The Attenbury Emeralds

by Jill Paton Walsh

  The scene resolved itself as Harriet’s eyes got used to the dark. Servants were carrying pictures and furniture out of the house and stacking stuff on the lawn. The great pictures, with two or three struggling porters carrying them, waved like the sails of ships at sea in the draught created by the fire. Peter ran forward. She heard his voice – it carried unexpectedly well considering its light timbre – giving orders. She heard him say, ‘Where the hell is Gerald?’

  And then ‘Bunter!’ Bunter had parked the car as far from the house as the drive allowed him, and was now running towards Peter.

  It was unclear to Harriet what she had best do herself. Looking away from the house she saw that there was an ambulance, which had come up the drive behind them, now slowly crunching across the gravel towards the west wing. She followed it. It stopped beside a little group of people. At first she thought that something from the house had been laid on the grass at their feet. When the ambulance men knelt down one on each side of it she realised that it was a person. The ambulance manoeuvred so that its headlights lit up the scene. Gerald. Gerald lying quite still under a blanket. Her mother-in-law was kneeling beside him, wearing a fluffy dressing-gown, and holding his hand. Helen stood rigid behind her, shaking. Gently the ambulance man removed the Dowager Duchess’s hand from that of her son, and asked her to make way. They were taking his pulse, and then pounding his chest. But not for long. ‘I’m so sorry,’ they were saying. ‘Nothing to be done, I’m afraid.’ Nevertheless they lifted Gerald into the ambulance.

  The Dowager Duchess looked up at Harriet and said, ‘Is Peter here? Find Peter.’

  Looking round, Harriet saw a group of the servants, standing close together, and silently watching their world disintegrate. ‘Go and find Lord Peter,’ she said to the nearest one. He was just a boy, holding a handkerchief over his right hand. ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked him.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ he answered. ‘I’ll find him.’

  But it was Harriet who was on the spot here. She thought that Helen must be in shock; she realised that Helen’s whole world, her status and her wealth lay dead with her husband at her feet. God knows which of her losses would hurt her most. Harriet thought that she herself was the last person to help Helen. She said to her mother-in-law, who must be in deep distress herself, ‘Will you stay with Helen exactly here, Mother, while I go and get the car? We need you both in the warm somewhere.’

  She walked back to the Daimler, hoping that Bunter or Peter would be in sight, but she could see neither of them. The fountain basin had run dry, and the firemen were dragging their hoses round the house to the lake, a quarter of a mile away. She got into the driver’s seat, and turned the ignition key, left in the lock, luckily. She had never driven the Daimler before and she had to find the lever that allowed her to slide the seat forward. Time had frozen; everything seemed to be taking a long time. But it was probably only minutes before she reached the two women, and got them into the car. Then she drove towards the Dower House. The carriage drive took a long elegant curve to get there; Harriet drove straight off the drive, and across the lawns in a direct line to her destination.

  At the door of the Dower House she found her mother-in-law’s scatty maid, Franklin, standing wringing her hands. At the sight of her mistress she let out a positive wail of relief, and ran forward. Harriet said, ‘Helen needs hot sweet tea, and a warm bed as soon as possible. Will you help your mistress manage that? And then see that she is herself all right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  It was the Blitz that had taught Harriet that in an emergency you give the less injured a useful job to do. But nothing had taught her how to deal with this – the dreadful immediate calamity that had befallen Peter. While she got his mother and sister-in-law into a warm house, somebody would have told him. Was Gerald already dead when Helen phoned for them? Someone would have told him, and she had not been at his side.

  She rejoined the mêlée in front of the house, and found herself beside the boy she had sent to look for Peter. ‘I couldn’t find him, missus,’ the boy said. ‘I’ve only been here a month, and I dunno what he looks like.’

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ Harriet asked him.

  ‘It got bit burned, missus. It’s nothing much. There’s others worse hurt.’

  In the dirty grey light of early dawn, muffled in fenny mist, she saw Bunter, carrying books. Then she heard Peter’s voice. ‘Thomas, can you get to a phone? I think we might be able to reach one in the east wing. I want an ambulance to take people into King’s Lynn. I want all these burns and cuts properly seen to. We’ll round up the walking wounded while we wait for it to come.’

