by Peter Rimmer
The brook dropped into a large hole and went underground for half a mile. The hedgerows still followed the line of the brook and when the water came gushing out, dropping ten feet into a pool, there were no surprises. Regular three bar gates into the fields allowed him to leave the path whenever he wished, but he always preferred following the water. Robert had counted twelve birds' nests since leaving the railway station at Corfe Castle. Now, in his mind, he could smell the food cooking for his supper. Whatever else happened he was going to be happy for the rest of his life. Suddenly Africa was far too far away, even for his imagination.
"It's very beautiful," said Harry looking at the tiny waterfall as they stopped for a moment.
Then they walked on in silence.
The Great Dyke stretched most of the length of Southern Rhodesia and Harry Brigandshaw was certain it contained most of the minerals known to man. Copper, nickel, cobalt, iron ore, chromium, the stuff the Empire made into machines and power, easing man's burden, taking the drudgery from human life. A pack mule, a prospector's pick, and his knowledge learned at Oxford would unleash the treasure and make certain there was money to govern and prosper the colony. He was going to explore the views of the mountains, like his father and Uncle Tinus had explored the country before the Union Jack was raised at Fort Salisbury in 1890. There was more than gold in them hills he told himself and involuntarily quickened his pace.
"Are you hungry?" asked Robert.
"In a way, I suppose."
"Here we climb over this gate into our own fields and out straight across to the house… Look. Far over there. That's little Lucinda. It's her birthday tomorrow. She'll be fifteen."
Cupping his hands to his mouth Robert called out, "Cinda it's me. I'm home."
Lucinda sat on the wooden bar of the gate, her small feet tucked into the second bar, and waited. There were two gates into the pasture, one on either end of the field. In between were the cows looking at the stranger and Robert while they vacantly chewed the grass in their mouths. The cows were fat and full of milk.
"Doesn't anyone milk the cows?" she heard the stranger ask.
"Old Warren will bring them to the milking shed."
"Who milks them?"
"He has two granddaughters. Sort of family business for centuries. Cinda, this is my friend Harry Brigandshaw. He's come to stay with us for a few days and then I'm going to be a schoolmaster."
The stranger was almost six feet tall, slim, his face somehow burnt unlike any complexion she had ever seen before. Very few boys of their class ever came to Purbeck Manor. From under her long, dark eyelashes, she watched him walk the last of the field towards her. When he smiled at her, she looked away and jumped down from the three bar gate. Then she stood, spreading her elbows on the top bar and resting the side of her face on the long sleeve of her dress. He looked different sideways and could not look into her eyes. This stranger's hair was long, longer than any of her brothers'.
"Where are you from?" she asked.
"Central Africa."
"You are a long way from home."
"You must be the same age as my sister Madge. Her birthday's in August."
"It's my birthday tomorrow."
"I know."
"What else do you know?"
"That I have never met a prettier girl at a three bar gate in all my life."
"Boys always say these things, but they never mean them. Come on. We'll be late for supper. I spied you from my room. I've been watching the path through Merlin's telescope for days. Don't tell father about being a schoolmaster until after we've all had supper. He'd have a fit. You can each have one of my hands and then we must run."
"You can't run without holding up your skirt," said Harry, taking the proffered hand.
"Then we will go slower and arrive later… Does mother know you are bringing a friend?"
"Yes she does, and it was wise of mother not to tell the rest of you girls."
"Are you an explorer Mr Brigandshaw?"
"My father was. Now we farm. Maize and cattle. We call our farm Elephant Walk. Once every decade or so the elephants migrate through our valley. The migration goes on for days, the earth shaking, the days and nights rent asunder by the trumpeting of the greatest mammals living on this earth. The last time the elephants migrated I was about your age."
"Weren't you afraid?"
"Not really. I was away at school in Cape Town."
"Will you take me to Elephant Walk?"
"It's a very long way away."
"I don't mind."
