A Mansion and its Murder

by Robert Barnard

  Her own maids less obviously so, but they hated her nonetheless. The only mode she had of treating domestic staff was a coldness veering toward disdain. The old family servants showed their feelings by never embroidering any mention of her name. The mention of any other family member might be embroidered along the lines of: ‘The salmon mousse is for Lady Fearing – you know how much she loves it.’ The equivalent for Mary would be: ‘The salmon mousse is for Mrs Francis,’ with silence left after the name both by the speaker and by the person spoken to. If they could have made it even more formal by saying ‘Mrs Francis Fearing’ without sounding ridiculous in the Fearing household, they would have done.

  Uncle Frank, on his rare visits to Blakemere, did not change in his demeanour toward his wife, but he did seem to be increasingly delighted by the prospect of becoming a father. He also made efforts to mend his bridges with me. He did not need to try very hard. My respect for him was dented, but my love hardly at all. This was the period when he taught me tennis (my game has always been rather mannish as a consequence), and occasionally we would have one of our old companionable days fishing on the riverbank.

  ‘You’ll have to bring the little one out fishing when I’m not at Blakemere,’ he said, on one of them. ‘Which I don’t intend to be very much.’

  ‘By the time your son is old enough to fish,’ I said, my eyes on the far bank and the meadows beyond it, ‘I shouldn’t think I shall be much at Blakemere myself.’

  You notice I didn’t use endearments about the approaching baby, though I did suspect that when it arrived I would be unable to resist its charms.

  ‘Aha! And what will you be doing in the big world, little rabbit? Studying life in order to be a writer?’

  I giggled. ‘You promised not to call me that any more. I’ve changed my mind about what I want to be.’

  ‘Quite right, too. Never set yourself goals too early on.’

  ‘I think I’m going to be a wonderful nurse and social reformer like Florence Nightingale.’

  Uncle Frank let out a great Hrrrmff. ‘Florence Nightingale these days is nothing but a great hypochondriac and a great nuisance to everyone in government. What she needs is a nurse of the old school, who would either kill her or shake some sense into her. And social reformers, though sometimes admirably useful, tend to be the sort of person that sensible people go miles to avoid.’

  ‘That’s because most people don’t like having their eyes opened to the truth,’ I said solemnly. ‘I think you are essentially frivolous, Uncle Frank.’

  ‘Of course I am. Would you like me half as much if I wasn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then consider yourself very fortunate that you have been spared a social reformer as your uncle.’

  We fished on companionably for a while.

  ‘What if the little one is a girl?’ I blurted out eventually.

  My uncle shrugged. ‘What if it is? You know I love little girls. I’ll teach her to fish, as I’ve taught you, and to play tennis.’

  ‘The family will want a boy.’

  His face reddened, and he turned to me almost fiercely.

  ‘The family be damned! God rot them, each and every one. I’ve delivered my side of the bargain.’

  Thinking over those words today, I think Uncle Frank was saying that sexual relations with his wife were at an end. At the age of thirteen I knew next to nothing about how babies came into the world. Who in the family did I have to ask? Who would think to take it on themselves to tell me when the right age came? Beatrice had told me only that this was something ‘between men and women,’ and that I would be told about it ‘when the time came.’ I suspected the time would never come. I suppose I could have asked Uncle Frank, but his marriage, the reasons for it, his reluctance to go through with it, made doing that more, not less difficult.

  I did ask Beatrice again on one of my visits to the spruce little cottage on the perimeter of Tillyards, that warm, red-brick old manor house with so many cold-hearted people inside. ‘Bea, tell me how babies are made.’

  Bea was also expecting a happy event. She was sure to know. ‘It’s something between a man and a woman.’

  ‘So you’ve said. Tell me.’

  She got the usual cagey expression on her face. I knew it well.

  ‘Something a man and a woman do together … It’s not for me to tell you. Someone will at the right time.’

  Oddly enough, I accepted that from her, and was distracted on to a topic that interested me more.

  ‘Bea, was Mary liked when she was Mary Coverdale and lived at Tillyards?’

  For answer, Beatrice merely rolled her eyes. She did not need to say any more. Servants always know, I said to myself triumphantly. We got on to talking about the approaching lying-in which was to produce her eldest son – the imaginatively named Merlin South (Bea had always loved storybooks with pictures). In later years he was for a time chauffeur at Tillyards, then a commercial traveller, and is now managing a factory producing wireless sets in Bedford – not a magician, by any means, but a solid, sensible man. Anyway, I learnt something about the birth of babies from her, even if I learnt nothing about procreation.

  This knowledge did allow me to make some judgments on the preparations for the lying-in at Blakemere, and to discuss them with Miss Roxby. I told myself that Miss Roxby probably knew as little as I did about lyings-in and how babies were made, but that was not in fact true. She knew plenty about them, and was certainly interested in the approaching ‘happy’ event.

  ‘I think all these preparations are flying in the face of Providence,’ I said. It was a phrase I was fond of.

  ‘It’s hardly flying in the face of Providence to prepare for something that you know is going to happen,’ she pointed out. I shook my head impatiently.

