The STAGS Club, in London’s St James’s, was the second place that day where I felt I really didn’t belong.
Walking though unmarked grand doors, in an exclusive backstreet of Westminster, I felt even more awkward than I had that morning treading the hallowed quad of Christ Church. Of course, the first thing I saw was a massive pair of antlers over the inner door, and beyond that, a passageway bristling with ancient-looking guns hanging on the walls. The metaphor wasn’t lost on me. I was a huntin’ shootin’ fish out of water.
Luckily Nel had a bit more natural courage than me – presumably she’d grown up going through fancy doorways and being made just as welcome as her father’s wallet. She greeted the mountain of a man who was standing, hands clasped, in front of the door like a high-class bouncer. He didn’t speak (rude, I thought) but indicated down the passageway with one massive paw. We walked in the direction of the hand and the passageway turned into a grand, open space. If I’d expected a cosy couple of rooms with leather armchairs and a fireplace like in Around the World in Eighty Days, I was mistaken. This place was like a hidden palace.
The atrium of the STAGS Club was hushed and dim, with marble pillars rising to the ceiling and a grand stairway curving out of sight. Underfoot was a black-and-white marble floor in the shape of a compass rose, as if indicating that the STAGS’ power reached to all points of the compass and to the ends of the earth. In the dead centre of the design was a mahogany writing desk, with a little man in white-tie and tails sitting at it.
Nel marched over to him and gave our names. This guy, unlike the bouncer, was uber-polite. ‘Ah, Miss Ashton, Miss MacDonald, guests of the Earl of Longcross. His lordship is expecting you.’ He wrote in a ledger with a fountain pen, then turned the book round to face us. ‘If you wouldn’t mind?’
We signed our names at the foot of a page entitled ‘Does’ (as in, a deer; a female deer), under some very grand female names. Like the guns on the walls, they were all double-barrelled. These were obviously the other honoured ladies who’d been admitted to the club for dinner. I made quite a mess with the ink pen, but the guy was far too well bred to burn me for it.
‘Lord Longcross is in the Crusader’s Library with Mr Jadeja. Jack will show you.’ He beckoned the giant from the door, who led us up the grand stair in absolute silence. I was getting some serious Perfect vibes – Jack obviously went to the same charm school as everybody’s favourite gamekeeper. It was a bit awks because you couldn’t even hear our footsteps. Just as in Cumberland Place, our feet made absolutely no sound on the thick carpets, which were the red of arterial blood. As we climbed I could hear a hubbub of talk – no raucous laughter or shouting, nothing so coarse; just the murmur of perhaps a hundred people chatting at low level in a big room. It made me nervous.
When we walked through the grand doors of the Crusader’s Library I spotted Shafeen at once. It was easy. He was the only person of colour in the room. He was standing talking happily to someone in a bow tie, as if he too was a member of the club and he’d been coming here all his life. Just for a moment, in that removed way I’d viewed Rollo the day before in the House of Lords, I saw Shafeen as other people must see him. Tall, handsome, urbane, wearing a grey suit over a white shirt open at his brown throat. I felt a jag of pride, of love – and of pity. If it weren’t for the colour of his skin, he’d fit right in in this room.
And the room itself was quite something. Above rows and rows of dark-wood bookshelves stuffed with ancient volumes, there were huge frescoes on the walls depicting various battles of the Crusades. There was no blood and guts, just these stagey, polite-looking scenes of Christian victory. I thought they were paintings, but as we advanced into the room I could see they were mosaics, artfully made up of a thousand tiny glass tiles. I imagined that each nugget of glass was less than worthless, but crafted together like this those panels would be priceless. From what (very little) I know of decorative art stuff, I would have said it was Victorian – all maidens with flowing hair and knights on white horses. The infidels, of course, had mean faces, swarthy skin and stylised turbans. Their mouths, like their swords, had a cruel downward curve to them. I was wrong; there were other people of colour in the room besides Shafeen. It’s just that they were on the walls, crudely represented and trapped in a perpetual losing battle.
I turned my attention to the victors in the room. I’m not kidding, but I recognised some of them from the TV. I’m not massively into politics but even I knew some of the characters that were huddled into the oak-panelled corners, parcelling up the world. There was that chubby blond one with the messy hair. There was that skinny dark one with the glasses. Finding Rollo in this room was a bit like Where’s Wally? However different their physical attributes, somehow everyone in the room looked like him. Eventually I saw him, accepting a glass of something from a tray. He had just taken a sip when he spotted us, and he did that gulp-and-beckon thing that people do when their mouth is full and they can’t speak.
We all converged by Shafeen and his new bow-tied buddy. The earl kissed me and Nel, with practised ease, on each cheek. Bow tie excused himself to Rollo in that bluff and friendly way that meant they were old pals. Because it seemed the right thing to do, Shafeen kissed us both too. But his lips lingered on my skin and his dark eye winked. He was happy. ‘Who was that bloke?’ I murmured as our cheeks met.
‘Head of the General Medical Council. He is being incredibly helpful.’ His whisper was warm in my ear.
‘Are you kidding?’
