The Verevale Hunt - Characters & Floor Plans

FAMILY

Lord Levondale (Felix Lionel, 3rd Baron - GB 1880): sixtyish, stoutish, baldish, good-natured but with a bit of a temper; divides interests between City and hunting. Timothy West type.

Lady Levondale (Cynthia): a comfortable, cheerful woman of about fifty, pert-faced and ample-bosomed, expensively but sloppily dressed ("imagine the White Queen dressed by Chanel"), fond of card games and gossip; Pauline Collins type.

Hon. Lavinia Levondale: spinsterish 28-year-old, "painfully plain and agonizingly earnest," devoted to charity, animal rights, and her dogs; but burning with a secret passion? Sarah Crowden type.

Hon. Michael Levondale: the young heir (19 -20, second year at Cambridge), good-looking, athletic, mischievous and a little manipulative, sexually adventurous; Christian Coulson type.

GUESTS

Jingo - James Ponsonby, 4th Marquess of Faringdon, Earl of Jarrow, etc.: (introduced in "The Foxbridge Footman") a charming and glamorous cad, 27 years old, terrifically handsome, Matthew Goode playing George Sanders.

Dotty - Dorothea Ponsonby, Marchioness of Faringdon: (introduced in "The Foxbridge Footman") a seductive child-woman, willowy and voluptuous at 25, a brilliant and manipulative mind masked in the giddy frivolity of a Bright Young Thing… a cross between Zoe Tapper and Kelly Reilly.

Bertie Pargeter: (introduced in "The Tears of Amphitrite") a cheerful idiot, chubby and well-dressed, good-natured and fully aware of his own shortcomings, socially clumsy but good at sport, mid-20s; Jeremy Sinden as Boy Mulcaster.

Hon Julia Pargeter: (introduced in "The Tears of Amphitrite") plain but witty and very clever, hard-headed business-woman disguised as self-effacing young matron, late-twenties/early thirties; Harriet Walter in Wimsey series.

Foxy - Sebastian Saint-Clair, Viscount Foxbridge: qv

Chester Vandekamp: Middle-aged American business tycoon, burly and weathered but smooth-mannered; older Liam Neeson type.

Mamie Vandekamp: Tycoon’s ex-chorus-girl second wife, voluptuous blonde just going to seed, crude but kind-hearted; Muzzy van Hossmere played by Renee Zellweger.

Miss Virginia Vandekamp: Tycoon’s daughter, early-mid-20s, adventurous flapper, boyishly attractive, Carey Mulligan type

Sir Wilfrid Beckett Haven KBE: Conservative MP & Cabinet Minister, widower late-fifties, stiff and gruff ex-military, gentry married daughter of an earl, John Williams type.

Miss Muriel Beckett Haven: Unmarried daughter and hostess of above, thirty-ish, pretty but sour, socially gracious but fiercely snobbish, interested only in bloodlines and politics. Frances Barber type.

Constance Gosforth the Dowager Duchess of Tyne: Impoverished grande dame, airy-fairy demeanor with grasping habits, fifty-something Joan Hickson type ("annoyed that eldest son was so selfish as to marry for love instead of much-needed money").

Lord Rupert Gosforth: Duchess’s charming wastrel second-son, good-looking but weak in chin and character, Laurence Fox type.

Sir Peregrine Pendersleigh, Bart.: elderly Egyptologist, muddled but good-humoured, Brideshead-era Gielgud type.

Miss Abigail Smallridge: Lavinia’s best friend since school days, frowsy but cheerful and chatty, fond of animals, Phoebe Nicholls type.

SERVANTS

18 Indoor Servants
Winborn, the Butler
Mrs. Fears, the Houskeeper
Mrs. Ingersoll, the Cook
Prevett, Lord Levondale’s Valet
Norrell, Lady Levondale’s Maid
Creacy, Miss Levondale’s Maid
3 Footmen
3 Housemaids
2 ea Scullery Maids & Kitchen Boys

12 Outdoor Servants
Gardeners, Grooms & Gamekeepers

10 Visiting Servants
Massingale, Lord Faringdon’s Pretty Valet
Wickson, Lady Faringdon’s Mysterious Maid
Pyburn, Duchess of Tyne’s Elderly Maid
Reginald Pond, Lord Foxbridge’s Valet
Moustafa Sassi, Sir Peregrine’s Exotic African Manservant
Heston, Sir Wilfrid’s Valet
Murphy, Miss Beckett Haven’s Maid
Maynard, Mr. Pargeter's Valet
Hibbert, Mrs. Pargeter's Maid
Celestine Dubois, Mrs Vandekamp’s Coquettish French Maid

POLICE

Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Trulock: medium-sized, middle-aged, rumpled clothes of good quality, soft-spoken with an educated accent, shrewd hooded eyes; see Michael Kitchen in Foyle’s War.

Detective Sergeant Andrew Netley - young, tall, good-looking, exceptionally neat; see Anthony Howell in Foyle’s War.


FLOOR PLANS



Mock-up of Entry (north) Front









First Floor



Second Floor



Third Floor

SEATING CHART

Untitled Exercise

Queen Anne’s Gate, London
Tuesday, 8 May, 1945

I leaned against the window in my study, sucking moodily on my pipe and gazing across my back garden to Birdcage Walk, watching the festive crowds streaming through St. James’s Park toward Buckingham Palace, and wished I could share their joy. The war was finally over, Hitler was dead and Germany had surrendered; the Americans were still at it with Japan, but for us the unbearable years of terror, death, and privation were at an end, and the entire populace were thrilled out of their minds.

But though I was grateful that it was all finally over, I just couldn’t work up any enthusiasm about this celebration of what the papers were calling V.E. Day. The war had cost me too much, much too much, and all I could think about was the grim inventory of all I’d lost.

I lost Pater first, early in the Blitz: he was hit in the head by flying débris as he was leaving his office in Westminster Palace, passing through St. Stephen’s Porch when it took a direct hit in September 1940. Vere House in Whitehall, a Palladian jewel built by my ancestors in the reign of George I, was destroyed by another bomb only a few weeks later.

My office in Bury Street was bombed in April 1941, killing my secretary and one of my investigators; around the block on St. James’s Street, Hyacinth House, the queer hotel where I’d lived before I married and later on bought and operated, was severely damaged by that same bomb and a couple of others, and had to be demolished; Verevale Court, a great Baroque pile on the Sussex Downs that had once been our principal seat, was requisitioned by the RAF for a training facility, and subsequently burned down when a wounded Spitfire crashed into it in October 1944.

I kept a careful list of friends and relations who’d been killed at home and abroad, compiled from letters and newspaper accounts and recorded in a special diary; but the number of people I lost in those years was too high to contemplate: dozens of classmates from Oxford and Eton, fellows from my various clubs, intimates from the queer demimonde, cherished friends and companions; though I had no blood relations but an elderly aunt, my wife’s younger brother, her uncle, and two of her cousins were taken, as well as numerous others of her sprawling and complicated family.

But the greatest loss of all was Twister—Sir Oliver Paget, fifteenth baronet, Scotland Yard detective, the love of my life, my dearest friend and partner in myriad adventures, the godfather of my sons. He wasn’t dead, though, for which I did my best to be thankful: but Our Sort were not allowed to join up, not even during the conscriptions; Twister believed that the only way to retain his honour and the privilege of fighting for his country was to completely cut off all contact with every queer he knew—including and especially me.

I was terribly hurt that he would put me away like that, but I did understand his motives, so I let him go; as a result, I hadn’t seen or heard from him in the last five and a half years, and only knew he was still alive because a friend in the War Office kept me informed of his doings.

On the other hand, it wasn’t like I’d lost everything, as many had done; in some ways I’d even benefitted.

Since my father died and I became the eleventh Earl of Vere, I had been very busy—not so busy that I forgot about Twister, but busy enough to keep my mind off him for the majority of my waking hours. I’d had to give up my private enquiry agency when the office was bombed, but I’d already taken my seat in the Lords by then, and so used my Parliamentary influence and my detective experience to obtain a fairly important post in the Home Guard.

I have to admit that the Home Guard was considerably more satisfying work than I had expected—having gone into it simply to keep myself distracted with blackout enforcement and bomb shelter provision, I instead created my own sub rosa investigatory branch and soon found myself rooting out criminals disguised as Wardens to loot bombed houses, destroying sinister cabals of black-market profiteers, building a spy-network of queers and conchies to keep tabs on the regular and military police, and having more fun than a decade of Society sleuthing had ever afforded me.

And then, though the losses to my ancestral estates were great, I didn’t actually live in the houses we lost, and my own residences had remained unharmed: Foxbridge Castle, our principal seat in Gloucestershire which had been in the family since the Crusades, had escaped requisitioning—largely due to my wife Caro’s activities, turning the entire park to agriculture and filling the house with refugees and the Women’s Land Army; and our townhouse in Queen Anne’s Gate, which I’d bought when Caro and I married in 1929, escaped the Blitz without so much as a cracked windowpane, though dozens of bombs had fallen only yards away in the Park.

The family treasures had been spared, as well, since at the very beginning of the war we’d taken the artwork and the better antiques out of all our houses and stored them in a bunker built for the purpose in an old iron mine on the Foxbridge estate; so though Vere House and Verevale Court were no more, their Adam ceilings and Gibbons paneling reduced to rubble and splinters, the pictures and plate were safe and sound.

Then there was the money: Savarell Inc., the massive pharmaceutical concern founded by my American grandfather, the majority stock of which I’d inherited from my mother, won a lucrative contract to supply drugs to the US Armed Forces as soon as our cousins across the pond joined the fray, and the value of my holdings nearly doubled on the strength of it. I also had a great deal of the fortune I’d inherited from my paternal uncle invested in British industries that had boomed with wartime conversion and production, not so spectacularly as my American concerns but enough that the staggering death duties attendant on Pater’s demise were more than recouped in the following years.

I had so much to be grateful for that it was really rather churlish of me to sit brooding over my sorrows on that celebratory day. But there it is, I couldn’t help how I felt.

"I beg your lordship’s pardon," my valet Pond slipped quietly into the study behind me, "It is time to dress. Her ladyship’s guests will be arriving at seven."

"Are you happy, Pond?" I asked, turning to look at him. He’d been my boon companion for nigh on twenty years, my friend in Oxford before entering my service in 1927; but his neat ferrety face, entirely unchanged since first we’d met, and his small spare frame in its eternal black suit betrayed no emotion stronger than intelligent concern, and I still couldn’t read him as clearly as I can most people.

"I try always to be cheerful, my lord," he replied noncommittally.

"I mean about the war ending, V.E. Day and all that," I clarified, "Are you filled with victorious glee?"

"I would not go so far as victorious glee, my lord," he said after a moment’s thought, "I am extremely glad that the war is over and we can return to normal life. But your lordship is not feeling victorious or gleeful?"

"I feel like hell," I shrugged, "All I can think about is everything we’ve lost. I’m inappropriately sad."

"Sorrow is perfectly appropriate, my lord," he consoled me with a gentle voice, "These last years have been so fraught with loss that one has had little opportunity for grief, and more losses expected all the time, who will be killed next, what will be bombed next; now that it’s over, it is perfectly natural for the grief to come."

