The Land of Summer Read online

  ‘No soup! No fish! Just entrée!’ the monocled gentleman bawled, still with spoon and fork at the ready. ‘And wine, Wilkins! Wine, man! And at the double!’

  It seemed little notice was taken of the outburst as butler and staff set about the business of slowly serving dinner, giving both soup and fish to the monocled gentleman, who ate both courses rapidly before attacking the entrée with the same spoon and fork he had raised in the first instance. During all this time no one made any conversation, simply following the example of the monocled gentleman and eating as much and as fast as they could. Despite feeling desperately hungry Emmaline only slowly followed suit, for the food was not just strange to her, it was unpleasant too, being less than hot and greasy with it.

  Finally, after consuming his entrée, the monocled gentleman turned to stare at Emmaline in silence for a good while before shaking his head from side to side several times, as if being annoyed by a fly or a wasp.

  ‘You are?’ he shouted suddenly. ‘You are? Who the devil are you? You are? You are?’

  ‘I am Emmaline Nesbitt, sir, here at the invitation of Mr Aubrey.’

  ‘The devil you are,’ the gentleman retorted, his monocle dropping out of his eye. ‘The devil she is!’ he bellowed down the table at the gaunt, heavily bejewelled woman.

  ‘I was wondering where Mr Aubrey might be, as it happens,’ Emmaline ventured, beginning to ask herself quite where she had landed up. ‘I have not seen him since my arrival.’

  ‘Where he should be, of course,’ the gentleman snapped, indicating to the butler for more wine for himself. ‘At his work. Where he should be, of course.’

  Dessert was taken in silence, and then the tall, gaunt woman nodded for a maid to pull back her chair and rose.

  ‘Shall we?’ she said generally, and led the ladies from the room, leaving the monocled gentleman and the Reverend to their port, which no doubt they would proceed to drink in silence, Emmaline reflected as she followed the others in their trailing faded gowns into the library.

  ‘We have met before of course, have we not?’ one of the two feathered ladies asked her.

  ‘Of course we have,’ her companion agreed, nodding at the gaunt lady.

  ‘I think not, ladies,’ Emmaline replied as politely as possible. ‘After all, I have only just arrived—’

  ‘At the Faynes’, one would imagine,’ the first lady said vaguely, patting her grey hair back into some sort of shape. ‘It generally is.’

  ‘Or it could have been the Cuthbertsons’,’ the second lady ventured. ‘They do hold some excellent soirées.’

  ‘Perhaps you failed to understand me,’ Emmaline persisted. ‘As I just said, I have only just arrived here.’

  ‘No, no,’ the first lady corrected her. ‘I am absolutely sure we have met before.’

  ‘Everyone one meets here one has met somewhere before,’ the second lady insisted, nodding her feathered head at Emmaline. ‘That is simply the way it goes.’

  ‘This is my first time in England,’ Emmaline tried.

  ‘Charming,’ the first lady remarked in a vague voice, beginning to drift away. ‘I do so hope we shall meet again one of these fine days.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ the tall, gaunt lady suddenly said out of the blue, waving one dismissive hand. ‘Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, all and sundry.’

  She rose and swept out of the library, her exit marred only by the fact that the attendant servant failed to get the doors open in time and had to raise and press a silver-buckled shoe against one of them while forcing the stuck one open. To show her displeasure at the delay, the gaunt lady cracked him on the back of his head with her folded fan before disappearing into the faintly illuminated depths of the house. She was followed almost at once by the other two, leaving Emmaline alone in the library, until the faithful if ancient Roderick appeared at the doors to give a significant nod to his charge.

  ‘I wonder if you could help me?’ Emmaline asked, as she followed him out of the room.

  ‘If it is in my power to do so, then most certainly I shall, miss,’ Roderick replied, lighting the way up the creaking grand staircase with a hand-held candle.

  ‘I was expecting to see Mr Aubrey at dinner, Mr Julius Aubrey, but he did not appear.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Roderick paused, not to consider the remark and provide a solution, but simply to allow Emmaline to pass through a door he was holding open.

