25
Spaniards In Sussex
Luís was discovered, on a warm September morning, in his youngest sister’s morning-room. Sir Harry pulled up a chair, sat down and cleared his throat. “Um—got something to tell you.”
With great difficulty Luís refrained from wincing. “Simpson wrote me all the details of the transaction for the house at Sunny Bay, Pa. If you want to give it up, I am agreeable.”
“Don’t want to give it up at all: cannot imagine what put that notion into your head!” he retorted testily.
Luís swallowed a sigh. What had put the notion into his head was that, imprimis, Bunch and Major Hall had returned from India and taken up residence in this pleasant house that belonged to Jack Hall’s old cousin, and Bungo, who had loathed Spain, had elected to join them: he would stay with them until the little old dower house attached to the property could be refurbished for him, and help Jack with the farm. The place was big enough to support two households and as the whole family tacitly recognised, Bungo would be happier close to his twin than anywhere else. Then, secundus, poor dear Inez had died in Spain and he had come home to England for good, a wealthy man, more than able to buy a really decent place for himself, his father and his little boy to live in. And, tertius, Sunny Bay House was little more than a cottage and the parcel of land that Lord Stamforth was willing to lease out with it negligible: scarce a small-holding. Apparently this last could not signify.
“Very well, Pa, let’s live at Sunny Bay. It is a lovely situation,” he said kindly.
“Good. Have pigs, hey?” replied the baronet, brightening.
“Of course have pigs, Pa: could Manuel de los Angeles support existence without pigs?” replied Luís with a laugh.
“Not all that well, no. He don’t like them Large Whites they favour thereabouts, though,” he warned. “Think it’ll have to be something more like the black pigs y’get in Spain.”
“Very well, Pa, Sunny Bay, black pigs and a happy Manuel it shall be! Er, talking of happy, has he, uh—”
“Eh? Oh! No. Struck up a friendship with one of the Indian hags from the castle, but it’s purely platonic, she must be over sixty.”
“Pa, in the past, if you recall, that did not stop him!”
“No, but this hag’s ugly as sin, whereas poor old Consuelo Dominguez was a good-lookin’ woman in her day. Fat, y’know, but none the worse for that. This old creature’s like a dried-up little prune. Not his type.”
“I see,” said Luís a trifle limply. “Well, if he can be contented with a platonic friendship and black English pigs, so much the better: I own I don’t want to give up chorizos!”
“No, but y’won’t have to,” he grunted.
Luís eyed him sideways. “So, that’s all settled?”
“Well, uh, thinking of doin’ a bit to the house, naturally! Make it more like home, hey? Thing is, if we enclose the side garden, make a proper courtyard, don’t think it’ll get enough sun—well, you’ll have to give me your opinion, Luís!”
“Of course, Pa. Er—Stamforth gave no indication he might be willing to lease a bit more land, did he?”
“Eh? No, don’t think so,” said Sir Harry in mild surprise. “Well, enough for a little flock of sheep, y’know.”
“Mm. Southdowns,” said Luís on an odd note.
“That’s it, aye. Short legs, short faces. Dare say they’ll do well enough, all the same.”
That seemed to be it, then. Luís had no doubt that Pa in fact would do very little around the place—well, he seemed to be keen on the garden, so probably he would direct that—but he would doubtless leave the agricultural aspects of it to him. But would there be enough to occupy him?
“Thought of bees,” said Sir Harry in a vague voice.
“Our own honey? That is a thought!”
“Aye. Plant some fruit and nut trees, too.”
“Pa, it might be rather too exposed for a decent-sized orchard. And, uh, many nuts will not grow well in England. I don’t think we’d manage almonds. Walnuts and hazelth, then!””
“Aye, they’ll do. –One out of two!” he noted cheerfully in the Ainsley fashion, à propos the “hazelth”.
Luís’s fate seemed sealed. He eyed him a trifle wryly, but nodded. “Well, set off for home tomorrow, then?”
“Aye.” Sir Harry cleared his throat.
“More?” said Luís faintly.
“Don’t try irony, Luís,” he warned, “it don’t suit you.”
“Then tell me, por l’amor de Dios, Pa!”
Sir Harry had intended to confess he hadn’t given up the Mr Smith caper, but lost his nerve. “Um, taken on a fellow in the garden. Bit of a scoundrel. Fred Moon by name. Can’t keep away from the women.” –Mr Moon was a relative of Mrs Dove’s. He had had experience in the castle’s garden, and also, at an earlier period, experience on the high seas, and more latterly still experience in Brighton jail, but as the offence had been merely public indecency, not something serious like stealing a loaf of bread or a piece of lace, for which he could well have been transported, both Lord Stamforth and Sir Harry had been able to overlook the matter. He would, in fact, still have been employed at the castle but for the unfortunate episode of flagrante delicto with the head gardener’s wife in the asparagus bed. A matter which Sir Harry was easily able to overlook, though he did warn him that if he tried anything like that with Señora Mendoza or her older girls, Mendoza would not hesitate to slip a knife between his ribs, whether before or after he cut ’em off for him he would not like to hazard a guess. This last detail appearing to convince him, Fred Moon had been very circumspect indeed, and Sir Harry had so far only had to soothe the feelings of an annoyed landlord of the local tavern—not his daughter, who was only fourteen, though it had to be conceded not appearing averse to the idea, but his wife, who, as Fred had reported aggrievedly, hadn’t been backwards in coming forwards—and pay a passing tinker twice what mending a few pots was worth in order to get him to remove himself and his ripe-looking female companion from the district. Miss Dow, the local baker’s sister, had shewn herself not averse but as Fred had stigmatised her as a scrawny old ’en with no meat on her bones there was little likelihood of his settling down with her. Sir Harry did not impart any of this detail to his son, as he was in no doubt Luís could imagine it for himself. He cleared his throat, looking at him hopefully.
“Good gracious,” said Luís lightly, “what is a philandering Moon, in comparison to a Manuel de los Angeles?”
“Aye. Well, needs a wife,” he grunted.
“I’d say they both do,” replied Luís mildly. “Taken on any more like that?”
