by Alan Clark
At the foot of one branch of the staircase, one of the portraits had been covered over. I didn’t need to guess whose it was. I tugged at the dust-sheet. With a slow hiss it crumpled to the floor and my grandmother stared down at me. She can’t have been more than twenty or so; in an ice-blue gown that matched her eyes, sapphires threaded through her hair. But it was the expression de Laszlo had captured in her youth which struck you. Hard to articulate exactly what it was. Not just a rich kid’s arrogance, but something in the blood perhaps, the utter certainty that things would go the way she wanted them. But they hadn’t. That was for sure. And yet that look had never entirely left her, not even after the strokes had twisted her features. It was probably on her face inside the mahogany box they burnt at Golders Green.
My heels echoed on the uncarpeted wood of the staircase. At the top, I faced the suite of rooms which had been hers, but I wasn’t going in there. In time maybe, but not today. Instead I headed for the corner of the east wing which, for eight years of my life, had been mine. Here the door was locked, which was odd as all the others had opened. But the lock was ancient and anyway it was my lock now. I reprised my heroics. Jesus Christ. The room was empty. Totally. No furniture, no carpets, no curtains. The light fittings had gone, the wall-sockets torn out. It had been laid waste and left to rot. I’d been vaporized.
With an instantly recognizable groan, a floorboard sagged under my weight. Bloody hell, could they still be there? I prised it up. Fuck, yes. A mouldy pile of wank mags I’d bought in Camden Town with blazing cheeks and smuggled home with thumping heart. Blokes with permed hair, flowery shirts and erections sticking out of bell-bottom pants. Like the portraits downstairs, these faces were old friends. They’d have bus passes and prostate problems now, unless the plague had got them. I thanked them for the pleasure they’d given me and stamped the board back down. Rest in peace. I shook my head. All those years of fearful caution, then I’d blown it in a moment.
The cat and I climbed onwards till we reached the narrow wooden spiral that snaked up into the cupola; the highest point in a house that perched on the highest point in London. I lost myself in the view again, like I always had; the towers of Canary Wharf, the tip of Big Ben, the mast at Crystal Palace and, right below, the gardens, the woods and the wide green splash of the Heath. Up here I’d been King of the Castle. Impregnable. Safe.
The unlikeliest of faces now entered my mind and obscured the view. I hardly ever thought of my father. It should have been him standing here, not me. He’d only have been in his early seventies, my mother even younger. But Hector Blaine’s life had gone off the rails long before he’d reversed his car into the drink. Under the iron rule of my grandfather, Archie, Blaine Shipping had been the biggest maritime empire in Scotland, but it had only taken Hector about five years to run it into the ground. After her brief, mysterious marriage to Archie, Granny had hurried back south to Mount Royal and the parental embrace. But she’d never abandoned the name of Blaine and, I’m guessing, couldn’t bear the shame of her only son being a wastrel. So she’d poured Ashridge money into the shipyard but it was too late. What was left worth having was vultured by a rival and the Blaine flag was lowered over the Clyde after a century and a half. She’d never spoken to Hector again.
After that, my poor daddy didn’t appear to have much talent for anything except self-indulgence. They’d lived at the gambling tables of Nice and Monte Carlo; I’d lived in a big villa in Kelvinside, looked after by a flush of nannies. I’d seen them so rarely that when they died the only difference was one of degree. Granny had considered me too young to go to the funeral and after our eventual trip to Mallaig harbour we’d rarely mentioned them again. We’d had each other after all. Granny was the last of the Ashridges, there were no cousins hovering to inherit; after her, the line would be extinct, a fact which seemed to nag her like a tooth. And I was the last of the Blaines, but of course that would be remedied in time; Granny had been quite confident of that.
‘When I’m gone, it will be business as usual,’ she’d said in the car that day as we’d driven away from Mallaig. ‘You will carry on at Mount Royal, you will continue the line and I will look down on you proudly from my white fluffy cloud. Is that a deal, my darling?’
