The Attenbury Emeralds (2 page)

‘You were just a girl, after all,’ said Lord Peter, smiling at his wife, ‘and a swot, I imagine. What were you doing in 1921?’

‘Head down over my books preparing for Oxford entrance exams,’ said Harriet. ‘I think, you know, that it’s just as well I didn’t meet you then, Peter.’

‘You’d have been a breath of fresh air compared to the girls I did meet. And you never know, you might have liked me. Wasn’t it my frivolity that put you off for years? I hadn’t yet got into the way of frivolity so much then.’

‘Is that true, Bunter?’ asked Harriet, affecting doubt.

‘His lordship never perpetrates falsehoods, my lady,’ said Bunter, straight-faced.

He descended the library steps, moved them one bay along, and gave his attention to the next column of books.

‘Bunter, do get down from that thing, and face forward somewhere. Come and sit down and tell Harriet properly about those lost years.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Bunter stiffly, doing as he was asked.

‘Well, come along then, your most excellent opinion, if you please.’

When Bunter hesitated, Harriet said gently, ‘How did
you
find the peace, Bunter?’

‘It was very easy for me, my lady. I had escaped serious injury. I had a job for the asking, and it was a well-paid position with all found. Many of those I had served with, especially the seriously injured, came home to a cold welcome, and were soon forgotten. People turned away from mention of the war as from talk of a plague. His lordship’s sort of people threw themselves into pleasure-seeking and fun. My sort had longer memories.’

‘The awful fact was,’ Peter put in, ‘that all that suffering and death had produced a world that was just the same as before. It wasn’t any safer; it wasn’t any fairer; there were no greater liberties or chances of happiness for civilised mankind.’

‘Working men were beginning to toy with Bolshevism,’ said Bunter. ‘And it was hard to blame them.’

‘The very same people,’ Peter added, ‘who were refusing to employ a one-armed soldier, or who were trying to drive down miners’ wages, were horrified at a rise of Bolshevism, mostly because of the massacre of the Romanovs. Well, because the Russian royals were disappeared, supposed dead.’

‘I remember Richard King in the
Tatler
,’ said Bunter, ‘opining that the mass of men will gladly sacrifice themselves for the realisation of a better world, but would never again be willing to sacrifice themselves merely to preserve the old one.’

At which both his employers objected at once.

Peter: ‘Even you, Bunter, cannot expect me to believe that you have remembered that verbatim for something like thirty years!’

Harriet: ‘In the
Tatler
, Bunter? Surely not!’

Bunter met both sallies with aplomb. ‘It happens, my lord, my lady, that I began to keep a commonplace book at that time. I was so struck by those words of Richard King that I cut out his article, and pasted it on to the first page of the book. My eye lights on it again every time I open it to make a new insertion.’

‘Worsted again,’ said Peter. ‘I should have realised long ago that it is useless to argue with you.’

Bunter acknowledged this apology with a brief nod of the head.

‘Uneasy times,’ said Peter. ‘There was a coal strike that spring – quickly over, but with hindsight it was rumbling towards the General Strike. And what Bunter calls my sort of people were carrying on like the Edwardians become hysterical. Dancing, dressing up, getting presented at court, throwing huge parties, racing, gambling, prancing off to the French Riviera or Chamonix, chasing foxes, shooting grouse…I was supposed to be a good sport, and join in. It seemed meaningless to me. I found my station in life was dust and ashes in my mouth. I might have been all right with a decently useful job.’

‘Couldn’t you just have gone and got one?’ asked Harriet.

‘Of course I could. I was just too callow to think of it. I think I went for months with no better purpose in life than trying not to disappoint Bunter. If he made breakfast, I ought to eat breakfast. If he thought I needed a new suit, I ought to order one, and so forth. If he kept showing me catalogues of book sales, I ought to collect books.’

‘If I may say so, my lord,’ said Bunter, ‘I believe the book-collecting was entirely your idea. I have been your lordship’s apprentice in anything to do with books.’

Harriet looked from one of them to the other. They were both struggling to conceal emotion. Whatever had she stirred up? Should she have guessed that the emeralds would open old wounds in this way?

‘You see, Harriet,’ said Peter, ‘that if my life was a stream of meaningless trivia, I was affronting Bunter. He was far too good a fellow to be a servant to a witless fool. I could just about manage to do what Bunter appeared to expect I might do, but I knew, really, that I was frittering both of us.’

