Doubting Abbey

‘Och, lassie, you look lovely,’ said Kathleen and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘I don’t think the viewers expect us to look too glamorous.’ She pulled a face. ‘We’ll leave anything tacky, like that to that pompous numpty, the Baron of Marwick. Ee, I cannot think of anyone less aristocratic…’

My stomach twinged. Try the real me for starters.

I left the smell of baking biscuits, headed out of the kitchen and towards the staircase. Then I climbed the steps, trying to get my bearings. As I’d found out yesterday, the ground floor housed the Low Drawing Room and library on the right, the Drake Diner in the middle and on the left, the kitchens. On the middle floor, were the family dining room and their lounge, known as the Parlour, then family and guest bedrooms and the High Drawing Room.

Panting slightly, I climbed another flight of stairs, right up to the second floor, at the top. This was where my tour would start and was home to something called the Long Gallery, plus the rooms where the staff slept.

‘Good afternoon, Abbey,’ said the Earl, in his tweed suit. He stood next to Gaynor and Roxy, who chatted to the cameraman. ‘I do hope you slept well. Kathleen said you were spending the day preparing for tomorrow.’ He sucked on his pipe. ‘That’s the attitude. Jolly good show, girl. Although I still think this cookery school idea is a load of nonsense…’

I smiled though his smoke and gazed the length of what was a mega wide corridor. In fact, it was more like a room, really, with doors to the staff bedrooms lining one side, on the left, and large windows on the right—the very back of the house. Plus there were a lot of pictures hanging.

‘Right, darlings, let’s get this show on the road,’ said Gaynor in her husky smoker’s voice, with a determined flick of her black bob. ‘Lord Croxley, if you could remember that this tour is for the viewers as well, that would be fab…’

He pursed his mouth. ‘Don’t worry – I’ll try to make it interesting.’

Roxy managed to smile at me while still chewing the sweet she’d just popped in her mouth and gave the thumbs-up as the Earl started walking.

‘I’ve never cared much for this marble fireplace,’ he said gruffly and pointed to a middle section of the long wall, in between two bedrooms. ‘Although Trigger, my father’s gundog, loved nothing better than to stretch out in front of it, following an afternoon at the shoot– a treat for the old mutt as he was rarely allowed in the house.’

I nodded, adjusting the mic’s battery pack clipped onto my culottes, under my blouse, that Roxy had quickly helped me fit. Apparently the lapel mics were better if you were walking about.

‘So, this is the Long Gallery?’ I said – cue the Earl to duly chat about its features. At the far end stood two buckets and there was a slightly musty whiff in the air.

‘A couple of the bedrooms up here don’t belong to the staff and haven’t been entered for years,’ muttered the Earl. I waited for some mysterious reason as to why not but he just carried on walking—Roxy pulled a face and yawned.

Urgh – she was right, this footage would be mind-numbingly boring. Shame, cos I thought this floor was pretty amazin’. The windows were mega, with shelves below them for seats. In between hung portraits of all sorts of people. Impressive chandeliers dangled from the ceiling and gave me a sudden urge to swing on them. I shivered, despite the summer temperature outside, wondering how many thousands of pounds it would cost to install central heating. The Earl was making points about the history of the interior design, which wouldn’t grab the attention of your average viewer. Finally, he stopped still in front of a portrait and puffed on his pipe. It was of a middle-aged bloke in a dinner suit, who sat by bookshelves, dark-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. The man’s shoulders sagged as if someone had anchored his cuffs into stormy waters.

‘Goodness, he looks, um, terribly serious,’ I said. ‘Who was he, Uncle? Some important politician who knew our ancestors? Or perhaps a film star who visited? He looks as if he could play a believable stern villain.’

The Earl’s cheeks flushed. ‘That’s Papa.’

‘Oh…um…’ I stuttered.

‘Really, Abigail,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised you don’t recognize your grandfather.’

Suddenly desperate to bite my thumbnail, I swallowed hard.

‘This was painted just after the Second World War,’ he continued. ‘I was only eight but remember it like yesterday. Papa didn’t budge an inch for hours, when he sat for the artist. Impressive—but then he was made of strong stuff.’

I studied the man’s hair, greased above the ears and black. Perhaps the Earl had looked like this as a young man.

‘It was painted just after Applebridge Hall returned to our possession. As you know, this place was requisitioned as a home for children during the war. We still lived here as a family, but evacuees from London were billeted with us.’

Abbey hadn’t told me that! Wow. Awesome.

‘The family struggled to bring it back to its former glory after those little blighters spent six years running riot. In fact, one of the lads caused a fire,’ he said, as if talking to no one in particular. ‘Dennis Smith was his name. Always up to no good. He swore blind he hadn’t been playing with matches, but none of us children believed him as we’d often catch him in the forest with a lit roll-up of paper, pretending to smoke.’

Rolled up paper? As children, my brothers had bought the real McCoy. The ice cream man got done for selling us single fags from his van.

