Ampersand Papers (3 page)

‘That’s very kind of you, my dear child. Put it down in front of her ladyship.’ Lord Ampersand was speaking thus paternally to the parlourmaid, who had returned with a rack of more acceptable toast. ‘But, Lucy,’ he went on to his wife, ‘does all this have any practical bearing on our affairs?’

The sixth Marquess of Ampersand has perhaps not figured so far in our narrative as a man of commanding intellect, or even of keen observation, extensive views, or wide reading. But it is undeniable that at this moment his mind was beginning to stir. If not stung by the splendour of a sudden thought, he had at least been pinched by the ghost of a perception.

‘It
might
have a bearing, Rollo. Agatha points out that in the earlier nineteenth century – which is when all these people appear to have lived – they were excessively fond of letter-writing and diary-keeping, and that sort of thing. This Adrian Digitt may have kept a diary, and all sorts of people may regularly have corresponded with him. Lord Byron and young Mr Shelley may even have sent him poems, and things of that sort.’ For a moment Lady Ampersand paused, as if thinking of embarking upon useful enumeration in the field of literature. But she thought better of it. ‘There may be money in it,’ she said.

‘Money!’ Lord Ampersand was really startled. ‘How on earth can there be money in it?’

‘Agatha says that, nowadays, things that people have just written can be almost as valuable as pictures they’ve painted.’

‘We haven’t many of
them
left,’ Lord Ampersand said grimly. ‘Even the decent family portraits gone under that confounded hammer.’

‘Yes, Rollo, and it really is too bad. Let Ludlow give you more coffee.’

For some minutes the Ampersands continued their breakfast in silence – and with the dread spectre of aristocratic poverty making, as it were, a third at the board.

‘Agatha,’ Lady Ampersand presently continued, ‘has asked somebody who really knows. It seems that a play of Shakespeare’s – say the one about Hamlet – just written out by his own hand with a quill pen and so on, would probably fetch more money than you got for all those Romneys and Hoppners put together – or even for the Gainsborough.’

‘Good God!’ Lord Ampersand was now visibly agitated. ‘All that stuff at the top of the North Tower, Lucy – do you think there might be a play of Shakespeare’s among it?’

‘I suppose there might be. But isn’t an unknown poem by Mr Shelley more probable? Agatha has been working it all out, and she says that even that would be immensely valuable.’

‘Impossible!’ Lord Ampersand was really shocked. ‘A poem? It isn’t decent. But good heavens!’ – a fresh thought had come to him – ‘would you say that all those damned prying fellows that wanted to come around had wind of this sort of thing?’

‘Yes – but of other possibilities besides this Adrian Digitt who had a circle. I’ve heard Skillet say that various Digitts have rather gone in for literature, and things of that sort, from time to time. I’m bound to say, Rollo, that nothing of the kind has ever been known in my own family.’

‘No, of course not, my dear.’ Lord Ampersand was thoroughly humbled. ‘But – do you know? – if there might be money around in all that I’m surprised that Skillet hasn’t been on to it. Always a smart lad, Archie, wouldn’t you say? Nose for the main chance.’

‘It just can’t have occurred to him.’ Lady Ampersand had her own ideas here, and they were not entirely to the credit of her son as a properly filial person. But upon this she judged it injudicious to embark. ‘I think, dear, that it should just be looked into,’ she said comfortably. ‘Perhaps the vicar could help. Or Dr Morrison, who has that modest little collection of old china. Or it might even be possible to hire somebody to investigate. For we
have
got a muniment room, after all.’

‘Hire somebody!’ The boldness of this conception astonished Lord Ampersand. ‘Young fellow from the varsity – that sort of thing? But would it be possible to get one with decent manners, eh? I could write to some fellow who runs one of those places, and ask him to turn up a stone or two and see what offered.’ This image must have gratified Lord Ampersand, who chuckled softly. ‘Yes, I could do something like that. Young fellow would get his keep, and a glimpse of how our sort live. Attractive proposition for the right man.’

‘I think there would have to be a fee, dear.’

‘A fee?’ The noble Norman brow of Lord Ampersand clouded. ‘Treat him to a spot of rough shooting, perhaps. Let him go out and fish. Mount him, if he can manage more than a donkey. Thoroughly generous arrangement.’

