of Mrs Sweetapple. She’s the housekeeper and knows them all by heart. I’d better show you the library, though it isn’t what it ought to be. It’s full of the most appalling rubbish and the good stuff isn’t properly catalogued. Neither my father nor my grandfather did anything about it, and Gerald’s hopeless. We’ve got an old bird muddling round there now—he’s my third cousin, not the one who’s potty and lives at Nice, his younger brother. He hasn’t got a bean, so it quite suits him to toddle about down here; and he does his best, and really knows quite a lot of antiquarian stuff, only he has very short sight and no method, and never can keep to one subject at a time. This is the great ballroom—it’s rather fine, really, if you don’t object to pomp on principle. You get a good view from here over the terraces down to the water-garden, which would look much more impressive if the fountains were turned on. That silly-looking thing among the trees there is one of Sir William Chambers’s pagodas, and you can just see the roof of the orangery.... Oh, look! there you are—you insisted on peacocks; don’t say we didn’t provide them for you.’

  ‘You’re right, Peter—it
is
a story-book place.’

  They went down the great staircase and across a hall chilly with statuary and thence by way of a long cloister to another hall. A footman came up with them as they paused before a door ornamented with classical pilasters and a carved cornice.

  ‘Here’s the library,’ said Peter. ‘Yes, Bates, what is it?’

  ‘Mr Leggatt, my lord. He wanted to see His Grace—urgently. I told him he was away, but that your lordship was here, and he asked, could you spare him a moment?’

  ‘It’s about that mortgage, I expect—but
I
can’t do anything about it. He must see my brother.’

  ‘He seems very anxious to speak to your lordship.’

  ‘Oh—very well, I’ll see him. Do you mind, Harriet? I won’t be long. Have a look round the library—you may find Cousin Matthew there, but he’s quite harmless, only very shy and slightly deaf.’

  The library, with its tall bays and overhanging gallery, looked east and was already rather dark. Harriet found it restful. She wandered along pulling out here and there a calf-bound volume at random, sniffing the sweet, musty odour of ancient books, smiling at a carved panel over one of the fireplaces, on which the Wimsey mice had escaped from the coat of arms and played in and out of a heavily undercut swag of flowers and wheat-ears. A large table, littered deep in books and papers, she judged to belong to Cousin Matthew—a half-written sheet in an elderly man’s rather tremulous writing appeared to be part of a family chronicle; propped open on a stand beside it was a fat manuscript book, containing a list of household expenses for the year 1587. She pored over it for a few moments, making out such items as ‘to i paire quysshons of redd sarsnet for my lady Joans chambere’ and ‘to ii li tenterhooks, and iii li nayles for the same,’ and then continued to explore, till rounding the corner of the bookshelves into the end bay, she was quite startled to come upon an elderly gentleman, in a dressing-gown. He was standing by the window, with a book in his hand, and the family features were so clearly marked on him—especially the nose—that she could have no doubt of his identity.

  ‘Oh!’ said Harriet. ‘I didn’t know anyone was here. Are you—’ Cousin Matthew must have a surname, of course; the potty cousin at Nice was the next heir, she remembered, after Gerald’s and Peter’s lines, so they must be Wimseys, ‘are you Mr Wimsey?’ (Though, of course, he might quite well be Colonel Wimsey, or Sir Matthew Wimsey, or even Lord Somebody.) ‘I’m Peter’s wife,’ she added, by way of explaining her presence.

  The elderly gentleman smiled very pleasantly and bowed, with a slight wave of the hand as though to say, ‘Make yourself at home.’ He was slightly bald, and his grey hair was cropped very closely above his ears and over the temples. She judged him to be sixty-five or so. Having thus made her free of the place, he returned to his book, and Harriet, seeing that he seemed disinclined for conversation, and remembering that he was deaf and shy, decided not to worry him. Five minutes later, she glanced up from examining a number of miniatures displayed in a glass case, and saw that he had made his escape and was, in fact, gazing down at her from a little stair that ran up to the gallery. He bowed again and the flowered skirts of the dressing-gown went whisking up out of sight, just as somebody clicked on the lights at the inner end of the room.

  ‘All in the dark, lady? I’m sorry to have been so long. Come and have tea. That bloke kept me talking. I can’t stop Gerald if he wants to foreclose—as a matter of fact, I advised him to. The Mater’s come over, by the way; and there’s tea going in the Blue Room. She wants you to look at some china there. She’s rather keen on china.’

  With the Duchess in the Blue Room was a slight, oldish man, rather stooping, dressed neatly in an old-fashioned knickerbocker suit, and wearing spectacles and a thin grey beard like a goat’s. As Harriet entered, he rose from his chair and came forward with extended hand, uttering a faint nervous bleat.