The Last Baronet Read online

  ‘But Mrs Sholto,’ Anna struggled to find suitable words with which to explain the difference in scale and style between a modest plot in front of a modern bungalow and the large, formally landscaped ground of a grand country house without causing offence or sounding superior, and failed. ‘Mrs Sholto,’ she said in a gentle voice, ‘these gardens are simply enormous. The gardens are huge.’

  ‘I need a bigger canvas to work on, Miss Gabriel.’ Behind the flamingo pink spectacle frames Mavis Sholto’s eyes were beseeching and her words were heartfelt. ‘I need something enormous. I need something huge. My Arnold going like he did was a catharsis for me. It freed a lot of repressed emotion. It released a lot of latent energy. These days I’ve far too much energy for my own good. I’ve got all this newly discovered talent and dynamism and I see your garden as a golden opportunity, I really do. I’m meant to come here, Miss Gabriel, you can believe me absolutely when I say that everything is predestined. I’ve drawn up my own astrological birth chart and you would be amazed at what it revealed about my future, you really would.’

  ‘I probably would, but Mrs Sholto, without wishing to offend you in any way, I really don’t think...’ Anna’s attention was momentarily diverted by the ringing of a telephone in the office next door to the kitchen, where Rupert had set up a makeshift desk constructed out of two bales of loft insulation material and a slab of chipboard.

  ‘I’m afraid you will have to excuse me now, Mrs Sholto. I have to answer the telephone.’ Anna made an attempt to rise from the table only to be forestalled by hands too pale and delicate to belong to any gardener, the perfectly manicured nails of which flamed with a deep vermillion varnish.

  ‘I can see you’re doubtful, Miss Gabriel,’ Mavis Sholto said in a deeply understanding tone, ‘and I don’t blame you one little bit, I really don’t. You don’t know me from Adam, and if you’ll forgive me for taking the initiative, I’ll make a suggestion: we’ll come for a week and work for nothing, Barry and me, and we’ll see how we get on. That way, if we don’t suit, there’s no harm done at all. I think that would be the best way round it.’

  ‘Well, I’m not altogether sure...’ But Anna was hesitant, the telephone caller was persistent, and the most unlikely gardener in the world had a will of steel.

  ‘That seems to be settled then.’ Mavis Sholto gathered up her immaculate little straw handbag and her white lace gloves and got to her feet. ‘Now there’s no need to show me out. I can find my own way. You go and answer your telephone and I’ll make myself scarce, Miss Gabriel, I’ll be on my way. We’ll see you on Monday morning come fair weather or foul, it makes no difference to Barry and me, rain or shine, it’s all the same to us. We’ll start at eight, if that’s all right with you; I’ve always been an early riser, six o’clock and I’m wide awake at the first stroke. My Arnold used to say “I’ll never need an alarm clock whilst you’re around, Mavis,” and he was right, he definitely was. I’m at my best first thing in the morning; ready to take on the world and a mind like a rapier. It’s all to do with when the planets rise in your star sign, but I’ll take you through it on another occasion when we’ve more time. Until Monday then, Miss Gabriel, and it’s been a pleasure to meet you, it really has.’

  As Mavis Sholto’s high heeled sandals clicked their way down the brick passage, Anna ran into the office and grabbed up the telephone.

  ‘Well, it took you long enough, I must say,’ said Henry Lamb amiably. ‘I was just about to hang up. I’ve been given your number by the Crown Hotel at Framlingham and I would like to make an enquiry about a possible Christmas break. There would just be the two of us; just myself and my very dear wife, Penelope...’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Hap-py birth-day to you, hap-py birth-day to you; hap-py birth-day dear Nor-man; hap-py birth-day to you!’ To a small burst of applause, Yvonne trotted into the office on her spiky heels, in her tubular short skirt, bearing aloft a miniscule iced cake with a single candle burning. There had been several Yvonnes, but the ceremony never altered. Now Elsie, with the usual huffing and puffing that accompanied any exertion on her part, leaned down and produced from under her desk a tissue-wrapped bottle of dark, sweet sherry, whilst Genevra fussed around, organising the glasses onto the tin tray decorated with a view of Balmoral Castle. (None of them, to Norman’s knowledge, had ever been there).

  ‘There now,’ said Elsie, as she always did, ‘I bet you thought we’d forgotten you, Norman! Come on, admit it! I bet you did!’

