When growing up, Aubrey had taken some time to realise that the whole city wasn't like this. Small things, like the shabbiness of the visiting knife grinder and wondering where he came from, had aroused Aubrey's curiosity and sent him out of Fielding Cross and into the sprawling streets of the city.
He'd discovered the vast Newbourne railway yards and the blunt engineers and navvies who worked there. He'd found the Narrows, Newpike and Royland Rise, each with their thriving communities so different from the gentility of Fielding Cross, and visited Little Pickling, Crozier, and even the Mire, despite its reputation.
The city was a grubby, brawling conglomeration, and Aubrey loved it, but Fielding Cross remained home.
The entrance of the Fitzwilliam residence was grand. A sandstone portico that would have done justice to a minor pagan god sheltered the door from the elements. The door itself was painted a glossy, dark blue. A bell pull on the wall didn't draw attention to itself, but was there for those who were brought up well enough to know what to look for.
Aubrey took a deep breath, bracing himself. It was always tense, returning home. Sometimes it was like entering a battleground and he knew he had to have his wits about him.
He reached out and rang the bell.
'Ah! Master Aubrey! Master George!'
The butler who answered the doorbell was tall, silver-haired and ruddy-cheeked. The fact that Aubrey had always thought he looked like a weary basset hound didn't detract from the affection Aubrey felt for him. 'Harris. Good to see you. Is he in?'
'Not yet, young sir. Something has come up in Parliament. The PM's called an early election.'
Aubrey whistled. 'An early election? Something must be afoot. When?'
'He's called it for just after the King's birthday.'
'Very clever. No doubt he hopes the goodwill from the King's Birthday procession will spill over to the election.' He shook his head. 'What about Mother? She's not at the museum, is she?'
'No, sir. She's bathing. She said she stank of formaldehyde and needed a good long soak before dousing herself with Padparadsha.' Harris said this with an impassive face, as if he were reporting on the weather. He did not have a high opinion of Lady Fitzwilliam's choice of perfume.
'Good. Good. George and I will be in the library.'
Harris looked as if he were about to say something, but simply nodded. He shut the door behind them before disappearing into the cloakroom. Aubrey stared at Harris's receding form, wondering what it was that he had been about to say.
When they entered the library, Aubrey found out what the butler's discretion had prevented him from mentioning.
Aubrey's grandmother was in the library.
Duchess Maria was sitting in a huge armchair, facing the door. The room smelled of old leather, cigar smoke and woollen carpet that's absorbed too much port and too many secrets.
Duchess Maria was over eighty years old, but her face was smooth and unlined. She was tiny, almost lost in the leather immensity of the chair. Her silver hair was arranged under a black snood and she wore black lace gloves on her long, thin hands. Her eyes were bright and attentive. Aubrey knew, from past experience, that those eyes didn't miss anything.
She didn't look surprised to see them, something Aubrey attributed to her legendary network of informers and spies. An image of Duchess Maria as a spider at the centre of a web stretching across the country and much of the world came to him and he shuddered.
He bowed and kissed her hand. She smelled of violets. 'Aubrey. You're too thin.'
She turned to George. George had learned enough to kiss the hand held out to him. 'George Doyle. It has been six months since I've seen you. You have grown.'
In someone else it would have been a cliché. In Duchess Maria it was a careful observation. 'Yes ma'am. Five inches in the last year.'
'Well done.' She turned her attention back to Aubrey. 'You didn't complete the training course today.'
'No, I didn't,' Aubrey said. Then he waited.
'I see. And you know that this will make it difficult for you to become an officer in the cadets?'
'Yes.' Aubrey kept his answers brief and, he hoped, not open to misinterpretation.
'You know that every Fitzwilliam male in the last two centuries has been a cadet officer at Stonelea School?'
'Yes.'
'So what do you have to say for yourself?'
Aubrey looked mildly at his grandmother, knowing that anger was not a useful reaction where Duchess Maria was concerned. 'I'm allowed one more attempt. I'll make sure I complete the course.'
Duchess Maria nodded. 'I see.' She turned back to George. Aubrey thought the smoothness of the action was like a swivel-mounted machine gun. 'Are you keeping up your cornet practice, George?'
It was an hour before they escaped.
'I feel as if I've just been over the Hummocks myself,' George said as he closed the library door behind them.
'You see why I don't much mind living at the school?' Aubrey said. 'Let's go to the billiards room.'
Aubrey enjoyed a contest. He always felt that he could make up for any lack of skill with a good grasp of tactics, strategy, and the weaknesses of his opponent. He had been playing against George in all manner of games since they were four years old, and despite George's easy co-ordination and strength, he usually managed to beat him.
Aubrey was ahead by a few frames when Harris found them. 'Dinner, sirs.'
Aubrey racked his cue. 'Lucky for you, George, that this table has just been relaid. I was just starting to get the feel of it.'
George shrugged into his jacket. 'I'm sure. A few more decades and I would have been begging for mercy.'
Aubrey laughed. 'Harris, are my parents seated?'
'They are, Master Aubrey.'
Aubrey sighed and his head drooped for an instant. Then he gathered himself. 'Tally-ho, then!'
Gaslights shed yellow softness on the dark, polished wood that was the dining room. Wood panels, wooden floor, immense wooden sideboards and mirrors with heavy wooden frames filled the room, leaving space for the large oval table in the centre. Aubrey had eaten a thousand meals in this room and had always wondered how many trees had gone into the making of the Fitzwilliam dining room. A small forest or two, he was sure.
Duchess Maria was motionless, while seated at either end of the table were his parents.
He looked at his mother, Lady Fitzwilliam. Masses of dark blonde hair were flung over her shoulders, eyes the colour of summer sky at midday, a face that the greatest portraitists would fight to paint . . . Only her sun-tanned skin prevented her from being universally acclaimed the foremost beauty in the land in an age when white skin was the hallmark of those who didn't have to work in the sun and who – therefore – came from the leisured classes.
Aubrey glanced at George. George's face was red and he wasn't looking at Lady Fitzwilliam. Anywhere else in the room, but not Lady Fitzwilliam. Aubrey knew that George had always been totally devoted to his mother, and that she was the only female who unsettled him. Agog, enraptured, in love, George was all of these things. Aubrey was sure his mother knew it, and she tolerated it with warmth, never embarrassing George or revealing she knew of his infatuation.