The Colonel's Moustache Part 1

They arrived by the afternoon train, the old-fashioned branch line that almost ended in what had once been the stationmaster’s living room: a carpeted room with sofas and a fireplace stuffed with old copies of The Sweffling Gazette. The stationmaster sat behind a desk in uniform, patted his sideburns and  made travellers feel like weekend guests. ‘Hope you’ll be happy at the Hall,’ he said. ‘The car’s waiting,’ and he gave Sophie an approving pat. In her weakened state Sophie was tearful, touched by any display of friendliness –   although Timothy paid, the taxi driver gave her his card. Old men took a shine to her and Timothy felt irritated by this army of pensioned off teddy boys with greying quiffs. No moustaches he noted,  none of the Marsden austerity.

            The Hall’s ill-assorted combination of copper domes and turrets floated above the trees. The turrets of a fantastic city flaunted both oriental and English dreams -- the sort of dream caused by toasted cheese before bedtime.

On their first day they circled the lake, sheltering under a shared brolly. Doctor Montcrief recommended  plenty of fresh air and rest, ‘stop her brooding..what’s done is done.’ The footpath was overgrown. Rhododendrons had spread their branch-ceilinged chambers right up to the water’s edge where waterfowl squawked and skid-landed. Timothy helped Sophie through dark green rooms with reddish brown roots. The twisting stems were like reptile limbs and he remembered as a child how he imagined walking between the ribs of a sleeping dragon.

            ‘We used to hide here - me and my cousins- from the Blooper boy.’

            ‘The Blooper?’

            ‘A hungry little wretch from the village. He marched about in wellingtons, playing a penny whistle.’

            ‘Did he have a name?’

            ‘He was a little blob that sucked everything up. Blooper. Blob. I don’t know. He drained his mother, drank the wet nurse dry and was sent to The Hall to pull off Colonel Marsden’s boots..’

            Sophie imagined a child made of blotting paper, hungry to absorb life’s lessons: friendship, love, someone’s birthday supper and then she looked at the lake and the still reflections of clouds among the reeds. What gruel was here! When you wanted the meat and blood of real life not pale boys like Timothy and his cousins. And pulling off the Colonel. Probably the old law of droit de seigneur. Hating was too easy—it was to be expected and she tried to dismiss the Marsdens with a nervous sniff.

            ‘Don’t you think we should head back in?’ A question which wasn’t one at all and he fussed around her shoulders with the shawl.   A goose honked from out of nowhere and flapped overhead with the dullness of an old leather football. The thought of the evening together  in the halo of electric light and Timothy’s forced good humour was deflating. She’d much rather watch the darkness over the lake turning silver but she turned and followed, hating her compliance, hating the twitch of fabric in her husband’s corduroys.

******

‘I don’t want to talk about  it.. ‘ Timothy muttered and fixed himself a drink.

            ‘Well what do propose to talk about while we’re here?’

            Timothy widened his eyes, a look of rather wooden concern that would not win any BAFTAs crossed his face. ‘Digging it all up just upsets you.’

          ‘Very charitable. You know you have a very uneasy relationship with the truth.’

          Sophie sat on the high-backed sofa in the drawing room and watched the park grow dark. Darker shapes of deer flitted between trees, crisscrossing the avenue. They liked to nibble grass beneath the Colonel’s monument. The gardener claimed grass grew better in the shadow of the obelisk.

         ‘What do you want to hear?  It was mindless amusement. It was the most sumptuous fuck of my life and she was on heat like an African lioness...’

         ‘All lionesses are African.’     

          ‘I think you might mean all lions originate from Africa but there are Asian sub-species and I do know this from the Colonel’s journals and cabinets…’

         ‘And man-eaters? They prefer Sothebys.’

         ‘Look, darling, we were under enormous pressure. She was a fucking receptionist. I did what I could at the time. Home… well, it was hell for all of us.’

            Sophie ran from the room and barefooted sprinted across the tiled hall and stopped by the dinner gong. Grabbing the beater she banged as hard as she could until concentric bronze circles spread up the stairwell, through the air and boomed deep in her solar plexus. She went on beating until her husband grabbed the beater from her hands.