A Future Arrived (2 page)

He spoke in the servants' hall before breakfast. Only a few of the twenty-five cooks, maids, footmen, gardeners, and grooms that he employed had known Mr. Coatsworth when he had been butler. Those few mourned openly. The others retained a respectful solemnity to fit the occasion. To them he had been simply an ancient retainer living in retirement in one of the cottages. The earl's declaration of a half holiday on the day of the funeral drew a greater response than his pronouncement of Coatsworth's demise.

The doctor arrived at nine o'clock, followed shortly by a hearse from a mortuary in Abingdon. After Coatsworth's body had been driven away the earl escorted Dr. Morton into the library and poured two stiff whiskies from a crystal decanter.

“Painful business, this.”

“Death usually is,” the doctor said. He set his bag on a table, opened it, and removed a printed form. “Although, if you ask me, it's the mechanics of it all that causes the most distress. Death certificates and funeral arrangements, wills and probates, all the bookkeeping of passing on.
Requiescat in pace
is all very well for the deceased, but hardly applicable to the living.”

The earl handed him a glass of whisky. “To John Harum Coatsworth, God bless his soul.”

“Yes, to Mr. Coatsworth.” He took a swallow, set the glass on the table, and drew up a chair. “Well, let's get on with it.” He sat down and removed a fountain pen from his pocket. “Did he have a certificate of birth?”

“No. A family Bible. He was born on tenth October, eighteen forty-one … in Lavenham, Suffolk.”

“Let's see, that would have made him eighty-nine next birthday. Eighty-eight for the record. A goodly span of years.”

“He came to work for me in eighteen eighty-two. The first servant I hired after my father passed away. The first servant I'd
ever
hired, if it comes to that. I was twenty. Forty-eight years ago. Good Lord.”

The doctor glanced up at the earl's stricken face and then turned back to the certificate. “Did he leave a will, by the way?”

“My solicitor drew one up for him some time back. He had no heirs. Bequeathed his savings to various charities.”

“Cause of death. Let's see … Congestive heart failure. Bit of a catch-all for dying of old age.” He signed the certificate, recapped his pen, and took another sip of whisky. “And that's that. Not taking this too hard are you, Anthony?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because you have a face that is most easily read. It's a sad day, my friend. A loss to all of us who knew him, but at eighty-eight it can hardly be considered a tragedy.”

The earl finished his whisky and splashed another dollop into his glass. “It's not that, dash it all. He led a good life … the life he chose to lead, anyway. It's just that … well, so much seems to be slipping away.”

“Time, dear chap. Only time.”

Blast! He couldn't explain. The words would not come. He could be quite inarticulate at times, a heritage from his days at school where terseness had been considered a virtue and the mark of a gentleman. He watched the doctor's car move off down the driveway and then strode to the stables where he found Gardway, in hacking jacket and shiny leather gaiters, overseeing the exercise of a chestnut hunter.

“Saddle Launcelot for me, will you, Samuel? I feel like taking a ride.”

“Very well, m'lord. But I'd avoid Bigham. Tom Dundas told me it's a sea of muck.”

“Tipley's Green. Stop off at Burgate House first and see my son. Be a shock to him. Knew Coatsworth all his life.”

He felt better on a horse, the great life-filled body cantering down the gravel road. He bent forward and patted the strong neck. The stallion broke into a gallop, glad to be out of the stable and stretching his muscles. Sniffing spring and frisky as the devil. He reined him in slightly and jumped a low gate at the end of the lane, taking it cleanly with feet to spare, then slowed the big horse to a steady trot along the high meadows bordering Leith Wood. Sheep bleated out of the way, their thick coats dirty gray and ragged after the bitter winter. He paused for a few minutes amid the fringes of a beech grove to let the horse graze in a patch of new grass. Lighting a cigarette, he sat stiffly in the saddle and gazed off across the Vale of Abingdon.

How much it had changed. Only one who had known the view from a perspective of well over half a century could possibly understand his feeling of regret. How crowded it all was. The pastoral vistas of his youth encroached and spoiled by row upon distant row of red brick villas. The environs of Abingdon; suburbs of what had once been no more than a village sleeping in the gentle folds of the Surrey hills. Crown lands and his own acres surrounding the Pryory kept the brick at bay, but there it lay along the near horizon, street upon street waiting to lurch forward if given half a chance and cover meadow and wood with more mock-Tudor houses and country clubs. Golf courses. “Garden” cities. By-pass highways from London. Town centers and cinemas—the hideous conglomeration of modern times.

The hypocrisy of his thoughts was not lost on him. A good many of those now despised houses had been built on his land. He had aided in the expansion of Abingdon in 1924 by subdividing a hundred and fifty acres near the village. He had then formed, and headed, the Abingdon Planning Commission. Middle-class housing had been built for the new breed of London commuters and for the executives and engineers of the sprawling Blackworth aircraft plant only eight miles away. Damn good houses had been constructed, even if they did have a sameness about them. Nicely ordered communities surrounded by parks and trees. And yet now, with painfully sharp memories of a time long past thrusting vivid images upon him, he wished that some giant hand would crush brick and plaster and sweep it all away.

It was a darkly brooding man who rode across the fields and dismounted in the driveway of Burgate House School. He tied his horse to a railing and stood for a moment gazing at the building. A symphony in ugliness. Gothic spires and Romanesque arches in a graceless blending of limestone and brick, Palladian windows and stained glass. A house built by a duke during the reign of Queen Anne as a memorial for his dead son. Part palace and part tomb. An unorthodox building to say the least and, for the past seven years, a most unorthodox school of which his eldest son, Charles Greville, Viscount Amberley, was now headmaster.

