The Peacock Emporium(17)

The last ounce of maternal sympathy she had felt for him evaporated. “Douglas, sit down,” she commanded, and placed herself opposite him. She took a deep breath, trying to make her words measured. “I’m going to tell you something about your father, young man. You have no idea what he has been through, keeping this estate together. You have no idea. When he inherited it, it was almost bankrupt. Wheat prices were the lowest in memory, the farm workers were heading off to the city because we couldn’t afford to pay them, and we couldn’t give the wretched milk away. He had to sell nearly all his family furniture, all the paintings except for the portraits, his own mother’s family jewelry, the only reminder he had of her, I might add, just to keep it alive.”

She stared at her son, determined that he should understand the gravity of what she was telling him. “And you’d be too young to remember this properly, but in the war the estate was requisitioned—we even had German POWs here. Did you know that? Your own father’s brother killed in the air, and we had to take Germans”—she spat the word—“just to keep the thing going. Dirty thieves they were, stealing food and all sorts. Even bits off the farm machinery.”

“They didn’t steal anything. It was the Miller boys.”

She shook her head. “Douglas, he has worked those fields day in and day out, rain, snow, sleet, and hail, for his whole adult life. I have had him come home with hands raw from pulling weeds, and his back burned blood red from working twelve hours in the sun. I remember nights when he’s eaten and fallen asleep at the table. When I’ve woken him, he’s gone off to fix the tenants’ roofs, or sort out their drainage. This is the first time we’ve had enough money for him to relax a bit. The first time he’s allowed himself to let other people help him. And now you, his hope, his pride, his heir, you tell him you want to give it away to a bunch of beatniks, or whatever they are.”

“It’s not like that.” Douglas was blushing.

His mother had said her piece. She stood, poured the coffee, added the milk, and then pushed a cup to her son. “I’d like this to be the last time we discuss this,” she said, the heat gone from her voice. “You’re a young man with big ideas. But this estate is bigger than your ideas. And we haven’t held it together for so long to let you unravel everything we’ve done. Because, Douglas, it’s not even yours to give away. You are a trustee, a custodian.”

“But you said—”

“We said the estate would be yours. What we did not say, at any time, is that it should be diverted from its natural purpose. Which, first, is farming and, second, to provide a home and a living for successive generations of Fairley-Hulmes.”

There was a long silence. Her tone, when she spoke, was conciliatory: “When you have children, you’ll understand a little better.”

Douglas, his head lowered, sat and stared into his cup.



* * *



—

When he arrived home the house was empty. It was possessed of the cold stillness that spoke of many hours of inoccupancy.

He hung his coat in the echoing hall and made his way to the kitchen, his feet absorbing the chill of the cold linoleum. For the first year of his marriage he had frequently found that his supper consisted of breakfast cereal or bread and cheese. Athene was not a natural homemaker and, after a few early charred efforts, had lost interest in even pretending to be one. More recently, without telling his mother, he had employed Bessie, one of the longest-standing estate wives, to keep their kitchen stocked and put the odd pie or casserole into the refrigerator. He knew she thought Athene scandalous. In a vague attempt to protect his wife’s domestic reputation he had explained that flour made her skin break out in hives.

A cheese pie was sitting on the shelf. Douglas placed it in the range, closed the door, and scanned the kitchen table for an explanatory note. Often they told him little: “Darling Douglas, back soon—A.” Or “Nipped out for breath of fresh air,” or “Gone for a spin.” Increasingly she didn’t leave a note at all. Tonight he didn’t mind. He didn’t know if he wanted to talk to anyone at the moment, even his wife.

He pulled a plate from the cupboard, glancing at the framed snapshot of Athene he had taken in Florence. That first year had been wonderful. They had spent three months traveling around Italy, driving Douglas’s red MGB Roadster, staying at tiny pensiones, and frequently offending the padronas with their uninhibited expressions of love. Athene had made him feel like a king, screaming delightedly at his driving on the winding mountain roads, draping herself over him as they sipped coffee in pavement cafés, wrapping herself round him needily in the dark. On their return, despite the newly decorated house, her horse, his gift of driving lessons, and her own car—she was a hopeless driver, and he had long since ceased becoming exasperated by the dents in the bumper—she had gradually become a little less adoring, a little less easy to please. She was not interested in his plans for wealth redistribution. He had hoped she’d be inspired. The idea for it had come from her, after all. “Let’s give it all away,” she had said, one summer afternoon as they picnicked alone by the trout river. “Let’s decide who’s most deserving in the village, and then give it away in parcels.” She was joking, of course. Like when she announced she had a terrible need to sing jazz and he had booked lessons for her as a surprise.