Portrait of a Disciplinarian (5 page)

‘She’s only thirty-five,’ Stephanie pointed out. ‘But I suppose it keeps her out of the house?’

‘Not really, it mainly means she’s always bringing the most frightful stiffs here.’

‘Oh. What about the Beare mob?’

‘Be careful of Aunt Lavinia. One of the critics in London slated her latest collection of poems, a fellow named Roland Bassinger –’

‘I know Roly Bassinger,’ Stephanie interrupted. ‘He’s a good egg. What did he say?’

‘He called it stearine bilge,’ Hermione explained. ‘I had to look “stearine” up, and it means a fatty precipitate in oil.’

‘That sounds like Aunt Lavinia’s poetry.’

‘Aunt Edith has found a new illness to have, and takes mustard rubs every day, then goes in a patent steam bath she’s bought. Aunt Rosalie’s still trying to breed zebra-striped cats, but a ginger Tom got in a few weeks ago and has ruined the experiment, so she’s a bit cross too.’

Stephanie gave a thoughtful nod, wondering which of her relatives would be best to touch for the extra money she needed. None of them seemed particularly promising, although if her Aunt Edith was enjoying a new illness she might prove a soft touch, and feigning an interest in Aunt Gertrude’s political causes, while risky, had been known to produce modest results. The best bet was certainly her grandfather, who at least was unlikely to whip her across his knee and dish out a bare-bottom spanking at the first mention of pounds, shillings and pence.

Escaping from the house before the aunts could converge on the breakfast table, Stephanie made her way
across
the lawn and past the lake to where the old icehouse had been converted into a sty for her grandfather’s pig, the Emperor of Driscoll’s. For any other pig the accommodation would have been positively palatial, but so vast was the Emperor that he was generally touching the sides in at least two places.

Her grandfather had left the breakfast table even before Hermione had arrived, so it seemed likely that he would have wandered down to the sty. Unfortunately he wasn’t there, only the bucolic pigman, Cyril Wonnacott, and the Emperor himself. The first greeted her with a gap-toothed grin and a wink so suggestive that she found herself checking that her dress wasn’t tucked into the flaps of her union suit; the second with a noise not dissimilar to the one she had made when expelling the drayman’s spunk through her nose.

Cyril Wonnacott went back to preparing a mash of old seed potatoes and mangel-wurzels, while the Emperor ambled across his sty, grunting hopefully. Clearly he recognised Stephanie, but she had often wondered if it was as a friend and occasional provider of such
bonne-bouches
as over-ripe apples and bacon rinds, or as a potential addition to the menu. Certainly the way he snuffled at her legs when she approached the well-made wrought-iron fence that prevented his escape suggested a more than purely social interest.

She had brought a stick, and began to tickle him behind one ear, a process that never failed to provide satisfaction. This occasion was no exception, and she soon had him grunting and snuffling in delight, while doing his best to press himself closer to her through the bars. She continued to tickle him, amused by how easy it was to provide so much pleasure, and was not aware of her grandfather’s presence until she heard the pigman’s respectful greeting.

‘Morning, Sir Richard.’

‘Good morning, Cyril,’ Richard Truscott responded. ‘Ah, and you too, Stephanie. Catchpole said you’d
arrived
. Don’t agitate the Emperor, my dear, it’s the Okehampton show in two weeks and I daren’t risk him losing so much as an ounce. What does he weigh in at this morning, Cyril?’

‘Ninety-four seven, sir,’ Cyril replied.

‘Splendid!’

‘A fine weight, sir,’ Cyril agreed, ‘but Jan says Sir Murgatroyd’s animal is pushing the hundred-stone mark, and like to be more before the show.’

‘Mere propaganda, I expect,’ Richard Truscott replied, but he looked worried. ‘Still, we must take every precaution. A little more linseed oil in his mash, perhaps?’

As the two men began to discuss pigs Stephanie considered the animal itself. The Emperor was so vast that it was hard to imagine an animal larger still, and yet for the last four years the huge boar had taken only silver medals at the Okehampton and Tavistock shows, the golds going to Sir Murgatroyd Drake’s still more monstrous creature. But the gap had been closing, pound by pound, which presumably explained why Sir Murgatroyd was keen to buy the Emperor.

‘… three thousand pounds the fellow offered me,’ her grandfather was saying, ‘and d’you know, he had the nerve to suggest I needed the money, blast him!’

