Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  I smiled at his gaffe but it was a smile tinged with sadness. Down below was the old-fashioned euphemism used by nannies and nurses for a girl’s private parts, according to polite thinking not a concept which should occupy a gentleman’s mind let alone a phrase which should sully his mouth. Once, when I had suggested this to John - tangled in the sheets of the bed, the French windows open to the cooling breezes of a summer night, the moonlight a pale sliver across the carpet of the bedroom floor, the smell of sex on his breath - he had denied being a gentleman since my down below was almost constantly on his mind and as often as possible in his mouth. The memory of it pierced me, now.

  ‘Below stairs’ I corrected, gently. Giles’ disarming manner, his gauche, slightly inebriated state lifted my melancholy. In this softer, more human iteration I found him powerfully attractive. I found myself wondering if he was married and then, rather shockingly, knowing I did not care.

  Giles blushed, and stammered, ‘Below stairs, indeed.’

  I finished lighting the candles and blew out the taper. The wisp of smoke drifted in the air between us, connecting us in a miasmic haze. The fire in the grate crackled. High, high above us, at the top of the rigid column of decorative brick, on the chimney top, a rook cawed in the gloaming, using the smoke from the fire to fumigate its feathers. Its cry came down to us, disembodied and strange, as something raw and wild and almost dangerous. I placed the taper on the mantelpiece and took the three or four steps across the carpet which brought me to where Giles stood. I gave him a straight look. I could smell the whisky on his breath, see past the glassiness of his blue eyes to a deep, beckoning pool beyond, feel the heat which rose from the confines of his dinner clothes. Whether from our sudden closeness, or from his earlier blunder, or the abrupt realisation he was not quite sober and that it would not do, he stiffened quite perceptibly. The little window which had been opened up to me in his clipped, efficient, entirely proper demeanour was beginning to close.

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ I said, recklessly, into the taut silence between us. ‘Everything is in eager readiness down below.’

  I left him, stupid with shock, in the dining room.

  From the raucous laughter which emanated down from the dining room and later the music room, we gathered the dinner had been a wild success. The Butler and footmen of Colin’s staff served brandy with coffee and left a drinks trolley laden with decanters and bottles from which the guests were to help themselves and did so, it transpired, with great liberality. The men servants then retired below stairs bringing with them the unfinished wine from dinner, which they clearly considered a perk of the job; they brought glasses and distributed it among them. The staff from the village had already departed. The cook and the kitchen maid had gone to bed. I was the sole remaining member of the household staff still up and they kindly included me in their libations. I am ashamed to say I probably partook more liberally than I ought to have done; fatigue, relief and a sort of heady recklessness overtook me. With their jackets off and shirt studs removed, their shoe laces slackened, the men became almost unguarded, human, as they had not seemed before. They seemed genuinely excited by the prospect of the talks upstairs, that an agreement between the parties could be a new beginning for our country and a restoration of dignity and productivity for the working people. Mr Mosley, it transpired, was a powerful and persuasive speaker; one of the men had heard him at a rally in London and followed his cause ever since. ‘We’re in a struggle for our country,’ he opined, pouring more wine into his glass, ‘that’s what Mr Mosley understands and what he’s trying to get these governmental men to buy in to. Mr Hitler has done it and look at Germany! If we’re not careful countries like Spain and Italy will overtake us. Us! The Britain my father and brothers died for! It’s been going to the dogs for years, but this is our chance, now.’

  The other men all nodded sagely.

  ‘My husband says Germany is a country ahead of us in many ways,’ I ventured.

  ‘Indeed he is quite correct, Mrs Johns,’ the loquacious man replied. ‘It makes you wonder who really won the war, doesn’t it? The Germans took the opportunity for a new beginning and look what a success they have made of it, whereas here, we’ve tried to go on as we always have done, old-fashioned and backwards-looking, keeping to traditions that are years out of date and should be consigned to the pyre. This house….’

  One of the men coughed. ‘It’s a fine old place,’ he murmured. Perhaps he had gathered my connection with the place was more than just occupational.

