The Last Baronet Read online

  ‘We shall not be requiring any organised entertainment,’ said Mrs Maitland-Dell. ‘We shall not be requiring anything in the way of fireworks, dance bands, discotheques or anything of a similar nature. We shall require absolute peace and quiet.’

  ‘Absolute peace and quiet,’ repeated Harry dutifully. ‘No entertainment of any description.’ His face betrayed only the slightest hint of disappointment.

  ‘Although I have specified that the hotel should be situated in the country,’ said Mrs Maitland-Dell, ‘I should like you to make absolutely sure that there are no potentially dangerous beasts at large in the grounds. No safari parks and no herds of deer. Nor would the family wish to be confronted with farmyard livestock whilst taking the air, and although I have to insist upon free-range eggs and fresh garden produce from the kitchens, I would not tolerate free-range poultry on the premises. There must not be any wandering chickens. The family might be inclined to give chase and I would not wish any restrictions to be placed upon them. The family must be allowed complete freedom. This is to be their holiday just as much as it is ours.’

  ‘Quite so, Madam, quite so,’ agreed Harry. ‘Absolute freedom for the family. No farm livestock. Free-range eggs. No wandering chickens.’

  ‘I would also like to be assured that there will be no disagreeable aromas of an agricultural nature, Harry. Silage, farmyard manure, chemical sprays, chicken and pig farms all smell extremely unpleasant. The air must be clean and fresh. I do insist upon it.’

  ‘No smells,’ said Harry. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And no large dogs. Large dogs can be boisterous as well as unfriendly.’

  ‘That’s very true, Madam. No large dogs. I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘I am sure I don’t have to tell you, Harry, that the standard of cooking must be excellent. We do not require extravagant meals, just fresh country produce beautifully prepared and presented. I cannot abide establishments where every single dish is served positive drowning in an excessively rich sauce. My digestion will not stand up to it.’

  ‘Plain food,’ said Harry. ‘No sauces.’ By this time the youngest Shih Tzu had fallen asleep at its post.

  ‘We shall require a suite of rooms with all the usual conveniences. En-suite with bath and shower. A bidet would be a welcome addition.’

  ‘All mod cons, Madam, I shall see to that,’ said Harry stoutly.

  ‘Colour television. Radio. Direct dial telephone.’ (Mrs Maitland-Dell hardly ever made telephone calls, nor had she ever been known to listen to the radio). ‘Good linen, Harry, is an absolute priority. Egyptian cotton is an absolute must. I cannot be expected to sleep on artificial fibres. My skin is extremely sensitive.’

  ‘Colour television. Radio. Telephone. Good linen,’ repeated Harry.

  ‘I shall take my own pillows, of course.’

  ‘Duly noted, Madam.’

  ‘Open fires would be very cheerful and welcoming,’ continued Mrs Maitland-Dell. ‘Not gas logs, Harry. I do mean real fires burning genuine wood cut from trees. I do not believe the family have ever experienced the warmth of a traditional, old-fashioned fire.’

  ‘I don’t believe they have, Madam,’ said Harry. ‘A proper open fire would be most congenial.’

  ‘A small establishment, Harry, don’t you agree? We would not feel at home in a large impersonal establishment operated by some faceless international conglomerate. An owner-manager would be ideal; someone who could attend personally to all our needs. We must have room service. There must always be someone available to provide all our usual little home comforts.’

  ‘I shall see what can be arranged, Madam’ said Harry manfully.

  ‘I feel sure you will, Harry,’ said Mrs Maitland-Dell warmly. ‘I must confess that I am looking forward to our little holiday already. I am so glad you suggested it. You may take the tray now.’

  As Harry approached the headboard and bent deferentially in order to remove the breakfast tray, the most senior member of the family stiffened. Her eyes bulged threateningly. From her throat issued forth a sound not unlike that of a vacuum cleaner or a small lawn mower. The rest of the family regarded her with interest.

  ‘And Harry, there is just one final thing,’ Mrs Maitland-Dell reached out for her dainty reading glasses with pearlised frames and her neatly folded copy of the Daily Mail. ‘Not too many other guests, if that can possibly be arranged. Just a few carefully selected people.’