‘I’m really not.’ Then, out loud, he asked me exactly the same question that Nel had outside Starbucks, in exactly the same way. ‘How’d it go?’ Beneath his positivity and confidence, I could detect a little anxiety about my performance at that morning’s interview. He badly wanted us both – all – to get into Oxford so we could be together.
‘Ah yes, the interview,’ chimed in Rollo. ‘I went up to Oxford myself. They asked some dashed difficult questions, I seem to recall, but I scraped in somehow.’
I just about passed out with the effort of not rolling my eyes. Of course he’d got in – his pathway smoothed by money and privilege and the old-school tie. ‘I remember reading once that Prince Charles got in with two Es at A level, so I can’t help thinking that a little detail like being heir to the throne might have helped him out.’
‘Ah,’ said Rollo, waving his already empty glass. ‘But nowadays one’s just as likely to be discriminated against because one has a privileged white background. Times are changing. Quotas. Diversity.’ He spoke the words as if they were curses. ‘Iconoclasts breaking statues of great men because they had some tenuous connection to the slave trade. The decolonisation of the curriculum. They are even talking about taking the word “Empire” out of the honours system and replacing it with “Excellence”. Order of British Excellence, for God’s sake!’ Rollo was getting puce in the face as he warmed to his theme. ‘Empire has become a dirty word, blackened with the stain of slavery. No mention of the manifold good the Empire did. Oh no.’
‘Like what?’ asked Shafeen.
‘Railways, roads, education, government – to name but a few. No. The achievements of the Empire are trodden into dust. Everyone’s forgotten that Britannia ruled the waves.’ He sounded truly sorry that the world was changing, just as his son had been one autumn night, sitting on the moonlit roof of Longcross with me, a million de Warlencourt bricks under his arse.
I glanced at Shafeen to see how he’d taken Rollo’s extraordinary speech. Normally he’d have about a million scornful things to say in response, but today he was listening quite placidly. Still, I thought I’d better get Rollo off the dangerous subject of Empire and back to the safer ground of privilege. ‘I suppose private-school kids could always go to the local state school if they feel discriminated against,’ I said. ‘I bet they wouldn’t though.’
‘No,’ Rollo agreed, ‘but you must concede there is now mobility the other way. That nice coloured girl my nephew Louis was wrapped around at Longcross, I believe she is attending STAGS in a bursary in Henry’s name.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘And I got a scholarship too. From my Manchester slum.’
He ignored my jibe. ‘But you went to the Oxford interview with exactly the same advantage I did, namely that you went to STAGS.’
He had me there. I supposed I was now one of the privileged.
‘So by your logic,’ he continued, ‘you’ve got a jolly good chance of getting in.’
I shrugged. ‘Unless I screwed up the interview with my low ways.’
‘And did you?’ asked Shafeen tensely.
‘I don’t think so. The Prof recommended some holiday reading, so it might not have been a total bust.’ Professor Nashe’s other recommendation to visit the Ashmolean, and the chance meeting it led to, would have to wait for later, when we were alone.
‘Well, that deserves a drink,’ said Rollo, who seemed fired up. I sensed that he liked a fight – especially one that he could win. ‘Jack!’ he called above the hubbub. I expected to see the huge door giant scuttling over, but this was a different guy. He wore white-tie and black tails, just like the desk jockey downstairs, and bore a silver tray on his white glove. Rollo put his empty glass on the tray smartly, unbalancing the waiter guy a bit. ‘I think champagne, don’t you?’ he said to all of us at large, but it wasn’t really a question. I expected him to ask for his favourite vintage, the Veuve Clicquot 1984, but he didn’t specify. Obviously whatever vintage the STAGS Club had going was eminently drinkable.
‘Very good, my lord.’
Once the waiter was out of earshot I remarked, ‘Same name as the door guy.’
‘What’s that, my dear?’
‘The guy on the door is called Jack. So’s this one. Quite a coincidence.’
Rollo threw back his head and laughed so much that he showed all his teeth, white and sharp and animal, with no fillings to be seen. ‘They all are.’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s a STAGS Club tradition,’ he replied, still smiling. ’All the staff are called Jack.’
‘But what are their real names?’
‘Lord knows,’ he said dismissively.
I looked about me. At other points in the room I saw a few girls in black-and-white maids’ outfits. Nel, as she often did, read my mind.
’What about the women?’ she asked. ‘What are they called?’
‘Why, Jill of course,’ Rollo replied.
Shafeen widened his eyes at me so that you could see the whites all around the dark pupils, but he was amused where yesterday he’d been outraged that his own father had been misnamed Mowgli. He must have had a good day.
Rollo looked round impatiently for our waiter. ‘Jack downstairs is known as Jack-door. Like the bird, you know. Jackdaw. Rather good, that. The rest of ’em are just plain Jack.’
‘Plain Jack’ was back with the champagne – four tall glasses on a tray. Rollo doled them out without a thank-you. I smiled at Jack and this time I studied him as a person. Stubby blond eyelashes, ears red at the tips, young enough to have acne scars. I found myself wondering about his mum or his partner, where he lived, what kind of music he liked. