The Captain and the Squire

by Catherine Curzon

  In that moment, as pleasure swept through them, he felt as though they were soaring, weightless, toward heaven. It was the most wonderful, overwhelming experience Tarquin had ever known and to share it with the man he loved made it more perfect than he could ever have imagined.

  Tarquin held Chris tight. “That really was something. Could do with a cup of tea now, couldn’t—what the hell has happened to my room?”

  Tarquin had glanced up from Chris’ shoulder and come face to face with—where could he start? The wallpaper had vanished. The window had gone. The cabinets had disappeared. The room was a third of its size. Weak light came in from above through a dingy, unwashed skylight.

  “Erm… Chris….”

  “You’re all that’s holding me up, Tarks,” Chris said dreamily. “Don’t move too fast.”

  “You know that bit in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy realizes she isn’t in Kansas anymore?” Tarquin asked. “Well…I sort of know how she felt.”

  “I don’t— Oh.” Chris lifted his head and blinked. “Where’s the room gone?”

  “And our clothes!” Tarquin chortled nervously. “I’ve lived in this house all my life and I have no idea… What’s that, over there?”

  Tarquin nodded toward a table. Now his eyes were accustomed to the light, he could see what looked like an ancient wooden table, piled high with paper. And on it, an old-fashioned portable writing desk, like a school desk without any legs. A rickety chair, fit for the lumber room, was tucked under the table. “Are we inside a cupboard? How did we…?”

  “Looks like we’re due a half-naked explore.” He laughed. “Together we’ve got a full outfit at least!”

  Tarquin brought his arm away from Chris’ waist and took his handkerchief from his pocket in an attempt to tidy themselves both up. “There. We’re almost decent, with a torn shirt and a whole shirt, jodhs and a jacket between us!”

  “You should always wear nothing at all,” Chris told him as he pulled his jodhpurs up. “But then every man would be jealous and I’d be fighting off hordes of your adoring fans.”

  “At least it’s quite a long shirt. Sort of like a nightshirt.” Tarquin tugged at the hem. “Erm… I had no idea this room existed. What is it, an office?”

  He stepped carefully from the hearth onto the dusty wooden floorboards, and picked up one of the papers. Tarquin sneezed, which fortunately cleared the dust off the elegant, faded handwriting. “A receipt! For… for… something bought at auction. It’s very old…must be from my grandfather’s time. Blimey, it’s for Sir Francis Drake’s codpiece!”

  “God, I love a secret room!” Chris gave Tarquin’s bottom an opportune tap. “But how the hell did we end up in it?”

  “The fireplace is the same, look. It must’ve rotated.” Tarquin put the receipt down on the pile. “I don’t remember pressing anything. The only secret button I’ve come into contact today was on your person! And you were holding on to the mantelpiece, so no pressing secret buttons for you.”

  “My hands were definitely otherwise engaged!” He patted Tarquin’s behind again. Then he went back to the mantelpiece and gripped it, testing the strength in the structure. He stooped and peered beneath, as though there might be something on the underside. “Seems solid enough.”

  Tarquin squinted in the half-light and shuddered. “Oh, God—there’s only a bloody snake hanging there! Right next to the fireplace! How the hell did—” He chukled awkwardly. “It’s a bell pull! At least we might be able to call for help, although quite frankly I’d rather be wearing trousers in front of our rescuers.”

  “Something must’ve triggered it, there has to be a switch.” Chris braced his hands on the mantelpiece again, approximating the position he’d been standing in when the fireplace moved. Then he shrugged. “Half-naked exploring first, we’ll figure out how to escape after.”

  Chris stepped back on the hearth and, with a loud creak, the chimney breast, fireplace and the man standing on it suddenly began to move. The whole structure turned and rotated, leaving a dumbstruck Tarquin in the small room alone.

  “Found the switch!” Chris called, his voice muffled by the wall that divided them. Then the hearth began to rotate again and there was Chris, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece and Tarquin’s trousers thrown over his arm like a tailor. “And your trousers.”

  He stepped carefully from the hearth then gestured to it with the polished toe of one boot.