  Harry carried the breakfast tray down the wide staircase carpeted edge-to-edge in pale green Axminster with a decorative border and brass stair-rods. At a discreet distance, the youngest Shih Tzu followed, hugging the skirting board, keeping low to the ground as if on a secret mission. Even with their widely differing levels of intelligence, both human and canine realised that Christmas in the country promised to be a tough assignment.

  NINETEEN

  Anna was away for three days on one of her unexplained absences. These always served to make Rupert feel aggrieved. Where did she go? Who did she see? Why wouldn’t she even talk about it? After a supper (cooked by Mavis, who seemed to be able to turn her hand to anything) Rupert strolled down to the stables. He found Nicola in one of the loose boxes attending to a small chestnut mare with a coat like a flame and the distinctive dished face of an Arabian.

  ‘You didn’t come in for supper. Mavis says I’m to tell you yours is keeping warm in the bottom oven. She’s put foil on it so it won’t dry out. She wasn’t sure how long you would be.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure what would happen about supper with Anna being away.’ Nicola looked up from the neat, dark hoof she was picking out into a bucket. ‘I’m almost done, anyway.’ The stable floor had been swept clear of bedding, revealing a floor of blue bricks; the clean straw, forked into a pile in one corner, resting against glazed tiles of a deep, sea green. These were old stables, a hundred years old at least, but of a quality the modern horse owner could only dream about.

  Rupert leaned on the half door. ‘We’ve started on the chapel. The men have sort of adopted it as an off-duty project. They’re using the slates from the old outhouses for the roof. Len’s left them to their own devices. They’ve already re-laid the floor. They’ve even found the bell. Vivian’s in his element.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ Nicola released the mare’s foot and moved herself and the bucket round to her other side. The mare lifted the appropriate foot in an obliging manner. ‘I’m really grateful. To be honest, Rupert, it wasn’t just the Christmas service I was thinking about; Vivian has always wanted to be buried in the chapel. He is the last Baronet, after all, and the other Rushbrokes are all buried there. The title and the Rushbroke name will die with him. It’s rather sad, actually.’

  ‘It is. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Why would you? There should have been an heir but it never happened. There were miscarriages, I believe. I was the only surviving child. It must have been a great disappointment.’

  ‘I can’t believe you were a disappointment to anybody. Lavinia looks much younger than your father though.’

  ‘Twenty years younger. Vivian plucked her from the tail-end of a career as a singer. She was quite well known in her day, apparently. Her family had practically disowned her; it wasn’t considered quite the thing that girls from her background did. It’s hard to believe now. She was always somewhat distrait, I gather; it was probably part of her charm. But after the miscarriages she retreated into her own cosy little world. Now, she has completely lost touch with reality and has been officially diagnosed as having dementia; well, you can see how things are.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a shame. It’s been hard on you, I can see that.’

  ‘It’s been hard on everyone. In retrospect, Vivian made a bad decision when he married Lavinia. He should have married money. He should have married a strong woman, someone who could have helped him run the estate. Someone who could cope.’

  ‘You don’t choose who you fall in love with.’

  ‘That may be true. But all the same, there
are practicalities to be considered when you own an estate like Rushbroke.’

  Rupert rested his arms along the stable door. The atmosphere of the stable was restful. He watched as Nicola moved around the mare’s hind legs, appreciating that her handling of the horse was sure, and kind, and confident in a way that he himself (who was unused to large animals and horses in particular) both envied and admired. He said, wonderingly, ‘Nicola, what do you really think of all this?’

  ‘All this?’ Nicola raised a questioning face from a hind hoof.

  ‘Well, you have to admit that it’s a bit of a sea change, isn’t it? I mean, one minute you’re riding down the lane minding your own business then suddenly Anna appears out of nowhere, plucks your father out of the mere and sets about turning your home into a hotel. It’s a bloody traumatic and unusual event, whichever way you look at it.’

  ‘Rushbroke ceased to be anything like a home a long time ago; that’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘It can’t have been very comfortable, I grant you, but at least you had your privacy; at least the place was your own.’

