‘Right, well, Polly, I’m so sorry. It’s a madhouse here, as you’ve probably already gathered. Did you meet my parents?’
‘Yes, your father was outside with his dog, and your mother was in the kitchen, looking for her trousers.’
‘And here I am, looking for my socks. What a shambles we all are.’ He pushed his hair to the side again. ‘You look superb anyway. Have you been out shooting before?’
I looked down at my tweed self-consciously. ‘Oh, thanks. And no, I haven’t.’
Jasper started doing up his shirt. ‘Well, give me two seconds and, socks permitting, we can be on our way. How are you with dogs by the way?’
‘With them?’
‘Do you mind them? Do you like them?’
‘Oh, no… I mean, yes. I love them. I’ve grown up with them. My mother has a small terrier called Bertie.’
‘How sweet. Mine is an abominably badly behaved Labrador called Bovril. Do you mind being in charge of him today while I shoot? I’ll tell you where to stand and all that.’
‘Sure. No problem. What about the interview though?’
‘What interview?’
‘Well, I need to sit down with you at some point and chat about, you know, the pictures in the paper and…’ I trail off, nervously.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that, we’ll have acres of time tonight over dinner. Now, let’s go and find these socks.’
An hour later, I was standing behind Jasper in a field on the side of a steep hill, holding on to Bovril’s lead with one hand, and my hat with the other. There were five other men spread out along the field, each holding a gun, each with a woman standing dutifully behind them, also holding some colour of Labrador on a lead. The wind was blowing odd noises towards us from a wood at the bottom of the field, some sort of weird warbling and the sound of crashing footsteps through thick undergrowth.
‘What is that?’ I asked Jasper.
He didn’t reply.
‘Jasper?’ I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked around. ‘What’s… that… noise?’ I mouthed slowly at him and pointed at the trees.
‘Hang on.’ He reached into his ear and pulled out an orange earplug. ‘What?’
‘Sorry. I just wasn’t sure what the noise was.’
‘It’s the beaters. They’re…’
‘What are beaters?’
‘They’re the people who flush the birds out. And they’re down there, in the woods, walking towards us from the other side to flush out the birds, to make them fly over us. Then… bang. See?’
It didn’t seem very fair, a load of people hollering in a forest, trying to make the pheasants fly towards a line of armed men standing on a hill. Beside me, Bovril yawned and lay down. I fished in my pocket for my phone, my hands already numb from the cold. ‘Beaters people who chase birds,’ I tapped into my notes with stiff fingers. ‘Jasper has dog called Bovril. Duchess mad, stuffs all family pets.’
A sudden, loud bang to the right made me jump so I slid my phone back into my pocket and looked up in the air to see a pheasant whirling in small circles towards the ground. It hit the grass with a thud. Bovril looked at it, then looked up at me, then whined.
I jumped again as Jasper’s gun went off. The smell of gunpowder floated through the air and there was another thud behind us as that pheasant tumbled to the ground.
‘Let Bovril off his lead, will you?’ instructed Jasper, eyes still on the sky as if scanning for the Luftwaffe.
Bovril, pleased to be free, bounded towards the dead pheasant, picked it up by the neck, and trotted obediently back, dropping it on my boot. I looked down at it and inched my foot away, uncertain of Jimmy Choo’s policy on accepting back boots which had pheasant blood on them. Frowned upon, probably.
The sound of gunshots rang out. Suddenly, dozens of birds were flying out from the wood. I clapped my hands over my ears and looked up into the sky. Pheasants poured overhead as the shooting continued, some tumbling from the sky like stones, some flying straight on over the hedge behind them. I’d keep flying if I were you, I willed them, keep going until you get to somewhere nice and warm, like Africa.
Jasper muttered the odd ‘fuck’ and a small pile of empty red cartridges piled up behind him. Bovril, meanwhile, galloped back and forth, fetching pheasants and proudly creating a pile at my feet. Some were still twitching, which made me grimace. Urgh, what was I doing standing in this cold field? All I wanted was to sit down with Jasper and get the interview done.
