Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked again.

  ‘Gone,’ he told me. ‘I have dismissed all the staff.’

  His words shook me. ‘Dismissed them? Why? By whose authority?’

  ‘By my own authority, of course, but with the agreement of your brother George. I have a telegram from him, if you care to read it.’

  I would have liked to have read it, but Mr Ratton did not produce it.

  ‘Why?’ I said again, my voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘There isn’t any money to pay their wages,’ he said, simply, as though it was as trivial as there being no lemon for the cocktails. ‘George’s father in law has been hit by the crash in Wall Street. He has been entirely wiped out. It is only his money that has kept Tall Chimneys going for the past few years; now it is gone. It is better for the staff that they know it, and find other situations, if they can.’

  His information absolutely floored me. I felt I might faint. I thought, briefly, of the letter John had received that morning, informing him, perhaps, of something similar, that the commission for large canvasses could not now be paid for. John will have to leave, I thought, dully. That’s what he had meant when he had said it was too late and couldn’t matter. I felt wretched, used. Was he, this moment, I wondered, throwing his clothes into his bag? Perhaps he had already left, satiated, an irritant itch well and truly scratched, and was half way across the moor to the village to find conveyance to the railway station.

  Mr Ratton waited patiently while these thoughts and their inevitable consequences unfolded. Whether he knew the exact train of my thoughts, or surmised their gist, or thought they ran upon different lines altogether I do not know, but he cannot have been ignorant of the distress they caused me. After a while he left the library and came back with my shawl, which I had abandoned somewhere during my search of the house, and a clean handkerchief, and a glass of brandy, which I gulped down.

  ‘What is going to happen?’ I enquired at last. Shock and perhaps the brandy had numbed me. None of it seemed real. My enquiry had a distanced, casual note as though I was mildly curious, but not really interested. We sat inside the pool of light from the single lamp. Beyond its halo the rest of the room, the whole house, seemed shadowed and insubstantial.

  ‘To Tall Chimneys? Who knows? I suppose it will be abandoned, like so many of these obsolete properties. George can’t afford to keep it up. Perhaps it will be sold, but my information is where America leads Britain is sure to follow; the next few years are going to see a slump in manufacturing and the mercantile sector; not many people, I think, will be able to afford to take on a property like this. In any case, the world that houses like this represent is over. It has been since the war, really. George has been living on borrowed time for years.’

  I knew in my heart, while Mr Ratton was prone to exaggeration, to making theatrical but ill-founded pronouncements on subjects he knew little about, this time he was right.

  ‘I meant, really, though,’ I murmured, ‘what will happen to me?’ Once again, it felt as though the enquiry was offhand, a matter of casual interest relating to somebody else entirely.

  ‘Ah,’ Mr Ratton shifted himself in his armchair, making himself, I saw, more comfortable. He was looking forward to the next half an hour. ‘Yes. It does all leave you in something of a predicament, doesn’t it? Perhaps you are in more of a predicament than even I know?’ He left his question hanging. His implication was all too clear. ‘You can’t stay here alone. How could you possibly manage a house this size by yourself? You couldn’t cope. It would be too much, even if there were funds for the minimum up-keep, which there aren’t.’ He let this point find its mark. ‘You can’t go to George. My understanding is they will be going to America very soon, to see what can be recouped. My fear is nothing at all will be gained by it, but he seems determined. Your other siblings?’

  I shook my head. Isobel was still in India, I didn’t know the whereabouts of my other sisters and I presumed they would be as penurious as I. My brother Colin had some role in Westminster, an independent income, presumably, but my heart quailed at throwing myself on him. He had always been such a cruel, cold, callous boy. I had heard nothing from or of him for years.

  ‘I don’t think they’d be able to do anything to help me,’ I mumbled. The brandy had made my lips flaccid and confused my thoughts.

  ‘As I thought.’ Mr Ratton placed his fingers in a steeple before him and rested his lower lip on them, as though giving serious thought to my quandary. ‘It’s a problem,’ he said, at last.