“No. Um, bring Inez’s little Consuelo Mendoza back with you, did you?”
“Sí, sí. The Spanish nurse had a fit at the idea of England, so Consuelo appointed herself in charge of Tonio, and as he adores her, it’s worked out very well. And the rest of her family’s here: she didn’t want to stay in Spain.”
“No. Well, dare say either Moon or Manuel could have her.”
“There’ll be daggers drawn in the kitchen garden!” he gasped.
“Very funny, Luís. Well, it'll be good to get home. I’ll be glad to see Don Quijote again, too.” He got out one of the cheroots his son-in-law had kindly brought him from India.
“Pa, those things stink,” warned Luís, backing off.
“Rubbish.” Sir Harry lit up. He sucked scientifically. He puffed out a stream of smoke. “Well, get him!”
Shrugging slightly, Luís shouted: “¡Holà, Julio! ¡Venga aquí!”
The door opened and Julio Juarez shot in, followed closely by Bunch Hall with the remark: “Must you bellow like that, Luís? You know very well the boy’s just outside the door!”
Mm, well, that was one good reason why Pa didn’t want to take up residence with his youngest daughter, wasn’t it? Bunch meant well, and she was not the sort of woman who forbade a fellow to smoke in the morning-room, but there was no doubt she was even more managing as a matron than she had been as a little girl. And Sir Harry never had supported very well the twins’ strong dose of solid English common sense.
Replying lightly: “Very sorry, mi querida: I forgot we weren’t at home,” Luís went out.
“Don’t you shout, either,” Bunch warned her father, leaving him to it.
Sir Harry had not reacted. He waited until the door closed and then said ruefully to Julio Juarez in Spanish: “Lost my nerve. Didn’t warn Luís about Señorita Calpurnia.”
Julio’s small brow wrinkled in thought. Sir Harry eyed him somewhat mockingly, not having expected any sort of rational reply, but having spoken in order to relieve his feelings, merely. Finally the little boy produced: “Señor Luís will be pleased to see Señorita Calpurnia and Don Quijote.”
“One or t’other, aye,” replied Sir Harry wryly in English.
Luís looked numbly round his father’s west-facing sitting-room, his jaw sagging in spite of himself.
“Can’t get the pretty tiles here that your mother favoured,” said Sir Harry on a glum note.
“No,” he said faintly. “Well, in the courtyard, Pa, not in the house like the peasants!”
“Pooh: had ’em on the risers of the stairs in the front hall!” he replied huffily.
“That apart. Why yellow, blue and pink, particularly?” he said feebly.
“Eh? Oh. It’s only tinted whitewash, like the outside.”
“I’m sure Lord Stamforth would be relieved to hear that, Pa. Why?”
“Manuel had the stuff to turn the whitewash pink, Señora Mendoza used the blue from the washing, and I think the yellow’s some stuff Manuel got off the old Indian servants from the castle. Not saffron. Don’t know its English name. Curcuma sound familiar?”
“Vaguely,” said Luis, staring at the very yellow wall. Presumably it was not going to get any clearer than that.
“Cheerful,” offered Sir Harry.
“Yes. Er, there’s a load of furniture coming from Spain: the dark old carved stuff Madre inherited.”
“So much the better!” said his father breezily. “Suit the place, hey?”
Something like that, yes. “I’d better see the upstairs.”
“Not much up there,” warned Sir Harry. “But if our own stuff’s coming, that’s all right!”
He was right, there wasn’t much up there. Two beds, in fact. One room had a clothes-press cunningly built into a corner, and the other had a looming oaken wardrobe in the English style that would swear at every stick of their carved old seventeenth-century Spanish stuff.
“There are some little cots in the attic rooms. Julio sometimes sleeps up there,” offered his father.
Would this be when he wasn’t sleeping on the end of Pa’s bed like a little dog? Or with Don Quijote in the straw? Luís didn’t ask. Since he didn’t want to lose his cook, however, he did ask: “And where does Manuel sleep?”
“Under the kitchen table,” replied Sir Harry simply.
“What? For God’s sake, Pa! He had a decent room at Little Lasset!”
“It was his own choice.”
“It won’t do,” said Luís grimly.
“Um, but the house ain’t that big, Luís, and with Tonio and Consuelo— And since you’ve got damned Jésus Juarez, still— Not to mention Jorge Juarez! The house’ll be overrun with dashed Spanish servants! Don’t know why you thought we’d need a footman at all,” he grumbled.
Because he had envisaged living in a decent-sized house! Luís took a deep breath and managed not to shout at him. “We shall have to build on.”
“Ah! See, that’s what I thought in the first place! You’d better speak to Simpson: dare say he’ll know how to swing it with Stamforth. Uh… well, damned if I can remember what the fellow said the agent told him,” he admitted.
“I shall have to speak to Simpson in any case. There is the small point that you’ve taken the house under the name of Smith, or so I collect.”
“What? Oh.” Sir Harry looked sheepish. “So I did.”
Luís did not press the point with him. But he did think the whole thing over very carefully. Then he made an appointment to see, not Mr Simpson or Lord Stamforth’s agent, but his Lordship himself.
Lewis Vane held out his hand, smiling, as the visitor was ushered into his study. “My dear Luís! Welcome back to England! Nan and I were so very sorry to hear of your wife’s untimely death.”
Of course Luís had known the Vanes for some time and had visited more than once at the castle, but he was a little surprised by the warmth of his reception. In especial as at one stage he had formed one of the minor army of fribbles who made up Lady Stamforth’s court.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, shaking hands.
“You might call any time, you know: there was no need to make an appointment,” said Stamforth, waving him to a chair.
“Alas, I think there was, sir, as I have a confession to make. Er—you have a tenant for Sunny Bay House who calls himself Mr Smith. ”
“That’s correct,” replied his Lordship neutrally.
Luís made a face. “I had best come right out and say it, Lord Stamforth: he is not a Mr Smith at all, he ith my father, Sir Harry Ainsley. I apologise most sincerely for the deception, which I assure you was all his own idea. And also for not being able to offer you any rational explanation for it,” he admitted ruefully.
