From Henry Hilliard and Pete Bruno h.h.hilliard@hotmail.com
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Noblesse Oblige
Book 5 Outer Darkness
Chapter 17 Epilogue
There are many other stories that might have been told, but Martin had been correct: there was a palpable sense of the end of one world in 1940 and the world of 1946 was another country altogether.
It was a common expression of the time to ask if one had had a `good war' and yet any answer to such a question would be to invite the contempt of a large section of humanity; Auschwitz, Nagasaki, Changi, Dresden, Coventry and Stalingrad were names that meant little in 1940 and our later knowledge of them that forever scarred our common consciousness, could no more be undone than the deeds that were bound up with them. Suffice it to say that Martin and Stephen spent a large part of the war with each other in Military Intelligence, apart from seven months in 1943 when Stephen was posted to Cairo and was instrumental in keeping the knowledge that the Ultra codes had been broken from the enemy. He was often in forward positions during the conquest of Libya, and thus under fire, and even in Cairo there was always the continuing danger of treachery and the risk of an assassin's bullet. 1945 found him in Italy and Martin in France.
For Martin there was the dramatic rescue of Mme de Gaulle from Carantec, although he fretted about the loss of two British and two Australian fliers on the first attempt, the final outcome of which, in a small way, set the direction of that country for some years to come. De Gaulle had set himself up first in Branksome House before moving with Mme de Gaulle to Hampstead from whence he travelled each day to his offices in Carlton House Terrace and famously assumed the role of the Cross of Lorraine that Churchill had to bear. Inevitably M. Lefaux went with him and so the era of grand entertainments at the noble pile in Piccadilly came to an end. Glass and Mrs Beck kept the house going as best they could; there was some bomb damage in 1944 and the blacked-out dome above the lofty hall never was repaired, even in later years.
London, as the bombs fell was, ironically, a tremendously busy place and Martin and Stephen, often passing one another on the front steps, found they had to snatch brief hours of sleep as best they could when not down in the shelters. Yet after the peace, the city, while safe, looked as it felt: dreadfully sad and unutterably dreary--almost unrecognisable from that gay metropolis that had once been the hub of a great empire; so much so that in the immediate post-war years the boys, like so many of their friends, elected to live away from London as much as possible and their clubs sufficed for their necessary visits to the bomb-damaged capital during this austere period.
Among of 40,000 tragedies of the blitz was the night of the 29th December 1940 when the West End of London was again targeted and a delayed action bomb destroyed the house off the Brompton Road where Charles Fortune, Jack Thayer and Donald Selby-Keam lived with Mrs Cribb, their housekeeper. Charles had been on Fire Watch Duty and was having a bad night of it and Donald was out in Tehran with a Foreign Office delegation, but poor Jack and Mrs Cribb `copped it'-- their shelter proving useless against the gigantic explosion. It was terrible and poor Charles moved into Branksome House, occupying the same room that General de Gaul had only recently vacated
Other raids had taken out the Hammam Turkish Baths in Jermyn Street and a `doodle bug' obliterated Mr Weintraub's shop in New Bond Street. It never reopened and Martin and Stephen lost contact with its singular proprietor.
London in wartime did have one small compensation: in the blackout boys were plentiful and Martin and Stephen had many adventures, the frisson of danger only adding to the thrill. Afterwards it was a different story altogether-- but more of that anon.
The blessings of peace, when it finally and exhaustedly dawned, soon lost their lustre and it was a common lament to say that we won the war only to lose the peace'. Even the upper classes began to look shabby, as American visitors like Bunny and Dwight privately noted. The universal British uniform of drab tweeds, gabardine overcoats, pullovers (England now seemed frightfully cold), mended and patched hand-me-downs and NHS spectacles and ill-fitting dentures, presented a dismal contrast to the loud checks, bright colours and confident snap brimmed hats of those who had come across from the New World. And it was a strangely old' New World, for unlike Europe, there were no humiliating shortages or obscene bomb sites or crippling taxation nor an army of bureaucrats seemingly bent on preventing its broken citizens from spending or building or travelling or doing almost anything at all.
With no permission to make the repairs to Branksome House and what with the rationing, the power cuts, the coal shortages and the general lack of enthusiasm for parades of finery of any kind (if by some miracle a shop had such a luxury and one had sufficient coupons and was prepared to endure endless queues or patronise the black market to obtain it) and coupled with a temper for eschewing all such anti-social displays of disparity in these socialist times, it was considered sensible to shut up Branksome House and William Glassbottom, the butler, and Lilly Beck, the housekeeper, were quite amenable to their relocation to Dorset.
Thus Branksome House remained a dark and brooding presence in Piccadilly for many years and readers of a certain age may well remember passing it on the bus until, finally, the crippling land taxes forced Martin and Stephen to sell it. There was talk of the mansion being turned into a luxury hotel or even a nightclub, but it was bought and sold, then sold again only to be demolished in 1970 for the new glass-and-steel headquarters of the National Trust, thus rudely bringing to an end a 350-year association with the Pooles. Martin and Stephen mourned its loss and had no London House until 1961 when they purchased the long lease on a very large and elegant flat in Holland Park's Royal Crescent.
At Croome it was another story. This was the house that was closest to the boys' hearts and they fought hard to retain it and, in fact, few would have wanted it as a gift, but there was a spiteful inclination that the owners of such houses should not be allowed to keep them. After the war, while many of their friends like Dongo, Spanker Tubshaw and the Earl of Plinthe were urging them to emigrate to America or Jamaica where taxes were lower, Martin defiantly said: "I'm not going to become a tax exile, Derby," and so spent the next four decades fighting to keep Croome and draining his fortune in the process.