  Although I hated to raise the question of his plans in such close association with my own, I had no choice. ‘What will you do?’ I asked. My question came out slurred.

  He seemed not to notice. He looked surprised I should even ask. ‘Me? I’ve told you what my plans are. I shall travel. Now, more than ever, there will be opportunities for people like me. The middle classes will rise. Land, for example, will be available for next to no money. The slump won’t last forever...’ He talked on for some time, outlining possible opportunities, suggesting alternative destinations; the Far East, South America, Africa. His voice was low and soporific. My eyelids felt so heavy I could not keep them from drooping. The light from the lamp became a haze, and then only a distant pin-prick, then went out altogether.

  When I woke up I was warmly wrapped in a thick travelling blanket and settled into the back seat of the motor car. I knew immediately I had been drugged – I had a bitter taste in my mouth, a ravening thirst and a dreadful headache – but my mind was surprisingly clear. From what I could tell I was physically unharmed. Beneath the blanket my limbs were not tied. I took stock of my situation quickly. The engine was running; the air was thick with exhaust fumes and also a dense wadding of fog which must have descended since my return from the gatehouse. We were still in the stable yard; I could hear the whinny and nicker of the horses in the stables and make out the dim light above the door to the estate office. From within I could hear someone – Mr Ratton, I supposed – opening and closing drawers, rifling through cupboards. The seat all around me was packed with boxes and loosely wrapped metallic artefacts; they clashed slightly as I shifted against them – the silver, I surmised, pictures, anything valuable which could be sold quickly without too many questions being asked. Mr Ratton was doing a flit, and planning on taking me with him.

  Regardless of my fears about John earlier, and Mr Ratton’s observation that I could not stay on alone at Tall Chimneys, I was determined not to be taken as a virtual hostage. I did have friends, even if John Cressing turned out not to be one of them; the rector and his family would give me refuge, or one of the other respectable families with whom I had struck up recent acquaintance. I had to get to them as quickly as I could, before Mr Ratton was able to drug or otherwise subdue me once more. I began to wriggle free of the blanket, trying not to disturb the haphazard arrangement of boxes and bundles in the seat which would alert him to my having regained consciousness. Once liberated, I re-arranged the blanket to make it look like I was still underneath it. My subterfuge would not stand close inspection but, in the dark and the fog, it might fool Mr Ratton for a few moments. I stepped out of the motor car onto the cobbles of the yard, glad he had left it there and not on the gravel on the front sweep. Then I ran, melting into the thick, vaporous air as quickly and quietly as I could. I took a route behind the stables and into the kitchen garden, behind the greenhouses and through the curtain of ivy which concealed the door into the plantation. Before I had even got that far I heard Ratton’s roar of annoyance and frustration; he had already discovered my ruse.

  I ploughed on up the slope, dodging the overhanging greenery, stepping almost as though by instinct over the roots and boulders which might trip me up or make me cry out. The fog was almost impenetrable; I called on some inner map of the topography which I had known so well since childhood to guide me. I could hear someone else – Ratton – in the woods. Not behind me, but pursuing a course which would intersect with mine
in a little clearing a couple of hundred yards from the gatehouse. I altered my route, pushing through a little stand of alder trees, dropping back along a stream which ran down a ravine in order to loop behind my pursuer and come out of the plantation some way along the high stone wall which separated it from the moor. The moor, in this fog, was a dangerous place, full of treacherous bogs and pools of brackish water. Who knew if I would be able to cross it in safety, or find the winding ribbon of roadway which would lead me into the village? My clothes were shredded to ribbons, my boots, thankfully stout enough, were full of water from the stream in the ravine and beginning to rub. I struggled on, keeping panic at bay as best I could, stopping now and again to listen for Ratton who was making much more noise than I was, but was already at a distance from my new route. Presently I couldn’t hear him at all, and allowed myself to relax a fraction; perhaps I had lost him; perhaps he had given up.