  ‘Beware,’ he said. ‘There is a step on the other side.’

  ‘As I said,’ Emmaline continued, following the servant down a long, dark corridor, her skirts whipped up by a sudden draught, ‘I was expecting to see Mr Aubrey at dinner.’

  ‘So I understand, miss,’ Roderick agreed. ‘From your previous remark.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Emmaline continued. ‘So I was taken aback somewhat by his absence.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Roderick paused to open another door for them both to pass through. ‘That is perfectly understandable.’

  ‘Forgive me. What is?’

  ‘Your concern at his absence, miss. Since you were expecting the very contrary. Your room, miss.’

  Roderick held the door to Emmaline’s bedroom open, waiting for her to enter.

  ‘I wonder …’ Emmaline began, looking into the dark room, ‘I wonder if you would know the whereabouts of Mr Aubrey, Roderick? As also my maid, the very small maid who helped me dress? Enid, who helped me dress?’

  ‘Alas no, miss,’ Roderick replied, following Emmaline into the room and lighting two small bedside candles from the one in his hand. ‘It is all but impossible to find even those whose location one assumes one knows in this house. People are rarely where you expect them to be. If that will be all?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Roderick. That will be all – except,’ Emmaline said, raising her voice to prevent the servant from finally taking his leave, ‘except if you do happen to learn of Mr Aubrey’s whereabouts, I should be most grateful if you could either tell me or pass a message to Mr Aubrey to say I – to say I would very much like to see him.’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ Roderick replied, with a sigh and a shake of his head, before closing the door and going, leaving Emmaline alone.

  Other than the servants, there was no one at breakfast when Emmaline came downstairs the following morning. Helping herself to some lukewarm over-scrambled eggs from under a cover, she sat down alone at the vast dining table and forced herself to eat. When she had finished and was rising to leave she suddenly caught sight of Julius hurrying past the open door. Still holding her napkin, she ran after him.

  ‘Mr Aubrey?’ she called down the corridor. ‘Mr Aubrey? Julius? Mr Aubrey!’

  In response to the final and loudest summons Julius stopped and turned to stare at her. Seeing Emmaline he frowned and waited, tapping one foot on the floor until she caught him up.

  ‘Something the matter, Miss Nesbitt?’ he wondered. ‘Because I am, as you see, somewhat busy.’

  ‘Yes, something is the matter as it happens,’ Emmaline replied calmly, which was not at all how she was feeling. ‘I wonder if we might speak?’

  ‘I am in rather a hurry, Miss Nesbitt.’

  Emmaline looked round, and since there were no servants in sight she lowered her voice and said, ‘Emmaline.’

  ‘I am particularly busy.’

  ‘It will not take long, Julius.’ Emmaline opened the door to a room behind her. ‘Perhaps we could talk in here.’

  She waited, and Julius quickly followed her into a small sitting room where the curtains were still drawn.

  ‘What exactly is troubling you, I wonder,’ Julius asked in a suddenly concerned voice as Emmaline pulled the curtains back, letting in some wintry sunshine. ‘Are you not comfortable?’

  ‘No, I am not comfortable, Julius, but that is not my entire point, if I may say so,’ Emmaline said, as Julius leaned down to light the fire with a long taper from the spills jar.

  ‘It does not surprise me that you are not comfortable,’ he said, still trying
to light the fire. ‘There is really very little that can be said in favour of this place, except that it is so uncomfortable that no guests linger here for long, which has to be something of an asset, you must agree?’

  ‘Where were you last evening, Julius?’ Emmaline demanded. ‘I came down to dinner with a room full of complete strangers, and I have to tell you distinctly odd strangers.’ Julius stopped tending the fire for a moment and looked round at Emmaline, smiling slightly, before continuing with his task. ‘First of all, when I arrived you were not here to greet me. I was left to shiver and all but freeze to death for simply an age, and then after – after we were reacquainted you vanished again, and for the entire evening I may say, the whole and entire evening.’

