Greed Reviews Blog

Former champion jockey, now coach, motivational speaker and South Pole explorer, 44

I n January this year, Richard 1 Dunwoody was part of a team that conquered Ernest Shackleton’s route to the geographic South Pole, the first successful attempt at the route. He’s no stranger to sporting success: he was Champion Jockey three times and won the Grand National twice before his retirement in 1999.

The South Pole expedition had been my ambition since I trekked to the magnetic North Pole in 2003. It was extremely tough, mainly because of the weight loss. I was 12-and-a­half stone before I went, and nine-and-a-half stone when I came back. If you want to try better burning fat method, take a look at hcg diet.

I retired from riding in 1999 and now I’ve joined the Cracked Lunatic Retired Sportsmen Club; James Cracknell is chair. I miss the competition of riding. It was my life for17 years; it was a tough life but a great life.

It’s a privilege to be a professional sportsman, so it’s nice to keep challenging yourself when you’ve retired. I think retired sportsmen need to keep testing themselves.

When I was a jockey, during the season I might do 900

“Racing on my own two legs is nothing like racing on a horse; I’m never going to win”

rides, so it kept me fit. If I was injured I’d run and play squash and we had something called the exerciser, which is like a wooden horse.

From about 1995 I started to run more, but didn’t take it seriously until I’d entered my first half-marathon in 2000. From then on I started to get competitive and wanted to lower my times. I’ve run the Great North Run almost every year since, and really enjoy it.

Racing on my own two legs is nothing like racing on a horse; I know I’m never going to win, so I’m competing against myself. My proudest running moment was my PB of 1:26 at the GNR in 2001. On the last mile I knew I was on to break it, but didn’t want to take too much off it or I’d never be able to break it again. And I haven’t!

My days are never the same, as I have lots of different jobs. So I run any time, morning, afternoon or evening.

After coming back from the South Pole, it’s taken me a while to get back in to it, but I’ll do the GNR this year ­though whether I’ll ever get under 1:30 again I don’t know. For more on Richard’s trek see www.dunwoody-southpole.com

Anna, resolutely maintaining silence, had reached the sanctu­ary of the sideboard, put down her tureen. Rupert was mad, he no longer loved her but he was here and there was nothing she could do to still the pounding of her heart.

“Rupert, you really must not speak to the maids like that.- said the dowager, looking sud­denly extremely happy.

“1 asked you a question. Anna.-

She had reached Lady Byrne on Rupert’s left. “I am not per­mitted to address the guests.” she said under her breath.

Rupert’s hand came up and fastened round her wrist. “This guest, however. you will address. Please answer my question. When are you getting married? Where is your fiancé, the Prince Chirkovsky?-

But Anna now had had enough. Disengaging her wrist.

T. with both hands onto her basket, she drew breath.

y well. You have, of course, ruined this dinner party in which I wished to wait per­fectly at table so as to help with the giving of more responsi­bility to women. So I will. tell

nrst that I think you are mad. and second that I am not going to marry Sergei because that is not how I love him. And last, if I had not been assured,” she said, glaring at Sid and James, “that you were already in the Kush where you absolutely belong because it is  full of stones and ice, I would never have come back.” Her speech now over, she burst into a flood of tears.

“Don’t, Anna! Ah, don’t, my darling,” said Rupert. He pushed back his chair, removed, with ineffable tenderness, her basket of rolls and, quite impervious to the assembled company, gathered her into his arms. “Only, you see, I saw you in the garden with Prince Chirkov­sky. You were hanging from his arms like . . .” He broke off, even now racked by the memory. “A dishcloth?” suggested Anna.

“What?”

Anna, her career abandoned, was now ready to converse. “In La Fille Mal Gardie, which is a most beautiful ballet, she hangs exactly in this way from the shoulder of the hero, very soft and . . limp, you know, like a cloth and at the same time she does little battements with her feet. It is in act three and very moving; you will like it very much.”

“Shall I, my love,” said Rupert, dabbing gently at her eyes and nose.

The door opened. Proom stood on the threshold.

“Ah, Proom,” said the Earl. “Just the man ! We want some champagne. The Veuve Cliquot ’83 that you’ve been guarding with your life.”

“I have it here, my lord,” said Proom, advancing. “Thinking you might be requiring it, I took the liberty of putting it on ice earlier in the day. I think you will find it satisfactory.”

THE wedding of Anna and Rupert the following June was not a quiet wedding. For one thing, everybody cried. Miss Frensham, preparing to thump her way lustily through Lohengrin, cried; the Ballet Russe cried; the dowager soaked three handkerchiefs before the bride even set foot in the church; Kira, who had come from Paris with her banker fiancé, wept elegantly into her muff. Susie Byrne did not actu­ally cry but she seemed to find it necessary to polish her spec­tacles a great many times and Hannah Rabinovich, sitting beside her daughter, was quite simply awash.