"It doesn’t seem to be coming to them," I indicated the cheering throngs beyond my garden gate.

"We are not all constructed alike, my lord," he pointed out, "I can send word that your lordship is ill, if you prefer to avoid tonight’s festivities."

"No, I’ll dress," I preceded him across the passage to my dressing-room, "Perhaps it will cheer me up, rubbing elbows with the giddy throng instead of watching them out the window."

"Very good, my lord," Pond followed me and started laying out the necessary tools for my evening spiff-up. I didn’t need to shave or wash first, so I took up my accustomed place in front of the triptych looking-glass and adopted the passive rigidity of a department-store mannequin.

I had turned thirty-nine the previous month, just around the corner from the dreaded forty—I’m not sure why, but I’d been dreading forty ever since I was twenty, as if it were a magic number that would turn me instantly into an old man; perhaps it is because my father was forty when my mother died, in the influenza pandemic of 1918, and he had turned quite instantly into an old man on that occasion.

Staring into the glass while Pond stripped and redressed me for the evening, I had to admit that the years had been kinder to me than they had to Pater, who was quite lovely in youth but resembled a particularly peevish buzzard in middle age; I wasn’t beautiful anymore, but I had kept my elegant figure and all my auburn hair, and my once-exquisite face was still firm at the jaw and unlined around the eyes, having only filled out and matured into a reasonable sort of handsomeness that was pleasing to look upon.

Still, I missed my beauty. This distinguished gentleman in the glass was better-looking than my father had been at that age, but he wasn’t a patch on the gorgeous creature I used to be. But there I go again, mourning my losses instead of enjoying my blessings: I was still alive and whole, when so many of my contemporaries were not, but all I could do was hanker after a pretty face I no longer wore.

"I can’t wait for cloth rationing to end," I said as he slid my dinner jacket onto my shoulders, "You’ve done an admirable job of keeping everything looking new, but I’m sick to death of these particular garments."

"Perhaps if your lordship didn’t give half his coupons to her ladyship."

"Yes, well. The hidden costs of marrying a fashion-plate," I smiled.

My wife the Countess of Vere (née Lady Caroline Chatroy, eldest daughter of the twelfth Duke of Buckland, known to all her friends as Caro) had never in her life worn any garment more than a dozen times, and was long accustomed to regular sojourns in Paris for entirely new wardrobes every spring and fall; she was also a devoted cross-dresser with a whole other persona called Charley, who dressed at least as well as I did, if not better: the loss of Paris to the Germans was a tragedy, and rationing a cruel and unusual punishment, forcing her to give up Charley altogether and wear her clothes until they practically fell off her. Her maid, Partridge, was a genius at altering her things to give her dressing a bit of variety, but there are only so many times you can dismantle and rebuild a dress or evening gown before the fabric starts to unravel. Her need was simply greater than mine, so I’d only used enough coupons to replace ruined socks and linens, and gave the rest to her.

"Oh, good, you are coming down," the object of our discussion suddenly hove into view behind me, virtually coruscating in a scarlet gown embroidered with gold bugle-beads in a pattern resembling fireworks, rubies at her throat and diamond stars in her golden hair.

"Did you think I wasn’t?" I wondered, turning to look at Caro instead of her reflection. She hadn’t aged a day in our fifteen years of marriage, which I thought rather unfair of her; but then, she has the sort of face that stands up to the test of time, square and sharp-boned, so much more durable than the dainty oval Nature had given me which relied so much on the bloom of youth. She’ll be just as beautiful at ninety as she was at nineteen.

"I saw you mooning in your window, earlier," she draped her arm around my waist and turned me back toward the glass so she could enjoy our combined reflection; we’ve always made a very attractive couple, and it gave me a lift to see us together, "when I was down in the garden. You looked quite desolate. I thought of giving you the Balcony Speech, but you wouldn’t have heard me over all the row in the Park."

"I am feeling rather desolate, but I thought the party might cheer me up," I explained, turning her back around and leading her out of the room, "Thank you, Pond. And please take the rest of the evening off to celebrate. I shan’t need you again tonight."

"Thank you, my lord," he bowed and started tidying the room.

"That’s a hell of a dress," I remarked as I preceded her down the three steps in the passage that connect my part of the house to hers, then onto the gracefully curving main stair, "Have you been saving it for a special occasion?"

"Brand new, actually," she bridled at the compliment, "specially made for tonight. Partridge started it when the Reichstag fell and just finished the beading yesterday."

"Quick work," I whistled appreciatively at the achievement, "Where’d she find so much silk?"

"It was the lining from my mink cape," she admitted ruefully, "I haven’t worn it in an age, and the colour is so festive."

"I am very much looking forward to being able to shower you in furs again, complete with linings," I nodded at the footman who opened the drawing-room door for us and made a beeline for the cocktail table, where Young Coldicott was assembling a shaker of martinis.

"I’ve heard they won’t be doing away with rationing any time soon," Caro busied herself over a plate of canapés the maid had just deposited on another table. We kept rather more servants than we required, as I’d made a habit of taking in the cripples and strays I encountered in my Home Guard work, pretty much hiring anyone who could carry a tray and refrain from stealing the silver—when your first footman has only one leg, there’s a reasonable need for a second footman with another leg, a one-eyed cook rather requires the complementary half-deaf kitchen-maid, and next thing you know the servants’ hall is packed solid.

And then, Young Coldicott (so-called to distinguish him from his father, our butler at Foxbridge Castle—there have been Coldicotts running our households for three hundred years) was the only servant we still had from before the war, the rest had gone off to fight or to work in factories—and we only had him because of his terrible eyesight, the poor thing was blind as a mole with spectacles thick as jewelers’ loupes. None of the new people had much experience, so we needed more of them to do the same work.

"I’ll have to make a noise about that in Parliament, I don’t think I can take much more of clothing coupons and no petrol and no sweets. I mean, what’s the point of having money if you can’t bloody buy anything?" I complained, bringing Caro’s and my drinks across and examining the food: light on the potted meats and heavy on the deviled eggs, filled out with turnips and radishes cut to look like flowers. Our little back garden was turned over entirely to chickens, with more coops in a caged run on the roof, so there were always plenty of eggs to eat if nothing else.

"If you weren’t so disgustingly honest, you could have made us fat on black-market delicacies," she teased, "One proper crook in your pocket instead of in prison, and you’d be swanning around in a new dinner jacket and guzzling sugared oranges right now."

"Oh, I do miss sugared oranges," I mused nostalgically, "Though we certainly wouldn’t be serving them as canapés, would we?"

"If I had an orange in the house, I certainly would," she laughed, "A rarer delicacy than caviare, these days."

"Papa! I want to go outside!" my younger son came barreling into the room and launched himself into my arms, very nearly knocking my drink out of my hand, "But Charlie says we can’t."

"Steady on, Poppet," I reproved gently, gathering him up under one arm and handing my slopped-over drink to the footman while the housemaid advanced on me with napkins to mop up the gin; he’s on the small side for a twelve-year-old, but rather too big to be climbing on me like a squirrel in a tree, so I had a bit of a struggle to hold him, "What’s the fuss?"

"I want to go to the Palace and see the King and Queen and Mr. Churchill," he explained in a rush, his pretty little face flushed and animated, "But Charlie says Saint-Clairs can’t go gawking at the Palace gates, we only go if we’re invited inside."

"You’re supposed to call me Foxbridge, Cyril," my elder son drifted in, scorn wafting off him like steam after a bath, "Not Charlie."

"I won’t!" Poppet swung around behind me and roosted on my back to make himself taller than his brother, clutching his arms around my neck in a chokehold, "Not even when I come to Eton next term. I’ll call you Charlie! Charlie Chucklehead!"

My boys are a study in contrasts: Poppet (the Honourable Cyril Vyvyan Chatroy Saint-Clair) has my curly auburn hair and big chestnut eyes, lively and inquisitive as a monkey, impulsive and affectionate, and consistently acts half his age; fourteen-year-old Foxbridge (Charles Oliver Chatroy Saint-Clair, Viscount Foxbridge by courtesy) is the spitting image of his mother, tall and handsome and sleekly blond, but solemn and standoffish, a miniature adult with a touchy sense of decorum, and had become a bit pompous since entering Eton two years ago.

Though they’re very different from each other, they’d gotten on reasonably well (according to Caro, who grew up with two brothers and three sisters—I was an only child and had no idea) until Foxbridge started to school, whereupon the exuberant antics of the younger began to grate on the increased dignity of the elder; now with the prospect of Poppet joining him at Eton in a few months, opening up a thousand avenues for fraternal embarrassment, Foxbridge’s dignity was thrusting into overdrive and the two were at each others’ throats more often than not.

"Pater, tell him we can’t go," Foxbridge demanded. That was an Etonian affectation, as well, calling me Pater, he’d always called me Papa before; I shouldn’t resent it, I’d started calling my father Pater when I went to Eton, and I should be grateful that he hadn’t adopted the other option, Gov’nor. Still, it annoyed me a little, just as calling him Foxbridge, which had been my name from birth until just five years ago, annoyed me a little.

"You can’t go into the Park," I said sternly, pulling on Poppet’s arms so I could breathe, "Though not for the reasons you cite, Foxbridge, I’m sure the family prestige can survive rubbing elbows with the common folk on an occasion like this. But there are too many people out there, and a lot of them are going to be drunk tonight. I don’t want you getting trampled."

"But I want to see the King!" Poppet wailed, kicking me in the back of my knees and nearly toppling me.

"I’ll tell you what," I backed up to the sofa so the child could dismount without doing me any further injury, "Go up to my study and get the big binoculars off the window-seat; I’ll telephone to Lord Glenconner at the end of the row and ask if you can go up on his roof, you should be able to see the Palace from there."

"Thank you, Papa!" he leaped off the sofa and ran for the door.

"Kiss your mother, first, you little savage," I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him off his feet.

"Do I have to go with him?" Foxbridge scowled at his little brother as the latter delicately kissed his mother on the cheek before tearing out of the room.

"The governess can take him if you’d rather stay here," I reached out and stroked his hair. He didn’t like being hugged or cuddled, but at least he didn’t mind gentle demonstrations of affection: many boys his age would rather die a thousand painful deaths than let their fathers kiss them, "Your mother might let you have some champagne."

"May I stay for the party?" he turned and addressed Caro excitedly.

"You are not appropriately dressed," she said with terrible hauteur, casting meaning eyes over his neat jumper and necktie; he correctly interpreted this as teasing but responded as if she’d been serious.

"I’ll go put on a jacket," he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek, "And I’ll ask Miss Silberstein to take Cyril to Lord Glenconner’s."

"Thank you, darling," Caro beamed at him as he left the room, then turned back to me, "You spoil those boys dreadfully. Foxbridge needs knocking down a peg, and Poppet needs to grow up, but you just indulge them as they are."

"And you don’t?" I laughed at her as I took a fresh cocktail from the table.

"I’m their mother, I’m supposed to indulge them," she smirked.

"Well, if you wanted a disciplinarian, you married the wrong girl," I made a camp little curtsey, one of our long-running jokes, "I’d better get on the horn to Number 34 before Poppet turns up there and starts hammering on their door."

