Читать книгу The Plus One - Sophia Money-Coutts - Страница 10
ОглавлениеON THE SATURDAY MORNING, I caught the 7.05 from King’s Cross, which arrived in York station just before 10 a.m., where an idling taxi driver outside picked me up.
‘You’re wanting the castle?’ said the driver. His car smelt of dogs.
‘Yes please,’ I said, shutting my eyes and leaning back in the seat to try to denote that I wasn’t up for chatting.
‘I know that young Lord Jasper,’ said the driver, as the car kicked into action.
‘Mmmm,’ I replied, eyes still closed.
‘I’ve been driving him about since he was a lad.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘And if you ask me…’
I wasn’t.
‘… there’s something not right about that family. All that money, all them rooms, all them horses. And now Lord Jasper in the newspapers again. Still no wife. And all that carrying on between the Duchess and that gamekeeper, I ask you. It ain’t right.’
‘The gamekeeper?’ I opened one eye.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘If you ask me, it’s disgustin’, behaving like that while your husband’s heart’s playing up. If my Marjorie ever even thought about it, I’d have something to say about it. Not that I’ve ever given her cause for complaint in that department.’
I decided to gloss over this personal detail. ‘Does everyone know about the Duchess?’
‘Oh yeah. Everyone up ’ere does anyway. And Tony, he’s the chap, braggin’ about it in the pub every night.’ He shook his head.
‘How long’s that been going on for?’
‘Years, far as I know. I tell you, if my Marjorie…’
Twenty minutes later, he pulled up outside the front door. ‘Here you go then, that’ll be twenty-five pounds. Will you be wanting a lift back later?’
‘Oh no, thanks, I’m here for the night.’
‘Right you are. Here’s my card anyways, you never know.’
I climbed out and looked up. It made the Disney castle look poky. There were turrets and gargoyles grimacing out on various corners. It was the sort of place from which a treasonous medieval baron would have plotted his march on London. I tugged on a metal pulley by the front door. Nothing. I pulled it again. Nothing. I peered through the glass of the front door into the hall and spied a large fireplace. There was no sign of human activity – just a large stuffed bear standing beside a grand piano.
Feeling awkward, I tiptoed across the lawn at the front of the house to find another door, like a visiting peasant who had come to pay my rent. Then, through a large stone arch to the left-hand side of the castle, I saw a door suddenly swing open and a male figure, clad entirely in tweed, marched out of it, followed by a black Labrador. Tweed hat, tweed coat, tweed trousers. The only thing which wasn’t tweed was the man’s face: the face was red.
He turned and shouted back behind him, ‘I TOLD EVERYONE WE NEEDED TO BE READY AT ELEVEN AND AS USUAL IN THIS FAMILY, YOU’RE ALL LATE. I don’t know why we can’t ever do anything on time, it’s a bloody shambles—’
The tweed-covered man spotted me.
‘AND WHO ARE YOU?’ he bellowed.
‘Um, hello… I’m, um… I’ve come from Posh! magazine. I’m here to see Jasper, it’s for an interview?’
He frowned. ‘Oh, the journalist,’ he roared, in much the same manner in which someone would say ‘paedophile’.
‘I’m here today… and then staying tonight… and then writing a piece…’ I stuttered.
‘Nothing to do with me, you want my son Jasper. He’s probably up in his room. You’ll have to excuse me for a moment, I’m trying to get ready for this damn shoot.’ The Duke of Montgomery turned to roar through the open door, ‘BUT EVERYONE’S BLOODY LATE THIS MORNING!’
He looked back at me. ‘Go through there and find Ian, he’ll point you in the right direction. And if you could get any of my family to hurry up that would be marvellous. Where’s my bloody dog? Ah, there you are, Inca. Come on, good boy.’ He stalked past me under the stone arch, the dog at his heels, leaving the back door open.
Inside was a room that smelled of mud and damp towels and was stuffed with coats, boots, hats, fishing rods and dog beds. No actual humans. So I walked anxiously through the room, feeling like an intruder, worried that an alarm would go off any second, and into a corridor so long I couldn’t see the end of it. Huge portraits peered down at me from the walls. I squinted at the closest one, which depicted a plain-looking woman in a green silk dress, white hair piled on her head.
‘The Duchess of Montgomery, 1745,’ read a plaque beneath it. There were more Montgomerys lining the corridor. Male Montgomerys, female Montgomerys, fat Montgomerys, thin, bearded Montgomerys, baby Montgomerys. A waft of cigarette smoke drifted towards me as I started to walk down the corridor.
‘Who’s that?’ came a shriek from a room on the left. ‘Ian, is that you? I can’t find my trousers.’
‘Er, no, it’s not Ian,’ I said, sticking my head into a large kitchen to see a woman sitting at the table, cigarette in hand, smoke snaking its way towards the ceiling. She was wearing a dark green polo neck and a pair of white knickers. No trousers.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘I’m Polly. I’m sorry to, um, interrupt. It’s only that I was told to come and find someone called Ian because I’m here to talk to Jasper. I’m from Posh!.’ I was gabbling. ‘The magazine?’
