Past Caring (12 page)

“That’s because it’s not for drinking . . . yet. You could call it a prize bottle. Take a look. You’ll soon see what I mean.”

Alec picked up the bottle and tilted its yellowed label to the light. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I just don’t believe it.”

“What is it?” I said, walking to his side.

“See for yourself . . . Leo’s been holding out on me.”

It was old madeira . . . very old. In fact, a bottle of the 1792

vintage.

“I’m sorry, Alec,” Sellick said with a smile. “Nothing could stop you writing the article when you did. Unfortunately, the time was not then ripe to tell you that there was indeed some left.”

“But how . . .”

“A bequest from Dr. Grabham to the previous owner of this property, discovered by me in the cellar.”

“But last night you said . . .”

“That in all probability Grabham had left none behind. I know. Well, that still is the balance of probability. In fact, though, he left a few bottles to Strafford—naturally enough, as the most distinguished and discerning Englishman of the locality after Grabham himself—and Strafford left this one bottle for me to find. But I couldn’t tell you until tonight because I hadn’t persuaded Martin to research the Strafford mystery.”

“I’m not sure I see the connection,” I said.

“The connection,” replied Sellick, “is my description of it as a prize bottle. It constitutes our prize, our reward to drink in Strafford’s honour when your research is satisfactorily concluded.

At that time, I propose that we three should gather here to com-memorate the occasion by cracking open the last of the ’92. I am sorry not to have told you before, Alec, but I hope you’ll agree there was a good reason.”

“I suppose I must,” said Alec. “Can I at least write about it after that?”

“Of course,” said Sellick. “As a good journalist, you should be grateful to me for providing you with the perfect sequel.”

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We laughed, and toasted in much younger malmsey Sellick’s judgement in planning such a fitting tribute to Strafford. For me, it was a long way to look ahead, but at least there was the satisfaction of knowing that Sellick’s whimsical editing of the facts could be applied to Alec as well as me.

“I think you owe me a game of snooker for this, Leo,” Alec said. “It’ll give me a chance of revenge.”

“What Alec means, Martin, is the certainty of revenge.

Clearly, I must submit. Will you join us in the billiards room?”

“I’d like to, but duty calls.” I pointed at the Memoir where it lay on a low table by one of the fireside armchairs.

“Of course. We’ll leave you to it, then.”

They took their drinks and headed off. I wasn’t sorry to see them go. I’d had enough of Sellick’s conjuring tricks for one evening and felt on surer ground with the Memoir: the dead do not dissemble. Tomás brought me some coffee and I sat down with it in the armchair beneath a standard lamp. I opened the Memoir and rejoined Strafford in the year 1909.

1909‒1910

I remember that misty day at the end of August 1909 more
clearly than I remember many of the days I pass here in my retirement. I collected Elizabeth from Putney and loaded her trunk
into the car whilst Aunt Mercy pressed parting gifts and wishes
upon her niece. Elizabeth wore a tweed dress, with a cape and a
bonnet tied under her chin to ward off the chill of a long journey. I
sounded the horn in farewell to Mercy as we drove off, alarming a
passing dray but, strangely, settling Elizabeth’s nerves. She confessed that she had been feeling somewhat apprehensive about
meeting my family and was positively relieved that we were now on
our way.

We passed down through Surrey and Hampshire and stopped
at Salisbury for luncheon in a cosy tea room by the cathedral. The
grey mist on the green with the great spire above minded Elizabeth
of the Melchester of Hardy, whose Wessex we were about to enter. I
remarked how odd it seemed to me that one so young as she should
read the poems of one so old and sad.

“Mr. Hardy is not such a sad man ,” she replied. “He is merely
resigned to the poignant sense of loss with which every eager enterprise must one day be remembered by those involved.”

“That’s an old thought for a young head.”

“Perhaps, but my awareness of it will not dim my enthusiasm—or any happiness it can bring.” The set of her chin told me
that she was to be believed. “Tell me in thirty years if it is so.” My
hopes still to know her thirty years on took wing at that remark. It

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was as well for my peace of mind that I did not know how vain those
hopes were or how right she was.

We travelled on until the chalk and pale green of Dorset
changed to the red earth and deeper green of Devon and, when we
reached Exeter in the late afternoon , we found the sun shining there
as if it had done all the day.

“Now we are entering your kingdom,” Elizabeth said as we
drove slowly over the bridge across the Exe.

“Hardly that,” I replied, “merely my constituency, too rarely
visited since I became a minister, and my home, which I am always
glad to return to.”

“Your mother will be pleased to see you.”

“And you,” I reassured her, hoping that I was right.

Beyond Exeter, we went by winding lanes on which cars were a
rarity. It was early evening before we passed through the village of
Dewford on the banks of the Teign , turned onto the Barrowteign estate and sighted the big old house among the beech trees, as familiar
to me as it was strange to Elizabeth.

My mother greeted us and at once turned her warmth and
charm to ensuring that Elizabeth felt welcome. Robert we found in
the drawing room, sucking on his pipe and looking more like the
squire of the neighbourhood than when last I had seen him, yet with
his bluff good humour unimpaired. Before there was time for any
awkwardness to arise, little Ambrose tottered in with his nanny
and, by the time his mother appeared, was being dandled on
Elizabeth’s knee to his evident delight. Florence looked askance at
this and her apparent resentment of the possible admission of a female rival to a family over which she seemed rapidly to be gaining
dominion was the only jarring note in an otherwise harmonious
homecoming.

