The Property of a Gentleman: One House. Many secrets.

by Catherine Gaskin

  And then Gerald’s voice came to me over the soft clicking of the windscreen wipers. I had thought he was asleep.

  ‘It’s wonderful how the excitement comes back,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think I was too old for this business.’ As if he knew I would bridge his thoughts he continued. ‘Robert hasn’t been in the house himself since 1945. I can’t find a record of it, or its contents, anywhere. I had one of our people go through the indices of Country Life the other day. It must be the only house of any size in England which hasn’t been photographed and written up. They must have been eccentrics with a vengeance, his father and grandfather. His father never even bothered to take his seat in the House of Lords. I doubt if Robert did, either. I wonder who the heir is ...? The line nearly died out in his great-grandfather’s time – the title and estate passed to some farmer-merchant who wasn’t expecting it. I begin to wonder if they were collectors of anything, or will the place be filled with Victorian junk? Well – who knows, there might be things there from before his grandfather’s time, though if there are I wonder why we don’t know about them. I must say, for an earl, Robert’s inheritance is very obscure. I should have thought to look up the newspapers at the time of his trial, and then again when he got the V.C. Newspapermen have such a talent for worming their way into places no one else can get a nose in.’ His voice sharpened as he straightened himself and took out a cigarette. ‘All those years – and a house unvisited, unrecorded. What shall we find, I wonder?’ Then he added: ‘It’s good to feel excited, eh, Jo?’

  He went on. ‘He won’t be expecting you, of course. But perhaps he remembers I don’t like to drive. I remember that he was faintly amused that I had a chauffeur and a car brought all the way from England last time I came across him at a house party in Italy. As if I’d place myself in the hands of an Italian driver! But of course Robert will accept you. He is charming, always, with women – even when he’s furious with them, or worse, quite indifferent to them. Heaven knows what state the place is in ...’ His tone grew lower as he considered it. ‘One can hardly hope to be warm, but it won’t kill us for a few nights. I’ll know soon enough why he’s asked me to come. Either he just needs a friend about, or he needs to be told what there is to sell from his house. I’ll pretty soon know whether it’s worth sending up our young geniuses from the various departments to do a detailed valuation. We shall pretty soon know if this old man’s eye is still as good as he thinks it is.’

  He spoke with no false modesty. Because of his age, he now worked only in an advisory capacity for Hardy’s. He was, therefore, more free than he had ever been to indulge his passion and his hobby – the quiet search for what was still unknown and undocumented, and which one day might appear in a Hardy’s catalogue. He specialised in nothing; he had the all-round knowledge of a lifetime among rare and beautiful things. But on his advice the experts followed, and not very often had he been seriously mistaken.

  ‘I indicated,’ he said as the signs for Penrith began to appear along the motorway, ‘that we would be looking over a property reasonably close to the Lakes. He knows Hardy’s well enough to know that we would never say whose property. It won’t be necessary to say we have spent all afternoon driving to reach Thirlbeck.’

  He continued in a low tone, as if his words were almost for himself. ‘We’ll see … we’ll see. If there’s anything worth selling still there, I could perhaps persuade him of relieving himself of the insurance costs. Of course, there is something there, something so superlative that even the Birketts haven’t been able to hide its existence. But who would ever buy it? I wonder? No one in his right mind, I think. But still, what an auction La Española would make ...’

  His voice trailed off into the sigh of weariness of a man who has done enough work for the day, so I kept the pace steadily at seventy, and asked no questions. In good time Gerald would tell me. ‘Dear God,’ he said a minute or so later, ‘I hope the place isn’t too run down. I hope there’s ice for the drinks ...’

  III

  We edged towards Thirlbeck by miles of those tortuous, magical roads of the Lake Country; the mountains humped about us, fantastic shapes, like a strung-out menagerie of child-drawn animals marching along the skyline – not mountains, really – shapes, heaps, crumpled-up folds of earth, not high, but the rises and descents so sheer and sharp that they felt as if they towered forever above us. Then suddenly, within a mile, we would have topped that humpback, and another valley, cupping its own secret rain-dark lake, was below us.

  ‘Theatrical’, was Gerald’s comment. Clouds spilled over unseen mountaintops, in other places the sky was clear and great glittering shafts of sunlight struck down, amethyst, amber, opal; the brown bracken was beginning to uncurl its green tentacles, the larches were assuming the brightest of green that a tree can wear, the birch trunks were pale, slender forests of wraiths; there were sombre green rectangles of conifers.

