‘I’m too caring as well,’ agreed Romy, removing her hat and shaking her hair free and steering Blanche into the drawing room. ‘Mummy turned me to face the mirror the other day and said: “Who’s that?” I said, “It’s me.” “That’s the person you’ve got to look after,” said Mummy. “Put yourself first for once.”’
‘How is your mother?’ said Blanche, who didn’t want anyone put first except herself. ‘Still living in Weybridge?’
‘She’s in Ibiza,’ said Romy, ‘first holiday in years. She’s been wonderful helping out with the kids. They call her Granny Playbridge – they hardly know Etta,’ added Romy, thinking how nice that little button-back, coral-pink chair in the corner would look in her bedroom.
‘I can’t believe Sampy is no more,’ quavered Blanche. ‘So glad I saw him and brought him some comfort the day he died. The lamb was too rare. He liked it well done, and Etta drooling over Rupert Campbell-Black upset him. I can’t help thinking that if she had been more caring, Sampy might still be alive.’
Outside, the captains of industry were exchanging cards, finding customers, discussing deals. Larry Lockton had sold his supermarket.
Shade Murchieson, who had made several fortunes selling arms and explosives to the Americans to flatten Iraq, was lobbying for a multi-billion deal to rebuild its infrastructure.
Martin, meanwhile, was racing around pressing the flesh, grumbling about the snide obituaries in the left-wing papers: ‘So full of errors. Dad was in such terrible pain, there has to be a feeling of liberation, but golly I’m going to miss the old boy,’ he told everyone. ‘Please sign the Book of Remembrance, and put your email address so we can keep in touch.’
‘That dog’s got to go,’ insisted Romy as Bartlett, who had friends among the guests, left blonde hairs on black clothes. ‘Easy on the bubbly, Alan.’
The mistresses roamed round, eyeing up possible new benefactors.
‘How many horses have you got?’ Trixie, perched on the balustrade showing even more leg, asked Shade Murchieson.
‘Far too many.’
‘Who trains them?’
‘Some are with Rupert Campbell-Black.’
‘Granny’s pin-up.’
‘And the rest with Marius Oakridge in Willowwood.’
‘My parents have got a barn there. Do you think he’d give me a holiday job?’
‘He might, I’ll introduce you.’
As a man accustomed like Sampson to terrifying people, Shade liked Trixie being totally unafraid.
Occasionally bellows rent the air as Drummond, who’d been at the champagne, bombed around at crotch level.
‘Oh God,’ muttered Trixie, ‘here comes Grampy’s squeeze in pursuit of a new backer, you better watch out.’
‘Hello, Trixie, how are you?’ cried Blanche. ‘I’m almost part of the Bancroft family, Shade. May I call you Shade?’
Out in the cruel sunlight, compared with Trixie, Blanche looked like a middle-aged Barbie doll whose veneer was cracking.
*
Etta was too numb to notice or be relieved Basil and Brian Tenby were no longer squeezing her waist, fingers splaying to caress her breast, murmuring endearments. Rumour was trickling around that she wasn’t going to be a very rich widow. Penelope’s suitors were in retreat.
She was also much too busy haring round seeing the vicar was looked after, chauffeurs were provided with something to eat and introducing people, groping to remember names of those she knew really well. Her tired brain was like a biro that has to be pressed round and round before the ink comes out.
Several old girlfriends, frightened off by Sampson, had turned up and were hugging her: ‘There’s a frenzy from death to burial, darling. At first you’re frantic, everyone asks you to dinner to hear the grisly details, then silence, so do come and stay in the summer.’
‘Don’t move for a year,’ advised others, ‘until you know what you really want, you’ve made it so lovely here. Thank God you’ve got Bartlett.’
Martin had rabbited on for so long in church, and also ordered the waitresses to go slow with the champagne, that the Great and Not-So-Good were looking at their watches and muttering about leaving. Pilots were revving up. Etta, however, rushed round filling glasses, to Martin’s disapproval:
‘Go easy on the bubbly, Mother, not everyone has chauffeurs to drive them home.’
‘On sports days in America,’ Trixie told Shade, ‘they have chauffeurs’ races. We could have one now.’
In the summer house, Martin found Carrie ringing Hong Kong on the house telephone and raised an eyebrow.
