6

On the Monday Jason West came to the offices of Goodbody’s in Lincoln’s Inn Fields to discuss with Oliver Goodbody a development project in Covent Garden in which both firms were involved.

When Jason was about to leave, Oliver said casually, ‘I met a young relative of yours at the cricket at Ravenscourt yesterday, Greg Rutherford.’

‘Gregory? Yes, he’s my sister’s boy, from Sydney. He’s with me for a few months so that he can get some knowledge of international dealing before starting in his father’s business in Australia.’ He paused. ‘He’s a rather provocative young man.’

‘He’s a very good cricketer. I was interested because he told me someone had been speaking to him about the Caverel family. Do you know who that could have been?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ West replied. Then he remembered. ‘Oh, yes. A young woman came to see him a few days ago. A rather extraordinary young woman, I seem to remember. Gregory told me it was something to do with the Caverels.’

When Jason had gone, Oliver returned to his desk and began to make a note.

Ever since he had become the senior partner at the age of forty-five, more than twenty-five years ago, Oliver Goodbody had looked after the affairs of the Caverels, as his father had before him. There were now few in the direct line but many distant connections, and there was little in the lives of any of them of which Oliver Goodbody was not aware. He drafted their marriage settlements, advised on their divorces, made their wills, and guided some through their bankruptcies. He made it his business to know as much as possible about all of them and anything of any interest, even gossip, was carefully recorded in his files. Some items were quite trivial; a young second cousin who’d got drunk at a Commem ball at Oxford and been banned from driving; an older even more distant cousin in difficulties with Lloyd’s. Other matters he noted were of more importance, such as Robin Caverel’s affair in Rome four years ago while his wife, Andrea was at her father’s home in Shropshire for the birth of their child, Francis. Andrea had not known of it, certainly not at the time. But Oliver had – and it too had been recorded in his neat handwriting and filed away in the safe in his office. Now he added to the file his conversation with the young Australian at Ravenscourt and the suggestion by Jason West that the Australian’s enquiry about Julian Caverel had been prompted by a visit from a young woman. When he had locked it away, he collected his hat and stick and went slowly down the old wooden staircase to the taxi which regularly took him from the office at the end of each day. He directed the driver to take him to Eaton Square.

Oliver Goodbody spent weekends at his home in Whitchurch in Hampshire, an early Victorian rectory which he much loved. He had lived there with Jennifer, his wife. There were no children and it was there that Jennifer, by then a chronic invalid, had died five years ago. But for twenty years, on every Monday and Thursday evening, Oliver Goodbody visited an apartment in Eaton Square. In the old days he would spend the night. Now he only dined before going on to his own small flat in Kensington.

A tall, handsome woman, her dark hair shot with grey, opened the door and kissed him on both cheeks.

‘You look tired,’ she said.

‘It’s been a long day.’

In the small library off the hall, she poured him a whisky-and-soda. ‘A difficult one?’

‘So, so. Something I’ve learnt has worried me a little.’

Anne Tremain waited in silence. Then as he said no more, she continued, ‘About your precious Caverels, I suppose.’ He looked at her in mock surprise and she smiled. ‘Is it ever anything else? You’re obsessed by that family, Oliver.’

‘They’re a part of my professional life, an important part.’

‘They’re more than that, and you know it.’

She was right, of course. The Caverels had been more than that to him ever since as a schoolboy he’d been taken by his father to Ravenscourt before World War II. They had dined with a footman behind every chair and he’d sat silent, observing. At the head of the table was the old Lord Caverel, the last of the family to have sat in Cabinet. To Oliver, he was awe-inspiring, magnificent in his green velvet smoking-jacket. At the other end of the long table lounged his son, Walter. When the men were alone, the schoolboy with them, and the port was being circulated, Walter had lit a cigarette.

‘If my port is so inferior you feel you must smoke while you drink it, you might at least remember to pass it.’

The words and the tone of the old man had imprinted themselves on Oliver’s memory. Walter had flushed and pushed the decanter to Oliver’s father on his left. But to the schoolboy son of his friend and family solicitor the old man had been kindly, walking him past the family portraits, telling him about each of them and of the part they had played in the country’s history. Ever since that evening, Oliver had been under the spell of Ravenscourt.

‘It’s not so much the people,’ he said at last to Anne, ‘it’s Ravenscourt. I care lest it be turned into an institution for I care who lives in it. I grieved when Walter shut it up and it stood empty and neglected. I used to go down from time to time, just to look around. I made the excuse that I’d come for documents from the muniments room, and the caretaker would open up the library for me. When I was alone I used to talk to the empty place which for three hundred years had been the centre of so much life, and I promised that some day it would come alive again, that some day the family would return.’ He looked down into his glass. ‘I suppose Ravenscourt does obsess me, as you call it. I would like to think of Caverels in the house their ancestors built and where at one time great matters of state were discussed and decided.’

‘Not any more.’

‘No, not since the turn of the century. Until then, they had all played a great part.’

‘Walter ended that?’

‘He did. Robin, unlike his father, was agreeable enough. And he had the sense to open up the house. But he had no great talent. There’s no place nowadays for the family except in the county.’

‘I never understand why you worry so.’

‘I think it’s my sense of history, of tradition. I like to think of them there, the descendants living where their ancestors had lived, and now that Nicholas has taken charge, the family should be there until well into the twenty-first century. That’ll see me out.’

‘The good and faithful servant.’

‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘The good and faithful adviser.’

‘Then what’s worrying you?’

‘Someone’s been enquiring about them.’

‘Why shouldn’t they?’

‘It’s just a little odd. I had what I can only call a premonition that after Walter Caverel died there’d be trouble.’

‘About what?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘Julian?’

‘Yes, but when Walter did die, and when Robin succeeded and then was killed in that accident, there was nothing. Everything seemed settled. My premonition was proved false.’

‘And now you’ve heard something?’

‘Yes. I’ve heard that a young woman has been making enquiries.’

‘What did she want?’

‘I don’t know – yet. But it’s strange, and it has disturbed me.’