Day Twenty-One (Seven)

 The various plantings had not suffered equally: the manicured privet borders with their deeper roots had fared the best, standing straight and neat; the shallow-rooted herbaceous borders and floral medallions were completely washed out, the few winter blooms bedraggled and bestrewn all over the place; the rolled lawns in between had lifted up in places, sheets and patches of sod laid back down further down the garden when the waters retreated. Ornaments stood straight or canted drunkenly in their places, and everything was covered in a thick film of browny-black silt. 

Various objects apparently lifted from the bed of the Thames by the flood were littered about, as well: some dead fish and oyster shells being pecked at by enterprising gulls, bits of weed-furred lumber, broken crockery and furniture, and lumpy-looking sacks of God-knows-what were spread around evenly.

Halfway down the second parterre, however, I spotted a familiar shape that had me coving my face and muttering "Oh, for crying out loud."

One might have suspected it was a mummy from the museum, it was laying so neatly composed in a shallow depression surrounded by miniature hedges where clumps of colorful perrenials had lain, so perfectly molded in mud-soaked fabric that you could make out that the body was male, fairly young, and probably handsome. But instead of narrow strips of linen, the body was wrapped in a fine sheet that rippled over the body where it had billowed loose during the deluge without coming apart.

"Is that a statue?" Kiro wondered when he stopped to see what I was staring at so intently, "I don't  remember any statues of that size in the garden, did it fall off the roof?"

Day Eighteen (Six)

 "Certainly makes decorating an embassy easier," I suggested with a smile as we moved into the White Drawing Room, the long oval at the center of the enfilade of rooms facing the Thames, and possibly the most spectacular room in the house though not the largest.

"Oh, absolutely, it was a dream moving in here. Converting this house to our Embassy was easier to do than holding the inaugural ball. I made the mistake of remaining unmarried, I had no idea an Embassy would require a hostess," he patted my hand as we moved into the Red Drawing Room, more cluttered and intimate than the other rooms, though just as grand, used for smaller gatherings, "Fortunately we had the excellent Coldicott, who knew exactly what Lady Vere would have done and duplicated her expertise for us."

"Mummy was very fond of giving parties," I smiled at the memory of these rooms filled with people laughing and chatting and dancing, "She had a talent for making people feel at ease and excited to be here at the same time."

Day Fourteen (or Five, depending how you count)

Tea was laid out on a table in the round bay windows flanked by elegant Louis XV chairs with watered silk upholstery. The china was English, though bearing the Herzoslovakian crest, Royal Stafford at a guess (confirmed by looking at the bottom of the saucer); but the tea was distinctly Slavic, so strong it could pass for coffee and intensely flavored with orange-peel and rose-hips, accompanied by large richly-spiced biscuits covered in confectioner's sugar.

We chatted in a thoroughly English fashion about the weather, which had been dramatic enough of late to see us through a first cup of tea, but it was cut short by the appearance of the Ambassador just as we were contemplating a second cup.

"Lord Foxbridge, how delightful!" he caroled gaily into the room, neat and handsome in a Poole morning suit as sharply tailored as my own, the dim light flashing in his inkblack eyes and over his pomaded hair and curled mustache, "I only just learned of your arrival, naughty Kiro keeping you to himself."

"An honour to meet you, Your Excellency," I rose and formally greeted the man; though not as handsome as Radovanovich, he was rather more attractive to me with his merry liquid black eyes and that scintillating mustache (it's a weakness of mine), and his Slavic accent was more pronounced under a mere surface glaze of Eton, adding an exotic charm to his words.

"Count Plamenatz, if I may present to you Viscount Foxbridge," Radovanovich stepped forward as I shook the Ambassador's hand to effect formal introductions, "Lord Foxbridge, his Excellency Count Mirko Plamenatz, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Herzoslovakia to the Court of Saint James."

"Oh but you must call me Mirko," Count Plamenatz insisted, still holding my hand and rubbing his thumb along mine discreetly, "We are all Old Etonians, are we not?"

"Of course, then you must call me Foxy," I had intended to ask the Embassy folk to call me Sebastian, if we graduated to Christian names, as this was a grown-up sort of occasion with me representing my family; but so many mentions of Eton had me offering up my school nickname instead. 