  My desire to revert to my original route – to the gatehouse and thence onto the road – felt very strong; the draw of the place itself was so powerful as to be almost visceral, my idea of it as a safe haven further intensified now by the new associations it had taken on since the afternoon. John’s voice, his hands, the smoothness of his shoulders and the tenderness of his fingers kept on re-appearing in my mind’s eye, undermining my determination to evade Ratton and distracting me from the crisis at hand. How could he have betrayed me? I stopped for a moment and leant against the trunk of a tall Scotch pine which stood in a small clearing, and allowed sobs to wrack me until I had all but collapsed, thoroughly wretched, at its base.

  It was a mistake, of course, to give in to such self-indulgent foolishness. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find Ratton standing over me, his face puce with exertion but also exultant. ‘You didn’t think I’d been wasting all these weeks sitting at the house and pining for you, did you?’ he panted. ‘I’ve used the time well. I think I know these grounds as well as you do, now, lady.’ He seized my arm and yanked me to my feet, pressing me back against the tree. Something other than anger and exercise was energising him. He had a look in his eye I recognised, now, with a bleak certainty. ‘I can see I’ll have to establish my possession once and for all,’ he said, grimly. ‘It isn’t what I wanted, remember, but you leave me no choice.’

  He thrust me hard against the tree with his whole body, pinioning me there so I was as helpless as a butterfly on a collector’s board. Although not a tall man he was incredibly strong, and after all I had been through that day, I had no strength to resist him. He reached one hand under my skirts and began to fumble with my under-garments, the other pawed and kneaded at my breasts. He breathed in short gasps, licking his lips with a thick tongue. Every so often he forced my mouth open and stuffed his tongue inside, much deeper than was comfortable, thrusting it until I almost choked. The hand under my dress found its object; I shrank in revulsion as he probed and rummaged. He thrust a fat finger inside me, and then two. I was swollen and sore with a tenderness which had been precious but which now felt raw and painful. I would have cried out but he withdrew his hand from there and put his fingers into my mouth until I gagged. He gave a sort of moan, sucking his fingers in his turn and returned them to their work below. Meanwhile he began to struggle with the fastenings of his clothes. His mouth found mine again, wetness from his mouth sliding down my chin. He pushed closer, easing himself between my thighs; I could feel his stiffness nosing clumsily at me, like a blind dog. The bark of the tree behind me was like razors.

  ‘Please God, no,’ I cried.

  He stopped and gave me an exultant smile. ‘Oh yes,’ he grunted, and steadied himself for his thrust, but at that moment the crash of low hanging branches across the clearing made his head turn sharply away. I leaned in and took his ear between my teeth, biting down so hard my incisors met through his flesh and his blood poured into my mouth. His scream was as high pitched as the Michaelmas pig’s.

  Footsteps thundering across the clearing, a roar of animal fury, and then John was hauling Ratton away from me. ‘Run,’ he shouted. ‘Run home,’ and I knew he meant to the gatehouse.

  By the time John came back I was warm, and calm. There were no signs of his departure at the gatehouse; I had been entirely mistaken in my suspicions. The fire was still lit, the kettle still warm, his belongings where I had tidied them earlier that day. But he had been working; whatever impediment had prevented progress over the past few weeks had been cleared. A canvas on an easel bloomed with extravagant strokes of iridescent colour; exuberant swirls, splashes and whorls - clouds across the moor, sunshine on hills, light on water, tumbled covers on a divan – any and all of these things, very beautiful.

  I ran into his arms. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked, presently.

  ‘He’s gone, tail between his legs,’ John replied.

  ‘You didn’t…?’

  He gave a harsh laugh. ‘I wanted to, but no. He’s alive. He isn’t very pretty, though.’

  ‘He never was,’ I murmured.

  The next day John and I slept late, then walked down the drive to Tall Chimneys together. The house had been ransacked, paintings taken off walls, cabinets looted of valuable artefacts. The strong room off the butler’s parlour had been plundered of silver and crystal. In the estate office the safe stood open, empty. The whole house had a forlorn, neglected appearance. We wandered through its rooms as though visitors from another time.

  ‘What will you do?’ John asked. ‘Will you stay here, alone?’