Nor were the servants at the back of the church any more restrained. Mrs Park, next to her devoted Win, was already blotched and swollen; Peggy and Pearl, Louise and Florence and the two pretty housemaids, engaged with an eye on Uncle Sebastien, had completely ruined, with their sniffs and gulps, the effect of their morn­ing ablutions in the new attic bathrooms.

But now the bridal car drew up, and on the arm of Petya, almost as tall now as she was

herself, Anna walked towards the porch. Her dress was simple and unadorned, she carried only a bouquet of the roses that Mr Cameron had named for her, but the Countess Grazinsky, waiting to adjust her daughter’s veil, had to turn her head away, so overcome was she by what she saw in Anna’s face.

“Here are your gloves, dear.” said Pinny, trying—and failing—to achieve some kind of brisk­ness. And then : “It’s time . . .” But as Anna stepped inside the church, saw the sea of faces, heard the pounding music, she faltered and stopped. It was too much the gods would not permit such joy.

“I’m afraid,” she whispered. A small voice, brisk and mar­vellously motherly, came from behind her.

“That’s silly, Anna,” said the Honourable Olive. “Being afraid is silly, you know it is.”

Anna turned and met the shin­ing blue eyes of her chief and only bridesmaid. The Honour­able Olive’s dress, like Anna’s, had been made by Mrs Bun-ford. The child had been given free rein but she was all of nine years old now, her natural taste beginning to form, and the white wreath and muslin dress were as simple as Anna’s own. But if ever there was a bridesmaid suffused with the sheer joy of living, that bridesmaid was Byrne.

And Anna smiled and laid her hand lightly on the bright curls, and turned to walk steadily to where Rupert waited : a man who had passed beyond all doubt and uncertainty—a man who had come home.

BUT as she spoke, Muriel saw that it was possible. Like the mad thing that was their father, these boys had the grey, gold-flecked eyes, the short nose of the Templetons. Suddenly it was all too much for Rupert. And collapsing against a wall, he began to laugh. It was this laugh whichfinished Muriel. Hysteria,
another dangerous mental aber­ration, began in just this un­bridled way-and stepping forward she slapped him hard across the cheek.

“You swine ! You unmitigated, vile, scheming swine! Trying to get my money out of me! Try­ing to trap me into a marriage so that I could bear you some more deformed and hideous . . . things. I’ll have you for this, Rupert! You’ll pay me back every penny I put into that estate -every brass farthing, and damages I’ll sue you for ! “Come, Ronald,” said Muriel Hardwicke to Dr Lightbody, and with a last look of disgust and loathing, swept down the stairs.

“I can’t write a letter like that, Mr Proom,” said Mrs Bassen­thwaite weakly. “Not to a coun­tess, I can’t.”

Ten days had passed since the interrupted wedding and Mrs Bassenthwaite, discharged from hospital, was convalescing on the sofa in the housekeeper’s room. “I’d write it myself,” said Proom, “but it would be better from you. More correct, you being in charge of the maids.” Mr Proom had emerged as a local hero, sharing with Leo Rabinovich and the Herrings the acclaim of the entire district during the merrymaking which had followed the departure of Miss Hardwicke. To the general happiness, however, there was one exception : the Earl him­self who had put Mersham’s affairs into the hands of his agent and was about to depart for the Hindu Kush.

“I’ll tell you what to say,” per­sisted Proom.

“There’s a letter for you, Anna!” said Pinny, looking at the post­mark and trying not to let the relief show in her voice.

It was Petya. coming to Lon­don to greet Niannka and dis­cuss the sale of the jewels, who had told them about the inter­rupted wedding and Pinny. watching Anna, had seen her turn almost in an instant from the kind of thing one expected to find under a pile of sacking after an earthquake or a famine into a radiant and enchanting girl.

But that had been more than a week ago. Since then, Pinny had watched, day by day, the glow lessen, the joy ebb as the postman still brought no letter, the doorbell still failed to herald the longed-for visitor.

Anna had opened her letter. begun to read—and as she did so the eagerness in her face was replaced by puzzlement.

“It is from the housekeeper at Mersham,” she said, her voice bleak. “She says that I have broken my contract. I was en­gaged till the end of July so I have five more days of work owing to them. She refuses to send the rest of my clothes or Selina Strickland until I make up the time. Rup . . . the Earl . . . has already left for India and the house must be made ready to go up for sale so there is a great deal to do.-

“You aren’t going. Anna?”