During the war, the Blitz on Plymouth could be clearly seen and heard in the distance from the great house and the boys watched in horror from the roof. There were several air raids on Wareham where Tachell's factory was severely damaged, but production continued and, as in the Great War, the villages on Martin's estate became the dormitories for munitions workers who toiled around the clock and crowded the inadequate busses that rumbled along the lanes to that town. Mr Sutton's `Audion' factory also expanded and was turned over to war production, with hasty additions that were far less attractive than the original fabric, but it was not a time for such dainty considerations and Martin's protests would have been useless in any case. Thankfully, like Croome itself, it was not a target of the Luftwaffe and the dilapidations at Croome, although not inconsiderable, could have been much worse.
At this time Croome had been requisitioned for evacuated children, with Martin and Stephen's quarters left unmolested. This changed when it was turned into the regional headquarters for mapping and cartography and the principal rooms became a sea of desks, chart tables and map presses, with duplicating machines incongruously whirring away in the Spanish Dining Room. The bedrooms were requisitioned for the large staff of the Survey Corps and for a while Stephen and Martin found it convenient to occupy the very cottage that Stephen had grown up in, while Erna and the children were in another nearby. With the remaining servants still at the big house, Martin found it was something like a holiday at Antibes to be with just Stephen in the beloved house and he had to admit that he was terribly excited to sleep, once again, in his old bedroom with the sloping ceiling while they fended for themselves in the quaint kitchen below and Stephen strolled about the cottage naked as he had done when he was a lad. These weekends were precious and few and Martin always associated them with a song from the period.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsikCmv9GS8
In December 1943 the map people abruptly left and the house was empty. Martin was going to ask for permission to move back, but then it was occupied by American officers who were (we later found out) preparing for the D-day landings in a disaster called Exercise Tiger' at Slapton Sands and Lyme Regis. Croome was now off limits' and Chilvers and Mrs Capstick found themselves relegated to the cottage. Then, at the end of April, the Americans were gone as suddenly as they had appeared.
It was only towards the end of 1945 that Martin was able to return to the forlorn country house and the state of it almost overwhelmed him. However Stephen strove to make him see things differently. Much of the damage was cosmetic, he said, although a large section of the scullery wall had collapsed when a truck in the yard had reversed carelessly. Intrusive pipes, conduits and fluorescent lighting could one day be removed, the linoleum could be lifted from the floors and the roof was still sound thanks to their actions in earlier years. Paintings and furniture could come out of storage and, as Stephen pointed out, they should be thankful that Colonel Harmon of the 2759th Engineer Combat Battalion of the 1st Special Brigade was a cultured man from San Francisco and protected Lord Branksome's house from the worst excesses of military occupation. Martin and Stephen, in fact, became quite friendly with him and gave him a small Piranesi drawing of a Roman street upon his repatriation.
In 1946 a terrible blow fell when the Labour Government abruptly and compulsorily acquired a large portion of the estate, encompassing the entire village of Pendleton. So inured to demands of the omnipotent state had the population become during the War that Martin and Stephen took it almost meekly, as if to expiate the new sin of having more than others. And who in 1946 did not believe that a better Britain-- a better world-- was what everyone had fought for? At least that had become the official mantra and it therefore gave carte blanche to government authorities to do the thinking for all of us. This was the heyday of Mass Observation', Men from the Ministry' and bleak Penguin publications penned by Victor Gollancz, and it seemed certain that the future would be one of continued benign government planning by dispassionate experts and that further sacrifices by the great families were naturally to be expected. Noblesse oblige. Yet his was a view that only the most optimistic still held by 1950.
It was not the futuristic horror of `Pendleton New Town', of course, but it still fell as a blow to the body and Martin could do nothing to prevent it. One portion of the land was slated to become an industrial estate, but this was stillborn and instead, with a change in government, the land was used for a dreary housing estate of mean, semi-detached bungalows constructed of anonymous brown brick, with skimpy eaves and joinery. The balance of the land remained unutilised until, at last, the government sold it to a private company for a golf links. Martin was furious at the high-handed actions and the waste of productive land this propelled Martin to take up his seat in the House of Lords as a Conservative peer.
Further assaults came when the County assumed control of the villages and then an Act of Parliament allowed tenant farmers to buy the freehold to their farms. The inadequate sums that Martin received quickly went in the exorbitant new taxes that he found that he now must pay. "Your kind is finished," a young man had spat at him before the War and now Martin found that these hastily flung words were ringing in his ears.
The villages had changed beyond recognition, with all sorts of new shops being built and 1962 saw the outrage of an American supermarket' in picturesque Branksome-le-Bourne. Martin longed for the days of Mrs McGrath and her simple village shop with its worn wooden counter and the sharp ping of its bell, where at least one didn't have to do the work oneself and pay cash at the end for the privilege of doing so. It was of some consolation that the Nu Frontier Tru Save' was not a financial success and closed after only four years while the village shop (now a self-service) lingered on, with only the most hardened modernists going over to Wareham to carry their wire baskets or push those obscene vehicles on castors.
In fact it was not uncommon to see the Marquess of Branksome himself lined up at the butcher's with the household ration book in his hand and a very girlie wicker basket over his left arm. Some of the younger village lads and lasses sniggered at the sight. However, when Stephen took to queuing with the same basket there were no snide remarks and Stephen was, for the occasion, quite the centre of attention of the passing parade and in fact received more than his fair cut from Mr Heritage. The next week young Billy Louch begged his mother to be allowed to do the shopping and strapping Sid Rye, the local swain and captain of the cricket team and amateur trumpeter in a swing band that played at the Wareham Palais, was also seen in the line clasping a green raffia basket.
