Death of a Delft Blue

CHAPTER FIVE

A Dinner in North Norfolk

‘My food was plain, but always varied and wholesome, and the good red wine was admirable.’

Samuel Butler

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A considerable amount of work awaited Dame Beatrice and Laura on their return to England, and for two or three weeks they lived and were kept busy at the Kensington house and at Dame Beatrice’s London clinic. The arrears of secretarial work were cleared up eventually by Laura and then she learned that the tiresome case on which her husband had been engaged for some months had been resolved and that he was due for leave. Upon being apprised of this fact, Dame Beatrice opted for Laura’s immediate return to the Stone House in Hampshire, where Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin could join her while they planned how most enjoyably to spend the free time offered to him.

‘And leave you here on your own?’ demanded Laura.

‘Although, like Katisha, I may well be sufficiently decayed,’ retorted Dame Beatrice, ‘I am not physically inert, mentally deranged or spiritually stagnant. I shall manage very well for a week or two. Moreover, as your son’s school holidays are imminent, you may direct him to proceed hither, and I will do what I can to entertain him and keep him out of your way for a week or two.’

‘You spoil him.’

‘No, I do not. I feel that Hamish benefits from my tutelage. Besides, Carey will invite him to stay on his pig-farm. Hamish loves pigs and is very good with them. Denis will be there, and so will Jonathan, Deborah and their twins, besides Jenny’s own couple of children. There will be plenty for Hamish to do, and that, as you well know, is the agreed formula for a child’s health and happiness. Nothing distresses me more than to hear a whining little boy (girls are not so prone to this particular malady or maladjustment) begging his parents to tell him whether there is not anything he can do. It is a serious malaise, and I do feel most strongly…’

‘All right, you win,’ said Laura. ‘And thanks,’ she added. ‘It will be rather nice to have Gavin to myself for a bit. Besides, I expect he’s tired. It’s been the brute of a case, I believe.’

So Laura betook herself to Hampshire. After a hectic week in London (during which he visited London Airport, spent a day in the Science Museum, went to two plays, two films, two restaurant lunches, one restaurant dinner, was given a tape recorder and chose a dozen ‘pop’ records) her son was driven to the village of Stanton St John in Oxfordshire, there to spend a blissful couple of weeks on Carey Lestrange’s pig-farm.

‘Pigs,’ he wrote to his mother, ‘are quite heaven.’

‘So I suppose they do have wings, after all,’ said his father, when Laura passed him their son’s letter. ‘Lewis Carroll seems to have been uncertain about it, but Hamish has clinched the matter.’

They spent an idyllic holiday, riding, walking and driving in the New Forest, and in Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. They also spent one unforgettable day with their son.

‘It’s not that I want you,’ said Hamish, ‘but you may as well see me in action.’ He released a year-old Landrace boar and gave it a playful slap on the hindquarters before he ran away. The boar galloped after him, tried to run between his legs and screamed with delight as it sent him sprawling. Hamish got up and chased the animal. When it turned on him, he tore away again. Carey came up and joined Laura and Gavin.

‘I don’t worry at all about Hamish, but is it all right for the boar?’ asked Laura. ‘He seems rather excited, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes, but Kelvedon King Arthur likes a game. I’m keeping him off service for a bit. He damaged himself a little at the last one, and fooling about like this with Hamish keeps him interested and lively. That boy is a born pigman.’

Laura expressed delight. Her husband guffawed. Carey collected the boar and shut him up again. Hamish dusted himself down and joined them. He wore a self-satisfied smile.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How did I do?’

‘Trot up to the house, old man,’ said Gavin. ‘The postman was in the lane as I came along.’

‘A postal order from Mrs Dame,’ said Hamish. ‘I was expecting it. She said she thought she could sell my golden hamsters for me, and I expect she’s done it. She’s awfully gifted, isn’t she?’

His elders declined to reply, so he trotted off, fully aware of his own grace, beauty and strength.

‘I don’t know!’ said Laura, with a groan. ‘He gets more and more dreadful every day!’

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Gavin.

‘Very much all right,’ said Carey. ‘If you don’t like him, why didn’t you have a girl?’

‘I wouldn’t know how to bring up a girl,’ said Laura.

‘Well, you don’t bring Hamish up. He brings himself up,’ said her husband. ‘And not making at all a bad job of it, either,’ he added, watching his son’s progress towards the house. ‘Hope he gets his postal order all right. If not, we’ll have to give him one.’