  I smiled up at him. ‘Not quite alone, I hope.’

  He returned my smile. ‘No, but for propriety’s sake, you must appear to be so. What passes to a blind eye in some sections of London society would certainly be frowned on here and you need the support of your neighbours; sometimes, you know, I will have to go to London or abroad. I’ll need somebody to buy my work, if I’m to remain solvent.’

  ‘Perhaps...’ I began, wondering if I dare suggest we move there together, regularise our relationship, but John did not take up my train of thought.

  I looked around the house. ‘I ought to protect the property,’ I said. ‘Something will happen. Somebody will come. Ratton will not come back?’

  John shook his head. ‘No. He has gone off like a rat deserting a sinking ship, taking every piece of portable property he could cram into the motor car. That, too, he will sell, I expect, unless the police catch up with him.’

  Together John and I closed Tall Chimneys down. We restored order to the rooms where we could, before throwing dust sheets over the furniture and closing the shutters. I mothballed the generator, reverting to the use of oil lamps. The pumping station too I closed down. These were luxuries I couldn’t justify now; the expense of running and maintaining them beyond my means or capabilities. I contacted my new friends who agreed to house the horses for the time being. The rector urged me to move in with them until better arrangements could be made with my brother George, or another family member, but I declined. Then he suggested his oldest girl should come and be my companion; she was perfectly nice but rather a lumpen girl with little conversation and no practical resourcefulness. Gently, I declined this offer also. It felt wrong to accept their hospitality and kindness when I had crossed such a particular boundary of respectability. Not that I regretted it, but I would not add to my transgression by behaving as though it was not so.

  Instead, I burrowed into Tall Chimneys, retreating - perhaps hiding - in its most sequestered accommodations. I removed my belongings to Mrs Flowers’ rooms, a pleasant enough arrangement; her ground floor apartments comprised a bedroom and a small bathroom, a sitting room with a French door into a sheltered paved area adjacent to the kitchen garden. They were close to the kitchens where I kept the stove alight. The time I had spent with her and the cook paid dividends; I knew where the foodstuffs were stocked and could cook rudimentary meals. I was familiar with the workings of the laundry. I had everything I needed in that modest corner of the house to keep body and soul together. All through the wi
nter I used the stores from the previous summer, some of which I had bottled myself. I tended the produce in the glasshouses, as Weeks had shown me so many years before, so we had tomatoes and cucumbers and melon with our Christmas dinner. I toured the house each day, ensuring it remained free of leaks and interloping animals. Each afternoon I walked up to the gatehouse where John would be waiting for me. He would work while I tidied the rooms for him. Then as the afternoon closed in we would walk together back to Tall Chimneys to eat whatever I had prepared at a small table in Mrs Flowers’ sitting room, a merry fire burning in the grate, the thick curtains pulled tight against the weather. Then we would go to bed. Sometime during the night John would get up and dress, and walk back to the gatehouse.

  One evening, as we sat in the semi darkness staring into the flames, John said ‘I suppose you sometimes wonder about marriage.’

  I held my breath. He was right. Marriage was in my thoughts almost all the time. Of course I expected we would marry - we must. It was both my heart’s desire and necessary. The strict moral up-bringing I had received from Isobel and at school demanded no other outcome. Society expected it. I might, to coin a phrase, have slipped ‘twix cup and lip, but this was a temporary lapse, private and safe within the isolated environment of Tall Chimneys.

  Was he going to propose? His face was in shadow, so I could not read his expression, but when he spoke his words startled me more than I could express. ‘George and his set would laugh. They think all that very outmoded and unnecessary, you know. They live very liberated, unfettered lives.’

  Outmoded? Unnecessary? The notion they would consider my desire to be married boring and conventional unsettled me, but it did not negate it. Isobel had always considered George and his companions very louche. But the remonstrance which had been on my lips faltered. I’d rather have died than become a fetter on John’s liberty or creativity.

  ‘But… I don’t know,’ John went on. ‘I think there’s something to be said for it, in some circumstances, if it were possible.’