Three boys, in a diverse assortment of clothing, bolted around a corner of the building and raced down the drive, closely pursued by an untidy-looking girl who was throwing green horse chestnuts at them. The boys, shrieking with laughter, vaulted a low stone wall and ran off into the muddy field beyond. The girl, no more than nine years old, hurled her remaining seeds and shouted something that the earl could not hear. Burgate House was not his idea of a school and never would be. He shook his head and turned toward the massive front doors.

He walked briskly down a long, barren corridor pierced by a row of lancet windows, a stone corridor that led to what had once been a chapel but was now his son's study. The carved wood door was ajar and he entered the room without knocking. Charles was already rising from behind his desk in greeting.

“No mistaking the ring of
your
boots, Father.”

The earl nodded. His son's smiling face was disconcerting.

“Coatsworth is dead,” he said bluntly.

“I'm sorry,” Charles said with quiet sympathy. “Did he go in his sleep?”

“I assume he did.”

“Good. A gentle death for a fine man.”

“He had been in my service for forty-eight years.”

“Yes, I know.”

“My butler for seven before I even met your mother.”

“A very long time. Difficult to think of the Pryory without him.”

“Your mother's still in London. I haven't told her yet.”

“You can ring her from here if you'd like.” He studied his father's face with concern. He looked pale and his eyes had a faraway opacity about them. “Would you like me to call?”

The earl shook his head, walked over to the windows, and stood looking out at a small, formal garden. “Lovely. I don't suppose you allow the children to play there.”

“They
work
there on Saturday mornings. The garden is their responsibility. They may walk or study in it, but not rag about. That's their rule, not mine.”

“Three boys and a girl were ‘ragging about' in front. Like street urchins.”

“New arrivals,” Charles said, as though he had explained that kind of behavior many times before. “They're often like that when they first come here. Not used to the freedom. They tend to be a bit wild until they discover that freedom ultimately becomes boring. Then they join the others and settle into the school routine.”

“Not quite like Eton, is it?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“Odd to think of this house as a school. It was empty when I was a boy. Only a caretaker lived here … and two gardeners. It was that way for many years. Lord Marshland owned the property. He never came near it and I can't say that I blame him. Depressing place. After he died his heirs tried to sell it, but, needless to say, they had the devil of a time finding a buyer. It wasn't until eighteen ninety that Archie Fox came along and they could get rid of it. Just the sort of place a millionaire cockney would want to live in.”

Charles frowned and walked around from behind his desk. “Do you feel all right, Father?”

He ignored the question. “I telephoned the vicar this morning. Arranged the funeral for Saturday afternoon. There will be a great deal of work to do before then, I'm afraid. All of the carriages will need sprucing up … saddle soap the leather … grease wheels … polish lamps … clean all the harness.”

“Carriages?” His mouth felt dry. “What carriages?”

“Ours, of course. The phaetons and victorias … the four surreys. And then there are black plumes that must be purchased for the horses. And black crepe for draping. Black silk rosettes for the coachmen to wear. A thousand and one things to be done.”

“Are you being serious? Those carriages have been stored in a shed since before the war. Surely you don't intend to—”

“He was a Victorian,” the earl said with steely emphasis. “A man from a far more gracious and civilized time. He was born a Victorian and he shall be buried as one.”

Charles cleared his throat discreetly. “He will be buried with dignity, Father, by those who admired him. Draped carriages and plumed horses on a Saturday afternoon in Abingdon High Street would be a spectacle—and a rather theatrical one at that. I think you should reconsider your plans.”

Lord Stanmore scowled and stepped away from the window. His face, Charles noted uneasily, had taken on a grayish pallor. “It seems quite proper to
me
.”

“I'm sure it does,” Charles said gently. “I suppose it's how one looks at things. I know how fond you were of him and what a blow this must be to you.” He placed a hand on his father's arm. “Perhaps it would be a comfort to sit down and talk about him. I can remember a story or two.”

“Yes, Charlie, I'm sure you can.” His eyes were fixed on some distant space. “My father died when I was nineteen. His wish was to be buried in Abingdon, although I can't understand why. He hated the place so. He thought the village a dung heap of yokels and the Pryory merely a warren of old brick and timber with a misspelled name. It was an elaborate funeral. Even the Prince of Wales attended. But in all the many hundreds of people who lined the High Street leading to the church or walked so solemnly behind the casket I doubt if there was one, no, not
one
heartfelt feeling of remorse at his passing. A more disliked man never lived in England. The funeral was a duty … a custom … and if that type of funeral could be held for a man I despised, then, by George, it can be held for a man I respected and loved for nearly half a century.”

There was a rumbling sound above them as a hundred chairs were pushed back from a hundred desks, and then the muted thunder of a hundred pairs of feet racing along the corridors toward the main stairs.

“Lunch,” Charles said. “Why don't you join me and then we can telephone Mother.”

The earl shook his head. “I want to ride over to Tipley's Green. I'll take lunch with Braxton-Gill, but thank you all the same.”

“A drink before you go, then. You look pale.”

“Do I? Well, it's been a bit of a shock, you know. I'll miss dropping in on the old fellow for tea and a game of draughts. He always looked forward to it. A brandy. Just a smahan to keep the blood moving.”

The four children who had been running about, tossing things, and bolting over the wall were standing in front of Launcelot and stroking his nose in unison. He was about to tell them sternly to keep away, but thought better of it. They appeared to be awed and gentle and the horse certainly was content enough. They moved away as he approached and untied the animal from the railing.

“Is that
your
horse?” one of the boys asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “My horse.”

“Your very own?” asked the girl.