  “Try putting your weight just there. You have to step hard into it, but that’s where the switch is.”

  Tarquin tried his heel against the spot, but not hard enough to set it off. “Well, someone was very ingenious! But why? What’s so special about this room that it needs a revolving fireplace? Maybe there might be something in those receipts that needed to be kept secret.”

  Leaving Tarquin to deal with his trousers, Chris began to leaf very gently through the papers. Tarquin fizzed with a collector’s excitement at the thought of what he might find. Had the mysterious PA Pierce ever found this room, when he stayed here all those years ago? Had the notorious advocate for sexual freedom and unashamed pleasure, whether man or woman, straight or gay, stood where he was standing now? Tarquin liked to think so—there was a certain romance in it.

  Tarquin took a handful of the papers and flicked through. “Receipts…receipts… For a delivery of coal, newspapers, an auction catalogue…” Tarquin smudged away the dust from a receipt from a stationers to read it more clearly. “Interesting… My grandad was buying a lot of typewriter ribbon for some reason. What have you got there, Chris?”

  “Receipts.” He shrugged. “Maybe he was buying the ribbon for Pierce during his stay here back in the day? Just think, one of these ribbons might’ve been used in the creation of England’s most saucy and controversial book. The book that shocked the world!” Chris laughed then held up a sheet of paper on which an immaculate copperplate script could be seen in dark red ink. “Look at this, it’s from The New Statesman in 1954. Received from PA Pierce via Beardsley Hardacre. The Secret Study number five, pertaining to the pleasures of pleasure itself, for publication in November. That sounds like a fun read to me!”

  Tarquin slapped Chris’ bottom. “We could write the sequel! I wonder…what’s in here?” He tugged the lid of the writing desk, but it was stuck fast. “Might be some PA Pierce stuff in here, you know! Could be worth quite a bit, but don’t tell you know who!”

  “Locked?” He peered down at the desk, one arm round Tarquin’s waist. “I always had this little dream that there was no Pierce. That it might even be Beardsley. No one ever saw him, did they? He went overseas when they summoned him to the obscenity trial, after all. But I’ve found so much stuff between him and Bea that he had to have existed. Beardsley was just a money man, not a secret artist with a poetic way of writing filth!”

  “But then, who was he? You know pen names and aliases are often similar to the person’s own name, or mean something to them in some…” Tarquin’s words trailed away, his attention fixed on what might be the desk’s keyhole. Except it was small and round, not shaped like an ordinary keyhole at all. Shaped, in fact, rather like a— “Prince Albert Pierce, perhaps?”

  “You don’t think…” Chris looked thoughtful, then widened his eyes and looked around them at the unassuming room. “The Secret Study?”

  Tarquin blinked. “It…it could well be, couldn’t it? An actual, secret study, that one can only find behind a revolving fireplace that once belonged to a royal mistress. The perfect place to hide away and write about terribly saucy things!”

  “We need to know what’s inside that desk, Tarks.”

  “We do.” When Tarquin lifted the desk from the table, something shifted inside it. It was so plain and unassuming, a little scratched here and there and with ancient ink smudges on its wooden surface. “Let’s get out of this room and see what’s inside here. I think I know what might open it.”

  Together they returned to the fireplace and, with much mutual amusement, Chris
deferred to Tarquin when it came to having the honor of operating the concealed switch. He felt almost giddy even without the slow revolve of the chimney breast, the writing desk held before him like an ancient relic and at his side his topless lover, a little reminder of what they had just done.

  Not that Tarquin was likely to forget in a hurry!

  As it turned, Tarquin admired the workings—someone had gone to great effort to construct the secret entrance to the secret study. His grandfather or someone else in the family must have known about it. Had Tarquin’s father?

  Tarquin laid the desk on one of the cabinets. “Chris, you’re going to think I’m bonkers, I know—but… I think the key to this desk is Prince Albert’s PA.”

  Saying it aloud made the idea sound ridiculous and Tarquin grimaced, waiting for Chris to tell him he was a great big daftie.