The estate was now reduced to 41,000 acres but it was still one of the largest in this part of England, but now more than ever Martin's income depended on his investments and directors' fees. Daniel Sachs-- or rather his firm--continued to advise Martin right up until Sachs' death in 1982 and Martin paid his taxes and worried about the nation and, like everyone else, tried to structure his affairs so as to make himself as small a target as possible for the rapacious government.
Another reason for Martin's decision to go into the Lords came as an indirect result of his time in Military Intelligence. The Americans complained that intelligence was being leaked to the Russians who went very rapidly from being allies to being enemies, especially on the other side of the Atlantic. "Quite frankly, Lord Branksome," said Colonel Ennis of the Office of Strategic Services, "you Brits have to clean up your act."
"To what are you referring, Colonel?" said Martin a trifle stiffly. He did not like Colonel Ennis and was sorry that he had invited him to Boodles where he snapped his fingers at the club servants and ordered orange juice ("I'm teetotal, your lordship, and I'm determined to set my kids an example back in Zanesville. I've seen what drink can do to a man.") Martin took a sip of his gin-and-tonic.
"You a married man, your lordship?"
"I'm a widower," answered Martin truthfully, but not liking the direction that the conversation might take.
Ennis nodded. "That Burgess wasn't married-- and not likely to be, if you get my drift. He was a fag, Lord Branksome, not to beat about the bush."
"And?"
"Well, that made him unsuitable for intelligence work, surely you Brits must see that; it doesn't matter who his people are or what school he went to, he was a security risk! Drink and boys, and a commie as well! It couldn't get much worse. Back home they are saying that there are too many like Burgess over here and we might not be so willing to share information unless you clean up your own backyard. Mr Hoover of the Federal Bureau is particularly keen to see a more wholesome atmosphere and so is Senator McCarthy from Wisconsin. He says you're all red as roses over here."
"Well, I'm not a communist," said Martin evenly.
"I never meant you, your lordship, but you must be more careful who is employed by your Military Intelligence and their personal lives must be above reproach, not just because of the risk of blackmail, but for the good of the whole country. A country can destroy itself from within just as surely as it can by invasion." He wagged his index finger. "I'm talking about perversion, Lord Branksome. Unnatural practices. Have you ever asked yourself what is really wrong with Britain? It might be old fashioned, but I often feel that the word `righteousness' is something that should be a touchstone for all of us in our public and private worlds, don't you think?"
Martin did not think and was glad he was resigning in just a few more months. Nevertheless, over the next few years there was virulent crackdown on homosexuality led by the Home Secretary and Martin and Stephen were, quite frankly, greatly intimidated as they saw several people of their acquaintance sentenced to terms of imprisonment. The thoughtful and dignified novelist, Rupert Croft-Cook, who had once been Stephen's guest to luncheon at Branksome House, was sentenced to nine months on the flimsy evidence of two sailors who had been arrested on unrelated charges sometime later and Martin was proud that he and Stephen met him upon his release from Brixton in 1954. Then came another blow. Custard was nabbed in a police roundup at a pub in the Maida Vale Road. He was released, perhaps due to his peerage, but he thought it prudent to relocate to Corfu. These events, when added to what Martin saw as the destruction of the countryside, helped precipitate his decision to go into the House of Lords.
It required some learning to understand the curious procedures of the place and in this Peter, now the 2nd Baron Spong of Rochdale, guided him. His maiden speech was on the topic of the proposed new motorways and in it he passionately opposed the needless destruction of the countryside for their creation. His speech was notable in two respects: his knowledge of such roads in Germany and the United States and the poor attendance in the chamber on the occasion of his giving it. Nevertheless, Stephen and his friends said it was a good speech and no one remarked on the irony of Martin's great liking for driving his Bentley (retrieved from Gibraltar some years before) at great speed along the A31 as several police fines would attest.
He was a good Conservative peer, but found common ground with Lord Silkin, the Labour minister responsible for town and country planning, and he became a passionate supporter of the creation of National Parks. He found that in the Lords he could oppose the Tory, Lord Kilmuir, who had launched the prosecution against homosexuals and lend his support to `Boofy' Gore (the 8th Earl of Arran) on the same topic. Lord Arran had two passions: the protection of badgers and the decriminalization of homosexuality in line with the Wolfenden Report. "Boof," said Martin pleasantly one day as they took tea on the terrace before a late sitting, "Why is it that everyone knows you for the Wolfenden legislation, but not your fine bill on the badgers?"
"Ah, not many badgers in the House of Lords, Poole."
As the fifties turned into the sixties, something called `the permissive society' became talked about. Martin and Stephen were glad to see it-- although it was not without its unsettling aspects for two middle-aged men. "We lived it, Mala," said Stephen one day. "It wasn't out in the open like it is now-- these young ones think they invented it-- but we lived it, right from the beginning didn't we?"
"We did, Derbs."
One of the peculiar things about the War was that natural life expectancy actually increased and many old people were determined to hang on until that devil Hitler was defeated. Aunt Maude died in 1947 and the Plunger's mother, who spent the War at the Dorchester, died in 1948. Mildred Rous-Poole, having lost Toby in an air raid, lived on until 1974, her new grandson's money coming in handy. Mrs Chadwick was in this group and she passed away in her beloved Antibes in 1949 with a CBE in an attractive velvet box on display in her very English drawing room.
When the boys eventually returned to the south of France in 1946, they didn't quite know what to expect. M. de Blezon had died in the terrible winter of 1944 and the poor Patronne was now a widow. She greeted them as they had last seen her, in tears, her black garments bespeaking of her loss. The bistro was open and she had taken in her one of her many nephews and his wife to help manage it.
