Hero is a Four Letter Word (4 page)

“The saviour of Albion, indeed,” he murmured.

Merlin just snapped her gum.

Another Four Letter Word

by J.M. Frey

Funerals, Jennet decides, both literally and metaphorically
suck
.

Metaphorically in all the ways they talk about in entitled poems, and empty hymns, and useless novels about vast open spaces and disillusioned young men with something to prove. Literally, because when they lower her father’s coffin into the cold, damp earth, it feels like she’s about to be pulled down on top of it.

It had only ever been the two of them. Jen and David against the world. Happiest pair that ever was. Strong. Defying all the stereotypes of men who can’t care, can’t nurture, can’t
mother
. Father and daughter, powerful together.

And now separated forever.

Jennet clutches a slim ash tree, leans close to it and does her best to breathe wet, chill, cemetery air; to remain upright; to not pitch nose-first into her Da’s grave. She has no mother, no uncle, no brothers or sisters to hold her upright, help her stand firm. Only Mrs. MacDonald, the cook and housekeeper, hovers beside her elbow but does not touch. They don’t have a close enough relationship for that, but if Jen was pressed, she’d have said that the woman was the closest thing to a female role model she’d grown up with. Her father hadn’t believed in governesses. Too Victorian, he’d thought.

When she’s invited to speak about the deceased, Jen just shakes her head, fingers digging into the bark. Mr. Coldwell, the only other servant and the man who was chauffer, mechanic, valet and friend to her father, steps up instead. He pulls a folded card from his breast pocket, clearly anticipating that Jen’s grief would make her mute and the task would fall to him. That is the nice thing about Mr. Coldwell: he is so good at anticipating when he would be needed.

Jennet listens with half an ear, the rain on the leaf mold and the canopy above them too much of a hindrance to her sorrow-soaked brain to catch all Mr. Coldwell’s words. When he’s done, he presses the card between Jen’s fingers. Mrs. MacDonald takes it, tucks it into her small black purse, and Jen is absurdly grateful that it will be kept safe. She wants to read it, but she can’t worry about keeping track of it just now.

Then the priest is calling her forward, and she goes on shaking legs, the heels of her pumps sinking into the wet grass. He presses a clump of soil into her hands and she steps to the edge of the wound in the world and opens her fingers. It lands with a wet plop right about where her father’s face would be.

She stumbles back, horrified with the visual, and covers her own face with her soil-streaked hands. The rain is freezing, sharp fingers against the back of her neck. Mrs. MacDonald touches her shoulder, and that’s it, that’s all Jen can take. Enough.

She turns and flees back to the house, leaving mud and rainwater in her wake like fairy-story breadcrumbs. She shuts herself up in the close, quietness of her Da’s en suite shower stall. The pouf still smells of his cologne body wash, fills her nose with the scent of warm, gripping hugs she will never have again, and she crumples against the tiles and weeps, and weeps, and weeps.

Despite the large house and the land surrounding it, Carterhaugh Estate isn’t wealthy. Nor is it really an estate. Jennet and her Da were not part of the peerage, never mind that the people of the nearby Selkirk call them “Lord” and “Lady” out of respect, and Jennet herself draws only a modest stipend from the family trust.

The house itself is two stories above ground and one below that comprises the pantry and kitchens with big dug-out windows. She and her father had apartments in the upper part of the house at the front, and there are two guest rooms and a study at the back. The ground floor is home to the formal dining room, the informal breakfast room, a sitting room that her father had filled with cleverly hidden electronics like a television and a sound system, two servant’s quarters occupied by Mrs. MacDonald and Mr. Coldwell when they aren’t in the mood to head back to their homes in Selkirk, and their shared bathroom. The house was old enough and well cared for enough to qualify for heritage status with the government, but that would mean needing to put in some cash for the restorations, and frankly they just don’t have the money.

As the only surviving blood kin to the Lord of Carterhaugh, Jennet is entailed the manor, the grounds, and a hundred acres of farmland which has been rented by the same family for the last three generations. Jennet inherits very little beyond the trust, the interest on which pays the salaries of Mr. Coldwell and Mrs. Macdonald, and for their consumables. The money from the farming tenants goes towards the upkeep of the house, and Jennet’s admittedly modest lifestyle. Jen doesn’t work, per se, but she does sit on the board of several of the local chartities, arts centres, and business associations.

Included in the manor’s grounds is a triangular plain crisscrossed with famous, so-called fairy circles, and just enough forest to get lost in. The forest borders both the Yarrow and the Ettrick, inhabits the fork where the two tributaries come together and head off as one to the far away North Sea.

From the window seat of her apartment, Jennet can see a doe with her fawn grazing along the edge of the lawn, sticking close to the trees. Her father’s grave is on the other side of the house, hidden behind the crumbling family chapel, and she is absurdly thankful that it isn’t visible from her sitting room.

She’s fled here after a day full of long, painful discussion and even more heart-breaking choices. She watches the deer and clutches a cup of tea and does her best to empty her mind. But even mother nature, it seems, is determined to not let her hide away from the thought of children.

The truth of it is this: Jennet can afford to remain at Carterhaugh, could probably live on the trust and the entail indefinitely, but the question has become – who will get it after? Who will Jennet name as her heir?

A few decades ago, Carterhaugh was open to tourists, like the grand houses of the Historical Trust used to do in the old days. There once were parts of the house that were staged, but so few people came out to the manor that they had repurposed the spare rooms as Jennet’s nursery and her Da’s study when she’d been small. With no wee ones in house and the building aging at a rate that is beginning to outpace the living’s ability to keep up the repairs, perhaps it is time, Mr. Coldwell floats as the three of them huddle over a pot of tea on the rough scullion’s table in the kitchen, to revisit the idea of turning the east wing into a bed and breakfast?

They could hire a part-time maid from the village to take care of the bedrooms, Mrs. MacDonald could do the cooking, Mr. Coldwell could pick up visitors from the train station in the old Model T that he has meticulously restored, and Jennet could play hostess? The only down side is, of course, that Jennet isn’t sure she could smile that much around strangers. She wouldn’t mind it so much if she could just avoid that part of the house, but of course part of the draw is going to be getting to interact with the Lady Carterhaugh herself. To take brandy in the sitting room, tour the ornamental and kitchen gardens, perhaps go for a horseback ride around the boundaries of the forest.

“And,” Mr. Coldwell says gently, “We’d have to rent out your father’s apartments.”

Jen’s fingers go tight on her teacup and she bites her lip hard to keep in the instinctual
No!

“It would make a lovely honeymoon suite,” Mrs. MacDonald agrees, voice low and deferential. It’s a conversation that has to be had, Jennet knows. But that doesn’t mean any of them like having it. “If we made it a bit less …”

“Like Da’s,” Jennet finishes.

Mrs. MacDonald quaffs her tea in a single, wincing gulp. “Yes.” She pours more for everyone, warming up what’s left in their cups, and they drink in silence for a moment. “Fresh coat of paint? Something lighter. Get the pipe smoke smell out, and some nice landscapes on the walls. Maybe leave up the family portraits?”

“No,” Jennet says. “I mean, the rest, I … okay. But the portraits, I want them moved to my sitting room.”

“I’ll arrange for —” Mr. Coldwell begins, but Jennet shakes her head.

“I’ll do it.” She lets go of her teacup and balls her fists against her eyes, pushing hard to keep the tears at bay. She’s so damn sick of crying. “It’s
my
family. I don’t want some workman I don’t know to touch … no, I w-want to do it.”

“Okay, dear,” Mrs. MacDonald says, a gentle, dry hand cupping the back of Jennet’s head. “Okay. We’ll help you.”