David Dickinson: Death of an Old Master

Winter 1896

The old man walked slowly across the fields. A fine rain was falling on his bare head. He let himself into the little church and walked to the position he knew so well after forty-five years as the bell ringer of St Peter’s Church. He slipped through the faded red curtain and unhooked the rope from its place on the wall. High above him in the tower the bell still carried the inscription from its maker. ‘Thomas Wilson made mee, 1714.’ The old man began to pull, his arms rising regularly above his shoulders like the swell on the sea.

The bell tolled for a funeral, the funeral of one who would have been the lord of the manor had he still lived there before his God called him home. Charles Edward Windham Fitzmaurice de Courcy was in the church already, his coffin resting beneath the inscriptions to earlier de Courcys on the walls. It was a quarter past ten in the morning, the service scheduled for eleven o’clock.

Two hundred and fifty yards away through the morning mist that swirled across the fields the great Jacobean mansion of de Courcy Hall continued to resist the elements as it had for the past two hundred and seventy years. Inside in the Great Hall a melancholy party was preparing to set off for the church. Alice de Courcy, wife of the dead man, wondered about her future. Edmund de Courcy, the eldest son, wondered about the size of his inheritance. Julia and Sarah, his younger sisters, wondered if they would be able to go and live in London all the year round. None of them had seen the dead man, husband and father, for the past fourteen years.

‘Do you think it’s time to go, Edmund?’ Mother touched her son softly on the arm. ‘We don’t want to be late.’ It was half-past ten.

‘Not yet, Mother, there’s still time.’

In 1882 Charles de Courcy had abandoned his fields and his family to live with another woman in the south of France. There, so the family believed, he had fathered another two children. There, the family were convinced, he had squandered most of the family inheritance on his mistress. And she, the mistress, had announced her intention of attending the last rites this melancholy morning, though whether she would bring the children no one knew.

‘Did Smithson say that woman would come to the house first or go direct to the church?’ Alice de Courcy asked for the hundredth time. Alice shook every time she thought about this meeting if meeting there had to be. Smithson was the family lawyer, based in Fakenham, who had been the unhappy conduit of many messages between the two households over the preceding decade and a half. The family knew there had been great arguments about a will, with lawyers coming up from Norwich and even London to thrash out the rights of an estate owner to dispose of his property as he wished in the dusty offices of a Norfolk town. Every conversation in de Courcy Hall since they heard of the death had revolved round this single point. Would the Frenchwoman come to the Hall or would she go direct to the church?

‘You know Smithson didn’t say, Mama.’ Edmund was as gentle as he knew how. ‘But I don’t think there is time for her and her party to come here and then go to the church. I think we’d better set off.’ It was twenty to eleven.

And so the de Courcy family set off across their fields for the last rites of a man they would never see again. In their different ways they prepared to meet another family they had never seen before, half-brothers, half-sisters perhaps. The girls thought it was rather dramatic and exciting, their cheeks turning red as the wind lashed through the trees. Alice was not sure she could bear it. Edmund, aware of his new responsibilities at the age of twenty-five, was uncharacteristically worried about his mother.

To the north, past the sodden cows that huddled for shelter beneath the twisted trees, the North Sea marked the outer limits of the estate. Generations of de Courcys had planted trees in ever-growing numbers as a protection against the storms that whistled in from the angry coastline. To the south the estate stretched for many miles in the direction of Norwich.

Sometimes the bell was very loud, as if it was right in front of them, sometimes it drifted off to the west with the wind.

A bedraggled vicar greeted them at the door. There were tiny holes in his cassock. His boots were leaking. Payments from the de Courcy family had become increasingly irregular over the years.

‘Good morning, Mrs de Courcy, Edmund, Julia, Sarah.’ The vicar smiled a feeble smile, his eyes flickering down the long drive that led to de Courcy Hall. It was ten minutes to eleven.

Edmund led his family to their pew at the front of the church, his mother huddling up against the wall as if she didn’t want to be seen. The bell was still tolling. The organ was playing a Bach fugue very softly. The women fell to their knees to pray. Servants and neighbours were filling up the pews behind them.

On the floor to Edmund’s left, two of his ancestors stared up at the ceiling and the next life from their brass memorial on the floor. ‘Richard de Courcy lies here, God have mercy on his soul. Lady Elizabeth who was the wife of Richard de Courcy lies here, to whose soul may God be merciful. This in the year of our Lord 1380.’ Grave and inscrutable, serious and humble, the ancient faces slept on. It was five to eleven.

In the pew opposite, Mr Smithson, the lawyer from Fakenham, was kneeling in prayer. Beside him a rather smartly dressed young man was staring at the memorial tablets on the walls. As the bell stopped a slow drip began to fall loudly on to the floor just behind the pulpit. It seemed to have caught the rhythm of the bell, the plops on the stone floor sounding at the same interval as the creation of the bellwright Thomas Wilson far above in its tower. Edmund noticed a small trail of green slime making a determined advance on the wall beside the altar.

Edmund stole a quick glance behind him. All the pews were full now, except for the one opposite his own. The organ began to build towards a crescendo. The vicar was busying himself by the altar, water dripping from his boots and forming little puddles on the floor.

At two minutes to eleven Edmund sensed there were new arrivals. You didn’t have to look round. There was a low murmur of excitement from the pews behind. There was a firm click as the door was closed by the newcomers. Julia and Sarah began to turn their heads to look until Edmund nudged them both firmly in the ribs. Alice de Courcy huddled ever closer to the wall and sank to her knees again to pray for deliverance.

A handsome woman of about forty years of age, escorted by a boy of ten and a girl of seven or eight, sat down in the pew opposite. Edmund realized with a shock that the little boy looked remarkably like he had done at the same age. All three stared directly in front of them.

The vicar coughed firmly. Resolutely looking at the back of the church he began the service.

‘I am the Resurrection and the life.’ The vicar’s voice was thick as if he had a heavy cold. ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

The Frenchwoman in her pew was having difficulty finding her place in the unfamiliar prayer book of the Anglican Church. The smartly dressed young man sitting beside lawyer Smithson leant forward and gave her his own, opened at the correct page. She smiled slightly in acknowledgement.

Edmund’s memories of his father were remote. Sometimes he had to admit that he found it hard to remember what his father looked like and he had to go and stare at the portrait in the Long Gallery of de Courcy Hall where an unbroken line of nine of his male ancestors adorned the walls. He dimly recalled his father teaching him to play cricket in the walled garden at the side of the house. He thought his father had been away a lot, in London or Norwich, always apparently on business. He recalled all too well the shouting matches that often accompanied his return, his mother left weeping softly in a corner of the drawing room. This new half-brother and half-sister must have very different, fresher memories but he had no idea what they were. He wondered if the little boy had been taught to play cricket in some hot French garden, with French servants bringing glasses of lemonade to drink under the trees.