‘Oh, Mrs Croc. spoils him,’ said Laura, crossly, ‘and so do you!’

‘With the result that when, in the years to come, he gets into all the scrapes a young man is heir to, Aunt Adela will haul him out of them by the scruff of his neck and a few words that will inevitably blister his ears,’ said Carey, ‘and I’m all for it. She has a wonderfully good influence on him.’

Hamish capered up to them, an envelope in each hand. He gave one to Laura and then, flourishing the other, performed a silent war-dance.

‘May I open it?’ he said politely to Laura, when she had read her own letter and was scowling thoughtfully at it.

‘Eh?’ she said, coming to. ‘Yes, of course. Why do you ask?’

‘Because I saw yours was from Mrs Dame, too, so I thought perhaps you’d rather discuss yours first.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve a few manners after all!’

‘You shock me, Mamma,’ replied Hamish, seriously. ‘Did you suppose you had begotten a monster? That’s the sort of thing old Caveat says to us in R.E. at school. He’s always talking about begottings and reading them to us out of the O.T.’

‘Begettings.’ said Gavin, taking the letter which Laura handed to him.

‘Actually, begattings,’ said his son. ‘You know…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gavin, hastily cutting short the genealogical tables of the patriarchs. ‘Read your letter and then trot along to the village post-office and cash your postal-order. What do you intend to do about this?’ he added to his wife as he handed back the letter she had passed to him. Laura drew her brows together.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’re both invited and it would make a couple of days out. What do you think?’

‘So long as Grandmother Rebekah is going to be there, I can’t wait to get started,’ replied Gavin. ‘On the other hand… well, we don’t get very much time to ourselves, and now that we’ve paid this duty visit to Hamish, I wondered whether, perhaps, a bit of peace and quiet, far from the madding crowd, and all that…’

‘Say no more,’ said Laura. ‘About dining out I’m like P. G. Wodehouse’s vicar on the subject of orphreys — I can take dinner parties or I can leave them alone. Let’s ditch this one. I’d much rather we did.’

Dame Beatrice, therefore, with a mental commendation of their good sense, and driven by her impeccable chauffeur George, went to Norfolk without Laura and Gavin, and arrived at Bernard van Zestien’s square-built seventeenth-century mansion at six o’clock on the evening of the proposed festivity. This, she had been informed, was to be held in celebration of the engagement of Binnie to Bernardo, an arrangement with which (so Binnie informed Dame Beatrice when she had conducted her to her room) Granduncle Bernard was exceptionally well pleased.

‘Such a relief,’ prattled Binnie, before leaving Dame Beatrice to dress for dinner, ‘because one never knows exactly how the old darling is going to take anything! I could give you dozens of instances. He’s quite, quite unpredictable. Oh, well, I suppose Bernardo is certain now to get most of the money. I shall have to insist on a marriage settlement, or whatever it is, shan’t I? After all, I am a relation, too, and actually a bit nearer the throne than Bernardo. But, of course, Granduncle would never leave any money to a girl.’

‘Excuse me, miss,’ said an elderly maid who had been deputed to look after Dame Beatrice during her stay in the house. ‘Perhaps Madam should get on. I have drawn the bath, madam.’

‘Oh, of course! Sorry!’ said Binnie, beating a hasty and undignified retreat. ‘Be seeing you, Dame Beatrice.’

‘I have known Miss Binnie since childhood, madam,’ the abigail observed when, a little later, she was arranging Dame Beatrice’s hair. ‘And when you’ve known them as children, you cannot hardly credit they’re grown up. Miss Binnie and Master Florian have lived here for more years than I care to count. Their father and mother own hotels in Scotland and it seem they thought hotel life was no life for children to lead — not permanent, that is — and I must say that, in my opinion, most thinking people would agree with them. Hotel life is unnatural. Everybody behave quite different to what they would in private. I wholly think children would grow up with false ideas, don’t you?’

‘You are a Norfolk woman, then,’ said Dame Beatrice, avoiding the question.

‘Oh, yes, madam. Born and bred in Holt, where my son go to the school. Gresham’s School that do be called. The main part is out on the Cromer Road. You may have seen it.’

‘Your son is studying science, then, among other subjects? I understand that the school obtains excellent examination results, and particularly in science.’

‘He’s a clever boy and a good boy. That’s why I go on working. His father’s in a good job, but what my boy need he’s going to have, although I like to keep it dark that I’m in service. His father work in Cromer, so that’s where we fare to live. We leave Holt as soon as we hear he get the scholarship, not to stand in his way.’