  “So long as nobody has to wear it, that’s fine by me!” Chris squeezed Tarquin’s shoulder. “Let’s see if you’re right, Scoob!”

  Tarquin pecked Chris’ cheek then, after a steadying deep breath, he took the PA from the safe. His hand trembled as he lifted it from its box. “Someone wanted this PA badly. Beardsley did, and his last fancy still does. If I’m right…”

  Tarquin closed his eyes and slid the little piece of metal into the hole. He wriggled it and turned it, then it got stuck. “Oh, hell, I was wrong. Let me just—” As Tarquin tried to pull it free, he heard a click. He glanced at Chris and saw excitement dancing in his large eyes.

  “Chris, would you like to lift the lid?”

  “Okay, I’m going to sound really silly but…let’s do it together?” He pecked a kiss to Tarquin’s cheek. “It feels right.”

  “Righty-ho!” Tarquin held the lid with Chris. “If all we find in here is an old bus timetable— Ready? After three.”

  Together they counted down then, as one, lifted the lid.

  It was full of paper.

  Tarquin leaned down to look. The edges had been nibbled by a creature of some description, but the typewritten pages seemed to have more or less survived. The same could not be said for the ancient, vulcanized rubber band which held it all together.

  “It’s…it’s a manuscript. A PA Pierce manuscript!” Tarquin stared at it in amazement. “Look at the title—The Ripening of the Swollen Wheat. I haven’t heard of that one! Maybe Madam Fanny’s Floral Pomander started life under a different name?”

  “Great-Uncle B did mention a planned sequel in his papers, but I’m not going to kid myself this is it.” Chris turned the first page. His eyes scanned the words and his smile slowly vanished, replaced by a look of disbelief. He turned the second page and gasped. “This isn’t Madam Fanny, Tarks. This is not what I’ve been reading to Orry every night before she goes to bed.”

  “My word, Chris…this has been moldering in my attic all this time, and I had no idea! Is there anything else in here? Let’s lift it out very carefully.”

  Tarquin placed the pile of typescript on the cabinet, hoping it wouldn’t slide off and spread across the floor. Handwritten notes lay underneath in the desk, and Tarquin picked up the top one. “This is Grandpa’s writing. It’s a challenge to decipher, but… You’re quite right, PA Pierce sounds better than Bunbury Bough. Yes—his name was Bunbury! Granny called him Bunny, although not in company, you understand.”

  But Chris was reading the typewritten pages again. He blinked and murmured, “If Bunny was PA Pierce, then Bunny had a thing for riding crops. Just like Tarkers.”

  “Wait—Bunny was PA Pierce?” Tarquin shook his head in disbelief. “Grandpa? But he was a lovely old chap, he—well, he had quite a filthy laugh after a few brandies, but… And Grandma was a dear old lady. She…” Tarquin read over the letter again.

  “Dear Beardsley, I’m glad you enjoyed Madam Fanny as much as I. What a thing for a quiet country squire like me to write! Can’t have all that thrusting nonsense published under my real name though. Wouldn’t like to shock the locals! You’re quite right, PA Pierce sounds better than Bunbury Bough.”

  Grandpa Bunny had written raunchy stories. And no one except Beardsley had ever known.

  “So…” Chris’ smile grew into a grin. “All those investigative journos, those explorers and nosey parkers who’ve spent thousands chasing PA Pierce sightings across the tropics… He was here all along? PA Pierce didn’t flee the obscenity trial at all, did he? He just got that bloody old shyster Beardsley to put it about that he had! And the coppers went to the Caribbean to winkle him out while Bea and Bunny drank champers and congratulated themselves on a con well done in Bough Bottoms!”

  “What a bloody pair!” Tarquin said. “Do you think Beardsley knew about this writing desk opening with the PA? Hence the pen name. I don’t wish to call your late uncle a thief, but when the PA vanished from the collection…do you think it could’ve been Beardsley? That he’d need it to open the desk, if a chisel and screwdriver weren’t to hand, so he took an opportunity—and there would’ve been many, seeing as he was only next door—and nabbed it. Maybe someone stole it from him, which would serve him right—one of his many mistresses—and that’s how it ended up at auction?”