‘I shouldn’t think Bunter saw it that way,’ said Harriet. ‘I imagine he saw you as a decently useful job. I hope we aren’t making you uncomfortable, Bunter,’ she added.

‘Not unusually so, my lady,’ said Bunter gravely.

His remark brought a brief blush to Harriet’s face. All three of them laughed.

‘So as Bunter was saying,’ Peter continued, ‘he and my mother between them – that’s right, isn’t it, Bunter? – were on the lookout for a suitable occasion, a kind of coming-out for me, when I might show my face in public again, and try to behave normally. And they chose the Abcock engagement party. A party to present Lady Charlotte Abcock’s fiancé to Lord Attenbury’s circle.’

‘Abcock is the Attenbury family surname, my lady,’ said Bunter helpfully.

‘Thank you, Bunter,’ said Harriet. She thought wryly that she would find all that easier to remember and understand if she had ever been able to take it entirely seriously.

‘It seemed just the right sort of occasion,’ said Bunter, ‘with only one drawback. It wasn’t very large, but on the other hand large enough to seem like being in society. The Earl of Attenbury’s family were long-established friends of the Wimsey family. The event was not in the shooting season. His lordship had been at school with Lord Abcock – Roland, the Attenburys’ eldest son – and had known the eldest daughter as a girl. Fennybrook Hall, the Attenburys’ seat in Suffolk, was not a taxing journey from London, as I supposed. I thought we would go by train, my lady. I had not anticipated that his lordship would insist on driving us, a circumstance that certainly made the journey memorable.’

‘That I can well imagine,’ said Harriet sympathetically. ‘What was the drawback?’

‘Oh, just that brother Gerald, and my dear sister-in-law Helen were among the guests,’ said Peter.

‘1921,’ said Harriet thoughtfully. ‘Surely Helen was not yet the full-blown Helen of more recent years?’

‘Much the same, if a little less strident,’ said Peter.

‘In the event, my lady, another drawback emerged when we had already accepted the invitation, and it was too late to withdraw,’ said Bunter. ‘The family decided to get their jewels out of the bank for the occasion, and the press became aware of it. There was a great deal of most unwelcome publicity about it, and it seemed likely that the party would be besieged.’

‘I have never been able to see the point of jewels so valuable that they have to be kept in the bank,’ said Harriet.

‘The thing about such possessions is that their owners don’t really regard them as personal property,’ said Peter. ‘They are part of the patrimony of the eldest sons. They go with the title, like the estates and family seat. Unlike the estates and the family seat, however, they can be entailed to go down the line of daughters. They are a family responsibility. Nobody wants to be the one during whose tenure they were lost, stolen or strayed.’

‘The Attenbury emeralds were, or rather are, in the strict sense heirlooms, my lady,’ said Bunter.

‘Yes,’ said Harriet doubtfully, ‘but it must greatly limit the enjoyment they can give.’

‘You married me wearing Delagardie earrings,’ said Peter mildly.

‘That was to please your mother,’ Harriet said. ‘She had been so kind to me; and she thought they would look good with that golden dress.’

‘She was right,’ said Peter, smiling.

‘My mind was on other things that day,’ said Harriet, ‘but I wouldn’t normally like to wear something that wasn’t really mine, but only on loan from history. It would be like going to the ball in a hired gown.’ Not for the first time she felt thankful that Peter was the younger son. She glanced at the blazing ruby in her engagement ring. That was completely hers.

‘On the other hand,’ said Peter, smiling – he must have seen that glance – ‘it lends occasions some éclat when everyone puts on their glory only now and then.’

‘Many families solve the difficulty by having paste replicas made for less august occasions,’ said Bunter.

‘And the Attenburys had done exactly that,’ said Peter, ‘which added to the complexity. But, Bunter, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Time we took the King of Heart’s advice: begin at the beginning, go on till you get to the end and then stop. That last is the most difficult, isn’t it, Harriet?’

‘Rough hewing our ends being easier than divinely shaping them, you mean? We seem to me to be having difficulty beginning at all,’ she said.

2

The difficulty beginning at all was greatly increased by the unexpected arrival of the two eldest sons of the house, Bredon Wimsey and Peter Bunter. When Mervyn and Hope Bunter had christened their son ‘Peter’ it had been a conscious tribute, but now that the boy was growing up in the Wimsey household, in a world where distinctions between master and man were increasingly precarious, it had become a source of confusion, and young Peter was known as ‘PB’.

