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Thursday, 21 July 2022

A FAMILY AFFAIR (Part 1 of 3)

  A FAMILY AFFAIR   (Part 1 of 3) 

 by Richard Banks


We were early intending to be the first to arrive, but by the time we did, my Wyngate cousins had already laid claim to the only guest room fit for the purpose. Invited by our host, Aunt Flora, to take our pick of the third floor bedrooms in the East Wing, Teddy and myself finally settled on one less neglected than the others with a ceiling so far unstained by the ingress of rainwater. What the late arrivals had to put up with I shudder to think, although in the case of the Beck-Cooper’s I derived great pleasure in imagining them being rained out of their bed or bitten by one of the many small mammals contesting ownership of the old ruin; it was no more than they deserved.

         Having previously visited Brookvale I had come prepared and within my suitcase packed half a pound of cheese, four sturdy mouse traps and an aerosol labelled ‘Bugkill’. These I unpacked along with our bathroom things leaving everything else within our suitcases where I judged they would be better off than out. After performing our ablutions in the cloudy waters of the only functioning tap in the bathroom we ventured down to the Great Drawing Room in which our fellow guests were beginning to assemble.

         It was the usual crowd and we did the usual thing of pretending to be glad to see them. They reciprocated in similar fashion. We made the usual small talk, exaggerated the achievements of our teenage children and swanked about foreign holidays to exotic places that some of those present had only seen on TV or the web. Our conversations, while scrupulously avoiding any mention of money, were intended to give the impression that we had rather more of the stuff than we needed; fortune hunters we were not, and we professed an affection for Aunt Flora and Brookvale that fully justified our presence in this family gathering of her nearest and dearest.

          The least fortunate of her guests was Eric, the grandson of Aunt Flora’s youngest sibling. It was he who would inherit Brookvale and the death duties that would bankrupt him unless, come the time, he could persuade the National Trust to take the property off his hands in lieu of said duties. This was an outcome he daily prayed for and which would have been as welcome to him as the commutation of a death sentence. Unfortunately for Eric the almost derelict condition of the house and the sale of much of its estate had made Brookvale an improbable candidate for public ownership.

         If Eric’s prospects were bleak to the point of despair Aunt Flora’s other guests had nothing to lose and the tantalising possibility of improbable gain. For this they had Uncle Hector to thank. Hector was the first born son of his father Joseph Entwhistle a self-made millionaire from Quebec who had hit upon the idea of marrying Hector into the English aristocracy. It was to be a loss maker that would raise the prestige of his once impoverished family, into the starry orbit of a noble and ancient family, with a proven, if distant, connection to Royal persons living and deceased.

         The deal when struck, over fifty years ago, was that the eldest son of Hector’s marriage with Aunt Flora would inherit the family title and in return Henry would write the cheques that kept Brookvale afloat. This he did for seven childless years, finally delivering an ultimatum that unless his son and daughter-in-law got on with their side of the bargain he would cease all future payments into the Brookvale estate. As Hector had no significant funds of his own we can only imagine that he redoubled his efforts at fatherhood, but with no more success than before. The monthly payments duly ceased and in an unfatherly act of abandonment Joseph remade his will leaving his great wealth to his second son. The only mention of Hector was now a bequest of ten dollars included only to show that his disinheritance was the firm intention of the testator rather than the oversight of an elderly man of increasing eccentricity.

         However, it was rumoured that Hector’s father had not entirely abandoned his elder son and that he had sent him over a million dollars in a wooden chest labelled ‘tea’. This he had done on the solemn understanding that none of it was to be frittered away on maintaining a crumbling property no longer relevant to the aspirations of the Entwhistle family.

         What happened next was also rumour until the discovery of a bill of sale by Aunt Flora. Uncle Hector anxious to conceal his father’s clandestine gift from official scrutiny used the money to purchase two diamond necklaces which he no doubt reasoned could be concealed about the house or grounds until such time as Brookvale was somehow disposed of. This, however, was never going to happen in Aunt Flora’s lifetime. For her, ownership of Brookvale was a sacred trust that she would never relinquish even though the folly of remaining there was becoming increasingly obvious. Uncle Hector’s hopes of deriving any material benefit from his father’s gift therefore depended on him outliving his wife which he spectacularly failed to do by falling off the battlements and drowning in the moat.

         So, here we all are, three years on, solemnly assembled to commemorate an event that’s still the common tittle-tattle of the county. Our motives for being at Brookvale were undoubtedly mixed. Of course we all loved Uncle Hector and were saddened by his unfortunate passing but a mystery has an attraction which is difficult to resist and the possibility that one of us might somehow find the fabled necklaces was a magnet somewhat stronger than grief. Not that any of us were going to admit this, after all to do so raised the question of what we did next  with said diamonds. For now no one in the assembled company mentioned them, not a single word, which confirmed my suspicion that their thoughts were not so very different from my own. Having all been descended from Donald the Duplicitous, the seventh Marquis, we were, of course, all cut from the same cloth. Ditto for Aunt Flora, but in her case this family trait was remarkably absent. Indeed in old age she had acquired a kind, almost saintly aura that suggested that she would soon be a candidate for Chief Angel. Clearly she had no need of diamonds in the next life and would only use them in this one to shore-up an ancient estate that was a lost cause. Our discovery of the necklaces, if by chance that happened, was therefore likely to raise a moral dilemma requiring subtle and complex reasoning. Inevitably this would raise many questions such as what would Donald the Dup have done? But I’m getting ahead of myself, first of all we must find the necklaces.

         The same thought was very much in the minds of Aunt Flora’s other guests and if the last two years were anything to go by their modus operandi would be both varied and enterprising. Try as we may no one was quite able to conceal that intoxicating feeling that one of us would soon discover what we should not be looking for. 

         The welcoming refreshments consumed, the guests were free to walk the grounds or play croquet with the only mallet and ball that could be found. For now there was nothing for me to do but relax. My search would begin at midnight but for others, the hunt was already on and they were determined that not a moment should be wasted. What exactly each of them was up to was less than clear, although I soon became suspicious of cousin Hugh’s new walking stick which emitted faint but discernible bleeps that he tried to muffle by humming loudly on his lengthy perambulations of the front and back gardens. Hetty and Arthur retired to their room for an afternoon nap which they appeared to abandon in favour of a noisy rearrangement of its furniture, and Eric departed to the woods, spade in hand, to dig, so he said, for truffles.

         My preference was for the spirits and on a coolish afternoon, I was more than content to wile away the several hours until dinner with a large G&T in the conservatory. It was while observing a strange plant of Triffid like proportions that I inadvertently made the discovery that my fellow guests were attempting by more active means. In the intestines of this transparent monster was not only the necklaces but a hoard of gold coins that I took to be the fabled pieces of eight.

(To be continued)

Copyright Richard Banks

1 comment:

  1. Fiendishly clever Richard, lookind forward to part 2, if you've written it (you have written it haven't you?).

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