There was a little silence and Luís had time to wonder with horror if he’d sounded too flippant. Then Stamforth said: “Well, whomsoever he may have deceived round and about, I was never in any doubt as to his identity.”
Luís swallowed. “I see. Well—well, thank you for humouring him, sir. Initially he just wanted to take lodgings in the town, and though I thought the masquerade unnecessary I could not see any positive harm in it. And I didn’t realise that I’d be away so long. I’m afraid he got bored and looked around for something new.”
“Don’t keep apologising, my dear fellow!” he said with a laugh. “Nan and I have been most entertained by it! In fact I have had to retrain her forcibly from rushing down to visit him. Not much of a play-actor: she’d be sure to give the game away, y’see!”
“I see,” said Luís limply. “Thank you. He has been very happy with the house, and loves the situation, and the Spanish servants seem happy there, so if it’s possible to take a long lease, as I think was mooted in the first instance, I would very much like to.”
“I see,” said Lord Stamforth slowly. “Of course there can be no objection, and if you wish to change the house, you must feel free to do so. But—forgive me if I speak freely. Do you intend living there yourself?”
“Yes; Pa ain’t fit to be left alone,” replied Luís with brutal frankness.
“Mm. I think that is wise. We have always had the impression that you get on with him very well, Luís,” he said, eying him narrowly.
Luís experienced a strong feeling of what it must have been like to have been a very junior subaltern hauled up before the former Colonel Vane in his Peninsula days! “Yes, that’s right, sir,” he said steadily. “I can stand him, y’see, and I don’t rub him up the wrong way. But he drives Bungo mad in very short order: and he knows it, what’s more, and half the stuff he says is deliberate.”
“Mm. And your older brother, who has Ainsley Manor?”
Luís’s mouth twitched a little. “Paul is a very patient man, but he’s been his own master for nigh on twenty years now, and he humours Harry too much and lets it show, I’m afraid. Pa usually spends Christmas at the Manor and even over that relatively short period generally ends up exasperated with him. And my sister-in-law does not support eccentricity very well.”
“I see. Then on a personal level I think you should do well together at Sunny Bay House, but what on earth do you intend doing with yourself? Spending half the year in London?”
“No,” replied Luís on a grim note, the elegant nostrils flaring slightly. “Demonstrably Pa can’t be left that long. Er—and though I should like his company there are reathonth why I could not take him with me.”
His Lordship gave him a rather sardonic look. “So I believe. Our disagreements in the House may have given you the wrong idea: I do know Wellington rather well.”
“Then you know that His Grace advised Pa after Waterloo not to attempt to resume his position in English society,” returned the younger man simply.
“Quite. And the, er, subsequent recognition of his services to the Allies?”
Luís was rather flushed but he replied steadily enough: “Lord Stamforth, I think you know as well as I that that medal was because my brother-in-law, Rockingham, pulled strings. Wellington’s fundamental position has remained unchanged, and I think you know that also.”
“Yes. Forgive me; I just wished to make sure that you did,” he murmured. “You will find life at Sunny Bay somewhat boring, I fear. The winters, particularly, can be excessively dull hereabouts. Even Nan, surrounded as she is by children, devoted retainers and pugs, becomes bored at times; and I have always thought that your nature was very similar to hers. Sunny-tempered, fond of children and animals, but highly intelligent as well. –I do hope you don’t mind being compared to a woman,” he added dulcetly.
“On the contrary, I’m flattered!” replied Luís with a feeble laugh. “I take your point about the boredom, in especial as ours will be a much, much smaller household than her Ladyship’s, but I don’t wish to force Pa to move again. Madre’s death was a very great shock to him, and at one stage I thought he’d never settle.”
“Mm. I also know our Ambassador to Spain quite well,” he murmured.
Luís gave a weak laugh. “Sir, I begin to perceive that the fellows on the Tory side who claim you’re the Devil incarnate may not be wrong, after all!”
“No, I merely keep my ear to the ground. Not interested in entering politics, yourself?”
“Not at all. Added to which, what sort of bribes would I have to offer the sturdy English voters to get ’em to elect a dago like me?” he said cheerfully.
“You have a point. Though the right sort of man may do considerable good, once elected,” replied Lord Stamforth neutrally.
Luís had now recollected that after his Army service Colonel Vane had been in the Lower House before he succeeded to the title. “I know. Forgive me; I did not mean to denigrate your old profession, Lord Stamforth.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a profession,” he said drily. “But thank you. Let me speak frankly. I think that after the first interest of settling into a new place has worn off you will become bored to death and will not have near enough to do, with only the small area of grazing land attached to Sunny Bay House. Had you thought of farming a larger estate?”
Luís ran his hand through his black curls in exasperation. “Aye, but as I’ve tried to explain, sir, I can’t uproot Pa, now he’s so happy!”
“Yes,” he said, smiling at him. “I do understand that, my dear fellow. In that case I have a proposition for you. Mr Matthews from Longacre Farm, which is the prosperous property between Sunny Bay and Underdene, had two sons, the elder of whom went into the Navy against his parents’ wishes and was tragically drowned some years back. The younger is little better than a simpleton, alas, and though a very good-natured fellow, incapable of managing anything apart from his father’s pigs, to which he is devoted. Mr Matthews is a hearty man of about my own age, not nearly ready to take his retirement yet,” he said with a little smile. “However, if you were to consider eventually amalgamating Sunny Bay and Longacre and farming them together—say, in eight or ten years’ time—Mr Matthews would be amenable to taking you under his wing. It would be no sinecure, mind: he’d expect you to be up before dawn and work as hard as he does himself.”
“I was usually up before dawn anyway, with Garcia,” said Luis numbly. “Sir, it would be the very thing!”
“Good. We’ll talk to Matthews, then. Oh, there is one thing: how do you feel about poultry?”
To his surprise the younger man’s face lit up and he said: “Oh! Is he the Mr Matthews who is famed for his poultry, then? I am very interested in all kinds of poultry and indeed, in all kinds of domestic birds. I think you don’t have a pigeon loft here?”