Their old house had been safe until the Italians occupied the town in November 1942. Then it had been ransacked and for a time occupied by soldiers. Mme de Blezon proudly boasted that the Italians had not found the wireless and that she would return it to them directly. Stephen said that she should keep it. The pictures were also safe, one of Mme de Blezon's family having been paid to conceal them in his barn where he constructed a safe, dry hiding place.
Inside they found most of the portable property had vanished, but the large table and the cabinet that had once been in a chemist's shop were still there-- perhaps being too heavy to move. Then they went out to where M. de Blezon's immaculate vegetable garden had once flourished. All was overgrown and the pergola had collapsed. However, there, beneath the beams and the grape vine that had continued to flourish, they found Stephen's old bathtub, overturned and filled with rubbish. Then and there they decided that they would not abandon the house that they had loved so well and would rebuild. And so they did and they spent a great deal of time out of bleak post-War England in France where the cost of living was lower. The children came during their holidays.
By the middle of the 1950s the Riviera had started to boom, with wealthy American film stars and West German industrialists arriving to supplement the French and dozens of new hotels were built along the seafront. Motor traffic suddenly became a nightmare. With the passing of Mrs Chadwick and finally Mme de Blezon, the boys seriously considered selling up and moving. They looked at properties in Grasse and Valbonne. However the ties of sentiment were strong and Will and Charlotte had come to love the old house too, even begging to bring their school friends in later years.
"Do put some clothes on, you two," upbraided Charlotte in desperation from behind her plastic sunglasses, "Ian and Pamela will be here any minute."
Stephen and Will merely laughed at her and swaggered out to the terrace with their arms about each other's shoulders, looking like a pair of elephants on a jungle path.
Having decided to stay, a swimming pool was constructed where the Patron had once planted tomatoes. Stephen loved the pool, but was a little conflicted by the loss of some of the simplicity of the old days and made sure they remained aloof from the vapid, `jet set' who pullulated in the new mansions and on-board the luxury yachts tied up at the marina. He liked it best when it was just the boys, with Will joining their number, and they could be carefree-- or perhaps carless-- of the grim proprieties that accompanied ordinary life at home.
Will was quite used to seeing Martin an Stephen in bed together at Antibes ("Here's Darby and Joan" he would quip) and thought nothing of strolling naked across from his own bedroom and jumping in with Martin as he sat up of a morning doing the crossword.
"Did you sleep well last night, Will?" asked Martin, looking at him across the top of the spectacles he now wore.
"Not at first, Papa," complained Will, grinning. "You two were so damn rowdy that I was too hard to go to sleep. You'll have me on the turn, you will."
"What is your son talking about?" asked Martin archly as Stephen wandered in. "Such language!"
"It's the price we bigger chaps have to pay, Will," explained Stephen feigning seriousness. "Someday you'll understand."
"And what makes you think I don't understand already?"
"And so precocious for 15, Mala!" said Stephen mock horror.
"16," replied the big lad and he leaned back arrogantly and clasped his hands behind his head--just like Stephen did, Martin noticed with both amusement and alarm.
It is now time to write of Will and Charlotte. At the beginning of the War they were still little tots, attending the kindergarten in the village with the other evacuated children and being instructed at home by Erna, whom they both had come to call Mutti, although Will was quite aware that Mata had been his mother and he kept a photograph of her beside his bed, although his memory of her in reality was growing dim and he could not distinguish his mother from the photograph in the silver frame. By the end of War they were nearly ten and it was time for them to go away to school. The thought of this broke the three adults' hearts and they were kept at home for a further year, but Will had been reading school stories and Charlotte had heard a great deal about the school in Cornwall where the Sachs girls had gone, the youngest, Gisella, now, it was hard to believe, up at Oxford and too soon they were gone.
The children had enjoyed an idyllic life in the country--even when forced for a time to move out of Croome--and they did not get to see the lights of London until 1945. Then for them came the treats of pantomimes, the zoo and the Tower and, in 1951, the funfair at Battersea Park. There were trips to Jersey with Erna who was lecturing at Bedford College and also, as we have seen, to Antibes with their two fathers.
In 1952 they joined Martin and Stephen on a trip to the United States. It had been a bleak year and Martin was surprised to receive a letter from Friedrich, whom he had not been able to reach hitherto. To his surprise he was living in New York and enclosed greetings from some of Martin and Stephen's friends in that city. There was no mention of Eugen. The boys were anxious to visit and Mata's money from Switzerland was cleverly employed to avoid the embargo on sterling.
A curious incident from that trip was an event that occurred when they went to see the new the United Nations Building. As they looked down onto the General Assembly, which was in session, both could have sworn they saw Count Osomchescu bending over in conversation with the Romanian representative. When they looked again, he was gone and neither Friedrich nor anyone else could enlighten them further, and it had to be admitted that all Romanian counts looked very much alike when seen from a distance.
Further trips followed, with the one in 1958 being made, for the first time, in a de Havilland Comet 4. It was speedy and, in a way, exciting, but the boys missed the thrill of the great liners that had served them so well since 1917.
The post-war years rolled on and the past drew away. The new species called teenagers' had no memory of a world before and distressingly turned their eyes to everything that was foolish from across the Atlantic. Curiously, there was a revival in interest in the 1920s, especially after a successful musical play had been written. Martin and Stephen were bidden to a house where there was a launch' of an old friend's memoir on the period and they were asked to dress accordingly, to the amusement of Will and Charlotte. At the party there was some polite laughter and some nostalgic dance steps were performed for the newsreel cameras, but it was not quite right and all rather sad really. "The past can't be recaptured, Derbs," confessed Martin afterwards.
www.britishpathe.com/video/twenties-party-aka-beverley-nnichols
Will and Charlotte had come to accept as normal the relationship of the three adults in their lives. Will knew from the earliest age that Stephen was his father, as did Charlotte, but he called Martin Papa' none-the-less, although they each had their own affectionate nicknames for them. Charlotte was a typical country girl in that she loved horses and getting dirty and she had a certain air about her that others admired. She grew to be statuesque and was athletic like her parents and played tennis and golf very well. By the age of sixteen, when she came out' at a ball given by Erna and Martin at the Dorchester, she could fairly be described as beautiful and she continued to absolutely dote on her younger' half-brother. At this age she grew to be more careful of her appearance and cultivated a great interest in Art-- always thankful that she had grown up in houses with their own fine collections of paintings and furniture. This was encouraged by The Plunger (her godfather) and it is of no surprise to learn that in 1957 she went up to Oxford to read Fine Arts and ended up with a position at a famous auction house before moving on to the Courtauld Institute where she met and subsequently shacked up' (as she termed it) with a nice chap, whose uncle was an Earl.
