Poor Buttercup. Cocktails were served in the Great Hall, footsteps clanging on the stone floor, swords glinting and tiny summer fires smouldering miserably in the cavernous fireplaces, and jollity was not the party’s most powerful note. Daisy and I had been helpless with giggles while dressing, lying on Daisy’s bed whooping and kicking our legs, but even we gulped and went quiet as we entered.
They had all got there before us and we had missed their names being announced so, although Buttercup flapped her hand at people and murmured Lady This and Mrs That – really her parents might quite reasonably have asked our finishing school for a refund – I never did get them straightened out. Besides, they had brought assorted daughters and chums so there were hordes of them in total. And the three men in dog collars, who added a surreal note, were no easier to distinguish. One would think that a Free Presbyterian, a Plain Old Presbyterian and a Catholic Priest would appear respectively as the Grim Reaper, more or less a vicar, and either a fat little man with a hip flask or a dashing prince in something purple, but here were three men with grey suits and pursed mouths and although one of them must be drinking lemonade to the other two’s martinis they were all drinking them out of cocktail glasses and with identical expressions of distaste.
I joined a group, taking a huge slurp from my own glass – delicious! – and began to listen. I imagine that either they thought I was one of the Dundas or Dalmeny ladies or they simply did not care, for they made no effort to tone their opinions down.
‘But it’s unchristian, my dear lady,’ said one of the ministers or the priest.
‘It’s pre-Christian,’ said a snooty-looking lady in a red dress.
‘Well, then,’ said another. There were puzzled looks all round. ‘I mean to say,’ she went on. ‘So is Mrs de Cassilis.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ I said.
‘My dear, haven’t you heard? She’s a’ – whisper – ‘Hebrew.’
‘A Hebrew?’ I echoed. ‘She’s from Hampshire. Oh, I see what you mean. No, no, no. That was her husband.’
‘Really?’ said the snooty lady turning to look at Cadwallader with deep interest. A maid had just given him a whispered message and as he swept out of the Hall to go and deal with it, he looked simply too Viking for words.
‘Not Cadwallader!’ I said, unable not to laugh at the idea. ‘I mean her first husband.’
‘First!’ spluttered the minister, possibly the priest, and took a restoring swallow from his glass.
‘A re-enactment of the pilgrimage would shift the whole thing on to a higher plane,’ said a young lady to my left. At the word ‘pilgrimage’, the minister – probably not the priest? – spluttered again and I took the opportunity of the hiatus while he was being banged on the back to detach myself and join another group.
‘Well, she says she’s a widow,’ someone was saying in poisonous tones, but she broke off upon seeing me. Clearly this one knew who I was. ‘My dear lady,’ she went on, ‘if this unpleasant episode goes ahead tomorrow after all, you’ll be able to see for yourself. It terrifies the children for one thing.’
‘Some of them,’ put in a gentle-sounding man in a pronounced Scottish rumble. This must be the Provost.
‘And those it doesn’t terrify are whipped up into a very unhealthy excitement by the whole proceeding.’
‘And the last thing we need,’ said a stout lady with a surprisingly squeaky little voice, ‘is to have the children as high as kites while their parents are too intoxicated to discipline them, wouldn’t you agree?’ She turned on me and caught me unawares.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve never seen it of course, but I believe there are games, aren’t there? Races and suchlike? And nothing works off excitement like running about in the fresh air, or so we were brought up to believe. I daresay it’s a fearfully old-fashioned idea these days.’
‘Precisely!’ said a tall man with an earnest face, marking his words with his glass and slopping a little. ‘Fresh air and healthful exercise.’ He looked around the gloom of the Great Hall as if ready to knock through a french window as he spoke. ‘The trouble with this district goes far deeper than the Burry Man once a year.’
One of the ladies could be seen to bristle and she made a crackling sound as she did so, telling me that although her cocktail dress was bang up to the minute her undergarments were still in the Edwardian era.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘Ghosts and monsters, lucky charms and who knows what superstitious nonsense,’ the tall man said.
‘Perfectly harmless fun,’ squeaked the stout lady. ‘No more to do with ghosts and monsters than dancing round the maypole or bobbing for apples. Perhaps when you have been in the district a little longer, Mr Turnbull…’ This quelled him. He smiled stiffly and walked off.
‘I had heard as much,’ said the crackling lady to his departing back. ‘Very peculiar ideas, I heard.’
‘And no reluctance to share them,’ said another.
I could not hear what was being said in all the other groups of people around the room but from the general tune of the talk – gossipy swoops over a deep hostile mutter – I saw that Buttercup’s cocktail party was going exactly as swimmingly as Daisy and I had predicted, so it was with some relief that I perceived Cadwallader beckoning to me conspiratorially from the half-open door.
He drew me out and shut the door softly behind us.
‘Come with me, Dandy,’ he said. ‘The plot thickens.’ He made towards the staircase and began to ascend. ‘I have a visitor,’ he went on as we felt our way up the worn stone treads to the drawing-room floor. ‘The Burry Man. And there’s something up that he won’t tell me but I’m hoping he’ll tell you.’
‘What about Buttercup?’ I said, loath to be drawn any further into the squabble.
‘What about what?’ said Cadwallader, but we had arrived at the library door and he did not pursue it.
I was half expecting a little green man covered in burdock seeds, I suppose, for it was a slight disappointment and relief to see standing in the middle of the rug, twisting his hat in large red hands, what looked like a perfectly ordinary farm-worker of about fifty, still in his breeches and collarless shirt although with his hair slicked down for this visit to the Big House.
‘Dandy, this is Robert Dudgeon. Carpenter and Burry Man. Robert: Mrs Gilver has come to help Mrs de Cassilis with the Fair and she’s very much looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.’
Mr Dudgeon touched his forehead but said nothing.
‘So,’ said Cadwallader in a hearty patronizing voice. ‘You’re not really going to let Mrs Gilver down, are you? Not to mention the rest of us?’
Mr Dudgeon shifted his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. He was in his stocking soles, presumably having left his workboots at the door on his way in, and I felt a stab of pity, for his obvious discomfiture could only be deepened by having to hold this interview with no shoes on.
‘I was so surprised when Mr de Cassilis told me the Burry Man still went on, Mr Dudgeon,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait to see it.’
‘Well now there, madam,’ said Robert Dudgeon. ‘I’m sorry about that then, but I’ve just been telling Mr de Cassilis here I can’t do it. It’s a shame, but there it is.’
‘Yes, but why?’ said Cadwallader, clearly very exasperated.
‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid, sir. You’ll just have to take my word for it there.’
‘Now look, Dudgeon,’ said Cadwallader with a new note in his voice. ‘Obviously someone’s got to you’ – Mr Dudgeon’s head jerked up – ‘and I want to know who it is and what he said and then I’ll get to him.’