The registers were never called, the easy-going staff being content to cast a non-militant eye over the class, put a black zero against the names of any absentees and fill in all the red markings on Friday mornings while the school was at hymn practice in the hall with the head teacher. It was not a school which gained university scholarships, but nobody had told Bluebell that, and, as the school was in a town fifteen miles away and she had no car, she had made no enquiries, content to thank God for the school bus which made farepaying for Gamaliel unnecessary.
Only to Garnet did the lad ever unburden himself and only occasionally at that. He would sit on Garnet’s bed while the novelist tapped away at a typewriter set on a table in the window and remain there, silent and unwinking as a statue, for perhaps a couple of hours or more. When Garnet knocked off work they would drink beer together, eat ginger biscuits and sometimes talk, sometimes not. Gamaliel had taught Garnet to swim. In return, Garnet had dedicated a book to him: To my splendid friend, Greg Ubi.
Gamaliel had not read the book, but in his own room he mouthed the dedication over and over again. As neither Parsifal nor Bluebell ever read Garnet’s books, they never asked who Greg Ubi was.
On the other side of the hills, high up, since it was built on top of the cliffs although some fifty yards inland, stood the rambling, somewhat decrepit Edwardian house known as Campions. Here lived the rest of Romula’s relatives, Rupert Bosse-Leyden, his wife Diana and their twelve-year-old twins Quentin and Millament, when the last-named were not away at boarding-school.
There was nothing unusual about the house except that it stood on land belonging to the National Trust. Rupert and Diana lived rent-free in return for keeping the environs free of holiday makers’ litter and the surrounding footpaths clear so that the public could have access to the cliffs and the impressive and beautiful views.
To help with the work involved, the occupiers gave free lodging at Easter to students who were willing to lend a hand with clearing and opening up woodland paths and in summer by going out early in the morning tidying up cans, bottles, cartons and paper left by holiday visitors. They also good-naturedly helped with the household chores and exercised the owners’ three dachshunds.
At other times of the year Diana was bored. She had never wanted children and when, in the second year of marriage, she produced twins, she was highly resentful of having to tend two babies instead of one. After the children were old enough to be sent to boarding-school and she and her husband became more and more estranged, she began a flirtation, which developed into an affair, with Garnet Porthcawl. An affair, however, taken much more seriously by her than by him, for whereas Diana was frustrated and bored, Garnet was contented with his home life, got on well with his sister, loved Gamaliel and looked upon the weak and often peevish Parsifal with tolerance, if not with affection or respect.
Another reason for Garnet’s reluctance to be married was that, although his income was rather more than enough to support himself and contribute towards, the support of his sister, her husband and Gamaliel, he doubted whether he could stretch it sufficiently to support a wife as well, for, married or not, he had no intention whatever of deserting Bluebell and Gamaliel. He knew that Parsifal could do little for them.
Rupert’s estrangement from his wife had begun with her resentment at what had been a difficult birth of the (to her) unwanted twins, followed by the discovery that Romula, Rupert’s wealthy grandmother, far from forgiving him for his illegitimate origins now that he had legitimate children of his own, refused an invitation to his children’s christening and declined to see him when he called to remonstrate with her.
He earned a sufficient although not a considerable income by writing educational books, but his magnum opus was to be a work of the flora of South Cornwall, for which he sometimes enlisted the help of Parsifal, whose poetic wanderings occasionally produced fairly rare specimens of the local plants. To console himself for the breakdown of marriage, Rupert had what was supposed to be a platonic friendship with Fiona Bute. She would have been prepared to marry him if she had not felt that Romula would disown her if she did. Divorce from his wife, however, was not one of Rupert’s priorities.
It was not until they were nine years old that Quentin and Millament became aware of the strained atmosphere of the house. This had nothing to do directly with their actual age, but was due to their having been sent home from school in the middle of the spring term owing to an outbreak of infectious illness.
Suddenly the house was different. During the Easter and summer holidays there were the students, a father who liked children and would take them for walks in the woods, a mother who would put up packets of sandwiches and provide fruit and there were always dogs and puppies about the house and garden. At Christmas their adopted cousin Gamaliel, who had taught them to call him Greg Ubi, always came to stay and they went back with him to Seawards, that mysterious, exciting house, for the New Year and to finish the holiday.
But in the middle of the spring term it was as though a blight had settled on Campions. The weather was cold and wet, so that it was not possible to go out into the woods, there were no puppies to play with, the thoroughbred dachshund sire was out at stud, the bitch was heavy with her next consignment and was more or less in purdah, one of the maids was under notice of dismissal, the others were sullen because they were on her side and against Diana who had sacked the girl in a fit of petulance and knew it but would not retract, and as for Rupert, the children’s companion at holiday times, he was immersed in his writing.
Even Gamaliel’s company was denied them, for he still had to attend school. Moreover, his homework, however carelessly or badly he did it— and he refused to ask for help—occupied his evenings. The twins, however, were resilient. When the next school holidays came round, all was as before, and, at their age, they neither knew nor cared about the sympathies and antipathies of those in the family circle. They knew that they had a great grandmother whom they had never seen and a grandmother who paid occasional visits to Campions and brought sweets. They knew from her that she had fostered their father when Rupert was a boy, and had brought him up with her own two children.
They were well acquainted with Bluebell through Gamaliel, less so with Garnet. Of Parsifal they knew little, for he was not at ease in the company of children and was apt to make himself scarce when they paid visits to Seawards. His, however, was a presence they could easily dispense with. Bluebell, who was an excellent cook, fed them, Gamaliel was their play-fellow and Garnet was sometimes available to join in a game or tell jokes and show them card tricks. Parsifal was, for them, a redundant member of the household and, for his part, was content to be so. Whatever the weather, his daily walks grew longer when Quentin and Millament were in the house.
Chapter2
Family Dinner
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The task of arranging the seating had devolved upon Fiona. Romula had made only two stipulations. She would sit at the head of the table (Fiona had taken this for granted) and facing her at the foot was to be one of the men.
Fiona, in pursuance of her usual policy, sought out Maria for a consultation. ‘There are all sorts of things to consider,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to boob.’
‘For one thing,’ said Maria, ‘the two children must be placed side by side. They will be shy and awkward. They are at an in-between age. It would be unwise and unkind to separate them. Then their parents had better be near enough to them to tender advice and exercise authority if that is needed.’