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

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘It’s a very long time. Almost four hundred years.’

  ‘Yes – I see.’ He didn’t show any wonder. ‘No prayer is ever offered too late – if the intention is right. You would like a Mass offered for the repose of the soul of this person, I take it?’

  ‘Yes – that’s it,’ I said eagerly. ‘For the repose of her soul.’ That was what she had written in that still childish handwriting. ‘Offer nine Masses for my soul.’ But I would like nine Masses said. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll offer a novena of Masses. Was this person a Catholic? It doesn’t really matter. One can still pray.’

  ‘Oh, yes. She was a Catholic. She probably died because she was a Catholic.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘A martyr?’

  No – not officially a martyr. Just a young girl who died a long time ago.’ I spelled out the name for him, surprised at how easily it came off my lips without referring again to the Book of Hours. ‘Juana Fernández de Córdoba, Mendoza, Soto y Alvarez.’

  He wrote it all down, and then he said, ‘I expect the Lord will know whom I mean if I just say “Juana”.’

  I didn’t know how much money to offer him. ‘Anything will be acceptable,’ he said. And he smiled once again. ‘I’ll say the Masses myself. The soul of your little Spanish girl will be comforted by the fact of someone remembering her after nearly four hundred years.’

  ‘I hope so.’ And then I added, although he couldn’t have understood my meaning: ‘It’s all I can do for her.’

  I went and sat in the church for a while, seeking for a moment its quietness to still my own racing mind. I had never seen it empty before; there was only one other woman besides myself. Someone was playing the organ very quietly when I entered, perhaps just practising, or warming up before a lunch-hour recital. It was almost twelve o’clock.

  The little peace and sense of relief I had bought with the request for Masses for the Spanish Woman seemed to ebb away too swiftly. I was back with the bewildering, frightening thoughts of Vanessa and George Tolson. By now he would be back at Thirlbeck, had probably already told Lord Askew. I wondered if Gerald knew yet; would Gerald be disappointed in me that I had not wanted to face Askew again? Would I succumb to the final weakness of having the Sung bowl mended at my own expense and posting it, and the Horae of Juana Fernández de Córdoba back to Thirlbeck? What would Nat Birkett think of someone who had left him so swiftly, almost in flight?

  It was nearly by force of habit now that I had the miniature out, and played with it between my fingers. More than ever I saw Vanessa in the vital, intelligent features of the third Countess. The other woman in the church got up and left; I watched her go, not wanting her to go. The organist had stopped playing; he seemed to be spending his time arranging sheets of music. Then I looked back at the miniature, once again placing the broken piece of the frame where it belonged, making it whole again. But I saw something else then, something I had never seen before. A kind of churning excitement caught at my stomach. I almost didn’t want to think, to reason it out because reason might destroy the hope that had so quickly been built. Yes ... yes, it was possible. It fitted. It could be tried, at any rate. It was something to try.

  I went out quickly into the lunchtime crowds, going all the way down to Curzon Street before I found a taxi. It took nearly half an hour to get down to Chelsea. I hesitated a moment before deciding against ringing Tolson. No matter what he said now, whether he agreed with my reasoning or not, I was going back to Thirlbeck. I repacked the big suitcase, putting the pieces of the Sung bowl and the Horae where they would be best protected by my clothes. Just as I was leaving the flat the telephone began to ring. I listened to it ring as I locked the door. It could be Harry – it could be Gerald or Tolson. I let it ring.

  IV

  I stopped the Mini just before I entered the birch copse. I had not thought it would all feel so familiar, as if I were returning to a place I had known all my life. I had come by the back way, by the North Lodge, using the keys I still carried with me, coming through the larch wood over Brantwick, and now the hard, bony upper slopes of Great Birkeld lay revealed in flinty moonlight. I traced the outline of the mountain against the sky. I might have lost my life up there on those slopes if the dogs had not brought me down, and yet the sight of them now brought no shiver of fear; I almost felt as if I had come back to something respected, known, and loved.