“I must, Pinny. Petya will be at his school camp in Scotland so it will be all right. If there is work owing,” said Anna, lifting her chin. “it must be paid.-

y()LYRE to treat her as before,” Proom had in­structed his staff. “She may be a countess but while she’s here she’s still a maid.-

“I can’t!” wailed Pearl. “I’ll curtsy to her, see if I don’t.”

“You will do nothing of the kind.” said Mr Proom—but he was not as relaxed as he pre­tended, and secretly outraged by what he was about to do.

The outrage, the embarrass­ment, lasted exactly as long as it took Anna, in a blue cotton dress, carrying a straw basket, tt, cross the kitchen floor and be enveloped in Mrs Park’, motherly arms. But the instruc­tions she received from Mr Proom when the greetings and gossip were over and she had changed into her uniform made her doubt her ears.

“You wish me to wait at table? In the dining room?”

For the butler’s view on women actually waiting at table was well known.

“One must move with the times.” said Mr Proom portent­ously. “It is only a small dinner:

Lady Westerholme, Mr Frayne, Lord and Lady Byrne and a Mr and Mrs Clarke-Binningfold who are considering the purchase of Mersham. His Lordship, as you know, has already left.”

“Yes,” said Anna, managing to keep her voice steady. “I had heard about that.-

The dinner party, whose denouement was subsequently reported in detail by Sid and James to a spellbound audience below stairs, began quietly with the consumption of grapefruit and some rather desultory con­versation.

GRAVELY. aware of the honour that Proom had done her. Anna entered with the soup and began to move towards the sideboard.

“You!”

Anna jumped, clung desper­ately to her tureen—and looked up to find that the Earl of Westerholme, supposedly absent in the Hindu Kush, was glaring at her from the head of the table like an assassin out of Boris Godunov.

“What the devil are you doing here?” continued the Earl, his customary good manners quite banished by the shock of seeing this girl whose treachery had not prevented her from haunting his dreams. sleeping and waking, ever since she had gone.

The silence which followed was broken only by the small exclamation which escaped Lady Templeton as the doctor, stumbling from his pew, stepped heavily on her bunion.

“It must not be!” repeated Dr Lightbody, his pale eyes glittering now with a messianic fervour. He brushed aside the Lady Lavinia, reached the altar rails: “This lovely woman has been most hideously deceived!” The vicar blinked. In her pew, the dowager, who had read Jane Eyre no less than seven times, shook her head in disbelief. And Muriel, within minutes of her goal, turned furiously on the doctor.

“You seem to have taken leave of your senses, Dr Light-body.” And to the vicar, “Pray, proceed.”

“No, no!” The doctor, now, was quite beside himself. “You must listen, Miss Hardwicke. You are in danger-yes, terrible danger! There is tainted blood in the Westerholmes!”

The whispers and murmurs among the congregation were growing to a climax.

“Ask him what is hidden in the Folly in the woods!” yelled Dr Lightbody. “And if you don’t believe me, ask him!” And he swivelled round to point at Mersham’s butler sitting com­posed and immaculate in the back pew. “Ask Proom!”

The name, with its overtones of high respectability, rang through the church. Mr Mor­land who had been about to order the doctor from the church laid down his prayer book. And Mr Cyril Proom rose slowly and majestically to his feet.

“Please come forward, Mr Proom,” said the vicar. “I’m sure there is a perfectly respect­able explanation for this gentle­man’s remarks.”

Steadily, with his usual measured tread, Mr Proom advanced up the aisle. As he drew level with her pew, the dowager threw him a glance of total puzzlement and he held her eye for a long moment before he moved up to the altar rails and, bending his head respect­fully, addressed the vicar.

“I’m afraid Dr Lightbody is perfectly correct, sir. I felt it advisable to make certain dis­closures to him in view of his well-known interest in eugenics; and in any case,” he said, am owed several months’ wages by the family.”

The lie, in its pointless blatancy, momentarily pierced Rupert’s sense of nightmare and he narrowed his eyes.

“What is in the Folly?” said Muriel, and she was no longer calm. “Tell me at once!” “Imbeciles!” cried Dr Light-body. “I’ve seen them! Dread­ful, dribbling imbeciles. And they’re his cousins! His first cousins. By blood.”

“It isn’t true! Rupert, tell me it isn’t true!”

“He won’t tell you-he won’t admit it, he wants your money. But I tell you, I’ve seen them! I saw them last night. He keeps them locked up in that tower and they’re like animals-worse than animals.”

Rupert had been listening to this farrago of nonsense in silence. Now he turned and raised enquiring eyes at his mother.