Glenconnor wasn’t at home, in fact nobody answered at Number 34, which rather threw a spanner into my plan; but then, if nobody was home, nobody would mind people on their roof, so I went downstairs to fetch the boy and the governess.

"Change of plan, old sport," I found the two of them in the foyer, Miss Silberstein industriously buttoning a squirming and impatient Poppet into his overcoat, "Nobody’s home at Number 34, you’ll have to go over the roofs. Do you mind a little climb, Miss S?"

"I do not mind, my lord," she replied stalwartly, though her eyes went big and she swallowed rather convulsively. She is a dour and mannish young woman, a brilliant scholar of languages and history who’d ended up billeted at Foxbridge Castle as an internee; she fled Germany when the Jews were expelled from the universities, and then been snatched out of Oxford as an enemy national when the war started; my old Nanny spotted her potential and made me take her on to teach the boys.

In the old days, a German governess would have been referred to and addressed as Fraulein; but German governesses are beyond unfashionable these days, and she wasn’t even teaching the boys to speak German, so we couldn’t call her that; and we couldn’t call her ‘Nanny’ since my own Nanny was still living with us at Foxbridge, my aunt’s long-time lover and secretary; therefore she was called Miss Silberstein, or Miss S. by those of us (well, just me, really) who found the correct pronunciation somewhat burdensome.

"I’ll go along with you," I offered, realizing that Miss S. might be afraid of heights; besides, it would be more fun to adventure on the rooftops and try to see the King than wait in the drawing-room while the guests trickled in.

"Why do I have to wear a coat?" my son groused as we climbed the stairs, "You don’t have to wear one."

"Because you have a governess and I don’t," I told him, ruffling his hair.

"Mummy says Mr. Pond is your governess," Poppet pointed out slyly.

"Yes, but he didn’t know I was going out on the roof," I paused at the door to the attic, "You think I should go back and put one on?"

"No! Let’s go!" he opened the door and pulled me through.

It wasn’t a difficult climb, the houses along Queen Anne’s Gate are about the same height, with flat or shallow roofs and no parapets, so it was fairly easy to hand Miss Silberstein over the obstacles without getting too close to the edge. But when we got to the end of Number 34, we found the view was not as unobstructed as I’d anticipated, the tops of the trees in the Park were just a tiny bit higher than we were.

"Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do," I surveyed the scene in consternation.

"Let’s climb up on the chimney," Poppet suggested.

"No, you must not climb chimneys!" Miss Silberstein gasped, "It is too dangerous!"

"Oh, I don’t know," I turned and examined the structure in question, which rose about five feet from the surface of the roof, with sufficient space between the flues that I could squeeze between, mounting the chimney like a horse, "I can get up there, easily."

"Oh, no, my lord! You will get so dirty," Miss Silberstein objected.

"I’m sick of this dinner-suit anyway," I shrugged with a show of bravado, although I knew Pond would have kittens when he saw all the soot; I jumped up a bit, caught hold of a grimy chimney-pot, and swung myself up, a little impressed with my own athleticism, "Boost him up to me, Miss S., I’ll hold him steady so he can see."

"Higher, Papa!" Poppet squealed once I had him in my lap, "I can’t see the balcony."

"Don’t squirm, your mother will never forgive me if I drop you off a chimney," I gripped his legs tightly and braced him against my shoulder while he adjusted the focus on the binoculars, "How about now?"

He went still and silent, so I assumed that the quarry had been sighted. He stayed still for quite some time, too, so it must have been a fascinating sight—he was as jumpy as a pea on a hot skillet until and unless something caught his attention, whereupon he became so engrossed one would think he’d been turned to stone.

"My lord, it is getting dark," Miss Silberstein warned after we’d been perched on the chimney long enough for my arms to get tired.

"We’d better get down, Poppet," I agreed, pulling him down into my lap.

"No, I want to stay here," he whined, "This is fun. Please?"

"It’s only fun for you, my dear," I laughed, hoisting him down into his governess’s waiting arms, "I’m bored and getting saddle-sore. I can’t imagine what’s so fascinating about watching the Royal Family wave."

"Oh, I stopped watching them ages ago, I’m watching the people in the Park."

"You won’t be able to see anything in a couple of minutes, anyway," I climbed down beside him and started batting the worst of the soot off my trousers, "It is getting dark, you know."

"They’ve got Kleig lights set up all around the Victoria Memorial and the Park," he objected, stamping his foot pettishly, "It’s not going to get dark in the Park tonight."

"What do you know about Kleig lights?" I laughed at the technical word in a child’s mouth.

"Thank his lordship for bringing you, Master Cyril," Miss Silberstein scolded the boy while strenuously rubbing his face and hands with her handkerchief.

"Thank you, Papa," he murmured sullenly.

"You’re welcome, Poppet," I wiped my hands on my own handkerchief and set off across the roofs toward home, "And thank Miss S. for coming, too. Now we both need to wash up and change into clean clothes. Tomorrow you can tell me all about the people you were watching."

"I’ll write you a report just like a real detective," he grinned up at me, his dudgeon put away in an instant.

"I look forward to reading it."

I parted from him on the third floor, where Miss Silberstein took him off to the nursery bathroom, then continued down to the second floor and through the passage to my own rooms. It was the sole spot where the two houses actually connected, and I only occupied the second floor of the other house; the large house where Caro and the boys lived was known to belong to me, but the slightly smaller building next door was owned and operated as a lodging-house by an anonymous holding company that is part of the Byzantine network of properties my stockbroker administers for me.

It was the safest way for Twister and me to live together: he rented rooms in an established lodging house in a location convenient to his work (if a trifle posh for a policeman); I took rooms in the same house under an assumed name and arrived every evening in a remarkably unflattering hat and a padded raincoat as a disguise, returning to Hyacinth House every morning through the abutting Bury Street office-block I’d bought at the same time; then, nearly a year later, I moved into the house next door with my new wife, and the mysterious third-floor lodger disappeared; after the children came, and Twister stood as their godfather, he dined with us every night, but always went home through the front door while I joined him through the door I’d had built in the second-floor passage.

It was unnecessarily complicated and rather a lot of fun, like playing at spies; and if Twister’s superiors at Scotland Yard ever examined his living arrangements, they looked perfectly innocent and above-board to even the dirtiest-minded investigator. We lived like that for ten blissful years.

Of course, there was no reason to keep up that fiction after Twister left me for the Army, but neither was there any reason to take over the rest of the smaller house, so I just let it continue as lodgings. It had come in handy on a couple of occasions when I needed a place for a friend to live, or a sham premises for Home Guard ‘sting’ operations.

 

To be continued...

14 - 20 Queen Anne's Gate (numbered right to left) in 1925

Floor Plans 14 - 22A Queen Anne's Gate; 14 and 16 are our setting.





Princess Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth II), Queen Elizabeth, (Sir) Winston Churchill, King George VI, and Princess Margaret celebrating VE Day on the balcony of Buckingham Palace



Crowds gathered at Buckingham Palace for VE Day

Map showing relative positions of "New Vere House" (A) and Buckingham Palace (B), about a third of a mile apart as the crow flies; the real 2nd Baron Glenconner actually lived at 34 Queen Anne's Gate (where the blue line takes its first turn) at the time; it is now the premises of St Stephen's Club.

　

The Feast of Saint Luke 2

The next morning was Sunday, and I lay in bed idly wondering what fresh new vistas of nonconformity lay before me. At home we always went to church in the village (the chapel in the house, slightly larger than the village church, is pretty much only used for family weddings and funerals) then had the vicar and all the churchmen to luncheon with their families; the servants all had alternating Sundays off, so that only half of them were working at a time, and meals tended to be simpler and service a little slower; but otherwise it was just an ordinary day.

"Morning, Foxy," Claude came rushing into the room, moving surprisingly fast for someone carrying a tray, which he set on the table beside the bed before leaping in under the covers with me, "Cold morning."

"Get off, you're freezing!" I protested as his frigid feet came in contact with my toasty warm legs.

"The whole house is freezing except the kitchen," he said, clutching onto me for warmth, "I forgot to put on a robe and slippers, I got so used to how warm it always is at your house. But I thought you'd want a cup of coffee, and I had to get Mama to make it before she went to chapel."

"That's very thoughtful," I said, touched by the gesture and deeply grateful for the coffee.

"Here, drink it fast before it gets any colder," he reached over to take a cup and saucer off the tray and handed it to me, "I didn't know if you wanted to go to church or not."

"I didn't think you went to church, here," I said, humming with pleasure over the coffee, which was rich and strong and syrup-thick, like you only get in Italian restaurants.

"We don't, but you always went when you were home," he explained, nestling against me again and wrapping his arms around my chest, his legs around my thighs, and burying his chilly face in my neck, "And you always went at Castoris, too. Caro doesn't go when she's here, but if you want to go into Leechester, I can go with you. Papa wouldn't like me to go inside, but I can show you where it is, anyway."

"I don't fancy going to a strange church by myself," I said, swallowing down the last of my coffee and setting the cup aside, then put my arm around Claude's shoulders and snuggled back under the covers. He was already warm again, and radiating his own heat; decently clad in flannel pajamas, he made quite a pleasant addition to the bed, "But you said your mother went to chapel?"

"There's a chapel here in the house for Mama and the servants, but it's Catholic. They do confession first thing, it takes ages, there's still time if you want to hear the mass."

"Another time, perhaps," I said; though I'd like to see what a Catholic mass in a private chapel was like, I wasn't curious enough to get out of bed yet.

"Are you going to church, Foxy?" Caro came into the room without knocking, surprising me a little. She was dressed for riding in a green wool habit and a tricorne hat with a veil, the train of her skirt looped up on the crook of her riding-crop.

"No, though Claude offered to take me," I said as she climbed up on the bed and lounged across my feet.

"Good, you can help feed the animals, instead."

"Hey, why are you all in here?" Tony came in next (nobody knocked on doors in that house, not once while I was there) with Paul right behind him, still in their pajamas. Without so much as a by-your-leave, they both crawled into the bed under the covers on either side of me and Claude; Peter took my free arm and wrapped it around his shoulders as he snuggled up against me, reaching over my chest to pull on Claude's hair, while Tony pressed himself against his elder brother's back and kissed his neck.

"What animals?" I asked Caro after everyone was comfortable—including me: it was nice, being enveloped in that chaste pile of warm bodies; and though my libido stirred at the contact, it wasn't any more urgent a stirring than is usual first thing in the morning.

"Pigs, chickens, horses, two cows, and some sheep," she said with a wicked grin, anticipating my surprise, "The servants don't do any work on the Sabbath, but livestock still have to be tended, so we heathens get to feed the animals, and ourselves, on Sundays. We can go riding after, if you'd like to join me."

"That sounds like fun," I faked a grin; it sounded like hard work, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of thinking herself a better farm-hand than me, she was already better at too many other things.

"Well, get up, then, you lazy boys," she started whacking at our legs with her crop, starting a rowdy sort of exodus in which I got pummeled by knees and elbows as well as Caro's whip.

"Bugger off so I can get dressed," I said to her as she walked over to the bureau and began adjusting her hat in the looking-glass.

"I'm physically incapable of buggering," she laughed at me, then poured out some water into the painted pottery basin, "Come wash your face and I'll get your riding togs out."

