23. Won’t Somebody Think of the Golf #2
Briar reasons that there’s not much they wouldn’t do for three hundred quid a day and therefore it doesn’t really matter what they’re agreeing to. ‘That’s fine. I drive . . . it’s a car. A truck.’
‘Pass me to my son.’
Briar takes an educated guess and hands the phone to Westby, who takes it with unnerving tranquillity.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Yes, all right. Three o’clock. I won’t. No, I didn’t bring it with me. I really didn’t. Ask the housekeeper.’
Briar can’t quite hear what his mother is saying, but they do hear when she hangs up. Westby holds the phone to his ear for a long time afterwards, and then puts it down on the desk in front of him without slotting it back into place in the holder, the dial tone still buzzing.
‘Well, that’s that,’ the counsellor says, eyeing the phone like she’s desperate to fix it. ‘Do you need anything else right now, Crispin?’
Westby shakes his head, and then gets up very suddenly and walks out of the office, Briar and the others trailing after him.
‘I suppose I’ll just go and get my things, and we can meet down by the car park in . . . twenty? Drive’s three hours, bit more with pit stops. Bring your nightie, we won’t be back tonight.’
‘West,’ Briar says, confused by all of this. ‘That’s fine. But where are we going?’
‘Oh. My father died,’ says West, marching onwards, like this is a detail of little consequence. ‘You’d better go and ask Genie if it’s all right, I just told the good doctor you’d be available to drive me so my mother would stop talking.’
‘West, wait,’ Briar says, accelerating to try to match Westby’s stride. ‘Your dad died?’
‘Yes,’ Westby says. ‘Another of his heart attacks, but less funny this time. Or more, I suppose, if you admire commitment to the bit, which . . . historically, I do. I’m just going to go in here and vomit, I think.’
He pushes open the cracked blue door of the boys’ toilets and leaves the rest of them standing in the hall.
‘Fuck,’ says Tate. ‘We’ve got to go with him, right? Do you think his mum will mind?’
Hadley is still watching the toilet door, which hasn’t quite managed to close itself. ‘She won’t even notice. But West will. I think.’
‘Ward will flip his nut.’
‘Whatever. It’s two days. Extenuating circumstances. We’re nearly home free. He’s not going to kick us out for going to a funeral.’
Briar licks their lips, which have gone dry, before speaking. ‘It won’t be a funeral, that takes weeks.’
‘Fuck!’ Tate says again, which pretty much covers it. ‘Okay. I’ll go tell my Housemaster and grab a bag, and then we’ll all meet in the car park in twenty.’
‘Shouldn’t someone . . . ?’ Briar gestures towards the toilet. They all look at the door apprehensively, like it might be about to fly off its hinges.
Luckily, Westby emerges a moment later, greyer around the edges but still remarkably stoic.
‘Chop chop,’ he says, gesturing with his hands, and they all hop to it.
Eugenia is very accommodating about the car and the trip, and hands Briar’s phone back without them having to ask. She also gives them a portable charger and a slice of thickly iced carrot cake for the road, with another for Westby, which Briar supposes is her way of offering condolences.
Westby is the only one waiting by the truck when Briar’s finished changing, throwing a rucksack together and hotfooting it back down to the car park.
He’s standing with his hands in his pockets, wearing a heavy wool blazer in brown houndstooth chequer despite the muggy day, his usual tactile fussiness completely quieted.
For one dicey moment Briar feels the overwhelming urge to hug him.
‘You all right?’ they say instead, which is mortifyingly inadequate, but the sort of thing you say when things are bad beyond your comprehension.
‘Mmm,’ Westby says. His eyes are bloodshot but dry; it must be from the vomiting. ‘I don’t think so, do you?’
‘No,’ says Briar. ‘Probably not.’
Hadley and Tate arrive not long after, Tate toting a red leather weekend bag, Hadley dragging a cabin-sized suitcase. As they load up, Briar can tell that they’re holding back their excitement about being allowed in Eugenia’s car. Now is not the time.