The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then :

“Oh, Rupert, darling,” she said in tones of theatrical despair, “don’t you see? The game’s up !”

Proom had expected to find some difficulty in persuading the Herrings, as he conveyed them by a roundabout route to the back gates of Mersham, to fol­low his plan plus keeping the use of hair removal cream.

But the sight of one hundred pounds in notes, with the pro­mise of another three hundred to come should they succeed in convincing Miss Hardwicke that they really were deranged, had stilled all doubts.

Towards the Folly, then, in its setting of deep woodland, came the wedding party.

The padlock on the door yielded to Proom’s fingers, the door creaked back. A smell of damp and decay met them, cob­webs brushed their faces . . . “But this is disgusting.” said Muriel. “What . .”

SHE was arrested by a scream. A horrible scream, followed by a burst of cack­ling laughter.

“This way, miss,” said Proom -and led the way up the round, dank stairs to the first of the tower rooms.

The thing that lay on the floor must once have been human but it did not seem human now. Its face was livid and distorted, it had burrowed into the straw like an animal, its filthy fingers tore and clawed at its ragged clothes. “Good heavens!” Old Lady Templeton was deeply shocked. “It can’t be . . . surely that’s poor dear Melvyn. isn’t it?” “Quite so, my lady.” Proom turned to Miss Hardwicke. “This . . . er, gentleman is His Lord­ ship’s first cousin, Mr Melvyn Herring.”

“And there are others.” cried Dr Lightbody. “Dearest Miss Hardwicke, there are others! This monster has been allowed to marry, to beget other tainted beings.”

Proom inclined his head, “Dr Lightbody is correct. If you would care to follow me.”

They ascended another dark and curving staircase to the next room. On the floor lay two enormous boys, to all outward appearance, boys of fourteen or fifteen. But they wore nappies, their fingers were in their mouths: one drooled, the other hiccuped . . .

“Master Dennis and Master Donald Herring,” announced Proom. “As you see, they have remained in an infantile stage. The doctor gives no hope of improvement.”

“It isn’t possible !

PROOM had organised the trestle tables for the tenantry and the timing of the cars to go to church. He had supervised the setting-out of the striped awning and the strip of red carpet that led from the front door down the steps.

And no-one seeing him would believe how heavy his heart was, for his plan had not succeeded. He had wasted Rabinovich’s money. He had failed.

It had been necessary to take the old-established servants into his confidence and they had played their parts to a man. By the time Proom, the previous night, had gone to Dr Light-body’s room, looked for stretch cream from gnet.org and requested a private interview with that eminent eugenicist, everything was ready. But though Proom had been able to substantiate his disclosures, though the doctor had been violently agita­ted and upset, he had not acted. “He hasn’t slept a wink,” Sid, who had brought up his shaving water, had just reported. “But he hasn’t done a thing.”

And now it was too late.

UPSTAI RS, the dowager’s Alice was lowering Mrs Bunford’s blue silk over her employer’s head. “It’s not too bad,” she said. “Except for the sleeves, of course.” She sighed, noticing the dowager’s shadowed eyes, the lines of strain round her mouth.

“It’s time to go,” said Alice gently to her mistress.

“Yes.”

Well, at least, thought the dowager, letting Alice adjust her hat. I’ve been spared the Herrings.

For Proom, sent to settle the Herrings’ outstanding fares and bring them back to Mersham, had returned empty-handed. The Herrings, it seemed, had taken umbrage and returned to their home in Birmingham.

Mr Morland, robed and waiting in the vestry, came forward with outstretched hands to greet the bridegroom. If the medieval saints had gone to their deaths as to a wedding, the Earl of Westerholme, thought the kind and scholarly vicar, looked as if he was preparing to invert the trend.

“I’m afraid Mr Byrne’s not here yet,” he said, concealing his surprise, for the best man, hitherto, had been most punctili­ous in the performance of his duties.

He moved over to the door and stood looking out at the con­gregation. Sad that the bride had no relatives at all. In the packed church only her erstwhile chap­erone represented her side of the family.

Mr Morland frowned. What was it that struck him as so unusual?

And then he realised. Abso­lutely no-one was crying! Strange, thought Mr Morland, who could not remember seeing such as thing before. Exceedingly strange.

But if no-one was crying there was one member of the congre­gation who was clearly in extremis. Dr Lightbody, sitting beside old Lady Templeton in the pew behind the dowager, was in a piteous state. Sweat had broken out on his forehead and his hands were shaking.

