Ray, who must have been carefully briefed, slipped a halter over the pony’s neck and gave the end to me. I led it round the yard, and Grandad said we had made good friends. I was all choked up with excitement. Then he said, if I could tear myself away, we would come back in a little while, but first he had something else to show me. We put the pony back in the stable and went back to the house. And there on the dining-room floor — Mrs Keane must have been briefed too — was a new saddle, bridle, girth, stirrups, cap, boots …
I remember the smell of the new leather, the sun on the blue and red carpet. And feeling Grandad’s hand on my head as I knelt down to look at this hoard of gifts, and looking up and seeing him smile, and thinking, for some reason: He is as happy as I am, he is exactly as happy as I am.
On the table, laid for breakfast, was a huge vase of roses, and by my place was a little pile of envelopes. The top envelope was pale blue with strange stamps on it, and Grandad said I should open it first. Inside the envelope was a card and also a letter. It’s funny, I don’t remember what that letter said at all.
Then Mrs Keane brought in the breakfast, and Grandad said that after breakfast, which I couldn’t eat fast enough, we would go and see how good I was at riding. Then he would take me somewhere nice for lunch. But I must be careful not to eat too much because at four o’clock, of course, there was my tea party, all my friends from school were coming and Uncle Frank and Auntie Stella and their little daughter Carol. If it was fine, which it looked like being, Mrs Keane and Ray would put tables outside, and, of course, everyone would want to see my pony. But in the meantime shouldn’t we think up a name for him.
We called him Tony. Get it? Tony the pony.
You see, I was spoilt. I was a spoilt little brat. I was brought up like a princess in a palace and had everything I could ask for. Save, of course, a mother — and a father.
Palace? But you won’t quibble over a Queen Anne house with oak panelling and a gravel drive and a lawn with two cedar trees, and a walled garden with a pond and a yew-tree walk and an orchard and paddock, and a stable and stable yard, no longer used as such when Grandad became their owner, but reconverted just before my tenth birthday to accommodate a pony and, three years later, a horse. Called Hadrian. That’s palace enough when you’re ten years old and when — with the addition of a housekeeper, a chauffeur-cum-valet and the part-time presence of two gardeners — only you and your grandfather have the run of it.
Hyfield House, built in 1709 by Nicholas Hyde, Gent. Let’s face it, Doctor K, you can’t get that sort of thing over here. The genuine, historical, English thing. You know, Joe and I used to joke that if Hyfield ever really became ours, we wouldn’t have to look any further. It would just be the start. Some glossy advertising in the right places. One- or two-week rentals to rich and impressible Americans. The real, authentic, country-house experience.
Just a joke, of course. I said to Joe, You’re not hiring out my Hyfield, my childhood. Over my dead body.
Over Grandad’s dead body! Ha ha! But then, I guess they’d pay more, wouldn’t they? If they knew it was the former residence of Robert Beech, V.C., hero and true British gentleman. Some gory history. A ghost. And this is the very spot where …
Just a joke. We’d never have thought then that that was actually what Joe would be doing one day. Castles and manor houses. Up-market vacations. Be a squire or a laird. Take a break from the twentieth century.
Yet if you want to know, that’s how I used to think of Hyfield once. I had this thing about the past. It used to be a good refuge, once, the past. I used to clop across the stable yard on Tony, and later on Hadrian, and make-believe it was the reign of Queen Anne. I used to imagine I was Mrs Hyde, wife of Nicholas Hyde. Mistress of the manor.
Maybe that’s how I should begin. When I tell the boys. If I tell the boys. Let’s go right back to the very start, shall we? Once upon a time, in the reign of good Queen Anne … Can you picture it? The world is safe and small — it only stretches to the next hill! The sky is blue — of course it’s blue! But this is pure, clear eighteenth-century blue, and the white clouds that float across it aren’t just clouds, they are time passing very slowly, the way time once used to pass. The apples are ripening in the orchard, the stooks are standing in the field. In the yew-walk, arm in arm, Mr and Mrs Hyde (but let’s call them Beech) are strolling, she in her hooped dress and bonnet, he in his cocked hat and breeches. And all is as it should be …
I can’t think what it’s like now. With Frank there. They’ll have patched up the frontage and the porch. All weathered in — no trace perhaps.
The last time I saw it as it was, the last time I saw that old world, my past, was that Sunday, that very last Sunday. And I had actually come to say I didn’t want it. Chose a good time, didn’t I? I was quite sure — now the future was fixed: Joe, me, New York — that I didn’t want it. But by then it was almost understood between Grandad and me, almost expected, part of our little scheme of renunciation; and the real reason I was there that morning was to tell him something else about my future: that I was pregnant.
I wanted him to be the first to know. Got that? After Joe, I mean. Though I happened to know full well that Harry was, for once, in London right then, and it would — it should — have been the simplest thing to pick up the phone and say, Hi Dad, it’s me. Guess what?
Shit! The whole world got to know! In less than forty-eight hours the whole world could read — it made such good copy — that Sophie Beech was pregnant. And had only just –
And, yes, I thought it often afterwards: What had been the point? What had been the goddam point of telling him about the baby he was never going to see? Which turned out anyway to be two not one. But now I think: No, it’s the one thing I’m glad of. That at least he knew.
I said: ‘I’m going to make you a great-grandfather.’
It would have to have been a perfect spring morning. Warm enough to sit outside and everything suddenly in leaf. As if the whole place were saying: Are you sure? Don’t you want to think twice? In no time he had a bottle of champagne and two glasses on that little table out on the terrace. And I guess we were halfway through it before that other subject came up. I said, ‘Perhaps now’s the time —’ And he said, ‘I know.’ But I wanted to say it. I said, ‘It’s all right. I don’t want it. You know that. We know that. None of it.’ And he said, ‘Thank God.’ And let out a great rough chuckle of relief which sent the pigeons flapping off the orchard wall. ‘So Frank gets the lot. Let him have it. All of it. Let the company have it.’ He took a gulp of champagne. Then he said, ‘Now I’ve got something to tell you, Sophie. I’m getting out. Not just saying it this time. I’m actually at long last, officially, finally going to retire. Shall we drink to that too?’
Okay, Doctor K — so we should believe in fate? That kind of fate? And what was the truth? That he was seventy-three years old and BMC had been his life anyway? Or that it was a fifty-years-and-more pretence and he was just about to be a real man again?
I think of that photo. His face in that photo.
He poured the last of the champagne. Using his metal arm. A trick he liked. Look at my latest toy. I make a good robot, don’t I?
‘Have you told Harry?’
‘What do you think?’
He smiled. This was how it was between us when we talked about Harry.
‘Well, you’ll have a chance to tell him tonight. He’ll be here. You know — just passing through. Between planes. Why don’t you stay here tonight?’