Naturally, I was intrigued to meet her, although Alec’s distinct lack of enthusiasm curtailed my excitement a little. If she had no connections and no money of her own, I thought, then she must be very beautiful to have snared him.
Alec had been the golden-haired wonder of my childhood: five years older and unaccountably sophisticated. As a youth, it had never occurred to me to question the differences in our backgrounds; we lived in a modest red-brick villa with a woman who came in to ‘do’, and Uncle Edward and Aunt Viviane owned a porticoed, pillared wonder of a place in Lancaster Gate, with a mighty network of black-clad servants traversing the back stairs to answer every ring of the bell, in addition to what they termed their ‘beach house’ in Helmstone.
We had seen them rarely; once a year Mother and
I made a visit to London for a quick tour of sneering relatives. Alec usually blazed in and out, on the rare occasions he was home from school. He was often being expelled for misbehaviour, and I, who at that time was still playing at conkers with the kids from the neighbourhood, thought the very idea of being expelled from school unaccountably glamorous.
One day, when I was ten, Alec, apparently on a whim, decided to take me out for the day, leaving Mother in the company of my frail, cut-glass-voiced Aunt Viviane and the rattle of china cups. I had yet to be parcelled off to Crosspoint on the largesse of my grandfather, and still spoke with the local accent, much to Aunt Viviane’s distress. I marvelled at the way Alec tossed out instructions to the chauffeur as he loaded me into the motor car.
‘Natural History Museum, if you please, Fenner,’ he said, sliding in beside me, and I looked out of the windows in wonder as we whizzed through the streets. I had never been in a motor car before, and drank in every second of the experience. Alec ushered me in through the giant doors of the museum and past dinosaur skeletons, but the biggest prize of the day was being in the company of my cousin.
We returned to the diplodocus on Alec’s request, and stood for a while looking up at it. He’d seemed a little distracted the entire day, although as I barely knew him I could not be sure that this was not just his way.
‘I expect I’ll be dead soon, anyhow,’ he said. This seemed to be the conclusion of several minutes’ internal questing, but I felt rather alarmed.
‘Are you poorly?’ I said. I knew that Aunt Viviane was
highly strung – nerves, Mother called it – but Alec had always seemed in the prime of health.
‘If the war continues,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘They’re talking about conscription. Perhaps it’ll all be for the best, dashed to smithereens in front of a German machine gun.’
‘They won’t make you go,’ I said. ‘Will they? Not until you leave school.’ The war, to me, was an adult’s preoccupation. I knew of classmates’ elder brothers who’d gone off to France. Sometimes those same classmates had been absent from school, and the teacher had told us in a solemn voice that we had to pray for the fallen but never to mention the matter to Huggins, or Wilberforce, when they came back to school next week. To me, the war was happening somewhere else.
Alec shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘I’m sure everybody would be happy if I disappeared.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ I said stoutly, and he smiled and ruffled my hair.
‘Thank you, Robert. When people have already decided you’re a bad lot, you may as well continue in the same line, do you see?’
I did not see, not at all, but I nodded anyway and tried, unsuccessfully, to emulate Alec’s shrug. ‘Mother wishes I’d never been born,’ he said darkly. ‘She’s found some new child to take my place, so I’ve heard.’
This sounded so unlikely, even to my immature ears, that I said squeakily, ‘That can’t be true.’
He smiled down at me coldly. ‘She’s always rather wanted someone who’d appreciate all her … her …’ He waved a hand in the air to articulate the words he was
unable to find. ‘Anyway, I’m a disappointment, so I may as well go to war.’
‘Please don’t go.’ My hand crept out of its pocket and felt his sleeve.
He smiled at me again, more warmly this time. ‘All right, Carver, if you really don’t want me to, I won’t.’
As it turned out, Alec turned eighteen three months before they declared the Armistice. He was on the boat train to France when they held the entire battalion up at Dover for twenty-two hours before sending them to Gloucestershire, where he worked out his conscription stamping envelopes. Despite his gloomy protestations at that time, I had always considered him the luckiest of people, and even now, climbing up the steep slope of Gaunt’s Cliff, thinking of the house he had just inherited and the actress he had just married, I felt privileged once again to share a space in his sunshine.