It would be nice to report that young Will, the Earl of Holdenhurst and Martin's heir, was very fond of boys. It was certainly true that the charming, easy going, good-looking fellow had a great many male admirers when he was at Martin's old school, and that some of them had indeed been his lovers, especially when he was the captain of the Rugby team, but he had a distressing and pernicious inclination toward females (Martin blamed Stephen for this weakness) and he had a great many girlfriends, especially when he was up at Oxford-- his sister trying her hardest to vet potential candidates, but to no avail.
Because he said he was too shy, Martin insisted that it was up to Stephen to have a `talk' with the boy before he went up. Stephen rehearsed the salient points in his mind for some days beforehand and finally spoke to his captive audience of one on the need to respect women and to be responsible adult. Will said nothing and sat there and measured his father's word against his own conduct hitherto. Stephen then launched into the topic of venereal disease and unwanted pregnancies, illustrating his homily with horrific examples of his own invention, justifying this approach with the sop to his conscience that it was for the good of young Will's moral education.
Will countered by asking what Stephen though about intrauterine devices in general and the new pressure ring types in particular. Stephen gave the lad a blank look so Will had him sit down and began a little disquisition on these modern prophylactics, illustrating the more complex points with sketches on the nearest scrap of paper to hand, which in this case was the sleeve of Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel.
Stephen was beginning to feel himself on the back foot so he countered by saying that Durex were the simplest and safest devices for a young man like him. Will gave him a blank look. "You do know to what I'm referring, Will, don't you?"
"Oh yes, I've heard talk of them of course..."
Stephen was surprised at his lack of knowledge of this seeming fundamental and so told him to wait as he had some somewhere.
When Stephen returned to Prince Regent's Bedroom he found Will, uncharacteristically, sitting meekly with his hands folded in his lap. He flourished the box, explaining that they were readily available at Boots and that he should always carry some.
"How many should I carry?" asked Will suddenly looking up at him.
"Well..." began Stephen, "it all depends of course on how many..." His chest swelled but found it hard to press on.
"Well, how many times a night can you do it?"
Stephen swaggered slightly and named a well-known positive integer. He looked at Will to see if he were impressed. He wasn't. "Not all men are as blessed as us, Will," continued Stephen, after a pause, and indicated the sizing on the box and extolled the elastic virtues of the devices. Will was silent and Stephen imagined him digesting all that he had told him. Then he looked up at him again.
"How do you put it on? Show me the proper way."
Stephen hesitated for a moment but unbuttoned his shirt and dropped his trousers. He reached for the box and Will did too, taking up a condom and examining it carefully.
"Doesn't it have to be hard?"
Stephen got it hard and Will struggled out of his stove pipes and underwear and got himself hard too.
"Now like this," said Stephen confidently and performed a deft action as Will watched closely, "although you might not have to stretch it as much as I do, of course. That's right, just like that-- get it down as far as you're able."
Will now had the accessory installed and compared his to Stephen's for confirmation, all the while continuing to slowly stroke his youthful member and looking to his father for approval. Stephen nodded and gave a few more pieces of glib advice and then found he was stroking his own latex encased cock in time with Will. Stephen then rubbed his free hand over his chest and increased his pace. He was then using both hands and now steadying himself by spreading his meaty legs wide. After some minutes he spilled and when he opened his eyes he immediately looked down to where the greatly distended rubber drooped very satisfyingly and without having burst. He raised his eyes and saw that Will had stopped and was smiling broadly-- no he was actually laughing--laughing at his father! At that moment Stephen realised that he had been cruelly taken-in by a piece of deceitful, disingenuous play-acting and despite their aroused states, chastised Will's muscular buttocks (if a resounding smack could be so described) with a good-naturedly swipe of the flat of his hand, but it did not stem his son's mirth as he hopped around the room hooting disrespectfully and Stephen found that he was laughing too-- laughing at having been gulled by the young man.
He made Will finish himself off, admiring his action-- no doubt the result of much practice-- and the issue, when proudly held up in its latex repository, compared favourably with his own, Stephen had to admit, and said so, being rewarded with a filial grin from the strapping lad who was now busy pulling on his trousers and Stephen now realised why Lord Surbiton was so concerned about his daughter and Mr Henning, the manager up at the golf links, so concerned about his wife.
Despite the rough and tumble of it all, Will managed to take a first class degree in Mods, reading political science, and expressed his intention of trying for a diplomatic post--although his title was against him in this day and age. In practical terms he spent more and more time running his father's estate and took a leading role in the anti-apartheid movement and in several other progressive causes.
Will's name was a one point connected with that of a certain Royal Princess who was some years his senior, their faces captured in the tabloids' flashlights. She was terribly funny but difficult, he confessed, but it would not have worked out, besides which, Charlotte did not approve. Instead, to everyone's surprise, he announced his engagement to Angela Rous-Poole, the daughter of Constance Rous-Poole (née Polk-Stewart) of Tetbury Park and the late Philip Rous-Poole, Martin's (and possibly Stephen's, if one cared to dig) second cousin once removed. Angela was a sensible girl whose looks and brains came from her mother and the pair met in fairly respectable company at Aldermaston on an early CND march, being grandly introduced to each other (as adults) by Dame Edith Evans.
