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

by Catherine Gaskin

  We came to a place where the land began to level out, and the grass grew evenly, the bottomland soil of the dale. I could hear the sheep bleat out of the mist. As the mist grew thinner I saw the sheen of water, and the dog led me to the trail that circled the whole tarn. They all clustered about me then, the whole pack of them, as if somehow they had to convey the message that their task was over. Then they strung out again, the leader invisible, the last one at my side, all the way back to Thirlbeck.

  The dusk had become darkness by the time we reached the house. I went in by the front way, and the dogs followed. They left me at once to go in search of Askew. As I leaned over the balustrade of the gallery, the last I saw of them was the trail of muddy footprints on the polished wood floor as Askew opened the door of the library to admit them in reply to Thor’s insistent scratching. I could hear his voice. ‘Well ... where have you been? I’ve never known you lot to wander off before. Better not let Tolson know, eh?’ I was glad they could not answer; I myself could never speak of how they had come to find me on the mountain that afternoon.

  Nat Birkett noticed the cuts and scratches on my hands. He found me, about noon, after my visit to Gerald, about to look for lunch in the same café where Jeffries and I had eaten breakfast.

  All I felt was his hand on my wrist. ‘Well, then – you’ve been very quiet lately. I don’t ever see you.’

  ‘I’ve been – I’ve been busy.’

  ‘So it seems,’ he answered, suddenly bringing my hand up, turning it palm upwards. ‘Were you stuck somewhere and couldn’t get down?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Come and tell me.’ He jerked his head towards the café. ‘If you’ve no objection to beer and cheese I know a rather cosier place.’ He led me across the town square, and through an archway that opened into what would have been a stable yard in past days for the hotel which fronted the square. Now it was the inevitable car park but the stabling had long since become dwellings and small shops. A hanging sign, THE DROVER’S REST, indicated a pub. There was an equally discreet sign at the door requesting walkers not to bring their knapsacks inside. Once inside I saw the reason for the sign. It was very small, lots of shining brass about, a fire burning in a brick fireplace, and there was an instant greeting from the landlord. ‘Morning, Nat, you’re early today.’ Then the man glanced at the clock. ‘Well – it’s after twelve. What’ll it be?’

  Nat looked at me. ‘A short? Or would you really like beer? It’s local. Very good.’

  We sat over beer and a cheese salad – and great slabs of bread almost as good as Jessica baked. ‘Gerald’s coming out of hospital tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I expect I’ll be going back to London soon – after Easter, probably. With Jeffries here, I’m really not needed. But Hardy’s keep insisting I stay. I seem to have been here so long, but it’s only a few weeks. I’ve been doing so little I’m rather ashamed. Just a bit of paper-sorting at Thirlbeck and driving around ...’

  ‘And walking,’ he said. ‘And almost getting into trouble by the looks of it.’

  I told him a little of what had happened on Great Birkeld, but not the real trouble I had been in, nor the arrival of the dogs. I simply said I had found my way down by a sheep wall.

  ‘It’s always better to try to keep to a sheep trod. The trouble is it all can change every winter. The ice works on the rocks, and what was a good path the summer before can suddenly step off into scree. You’ve got to be very experienced to get across scree. I never imagined you’d go off the valley floor, or I’d have insisted you had a compass.’ He thrust out his legs and looked at the fire, as if he were trying to keep his patience. ‘God damn it, Jo! You could have broken your neck, and kept us looking for your body for weeks.’

  ‘I would have been a lot of trouble, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘You bet your life you would. You should stay back in the city where you belong.’

  ‘I’ll see that I do in future.’

