A Mansion and its Murder (11 page)

Her manner seemed to take on a degree of caginess.

‘How would I know? Maybe she came into some money.’

‘She doesn’t have rich relatives. Anyway, she would have told me. We talk about things like
that … Robert says the money came from my family.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘That sort of generosity doesn’t sound like them.’

‘The Fearings are not “them”, they’re “us” to you, Miss Sarah. And you won’t hear many below stairs complaining about them.’

‘I know that. But if they – we – handed out a big sum like that must have been to anyone we’d employed, it would generally be a quid pro quo.’

‘Don’t be throwing those foreign tongues at me, Miss Sarah.’ It was a common complaint with Bea, but it sounded like a dodging tactic.

‘I mean, we don’t generally give anything for nothing.’

‘Not many people do.’

‘Maybe not. And I suppose we wouldn’t be bankers if we did … What do they say in the servants’ hall happened on the night Uncle Frank went away?’

‘What do you bring that up for?’

‘I want to know. You know how I loved Uncle Frank.’

She looked down at her lap, or her rounded belly.

‘They say there was some kind of … of
violence, like … and Mr Frank had to leave double quick.’

‘I see. What kind of violence?’

‘Nobody knows. But the family took it so serious they wouldn’t have nothing more to do with him, not ever. Like maybe he hit his wife.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said sceptically. ‘I admire them for taking it so seriously if it was that. I’ve never heard of any trouble from the Coverdales about it.’

‘Happen it was all hushed up. But I’ll tell you what else they say.’

‘What?’

‘They say it’s something better not talked about, better not looked into. There’s something of that sort in all families, as you’d know if you were a bit older and a bit more knowledgeable in the ways of the world. Let sleeping dogs lie – homely advice, but good.’

I think in the long run her homely advice influenced me. I was beginning not to forget Uncle Frank, but to get over his loss. I was starting to think about going up to Cambridge, and about what I was to do after that. And I suppose this accounts for the fact that my pursuit of the truth of Uncle Frank’s death was distinctly desultory and unsuccessful, even when I was
head of the Fearings and mistress of Blakemere. I had my own life to lead, and it was a life that involved many hard decisions.

Alas, I missed entirely Bea’s oblique allusion to herself in what she said, and to her own marriage. Not that I could have done anything about that when Bea put up with it so uncomplainingly for the sake of the children. I made one more attempt at that time – my seventeenth year – to find out the truth about That Night. It was in the entrance hall at Bankside School, and I had just arrived from Blakemere. By now Robert and I were firm friends, and I often gave him little snippets of news from his old home, about the people there.

‘Papa was very thoughtful at breakfast today,’ I said.

‘Oh, dear, Miss Sarah. Not trouble at the Bank, I hope.’

‘No, it couldn’t be. Papa was there yesterday. He got a letter with a foreign stamp on it. I think it must have been from Uncle Frank.’

Robert jumped a fraction, then with an effort resumed his calm passivity.

‘I didn’t know your uncle still kept in touch with his family.’

‘Nor did I. I didn’t like to ask Papa about it.
Is it true Uncle Frank went to Australia, Robert?’

‘Of course it is, Miss Sarah. He was unhappy in his marriage and he went to Australia. You were told about that, I’m sure. Why do you ask me? I was just a servant at Blakemere.’

‘Servants often know more than family – especially young people like me.’

‘Well, I only know what I was told. Your uncle is in Australia. It’s a long, long way away, Miss Sarah. I shouldn’t bank on him ever coming back if I were you.’

That was all I got out of him. Robert was always splendidly impassive. If those last words were a coded message, it was one he could easily deny: I was jumping to conclusions like any silly girl was apt to. It was very seldom, in all the years I knew him, those years of my friendship with Edith and him, that I got anything of substance out of him.

I thought about these things on the way home from visiting poor Edith. How lucky Robert was, to have died first, though the younger. And how Edith would have hated being in her present condition, if she could be conscious of it. Would we in this country, I wondered, ever legalise euthanasia?

At the gatehouse there were boxes from
London. I was in for a hard, boring evening. There was also a letter from cousin Digby Fearing at the Bank: long and dry about banking matters, with some personal details at the end. He has a dull, loving wife and two children, of whom the boy is promising to be a high-flyer in the Conservative Party (‘I shouldn’t say this to you, but …’). To blow the cobwebs away before putting a meal together and then getting down to work I decided to take the dogs for their walk – indeed, my relationship with them is such that I had no choice: humans I can command, and have done so from a quite early age; dogs I obey.