Dame Beatrice had often wondered whether this kind of self-sacrifice by parents on behalf of their children was justifiable, but she supposed that it was their own business. At half-past seven she went downstairs to the dining-room for cocktails, and had a chat with her host before dinner.

Leyden Hall, in spite of its Dutch name, had been built by an unnamed English architect in the late Jacobean period and had sustained and absorbed some alterations in the year 1670 when it had changed owners. The staircase, broad and handsome, was uncarpeted to display the shallow oak treads. Heraldic devices, borne on shields carried by black, improbable-looking lions, adorned the newels.

A broad window on the landing provided a fine view of the gardens and lake, and magnificent trees screened an expanse of pasture for cattle. To gain the dining-room Dame Beatrice had passed under an arch in an over-decorated stone screen, and found herself opposite the front door and in a spacious vestibule from which the dining-room and the library opened on her right and the gun-room and an entrance to the housekeeper’s room and the servants’ quarters on her left.

The door to the gun-room, an apartment no longer used for its original purpose, but as an adjunct to the dining-room, was open, and there was the sound of many voices. As the party was to number sixteen, and since all but herself were, in some degree, related, the noise seemed only natural. Above the general family din, she could distinguish the screaming tones of Grandmother Rebekah Rose and the resonant voice of Bernardo. She supposed that the usual verbal sparring-match was in progress, a supposition which was borne out when she entered the room. Florian, she saw, was among those present. So were his relations from Amsterdam. Florian’s superb head was heavily bandaged and there were bluish shadows under his hyacinth-blue eyes. He was pale.

Dame Beatrice, the physician uppermost in her at the sight of the injured boy, went over to him.

‘The barrel-organ was great fun,’ she said, ‘but what have you been doing to yourself since?’

Florian touched the bandages on his head.

‘This?’ he said. ‘Oh, I had a silly accident about a week ago. I suppose the maids got excited about having so many people in the house. Usually there are only Granduncle, Binnie and myself. Anyway, somebody must have left a great lump of floor-polish on the stairs outside my room, and I was making rather rapidly for the bathroom on the floor below when I took a most terrible toss and hit my head. Luckily it didn’t kill me. Nobody will own up to having left any polish on the stairs, needless to say. As it happened, I’d been trying putting on my face-towel as a turban and I thought it looked rather good. Well, I had my bath-towel over my arm and my sponge-bag in the other hand, so, when I slipped, I was a bit helpless, you see. According to the doctor, my turban probably saved my life. As it was, my head took a pretty good bashing. Everybody was much excited and alarmed.’

He seemed delighted to have been the centre of so much attention, but Dame Beatrice was not equally pleased. Servants, even incapable ones, do not leave ‘great lumps of floor-polish’ on uncarpeted wooden stairs. A malicious practical joke seemed much more likely. She gazed around her. Nobody present, with the possible exception of the volatile Binnie, seemed capable of perpetrating a practical joke, and, surely, even Binnie would have realised that this particular trick was highly dangerous.

She looked at Bernardo, at the moment in high argument, as usual, with his Jewish grandmother. This time it was in connection with his forthcoming marriage to Binnie, a project of which she disapproved for reasons which she again proceeded to voice.

‘Maybe you marry the money, but where do you get this wedding of the Dutch Reformed Church?’ she yelled.

‘Grandfather van Zestien wants it that way, darling. And if I am to marry the money, as you so charmingly put it, I must marry in the Dutch Reformed Church. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Should be by the synagogue with you!’

‘At the synagogue. But you forget, dear heart, that I am of mixed blood. Only half of me is Jewish. My mother is Dutch, remember.’

A fair-skinned, round-faced, middle-aged woman interrupted the discussion.

‘Go away, Bernie.’ she said, in a commanding voice and with a slightly guttural accent. ‘Make yourself useful.’

‘Very well, Mamma,’ said Bernardo. He saw Dame Beatrice looking at him, went forward at once, greeted her charmingly, led her to Bernard van Zestien and Binnen and then went to the side table to bring her a glass of sherry.