  I took the Mini slowly through the birch copse, half expecting to see the white shape of the great hound that had confronted me on that first journey. The trees were now almost completely in leaf, and it was dark beneath them; when I had come first to Thirlbeck they had borne only the catkins of early spring. The valley widened out, the house now was visible. There were no lights anywhere. By habit I looked across the dark mass of trees where the shelter was built, wondering if anyone was on watch. It was past two o’clock, but a night of bright moonlight and no mist might have tempted out someone who badly wanted the eggs of the golden eagles. There was no light at the shelter, no sign of a cigarette glowing in the dark, or the little Sterno stove heating water for coffee. Now I was down in the floor of the valley; the dark shapes of the cattle were visible, and the smaller white flecks of the sheep and lambs. It was utterly still and silent – not even a slight breath of wind stirred the mirror surface of the lake. A silent, enchanted world, frozen in the moonlight, a place which my senses recognised as if from a long time past.

  I drove around to the back of the house. I knew that the dogs had heard the car and come downstairs. They must have pushed their way past the green-baize door, because I could hear the scrape of paws against the wood of the back door leading to the kitchen passage, and the strange sort of huffing sound that they all made when they were together. And yet they did not bark. I felt the same prickle of gooseflesh I had known on the night I set off the alarm system. I pushed the bell at the back door, and heard it ringing somewhere inside the house, somewhere, I judged, in the Tolsons’ wing. I hoped it would not wake Gerald or Lord Askew. The morning, with a few hours of sleep behind me, would be time enough for them.

  Tolson came very soon, wearing a heavy, shapeless woollen dressing gown; I guessed he had been sleepless, perhaps sitting before the warmth of the Aga in the kitchen. He opened the door without hesitation as if he knew from the dogs’ behaviour who was outside. Light streamed into the passage from the kitchen as he held the door wide.

  ‘You should have told me you were coming,’ he said simply. ‘I could have had a meal ready.’ For the first time I heard no implied hostility in his tone.

  ‘I had thought of waiting until a decent hour in the morning,’ I answered. ‘But then I was so close, so I thought I might as well just come on.’

  He nodded, and motioned me inside; as I walked in all the dogs turned and went with me. I put my hands on the up-thrust heads that offered themselves, and there was a turmoil of long, spiky, wagging tails.

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ Tolson said, without consulting me. ‘Sit down. You’d probably like some toast – something to eat.’

  ‘Please, don’t trouble.’

  ‘No trouble.’

  I sat at the kitchen table while he made tea, and toasted thick slabs of bread. I shovelled the toast into my mouth and gulped the tea. Around me the dogs sat, two circles of them, fanning out like some exotic adornment.

  Finally the hunger was gone, and the tea had warmed me. I felt my body relax. I leaned back in the big chair, and my hands went naturally to the heads of the dogs nearest me. Their rough tongues scraped my hands as they had done up on the mountain. I wondered how I had ever lived without dogs before.

  I straightened. Somehow this lessening of tension had made my journey seem less important. But Tolson still waited.

  ‘I think I have something to show you. I hope . . I brought the miniature from my handbag. Tolson’s massive dark head bent over it as I explained. Then he drew back, but in that large body I sensed a kind of quiet relief, a release of pain
and despair.

  ‘Could be,’ he offered.

  ‘You’ve already told him?’

  ‘Yes – I’ve told him. He acted as you would expect a gentleman to act.’

  ‘I’ll see him in the morning, then,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, if it suits you. If that’s what you want.’

  ‘Yes. That’s the way it should be.’

  We sat silently for some time, drinking more tea from large mugs. A strange companionship existed between us, where before there had only been unease. The things I had said to him the previous night, and his own hostility towards me, were past. The dogs lay sprawled on my side of the table. I had almost come to take them for granted.

  He spoke at last. ‘It’s late. You’ll need some sleep. I’ll fill some hot-water bottles.’

  I didn’t protest. When we went beyond the green-baize door the dogs followed us. I led the way, carrying two hot-water bottles. Tolson carried my suitcase. The dogs moved ahead on the staircase, and went on before us to the Spanish Woman’s room, as if I had lived there always.