  ‘We’ll have to remember to call them fells,’ Gerald said, nodding at the mountains; I was silent, concentrating on the difficult, narrow road, hemmed by the most beautiful stone walls I had ever seen. ‘And the small lakes are tarns. Well, we shall make mistakes, but we won’t be here long enough to matter. All visitors are tourists, and therefore rather contemptible. Anything not Cumbrian-born is something less interesting than the animals. They care about sheep here. I know an art dealer – odd sort of man. He comes up here every year and spends two weeks fell-walking. He says he’s getting past it, and it nearly kills him, but he lives just to come back. He’s angry now because the motorway has come. Says the whole area is so crowded in the season that you can spend a weekend on the road looking at the back of a caravan. Only way to be alone is to get out on the fells and walk, and even then you’re lucky if you don’t see a dozen others on the trail before or behind you. Twenty years ago, in spite of Wordsworth and his daffodils, it was a different place, still hard to get to, completely out of the world. Oh, yes ... I took the trouble to telephone my friend before we left. I did remember that. He’s heard of Thirlbeck, of course. But he doesn’t know anything about it. It’s just a name on a map, in a valley that’s almost completely bounded by the National Park, and trespassers, walkers or picnickers are neither invited, wanted, nor permitted. And when they say “trespassers will be prosecuted” they mean it. Of course as an art dealer he’s curious – but the locals don’t talk about Thirlbeck. The memory of Robert’s father and grandfather, and their passion for privacy must die hard ... and, rather naturally, the young ones don’t care. If there’s the odd poacher or two on the property, they’d be the last to talk. That there is a house, they know. What’s inside it, no one seems to know or remember. My friend once wrote asking for permission to come on to the estate ... I suppose he hoped he might be able to talk his way into the house. He got a less than polite letter warning him of legal action if he tried it. That was all he could tell me, and I suppose it speaks for itself. Oh, Jo, I wish we’d get there. It’s been a long day. I’ve never much cared for the Lake District. Too violent. Too much rain. I think you really have to be born to it.’

  ‘And this is my first time here. Funny, except for expeditions to do valuations of houses’ – I glanced across at his weary face affectionately – ‘mostly thanks to you, I really don’t know England at all. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a whole holiday in England. That’s pretty shameful to have to admit, isn’t it? When I could afford to take holidays I shot off to Paris and Rome and Madrid – and later I started to borrow Vanessa’s car and wandered around country districts all through Europe. And it’s always been to look at museums and churches. I must be the only person alive who has spent weeks in Venice, and has never been to the Lido.’ The thought came sharply, like the great blades of light striking the stony sides of the fells. ‘Gerald, I’m twenty-seven. Have I spent too much of my life with my nose pasted against the display cases in museums? I want badly to go to New York and Washington – and do you know why? Just to see the Metropolitan and the Cloisters and
the National Gallery. When someone says California I don’t think of the sun, I think of the Norton Simon Collection! Twenty-seven – don’t laugh, Gerald! It sounds young to you. But quite suddenly I’m beginning to feel that I’ve missed out on something. And I haven’t really any idea what it is.’

  ‘Why don’t you marry Harry Peers? You could have the Metropolitan and a suite at the top of the Pierre at the same time. And if you don’t care for the Venice Lido, there are still private beaches in the Aegean with little Greek amphitheatres as a backdrop. You could buy those little pieces of Chinese porcelain, instead of just looking at them. Your answer to being twenty-seven and feeling you’ve done nothing is to marry Harry Peers. He can give you all the worlds you think you might have missed.’

  ‘Apart from a few other things, such as a lot of beautiful girls he knows, what’s wrong about that idea, Gerald, is that he hasn’t asked me to marry him. If he does – if – it will be done quickly, over in a day. The shares will be rapidly acquired, with a minimum of fuss. Until then, he’ll be as secretive as he is about all his deals. He’s out of the country now – New York, I’d guess. I don’t know whether he’s gone to try to buy the Empire State Building, or just because there’s a girl he rather fancies. He won’t bother to go to the Metropolitan. He’s been there. But he’ll come back with some precious little thing or other, bought from a dealer. And he’ll show it to me. And he’ll see me want to lick my lips over it ... that’s Harry. Does anyone like Harry really have to marry anyone these days? Isn’t everyone available? – all styles and sizes, and, for Harry, all degrees of intellect. And don’t say, “Everything’s available – at a price.” Yes, I know. In a sense, we’re all up for auction. But I’m not being fair – that isn’t Harry. He’s better than that – has a much more subtle sense of what he’s after. There is more to the game than the price. And me – the trouble with me is that I’d just be too dull for him. Too earnest. Why couldn’t I have been like Vanessa? He adored Vanessa, and she him. Yes ... I do think I would marry him if the day ever came when he finally decided that the property was right. He’s got an oddly old-fashioned streak like that. He’d want it to be for good, and for ever. His values are still working-class in that way. He thinks if a marriage comes to a divorce, it’s all been a waste of time – and of course he’s right. He’ll never gamble on marriage the way he does in the property market.’

  ‘Well, then, he’s a bit of a fool, which is something I didn’t think I’d ever say of Harry Peers. Marriage is the least safe institution in the world. Real gamblers love it. And if he won’t gamble on you, he is a fool.’

  I smiled. ‘Gerald, you’re kind. That will make reading his doings in the gossip columns a little easier.’ And I didn’t add that I had been glad, for this reason also, to be away from London for a few days. It might have a little shock value for Harry if I were not at the other end of the telephone line when he decided, at whatever hour suited him, to call from New York, or the Bahamas, or wherever it was that some empty beach or city-centre property was tempting him. I told myself angrily that he was utterly selfish; in justice he also was generous and kind, in odd, unexpected ways. He was also capable of the sort of flashy, showy gestures that at times made him seem vulgar, and at other times reminded me so much of my mother. It was true that Vanessa had liked Harry; she had applauded the sheer gutsiness of his vulgarity, and admired his style.

