The Sweetness of Liberty James (23 page)

‘How simply lovely!' exclaimed Liberty, gratefully admiring the fire. You could only get away with this in such a large room, but the pleasing warmth it gave off enabled her to remove her thick coat and pashmina. She remembered times of sneaking down to the kitchen when she stayed at Denhelm as a child, and even sharing a bed with Savannah. They had sometimes been frozen during the night, and after a day's hunting they would creep downstairs, where Mrs Goodman would be busy catering for the crowds of adults enjoying the hunt ball upstairs, helped only by a few local girls. She would make them steaming mugs of cocoa and wrap them in blankets. Thus warmed, the two girls would often steal up to the main landing and peer through the banisters to watch endless black-tied men and scarlet-coated huntsmen mingling with ladies in beautiful frocks, and they would wonder how people could dress in such thin clothes when it was so freezing cold. If they had delved under the skirts of many of the ladies who had attended balls at Denhelm in earlier times, they would have glimpsed long johns and thick vests, while the poor uninitiated simply shivered or danced nonstop. After the young girls had accidentally disturbed two of the guests in the library who were definitely not reading books, they decided this must be the best way to keep warm when you were grown-ups.

Just then Jonathan came into the kitchen, his shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows, oblivious to the chill of the rest of the house as only someone brought up in that environment can be.

‘Thought I saw your car arriving,' he growled. ‘I expected you to be on Deirdre's time, and at least half an hour late. What a good influence you must be,' he continued as he kissed them both. ‘Now, what would you like?'

‘Um, coffee, I think, and then a glass of red,' said Deirdre.

‘Oh dear, another housewives' class? You really must give
them up, you have so much more to offer. Stick with the children – at least they are willing to learn about food and they don't get you bladdered every time!'

‘Jonathan!' exclaimed Deirdre. ‘I am not bladdered, as you put it. I would just like a coffee and no judgement, thank you.' But she said it with a wide smile as she saw Jonathan winking at her daughter.

Once they were all settled at the kitchen table, a big dish of Mrs Goodman's game pâté and a tray of toast and home-made pickles before them, Jonathan asked Liberty what impression she had formed of both the butcher's shop and Duck End.

‘I still love them both. But the agent thought the Smythes might be a problem.' She explained how they were going to ask over the odds for the house.

‘I am sure they will come round with a little persuasion. Neville wants my advice on investing in a racehorse, which could help. And if all else fails, I happen to know one of my stable lasses caught him with an estate worker in the Big Barn, so a little blackmail may hurry things along.'

‘Oh my God, you can't mean it!' shrieked Liberty.

‘The blackmail? Not seriously, of course, but I could just drop it casually into the conversation, if you know what I mean,' twinkled Jonathan. ‘Funny how these things make a difference to negotiations sometimes.'

Mrs Goodman then produced a delicious supper of cauliflower soup and cheese straws, followed by pheasant casserole and mash. There was hardly any room for pear and quince crumble with lashings of thick cream, but they all managed it somehow!

‘Yummy, a taste of my childhood,' said Liberty, wiping her mouth with a large monogrammed napkin.

‘It would be,' responded Deirdre. ‘You spent more time here than you did at home!'

‘Well, I could say that you and Dad were always working, but really I just loved it here with Savvy. What news of her? I have been dying to find out all about her.'

Jonathan sighed. ‘I emailed to let her know you were here, and she wants your email address. She would love to meet up with you, and is planning a trip back home in December.'

‘What is her husband like? Khalid, isn't it?'

‘Very wealthy; otherwise, not sure really. He owns racehorses, so we get to see them over here in the season. I wasn't keen for her to move to the Middle East, but you know Savannah, when she puts her mind to something . . .'

After leaving her final school in Lausanne in a flurry of scandal, something to do with a lesser royal from one or other European family, Savannah had run away and married a French count. Alexandre had been the perfect French gentleman, and he adored Savannah. Sadly, he also adored women in general. Savannah loved to feel exclusively worshipped, probably something to do with her lack of a mother and a doting father, so the moment she had found Alexandre in bed with the chambermaid she decided that simply being a countess was not, after all, sufficient for her, and she returned home for a brief while.