“Us? Er, no,” said his lordship a trifle limply. “Matthews does, however.”
Luís rubbed his hands together. “Good! I cannot thank you enough, Lord Stamforth!”
“Well, it’s to my advantage to have good tenants, y’know,” he said with a smile. “Er, but of course you can afford to live like a gentleman. This life won’t offer you that luxury.”
There was a little pause. Then the elegant Luís Ainsley shrugged. “I’ve tried that, and it was a damned boring, pointless existence. I’ve never been really happy except when I was working the property with old Garcia. If I could have stomached the thought of bringing up my children in the Roman faith and if Pa had wanted to stay, I’d have settled in Spain, but— To say truth, this is far more than I ever hoped for!”
“And the fortune which came to you through your late wife?” returned Stamforth calmly.
“I shan’t be so mad as to tie it all up for Tonio, for one never knows, does one? But I have put a large sum in trust for him, and shall only draw on the remaining capital if I have to.”
“Good; very sensible.” He stood up. “Now, as Nan has promised to kill me if I don’t take you into the salon to take tea, we had best adjourn, I think, Luís! Oh, and I should warn you that the dread word ‘waists’ was mentioned.”
“They do have ’em, in Spain.”
“Yes, but high or low, dear chap? And are the sashes wide or— Is narrow the correct opposite?” he asked on a plaintive note.
“Stop it!” replied Luís with a laugh. “You are ruining the prospect of a delightful cup of tea!”
And, his Lordship giving in and grinning, the two proceeded to the salon in a state of perfect amity.
“I’m perfectly all right!” said Sir Harry crossly to Miss Calpurnia’s concerned face.
He was in bed, and it was gone ten in the morning. “You can’t be,” replied Captain Cutlass firmly. “Manuel de los Angeles says it was a nasty fall and you are very bruised as well as the swollen ankle.”
Sir Harry had insisted on superintending, or, to hear Manuel de los Angeles tell it, interfering with, the laying of the new paving stones for the west terrace. And, there being a considerable amount of mud and water around, had slipped. As Luís had had to rush off to Southampton to see to the forwarding of their furniture, there being manifestly no suitable person in his father’s household he might send instead, there had been no-one at home capable of standing up to Sir Harry and insisting on calling the doctor.
“I shall fetch Dr Kent,” decided Captain Cutlass with a frown, having unceremoniously thrown back the covers and inspected the ankle. “That ankle looks as if it might be broken.”
Here Manuel made an anxious speech and she agreed: “Sí. The word is broken, Manuel.”
There was little likelihood of Manuel’s having understood the words but he grasped the tenor and, glaring at his master, said in Spanish: “The ankle’s broken, señor.”
“Oh, get out,” groaned Sir Harry, closing his eyes. “It ain’t. Bad sprain, is all.”
“You can trust Dr Kent: he’s a good doctor,” said Captain Cutlass on a firm note.
“Very well, fetch him,” he sighed.
“I shall. –Who is the man who opened the door, by the way?”
“Eh? Oh.” The baronet cleared his throat. Of course he had not yet confessed all to Miss Calpurnia—indeed, this was the first time he’d seen her since his return from Bunch’s house. “’Nother Juarez. Jorge, that would have been.”—It must have been, since Jésus, in his unconvincing rôle of valet, had gone with Luís.—“Um, decided to join his little, uh, relative. Did you sail over with Rattle, me dear?”
“No; Mr Moon, Cookie’s brother, gave me a lift on his cart. He wanted to see his cousin Fred, in any case,” she said smiling.
“Then if y’must get the quack, take Don Quijote.”
“Very well,” said Captain Cutlass on a pleased note, going out.
Sir Harry lay back on his pillows and sighed. True, he had introduced the motif of Don Quijote deliberately, to distract her, but— Oh, well. “She’s going to bump into Luís soon or late,” he muttered to himself. “Dare say it will all resolve itself then.”
… “It’s just a sprain, but a bad one,” said Dr Kent, concluding his examination. “You need to keep off it entirely, Mr Smith. No hopping up to see how the workmen are getting on outside. Stay in bed for a week and it’ll heal well.”
Glaring, Sir Harry responded: “Lot of fuss about nothing: damned sawbones!”
Unmoved, the doctor returned: “I’ll send over a salve for those bruises: should ease them considerably. In the meantime, don’t dose yourself with spirits, they are not a remedy.” And took his leave.
Downstairs, having explained the patient’s need to be keep immobilised in words of one syllable to Captain Cutlass under the unwinking gaze of the cluster of foreign servants who had appeared from nowhere, he noted: “Well, that makes two of ’em and, dare I say it, one is nigh as obstinate as t’other!”
“What, two patients who have had bad falls?” replied Captain Cutlass, trying not to laugh. “Who is the other, Doctor?”
Grimacing, Dr Kent explained: “Mrs Piper-Fiennes. I thought you might have heard already, through your brother John and his wife.”
“No,” she said, swallowing hard. “Oh, dear. A fall is not funny, really, at her age. How is she?”
“In the worst mood in Christendom. Physically, very bruised indeed, and as in her case the ankle is broken, will be laid up for some time. Her cook and housemaid, I might add, have seized the opportunity to leave her.”
“Oh, help,” she said numbly.
“Mm, well, it’s a coincidence, but their mistress’s accident certainly made it easier for them. Did you know they are sisters? –Yes. One of their brothers runs a small tavern in Brighton and as his wife died not long since and his eldest daughter has just married a Guillyford Bay man, he’s asked the sisters to come and live with him and help out there.” He eyed her drily. “It may not be much of a living, and a back street tavern ain’t as respectable as High Mallows, but which would you prefer in their shoes?”
Captain Cutlass shuddered. “Which would anyone?”
“Quite! Er, your little sister-in-law has bravely visited the old hag, but it didn’t go down too well. She did get as far as the bedroom, we gather, but was told High Mallows don’t require no calves’ foot jelly from Wardle Heights Farmhouse.” He shrugged. “Don’t know what Piper-Fiennes is living on, with no cook, but as it ain’t human nature to starve, dare say he’ll survive. Make sure Mr Smith stays in bed and puts plenty of salve on the bruises. If you want to come back with me, I’ll make it up for you directly.”