"Kiro, please," Radovanovitch bowed a little with his hand to his chest when Plamenatz looked at him expectantly for a long moment; he seemed surprised to find us at this stage of acquaintance so soon, but following his chief's lead, broke the tension with a graceful gesture, "Would you care for tea, sir?"

"No, thank you, I've already had my tea," Mirko hooked his arm through mine and pulled me from the room into the corridor, "I'd love to look over the house with Foxy and hear about what it was like to grow up here!"

"Oh, I never really lived here," I explained as I was swept up the main staircase to the first floor, "I was seldom brought to Town as a child, a few trips to visit museums and Parliament, and then Christmas shopping outings, visit my grandfather occasionally, and to see Mummy's annual ball in May. I wasn't allowed to come at all during the War. I'd be hard-pressed to remember which room was mine, to tell the truth."

"Well you can tell me about your mother," he patted my hand solicitously, "I have heard much about Lady Vere since I came here, her beauty and charm, a perfect hostess. My sincerest condolences on her loss, of course."

"Thank you, that's very kind," I smiled back but felt rather uncomfortable discussing my mother and flirting with a new friend at the same time; we'd come into the Blue Drawing Room, which was fairly sparsely furnished with delicate armchairs and settees grouped around small tables, easily rearranged into a ballroom or a theatre, "You don't seem to have changed anything, I'd have thought you'd make it more in the style of your homeland."

"Most of the paintings are from home," Mirko pointed to a few clunky-looking landscapes and dim portraits of dour nobles in peculiar dress that had replaced the St. Clair portraits, though all the still-life and landscape paintings I remembered belonging to the house were in situ, "But the aristocracy of Herzoslovakia have been so Anglophile for so long that Herzosolovakian style is just English style, though we tend more toward darker colours at home."

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Day Four

Coldicott took my coat and hat and brolly into room off the foyer and then conducted me down the side corridor and knocked on a door halfway down, which he opened and announced "Lord Foxbridge, sir" inside, then stood to the side to allow me to pass.

I stepped into a small dark office lined with cabinets to chin height with a lightless window and a harsh ovehead lamp, which I think but am not sure used to be a secondary coat closet in Mummy's day, and was confronted by a tall and stupefyingly handsome young man coming at me with his hand out.

"Good afternoon, Lord Foxbridge," the vision said in a beautiful deep voice of pure Etonian vowels and not a whisper or scintilla of an accent, "I am Kiro Radovanovitch, the charge-d'affaires of the Embassy."

"Dobro popladne, gospodine Radovanovitch," I shook his hand, garbling the Serbian greeting I'd memorized on the way over.

"That's very good," he blinded me with a dazzling smile, still holding my hand, "I remember you from Eton, though I don't believe we actually met, different years and different Houses. You are remarkably unchanged." 

"Golly, how mortifying," I laughed, "I still look twelve?"

"More fourteen or fifteen, as you were when I matriculated," he laughed back, "But it's more that your colouring and looks are so distinctive, I'd recognize you anywhere."

"I'm sorry I don't remember you," I packed a little flirtation into the sentence, but not so much that he couldn't ignore it if he chose, "You were in Manor House, weren't you?"

"Yes indeed, and you were in Godolphin," he didn't respond to the flirtation, but was still holding my hand, so I was getting mixed signals, "I doubt anyone would remember me from my Eton days, I was not notable, I played no games and seldom left my study."

"That's a shame," I said, trying to imagine a beauty like this hiding in his study. But it would be why I didn't remember him, as I made a point of collecting the best-looking older boys.

"Would you care to tour the grounds, Lord Foxbridge? There was no damage in the house from the flood, the basement is remarkably watertight, but the garden is in shambles."

"Oh quite, quite," I scrambled to remember why I was there in the first place, "I suppose my Pater would want me to take a dekko at the cellars, but I wouldn't know what water-damage looks like, so unless your kitchen staff are in waders I can take your word for it."

"The flood came right to the edge of the terrace, but it appears the architect took it for granted that the Thames would flood someday, and there's an excellent drainage system around the house."