Her elder brother Edmund had been so admonishing, however, that at the first opportunity and proposal she was off again, this time with a duke. ‘They lived somewhere up north,' explained Jonathan. ‘I didn't have an opportunity to find out exactly where because by the time we were invited to stay she had discovered him in flagrante with one of his tenants – not a female – so she left hurriedly and quietly. It was after some do involving Elton John. She stayed in London for a while with one of her school friends, who introduced her to Khalid bin Wazir. As you probably remember, she throws herself into any of her passions heart and soul, so she read up on customs, Islam, the Middle East, then converted to Islam and married him. We went out to the Gulf for the wedding and Edmund thought it may be the best thing to happen to her. Grahame and I are not sure. I think she may be a bit of a stubborn, spoiled brat, but she is my own darling little girl and I hate her being stuck out in a country full of sand but empty of her friends and family. She is such a
social butterfly – or she used to be. She had both her children quite quickly. Little Sasha and Hussein are just delightful. They are eight and six, and I would love to see more of them all. The biggest surprise to everyone is how well she has taken to motherhood. She simply adores her children. She even gave up riding while she was pregnant, although from what she tells us Sasha now has her own pony and Hussein is strapped in a basket on the front of Savannah's horse!'

‘So she has some freedom, then?' Liberty asked.

‘Well, yes, but I think she pretty much lives in the desert. Edmund thinks that when she finally masters Arabic she will get bored again and look to the next project. I think differently; she seems to genuinely love this chap, and he appears to be a decent sort. And anyway, now she has the children she has calmed down and feels more settled. I just wish it wasn't so far away, that's all. I have invited them for Christmas, together with Edmund and Grahame.'

‘And what news of the two of them? Are they married?' Liberty said this with some lightness in her voice. Edmund, she couldn't care less about – pompous stick-in-the-mud, he probably had some goody two shoes perfect wife and two perfect children – but Grahame, the beautiful Grahame . . .

While Savannah and Liberty had run riot over the Denhelm Estate in their childhood, Liberty and all the other girls who visited had childhood crushes on Grahame. With his white-blond curls, grey and yellow cat's eyes and dark olive skin, he had the perfect combination of his dark father and his fair mother. Grahame had always charmed both adults and children. He also had a winsome way about him. From the moment he was born, he was a natural charmer who won everyone over as he never stopped smiling. And then, as he grew older, he was always kind and sweet and ready to help, and sorted out arguments between his friends and said the right thing at exactly the right time.

Into his teens, he always had the prettiest girlfriends on his arm, and many mothers invited him to their daughters' coming-of-age
parties in the hope that he would turn into the perfect husband.

However, Liberty, and as far as she was aware only Liberty, knew the truth. One weekend exeat she had raced excitedly down to the stables to look for Savannah – as usual after only the briefest kiss for her mother – and off with the dogs she went, as she knew the estate so well. She took the shortcut across the fields from her mother's house. They had inserted a gate in the back wall after one escapade when both Liberty and Savannah fell and broke their wrists while climbing along a branch of the old walnut tree in an attempt to get over the wall.

As Liberty raced through the formal gardens, her eye had been drawn to movement at the edge of the yew maze. Curious and thinking it could be Savannah, she ran lightly towards the maze. She heard heart-wrenching sobs coming from the other side of the hedge. She scrabbled underneath it – she had never mastered the way through – and discovered Gray crying his eyes out in a very un-Gray-like way. So shocked at seeing her boy-god upset and unsmiling, all Liberty could think of doing was to hug him. She let him weep on her shoulder for a good ten unspeaking minutes, after which the shuddering calmed and he started to breathe more easily. She was reminded of her pony when she found its companion Shetland dead in front of them, tangled in barbed wire and ripped to pieces by badgers and foxes. It was traumatic for both her and the pony to see the horrific result.