  ‘Won’t we be wanted here?’ asked the Denver butler.

  ‘Don’t argue, Thomas,’ said Peter. ‘Just make sure everyone with an injury gets in that ambulance.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace,’ said Thomas.

  Peter flinched as though he had been struck in the face. ‘Much too soon for that,’ he said.

  Harriet went and stood beside him. A fireman approached them. ‘No more getting chattels out of the other end of the house, sir,’ he said. ‘The whole thing may firestorm any minute. Not safe.’

  ‘Are we sure there is nobody left inside?’ said Peter. Harriet wasn’t sure he had noticed her standing beside him, until he slipped his hand into hers. They stood together, watching the party lights in the blazing windows burn on. Bunter came running towards them, carrying, Harriet noticed, a last armful of books.

  ‘Get back, get back,’ the fire chief was calling. ‘It’ll blow in a minute. Get back!’

  ‘Blow?’ said Harriet, standing her ground until Peter moved.

  There was a loud crack and rumble. Across two-thirds of the house the roof had fallen in. Liberated, the fire leapt skywards, in a flamboyant display of flames and sparks. No longer contained within the building, it roared loudly. They could feel the warmth on their faces, and they began to edge away across the gravel. And as they went the great façade suddenly collapsed. It fell from low down, like someone flexing at the knees. It went down with a thunderous roar, and fell inwards, across the inferno behind it. It gave the fire pause; for a moment the light and warmth of the conflagration was halted. The appalled watchers on the drive could see that the back wall of the house had already partly fallen; they could see sunrise catching the surface of the lake beyond the house.

  The fire drew breath; then it began to re-emerge from the rubble pile that had damped it, not in the one huge blaze with which it had burned before, but in dozens of little flames, licking through the surface, and beginning again. Unheard in the huge sound of the fire the ambulance had arrived. Peter turned and walked away to make sure his orders about injured people were being observed. Bunter seemed to be busily directing the removal of furniture and pictures from the drive to safety in the stable block.

  Harriet thought she had better return to the Dower House to comfort Peter’s mother. It must be a terrible thing to lose a son. She felt an irrational urge to rush home and make sure her own sons were all right. The rising light showed her everyone around her covered with smuts like chimney sweeps. And surely Peter must need some rest.

  ‘Peter, come back to the Dower House, and get some rest,’ she said to him.

  ‘Later,’ he said.

  Did he mean to stand there until the last object had been put in the barn, the last servant put in the ambulance, or ordered to get some rest?

  She tried a ruse. ‘Peter, I need some sleep. Come with me and rest.’

  ‘Sorry, Harriet,’ he said, walking away from her.

  ‘Peter, your mother must need you very badly,’ she said, catching up with him. He turned towards her a face streaked with soot, lined and inexpressibly tired. ‘My mother will expect me to see to things here,’ he said. ‘Tell her I will come as soon as I can.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. And walking away she realised that although Peter had told Thomas that it was too soon to be calling him ‘Your Grace’ it was de fac
to who he was now. In the last hour she had seen him becoming the Duke, like it or no. And with a further shock she saw that in that same last hour she had herself become the Duchess.

  A family doctor was in the Dower House when Harriet reached it. A pleasant, grey-haired gentleman in a three-piece suit with a gold watch on a watch chain who reminded Harriet immediately of her own father. He had, Franklin had told her, sedated Helen, and was now in the drawing-room with the Dowager Duchess. When Harriet entered the room he was taking her mother-in-law’s pulse, one hand on her frail wrist, the other holding his watch. She was sitting in her favourite chair, still in her sooty dressing-gown, steadily and silently weeping.

  ‘Hot tea for you too, Duchess, and a bath and a rest,’ he said, releasing her wrist.

  ‘But I don’t know what is happening out there!’ she cried.

  ‘Nothing is happening that will not wait for you,’ he said.

  ‘What happened to my son, Dr Fakenham?’ the Dowager Duchess asked him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  Peter appeared in the doorway, and stood there, listening.