  ‘Never,’ protested Norman, as he invariably did. ‘I knew you wouldn’t forget!’ Although every year he secretly hoped they might and was inevitably disappointed. The ceremony progressed. Norman blew out the candle. The cake was cut. Paper serviettes were distributed. It was Norman’s privilege to be presented with the first glass, the first slice. Now came the worst part.

  ‘For he’s a jol-ly good fel-low; for he’s a jol-ly good fel-low; for he’s a jol-ly good fe-el-low, and so say all of us!’

  Glasses chinked together. ‘And how many years are we celebrating today, Norman? Well, we remember, even if you don’t! Sixty-nine years to the day and you don’t look a day older than sixty and that’s the truth, isn’t it girls? A very happy birthday to you, Norman, and many more of them!’

  Carefully packaged gifts came next: a giant handkerchief with a few bars of music printed on it. (‘Pity you haven’t got your violin with you, Norman; we could have had a tune!’) A box of continental chocolates from Thorntons. (‘At least you’ve kept your figure, Norman! Slim as a willow, and straight as a die, isn’t he girls? Not like me. Not like poor old Elsie!’) A pottery mug bearing the legend OLD ACCOUNTANTS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST LOSE THEIR BALANCE. (‘No offence intended, Norman, it just seemed appropriate for the occasion, don’t you think?’)

  But old accountants do die, thought Norman, and I have almost outlived my threescore years and ten. Next year I shall be seventy. I am old! Norman didn’t feel old. He didn’t feel any older today than he had felt ten years earlier when he had been fifty-nine, and that had felt quite old enough at the time. Sixty-nine years! It didn’t seem possible, but a birthday was a birthday, and a date on a birth certificate was a date on a birth certificate, whichever way you looked at it. There was no way of putting the clock back. Norman was sixty-nine; like it or lump it.

  In the midst of the celebration, the shop doorbell pinged. The shop, with its sparse selection of stationery, its shelves of dusty box files and its racks of dog-eared greeting cards; most of which were beginning to acquire a genuine period charm, was separated from the office area by a low partition of frosted glass. Above this partition now appeared a long, sallow face with a drooping moustache.

  Elsie heaved herself to her feet in greeting. ‘Well, now, here’s Mr Allison come to see us! Genevra, have you got Mr Allison’s printing ready for him? Pardon the festivities, Mr Allison, but we’re having a little tipple on the occasion of Norman’s birthday; sixty-nine years to the day, and to look at him you would never believe a word of it. Come round, Mr Allison, dear; come round to the inner sanctum and join us in a glass of sherry, if you will. It’s not every day Norman has a birthday, is it Norman?’

  ‘No, indeed,’ agreed Norman in a heartfelt voice. ‘Once a year is quite enough.’

  Mr Allison stood beneath a dusty Christmas garland, pinned up years ago by one of the Yvonnes and never taken down. From it was suspended a pleated paper bell which had once been red but was now faded to an unwholesome shade of orange. He was tall and thin and everything about him drooped; his moustache, his shoulders, his trousers, his tweed jacket and the forlorn little scrap of his bow tie. Even the few sad strands of hair he had arranged carefully over his scalp refused to stay in position and drooped forward over his brow.

  ‘Good health to you, Norman,’ he said in his whispery, apologetic voice. ‘A very happy birthday. I must say you are wearing very well. I had no idea you were sixty-nine. You wear your years very lightly. I am amazed.’

  ‘I’m pretty
amazed myself,’ confessed Norman. ‘I don’t know where all the years have gone and I don’t want to be sixty-nine years old at all. I don’t like it. It doesn’t seem just cause for celebration as far as I’m concerned and I rather wish people wouldn’t keep reminding me.’

  ‘Now, Norman, don’t be a spoil sport’, admonished Elsie. ‘You know you enjoy your birthdays just as much as we do.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Mr Allison hastily, ‘I do understand how you feel.’ Already his glass was empty and he looked longingly at the sherry bottle on Norman’s desk.

  Norman took pity on him and refilled his glass.

  ‘Thank you, Norman. Thank you very kindly. This is an unexpected treat, I must say. Well, tempus fugit, Norman. The sands of time and all that, eh?’ He drained the glass with one swallow. The Adam’s apple in his throat barely moved.

