Cavalier Case (6 page)

So what did Marcus see in Zena? For it was clearly Zena that he had come to see. His eyes hardly ever left her, even when he was supposedly talking to someone else—Charlotte, for example, or Jane Manfred, who attempted to engage him in up-to-the-minute Westminster chit-chat. Marcus Meredith was not unlike an earnest kind of dog, thought Jemima, the sort of dog em which Decimus posed his hand, altogether lacking the glamour which she had to admit his cousin Dan possessed. Then of course there was the matter of his polio, which had given him that hunched lopsided look in his tennis clothes; although it was much less obvious now that Marcus was wearing a suit.

Was it Zena's slightly stern remoteness which appealed to him? Unmarried at nearly forty, there was something of the military female saint about her, a Joan of Arc too dedicated to history perhaps to marry into the twentieth century.

'Hey,' thought Jemima, 'is that how I sometimes strike people?' She put the unwelcome idea aside. Zena certainly treated Marcus casually enough. No doubt his devotion was at once convenient and irritating to her, as was often the case with dog-like affection. And there was a moment when—having criticised his Trumper's hair lotion as "impossibly square"—she began to pick on his actual haircut.

"You should really go to some unisex hairdresser," Jemima heard Zena say crossly. "As if you ever would."

Only Jane Manfred sailed serenely through the whole of lunch without allowing the surface of her chic calm to be ruffled. The pretty white wool and navy suit she wore (Chanel? Yes, and an original to boot—no copies for Jane Manfred) was neither suited to the weather nor to the country. She had to be on the way to sixty—and yet the smooth beauty of her faintly olive skin made her look quite as cool as Charlotte the English rose. As for her jewellery—was that perhaps what the Duchess of Windsor had looked like at an English country house in July? You could argue that the glistening golden wheat sheaves Jane Manfred wore dangling from her ears were a seasonal touch, but as for the rows of pearls . . .

And then there was her perfume, strong enough to knock out any kind of delicate competition, the scent of the old-fashioned roses for example, or Charlotte's equally pleasing and pervasive lily-of-the- valley (Diorissimo probably), a taste which she apparently shared with Zena since both women smelt of it—unless one had borrowed from the other. Then there was Dan's own rather heady (to Jemima) Eau Sauvage, and Marcus' distinctly un-heady hair lotion. But Lady Manfred's perfume, unknown and with a strong musk-base, overrode all these smells, pleasant or unpleasant.

Jane Manfred sensed Jemima's appraisal and, leaning forward, whispered theatrically in her direction: "Afterwards we must talk about Cy, that naughty boy . . . I'm in despair. He threatens marriage ..." 

Jemima's mind, taken rapidly back to Megalithic House, whirled.
Marriage
? Cy? Who to, for God's sake? Surely Jane Manfred herself was safely married? It must be Baby Diamondson. But wasn't she married too? —Did Cy ever notice awkward things like husbands? At this point Lady Manfred triumphantly changed the conversation.

"Darling!" she cried towards Dan. "Really I shall make no difficulties about the Cavalier Celebration. So long as you are not unkind about my own ghost, that poor much maligned Sir Bartleby Potter, M.P. If it is all to take place here instead of Taynford, then he must have a very good part in your
Son et Lumiere
. A sympathetic part. So far as is possible."

Lady Manfred turned towards Jemima. "Sir Bartleby was a Puritan, she explained in her kindest voice. It was as though she was explaining to her own butler that a guest at her dinner party was—unexpectedly and with no warning in advance—a vegetarian.

Jemima, to tell the truth, had forgotten all about Lady Manfred's own ghost, that allegedly romantic figure, all long hair and soulful eyes, "looking like a violinist," which had been described to her so vividly by Cy Fredericks. The Puritan M.P. Sir Bartleby Potter did not
sound
as if he looked like a violinist, but that was obviously pure Royalist pro-Decimus prejudice on her part. Frankly, she hoped that Sir Bartleby was not now going to provide a further distraction from the subject of Decimus—thanks, presumably, to Zena's interference— since whatever the quality of his looks, he had certainly not been a poet.

