Someone Wishes to Speak to You (8 page)

Mathew responded to the inquisition in his usual quiet and confident way, being careful not to make any reference to his love for Lucienne.

The two famous Cow and Calf rocks stood proudly on the skyline of the moors above Ilkley, known as the ‘gateway to the Yorkshire Dales’. The winding road north through Bolton Abbey, past the Duke of Devonshire’s hunting lodge and the gothic grandeur of the twelfth-century Bolton Priory was squeezed in parts by the sombre grey dry-stone walls so characteristic of this part of the north of England. During the majority of the journey the road had clung to the banks of the River Wharfe, prior to twisting its way over the heather-covered grouse moors of Lower Wharfedale, and down to the lush valley embracing picturesque Burnsall. Here, infant lambs skipped around their mothers in celebration of their new-found freedom in the verdant meadows of the surrounding countryside. Seeing once more the familiar landscapes of natural beauty and rich diversity, Mathew had found himself with a growing feeling of belongingness in this return to his birth place, an environment that could hardly be more of a contrast to the Central African montane forests of Kahuzi-Biega.

As the Daimler drew up in front of the impressive main entrance to Hartington Hall, Sir Colin had been quick to descend the expansive flight of limestone steps to greet his younger son. As Mathew stepped out of the car, his father for a moment dropped his usual formal approach by embracing him with insuppressible emotion, such was his delight in seeing his son again.

‘Mathew! My boy! So good to see you . . . Let’s have a look at you then . . . Glad to see you’re all in one piece. Not quite as warm here as you’re used to, I dare say.’

‘It’s so good to be back on home ground – I can’t tell you how beautiful it looks!’

‘Quite so, we’re very lucky. Well, come in, come in . . . We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

Over dinner that evening, Mathew provided his parents with as much information about his time in Africa as he considered appropriate. It felt rather like the prodigal son returning to his home from afar, with the fatted calf having just been slaughtered. He told them about the great variety of people he had been privileged to have encountered; the diversity of the environments he had seen during his travels around Lake Kivu, including the dramatic beauty of the Virunga volcanoes; the tremendous respect and admiration he had gained for the gorilla family he had studied, in particular the quality of their social life; the great help his professor’s introduction to Adrien Deschryver had been, on behalf of Emory University and the Yerkes Primate Research Center; and how grateful he was that his father’s grouse-shooting friend, the Belgian CEO of Amiza, had sponsored his accommodation.

After Mathew had finished summarising as many of his experiences as the conversation at the dinner table had allowed, he moved on to his future plans. ‘Over the next few months, while I’m here with you, my priority has to be to analyse and compare all the data I’ve gathered on gorillas in captivity and those living in the wild state. Once I’ve finished that analysis, I have to start writing up my doctorate thesis – I’m due to be interviewed by an Emory University examination board at the end of November, under the chairmanship of my mentor, Professor Osman Hill.’

‘It sounds as though you have it all thoroughly planned out, darling,’ said Lady Sally. ‘So you’ll be able to stay for quite a while, will you?’

‘It all depends on how much work I can get done without access to the library at the Yerkes Center, but I do expect to be here for the next five to six months, at least . . .’

Sir Colin Duncan had been born in 1910 and was only four when his father, Sir Reginald, acquired his baronetcy at the start of the First World War. In 1928 he was appointed Head Boy of Sedbergh School in north Yorkshire, and the following year he embarked upon a three year BSc (Hons) Countryside Management course at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester. After attaining his degree, he spent the next five years gaining valuable experience by carrying out management responsibilities on two sizeable country estates, one in Westmorland and one in the lowlands of Scotland, prior to taking over the running of the Hartington Hall estate, which had been in the Duncan family since the mid-seventeenth century.

In 1937, he had married Sally Parkinson, the daughter of a wealthy property and upmarket department store owner in Bradford. The wedding had taken place at Bolton Abbey, followed by a lavish reception at the nearby Devonshire Arms. The honeymoon had been spent in the Italian lakes at the luxury Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni at Bellagio, on the shores of Lake Como.

