The Property of a Gentleman: One House. Many secrets. Read online

  The dining-room was not crowded as the library had been. There was another long oak table which could only have fitted into a house of this size, Jacobean, I guessed, and in very good condition; there were a dozen or so chairs which matched it, two long sideboards on which the red pilot lights of electric hot trays shone eerily. There were more of those beautiful gilt-framed mirrors, and some very ordinary Chinese vases. There was here the same feeling of serenity that the almost-bare hall possessed, a sense of rightness. The dogs, all eight of them, were once more grouped about the fire.

  The food was, unexpectedly, very good. There was onion soup with hot garlic bread wrapped in a towel, chicken in some kind of sauce that only a serious cook could make, the sort of pastry that one saw on the trolleys of the most expensive restaurants, and a single piece of marvellously flavoured Wensleydale cheese. We helped ourselves from the dishes on the sideboards; none of the Tolson family made an appearance. There was a beautiful hock, poured in Bohemian engraved glasses with green stems. I hardly spoke through the whole meal; I was hungry and the food was delicious. When it was finished I said so with no trace of false politeness.

  ‘Tolson’s granddaughter does most of it,’ Askew said. ‘Jess – Jessica. She’s brilliant, really. A natural cook, and quite a brain, too. Won a scholarship to Cambridge. She’s one of those geniuses who lap up all their A levels – or whatever they call it – at sixteen. Tolson said she came out of school at Kesmere with one of the best passes in the whole country.’

  ‘She’s here now, though?’ I said. ‘I thought term hadn’t ended yet.’

  Askew frowned. ‘She never did take up the scholarship. I’m not sure why not. Perhaps she overdid it a bit. Tolson said she was quite seriously ill about three years ago. Perhaps they thought she was too young – or not well enough – to send away from home. Undoubtedly, she’s her grandfather’s pet. He says she just prefers to stay here. Highly strung ... I suppose they’re afraid of what will happen to her out in the world. A pretty little thing, too. She must be going on twenty now.’

  The Condesa smiled. ‘She will marry, Roberto. She will marry someone her formidable grandfather approves of, and live very near to home. This house is more her home than the farm she comes from. Wherever one goes in this house, there she is – ’

  ‘But she does help with the housework,’ Askew interrupted. ‘Does a great deal of it as far as I can see. So why shouldn’t she be around?’

  ‘Is there housework on the top of the pele tower? I’ve seen her there.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t, then. The pele tower isn’t safe. But then a bright, imaginative child – why shouldn’t she go where she pleases? She probably has all sort of romantic fantasies about this house.’

  ‘She is not a child, Roberto,’ the Condesa said quietly. ‘Highly strung, brilliant – a wonderful cook. Yes. A child? I do not think so.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, let’s not upset her. It may mist and snow and rain, but at least we have good food. Don’t we, dogs?’

  At his word all the hounds turned and lifted their ears expectantly, and then settled down again as they realised that no movement was coming from Askew. Askew laughed at the kind of mirrored image they all gave of each other. ‘Extraordinary lot, aren’t they?’

  ‘More than that,’ Gerald said. ‘I almost had Joanna turn the car around when they appeared. It’s hardly ... well, it’s hardly decent, my dear Robert. So many of them, and so huge!’

  ‘Don’t blame me. It’s Tolson’s hobby. They’re his dogs, but since the instant I arrived they’ve unaccountably attached themselves to me. I’ve never even fed them – in fact, it’s one of Tolson’s strictest rules that they must never be fed from anyone’s hand. He doesn’t want them being a nuisance at the table – or, for that matter, taking food from a stranger.’

  ‘Does he show them?’

  Askew looked surprised. ‘Why ... no. I suppose I don’t realise how strange they must look to outsiders. But there have always been Irish wolfhounds at Thirlbeck. There were in my young days an even bigger pack than this. Somehow Tolson managed to feed and keep alive at least one breeding pair during the war – not the easiest thing to do with food rationing as it was. I suspect they often got things that were meant for people. Tolson wouldn’t put his patriotism before his care for Thirlbeck. The farm made record yields in those years, so I think Tolson must have worked like three men, and all his sons worked, though they were only kids then. I suppose he thought he’d earned his right to keep the dogs.’