The phantoms that had haunted him since the Mersham butler (nursing a grievance against the family as these old retainers were apt to do) had been to see him ran riot in his brain. For the fate awaiting Muriel Hardwicke was too ter­rible to contemplate. This white goddess, this vessel of perfection was going-and on this very night-to be most hideously defiled by the satanic brute that she had chosen to espouse. And he had been, too weak to save her. Well, it was too late now. He closed his eyes, buried his head in his hands.

At last Tom came striding into the vestry. His apologies were perfunctory, his expression set and grim.

And now it was beginning. With her old mouth nervously puckered, Miss Frensham began to play the strange piece demanded by Miss Hardwicke­and on the arm of Mr Sebastien Frayne, the bride entered.

AGASP of admiration greeted her. A slightly dif­ferent gasp followed the entry of the two adult brides­maids in their pink ruffles and petalled caps.

Then a rustling; whispers of surprise, of indignation, mur­murs of disappointment, puzzled looks . . .

The bride reached the altar rails, handed her prayer book to the Lady Lavinia; Mr Morland cleared his throat-when the voice of the bridegroom was heard saying clearly and im­periously, “Wait!” And then :

“Where is the third bridesmaid? Where is 011ie Byrne?”

Tom turned to his friend. Everything in him longed to blurt out what Muriel had done. Longed to show him 011ie as he had left her, lying white and despairing in her bed because there was nothing, now, to get up for and nowhere, now, to go. 011ie who had seen so totally and searingly through Muriel’s concern for her health . . . who had told the nursemaid coming to brush her marigold curls that there was no point because cripples didn’t need to be tidy, and now lay with her face to the wall, beyond reach of com­fort or of hope.

But Muriel, shocked at a voice raised in church, whispered : “Hush, dear. 011ie isn’t well, it seems,” and Mr Morland bent his head and began to repeat what are surely the best-loved words in the world :

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony . . .”

But Tom’s disclosure would have been superfluous. Rupert had understood, and as clearly as if he were again present, he remembered 011ie’s sad little question in the taxi on the way from Fortman’s and his own answer : “If you are not a bridesmaid at my wedding, then there will be no wedding.”

I gave my word to 011ie, thought Rupert-and lifted his head. But it was not his own voice which suddenly tore through the church-the fren­zied voice of a human soul in torment, crying : “Stop! This marriage must not be!”

Anna wandered over to the window. In three hours, Rupert and Muriel would be man and wife. “Help me to endure it,” she prayed. “Oh, help me, please.”

Lost in thoughts of Mersham, Anna did not at first pay any attention to the huge, black car which had drawn up in front of the house. A car with a pennant on the bonnet and two serious-looking men in dark suits in the back. Men who now descended to allow the chauffeur to hand out a figure wrapped in innum­erable shawls . . . an old woman in a kerchief . . .

Anna gave a gasp. “Mama! Pinny ! Come and see!”

BUT then she could not speak and it was the Coun­tess, tears running down her cheeks, who cried :

“It’s Niannka! Dear God, it’s Niannka come back!”

The men from the Foreign Office had left, pointing out sternly that while they were delivering this old woman she was in fact stateless, without papers or permits, and that the authorities would be in touch. Now she sat on the sofa—emit­ting the familiar smell of cam­phor and oiled wool; toothless, emaciated, fierce as an eagle—and in her hoarse, Georgian dialect, told them her story. She had been arrested on the way to their rendezvous in one of those pointless raids that were so much a feature of the times. For three weeks she and a hap­hazard collection of unfortunates scooped off the streets had been kept behind barbed wire in a detainment camp near Chudvo. From there, some wretches were marched off to permanent im­prisonment or death, others, arbitrarily, were released, given back their ragged bundles and sent on their way.

Niannka was released but when she reached Chudvo station to meet her employers, the Grazinskys had gone.

“So I went home, Baryna,” said Niannka now, shrugging aside the ten-day journey in an unspeakable train across a war-torn country, the trek across the mountains without food. Her relatives were not over­joyed to see her but Niannka commandeered an adjoining cave, stowed her bundles and prepared to wait till the Little Father should be back on his throne and the Grazinskys return.

It was a hard time, she said, but she had done what she could to make herself useful in the village.

Then one day a party of English with mules and porters had come to the village and, leading them, a tall man like a stork who had begun to ques­tion her. At first she had laughed so much at his extraordinary Russian that she couldn’t hear what he said, but when she gathered that he knew where the Grazinskys were she stopped laughing very soon.

“Even so, I was not stupid,” she said, tapping the side of her nose. “‘How do I know you are telling me the truth’?’ I said to him.”

But then, continued the old woman, he had described the Grazinsky family in such amazing detail that her doubts were soon stilled.

So, as soon as she had gone to the monastery to thank St Nino, she had packed her belongings and prepared for the mule jour­ney across the valley to where she thought she could catch a train to England.

