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.