  Gerald leaned forward. ‘There’s something particularly important about them?’

  Askew looked rather embarrassed. ‘I don’t really know. It’s just that tradition has it that there have always been wolfhounds at Thirlbeck. They’re a very ancient breed, and were very nearly extinct in this century. They’re said to be the largest dog in the world – and the only one that hunts by sight as well as smell. They’re famed in Celtic literature, Tolson says, for bringing down enormous stags by their own power – when you consider the size of them, the height, well, I suppose you can believe it. This lot doesn’t seem to go after the deer, though. They stick pretty close to the house, and since I’ve been here, they’ve stuck pretty close to me.’

  He extended the hock to refill my glass. ‘Do they always stay together?’ I asked. ‘None of them ever goes off alone?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed. There’s always eight about whenever I bother to count them. They seem to enjoy each other’s company. In any case, they all stick to me like shadows ... sometimes I wish they wouldn’t.’

  Then I was aware that his look hadn’t been one of embarrassment, but unease. He was gentle with the hounds, and off-handedly affectionate. He wasn’t afraid of them, but I had the feeling that he wished they weren’t there, which was exactly the same feeling I experienced when he had said they never went off alone. I shivered, and hoped that no one had noticed. This was the dog – one of these dogs, I would swear – which had dashed across the road before my eyes at the birch copse that evening, nearly causing me to crash. I wondered if Gerald was also thinking the same thing. But Gerald hadn’t seen that dog, and neither of us had had any foreknowledge that this pack of wolfhounds, with their amiable, shaggy faces and gentle eyes, were the traditional hounds who had for centuries guarded the Birketts and Thirlbeck. I had caught some of Askew’s sense of unease.

  ‘I don’t know why Tolson bothers with metal shutters when there’s this lot around,’ Gerald said. ‘They’re better security than anything short of armed guards.’

  ‘Double insurance, Gerald. I suppose he thinks that if his electrical gadgets fail, the dogs won’t. For whatever reason, I wouldn’t dream of interfering with his arrangements.’

  ‘Nor would I, Robert. They’re admirable ... admirable.’ Gerald beamed over the hock. He was at his best at this time of the evening, with good food and wine inside him. His pleasant, well-preserved face glowed; good-will came from him visibly. All he needed now was a little Mozart.

  The wine had brought other thoughts to the Condesa. ‘Roberto tells me your father lives in Mexico,’ she said to me. ‘Myself I do not care so much for abstract painting, but Roberto says he is very good – famous.’

  ‘He is good,’ I conceded. ‘I don’t think he would agree that he was famous. He just keeps painting – and in the last ten or so years he’s begun selling very well. That’s the only difference for him. It hasn’t changed his life ... not at all.’

  She shrugged; her amused look indicated that if a man didn’t care whether he was famous or not, then he was more than an eccentric. ‘He is fortunate living in Mexico – always the sun. There is quite amusing society in Mexico City and in Acapulco. You remember how it was in Acapulco, Roberto?’

  ‘Yes, my love, I remember. For once you had enough sun. You have Spain in your bones, Carlota, and you’re not really happy without that eternal sun.’

  She shrugged again. ‘And this is in your bones? This mist and damp? Then give me Spain.
’ She suddenly remembered me. ‘Does your father go to Acapulco in the season?’

  I almost laughed, and it wouldn’t have been fair because she could not possibly have known what my father was like. ‘No – never. He lives in the mountains south of Taxco. A very remote hacienda. He never leaves it if he can help it.’

  She shuddered delicately at the thought. ‘Never ...’

  ‘He doesn’t like cities. For him to go to Mexico City is a torture because of the smog. It starts him coughing. He’s no good in damp places either, and down at sea level it’s too humid in Mexico.’

  ‘I remember he didn’t like damp places,’ Askew said slowly. ‘He still has that weak chest, then? A bad legacy from a German prison camp. I remember it rained so much when he was here, and he was trying to paint, and not succeeding at all. That autumn was very wet – and there were some leaks in the roof ...’

