The Will To Live (2 page)

“Sally Marshall,” she whispered. Her voice was shaky and she was pale with shock.

“Sally Marshall,” he repeated. “Good, good. What do you do, Sally Marshall?”

“I’m a caterer.”

“And what do you cater for?”

“Weddings. Funerals. Christenings.”

“Christenings? Yes. That’s right. Good. Very good. Lovely. Well, carry on. Keep up the good work.”

He turned, and started weaving his way unsteadily back down the drive towards the main road.

Sally watched him go past, her mouth opening and closing a couple of times. Then it dawned on her that if her van was wrecked, her trays of oh-so-carefully prepared christening nibbles were likely to be wrecked too. She went even whiter.

“I’ve got 300 blinis in the back!” she gasped hoarsely. “My God! The pavlovas! What if they’re smashed?”

Graham patted her hand and looked anxious. After a moment or two Sally made a supreme effort to pull herself together. “Let’s just get there, shall we? I’ll sort it out then.”

The van had stalled on impact with the tree and, although the engine grumbled into life when Sally turned the key, its wheels had sunk deep into the soft, wet grass and no matter how hard she revved she couldn’t shift it.

Graham and I jumped out – stupidly leaving our coats tucked under the front seat. On our first shove the wheels spun furiously and we were spattered with clods of mud from head to toe. We finally managed to get the van onto solid ground, but then the engine sputtered and died so we had to push it all the way up to the house while Sally sat in the front and steered.

When we reached Coldean Manor – red-faced, muddied, soaked, out of breath and pushing a smashed-up van – keeping a low profile wasn’t really an option.

“Oh Lord,” drawled an aristocratic voice as we ground to a halt by the front door. Standing in the massive stone porch was a young woman in an extremely expensive-looking silk dressing gown having a not-so-sneaky cigarette. She had almost white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes which pierced us with an icy stare. Her face would have been pretty – beautiful, even – if it hadn’t had a hooked, hawk-like nose stuck in the middle of it. “Look what the cat dragged in.” She blew smoke in our direction and then called into the house, “Jennifer? Jen! Cousin, dear! Cuz! Your caterer’s arrived. Looks like botulism on wheels! E. coli on a plate! I shan’t be eating any.” The gales of laughter that followed her little joke were deeply unpleasant. Graham looked as uncomfortable as me but there wasn’t anything we could say – not if his mum was going to keep the job. I suddenly knew how generations of persecuted peasants must have felt. Revolting.

Sally, who was now in a state of extreme anxiety over the condition of her canapés, fortunately hadn’t heard the remark. She was rummaging in the glove compartment for her paperwork, muttering, “Contact! Who’s my contact? What’s her
name?
”

Just then another young woman, who looked very like the first one but seemed kinder and gentler, came into the porch carrying a sleeping baby in her arms. She threw an angry look at Silky Smoker and said, in a voice that had the same crisp accent, “Ignore Lydia, she’s got a cruel sense of humour. For heaven’s sake, Lyd, put that cigarette out! Don’t you know the damage smoke can inflict on a baby’s lungs?”

She’d addressed her remarks to her cousin, so when she actually turned to look at Graham and me and took in the mud and the smashed-up van, she did a big double take. “Goodness! What on earth happened? Did you have some sort of accident?”

“A man stepped out in front of us,” I said.

“Heavens! Was he hurt?”

“No,” Graham told her. “Mum hit a tree instead.”

By now Sally had found the paperwork and she climbed out of the buckled driver’s side. “Jennifer Thomas?” she said.

“That’s right. Come in, come under cover, you’re all getting terribly wet.”

Once we were safely in the porch, Sally prodded the baby gently. “You must be Marmaduke,” she said in a squooshy voice. “Aren’t you a lovely boy? Are you looking forward to your big day?”

Marmaduke didn’t answer – in fact, he didn’t even open his eyes. Wise baby. Instead his mother said, “It sounds like you’ve had a terrible time getting here. I am sorry.”