But at the thought of her loss, I’d erupted with violent sobs and clung frantically to her till we’d reached Fort William and had fish and chips for lunch. And now, fuck me if it hadn’t happened; after all the years, after all the water that had roared under the bridge. Here I stood, up in the cupola, the master of Mount Royal. At least for a while.
‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome … and all that jazz,’ said a voice. ‘But this one needs serious re-pointing I reckon.’
‘Vic d’Orsay, what the hell are you doing here?’
A snowy head ascended from the well of the spiral. He moved with some effort, the slight limp still there. We’d not met since Golders Green a couple of months ago.
‘Her Ladyship’s lawyer is an old buddy,’ he panted, his belly rising and falling like a bellows. ‘At lunch today, he let slip you’d just taken possession. The security guy let me in. I came to congratulate you. Hope you don’t mind the intrusion.’
Maybe I should have done, but I suddenly felt glad to have him there.
‘Jeez, it’s really something isn’t it? Even in this state,’ said Vic, absorbing the panorama. I pointed out the landmarks and Vic delivered the necessary oohs and aahs. There were some old orange boxes lying around the cupola. Flicking the dust off one with a blue silk handkerchief, he sat with his chins resting on the top of his stick and fixed me in his gaze.
‘Were you surprised she put you back in her will at the eleventh hour?’
‘I didn’t expect her to leave me a pot to piss in.’
‘She didn’t,’ said Vic. ‘I did.’
‘Sorry?’
‘As we’d both predicted, she’d left the lot to the loonies and the lurchers,’ said Vic. ‘She didn’t change her will, I changed it for her.’
I sat down on another orange box, my mouth doing a passable imitation of a goldfish. The cat leapt up onto a third and swivelled its head between us as if it were at Wimbledon.
‘I don’t have many talents beyond my music,’ Vic went on, ‘but one of them was a boyhood genius for calligraphy. I can copy somebody’s handwriting two minutes after I’ve seen it. In this particular instance, I employed it to spectacular effect.’
‘How the fuck did you do it?’ I whispered as if I didn’t want the cat to hear.
‘One day before her second stroke, my friend the solicitor brought her some important papers. She could still hold a pen at that point and I helped her sign some stuff. Then, after her big attack, I tracked you down, got to know you a bit, felt angry at the wrong being done to you. The whole thing came to me when I was trying to clip my toenails. Complete in every detail. I now knew where she kept the will and one afternoon while she was totally spaced, I dug it out, added the codicil, signed it in her handwriting and witnessed it in my own. Then I went into the sluice and got one of the nurses to provide the second signature. It was done and dusted in ten minutes. I was so chuffed with myself, I had a meringue at tea.’
‘Didn’t the nurse suspect anything?’
‘It was that surly Welsh one. A babe of strictly limited intellectual gifts. Certainly too dumb to know you witness a signature in the presence of the signatory and not while emptying out their shit.’
‘But why on earth did you do it? What’s in it for you?’
There was a long pause.
‘Well you see, the quacks say there’s no reason why I can’t have another ten years at least. And I’d like them to be good years, not just the fag-end of life, if you’ll excuse the expression. But as I mouldered in that lounge with poor old Dickie and the other stiffs, it dawned on me that even passable health, the affection of a million middle-aged ladies and an enviable portfolio of investments was unlikely to bring me what I really wanted.’
> ‘Which is?’
He coloured a bit, looked away and stroked the cat.
‘Oh toots, just the things most people are searching for. Say no more.’
‘And what’s that got to do with me?’
Vic stood up and began to circle the tiny space.
‘I came to this house once, donkeys years back. I remember the magic of just being in those rooms. Before the rot set in, of course. Not just the literal rot, but the bad things that Sibyl allowed to happen here in later years. You remember too, don’t you? Well young Blaine, I have a plan for us to make it that way again.’
‘Us?’ I said, with a prick of irritation. That wasn’t a concept I was used to wrestling with. ‘What if I don’t agree to this plan of yours?’