"That's good to know," I stepped back a bit as Radovanovitch sidled past me to open the door again, "I expect the drainage was put in when the Embankment was built. Drainage was so much on everyone's minds in those days."

"I asked Coldicott to serve tea in the Garden Room when you arrived, and we'll take a look at the grounds after, if that is amenable."

"Oh, quite, quite," I agreed and followed him back out into the corridor and through a rather more grand doorway to the Garden Room, a place I remembered well and was entirely unchanged, down to the placement of the delicate Louis XVI chairs covered in flowered chintz that matched the Adam-designed murals and ceiling. It looked rather grimly chilly with the rain still coming down, though not as heavily as in the morning.


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Day Three

There wasn't much changed, or at least I didn't notice anything--but then I'd never spent a lot of time in Vere House, and Georgian furniture and paintings of views are very much of a muchness, so they might have changed everything and it would still look the same to me.

The only real change I noticed was a huge portrait in the hall of King and Queen of Herzoslovakia, a handsome blond couple who looked no different from English aristocrats except for their peculiarly ugly Eastern regalia; but then the Queen was English, and the King had been passing himself off as an Englishmen for years while he waited for the Republic that had murdered his parents to fall, so it stands to reason.

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Day Two

"Welcome, Lord Foxbridge, so nice to see you again," the man said, and I realized I knew him—it was Young Coldicott, our Coldicott's son, who had been butler at Vere House since Mummy became Countess. Identical to his father at Foxbridge, he was a tall and handsome soldierly type of forty or so, and despite the foreign livery looked exactly like had eight years before.

"Oh, Coldicott! How nice to see you, I had no idea you were here."

"Lord Vere retained me and a handful of staff when he closed the house," he bowed and gestured for me to come inside, "due to the long association between our families. And His Excellency the Ambassador kept us on with the lease."

"That's lovely," I followed the man into the house, looking around with interest to see what the Herzoslovakians had done with the place.

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Day One

An hour or so later, I rolled down Whitehall Garden to the back corner where a relatively unassuming gatehouse concealed the grandeur of Vere House; taking a sharpish turn to line up with the narrow arch, I encountered a pair of very tall young men in rather opulent uniforms of claret serge and gold braid crossing wicked-looking halberds festooned with red and gold ribbons. Above the arch, a gaily coloured all-weather sort of tapestry sporting the arms of Herzoslovakia obscured the stone St. Clair escutcheon, though the "VERE HOUSE" inscribed below remained for the guidance of post and deliveries.

The young sentries stared stonily at me an uncomfortably long moment, then stepped smartly to each side with their halberds raised to allow me passage. I drove very carefully through the dark tunnel of the arch, then into the small courtyard, just big enough to turn a car (or a coach-and-four) in a tight circle around a pretty ornamental fountain. On the left was another dark archway leading to the garages, and the right contained a completely useless little arcade with some statues standing around in elaborately casual poses against the blank wall of the house next door. Front center was of course the main house, five bays wide and rising three storeys of decreasing height surmounted by a pediment and balustrade with more statues standing about waiting for a tram that wasn't coming. The house continued with an extension to the left, overlooking the motor court, added on to the house in the middle of the 18th century.

Pulling into the courtyard gave me an unexpected pang of sorrow: I hadn't been to Vere House since Mummy's funeral, eight years before, and the intervening time had not dissipated the sense of tragedy that had stained the house on that day. The Herzoslovakian flag, though festively coloured, didn't make enough of a difference to erase the sight of black buntings that had hung over each balcony in my memory.

I didn't have a lot of time to wallow in sorrow, as another liveried gent, a little older and less ostentatiously braided than the sentries on the gatehouse, came out onto the porch to greet me.

"Welcome, Lord Foxbridge," the man said in a charming Slavic accent.

"Is it alright to leave my motor here?" I asked, ascending the steps.

"Of course, my lord, we are not expecting any other visitors today. Won't you step this way?" 

I duly stepped and followed the man into the house, looking around with interest at what changed had been made since I last entered this house. It had been let furnished but it was furnished as town home rather than an embassy; but they didn't do much but move a few pieces of furniture around and add a massive painting of their king and queen in the main hall

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