“Yes, I shall,” she decided.
Dr Kent watched in considerable amusement as she then, with a lot of hand-waving, gave the Spaniards their orders. Something must have sunk in, although there were only a handful of Spanish words in there: one of the menservants and a little boy rushed upstairs. Ignoring the subsequent shouting in Spanish from the direction of the invalid’s room, he conducted Miss Calpurnia out to his trap, helped her up, and set up off at a sedate pace for Waddington-on-Sea.
“What’s up?” said Sir Harry two days later as, having again turned up at Sunny Bay very early, inspected his injuries, superintended the reanointing of his bruises and rebandaging of his ankle, and then superintended his breakfast, Captain Cutlass sank into a chair by his window and gazed out at an uninspiring view of the badly gravelled sweep and the bumpy field that constituted Sunny Bay House’s front lawn. “Planning to have that properly levelled and get a decent load of gravel on it before the weather breaks, y’know!”
“What? Oh—yes. Good.”
“What’s the matter? I’ve been keeping off the demned ankle,” he said glumly.
“I know!” she said, favouring him with a smile. “I was just wondering how poor old Mrs Piper-Fiennes is going on. If she’s scared Mary off—and they have no other neighbours…”
“Be bullying her son from her bed of sickness, if she’s anything like some of the hags I’ve known!” he replied cheerfully.
“He will be very busy on the property at this time of year. They are harvesting, you know.”
“Right: farms his own place, do he?” replied Sir Harry with cheery interest.
“Yes. He grows a lot of grain… Mr Smith, with her cook and housemaid gone, I think she may be all alone in the house!”
“Uh—downstairs maids?” he offered.
“A scullerymaid. Annie Patch,” said Captain Cutlass, wincing.
“Oh? A sister of your Polly?”
“No, an aunt. She is very slow—they say in the town she was dropped on her head as a baby, but I don’t know how true that is. But she’s certainly lacking in anything approaching initiative, and if not given a direct order will just sit gazing vacantly before her all day. And of course she hates Mrs Piper-Fiennes, so if it did occur to her to go up and ask if she needed anything, she wouldn’t.”
“Hm. And she’s the only other indoor servant?”
“Yes, Mrs Piper-Fiennes has never been able to keep her servants,” she said simply.
“Not surprised,” he grunted. “If y’want to get over there, me dear, you go: I’ll be all right, with the pack of ’em fussing over me like a lot of demented hens with one chick!”
“They’re not that bad!” said Captain Cutlass with a laugh, getting up. “I really think I had better.”
“Aye. Uh—the trip might be bit much for Don Quijote,” he said cautiously.
“Yes; I thought, if I take might him as far as the town and then take Old Horse the rest of the way?”
This being agreed, Captain Cutlass set off on her mission.
At the shop her older brother assented to her request to stable Donkey Oatee and take Old Horse and the cart, though warning her that Ma Piper-Fiennes wouldn’t thank her.
“I know. Can you think of anyone who might want to work for Mrs Piper—”
“No!”
No. Quite. Resignedly Captain Cutlass went to fetch Old Horse.
The door of High Mallows was opened to her by Mr Piper-Fiennes with tears running down his high-coloured face.
“What’s happened?” she said sharply.
“Ma’s ’ad another fall!” he gulped.
To his rear Annie Patch, wearing an unpleasantly avid expression, volunteered: “Mistress fell down the stairs, all of a ’eap, like! And now she won’t a-move!”
“Have you tried to move her?” said Captain Cutlass sharply to her son.
“No,” he gulped, wiping his hand across his face. “She looks awful bad, Miss Calpurnia!”
“I’d better take a look,” she said firmly.
Gulping and sniffing, Mr Piper-Fiennes stood back and allowed her to enter the beautiful little front hall of High Mallows. It didn’t help, reflected Captain Cutlass grimly, that Mrs Piper-Fiennes had had the entire hall refloored in what was supposed to be a facsimile of the original black and white marble tiling. The old lady was lying on it in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs.
“H’obstinate,” said Mr Piper-Fiennes, sniffing juicily. “She must’ve got up.”
“Yes,” she agreed, kneeling.
“I was h’out, seeing to the wheat,” he explained. “Dr Kent told her to say abed, but she ain’t never listened to no-one in ’er life, Miss Calpurnia!”
“Mm.” Well, the old lady was breathing, but it was very stertorous breathing and she was a nasty colour. “I think we had best not move her, but put a coverlet over her gently, and send for Dr Kent at once.”
“Aye. Shall I go, meself?” he asked meekly.
Captain Cutlass had a strong feeling his mother might die before he got back. “No, send one of the men, on the best horse you’ve got. –Annie Patch, go upstairs and get an eiderdown from Mrs Piper-Fiennes’s room and bring it down here.”
Obediently they both scurried off.
It was a good two hours before Dr Kent arrived. It was fair to say that those were the two longest hours of Calpurnia Catherine’s existence—worse, even, than the period immediately after Pa’s death and the time Dr Adams had been dying. Mr Piper-Fiennes was completely at a loss, not even capable of making a pot of tea and sandwiches, and Annie Patch was just about as useless—or, thought Captain Cutlass grimly, most certainly giving a good imitation of it. In the end she went out to the kitchen herself, superintended the making of a pot of tea, and made sandwiches for them all, ignoring Miss Patch’s representations as to Mistress not letting them ’ave the good ’am. There was nothing else in the larder, in any case.
The old lady had not died but she had not regained consciousness, either. Dr Kent, looking very sour, decided there were no more broken bones but she had knocked herself out, as they saw, and there was no knowing when or if she would come round.
“There’s blood, Doctor,” quavered Annie Patch.
“Not very much. Get out to the kitchen, woman, and boil up some water.”
Annie Patch looked vague but vanished kitchenwards.
“She doesn’t appear to be capable of making a pot of tea,” offered Captain Cutlass.
