Майкл Ридпат - The Diplomat’s Wife

‘Not quite yet. We’re going to start in Devon. Chaddington Hall.’

Phil loved driving the TR6. They sped across Bodmin Moor with the roof down. It was a cool day for June with small white clouds chasing the car eastwards, scattering quick black shadows across the green moor. Phil usually drove his mother’s dull, underpowered Renault 5 with the weird gearstick, and occasionally his father’s big, heavy, slightly scary Rover. The TR6 beat both of them hands down, and along the straight bits of the A30 he was able to push above eighty without any complaint from his passenger.

Stupidly, Phil had forgotten to bring any of his tapes. Grams slotted in one of her own, some opera, and although Phil flinched at the first screech, he enjoyed the way the music swelled around them as they barrelled across the moor.

‘Do you really need me to drive, or were you just being generous?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no. I’d much rather you drove. I’ve lost my confidence, recently. And I’m very glad you agreed to come.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. I have a feeling I will need a fit young man with me.’

‘To do what, exactly?’

‘To deal with the unexpected.’

‘Are we expecting the unexpected?’ Phil asked with half a smile.

‘Yes, I rather think we are.’

Phil slowed behind a line of cars following a caravan. ‘Where are we going? You said you were posted to Paris and Berlin?’

‘That’s right. Or rather Roland was.’

Phil remembered his grandfather well: he had died five years before, when Phil was thirteen. Phil had liked the old man. The family had visited his grandparents a few times in Mevagissey, and Grandpa usually took Phil out fishing around the local coves in a little motorboat. They never caught much, but it had been fun.

‘Will we be going anywhere else?’

‘Possibly. Probably. I don’t know yet.’

‘This all sounds very mysterious.’

‘Oh, it is,’ said Grams. She was silent for a moment. ‘One of the reasons I asked you to accompany me is that I want to tell you a story. My story. The story of what I did before the war. I mentioned I’ve been thinking of revisiting my life then. But I also want to share it, so someone knows about it when I’m gone.’

‘But you’re not going anywhere, Grams,’ said Phil. ‘I don’t know how old you are, but you can’t be much more than sixty.’ Phil tactfully lopped a couple of years off his best guess.

‘Sixty-four,’ said Grams. ‘And you never know. Roland was only seventy-two when he died.’

That still seemed to give Grams another eight years at least. She looked pretty healthy to Phil. Not even really an old lady.

‘Why me?’ said Phil. ‘Why not Mum?’

Grams smiled. ‘My story would be difficult for your mother. It might be difficult for you. But I think you are the right person to hear it. I’m sure you are.’

Phil wasn’t completely convinced by that explanation, but his curiosity was aroused, as his grandmother had no doubt intended.

‘All right. We start at Chaddington Hall? That’s where you grew up, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And your father was a lord?’

Phil’s parents had discussed Chaddington Hall once or twice, but when he had pressed his mother for details of her grandparents, she had been evasive, to the point that Phil had almost doubted their existence. The idea that his family could have had any lordly ancestors seemed faintly ridiculous to him; his mother behaved in a resolutely middle-class fashion. But Grams? There was a touch of the aristocrat to her. And she had become a ‘lady’ herself when Grandpa had been knighted for his services to diplomatic cocktail parties or whatever. Dad’s father, who still lived with his wife in a nice village outside Glasgow, had been in insurance.

‘He was Lord Chaddington,’ Grams said.

‘Is there a Lord Chaddington now?’

‘No. I did have a brother. Hugh. But he died, so there was no heir to the title.’

Phil hadn’t heard anything about a Hugh. He would have been Phil’s great-uncle. Why had his mother never mentioned an uncle? There was a Great Aunt Sarah in Australia, presumably Grams’s sister, but Phil had only met her once, and couldn’t remember that very clearly.

‘So who owns Chaddington Hall now?’

‘It’s a prep school. My sister and I sold it in 1967. Most of the proceeds went in death duties. I telephoned and they are expecting us. It will be the first time I have been back since my father died. And it’s the place where my story starts.’

Soon after they crossed the River Tamar from Cornwall into Devon, they turned off the A30, and followed a number of ever-smaller roads that twisted and turned through little valleys and wooded lanes where the trees met overhead. Grams did the navigating without the aid of a map, which was fortunate, because Phil had completely lost his sense of direction. They emerged from a wood and over an uncharacteristically low hedge he caught sight of a broad bare hillside about five miles away.

‘Dartmoor,’ said Grams.

‘Are we going up there?’

‘Not quite.’

They meandered closer to the hills, until they passed a small sign announcing Chaddington. The village was tiny, just a few cottages, a couple of farms and a squat stone church with a squat stone tower. Trees encroached from all sides.

‘Let’s go the back way,’ Grams said. ‘Turn left here.’

She indicated a tiny lane opposite the church.

‘There’s more of a back way than this?’ said Phil, but he did as she suggested. He wasn’t sure why: even though they were heading towards the moor, it was impossible to see much above the high banks and hedges. The lane twisted and turned, passed a farm, and then straightened up for a hundred yards or so. Phil braked as the lane lurched over a small rise, and plunged into a hollow surrounded by trees, where it turned sharply to the right. Grams seemed to shiver and looked over her shoulder at the curve. Phil felt a flash of irritation: he had braked in plenty of time.

They emerged from the trees and soon came upon a slightly bigger road and a pair of grey gateposts, guarded by a tiny lodge. A large blue painted sign proclaimed: ‘Chaddington Hall School’ and underneath it: ‘Preparatory School for Boys 7–13 Years’.

Phil turned in, and guided the TR6 along a driveway running through a sports field split up into a number of cricket pitches. Boys of different sizes were playing — it was a Saturday afternoon in summer, after all.

‘This used to be the park,’ said Grams. ‘It makes sense they would turn it into playing fields.’

Chaddington Hall appeared ahead of them at the end of the long drive: a rambling house surrounded by lush vegetation. Plants climbed to left and right of the front door up towards the roof, and a thick, ancient tree stood on a circle of lawn to one side, its long branches stretching out towards them. The house appeared kindly rather than imposing, ancient grey brickwork wrinkling the facade.

‘That’s a chestnut,’ Grams said. ‘We used to love climbing it. I bet the schoolboys still do.’

‘I bet it’s out of bounds,’ said Phil. ‘That’s what schools do: ban the stuff that’s fun.’

He drew up next to a line of cars and a couple of minibuses parked on a tarmac apron to one side of the drive.

‘I’m pleased to see they haven’t messed the house up,’ Grams said. ‘At least on the outside.’

‘If they’ve turned it into a school, it’s bound to look different on the inside,’ Phil warned.

‘I know.’

As they walked up to the entrance, a small boy in grey shirt and shorts charged past, then stopped and pushed open the heavy door for them. They entered a square black-and-white-tiled hall, an imposing wooden staircase rising opposite. To their left, an open door marked ‘School Office’ revealed a large desk, behind which sat a middle-aged woman in a tweed skirt. She rose and approached them.