I had nearly used up my petrol ration, so we went the familiar way up to the house. That monstrous, sprawling bulk with all its innumerable windows securely boarded up is an almost frightening sight – if one notices. I hardly do. Blakemere, in one state or another, has always been
there
in my life. To the dogs it just seems something to go
around
– a monstrous obstacle between smells and more smells. Lizzie, the old dog, has forgotten she ever lived there, and is infinitely happier in the smaller, cosier, warmer gatehouse. Ernie, the younger but fatter dog, has never been inside.

Meditating on this blind hulk in the midst of
a vibrant landscape rich in wildlife, thrilling for the dogs, I realise that Blakemere is now dead. By the locals it is not forgotten, but it is discounted: it is no longer of any moment. It is as dead as Uncle Frank, who someone, somehow, killed in the red sitting room and buried in the little wood which I could see in the distance, basking in the late sunlight over on the horizon.

To go up to Cambridge in 1898 was to enter an institution where women were accepted but unwanted. They themselves were so aware of this, so desperate to be wanted and valued, that the college principals and academics fenced girls in with so many rules and prohibitions that they were hard put to find a way off the rails even when they had a mind to it.

Nevertheless, for me it was liberation.

It was no more family, no more Blakemere. But it was more positive than that as well: it was friends who were my intellectual equals, it was teachers who were penetrating thinkers (some – and the ones who were not, I avoided), it was
sitting in libraries and it was going shopping, it was attending exciting new plays at theatres, it was singing in the college choir, it was circumventing regulations and, just occasionally, talking to a man about men’s matters without his displaying condescension or surprise.

When the end of my first term approached I sent a note to Mrs Merton, the Blakemere housekeeper, telling her when I would be arriving back. When the end of my second term came near, as an experiment, I wrote a note to my father, ending it ‘Your loving daughter Sarah.’ Somewhat to my surprise I received a reply. It was a hand-tinted postcard of one of the stars of the Doyly Carte Opera, typewritten on the back, doubtless by one of the Bank’s secretaries – a new breed of employee, representing a new if subservient role for women. The note read:

The postcard, which my father seemed to have written as if he was composing a telegram, was enclosed in a conventional bank envelope. As the picture represented the star dancing a cachucha, fandango, or bolero with lots of frilly skirts it would otherwise have caused scandal at Newnham. My papa obviously understood these things better than I would have given him credit for. I replied:

Sadly I could find no postcard even mildly risqué in Cambridge. This could well be because I did not know where to look. I sent one of young men in boaters punting on the Backs.

My relationship with my father, you will have realised, was changing. Now I was on the verge of being ‘grown up’ he began to value my company, talked to me a lot, introduced me with pride to Blakemere’s guests. It was not till my Cambridge years were over, however, that he would use phrases of introduction such as ‘The future head of the family’, or ‘the future mistress
of Blakemere’, or even ‘the future head of Fearing’s Bank’. That, at the turn of the century, was an idea that few could take in – few men, that is, and not a great many more women. We forget, these days, how many prominent women there were foolish enough even to oppose female suffrage.

Actually they are still around. They are the sort of women who in the war opposed the Land Army, and found its women workers unwomanly and reprehensible.

Aunt Jane remained hostess at Blakemere, and I only stepped in during her occasional illness. It was not a role I coveted, though I relished many of my encounters with politicians: it was the age of Balfour, but also of Lloyd George – he being a coming man, and therefore courted by Fearing’s Bank in spite of his lowly origins and dubious moral character.

But my vacations at Blakemere meant, above all, Richard. He was at home permanently now, and in the charge of Bertha, the slow but loving housemaid, newly promoted and properly paid, and taking wonderful and constant care of him. Richard was growing up: physically the process was unmistakable, mentally it was less so. He had long periods of contented lethargy,
broken by spells of joy, activity, simple pleasure in people and things around him. He loved me unreservedly (was he the first human being to do so?), and in return I made him one of the centres of my universe. He was a person for whom one could only make the simplest of plans, and that was indeed a happiness and a relief. There had always been too much plotting and planning, too much trying to nudge Providence, at Blakemere. We were never content to lie back in the water and let the wave take us. Even my father was not immune to this family trait.