‘Here we are,’ he said finally. ‘Welcome to our humble abode. It’s only half the size of the Lancaster Gate place, of course, but I hope you find it suits you well.’
I breathed heavily, waiting for my lungs to come to rest. We were at the crest of the cliff. To my left, a railing separated us from the promenade far below, the waves breaking on the shore and the spindly finger of a pier glistening in the brisk sunshine. Ahead, the road ended abruptly and became a path leading along the cliff edge beside an ugly churned-over field. To my right, a long terrace of Regency houses spilled all the way back down the hill.
The topmost one of these was larger than the others and painted a buttermilk yellow, reflecting a mellow light in the early summer sun. It was about six storeys high,
with a crenellated roof and a pillared doorway. There was a stained-glass decoration over the door in an art nouveau style, with a text I could not quite make out from across the road. As I was peering at it, the door swung open and an auburn-haired manservant descended the steps and came down the path towards us.
‘Scone!’ Alec crossed the road and put my case on the pavement, where it was picked up by the servant, presumably the butler. ‘Take this up to the fifth floor, would you?’
Scone nodded. ‘Shall I show Mr Carver the way also?’
‘Good idea.’ Alec ushered me on to the path. ‘What d’you say I give you an hour or so to rest, and then I can take you for a drink in the town, and head back in time for dinner at eight?’
‘That sounds …’ I thought of the myriad chores bestowed upon me back at home, even during my long illness. ‘Absolutely wonderful.’
‘Good stuff. I’ll knock on your door. Here, d’you like this?’ We were walking up the steps now; he waved overhead at the stained glass, which I could now see displayed the name of the building. ‘Mother put that in when she inherited Castaway. Loved the place, you know. Always hated London.’
I crossed over the threshold and found myself standing on an oriental-style rug, beneath which peeped the black-and-white chequered flags of a large hallway. Sunlight beamed in coloured lozenges through the stained-glass window. There was a mahogany sideboard upon which stood a silver platter for post, and above it was a mirror, curled about with cupids and leaves. So swiftly I barely noticed him, Scone took the jacket from my arm and hung
it on the row of pegs between the first and second front doors.
‘Dining room here,’ said Alec carelessly, indicating a half-open door to his left. ‘Scone’ll show you the rest. I’m going to take a turn in the garden.’
He winked at me, and I watched him walk along the passageway and through a door further along. ‘This way, sir,’ said Scone, and I followed him past a gleaming brass gong at the foot of the stairs. The banisters were polished to a deep sheen and ended with a rather lovely snail-like flourish at the end. The stairs were carpeted a deep red, and the walls were hung with various paintings. I wondered if Alec had inherited the lot wholesale from his mother or if some of these were the new Mrs Bray’s touches. I wondered what her taste, as a former actress, was like.
On the first floor there was a small landing, illuminated by a window behind the stairs, and a closed door ahead of us. ‘The drawing room, sir,’ said Scone, separating each word as if it were pickled in vinegar, and I frowned to wonder that a mere room could draw such disapproval. He pointed to the door to our side. ‘And here is the library. Mr Bray wishes you to make full use of it.’
Up we went, Scone indicating Mr Bray’s bedroom and the bathroom, which he showed me with some pride. ‘Very modern, sir,’ he said, indicating the hot-water geyser to fill the bath. He insisted on showing me how to turn the taps on and off, both there and on the wash basin. ‘Right hand for the cold, left hand for the hot.’
‘Excellent,’ I said, as if I were used to such conveniences and not the freezing wash of school or the tin bath in front of the fire at home.
On the next landing, Scone merely murmured, ‘The third floor here,’ waving a hand at the closed doors, and I presumed this contained Mrs Bray’s bedroom and perhaps some other private abode. We continued up to the fourth floor, where Scone indicated the study and ‘Mr Edward Bray’s bedroom’.
‘How often does he visit?’ I asked, maintaining a fake smile, hoping his stays were as infrequent as possible. My uncle was one of those men who enjoyed the state of being in a permanently foul mood, and being widowed so young had done nothing to improve his temper.
‘He has not yet found the time,’ said Scone mildly. ‘We hope we will see him at some point during the summer.’
‘Yes, quite,’ I muttered, and thought with some relief that Uncle Edward would probably see it as an indignity of the highest order to have to stay on one of the upper floors of a house that had once been his own, never mind that he no doubt considered said mistress of that house to be several rungs lower than him, socially.