The woman drew lengthily on her cigarette. ‘Yes, I’m trying to find Ian, too. I need my trousers. We’re all late this morning and in terrible trouble with my husband. As usual.’
‘Oh,’ I said, in a manner which I hoped suggested I was sympathetic and yet relaxed about being granted an audience with the Duchess in her knickers. Who and where was Ian?
A dog that looked like Bertie was curled up and sleeping on the back of a sofa underneath the kitchen window. ‘Oh, sweet,’ I said, nodding towards it, trying to make conversation so I could stop thinking about the Duchess’s knickers. ‘Do you have a terrier?’
The Duchess looked over her shoulder. ‘He was a terrier, yes. A Yorkie called Toto. But he’s dead.’
‘Oh.’
‘He’s dead too,’ she said, pointing at an orange guinea pig on a bookshelf beside the Aga.
‘Oh, right.’
‘I can’t bear to bury the pets, you see. So I have them stuffed by a taxidermist in town.’ She took another drag of her cigarette. ‘I might do the same to my husband one day.’
Thankfully, I heard the sound of footsteps approaching.
‘Ian, there you are,’ the Duchess exclaimed. ‘I can’t find my trousers. Have you seen them?’
I turned around. Ian was apparently a sort of giant butler, well over six foot, in a uniform, with his hair neatly brushed to the side. A pair of tweed trousers lay across his arm.
‘Are these the ones, madam?’
‘Yes. You are a poppet.’ The Duchess stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. She was tall, with pale, thin legs. I stared resolutely at the floor.
‘This is Holly by the way, she’s come to interview Jasper. How long are you here for?’
‘Well, today and tonight he said, I think, if that’s all right. I mean, I don’t have to stay, I just need to—’
‘No, do stay,’ said the Duchess, taking the tweed trousers from Ian. ‘Lovely to have some fresh blood,’ she added. It sounded like a threat.
‘Are you walking out with us today?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I replied, confused. ‘What does… um, what does that mean?’
‘What?’
‘What you just said. Walking out?’
‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. Then, quite slowly, as if she was talking to a small child, ‘As in, are you coming shooting with us?’
‘With a gun?’
She smiled at me. ‘Darling, no, we wouldn’t give you a gun. You don’t look like a trained killer. Walking out means coming along and watching. Jolly cold, frightfully boring. But you can stand with Jasper.’
I was relieved. ‘Oh, right. Then yes, I think so. If that’s all right.’
‘Have you got any clothes?’ she asked, standing up to put her own trousers on. One leg in, then the other. She maintained eye contact with me throughout. It was like some kind of weird, reverse striptease.
‘Uhhh, yes. In here.’ I jiggled my overnight bag.
‘Good, well, we’re already all terribly late. Ian, has someone made a room up?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘Marvellous, in that case can you show Holly to her room and she can quickly get changed. I can’t tell you the row there’ll be if we’re not at the stables in the next ten minutes. And take her to Jasper’s room afterwards, will you?’ She stalked out, in the direction of the boot room.
‘It’s Polly, actually,’ I said to Ian, apologetically.
‘Welcome, madam,’ he replied, holding a giant hand out for my bag.
I followed Ian as he walked slowly out of the kitchen and back into the corridor, past more dead Montgomerys, up a twisting staircase, along another corridor, down some carpeted stairs and then he turned and opened a door.
‘Here you are, you’re in Nanny’s old room. There’s a bathroom just through there. I’ll give you a few moments to change and then take you to Lord Jasper.’
‘Great, thanks. Yes please.’
I stepped into the room as Ian closed the door behind me. It looked like it hadn’t been redecorated for fifty years. Flowery wallpaper, a yellowing carpet and a pink quilt on a narrow single bed. I pressed my hand on the mattress and winced as a spring pinged underneath it. There was a stuffed ferret with horrid little pink eyes on the mantelpiece. My phone buzzed from inside the bag. It was Lala.
You there? Keep me posted. Xxx
I chucked the phone down on the quilt. Later was fine, I needed to put on my tweed. A few moments later, I looked like a Victorian lady explorer off to discover the dusty crevices of the empire. Was I supposed to look like this? I fished my lip-gloss out of my bag and added some for effect, then glanced in the mirror again. If Joe could see me, he would die of a heart attack from laughing.
There was a discreet knock at the door and a gentle cough outside.
‘Sorry, sorry, just coming.’ I threw the lip-gloss on the bed and opened the door.
‘Magnificent,’ said Ian. ‘Follow me.’
Sedate apparently being Ian’s preferred pace, I followed him back up the carpeted stairs and along the corridor.
‘Lord Jasper,’ said Ian, stopping outside a closed door from behind which I could hear Van Morrison playing. ‘I’ve got the journalist from London here.’
Van Morrison stopped. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ came a groan.
‘She’s not called Jesus, sir. She’s called Polly,’ said Ian.