Dr Kent got up. “That type, never mind how limited the intelligence, is usually cunning enough to work out that the more incapable they seem, the less work they are forced to do. –I don’t think the skull is cracked, but she’s taken a nasty knock. You did right not to attempt to move her, Captain Cutlass. Mr Piper-Fiennes, you and the fellow who fetched me had best get a door or some such and carry your mother up to her bed. The less jolting she has at this stage, the better. And I must warn you that you should expect the worst.”
Very white, Mr Piper-Fiennes hurried out, calling to Tom Bender.
“I think he blames himself for being out all morning,” said Captain Cutlass in a low voice.
“Rubbish! The woman was recovering well, she has no-one but herself to blame! What are you doing here, incidentally?”
Captain Cutlass sat back on her heels, sighing. “I was worried about her, after what you told us at Mr Smith’s.”
“With good reason, apparently,” said the doctor, holding out his hand to her.
“Thank you,” she said as she was hauled unceremoniously to her feet. “And thank you for coming all this way, Dr Kent.”
“At least they can afford to pay my bill,” replied the doctor drily. “Lovely house, isn’t it?”
“Mm. –Doctor,” she said in a lowered voice: “what on earth will he do if his mother dies?”
Dr Kent looked down at the pretty, flushed young face and swallowed a smile. “One would hope that he’d marry a buxom lass from the town who’d make him happy for the rest of his days, but in my experience human nature ain’t like that. He may marry, yes, but what’s the betting it’ll be another bossy hag that won’t let him call his soul his own?”
Captain Cutlass gulped.
“In the meantime there’s the small matter of a practical nurse.”
“I’ll stay. Annie Patch is worse than useless.”
“Mm.” It had occurred to Dr Kent to wonder if in fact the woman had helped the old lady along. He had known persons of that level of intelligence, with just that sort of sly, avid expression on their faces after the event, who had been far from guiltless in their relatives’ accidents. It was a damned pity that Captain Cutlass was so young, but— He took a deep breath and told her shortly just why he thought she’d better send the woman away for good.
To his surprise, though he did know she was a sensible and intelligent girl, she nodded slowly and after thinking it over said: “I think it would be wise. She volunteered the information that her mistress fell down the stairs all of a heap, which, though it is the obvious conclusion to anyone with a modicum of intelligence, strikes me as too much of a leap of logic for Annie. I can see her accepting it once someone else had said it, and repeating it, but…”
“Aye. Better safe than sorry, eh? I’ll take her round to Mrs Patch’s, she can help her with the laundry.”
Captain Cutlass bit her lip. “She may be jealous of the little ones, Doctor.”
His nostrils flared for an instant. “Right. Any idea where she might be safe?”
“With her brother, Jim Patch, I think. He’s a burly fellow with no children, and his wife died some time since.”
Jim Patch was assistant to the Waddington-on-Sea knacker and his tiny cottage was far from salubrious. Dr Kent’s mouth twitched slightly. “Good. Knacker’s Yard, is it?”
“Yes,” said Captain Cutlass simply.
And, Mr Piper-Fiennes and the invaluable Tom Bender entering at that moment with a panel of wood which the burly Mr Bender explained had “Come orf an old bench,” the unfortunate Mrs Piper-Fiennes was carried carefully upstairs.
“She has come round, but she’s not herself at all,” explained Captain Cutlass in the shop, two days after that. “Horridly vague, and half the time doesn’t even recognise her son.”
“Does she recognise you?” asked Mouse.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “Dr Kent seems to think she won’t improve, either.”
“Mr Piper-Fiennes will need a housekeeper, then,” said Mouse.
“Yes. And a cook,” she agreed incautiously.
“Thought they had a cook?” said Little Joe.
“Um, no, the cook and housemaid have recently gone to live with their brother in Brighton,” admitted Captain Cutlass.
He took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t want to sound like Ma Mountjoy, but just who is there in the house with you, then, Captain Cutlass?”
“Can it signify?” she retorted crossly. “Only him, if you must know, but Tom Bender is helping out!”
Little Joe thrust his hand through his brown curls. “I suppose I need not ask if Ma knows!”
“She knows I am staying there, but I’m not bothering her with the rest,” she said grimly.
“I could go,” Mouse offered in a small voice.
“That wouldn’t be much better, frankly,” retorted their brother. “Um… Hell. Victimise poor Aunty Lash, I suppose.”
Captain Cutlass frowned. “She’s pretty much borne the brunt of the past year, Little Joe. It would be highly unfair. And, um, well, Ma does seem brighter, but don’t you think Aunty Lash had best not leave her?”
“Yes, she’s right, Little Joe,” agreed Mouse. “I suppose Aunty Bouncer might do it, but Aunty Jicksy is getting very frail: I really think it would be best not to separate them. However, there is one person who has absolutely nothing to do, is quite hale and hearty, and is more than old enough to be a chaperon for Captain Cutlass.” Her relatives were looking at her blankly, so she elaborated, nodding in the direction of the Elephant & Castle on the corner of the Close: “Not fifty yards away as we speak.”
“Brilliant!” decided Little Joe grimly. “Go on, Captain Cutlass, go and haul him out of it. He’ll either be in the tap or in that tiny side parlour that stinks of baccy and dead dogs. And if he kicks up, you can refer him to me.”
Grinning, Captain Cutlass assured him she would not need to, and hurried off to inform Nunky Ben of his fate.
… “Ah,” said the burly Mr Stutt, leaning heavily on his bar counter. “Well, ’e is ’ere, Captain Cutlass, deary, aye. ’Im and that Dan Jones and old Rog Biddle, and that old fool, Barney Bodger, with ’is blamed dawg. And that Bob Bodger, and why ’e ain’t at ’is work, don’t ask me!”
“Well, the tide is wrong at the moment, Mr Stutt,” she explained nicely.
The innkeeper sniffed. “Wrong at four this morning when the boats got out, were it? No more use than h’ornament!”
Grinning, she replied: “In the snuggery, are they?”