"I'm not going to be valeted by a lady," I protested, pulling the coverlet up to my chin for emphasis.

"I wish you'd stop thinking of me as a lady," she turned and glared angrily at me.

"But you are a lady," I countered.

"Piffle," she threw a hairbrush at me, narrowly missing my head--though I doubt she actually missed, she was probably aiming exactly one quarter of an inch from my left ear, "If you and I are going to be married, you're going to have to drop your notion of us being different genders."

"But we are different genders," I stubbornly insisted.

"We're both queer, so it amounts to the same thing as us both being boys who aren't queer, or both being girls," she reasoned, snatching the covers off the bed and pulling me out by my arm, "And we've already seen each other in our unmentionables, so what's the point of modesty, now?"

"I'm just not comfortable," I pouted, taking off my pajama-jacket so I could wash while she rummaged in the wardrobe, "It feels wrong."

"Just think of me as a man who happens to be dressed as a lady," she said, tossing a fresh shirt at me, "instead of a lady who sometimes dresses as a man."

"I'll try," I promised wearily, knowing I was beat, "But it'll be difficult, since I have already seen you in your unmentionables."

With Caro's help, I was dressed neatly, if not as nattily as usual, in fairly short order; trotting down to the kitchen, we found the Chatroy boys clustered around the fireplace, toasting bread on long forks and guzzling big bowls of porridge.

Claude interrupted his meal to show me where everything was, letting me scoop up my own porridge from a great cauldron over the fire, fix it up with sugar and cream from a crock, cut my own bread from a massive loaf, and pulled up a chair so I could make my toast in comfort. Caro had already eaten, her maid had brought her breakfast in bed before the rest of us were up, so she preceded us into the kitchen yard.

Once I'd eaten and gone outside with the rest, I wished to God I'd had a camera: the Tatler would pay a fortune for a photograph of Lady Caroline Chatroy, fashionable Society darling in full sidesaddle riding kit, hunkered down on a wooden stool and milking a cow. I helped feed the pigs, robbed several hens of their eggs, and had a go at milking a goat--though the goat did not enter into the spirit of experimentation and bit me when I handled her too roughly.

The rest of the day passed in leisurely fashion, Claude joining Caro and me for our ride and showing us over the hamlet of Bourneham and other highlights of the estate; then I had a nice long bath (the only uninterrupted bath I had in that place) before dressing for lunch, which was also taken in the kitchen without the assistance of servants, making sandwiches out of slices from an immense Italian pork sausage full of nuts and peppercorns, along with olives and hunks of goat-cheese. The same thing happened at tea-time and dinner-time, as well, just picking from big platters of cold meats and cheeses, pickles and fruit--antipasti is the Italian word--while the servants lolled about their own quarters, the kitchen gardens, and the barn. It was quite pleasant.

Monday brought the servants back to their posts, and I was wakened by a tiny wizened gnome of a woman who greeted me cheerfully in Italian (all of the servants were Italians, imported along with the Baroque furniture and the colourful pottery from Donna Bianca's Perugian home) while opening the curtains, and left me an ewer of hot water and a pot of coffee.

The rest of the morning I spent with Claude and his brothers, who climbed into bed with me as soon as I'd finished my coffee, then dragged me down to the river for a freezing bathe, where we raced each other against Lord John's motor launch when he went upriver to the University for the day. Then we all had hot baths in the house before a huge breakfast, followed by a prolonged game of tennis.

The Chatroy boys pretty much adopted me as one of their own, despite my being several years older than them, including me in all of their pastimes as well as dog-piling on top of me whenever I sat down on any piece of furniture that could accommodate them; and while I sometimes had to fight an urge to touch them inappropriately, such urges were not frequent nor particularly compelling.  It was really like becoming a child again, myself.

Those boys lived in their own idyllic little world, a little boys' world full of little boys' pastimes (tracking wild animals, chasing each-other through the woods, climbing trees, catching tadpoles in jars, etc.), a world into which Eros had yet to intrude: ripening bodies were observed and remarked on, but not explored or indulged. 

Eros cannot be excluded completely from any world, though, at least not when some denizens of that world were already closely acquainted with him; my second night at Bourneham, Claude sneaked into my bedroom not long after midnight, and we spent a pleasantly strenuous hour or so together before he returned to his own room.  

I worried, the next day, that his habitual candour would expose our new relationship to his brothers, or worse his parents, but I needn't have: Claude was discretion itself in this one aspect of his life, and did not by so much as a look or a gesture give any indication of our nocturnal pastimes, nor so much as a hint of his adventures with the white-slavers, Lady Beatrice, and William (though he did share them with me, in excruciating detail).

With growing fondness, I watched Claude slowly returning to himself as he reacclimated to this world, the bubbling enthusiasm and shocking candour that had formerly enlivened his personality coming back to the surface; and I found myself losing my own grown-up reserve, becoming rather more Claude-like than I would have thought possible.

Caro kept herself somewhat aloof from us, though, watching our games from the sidelines and spending much of her time chatting with Donna Bianca in the kitchen. And though she was dressed impeccably all the time, she seemed so much more relaxed and serene than usual, her jokes became gentler, her smiles less ironic; it rather enhanced her beauty, I thought, and I found my admiration for her developing into something more like affection.

All the time I was at Bourneham, though, I missed Pond terribly, even more than I missed Twister. I'd not realized how completely I'd come to depend on him as a confidante as well as a servant, and I rather wished I'd brought him along after all--although the informality of the place would have shocked him to the core, I think he would have enjoyed himself after getting used to it. The demonstrative affection of Italian men, not to mention their beauty (every male servant on the estate was a stunner, without exception), would have been ample recompense for any discomfiture he might have experienced.

The end of the week brought a new treat, in the form of a church fête in the neighbouring village of Leechester, which was one of the highlights of the local social calendar, featuring not only an elaborate pleasure-fair and the usual sports but also a lengthy concert of local talent and visiting luminaries. We were to make a day of it, spending several hours at the fête and then having an early supper with the local squire, returning to the village hall for the concert followed by a cake-and-cocoa reception in the vicarage.

The boys were as excited as children on Christmas morning, and I was afraid they were going to injure themselves in the haste with which they bathed and dressed; Donna Bianca dressed with special care, assisted by Caro's maid, wearing some magnificent cameos and a very smart cloche; Caro was of course immaculately turned out, fully expecting to be photographed by the local Press, and could have walked straight into the Royal Enclosure in her French wool walking-suit, fox-fur muff, and extravagant picture hat; I made an effort as well, since I'd probably be photographed along with her, though I didn't have my best suits with me.

Leechester is a very picture-postcard sort of place, leafy and quaint, with a line of thatch-roofed buildings along the top of a gently sloping common meadow terminating at the banks of the Cam, dominated by a squat and massive medieval church at the eastern end of the High Street. The fair was set up around an ornamental bandstand in the centre of the common, made up of a dozen colourfully striped canvas tents; at a slight remove from this cluster, on the banks of the river, a string of Gypsy caravans stood in a semicircle around some sort of scaffolding.

I made my way around the fair with Caro on my arm, applauding the little band in the bandstand, examining the foodstuffs and handicrafts offered for sale, being photographed by the local press and Country Life, failing to win a goldfish with some quoits, riding on the carousel, and eating an ice-cream; but all the time, I was drawn to the scaffolding in front of the caravans, trying to figure out what it was meant to be used for, and the curiosity was eating me up.

But of course Caro could not be led, and no matter how hard I tried to steer our course toward the scaffolding, she kept counter-steering toward the game booths, which she studied intently but did not seem interested in playing.  I was coming to understand that Caro's passion for games was more for how they worked than just winning them, she was observing the mechanics of the thing rather than the players or the prizes.

"I want to go see what that scaffolding is for," I finally tried the direct approach, always my last resort, pulling her away from her study of the cocoanut-shies.

"Certainly," she swiveled cheerfully on her heel,

The Feast of Saint Luke 1

"Why aren't you wearing a costume?" I wailed in disappointment on entering Twister's room: he was just finishing his tie, a plain boring white tie to go with his plain boring tailcoat.  It was the night of my much-anticipated masquerade ball, the grand finale of my house-party, and I was wound tight with excitement; seeing him in ordinary evening dress struck me like a blow.

"What the hell are you got up as?" he countered, his eyes wide with amazement.

"Oberon, of course," I sniffed, striking a regal pose to show off the costume. It was a dazzling thing, designed for the ballet by Caro's pet costumier: pale green tights with knee-high boots and a wide-necked doublet of silvery green lamé glittering with crystal dewdrops, a fluttering mantle of pale green net spattered with silk butterflies, an immense headdress of silver-gilt papier-mâché antlers and peacock feathers, and a tall silver staff twined with pale green lamé ivy and topped by a crystal rose.

"Of course," he agreed, ogling my practically bare shoulders and shamelessly displayed legs, "You would have to be King of the Fairies, wouldn't you?"

"No point in being Parliamentary Undersecretary of the Fairies, is there?" I smirked at him, slowly turning to give him the spectacular rear view.  I looked very good in those tights, if I do say so myself.

"How am I supposed to keep my hands off all this for the whole evening?" he complained with a deep growl, coming close and pawing the silken material at my hips.

"Put them in your pockets?" I suggested helpfully, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him softly, "But really, why aren't you wearing a costume?"

"I have a mask," he explained, running his hands up my back and nuzzling my neck.

"Everybody has a mask, that's no fun," I pouted, gasping when he bit me lightly on the earlobe, "Get off me, I can't hide what you're doing to me in these tights."

"I think you'll like it," he said, stepping into the clothes-press and giving me a moment to recover my dignity, "The mask, I mean.  Look."

"You're a fox!" I cried with delight when he came out of the press, most of his face obscured by a very realistic-looking fox's head, made of red fox fur, with whiskers and eyelashes and everything.

"I'm you, Foxy!" he replied, turning around to show me the long bushy fox-tail protruding from between the tails of his coat.

"My tail isn't that bushy," I laughed at him.

"I'm wearing your cufflinks and studs," he showed me the details of his costume, "and your tie and handkerchief.  Your braces and socks, too.  This is your wristwatch."

"Nobody will notice those," I frowned, "I didn't even notice them."

"They don't need to notice: I'm not wearing them for anybody else, just for us," he took my hand and nuzzled his fox-nose into the palm, kissing my fingertips, "I'm just a fox for everyone else.  But in my own mind, and yours, I'm Foxy."

"You're a very strange man, Twister Paget," I laughed, deeply touched by the fetishism of him wearing my things.

"Says the man dressed as a fairy," he laughed right back.

"We're going to be late for the party," I said with a sigh as I leaned my staff against the wall and started checking the pins holding my headdress in place.

"Nonsense, we've got fifteen minutes," he looked at his watch—my watch.

"This is going to take at least twenty," I replied, pushing him back onto the bed and climbing up on top of him, "Thirty if you ladder these tights and I have to go change into my spares. No, leave the mask on."

*****

My prediction of doom for my house-party turned out to have been quite unfounded.  Aside from Jingo and Dotty, who left immediately after Thomas's inquest, and Twister and Claude who were more like family, none of my guests was actually involved in the affair; barring a scandal, there would be no reason for anyone to take to their heels.