  I can’t stand much more of this, Norman said to himself, as he had said to himself for the past thirteen years, I have to get out of this place. It’s pathetic. We are all pathetic. I have to get a grip. I have to make a move.

  Genevra, bustling and fluttering over the simple matter of obtaining Mr Allison’s signature for the collection note, irritated Norman so much that he had to turn away. In despair, and in defiance of his usual custom, he poured himself a second glass of sherry. He disliked it intensely but felt it might have a numbing effect on his sensibilities. Yvonne, gathering up crumpled serviettes, winked at him in a conspiratorial manner. This Yvonne had only been in the job for a few months but already she had confided to Norman that she was looking for something else. ‘Something a bit more demanding, if you know what I mean; something a bit more interesting; no disrespect intended to anybody here, Norman, you’re all lovely people and its very cosy like, it’s just... well it’s just a bit stuffy, that’s all.’ The Yvonnes never stayed long. Who could blame them? This Yvonne had a tiny waist and legs like a racehorse. Today she had piled up her mass of auburn hair and secured it to the top of her head with what looked like two knitting needles. They stuck out like two little horns with knobs on. These, and the extravagantly long false eyelashes she had attached to the lids of her large and rather languorous (Elsie would have said vacant) hazel eyes, reminded Norman of a giraffe he had once taken a photograph of at Dudley Zoo. Norman liked this Yvonne. He would miss her.

  Of course, Norman had not intended to stay long either. In the early days he had tried for more demanding jobs, more interesting jobs, better paid positions. He had become a familiar figure at the job centre on his days off. He had scanned the situations vacant columns in the local newspapers, written letters, even attended a few interviews. But his age had been against him and gradually the constant rejections had nibbled away at his self-esteem. He had become discouraged and depressed. A feeling of hopelessness had seeped into his soul and he had stopped trying. Nobody would touch him with a bargepole now, not at almost seventy years of age. Yet, I can’t stay here, he thought in despair. I can’t put up with this for the rest of my life. My brain will shrivel to the size of a walnut. Yet, if he was honest, the alternative, the thought of retirement, frightened him. The prospect of sitting in his little terraced house just off the Mile End Road alone with his memories, giving the odd violin lesson to eke out his pension, warming up his Bird’s Eye Dinner for One, terrified him. So I shall probably die here, he thought, bent over my desk, sitting in this very chair. I shall carry on entering up the invoices in the sales ledger, filling in the quarterly VAT return, balancing the totals in the analysis book, my head getting greyer and greyer and lower and lower until one day Elsie will say ‘You’re very quiet today, Norman. You haven’t said a dickey bird all morning, has he, girls? Out on the tiles again last night, were we?’ And then, a little louder, ‘I said, you haven’t got much to say for yourself today, Norman! Cat got your tongue, has it?’ Then, as panic set in, ‘Norman? Norman!’

  ‘Norman!’ Elsie’s voice, interrupting his reverie, made him jump. ‘Mr Allison was just asking how long you’ve been with us! I’m telling him it must be at least twelve or even thirteen years, because it’s got to be fifteen years since Clark Strang folded. Oh yes, Mr Allison, our Norman was one of the lucky ones; he took the redundancy before the crash came; he saw the writing on the wall. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, being an accountant. Now it’s thirteen years he’s been with us and it only seems like yesterday he walked through that door; such a nice, softly spoken little man I thought he was, a lovely manner with him and quite dapper in his way; we were lucky to get him; he was too good for the likes of us if the truth be told. I bet you didn’t know our Norman was properly certified, did you, Mr Allison? Oh yes, quite a high flyer was our Norman in them days; a real accountant, he was, with all examinations passed and paper qualifications, the lot. Will you have another little tipple to help you on your way, dear? Well, why not? A little of what you fancy does you good, and so say all of us. It is Norman’s birthday, after all, and he won’t see sixty-nine again, and that’s a certain fact.’

  When Mr Allison had left, clutching the box of copying to his chest and colliding with the card racks on his unsteady progress towards the door, they settled back to work: Norman preparing the monthly statements, and Elsie, Genevra and Yvonne packing a promotional mailing for a charity Christmas catalogue.

