THE HIGH LIFE
[Part 1]
By Richard Banks
It
was not until after my passing that I discovered the truth. One moment I was in
the Waterloo Room, sitting on the sofa and sipping a restorative sherry, the
next I wasn’t. It really was that quick. I remember the glass slipping from my
fingers but even before it hit the floor I was rising through the ceiling
which, despite its solid construction, could do nothing to keep me in.
But this was the new me, the inside of
my head me; my body, my flesh and blood for over thirty years, had been left
sideways down on the settee. It was a strange experience but not entirely
unpleasant and, on a cloudless evening with the sun sinking towards the
horizon, the view of Frampton Hall from up high was a joy to behold. The
trouble was that having risen to a point where most days you would expect there
to be clouds I continued, ever faster, into space, the Earth below me soon
resembling the globe in my children’s playroom.
It was all very fascinating but at the
same time more than a little alarming and, as I sped further and further away
from Earth, I must confess I was thrown into something of a tizz, especially as
I was headed straight for the Moon which like me was unable to change
direction. A month after Neil Armstrong and Buzz had set down there it seemed I
was to be the first woman, but not, I feared, with the same happy outcome. They
had buttons to press that made Apollo 11 go up, down and every other way but I
had nothing, not even a finger to do the pressing. Worse still I couldn’t slow
down, and though common sense told me that having already died I was unlikely
to do so again, the prospect of crashing into the lunar surface triggered
something in my altered being that I can only describe as instinct or mind over
matter, except that my matter had been very much left behind in the Wellington
Room.
“Stop,” I shrieked, or tried to, not a
sound passing my non-existent lips. But stop I did. So that’s how it works, I
thought. It was just like talking to Fred, our chauffeur, except that I was
Fred and by the power of thought able to send me, or what was left of me,
anywhere I wanted to go. So back to earth I went and after getting a little
muddled with my geography descended back into Frampton Hall as the sun was
rising at the start of a new day. Needless to say I assumed this to be the day
after my departure, but as I came in through the roof it soon became apparent
that this was not the case.
Whilst I had no wish
to see my mortal remains stiff and horizontal on the settee I was both
surprised and perplexed to find that their removal was only one of a number of
things to have happened since my departure. Indeed, the
room had been treated to a complete make over and the Goya above the
mantelpiece replaced by some other old master. In the hall the chiming of a new
timepiece alerted me to a further change; the old carriage clock that had
struck the hour and half hour, with loud reverberating chimes that could be
heard in every room of the house, had now been replaced by one, rather smaller,
that spoke with a softer voice. Reassuringly the rogues’ gallery of Neville’s
ancestors was still there, beginning, at the foot of the Grand Stairway, with
the one that came over with William I and continuing up to me and Neville at
the top. Yes, there they all were, the same old faces I had passed by, back and
forth, so many times, except that now there was one further picture on the
first floor landing.
This was as puzzling as it was
disconcerting, and on rising up to see what it was I came face to face with
Neville and his new wife, the sixteenth Lady Frampton, otherwise known as
Mildred, my little sister. Resisting the urge to continue on to our bedroom
which, perish the thought, must now be their bedroom, I retreated to the
Wellington Room where I hoped a little thinking time might make things clearer.
Never had I been in more need of a stiff drink and, although my drinking days
were now well and truly over, the smell of alcohol around the decanters not
only steadied my nerves but put me on the maudlin side of squiffy. Back in the
familiar surroundings of Frampton Hall, my present predicament, troubling as it
was, seemed less important to me than the loss of a privileged lifestyle that
had somehow slipped from my grasp.
It’s been ten years since I met Neville
in a West End club and, on finding him to be the elder son of an Earl, did
everything I could to retain his very evident affection. His parents, of
course, did everything they could to break us up. After all they were peers of
the realm and I was a commoner, and an insignificant one at that. Had my father
been a billionaire that might have been enough to buy me into the aristocratic
fold, but having neither money nor blue blood I had nothing they were looking
for in a daughter-in-law. Fortunately Neville was a headstrong, determined
young man who had been spoilt rotten and expected to get whatever he wanted,
and what he wanted just then was me.