The siblings had called him Merlin when he was ten years old and frightened the cat. One minute Tiddles had been lying in front of the fire and next she was hissing and arching her back. When Aunt Nut opened the door to the morning room, she shot past Merlin and Aunt Nut at a speed not seen in years. At first, they put it down to Aunt Nut coming into the room as all the children knew that Great Aunt Nut was peculiar, but it wasn't the Aunt at all. All of a sudden the cat had become petrified of Merlin, with or without Aunt Nut in the room, and the name had stuck, as nicknames often will, for the rest of his life. As he grew older, even the dogs growled at him, which was a problem as from an early age Merlin was the best shot in the family, and hunting rabbits with growling dogs gave the game away to the rabbits. To add to the complication, owls and hawks took a liking to newly named young Merlin. But when there was so much going on in the family no one took a particular interest. Merlin brought the telescope he had retrieved from Cinda up to his one blue eye and grunted with satisfaction.
"There they are," he said to his empty bedroom.
Coming down the path between the herbaceous borders was his sister holding a stranger's hand. Behind came brother Robert who was trying to catch up to Cinda's empty hand that trailed, waiting behind her back, but the path was too narrow. Then they disappeared under a long arch of climbing roses devoid of leaf and flower, the old trellis hiding the trio from his sight.
Snapping the telescope back into itself, he watched the path for a moment before shutting his window and drawing the curtains. Then he shivered and wondered why.
Halfway down the staircase, two at a time, he jumped on the bannister and came out into the hall at a speed. His mother told him every time it would kill him. Ever since he had scared the cat he had taken to sliding down the bannister, quite often frightening himself. As he opened the front door, or more exactly the small door inside the front door, a waft from the kitchen of cooking meat caught his saliva buds and flooded his mouth. When he reached the edge of the vast terrace to where he could look down the garden, the trio were again hand in hand and walking up the path between the badly kept lawns.
Merlin waved and Robert waved back with his free hand. Cinda broke loose, picked up her long skirt, and began to run.
"Supper's nearly ready," Merlin called.
Behind him the small door opened again onto the terrace that ran the whole length of the house, and young Barnaby raced across the flagstones that age and many generations of children had worn smooth.
"It's roast lamb," he yelled in his high pitched voice.
Looking up the terrace at the young man and small boy, Harry Brigandshaw smiled and turned to his friend.
"Don't you St Clairs think about anything else but your stomachs?"
When he looked up again there were more friendly faces waving at them.
"He's very nice," he heard Lucinda call to an older woman who was standing at the top of the terrace stairs.
"That's my mother," said Robert St Clair with great pride.
Granny Forrester remained inside next to the fire with a shawl over her bony shoulders. Her needlework showed a pheasant in flight, soft brown and dull red, the bird perfectly balanced on the wind. It would cover another footstool that no one would use but it gave her something to do. Her bony fingers worked the pieces of wool into the pattern while her mind concentrated on the distant noises coming from the terrace. There was nothing w
rong with Granny Forrester's hearing though she had kept that a secret for years.
Potts watched from his chair and sipped a glass of brown sherry. Officially he allowed himself two every night at exactly the same time and waited for the grandfather clock in the corner of the morning room to chime six o'clock.
"Like a glass of sherry, Nettie?" he would ask every night.
"You know I don't drink Willoughby, but I'll just have a sip of yours to keep you company."
And every night he poured a glass of brown, sweet sherry, offered the glass to Granny Forrester and watched her take the one big sip that drained the glass. For himself, he preferred a dry, pale sherry, but ever since coming to live at Purbeck Manor he had changed to the tawny brown.
"That is only your second, Willoughby?" she said trying not to show her agitation.
"Of course, my dear."
"May I have another sip of yours?"
And every night when they went into supper they were quite tiddly.
When the door opened she pretended not to hear and only when her grandson kissed her on her shrivelled cheek did she smile, her hands still working the snippets of coloured wool.
"I've missed you Granny," said Robert St Clair next to her ear, and then he stood back to introduce Harry.