  ‘It’s a museum piece, alright,’ the man conceded, with a sneer, ‘but there will be no place for houses like this in the new order.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, in a small voice.

  ‘Because they benefit a few people rather than many people.’

  I thought about taking issue with him. Over the generations Tall Chimneys and my family’s other properties had sustained and benefitted countless people through work and patronage. ‘You’re a Communist, then?’

  ‘Not me,’ he retorted, ‘I’m a fascist and proud of it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I really know the difference,’ I admitted.

  ‘You’re not alone,’ he smiled. ‘Communism is about economics, fascism is about nationalism. Communism is about equality – everyone gets the same whether they earn or deserve it - but fascism is about merit. In a fascist country people like me can rise.’ He sat back in his chair and drew on his cigarette. ‘Yes,’ he nodded, and repeated almost to himself, ‘people like me can rise.’ I thought about Sylvester Ratton, living proof that in Mr Mosley’s regime small men could become powerful, and shuddered.

  An hour or so later the men took themselves off to bed. Their talk had continued but I had played no part in it. I had continued to drink, though, my body and my head unaccustomed to the wine and yet steadily carrying on, as though seeking some oblivion which would not come. At the back of my mind was always the malevolent nearness of Ratton and, overshadowing even that, an image of John in the arms of somebody else.

  At last the noises above stairs abated and I crept up to make sure doors were locked and fires had been left safe. I looked at it all aghast. The rooms were in disarray; glasses strewn everywhere, sticky rings on polished wood, furniture awry. Candles had been left to burn themselves down, their wax building yellowish stalagmites on the mantle-piece. There were casings of cigar ash on chair-arms, cushions on the floor, rugs askew. The unaccustomed evidences of masculinity seemed like an invasion, the wanton consumption of fuel and spirits, the careless treatment of furnishings like a kind of affront. Things had been moved around and disturbed to such a degree I felt personally molested, interfered with in a way that was outrageous. I banked down the fires and gathered the crystal together for the maids to carry down early in the morning, straightened rugs and restored soft furnishings but it all seemed unsatisfactory and ineffectual. I pulled back the curtains and opened the window sashes a little to admit fresh air to stir the fug but the staleness remained, stubborn and inert. I moved in a sort of jealous trance, outwardly calm and serene, like a hollow ghost, but inwardly seething with possessive fire. Regardless of the remedial influence brought about by Colin, the repairs and improvements, the literally life-saving consequences of him deciding to use the house, I didn’t consider it to be his. It was mine and I wanted it back. But the rooms looked back at me with a sort of satiated smugness, as though they had enjoyed their mistreatment. ‘This is what we were meant for,’ they seemed to say. ‘You know, we were never really yours.’

  ‘Like John,’ I thought, bitterly.

  The cruelty of it was too much; everyone, it seemed, had turned their backs on me. I had no one and nothing. I was out of place, out of step, out of time. The loneliness was overwhelming.

  I would like to be able to tell you that he came to my room in the night and took me by surprise. That I put up at least a token resistance. That I was seduced. But none of those things would be true. I took my candle and mounted the silent stairs. The
shadow I cast on the new-painted walls was grotesque. In the hall the ancient long-case clock ticked with a sound like ‘tut, tut, tut,’ a head-shaking, finger-waving, sad remonstrance, but still I climbed to the landing and trod along the corridor to where I knew his room to be. I turned the handle and it yielded. I blew out my candle and stepped inside.

  The room was dark and thick with the smell of inebriated male; a sour, chemical top-note of whisky overlaid a pungent vegetable baseline of cigar. Somewhere beneath and behind these was the smell of the man himself and his heat pervaded the room – it must have been him as no glimmer of fire remained in the grate. He must have opened the window before going to bed; the curtain billowed slightly in a breath of breeze, admitting also a sliver of moonlight by which I could make out the bed and his sleeping form. He was lying outside the covers in a semi-foetal positon, one arm thrown across the bed and the other sandwiched between his thighs. His blond hair looked like silk on the linen of the pillow. His shoulders, buttocks and thighs were well-formed and very pale, like alabaster, almost with a luminosity of their own. The heat in the room was almost suffocating; emanating not from him, I realised, but from me. I felt breathless and almost panicked by its intensity, as though I was literally melting and dissolving like the wax candles below. I began to pull off my clothes in a frenzy. But the more layers I pulled off the hotter I became, ignited by a burning fire which no amount of nakedness would ever extinguish. In the end, stripped entirely but still consumed by a passion so intense I felt like a human torch, I slipped onto the bed beside him.