Dame Beatrice had met her host upon arrival, but had had no opportunity to sum him up, since Binnie had almost immediately insisted upon showing her to her room, babbling that Dame Beatrice had had a very long journey and must be very tired. Dame Beatrice, who had had a smooth and comfortable journey from London to Norfolk, had lunched at an hotel in Norwich, and enjoyed an early but leisurely tea in Cromer, and who, in any case, scarcely knew the meaning of the word fatigue, had suffered herself to be led away. Her host, she had been at once aware, found conversation with a stranger somewhat difficult. He was a bald-headed, eagle-beaked old man to whom years of association with Jewish diamond-merchants had given something of an Hebraic appearance and courtly, slightly exaggerated manners. Unlike most of his Jewish friends, however, he was almost tongue-tied, and Dame Beatrice had felt him sigh with relief to see the back of her for an hour or so before dinner.

Now, however, supported by his sister Binnen, his daughter Maarte (Bernardo’s mother) and her handsome Jewish husband, Sigismund, he seemed at ease and contrived to make conversation.

‘We are having this little party,’ he said, ‘to wish well the young people who are to be married, and I take this opportunity, Dame Beatrice, to invite you to the wedding. This shall be in Holland, my country, and in a Protestant Church. The date I will let you know when it is fixed. There are many arrangements for a marriage.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Bernardo’s father. ‘It is so. You will be most welcome, Dame Beatrice — most welcome!’

‘And now,’ said Binnen, ‘we must find Florian a girl. It is high time for all our young people to be married.’

Florian, who was standing near at hand with his sister Binnie and their mother and father, heard his name and turned round, glass in hand.

‘What was that?’ he asked. Old Bernard chuckled.

‘Your grandmother is arranging for your wedding, mijnheer,’ he said. Florian disfigured his beautiful visage with a wolfish grin.

‘May the gods bless it!’ he retorted; and very deliberately he poured his wine on to the carpet. There was a wail of reproach from Rebekah.

‘Such wicked!’ she screeched. ‘Waste of the wine! Mess of the carpet! Aubusson?’ she added keenly, addressing Bernard. He smiled and nodded. Binnie rang the bell for a maid and a cloth to mop up the sherry. Rebekah seized the cloth from the maid, knelt down and, while mopping up, subjected the carpet to a keen and knowledgeable scrutiny. ‘You have been done,’ she announced. ‘Made in Brussels. Modern. Not bad. Not Aubusson. I will offer two hundred pounds.’

‘So it is Aubusson,’ muttered Bernardo to Binnie, who giggled wildly. She caught her brother’s hostile eye and began to choke. Bernardo patted her gently on the back. Giggling and choking at one and the same time, she changed suddenly to tears and ran out of the room. Rebekah looked at the door through which Binnie had just passed. Then she turned to Bernardo.

‘So she is pregnant, no?’ she demanded. The situation was saved by the butler, who announced that dinner was served. The company, shepherded by Binnen, were shown to their seats in the dining-room. There was a name-card opposite each place. Evidently the dinner was to be a formal occasion of a kind, although not entirely so, as was evident from some of the seating arrangements.

Bernard took the head of the table and Binnen the foot. On Bernard’s right was his daughter Maarte, Bernardo’s mother, on his left was Binnie and next to her Bernardo had been placed. Rebekah sat next to her sparring-partner and Derde was on her left. He was flanked by Dame Beatrice herself, who was upheld also by his brother Sweyn. Flora, the mother of Florian and Binnie, sat on Binnen’s right, and that concluded one side of the table.

On the opposite side, Sigismund sat next to his wife, then came Opal, partnered by Florian, who separated her from her sister Ruby. Frank, Binnen’s son, who was also Flora’s husband and the father of Florian and Binnie, sat between Ruby and the quiet, svelte Petra, who thus was on Binnen’s left.

‘Be prepared for my father to say grace,’ murmured Sweyn, as he drew out Dame Beatrice’s chair. Grateful for the hint, Dame Beatrice was fully prepared for the spate of Dutch which preceded the serving of the meal.

‘In the Netherlands, my country,’ announced Bernard van Zestien, raising his head, ‘I serve and eat according to our customs. In England, things are different. I am now following Parson Woodforde’s diary.’

‘Not pig!’ screamed Rebekah. ‘You know I do not face pig, neither Bernardo nor my son Sigismund.’

‘What a compliment!’ muttered Bernardo. Aloud he added, ‘If I remember my Parson Woodforde, darling, there will be so much choice that you can eat nothing but fish, if that is what you want. But don’t be such a hypocrite, sweetheart. You haven’t bothered about kosher food for centuries. What about…’

‘No!’ shrieked his relative. ‘I was drunk. It was bad champagne. You are not to say!’

‘All right. I don’t let down my nearest and dearest in public.’

Rebekah stared resentfully at the plate of soup which was placed before her. Then she sniffed at it disdainfully.

