Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

In the great houses of the bourgeoisie and the commercial parvenus, the servants provided the glue that held the social classes together, or bridged the divides. As snobbish and as rule-bound as their employers, they became families within families, with their own intrigues, honours and dishonours, grands amours , hatreds and loyalties. Every house had its own rules. In some the servants were treated almost like slaves, but in families such as the one in The Grampians, they were a natural part of its extended society. The one universal truth is that every family was terrified of losing its cook. Ladies lived with the perpetual anxiety of upsetting their cooks or having them poached by unprincipled dinner guests.

There were worms in the buds, however, even in Court Road. Not long after the coronation, in a glade of the New Forest, the handsome Captain Pitt was killed in a duel that was possibly the last to be fought formally on British soil. Nobody was ever to find out the identity of his antagonist. His pistol had been discharged, but there were no powder burns on his forehead where the bullet had entered his head, and in any case the bullet was not from his own gun. That is all that anyone was able to discover. His body had been found by a horseman, lying spreadeagled in a swathe of bluebells, not far from a stream and a pungent bank of ransoms. He was given a military funeral, all the more poignant for the youth of his widow and children, and sailors from the Royal Yacht fired a volley over his grave. His death left behind it the ambiguous sorrow of those who mourn the dead, but are proud that it came about as a matter of honour.

Within a few months his two eldest sons had died in the South African war, Theodore in an ambush and Jean-Pierre of enteric fever. Archie and Daniel would always remember them as jovial giants who used to hurl them across the room into the safety of a sofa piled up with cushions. Mme Pitt, grief-stricken but stubborn, inheritor of three sets of medals, decided not to return to France with her remaining sons, Archie and Daniel. Her circumstances greatly reduced, she moved to a small cottage in Sussex, where she eked out her living by teaching French in local schools and to private tutees. After many years of effort she finally learned to make the ‘th’ sound in English, only reverting to ‘z’ when she was in a state of agitation.

Archie had already left Westminster School, and Daniel had to leave early, following his brother directly into Rattray’s Sikhs and departing for India. Mme Pitt now lived alone in her little piece of paradise under the South Downs. Back in Court Road, every time they saw that part of the wall, Rosie and her sisters would think of Daniel flying over it on Coronation Day, wonder where Daniel and Archie were, and miss them. On the other side the Pendennis boys remained, and the lives of the children continued to be inextricably entwined, linked by the blue door. Everyone knew that Rosie and Ashbridge would grow up to be married, as certainly as they knew it themselves.

To all appearances the new King had brought with him a relaxed love of the good things in life. People flocked to the races because he was often there, and the whole nation rejoiced when his horse, Minoru, won the Derby in 1909. Witty, popular and shrewd though he was, in private the merry monarch still fell into deep fits of gloom. He was a peacemaker, but saw all about him disintegration and the prospect of chaos. He contemplated abdication and was growing ever more convinced that the monarchy would not survive to see his grandson on the throne. He had personally succeeded in creating the Entente Cordiale with France, repairing the diplomatic damage done by the South African war, but it was impossible to ignore the Nero-esque antics of his nephew in Germany, the ‘All Highest’ and ‘Admiral of the Atlantic’.

Sandwiched between France and Russia, and fearful of them both, the Kaiser had long resolved to knock out France with one titanic blow, and then turn on Russia and crush her too. The easiest way to deal with France was to invade it through two neutral countries, Luxembourg and Belgium. He was convinced that Britain would not honour its treaty obligations to defend Belgium. It was, after all, a mere ‘scrap of paper’ and his mother was King Edward’s favourite sister. Germans in the know began to make toasts to ‘ Der Tag ’. General von Moltke was later to remark that one’s battle plans survive exactly up to that point when one makes contact with the enemy.

King Edward brought his brief and beautiful age to an end on the sixth day of May in 1910. Prostrated by bronchitis but smoking cigars to the very end that they had been hastening, he learned from the Prince of Wales that his horse Witch of the Air had won at Kempton. ‘I am very glad,’ he said, and his servants put him to bed. ‘I shan’t give in,’ he said, ‘I’m going to fight it,’ but he fell into a coma and died at the imminence of midnight.

Thus it was left to King George to deal with what his father had foreseen; and to Rosie, Christabel, Ottilie, Sophie, Sidney, Albert, Archie, Daniel and Ashbridge.

I LOVED ASH the moment we first set eyes on each other, and it was entirely mutual, even though we were only little children. When we met he was fresh from America and was very put out by being in England. He told me later that he found it rigid and archaic, but I’m certain that if he had ever gone back to America he would have found it deficient because it was too callow.

Ash was really called Ashbridge, and he was from Baltimore. He had a lovely soft American accent, with that strong ‘r’ after the vowels. He never lost it and you never would have mistaken him for an Englishman. His family lived on the other side of our house, and he was one of our crowd of children that spent its time larking about, making mud pies, playing sardines and hide-and-seek, and British bulldog, and tag, and kick the can. Our mothers were somewhat genteel, but we children were almost wild when we were outside. We romped and fought in our walled gardens, whilst our respective governesses and nurses gossiped together and had tea in the conservatory. In May, Beeson’s men used to come and remove the windows of the conservatory. Thanks to the Luftwaffe and lack of funds, they’re off permanently now. When we were older we all played tennis on the lawn, in never-ending combinations of doubles and singles. We played American tournaments, and knockout competitions, and generally you won if Ash was on your side. If Ash and Daniel were both on your side, you would definitely win. Ash was school champion at absolutely everything. I remember a doubles game where you had to run round the net as soon as you’d hit the ball. We called it American Tennis, and it was completely exhausting, but it was such hilarious fun. The problem was that there was never really a winner, because the games were not won by a pair, but by the east end or the west end. Sometimes all nine of us played at once. My mother liked to play croquet, and every year she would aspinal the hoops, making a great ceremony of it, and then causing arguments when she wanted to play croquet and we wanted to play tennis.

Because Ashbridge was American we got into the habit of calling ourselves ‘the Pals’. ‘Light-heart and glad they seemed to me, and merry comrades’. We were: Daniel and poor Archie, Ash and his brothers Sidney and Albert, and Sophie and Ottilie and Christabel and me; five boys and four girls. We had battle cries of ‘Long live the Pals!’ and ‘Pals forever!’ Then Daniel and Archie moved away after the Captain was killed, and Ash and Sidney and Albert were the only boys left.

Ash grew up to be a wonderful man. By the time he was eighteen he was occasionally sporting a military moustache, but otherwise he looked as he always had. He was nicely proportioned, with blond hair and grey eyes. He used to say: ‘I am built for speed and distance. If you want someone to run to Wales and fetch you something, then I’m your man.’