Chapter Eleven #4
‘Sinking, the doctor says.’ Tears immediately filled Fritz’s eyes.
‘What happened? Was it an accident?’
Fritz shook his head, and the words took a moment to come.
‘It was at the office. I wasn’t there. Callender saw it.
’ Callender was their father’s private secretary.
‘He said Father was angry all morning, then a letter came that got him really mad. He stormed up and down, raging about it. Then he just fell, like a stone, Callender said. Dr Tweedie said it was a stroke. We had him brought back here, but Tweedie says there’s no hope. ’
‘Can I see him?’
Fritz shook his head again, as though he had water in his ears. The slow answer came at last. ‘Best see Mother first. If she sent for you.’
His mother was in the small sitting-room.
It felt cold in there, and smelt of furniture wax, and a little of soot.
There must have been a summer chimney-fall: he could see it speckling the paper fan in the empty grate.
His mother sat in a wing-chair beside it, with a heavy shawl round her shoulders: Father wouldn’t allow fires in July, whatever the weather, and Angus felt a moment of anger, seeing his mother uncomfortable.
Father never felt the cold – the fires of his temper burned too brightly – and he didn’t care if anyone else did.
Coal cost money (though he owned coal mines and could have as much coal as he wanted without paying for it).
Economy was a virtue to be embraced (especially if it didn’t inconvenience him).
Standing beside the chair was a small, slight young woman with a nervous expression; she made him think of a fieldmouse – an obviously pregnant fieldmouse.
‘My wife,’ Fritz said, all the introduction he seemed capable of.
She gave Angus a frightened look but didn’t speak.
Fiona Culross, Angus remembered: she had brought rail and lumber interests into the family when she and Fritz married in June last year.
Had she wanted to marry Fritz at all? he wondered.
Or had there been some other young man she had yearned for but dared not mention while her future was being decided by Sir Gordon and her father?
But Fritz would be kind to her, he thought.
He would not be what Sir Gordon was to their mother.
He approached his mother nervously, unsure of his welcome, but her eyes lit when she saw him, even though they filled at once with tears, and she held out her hands to him.
He went and knelt in front of her and took them – they were like blocks of ice – then put his arms round her and gave and received a fervent embrace.
He felt her wet cheek against his, and cried, ‘Oh, Mummy, I’m sorry! ’
She stroked his hair. ‘No, no,’ she said.
‘Dear child. I never wanted you lost to me. There! My owny-own.’ The childhood endearment restarted his tears, and he clung to her for a moment before recovering himself.
The banishment had been his father’s idea, he knew that, but in her few words he understood that she had not agreed with it, though she would never have gone against her husband’s wishes.
The fact that she had called him here now told him it was all up with his father: she would never have defied him otherwise.
She went on. ‘It was his temper, his dreadful temper. A stroke, Tweedie says. He’s been mad at everything and everyone since he sent you away, and it’s just got worse and worse.’
‘It was my fault!’ The guilty words burst from Angus.
‘No, no, my dearie. It was not reasonable, how he behaved to you, but there was nothing I could do. You know that.’ Their eyes met in understanding.
‘He would have this, and there was no arguing with him. Don’t blame poor Fritzie either: he never wanted to take your place.
He’s too much a dreamer for the business.
But it’s all done now, can’t change it.’
‘He wouldn’t let me come and say goodbye to you. He said you didn’t want to see me.’
‘Ah, no,’ she said, with soft pain. It was all that was needed.
‘Can I see him?’
‘You can, but he’s not conscious. He probably won’t know you’re there.’
‘Is it just Fritz here with you?’ he asked, getting to his feet.
‘No, Gussie and Ben are somewhere about. The little ones are at Beata’s. We thought it best. Fritz will take you up.’ He kissed her hands, and she said softly, ‘He’s no age, no age at all. It was just his temper.’
And he knew from the way she spoke that she loved his father still, in spite of everything. How women loved! There was no fathoming them.
His father was in his own bed, in his own bedroom, a heavy, masculine room of stately furniture, polished wood, dark red fabrics.
He was propped up against a mass of white pillows, like a man fallen back into a snow-drift.
He looked gaunt, his hair seemed whiter than Angus remembered, his skin was waxy-pale; but he had been shaved smooth, and his hair was neatly arranged.