‘Yes, Rollo dear. But I shall write and consult Agatha about it.’ Lady Ampersand was quite firm. ‘Agatha will know just the right people to ask.’

‘As you please, my dear. Time I was walking the dogs, eh? Splendid morning.’

And Lord Ampersand, mildly excited by the astonishing ideas that had been put in his head, embarked on his day’s common round.

Lord Skillet was the Ampersands’ only son, and now middle-aged: although enterprising, he had never displayed any interest in matrimony. There were also two daughters, Lady Grace and Lady Geraldine Digitt.

Neither Grace nor Geraldine had been interested in matrimony either – or if they had, it had been unobtrusively and ineffectively, and they were now well past an age at which marriage is a sensible idea for a woman. When not engaged in charitable exercises either in London or abroad they continued to live with their parents at Treskinnick Castle. They mingled very little, however, in what their mother called the neighbourhood, meaning the dozen or so families of any consequence resident in the western extremity of the British Isles. They had been constrained as girls to attend numerous dances and similar social occasions; to plouter down chilly streams in pursuit of otters, and round and round prickly moors in pursuit of hares; to graduate from alarming ponies to horses more alarming still. But if physically timid they were strong-minded, and they possessed their own ideas about the responsibilities of their station. Now in their forties, they were held by their father in considerable awe. They kept things called Blue-books in their rooms. They ought really to have been MPs. But only Skillet was that – and for the frivolous reason that he was determined to have sat in both Houses of Parliament in his time.

Lord Ampersand’s parents had provided him with only a single sibling in the person of a younger brother, Lord Rupert Digitt, who had been killed when pursuing a fox shortly after marriage. (This had happened in Kent, an outlandish locality in which one simply
doesn’t
hunt: but Lord Rupert had.) It thus came about that the heir presumptive to the marquisate (and to the barony) was Rupert’s son, a young man called Charles Digitt. Charles came around Treskinnick a good deal. He probably felt an eye should be kept on the place. It might eventually be saleable as a home for disturbed children, or something like that. Charles, because his fox-hunting father had married late, was younger than his cousins Archie, Grace and Geraldine. He was understood to be very clever, and to go in for advanced ideas. Archie, although he had declined the duty of siring an eighth marquess, rather resented the existence of this presumptive one. He had been known to describe Charles as a viewy brat. Lord Ampersand, while deferring to Charles’ position in the family and professing to look forward to his visits, was inclined to get fussed when his nephew actually turned up. He felt it due to the young man to give him an account of the present condition of the estates and of the financial situation generally. But as he really knew very little, leaving all such matters to Skillet, he easily grew confused in his exposition, and felt that he was being suspected of concealing things. It amused Skillet to enhance this quite baseless impression by himself adopting a shifty and conspiratorial attitude when appealed to by his father for facts and figures. Lady Ampersand, who understood the play of family feelings very well (although totally incapable of discursive thought on the subject), knew that Charles was not deceived or perturbed by this behaviour on the part of his kinsmen. And this was true. Charles was sure he wasn’t being cheated because he was aware that there was pretty well nothing left that he could be cheated of. His uncle and cousin were already down to those entailed and settled remnants of the family fortune of which it was only the income that could come to them. (There had been a row over the Hoppners and the Gainsborough. But it had been decently conducted by lawyers. Charles himself had, so to speak, kept out of the picture.)

Of this distinguished but not particularly ramifying family only one further member falls to be mentioned at present. Miss Deborah Digitt was a spinster of mature years, who lived in a small but genteel way in Budleigh Salterton. This quiet resort (very little intruded upon by those vulgar hordes that in England seek the sea in summer), although it may be described as located in the West of England, was at the same time at a comfortable remove from Treskinnick Castle: comfortable, that is to say, if one is estimating what in the way of occasional attention is due to an obscure and impoverished relation. Lord Ampersand was very clear that he acknowledged the relationship; he frequently referred to ‘my kinswoman Deborah Digitt’; he sometimes even said ‘my cousin Deborah Digitt’. But he was quite vague about how the poor lady came in – a fact that may be established simply by recalling that he had never heard of Adrian Digitt, the revolver in circles. For Miss Digitt was in fact Adrian’s great-granddaughter, and Adrian’s father (as Lady Ampersand had discovered) had been the second marquess’ younger brother. So Lord Ampersand’s and Miss Deborah’s ancestor in common was the first marquess.

