John Carré - A Delicate Truth

‘She Suzanna, then? Suzanna Cardew as rode the hunt when she were nine year old? Got out in front of the Master, had to have her horse hauled back by the Field Master.’

‘That sounds like Suzanna.’

‘Well I’m buggered,’ says Ben.

A couple of days later an official letter arrived at the post office that put paid to any lingering suspicions. It was addressed not to any old Probyn but to Sir Christopher Probyn , who, according to John Treglowan, who’d looked him up on the Internet, had been some sort of ambassador or commissioner, was it, to a bunch of islands in the Caribbean that was still supposed to be British, and had a medal to show for it too.

And from that day on, Kit and Suzanna, as they insisted on being called, could do no wrong, even if the levellers in the village would have wished it different. Where the commander in his later years was remembered as a lonely, misanthropic drunk, the Manor’s new incumbents threw themselves on village life with such zest and goodwill as even the sourest couldn’t deny. It didn’t matter that Kit was practically rebuilding the Manor single-handed: come Fridays, he’d be down at Community House with an apron round his waist, serving suppers at Seniors’ Stake-Nite and staying for the washing-up. And Suzanna, who they say is ill but you wouldn’t know it, like as not helping out with the Busy Bees or sorting church accounts with Vicar after the treasurer went and died, or down Primary School for the Sure Starters’ concert, or up Church Hall to help set up for Farmers’ Market, or delivering deprived city kids to their country hosts for a week’s holiday away from the Smoke, or running somebody’s wife to the Treliske in Truro to see her sick husband. And stuck-up? – forget it, she was just like you and me, ladyship or not.

Or if Kit was out shopping and spotted you across the street, it was a pound to a penny he’d be bounding towards you between the traffic with his arm up, needing to know how your daughter was enjoying her gap year or how your wife was doing after her dad passed away – warm-hearted to a fault, he was, no side to him either, and never forgets a name. As for Emily, their daughter, who’s a doctor up in London, though you wouldn’t think it to look at her: well , whenever she came down she brought the sunshine with her, ask John Treglowan, who goes into a swoon every time he sees her, dreaming up all the aches and pains he hasn’t got, just to have her cure them for him! Well, a cat may look at a queen, they do say.

So it came as no surprise to anybody, except possibly Kit himself, when Sir Christopher Probyn of the Manor was paid the unprecedented, the unique honour, of becoming the first non-Cornishman ever to be elected Official Opener and Lord of Misrule for Master Bailey’s Annual Fayre, held by ancient rite in Bailey’s Meadow in the village of St Pirran on the first Sunday after Easter.

‘Funky but not over the top is Mrs Marlow’s advice,’ said Suzanna, busying herself in front of the cheval mirror and talking through the open doorway to Kit’s dressing room. ‘We’re to preserve our dignity, whatever that ’s supposed to mean.’

‘So not my grass skirt,’ Kit called back in disappointment. ‘Still, Mrs Marlow knows best,’ he added resignedly, Mrs Marlow being their elderly, part-time housekeeper, inherited from the commander.

‘And remember you’re not just today’s Opener ,’ Suzanna warned, giving a last affirmative tug at her stock. ‘You’re Master of Misrule too. They’ll expect you to be funny. But not too funny. And none of your blue jokes. There’ll be Methodists present.’

The dressing room was the one part of the Manor Kit had vowed never to lay his do-it-yourself fingers on. He loved its faded Victorian wallpaper, the clunky antique writing desk set in its own alcove, the worn sash window looking out over the orchard. And today, oh gladness, the aged pear and apple trees were in blossom, thanks to some timely pruning by Mrs Marlow’s husband, Albert.

Not that Kit had just stepped into the commander’s shoes. He had added bits of himself too. On the fruitwood tallboy stood a statuette of the victorious Duke of Wellington gloating over a crouching Napoleon in a sulk: bought in a Paris flea market on Kit’s first foreign tour. On the wall hung a print of a Cossack musketeer shoving a pike down the throat of an Ottoman janissary: Ankara, First Secretary, Commercial.

Yanking open his wardrobe in search of whatever was funky but not over the top, he let his eye wander over other relics of his diplomatic past.

My black morning coat and spongebag trousers? They’d think I was a bloody undertaker.

Dinner tails? Head waiter. And in this heat daft, for the day against all prediction had dawned cloudless and radiant. He gave an ecstatic bellow:

‘Eureka!’

‘You’re not in the bath , are you, Probyn?’

‘Drowning, waving, the lot!’

A yellowing straw boater from his Cambridge years has caught his eye and, hanging beneath it, a striped blazer of the same period: perfect for my Brideshead look. An ancient pair of white ducks will complete the ensemble. And for that touch of foppery, his antique walking stick with scrolled silver handle, a recent acquisition. With knighthood, he had discovered a harmless thing about walking sticks. No trip to London was complete without a visit to the emporium of Mr James Smith of New Oxford Street. And finally – whoopee! – the fluorescent socks that Emily had given him for Christmas.

‘Em? Where is that girl? Emily, I require your best teddy bear immediately!’

‘Out running with Sheba,’ Suzanna reminded him from the bedroom.

Sheba, their yellow Labrador. Shared their last posting with them.

He returned to the wardrobe. To set off the fluorescent socks he would risk the orange suede loafers he’d bought in Bodmin at a summer sale. He tried them on and let out a yip. What the hell? He’d be out of them by tea time. He selected an outrageous tie, squeezed himself into the blazer, clapped on the boater at a rakish angle and did his Brideshead voice:

‘I say, Suki, darling, do ya happen to remember where I put m’ bally speech notes?’ – posing hand on hip in the doorway like all the best dandies. Then stopped, and lowered his arms to his sides in awe. ‘Mother of pearl. Suki, darling. Hallelujah!’

Suzanna was standing before the cheval mirror, scrutinizing herself over her shoulder. She was wearing her late aunt’s black riding habit and boots, and the white lace blouse with its stock for a collar. She had pulled her strict grey hair into a bun and fixed it with a silver comb. On top of it she had set a shiny black topper that should have been ridiculous but to Kit was utterly disarming. The clothes fitted her, the period fitted her, the topper fitted her. She was a handsome, sixty-year-old Cornishwoman of her time, and the time was a hundred years ago. Best of all, you’d think she’d never had a day’s illness in her life.

Pretending to be unsure whether it was permitted to advance further, Kit made a show of hovering in the doorway.

‘You are going to enjoy it, aren’t you, Kit?’ Suzanna said severely into the mirror. ‘I don’t want to think of you going through the motions just to please me.’

‘Of course I’m going to enjoy it, darling. It’ll be a hoot.’

And he meant it. If it would have made old Suki happy, he’d have put on a tutu and jumped out of a cake. They’d lived his life and now they would live hers, if it killed him. Taking her hand, he raised it reverently to his lips, then lifted it aloft as if he were about to dance a minuet with her before escorting her across the dust sheets, down the staircase to the hall, where Mrs Marlow stood clutching two posies of fresh violets, Master Bailey’s flower of choice, one each.