“So now 1 am here,” she finished, “and ready to work.” Her fierce eyes swept the tiny room. “But first, Baryna, I must ask for your forgiveness.”

And with tears springing to her eyes again she began to apologise. She had not, she said. been able to bring the Crown of Kazan. It was so cumber­some and heavy that it would certainly have attracted sus­picion so she had buried it under some rocks just before she reached her village. She could remember the exact spot and would take them there as soon as the Little Father returned if only the Baryna would not be angry. Everything else, of course, she had brought.

“Everything else?” said the Countess faintly.

Niannka bent down to the malodorous, mud-stained carpet­bag which had been lying like a sick animal against her skirts. Then she rose, carried it over to the green baize card table. and, watching in a silence that even embraced Miss Pinfold’s sister’s budgerigar, began to unpack the priceless jewels that Anna and her mother had thought were lost for ever.

Baskerville woke first on the morning of the wedding. Woke, stretched, yawned in the small room in the bachelor’s wing which Rupert still occupied for this last night. Woke and padded over to the two suitcases, strapped and labelled for Switzerland, and howled as dogs have howled at their masters’ luggage for centuries.

“You shall have it, Mr Proom. But I wonder if you are wise to take it in this way. If you are considering the purchase of a cottage for Mrs Proom, for example, it might be wiser—”

“It’s not for me, sir,” said Proom, shocked. “I’d never ask it for myself, sir. I can take care of myself and I know the health benefits of ginger.”

“For what, then?” asked Leo. surprised. “Or do you not wish to tell me?”

“IT isn’t that I don’t want to, sir. But . . . well, I have this plan and 1 don’t really want to involve anyone else. It’s a very . . . peculiar plan.”

“You are trying to help some­one else?”

“You could say that.” There was a pause. “Things couldn’t be worse at Mersham, sir. Lady Westerholme, well she’s at her wits’ end and Mr Rupert—His Lordship, I mean—I saw him in hospital when they first brought him over from France and he looked better than he does this morning. And Anna’s gone—”

Leo smiled. “You heard what happened at the ball?”

Proom inclined his head. “Yes, sir. The account gave great pleasure to all the staff. But it was what was done to Win,” he continued, “that made me think unything was worth trying.”

“Win? Who is Win?”

Proom told him the story, while Leo made Central Euro­pean noises of sympathy.

“If I tell you what I mean to do with it, sir,” said Proom, realising how unfair it was to ask for help without giving his confidence, “I’m afraid you’ll think I’ve taken leave of my senses.”

Carefully. much embarrassed by its theatricality, he explained his plan. When he had finished Leo looked at him incredulously.

“Your plan will not succeed, I think; there are too many people who will fail to act as you hope. But if it does, don’t you see, you are destroying also yourself? The financial con­sequences to Mersham would be disastrous.”

“I know, sir. But, well . . . I taught Mr Rupert to ride a bicycle. There wasn’t the fuss made over him that there was over his brother, God rest his soul, but there’s no doubt which was the finer gentleman. And seeing him like this . . .”

There was a pause. Then Leo nodded. “You shall have the money, Mr Proom. Immediately. And in cash.”

Anna, meanwhile, was fine. She was very well. She had, as she frequently informed Pinny. never felt better.

“I don’t doubt it, dear,” said Pinny. “All I said was that I wish you’d eat something. You’ve been home nearly twenty-four hours and you haven’t touched a thing.”

Anna gazed obediently at the breakfast table set out in the little parlour, took hold of a piece of toast and conveyed it to her mouth.

“It doesn’t go down,” she said in a puzzled voice, exactly as she had done when she was five years old and sickening for quinsy.

Pinny’s heart contracted with pity and helplessness. From Anna’s account of Mersham, which seemed to be inhabited by absolutely everyone except its owner, she had drawn her own conclusions.

“I have been thinking,” said Anna. “I believe it would be best if I went to Paris. Kira has said she can find work for me in her salon — selling perfumes. It would,” she added bleakly, “be very interesting.”

Since none of them had the fare to Pimlico, let alone to Paris, Pinny felt free to agree.

“Ah, no, my little flea,” said the Countess, patting her daughter’s hand. “Paris is so far! Something will come along, you’ll see. Dounia has a new plan,” she continued, referring to her unquenchable sister-in­1,,w. the Princess Chirkovsky. “We are to make much Krass in Miss King’s kitchen—she has permitted it—and sell it to the teashops of Lyons, because no­body in England knows at all about Kvass—”

“Lucky for them,” said Pinny, under her breath.

“There are always good things happening,” said the Countess, determined to divert her daughter. “For example, have you heard about Pupsik?”

