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‘Quick Master Reginald back inside now out of sight’

The two figures running for the door of the turf shed. Luke tugging, kicking and pounding on the door frozen shut. Oaths turning the sky pink. A final thump of Darcy Dancer’s shoulder smashing it open. Banging it closed behind them. Peering out a cobwebbed window.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’m telling you Master Reginald, only a shotgun blasting a couple of times in each ear would put some manners on that black terror and then he’d eat you napkin and all.’

Darcy Dancer’s jacket hanging over the mighty beast’s one eye. That bucks its head left and right. And one’s best tweed coat goes fluttering down into the snow. Kern dodging and snapping around the stallion’s hoofs as it stands vertical on hind legs, bellowing, pawing at the sky. And lands again, feet asprawl on the snowy cobbles to turn looking around the yard. Just to see if there’s anything left to kill. A snort out its nostrils. A shake of its head at Kern, as it charges again. Another lash of its hoof at a limping Olav. Till its hind legs sending a lump of snow flying, the monster beast turns to gallop pounding away up the stable yard road. In a soaring leap clearing a five foot wall by two feet. Glistening black against the pearly parkland. Its legs reaching racing out into its snowy white miles of freedom.

Midnight Shadow

Would be

Better named

Morning Earthquake

4

A mild moist westerly wind fading the snow and ice away. Dripping from the trees. And the dining room ceiling. The moisture blackened roof slates drying a lighter blue. The drains and gutters gurgling. The front parkland glowing emerald green again in an afternoon sun. The unfrozen cows hauled with chains to the side of the field and buried.

Before the beams crack and walls finally crumble I thought that I would move into my mother’s apartments. Calculating to recline there of a morning on the soft satins of her chaise longue. My languorous limbs enveloped in my silk dressing gown. Where one could await the news of any new disaster in some comfort. Dear me, and how pathetically did one dream of such serenity. In the cock crowing silence, my head against a pillow, not a bother on my mind. And there deep in eiderdown ensconced, having breakfasted peacefully abed and one’s ablution hour over, to then, in the delicious pain pleasure throes of ennui, peruse the pages of some light and preferably silly novel. Populated with insufferably haughty top layer la de da people living in similar country houses but with unsimilar tiresome pursuits and debacles to mine own. Such as, while savouring biting into an unburned piece of toast slathered with a particularly tasty and unmouldy gooseberry jam, Dingbats went running through the halls screaming she’d been scalded with soup thrown at her by cook in the kitchen.

‘I am this minute scalded. I am this minute scalded to death.’

Then there appeared in what seemed nearly the next minute, an envelope clearly penned by Leila and delivered to me by an arm bandaged Dingbats with breakfast. She of course also wearing her expression of the most depressed of the apostles at the last supper. As well she might having forgotten napkin, the salt, the butter, cream and a cup to drink from. But did remember to make sure that nearly everything one touched was either tacky with honey or slippery with grease. I must confess I was so damn tempted to upend my tray and shout something quite rigorously untoward and blasphemous. But one could so plainly see the poor creature despite her big tits and fear of rats and dogs, had not more than five brain cells in her head.

‘Ah Mollie, I do think we are minus salt, butter, cream, a cup and saucer and napkin.’

‘Are they not there on the tray sir.’

‘No in fact apparently they are not there.’

‘O. I put them on I did.’

Clearly a ghost with wings had stolen them on the way from the kitchen and now one was going to spend enough time while my cold breakfast was getting ice cold, discussing it. And in one’s impatience one does do dastardly things. I pointed silently downwards to the kitchen. Suggesting Dingbats to go there. Before I much noisily rose from my bloody bed and booted her well larded arse stairwards. Damn insolent creature by the tone of her voice I knew was suggesting I could do without the salt, the butter, the cream and a cup to drink from. And one overheard her mumbling just as she was closing the door.

‘I haven’t had me own breakfast yet.’

Good lord, not back here long enough to catch my breath, with hardly a single moment of peace and with such brazen ungratefulness, one wonders why on earth I bother to stay. Debts mounting hourly. A most recent insalubrious communication from the local bank manager with clearly an increasingly careless regard for his social betters, demanding to see me. At least one will dig out a spoonful of this still lukewarm congealed porridge while I open this envelope addressed unmistakably under Crooks’ instruction.

Master Reginald,

c/o The Apartments of

Delia, Her Late Ladyship.

And well you might know he would choose to have such message written on one of the last few sheets of engraved notepaper left in the house. And that put into one of the last few engraved envelopes. And that sealed with my mother’s grandfather’s wax seal. With a coat of arms that one hates to admit this tender hour of the morning, may be quite bogus.

I beg to inform you kind sir that your obedient and humble servant is due to the recent apparition presently indefinitely indisposed.

CROOKS

Just as one needed, in the soothing interests of one’s spirit, some very top butlering these mornings, you might be damn sure that nothing of the sort could be expected. Having as I had just elaborately enumerated and posted new unbreakable rules for the household and estate. Instructing that only one pound of butter and one quart of cream be allotted per meal at servants’ meals. Of course including tea this still means four bloody pounds of butter, and one ruddy gallon of cream down the hatch, plus endless grumbling from the men in from the yard. That nothing of the kind could happen in my mother’s day. Further to which Sexton, of course enlightened me.

‘Ah there would be complaint no matter what but sure harmless enough are the passing remarks that you’re a Protestant alright, and next you’ll be counting out the raisins baked in the bread.’

One does shrink in horror at the bias of such bigoted words, but not much milk comes out of the udders of two dead cows, even Catholic ones. And unless I galvanize this mob into some semblance of corporate efficiency they’ll all be lucky to be eating potato and cabbage soup. Of course one is one’s own worst enemy. To feel abed of a morning that one’s blankets and counterpane somehow shielded one from the rigours of facing another day. Of turd congealed sewers. Of hungry coughing sick and dying animals. Of fences broken. The muddy deep ruts of carts where timber had been stolen. Every tool if not broken, twisted out of shape. Or worse, lost. Game poached. Beasts strayed. Or a neighbouring farmer’s cunningly trespassing cattle. And before one even arises to get out into the fields, so much internally is already amiss. A knock right now on the door. Dingbats with the missing items of my breakfast.

‘You’ve still forgotten the cream and butter Mollie.’

‘Ah sir it is the new kitchen rules to stop the wastage.’

‘Did you have cream and butter for your breakfast.’

‘I haven’t had me breakfast.’

‘Will you have cream and butter for your breakfast.’

‘I might.’

‘Well I might too, if you please.’

If nothing else, Dingbats’ four brain cells, recently five, clearly could energize enough to provide an instant countenance of insubordination. Flouncing about in her tracks, big tits shaking and closing the door behind her with far more than enough force to shut it. God knows what they were all doing in this house all the time I wasn’t here. Rereading Crooks’ message, one takes a damn poor view of his word indefinite. Find him in urgent hysterics blinded over another vision of my virginal mother draped in her array of pearls arisen from the dead. Better I suppose than finding him having abruptly terminated his employ by committing hara kiri in our butler’s suicide room. Where from whence Crooks now claims, the previous butler who had hung himself from the ceiling, came making a nightly ghostly appearance with ampoules of whisky. And as Sexton said to me in the garden.