  ‘He was here?’ I repeated. ‘Here – at Thirlbeck?’

  ‘Of course. That’s when I knew him.’ He looked at me in puzzled surprise. ‘He and Vanessa rented that little lodge up there by the gate where you came in. The roof did leak, but it wasn’t a ruin at that time. I would have fixed it if they had been going to stay on. But it wasn’t right for either of them – for different reasons. I was grateful to them for being here then – it was my one attempt to try to live at Thirlbeck, and they were good friends. They made the attempt bearable, even if in the end it didn’t work out. I remember they left with the first snow – and I left soon after.’ He looked directly at me. ‘They never told you they were on the Thirlbeck estate?’

  I shook my head. ‘My mother said they had rented a cottage in the Lake District the summer the war ended. And my father – well, I didn’t really know him until a few weeks ago. There were so many other things to talk about.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ He looked around the room, this red-curtained fastness against the wind that blew outside, the firelight lapping the dogs on the rug. ‘We shared many a bottle of wine in those few months. We had all survived a war, and we were pretty heady with the triumph of just that simple fact, so we were pretty reckless with what remained of the cellar my father laid down. There wasn’t much else to be reckless with – petrol and clothes were rationed, and so was food, but we didn’t do too badly with that – this being a farm and the valley alive with game. We made a bit of a thing about trying to put some weight on Jonathan – he’d been repatriated from Germany and discharged almost at once, with orders to find himself a place in the country, and get some fresh air and rest. I think the Army kicked me out very smartly because I was a bit of an embarrassment to them. So we were all celebrating survival on the contents of my father’s cellar – pretty good it was, too. I suspect we forced the gaiety at times. Or perhaps I forced it – they were both quite a lot younger than I, and I suppose I wanted to show I could keep up. But even while we drank up the cellar and ate illegal venison, I suppose we all knew that nothing was working out – for any of us. We knew we were all going to leave.’

  I couldn’t help seeking Gerald’s eyes across the table. His rosy face had become almost pallid; I hoped I hadn’t betrayed the same shock while Askew had been speaking to me. We had, Gerald and I, been thinking of Thirlbeck as uncharted ground, and already we had seen treasures here. And Vanessa, whom we both had believed we had known so well, had once spent a whole summer and autumn among these lovely things – she had known Thirlbeck as only, perhaps, the Tolsons knew it. And she had said nothing of this place – nothing.

  IV

  We went to the drawing-room for coffee – again a pot kept hot on an electric plate, and we served ourselves. By now I think both Gerald and I had come almost to expect what we found – a room only a little less crowded than the library, but still holding almost the same amount of beautiful pieces arranged without any thought of display, but simply for the convenience of herding them into this room. This would be one of the rooms with the metal shutters, I thought, as I ran my finger over the dusty top of a magnificent bureau plat mounted with porcelain plaques which I made a rough guess as being from the Sèvres factory. There were other pieces almost as fine in the room – commodes, pier tables, marquetry writing tables, gilt-wood and tapestry chairs with the same rough string tied across them. A few sofas and chairs of about the Thirties vintage, covered in the same faded chintz as those in the library, were there to be sat on. The rest of the contents of the room would have made one of the most exciting sales of fine French furniture Hardy’s had ever mounted – if it ever came to auction. I could have cried out with impatience at the elaborate game we all played – no one mentioning even the smallest item of furnishing while we drank coffee from inexpensive earthenware cups. Gerald talked with the Condesa, avoiding my glances towards him. If he was as shaken as I was by the thought that Vanessa must once have seen all this splendour he had managed to recover himself. Perhaps it had not been like this in Vanessa’s time; perhaps these pieces had been scattered through the whole house, and she had never seen them in this way, heaped together like a miser’s hoard. But if she had known Thirlbeck, and even with the limited knowledge she had possessed in those days, she would have recognised the best of these pieces – and who could have forgotten them? Who would not remember them as the prices of works of art shot up higher and higher? Had she given no thought at all to this treasure trove on the day that Mrs Dodge’s Louis XVI bureau plat sold for 165,000 guineas, more than double the previous world record price for a single item of furniture? I didn’t think so. She had been at the sale and had been as astonished and as breathless as everyone else at the prices reached. And yet she had said nothing.