  He lifted his beer. ‘All right – all right. But I’ve every reason to be annoyed. You’re a bloody fool, and you must know it. But if you’ve got any time to spare we can put you to work taking a turn watching the crag where the eagles are nesting. It’s on the Brantwick side of the tarn, where the road goes, so you’ll be able to drive quite close. I’ve put up a sort of shelter at the edge of the woods there – just enough to keep the rain off. The thing is that no one, not even the watchers, must go near the nest. When the word gets out that golden eagles are nesting there, there’ll be plenty who think they have the right to come as close as possible to have a look, and there are enough stupid clots who’ll actually want the eggs themselves. So we’re ringing the bottom of the crag with really ferocious barbed wire, and there’s an outer fence a good distance away which is in plain view of the hide. There are plenty of old, weak spots in the estate wall on the North Lodge side which anyone could get over, and there might be a few who would be tempted to come over from the other side of Brantwick. It’s a fiercesome walk and climb, but a few might try it.’

  ‘What do you do if someone does try to come over the top?’

  ‘Well, if it’s you who see them, you get in the car and come back and rouse Tolson – any of the Tolsons. They’ll telephone me, and a few other people round in the district, and we’ll have to deal with it ourselves. That’s going to be a rough one though – just getting there, in time. If the eagles are frightened off the nest long enough the eggs will go cold – and then we might as well give them to the egg hunters. The people who climb in by the estate wall would have to go by the hide, and you or anyone else could easily stop and challenge them. It is private property, and there’s a law of trespass. It’s a chancy thing. Tolson wants to co-operate, but he’s edgy about strangers – the crowd I’ve put together to help with the shifts – having the right to come into the valley. Oh, we have it nicely arranged. They’ve all got written passes to show at the South Lodge. But still he’s edgy. He never has wanted people in that valley, but Askew said I’m to have full co-operation, and that’s law with Tolson. But in his turn he’s rounded up every last Tolson who can spare an hour – sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. Well, the Easter holidays have begun, so that’ll be a help as far as the kids are concerned. The more Tolsons there are, the fewer strangers. Tolson’s a man who should have had at least six sons. It would have made life a lot simpler ...’ We sat over our beer, and ordered some more, and Nat’s talk drifted on to the time in 1968 when foot-and-mouth disease had decimated the flocks and herds of farmers all over the country, the time of heartbreak when every wind that blew had been a threat to livestock a man might have taken a lifetime to build up. ‘I’ll tell you, Jo, I was thankful for the way Tolson had kept that valley closed off then. Naturally he included my stock among the Tolsons’ own, and they were all rounded up – the ones outside the wall of the estate – and driven inside. That’s the time when we strengthened the fences and gates over by the North Lodge. One of the Tolson ladies went to shop for the food for all the families each week. The car was hosed down before she left, and hosed down again when she got back. We had the kids wearing white Wellingtons the minute they stepped off the bus, and they had to wade in a trough of disinfectant before they went a step farther, and again before they got past the wall of Thirlbeck. It was a pretty grim time. We couldn’t go anywhere – not to the pub, or to church, or a film, or to visit anyone. There wasn’t nearly enough grazing for the livestock, and we had to hand-feed. Hellishly expensive. And all the while we didn’t know if these precautions were worth the time of day. The Ministry just didn’t know how it was spreading. It could have been passed by natural contact – so we lived and breathed disinfectants – or it could have been carried by the droppings of any silly bird that happened to fly over the farm. I’ll tell you, that was one time of my life I didn’t care much for birds.’

  He put down his beer and took one of my hands in his, tracing the scratches and deeper cuts. ‘You know, I’m awfully glad you didn’t tumble down Great B
irkeld and break your silly neck. And I’ve been talking like an idiot – stupid things about farming and birds that you probably don’t give a damn about. I can’t talk about old silver and paintings, Jo. It’s hard for me even to imagine what sort of world you live in. But I thought when you left Southdales that morning that I had bored you to death with my stupid rambling – and here I am doing it again.’

  ‘And here I am listening. You listened to me. Nat. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, I remember. Even though it was sad about your mother, and then having to get to know your father like that, it still sounded way beyond my world. Switzerland and Mexico. And working for Hardy’s. And knowing someone called Harry Peers who telephones you from places I seem hardly to have heard of. Afterwards I wondered if you really had been at Southdales, or was it some drunken dream I had. You really don’t belong there. Thirlbeck is your sort of place, and when all those glamorous types disappear from Thirlbeck, you’ll be gone too – then or sooner. I didn’t have champagne for you, and now all I’ve given you is beer.’ He shrugged and dropped my hand. The picnic near St Bees had not been mentioned. ‘I rather imagine the hay is sticking out all over me.’

