Chapter Five
Henry Ferguson sat looking at his feet. The grandfather clock softly chimed the quarter hour from the downstairs hall, and he became aware that he must have been sitting looking at his feet for fifteen minutes. The rest of the house was quiet and empty; his father and stepmother were out for the evening. He was now dressing for this evening’s charity event where he was giving a keynote speech on the importance of clean wells in war-torn countries.
The clock chimed another quarter and he was amazed that he had now wasted thirty minutes looking at a pair of black socks. His life was a mess and he had no idea how to jump start it. A year ago he had been fighting in the Middle East for King and country. A violent and terrifying existence surrounded by friends and enemies. Life was black and white; save people, kill people, avoid getting killed, watch others die. His hair constantly thick with sweat and sand. Now as he ran his fingers through his blond hair it was smooth and glossy. Like everything else in his life.
An honourable discharge had brought him home where he floundered.
A stupid, banal accident during a football game with some local kids had snapped his cruciate ligament and sent him home to England with an honourable discharge after only a few years of active service. An anterior cruciate ligament injury was repairable but it left a permanent weakness. He’d been offered a desk job but he felt it was time to come home and help his father run the family estate. Following the death of his mother, Hal’s father had married again, a lovely lady, but following a minor health scare, Hal didn’t want to miss any more time away from the people he loved. Life simply was too short and gone in a heartbeat.
Between one heartbeat and the one that never came.
He helped his father run the estate, he began to attend parties and events and yet his life seemed shallow. There seemed to be no purpose to it. Initially, he had struggled to come to terms with his ACL injury and then he began to party hard, finding nothing else to do. He felt out of control; he needed a purpose but he didn’t know what that was. It was at times like this that he missed that calm voice of his mother. He felt foolish that at twenty-eight he was still turning to his mother. He just wished she were still around to help him. Instead, now here he sat staring at his socks.
Lacing up his shoes, he stood up, checked his bow tie in the mirror and then headed downstairs and did a tour of the house and the grounds. Maybe he should move out. Who still lived at home at his age, but it seemed the easiest option. Normally he wouldn’t be so meticulous but no one else was home tonight so he liked to be certain of the security. He headed into the small library that was known as his mother’s. It was rarely used these days but when he felt flat, he found her presence buoyed him up. Recently he had made the biggest decision of his life and it was bringing him nothing but misery, and in his despair he was behaving badly. As he left, he touched the little jewelled snowdrops on the bookshelf. The flowers had been made by Fabergé and had been in his mother’s family since they had been first purchased as a birthday present from the London branch of Fabergé in the early 1900s.
Every time he saw them, they raised his spirits; he would remember his mother telling him that these tiny delicate blooms would emerge through the ice and snow. Whenever a task seemed insurmountable, she would say, he was to remember the first flowers of the year. As a little boy he had nodded solemnly at his mother’s words and tried to take them to heart. Smiling now he realised that, as ever, her words cheered him up. He had made his decision, now he needed to live with it.
Having checked all the house doors were locked, Hal switched his torch on and made his way over to the kennels. He wasn’t going to bother with the lower pens, Brian always had those in hand; besides, you’d have to be a very determined burglar or vandal to go and find those sheds in the pitch black. The kennels and estate offices, however, were an easier target. He wondered if security lighting might be an idea; he would mention it to his father. Who would no doubt scoff at the idea and add it to Hal’s other suggestions to drag the estate into the twenty-first century. Some days Hal wondered if the estate had even left the eighteenth century, in which it was first built.
It was important to him that he ran the estate properly, to show his father that when the time came, he could hand the reins over to Hal, with complete peace of mind. Since his mother’s death, he and his father had grown distant. For the thousandth time Hal regretted joining the Army and leaving his father to cope alone. At the time all he could think of was his own grief. Everything about Cornwall, and indeed England, reminded him of her. There was no escape from his pain.
Only under the hail of gunfire and explosions were his memories quashed. The harsh sun and arid landscapes offered no soil for his misery to take root. He watched his colleagues die or sustain injuries, he took part in rescue missions where babies screamed for their mothers lying bloodied across the floor. It seemed a world made mad with men wailing in pain, women silent in horror. Whole populations seemed to be on foot trying to find a place of refuge from the enemy, from their own side, from the soldiers that were here to help. Everyone desperate for food and shelter or simply a night without attack. This was the sort of life that placed his own grief in proportion and whilst it didn’t lessen it, Hal learnt to deal with it. And as he learnt, he felt his mother’s presence alongside him, nodding her approval and offering her protection.
Vollen was a beautiful Georgian house built in a soft warm brick more commonly associated with the Cotswolds and indeed that was where the stone had been quarried. When Hal’s ancestor had made his money in the mining industry, he wanted to display his wealth as visibly as he could; so rather than build in the local granite he had the warm Cotswold stone brought by cart to Cornwall at colossal expense. It was his idea of a little joke and whilst not everyone found it as funny as he did, every time he rode home and saw the sun warmly reflecting on the walls of his house, he smiled in pleasure at what he had achieved.
Now his grandson, many times removed, walked across the cobbled yard and looked in at the dogs. All four of them looked up as he shone the torch on them. There was a lazy wag of a tail and a yawn and then three of them went back to sleep. This was a voice and smell they knew well. No need for alarm. Hal smiled to himself as Nimrod padded over to see if he was okay. When his mother was dying, he would come out to the kennels and cry himself to sleep, curled up amongst the dogs. Only Nimrod now remembered those times, little more than a pup herself. In the morning his father would berate him for his weakness; he was sixteen not six. His mother, though, would hug him as tightly as she was able and then gently suggest he shower before school.
How nice it would be to just stay here, he thought, bring the dogs into the house, and all sprawl out in front of the fire.
Sighing, he returned to the house and waited for his taxi to arrive. These past few weeks, though, he had preferred drinking to thinking, and had fallen asleep in a stupor most nights. His life seemed to be turning in a direction that was not of his making. He knew this maudlin behaviour also had to stop but he had no idea how. He just wanted to be happy again instead of just pretending to be. He should focus on the snowdrops.
Folding his tall frame into the taxi he thought about the week ahead. He had a few social engagements and there was the estate to take care of, when his father didn’t disrupt his plans that was, but other than that there was nothing interesting on the horizon at all. Maybe the party would be fun. Something had to happen. He’d better go and be the life and soul of the party. Again.