The High life [Part 3]

 The High life [Part 3]

By Richard Banks 

I take myself down to the kitchen where Cook and the rest of the kitchen staff are washing dishes and preparing lunch which, if not taken, will be eaten by themselves. Life below stairs is seldom a hungry one. It’s also never short of gossip so I sit myself down on a shelf next to the cocoa jar and listen to every word that’s said, most of which is about their current employers. It seems that they are a less than a loving couple and that their initial attraction has quickly cooled. If Mildred’s bump doesn’t produce a male heir their expectation is that it won’t be long before he jumps ship and finds himself a third Lady Frampton. Indeed they have opened a book on when this will be. And, just when I’m despairing of them saying anything about the girls, in comes Trudy with the news I’ve been seeking.

         Neville has had them, and herself, moved to the Gatehouse on the edge of the estate where the sound of their voices is unlikely to aggravate his ever more frequent hangovers. Being the ‘ever loving’ father he visits them twice a week, and complains about how much they are costing him. Cassie attends the village school where she will be joined soon by Catherine. Only when the five of them are old enough to be married are they likely to be of any interest to their father who each morning examines the births’ column in The Times for eligible sons-in-law. As for Mildred she’s not been herself since I died of that heart attack. If the baby she’s expecting was on its way before my demise they’re thinking she might very well be suffering from a guilty conscience. Even if things did happen in the right order their marriage was very definitely too much too soon.

         Nurse says that it’s the children she feels sorry for. Losing their mother is bad enough but having a father who can’t abide them and is seldom sober past dinner time is a blight on their lives, as it must be for her Ladyship. They fall silent for a few seconds, no doubt reflecting on the good times when I was around, but when they get back to talking it’s about Ernest, ‘the young master’ Neville’s brother who’s the President of various good causes, including the Auxiliary Ambulance and the Lame Dogs League. Goody Two Shoes, Neville called him, and I must admit I thought so too but now I’m beginning to see that he may have his uses, for Ernest is the children’s guardian should both their parents predecease them. And Ernest has a wife, another paragon of virtue, who loves children and has none of her own.

         All this is beginning to fit together so well that I’m beginning to think that the Good Lord already knows how he wants all this to end, if only something terminal and unethical was to befall the two villains impeding his good intent. Is that why I’m still here when the Angel should have been saving me from myself? If so, how devious is that?

         Nurse departs with the vegetables she’s come to collect and the conversation turns to the mundane business of the day, so I’m off. I’m still short of a plan but as what I do depends on what I’m able to do I decide that a day spent in discovering and practising my new powers is unlikely to be time wasted.

         Navigation is the least of my problems and I can go up and down and side to side better than than the helicopters that pass overhead most days. My aura can be easily turned on and off and has all the colours of the rainbow and those in between. I can make it faint or bright, flicker it on and off like lights on a Christmas tree, or rearrange my head so that it fits under either arm. As for my face I can change that too and I have great fun practising different expressions in front of the mirror in the Great Hall. It’s my angry, demonic face I’m most pleased with, especially when I ruffle up my hair into a dishevelled Afro. My voice is almost back to normal but my ability to impact on or manipulate physical objects has gone never more to return. A shame that, as knowing where to find Neville’s shotgun I would gladly give him and Mildred both barrels. However, hot thoughts are not without their consequences for my aura which erupts into flames. Indeed it seems I have set the Great Hall ablaze, but once I calm down everything goes back to how it was.  Thank goodness for that! Whatever plan I come up with it won’t involve burning down Frampton. That belongs to the girls and they will get every last piece of it.

 

(To Be Continued)

 

Copyright Richard Banks