Exclusive Bespoke Excerpt #2

            The grandfather clock in the hall read three o'clock, but nobody had yet looked at it today. In fact, nobody had glanced at that face for some time. Indeed, had they been asked, it was unlikely that any soul who lived there could even have described the two French enamel griffins and the rolling moon face that travelled back and forth between them every day. The clock had been there as long as the house itself and was, like most faithful servants, taken for granted, its cogwheels steadily chopping the hours and minutes away, its pendulum swinging with a quiet, dull thud inside the tall cabinet. A sound so constant that it was ignored.

            But today something different was about to happen.

            Perhaps it had already begun.

            Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.

            No, that ticking sound was not the clock; it was the housemaid's boot heels striking the garden path with a brisk trot, two flints close to sparking, her forward motion all bustle and twitch, propelled as if by steam engine with no safety valve. The only pressure released sputtered forth in tiny, puttering curses through a thin, resentful spout of a mouth. But it was not enough relief. The rest of her being swelled to bursting point even as those whispered breaths escaped— broken and chipped gasps as fragile as the teacups that bounced and rattled on the tray she carried.

            The gardener, hearing her approach, opened his eyes, scrambled as upright as any man could with three jugs of scrumpy inside him on an unseasonably hot day, and made a half-hearted attempt at resuming his work. Although a number of unconvincing denials were poised upon his sloppy lips, none were needed. Whether or not she had seen him napping there in the shade of the privet hedge, the housemaid had no time to berate him for once; indeed, she made no acknowledgement of his presence at all today. Her cheek, he noted, was striped with the scarlet ghost of finger marks and, a loose, dark curl of sweat-dampened hair, having escaped the white lace cap that was knocked slightly askew, stuck there across her skin like a question mark.

            His hedge shears hung useless in the air, the blades swinging wide open, as he watched her go, admiring the tight sway of her hips beneath the grey skirt of her afternoon uniform. Two wide, broderie anglaise apron strings fluttered in her wake, crisp and virginal white. He hiccupped, exhaling a hot cloud of cider fumes.

            Why hadn't she seen him there? It wasn't like Florrie not to flirt or chide. Usually both at once. Since he could barely feel his own fingers, or the tongue in his mouth, perhaps he was not really there.

            But then he felt the first drop of rain on that sticky afternoon and knew that he was indeed still flesh. Something made him look up. A shadow flew across the sky, but not with purpose like a bird. Its trajectory was a wild arc that seemed too slow, as if it fell through clear paste rather than air. A stray shuttlecock perhaps, from the riotous game of battledore taking place on the lawn? With the hedge shears in his hands he had nothing with which to shelter his gaze and the sun's glare was a blinding white veil.

            What time was it? By the strength of that brightness it must be after one o'clock.

            His back ached as if he'd been at work for hours; his stomach grumbled. He could not recall when he last ate. But nor could he recall his own name. Was it Jonah or Jack? One name he was christened, the other was given him by his employer because she didn't like the first. Such was the way the world ran, he had no say in what they called him; he was their property as much as the plants he pruned. At that moment he felt resentment at his place in life, as if something had given him an uncustomary jolt and he recognized the injustice for the first time.

            Distracted then by a noise through the open terrace doors to the conservatory, he stumbled around to see what it was. But his eyes, still smarting from the bite of the sun's teeth, could see naught but a watery blur. His mind, fogged by too much cider, could make no sense of what little blotchy shape and form it recognized. What he really wanted was to sleep. The heat was too much. Knees bent, shears forgotten, he resumed his weary squat behind the bushes and pressed his back to the wall, yawning.

            Indoors, beyond sight of any observer, the butler let a bottle of port slip through his usually steady palms, so that it shattered on the flagstone floor of a downstairs passage, leaving a weeping, blood-red stain that trickled deep into the cracks, seeping into the very foundations of the house. One drop bled under his well-polished shoe, while he watched it spread a crimson web, his own movements frozen in place, trance-like.

            Farther below, in the kitchen, a large saucepan of eggs had been left untended until it almost boiled dry, the shells banging against the sides of the pan in half an inch of fiercely bubbling water, the cook and kitchen maids nowhere to be found. The scullery maid crawled in among the pickle jars on the bottom shelf of the still-room, hiding her face against her knees and stuffing an apron into her mouth, biting down on the cloth to muffle a cry of anguish. By the servants' entrance, the hall boy, sluggish in the heat, took pause to lean one shoulder and enjoy a stolen, roasted chicken leg. But even as his mouth opened for the first bite, he glanced back and then upward at the top of the house, his body stilled, as if he heard a rumble of thunder from above. Or a sound unusual, out of place.

            Meanwhile, the youngest son of the family, who stormed through the hall and out of the front door, laughed loudly and mirthlessly at the invitation in his hand.

 

Lady Isolda and Mr. Ezra Welford

request the favour of your company,

for tea, frolics and delicacies

at one o'clock in the afternoon, on Sunday, September 24th, 1893

at

Welford Hall

Quipsey Thwaite, York

 

            "Frolics?" he hissed. "They do not know the meaning of the word." With a sneer he ripped the invitation into halves and then quarters, before letting the pieces drift to the gravel under his riding boots. He looked around, wondering where his sister had gone. Damn her. Once again she'd stuck her nose into his business and got him into trouble. Or tried.

            In this intolerable heat, he ought to strip naked and swim in the ugly, bloody fountain. Show them a true "frolicking". Make them spill their tea and lemonade. Serve them all right.

            Blind with anger, he did not see his sister escaping through the bars of an iron, trellis-work gate. Avoiding everybody by hovering in the rose garden, the daughter of the house reached to pick a late blooming flower and felt the vicious stab of a lurking thorn. And as she watched the red bead bulge against her pale skin, she muttered softly, "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."

            On that humid afternoon she shivered and looked up, frowning.

            High above, in a turret of the house, an old man with the mind of a child played with his doll house— an exact replica of Welford Hall— in which the tiny figure of a lady in a grand hat sprawled at the foot of some stairs, surrounded by crumbs of bread and with a smudge of rhubarb jam from his afternoon sandwiches smeared upon her head. A twig, snapped in two, lay by her side. The nurse charged with his care came up behind, breathing heavily, wiping perspiration from her forehead with a handkerchief.

            Shrill and cross in the thick heat, she exclaimed, "Lord Percival! How many times must I tell you not to play with your food?"

            "'Tis not my food," he replied with a giggle, as she wiped his sticky fingers on her handkerchief. "'Tis for the foxes."

            At that same moment, downstairs in the house, the eldest son of the Welford family paused to approve his handsome appearance in a looking-glass. Realizing he'd lost the diamond stick-pin from his ascot, he leaned forward, annoyed. The reflection of something dark fell behind him in the tall window. A dead bird, perhaps, its heart stalled by an arrow. But who would practice their archery on such a day, with the lawns full of people?

            "Did you see that, dear?" he asked his wife, belatedly aware of her presence in the drawing room behind him.

      

      "I never see anything, dear," came the reply, wielded like an ice-pick. "If it can be helped."

            The thing that flew through the air tumbled and tumbled for what seemed like forever. Until it finally landed with a smash into the tray of teacups carried across the lawn by the housemaid, the surprise causing her to drop everything and exhale all her steam at once.

            It was neither a shuttlecock, nor a dead bird.

            It was a boot. A new ladies boot.

            Still worn by a foot that had been squeezed into it for the first and last time earlier that morning.

 

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(Image: Tea Set by Jean-Etienne Liotard c.1781-83 and Letter Writer by Johanne Mathilde Dietrichson (1837-1921).)