  ‘My apologies, Miss Nesbitt – Emmaline,’ Julius muttered with his back to her. ‘I had a great deal to do. As a matter of fact, I was wondering, may I call you Emma from now on, when we are alone? I should like that very much.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Emmaline agreed, distracted for a second. ‘But where was I? Oh, yes. As I was saying, Julius, I didn’t even see you at dinner. You didn’t even come down to dinner. Were you not feeling well?’

  ‘I am perfectly sure I did not miss very much, did I?’ Julius replied, standing back up now the fire was alight and admiring his handiwork. ‘The food is execrable. And the company little better.’

  ‘I was not even introduced, Julius. No one seemed to have an idea as to who I might be.’

  ‘Personally I would not let that concern you, truly. To my mind they are all as mad as hawks, as Mrs O’Clee keeps observing.’

  ‘Yes, you may well be right, but put yourself in my position. I had no idea who these people were. They were most unattractive, a most unattractive group of people, not the kind of people whose company I am accustomed to keeping, truly they weren’t. Why, one of them even hit a servant with her fan!’

  ‘If you have to know,’ Julius said with a shrug, fixing her with a pair of bright blue eyes somehow made bluer by their dark, sad surroundings, ‘your host and hostess are the Earl and Countess of Parham, the two older ladies are second cousins, and as for their friend the Reverend Archibald Welton, well, he is the dullest ditch I ever came across, and you will ever come across too, I hope. I am only sorry I was not there to introduce you, but frankly I couldn’t stand another dinner in their company. I find them intolerable.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Julius,’ Emmaline replied, puzzled. ‘Why do you have these people here, if you don’t like them?’ She paused, frowning. ‘Except you said these people – these people were the host and hostess?’

  ‘Which is perfectly correct – that is most precisely what and who they are.’

  ‘How can they be? Unless they were acting as such in – in your absence?’

  Julius blinked as if quite unable to understand what Emmaline had just said, frowned, and then folded his hands behind his back, bending his tall frame forward towards her.

  ‘You believe this to be my house?’ he asked, his eyes widening. ‘You thought …’ He paused to shake his head slowly. ‘You thought this was where I lived. Where – where we were to live. You imagine I would live like this?’

  ‘You seem affronted, Julius—’

  ‘No, no, not in the least affronted, Emma. No, you misunderstand me, I am horrified that you should have been so mistaken.’

  ‘There is no cause to be. It was a natural mistake. No one made me any the wiser, do you not see? Mr Ralph brought me here, and never once did he mention that this was not your residence. I was never told anything to the contrary, and even you, Julius – even when you and I were finally reacquainted—’

  ‘Yes, reacquainted, we were reacquainted, yes.’

  ‘You never explained to me that this was not your house,’ Emmaline concluded. ‘You simply abandoned me and – and disappeared.’

  ‘I know, I realise now I was most remiss to abandon you in that way, but there is so much to do – there still is, alas – and the Parhams are full of the joys of spring, except when it comes to making decisions, at which point they chew the cud like so many beasts in the field.’

  ‘Perhaps if you could explain to me what exactly this work is that you do here, Julius …’

  ‘I am here to try to restore and redesign the interior of the entire house and to supervise the works. The plumbing is non-existent, the walls bulge with damp, and yet all must be made good within the year. It is an impossible task. And by the way, you might do well to remain in here until lunch time. At least you will keep warm, and there is quite an interesting small library for guests behind that glass that you might enjoy.’

  Having indicated a glass-fronted bookcase Julius went, leaving Emmaline to examine the contents of the shelves. Most of the books seemed to concern the history of minor military regiments or extended journeys across obscure parts of the world, which could be of little interest to anyone except the most dedicated of travellers. Finally, and more or less out of desperation, she settled on An History of the Peloponnese because it was at least illustrated with some fine line drawings, but thanks to the dullness of the text and the warmth now generated by the fire in the little sitting room she was soon fast asleep, so fast asleep in fact that she missed hearing the gong for lunch and consequently the entire meal itself, which could only have been a blessing.