  His skin was cool, a balm I hungered for. He half woke as I pressed myself against him, turning in confusion as I rained kisses over the quenching coolness of his skin. I do not know if he would have remonstrated with me; whatever words were on his lips were swallowed by my eager mouth before he could utter them. My hands ranged over him – his chest, his navel, his buttocks, his groin. Whatever refusal his words might have uttered his body denied – he was erect in my hand and soon his own hands were as feverish as mine, assimilating my body with urgent caresses. We rolled across the bed, clutching and grasping at each other, kissing and biting with such ferocity it was hard to tell whether we were fighting or making love. Then I had him inside me. He was young, I suppose, and perhaps inexperienced. He came very quickly, too quickly. My arousal was not assuaged but he collapsed on top of me, panting and wet with perspiration. I moved underneath him, urging him on.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ I whispered, ‘we haven’t finished.’

  He groaned and it occurred to me with a dreadful, sickening awareness he was only half awake. ‘Wha…?’ he mumbled, lifting a hand and sweeping across his face. His eyes were closed, had remained closed throughout, I thought.

  I pushed him over onto his back and sat astride him, but it was no good; he was semi-flaccid and already his breathing had returned to a stertorous snore. His head was twisted on the pillow. He wasn’t looking at me, he probably didn’t even know who I was or if I existed at all. I would be a boyish fantasy, half-remembered, just a wet-dream.

  I climbed off the bed and got dressed. My passion, although not appeased, had shrivelled. I felt cold and sick and sober, and very ashamed.

  I went down the servants’ stairs and tiptoed along the service corridors back to my room. It was dawn. Across the silent moors and down through the still plantation I heard the bells ringing from the parish church. It was Easter Day, the day of forgiveness, new life, renewed hope. The sound increased my wretchedness. I wanted to crawl on my hands and knees to the church and confess to my friend the rector, beg forgiveness of the man on the cross. But I knew neither would shrive me. Only John could do that. I got undressed and climbed into bed without lighting the candle or looking at myself in the mirror.

  The following day the King[8] came to Tall Chimneys, with Mrs Simpson.

  They arrived in a closed car; the weather had turned dreary with drizzle, it must have seemed to them they were coming to a sorry, sodden hole of a place. He climbed out with his hat pulled well down, she wore a scarf and dark glasses. She was taller than he was, very thin and not at all as attractive as I had expected. From my position in the hall, lined up with the other staff, and in my admittedly jaundiced mood, I failed to see what all the fuss was about.

  Colin hurried down the steps with an umbrella and they were ushered inside, past us, and into the music room where the gentlemen waited.

  My wretchedness from the night before persisted; even such an honour as this could not lift my mood. I was disgusted with myself and hung over to boot. I roamed aimlessly around the servants’ halls and felt sorry for myself. I longed for the day to be over, for the morning to come when the guests would all depart leaving me alone at Tall Chimneys. I did my best to quell the excited gossip of the village women, who had guessed - correctly - the identity of our mysterious guests, and avoided at all costs seeing Giles. I had no idea what, if anything, he would recall from our encounter. As far as I was concerned, the less the better.

  Of course my seclusion could not last. After luncheon the gentlemen went into the library to brief His Royal Highness on their discussions thus far, and Mrs Simpson went into a sitting room which had been expressly prepared for her. One of the secretaries was supposed to keep her company but he was soon summoned to the library and I was sent for. I tidied myself as much as I could and picked up a piece of sewing to occupy my hands. At the door of the room I paused and took a few deep breaths. It came to me, in that short interval, we were very much in the same boat, Mrs Simpson and I. We were both at Tall Chimneys more or less incognito, connected far more intimately to our men than we ought to be, very much on the wrong side of every boundary you could name. As I entered the room, instead of awe and awkwardness what I actually felt for the poor, shivering woman I found, was pity.