Liberty wondered if it was something to do with his mother. Had he found some memento that had reminded him of her? Her silence enabled him to talk, and it all came out – how he had always known he was gay, but could never give his father the shock or his brother the satisfaction of failure.

Ever since his teens Gray had wanted to go into politics; his personality suited the profession perfectly and his credentials as second son of an ancient English line of aristocrats and his Eton education stood him in great stead to join the Conservative Party. But this was the 1980s. Scandal was rocking the party the
whole time. To do well, he knew he could never, ever, be himself. So what was he to do?

Liberty was shocked. She was twelve years old, had heard the word gay and in theory knew what it meant, but this man was her god! She loved him; she was going to marry him when she grew up. This couldn't be happening!
Pull yourself together
, she had told herself silently. Old beyond her years since her parents' separation, she could only think
this is my friend and he needs my help
. She soothed him as best she could. She had no idea what his family would think, so she didn't mention them to him. Vaguely hoping it would be a passing phase and the two of them were really meant to be together one day, she said, ‘Well, if politics are so important to you, concentrate on that and see if you can leave your private life for a while.'

Being only twelve, Liberty didn't quite understand about urges and hormones, but because she said it in such a simple and matter-of-fact way, it made perfect sense to the loyal, decisive Gray.

‘Right! Concentrate on the career, that's it, old girl, that's what I will do,' he replied. Liberty looked at him wiping his nose on a lace handkerchief.

‘Your mascara has run,' she said with a giggle. The New Romantics seemed to have enabled a lot of feminine men to express themselves rather better than in previous decades.

‘Thanks, duck,' he said, ‘but you really can't repeat any of this to anyone, anyone at all.'

Glad to have this one thing between the two of them, Liberty knew she would carry his secret to the grave, and she told him that if he got her out of the maze and to the stables she would never mention the conversation again.

Savannah never asked why Liberty stopped gazing at Gray from the top of their tree house, or trying to persuade her to ride past him and his friends rowing on the lake. She simply assumed Liberty had another crush. And anyway, he was only her boring brother!

Gray had since made it up the ranks of the Conservative Party. He was given a job in the Cabinet when the new administration came in, and was welcomed as a peacemaker, a genuine hard worker who made sure to continue his work on behalf of his constituents, promising they would go on having weekly dustbin collections. At the same time he offered incentives to install incinerators in brownfield sites and the energy created from these was provided by a private electricity company to local factories at good rates. He also gave the local police the confidence to clip youngsters around their ears for small offences, and parents, encouraged by this, helped to keep the children off the streets. Most towns and villages in his constituency had installed board parks and youth clubs. People from the community held fundraising events, which were hugely helped by the attendance of Gray's famous and glamorous friends. He was simply so popular that no one questioned how he got to know Elton and David, and the crowds that went along with them gave generously.

So Gray had been the one member of the de Weatherby family that Liberty had been able to keep tabs on. Although, since he left home, they had not spoken much.

Liberty wondered if Grahame had since married, but Jonathan simply said, ‘No, neither Ed nor Gray have married yet, but it's more normal for boys to live a little before settling down, and anyway, Savannah has married enough times for all of us! Ed lives and works in the City, but he is hoping to start working full-time down here. He is part of a very exciting company developing alternative sources for power production. He helps on the financial side, and they are looking to set up offices out of London, to save money. I thought they should use some of the rooms here, maybe even try some of their experiments on this house. Have I told you about our heating system? Saves a bloody fortune!'

‘Um, right,' piped up a dozing Deirdre, made sleepy by good food, the warmth from the fire and the rather excellent claret
Jonathan had served with supper. ‘I think we had better be off home now. It's late and Liberty needs to get started early.'

‘Do I?'

‘Well, you better had – I don't want you under my feet, cramping my style forever, you know, and we have equipment to buy, not to mention decorators, electricians and other workmen to hound.'