‘Good one,’ said Jasper, throwing opening the door and smiling at me. ‘Polly, hello, any friend of Lala’s is a friend of mine.’
He was handsome, I had to admit it. And taller than I expected, with blue eyes and dirty blond hair that he swept to the side with one hand. He was also wearing an absurd pair of tweed knickerbockers which gathered just beneath his knees, but his shirt was loose and unbuttoned. He, too, was barefoot. Was nobody in this family able to dress themselves properly?
Jasper held out his hand. ‘How do you do?’
But I didn’t have a second to answer how I was doing, because he immediately turned to Ian.
‘Now, Ian, my good man, I can’t seem to find a single pair of shooting socks. I mean, I don’t know what you do with them. Do you eat them? I buy a million pairs every year and then the shooting season rolls around again and they’ve all gone. It’s the bloody end, I tell you.’
‘I’ll have a look in your father’s room, sir.’ Ian turned and glided silently back along the passage.
‘Right, well, Polly, I’m so sorry. It’s a madhouse here, as you’ve probably already gathered. Did you meet my parents?’
‘Yes, your father was outside with his dog, and your mother was in the kitchen, looking for her trousers.’
‘And here I am, looking for my socks. What a shambles we all are.’ He pushed his hair to the side again. ‘You look superb anyway. Have you been out shooting before?’
I looked down at my tweed self-consciously. ‘Oh, thanks. And no, I haven’t.’
Jasper started doing up his shirt. ‘Well, give me two seconds and, socks permitting, we can be on our way. How are you with dogs by the way?’
‘With them?’
‘Do you mind them? Do you like them?’
‘Oh, no… I mean, yes. I love them. I’ve grown up with them. My mother has a small terrier called Bertie.’
‘How sweet. Mine is an abominably badly behaved Labrador called Bovril. Do you mind being in charge of him today while I shoot? I’ll tell you where to stand and all that.’
‘Sure. No problem. What about the interview though?’
‘What interview?’
‘Well, I need to sit down with you at some point and chat about, you know, the pictures in the paper and…’ I trail off, nervously.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that, we’ll have acres of time tonight over dinner. Now, let’s go and find these socks.’
An hour later, I was standing behind Jasper in a field on the side of a steep hill, holding on to Bovril’s lead with one hand, and my hat with the other. There were five other men spread out along the field, each holding a gun, each with a woman standing dutifully behind them, also holding some colour of Labrador on a lead. The wind was blowing odd noises towards us from a wood at the bottom of the field, some sort of weird warbling and the sound of crashing footsteps through thick undergrowth.
‘What is that?’ I asked Jasper.
He didn’t reply.
‘Jasper?’ I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked around. ‘What’s… that… noise?’ I mouthed slowly at him and pointed at the trees.
‘Hang on.’ He reached into his ear and pulled out an orange earplug. ‘What?’
‘Sorry. I just wasn’t sure what the noise was.’
‘It’s the beaters. They’re…’
‘What are beaters?’
‘They’re the people who flush the birds out. And they’re down there, in the woods, walking towards us from the other side to flush out the birds, to make them fly over us. Then… bang. See?’
It didn’t seem very fair, a load of people hollering in a forest, trying to make the pheasants fly towards a line of armed men standing on a hill. Beside me, Bovril yawned and lay down. I fished in my pocket for my phone, my hands already numb from the cold. ‘Beaters people who chase birds,’ I tapped into my notes with stiff fingers. ‘Jasper has dog called Bovril. Duchess mad, stuffs all family pets.’
A sudden, loud bang to the right made me jump so I slid my phone back into my pocket and looked up in the air to see a pheasant whirling in small circles towards the ground. It hit the grass with a thud. Bovril looked at it, then looked up at me, then whined.
I jumped again as Jasper’s gun went off. The smell of gunpowder floated through the air and there was another thud behind us as that pheasant tumbled to the ground.
‘Let Bovril off his lead, will you?’ instructed Jasper, eyes still on the sky as if scanning for the Luftwaffe.
Bovril, pleased to be free, bounded towards the dead pheasant, picked it up by the neck, and trotted obediently back, dropping it on my boot. I looked down at it and inched my foot away, uncertain of Jimmy Choo’s policy on accepting back boots which had pheasant blood on them. Frowned upon, probably.
The sound of gunshots rang out. Suddenly, dozens of birds were flying out from the wood. I clapped my hands over my ears and looked up into the sky. Pheasants poured overhead as the shooting continued, some tumbling from the sky like stones, some flying straight on over the hedge behind them. I’d keep flying if I were you, I willed them, keep going until you get to somewhere nice and warm, like Africa.
Jasper muttered the odd ‘fuck’ and a small pile of empty red cartridges piled up behind him. Bovril, meanwhile, galloped back and forth, fetching pheasants and proudly creating a pile at my feet. Some were still twitching, which made me grimace. Urgh, what was I doing standing in this cold field? All I wanted was to sit down with Jasper and get the interview done.