Constance didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Angela had been engaged to the son of Mrs Buckweet and Will was a few years her junior, but he was so handsome and so conveniently possessed of his own fortune, that she swiftly realised that the match was a good one and privately laughed at the irony of it all and publically made no objection to it.
It was hard to imagine, but Chilvers, the admirable butler at Croome, had been born in the distant year of 1873 when Gladstone was first prime minister and Queen Victoria was in her heyday. From the sublime heights of the Edwardian period, he found himself, after the War, the head of a great house that was no longer great' and from the little feudal universe where he had once reigned as a demigod, he now presided over an indoor staff of just six, with a couple of women coming in from the village and the perennial odd man' who became increasingly more odd with each passing year.
Although now over 70, he would not think of retirement and only a pained look and a raised eyebrow betrayed his true feelings at the humiliating processes of adjustment he was forced to make to the post-war world. At one point, in 1946 and 1947, when the shortage of coal to heat the great house was at its worst and the rationing of potatoes, bread and sugar at its most severe and with the government encouraging the populace to subsist on a disgusting South African tinned fish called `snoek', Martin, Stephen, Erna and Myles came to eat their grim evening meals in the servants' hall which, with the kitchen, was at least warm. After a prolonged strike had ended and when the coal supply eased slightly in 1948, Chilvers begged his masters to resume dining in the small Adam Salon, which he warmed with a smelly paraffin heater. And this they did and Chilvers relaxed slightly as something of the natural order had been restored.
Living in the country only made a slight difference to the strictures of rationing, for while hares, birds and fish were `off ration' and a certain amount of home grown produce could be consumed-- if they had a man to tend the kitchen garden-- their own grain, pigs, poultry and other livestock were all minutely controlled by the Ministry of Food, to Martin's ceaseless outrage. Not for them was the sacrifice of a fat porker to feed themselves or to barter. Martin thought with dismay of the prospect of having to fine himself at the next quarter sessions.
Bunny and Dwight sent over food parcels from America, but they had to be asked to desist in this generous impulse, for whatever was sent over now came off their rations for the sake of equity. Thus a generous box of chewing gum, ice-cream cones, pretzels and a certain indestructible cake-like product with a name that only Walt Disney could have invented and that was too disgusting to eat, gave cause to the authorities to reduce the allowable ration for those at Croome, with distressing consequences.
Chilvers still brought in the boys' early tea in a ritual that went back as long as anyone could remember, although when he turned eighty he allowed Glass to carry the heavy tray while he himself had charge of the post and the newspapers-- which were several now as Martin was an MP. Chilvers continued to iron these journals in his pantry and now used an indelible pencil to draw attention any article that he thought his lordship should be cognisant of.
A less malicious a person one would be hard pressed to find in all of Dorset, but Stephen nevertheless took a certain delight in torturing the poor butler on these early morning visits, seeming to save the most lewd acts in his repertoire for that precise moment when Chilvers opened the bedroom door. He might find the blankets thrown back and Mr Stephen on his knees caught in the act of shooting a generous stream of his essence in the general direction of his lordship who was open-mouthed and wanton; Stephen might be standing before the tall looking glass with his thick cock deep inside a semi-conscious Martin who had has legs wrapped around him to pull him in deeper or he might be surprised by his hairy, muscular buttocks pointed at the doorway while instructing Lord Branksome in the operation of a particularly nasty dildo. Always there would be a cheery greeting and Chilvers was usually covered in confusion, believing he should look away, but unable to turn his head.
In later years, Chilvers countered this aggression with snappy ripostes: I see there's been another of those American atomic explosions'; I might remind your lordship that sausage is still on the ration'; (to Stephen's naked bottom) Excuse me Miss Munroe' and Viscount Halisham is outside, your lordship'--this last referring to the Conservative peer who spoke so passionately against the Wolfenden Report.
"I hope you don't mind seeing a fine big cock, Chilvers," said Stephen one such morning as he was preparing to choke Martin.
"Not at all sir, I have already seen a very fine young one--perhaps even finer-- in the Prince Regent's Bedroom." This drollery on the part of the aged butler was true, for young Will occupied that bedroom and he was a strapping lad of 17.
"Well then, we will both see you up on the roof later this morning if it doesn't rain."
"Very well, sir," said Chilvers as he withdrew and later that morning it was indeed a crowded scene in the sequestered sunbathing place. With Martin and Carlo and Stephen on one side and Glass and Myles and on the other, Chilvers had only a narrow piece of real estate for his portly form. He was eighty and so lowered himself carefully. Just then Will came bounding through the low door and greeted everyone. He was wearing just his Y-front underpants, which strained to contain what lay beneath. He looked down at his bulge and laughed. Stephen, of course, disapproved of these garments, but Will said they were the fashion and all his friends wore them and that the girls liked them. What more could be said? Stephen must let him have his way, he thought to himself as Will slid them off, freeing his ill-controlled privates and flopping down next to Chilvers. Poor Chilvers groaned, for on one side was Stephen's naked form, with his flaccid cock laying across his hip and just touching Chilvers' leg whilst on the other was the husky Will who was all youthful muscle and one muscle in particular was not much smaller than that of his father and it was already on the rise and casting a shadow over the butler's tummy.
"Don't worry, Mr Chilvers," said the young man brightly. "I'll pay the fine out of my pocket money."