And the scandal was of course diverted, Silenus fixed everything before I was even out of bed the next day, cooking up a fiction that covered all the facts and shielded everyone involved, then spoon-feeding it to the Coroner and the Press. 

One of the new housemaids, Peggy, a talented amateur actress with no local family, claimed that she'd been the bone of contention between William and Thomas, swearing to reporters (and under oath at the inquest) that she'd been aware that both men were in love with her, but had preferred William's attentions, which made Thomas jealous enough to kill him.

Silenus also reconstructed the confrontation scene to match, excluding the ladies and Alfie, as well as Claude who couldn't lie, and Twister who wouldn't, reducing it to myself and Otterly as the only witnesses to a fictional scene: Silenus allegedly tricked Thomas into confessing his crime to Peggy by the rather fanciful means of frightening him with a fake séance. 

I thought the tale was pretty flimsy, with great big glaring holes in it (such as why the estate manager was involved in a situation with the indoor staff), but the coroner's jury bought it and the Press lapped it up like cream: "The Belowstairs Love-Triangle" was blazoned across the newsstands all the next week.

Summerill knew all about it, though, since Twister insisted on telling him the whole truth; but that worthy detective surprised us all by agreeing completely with Silenus's solutions, even admiring the way he'd coopted Jingo's blackmail ring. I thought Twister would be disgusted with Summerill for his complicity, but instead he stopped grumbling about Silenus.  I suppose hearing those same arguments from a trusted colleague instead of a sinister old poof put a different complexion on things.

At any rate, Thomas's death was judged an accident; and though he couldn't be tried posthumously, his confession closed the case on William's murder.  Peggy went to London with two thousand pounds in her pocket to make a bid for the legitimate stage (though she ended up in pictures, and became quite successful playing working-class ingénues), Mrs. Coldicott went away to visit relatives and recover from the shock, and the rest of us pretended nothing had happened: one footman had killed another and then taken a fatal spill down a corkscrew stair; a tragic episode, but nothing to do with the Saint-Clairs or our guests.

And so Pater went back to London, Sir Lionel and Lady Brazington came to stay in the Faringdons' place, and we went about our merry business—some of us a trifle subdued, perhaps, though some of us with the knowledge of what had actually happened were more than a little giddy with the relief over the ghastly scandals we'd avoided—and had a rather good time.

I'd had to cancel some of the more frivolous entertainments I'd planned, in deference both to a death in the house and to the somewhat reduced staff, not to mention my own slightly hampered ability to play the charming host with a knife-wound in my shoulder (which healed up surprisingly fast and didn't even leave much of a scar); but anything for which I'd hired entertainers or caterers went on as planned, culminating in a ball that grew prodigiously in size in the week following the inquests. 

We had invited a great many people to begin with, even people we didn't know, pretty much lifting the guest-list from Who's Who and sending an invitation to every family listed in that tome within thirty miles of us; and with country-house ball invitations, guests staying at the time are always included; but the publicity of the Belowstairs Love Triangle was such that every one of the invited families suddenly had a dozen guests staying with them.

And then, of course, one's London friends started clamouring for invitations, drawn by the rubbed-off glamour of press mentions and the photographs from the first entertainments I'd held, which had already been published due to the sudden attention we were receiving.  The guest-list grew so exponentially in one week that we had to hire a second catering crew, press-ganged two dozen villagers to act as waiters and maids, and opened all the third-floor bedrooms and the attic to make room for the overnighters.

It was a glorious chaos, with nearly four hundred guests expected and over six hundred showing up in total, including a platoon of Bright Young Things who crashed the party en masse, the festive crowd pouring out of a small fleet of charabancs from London; only fifty or so were meant to spend the night, but in reality the sun was well up before the majority of party guests started leaving, and few of the beds were actually slept in (though most were utilized, at least).

My costume was much admired, as was Aunt Em's (I'd wanted Caro to act as my Titania, but she thought that would be taken as a too-early proof of our engagement, so dressed instead as Cleopatra with Claude as Mark Antony); far more modestly draped than I, she was resplendent in dove-gray and midnight-blue robes spangled with diamanté stars and feather songbirds, like a partly-cloudy night sky, and a silver foil headdress representing the phases of the moon.  We even had a pretty village lad painted blue and dressed as a miniature maharajah to act as our page, holding a big velvet bag from which we dispensed favors (tie-pins for the gentlemen and compacts for the ladies) while receiving our guests.

Though the majority of guests had opted for the simplicity of a mask with standard evening dress, there were quite a few really spectacular costumes on display; and even a half-mask tends to reduced people's inhibitions enough that you'd scarcely credit their behaviour, hidebound judges dancing on table-tops and decorous matrons flirting outrageously, and a good time was had by all. 

There was proper dancing in the Long Gallery and jazz dancing in the music-room, cards in the Great Chamber and a banquet in the dining-room, and a troupe of Gypsy carnival performers circulating around with dancing monkeys and magic tricks, blowing fire and balancing on balls, even swinging on trapezes and crossing high-wires in the upper reaches of the great hall.  And when it got so late the musicians and performers were fainting in their chairs, the guests took over the instruments and put on impromptu shows that went on until dawn.

I was so giddy and exhausted by the end of the party that I started weeping like an overstimulated child when Pond took me out of my costume the next morning.  I became so hysterical that I alarmed him enough to send for Twister, who got me into bed and held tight to me while I bawled myself to sleep.

"I'm going to miss you so much when you go home," I said to him when I woke up some hours later, finding him lying awake beside me, "I don't think I'll be able to stand it, waking up and not having you in my arms."

"You lived without me your whole life before I came here, I'm sure you'll survive after," he smiled and stroked my hair.

"I didn't know what I was missing, then," I replied, not smiling, still feeling weepy after my hysteria, "These last two weeks have been heaven, everything after will feel like hell.  I wish I could live with you always."

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride," he said uselessly, echoing Nanny, or perhaps his own nanny.  I suspect that little bit of doggerel was standard-issue nanny propaganda.

"I'm quite serious," I said, rearing up on my elbow so I could look into his eyes, "There must be some way for us to live together, to wake up together every day."

"Oh, my beautiful Foxy," he wasn't smiling, now, either, "It's just not possible.  We'd have to give up everything: you'd have to give up your position and your family, I'd have to give up my career, we'd have to go away where nobody knows us and live always in fear of the law.  That's no life for us."

"That's not quite true," I nestled back down in his arms, my face in his neck, chilled by the tone in his voice, the bleakness of his vision, "I wouldn't really have to give up anything.  Nobody can take away my money or my title, not even Pater.  I can easily live in France if I wanted.  I don't have a reputation yet to protect.  But you'd have to give up everything, wouldn't you?  It isn't fair of me to even talk of it."

"You'd still lose, because I can't give you an heir," he said, "You need an heir.  You're the last of your line, all of your titles would go extinct without you."

"I never realized how easy it is for me," I sat up and scrambled out of bed, suddenly hating myself and wanting to get away; I was halfway across the room before I turned back to Twister, laying astonished on the bed, "I can get an heir just like that.  Caro would marry me, regardless, and even if she and I couldn't engage in the act, we could always get a baby somewhere or other to pass off as ours.  I really don't have anything to lose.  And yet here I am always nagging you to give up everything to be with me.  What an awful cruel ass I've been to you."

"Oh, come on," he sounded alarmed and annoyed at once, "You're not being cruel.  You're just being naïve."

"I don't deserve you," I started crying again, collapsing onto the floor in front of the empty fireplace, the stone hearth comfortably cold against my bare skin.

"You're crazy," he laughed indulgently after he'd scooped me up off the floor into his lap, curling up with me on the sofa and holding me until I calmed down, "Are you always like this after a party?"

"I've never had a party like this," I conceded, hiccoughing and laughing at once, "I guess this is what 'overwrought' feels like. I've always wondered."

"I don't want to leave you like this, but I have to get dressed," he grasped my chin and turned my face toward his so he could kiss me, "Bunny's driving me back to London this afternoon.  And I have to be at work bright and early tomorrow morning."

"I'll be all right," I promised, pushing him down onto the sofa, "If you'll give me a little something to tide me over until I come to London next."

"Little!?" he roared and slapped my backside hard enough to hurt, then started tickling me, "I'll show you little."

*****

Once the party was over and the guests gone, life at Foxbridge went right back to the way it had been before, quiet and a little dull—though after all the hullabaloo, I had to admit that the quiet dullness was a welcome change.  Caro and Claude stayed on, as well, and they added a bit of life to the house that had been lacking before. 

October came on all misty with rain, and Aunt Em's travelling al fresco luncheons had to come indoors: I suggested we simply move luncheon into the great conservatory, just like being outdoors but without the weather; but her conscience couldn't allow making the servants walk all that way every day, so the big bay window of the great hall became our luncheon-spot.

"Look at this!" I exclaimed over an unexpected envelope in the pile of post beside my plate, "A letter from Verevale!"

"Really?" Aunt Em snatched the thing out of my hand in disbelief, studying the crest and address through her lorgnette, letting her own letters fall in her excitement, "Well, I never!  Whatever can they want?"

"You'll likely find the answer inside the envelope," Nanny pointed out drily, reaching over to pluck Aunt Em's letters out of the soup.

I took the envelope back and tore it open, savaging the paper in my haste, and quickly scanned its contents, "They want me to come stay!"

"Who are 'they'?" Caro asked, amused by our shock.

"The Levondales," I answered as Aunt Em took the letter away to read for herself, "Lord Levondale is the tenant at Verevale Court, our other seat."

"And why is it so surprising they'd write and invite you to stay?" she pursued.

"They never have!" Aunt Em said breathlessly, "They've never written to us, not in three generations.  Not even a Christmas card."

"But they're your tenants?" Caro frowned.

"I think that's why," Aunt Em opined, "I think they're embarrassed that they don't own Verevale, they're just tenants.  So they pretend we don't exist."

"That's horrid," Caro was offended on our behalf.  As we spent more and more time together, with just family around us, Caro and I were coming to feel like we were already married, and members of each others' families: an insult to the Saint-Clairs was an insult to the Chatroys.

"That's not really why," I told Caro, wanting to share knowledge that I had gleaned by eavesdropping on my parents years and years ago but not sure I should mention it in front of Aunt Em, "My grandfather insulted Lord Levondale's grandfather, and there has been a certain coolness ever since."

"Who told you that?" Aunt Em looked at me sharply.

"I heard it from Pater," I temporized: he certainly didn't tell me about it, he told Mummy about it, but I heard him from my hiding place behind the drawing-room curtains.

What happened was this: when my grandfather, the ninth Earl of Vere, acceded in 1881, he found he couldn't afford to live at Verevale Court and Foxbridge Castle, as well as Vere House, all at the same time; he also needed a substantial infusion of cash to keep the estates solvent under the load of debt left by the eighth Earl; he therefore had little choice but to let Verevale Court.  The newly-ennobled Baron Levondale, an obscenely rich gem-merchant and banker, could have afforded to buy Verevale outright (if it hadn't been entailed); but he didn't want a whole estate, he just wanted a stately country-house with a sufficiency of parkland. 

So he bought the hundred-year lease on Verevale Court, paid in advance (which was still cheaper than buying the whole estate: old Levondale didn't get rich by paying more than he had to for anything), and retired to Sussex to take up the life of a landed aristocrat; the ninth Earl paid off a lot of debt and bought a great many diamonds for his new bride; everyone was happy.

