2008 - The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce

by Paul Torday

  Bob said, “Any minute now.”

  My heart started to beat a little faster. I still had not seen a grouse on the moor. I wondered whether we would draw a blank. Perhaps Ed was wrong. The grouse I had heard earlier had all gone quiet. There didn’t seem to be a bird anywhere except for the hen harrier, still circling above the beating line. Then there was a shot from further down the line, then a ragged fusillade and then, before I had a chance to do anything about it, a pack of small brown birds was rocketing past the butt on every side, swarming in every direction. The birds were moving at an incredible speed. They were gone before I had even thought to raise my gun to my shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” said Bob. “It takes getting used to. Just keep your eyes open and—now, there in front: do you see that single bird?”

  A lone grouse was darting this way and that along the gullies in front. It was about two hundred yards away. I put my gun up and Bob said, “Now. Now, sir!”

  I swung on it and fired and everything slowed down: the grouse, which had already closed the gap to less than forty yards, seemed to tumble in the air in front of me, and then something whizzed past my head at great speed, and I turned and saw it bounce as it hit the ground ten yards behind me, in a cloud of white and brown feathers. After that I fired shot after shot, and by the end of the drive six more birds had fallen. Bob had made me wear ear protectors, but even so, by the time the beaters arrived at the butts and the drive was over, my head ached, my shoulder felt bruised from when I had fired before nesting the gun properly into my shoulder, and my throat was dry with the pollen from the heather.

  As we walked back from the last line of butts towards the vehicles, I found myself beside Catherine. “Did you enjoy yourself today?” she asked.

  “It was unforgettable. I don’t know if I’ll ever do it again, but I’m so glad to have tried it once.”

  “Oh, you’ll do it again,” said Catherine. “Ed will see to that. You’re his mascot now.”

  Suddenly she bent and picked something from the ground. When she straightened up, she was holding a sprig of white heather. She gave it to me and said, “Wear this in your cap, Wilberforce. It brings good luck.”

  I thanked her and stuck it into the tweed cap that Francis had lent me. Then she walked on and I found myself beside Heinrich Carinthia.

  “You have shot your first grouse, I hear. Then, I should say, you have had a very good day.”

  “It has been memorable.”

  “It is always a special moment when you shoot your first grouse. Of course, we have none at home in Austria. I still remember my first grouse. It was here, many years ago, just after the war, almost the first year they started shooting the moors again. I was sixteen years old, and Ed’s grandfather and Francis’s father were still alive. I still remember that little bird coming down, just as if it was yesterday. You arrived here with Francis. He is a friend of yours?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He used to shoot so well, before he gave it up. It is a great shame that he does not shoot any more. His obsession with wine, I fear, has cost him his fortune. I feel a little bit responsible, for it was I who started his interest in wine.”

  Heinrich stopped walking, and so I stopped as well. “I must catch my breath. I am not so young. Walking over this heather is hard work for an old man. Yes, Francis came to me for some months when his parents wanted him out of the way of some trouble. He never told me what it was, but I expect a girl. Francis was so good-looking in those days. I looked after him for his father’s sake. His father had been in the army and had stopped Russian troops from burning down my family’s house at the end of the war, so I felt that I owed the Black family some favours. I took Francis to see my new winery in California that I had just bought. In those days it was very brave for Europeans to try to make wine in California, but it has been my best investment. Then I took him to my little property in Bordeaux. You have heard of Château Trebuchet?”

  I said that Francis had mentioned it to me. We started walking again, moving slowly across the heather to where the vehicles had been parked.

  Heinrich Carinthia said, “He is so rude about it. Francis knows a lot about wine, but I still ask myself whether he truly understands it. You must try the Château Trebuchet. I will find your address from Francis and send you a case.”

  “Oh, please don’t go to the trouble.”

  “You will drink it to celebrate your first grouse, and then you will tell Francis that, after all, my Trebuchet is a very good wine. If you are a friend of Francis, you must also be an amateur of wine.”

  I said, “I don’t really drink that much. But he is trying to get me interested.”

  Heinrich Carinthia shook his head. “Be careful. It is good to like wine; it is acceptable to love it, as I do; but what Francis feels for wine is beyond love. You must be careful to stop at liking. Even loving is a little dangerous. Ah, here we are, and we have kept them all waiting.”