A whistle blew and Jasper put down his gun. ‘Well, that wasn’t too bad, was it? Must have been sixty or so birds that came out of there.’
Poor things, I wanted to say. ‘Hmm,’ I said instead. ‘How long have you been doing it?’
‘Since I was six.’
‘Six? I was still learning to tell the time when I was six.’
‘Dad started me pretty early. Right, come on. Another drive, then it’s elevenses.’
‘Drive? In a car?’ I was hopeful about warming up.
‘No, no, you appalling townie. That’s what we’re on now. A “drive” is this, standing around in a field waiting for birds to be driven towards us. So, we’ve got one more, then elevenses, then probably another couple, then lunch, then maybe two more drives after that depending on the light.’
The day stretched before me. My fingers had gone white from the cold and my feet were presumably the same colour despite being wrapped in scratchy woollen socks. It would serve Peregrine right if I succumbed to frostbite while shooting in Yorkshire.
Lunch was back in the castle, in a room with the heads of dead animals looking down at us. Stag heads staring glassily out in front of them, snarling fox heads, a zebra head, a warthog head, the head of something else that looked like a deer but had curling horns. I stared at them. You never saw zebra heads on 60 Minute Makeover.
‘We killed the last journalist who came to stay with us,’ said a voice behind me. I turned around. It was the Duke. ‘Only joking,’ he said, before I had the chance to reply.
‘Now, come on, everybody sit,’ he ordered.
I was sitting between a man who was wearing bright yellow socks with his tweed outfit, called Barny, and another guest called Max. Barny, I learned, was actually called Barnaby and he was fifty-first in line to the throne. He didn’t have a job, but lived at the family estate in Gloucestershire and spent his time shooting. When he wasn’t shooting, he told me, he was fishing or horse racing.
‘Oh,’ I said, starting to run out of small talk. He seemed obsessed with killing things. ‘So do you travel much?’
‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘going abroad is ghastly. Apart from the Alps. I go skiing three or four times a year. I’d like to go hunting tigers in India, but they’re making it very tricky to do that these days.’
‘Barny, you can’t say that sort of thing,’ said Max, joining the conversation. ‘Polly, I’m so sorry. Barny is completely appalling, but we’ve all been friends since school and we can’t seem to shake him off.’
‘How rude,’ said Barny. ‘No shooting invitation for you this year, Maximillian.’
‘You see, Polly? Barny blackmails us into being friends with him. Tragic.’
I looked along to Jasper, positioned at the head of the table, with two blondes sitting either side and smiling at him in an adoring fashion. His ideal habitat, I suspected. He’d loosened the collar around his neck and was leaning forwards on the table, telling them some story. He reached for a bottle in front of him and topped up both their glasses while still talking, then put the bottle back and looked down the table at me. He caught my eye and winked. Please, I thought, I’m not that easy.
I turned to Max, sensing if not an ally then at least someone I might be able to hold a conversation with, and asked him about the others. ‘Max,’ I began, ‘who is everyone else here? I mean, obviously, I know about Jasper and his family. But I’m not sure about anyone else. Do you know them all?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, folding his napkin and putti
ng it on the table.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, just poor you. Having to come to this. Do we all seem totally absurd?’ Max asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. ‘No,’ I said after a pause. ‘I’m just trying to gauge who everybody is.’
‘OK, let me talk you through them all. So, next to Jasper’s father is Willy Naseby-Dawson, she’s…’
I looked at the blonde girl again. ‘Why’s she called Willy if she’s a girl?’
‘Short for Wilhelmina. She’s from a German family, she’s Barny’s wife. Poor thing. And then on her other side is Archie Spiffington, who’s married to the girl Barny’s talking to now, Jessica. They got married last year because she was pregnant – her father was very upset at that and insisted on them getting hitched. Her family’s disgustingly rich. Her great-great-grandfather invented the railway or something. Anyway, big wedding in London, then six months later along comes their son Ludo, who’s now about seven months, I think. I’m the godfather.’
‘Oh, sweet, where’s Ludo?’