  ‘I didn’t have the bed stripped,’ he said as we entered. He put on the only electric light. ‘I had a feeling you’d be back. You’d only used those sheets two nights ... we have to watch economies, you know. Such big sheets for that bed.’ He put the suitcase on the chest where I could unpack it. I opened the two cupboards and the clothes and possessions I had left in the last hurried packing were there, like the sheets, untouched. Tolson had already put a match under the freshly laid fires in the two fireplaces. ‘It’ll warm up in a bit,’ he said. ‘Don’t shut the door – I’m going down to get you some brandy from Lord Askew’s stock. It’ll help you to sleep.’

  He came back in a few minutes and wordlessly laid the brandy on the big table in the window. I halted him as he was about to leave. ‘We’ll see him together in the morning,’ I said. He nodded. We had entered into some unlikely compact, the two of us. A long bridge of compromise had been walked in these two nights when neither of us had slept very much.

  After I had undressed and washed quietly in Gerald’s bathroom, I sat up in bed sipping the brandy. I had my cigarettes close by, but I realised that it was now a long time since I had smoked the last one, and I did not really need this one. I sat there, pillows propped against the carved headboard, feeling the warmth of the bottles against my feet and side, watching the light of the two fires thrown up to the ceiling. It hardly even seemed strange to me now that two of the wolfhounds had stayed; they lay with their great lengths stretched on the rug before one fire. I thought I could even distinguish them from the rest – two males who must have been brothers, or father and son, the leaders of the pack, and still able to live at peace with each other. ‘Thor ... Ulf ...’ I whispered. The ears bent back, and the big heads raised. They gazed at me with their questioning, solemn eyes, A flicker ran along each tail, and then they settled to rest again. After a while I heard one of them begin to snore gently. I put the glass aside, and slid down between the sheets, and slept.

  CHAPTER 7

  I

  I had not thought it possible he could seem so changed. Askew faced me now across the desk in the study, Gerald at his side, Tolson, who refused a chair, standing slightly behind him. He seemed much older – or perhaps he merely appeared the age he was. The boyish nonchalance, the flippant grace, was gone. I did not see him now as the natural companion of a much younger woman, but a rather worn man, made too suddenly aware of his years and a weight of responsibility whose acceptance he had not been any longer able to postpone or put aside.

  I had told him of Vanessa’s part in taking the paintings from Thirlbeck, that it had been she who had introduced the Dutch expert to examine them, she who had carried canvases through customs, who had carried whole collections of Chinese ceramics, of perfume bottles, of snuffboxes, and found buyers for them. Tolson had produced a notebook, and in Vanessa’s hand there were lists and descriptions, rather vague, but good enough to give us an idea of the treasure this house had once held, and now was dispersed for ever, to nameless buyers.

  ‘Did she ever bring anyone here to look particularly at the Chinese things?’ Gerald asked Tolson.

  ‘She once brought two gentlemen – one an Oriental. He said very little, I remember. But after that Mrs Roswell carried away anything that was small enough to go easily ... The prices she got seemed very high to me.’

  Gerald examined the book again and sighed. ‘They would be much higher now. Most of these were sold quite some time ago.’ He studied the list for a while, his lips puckering; he stabbed the list at various points, with his pen. ‘Vase ... fifteenth-century Mei P’ing, white dragons on blue ground ... Square baluster jar, Ming Wu Ts’ai, red dragons, green clouds, 7½ inches.’ He looked up. ‘If it was a good one, Robert, I have to tell you that last season we sold something of this description for about seventy thousand guineas. And here ...’ Again the pen stabbed the paper. ‘Ming Fa Hua Baluster Kuan, blue ground, turquoise peacocks, fifteenth-century. Hundreds of pieces ... on and on. Vanessa’s descriptions leave a lot to the imagination, but from the prices she got from probably dubious sources, I’d guess that these were of very high quality.’ Then he gave a soft moan. ‘Oh, heavens ... Kuan-yao bottle, 8½ inches, Southern Sung Dynasty. Robert, we sold something of this description for ninety thousand guineas.’ He reached the very end of the list. ‘This last piece I hardly like even to think about. Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you. Fourteenth-century wine jar, Yüan Dynasty, I3½ inches, applied moulded flowering chrysanthemum, tree peony, pomegranate, camellia ...’ His tone lowered as he went through the rest of the description. ‘If this is accurate, we might have sold almost a twin of that for two hundred and ten thousand guineas. Robert, do you hear what I’m saying? Two hundred and ten thousand! That’s the highest price ever paid for any work of art sold at auction except a painting. And Vanessa did very, very well for you, considering it must have had to be a very private transaction. She sold it only two years ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tolson said. ‘She left it until last because its size presented difficulties. Finally she found one of those sort of square cases ladies carry about that was big enough. She packed cotton wool balls around it – those things you buy in bags in the chemist, and she filled the inside of the jar with plastic cosmetic jars, hair curlers, all that sort of thing. Ingenious, I thought.’

