Lady de Warlencourt came back in with the meat course.
As the footmen placed these fancy-pants ribs (with little paper hats on the bones) in front of us, I was racking my brain to think of a topic of conversation that didn’t make it so painfully obvious that we’d been talking about her. So I hurriedly asked the earl: ‘What were you debating in the House of Lords? Can you tell us? Or would you have to kill us?’
Good, Greer. Once again, absolutely nailed it in terms of finding exactly the wrong thing to say in a given moment.
The earl didn’t seem to mind my question. He even smiled. ‘On the contrary. The proceedings of the House of Lords are a matter of public record.’
‘Hansard,’ said Nel. ‘They make word-for-word transcripts of parliamentary debates.’
‘Precisely,’ said the earl, without looking at her.
‘So what were you talking about today?’
He hesitated for just an instant.
‘Foxes,’ he said briefly.
Now I sat up. See if you can find out about Foxes.
‘What about them?’ He’d asked me some difficult questions; it was time for him to answer some. You see what I mean about dinner with the upper classes being a battleground? ‘I mean,’ I said, emboldened by the wine, ‘if we can read about it, you might as well tell us.’
Rollo cleared his throat. ‘I’m introducing a bill for its first reading, early in the New Year. To reinstate fox hunting in England.’
‘But it’s banned now, right?’
‘Since 2004. We used to ride to hounds at Longcross, until that damned bill outlawing it.’
‘Ridiculous,’ tutted the countess.
‘They said it was animal cruelty.’
‘A bunch of dogs tearing an animal apart,’ said Nel drily. ‘I can’t imagine why.’
‘Precisely, my dear,’ said her ladyship, taking what Nel had said at face value. ‘Such nonsense. Arrant nonsense.’
‘It’s valuable pest control,’ chimed in Rollo. ‘Damned liberals don’t understand the countryside.’
‘And the hundreds of jobs, darling,’ broke in the countess.
‘Hundreds of jobs,’ her husband echoed. ‘The hunt was a major employer in the countryside.’ This was clearly a well-rehearsed double act. I wondered in how many great houses they’d performed this Rain Man back-and-forth they had going.
‘Besides, it doesn’t hurt them.’
Nel wasn’t having that. ‘Who says?’ she asked bluntly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Who says it doesn’t hurt? The fox?’ Nel was being pretty to the point – I wondered if she was a bit fed up of Caro sucking up to me and Rollo sucking up to Shafeen.
‘Well,’ said Rollo, blustering slightly, ‘one can see. In fact, I think he enjoys it.’
Henry had said this too. Not just about the fox, but about me. He’d challenged me to tell him I hadn’t enjoyed that first weekend at Longcross. Then I couldn’t speak. Now I couldn’t either.
‘It’s a jolly day out,’ said Rollo. ‘Fox bloody loves it. And it’s a fair fight. Sometimes –’ he pointed a long finger at the frescoed ceiling – ‘he gets away.’
Not always, I thought, recalling the fox head in my room.
Shafeen said, quite loudly, ‘That sounds like – what did you call it? Arrant nonsense.’
Even I thought that was a bit harsh. For a moment, the earl’s face fell still and his eyes went small with anger. But then, just as his son had done when Shafeen had told his story about the tiger, he threw back his head and laughed.
Feeling braver, I prompted, ‘But it didn’t go well, did it? Today, I mean.’
Rollo looked puzzled. ‘I don’t quite follow you.’
‘You had to sit late. So it can’t have gone smoothly, can it?’
He smiled sadly. ‘I can see why my son had such a penchant for you. Clever girl.’
The past tense was a hammer blow. As for the rest … I dared not look at Shafeen.
‘No, it didn’t go well,’ continued Rollo in answer to my question. ‘There was a bill ahead of it on the order paper. That one’s on its third reading, and tomorrow it could pass into law.’
‘What’s the bill?’ I asked.
‘To ban hunting with hounds entirely.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Shafeen. ‘You can’t hunt foxes with hounds at the moment anyway, right?’
‘Correct. But you can gather, in the traditional way, with a pack of hounds and have a trail hunt.’ Rollo took a gulp of wine. ‘One of the hunt servants drags a trail through the woodland for the hounds to follow.’
‘With aniseed?’ I looked at Nel then. She too was gulping her wine, clearly reliving the time when the hounds had followed her, followed the aniseeds in Henry’s jacket pocket. My heart hardened against Henry then.
‘Trail hunting usually uses fox urine …’
‘Lovely,’ I said.
‘… but it’s not the same as a real fox,’ said Rollo crossly.
‘It’s not the same,’ parroted Caro, a shrill echo.
‘I say,’ burst out Rollo, cutting across his wife, ‘you all seem very much interested in the matter. Why don’t you come to see the sitting tomorrow? All of you.’
Shafeen put down his glass. ‘We can do that?’
‘Naturally. After all, these are the people’s laws we are ratifying, and it is your right to bear witness that everything is done with complete probity. It is a very transparent process.’
I looked at Shafeen to see how he was taking this. When the earl described the Lords like that, it sort of made sense. I knew Shafeen well enough to tell that he wasn’t convinced, but he was intrigued.
‘It’s the final sitting of the year before the House rises for Christmas,’ said the earl. ‘Could be your only chance.’ He was very persuasive.
‘I’d like to very much,’ said Shafeen.
The earl brought his hand down on the table with a crash, clearly delighted. It was as if that tragic little conversation when the countess was out of the room had never happened. The bombast and the slightly too loud voice were back. ‘That’s settled then,’ he barked, smiling. He clearly didn’t feel the need to check with the rest of us. ‘Wear a jacket and tie and I’ll get you in “below the bar” – that’s the best bit of the public gallery. Ringside seats, don’t you know.’ He tossed down the rest of the wine in his glass. ‘Come at the end of the session. That’s when things should get dashed interesting, if I’ve got any say in the matter.’
After dessert, the ‘ladies’ rose to leave the room, presumably to leave the men to talk ‘business’ over the port. We went to drink coffee and manufacture some extremely awks small talk in the drawing room with the emotionally fragile Countess of Longcross. While smiling and nodding, I was wondering all the time what was happening in the other room. I no longer thought Shafeen would start a fistfight with Rollo though. There had been a sea change – I could smell it hanging in the air, like the lingering aroma of the earl’s scent, even when he was in another room.