‘Speaking of money, Grandpapa,’ Stephanie put in quickly, ‘I don’t suppose you’d be a sport and advance me ten pounds until my allowance comes through?’

‘I’d love to oblige, my dear,’ he answered, ‘but you’re supposed to be in disgrace and you know what Vicky’s like. I’d never hear the end of it. How d’you manage to get pinched anyway? Bit of a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?’

‘I was trying to get a policeman’s helmet,’ Stephanie explained, knowing that it was safe to make the confession to him.

‘Silly ass,’ he responded. ‘I suppose you made the classic mistake of trying to grab it from the front? That’s not the way at all. You have to come up behind
the
fellow and give the helmet a sudden push. That way you dislodge the chinstrap, his helmet falls forward and you’re up and running before he really knows what’s happened.’

‘I know that, grandfather, but I’m too small. I tried to get it with a boathook, from a window in this room Freddie Drake had hired in the Dove.’

‘Ingenious,’ her grandfather admitted, ‘but whatever were you doing with that young gumboil Drake? I suppose it was him who got you pinched?’

‘In a way, yes,’ she admitted, ‘but speaking of Freddie Drake, grandfather …’

‘Don’t,’ he interrupted, ‘or if you must, do so beyond the range of my hearing. So he ran off and left you to face the fury of the law, did he? Just the sort of behaviour I’d expect from a Drake. Bad blood, the lot of them, although I suppose young Bobbie’s not a bad sort.’

Stephanie pursed her lips. It was clearly not a good moment to mention that she intended to marry Freddie.

‘He did pay my fine,’ she said, ‘but the thing is, Grandpapa, that I needed the helmet as a trophy for my club, the Gaspers, so I could stand for secretary. If I don’t get back to London soon, and with something pretty special for a trophy, then Myrtle Finch-Farmiloe gets the post by default. That’s why I need the money, you see.’

‘Myrtle Finch-Farmiloe?’ he responded, evading the point. ‘She was your Protector when you first went to Teigngrace, wasn’t she? Showed you the ropes and all that?’

‘Yes, Grandpapa,’ Stephanie said, reflecting not for the first time that Myrtle had had some extremely peculiar ideas about what the role of Protector should involve. ‘But now I’m up against her in this election, which is why I urgently need some money and to get back to London before the end of the month.’

‘Can’t be done, I’m afraid, my dear,’ he answered.
‘Vicky
would blow a gasket, to say nothing of your mother and the girls. They’d make my life unbearable, and you know how badly the Emperor reacts when I’m out of sorts. It puts him right off his feed. Sorry, but there it is. You are in disgrace and in disgrace you had better stay.’

Returning to the house, Stephanie found that Vera Clapshott had finally arrived. A dray had brought both maid and Stephanie’s luggage from the station and was being unloaded in the stable yard. Great-aunt Victoria was supervising, and slowing the process down considerably by attempting to instruct the stable lads and berate the maid simultaneously. Vera Clapshott accepted the admonition with her head bowed, looking thoroughly sorry for herself, a sight that Stephanie took a moment to enjoy before moving closer.

She gave her brightest, most girlish smile as she approached, while hastily running over her story in her head. Great-aunt Victoria noticed her, frowning in a way that set Stephanie’s stomach churning and her bottom cheeks twitching, but she held her smile and managed a bright, breezy tone as she spoke.

‘Good morning, Great-aunt Victoria.’

‘There you are, Stephanie. I have been looking everywhere for you.’

‘I was visiting the Emperor,’ Stephanie explained. ‘Sorry.’

‘Wherever is your car?’ Great-aunt Victoria demanded. ‘And why do you look as if you have slept in your clothes?’

‘I ran out of petrol,’ Stephanie hastened to explain, ‘so I had to leave the car at a garage in Postbridge, which was why I was so late, and because Vera hadn’t arrived I haven’t a thing to wear.’

Great-aunt Victoria gave a derisive sniff and turned once more to the maid, who began to babble her explanation.

‘I … I’m most awfully sorry, Miss Truscott … Miss Stephanie. I mistook my connection at Exeter, and it was the very last train, so I had to come on in the morning.’

‘Silly girl,’ Great-aunt Victoria snapped, ‘and the same applies to you, Stephanie. Really, does your car not have a gauge to indicate the level of petrol? And could you not have used the telephone to have Gurney or Annaferd collect you?’

‘I didn’t want to give any trouble,’ Stephanie explained.

