At this moment the door opened and Bess came in, followed by one of the maids, and behind the maid was Dr Ernest Lessing. He was the local country doctor the family used when they were at the house in Kent.
Will stood up, turned to the doctor, whom he knew, and greeted him cordially. ‘How are you, Dr Lessing?’
‘Very well, thank you, Mr Hasling,’ he answered, and then he stepped up to the bed, put his black bag on a chair, took out his stethoscope. He looked at Edward for a long moment, and then said quietly, ‘Good morning, Mr Deravenel. Bronchitis again, eh?’
‘Afraid so, Lessing. I’m prone to it, so it seems to me.’
Nodding, drawing closer to the bed, the doctor put the stethoscope in his ears and listened to Edward’s chest. After a moment or two, he said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to get you up on the edge of the bed. I need to check your lungs.’
‘No problem.’ Edward struggled to sit straighter, and Will and the doctor helped to get him totally upright. Will unbuttoned Ned’s pyjama top for him and slipped it off his broad shoulders.
While the doctor examined Edward, Will walked over to the seating area at the far end of the bedroom, where the maid had deposited the tray. Bess was sitting watching the doctor, but brought her eyes to Will’s, and whispered, ‘He’ll be all right, Uncle Will. Father has the constitution of an ox and always shakes off these bouts of bronchitis, pulls through them quickly.’
‘Yes, I know that.’ Will now reached for the cup of lemon tea, dropped in a lump of sugar and stirred it; he sat drinking it for a few moments. Quite unexpectedly he felt unusually worried all of a sudden and he asked himself why he was feeling so … fearful for Ned. Bess had spoken the truth, her father did have a good constitution, was rarely ill, and Ned had been vigorous, energetic and strong for as long as he had known him. Yet Will was inordinately troubled, and was unable to explain this acute sense of foreboding to himself. It was an odd kind of unease.
Will came out of his reverie when he heard Dr Lessing saying to Ned, ‘It’s as you thought, Mr Deravenel, you’ve got a bad case of bronchitis, which is why you’ve been having trouble breathing. Your air passages are infected. But you’ll be all right. Just continue inhaling the Friars’ Balsam, and take the cough suppressant. I’ll send more over to you later today. You need rest and lots of liquids.’
Ned eyed the doctor and murmured, ‘Then nothing’s changed, Dr Lessing.’ He tried to force a smile, wanting to make light of it.
‘That’s true, it hasn’t. I’ll come to see you tomorrow, Mr Deravenel. Rest comfortably in the meantime.’ The doctor left, after saying goodbye to Will and Bess, adding that he would see himself out.
Bess brought the cup of lemon tea to her father, and Edward sipped some of it then placed the cup on his bedside table. ‘I feel quite tired, Will. I think I’d like to have a nap.’
‘Then that’s what you must do. I’ll be off, but if you need me I can be back in ten minutes, Ned.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll go downstairs with you.’ Bess looked at her father and said in a soft voice, ‘I’ll look in on you later, Papa. Rest now.’
Edward gave her a faint smile and closed his eyes.
As they went down the staircase together, Will suddenly stopped, took hold of Bess’s arm. ‘You must promise to phone me, day or night, if he becomes worse, or if you need me for anything at all.’
‘I promise, Uncle Will. But I know the doctor’s right. And anyway, Father does recoup quickly, soon gets over bronchitis if he sticks to the regime.’
‘Who’s here in the house, Bess? Other than Faxton?’ Will asked as they continued down the stairs. ‘Cook, I assume, and the maids. But where are your little sisters, the ones who haven’t gone to Rome?’
‘Here with Nanny in the nursery at this moment. Anne was invited to go with Mother and the others, because she’s eight, but not Katharine and Bridget, Mother says they’re too little. But Anne didn’t want to go, Uncle Will: she likes to mother her sisters. She misses Little Georgie, she’s never stopped grieving for him. Or for Mary.’