  ‘Ah, but for how long?’ Nicola’s upturned face regarded him from beneath the mare’s shining flank. ‘The estate was in hock to the bank. We were living on borrowed money and our debt was growing larger with every breath we took. Time was running out for us.’ Setting down the mare’s foot, she straightened up, moving the bucket out of range with the toe of her boot. ‘I would have thought that was rather obvious.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose it was...’ Rupert watched as Nicola removed the mare’s checked cotton sheet, moving with her habitual steady calmness. He wondered what it had been like for her, growing up on this crumbling wreck of an estate with her deranged mother and her eccentric father, as first the comforts and then the necessities of life had dwindled away. He wondered if she had ever felt that fate had been unkind; if she had ever given way to anger and frustration; if she had wept. ‘...But the point I’m making is that you seem to have taken it all so remarkably calmly. If I was in your position I’d find it bloody hard to swallow. I’d feel sidelined, I feel sure. I’d certainly feel some resentment.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nicola considered him thoughtfully. ‘I believe you would. But then you are not me, are you?’ As she leaned over a wooden box of grooming equipment she lifted a hand to hook back a stray wing of hair in a gesture at once familiar and unsettling. ‘What I feel,’ she said as she selected a metal implement with several rows of sharp teeth, ‘is that this was meant to happen. Anna is our salvation. We have been given another chance and Anna is the instrument of that. At the moment I don’t care who she is, or where she has come from. All I know is that she is here and I’m glad. I don’t feel sidelined, Rupert. I don’t feel resentful. I feel gratitude. I feel saved. That’s what I feel.’

  Rupert watched as she picked out of the box an oval leather-backed brush with short, soft bristles. She began to brush the mare’s fiery coat with firm, sweeping strokes, running the brush across the teeth of the curry comb after each alternate stroke, every now and again pausing to knock the comb out on the stable floor, releasing a small shower of grey dust. Rupert found the scene relaxing and curiously evocative. There was a comfortingly timelessness about the horse and the stable which, though unfamiliar to him in reality, was at the same time familiar through countless half-experienced paintings and story book illustrations and was thus rendered recognisable in all its homely detail; in the way the headcollar rope dangled from the mare’s lowered head; in the wisp of hay suspended from her soft mouth; in the folds of the check sheet thrown across the wooden manger in the shadowy corner. After all the trauma of the last six months he was soothed into a feeling of rare quiescence.

  ‘So what about you, Rupert,’ Nicola said eventually. ‘Where do you stand in all this? Why are you here?’

  The question was not altogether welcome. ‘Why do you think I’m here? I’m an employee. I’m here because of my professional expertise. I’m a bloody hotel manager. I’m here to do a job.’

  ‘No need to be so touchy.’ Across the mare’s gleaming neck, Nicola regarded him with amusement. ‘Nothing to do with being hopelessly in love with Anna, then?’

  There was a short but tense silence, after which Rupert capitulated with a groan of despair.

  ‘Bloody hell, Nicola, is it so transparently obvious?’

  Nicola took the mare’s tail in one hand and began to brush it out, a few hairs at a time. The mare flipped one ear backwards in a half-hearted way but was otherwise unperturbed. ‘I’m afraid so. Is it totally unrequited?’

  ‘Absolutely and soddingly totally.’

  His voice was so vengefully despondent that she burst into laughter. They both laughed, but ‘It must be very difficult.’ Nicola said. ‘For you, it is no laughing matter.’

  ‘It hasn’t been, until now,’ he agreed.

  ‘Is there a reason? Could there be someone else, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think there must be. Where has she gone today, for example? She often goes away for days at a time. She never talks about it. It’s a touchy subject.’ He watched as the mare’s tail was brushed into a gleaming fall of auburn silk and understood for the first time why young women with long, straight hair and sleek legs were described as having thoroughbred looks; there was certainly a comparison to be made with the hard, bony elegance of the horse’s lower limbs and the shining, silken glory of the tail hair.

  Nicola moved round to give her attention to the horse’s mane. ‘Perhaps I should do some gentle probing on your behalf. See what I can find out.’