It turned out, however, that what Sir Bartleby had been, if not a poet, was the Parliamentarian commander in the siege of Lackland Court, who had been killed towards the end of it (hence his ghostly status). He had also fought at the battle of Taynford three years earlier. And all that Lady Manfred was asking, most fortunately from every point of view, was for a representation as a character in the Celebration, something to which Sir Bartleby was surely fully entitled. Jemima heaved a sigh of relief.

"I gather you actually saw him at Taynford!" she exclaimed in her relief, rather overdoing her enthusiasm.

"Yes, I saw him once." Lady Manfred adopted an expression in which pride and nostalgia mingled. "Only once. Gawain and I saw him once late in the evening when we were working out the shape of the new north conservatory. It was as though he set the seal on our work. He gave us a sign of acceptance. He looked exactly like his Portrait, which Gawain had just brought back for us from America—" 

Cy said he looked wonderfully romantic," Jemima went on. "Like a violinist." Her words died away in face of Lady Manfred's amused stare.

"Cy said that? How enchanting! You see, I do not think our beloved has ever noticed the portrait and he has certainly not seen the ghost. Our ghost. No, what I said was that Sir Bartleby Potter looked just like Cy himself, an impressive public figure, Jo you know, except for the complexion, Sir Bartleby's complexion and tor that matter his nose being very red. Cy's nose and complexion are
not
red. They are distinctly pale given his aversion to good country air. But it you imagine our dear Cy in armour, with a broad yellow sash—"

It was an agreeable picture. But the general message received by Jemima was that Lady Manfred's ghost, being "an impressive public figure" of a ghost, looking like a bottlenosed Cy Fredericks rather than a romantic soulful vision, could now be safely down-peddled so long as his earthly role was properly acknowledged.

Only Zena, irritated no doubt by Lady Manfred's defection, tried to drop a little vinegar into it all. "I've never much believed in that Potter ghost," she murmured to Jemima in her turn. "It was probably just Lord Manfred coming home unexpectedly. After all, Sir Bartleby Potter himself only got hold of Taynford a couple of years earlier. Before that it belonged to a heavily Royalist family." 

So much for Cy's second bold assertion of the family owning Taynford Grange since "Charlemagne" thought Jemima.

But Jane Manfred elected not to hear Zena. She helped herself to an enormous second plateful of summer pudding and double cream as she spoke, which recklessness, given her by no means sparse figure, endeared her to Jemima.

"We will discuss it tomorrow. At the Planty. After our game. Have you forgotten? We're playing a doubles at some unearthly hour tomorrow morning. Dan, you're going to do all my running for me. Before discussing my investment in the country tennis club. You, me and that woman who runs the Planty, Alix, what's her name."

"Oh yes, Charlotte," began Dan hurriedly. "It is true that I'll have to go up later tonight—"

"I wonder if on the subject of the Cavalier Celebration and the characters involved, the cool voice of television could be heard— Jemima spoke politely but firmly; Megalith Television must not be ignored altogether in favour of plans for the new country club.

"Of course it can!" cried Dan. He beamed at her. "I've had a brillaint idea. Why don't you play tennis with us tomorrow morning? Alix is longing for you to test out the Planty. And then we can all talk ahout this television thing."

In all this Nell's anguished cry - "But Daddy, you promised me" - passed unregarded by Dan, if not unnoticed by Jemima. For the rest of her visit, however, Jemima found Dan to be in an ebullient mood which seemed to be connected to his projected escape from Lackland Court later in the day (or night in fact - "when the traffic dies down"). Even her tentative suggestion of a further quick "chat" to Haygarth about the history of the place was perfectly well received. Jemima, in the general atmosphere of
bonhomie
, seized the moment to mention it.

"Anytime after tomorrow!" responded Dan jovially. "He finally retires tomorrow morning. This lunch was his swansong. Then there'll be all the time in the world for the old boy to take you down memory lane. I fear he's suddenly turned pretty depressed about leaving so it will be a pleasure to him. One warning:
don't
let him get on to Cousin Tommy's war record."

"And the ghost.?" Jemima decided to press her luck since the sharpness with which Dan had dismissed Jemima's appeal to talk to Haygarth on her last visit was noticeably absent.

"Ah, the ghost!" There was a pause. Dan drummed his fingers on the table, a habit he had, Jemima noticed, only when in the presence of his family. "Of course. That's your subject. As the tennis club is mine, I doubt if Decimus will come a-haunting the players. Ghosts outlive their usefulness like everyone else." He was interrupted by a cry from the nursery end of the table. It was Nell once more.