  “Finished your nature ramble, Heini?” called Ed, who was standing next to Francis and waiting for us. “Right, everybody into the vehicles. Let’s get back to the house.”

  When we arrived back at the Lodge, Ed told everyone to do whatever they liked with the rest of the afternoon, but to be ready for drinks and dinner by eight. There was a race for the three bathrooms as soon as he had finished speaking. I decided I could wait my turn, and I went into the rough garden and looked about the Lodge. I came around the side of the house and found the keepers still tying up the grouse into braces with lengths of red twine, and hanging them in the game larder. There were dozens of birds still in there from the previous day’s shooting.

  I saw Bob, and went over to him and said, “What happens to these birds now?”

  “They go down to London, sir, to the restaurants and hotels. The dealers pay a good price for them, at this time of the year.”

  I went on with my tour and finally sat down on a bench looking over the dale, beneath an open upstairs window. I sat there for a minute or two. Then, to my surprise, I heard voices just above my head. I realised after a second that I must be sitting beneath the open window of Ed’s bedroom.

  I heard him say, “He’s quite hard work.”

  Catherine’s voice replied, “I think he’s sweet. He was so thrilled to have shot his first grouse.”

  “I don’t know why I asked him,” said Ed. “I know nothing more about him than when I first met him. He seems to have wandered into our lives from nowhere. He’s Mr Nobody.”

  “Well, you do get your enthusiasms for people, Ed, and then you get bored with them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Ed angrily.

  I didn’t want to hear any more of this. I was eavesdropping against my will, but I knew if I stirred they might hear or see me.

  “You know.”

  There was a pause and then Ed spoke again: “And another thing, I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  Catherine’s voice said sharply, “Looks at me like what, Ed? He can look at me if he likes. You don’t own me. You’re just in a bad mood because you didn’t shoot well today.”

  “Please don’t talk to me like that in my own house,” said Ed. There was some muttering from further away that I could not hear, and then the loud slam of a door. It sounded as if there had been a row.

  I sat there until the silence from above persuaded me that there was no longer anyone close to the window. At any rate, I could not sit there for ever. I stood up. Tears were smarting at the corners of my eyes. I could not believe what Ed had just said. Every time I had ever met him he had been so kind to me, so friendly, so full of charm and thoughtfulness. What was it I had just heard him call me: ‘Mr Nobody’?

  I walked down to the bottom of the garden where the shaggy lawn ran into a spinney of Scots pine. I thought there might be tears running down my cheeks and I did not want to meet anyone just then. I felt humiliated and disappointed at the same time, but within me a reasonable voice said, “Mr Nobody: that
sums it up very well.” After all, I didn’t even know who my real father and mother were, or had been. All I knew of life had been learned by sitting in front of a computer for the last ten or fifteen years. No wonder Ed got bored with me. Everyone was bored by me, after a while. I bored myself. Everyone who ought to love me abandoned me.

  I stood amongst the trees for quarter of an hour feeling sorry for myself, until at last a sense of calm returned. After all, what did it matter? I would get through the evening and drive back the next morning with Francis, and then I need never see any of them again. I practised a smile and found I could stretch my lips into some semblance of a grin. I could at least look normal, even if I did not feel it.

  I walked back to the house and made my way upstairs to my bedroom. In a corridor I met Ed, returning from the bathroom with a towel round his waist.

  “Bathroom’s free, Wilberforce,” he said, “if you don’t mind a few pools of water on the floor.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and began to go past him.

  He stopped me by gripping my arm and giving me his most charming smile. “Wilberforce, I’m so pleased you shot your first grouse today. We’ll definitely get you out again. You shot so well today. Bob told me. You’ll be shooting as straight as the best of us before long—I know you will.”

  “I’m very grateful to you, Ed,” I found myself saying, “for giving me the chance.”

  He loosened his grip, his eyes still holding mine, dancing, wanting to be loved, wanting to be admired, demanding my tribute. He was still smiling.

  “Oh, we’ll get you out again,” he promised. “Huge fun, to see someone get their first bird. It’s always a special moment.” He gave me two quick pats on the shoulder and went on to his bedroom.

  I went to my bedroom and undressed for my bath. As I did so, I wondered if I had really overheard that conversation below Ed’s bedroom window.

  Ed could be so charming, when he wanted to be.