Will nodded. Ned’s third son, Little Georgie, had died in 1922, four years ago now, when he was just two years old. He was another child they had lost in infancy, like baby Margaret who had passed on several years earlier. But then Ned and Elizabeth had been fortunate to have two more children after these deaths, Katharine in 1922, who had helped them to get over the sad loss of Little Georgie, and then Bridget in 1923, who was now three years old. Mary, their second-born daughter, had died last year, quite prematurely of rheumatic fever, much to their immense sorrow. She had been fifteen.
Will sighed, shook his head as they walked across the entrance hall towards the front door.
Bess, looking at him quickly, asked, ‘What is it, Uncle Will?’
‘I was just thinking what a lucky couple your parents are, in so many ways. Just think how many children they’ve been fortunate to have – ten altogether and only two of them died in infancy, and then Mary of course. That’s quite a remarkable achievement, in my opinion.’
‘Yes, it is.’ A hint of sadness crept into her voice when she said softly, ‘I miss Mary very much. She was close to me, and we were close in age.’
‘I know you miss her. We all do. Although it doesn’t make it any easier for me to say this to you, because you’ll grieve for Mary for a long time, you must take consolation in your other brothers and sisters.’
‘I do, and they’re all rather beautiful to look at too, just like Mary was, and sweet. Really good children.’
‘I think this brood is quite a remarkable achievement for your parents, and obviously the Deravenels are a fertile family. I expect you’ll have a big family when you grow up and get married,’ Will told her.
‘I certainly don’t want ten children!’ she exclaimed, sounding horrified at the idea, and grinned when she saw the look of amusement on his face. ‘And I am grown up, Uncle Will. Have you forgotten I’m now seventeen?’
‘And in charge,’ he added succinctly. ‘That’s what you forever announced when you were a little girl. “I’m in charge”, you used to say to me. And you know what, Bess? I believed you.’
Bess found Nanny on the nursery floor of Waverley Court, where there was a parlour, bathrooms, a baby nursery, and bedrooms for the children, as well as for Nanny, and Madge, the assistant nanny.
Going into the comfortable, cosy parlour, Bess found Nanny sitting at the table holding a cup of tea, whilst her three little sisters were drinking glasses of milk. There was a plate of sliced fruit on the table, Nanny’s antidote to sweet biscuits and chocolate fingers, which they all adored and Nanny frowned upon. ‘Too much sugar,’ she was forever saying, wagging a finger.
‘There you are, Bess,’ Nanny said, putting her cup down. ‘How is your father?’
‘He’s not too badly, Nanny, and it’s bronchitis, as we all thought. The doctor just left.’
‘I saw his car through the window, and Mr Hasling’s as well.’
‘Uncle Will went home, but he’ll come back if we need him for anything.’
‘Will Dr Lessing make a visit to your father tomorrow, Bess?’
‘Yes, Nanny, he said he would. In the meantime, we must look after Father the way we always do when he gets bronchitis.’
Nanny nodded sagely. ‘Yes, we’ll do our best. It seems to run in the family,’ she murmured, thinking of Young Edward, who was prone to it, just as his father was.
‘I want to see Papa,’ Anne announced, giving Bess an imploring look. ‘Can I? Please. I want to give him a kiss – he likes my kisses, he told me.’
‘A little later, darling,’ Bess said in her most authoritative voice. ‘Father is resting now … you know he’s not well.’
‘But he promised me a threepenny bit for Good Friday. That’s today,’ the eight-year-old pointed out.
‘If he promised, he’ll keep his promise, Anne, but later.’ She glanced at Katharine, who was four, and Bridget, who was
a year younger, and added, ‘Everyone will get a threepenny bit for Good Friday. From Papa. I promise.’
Her three younger siblings beamed at her, and she broke into a smile as she studied them for a moment. They were all blondes, and beautiful, just like their brothers and their other sister Cecily.
Katharine now looked at her through those alluring turquoise eyes of hers, and announced, ‘We’re having hot cross buns for tea, Nanny says so.’
‘I shall come and join you,’ Bess promised.
‘And Papa?’ Katharine asked eagerly.
‘We’ll see.’ As she spoke Bess looked across at Nanny and shook her head.
FORTY-ONE
London
Bess was sitting by the side of her father’s bed, in the bedroom of his house in Berkeley Square. Yesterday, Easter Sunday, he had insisted on returning to London. His health having improved since Good Friday, he had explained that he much preferred to be in town, and so Broadbent had driven them up in the late afternoon.