‘No idea, with the nanny in London probably. And then, on Jessica’s other side is Seb – Sebastian, Lord Ullswater. He’s a fairly dubious character who used to be in the Army and now sells weapons to anyone who’ll buy them. And he’s married to that girl on the other side of Jasper, the girl on my right, who’s called Muffy.’
‘And what about you?’ I asked him.
‘What do you mean, what about me?’
‘Are you married?’
Max threw his head back and laughed. ‘I’m gay, my darling. Can you not tell because I’m wearing such manly trousers?’
‘Oh, right,’ I said, blushing. ‘Although, you could still get married.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ he said, nodding.
‘Have you got a boyfriend?’
‘No. Not terribly good with boyfriends.’
‘Max,’ said Barny, from my other side. ‘None of us want to hear about your love life over pudding.’
‘I wish there was one, Barny, old boy. But it’s been slow-going of late.’
‘You should meet my flatmate, Joe,’ I said to Max. ‘You’re just his type.’
‘Oh really? What’s his type?’
‘Well, actually, quite wide ranging, I’d say. But dark, handsome and funny. And you’re all of those.’
‘Right,’ bellowed the Duke from the other end of the room, slamming his fists down on the table. ‘Finish up your pudding and let’s get going.’
‘Come on then,’ Max said to me. Then he called down the table, ‘Jasper, I’m stealing Polly to stand with me this afternoon. Violet, why don’t you go with your brother? I need to talk to Polly about her flatmate.’
Jasper’s sister. I’d barely noticed the woman sitting three to my left. She seemed much quieter than her talkative brother.
‘Fine by me,’ said Violet, carefully putting her napkin back on the table. ‘If anyone wants to borrow another layer then shout, it looks like rain this afternoon.’
It started raining while I stood behind Max waiting for the shooting to start again. Having defrosted enough to handle a knife and fork over lunch, my hands were stiff with cold again. Max stood, gun slung over his arm, cigarette dangling from his lips.
‘You all right?’ He glanced back at me.
‘Yes, yes, fine. Who needs hands anyway?’
‘You going back to London after this?’
‘No, I’m staying tonight. I haven’t had my interview with Jasper yet.’
He exhaled smoke into the air. ‘That’s brave. Have you talked much to their Graces?’
‘Who?’
‘The Duke and Duchess.’
‘No, not really.’ I squinted in the distance to see the Duke standing at the other end of the field. The Duchess had announced after lunch that she wasn’t coming out that afternoon because she had work to do in her hen house.
‘They’re barking,’ said Max, grinding his cigarette out in the mud with his boot. ‘Truly barking.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
‘Which is why Jasper is a bit… complicated sometimes.’
‘You’ve known him for ever?’
He nodded again. ‘We were at prep school together. Then the same house at Eton, until he got kicked out. Then Edinburgh University.’ He paused. ‘He’s been a good friend. Stood up for me at school when I came out. Not that my sexuality was a huge surprise to anyone. I mean, darling, look at me!’
I laughed. Max was wearing tweed, but also pink socks, a pink shirt, a yellow tie and a pink beanie.
‘So, he’s been a good friend,’ he carried on. ‘And, I know we all get a bit carried away sometimes…’
‘Carried away?’
‘Those pictures, after he broke up with Caz, are a case in point.’ Max raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Anyway, Jasper knows exactly who told the papers he’d broken it off with her, who told the photographers where he was that night. But he’s not going to say anything. He’s too honourable.’
There was a bang down the line and a pheasant dropped through the air towards the ground. ‘Right, here we go again. Time to concentrate,’ said Max, turning round and lifting his gun.
Back at the castle there was tea. The sort of tea you read about in a Dickens novel. Sandwiches, sausage rolls, fruitcake, shortbread, tea in actual teapots. Also, port. Port! In miniature wine glasses! Joe and I put away a couple of cheap bottles of Pinot Grigio from Barbara’s shop almost every night, but we didn’t drink as much as this lot. The Duke’s blood must be 93 per cent alcohol, I reckoned, watching him drain another glass of the syrupy red liquid.