  Having now identified the situation in which she found herself placed by Julius, Emmaline was discovered at last by Roderick, albeit a little too late for any lunch. With the old servant’s help Emmaline once more went in search of her errant fiancé, whom they finally found in what her escort informed her was the State Drawing Room.

  Julius was sitting looking handsome, elegant but disconsolate on the top of a small ladder surrounded by a sea of furniture covered with vast dust sheets. He was holding a palette of colours in one hand, and a cigarette in the other.

  He took no notice of Emmaline when she arrived in tandem with Roderick, continuing to sit and smoke and stare, first at the wall in front of him and then down at the small palette in his hand, until Emmaline dismissed the manservant and walked over towards the ladder.

  ‘Good afternoon, Emma,’ Julius called down to her. ‘I trust you enjoyed your morning, and all the rest of it? I apologise if I seem preoccupied but I am having a great deal of trouble mixing this particular colour. May we converse later, perhaps?’

  ‘When might be a good time?’ Emmaline wondered in return. ‘If you could just tell me when you might be free.’

  ‘I would imagine the answer to that would be never, would not you?’

  Realising that silence and tact were her only possible weapons, Emmaline moved away from the ladder and looked around the vast apartment. She had thought the rooms in her own home were ample enough, yet never in her life had she seen a reception room as enormous as the one in which she was now standing, nor had she ever seen furniture so massive. Even under the dust sheets it was obvious that the two grand sofas lined up along one wall could seat ten or twelve people in a row, and the room itself could accommodate well over a hundred guests with ease. The salon was unutterably grand in conception, set with four enormous marble pillars that supported a domed roof decorated with a faded mural depicting the Creation, and its walls hung with immense formal portraits of crowned and robed men and heavily bejewelled women that from the way they had been framed appeared to have been painted directly on to the walls. Yet like every other room she had seen in the house it was in a bad state of repair, the paint peeling or in some places practically non-existent, the drapes badly frayed and moth-eaten, and the plaster cracked and broken, or at the very least discoloured.

  ‘I certainly do not envy you your task, Julius,’ she could not resist calling up to him after she had walked round and inspected the entire room. ‘Where would a person start?’

  ‘This is hardly a task,’ Julius replied from on high. ‘It could be more readily compared to one of the labours of Hercules.’

  ‘Are you thinking of restor
ing the paintwork to the original colour, perhaps?’

  ‘I might be, and there again I might not.’

  ‘Might I perhaps make a suggestion?’

  ‘And what might your suggestion be based on?’

  ‘If you remember the ballroom, our ballroom at home?’ As soon as she said ‘home’, Emmaline felt a stab of homesickness. ‘The ballroom at home – yes – and how at one point you admired the colour with which the walls had been painted?’

  For the first time since she had entered the room Emmaline found Julius looking down at her with some interest.

  ‘I did, did I?’ he asked, a little uncertainly.

  ‘Yes,’ Emmaline replied, made vaguely uncomfortable by the concentration in his gaze.

  ‘If you say so, then it must be so,’ Julius murmured, once again staring at his palette. ‘The point being, your point being?’

  ‘I chose that colour,’ Emmaline informed him, careful to keep the pride out of her voice. ‘We had the ballroom repainted only last year, and because I – well, because Papa thinks I have a good eye for colour, and because Mama was not happy with the previous selections, I ended up choosing the colour.’

  ‘Now, let me see.’ Julius now held up his palette as if to try out the shade he had in mind against the remains of the existing colour. ‘Are you suggesting you might do the same here, with the same degree of success? Make a suggestion as to the correct colour?’

  ‘Only if you would welcome such a suggestion, and were unable to decide yourself, Julius,’ Emmaline replied. ‘Or if you were in two minds about one shade or another.’

  Julius shook his head, but said nothing. He continued to sit staring at the wall, and then at his palette, then back at the wall.

  ‘Here!’ he said suddenly after some minutes. ‘Catch!’

  Emmaline found the small wooden palette flying down her way and just managed to catch it before it fell to the floor.