Now, as she glanced at him, Bess had to admit that he did look a bit better; his colour was more normal, his eyes were less glazed, and the feverishness was diminishing, for which she was most thankful.
Looking at her thoughtfully, Edward said, ‘Thank you for reading The Times to me, Bess. Now, there’s something I wish to explain to you.’
Sitting up straighter in her chair, his eldest daughter was immediately alert. ‘What is that, Father?’ Her curiosity was aroused because he sounded serious.
Pulling open the drawer in the bedside table, he took out a piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘First, I would like you to read this.’
She did as he asked, and then focused her clear blue eyes on him. ‘The numbers here, they’re a combination … for your safe, aren’t they?’
‘Good girl! For the safe in my dressing room here, and for the one at Ravenscar. Those numbers open both safes, it was so much easier to make one sequence. I want you to open the safe here and take out the manila envelope on the top shelf.’
Jumping up, she hurried across her father’s bedroom, taking the piece of paper with her. A moment later she was back, carrying the large envelope. After handing it to him, she returned to the chair.
Edward held the envelope for a moment, then placed it on the bed, and said, ‘These papers are for you, Bess. To keep. They are the rules of the company, of Deravenels, updated by me in 1918. You must remember when I had that fall on the terrace at Ravenscar that year … at Christmas?’
‘Of course I do, Father.’
‘I was very lucky that day, you know. I could have been rather seriously injured, broken my back or my neck. I could even have been killed. Fortunately, I wasn’t. What that fall did was alert me to the truth … that I am vulnerable, just like anyone else. I started to think about the rules of Deravenels, and I decided I must have them changed. I was delighted when the board went along with me. And what the new rules in the envelope explain is that a woman who is born a Deravenel can inherit the company, run it as managing director. Understand?’
‘Yes, I do. But what about the male heir? Doesn’t he come first?’
‘Absolutely. But what if something happened to me and your brothers at the same time? What if we had some kind of accident and died? Or what if both boys were together, had an accident and were killed? One never knows what life is going to bring, Bess. And so I got to thinking, as I said, and I realized that after your brothers, you would be the heir to Deravenels. And so I studied the old rules, drafted some new ones, and took them to the board at our annual board meeting in January of 1919. They were immediately approved by my fellow board members, and registered.’
‘The rest of the board agreed that a woman could run Deravenels?’ Bess exclaimed. ‘I can hardly believe that!’
‘Well, we are living in modern times now, you know. It’s already 1926. Anyway, if I should die, or if your brothers die, or are in any way incapacitated, then you immediately become my heir. In other words, if you are the only one left standing, Bess, you, as my eldest child, are the next in line and will inherit everything, including Deravenels. Apart from the trusts I have created for your sisters, and your mother, of course. Grace Rose also has her own trust. And you do, too, and that remains intact no matter what.’
For a moment Bess was flabbergasted, and then as the implications set in, she exclaimed tremulously, ‘But you’re not going to die, Papa! And the boys are not going to die! Please don’t talk about you all dying. It upsets me.’
‘I know it does, but we must be practical, businesslike, there’s too much at stake. I want to safeguard the company. I must. I built it into everything it has become today. I must protect Deravenels for future Deravenels. That is what this conversation is about.’
He now handed his daughter the manila envelope, and explained, ‘Along with the company rules, there is my cheque made out to you, Bess, for five thousand pounds. I want you to telephone Aunt Vicky, when she gets back from Kent later this week. She will take you to her bank, where you will open an account and rent a safety deposit box. The cheque –’
‘Father, it’s too much. A fortune.’
‘The cheque will enable you to open an account, and it will be there for you for any emergencies you might have one day. Explain you want it to be in an interest-earning account, all right?’
Bess, at a loss for words, simply nodded.
‘And no doubt you realize the safety deposit box is for the papers in the envelope?’
‘Yes, Father, of course.’
‘Please read them later.’
‘I will.’
‘Another point. Endeavour to commit the sequence of numbers to memory if you can, and then destroy the piece of paper.’