After half an hour or so of standing on the fringes of the drawing room, defrosting my hands yet again on a teacup, Jasper’s friends started leaving and I snuck out gratefully to my room. I then ran a hot bath with a good few slugs from an ancient-looking bottle of hyacinth bath oil I found in the bathroom cupboard. Sylvia Plath once said that a hot bath cured everything, which I’d always thought slightly ironic, because poor Sylvia then went and killed herself. But I needed a bath to help collect my thoughts. The evening dinner promised to be a sort of cross between Downton Abbey and Coronation Street, while everyone politely ate their soup. Or drank their soup. What does one do with soup? Anyway, everyone would be doing something with their soup and discussing the day while bad tempers seethed underneath. Maybe soup would be thrown.
Because nobody in this house, this castle, rather, seemed able to move without some form of alcohol in their hand, Ian had sent me upstairs with something called a ‘hot toddy’. A few fingers of whisky, some hot water and a teaspoon or so of honey, he’d explained. ‘It’ll warm you up,’ he’d said.
I swirled it around in its glass, splashing hot, oily water over the side of the bath. It burned my throat going down.
My phone suddenly vibrated on the bed, so I climbed out of the bath, wrapped myself in a scratchy towel, picked it up and lay – steaming – on the narrow little mattress. It was Lala again.
How’s it going, Pols? Do you like Jaz? Send my love to everyone. Don’t forget the make-up thing Xxxx
I quickly typed out a reply.
All good, don’t worry. I’ll report back on Monday xxxx
Still hot and damp from the bath, I then stood up to heave myself into the floor-length dress Legs and Lala had insisted I wear. No tights, because they were common apparently. I looked in the full-length mirror. A ropey Twenties flapper girl looked back at me. But it would have to do. And somehow I needed to walk downstairs in the ridiculous heels they’d given me, so high they looked like they might give me vertigo.
I picked up my phone again and checked the time. Nearly seven o’clock. I needed to find the drawing room where Ian had told me the family gathered for drinks. More drinks! And I still hadn’t sat down to interview Jasper yet. I’d scribbled some more notes on my phone – his penchant for Van Morrison, his habit of constantly brushing his hair from his eyes, Max’s comment about him being ‘honourable’ �
�� but I needed Jasper on record about his relationships. I needed him to open up a bit. I couldn’t come all this way and report back to Peregrine with so little. Maybe more drinks would help, I thought, as I closed the bedroom door behind me and inched down the stairs like a wobbly drunk, clutching at the banister. A grandfather clock ticked gently from below, but otherwise the house was silent. Ian’s instructions for finding the drawing room had been along these lines: ‘Come downstairs, turn left and walk fifty yards down the corridor, turn right into another corridor, click your heels three times and the drawing room will be on your right-hand side.’
The sound of smashing glass, followed by a high-pitched scream gave me a clue. It was exactly the sort of high-pitched scream that might come from an angry and potentially violent duchess.
‘WE ARE ALL HAVING FUCKING DINNER TOGETHER, ELEANOR, I MEAN IT.’
Another high-pitched scream. I froze outside the door. Rude to walk in on a row. But quite rude to stand out here listening to it, also. I wondered if I should hobble back upstairs again. But I could already feel a blister coming up on my little toe from those wretched heels. I was hovering like this in the hall, as if playing a private game of musical statues, when I heard a small cough behind me.
‘Polly, there you are,’ said Ian. ‘Follow me and let’s get you another drink.’ He swept past, carrying a silver tray with several Martini glasses on it.
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely, nothing to worry about,’ he said, pushing the door open.
The Duchess was standing beside the fireplace, still in her shooting clothes. The Duke was sitting in a large red armchair. Inca walked towards me and shoved his wet nose into my crotch.
‘Do get your bloody dog to behave,’ said the Duchess, huffily.
‘That’s all right,’ I said, brushing smears from Inca’s wet nose off the three-thousand-pound dress.
‘Very kind of you to dress so wonderfully, Polly, but we’re terribly relaxed here,’ said the Duke, who was wearing a blue shirt and electric red cords with a pair of velvet slippers. ‘Ian, what are we having for dinner?’
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