  FIVE

  It is evening now, and I am sitting outside on a stone bench on a terrace outside the Lodge. Heinrich Carinthia is sitting in a deckchair a few feet away, reading a newspaper. The others are all still inside, awakening after their afternoon sleep, and thinking about changing for dinner. I am dressed in rented evening clothes that do not fit me very well. Heinrich is wearing a huge green-velvet tent of a smoking jacket over trousers of a mysterious tartan, and velvet slippers with stags’ heads embroidered on them in gold thread. We exchange nods when I come out, but he is absorbed in his paper, so I sit and stare at this alien landscape.

  The deep fold of the dale below is shrouded in shadow and dark fir woods. Above the woods small green compartments of pasture are marked out by stone dykes. Sheep are streaming down the hillside towards one such field where there is a circular sheep fold, rounded up by two dogs and followed by a farmer on a quad bike. I can hear the sheep shouting in complaint, as they are gathered in. Above the pasture is the heather, the beginnings of the moor where I have spent the day. A year ago, a few months ago, it would have been unthinkable that I would ever have been in such a place, and had such a day.

  The overcast that has covered the sky all day has gone. Now the sky is streaked with red and gold. The air is warm, with that familiar sweet smell I remember from my first visit to Caerlyon. My life has been transformed in these four months. Now, as dusk approaches, a great golden light drenches the summits and ridges of the hills, suggesting infinite distances of undiscovered country, and endless possibilities. A line of cloud sits on the horizon, its domes and pillars catching the evening sun, so that it resembles a distant range of Himalayan peaks. I turn to look at the house, and see Catherine coming towards us along the terrace, carrying two misting glasses of white wine. She is wearing a dark-rose-coloured evening dress that suits her perfectly, and once again, as on the very first time that I met her, I am overwhelmed by her beauty.

  She walks across to Heinrich Carinthia in his deckchair and says, “A glass of wine, Heini?”

  “Was? Was denn? Ach, it is you, Catherine. I was miles away, watching this glorious sunset. A glass of wine would be very good.”

  Catherine hands him the wine and then walks across to me with the other glass.

  “And you, Wilberforce?”

  And me?

  The question has many possibilities. I take the glass of wine from her, and as I do so her fingers, cool from holding the glass, briefly touch mine. She does not at once withdraw her hand, but glances at me, and our eyes meet for a moment. I see a look of curiosity, of puzzlement, in her expression. Then she leaves the glass in my hand. I do not speak, not even to thank her. I cannot speak. She does not smile, nor say anything, but after a moment longer she turns and walks slowly back to the house.

  Who are you? her glance asks. What are you?

  I know the answer to that one. I am nobody. I am anybody. I can choose to be whom I like. I turn back with my glass in my hand to watch the golden sky.

  “Was fur ein bimmlischer Abend,” says Heinrich Carinthia. “So heavenly a nighr.”

  I nod in a friendly way, but do not speak. I still cannot. Heinrich understands how I feel. There is no need for either of us to speak again. The sheep are grazing quietly again. The great silence of the dales has fallen again, a peacefulness that is not like any other, and the two of us watch the sun sinking further down in the sky, in a silent companionship. A single bright star is gleaming, low in the sky. Then another, and another comes out, as the sun goes below the horizon. My heart is choked by my great discovery, the truth I have just seen in this wonderful sunset, the truth I have just felt in the touch of Catherine’s hand.

  Because I am nobody, I can choose to be whom I like. I can choose my life to be what I want it to be. I can become anybody; I can do anything.

  For the first time in my life, I feel that things, after all, might change for the better. I have been a prisoner for too long, a prisoner of my own self-doubt, a prisoner of a loveless childhood, and a life without experience and without joy. Now I feel an absolute certainty that my life is about to change and become so different from what it has been up until now. It is so simple. It has always been so simple. It is a matter of choice, a matter of understanding that one’s freedom to choose is limited only by courage and imagination. I have enough courage to choose, I hope; enough imagination to understand that life may have more possibilities than I can tell. So I have that freedom. I’ve always had that freedom, but it has taken until tonight to realise it. All I have to do is stretch out my hand and take the things I want. At this moment, on this heavenly evening, I feel absolutely certain in my new sense of optimism. I will learn to have fun; I will learn to have friends, real friends; perhaps one day I will even learn how to love somebody—not Catherine, of course, for she belongs to Ed, but someone like her.

  Do you ever have that feeling? Have you had that absolute sense of conviction: that, after all, life is going to turn out really well for you?