‘Who do you anticipate inheriting Blakemere if you have no family?’ he asked me one day, when I was indulging in a fashionable feminist diatribe against men.

I shrugged. ‘Probably one of Cousin Anselm’s sons,’ I said. ‘I can’t see one of Clare’s taking over, can you?’

Aunt Clare’s (wholly delightful) collection of sons were beginning rackety careers that included music-hall performing, ballooning, commercial travelling, on-course bookmaking, and dabbling in dubious transactions that led to prudent and hurried emigration. Aunt Clare and Uncle Alfred were burnt to death two years later in a fire at their home-cum-studio, in which an awful lot of
bad paintings were also destroyed. They were buried in Chelsea, rather than in the newish Fearing family vault in Wentwood Church.

‘Yes,’ my father nodded, ‘it does look as if it will all have to come to one of them. And Digby seems a lot more reliable than his father. But I hope you’ll get married.’

‘I haven’t worked out my attitude to men yet,’ I said, as if the world was waiting. ‘If only I could find myself a young man like Uncle Frank.’

‘I blame myself about Frank,’ said my father, after a pause.

That was all he said, and something in the set of his shoulders told me to pursue the subject no further that day. I did approach the subject of Frank now and then with my father, but this was the closest I ever got to a statement of his share in the responsibility. I got no details ever of the last night Frank spent at Blakemere, or anything beyond the family line about where he was. My father registered my curiosity, but never satisfied it. One day over breakfast – a meal we generally shared alone – he read a letter, then pocketed it, saying, ‘That was from your aunt Mary. Funny woman. She seems to repel sympathy.’

I agreed with
that
wholeheartedly.

‘What is she doing?’

‘Looking after an aged relative in Dumfries. Doesn’t need to – gets a splendid annual income from us. Wants to be a martyr, I suppose. Bit of a hypochondriac, too.’

‘Like Mama.’

‘Yes, like your mother. Though that went well beyond hypochondria.’

If I had not then worked out my attitude to men, I soon began to do so. One of the pleasures of being at Cambridge was that occasionally, usually at the beginning or the end of term, I could spend a weekend with my grandmother in London, doing the things she loved and wanted me to love too: going to plays, galleries, and museums, holding or going to intimate dinners (so different from Blakemere’s dinners) where a few intelligent people discussed topics of current interest. My grandmother, I sensed, had bloomed, and was enjoying life more than ever before. When I was in my last year at Cambridge she proposed that I should spend a week or ten days with her at Easter in the south of France: a party was going from Bankside School, she said, so Edith Beale could be my chaperone on the journey. The girls and their headmistress would be staying at a small pensionnat in Nice, but I would of course stay with her. I was overjoyed,
and I think felt just a little flattered.

I joined the party at Waterloo. The girls were loomed over and shepherded by Robert, now becoming portly, but immensely intimidating should intrusion or impertinence threaten the little party. Edith, too, was putting on weight, but she was the respectable and efficient school principal to the life. How long ago it seemed, when I had listened to Robert’s footsteps in the corridor outside our bedrooms, and how the twelve young ladies in the party would have enjoyed hearing about it!

‘Sarah!’ said Edith, kissing me. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again – and looking so well.’

I shook hands with Robert and was introduced to all of the girls. I was a little ashamed to admit that this was just as big an adventure for me as it was for them, so I assumed a world-wise pose, and it was only as we were going through Customs at Dover that I wondered whether the pose would survive my first experience of sea travel.

By a miracle it did. I experienced no discomfort at all. It has always been a great joy to me – even, foolishly, a pride – that I can keep my stomach when all around are losing theirs. It was when most of the girls were below deck,
suffering grievously, or foolishly pretending to, that on the breezy deck in weak sunshine a young man approached me.

‘It is a beautiful day, is it not?’

A young Frenchman! Heaven! The traditional trap for the virginal English girl. I saw Robert moving away from his wife, who was looking queasy, and coming to stand close by.

‘Quite perfect for a sea trip.’

‘Mademoiselle does not suffer from seaillness?’

‘Sea-sickness,’ I said, before I could stop myself. I had foreign friends at Cambridge who always wanted their English corrected. The man just nodded. ‘No, I don’t. It’s a great boon to have that sort of constitution.’

‘You are going to Paris?’

‘To the south – Nice. And you?’

This last question, I’ll have you know, was very forward, even brash, for a young lady at the turn of the century: one did not question a young man about himself.

‘To Marseilles. And yours – it is a pleasure trip?’

‘Purely pleasure. And yours?’

‘One does not go to Marseilles for pleasure.’

I smiled, he murmured, ‘Charles de Maurras,
at your service, mademoiselle,’ and removed himself to another part of the deck. I think, in retrospect, I should have asked myself why he had not asked my name. In retrospect, I think it was because he already knew it.

He was there again when we got to the Gare St Lazare, and we talked while Robert was busy with porters and luggage, and while Edith, though nearby, was occupied with shepherding her flock and answering their questions. Her flock’s eyes were mostly on me, instinct with curiosity, and I suspect that many of their questions to her and affectations of nervousness were designed to keep their headmistress’s attention elsewhere than on us. Girls had to stick together in those days.

He told me he was in the cotton trade, was returning from Bolton and Burnley, where he had business, and now had to report back to his Marseilles firm before he could hope for a few days’ holiday. He asked my name, perhaps realising his earlier mistake, asked why I was travelling with a school party when I was clearly beyond school age, expressed wonderment that I was studying at the world-renowned University of Kembritch. When Robert had sorted out the matter of the luggage he engaged the young man
in conversation for a minute or two, but soon M. de Maurras bowed and left to catch a different train.

He appeared in Nice on our second day there.

I realise I am relating an incident wholly predictable, one irrelevant to the matter in hand, except in so far as I figure in it. I am telling it to you simply because it was a determining incident in my life. There were also matters of some interest as side issues, in particular the attitude and behaviour of Edith and Robert.

It had been tacitly assumed that I would, when not with my grandmama, go around with the school party and receive the extremely efficient chaperonage that they were given. With the reappearance of Charles de Maurras (the ‘de’ was self-assumed, I feel quite sure) the situation tacitly changed. He came up to us on a visit to an art gallery, and engaged not just me but Edith and Robert in conversation. By the time the gallery visit ended we had an assignation for the next day. I told Edith I was engaged with Grandmama, and she made no attempt to verify the assertion. From then on she and Robert turned a blind eye to what was going on, though they certainly saw us around.

What was their motive in this? It is possible
that Charles slipped them some money, but I doubt it: they had no need of it, and if it were found out, it would ruin their relationship with the family and probably destroy their school. I think they decided I was twenty-one, and it was time I was initiated into a side of life from which they themselves derived unashamed pleasure. I think they thought it was time I began the process of deciding what place what we today simply call sex was to have in my life. If so, the decision came quicker than they could have anticipated.

It was after our second session in a hotel bedroom – seedier than I was used to, but not the less exciting for that, at least first time round – when, after that all-purpose word sex, and after thanks and endearments, Charles began talking about banks and money with considerably more interest and enthusiasm than he ever could muster about me, that I made up my mind.

‘I must go,’ I said, and got up and began dressing.

‘Tomorrow,
ma chère
? Two o’clock?’

I nodded. I think by the time I let myself out of the shabby room he had registered my lack of enthusiasm, so it may have been small surprise to him when I did not appear in our usual meeting place at two o’clock. I never saw him again. He
later went into politics, and had a minor ministry in the Petain government. We didn’t bother to shoot him, so he is probably even now preparing the way for a return to political life. How odd if we should meet officially!

My grandmother, for the rest of my stay, had the pleasure of a great deal of my company, probably rather more than she wished for. Sometimes, though, usually in the early evenings, I would take myself off and walk on the promenade or on the beach. I thought about men, and though I did not decide to forswear them entirely, I did decide they were to have no more than a marginal place in my life. Sex was pleasant enough – no more. Not something to give up my controlling interest in myself for.

Which left me with – what?

One possible answer was the Bank and the house. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I had got, or would get in the future, if I accepted it. It may seem like an odd choice, but remember there were many women who would count me lucky beyond belief to have such wealth, and the possibility of such a fascinating occupation. And by heading Fearing’s Bank, even if only by inheritance, I could blaze a trail for other women. I still thought, you notice, in
the metaphors of explorers and empire builders.