‘I better warn you,’ Carrie replaced the receiver, ‘Blanche has just told me Dad promised her fifty thousand a year after he died.’
‘Don’t think there’s anything in writing. Hopefully Dad shredded it.’
‘Well, she’s told Dame Hermione, who now wants paying for today.’
‘Sampson remembered me in his will and in his willy,’ giggled Trixie, putting on Dame Hermione’s deep, deep voice. ‘Will you buy me a racehorse?’ she asked Shade.
‘Fond of your grandfather, were you?’
‘No, he was a monster and vile to Granny.’
‘Would you like a drink?’ asked Alan and Etta in unison, as they met on the terrace waving bottles. Etta glanced up at the sky and shivered: ‘I do hope Sampson’s OK in heaven.’
‘Not sure God will be too happy having such an alpha male up there,’ said Alan. ‘Sampson’s probably fired St Peter and the Holy Ghost already. Oh cheer up, darling, you’re in shock now but your life will be so much easier and more fun.’
‘Granny Playbridge is in Ibiza,’ announced Drummond, wolfing chocolate cake when his mother wasn’t looking. ‘Granny Dorset is in shock.’
‘Where’s shock?’ asked Poppy.
The Astons and the Mercedes were departing.
‘Shade Murchieson’s got an SM 1 number plate, how naff,’ said Trixie in disappointment.
‘Stands for sado-masochist numero uno,’ said Alan. ‘Don’t get too close to him, darling, he’s not a nice man.’
‘The waitresses don’t need tipping, Mother,’ snapped Martin, just restraining himself from reminding her that it wasn’t her money any more.
Next morning, with none of the old teasing affection in his voice, Brian Tenby, the family lawyer, read the will and broke the news to Etta that all the money had been left to Martin and Carrie on condition they looked after their mother.
‘I’m sorry, Etta, Bluebell Hill will have to be sold to pay estate duty.’
The answer, Martin assured his mother, was for her to move to Willowwood and make a fresh start.
‘There are too many memories here to remind you and indeed all of us unbearably of Dad.’
‘Martin and I want you to move to Willowwood,’ urged Carrie, for a moment not checking her messages, ‘into a charming bungalow – we’ve already applied for planning permission – in the valley below our barns. Joey East, an excellent local builder, can knock it up while you’re winding down here. It’ll probably take six months to sell.’
Seeing Etta mouthing in bewilderment and dismay, Martin took up the cudgels.
‘You’ve been so busy caring for Dad, you haven’t had time to get to know your grandchildren. “Who’s Granny Dorset?” Poppy asked the other day and that’s really not good enough. Granny Playbridge has been a tower of strength, but she’s got a part-time job now and won’t be able to drop everything and whizz over from Weybridge. I told her not to worry because you, Mother, would be stepping into the breach.’
‘What about Ruthie and Hinton?’ stammered Etta.
‘They’ll find other work,’ said Carrie. ‘Whoever buys here might take them on. It was what Dad wanted. We couldn’t influence the will in any way.’
‘But I love it here. I could let out rooms …’
‘You’ve got to face up to the fact that you’ve got no money except your old age pension,’ said Romy bullyingly. Her plan was that while she and Martin set up the Sampson Bancroft Fund and took on other charities, her mother-in-law could look after Poppy and Drummond.
‘I’ve looked after my children single-handed,’ she went on sanctimoniously. ‘I need some me-time.’
Etta looked round the pretty primrose-yellow-walled room and out at the white blossom of the blackthorn exploding all over the valley.
‘I don’t want to go,’ she whispered.
‘Blanche was saying how stressed Dad was on Sunday; how he hated being left alone,’ said Carrie brutally. ‘If he’d lived another year, none of this would have happened. If you move to Willowwood, you can ferry Trixie back from Bagley Hall during exeats and keep an eye on her in the holidays. That will free me up to travel and Alan to get on with his book.’
Etta could have so done with Alan as an ally, but unable to face his mother-in-law’s crucifixion he had sloped off to London. She stumbled to the downstairs cloakroom, where, surrounded by the photographs of Sampson’s sporting achievements, she threw up her breakfast cup of Earl Grey. As she rinsed her mouth from the tap, she noticed drawing-room ornaments – the sleeping wooden lion, a Staffordshire dog and a Rockingham Dalmatian removed from Poppy and Drummond’s ravening fingers – sidelined but resigned on one of Sampson’s filing cabinets.