A whistle blew and Jasper put down his gun. ‘Well, that wasn’t too bad, was it? Must have been sixty or so birds that came out of there.’
Poor things, I wanted to say. ‘Hmm,’ I said instead. ‘How long have you been doing it?’
‘Since I was six.’
‘Six? I was still learning to tell the time when I was six.’
‘Dad started me pretty early. Right, come on. Another drive, then it’s elevenses.’
‘Drive? In a car?’ I was hopeful about warming up.
‘No, no, you appalling townie. That’s what we’re on now. A “drive” is this, standing around in a field waiting for birds to be driven towards us. So, we’ve got one more, then elevenses, then probably another couple, then lunch, then maybe two more drives after that depending on the light.’
The day stretched before me. My fingers had gone white from the cold and my feet were presumably the same colour despite being wrapped in scratchy woollen socks. It would serve Peregrine right if I succumbed to frostbite while shooting in Yorkshire.
Lunch was back in the castle, in a room with the heads of dead animals looking down at us. Stag heads staring glassily out in front of them, snarling fox heads, a zebra head, a warthog head, the head of something else that looked like a deer but had curling horns. I stared at them. You never saw zebra heads on 60 Minute Makeover.
‘We killed the last journalist who came to stay with us,’ said a voice behind me. I turned around. It was the Duke. ‘Only joking,’ he said, before I had the chance to reply.
‘Now, come on, everybody sit,’ he ordered.
I was sitting between a man who was wearing bright yellow socks with his tweed outfit, called Barny, and another guest called Max. Barny, I learned, was actually called Barnaby and he was fifty-first in line to the throne. He didn’t have a job, but lived at the family estate in Gloucestershire and spent his time shooting. When he wasn’t shooting, he told me, he was fishing or horse racing.
‘Oh,’ I said, starting to run out of small talk. He seemed obsessed with killing things. ‘So do you travel much?’
‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘going abroad is ghastly. Apart from the Alps. I go skiing three or four times a year. I’d like to go hunting tigers in India, but they’re making it very tricky to do that these days.’
‘Barny, you can’t say that sort of thing,’ said Max, joining the conversation. ‘Polly, I’m so sorry. Barny is completely appalling, but we’ve all been friends since school and we can’t seem to shake him off.’
‘How rude,’ said Barny. ‘No shooting invitation for you this year, Maximillian.’
‘You see, Polly? Barny blackmails us into being friends with him. Tragic.’
I looked along to Jasper, positioned at the head of the table, with two blondes sitting either side and smiling at him in an adoring fashion. His ideal habitat, I suspected. He’d loosened the collar around his neck and was leaning forwards on the table, telling them some story. He reached for a bottle in front of him and topped up both their glasses while still talking, then put the bottle back and looked down the table at me. He caught my eye and winked. Please, I thought, I’m not that easy.
I turned to Max, sensing if not an ally then at least someone I might be able to hold a conversation with, and asked him about the others. ‘Max,’ I began, ‘who is everyone else here? I mean, obviously, I know about Jasper and his family. But I’m not sure about anyone else. Do you know them all?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, folding his napkin and putting it on the table.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, just poor you. Having to come to this. Do we all seem totally absurd?’ Max asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. ‘No,’ I said after a pause. ‘I’m just trying to gauge who everybody is.’
‘OK, let me talk you through them all. So, next to Jasper’s father is Willy Naseby-Dawson, she’s…’
I looked at the blonde girl again. ‘Why’s she called Willy if she’s a girl?’
‘Short for Wilhelmina. She’s from a German family, she’s Barny’s wife. Poor thing. And then on her other side is Archie Spiffington, who’s married to the girl Barny’s talking to now, Jessica. They got married last year because she was pregnant – her father was very upset at that and insisted on them getting hitched. Her family’s disgustingly rich. Her great-great-grandfather invented the railway or something. Anyway, big wedding in London, then six months later along comes their son Ludo, who’s now about seven months, I think. I’m the godfather.’
‘Oh, sweet, where’s Ludo?’
‘No idea, with the nanny in London probably. And then, on Jessica’s other side is Seb – Sebastian, Lord Ullswater. He’s a fairly dubious character who used to be in the Army and now sells weapons to anyone who’ll buy them. And he’s married to that girl on the other side of Jasper, the girl on my right, who’s called Muffy.’
‘And what about you?’ I asked him.
‘What do you mean, what about me?’
‘Are you married?’
Max threw his head back and laughed. ‘I’m gay, my darling. Can you not tell because I’m wearing such manly trousers?’
‘Oh, right,’ I said, blushing. ‘Although, you could still get married.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ he said, nodding.
‘Have you got a boyfriend?’
‘No. Not terribly good with boyfriends.’
‘Max,’ said Barny, from my other side. ‘None of us want to hear about your love life over pudding.’
‘I wish there was one, Barny, old boy. But it’s been slow-going of late.’
‘You should meet my flatmate, Joe,’ I said to Max. ‘You’re just his type.’