  ‘I had warned him twice,’ Dr Fakenham said. ‘He took no notice, I imagine. But his heart was dicey. Standing outside on a cold night wearing only a silk dressing-gown over his pyjamas, and watching his house burn down triggered, I think, a heart attack. I will sign the death certificate to that effect. Now will you yourself, Duchess, please take my advice, or shall I expect to be called out again shortly to another avoidable calamity?’

  ‘My dear Honoria,’ said Harriet, ‘please…’

  ‘Come, Mother,’ said Peter. He stepped forward, picked up his mother in his arms, and simply carried her away and up the wide, winding staircase towards her bedroom.

  ‘Now there’s a man who keeps himself fit for his age!’ said the doctor admiringly. But Harriet thought her mother-in-law, frail and bird-boned as she now was, was not much of a burden.

  ‘Is there anyone else needing attention before I go on my rounds?’ Dr Fakenham asked her.

  Harriet said, ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to see if any of the firemen have been hurt?’

  ‘Certainly, Duchess,’ he said.

  She must have flinched as visibly as she had seen Peter flinch.

  ‘Come now,’ he said to her. ‘These things happen to the best of us. Only to the best of us, of course. Common folk have other hazards in life.’

  ‘My father was a family doctor like you,’ Harriet told him.

  ‘Well, doctors breed a good line in sensible daughters,’ he said. ‘I wish you luck.’

  20

  Harriet dragged herself upstairs. She found a hot bath ready for her, clean clothes laid out on a chair, her sponge bag in the bathroom, and a wide bed in which Peter was lying already asleep. It took a while to scrub herself clean. When she emerged into the bedroom again she found coffee, eggs and toast on a tray waiting for her. Bunter appeared and said, ‘Is there anything else you require, my lady?’

  ‘Nothing thank you, Bunter. Get some sleep yourself; this cannot be a good day ahead of us.’

  He thanked her and left. She got into the bed beside Peter and was instantly asleep.

  When she woke Peter had slipped away quietly. The tray of uneaten breakfast had been removed. She looked at her watch: ten thirty! She dressed rapidly and went downstairs. She found Peter and his mother in the yellow drawing-room, talking quietly.

  ‘My poor Gerald!’ said the Dowager Duchess. ‘I know he was a pompous man. A man for all the stuffiest conventions you could find. But he didn’t have a happy life. The responsibilities weighed him down. And I don’t think Helen looked after him properly. There should have been another son. He never got over Lord St George’s death. Not even when you had a son to supply the need, Peter. And the one time he did break out and look for some happiness it all went desperately wrong. He never left the beaten track again, as far as I know. My poor son. And now it will all land on you, Peter. And I shan’t like to see you and Harriet bearing it.’

  ‘We’ll manage,’ said Peter.

  Harriet slipped away. She went to telephone the children’s schools and make sure her sons heard the news from her, and not from hearing about the inevitable fuss in the newspapers.

  Coming back, she found Helen in the room, still shaking, though with anger this time, not shock. ‘Your outrageous manservant has been giving servants all the bedrooms!’ she said to Peter. ‘When I told them to get themselves to the servants’ quarters at once, they said they had been assigned the guest rooms to sleep in. Damned insolence!’

  ‘I don’t suppose they know who they are to take orders from at the moment,’ said Harriet carefully. ‘And there wasn’t enough room in the servants’ quarters here for all the people from the Hall as well.’

  Helen went on speaking to Peter. ‘You see what you get for marrying out of your class, Peter,’ she said. ‘A damn fool thing to do. Now a woman will be in charge of all this who hasn’t the first idea how things should be done. Not a clue. We may expect disorder and vulgarity on every side. And I must remind you all that this is my house now. Your mother will have to take herself off to her London flat as soon as possible, and I shall decide how the bedrooms here are disposed of.’

  Peter said, ‘Do you think we might bury my brother with calm and dignity before you start quarrelling over houses and bedrooms?’

  Thomas arrived at the door and said, ‘Lady Mary has just arrived, my lord.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Helen. ‘My sister-in-law the policeman’s wife. And I suppose she has brought her children with her. And where are they to sleep? In the stables?’