  ‘I mean the scale of the preparations. Dr Morris from Wentwood is to be in residence here for a week before the poor little thing is due, and our fastest horse is to be in readiness for the coachman to ride to Aylesbury to summon Dr Petherbridge. How absurd! And the number of midwives, nurses, extra servants that have been hired – as if we didn’t have enough already!’

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Francis insists on them,’ said Miss Roxby slyly.

  ‘Perhaps she does! It would be in character. But it doesn’t alter the absurdity.’

  ‘I believe some of the extra servants are already causing problems below stairs,’ said Miss Roxby. ‘Incomers usually do.’

  ‘Were you ill last night?’ I asked.

  ‘Ill? No, why?’

  ‘I heard Robert come from your room.’

  ‘I sent for hot milk. I found it difficult to sleep.’

  My doubts about the preparations were only confirmed in the weeks ahead, for they became more and more grandiose, and Blakemere might more reasonably have been awaiting the birth of an heir to the throne instead of an heir to the banking firm of Fearing’s. But Uncle Frank was not party to these preparations. How could he be, when he was hardly ever there? The preparations could be laid to the account of my grandfather and his exaggerated sense of the family’s importance. I think I have hinted that my grandmother was much the more intelligent of the two. I suspect she adopted the policy of many women married to stupid (or limited would be a fairer estimate) men, and let him have his head in public, hoping to influence him privately, if only in small ways. In the matter of the approaching birth he had his own way entirely, and if the ironic eye might have said he made a great fool of himself, such an eye (and there were not many at Blakemere, apart perhaps from my grandmother, and Uncle Frank) would have made sure his perceptions never were given verbal expression.

  Uncle Frank was summoned home by telegram one week before the birth. They should have known him better. Nothing had actually happened, and he knew perfectly well when the baby was expected. He ignored the summons and came down three days later. I saw him greet his wife in Grandmama’s sitting room: he could have been an atheist in court kissing the Bible. His jokes about her size were brus
hed aside, as all jokes were by Mary. She told him the opinions of the doctors, which interested him, then outlined her plans for the future of their son, which interested him not at all. Uncle Frank intended to make all the important decisions about the boy’s future himself. And if I knew Uncle Frank, there would be no element of predestination in the plans – no sense that the child was born for one fate and one fate alone. He thought of himself as a free spirit, and his son would be the same.

  The labour began two days late. Mary, I was told, had been very impatient with the delay, as if a tradesman had not turned up on time for an appointment. The birth was to take place not in her own bedroom, but in one of the largest bedchambers in the body of the house. Grandpapa had not actually asked the Home Secretary to witness the birth, but if he had thought he would come, he would have done so. I need hardly say I was kept well away from the centre of so much drama and expectation.

  ‘What happens when a baby is born?’ I asked Miss Roxby, though, as I say, I doubted she knew much more than me.

  ‘It is a time of great pain and suffering for the mother,’ she said. ‘Great joy eventually, too, of course.’

  This last was definitely an afterthought, and one reluctantly brought out. I perceived I was not going to get anything but generalities.

  ‘And how long does it take?’

  ‘It can be quite short, and it can be horribly long.’ Again, she seemed to speak with intense feeling.

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you ever want to have a baby.’

  ‘I don’t. I had an elder sister die in childbirth. There are ways of avoiding it.’

  It had never occurred to me that childbirth was unavoidable, so I said rather priggishly, ‘It’s a good job some people want to have babies, or what would become of the Country?’

  ‘There will always be plenty of women who find their vocation in having babies and bringing up children,’ said Edith Roxby.

  I thought of Beatrice, and nodded.

  I became less sure that I was one of them when the labour started.

  I was, as I say, well away from the bedroom in question, and was denied my usual freedom to roam. However, I registered the beginning of the birth (the phrase I used to myself) by the sounds of servants scuttling around, and by a series of subtle changes in the routines of the house. That was not long after breakfast. I said nothing to Miss Roxby, but bent low over my schoolbooks. For some reason my cheeks were burning. When the usual time came for a break in lessons, Edith led me down an obscure back staircase and stayed with me as we roamed well away from the house, talking of all sorts of miscellaneous matters that were not really what was on our minds. The servant who brought us our dinner (our main meal was served at about two, this being thought healthy for a child) was flurried, and whispered to Miss Roxby. When she had gone, my governess told me that the birth was difficult and protracted, but it was hoped it would soon be over.

  She was remembering her sister, I knew. Mary was not loved, but a death in childbirth strikes chill in the hearts of all women.

  But the labour was not soon over. The afternoon wore on, evening came, the sun sank low in the sky. I tried to imagine ‘great pain and suffering’ lasting as long as this, and failed utterly. I had not had a happy childhood, but my physical pains had been few and short.

  ‘How can it go on so long?’ I asked Miss Roxby, feeling almost sorry for Mary.

  ‘It often does. It’s women’s lot.’

  ‘It won’t be mine.’

  At last I sensed, by the house’s noises, that it was over. It was as if the whole mountainous structure relaxed. I had no sense of tragedy, of the house having been struck by an unusual disaster. I wondered what would happen to me. Would I just go to bed in the usual way? Surely someone would understand what a child feels about a new baby in the house?