‘Out of season,’ she said. ‘Is a wintry dish, no? Inherits pork fat, bacon — who knows what?’ She pushed her plate aside.

‘Never mind, dearest,’ said Bernardo. ‘You can have a nice raw herring instead.’

‘Is to make up to me for losing on mine proteins?’ yelled Rebekah. ‘I fall for soup!’ She seized her plate and hurriedly caught up with the other diners. ‘Now perhaps I have your raw herring, isn’t it? So eat the nuns in Belgian convents,’ she added, with deep resentment.

‘Tasty, nourishing and cheap,’ said Bernardo. ‘Ever eaten rollmops, by any chance, dearest?’

His relative picked up a piece of bread and smacked it into his ear, and, apart from this, the meal proceeded according to plan.

‘We have from Parson Woodforde,’ announced Bernard van Zestien, ‘the account of a meal for the year 1788. We did not take fish with oyster sauce, but, apart from that, the menu stands just as he made it.’

‘Impossible!’ moaned Rebekah. ‘Is all pork!’

‘No,’ said Bernard, bending upon her his benign, shortsighted gaze. ‘There is pork, of course. I do not think any eighteenth-century menu could be without it. But there is also boiled beef, hashed turkey, mutton steaks, roast wild duck and fried rabbit. There is also…’

‘So I eat this infected rabbit, this mix-whatever-it-is!’ shrieked Rebekah. ‘I do not choose to obtain my diseases from rabbits!’

‘Of course not,’ said Bernardo, in dangerously quiet tones. ‘You obtain your diseases from over-eating and over-drinking, my dear. Now you jolly well eat boiled beef, hashed turkey, and roast mutton, and don’t be silly.’

The dinner ended with Parson Woodforde’s dessert of olives, almonds, raisins and apples. Of these Rebekah partook happily and rose, with the rest, to toast the newly-engaged couple. Her only comment was to the effect that her late husband would not have approved of mixed marriages and that King David’s peccadillo was entirely owing to Bathsheba. ‘Her fault, washing herself in public, so would nobody nice,’ said Rebekah, with authority.

‘Yes, Uriah was a bit of a twerp,’ said Bernardo. ‘After all, he could have opted out of that battle. He was a Hittite, and the Hittites were a damn’ sight more civilised than the Jews of the same era.’

‘In subjection! In subjection!’ shrieked Rebekah. ‘The Jews are always in subjection!’

‘He wasn’t a Jew, dear,’ said Bernardo. ‘In the words of Bessie Shimmelfarb, give way just a little. In my words, for God’s sake shut up! You sound a complete old moron, and I’m ashamed of you.’

Few, perhaps, except Dame Beatrice, realised the depths of affection and family pride which obtained between the two contestants. Rebekah glared at her critic and Bernardo peeled an apple with an air of complete detachment. He put two pieces on Rebekah’s plate, grinned at her and then, taking up one of the pieces, he bit into it and offered her the rest.

‘So you give me best, and so you should,’ she shouted. ‘You are Adam and Eve, isn’t it?’

‘Scholars seem doubtful whether the fruit of the Garden of Eden was an apple, darling. Personally, I think a pomegranate would be nearer the mark,’ said Bernardo.

‘Those seeds? So shall cause appendicitis, isn’t it?’ screamed his relative. ‘Did Adam have appendicitis?’

‘Well, he did lose a rib. I wonder whether that made any difference?’

‘So not nice! You are not nice!’ shrieked Rebekah. ‘Now we shall change the subject. I look around this room, and what am I seeing?’

‘An ass-head of your own,’ muttered Bernardo. Rebekah took no notice.

‘I see upon the wall,’ she announced, ‘picture from English artist Romney, representing previous owner of this house. Is inferior copy. I offer twenty pounds.’

‘You stick to diamonds,’ retorted Bernardo. ‘You think you understand pictures? Gorblimey! Besides, that picture has been promised to me for a wedding present.’

‘I like you to have my twenty pounds. You are not forgetting the diamond ram you promised me?’

‘I promised you nothing!’

‘For my birthday, yes, you did!’

‘I’ll buy the ram if you’ll buy the thicket.’

Rebekah looked at him suspiciously. Then she said, ‘I am like King Saul. I also am among the prophets. You and I shall be finding ourselves among the thicket and it will be a long time before we are getting out of it. Put that in your pipe, silly boy!’

‘Don’t smoke a pipe,’ said Bernardo.