Sally Parkinson had been born at the family’s manor house, Howgill Hall, in Gilstead near Bingley, Yorkshire. After schooling at Harrogate Ladies’ College she had spent a year at the famous Swiss ladies’ finishing school of Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne, undergoing classes in etiquette, training in cultural and social activities, as well as learning French and Italian. Since marrying Colin Duncan she had wholeheartedly thrown herself into charity work for the underprivileged and energetic fundraising for the cottage hospitals in Ilkley and Skipton. Although she had always been
desperately anxious not to be considered by others as a snob, she had found it almost impossible not to socially pigeonhole the people she met. Did they have a handle to their name? Were they from the top social drawer, or perhaps from the second drawer? Or could they be categorised as rather undesirable – would it be rather counterproductive to be seen in their company?

One of his mother’s ancestors, Robert Milligan, had settled in Bradford in 1810 when it was only a small village. He had taken an active interest in public affairs and had soon become an influential figure. He served as the Borough of Bradford’s first mayor during 1847-1848 and in 1851 was elected as a Church Liberal MP. Following the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, the Milligan/Parkinson family, the second generation of which had married first cousins in order to keep family wealth within their ranks, had always been immensely proud of their ancestor’s support for the total abolition of black slavery in the British colonies, as well as his active interest in promoting the emancipation of West Indian slaves. Mathew’s maternal grandfather, Albert Milligan Parkinson, had died in 1932 and had left his only daughter a sizeable fortune.

The Duncans’ first child, Sebastian, had been born just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, in May 1939. It had not been long after his birth that their father had volunteered to join the British Army and gained a commission in the 12th Royal Lancers. The regiment had been raised in 1715 against the threat of the Jacobite rebellion, and seventy-four years later had a young Duke of Wellington serving in it as a subaltern. The 12th Lancers were proud of the fact that their first battle honour had been won in Egypt in 1801, a country in which 2nd Lieutenant Duncan was soon to serve. During the war the regiment played a key role as an armoured car division in shielding the British Army’s retreat from Dunkirk, and it was during this time that Colin Duncan was
‘mentioned in dispatches’. Subsequent to Dunkirk he was with the regiment when it fought with distinction at the Battle of El Alamein and, later on in the war, the 12th Royal Lancers played a significant role as a corps-led reconnaissance asset with the Allied Forces in their advance through northern Italy.

After being promoted to captain, it was due to his bravery in single-handedly taking out a German machine gun post that Captain Duncan was awarded a Military Cross. In April 1945 the regiment entered Venice, and after D-Day he celebrated with his fellow officers at the famous Locanda Cipriani restaurant on the nearby island of Torcello. It had been during the Italian campaign that he had become great friends with a brother officer, Roger Willock, who prior to the war had joined the Diplomatic Corps. This friendship was to prove most advantageous to Mathew in years to come.

In 1962, while Mathew was at Wellington College (a school that his father had most probably chosen for both of his sons due to his regiment’s association with the Duke of Wellington), that Mathew’s eighty-five-year-old grandfather had died and his father had inherited the baronetcy. Sir Colin was a tall, handsome man with a charismatic, commanding presence and a full head of snow-white hair, which was suitably matched below his twinkling blue eyes by a whiter-than-white well-trained military moustache. There was something in his manner, an emanation of kindness, which put people at ease although he was a man of high principles who always expected others to have the same level of integrity. He would never suffer fools gladly. During the next ten years, Sir Colin was appointed High Sheriff of North Yorkshire; awarded the Life Presidency of the North Yorkshire Branch of St John Ambulance; and selected to by an Honorary Colonel of his old regiment.

Mathew’s brother, Sebastian, had always wanted to be a professional soldier. After leaving Wellington College, which had been built as a national monument for the Duke of Wellington and opened as a school in 1859 with its motto
‘Fortune Favours the Brave’, he gained entrance to the Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Sandhurst. After two years of intensive training, he narrowly missed gaining the academy commandant’s much-coveted Sword of Honour, but was awarded the Queen’s Medal as the officer cadet achieving the highest scores in military practical and academic studies.

