Eagle on the Hill

by JH Fletcher

  He would think and the answer would come, as it always had. Out of the red air, the waves that rolled landwards tinged with blood, there would be a reckoning and a triumph. A triumph.

  A blow reverberated through him. A concussion. George Grenville was on his knees, his hands flattened against the glass. Beyond the window he could hear the roar of the surf. The glass pressed against his cheek. He was slipping downwards, he was lying on the carpeted floor.

  His heart flung itself frenziedly against the confines of his ribs, and paused. And again flung itself. And paused. Beat. And paused. Beat …

  All will be well, George said — or thought. His breath barely stirred the air. All would be — all would — all …

  Beyond the window the silver waves, wind-driven, broke upon the cliffs.

  CHAPTER 94

  George Grenville died on 9 January 1900. Within twenty-four hours the whole world had heard the news that had killed him. Sir Thomas Sutton, leading member of the Victorian government and member of the Executive Council, had been ruined, bringing down his own National Bank and a hundred other enterprises. Among them went the Clarence Bank, taking with it many of the depositors who had placed their faith and their future in the Grenvilles’ hands.

  Soon, as details of the crash began to emerge, the echo of disaster was drowned by a rising tide of fury. There had been an abuse of trust, or so it seemed. Not to put too plain a word on it: fraud.

  The old man had escaped the depositors, but his son was still around and would face the music. Unless they were repaid in full — in full! — Rufus Grenville was heading for prison.

  After the funeral Lady Jane returned to Adelaide, while Rufus, shorn of his embroidered waistcoats and horseless carriage, tore his hair in frenzied handfuls and did not know which way to turn.

  What was clear was that most of the family’s investments would have to go. Eagle on the Hill was certainly lost, he informed his wife.

  ‘It’s our home!’ Mary protested.

  ‘It is a wrench,’ Rufus said, ‘but we have no choice.’

  He was lying. The advisers had told him that things, although bad, were not as catastrophic as had been feared. The proceeds of the family’s assets would be enough to repay the depositors. There might even be a little — a very little — left over.

  He could have held on to Eagle on the Hill, as Mary wished, but he had no such intention. It had been his childhood home, the token of his birthright and superiority, but what of that? What it signified now was not superiority but disaster and shame, because it was there that Sir Thomas Sutton had first laid the trap into which Rufus had later blundered. He could not wait to see the back of it.

  Martin read the news in the paper before he received his mother’s telegram.

  BANKS IN VICTORIA CLOSE THEIR DOORS

  National Bank suspends payments

  Other financial institutions may be affected

  And, in a separate story:

  GEORGE GRENVILLE FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL

  His mother’s telegram was equally stark.

  Appears we may have nothing left from the crash.

  Nothing left …

  Again and again he read it yet could not take it in.

  Nothing left.

  All his future’s shining castles … It had needed only those two words to bring them crashing down. And still he could not come to grips with it. Everything had been planned. Six more weeks and he would have been at sea, heading to Europe, to the world, to a future of music and triumph and fulfilment. Ernesto’s latest letter, confirming the arrangements and the succession of concerts that would introduce him to an adoring public, was on his desk. They will worship you, Ernesto had said. I guarantee it.

  Now this.

  Nothing left, the telegram said. He tasted the words through dry lips. Nothing left.

  He was bitter. It was useless to feel that way, yet he could not help himself. It would have been better to have failed honourably than this, to have given a bad recital instead of a good one, to know that he hadn’t the talent and that all his ambitions had been hopeless. You couldn’t argue with lack of talent.

  But he had given no bad recitals. The three public performances he had given had been the greatest, the most glorious successes. Everyone had praised him. His future had been assured. And now was assured no longer.

  Ruined. It meant more than a financial loss. That he could have lived with, but to lose all his hopes, all his life, was unbearable. Except that it would have to be borne. Dear God, he thought, how shall I bear it?

  He went to break the news to his tutor, who was almost as devastated as he was.

  ‘I can’t believe it! Nothing, you say? Nothing at all? A family like the Grenvilles?’

  Even in Sydney the name of Grenville carried weight.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Martin did not know. ‘One thing’s sure. I won’t be going to Europe.’

  ‘You must!’

  ‘How can I? I’ve no money. And Ernesto Walsh made it clear he wasn’t prepared to pay my passage.’

  ‘I’d pay it myself,’ Dominic Bruce said unhappily, ‘if I could. It will be such a waste, if you don’t go.’ He was beseeching the gods and wasting his breath at the same time. He had no money, Martin had no money, the Grenvilles had no money.

  Martin could have smashed his fist in the face of the fortune that had seemed to favour him, only to deny him, at the last.

  ‘I shall go back to the Murray,’ he said. ‘I shall need to get a job.’

  At least he might see Alex again. But what was the use of that? She had made her feelings plain the last time they’d met. She couldn’t wait to get rid of him. For all he knew, she might be married by now.

  ‘You still have a recital to give. In three days’ time. Remember.’

  ‘I’ll cancel it.’

  ‘You will do no such thing.’ Dominic could be fierce when he had the mind. ‘You have a duty.’

