Sophia Money-Coutts - The Plus One

I quickly typed out a reply.

All good, don’t worry. I’ll report back on Monday xxxx

Still hot and damp from the bath, I then stood up to heave myself into the floor-length dress Legs and Lala had insisted I wear. No tights, because they were common apparently. I looked in the full-length mirror. A ropey Twenties flapper girl looked back at me. But it would have to do. And somehow I needed to walk downstairs in the ridiculous heels they’d given me, so high they looked like they might give me vertigo.

I picked up my phone again and checked the time. Nearly seven o’clock. I needed to find the drawing room where Ian had told me the family gathered for drinks. More drinks! And I still hadn’t sat down to interview Jasper yet. I’d scribbled some more notes on my phone – his penchant for Van Morrison, his habit of constantly brushing his hair from his eyes, Max’s comment about him being ‘honourable’ – but I needed Jasper on record about his relationships. I needed him to open up a bit. I couldn’t come all this way and report back to Peregrine with so little. Maybe more drinks would help, I thought, as I closed the bedroom door behind me and inched down the stairs like a wobbly drunk, clutching at the banister. A grandfather clock ticked gently from below, but otherwise the house was silent. Ian’s instructions for finding the drawing room had been along these lines: ‘Come downstairs, turn left and walk fifty yards down the corridor, turn right into another corridor, click your heels three times and the drawing room will be on your right-hand side.’

The sound of smashing glass, followed by a high-pitched scream gave me a clue. It was exactly the sort of high-pitched scream that might come from an angry and potentially violent duchess.

‘WE ARE ALL HAVING FUCKING DINNER TOGETHER, ELEANOR, I MEAN IT.’

Another high-pitched scream. I froze outside the door. Rude to walk in on a row. But quite rude to stand out here listening to it, also. I wondered if I should hobble back upstairs again. But I could already feel a blister coming up on my little toe from those wretched heels. I was hovering like this in the hall, as if playing a private game of musical statues, when I heard a small cough behind me.

‘Polly, there you are,’ said Ian. ‘Follow me and let’s get you another drink.’ He swept past, carrying a silver tray with several Martini glasses on it.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely, nothing to worry about,’ he said, pushing the door open.

The Duchess was standing beside the fireplace, still in her shooting clothes. The Duke was sitting in a large red armchair. Inca walked towards me and shoved his wet nose into my crotch.

‘Do get your bloody dog to behave,’ said the Duchess, huffily.

‘That’s all right,’ I said, brushing smears from Inca’s wet nose off the three-thousand-pound dress.

‘Very kind of you to dress so wonderfully, Polly, but we’re terribly relaxed here,’ said the Duke, who was wearing a blue shirt and electric red cords with a pair of velvet slippers. ‘Ian, what are we having for dinner?’

‘I think Chef’s doing mushroom soufflé, followed by roast partridge and then rhubarb syllabub, Your Grace. And there’s some cheese, if you’d like?’

‘Yes, we simply must have cheese,’ the Duke said gravely.

‘Well, if you’ll forgive me,’ said the Duchess, ‘I’m going to go and get changed and then go out. So, I’m afraid I won’t be joining you for dinner, Polly, but my husband and children will look after you.’ She glared at the Duke and stalked out, slamming the door behind her.

‘Drink, Polly?’ asked the Duke. ‘I’m going to have another one. A strong one, I think. Bugger the doctors.’

After its warlike beginning, dinner was almost disappointingly peaceful. Jasper, the Duke, Violet and I sat at one end of a vast mahogany table in the dining room, the light from several silver candlesticks flickering off the dark green walls and an eight-foot stuffed polar bear casting a long shadow along the room at the other end of the table. It was his grandfather’s, the Duke told me, one of forty-six polar bears brought back as a trophy from one of his hunting expeditions in the Arctic in 1906.

There was no shouting. No Duchess. Violet (in jeans and a t-shirt) talked about her horses, the Duke generally talked about the animals he’d killed, Jasper (in jeans and a collared blue shirt) quietly fed Bovril scraps of partridge. I felt excruciatingly out of place given that I was dressed as if I was off to a pre-war nightclub, but I kicked my shoes off under the table. I rubbed my feet together as the Duke asked me questions about London.

‘Far too many people in London,’ he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin at the end of dinner and standing up. He then announced he needed to walk Inca and Violet said she wanted to have a bath. Which left Jasper and me sitting at one end of the table, candles still burning and Ian humming while removing bowls and dirty napkins.

‘Another bottle?’ Ian asked.

‘I think so, don’t you?’ replied Jasper, pushing his chair back from the table and stretching his legs out in front of him. ‘OK, Polly, let’s get this over with.’

‘Get what over with?’

‘The interview, our little chat. What do you want to know about me and this madhouse?’

‘Oh, I see. OK. You call it a madhouse?’

‘What else would you call it? My father is a Victorian whose dearest wish is that he’d fought in the Boer War. My mother is happiest pottering about in the hen house with her friend, the gamekeeper.’

‘Ah. So, that’s…’

Jasper raised an eyebrow at me.

‘… common knowledge?’

‘Desperately common. The whole village knows about it. It’s been on and off for years. As long as I can remember. I don’t mind so much but I think Violet probably does. So, instead, she thinks of horses from morning till night.’

‘Hang on, hang on, can I record this?’ I pulled my phone out of my pocket and waved it at him.

He smiled at me. ‘Ah my inquisitor. I didn’t realize I was doing an interview for Newsnight .’

‘You’re not. But I quite need to record it. Can I?’ I held my phone up again.

‘’Course. I will say lots of immensely intelligent things.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ I said, fiddling with my phone to make sure it was recording. ‘And what about you?’

‘What do you mean “What about me?”’

‘Are you as mad as everyone else?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m the sanest of the lot.’ He smiled again and swept his hair out of his eyes.

‘What about your break-up? What about those photos?’

‘What photos?’

‘The ones in the paper.’

He looked straight into my eyes. It was unnerving, as if he could see directly into my brain. A sort of posh Paul McKenna. ‘I don’t want to talk about Caz,’ he replied. ‘She’s a sweet girl. It just wasn’t right. Or I’m not right…’ He trailed off. ‘And those photos… All right, so occasionally I behave badly and let off a bit of steam. I go out and I behave like an idiot. But I don’t think being photographed stumbling out of a club is the worst thing in the world.’

He leant closer, shifting in his chair, still looking into my eyes. ‘Forgive me, Polly, for I have sinned.’

I burst out laughing. ‘Nice try. But you can’t charm your way out that easily.’

‘Fine.’ He sat back again, reached across the table for the wine and filled our glasses up. ‘OK, go on, ask me anything.’

I raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I’m trying to work you out.’