‘Oh really? What’s his type?’
‘Well, actually, quite wide ranging, I’d say. But dark, handsome and funny. And you’re all of those.’
‘Right,’ bellowed the Duke from the other end of the room, slamming his fists down on the table. ‘Finish up your pudding and let’s get going.’
‘Come on then,’ Max said to me. Then he called down the table, ‘Jasper, I’m stealing Polly to stand with me this afternoon. Violet, why don’t you go with your brother? I need to talk to Polly about her flatmate.’
Jasper’s sister. I’d barely noticed the woman sitting three to my left. She seemed much quieter than her talkative brother.
‘Fine by me,’ said Violet, carefully putting her napkin back on the table. ‘If anyone wants to borrow another layer then shout, it looks like rain this afternoon.’
It started raining while I stood behind Max waiting for the shooting to start again. Having defrosted enough to handle a knife and fork over lunch, my hands were stiff with cold again. Max stood, gun slung over his arm, cigarette dangling from his lips.
‘You all right?’ He glanced back at me.
‘Yes, yes, fine. Who needs hands anyway?’
‘You going back to London after this?’
‘No, I’m staying tonight. I haven’t had my interview with Jasper yet.’
He exhaled smoke into the air. ‘That’s brave. Have you talked much to their Graces?’
‘Who?’
‘The Duke and Duchess.’
‘No, not really.’ I squinted in the distance to see the Duke standing at the other end of the field. The Duchess had announced after lunch that she wasn’t coming out that afternoon because she had work to do in her hen house.
‘They’re barking,’ said Max, grinding his cigarette out in the mud with his boot. ‘Truly barking.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
‘Which is why Jasper is a bit… complicated sometimes.’
‘You’ve known him for ever?’
He nodded again. ‘We were at prep school together. Then the same house at Eton, until he got kicked out. Then Edinburgh University.’ He paused. ‘He’s been a good friend. Stood up for me at school when I came out. Not that my sexuality was a huge surprise to anyone. I mean, darling, look at me!’
I laughed. Max was wearing tweed, but also pink socks, a pink shirt, a yellow tie and a pink beanie.
‘So, he’s been a good friend,’ he carried on. ‘And, I know we all get a bit carried away sometimes…’
‘Carried away?’
‘Those pictures, after he broke up with Caz, are a case in point.’ Max raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Anyway, Jasper knows exactly who told the papers he’d broken it off with her, who told the photographers where he was that night. But he’s not going to say anything. He’s too honourable.’
There was a bang down the line and a pheasant dropped through the air towards the ground. ‘Right, here we go again. Time to concentrate,’ said Max, turning round and lifting his gun.
Back at the castle there was tea. The sort of tea you read about in a Dickens novel. Sandwiches, sausage rolls, fruitcake, shortbread, tea in actual teapots. Also, port. Port! In miniature wine glasses! Joe and I put away a couple of cheap bottles of Pinot Grigio from Barbara’s shop almost every night, but we didn’t drink as much as this lot. The Duke’s blood must be 93 per cent alcohol, I reckoned, watching him drain another glass of the syrupy red liquid.
After half an hour or so of standing on the fringes of the drawing room, defrosting my hands yet again on a teacup, Jasper’s friends started leaving and I snuck out gratefully to my room. I then ran a hot bath with a good few slugs from an ancient-looking bottle of hyacinth bath oil I found in the bathroom cupboard. Sylvia Plath once said that a hot bath cured everything, which I’d always thought slightly ironic, because poor Sylvia then went and killed herself. But I needed a bath to help collect my thoughts. The evening dinner promised to be a sort of cross between Downton Abbey and Coronation Street, while everyone politely ate their soup. Or drank their soup. What does one do with soup? Anyway, everyone would be doing something with their soup and discussing the day while bad tempers seethed underneath. Maybe soup would be thrown.
Because nobody in this house, this castle, rather, seemed able to move without some form of alcohol in their hand, Ian had sent me upstairs with something called a ‘hot toddy’. A few fingers of whisky, some hot water and a teaspoon or so of honey, he’d explained. ‘It’ll warm you up,’ he’d said.
I swirled it around in its glass, splashing hot, oily water over the side of the bath. It burned my throat going down.
My phone suddenly vibrated on the bed, so I climbed out of the bath, wrapped myself in a scratchy towel, picked it up and lay – steaming – on the narrow little mattress. It was Lala again.
How’s it going, Pols? Do you like Jaz? Send my love to everyone. Don’t forget the make-up thing Xxxx
I quickly typed out a reply.
All good, don’t worry. I’ll report back on Monday xxxx
Still hot and damp from the bath, I then stood up to heave myself into the floor-length dress Legs and Lala had insisted I wear. No tights, because they were common apparently. I looked in the full-length mirror. A ropey Twenties flapper girl looked back at me. But it would have to do. And somehow I needed to walk downstairs in the ridiculous heels they’d given me, so high they looked like they might give me vertigo.