“It was OK until that idiot tried to kill himself,” Sally replied grimly, checking her watch. “Look, I’ll sort the van out later. Right now I’d better get on. I’m running late, I’m afraid. There’s a lot to do.”

“Yes, of course. Lydia, could you give Gethin a shout? My husband will show you where everything should go, Mrs Marshall. And you two…” She looked at Graham and me thoughtfully. “Do you want to come and get washed? I can probably find you some clean clothes too, if you like?”

“They’re not guests,” objected Lydia.

“No, but they are people.
Children
. And they’re horribly wet. They’ll catch their death of cold.”

“It’s their own fault if they fell over,” shrugged Lydia.

“Really, Lydia.
Must
you be so unkind?
Noblesse oblige
and all that.”

Her cousin lit up another cigarette and said nothing.

“Come on, follow me,” ordered Jennifer, hurrying us and the baby away from the toxic fumes.

“OK. Great. Thanks.” Graham and I were starting to shiver. The prospect of a shower and some dry clothes was very appealing.

So that was that. We all went into the house and Gethin, Jennifer’s husband, arrived – cheery, dark-haired and sounding very Welsh. He led Sally off in one direction and we followed Jennifer and Marmaduke in another. We trooped along behind them towards a huge staircase. The walls were oak panelled and hung with portraits. Generations of Strudwicks, all with the same Viking-blonde hair and cold blue eyes, peered contemptuously down their sharply hooked, hawk-like noses at us. The largest painting was of a man dressed in a grey double-breasted suit. His hair was slicked back and he looked like something out of an old wartime newsreel so I guessed this must be Albert. His hands were clasped tightly together in his lap, fingers interlocking, white at the knuckles as if he could barely resist the urge to salute and scream, “Heil Hitler!”

Jennifer had climbed only three steps when she stopped in her tracks. “Actually,” she said, turning to face us, “maybe we ought to go the other way. Uncle Lawrence can be a bit …
funny
with strangers… Well, of course, he’s terribly unwell, poor man, in a lot of pain. I suppose one can hardly blame him…”

She led us back through the house, past the kitchen where Sally was surveying her wrecked raspberry pavlovas in near despair. Another Strudwick, who was basically Jennifer in a man’s suit and turned out to be her brother, Julian, was looking at the same devastation. Unaccountably he was rubbing his hands together in delight. “Are you doing mess?” he asked. “How fantastic. That was my favourite pud at school.”

Sally’s eyes narrowed. “Eton?”

“Of course.”

Her eyes gleamed with sudden inspiration and she started scraping the pavlovas into a heap.

Graham and I left her to it, following Jennifer up the back staircase which led into what must once have been the servants’ quarters.

By now I was having fantasies about a steaming power shower, perfumed body wash and a fluffy towel. What we got was rather different. Apologizing for the sub-zero temperature – “Uncle doesn’t heat this part of the house” – Jennifer showed us to a spacious but arctic bathroom, where we were permitted to scrape the mud off our faces and wash them (in freezing water) with an old lump of soap (that was as hard as marble and about as fragrant) and towel ourselves dry (on what appeared to be a couple of dishcloths). She went in search of spare clothes and while we waited for her to return I said to Graham, “Not exactly luxurious, is it? I thought you said the Strudwicks were rolling in it.”

“They’re tight-fisted,” Graham explained. “It’s how the rich stay rich – by never spending more than they have to.”

There was a pause while we contemplated the sparseness of the bathroom and then I asked, “
Noblesse oblige?
What was all that about then?”

“It’s a French term. Means the nobility have an obligation to be generous to the lower orders. That’s us. But from what I’ve read, Jennifer is the first Strudwick to have heard of the concept.”

“If she’s a Strudwick, why’s she called Jennifer Thomas?”

Graham looked at me like I’d asked the most idiotic question in the world. “Because she married Mr Thomas.”

“Oh. I didn’t think women changed their names these days.”

“They’re an old family. I suppose they stick to tradition.”

“OK, so she’s Lydia’s cousin. Who’s Uncle Lawrence then, Lydia’s dad?”