‘Well I could just go to the cops and confess,’ said Vic. ‘I could say I felt your exclusion from Sibyl’s will to be a grave injustice, that I was depressed after my stroke and, under the influence of my medical cocktail, I did a very silly thing and I’d now like to cleanse my conscience. The quacks will testify on my behalf. Like you, the cops will be unable to imagine any personal motive since we hardly know each other and, as I’m a national treasure Grade II, I’d bet I’ll just get my ass kicked or at worst a suspended sentence and useful publicity for the sales of my back catalogue. Mr Rory Blaine however will be disinherited, the loonies will get it as planned then have to sell it and some gentleman from Jeddah will move in with his fifteen wives.’
‘So you’re blackmailing me into going along with whatever you’ve dreamed-up?’
‘Only in the nicest possible way.’
I was getting dizzy watching him circumnavigate the cupola. Granny’s solicitor had said that the amended will, written just three days before her death, might normally have excited some suspicion. But since I, the new beneficiary, had not visited the home since the previous week and as one of the witnesses was no less than Vic d’Orsay, the celebrated singer, any thoughts of foul play had been instantly dismissed.
‘Victor, for fuck’s sake stand still,’ I barked. ‘What’s this plan?’
‘If my calculations are correct, you can only pay off the taxman, restore the house and pay its running costs if two criteria are met. The first is that you get a sizeable injection of extra dough. I can provide it. The second is that the house will have to work for its living. My scheme would not only enable it to do so but might even be a nice little earner.’
‘You’re assuming I want to keep this wreck.’
‘I was assuming it, yes. Until ten minutes ago when I found you here and saw the look on your face. Now, I know you do,’ said Vic. ‘Anyway what was your plan? Flog it off, then fritter away what’s left, chasing young Spanish ass in Marbella? You belong here, Rory.’
The old sod was dead right on both counts. I’d imagined selling both the house and the business then heading for the sunny villa with the jacuzzi and the hot-and-cold running boys. But to have Mount Royal again only to lose it for a second time was something I didn’t think even Ms Prada could help with. I knew that for certain now I was back inside its walls.
I leaned back against the latticed glass and gazed out over the tops of the oaks. It had been a shock of course. Not Vic’s crime, I’m ashamed to say, but the fact that Granny hadn’t, after all, wanted to fix things at the last. In those final weeks, I’d made four or five trips to the white bed with the high railings. I’d worried that my presence might freak her out again, but she’d just lain there and stared. It hadn’t been easy. I’d asked Vic to come the first once or twice, he seemed to understand the fractured sounds she made. But there were none for me. Still, I’d nattered on about anything; the years in Australia, the agency, the awards, wanting her to know I’d made something of myself even if she might not consider it much. I reminded her of dancing at the Savoy, freezing outside Edinburgh Castle, the day we’d won five hundred pounds at Ascot. But nothing. Oh well, Vic had said the words didn’t really matter. The leaf-thin hand had lain still on the sheet. The final time I’d seen her, I’d let my own rest beside it, the fingertips almost touching. I’d told myself not to be pathetic. This might be my last chance. And it had been. And I’d not taken it. Then the inheritance had suggested that things had indeed been sorted and I’d been half-drunk on the joy of it. But now I’d discovered that was a sham. I stood here under false pretences.
‘That big wrist-watch over there has stopped,’ said Vic, peering down at the Clock Tower. ‘What d’you say the two of us get it going again?’
It was hot as hell up here now. Vic d’Orsay waited, pushing the delinquent wave of hair back off his sweaty brow.
‘Okay then,’ I said finally. ‘Let’s hear how we save Mount Royal.’
He only spoke one short sentence but I laughed and laughed until I thought I was going to piss my nice new Paul Smith chinos. But the cat seemed to like what it heard and rubbed itself admiringly against Vic’s dodgy leg.
*
The Saloon was lit entirely by candles. Thin as fingers in the wallsconces, thick as arms in the giant torchères, they flickered against the Mogul tapestries, bringing a sort of half-life to leaping tigers and emperors on jewelled elephants. Milk-white roses frothed out of lacquered jars, their scent defeated by the smoke of cigars and the myriad perfumes of pampered flesh. While servants circled with coffee and liqueurs, the piano tinkled out Granny’s favourite Cole Porter. ‘You’re The Top’ sang the pianist and few of those assembled would have doubted that they were.