The fifth floor was the highest in the house, although at the top of another short flight of stairs was a closed door that I presumed led up to the servants’ quarters in the attic. There were two doors on the fifth floor, one ahead and one to our right. Scone opened this one, and I found myself in a pleasantly furnished room, with a canopied double bed, a fireplace, a writing desk and a sash window that was slightly open, letting in a cool breeze. Scone placed my suitcase on the bed and said, ‘Would you like me to unpack, sir?’
‘No, no,’ I said hurriedly, uncomfortable with the attention. ‘I’m quite all right now, thank you.’
‘Very good. Shall I send up some tea?’
I grinned. ‘That would be marvellous.’ I looked around. ‘You’re very kind.’
Scone snorted slightly. I suspected I had gone too far, and I blushed. I stepped back out on to the dark wood of the hallway. ‘What’s this door here?’ I said to Scone as he came out to join me.
He obliged by twisting the handle and opening it. ‘The nursery, sir.’
I caught a glimpse of a cot in one corner and a bed in another, presumably for the nanny. There was also a single ink-stained desk and a much-abused rocking horse, almost bald and with pieces gouged out from his face. One of his staring eyes had been coloured yellow, the other green, by a destructive childish hand.
I turned back to Scone. ‘I didn’t know they had children,’ I said, although I supposed there was not any particular reason for me to know.
‘They don’t, sir.’ Scone smiled, and I had the impression he thought I was rather slow. ‘This used to be Mr Bray’s nursery.’
‘Ah. Of course.’ As I retreated from the room and Scone silently closed the door, I wondered why it had been kept as it was; although of course, I realized, blushing once more as Scone descended the staircase with aplomb, there would be future inhabitants of this nursery. I thought they might want to replace the horse, though; its mad staring eyes had rather unnerved me.
I went back to my room and investigated it thoroughly. Alec was right: his parents’ London house was twice the size of Castaway, but that one, with its myriad, cavernous
rooms and echoing hallways, had always intimidated me. This place, with its elegantly twisting staircase, oblong sash windows and dark polished floorboards, fitted me to a T.
I went to the window and looked out at the garden several storeys below. It was agreeably long and broad, with paved walkways that led off into hedged arbours. At the back I could see an ornamental pond bordered with wooden recliners and, in one corner of the garden, a vine-covered stone summerhouse. Directly below me were a glass-roofed conservatory and a terrace containing several wrought-iron chairs and a table.
As I watched, I noticed Alec appear on one of the paved walkways. He was trudging along, hands in pockets, and seemed to be lost in thought. I leaned against the window and watched him, mellow with affection. I felt I had never really got to know him properly; perhaps this summer, I would.
Outside my door I heard a clatter and a muttered sigh. I pulled it open and saw a young girl with her head bowed, holding a tray upon which was slopping a quantity of tea.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘I’ll get you some more right away.’
‘It’s quite all right.’ I took the tray from her, at which she flinched, and set it down on the dresser. A flannel had been laid out for me, and I used that to mop up the tea, lifting the little pot and the china cup and saucer. ‘There you go, no harm done.’
Her chin was still stuck firmly to her chest. ‘Thank you, sir. You’re very kind, sir,’ she whispered again.
I laughed. ‘Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill, eh? What’s your name?’
Her eyes darted left and right as if seeking some sort of escape. Her hair, tucked under its mob cap, appeared to be the colour of straw. ‘Agnes, sir. I’ve only just been made parlourmaid, what with I was under-housemaid before, and I ain’t that used to the trays, see …’ She trailed to a halt, as if realizing she had said several sentences too many.
‘Well, pleased to meet you, Agnes. My name’s Carver. I’m Mr Bray’s cousin; I’ll be staying here for the summer.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Infinitesimally, she edged backwards to the door.
I felt thoroughly awkward now, as if I’d pinned her up against the wardrobe and attempted to ravish her. ‘Well … er … I thought perhaps you didn’t know.’
‘No, sir. Is that all, sir?’
She barely waited for my nod before she vanished from the door. I sighed, and was about to dismiss her from my mind when, quite without warning, I found myself out in the corridor, calling, ‘Listen, Agnes.’