Great-aunt Victoria responded with another sniff and turned her attention to the stable lads, who had managed to drop one of Stephanie’s trunks.

‘I would like to change, Clapshott,’ Stephanie announced, doing her best to imitate her great-aunt’s imperious tone. ‘You may bring my small valise up to the Blue Room.’

‘Yes, Miss Stephanie,’ the maid answered, her tone mild and obedient but a flash of her eyes sending a very different message.

Stephanie stuck her nose in the air, sure that Vera wouldn’t dare risk Victoria Truscott’s wrath, and made for the house. Vera followed, struggling with the valise, which was only small in the sense of being less large than its two companions or the travelling trunk. Indoors, Stephanie felt a little less sure of herself, wondering if her mother and Great-aunt Victoria had communicated on the telephone and, if so, exactly what had been said. By the time she had reached the Blue Room she had decided it was better to be safe than sorry, and therefore to adopt a less haughty attitude towards her maid.

‘Thank you, Clapshott … Vera,’ she said.

‘That’s no trouble at all, Miss Stephanie,’ the maid answered, but the tone of her voice was no longer obsequious.

‘I’ll, er … I’ll let you unpack then,’ Stephanie said hastily, backing from the room.

‘Don’t you want to change, Miss?’ the maid enquired innocently.

‘In a while,’ Stephanie replied, and made her exit.

It had been what her father would have called a strategic retreat, she told herself as she made her way back downstairs. Possibly her mother had told Great-aunt Victoria that Vera had permission to discipline Stephanie, possibly not, and possibly Vera might have taken matters into her own hands anyway. In any case Stephanie would have ended up over Vera’s knee, which would have been bad enough at the best of times, but unendurable when the stable lads would shortly be bringing up the rest of her luggage. Both were young, lively men, as full as themselves as they were physically attractive, and just the thought of being spanked bare-bottom in front of them made her blush to the roots of her hair.

Congratulating herself on having escaped an embarrassing episode that might well have been a contender for her top ten, she made for the library. It seemed as safe a haven as any, since not even Great-aunt Victoria could object to her reading a book, while it would also provide the peace she needed to consider schemes for getting together some money and returning to London before the Gaspers election. Entering the room, she discovered that Hermione had made the same decision and was seated at the big table, studying an atlas.

‘Hello, H., avoiding the aunts?’ Stephanie greeted her sister.

‘Yes,’ Hermione replied. ‘Aunt Lettice wants to take me to Lydford slaughterhouse to lecture me about eating meat, but Catchpole warned me in time.’

‘The best of butlers,’ Stephanie said. ‘What are you up to?’

‘This is where Papa fought,’ Hermione answered, turning the atlas around.

‘Don’t be morbid,’ Stephanie responded automatically,
then
paused, wondering what her father would have made of her predicament.

Colonel Sir John Truscott seldom spoke of the war at all, but sometimes, when some of his old comrades had been to dinner and done themselves well on the port, they would discuss tactics and how matters might have been improved. As a small girl she had frequently listened from the top of the stairs, at once horrified and fascinated, while the even smaller Hermione hid in the shadows behind her.

Turning the pages back from Northern France to South-West England, she considered the map. She needed to reach London within two weeks, bearing some trophy so magnificent that it would put whatever Myrtle Finch-Farmiloe had secured firmly in the shade. That represented the objective, and in order to attain it she needed a strategy.

‘You’re making faces,’ Hermione pointed out.

‘I’m thinking,’ Stephanie replied, ‘about how best to sort out the stuff I told you this morning.’

‘You’re going to get spanked,’ Hermione stated.

‘That must be considered an acceptable risk,’ Stephanie answered bravely, ignoring the sudden tightening of her bottom cheeks.

‘You’re going to get caned,’ Hermione went on, in what Stephanie considered an unreasonably smug tone of voice.

‘Shut up and help,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to work out what Papa would do in my place.’

‘Shoot Myrtle Finch-Farmiloe?’ Hermione suggested.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ Stephanie replied. ‘Seriously, help me. I have to get myself and a really good trophy to London by the last day of the month.’

‘All right, you’re the one who’s going to get into trouble. How about old Sir Murgatroyd’s pig?’

‘Sir Murgatroyd’s pig? What about it?’

‘It would make a jolly good trophy.’

‘It weighs a hundred stone!’ Stephanie exclaimed. ‘And it would probably cause comment on the train.’