  “And that’s when the Boughs and the Hardacres really fell out?” Chris tipped his head to one side. “Because Bea, who was interested in sex and cash and not much else, wanted to publish the sequel and Bunny preferred the anonymous, quiet life? So he took to his Secret Study essays and left Uncle Bea so near and yet so far from the sequel he knew existed. It would’ve made him even richer than he already was! That’s why Bea hated you and your dad and your grandpa, the nasty old bugger!”

  “It all makes sense now! And Beardsley must’ve told his last fancy about it, too. Well, they won’t be getting hold of it now.” Tarquin stroked the cover page. What a saucy old chap his grandfather had been. “This novel must be worth a fortune. I’ll have to get some advice…confidential… There might be other Pierce writings among those receipts. But I’m not asking Bryan, the dodgy git. And we have to keep it a secret, we have to keep Bunny’s pen name if someone wants to publish this—he didn’t want anyone to know what he wrote, and we should respect his wishes.”

  “Absolutely,” Chris assured him. “Don’t worry, Tarks, I’m not Great-Uncle Beardsley.”

  Tarquin slipped his arm around Chris. “He’d never have looked that good without his shirt on!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tarquin held Chris’ hand as they headed to the boathouse. “Lovely day for the race!”

  “Sure you’re all right about coming out like this?” Chris squeezed his hand. “I got the impression at training this morning that Longfellow’s put the word around. A few knowing looks, nothing nasty.”

  “I can cope with that.” Tarquin beamed. “I’m not going to announce it over a loudhailer, but I love you, and I want to hold your hand, and if we get strange glances from people, that’s their lookout, not ours.”

  They strolled along the riverbank, greeting the villagers who were beginning to gather and who, if they were surprised to see the squire and the captain hand in hand, thought better of saying it. But perhaps it had been obvious from the start. Mrs. Longfellow had seen it, so maybe she hadn’t been the only one. Behind the couple trailed the Oracle. A ribbon in Bough Bottoms’ blue was tied around her neck, and she paused now and then for photographs, as gracious as she was fondly received.

  “Right.” Chris took a deep breath as the boatshed drew closer. “This is where I have to say adieu!”

  Tarquin kissed Chris’ cheek. “And this is where I say, Give Aubrey Reeve a pasting!”

  “I intend to. He won’t nobble me again!” Chris put his arms around Tarquin and held him close. “Love you.”

  “Now that’s adorable!”

  Tarquin and Chris both looked round to see Shobna, waiting with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face.

  “No smooching before the race, captain!” She gave them a wink. “But you’ve got as much time as you like afterward.”


  “When we win, you mean?” Chris grinned. “Let’s go and get the team whipped into shape, shall we? Bring that trophy home.”

  Shobna clenched her fist. “It’s ours!”

  “Look after your dad, Orry.” Chris stooped to pat her head. “And give us a cheer as we go past.”

  With another hug for Tarquin, Chris followed Shobna into the boatshed and a moment later, Tarquin heard a cheer go up as the captain arrived. The sound warmed his heart and he beamed at the Oracle, who gave a happy oink. Now all there was to do was amble and wait and no doubt indulge in a bit of squirely chat with the locals.

  He was just a few minutes into his happy patrol when a hand landed on his shoulder and a horribly familiar voice said, “Tarquin?”

  Oh God, no—not you!

  But lo and behold, it was Petunia. Tarquin tightened his hold on the Oracle’s harness and gave his former fiancée a curt nod. “Petunia. How do you do?”

  “Can I have five minutes?” She fluttered her eyelashes. “Somewhere quieter? I just need a little chat.”

  “I don’t see why not—although do I need to frisk you for firearms?” Tarquin raised an eyebrow in warning, and the Oracle gave an annoyed squeal. Petunia’s smile looked almost painful and she led them away from the throng, many of whom were already beginning to unpack tasty-looking picnics, ready for the big moment.

  “We’ve had some artifacts at the sale room, from overseas,” she explained. “And one of them was sold to Mr. Longfellow. And he gave it to you and you called the police. Why would you do that?”