  She was huddled into a small armchair she had pushed as close as possible to the fire. She was poking ineffectually at it but it hardly emitted any heat - somebody had put damp logs on it and only a thick, acrid, yellowish smoke rose from the grate. Mrs Simpson wore a thin cardigan over a plain blouse. The scarf she had worn earlier was draped across her shoulders. I have no doubt the cardigan was cashmere and the blouse and scarf both silk, but they seemed to provide no warmth. Her face was pinched; a deep frown slashed her bony forehead which her starkly parted hair made very prominent in her face. I could see she wore a good deal of make-up but it did not disguise her discomfort. Bright red lipstick made her mouth seem very wide, and emphasised a blemish on the left side of her chin. Apart from the poker her hands were empty; she didn’t seem to have any reading material with her, or anything at all to occupy the lonely hours she must have known she faced while the men talked.

  I bobbed a curtsey - probably wrong - and went across to fire to mend it, taking the poker from her hand, which was ice cold.

  ‘I’ve been sent to see if you need anything, ma’am,’ I said. ‘I can see immediately that you do.’

  She gave me a wan smile and leant back in her chair as though exhausted. I soon had the fire burning better, and pulled the thick curtain across the window, to block out the draught. I lit the lamps and rang the bell. ‘Bring tea,’ I said, ‘hot tea, and toast, and that thick mohair blanket from the settle in the hall.’

  I took the liberty of tucking the blanket around her legs while she dozed, easing off her high heeled shoes and chafing her feet, which were frozen. She allowed my ministrations without a murmur, and when the tea came I poured her a cup without asking and placed it on a table at her side. She roused herself enough to drink it, both hands cupping the fine porcelain, before lapsing back into sleep. Satisfied I had done everything I could to bring her ease, and with the fire now burning very brightly and the room altogether more cheerful and comfortable, I gingerly took another armchair and settled to my sewing.

  Presently I looked up to find her eyes on me. ‘What’s your position here?’ she asked.

  I decided it was pointless to prevaricate. ‘I hardly k
now,’ I admitted, putting down my work. ‘I am Colin Talbot’s sister. I live here permanently but you wouldn’t call me the lady of the house. Up until a few weeks ago I lived here alone, practically.’

  ‘Ah! You’re the reclusive sister.’ Her American accent was pronounced; it would be clichéd to call it a drawl but it certainly had a languorous quality to it.

  I felt a brief surge of anger. Her privacy had been protected at all costs, I fumed. Everything had been cloak-and-dagger to the extent I hadn’t even known she was coming. My affairs, in contrast, it seemed, had been thoroughly discussed. ‘I’m not a recluse,’ I retorted. ‘At least, not by choice. It seems to have been my fate, though. It’s the part that has fallen to my lot, for good or ill. I can’t deny, before the visit of these gentlemen, and yourself, Tall Chimneys has had no visitors since 1929.’

  ‘Good God!’ she ejaculated, and then, more musingly. ‘What bliss.’

  We sent for more tea. She smoked cigarettes. I told her what I could about the house - its history, as far as I knew it, about my brother George and the difficulties his death had caused. She seemed very interested to know how I had coped, all alone. ‘I wasn’t quite alone,’ I mumbled, ‘not all of the time, anyway.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, knowingly. ‘Now I think about it, something was mentioned. I know Mr Cressing’s work, in fact. I attended an exhibition of his, I believe.’

  I said, wryly ‘It seems you know all my secrets.’

  ‘Don’t you know, dear, there are no secrets,’ she replied, bitterly.

  We spoke of John for a while, and of the art scene in general. Mrs Simpson was surprisingly well informed. As I described John’s work I was conscious of a pit of longing for him deep in my stomach. ‘I wish he was here,’ I blurted out at last.