  ‘A duty?’ Martin mocked him wearily.

  ‘Indeed you have. To your public and yourself. Most of all to art.’ He raised anguished hands to his head. ‘I refuse to believe that the world is to be deprived of your genius. And because of money …’

  As though money were the most contemptible thing on earth.

  ‘Try surviving without it,’ Martin said. ‘In any case, I have to go to my grandfather’s funeral.’

  ‘No,’ Dominic said.

  Martin stared at him. ‘I must. My parents will expect it. My grandmother —’

  ‘Ask yourself this. Would your grandfather have wanted you to?’

  Martin thought. The old man’s ego had been second to none but he had always despised futile gestures. And success had been his idol.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘The recital,’ Dominic said. ‘Let’s hear no more objections.’

  Martin sent his mother a telegram. His father wouldn’t try to understand, but he thought his mother would. The first duty of the living was to life, not death.

  So give the recital he did. For the duration of the performance the music transformed him. The sense of emptiness that had obliterated so many of his hopes for the future was itself obliterated.

  Bending over the keyboard, the world contracted only to that, as the spirit and sound that he summoned from the depths of his being turned to joy. His fingers were dancing; they drew the music from the keys so fast that it seemed he did not touch them at all, that the music was conjured in answer not so much to his touch as to his will.

  Only afterwards did the emptiness return.

  The nights were the worst, the long grating hours of despair, when he continued to hope, despite himself, yet knew that hope was in vain.

  Three days after the recital he received a letter from his mother. She, too, was no stranger to despair. It seemed that his father, amid the wreckage of his ambitions, was determined to demonstrate, however belatedly, that he had a will.

  He has made up his mind to it and will
not be shifted, she wrote. He has decided to sell Eagle on the Hill.

  Martin put down her letter. The bastard! he thought. He’s determined to bring us all down in the wreck. I shall go home, he decided. While I still can. I shall leave in the morning.

  CHAPTER 95

  It was Thursday, 18 January 1900, and there was rain over Eagle on the Hill. It was a fitting comment on the dying days of what all the family had thought would be a mighty dynasty.

  There were three members of the family present: Rufus Grenville, his wife Mary and their son Martin.

  Rufus stood at the window of the big drawing room, staring out at the rain and the ruin of all their hopes. Then he turned, walked to the table and sat down.

  ‘First thing we’ll do,’ he said, ‘is get rid of this damn mausoleum and move to the city.’

  He couldn’t wait. Gum trees and river … Who needed them?

  ‘And what do you propose we use for money?’ Mary had no plans to live in a garret, and the family’s investments — in steel, in land, in railways — all had to be sold, to make good the depositors’ lost funds. ‘That wretched man Sutton … If you hadn’t let him hoodwink you …’

  The wound still bled. She knew Rufus hated being reminded of it, which was why she’d said it.

  He knew it too, and marked it in his memory, but today, with the lawyer, Morton Gage, due within the hour for the reading of his father’s will, even thoughts of Sir Thomas Sutton could not sour Rufus’s mood. Once the will was out of the way he would at last feel that his father was safely dead. For the first time in his life he would be free.

  ‘The world is full of fools.’ It was a phrase he’d heard somewhere; he trotted it out with pride, as though he’d minted the words himself. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard to find one of them willing to take over this place.’

  And with the proceeds they should manage very well. He had been down when he discovered they were ruined, but now was on the way up again.

  Martin said, ‘I don’t agree with selling this house.’

  His father looked him slowly up and down. ‘And you, of course, have the money to permit us to keep it?’

  No, Martin did not have the money. All he knew was that he was determined — somehow — to hang on to it. Because to him it represented both his memories of childhood and his hopes for the future.

  He had already lost Alex; after the trauma of that terrible meeting he had returned from Edward’s Crossing feeling that the underpinnings of his world had been destroyed. The woman he had loved … gone. Now, after a final year’s study, with success within his grasp, had come this latest blow. The career that was to have been the focus and purpose of his life was also gone. Yet while Eagle on the Hill remained in the family, as long as he could say ‘This is my home’, he retained the belief, illogical yet profound, that hope — of reclaiming both Alex and a life in music — remained.

  All depended on the house. And no, he had no money. But he had lost Alex through his inability to find the right words. He would not make the same mistake now.

  ‘This is our home. You have no right to sell it.’

  ‘I have every right. And, I assure you, every intention.’

  ‘It’s our only source of income.’

  ‘In the city we shall find other sources.’

  Martin might have hated his father for his arrogant determination to destroy rather than preserve, but hatred was too close to love and Rufus was unworthy of such emotions. Instead he despised him.

  But that, too, served little purpose. If Eagle on the Hill went …

  All would be lost.

  Rufus entertained no such doubts. Once he had recovered from the original shock, the loss of the family fortune had troubled him less than he would have expected. With the proceeds of the estate there would be enough for him to live adequately in the city — even to cut the mildest of dashes, if the mood took him. He saw himself driving his motor car, watched by the envious eyes of passers-by. And Mary’s instinct for independence, more noticeable and worrisome in recent days, would be quite snuffed out. Once again he would be the undisputed master of his household. It was worth some inconvenience to achieve that. As for Martin … Martin would have to work, which would be no great sacrifice. Rufus had worked hard all his life.