‘Yes, I will.’
He smiled at her. ‘Don’t look so worried, darling, nothing’s going to happen to me for a very long time, or to your brothers. I’m merely being my usual efficient self, that’s all.’
Bess nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her father’s talk of accidents and death and dying troubled her tremendously. A little silence fell between them for a moment, but she finally said, ‘You did improve quickly, Father, but you must still take care. I hope you’re not thinking of going to Deravenels on Tuesday. You’re not, are you?’
‘Not even I am that foolish. No, I’ll do as Dr Lessing says, and remain in bed with my cough mixture and my Friars’ Balsam handy.’ Edward sat back against the pile of pillows; he always felt better sitting upright when he had bronchitis. He seemed to cough much less in that position.
Bess rose, and picking up the envelope she glided across the room, heading for her father’s safe, saying as she did, ‘I’d better lock these away until I can take them to the bank later this week.’
‘That’s a good idea.’
She came back and stood next to the bed, looking down at Edward; all of a sudden a smile appeared on her face, dislodging her grave expression. ‘I think I’ll go downstairs and talk to Cook, Father. I want to know what she is making for your dinner. Do you fancy anything special?’
‘I’m not all that hungry, Bess. Something light. He leaned his head on the pillows. ‘I feel tired. Would you wake me in an hour, my dear?’
‘Yes, I will.’ She hurried out of the room, heading for the kitchen.
Edward watched her go, thinking what a unique young woman she had become. She was beautiful as a child, but now a new loveliness had settled over her. She seemed to him to have an inner light, a radiance that frequently took his breath away. Bess still had his vivid colouring, the red-gold hair, the startlingly blue eyes. But her face was now much more like her mother’s; she had Elizabeth’s elegant bone structure, delicate features, her classical beauty. He was very proud of Bess, and in so many different ways. He trusted her implicitly; she had always been more his child than her mother’s. In fact, it seemed to him that Bess had been instinctively wary of her mother for years.
As she shut the door behind her, Edward closed his eyes, fel
l down into himself, his thoughts running on. He did not sleep. All manner of things rushed through his mind … George, his brother, was suddenly there, clear as day inside his head. Beautiful boy, handsome man. Too young to die … there was Neville now, his cousin and mentor whom he had revered … he also had died too soon. That ghastly accident at Ravenscar … so long ago now … twelve years. His beloved Johnny, Neville’s brother, dying there with Neville on the beach at Ravenscar … he remembered their youth together, growing up in Yorkshire, riding across the moors. They had loved the moors best in August and September; it was then the heather bloomed, a sea of purple … wave upon wave of brilliant colour undulating under the light breeze … the moors … implacable … wild, empty spaces filled with silence and solitude … he had never felt lonely there … the moors flung up against the uncertain northern sky were home to him …
Unexpectedly, his thoughts swung to Amos Finnister. Last year, in Paris, Grace Rose had been worried about him, and so he had spoken to Amos when he returned to London. There had been no hesitation when he asked Amos if something was troubling him. He had unburdened himself at once. Edward could hear his voice now, low and sorrowful. ‘It’s about your brother, Mr George,’ Amos had confided. ‘Oliveri and I, well, we feel it’s our fault he’s dead, sir. You see, we told Vincent Martell about that old saying, you know, the one referring to Thomas à Becket … when King Henry said something like, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” and how some of the king’s henchmen had gone off and murdered Thomas in the cathedral on behalf of the king. Oliveri and I have always believed, ever since then, that Vincent loosened the wedges that held the barrels in place. He sort of … well, he kind of indicated that he had. And we’ve felt responsible since that time, and guilty. We never meant harm, but perhaps he thought we were giving him a hint.’
Edward recalled now how he had reassured Amos that day, explained that it was not his fault, nor Oliveri’s, and that George had brought everything on himself. Later, Amos had confided that Vincent Martell had grown to genuinely hate George, in the most virulent way, because his brother was saying such dreadful things about him. Nothing could ever be proved, of course, nor did he want to prove it. In any case, Vincent had cancer and was very ill at this moment, more than likely dying.
Heirs of Ravenscar Page 33