Briar’s had their phone plugged into the portable charger since they grabbed a cable from their room, and it comes screaming to life as they clip it into the holder on the dashboard, alarms and reminders popping up faster than Briar can swipe them away.
When the phone calms down, they open the maps app and watch with rising frustration as it resolutely refuses to geolocate.
‘Just go left out of here, and when we’re out of the pit of despair I’ll put the address in,’ Westby says.
So Briar sets off, and they sit in awful silence until West fiddles with the buttons to put the radio on.
Between patches of static they catch fragments of music, which resolve into melodies, and are then superseded by a barrage of notifications on every phone as they leave Temple jurisdiction and reach the sweeping country lanes of the real world.
Westby’s house, Gatehurst Court, is monstrous.
First there’s the front gate, and beyond it the gatehouse, a cottage bigger than Briar’s family’s, with washing in the garden and wellies lined up on the front step.
Then the drive, which goes on forever, undulating over small hills and dales, which are dotted with large, square-headed sheep.
They pass the lake on the left, slowing to allow some mallards to clear the gravel track, and only then do they turn towards the tree-lined avenue that brings them to the house.
Gatehurst is wide and boxy with intricate trim around the roof, built in yellowish stone, with projecting wings on either side and lichen-studded columns over the front porch.
It has its own private chapel to the right, and extensive outbuildings to the left.
Any number of period dramas could have been filmed there.
Briar’s mum, a staunch fan of Austen, has paid entry fees for them to tour places like this.
As they pull up to the house, Westby seems to shake himself out of his stupor.
‘It’s Elizabethan,’ he says, as Briar parks next to a row of incredibly expensive, almost identical black estate cars, broken up with a few Jeeps and Land Rovers. ‘Liz the first tried to give it to Sir Francis Drake as a prezzie, but I suppose he didn’t want it.’
‘Sure,’ says Briar, as they all get out. They’d thought themself well-versed in grand houses after a childhood spent rattling around one, but Gatehurst could eat Grove House as an amuse-bouche. ‘It’s . . . wow.’
Westby grimaces as he slings his bag over his shoulder. ‘It’s horrid. Costs at least a hundred grand a year to run. I’m going to sell it to an idiot or donate it to a heritage charity the second I inherit, so don’t get all excited and start drinking my cummy bathwater.’
‘I’ll try to restrain myself.’
‘See that you do.’ Westby looks up at the house and takes a deep breath, bracing himself - and then his supports fail, and he crumples. ‘God. I don’t know that I can do this.’
Hadley comes over to pat him hard on the shoulder like a military father, which is ridiculous enough that Westby rolls his eyes, shakes her off and starts decisively in the direction of the entrance, with only the slightest, almost imperceptible limp.
Briar half-expects to be admitted by a butler, but instead Westby just shoves against the door and it slowly creaks open.
The entryway is three stories high and dominated by a grand staircase, which is propped up by smooth-eyed, long-suffering stone angels; on the table, which is inlaid with mother-of-pearl flowers and butterflies, a lone but extravagant bouquet of white lilies and roses is discarded and already drooping, as nobody has thought to put it in water.
‘Right,’ Westby says, a shade paler from the moment he stepped over his own threshold. ‘Rip off the bandage, I reckon. No use prolonging the inevitable.’
There are signs of life down the hall; they all follow Westby as he marches grimly onward across the chequered marble floor, and when they reach a door the same colour as the wood panelling around it that’s slightly ajar, Tate hesitates.
‘Do you want some . . . privacy?’
‘I can’t think of anything I’d like less,’ Westby says, shoving with both hands and then entering the room chin-first.
It’s a high-ceilinged drawing room in shades of muted blue, with a dramatic stone fireplace as the centrepiece and finely upholstered furniture in pale chintz gathered around it, more modern than the outside of the house by a few hundred years.
The rugs are about twenty feet across the marble, and despite the warm summer air outside, it’s cold in the way that Grove House always was, any snatches of warmth whistling away through ancient, single-glazed windows and howling up the vast chimneys.