"Oh Daddy, can I go up on the battlements after lunch? Please, Uaddy, will you take me up? You promised."

This time she did get her father's attention. Dan's face cleared; it was as though he had seen an opening for a classic passing shot on the tennis court. To accompanying cries of "Me too, Daddy" from the Younger girls and a shout from Dessie, he turned to Jemima.

The view from the battlements. I promised you that last time. I just look after - " He gave a vague indicative wave in the direction of Lady Manfred, who did not contradict him. "But Nell will take you, won't you? And she can tell you all about the ghost. She's seen it quite recently, or so she tells me. First the library with Aunt Zena, then the battlements with the Little Nell. A delightful family tour." He smiled at Jemima, that boyish grin which made it so easy to remember the Wimbledon favourite, Handsome Dan Meredith, he had once been. 

"Delightful indeed!" said Zena Meredith sardonically to Jemima a little later when they were standing together in the Lackland Court library. "It would be—if I could get out of my mind that this is going to be the club room—including vast bar—for Dan's country club."

It was a remarkably beautiful room, as dark as the spare and empty Long Gallery at the top of the house was light. Leather-bound books in predominantly sombre colours, books of carefully graded sizes, not only lined the shelves on every wall but the deep embrasures which led to the six long windows. There were only two pictures in the room—every other inch of space was covered by books: two full-length portraits of a man and a woman in eighteenth-century dress, he with a long gun under his arm and some kind of sporting dog at his heels, she with high powdered white hair, long dress of celestial blue and a bust to keep her company rather than a dog.

"The Gainsboroughs!" exclaimed Jemima, remembering her conversation with Dan Lackland in the car before her first visit.

"Copies," corrected Zena drily. "Since the originals went to the Met . . . Not too many originals here altogether, I fear, among the pictures. The famous Van Dyck at the head of the stairs is almost certainly a copy, if a historic copy, a few years later, after the Restoration perhaps. Although the Decimus Ghost doesn't seem to have noticed."

A series of busts, similar to that depicted in the fake Gainsborough, stood at the tops of the book shelves. Philosophical worthies? Roman emperors? Under their sardonic gaze, the room, for all its beauty, had a feeling of sadness and neglect about it. Unlike the drawing room, which already showed signs of Charlotte Lackland's fashionably pretty Fulham Road taste (including copies of
Taffeta
cast about and new-looking lamps), the library betrayed no signs of the new ownership- Did any of the Present Meredith family ever visit it. Jemima wondered. Except Zena, of course. Would this room really become the club room—plus bar—in Dan Lackland's projected country club? The phost of Decimus, the real ghost, which was the memory of the poet in the room where he had once written his poems and where his manuscripts were still housed, would vanish. Copies of
Taffeta
,
Vanity Fair
and
Vogue
would invade; the books would recede and would perhaps be sold.

Zena was standing in one of the shafts of light in the furthest window. Jemima could hear the cries of the gambolling younger Meredith children on the lawn outside. Zena's pale face looked quite haggard in the brilliance of the light. There were deep lines suddenly visible not only round her eyes but surrounding her mouth. Then Jemima realised that for all her light sarcasm she remained deeply angry.

"Either you feel it or you don't," Zena was saying; she clenched her fist on the book in her hand—"
Heaven's True Mourning
" in a red eighteenth-century leather binding with the arms of the 8th Viscount (he of the Gainsboroughs) on it in gold.

"The importance of inheritance?" Jemima, both of whose parents had died in a car crash when she was eighteen, had never inherited anything much in her life except her father's medals and her mother's photograph albums of life as an army wife in India (she treasured the latter more than the former).

Not so much inheritance as
heritage
. The Lackland family heritage, beginning with Decimus and of course Olivia the heiress. This is— was—a perfect gentleman's eighteenth-century library. The Merediths didn't read—and they didn't sell. Up till very recently." Zena paused briefly but she did not elaborate. "A perfect combination you might and he going to dig up the ruins of the chapel to make a conservatory-type club dining room there. Conservatories are all very well for people like Jane Manfred." She stopped. "Those perfect Gothic ruins we used to play in as children, scaring ourselves silly." The bitterness was unmistakable.