It was true love, he said, he had
discovered his muse, his soul mate, his rock in this life and the next. He was
smitten alright, although his infatuation may have had more to do with my more
visible qualities that had recently won me the title of Miss South East
Counties, 1958. Having been shown the broom cupboard in which he thought he had
been conceived, and declined his invitation to re-enact history, I set-out an
alternative scenario that involved a gold ring and a comfortable bed. A week
later we were in Gretna Green, and legally
wed.
At first all went well, Neville’s
parents were reasonably civil, and he did everything he could to help me fulfil
my dynastic mission which was to provide an heir and a spare. It therefore came
as no surprise when after only a year of married life I gave birth to our first
child, Cassandra. A wonderful child was
Cassandra, healthy and fair of face, who had only one failing – she was not a
boy. Neville’s disappointment was only too evident; indeed he did little to
conceal it. The Earldom had always passed down through the male line and this
was a tradition he was determined to maintain.
“But you will,” I assured him, “I have
two brothers and five uncles, it’s in the genes, we’re bound to have boys.” And
so it was that eighteen months later we had Catherine.
Having failed to convince Neville that
she or her sister might very well prove useful in marrying a Prince we returned
to ‘mission boy’ with a renewed vigour that soon resulted in the double
blessing of the twins – Isabel and Elizabeth. It was at this point that Neville
began to take consolation in malt whisky and the solitude of his study. To make
matters worse, if worse they could be, my young sister, Mildred lost her
husband in a supermarket car park in the sense that he stepped out in front of
a delivery van and was a tad too slow in stepping back.
At least it took my mind off my own
troubles and living in a stately home with twenty-four bedrooms I had no
hesitation in inviting Mildred to come and stay for a while. A stay that lasted
somewhat longer than expected, when it transpired that her husband’s life was
uninsured and she had nothing in the kitty to pay their mortgage. Not that she
outstayed her welcome. With Neville in a permanent sulk I was more than
grateful to have her near by, her presence unnoticed by him and his parents who
took her to be a maid or some other minion. It was not until we went riding one
day that Neville realised that she was ‘one of us,’ at least by association. Happily
they hit it off rather well and she was formally invited to stay as long as she
wished which, as far as she was concerned, was as long as possible. After all a
life of luxury in a stately home was a distinct improvement on the social
housing on offer from Camden Council.
And so our lives took a turn for the
better. Neville emerged from the shadows and we resumed ‘mission boy’ while
Mildred was always at hand to look after the girls at inconvenient moments and
keep me company when Neville was at his London club having what he called his ‘man
time’. Quite what this involved I thought best not to ask, and as he was always
very nice to me on his return, his times away were not to be discouraged.
Anyway, I had my sister now and whenever we were left to ourselves we filled in
the time very pleasantly. And then, just when life couldn’t get better, it did;
I became pregnant for a fifth time and Neville’s father died of something the
doctor was persuaded not to write on the death certificate. Of course no one
should be celebrating the death of their father-in-law but he was a dreadful
old bore and with him out of the way Neville became the fourteenth Earl and
that, of course, made me Lady Frampton.
Whoopee, I thought, what an upgrade on
Miss South East Counties! And, with another child on the way, I thought
things were set to get even better. This
time it would be fifth time lucky and when my stomach went a very different
shape to how it had been before, I became convinced, as was everyone else that
the child inside me was a boy. The only downer was that the, poor child, was
to be named Hubert after Neville’s father but apart from that it was all
systems go and Hubert was duly enrolled for his father’s schools up to and
including Harrow. Unfortunately on the day of his triumphal entry into this
world Hubert turned out to be a Huberta, and as part of her father’s revenge
was christened as such in the family church in front of six people who
reluctantly included Neville, looking even grimmer than at his father’s funeral.
It was not long after that the thorny
issue of divorce was raised. Not by me of course, I liked being Lady Frampton
and no one was going to edit me out of Debretts. Needless to say Neville went
into another one of his sulks and spent more and more time away at his club.
How would I have managed without Mildred, my darling sister and confidant, who
was not only my rock during these troubled times but somehow effected the
reconciliation that brought Neville back to his senses. How she did this when I
could hardly drag a word out of him I will never know but within a month our
life together became as tranquil as a millpond, and although Neville seldom
strayed from his side of the marital bed he was, at least, still in it. And
that’s how it was until that dreadful evening when everything changed and I
went shooting up through the ceiling.
To Be Continued/...
Copyright Richard Banks