It was just six years after this that Chilvers had a heart attack and died very quickly. He had just been saying to Mrs Capstick how pleased he was that Will was engaged to Anglea Rous-Poole when he had the turn. It was very sad and Stephen said to Martin, "You know, I don't even know Mr Chilver's first name. Do you?" Martin said that he had never heard it. "I mean we don't know anything about him. Where was he born? Who were his people? Did he believe in God? What was his favourite food? He's lived with us all these years, but he is a stranger. Isn't that terrible?"
"Perhaps, Derbs, but we were his family and this was his place; he never wanted more. I think he was born in Petersfield, and the curious name `Dragon Street' stuck in my mind, but I'm not sure, and I know he liked tripe-and-onions because the other servants once complained. I don't know what the sum of a life is, Derbs, but I loved Chilvers more than my own father."
Eric Chilvers was laid to rest in the churchyard at Branksome-le-Bourne at the age of 86.
There were other deaths: Miss Tadrew passed away the following year and Stephen was devastated. More tragically had been the death of Teddy Loew who developed cancer and within six months died in The Plunger's arms. It hit their friend very hard. He found he could not paint, but he still managed to write his art column for a well-known weekly and he remained on the board of the Tate Gallery, but he was grieving inside.
Stephen went to stay with him at Broughton Lodge; sleeping with him, which The Plunger said, ruefully, was a comfort. Stephen also sought comfort from Gertie who was old, but looked no older than he did twenty years before. "Come down and see old Gertie," he would say. "I've still a few tricks up my skirt and know how to make a big lad happy." And he usually did, sometimes expertly sucking Stephen to climax as he sat in an armchair and turned the pages of one of Gertie's theatrical scrap books, sometimes Gertie removing Stephen's cock from his maw in order to answer a question or make a comment about a star or show from long ago. Often he would prepare a bath for Stephen and use his soapy hands between Stephen's legs, which hung over the sides. "You need stretching more, dearie; a big lad like you can take a lot before the final act."
Some years later, when The Plunger became a regular on a BBC radio quiz program, he took up with a man who worked there. Gertie hated him instantly and The Plunger was severe with his servant, but always stopping short of sacking him. Then Gertie noticed money and things disappearing from Broughton Lodge and the Chelsea studio. Some of Teddy's paintings disappeared too. Gertie waited until he had the evidence and the faithless lover was exposed and sent packing. Again The Plunger was sad and alone. However, in a final act before Gertie too shuffled off this mortal coil, he introduced The Plunger to Clifford who was a trainee scene painter at the Theatre Royal. Clifford had migrated from poverty in Jamaica and had showed real talent in art school. He was a very kind young fellow, amusing, good looking and quite black of course. He and The Plunger `hit it off' (to use an expression of the time) and so Lord Altnaharra was not alone, even in his eighties, and Clifford looked after him devotedly when Gertie Haines died in 1960.
The nineteen-sixties was a decade whose end was a revolution away from its beginning. There were straws in the wind of course. Martin loved the Beatles while Stephen loathed them--while admitting of a yen to sleep with the four Liverpudlians. Britain's decline as a world power continued after Suez and Martin spoke gloomily in the Lords of this and of his distaste for the blunt hegemony of the United States. When Vice-president Nixon came to Britain, Martin was pleased to be able to snub both him and Harold Wilson at the same time.
Martin had been initially in favour of the war in Vietnam-- such was his loathing of Communism-- but by 1968 he had changed his mind and Stephen increasingly re-examined his own views in light of a war fifty years before. The adults were increasingly puzzled by the antics of the young and by 1968 they were even rather fearful of them-- as if they were some strange and alien species-- and they were greatly hurt at their rejection of much that they had held so dear. In this vein, Martin, Stephen and Erna sharply disapproved of Charlotte living with a man she was not married to-- even if it was in Eton Place-- and they called it by an ugly name. Charlotte wheeled on them and told them some home truths that should have been blindingly obvious before they spoke and they were suitably chastened and nothing more was said. By 1973 Martin realised, to his surprise, that he no longer thought of it as even being an `issue'-- to use the vernacular. The world had moved on.
The grandchildren were mightily amused by the photographs from this period. Stephen and Martin were snapped in Kodachrome revealing them as middle-aged men, but their hair was worn decidedly longer than it had been, caressing their ears and even touching their collars. Pictures of Erna show her in boots and a tartan skirt just above her knees and she was more often seen in trousers that looked like wallpaper. Stephen, who had shaved of his pencil moustache in 1945, to Martin's distress, cultivated a bushy one for a year or so in the early 1970s and both gentlemen sported Edwardian sideburns on their chops. The grandchildren asked them if they had worn caftans and Martin said no, only his peer's robes, while Stephen laughed too, but failed to confess that he did wear one, at Carlo's urging, for a few weeks in 1969--enjoying the airy freedom beneath as he swung down the King's Road.
In 1974 Martin and Stephen flew to California to see Bunny who had moved there after the death of Dwight. Dr Dwight Sleeper Hoyt III had been a heavy smoker and lung cancer took him after three dreadful years. Bunny had decided to make a clean break from Chicago and followed the advice of certain friends and headed for Los Angles where he plunged into real estate with tangible results. Martin and Stephen had not been there since 1917-- an unbelievable age ago and the city was unrecognizable and not a soul remembered them from that distant time --it was a town of particularly short memories, they realized.
While the weather was marvellous and they went to the beach at Malibu where Bunny had a cottage, both boys did not care for Bunny's new friends who seemed interested in little but the ruthless making and joyless spending of money. These people had no conversation save regarding their obsession with their diets and appearances-- Bunny himself was on some regimen that involved meditating on a small mat and eating large quantities of lentils-- yet no one walked anywhere or took fresh air and they were all hopelessly addicted to cigarettes and pills of various kinds. The boys were not naïve, and an irritating sniff and frequent trips to the `bathroom' (as they coyly termed the lavatory) disclosed that most of Bunny's friends enlivened their flaccid personalities with cocaine. They were, as in 1917, not entirely sorry to leave Los Angles for the decidedly less glamorous world of rural England, which they decided they liked best of all.