  Perhaps I was thinking just a little too much of Harry, but then the bend at that particular point was very sharp. I wasn’t driving fast, but even so I was almost on top of the other car before I even saw it, and applied the brakes sharply. ‘Sorry,’ I said to Gerald. ‘But he’s absolutely crawling along.’

  ‘Yes ... it would have been a pity.’

  ‘What would have been a pity?’

  ‘If you’d run into the back of a ... well, I’d guess it could be about a 1931 Bentley. Beautiful condition, isn’t it?’

  ‘Gerald – you know what kind and year it is!’

  ‘Well, my dear, when they made that sort of thing, there weren’t so many about. These days I can’t tell one new one from the other ...’

  I dropped back a little. We were within ten miles of Kesmere, which was the town closest to Thirlbeck, and for all I knew there wouldn’t be a stretch of road safe enough to pass before then. Certainly it was not to be done where we now were – with bends every few yards, and a drop down a sharp slope of scree below us. I sighed; it would soon be dusk.

  Then the car in front, a drophead with the top down, slowed even more, and then, at the first place where the width of the road permitted him to draw over, he stopped completely. I saw him signalling me to pass with, I thought, a rather impatient gesture. I had the impression of a rather youngish man with careless, tow-coloured hair wearing a thick jersey. He looked cold, seated there in the height of that splendid anachronism – and he was probably a bit wet too, since we had just passed through a shower which must have hit him as well. I saluted to thank him, but even in the driving mirror I saw no more of him; the bends were sharp and numerous.

  We went about two miles farther, dropping down almost to the floor of the valley, and once again I had to touch the brakes quickly. Both of us had almost missed it – a break in a section of the high stone wall we had followed for about half a mile, a clear semicircle of ground off the roadway, and between crumbling stone pillars, unpleasantly topped by barbed wire, a strong pair of galvanised iron mesh gates. Behind the wall, which was also spiked with barbed wire, was the ruins of a gatehouse on which the slate roof had collapsed. A bleak, rather crudely lettered sign hung on the gates.

  THIRLBECK

  STRICTLY PRIVATE

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

  I looked at Gerald. ‘This is it?’ The road that led beyond the gatehouse seemed barely more than a half-overgrown track, rising at an impossibly steep angle, between hand-cut stone walls and a forest of larches, feathering green.

  For once Gerald seemed nonplussed. ‘Has to be.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Good God – do you suppose this is the main entrance?’ He was fumbling in his jacket pocket. ‘Must say his directions weren’t very explicit ... where’s that letter? But I do remember he said something about Kesmere ...’

  I was out of the car by now, and Gerald had wound down his window. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘this has to be his back door – and very firmly padlocked.’ I was rattling the heavy chain and lock that secured the gates, and looking beyond to the rather sad desolation of the ruined cottage, which must once have been quite beautiful; then I saw, propped against its side wall, the rusted remains of heavy wrought-iron gates, a tracery of design through them, and what might be part of a crest. ‘I hope his front door is more welcoming. We’ll have to go on, Gerald. I’m sorry ... and you’re tired.’

  He had found the letter. ‘Yes – he says go through Kesmere, and take the right ... oh, well, we’ll ask when we get there.’

  I took one last look up the larch-lined road, and saw that its paving had been hand-laid, as were the walls. There was a kind of lordliness in that, a memory, even, of the days when labour had been so cheap; and now the weeds grew through the stones, and the noble emblem on the great gates had rusted into anonymity.

  For all its splendour, the Bentley had a noisy engine; I heard it coming before it rounded the last bend. It slowed and stopped, pulling off the road in front of us, into the curving space before the big gates. The man got out. He looked less young, less sporty, now. He wasn’t old, or even middle-aged, but it was a tired face, a thin, straight-cut mouth and weather wrinkles about the grey eyes. He had heavy brows darker than his tow-coloured hair. With the thick sweater he was wearing stained corduroy pants.

  ‘Do you need help?’ It was said rather brusquely as if he didn’t want to waste any time on pleasantries.

  Gerald spoke for me. ‘Lord Askew is expecting us. We wondered ...’

  ‘Lord Askew is expecting you.’ He didn’t even attempt to disguise his sarcasm. ‘Lord Askew
hasn’t been here since God-knows-when.’

  ‘Then you’re misinformed.’ Gerald’s tone grew terse. ‘Lord Askew is in residence, and we are expected this evening – and his note says “go through Kesmere”. We thought this might be a shorter way. I’m tired ...’

  The man came towards him, rounded the car to speak to him at the open window. Watching, I saw a strange softening of that strained face as he looked at Gerald. Suddenly, between them, all strangeness disappeared; they were such an odd contrast, that man, and Gerald; the one with the whiff of the farmyard about him, and yet driving that elegant Bentley, and Gerald still wearing his London suit, his city skin pale in contrast to the weather-beaten man who faced him. For some reason they recognised each other – not as known persons, but as people who trusted the basic honesty of each other.