I picked up my phone again and checked the time. Nearly seven o’clock. I needed to find the drawing room where Ian had told me the family gathered for drinks. More drinks! And I still hadn’t sat down to interview Jasper yet. I’d scribbled some more notes on my phone – his penchant for Van Morrison, his habit of constantly brushing his hair from his eyes, Max’s comment about him being ‘honourable’ – but I needed Jasper on record about his relationships. I needed him to open up a bit. I couldn’t come all this way and report back to Peregrine with so little. Maybe more drinks would help, I thought, as I closed the bedroom door behind me and inched down the stairs like a wobbly drunk, clutching at the banister. A grandfather clock ticked gently from below, but otherwise the house was silent. Ian’s instructions for finding the drawing room had been along these lines: ‘Come downstairs, turn left and walk fifty yards down the corridor, turn right into another corridor, click your heels three times and the drawing room will be on your right-hand side.’
The sound of smashing glass, followed by a high-pitched scream gave me a clue. It was exactly the sort of high-pitched scream that might come from an angry and potentially violent duchess.
‘WE ARE ALL HAVING FUCKING DINNER TOGETHER, ELEANOR, I MEAN IT.’
Another high-pitched scream. I froze outside the door. Rude to walk in on a row. But quite rude to stand out here listening to it, also. I wondered if I should hobble back upstairs again. But I could already feel a blister coming up on my little toe from those wretched heels. I was hovering like this in the hall, as if playing a private game of musical statues, when I heard a small cough behind me.
‘Polly, there you are,’ said Ian. ‘Follow me and let’s get you another drink.’ He swept past, carrying a silver tray with several Martini glasses on it.
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely, nothing to worry about,’ he said, pushing the door open.
The Duchess was standing beside the fireplace, still in her shooting clothes. The Duke was sitting in a large red armchair. Inca walked towards me and shoved his wet nose into my crotch.
‘Do get your bloody dog to behave,’ said the Duchess, huffily.
‘That’s all right,’ I said, brushing smears from Inca’s wet nose off the three-thousand-pound dress.
‘Very kind of you to dress so wonderfully, Polly, but we’re terribly relaxed here,’ said the Duke, who was wearing a blue shirt and electric red cords with a pair of velvet slippers. ‘Ian, what are we having for dinner?’
‘I think Chef’s doing mushroom soufflé, followed by roast partridge and then rhubarb syllabub, Your Grace. And there’s some cheese, if you’d like?’
‘Yes, we simply must have cheese,’ the Duke said gravely.
‘Well, if you’ll forgive me,’ said the Duchess, ‘I’m going to go and get changed and then go out. So, I’m afraid I won’t be joining you for dinner, Polly, but my husband and children will look after you.’ She glared at the Duke and stalked out, slamming the door behind her.
‘Drink, Polly?’ asked the Duke. ‘I’m going to have another one. A strong one, I think. Bugger the doctors.’
After its warlike beginning, dinner was almost disappointingly peaceful. Jasper, the Duke, Violet and I sat at one end of a vast mahogany table in the dining room, the light from several silver candlesticks flickering off the dark green walls and an eight-foot stuffed polar bear casting a long shadow along the room at the other end of the table. It was his grandfather’s, the Duke told me, one of forty-six polar bears brought back as a trophy from one of his hunting expeditions in the Arctic in 1906.
There was no shouting. No Duchess. Violet (in jeans and a t-shirt) talked about her horses, the Duke generally talked about the animals he’d killed, Jasper (in jeans and a collared blue shirt) quietly fed Bovril scraps of partridge. I felt excruciatingly out of place given that I was dressed as if I was off to a pre-war nightclub, but I kicked my shoes off under the table. I rubbed my feet together as the Duke asked me questions about London.
‘Far too many people in London,’ he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin at the end of dinner and standing up. He then announced he needed to walk Inca and Violet said she wanted to have a bath. Which left Jasper and me sitting at one end of the table, candles still burning and Ian humming while removing bowls and dirty napkins.
‘Another bottle?’ Ian asked.
‘I think so, don’t you?’ replied Jasper, pushing his chair back from the table and stretching his legs out in front of him. ‘OK, Polly, let’s get this over with.’
‘Get what over with?’
‘The interview, our little chat. What do you want to know about me and this madhouse?’
‘Oh, I see. OK. You call it a madhouse?’
‘What else would you call it? My father is a Victorian whose dearest wish is that he’d fought in the Boer War. My mother is happiest pottering about in the hen house with her friend, the gamekeeper.’
‘Ah. So, that’s…’
Jasper raised an eyebrow at me.
‘… common knowledge?’
‘Desperately common. The whole village knows about it. It’s been on and off for years. As long as I can remember. I don’t mind so much but I think Violet probably does. So, instead, she thinks of horses from morning till night.’
‘Hang on, hang on, can I record this?’ I pulled my phone out of my pocket and waved it at him.
He smiled at me. ‘Ah my inquisitor. I didn’t realize I was doing an interview for Newsnight.’