“No. I’m not saying as they weren’t afore, but no. Takes three, easy enough, but with the fire going, and that blamed dawg in there? No, another feller turned up with old Rattle, so they all went into the private parlour at the back.”
“Mr Rattle? At this hour?”
“T’other feller brung ’im, deary. Flash feller, throwing ’is gelt about, and I’d best warn you now, they been on the rum this past ’alf hour and more!”
“Thank you, Mr Stutt,” replied Captain Cutlass grimly. “He can certainly come along out of it, in that case!”
“Aye,” owned the innkeeper, shaking slightly. “’Ang on a mo’, me dear! ’Aven’t seen our Belindy lately, ’ave yer?”
Mr Stutt’s sister, Belinda Biggs, née Stutt, was the unfortunate who held the position of cook to Ma Mountjoy. Captain Cutlass managed not to wince. “Not for a while. How is she?”
“She’s well, me dear, but fed up with You-Know-Who,” he said with heavy significance. “She’d like another place, to tell you the truth, don’t care if it don’t pay so well, neither. Only thing is, will the cow give ’er a line if she ups and leaves ’er?”
Perfectly understanding this last to mean would Mrs Mountjoy give Mrs Biggs a reference, Captain Cutlass replied eagerly: “She may not need one! Would she mind working out at High Mallows, do you think?”
Mr Stutt’s mouth opened and he appeared turned to stone.
“No!” she said quickly. “Mrs Piper-Fiennes has had a bad fall—two, in fact—and her mind is affected and Dr Kent thinks she may never be the same woman again!”
“Phew!” he replied, grinning. “She wouldn’t need to be, me dear: out of the frying-pan into the fire, that’d be, hey? No, well, as for out at ’Igh Mallows, Belindy wouldn’t mind that, and there’s your John-John and Mary just next-door!”
“Oh good! I’ll speak to her!” she beamed, turning for the door.
“No, come through, lovey, no need to go the long way,” said Mr Stutt, hospitably raising the flap in his counter.
“That flap is so cunning!” approved Captain Cutlass, going through.
The door at the back of the public bar led one into a maze of tiny passages and small cramped rooms: the inn was certainly more than old enough to justify Dr Adams’s claims for the provenance of its name: old enough to have seen the Spanish Armada scattered to the four winds in the Channel, certainly, if not to have seen, as the innocent Ned Yates had once speculated, the Norman Conquest. Following the innkeeper’s advice, Captain Cutlass went “along thataway.” At the end of the dark little passage a door was ajar. As she approached there was the sound of male laughter, in which she was almost positive she caught the tones of Nunky Ben’s cackle, and then a somewhat slurred voice that was possibly Bob Bodger’s said: “Three times married, and never a father? Well, I ’eard of t’other thing!” And there was more laughter.
Captain Cutlass’s brow furrowed. She had been about to gird up her loins and march in, but she hesitated.
And then a voice which was very much not one of the locals’, but which she did recognise, said with a laugh in it: “But certainly! My valet, Jésus Juarez: he is a bigamist, y’see. A country lad, born on my mother’s estate, but apprenticed very young to a goldsmith in the town. He married his first wife at seventeen. That is, when he was seventeen: she was turned forty!”—More male laughter. Captain Cutlass staggered, and leaned against the old oak panelling, very pale. Surely—
The voice was continuing merrily: “About a year afterwards he came back to the estate and married a girl of around fifteen or so, the news not having reached home of his first venture, y’see. He came up to the house and begged Madre, my mother, for a job, so she took him on as footman. The girl had a brat six months after the wedding, and Jésus seemed to be doing fine—though he was always pleading poverty. Well, not long after that Pa discovers, quite by chance, that the so-called solid cold cross on the altar of the village church is actually lead, gilded. I dare say no-one else would have thought anything of it, but Pa has an intricate mind, you see! It occurred to him that it was too much of a coincidence that Master Jésus Juarez had been working for a goldsmith. He cornered him but naturally he denied everything, though with a damn’ fishy look in his eye. Being Pa, he wouldn’t let it drop—likes to get to the bottom of things, you see. So he went off to town, got hold of one of the goldsmith’s workers, poured the local red wine into him, and got the whole story. The goldsmith was blackmailing poor old Jésus on account of the two wives, and forced him to steal the gold cross and replace it with the replica. Well, it’s too late to do anything about that, and Pa don’t give a damn about Catholic church ornaments, but after all the man’s from the estate, so he goes to check up on the first wife, and finds out she died a couple of months back, and the eldest daughter by the first husband has taken on the brats. So Pa goes off to see her, and that’s when he finds out the first wife was past forty—well, can’t blame Jésus for getting out of it, hey?”—Further laughter and some off-colour remarks.—“But then he asks which of the brats Jésus fathered, and the daughter bursts into tears and admits it was none of them, and her ma seduced poor old Jésus well after the event, and the priest did the rest! So Pa goes home breathing fire and brimstone about the damned Catholic priests, as you can imagine, and him and Madre see Señor Jésus together. There ain’t no need to say much: he throws himself at my mother’s feet and sobs out the lot. So they get him calmed down and Pa says not to worry, there’s no point in trying to prosecute the goldsmith, and as the first wife’s dead, they’ll let sleeping dogs lie, and there’s no need for Consuelo ever to know of it. But then Jésus up and asks, what should they do about Maria?”
Captain Cutlass tried to swallow and found she couldn’t. It was, almost word for word, Mr Smith’s story! How could Mr Ainsley possibly know— Or was it not him? Was she imagining it was his voice—after all, she’d only met him to speak to the once. Was it perhaps Mr Smith’s son, come back from wherever it was?
“So then the rest of it comes out. The reason he’s short of the readies is that the goldsmith made him marry this Maria, who’s his niece, that someone else had got into trouble—no, true: Jésus was on the estate at the time, couldn’t have been him! And he’s been forcing him to support her. Pa questions Jésus narrowly, but it appears he’s white as the driven snow: never even had the woman! By this time, as you might imagine, Pa’s beginning to doubt that any of the brats are damned Jésus’s get at all,”—more shouts of laughter and some very rude comment—“so he corners the local priest and explains to him what happens to obscure country priests that’ve been sanctioning bigamy. And who, exactly, is the father of Consuelo’s brat? At which the priest breaks down and admits it was a married fellow with eleven brats of his own, and the girl’s mother was frantic, and Jésus came along— In short, the damned girl seduced him and they told him the brat was his. So there’s poor old Jésus, three timeth married, and never a father!”