“No.” This time Anna’s smile was not assumed. The troubles of the Baroness de Wodska and her dog were close to her heart.

ELL,” said the Countess.

“The daughter of Colonel Terek has mar­ried a very rich man and, of course, the Colonel has always had a tendresse for the Baron­ess. So he sent Pupsik to a very expensive clinic where they have made the Röntgen rays and found absolutely clear the Ras­trelli diamond inside him.”

“That’s marvellous! So now they will be able to operate.”

“They will be able,” said the Countess. “But they will not. Because the Baroness does not permit that Pupsik should suffer and has taken instead a job in a laundry. But you see how there are always wonderful things?”

Leo Rabinovich was working in his study. He had retired from the rag trade but his business sense was inborn and since he and Hannah had come to the country, their wealth, due to his astute investments, had trebled. Now it seemed as if his fortune would go. not as he had hoped to further the interests of the Cohens, the Fleischmanns or the Kussevitskys. all of whom had sons whose mothers had watched Susie grow to marriageable age with unconcealed interest, but to the Byrnes, whose record in such matters as the burning of the synagogues in medieval York, for example. was far from im­pressive. Still, there it was. Tom was a nice lad and Susie’s very spectacle frames, since the ball. seemed to have turned to gold. A knock came at the door and the parlourmaid, round-eyed with wonder, announced Cyril Proom. Proom had come to the front door, a gesture which had brought beads of perspiration out on his forehead, and the maid had nearly fainted. Not because she had expected him to come by the back door either. She had simply expected him to be for ever at Mersham: immaculate, planted there.

The parlourmaid showed Proom in, Rabinovich looked up—and was at once attacked by an almost ungovernable lust. Hannah was a good house­keeper. The Towers ran well, the food was excellent, the rooms clean and well cared for. But Hannah, sensibly knowing her limitations, stuck to women ser­vants. and these she treated with the traditions that prevailed in the village homesteads of her youth. In the servants’ quarters of the Towers, nothing was secret: nothing, felt Leo Rabino­vich. was spared. The Rabino­vichs’ maids got the shingles and the measles and were nursed by Hannah. They were crossed in love and their sobs floated up to the study where Leo was trying to read his company reports. They dreamed about nesting crows and royal babies and fire engines and told him so while serving breakfast. They walked in their sleep. their aunts fell off bicycles, poltergeists infested their cousins’ cottages—and every disaster, minutely chron­icled, reverberated through the rooms and corridors of his house.

But if Proom had come to offer his services . . . Leo’s eyes momentarily closed and a series of dizzying vignettes flashed through his mind. Himself sit­ting at dinner while a totally silent footman, an English foot­man, inscrutable and powdered, approached with the Leber­nockerl and sauerkraut. Himself arriving after a day in the city, handing his hat and coat to Proom himself and receiving only a pleasant : “I trust you had a successful day, sir?”

But as he looked at Proom, standing respectfully before him in his unaccustomed lounge suit, Leo knew that all this could not —should not—be. For Proom belonged to Mersham.

“You will sit down, Mr Proom?” Rabinovich asked.

“No, thank you, sir.” The mere idea had made Proom flinch. He was extremely em­barrassed now, and, putting off the moment when he would have to make his request, he said : “May I be permitted to felicitate you on the news of Miss Rabin­ovich’s engagement? The event gave great satisfaction below stairs.”

“Thank you. How are things at Mersham?” enquired Rabin­ovich. Proom, in pursuit of his plans, made no attempt now at polite evasion.

“Bad, sir,” he said.

Rabinovich nodded. “You know we shall not be visiting any longer?”

“I had heard, sir. There will be a number of changes—and none of them for the better.”

Rabinovich waited. “I can help you, perhaps?”

Proom cleared his throat. “A long time ago, sir, you said that if I ever needed help I had only to come to you.”

Leo nodded. “I said it and it is true. Never shall I forget what you did for Susie.”

THE incident to which he referred had taken place shortly after they came to The Towers. They had all gone in a party to a local race meet­ing. taking along the twelve-year-old Susie. Susie had patiently watched three races after which she had drawn a book out of her pocket and settled herself on a folding stool to read. She was deep in her story when a Bugatti coupe, incompetently parked on a slope, began to roll towards her and it was Proom. standing guard over the picnic hampers, who had saved her.

Proom plunged. “I need a con­siderable sum of money, sir. Immediately. And in cash.”

He mentioned it and Rabino­vich’s bushy eyebrows shot up in surprise. The sum was one which would keep a man and his family in comfort for a year.