‘You’re not. But I quite need to record it. Can I?’ I held my phone up again.
‘’Course. I will say lots of immensely intelligent things.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ I said, fiddling with my phone to make sure it was recording. ‘And what about you?’
‘What do you mean “What about me?”’
‘Are you as mad as everyone else?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m the sanest of the lot.’ He smiled again and swept his hair out of his eyes.
‘What about your break-up? What about those photos?’
‘What photos?’
‘The ones in the paper.’
He looked straight into my eyes. It was unnerving, as if he could see directly into my brain. A sort of posh Paul McKenna. ‘I don’t want to talk about Caz,’ he replied. ‘She’s a sweet girl. It just wasn’t right. Or I’m not right…’ He trailed off. ‘And those photos… All right, so occasionally I behave badly and let off a bit of steam. I go out and I behave like an idiot. But I don’t think being photographed stumbling out of a club is the worst thing in the world.’
He leant closer, shifting in his chair, still looking into my eyes. ‘Forgive me, Polly, for I have sinned.’
I burst out laughing. ‘Nice try. But you can’t charm your way out that easily.’
‘Fine.’ He sat back again, reached across the table for the wine and filled our glasses up. ‘OK, go on, ask me anything.’
I raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I’m trying to work you out.’
‘That’s not a question.’
‘I’m just trying to work out whether the joking is a front.’
‘A front?’
‘Like a mask. Covering up something more serious. You joke a lot.’
‘What did you expect?’
I frowned. ‘I’m not sure. You to be more cagey, more defensive.’
‘You expected me,’ he began, ‘to be a cretin in red trousers who couldn’t spell his own name?’
‘Well, maybe a bit. I mean, er, some of your friends at lunch, for example.’ I was thinking about Barny.
‘Yes. Most of them are bad, aren’t they? But…’ He shrugged. ‘They’re my friends, I’ve known them since school. And they don’t mean to be such thundering morons. They were just born like that.’
‘And you weren’t?’
‘No. I’m different.’ He grinned.
‘How?’
‘OK. I know there’s all this…’ He threw his arm out in front of him and across the room. ‘But sometimes I just want something normal. A normal family which doesn’t want to kill each other the whole time. A normal job in London. A normal girlfriend, frankly, who doesn’t look like a horse and talk about horses and want to marry me so she can live in a castle and have more horses.’
‘Oh, so you do want a girlfriend?’ I sensed this was the moment to push him a bit harder, to try to unpick him. ‘You want a proper relationship?’
He looked at me again, straight-faced. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘I am,’ I persevered. It was tricky, this bit, quizzing someone about their most personal feelings. But Peregrine wanted quotes on Jasper’s love life, so I needed him to talk about it. I needed a bit of sensitivity from the most eligible man in the country, a chink in his manly armour.
‘So, OK, you’re single again,’ I pressed on, ‘and I know you don’t want to talk about Lady Caroline… Caz… but what’s the deal with all the women?’
His wine glass froze in mid-air, before he placed it back down on the table. ‘Polly, I can’t believe it. “All the women” indeed. Who’s told you that?’
‘OK, so I know you dated Lala, briefly, and I know about a few others. The rumours about you and that Danish princess, last year, for example?’
Jasper grimaced in his seat. ‘Clara. I had dinner with her once and that was it. Terrible sense of humour. She didn’t laugh at any of my jokes.’
‘All right, the photos of you and Lady Gwendolyn Sponge?’
‘Nothing to it. Our parents are old friends.’
‘Who was that one you went skiing with last year then?’
He frowned at me.
‘You were photographed laughing on a chairlift together.’
His face cleared. ‘Oh, Ophelia. Yes. She’s a darling. But about as bright as my friend Bovril.’
Under the table, Bovril thumped his tail at the sound of his name.
‘Fine. But I imagine there have been… many more.’
He sighed. ‘Many more. I mean honestly, who makes up this nonsense?’
‘So it’s rubbish? All those tales about the legendary Jasper Milton are nonsense?’
‘You, Little Miss Inquisitor, are teasing me. And anyway, what does my personal life really matter to you?’ He looked at me with a straight face. ‘Why are you blushing?’
I put my hand up to my cheek. ‘I’m not. It’s all this wine.’
‘Oh. I thought it might be because I’m flirting with you.’
‘Is this you flirting? I’m amazed you get anyone into bed at all.’
He laughed. ‘Touché.’ And then he brushed his hair to the side, out of his eyes, again. And just for a second, literally for a second, I promise, I wondered what it would be like to be in bed with him, my own fingers in his hair. But then I thought about Lala and told myself to have a sip of water. I couldn’t go around the place fantasizing about my interview subjects. Kate Adie would never do that. I tried to get back to the point.
‘Do you think you’ll settle down though? Find someone? Get married? Have children? Do all that?’
He sighed again and sat back in his seat. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. How does one know? Do you know?’
‘This isn’t about me.’