Grimly Captain Cutlass waited until the laughter had died down. Then she marched in and said as her great-uncle raised the tankard to his lips: “Put that down, Nunky Ben, you’ve had more than enough. Come on, we’re going home.”
Unwisely Mr Rattle put in: “Cap’n Cutlass, deary, ’ere’s Mr Loowis Ainsley come home from Spain!”
“If that is who he is calling himself I dare say he is,” replied Captain Cutlass coldly, having now had more than time enough to perceive that it was, indeed, he. “Though doubtless he will be hard put to it to explain how it comes about that I had the exact same story he has just told you off Mr Smith, who, just incidentally, cast himself in the rôle of the pa in it! –Get UP, Nunky Ben! Or do I have to fetch Little Joe to you?”
“Miss Calpurnia—” began Luís hoarsely, very flushed.
“Sir, I know not nor do I care whether you, the man who is presumably your father, or both be the masqueraders in this instance,” said Captain Cutlass disdainfully, as Mr Rattle, looking dismayed, helped Nunky Ben to his feet. “–Get that smelly dog out of my way, if you please, Bob Bodger!” Numbly Bob Bodger hauled his Great-Uncle Barney’s old dog out of her way, and Miss Calpurnia swept out by the outer door.
“Go on,” said Mr Rattle weakly to Nunky Ben.
“What’s she on about?” he croaked.
“Dunno, but I’d go, if I was you.”
Numbly the old man tottered after her.
There was a babble of self-exculpatory Spanish on the stairs, the phrases “sprained ankle” and “Señorita Calpurnia” figuring largely. Sir Harry had time to lay down his book, wincing, and then Luís came in, followed closely by Manuel, Jorge and little Julio. Behind them Jésus Juarez could be glimpsed, hovering, still in his outdoor garments.
“There y’are,” said the a baronet on a weak note. “Got the furniture, did you?”
“Yes. It’s on the yacht. She ith moored in the bay.” Luís turned and addressed a very pithy order to the servants and they all vanished.
“Fellows are thrilled you’re home, Luís,” said his father weakly.
“So thrilled, indeed, that they at least seem to assume there is no need for further prevarication,” he said coldly.
“Don’t. Sound like your damned grandfather,” he moaned.
Luís switched to Spanish and said icily: “In that case I shall endeavour to sound like Don Luís, instead, and take leave to inform you, señor, that your conduct has been duplicitous to the point of idiocy.”
Sir Harry gulped in spite of himself. In especial as he had not expected the final word. “Yes, very well, your Spanish grandfather,” he said feebly in English. “Let it run on too long. Couldn’t see how to tell her tactfully. Who told you? Damned Manuel?”
“No. I made the mistake of taking the yacht in to Waddington-on-Sea in quest of something fresh for your midday meal,”—here the baronet tried to smile and failed—“and as Rattle was on the quay and expressed great interest in her, I showed him over her and then took him off for a drink. At the inn we encountered several local personalities, amongst whom was Miss Calpurnia’s Nunky Ben Huggins.”—Sir Harry gulped in spite of himself.—“I had just told them the story of Jésus and the three marriages in which he didn’t manage to father any of the brats, when Miss Calpurnia walked in to retrieve her uncle, announcing that she had heard the same story from a Mr Smith, who had cast himself in the rôle of pa in it. Surprisingly, her conclusion was that some sort of masquerade was going on.”
Sir Harry swallowed. “Er—aye. Doesn’t sound too bad—”
“She was furious, you old idiot!” he shouted. “Furious and disgusted!”
“Disgusted? Uh—oh: did you let the story get too ripe?”
“No! Disgusted at your DUPLITHITY!” he shouted.
Sir Harry didn’t say anything about the intervocalic “C” in English, he just said glumly: “Sorry.”
Luís sank down on the edge of the bed and buried his face in hands. “I didn’t run after her,” he said indistinctly. “Didn’t wish to make a scene in the street—it was bad enough as it was.”
“Mm. Uh—’tis all my fault, Luís,” he said, clearing his throat. “She must realise that.”
“No,” he said dully, not looking up. “Can’t remember, exactly, but the implication was that either you’re an Ainsley masquerading as a Smith or I’m a Smith masquerading as an Ainsley. With nothing to choose between them,” he ended sourly.
“She’ll cool down, Luís. And she must realise it was all my blame. Well, Hell, the Stamforths know who you are!”
“I dare say,” he said dully.
Sir Harry watched him dubiously. After quite some time, as his son didn’t move, he cleared his throat and said: “After all, you hardly know the gal, as yet, Luís. Give it time.”
“She despises the pair of us,” he said sourly.
“Uh—well, yes, not a girl that likes anything underhand,” he admitted guiltily. “Wrote you what she said of Lady S. pretending to be a Portuguese, maid, hey?”
Luís ran his hand through his curls. “Not me, no.”
“Oh. Might’ve been Paul or Gaetana. Anyway, the thing was—“
Luís got up abruptly. “Spare me the details. There’s lobster, but no cream, so it won’t be homard crème. It’s all yours, I’m going to help Mendoza to unload the furniture.” With this he strode out.
Tactfully Sir Harry waited until he heard the back door bang behind him before calling: “¡Holà! Manuel! Get up here, you old devil! –Lobster, hey?” he murmured, rubbing his hands. “Jolly good!”
It was not that he was unsympathetic to his son’s cause: merely, he did not consider it hopeless at all. And, also, he was very much cheered to realise that Luís’s partiality for the delightful Miss Calpurnia had not, in fact, worn off over the last two years. And he was very fond of fresh lobster.
Next chapter:
https://thefortunateformbys.blogspot.com/2023/10/pride-and-prejudice.html
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