  Miraculously someone did. Almost two hours after I had sensed that the house was relaxing, almost rejoicing, Robert, our favourite footman, knocked on the schoolroom door.

  ‘Miss Sarah is to go and see the new baby.’

  I didn’t quite like the way he put it, but there was no question of my refusing to go. I got up and led the way, Miss Roxby behind me, and Robert a short but respectful distance behind her. We went down one flight, then through endless, progressively grander corridors till we came to the immense and gloomy bedroom where I knew the lying-in had taken place. Robert knocked on the door, and Mr McKay, looking as grand as grand (grander than any Home Secretary could have looked) let us in.

  Mary, on the bed, was white, drowsy, but triumphant. Uncle Frank was not by her but beside the cradle, and he looked – how can I analyse it? – pleased with himself, for once not dissatisfied or ashamed over the shoddy bargain he had been forced into, and above all proud of the little bundle in white lying quiet in the ridiculously grand cradle in the centre of the room.

  ‘Can I hold him?’

  I knew it must be a him. The medical man, immensely portly and pompous, looked dubious, but Uncle Frank said, ‘Of course,’ and took up the little bundle tenderly. I held my breath, feeling it would break like a china doll if he dropped it. Then I put out my arms and he put the bundle into them. I looked down into the quiet, sleeping little face and I felt a love so overpowering, so all-embracing for the helpless little thing that I realised I had never felt love before – that my affection for Uncle Frank was the natural feeling I would have for one of the few attractive people in my life, but that this was the real thing – the passion that took hold of you, took over your life, filled every part of your body and mind.

  The eyes in my little bundle opened, the face screwed up, and he began to whimper.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Son and Heir

  Physically the baby thrived. I was delighted, but a little surprised. Blakemere did not seem to be the sort of place where babies would flourish. A grand nursery, for example, seemed a contradiction in terms, yet since the baby had to have a nursery in the body of the house, close to its mother, a grand nursery was what he had. And a nursery, of course, was what Grandpapa thought appropriate. A large, authoritative woman from Wentwood, Mrs Nealson, was the nurse in charge, and it was Mrs Nealson whom I had to propitiate if I wanted to hold my little cousin, tickle him to make him gurgle, dangle things before his eyes, or put things in his chubby little hands. She was, I think, a good woman at bottom, but she was a very fearsome one at top, and for her I was the model little girl which I was for no one else.

  It was Mrs Nealson who noticed first. Cousin Richard (as he was to be christened) was Mary’s first child, so though he got what was called his infant succor from her, it was natural she wouldn’t remark it. To me a baby was as foreign as a kangaroo would be if one was imported to graze on Blakemere’s grassy expanses, so there was no question of my noticing.

  I got no whisper of it when Mrs Nealson first brought the matter out into the open. I think I may have heard of a joint visit to the nursery by Dr Morris and Dr Petherbridge, but I thought this was merely routine – high-level routine, certainly, but that would have been in keeping with all Grandpapa’s other dealings during the pregnancy and the lying-in.

  My uncle Frank was summoned home from Paris, and this time he came.

  The news, the awful news, gradually seeped down to me.

  Richard was not responding as a baby of six weeks should – not observing, not reacting. In a word – and it was a word that began to be whispered around even below stairs – he was ‘backward’. Worse than that, he was what we today would call retarded. Under their breaths the servants used the word ‘idiot’.

  I was never told whether this was due to something either of the doctors had done during the delivery, and I made no inquiries later on when I was in a position to. To what end? And it would have seemed too much like trying to attribute blame. How could I want to put blame on anyone for the condition of a boy, a man, who was so much happier and nicer than anyone else at Blakemere?

  The medical men came fairly frequently, together or se
parately, for several weeks after that. I think, like most professional people, they had an aversion to delivering bad news with any brutal suddenness: doing it by dribs and drabs is much more beneficial financially. Certainly Mary was a long time taking the news in: she went on feeding the quiet, plump little bundle, and seemed to think that his condition might be reversed by treatment – an operation, or a course of the waters.

  When the truth was revealed to her, her world fell apart. The fact that it was an unlovely world, a piece of self-glorification and self-aggrandisement, did not make its shattering any the less appalling. She continued feeding Richard, but she otherwise preferred not to see him. Any nursing, cradling, cuddling he got came from his father, or from me, or from one of the women paid to take care of him, who felt their importance suddenly diminished. It bound me still more tightly to Uncle Frank that the confirmation that his son was mentally retarded did not shake by one iota the love that he felt for him.

  ‘It’s obvious that sooner or later he will have to be put in an institution,’ I heard Mary say one day to her husband. ‘Best for him if it’s sooner.’

  She said ‘him’ as if she wanted to say ‘it.’ They were on the terrace, and I saw Uncle Frank’s face darken, and he strode off without a word down to the meadows.

  I think if he could have chosen, Uncle Frank would have been much more at Blakemere from then on. But it was not to be thought of: Blakemere contained his wife, and everything she did from the time of the doctors’ final pronouncement jangled his nerves and outraged his feelings of justice and decency. The poor little mite had in effect lost both parents.