Had she killed Sampson? Weighing herself, she discovered she’d lost ten pounds, glancing down at new greenish veins rising on the backs of her hands she felt so guilty she agreed to everything.
There now seemed to be so much to do, so many hundreds of letters to answer, direct debits to cancel, clubs writing for subscriptions, charities hoping Sampson would give them a donation, hospitals reminding her Sampson was due for a check-up and sending her pamphlets telling her how well they were doing, pension policies to unravel, endless forms to be filled in, bills and funeral expenses to be paid, people ringing up. Carrie and Martin had refused to take Sampson’s booming voice off the answering machine, so lots of people assumed he was still alive.
Leaving Etta to pick up the funeral bills, Carrie was still wrangling over expenses for flying back from Hong Kong.
‘I’ve always called Etta “Mother” and kept her in the loop
because I didn’t want her to be jealous of Martin’s and my closeness,’ Romy told everyone, insisting that Etta come to Willowwood for Easter.
‘So you can suss out the area and see what a fun village you’ll be living in.’
Then Romy spoilt it by banning Bartlett.
‘Harvest Home is not a Bartlett house, I’m afraid. Drummond’s asthma has been awful since we’ve been staying here.’
‘Then I can’t come,’ stammered Etta. ‘I need Bartlett.’
‘Ruthie can look after her for a weekend.’
Bartlett took matters into her big blonde paws by being desperately sick in the night. An X-ray revealed a large tumour.
‘I don’t want her to suffer,’ whispered Etta.
‘Well, she is suffering, I’m afraid,’ said Mr Hollis, the vet, who came out to Bluebell Hill the next day.
Bartlett, unlike most dogs, loved the vets, particularly Mr Hollis. Wagging her feathery gold tail, she staggered out to meet him, gathering up a Bonio as a present, before her back legs collapsed.
‘Couldn’t she last a bit longer?’ begged Etta. ‘Not sure I can go on without her.’
‘She’s in a lot of pain, Etta,’ said Mr Hollis, tapping the bubbles out of the pink liquid in his syringe.
Most poignantly of all, Bartlett held out her paw to Mr Hollis for the fatal injection. Then, as Etta held her close, Bartlett turned and smiled reassuringly at her mistress as if to say good-bye. Etta choked back a sob and hugged her but a second later, as Bartlett keeled over like a rag doll, was unable to suppress a great howl of anguish.
‘Are you sure she’s dead?’ she sobbed, stroking Bartlett’s silken gold ears.
‘Quite sure.’ Mr Hollis put a hand on Etta’s heaving shoulders. ‘I know how much she meant to you. I’ll carry her outside.’
Hinton, Etta’s great friend – they had pondered so many plantings and colour schemes together – had dug a grave in the orchard and planted a hastily knocked-up wooden cross beside it. Bartlett was buried in her tartan rug, with her favourite rubber snowman and a tin of Butcher’s Tripe. Etta left on her collar and disc.
‘So perhaps Sampson might find her in the underworld.’
‘Bartlett’s more likely to go to heaven,’ said Hinton, blowing his nose.
‘Might make it less easy to sell the house if the dog’s buried
there,’ observed a beady Romy, who was still hanging around ear-marking loot for their barn and who was watching from the kitchen window.
‘Etta’s far more upset over the death of a smelly old dog than over Sampson,’ she added disapprovingly.
‘Good for her to cry, poor soul,’ said Ruthie furiously. ‘She was wonderful to Mr Bancroft.’
Etta had a hundred things to do but she wandered sobbing round the wood finding bluebells for Bartlett’s grave.
Trixie rang her from boarding school that evening.
‘So sorry to hear about Bartlett. No dog could have had a nicer home. Did you know that when you arrive in heaven all the dogs you’ve had come racing across a sunlit lawn to meet you? I know Bartlett will be leading the pack.’
Country Life
had long been Etta’s favourite magazine. She always enjoyed fantasizing about the houses advertised in the opening pages. Now, to her horror, Bluebell Hill was in it, and sold terrifyingly quickly to a young couple who’d made a fortune in Hong Kong, had one child, were planning more, and who promised not to dig up Bartlett.