  Gerald looked at Tolson as if he had been going to try to explain the enormity of what had been done, but decided against it. Tolson would never be convinced that what he had done was not the right, the best thing, for Thirlbeck. So he merely said, ‘This list was just for you – so that you could identify the pieces as you remembered them?’

  ‘That was all,’ he said. ‘Mrs Roswell didn’t pretend to know all about them. She made a list when she brought the Oriental gentleman that time. It was for her own guidance, too. There were so many of them – saucers, bowls, little jars. They seemed to me to bring very large prices – for what they were. Just all the stuff that came over from Major Sharpe’s house after he died. Up in the attics it went, most of it. I felt rather sorry about that, because his will made special mention of leaving his Chinese things to the Earl of Askew. But that was a long time ago, and they couldn’t have had much value then. The Countess, I remember, was rather annoyed at having to store them. A few bits and pieces went into rooms through the house. Mrs Roswell tried to replace with modern copies some of the things she took away – so there shouldn’t be too many blank spaces.’

  Miserably I was remembering the nineteenth-century prunus vase in the library. I was watching Gerald’s pen go up and down the list. ‘She couldn’t have taken all that out by herself.’

  ‘No – most of the Chinese things were disposed of in this country – perhaps they’re still here, or they’ve gone out gradually. But the important pieces she held on to as long as she could. She said the value was going up every day. The snuff-boxes went all at one time, to a single buyer. Someone out of the country.’


  Gerald looked at Askew, who had remained silent and seemingly not very interested in the details that were being pressed upon him. ‘Did you know about the collection of snuffboxes, Robert?’

  He seemed to drag himself out of a daze. ‘Of course I knew. Just as I knew about Major Sharpe’s Chinese stuff. We never took it seriously. I don’t think many other people did then, either. I’d forgotten about it until Jo brought the bowl to me ... Well, who would think – ’

  ‘The snuffboxes, Robert,’ Gerald pressed him.

  ‘Yes ... the snuffboxes. Seemed an odd sort of a thing to collect. They came to the family by descent. Wife of the ... well, I suppose it must have been the thirteenth Earl – was the daughter of a publisher, a London publisher. I only remember that part of it because there’s a picture of him somewhere about the place. Bit of a dandy, I’d say – holding a snuffbox. Snuffbox Johnny, I used to call him. I haven’t an idea what his name was, though. I remember the boxes. They were all displayed in a glass case, the sort of flat thing you see in museums. It used to be in the library. One day when I was about eight I was practising strokes with a cricket bat in there – it was pouring rain outside. It was a bigger bat than I’d ever used before, and the damn thing sailed clean out of my hands and smashed down on the glass over the top of the case. My mother was upset about my breaking it, and got it moved out of the library at once before my father saw it. I don’t think he ever missed it. He never said anything. I don’t know what happened to the boxes.’

  ‘Nor do we, now,’ Gerald said. ‘Vanessa did a good job on selling this lot – and why not? If they were really up to this description, they must have been very fine. Louis XV gold and enamel rectangular snuffbox – Jean-Marie Tiron, charge of Julien Berthe. Early Louis XV enamelled oval box, Noel Hardvilliers, charge of Julien Berthe. English chased gold snuffbox by George Michael Moser. Great names, all of them.’ His pen was running down the list, his lips moving silently. Then he said, ‘Twenty-four of them in all. The best names of the finest period. As a collection, this could have been a connoisseur’s dream. If they were as good as I think they may have been, the whole might have gone at better than two hundred thousand pounds. Vanessa didn’t achieve anything like that amount, but she didn’t do badly, either, considering the time at which they were sold, and the circumstances. Whoever got them must have known they couldn’t be sold openly – ’