Martin's grand amore of 1979, which disgusted Stephen, was for the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. In her Martin saw, all too readily, the saviour of the nation and someone who would restore the greatness that had once been theirs. This adoration reached its height in 1982 with the Falklands War and Martin had his collection of stamps from that gallant dependency on display in the Red Drawing Room. During the Miners' Strike, Martin was rather troubled and Stephen took the opportunity to remind him of their visit to West Tipton in the nineteen-thirties. The Iron Lady acquired some tarnish.
About this time, Martin agreed to open Croome to visitors over the summer months. It proved a surprisingly popular attraction and the income went towards their land tax bill and so the days and hours were extended, especially in the months when the boys' (if octogenarians could be described thusly) were away in France. Martin found he actually liked the general public who were well behaved on the whole and were willing to stop for a chat to an old man. The only small inconvenience was when they found they had to restore the kitchens to how they were in his father's time-- the usual offices' apparently being of particular interest to trippers who enjoyed comparing them to their own Formica fitted dream kitchens at home. The film people were also glad to use it and pay for the privilege. A more modern kitchen for their own use was constructed where Glass's bedroom had been for he had died in 1978 and the house now had no butler.
Instead, there were a series of new housekeepers and Nils, a young Swedish masseur was employed as a nurse in later years, especially to aid Carlo, who was even older than they were and rather prone to arthritis, and for Erna who had nothing wrong with her at all. The Swedes had a refreshingly open mind to matters, they all agreed.
And how do we know all this? Why Martin and Stephen are right beside us as we write these words. Both boys are well over ninety now. Martin's eyes are still blue and twinkle beneath his lids, which are, to be honest, a little droopy and his blond hair has all but vanished. It was only three years ago that he found it best to use a stick when outside the house and this was precipitated by `a fall' he had on the steps at Boodles, but he assures us that the gin, the claret and the Drambuie had nothing to do with it.
Stephen's raven locks are now iron grey and he still makes the gesture of pushing a stray lock from his left eye, although it is many years since it last flopped so luxuriantly and attractively there. He is still a handsome man, very upright and not run to fat and he is just reminding me to tell how he was almost a film star in the days when Hollywood was silent. We tell him that that is recorded.
Now Martin is wondering if we got the names of his dogs correct for the time when Margaret Thatcher came to visit. We tell him that we did not write about that. Stephen teases him about being moony for Susan Hampshire when the BBC used Croome for a serialization of some Trollope novels.
Martin has angina and rests of an afternoon, usually with Stephen beside him, ("Just to keep him company") and Stephen finds that he must visit the lavatory more frequently than he would like. "But I'm glad I never smoked like so many of our friends. You don't smoke?" (We assure him that we don't) "Lord Altnaharra says he's given up, but Will saw him skulking outside the George V Dining Room when he was here for lunch last week. I think he hides them from Clifford."
Despite all this, their minds are still active-- quite sharp actually--and they give thanks for this, and they spend a good part of their days reading and listening to music rather than vegetating in front of the television like so many of their surviving contemporaries. "Noel said television is not for watching; it's for being on," says Martin and we laugh.
Stephen asks if he might write something on my Macintosh 512k. "I think I would like to learn how to use a computer," he says. "Am I too old?" and then: "Remember when you bought me a ball point pen," Mala?" Stephen continues with his voice raised.
Martin nods. "I think it was for your fiftieth birthday and it cost nine guineas in Regent Street," and turning to us, "They were the latest technology then-- I think it was a `Birome' made in South America."
"You're looking a little pale, Mr Hilliard, would you like Nils to take your blood pressure?" says Martin and Bruno says that it is prison pallor.
"Were you in prison Mr Hilliard?" asks Martin and his lordship is told of the sentence in ___ and what it was for. "I have been out there once and I have some very fine stamps from there." He rings for Mrs Wainwright to ask Carlo to bring his album from the bedroom. Carlo will need help to lift it down from the bookshelf and he is rather short sighted now and might bring the wrong one. A discussion about stamps of the British Empire follows.
We would like to ask about their sex life, but think it indelicate-- despite all that has gone before. As if reading our minds, suddenly Martin puts down his cup and says, "Stephen still likes to fuck me, you know. Does that shock you?"
It does a little, but we laugh and say "Not at all."
"Not so often as I used to," chimes in Stephen, with a grin, "but he still moans like a whore and says it's too big."
"I know it's obviously not too big," reflects Martin seriously after he asks Stephen to repeat what he has just said ("I'm a little hard o' hearing these days and the young ones do mumble instead of speaking clearly like they did in my day, don't they?" We agree.)
"It can't be too big, Mala. I've proved that," chuckles Stephen, "It's the way he likes it." Martin blushes like a schoolboy, but does not deny it. For a moment they are both boys at the swimming place.
Martin is looking out of the window at the wintry scene. He says that he is considering planting a Maackia amurensis on the lawn outside the window. Stephen tells him they take fifty years to mature and Martin brightly replies: "Well, we had better plant it this afternoon then, Derbs." They share a rueful smile for they know that they have not many summers left together, but for now they have each other and they are still in love.
Henry H. Hilliard & Pete Bruno, Croome, 1988.
To be continued in two chapters called "Post Scripts", so watch out for them, dear reader. If you have any comments or questions, Pete and I would really love to hear from you. Just send them to h.h.hilliard@hotmail.com and please put NOB Nifty in the subject line.