Granny looked beautiful tonight in a long Givenchy sheath, her hair piled high on her head, clutching her jewelled Malacca cane. Around the long room opinions were being canvassed, plots hatched, flirtations begun; all of which might reverberate far beyond these walls. This was what Granny lived for. The unions may have been running the country but at Sibyl Blaine’s parties all was well with the world as she had always known it.
I’d sat beside him at dinner. He never mentioned his name. He was a nice man, full of risqué jokes and anecdotes about famous people. He was old enough to be my dad but he didn’t talk down to me. I was wearing my dress kilt and rattled on about my interest in clan tartans; he didn’t seem bored like Granny usually did. I told him that I hoped to be a writer one day. He promised to send me a list of authors he thought I should get to know. If you want to write, you must read, he said.
A few times I noticed Granny watching us. I felt the usual wee jolt of fear, but that was familiar now, both here and at school. I’d learned to be careful, to watch what I said, how I said it, even how I moved my body. I always sat with my legs well apart, palms flat on my thighs, elbows pointing outwards. I walked with a swagger, I’d deepened my voice before its time and, to Granny’s strong disapproval, coarsened my Kelvinside accent to a degree not quite welcome at Mount Royal. I’d also discovered a knack for making people laugh, the age-old defence of the vulnerable. I’d scoured joke books, learning them by heart, keeping them ready like a quiverful of arrows. By sheer willpower, I’d even forced myself to be good at rugby and, shamefully, to mock those who weren’t. And I’d found a role model; a Scottish folk-singer who appeared every week on TV; strapping, bearded, thumping his guitar like a man possessed. He’d been the reason I’d taken up the instrument and fallen in love with the music. I dreamed about him regularly, the evidence sticking to me when I woke. He was everything I wanted to be, everything I was determined to show that I was. His name was even Rory.
But the price of deception was eternal vigilance; a 24/7 awareness of the thousand tiny ways in which I might betray myself. One day I’d missed a try and been called a useless poof. I’d hardly slept till I’d managed to persuade myself it’d been a meaningless taunt. Tonight, at the dinner-table, why was Granny watching us? What detail had I missed? What expression had slipped past my guard? The fear was always there. It was locked in constant combat with what I yearned for and sometimes it lost, but it was always there. Me and my shadow.
The nice man poured champagne into my water-glass w
hen Granny wasn’t looking. When I let my thigh rest against his, he didn’t pull it away. I offered to show him the gardens after coffee.
The night was humid. There had been a thundery shower and the ground still exhaled a just perceptible mist. We circled the Great Fountain, floodlit for the occasion. We dodged the spray and laughed. Would he like to see our wee folly? He said that he would. I led him through an abandoned walled garden called the Wilderness, till we reached the little ruined temple. Inside the cramped, roofless chamber was a grubby statue of Apollo, his body scurvied with lichen. Despite the heat, it was dank and dark in here. The nice man found a stub of candle. He lit it and stuck it on Apollo’s head.
At first, we didn’t see Granny in the doorway, her long dress stained and slashed by the sodden brambles. It was only when her old spaniel ran in yelping that we turned our heads. The nice man hissed a soft expletive. He pulled up his trousers and, with an apologetic smile, tried to squeeze past her into the garden. But her hand shot out and clawed onto his collar.
‘He’s fifteen,’ she said, spitting the words like grape pips. ‘Fifteen. The scandal would finish your career.’
The nice man smiled at her again, but this time in a different, bolder way.
‘And yours,’ he said.
He wriggled from her grasp, smoothing his lapels. She stood aside and let him pass. I was still kneeling on the floor, calcified like a Pompeiian, my bare knees scuffed and dirty, my mouth wet. Granny looked down at me but said nothing. She was breathing heavily, leaning on the jewelled Malacca cane. Then suddenly the cane flew upwards. For a moment, it quivered in the air above my head, but then it froze and fell from her hand. She blew out the candle on Apollo’s head and turned towards the doorway. The spaniel scampered ahead out into the night.