Of Elizabeth’s political activities we naturally said nothing, beyond alluding to her suffragist sympathies to my mother, who took
these to be comparable with her own and still counselled against
mentioning them to Robert, who would be scandalized. I was less inclined to doubt this after a tour of the estate with him, during which
he speculated on increasing the rents in such an unthinking manner
that I detected a hardening of his attitudes with age, or perhaps
with marriage, that disturbed me. He was appalled by my hints of a
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coming clash with the Lords over the Budget and I subsequently
said no more to him of such matters.

For all that, Robert was charmed by Elizabeth, as was my
mother. I think she recognized in her such energy and intelligence
as she might once have aspired to herself had she not accepted rural
seclusion with my father. They made an instantly sympathetic pair,
the elegant old lady and the vibrant young one; perhaps Elizabeth
saw something of Hardy’s poetry in my mother’s soul. If so, it was a
great deal more than she (or I) saw in Florence’s paintings, which I
found festooning the house to my considerable irritation. Elizabeth
proved more adept than I in displaying some admiration for them,
but even this could not endear her to my sister-in-law.

A central purpose of any sojourn at Barrowteign was to remind
myself of all the doings in the constituency, to visit and advise those
with a problem and to show myself in the area. In this Elizabeth
proved a great aid. Her beauty dazzled many, her wit drew out others, her grace soothed the pugnacious few. At her behest, I played in
Dewford’s last cricket match of the season , which impressed the villagers almost as much as the rounds I stood them at the inn afterwards. At my behest, she accompanied me on a visit to the poor
quarrying districts south of Barrowteign and there conceded that
old age pensions and Lloyd George’s national insurance schemes
ought perhaps to take priority over suffrage reform. We continued,
in short, to be as good for each other in Devon as we had been in
London. Even Flowers, my assiduous agent, was heard to mutter
that Elizabeth for a wife would enhance my standing in the constituency.

Not that it was Flowers’ typically blunt calculation that set me
thinking of matrimony. That was born of the affection that I felt
deepening into love. September passed as an idyll of growing happiness and hope. Fine weather attended our weeks at Barrowteign
and I often took Elizabeth out onto the Moor or down to the coast,
indulgences in the beauty of nature which she had not known since
childhood. So far from London and my career, it was easy to forget
the difficulties attendant upon our association. Insofar as I bore
them in mind, it was only as a minor problem easily overcome.

Much more significant so far as I was then concerned was whether I

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could persuade Elizabeth to agree to marry me. I doubted not that,
if I could, it would assure my future happiness.

Michaelmas was that year a peerless day of autumn brightness,
every tree and every stone at Barrowteign picked out by sharp
shadows in the clear sunlight of a cloudless sky. The house was
quiet, with Robert off on his quarter-day tour of the tenant farms,
Mother along with him to see for herself that all was well with those
whose welfare was always close to her heart, if not always that of
her son. Florence had gone to visit her family in Dartmouth for a
few days, taking Ambrose with her. Elizabeth was eager to escape
into the sunshine and I was free to indulge her eagerness.

I drove the car up into the foothills of Dartmoor that lie between the Teign and Bovey valleys and stopped where the lanes became too rough and steep for further progress. We continued on foot,
I carrying a picnic luncheon in a haversack whilst Elizabeth set a
disarming pace and navigated expertly by one of my brother’s
maps. So it was that she brought us to Blackingstone Rock, that
great node of granite atop the hills above Moretonhampstead, and
led the ascent. I was more breathless than she when we reached the
flat top of the rock and sat down to take the view. Before us the
Torridge plain stretched as far as the sea, which I could almost
think I saw, so clear was the air. Behind us Dartmoor hummocked
towards its wilder reaches. Down in the Teign valley, it was just possible to descry the distant roofs of Barrowteign. I gazed around in
awe, breathing heavily.

“This will never do,” said Elizabeth. “You have spent too long
behind your desk in Whitehall, Edwin , I can see.”

“Perhaps,” I replied, “but I have carried a meal on my back
and you have younger legs than I.”

She threw a fern leaf in my direction and we laughed. The sun
and the warmth seemed as undeserved at this season as our happiness, but both were there to be revelled in. I uncorked the flagon of
cellar-cooled cider I had brought and we toasted the countryside of
my birth.

“All over Devon ,” I said, “workers will be pausing from the
harvest at about this time for a draught of their native brew.”

“Or worrying about their rent for the next quarter.”

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“Do not be hard on Robert,” I said, detecting a shaft in his direction. “He’s as good a landlord as they come. A little set in his
ways, I admit, and beginning to take himself too seriously, but that’s
just the onset of middle age. Losing my breath on stiff climbs is
probably a sign that I’m to emulate him.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to criticize Robert. He is a good
man. He simply lacks his brother’s vision and intelligence—and
humour.”

“Any humour is your gift, and a goodly part of the vision too.

Florence would grind any man down. We cannot all be lucky
enough to find someone like you.”

Elizabeth looked down and blushed, in her a rare show of vulnerability. But it was not the altogether pleasing contrast with my
plain and prosaic sister-in-law that had occasioned this embarrassment. It was the implication that she might one day be my wife.