Graham – ever resourceful – breathed on the mirror and drew me a family tree.

I was fascinated. “Wow… So what happened to Lawrence’s wife then?”

“She died last year.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Nothing suspicious. It was cancer, apparently.”

“Fair enough. So Jennifer’s dad is the guy that disappeared?” I asked. Graham nodded. “Interesting. Jennifer and Julian are pretty much orphans then. Have been for ages. Who brought them up?”

“They were sent to boarding school along with their cousins.”

“What about the holidays?”

“They came back here, I presume,” Graham said.

“I wonder what it was like? Jennifer and Lydia don’t exactly seem close. They don’t all still live here together, do they?”

“No, only Lawrence and Lydia. The rest of the family are just here for the christening. Lawrence is pretty ill, I think. Lydia must look after him.”

“Poor man! She doesn’t seem to have much of a bedside manner.” I surveyed the diagram again. “How do you find out all this stuff, Graham?”

He shrugged as he wiped the mirror clean. “
Who’s Who. Debrett’s Peerage
. Wikipedia. It was easy.”

“Well, Jennifer seems nice at any rate. And her brother looked OK. Maybe they missed out on the cruel gene.”

Or maybe not.

When Jennifer came back – minus the baby – she was carrying two outfits for us to change into. She dumped them in our arms and scurried off to prepare Marmaduke. The clothes had clearly been stuffed into a wardrobe sometime in the 1970s and hadn’t seen the light of day since. For a start, they stank of mothballs. And Graham and I aren’t exactly fashion conscious, but even we knew we looked ridiculous. When we emerged from the rooms we’d got changed in, I was in a frilly pink nylon blouse, white tank top and maroon miniskirt. Graham sported a purple paisley shirt, orange cardigan and lime-green pantaloons. We looked at each other and it occurred to me that maybe Jennifer hadn’t missed out on the cruel gene at all.

No … in her case it seemed particularly warped.

GRAHAM
and I were still staring at each other when I glimpsed a movement outside the window. The tramp we had nearly run over earlier was crossing the courtyard below. “Graham, look!”

He had a sheet of newspaper crumpled in one hand and was heading purposefully towards the kitchen.

“Crikey!” said Graham. “If he bumps into Mum again I wouldn’t rate his chances of survival.”

But we weren’t the only people to have spotted him. Before we could move, a man in a dark suit came from the house and intercepted the tramp on the cobblestones. The man was about the same height as Julian and Gethin but he had his back to us and was holding an umbrella so we couldn’t tell if it was one of them or someone else. When I tried to open the window I found it was painted shut. From the man’s body language and the tramp’s response it looked as if he was offering help.

The tramp shook his piece of newspaper in the man’s face. Was he upset? Angry? His face was hidden by that big hat so we couldn’t read his features.

The dark-suited man made a placating gesture and the tramp carefully folded up the tattered sheet, or tried to. It was so wet it came to pieces in his hand, and eventually he gave up and let the rain wash the fragments away. Then, arms outstretched as if begging or pleading, he hung his head.

As we watched, the man in the dark suit pulled out his wallet and handed something to the tramp, who pocketed it. Then Mr Dark Suit shooed him around the corner and presumably off the premises.

We set off to find our own way back to the kitchen but soon got a little bit lost. It was a very big house with an awful lot of stairs and corridors and we didn’t know our way around. We didn’t mean to end up in the family’s private quarters. But it was very interesting when we did.

After taking a few wrong turns and running into several dead ends we found ourselves in a grand corridor guarded by suits of armour. A collection of lethal-looking spears was mounted on the wall at the end.

“I suppose we ought to go back the way we came,” said Graham.

We were about to do just that when we heard a man exclaim, “He’s dead!”

The voice had come from a room halfway down the corridor whose door was ajar. As one, Graham and I tiptoed towards it while the unseen man continued to rant. “Dead as a doornail. Dead as a dodo. Let’s face it, James has been a stiff for years! We all know that. I don’t understand why the old man won’t accept it!”