  ‘I doubt you’ll be successful. Anna’s a dark horse – no pun intended.’ He was grateful though, for her offer of assistance; for her empathy. After Anna, tense and tetchy (and frightened, but Rupert was not to know that) Nicola’s presence and obvious kindness were like a soothing balm. After the hell of the house with its swarming carpenters, plasterers, electricians and plumbers, the stable was an oasis of tranquillity. It was dusk now and the light was fading. All he could hear, as he leaned over the stable door, was the gentle chomp of the chestnut’s jaw as she pulled hay from the net and the occasional snort and scrape of a shod hoof on brick from the stable next door; companionable sounds; timeless and calming. (Ah, the gentle seductiveness of the stable; the female has always recognised it; the male succumbs less often). ‘What about you, Nicola?’ he said eventually. ‘Have you ever been in love?’

  ‘Goodness, do you always ask such searchingly personal questions?’

  ‘I’ve told you about my love life, or the lack of it, now it’s your turn.’

  ‘Is it indeed?’ Nicola looked at him thoughtfully over the horse’s neck. ‘I can see I might have to get used to shared confidences.’ She considered the question carefully as she replaced the horse’s rug. ‘Well, this may not be the answer you are expecting, but if you are talking about love, as opposed to physical relationships, I think I have been in love from the moment I saw my first horse. Sometimes,’ she stretched out a hand and touched the underside of the mare’s jaw where the skin was loose and warm and softer than velvet, ‘I look at one of these beautiful creatures and I only have to catch a certain tilt of a head or the curve of an ear and I honestly could weep for love. And although I know they are not capable of returning my love it doesn’t matter; if anything, it just intensifies it. I think that is love,’ she said, turning to him. ‘I think it must be love, and, if I am right, then the answer to your question is yes, most definitely I have been, I am in love… don’t you think?’

  Rupert was melted by this honest and touching declaration of a love untainted by lust or pride, possessiveness, or even expectation. He forgot his fear of horses, unbolted the lower door and went into the stable. He put an arm around Nicola’s waist and pulled her close. Because he had been lonely and miserable, because he was in need of comfort and desperate to be loved, he kissed her open mouth and her startled grey eyes and smoothed her hair away from her face. His ha
nds were on the warm softness of her breasts almost before he realised it, and he drew back at once, ready to apologise, to beg forgiveness, except that she took his hand and led him to the pile of straw in the corner of the stable, and unbuttoned her blouse, and after that everything else was forgotten.

  TWENTY

  The department, discreetly labelled MILITARY AND SPORTING was on the second floor and furnished like a gentleman’s club with mahogany panelling, heavy drapes, leather chairs and pleated lampshades on brass stands. A lone sales assistant, white-haired and stooped like an aged manservant, was peering into a ledger on a leather-topped desk as Tony Pomeroy arrived, treading silently on well-felted navy blue carpet.

  Tony cleared his throat in order to indicate his arrival. ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I would like to purchase a hunting outfit.’

  The sales assistant raised his head and his expression was pained. ‘Oh, good gracious me, Sir, not a hunting outfit; never in a million years. What you require are hunting clothes.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Tony obligingly, ‘I would like to purchase a set of hunting clothes.’

  ‘You would like to purchase hunting clothes.’ The assistant looked at him in reproof. ‘Not an outfit, not a kit, and most certainly not a set.’

  ‘Hunting clothes,’ agreed Tony, and seeing that this could be a long drawn out affair, sat down on one of the leather chairs.

  ‘May I enquire for which pack?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I was enquiring, Sir, as to which pack of hounds you will be hunting with?’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well... to be honest, I don’t actually know. Does it matter?’

  ‘It would be advisable to know, Sir, whether you will be hunting with foxhounds, staghounds, harriers, beagles or draghounds.’

  Tony had no idea that packs of hounds came in such a bewildering variety. ‘Surely all hunts are more or less the same?’

  ‘In many ways they are much the same, Sir, but as I am sure you are aware, foxhounds hunt fox, staghounds hunt deer, harriers hunt hare, draghounds hunt an artificial line, and beagles are followed on foot.’