  As for the despositors … there were ways of hiding what money remained. Let them try to find it, that was all. Let them try.

  Forty minutes later, when the lawyer arrived, Rufus did not walk to meet him. Rather, he glided, his feet barely touching the ground:

  Morton Gage changed all that.

  He looked at Rufus and Mary. ‘Will your son be joining us?’

  ‘No,’ Rufus said. ‘I told him there was no point. He’s not directly involved, after all.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Morton Gage.

  He unfolded the will and began to read.

  Then came disaster. Because, after the bequests relating to the family’s industrial and commercial investments — no longer of any interest, since their sale would barely cover the Clarence Bank debts — it turned out that Eagle on the Hill had been left not to Rufus, but to Martin.

  ‘To Martin?’

  Rufus could not believe he had heard correctly. His face was as red as his embroidered waistcoat.

  ‘My son?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Morton coughed. ‘Your son, Martin Grenville.’

  ‘That can’t be right! Surely my father hadn’t forgotten that Martin is planning to wander the world as an — an itinerant piano player?’

  ‘Mr Grenville’s instructions were very clear. In a codicil to his will dated —’

  ‘A codicil? What does that mean?’

  ‘An addition to the original. Or an amendment.’

  ‘An amendment? Is it legal?’

  ‘Perfectly legal.’

  ‘What did the original say?’

  ‘That is irrelevant. The codicil supersedes —’

  ‘I demand to know.’

  Mary intervened. ‘Rufus, stop making a fool of yourself.’

  He turned on her. ‘I have the right. I am my father’s heir.’

  ‘As far as Eagle on the Hill is concerned, apparently not.’

  ‘I had every right to believe the house would come to me!’

  ‘No doubt your father had his reasons.’

  ‘I’d like to know what they were.’

  But these were matters that even Rufus could not continue to rant about in the lawyer’s presence.

  ‘Can we challenge the will?’ he asked.

  Morton Gage studied him thoughtfully. He was not averse to the suggestion, in principle; litigation paid the bills. But in this case …

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘An error of judgment? Mental incapacity?’

  ‘An error of judgment is a matter of opinion and not ground for a challenge. As for mental incapacity, that would have to be proven …’

  ‘Your father was as sane as you are,’ said Mary.

  ‘But this means I get nothing!’ It couldn’t be true; it mustn’t be true! ‘What am I supposed to live on?’

  But that was something on which Morton Gage was unable to advise. Except to say that in his view litigation, unhappily, was unlikely to be productive.

  Rufus came out of the meeting a ghost of the man who had gone in. He stared venomously at the house. ‘I hate this place! Hate it!’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why your father left it to Martin,’ said his wife.

  ‘Where are we supposed to live? I tell you, I could burn it down.’

  ‘At least that would solve the accommodation problem,’ Mary said.

  Rufus looked at her suspiciously. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Jail,’ she replied.

  ‘Martin doesn’t know,’ Rufus said. ‘I suppose there’s no chance of keeping the news from him?’

  Mary’s look would have incinerated the phoenix. ‘Cheat your own son? You are despicable!’

  ‘Not cheat him,’ Rufus protested
. ‘He still stands to inherit when we’ve gone. Don’t forget, he’s planning to live overseas. It’s not as though he needs the house, after all.’

  ‘Put the idea out of your mind,’ Mary said.

  In any case, Morton Gage made it his business to meet with Martin before he returned to the city.

  Like his father, Martin found the news hard to believe.

  ‘He’s left Eagle on the Hill to me?’

  ‘To be held in trust for you until you’re twenty-five.’

  ‘In trust? What does that mean?’

  ‘It means you can live in it straightaway but you can’t dispose of it until it’s legally yours.’

  ‘And that happens when I’m twenty-five?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And can my father sell it in the meantime?’

  ‘Certainly not. It’s not his to sell.’

  ‘Who are the trustees?’

  Morton Gage coughed self-deprecatingly. ‘I am.’

  ‘And when I’m twenty-five?’

  ‘You can do what you like with it. Sell it, if you wish. In the meantime, of course, the income from the estate — arising from the sale of grapes and wine — is yours.’

  ‘To use however I like?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Martin stared at him, and at a vision of the future in which he was afraid to believe. ‘My God … I’m saved!’

  ‘I also have a letter addressed to you from your grandfather,’ the lawyer said. ‘Perhaps you would care to read it?’

  He took a long envelope from his briefcase and handed it to Martin.

  Martin looked at it, and at the lawyer. With a nervous thumbnail, he split the seal.

  I have left Eagle on the Hill to you, because you represent the future, and because I believe your father would sell it if he could. The house is a symbol of how far the Grenvilles have risen in the world. For this reason I should like it to stay in the family. However, that decision must be yours. Youth, by its nature, is impulsive and short-sighted, but by the time you are twenty-five, I trust you will have learnt to value your heritage and will see how important it is that the future should be founded on the successes of the past.