  ‘Not hay – just prickles.’

  ‘Ouch!’ He laughed. ‘I expect I deserved that. Well – I’ll walk you to your car, and then I have to come back here. I know a man with a couple of good calves, but he wants too much money for them. If I get enough whisky into him he might drop his price ...’ He was helping me on with my anorak. ‘Farmer’s talk, Jo.’

  ‘We talk shop, too. It’s different shop, that’s all. Don’t bother to come with me. What time do you want me to help with the eagle watching?’

  ‘Would two to five in the afternoon be all right? After that a couple of the Tolson kids will take over for two hours. Can you manage that? I’ll be there early in the mornings – people think if they get up before dawn they might just beat us, but we’ll be there even earlier. I’ll tell Tolson. He’ll be happy that there’s one fewer outsider coming into the valley.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I answered, ‘that Tolson doesn’t think I’m one of the worst outsiders of all.’

  And I left him, the two beer mugs in his hand on the way back to the bar, frowning in puzzlement. It was true. I didn’t belong here, and he didn’t belong anywhere else. I thought there was a kind of amazing innocence left in him that wouldn’t have long survived beyond this world of his. Then I began to imagine him meeting my father, and how very well Nat would have understood and respected my father’s need for the lost, remote world of San José.

  III

  Easter came and Gerald returned to Thirlbeck, and life took up yet another rhythm. He now talked on the telephone himself, so my daily call to Hardy’s was no longer necessary. He had his breakfast carried to him by Jeffries, and then made a rather grand appearance a half-hour before lunch. The days were mostly sunny, and one of Tolson’s sons had come along, first with a tractor, and then with a power mower, and cleaned the long grass in the avenue between the trees that led to that open space, with its crumbling stone balustrade, which gave a view along the length of the tarn. Garden furniture of a by-gone age – teak benches and chairs, a handsome teak table – had been produced. Drinks were set out there whenever the weather permitted. To see Gerald walking down that avenue unassisted, with all his old command of himself and his surroundings, was, for me, to step back to a time before he was ill. His conversation was brisk and sharp, but he still returned to his room after lunch and didn’t reappear until it was time for drinks before dinner. I saw how Askew and the Condesa had grown to look forward to him coming; Thirlbeck itself, I thought, oppressed the Condesa, and she wanted talk of other places, something Gerald could well supply.

  Tolson did what he could to relieve the ritual monotony of the days. He produced the key of the gun room, and the Condesa and Askew spent some time each choosing from the racks of weapons the one that suited them most, cleaning it, getting ammunition ready. When they used the guns the Condesa held a slight edge over Askew. ‘I’ve lost my eye,’ he said. That one session of target practice was all they ever had. Nat Birkett complained that the noise was disturbing the eagles. The guns were put away.

  After that Tolson found two hacking horses. Perhaps they had been bought, perhaps they were on loan – Tolson had connections in that countryside which made either situation possible. It wasn’t really a rider’s country, being too steep and rocky in most places, but he found the horses and they were handsome enough, a bay and a chestnut mare, to complement their riders. Askew and the Condesa had come without riding clothes, and having seen the shops in Kesmere, they travelled to Carlisle to buy what they needed. I thought that both of them had been more accustomed to made-to-measure breeches and jackets and boots, but they looked very well in what came off the rack. They also bought the heavy raincoats used by everyone who rides in that climate; the Condesa hated that weighty outer garment, but since they only rode through the valley, using the path, which skirted the tarn, and made no jumps, it only hampered her, not the mare. When the rain came down, she was glad of it. A trestle was set up in the service passage where she and Askew left, and dried, their boots, jackets, raincoats, and caps. After the morning ride came lunch, and for the Condesa, the siesta. After that, the time drifted to drinks and dinner. She seemed to have ridden off the nervous energy that consumed her; by evening she was relaxed and gracious.