He laughed. ‘See? You don’t know either. It’s not that easy, is it?’
‘What isn’t?’
He shrugged. ‘Relationships, life, getting older and realizing things can be more complicated than you thought.’
‘You feel hard done by?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. In the great lottery of life, as my father is fond of saying, I know I’ve done pretty well. But do you know what? Maybe, sometimes, I don’t want to take over this whole place. I don’t want to be told how lucky I am because I get to devote my whole life to a leaky castle and an estate that needs constant attention and I don’t want to be in the papers falling out of a club. But that doesn’t mean that I know what I do want.’
I stayed quiet and glanced up at a portrait of the sixth Duchess of Montgomery, a fat, pale lady in a green dress looking impassively at us from the wall. I looked from the painting to Jasper, who suddenly smiled at me.
‘What’s funny?’ I said.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Me, sitting here, talking to you about how terribly hard my life is. Come on, let’s have more wine and you keep asking me all your clever questions.’ He reached for the bottle and filled up our glasses again.
‘Does it bother you, what other people say? What newspapers say?’
‘It would be a lie if I said that it didn’t. Sometimes it does. But then you just have to remind yourself that they don’t know the real story.’
‘Which is?’
He sighed. ‘Oh, I suppose that we’re a bunch of dysfunctional misfits trying to muddle through like everyone else. Just… in a bigger house. But you can’t say that,’ he said, inclining his head towards my phone, still recording on the table. ‘I’ll get in trouble. More trouble. “Poor little rich boy”, they’ll all say.’
‘It’s quite a defence plea though.’ I said this smiling at him. I couldn’t take his sob story that seriously but I still felt a twinge of sympathy. A very tiny one.
‘Nope,’ he said, ‘Sorry. Can’t use it. That was just for you to know. Not everyone else. And what about you, anyway?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What’s your story? Why are you here interviewing me?’
I felt awkward. ‘Erm, it’s not very exciting. I grew up in Surrey, then my dad died, so Mum and I moved to Battersea where she’s lived ever since. I was all right at English at school so my teacher said I should think about becoming a journalist. I think he meant more politics and news than castles and Labradors, though, no offence.’
‘None taken.’
‘But this is good for now.’
He nodded in silence. ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’
I laughed. ‘I’m supposed to be asking the questions.’
‘You are. I’m just being nosy.’
‘No, as it happens. I don’t. A bit like you, I guess, relationships aren’t my thing.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t imagine you with an Ed or a James, living in some terribly poky flat in Wandsworth.’
‘Oh, I see. You’re not a man of the people at all. You’re a snob?’
‘I’m teasing. Some of my closest friends are called Ed and James. But come on, Polly, you really must lighten up or we’ll never get anywhere. If we’re going to get married one day, you’ll need to stop being so stern.’
‘You’re ridiculous,’ I said. But I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. He was clearly the boy your mother warned you about but he was also charming. More charming than I’d thought earlier that day. More charming than the papers made out. Or maybe it was the wine?
‘Why shouldn’t we get married? I think you’re terribly sweet. And funny. And you clearly know nothing about horses which is also a bonus.’
And then he leaned forward and kissed me. Briefly. His lips brushed mine for two or three seconds, tops, before I pulled my head back. Slow reflexes, admittedly. But, in my defence, I was very drunk.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said in my most matronly voice, pulling away.
‘No?’
‘No. This is work. For me anyway. And just when I was starting to like you.’
‘Have I ruined it?’ he said, still leaning forward, still smiling at me.
I ignored the question. ‘Your seduction techniques might have worked on Lala, but not me.’
He sighed and sat back in his seat. ‘Good old Lala. How is she, anyway?’
‘She’s very well. Well… kind of. You know Lala.’
‘I did like her,’ he said, staring at the table as if in a trance. ‘It just wasn’t the right timing again.’ He paused. ‘Or it was something else. I don’t know.’ He looked up at me. ‘You won’t write about me and her though, will you?’
‘You and Lala? No. Don’t worry.’
‘Good. I don’t mind being written about that much but I don’t want to cause trouble for anyone else. I mean, I ask for it, I know. Others don’t.’
He threw back his wine glass and I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. So, we sat for a few moments in silence while ancestors in wigs frowned down from the walls. The mood had changed but I wasn’t sure why.
‘Bedtime, I think,’ he said after a few moments. ‘Let me show you the way to your room.’
I followed him in silence back down the long corridor and up the stairs. I felt awkward about things. About the whole day. The entire family should be in an asylum. I knew Peregrine would expect my piece on the family to be glowing, to talk about how upstanding they all were. To put a gloss on life in the castle and be as flattering as I could about the Duke and Duchess. But the truth was they all seemed a bit lost. Trapped. Although, having met Jasper, I could at least write about how much more self-aware he was in real life, as opposed to how he was portrayed in the papers. I could definitely bring myself to do that, I thought, as I reached for the zip on the back of my dress. For God’s sake, it was going to take me about five hours to get out of this thing.