Prior to entering Sandhurst, Sir Colin had recommended that his eldest son and heir should aim at gaining a commission in the Household Brigade. So Sebastian took the opportunity to make friends with members of the brigade and, due to his family’s many social connections and his evident military prowess, he was soon to be sponsored throughout his two years as a cadet as a potential future officer in the Life Guards (which together with the Blues and Royals, represented the oldest and most senior British cavalry regiments). Toward the end of his training, a place in the regiment was confirmed. At the time of Mathew’s return to Hartington Hall, Sebastian was serving as a senior captain with his regiment as part of an armoured unit on his second tour of Northern Ireland.

Before Mathew was accepted by Scaife University in Tupelo, Mississippi, his mother had schemed as much as possible to pair him off with the oldest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Drysdale, the eighteen-year-old Lady Antonia Clinton-Kemp. Antonia was just the type of person she would like to see her youngest son betrothed to. She was five feet six inches tall, with light-blonde hair and an English rose complexion. These attributes were matched by her fine cheekbones, clear blue eyes, and a countenance that gave her a kind of delectable innocence as well as, to Lady Sally’s reckoning, the fact that she was ‘a perfectly nice young lady’. Adding to such agreeable qualities, she sat on a horse well and rode to hounds impeccably, she was intelligent and also a fine shot. So in Lady Sally’s estimation, Antonia possessed the majority of the social attributes that she considered were essential for the next generation of the Duncan family to reproduce from.

Prior to having embarked on his African field studies, Mathew had had a brief flirtation with Antonia at the annual January Bramham Moor Hunt Ball at Wetherby. The encounter had been rather champagne-fuelled and had been restricted to a few furtive kisses, cuddles, and a lasting embrace, within the confines of the front seat of his MGB GT. But in spite of Mathew having enjoyed this first physical contact with a member of the fairer gender, he could not help regarding Antonia as just a delightful, attractive, sporty friend who shared his social circle; not a person to attempt to deflower and thereby dishonour.

It was well known that girls within his set would be quick to warn each other of the boys who had ‘tried to pounce’, and word would soon get around that they were NSITs – ‘Not Safe in Taxis’. On the odd occasion the behaviour of one of his social group had been considered by his peers to have gone too far, to have breached their moral code, they were quickly ostracised from the circle. However, due to his mother’s continued scheming it was not long after Mathew’s return to Hartington Hall that she announced Antonia was soon due to return to her nearby family estate, Bardon Towers, for her summer vacation from Girton College. Her mother, the Countess of Drysdale, had informed Lady Sally that Antonia had told her she would like to see Mathew again and was keen to hear all about his encounters with gorillas in ‘Darkest Africa’.

The view out of the mullioned bay window of Hartington Hall’s library, with its floor to ceiling shelves of leather-bound books, could not have been a more agreeable and peaceful environment for Mathew to work in. Wisteria cascaded over the balustraded upper terrace, which featured splendidly elaborate gazebos at either end of the lichen-speckled wall, through which an imposing double flight of steps led down
to an ornate wrought-iron gate giving access into the undulating meadows of the ‘Home Park’. At the bottom of the park could be seen the slow-flowing, shallow waters of the River Wharfe, with its backdrop of trees which gave way to the heather-covered moors and hills of the Dales.

Since returning to Hartington, Mathew had slipped into a carefully disciplined routine from Mondays to Fridays, leaving each weekend to socialise with his parents and friends. After rising at dawn, showering, and taking a mug of hot, strong, black Kivu coffee (numerous bags of which he had brought back from Bukavu with him), he would make his way to the stable yard. During Mathew’s formative years, the stable yard had represented a place of sanctuary – a place he had shared with his father’s Labrador gun dogs, Jock and Paddy, and his half-bred chestnut-coloured hunter out of an Irish Draught horse lineage; The Mouse.

In the middle of the flagstone yard was an attractive fountain whose waters tumbled gently over the figure of Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting and of the woodlands, into a font-like trough where horses had refreshed themselves for generations. White fan-tailed pigeons fluttered from their loft above the main coach house to bathe in the clear water. Spacious wood-panelled loose boxes and stalls, topped by metal bars which enabled the horses to communicate with each other, and the two mahogany-panelled harness rooms with their glass-fronted sliding doors, had no doubt once boasted some of the best saddlery in the North of England; all of which presented a scene of former opulence. Before the advent of the car the stables probably accommodated well over twenty horses, but now there were only four. The Mouse had died several years previously.