"My grandmother Forrester … Sir Willoughby Potts. This is my good friend Harry Brigandshaw from Oxford."
"Have a glass of sherry young man. You walked I suppose. If young Robert told us when he was coming they'd have sent the trap, damn it. Knew a fellow called Brigandshaw once. Damn man was a pirate, so they said. Took me out to the Pacific on my first trip. No relation, I hope."
"My grandfather, sir," said Harry.
"Well, have a glass of sherry, anyway. Damn good sailor. But then you'd have to be to be a pirate. Did something to him in the end."
"Made him a baronet sir."
"Pirate gets a hereditary title and I get a KBE."
"He was very rich and gave a lot of money to the Tory party."
"That makes all the difference. Money talks. Don't you forget it. I wish more of it had talked to me. Go on Robert, you can pour the sherry and only put a drop in the glass for Lucinda… Isn't it your birthday, Lucinda?"
"Tomorrow, Gramps."
"Don't call me Gramps. You know I'm not a grandfather. There's no respect in this family whatsoever. Barnaby, shut the door. You know your Grandmother hates the draught. Ah, there you are Bess. You'd better have a sherry too. Cold on the terrace. Now, where's the Lord of the Manor?"
"Ethelbert is looking at his pigs."
"Merlin, open another bottle of sherry. I can see from here the decanter's empty."
Ethelbert, Seventeenth Baron St Clair of Purbeck, had a special rapport with his pigs. Maisey was suckling twelve piglets while she watched him with soppy, adoring eyes. In the next pen, the eight-week-olds were feeding from the trough, ignoring their mother. Then came Hector, the finest boar ever born, and father of them all and countless more that had been well turned into bacon.
The cold draught, creeping up his bottom from the tear in his trousers, reminded him that he was hungry.
"Goodnight my darling," he said to Maisey. With a light heart and a smile on his ruddy face, Lord St Clair left the pig shed.
Barnaby watched his father go round the back of the old house before letting the curtains fall closed. Outside it was almost dark.
Inside it was warm from the two fires either side of the sitting room. The clink of the glass stopper dropping back into the decanter, the loud tick of the grandfather clock in its corner, the hiss of the gas lamps on the walls that spluttered and moved the shadows, the gentle voices of his family, were all that Barnaby could wish from life. He was the happiest ten-year-old in all of England. It was a fact, yet unrecognised by Barnaby, this well of happiness always overwhelmed him before supper.
Harry Brigandshaw picked up the sweet farmyard aroma of horse manure soon after he sat down with the family in the dining hall. Again, two fires burnt, one at each end of the long room. The end, from which was emanating the strange mix of smells of barnyard and roast mutton, was occupied by a large cooked sheep on a spit and Lord St Clair of Purbeck. No one had bothered to introduce them. Absorbed into the chaos of the St Clair family, any introductions would have been superfluous. He had become part of the family the moment he stepped over the threshold.
The baron stood over the crispy cooked carcass with a small sword that had belonged to one of his ancestors. He slashed the blade back and forth across a sharpening iron, his tongue slightly projecting from the left corner of his mouth, his ruddy face screwed tight with concentration. Along with all the grown-ups he was dressed for dinner. For the carving session, Lady St Clair had wisely covered him in a dust coat of the same type people were using to ride in the newfangled horseless carriages.
On the old table made from a wood long lost in the family history, heaped pots of vegetables, roast potatoes, and sweet roast swedes were methodically being plonked down by an ancient servant that Harry wanted to jump up and help, the weight of the pots almost tripping the old man face down across the table. Next to him the soft hand of the nineteen-year-old Annabel touched him for the first, but not the last, time.
"James will think he's getting old if you help," she whispered into his ear, blowing gently to finish her warning. Across the table seventeen-year-old Genevieve glared at her older sister. Under the table, the youngest of the three sisters, Lucinda, was rubbing his ankle with a foot.