One would think this a very straightforward transaction, and perfectly opportune for both parties; but though the Earl had no cause to complain of the money, he really would have preferred to have had more, and so took it into his head that Levondale had cheated him on the price.  One night, in his cups at a ball, he loudly referred to Levondale as "that damned dirty Jew."

Ordinarily, nobody would have paid the slightest attention to the anti-Semitic babble of a drunken peer.  However, Lord Levondale's son, a rather hot-headed young man aptly named Lionel, happened to be in the room at the time and took some exception to the comment: though Lord Levondale was originally a Jew (born Leventhal, he Anglicised his name when he was baptised) he'd converted to Christianity at the time of his marriage to a viscount's daughter; he also had a mania for hygiene, and only God could judge the state of his soul.

The Honourable Lionel Levondale, who later became the second Baron Levondale, actually slapped the ninth Earl with a glove at that ball; but duello had rather gone out of fashion by then, so he had to be satisfied with impugning Lord Vere's honour and intelligence all over London; to make matters worse, it got into the papers during a slow news week—resulting in suits and countersuits of libel, and a relatively vicious Society feud that was the highlight of three Seasons.

Though Lionel's son, the incumbent third Baron Levondale, did not keep up the feud, neither he nor his wife had any reason to end it; my father was quite indifferent to them, and Mummy hadn't pressed the question after learning the story; consequently, no Saint-Clair living had ever set foot in Verevale Court, the house our ancestors had built and occupied for two centuries.

"Do you know the Levondales, Caro?" I asked.  She seemed to know everyone, I wondered if she'd had anything to do with the invitation.

"I've met them, of course, but I can't say I know them very well.  They're Social, but not quite Fashionable."

"Lord Levondale's son Michael was one of Papa's freshers last year," Claude said, unexpectedly joining the conversation.  He had become very quiet since the murder, and seldom ever spoke unless addressed directly, "He came over for tennis sometimes.  He played very well."

"I wonder what prompted the Levondales to reach out to you now, after all these years?" Nanny took the letter from Aunt Em to peruse its contents.  Visitors have often been shocked by the way we pass our letters around at luncheon, it seems that most people think of their post as sacrosanct and private; but Nanny has always read Aunt Em's letters, as her secretary, and let Aunt Em read hers; and when I came back to live at Foxbridge, I naturally joined in with the practice — as I've said, my private affairs are of the sort that nobody in his right mind would commit to paper, unless one wants to be blackmailed, so I had no reason to hide my correspondence.

"Lady Levondale mentioned mutual friends," I said, "but not which ones.  I suppose it could be anybody.  I'll have to find out when I get there."

"You're going to accept, then?" Caro frowned.

"If for no other reason than sheer, raw curiosity," I answered, tucking into my filet of sole, "I'm mad to know what prompted Lady Levondale to write.  And I'm dying to see Verevale Court, I may never get another chance.  I'm sure to be dead and gone before the lease expires."

"I'm not so sure I'd be willing to let a three-generation feud go so easily," Caro considered, resuming her examination of her own letters, "After that long, it rather becomes a tradition, doesn't it?"

"If the injured party extends the olive branch, it would be caddish not to accept," I explained.

"The lease expires in 1982, Sebastian," Nanny corrected me, "You'll only be seventy-six years old by then, I'm sure you'll still be up and about and perfectly capable of seeing to your estates."

"Seventy-six!" I gasped, shocked by the idea, "That's frightfully old, I can't imagine living that long."

"There are plenty of septuagenarians running about these days," Nanny looked at me over the top of her pince-nez, "With medicine advancing at its current  rate, it's expected that living to a hundred will soon become quite commonplace."

"That will be rather hard on the heirs, won't it?" I laughed, "Waiting around for a hundred years to come into one's inheritance?"

"Perhaps it will inspire young men of rank to make something of their own lives instead of just waiting around for their fathers to die."

"Something in that," I agreed, intrigued by the idea.  Very few of my male ancestors had lived much past sixty, and very rarely did anyone marry before acceding, so it was almost unheard-of for a Saint-Clair to know his own grandfather.  One wonders what might have happened if they'd had more opportunity to make their own way in the world before taking on the responsibility of the earldom.

If my father lived to be a hundred, I'd remain Viscount Foxbridge until I was nearly seventy; and if I married Caro in the next three or four years, as I intended, it was quite likely that I would have children and grandchildren before Pater fell off his perch.  I'd also have plenty of time to do all sorts of interesting things before taking on the estates and Parliament.  It made for rather a dizzying prospect.

"When are you asked?" Caro wondered, taking the letter from Claude, who'd been looking at it blankly as if it were written in hieroglyphics after Nanny passed it along.

"November fourth, to stay at least a fortnight," Nanny replied for me.

"Oh!" Aunt Em exclaimed in disappointment, "You'll miss the first hunt of the season!  I was especially counting on you being here for that."

"But Auntie, I haven't been to the first hunt at Foxbridge since I went to Eton."

"Exactly, you've always been stuck at school for the first hunt, I wanted to have a hunt ball here now that you're home."

"I suppose I could put Lady Levondale off until the following week," I suggested.

"No, don't do that," Aunt Em sighed, "If she invited you for their first hunt, it would be cruel to disappoint her."

"I'll be absolutely sure to be here for the first hunt next year," I took her hand and shook it about on the table, "And the year after that.  And so on and so on, I'll be around a while yet."

"Unless there's another war," she shrugged sadly, poking at her food.

"What makes you think there'll be another war?" I gaped incredulously.  Wasn't the whole point of the Great War to prevent future wars?

"I didn't think the last one would happen, did I?" she said, her voice strange and hollow, "But it happened anyway.  And if I learnt anything from the experience, it's to not put things off for a future that may never come. So many young men with their lives ahead of them, bright lovely boys like you, all dead now, all their tomorrows taken away."

"Now, Emily," Nanny said sternly, "You mustn't talk like that."

"I wonder what the riding is like in Sussex," I hastily changed the subject, not liking the haunted look in Aunt Em's eyes, and rattled by thinking of both living to a hundred and dying young during the same course of one meal, "I've never hunted there before.  Do you suppose I ought to take my own horse?"

The rest of the meal passed with inconsequential topics related to hunting and riding, and afterward I went up to my little study to delve further into the life of Louis XIV's younger brother, Philippe, le Duc d'Orléans, the first research subject for my embryo  collection of Queers in History.

I'd found this obscure and untidy bookshop in Soho run by a funny little gnome of a man, a former professor of history at Cambridge who'd been sacked for repeated indiscretions with undergraduates; he was helping me with my research, sending along biographies of, and literature by, gentlemen of Our Sort to give me some ideas of what to look for by way of artifacts.  He'd started me off with Monsieur (as the duke was known all his life), the Emperor Hadrian, and Ludwig II of Bavaria as the most likely to have left luxurious detritus lying about in shops, and was sending along more whenever I finished with those three.

While I read, I took up my other new hobby, smoking a pipe.  I'd snitched one of Pater's from the rack he left behind in the business room, and was busily practicing with it: smoking a pipe is a lot harder than it looks, there's a great deal of skill involved in packing the bowl just right so it stays lit; as a novice, I of course spent more time tamping and lighting than I did actually drawing smoke, but it gave me something to do with my hands (if I sit too still while reading, I fall asleep) and made the room smell lovely.

I was startled from my pursuits by a knock on the door into the corridor.  Pond was the only one who used that door, as I generally entered from the bedroom, and he of course never knocked; nobody else ever came into that room except the servants to clean and build the fire when I was still asleep.  No one had ever knocked on that door before.  So bemused was I that my caller had to knock again to stir me from my stupor.

"Come in?" I ventured, a note of uncertainty breaking my voice. 

"So, this is where you hide all afternoon," Caro came strolling into the room, looking around with interest, "What are you up to?"

"Reading," I said simply, strangely shocked to see her in all her fluffy femininity moving around in my terrifically masculine sanctum sanctorum.  She was wearing pleated white silk, and glowed like a Christmas angel against all the oak and leather.

"You look quite ridiculous with a pipe," she settled down in the chair opposite me and gave me that superior smile of hers, a smirk I'd have found annoying on anyone else.

"I know, like a child playing dress-up," I admitted, knocking the smouldering tobacco out into the fireplace, "That's why I haven't taken it out of this room.  What brings you by?"

"Claude got a letter from his mother today, she wants him to come home.  Apparently his brothers are pining for him.  They've never been apart this long before."

"Perhaps going home might bring him back to himself somewhat," I said, repacking the bowl of my pipe, "He's been so sad since William was killed."

"I don't know," she took a cigarette from a case hidden somewhere in her costume and lit it with the patent pipe-lighter from my table, which she handed to me when she was done, "I think it might be hard for him to go back to his old life, after living as much as he has the last few months.  First the kidnapping and Lady Bea, and now William and the murder.  I'm afraid he may have lost his innocence for good, poor lamb."

"Does losing your innocence automatically make your family tedious?" I wondered; having never had siblings or even cousins of my own, I was genuinely curious.

"You don't feel like you belong, anymore," she said after a thoughtful pause, "You know about something they don't know about, and you can't tell them about it.  It makes you feel divided from them."

"That sounds sad," I said, "I guess it's just as well I didn't have brothers or sisters."

"And that you're still innocent," she smirked again.

"Me?" I must have looked a picture of comedy, the poorly-lit pipe hovering uselessly in front of my gaping mouth, "By what definition can you call me innocent?"

"Loss of innocence isn't just discovering physical love," she explained, "Nor even pursuing it with the abandon and enthusiasm you do. It's more a matter of trust and wonder.  You still think the world is a lovely place."

"Isn't it, though?" I smiled at her superiority, "For the most part, anyway?"

"When your heart gets broken is when you lose your innocence," she said, "When you're betrayed by love.  You'll be an innocent until Twister hurts you, which I doubt will ever happen."

"Who broke your heart?" I wondered; she was right, of course, even Jingo's betrayal, painful as it was, hadn't really scarred me—but I'd never really loved anyone until I met Twister.

"Clarissa Seton," she said in a strange tone, somewhere between a sigh and a snarl, "My second year at Roedean."

"What was she like?"

"Exquisitely pretty," she got up and threw her cigarette into the fireplace, going to look out the window at the courtyard, "and unbelievably sweet.  Like a Dresden shepherdess made of spun sugar.  I fell in love with her the first time she spoke to me.  But it was just a game to her, getting girls to fall in love with her and then setting us at each-others' throats for her own amusement, like gladiators.  I very nearly murdered Sylvia Cattermole before I realized what she was doing."

"Not very nice," I said after a bit of glowering silence stretched into an uncomfortable pause.

"No," Caro turned back, her composure back in place, "Not very nice.  But to return to the reason for my invading your burrow, I think we should go home with Claude."

"Whatever for?" I frowned.  Claude was growing on me, I had to admit, but I still habitually held him at arm's length.

"You and I have been away to school, and he hasn't; we have experience of coming home, experience we can share with him.  Besides, it's fun there."

"I can't very well just drop in on Claude's people, can I?"