  ‘Now we’ve got Norman’s birthday over,’ said Elsie, when she was comfortably ensconced again behind her desk and engaged upon peeling address labels from a seemingly endless roll and slapping them onto polythene mailers. ‘The next event on the social calendar will be Christmas. It might seem a long way off now, but it comes round quicker than you think; once we get past Halloween and Guy Fawkes night, Christmas will be on us before we can say Jack Robinson, just you mark my words.’

  ‘If I was rich,’ Yvonne said dreamily, ‘which I’m not, as you very well know, but if I was, I’d fly off somewhere really exotic for Christmas every year. I fancy the Bahamas, myself, people do say it’s ever so nice, all white sand and palm trees, but I expect it’ll be just my mum and me again this year with half a box of crackers and a turkey breast from Tesco, killing time, waiting for the shops to open on Boxing Day.’

  ‘Oh, I like Christmas,’ said Genevra. ‘I know it’s got too commercialised, but I must confess that I always enjoy it. I like going home in the dark evenings with the shops all decorated and warm-looking, and fairy lights in people’s windows. We always go to Elsie’s for Christmas Day, Norman and me, and she spoils us something rotten with special treats and all her nice little touches. Elsie always does us proud, don’t you, Elsie?’

  ‘Well, I do make a nice mince pie,’ Elsie admitted, ‘and even if I say it myself, I’ve never tasted a better chestnut stuffing than my own. I make my own rich fruit cake with marzipan and last year I tried a new recipe for Christmas pudding with breadcrumbs and it came out a treat. Light as a feather it was, and Genevra had two helpings, didn’t you, dear?’

  Norman would never know exactly what prompted him to say it; whether it was the result of his own resolve, or the extra glass of sherry; but, ‘I’m glad you mentioned Christmas, Elsie,’ he said. ‘Because I won’t be coming to you this year, I’m afraid. I’ve made other arrangements.’

  Elsie stopped peeling labels. Genevra stopped pushing catalogues into the polythene mailers. Even Yvonne, who had been counting the packets into twenty-fives and snapping them with elastic bands before dropping them into the Royal Mail letter sacks at her feet, stopped work and stared at him.

  ‘Other arrangements?’ said Elsie in tones of the very greatest astonishment. ‘What other arrangements?’

  ‘I’ve been invited to stay with friends,’ said Norman. ‘I’m very sorry, Elsie, but every year they invite me to stay and every year I refuse, and I thought that just this once I should... that perhaps I should...’ Norman heard his voice falter, felt his resolve weakening. He reminded himself of the stifling heat of Elsie’s over decorated, over furnished house; the unutterably stultifying sameness of the conversation;
the dry little mince pies, all pastry and no filling; the frozen turkey that somehow managed to taste of fish, the glutinous gravy, the tough roast potatoes, the truly horrifying colour and texture of the stuffing; the flaming horror of the Christmas pudding, full of pips and stalks and solid knobs of candied peel, everything pressed upon him with infinite kindness and generosity and a genuine concern for his comfort and enjoyment, and he knew that he would not be able to endure it, not this year, not next year, never again. But he was a poor liar and unaccustomed to being the cause of upset, and his new-found resolve deserted him completely in the face of Elsie’s incredulity and sight of Genevra’s stricken face. ‘On second thoughts, I think I shall probably write and tell them that I won’t be able to make it this year,’ he said. ‘I feel sure I could manage to excuse myself again without causing offence.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Having overcome her astonishment, Elsie now decided that a change of surroundings was just what Norman needed. ‘You’ve been looking a bit peaky of late, dear, if you don’t mind me saying so, and a change is as good as a tonic at times. You go off and enjoy yourself with your friends and don’t you give us another thought. We’ll still be here when you get back, won’t we girls? I must say, Norman, I would never have guessed that all the times you’ve been to mine you’ve been turning down a chance to be with your own friends,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m flattered, Norman, I don’t mind admitting it. Not that you won’t be missed, dear, because you will, but I’ll see you don’t miss out. I’ll put aside a few mince pies in my Tupperware and you shall have them for New Year with a glass of my best sherry and a slice of my Christmas cake if it’s successful; I’m trying a Delia Smith recipe this time for a lighter cake with crystallised fruit in it; I’m living dangerously this year, Norman; we oldies mustn’t get too set in our ways which is why you should go off and have a good time with your friends and we’ll look forward to hearing all about it when you come back. It will give us something to look forward to, won’t it, girls?’