The sword stopped flashing in the firelight, and Harry understood the need for the dust coat. His host was a messy carver and between the carcass and the silver salver most of the juice landed on the dust coat, protecting the stiff white dress shirt from disaster. Stoically, James held out a salver for the cut slices of meat before going round the family. Barnaby's plate was already stacked high with vegetables and potatoes when his turn came to take meat from the salver. Harry smelt the barnyard behind his right elbow as a second salver was slid in front of his eyes.
"You must be Harry Brigandshaw. Welcome to Purbeck Manor. Please don't get up."
It was the first time Harry was served roast lamb by a Lord of the Manor.
"Thank you, sir."
"You can help me muck out the pigs tomorrow. We farmers have to stick together."
When Harry looked up from helping himself to meat, his host gave him a wink.
"Get a move on, Ethelbert," said Lady St Clair. "The food's getting cold. Now, is everyone served?"
Satisfied, she smiled at her husband, "Ethelbert, you may now say grace."
"Thank you my dear."
"Better put down that dish."
In a brief ceremony the food was blessed and the whole family tucked in. Having been told by his mother to never finish his food first and to chew at least six times, he was astonished to watch the mounds of food disappear so quickly. Barnaby was the first to finish. Timing his manners, Harry put down his knife and fork just ahead of Granny Forrester and Great Aunt Nut, who came in joint last.
The food had been quite delicious and was followed by plates of battered rhubarb covered in golden syrup. Only after all the food had been eaten did the family begin to talk.
Then, without a word spoken, the women and Barnaby rose from the table, the men moved to chairs closer to Lord St Clair, port glasses and a bottle of port were placed by James in front of His lordship, who filled a glass, took it from the tray, and pushed the bottle and glasses to Sir Willoughby Potts. Every man poured himself a glass of port.
By the time he found his bed, with the help of Robert, Harry was slightly drunk from the port. When he woke once in the middle of the night he had no idea where he was. Rain was slashing at the closed window. No one had drawn the curtains. A strange keening noise was coming from somewhere inside the old house. An owl, so different to an African owl, hooted despite the rain, and Harry remembered where he was. Secure in his knowledge, he lay back and was so
on fast asleep. He dreamed of the Zambezi Valley and when he woke in the early morning with the spring sun streaming through the window, he was smiling.
The house was quiet and Harry pulled the feather-stuffed quilt up to his chin. At the end of the bed, on an old dressing table, a large enamel bowl with a jug the same size stood ready for his morning wash. Under the bed would be a heavy stone potty that his mind tried to ignore; it was cold in the room despite the watery spring sun. The long sash window behind the right side of the bed would look out across an inner courtyard that gave entrance from the main road to the manor house.
The terrace and lawns that he had first seen at the end of his walk from the railway station were on the other side of the house. Across from him the evening suit he had borrowed from Merlin the previous night hung neatly over the chair next to the dressing table.
With the quilt round his shoulders, Harry finally climbed out of the bed and looked down into the cobbled courtyard from the tall window. The sun was shining through an open portal at the entrance to the mansion sending a shaft of light along a section of the old Purbeck stone walls. Harry let down the sash window a few inches.
A side door opened somewhere below his third-storey bedroom. Birdsong rang through the opening at the top of the window. Into view across the wet cobbles, shining in the sun from last night's rain walked Barnaby, holding a man by the hand. Slowly the two moved across the cobbles and through the portal into the sun beyond. Even from his third floor window, Harry could sense that something was wrong. The man pulled back his head and made the sound that he recognised as the keening from deep in the house of the night before. The strange sound, almost laughter, stopped, and the big man holding the boy's hand half turned and looked up at Harry clutching his quilt inside the bay of the third floor window.
With the sun shining into the man's face, Harry imagined a knight of old in full armour waiting for his horse. Barnaby, not seeing the brief connection between the two men, tugged at the strong arm and led the big man out past the main gate of Purbeck Manor. For the second time since leaving the train at Corfe Castle, Harry shivered as if a ghost had run over his grave. Then he understood. The man down below was Richard, eldest son of an ancient family, heir to the barony.