Lord Ampersand – in a manner perhaps uncharacteristic of his kind – simply didn’t know about all this. But the old soul in Budleigh Salterton was a relation, and he regularly sent her a Christmas card, and also occasional presents of game. What Miss Digitt (who lived ministered to by a single maid, of years even more advanced than her own) can have done with two brace of pheasants or a haunch of venison was unknown. But she always acknowledged these gifts correctly and without effusion. So Lord Ampersand had a comfortable sense that he did the old girl quite well.

If anybody did know whose great-granddaughter Miss Digitt might be it was probably Lord Skillet – who owned, however, a trick of keeping things to himself. But it was known in the Ampersands’ household that Archie, oddly enough, called in on the old lady from time to time on his way to or from London – divagating from the main Exeter road for the purpose. He couldn’t have done this from a sense of duty, since demonstrably he hadn’t been born that way. Deborah must have amused him. But it was difficult to see how. On one occasion Archie had taken his cousin Charles with him to Budleigh Salterton. It had been a mid-morning call, and their kinswoman had offered them a glass of madeira and a slice of cake. She seems not to have struck Charles as she regularly struck Archie. Charles said that she was a cultivated old creature with wide-ranging interests. Archie said that she was simple-minded, and that if she had her childhood over again now (and in a sense she was so having it) she would be classified by busybody psychologists as ESN. Lord Ampersand’s curiosity was unstirred by these disparate estimates. He just continued to despatch to Budleigh Salterton (when there was a glut of them) his sundry trophies of the chase.

Lord Skillet, as became the dignity of his father’s immediate heir, enjoyed an independent establishment in a respectable manor-house a few miles from the castle. But being a legislator (at present of the elected, but eventually to be of the hereditary sort), he had to spend a good deal of his time in London: in addition to which he had various commitments, responsibilities and attractions (some of them not to be too curiously inquired into by his parents) in other parts of the country, and indeed of the globe. Of late, however, he had been round and about the castle a good deal, and had been showing what Lord Ampersand judged to be a laudable interest in the day-to-day running of the estate. Lady Ampersand had seen to it that a bedroom, bathroom and sitting-room were in permanent readiness for him should he be minded to pernoctate at Treskinnick: this since she had remarked that Archie and his father were prone to end an evening in a somewhat convivial way. Archie was a very fast, almost a reckless driver of high-powered cars, and it was undesirable that he should be let loose even on unfrequented country roads at too late an hour.

This being the way the Digitts lived now, it wasn’t long before Archie was apprized of his aunt Agatha’s discovery about Adrian Digitt and his circles. If it wasn’t news to him (and his mother suspected it was not), it was news to his sisters – who proved to be not favourably impressed by it when the matter was eventually debated at a family dinner table. Lady Grace was two years younger than Lord Skillet, and a little prone to be at odds with him over anything that turned up. She had now served for some years on the County Council, and been active on sundry other public bodies as well; and what she judged to be her brother’s ineffectiveness and indeed incompetence as an MP irritated her a good deal. Lady Geraldine, two years younger again, generally followed her sister’s lead, but occasionally darted ahead of it. At the moment they were both taking the line that Adrian Digitt had probably been no credit to the family.

‘But, Grace,’ Lady Ampersand said pacifically, ‘the young man – of course he was once a young man – certainly died more than a hundred years ago. Nobody minds having quite shocking ancestors as long ago as that. In fact, everybody has.’

‘There is no reason to believe him to have been shocking, mama. But it does look as if he gave most of his time to cultivating friends and acquaintances who were perhaps all very well in their way. A literary and artistic way, and so forth. But for a Digitt it was most unsuitable. Geraldine, do you agree with me?’

‘Yes, Grace, of course I do. It seems not even to have been just a hobby. Was this Adrian in the army? Apparently not. Then he ought to have become a clergyman. If he was all that brainy he might have been made a bishop. As it is, I don’t think we ought to start a fuss about him.’