The Earl turned to the camera and raised his eyebrows. ‘Perhaps, if he’s watching, Dennis would like to confess his crime. But there—stiff upper lip and all that, my family simply had to tolerate the intrusion and damage. If truth be told, Mama enjoyed doing her bit and I made the most of the company. It was for the good of the country. The real villain was Hitler.’ He sucked on his pipe. ‘After the war, Papa did his best to restore our home to its former glory.’

Blimey, for a man of few words, that was quite a speech. Sweet – he’d clearly adored his dad.

One thing Abbey had mentioned was this grandfather’s failed business dealings. He died from a heart attack, mega young – well, if, unlike me, you don’t consider being fifty- something totally ancient. Her dad, Richard, was only a teen. In the days following his death, the Earl and his brother must have become close, which made their fall-out all the more random.

‘It must have been a shock when he, um, passed on.’ Okay, so a lady wasn’t supposed to make such personal comments but, for Gawd’s sake, how would viewers warm to the Croxleys if they came across as such cardboard cut-out, unemotional aristocratic figures?

‘Epiccccc,’ I said as we moved to the next portrait—a woman in a fancy dress, with geisha-white skin and caramel hair swept up. Jewels dangled from her ears and hung around her neck… Crap! Had I really laxed into Gemma mode and really said ‘epic’? ‘I mean, um…a picccccture one could stare at all day. What an extraordinarily good-looking woman.’

‘Mama,’ he said and his face went all squishy for a second, before he stared at me. ‘Once more, you talk as if you’ve never seen a picture of her.’

I forced a laugh. ‘Apologies, Uncle – Grandmother looks quite, um, different from the photos Father has shown me.’

The Earl gazed back at the portrait. ‘During inclement weather, when Papa was away on business, she’d smuggle my pony up here and let me ride the length of the Long Gallery. I loved her for that,’ he said softly.

‘How, um, enchanting.’ I glanced at Gaynor, who’d looked up from her clipboard to listen. Roxy had even stopped chewing. Blimey, the Earl had let his gruff mask slip for a minute.

A smile flickered across his face. ‘Well, that’s what the Long Gallery was sometimes used for—exercise in bad weather. Up and down we’d go. Our indoor constitutional, Mama used to call it – but she always made it seem jolly.’

He scratched his bristly beard and headed for the next picture. It was a couple, smartly dressed on a fancy sofa. The man had on a cravat and a pocket watch hung out of his waistcoat. I glanced sideways at the Earl. A pocket watch dangled from his tweed waistcoat – perhaps it was the same one. The woman was dressed in a vertically striped blouse and broad-brimmed hat. The couple looked happy and fancy-free, eyes twinkly and mouths upturned.

‘My great-grandparents,’ he said. ‘Terribly well-known for their partying. Splendid hosts, according to one and all. The Drake Diner was home to many a ball. In those days the servants slept in the kitchens and pantry. Up here was for guests.’

We moved onto the next frame. ‘My grandparents,’ he murmured. ‘They were also significant players on the social scene. We believe a young Noel Coward stayed here once.’

‘Ah, yes, my dear cousin mentioned that,’ I said.

‘Your father never told you?’ he said abruptly.

Roxy and Gaynor glanced at each other and raised their eyebrows.

‘But, erm, of course,’ the Earl said after a quick glare at me, ‘Richard never was much interested in celebrity. But he must have told you about our great-grandfather’s party trick? Papa used to creep down and peek at him doing it in the Drake Diner.’

My cheeks flamed. ‘Um, yes, he could make, um, coins appear from people’s ears…?’

‘That wasn’t the one I was thinking of,’ he said in a measured voice. ‘Apparently, drinking out of his wife’s shoe was considered a jolly jape. He’d announce to the room that it made the champagne taste absolutely divine. Papa got into trouble when he was a little boy for trying the same with his bedtime milk.’

Gaynor and Roxy smiled.

As we came to the end of the Long Gallery, on the right hand side of the house, we stood and gazed up at a ginormous gold-framed portrait of a man. Around his neck was an amazin’ ruffle, he had a moustache, beard and wore a feathered hat. His expression looked kind of laid-back, as if not a thing could surprise him. Upright and confident, he seemed like the complete opposite of the bespectacled, world-weary-looking Earl’s dad.

‘The very first Earl of Croxley,’ said the old man and straightened his back. ‘Elizabeth the First awarded him the estate of Applebridge for his role in defeating the Spanish Armada, in 1588. The Drake Diner was named after his good friend…’

‘Sir Francis Drake,’ I mumbled. Even I could work that out.

I exchanged glances with Roxy, who’d was clearly rapt. This tour had turned into a live history lesson. I gazed at the man on the canvas and tried to imagine him on some ship or proudly bowing before the Queen. He must have been one of the celebrities of the day. Mega important. Probably had his pick of the women, ate the finest food without having to worry about paparazzi and Twitter trolls, like today’s celebs.

‘Did he build Applebridge Hall?’ I asked.