The wedding party were all assembled in the church. The organ played, the bride advanced. But the girl Rupert really loved was far away, and he was standing before the altar with a beautiful, but cold‑hearted fanatic. In just a few more minutes they would be man and wife.

The story so far:

Rupert. the Earl of Westerholme, was about to be married. The woman he really loved, though, was not his fiancée, the coldly beautiful heiress Muriel Hard­wicke. but Countess Anna Graz­insky, a penniless Russian aristocrat who was working as a housemaid at Mersham. Rupert’s country home.

Muriel, a follower of Dr Light-body’s teachings, had upset everyone at Mersham by her fanatical insistence on hygiene and healthy living. But Rupert felt that he could not break his word to her. The marriage had to take place.

At a ball given to celebrate the approaching wedding, Rupert danced one last waltz with Anna and persuaded her to confess that she returned his love. This memory. he thought. was all they would ever have. So he was not very pleased, later, when he dis­covered Anna in the arms of her handsome cousin. Sergei.

Now read on:

IN the small hours, after the ball. the weather broke. A niggling wind shuffled the leaves: clouds scudded in from the west: it began to rain.

To the girl stumbling in her torn sacking dress up the grassy path that led from Mersham woods to the kitchen gardens. the rain meant nothing. She was in the last stages of exhaustion: her hair filthy and matted, her bare feet bleeding: a frayed tape with a number stamped onto it still clung to her wrist. Every so often she would stop for breath and turn her bruised, vacant face towards the woods, listening for pursuit, before she was off again, and as she ran she sobbed continuously.

She had found it. With a last desperate effort she leant across the water butt and tapped once on the pane of glass behind which Mrs Park lay sleeping, before she slithered, unconscious, onto the cobbles.

Win had returned.

“There’ll have to be an enquiry, Rupert.- the distraught dowager said to her son. “Dr Marsh says there’s no doubt Win’s been seriously ill-treated. It must be an absolutely diabolical place—,. she was dressed in sacking, liter­ally. She’s half starved. too, and terrified. If you go up to her, even though she’s barely con­scious she puts up her arms as though she expects to be hit. I’m going to get it closed down if it’s the last thing I do. And Rupert. you must speak to Muriel. The ,servants were upset enough about Anna’s going and though it’s noble of her it’s quite unnecessary because Minna asked her to stay and the Rabinovichs also . . .”

“Noble’?” Rupert’s voice tore at the dowager’s raw nerves like sandpaper. “That’s rich! That’s very rich! Anna hasn’t gone alone. I assure you. She’s eloped. I found her in the garden carrying on like a guttersnipe with one of the chauffeurs.” “The chauffeurs?” The dow­ager’s brow cleared. She smiled. “Oh, yes, I forgot you weren’t there when that came out. It seems that the Nettlefords’ chauffeur was her cousin Sergei, the one she’s so fond of! You can imagine how Honoria carried on when she found she’d  let a perfectly good prince get away from her girls.-

“I see. That explains it.” Rupert’s voice was grimmer than ever. “Well, they should make a very handsome couple—and at least we’re spared the strain of having our coals carried up­stairs by a princess.”

Very late that night. Proom. on his last rounds, found a light still burning in the Gold Saloon and went to investigate.

Lying sprawled on a sofa, his head thrown back against the cushions, one arm flung out—was His Lordship. His breathing was stertorous: the decanter of whisky on the low table beside him was empty.

For a long moment, Proom stood looking down at his master. Then he leant forward to shake him by the shoulder. Whereupon the Earl opened an unfocused eye, pronounced, with perfect clarity, a single word—and at once passed out again. “Tut.” said the butler, express­ing in the only way he knew his deep compassion.

Then he went downstairs to order James to come and help him carry His Lordship to bed. On the following day. the last before the wedding, Mr Proom received a telephone -call. It was from the stationmaster at Maidens Over and informed him that a family by the name of Herring had been appre­hended while trying to cheat the Great Western Railway of the price of two tickets from Bir­mingham New Street.

“Where are they now?” asked Proom when he had digested this piece of information. “They are locked in my office. Mr Proom. pending fur­ther investigations. What would you wish me to do with them?” “If you would be so kind as to keep them there, Mr Fernby,” said Mr Proom. “Just keep them there. On no account let them out till I arrive.”

“It will be a pleasure. Mr Proom.- said the stationmaster. But when he had replaced the receiver. Proom did not go to find the Earl or the dowager. Instead he stood for a long time lost in thought. Mr Proom remembered Melvyn Herring. Lady Westerholme’s black sheep of a nephew: he remembered him very well . . .

Presently Proom went to find James to tell him that he would have to deputise for a few hours, and then to Mr Potter to ask if he could borrow a car.