  But the riding did nothing to end their isolation. They remained always within the Thirlbeck valley. Askew didn’t seem to want to venture farther, and the Condesa didn’t insist. Askew appeared to have entered a sort of state of suspension while he waited for Gerald to recover fully. He cared nothing about re-establishing contacts with the past; he postponed the future.

  I took my turn, as I had promised Nat, at the shelter on the edge of the larch plantation below the crag where the eagles nested. My eyes ached sometimes with watching through the binoculars but the hours never seemed long. They were mostly golden days, with only swift showers that passed over the valley where the spring was now in full flood. I was supposed to watch on every side of the crag, and above it, for the approach of strangers, simply from curiosity or with intent, but often I found myself just watching the flight of the eagles themselves. I learned to watch for, to anticipate, to love that heart-stopping moment when one or the other soared above the crag, and then stooped in a dive to earth or towards the nest. I began to understand how Nat felt about them – they became for me a new manifestation of all that was free, things that Nat would keep for ever wild and free, free to soar above the valley, to mate and to nest, things that had not been for two hundred years, and might return again, in defiance of the car parks and the picnic litter, but wild things that needed a territory as big as this valley, and the peace to nurture their fledglings. I grew to feel about those two birds as I felt about the house of Thirlbeck itself – that once it vanished something quite irreplaceable would have gone.

  I was relieved of my watch each afternoon by some of the Tolson grandchildren – good-looking, sturdy children, most of them, friendly, but independent, as I would have expected. They bore a strong family likeness – many of them had the dark, strong features of their grandfather; they handled themselves well, confident in their own environment. Tolson had created a well to draw upon in them, but of all of them I met, Jessica still stood out – the blonde, fairy-like creature, gifted with a high degree of brains and possibly ambition, but too highly strung to put it to work in the everyday world.

  Those people I relieved were drawn from the pool of volunteers recruited from the lists of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They were mostly housewives, able to spare an hour or two, or retired people, people who cared as passionately as Nat that the birds should breed successfully, and should return to the nest next year, and all the years to come. But there were a few who, after exclaiming at the beauty of the Thirlbeck Valley, complained that this had been their only chance to see it. ‘It real
ly isn’t right,’ one young woman said to me; ‘all around is National Park, and we’re allowed to use it. And this still belongs to Lord Askew, and I have to show a pass written out by Nat Birkett to get in here. I’ve lived ten miles away all my life, and I think this country belongs as much to me as Lord Askew. It would make a Socialist of anyone, it really would. Just imagine, he’s owned all this, and the house as well, and he’s never bothered to come here. Damn shame, I call it. But I wonder if Nat Birkett will be any different when it comes to his turn. You’d think he would be – but they’re all the same when they get their hands on something like this. And Nat Birkett always did like his own company. Strange he’s not married again. Oh, look, there goes one of them! The male, I think.’ And she raised the glasses to follow the flight of the bird, and I was forgotten. I drove back to the house also wondering what Nat Birkett would do when this became his. By then Askew would have stripped it of whatever could be sold, and Nat would be left with the bare, beautiful bones of it.

  All the time Gerald had been in hospital, and during the convalescent period, I spent several hours a day working on the boxes in the study, and it was as useless as it had been the first day I had made an attempt to find any paper relating to the painting, or to the other parts of the dowry which Margaretha van Huygens had brought to Thirlbeck. It was an uneasy and difficult task Gerald had assigned to me; he couldn’t know how hard it was to approach the door of the study, knock, and find that Tolson was busy with papers at his desk, or worse, talking on the telephone. Quite often he would summon me with a wave of his hand. ‘Please go ahead, Miss Roswell. I don’t ever recall seeing such a paper myself, but then I’ve not looked into every box. There’s always been too much present business with the estate to worry about the past. I’m sure it’s all very interesting ... ’ But his eyes seemed resentful behind those cruel glasses. ‘Jess should give you a hand. She’s very quick and good with papers.’