  Harriet said, ‘Helen, you are overwrought. We shall all assume that you do not know what you are saying, and will speak more gently when you have recovered yourself.’

  ‘Are you being kind to me, Harriet?’ said Helen, and abruptly burst into tears.

  ‘When did you last have anything to eat, Helen?’ Harriet enquired. She rang the bell, and when Thomas arrived she ordered breakfast for Helen in her room.

  And that done, suddenly desperate for the open air, Harriet made her escape and went for a walk in the park. The air still smelled of bonfire, and she could see wisps of smoke rising from the fallen part of the house. The fire engines had gone. Instinctively she turned the other way and walked into the wood that covered a gentle rise behind the Dower House. The birds were callously singing as usual. What time was it? When would she have a chance to talk properly to Peter? No knowing. How would her son Bredon take to being a lord? It wouldn’t be good for him. Well, perhaps at a really posh school nobody would be impressed, and it could pass unnoticed. How did people manage heavy responsibilities who had not been raised to expect them? Well, the present King had not been raised to expect the crown, and he made a good job of it. Being raised in the expectation of a dukedom had made poor wild and wonderful Lord St George attempt to endanger his own life in every way he could think of, and overspend his allowance in dozens of imaginative ways. If he hadn’t been killed in the Battle of Britain he would probably have managed to kill himself driving or riding to hounds. And Peter? A carefree second son. While St George was alive, Peter had been safe. But for the last few years he must have known this might happen.

  Harriet made the circuit of the path through the woods and turned back. And here was Peter, coming towards her.

  ‘All right, Domina?’ he asked her.

  ‘I just ran away for a bit. As you see, I’m on my way back.’

  ‘Can’t tell you how much I’d like to run away myself,’ he told her. ‘But I’m tied like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. The estate manager wants to see me. The lawyers want to see me. Gerald’s accountant wants to see me. The fire officer wants to see me. The vicar wants to see me. Bunter has put them all off until tomorrow, and made appointments for them in sequence. But there’s also the undertaker; I must see him this afternoon. You should return to London and leave me to get on with it.’

  ‘I’d rat
her stay with you,’ said Harriet firmly.

  They had reached the door of the Dower House, and they hesitated there. ‘Hope Bunter is coming up on the morning train tomorrow to take photographs of the ruin for the insurance claim,’ Peter said. ‘Shall she bring your typewriter and manuscript folder?’

  ‘Perhaps she’d better,’ said Harriet. ‘And I’d better find a cubby-hole to work in.’

  ‘And in the meantime, come and say hello to Mary and Charles,’ he said.

  Charles said, ‘So sorry, Peter. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

  Peter said, ‘Not up your street, I think, Charles. The fire officer-in-chief thinks it was an electrical fault, and God knows when the place was last re-wired. All the old gaslight pipes were still there. But thank you.’

  Lady Mary flung her arms round her brother and said, ‘Hard on you. I know I’d simply hate it.’

  They were all avoiding the Hall. They could still smell it on the air; they could see the ragged, blackened, partly collapsed structure on the gentle rise out of all the windows, for the Dower House faced the Hall. But somehow nobody felt like walking across there to have a closer look. It was as if they were all waiting for each other. After lunch, when Peter has seen the undertaker, Harriet thought.

  When they did set out, the family all came too. ‘You don’t have to do this just yet, Mother,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Better face it, dear,’ the Dowager Duchess replied.

  ‘Wrap up warm, then,’ Harriet said.

  As the little group walked up the hill, Harriet fell back, and walked beside Charles, leaving Lady Mary to walk in step with Peter. Their childhood home, she was thinking. They were not alone when they reached the drive in front of the house. A solitary helmeted fireman remained.

  ‘You can’t go too near, sir, I’m afraid,’ he said to Peter. ‘The stone bit will be safe when everything has cooled down, in a day or two. And the part beyond it.’

  ‘The stone bit?’ said Peter. ‘It’s all a timber-framed Elizabethan house, behind the Jacobean frontage.’