‘To what,’ demanded Peter of these two, ‘do we owe the honour of your presence in term-time?’

‘Research, Father,’ said Bredon. ‘We were sent to sit in the spectators’ gallery in the House of Commons. To make notes, of course. And we do have permission to stay overnight at home. If it’s all right by you, of course.’

‘Hmm,’ said Peter.

‘Well, the food is pretty foul at school,’ said his son hopefully.

‘Very well then. It’s a pleasure to see you both. You may report on your impression of the Mother of Parliaments when we sit down to dinner together. Run along now and find your younger brothers and beat them at ping-pong or something.’

‘It’s easy to beat Paul,’ offered Bredon, ‘but little Roger is a demon player.’

‘Do your best,’ said Peter. ‘And off you go. The grown-ups are story-telling.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bredon.

But they stood in the doorway waiting.

‘You too, PB,’ said Bunter.

‘Oh, thanks, Dad,’ said PB over his shoulder as the two disappeared down the stairs.

Harriet said, ‘I really like to see what good friends those two are.’

‘Well, effectively they have grown up together,’ said Peter.

‘Does that always make friendship?’ asked Harriet. ‘I don’t know. There’s such a lot an only child doesn’t know.’

‘Hope and I are very grateful, my lord, my lady,’ said Bunter, ‘that our only son has had the companionship of your sons.’

The three of them hesitated on the brink of the treacherous social gulf that yawned between them.

‘You know that we love him like one of our own,’ said Harriet, full of daring.

‘As long as it doesn’t give him ideas,’ said Bunter gruffly.

‘I hope it does,’ said Peter. ‘I hope it does. And I hope his ideas make my sons buck up. It’s a changing world now. But we were in the past, weren’t we? Where were we?’

‘You were arriving at the Abcock girl’s engagement party,’ prompted Harriet. ‘Can you pick up the thread?’

‘We arrived safely, my lady,’ said Bunter, rising to the challenge. ‘His lordship was given a room at the corner of the house, and I was assigned a place below stairs.’

‘Do we have to explain to Harriet the layout of the bedrooms?’ Peter asked.

‘Perhaps we should first describe the family and the other guests,’ said Bunter.

‘Righty-ho. Well, Lord Attenbury was a traditional old stick. About fifty. Honourable to a fault. A bear of very little brain. But Lady Attenbury was cut from another cloth altogether. A graceful and intelligent woman. Kept her brains strictly undercover, brains not being the done thing, you know, but never missed a thing. She was a great friend of my mother’s, by the way.’

‘Was your mother at the party?’ asked Harriet.

‘No. She had been invited and declined, all for my sake. One can hardly demonstrate one’s independence while hanging on to Mother, after all. The Attenburys had four children. First a son: Roland, Lord Abcock, remarkably obtuse sort of fellow, but a good sport. I knew Roland well at school: he used to fag for me. Often had to do his prep for him. You could tease him all day long, and he never noticed. He had married his childhood sweetheart, but she wasn’t present. Looking after her sick mother in Wiltshire or something. Then a daughter, Charlotte, the one just recently engaged. Knew nothing much about her really, although I had seen her now and then before the war, when she was much younger. Then a second daughter, the joker in the pack, Diana, who was at finishing school in Switzerland on the occasion of this party. We’ll come to her later. Lastly, quite a bit younger, an after-thought, Ottalie. Sweet little girl in white pinafores with a playmate in residence. That’s the family. Now the guests. Well, I’m blowed if I can remember most of them, but the ones that matter were the ones who had been given rooms in the main wing. Help me out here, Bunter.’

‘Captain and Mrs Ansel,’ said Bunter, ‘army friends of Lord Abcock. Mrs and Miss Sylvester-Quicke; Mr Northerby, the lucky fiancé Mr Freddy Arbuthnot; Sir Algernon and Lady Pender; Mrs Ethel DuBerris, a young war widow, and her daughter, Ada, a child about Ottalie’s age. The Duke and Duchess of Denver. And yourself, my lord.’

‘The only names I recognise apart from your brother and sister-in-law are dear Freddy and Sylvester-Quicke,’ said Harriet. ‘The dreaded Amaranth. Is that where she first took a shine to you?’

‘I suppose it might have been. She was very young, and posing as a blue-stocking. Her mother thought my brains might make me susceptible.’