"Of course you can," she laughed, "There's no formality at Bourneham.  I'm family, and you're my incipient fiancé, so of course you can drop in.  Come spend a week before you go to Verevale."

"Alright," I agreed, knocking another wasted nugget of scorched tobacco into the hearth and giving up on the enterprise, "I'll have Pond pack us up."

"You may want to leave Pond behind," she perched on the arm of my chair and picked up my pipe to examine, "He might not like the informality.  The family eat in the kitchen, there."

"The kitchen!" I was stunned, "Like farmers?  Will I like it?"

"It's not a hovel, Foxy, it's a country-house, quite comfortable if not as luxurious as Foxbridge.  But there's no structure, no rules, no dress-codes.  If you want something to eat or drink, you just go get it instead of ringing for it; if you want coffee at tea-time or brandy for breakfast, you can have it; and if you feel like wearing pajamas to dinner, nobody will care.  Imagine a whole week without a collar on," she said enticingly, then changed her tone, "Imagine poor Pond in such an atmosphere, he'd be absolutely barking in a matter of hours."

"Do you bring Partridge?" I wondered what Pond would do without me for a week.

"Yes, I'm incapable of dealing with my own hooks anymore.  But remember, she's got a theatrical background.  Pond is a hereditary professional, he's so much more easily shocked."

"Yes, I see what you mean," I got out of my chair and reached for the bell-pull, "He'll kick like a mule, but I'm sure he could use the rest."

"Good, I'm glad," she kissed me on the cheek on her way to the door, "I'll let Claude know, and telephone to Bourneham so they expect us."

*****

Pond was reluctant to let me go to such an unconventional house, and even more reluctant to let me go with a suitcase full of jumpers and old tweeds; but the promise of a week's paid holiday in Plymouth, taking the sea air cheek-by-jowl with His Majesty's Navy, eventually swayed him.  Three days later, I was bowling along the Cambridge Road with Caro at my side, Partridge and Claude in the back seat, and an amazing amount of luggage in the boot of my Rolls (Claude and I could travel light, but Caro had her image to uphold). 

Just as the spires of the great university came into view on the horizon, I was directed off the main road toward Leechester, through which we passed to find Bourneham, a sleepy little hamlet cuddled beside the Cam about four miles downriver of the city.  On the far side of the hamlet, we turned through the tumbled remains of a stone arch and drove along a heavily wooded lane for several minutes.  Then the wood parted and Bourneham Hall hove suddenly into view, a great rambling pile of gables and chimneys, draped in ivy and glittering with warped diamond-pane windows.

When I pulled up to a crumbling wooden porch in the Gothic style, instead of the expected butler, we were greeted by an explosion of Chatroys: two gorgeous boys flew out of the house as if it were on fire and tackled Claude the moment he stepped out of the motor, wrestling him to the ground amid a clamour of glad cries like excited beagles; behind them came a woman of absolutely astounding beauty, who despite being rather stout was a picture of blooming health with bright roses in her alabaster cheeks and a happy glitter in her large inky eyes; finally came an eccentrically dressed and epically bearded man smoking an elaborately ugly Meerschaum pipe, a Victorian Punch caricature of a mossy academic.

The woman stepped nimbly around the seething mass of screeching boys and flung her arms around Caro's neck, peppering her with loudly smacking kisses, "Caro, carina!  Che bellissima!  But so thin, we will have to feed you up."

"Hello, Zia," Caro pushed the woman away very gently but firmly, then turned her toward me, "This is my friend, Lord Foxbridge."

"So nice to meet you, Donna Cecilia," I put my hand out to shake.

I'd had a long discussion with Nanny, who is an expert on Italian history, about what I was to call the lady: as the foreign-born wife of a duke's younger son, by the strictest Court etiquette one would have addressed her as Lady John; but she is the daughter of a count, so could be called Lady Cecilia if one applied English courtesy titles to foreign nobility (which Court does not); but in Italy, she would properly be called Contessa or Donna Cecilia.  After much consideration, we'd decided on Donna Cecilia, being careful to pronounce the C as a Ch in the correct Italian manner, but it all turned out to have been in vain:

"No, no! You must call me Chichi, everyone calls me Chichi," the woman objected, slapping away the hand I'd proffered and clutching me enthusiastically to her ample bosom, kissing me wetly on both cheeks, "How can I call you?  Your name is so hard to say."

"My friends call me Foxy," I admitted weakly, overwhelmed by her personality.  She was even more beautiful up close, though she can't have been much younger than forty; aside from the bloom on her unlined skin and the enticing lustre of her rippling raven hair, she was dressed with surprising elegance, wearing a simple skirt and cardigan with that inexplicable chic only European women seem to have, and she smelt divinely of violets and gingerbread. 

"Foxy!" she laughed delightedly, a musical cadenza worthy of any opera-house, "A little red animal?  La volpe?  Così adorabile! Now, alla cucina, all of you.  We have something to eat."

"Welcome to Bourneham Hall, my boy," Lord John came over and shook my hand after giving Caro a peck on the cheek and a pat on the head; one could see how handsome he was underneath the fierce mass of his beard and hair, but there was a misty vagueness in his manner that I found slightly off-putting; he did not meet my eye at all, instead staring off into space as if he were blind, and his handshake was dry and limp, like having an empty glove placed in one's hand.

I was familiar with the type, of course: at Oxford, I'd known several such dons, the sort who made excellent lecturers but dreadful tutors, men who wandered through life in an abstracted dream until and unless they were discussing their own particular subject, at which point they became passionate and brilliant.  I'd just have to find some way to bring the conversation around to early medieval literature and he'd come alive like the Blackpool Illuminations.

I followed the family into the house just as a troupe of burly men came swarming out of the kitchen courtyard to empty the Rolls and drive it off to the stables, and had to stop a moment in the great hall to let my eyes adjust to the lower light. 

The lofty room was a wonderfully preserved medieval original, its interior walls made of rough plaster between crooked oak beams, its crumbling stone fireplace big enough to roast an ox in, big uncurtained windows stuck high in the walls, and a crudely carved wood screen across one end with a gallery above and a raised dais beneath.  It was furnished rather like a university common-room with massive lumpy couches and armchairs under heavy cloth slipcovers, but instead of books and trophies the scarred old tables were littered with brightly-coloured pottery, vases and urns and figurines all painted in a similar primitive but lively style.

"Hideous, aren't they?" Caro whispered to me when I paused to gawk at a towering tulip-vase blindingly embellished in cobalt, crimson, viridian, and heliotrope that made the real flowers protruding from it seem quite drab, "But not a word, they come from her father's estates in Perugia and she loves them like children."

"They're so colourful," I gasped, though mostly in admiration, finding them crude but delightful, "so exuberant."

"Wait until you see the kitchen," she promised in a dire tone, pulling me away from the vase and through a broad Gothic arch, along a short stone passage, and down a half-flight of time-hollowed stone steps into the vast and ancient kitchen.

"Oh, my," I blinked at the brilliant daffodil-yellow walls and the profusion of gaily painted pottery crowding every surface and shelf.  The room was enormous, brightly lit with broad windows and electric lights, dominated by a gargantuan fireplace made of bricks and plaster with ovens and warming-chambers built into it, and an actual iron cauldron of boiling water bubbling away over the flames.  There were several women bunched around various counters and appliances, cutting and stirring and kneading things, and they took no notice whatever of us as we came in and assembled ourselves around the venerable scrubbed wood table that stood in the center of the room.

Donna Cecilia bustled around us, pouring milk for her sons and tea for her husband and niece, bringing me first a cup of coffee and then a glass of wine, and enjoining us to dig in to the great heaps of pastries, fruit, and cheeses on painted platters in the middle of the table.  Once she had everyone eating, she finally stopped and greeted Claude, yanking him out of his chair into a ferocious hug and kissing him almost amorously on the mouth repeatedly, all while pouring out a stream of endearments and complaints in her native tongue.  He took this treatment complacently, but seemed to squirm a bit before she finally let him go.

I imagined Pond in that room, and had to giggle: he would have dislocated his jaw from gaping in disbelief as the lady of the house went and snatched some fresh almond cakes out of the oven and dropped them on our plates herself, as the housekeeper Signora Pozzi was brought forward to meet me and shake my hand, as the Chatroy boys talked with their mouths full and threw biscuits at each-other, as Lord John put his feet on an empty chair and ate muffins off the open book he was reading instead of a plate.  I found it quite jolly, though, if a bit overwhelming.

Once I was stuffed to bursting, most of the family had wandered off on their own pursuits and Donna Cecilia excused herself to go get dinner started (Pond would have died, quite simply laid down and died), so Caro took me to my room and then on a tour of the house.  It was a really charming old place, large but by no means grand, well preserved but with no pretensions to museum-like perfection or manufactured romanticism; it had grown organically over the centuries without any sort of plan or overriding principle of design, and as a result had a lived-in, timeworn beauty that was entirely enchanting.

My bedroom, when I returned there to unpack and change, was quite comfortable, large and paneled in coffered oak with more university-like furnishings of slipcovered chairs and battered bureaus, though the bed was a massive antique four-poster with a mesh of ropes holding up a sack mattress filled with fresh straw and lavender.  The one large oriel window had a lovely view of the river and the garden, and the heavy desk was angled against it so you could look out while writing letters.

There were only two bathrooms, though, and while Caro could loll in luxurious privacy in the room set aside for ladies, with only Donna Cecilia to compete for time, I got to share with all three boys and Lord John.  And with the university-like décor extending even into this room, it was rather like being in college again.

"Mind if I come in?" Claude asked, startling me while I was having a contemplative soak before dressing for dinner.

"Sure," I replied, although he was already all the way into the room.  But that wasn't what he meant: he quickly shucked off his clothes and climbed into the tub with me.  I was too surprised to object, and simply shifted to one side so he could nestle down into the water beside me.

"You have a nicer body than I expected," he said, running his hand over my torso and onto my hip; but it wasn't a flirtatious statement, nor an erotic prelude, it was simply an observation.

"Thank you?" I replied, quite nonplussed, and deeply embarrassed by my body's reaction to his caresses and the sensation of his hot breath against my damp neck; to distract him from noticing it, I tried chatting, "I enjoyed meeting your mother.  I bet you're glad to be home."

"Not really," he said, stroking my chest absently, "Something's different.  I don't know what it is, but I feel cut off, like I'm wrapped in a blanket and everything is muffled somehow."

"I'm sure it will clear up after you get used to being home again," I offered lamely.  It was exactly as Caro had said he'd feel; and though it was my appointed task to help him ease back into his home life the way one does when returning from school, I couldn't think of anything more helpful to say.  I was still 'innocent' after all, and had no experience of that cut-off feeling.

"I guess," he shrugged, then pulled away from me and sat up on his haunches, "Budge up a bit, would you?  I need to wash."

I budged as requested and handed him the soap, and watched him as he lathered himself up.  I really ought to have got out of the tub, but I was still in a state and the water was hiding it, more or less.  Besides, Claude was in a similar state, and didn't seem to think a thing of it; I wondered if that strange unselfconsciousness was what I'd missed by not having brothers, or if it was just the Chatroys who were like that—even at Eton, where I'd lost most of my modesty in the shared bathrooms, we did not share a tub, nor touch each other except with the business end of a wet towel, and displays of arousal were invariably ridiculed into remission.