Someone was doing these things for him. He had caught a glimpse of a nurse in the dressing-room as Fritz conducted him in.
He was vaguely glad – Father had always been meticulous in his appearance.
It would have been unkind to let him look dishevelled now he was helpless.
One of his father’s eyes was partly open, but all that showed under the lid was white.
His mouth was hanging loosely to the left, and he had drooled a little.
Angus took one of the hands that was lying on the counterpane; it felt cold and lifeless.
Had he died already? But, no, there was a little movement of breathing under the sheet.
‘Father,’ he said. ‘Father. It’s me, it’s Angus.’
‘He doesn’t hear you,’ Fritz said from behind him. ‘He doesn’t know anything, Tweedie says.’
Angus lowered his voice, but leaned close to the waxy face, to the strangely unnatural curves of the ear, like a sculpture.
‘Father, why did you do it?’ he heard himself ask.
He hadn’t known, that was what he’d say.
‘She’s lovely, Rachel’s lovely, and she’s an earl’s daughter.
It would have been a good marriage. There was no need for all this. ’
There was no reaction. The breath sighed slowly in and out; the hand did not warm in his.
And I shall marry her anyway, he thought, and all this will have been for nothing.
I would have run your business better than poor Fritz ever will.
You’d have had a daughter-in-law, a lady, connected to the highest in the land.
‘I’m sorry, Father,’ he said. But he was saying, I’m sorry it came to this for you, not I’m sorry I didn’t bend to your will.
He was making his own way in the world and he would do well, though it would be a harder path. If his father had not been so unreasonable, he could have had everything – and so could Father.
He put down the hand, and straightened, turned to Fritz, who was standing as though he had been stunned and wasn’t sure where he was. ‘You’ll take care of Mother and the little ones, won’t you? It’s your job now.’
‘Aye,’ Fritz said at last, slowly. ‘I know it is. I’ll – I’ll be right.’
His father died just after midnight. Angus, his mother, Fritz, Augusta and Benedict were clustered around the bed, his mother holding one cold hand and Dr Tweedie the other, fingers on the pulse.
His father’s breathing had grown noisy, and then it had stopped.
Nothing else marked his transition from the world.
Tweedie waited a long moment, frowning, and then said, ‘He’s gone. ’
Gussie burst into noisy tears and Ben put his arm round her, but the others had passed beyond tears now.
Fritz looked even more stunned. Their mother put down her husband’s hand, bent and kissed his brow, and came to put her arm round Fritz and lead him away.
‘Come, baby,’ she said. ‘Come away, and we’ll have some cocoa. ’
Angus followed her out. The household hadn’t gone to bed, and a housemaid was hovering, perhaps to take the news to below-stairs as soon as it happened. He ordered her to light a fire in the small sitting-room. He saw her prepare to question the order, then realise a new regime was beginning.
Thus do the mighty pass from the sphere of their worldly power to a greater judgment, he thought.
The solicitor, Allardice, attended the next day.
Angus knew him well, had known him since a boy, had played with his sons, who were the same age, at Allardice’s home while his father conducted business.
He asked to speak to Angus separately, and Angus was afraid he would be told to leave, because he was no longer involved in any of the family’s concerns.
But once they were secluded in Father’s business-room (cold, very cold on the north side of the house, and so horribly quiet, with just the clock on the overmantel indifferently picking seconds out of its teeth and spitting them into the empty grate), Allardice gave him a sympathetic look and said kindly, ‘You understand there’s nothing I can do about the will?
I advised against the recent changes your father made – they seemed excessive, and I mistrust excess – but it was his instruction, and it was my duty to implement it.
So after payment of your mother’s jointure and various individual legacies, your father’s fortune and the business go to Fritz. ’
‘Yes, I know,’ Angus said. He hesitated. ‘I was wondering if there’s a need for me to stay on for a while, though. Fritz, you know…Very much cut up, perhaps not up to dealing with things.’
Allardice said, ‘I’ll steer him through, you needn’t worry, Sir Angus.’
Angus’s scalp shot backwards as his eyebrows shot up.
He stared at the solicitor, who smiled a little.
‘Aye, I thought mebbe you’d forgotten,’ he said.
‘The baronetage is hereditary. It can’t be given away in a will.
You have the title. There was nothing Sir Gordon could do about that, though he asked me pretty sharply. ’
‘I’m a baronet?’