  I looked again around the room and found the thing that seemed missing from the whole house. While there were several beautiful mirrors, there were no pictures. There were not even the usual dull, crudely executed portraits of the Birketts through the centuries. Their total absence made me think that in some other room with metal shutters there would be frames and frames stacked against the walls, and among them there might be just one picture that came up to the quality of the pieces we saw about us here. Then, thinking of the prices rising daily at Hardy’s and other auction houses, knowing as much as a reputable house did know about the more dubious side of the business, and what went on between private and not honest dealers, I began to be afraid for Thirlbeck. It needed now, much more than metal shutters, the remote loneliness of this valley, the pack of wolfhounds, and the barbed wire. With every day that passed it would become more and more a target for those who knew what treasures it possessed. And Vanessa had said nothing.

  There was a sense of restlessness in the room, as if we were all holding back from saying what we most wanted to say. Gerald and the Condesa were seated on a sofa, talking, both of them using their smooth sophistication to cover the fact that they were talking of nothing that much interested them. The Condesa, improbably, had produced a small travel bag and taken a frame filled with fine canvas from it. Gerald watched, in evident fascination, as she stitched at the intricate petit point of the design. Askew smiled a little as he stood beside me at the table where the coffee service was laid out, nodding towards the Condesa. ‘Unexpected, isn’t it? I always see her as the sort of person who should be carrying skis, or skin-diving equipment – and she does both those things expertly, and a lot more besides. But wherever she is in the world out comes the piece of tapestry, and you can be sure that every man in the room will eventually gravitate to her side to watch the progress of the work, and compliment her. I accuse her of using it as a secret weapon, but she swears that there are twenty-four chairs in her mother’s house near Seville which need new covers, and it is almost a life’s work. How demure she looks, doesn’t she? – like a girl in a convent. No doubt that was where she learned it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said lamely. And yes, I thought, one could easily imagine her skiing and skin-diving and doing all the sportive things that the rich did to pass the time. Why did I suppose she was rich? Only because she moved a
nd spoke and dressed as the rich did, and she had that carelessly elegant look that is only produced by a great deal of time and money.

  Did I let my small jealousy of her show too much? Askew turned at once and refilled my cup, holding out the cream and sugar, attending to me as if he thought I had been neglected. As he poured brandy he said, ‘So they teach you well at Hardy’s, do they?’

  What did he mean? Was he expecting that I, the least experienced of them here in this room, would be the one to break the silence, to make the first remark about the furniture. Did he want that? ‘They do their best,’ I said carefully. ‘They try to find out what you might be good at – if you’re going to be good at anything, that is. Then you learn what you can by handling, seeing, listening.’

  ‘And are you any good?’

  I shrugged. ‘Who knows – yet? Oh, I’m long past my Front Counter training, which I suppose first of all is a drilling in manners – there are so many different kinds of people to deal with, and all of them carefully. We spend all our time on the Front Counter answering little questions, and when someone brings something for a valuation, phoning for the experts to come from the various departments to the interview rooms. Sometimes the oddest things turn up – and the oddest sorts of people. But one has to be polite, even if they sometimes aren’t. And there’s the sort of person whose feelings can be hurt quite easily by someone being offhand, or hurried with them. They might have brought in something they believe is quite valuable, and you know yourself – even without getting the expert’s opinion – that it isn’t worth five pounds. But you must never let them think it’s been a waste of time – for us, or them. They might have something really valuable that they will some day bring along. And there’s the other side of it. When you get some experience and are called up to give an opinion on something, you can sense sometimes that what the person is thinking of selling is something very precious to them – something they’d rather not part with. That’s when the most tact is needed, making them feel easier about it, if possible making them think it will be bought by someone who will cherish it – even if we know it’s most likely to go to a dealer who will resell it.’