"Do my back, would you?" he turned around and handed me the soap, presenting his broad back for washing; I complied, getting into even more of a state, and contorting myself into an incredibly uncomfortable position so it wouldn't touch him; and when I was done sluicing him down with water from a big copper pitcher, he got out of the tub and did the same for me, lathering up my back and rinsing me off thoroughly.  I had no choice but to get out, then, state or no state, and tried to emulate his nonchalance about it.  It was the most unsettling bath I'd ever had.

I scurried back to my own room and did what I had to do to compose myself (twice), smoked a couple of calming cigarettes, and then got dressed in my smoking jacket, claret-colour velvet with dazzling navy satin lapels, wrapping a cravat inside my collar instead of putting on a tie.  Then I went poking around the house trying to find where they gathered before dinner.

In most households I'd ever experienced, there would be a butler or footman to tell you these things; but there were no male indoor servants at Bourneham, only the half-dozen or so maids and Signora Pozzi, who all cooked and cleaned without the usual specialization.  The men were outside, seeing to the livestock and the gardens, only coming inside to eat and repair things.  I soon learned that this is a common form of country housekeeping in Italy, even on the great estates, women indoors and men outdoors with no hierarchy among staff; but it seemed quite chaotic and bizarre to me at first.

I found the family in the parlour, a snug chamber directly beneath my bedroom, with tall French windows standing open to the chill evening air while a blazing fire in the elaborately carved stone hearth competed to make the room untenably hot.  Donna Cecilia was not yet present, nor had Caro come down, though Lord John was ensconced in an armchair near the window, wreathed in pipe-smoke and dressed in a disreputable old tartan smoking-jacket.  He looked up briefly from his book when I came in, pointed amiably at a drinks tray, and went right back to reading.

Claude and his brothers, Tony and Paul, were heaped together in a pile on a worn Knole sofa near the fire, dressed in fresh shirts but no jackets, leafing through an enormous old book that appeared to be an atlas of some sort; that had to be a habit peculiar to those boys, the way they lounged all over each-other like puppies in a basket, I'd never seen any other brothers do that—on the other hand, I'd never known brothers as close in age as those three, barely a year apart and so alike that one might think them triplets. 

As I helped myself to a drink, I watched Claude with his brothers, and wondered what he was feeling.  For though he seemed natural enough, chatting and cuddling with the other boys out of long habit, I could sense that he was slightly uncomfortable.  Being next to me in the bathtub, as Platonic as our relationship was, had stirred his body; what was it doing to him being sandwiched between two nubile youths, now that his body knew such pleasures? That beast, once awoken, cannot crawl back into its shell.

Or was I just being dirty-minded? After all, I'd never really known that kind of warm intimacy except in the realms of Eros, had not been introduced to physical affection until first being introduced to physical passion.  Cuddling was only ever, for me, something one did with one's lovers; I had no idea what it would be like to lay in someone's arms in all innocence like that.  Perhaps that gentle, clean affection would heal Claude's battered spirit in ways that Caro and I, with all our experience and sophistication, couldn't even comprehend.

"What a pretty colour," Caro came floating into the room, a fluttering cloud of pink chiffon and ostrich feathers, sidling up beside me and taking my whiskey out of my hand, "I've never seen you in a smoking-jacket before."

"Pond doesn't often let me wear it," I admitted, pouring a new drink, "He considers smoking jackets as not to be worn in public, nor in any company containing ladies.  Though I must say, I feel a little overdressed in it, here."

"'One can never be overdressed or overeducated,'" she quoted Wilde with a wink, knocking back the whiskey in a single gulp and holding out her glass for more, "And this house is not built on conformity.  You needn't try to fit in."

"I enjoy fitting in," I protested, "People like you better if they see you trying to emulate them, and adapt to their customs."

"You care too much about being liked," she scolded me with an indulgent smile.

"Everyone wants to be liked, don't they?"

"I prefer to be admired," she struck a regal attitude, as if posing for a portrait.

"Rather the same thing, isn't it?" I laughed.

"They are completely different things," she said in a pedantic tone and poured a third whiskey for herself, "You might like and admire someone, or you might admire someone you don't necessarily like; but more often, one likes people one doesn't really admire.  And people seldom admire those who want desperately to be liked."

"I suppose so," I deferred to her wisdom, though I wasn't sure I agreed with her.

"Ah, miei tre bambini!" Donna Cecilia burst into the room and launched herself at the three boys in the sofa, inserting herself between Claude and Tony while pulling Paul's head into her lap by the hair, "All together again, finalmente!"

"Mama!" they all protested, squirming in her embrace but obviously loving every minute of it, giggling with delight as she kissed them and pinched them and pulled their hair.  I wondered if all Italians were so boisterously affectionate; and if the daughter of a count could rough-house with her sons, as well as cook meals with her own hands, what must their farm women be like?

Dinner was served shortly afterward in the dining-room, a low darkly-paneled room with tiny windows that was incongruously furnished with gilt and marquetry Baroque furniture of imposing grandeur, and lit with fantastically elaborate Venetian glass chandeliers, which I later learned Donna Cecilia had brought with her from Italy as part of her dowry.

I say "served," but in fact the food was simply heaped up on the table, and the dishes passed around by the diners themselves instead of by servants.  All during the meal, which was immense and varied and quite exquisitely delicious, Donna Cecilia peppered me with questions about my family, my friends, my homes, and my clubs, offering very little information about herself but rather taking the pauses in between my answers to press more food onto my plate.  By the end of dinner, I felt like an overinflated tyre.

"Join me for a smoke, Foxbridge?" Lord John asked me after the food had finally been depleted and Donna Cecilia's attention was diverted to talking to Caro.

"Thank you," I replied, rising from my chair, only slightly surprised that the men were expected to leave the dining room first; I was beginning to become accustomed to the Chatroys' topsy-turvy ways of doing things.

"Chichi doesn't like smoke around food," Lord John explained to me as he led the way back into the great hall and then up a crooked wooden staircase in the corner, "Even if we're done eating.  And we don't have many ladies visiting, so it only seems fair that the smokers should go out instead of making Chichi go sit by herself in the drawing-room."

"What a wonderful room!" I exclaimed as we emerged from the tunnel-like stair into a vast space, nearly as large and lofty as the great hall below, and absolutely packed with books. The walls were paneled up to shoulder height, then plaster and planks the rest of the way up into the peaked roof, where immense rafters were painted and carved with all sorts of flowers and grotesque figures; two enormous stained-glass oriel windows at either end gave light and air, while two relatively small-scale fireplaces were burning merrily to keep the place warm.

"It was called the 'solar' in the old days," my host beamed at the compliment, and I could tell from his glowing expression that the house was one of his pet subjects, "The heart of the house, really, where family and social life was conducted; though it had been in use as a ballroom when I bought the place.  Some eighteenth-century idiot had covered all this paneling in painted pine, and installed a dropped plaster ceiling, very amateurishly done.  Vandalism, I call it, but worse things have been done in the name of passing fashions."

"Indeed," I agreed, settling down in a very comfortable sofa and lighting a cigarette, "But at least the damage wasn't permanent.  There are so few places like this left."

"You're interested in medieval architecture?" he looked at me with surprise, nestling into his own chair by the fire.

"I'm more familiar with the Elizabethan period," I said, not wanting to commit myself as an expert, "My home is Elizabethan, but my great-grandfather tried to turn it into a medieval castle.  Fortunately he had a good architect, some of the worst excesses of Victorian taste were deterred."

"Hmmm?" he murmured encouragingly while lighting his pipe.

"And I recently had a guest staying who is an expert, she told me a great deal that I hadn't known about the house.  Funny how we can live in places without knowing much about them, so I started doing some reading."

"You were at Magdalen in Oxford, I heard you say?  Did you read in the Arts?"

"I took a first in Modern Greats," I said hesitantly; the subject was a sore one with some scholars, considered too practical and preparatory for the rarified realms of Arcadia, treating government and diplomacy as a trade that one could learn like masonry or engineering.

"Planning on going into politics?" he frowned at me.

"Well, not 'planning' so much as preparing for the inevitable.  It seemed sensible to have some idea what I was doing before I took my seat in the Lords."

"Too much emphasis put on sensibility these days," he shrugged grumpily, "But I suppose it's just the pendulum swinging back.  Oxford and Cambridge used to exist for the sole purpose of turning out clergymen like ready-made suits; soon we'll be turning out civil servants with the same efficiency.  Perhaps scholarship for its own sake is only a passing fashion, itself.  Everything takes on the aspect of passing fashion if you view a broad enough scope."

"I expect so," I said, hoping he'd either start an impromptu lecture or relapse into silence: I was already in over my head, conversationally.

"You're not boring Uncle John, are you, Foxy?" Caro entered the room and navigated through the crowd of chairs and book-laden tables, taking my cigarette instead of lighting her own.

"Foxbridge knows something about architecture," Lord John replied in the sort of mildly astonished tone usually inspired by performing monkeys, not standing or even lifting himself slightly as one does when a lady enters a room, "Cleverer than your usual run of friends, Caro."

"Most of my friends are too frightened by your beard to talk intelligently," she said affectionately, perching on the arm of his chair and draping an arm over his shoulders, "Foxy's made of sterner stuff.  He solves crimes, you know."

"Professionally?" he raised his eyebrows at me, apparently impressed.

"Oh, no," I smiled at the notion, lighting another cigarette, "I haven't the discipline for a profession, I just suffer from unbridled curiosity.  Or, rather, I make professionals suffer from my unbridled curiosity."

"Curiosity without discipline is nothing better than mischief," Lord John scowled quite ferociously.

"He's just being self-deprecating, Uncle," Caro laughed, a light of mischief in her eyes, "He's really quite clever.  Foxy, tell him about one of your cases."

"Oh! Um," I stuttered, suddenly realizing that all of the cases in which I'd recently been involved were of a nature that couldn't be discussed in polite company, and certainly not in front of Caro's uncle—I mean, two of them involved his own son in some very indelicate circumstances, "I'm sure Lord John would find my stories quite dull.  I'd rather hear more about Bourneham Hall.  When was it built?"

"The main part of the house was built in 1450, enclosing the existing great hall which was built in 1380.  But the original foundations were laid in 1290, on an even older site.  The name Bourneham originates..." Lord John was off and running on a favourite set-piece, his face alight with the fanaticism of a scholar on his pet subject.

"Well played," Caro whispered to me as she got up and moved away from the fireplace, having heard the lecture a hundred times before.  She left the library as soon as she'd finished a second cigarette and a last glass of brandy, leaving me the sole auditor of the lesson.

The lecture went on for more than an hour, encompassing the entire history of the house's owners since the days of Canute, the dates and reasons for the later additions of wings, the original uses of all of the main rooms, the restoration projects he'd undertaken since buying the house twenty years back, and his plans for future restoration.  When the lecture was over, he simply stopped talking, opened a book, and apparently forgot that I was there.

I got up and poked around the room with some curiosity, but decided to go to bed when I heard my host snoring in his chair.  I was glad, as I made my way across to the other wing of the house, that Lord John had not been so wedded to historical authenticity as to eschew electric light, else I would have had quite a time crossing the great hall and navigating so many crooked staircases.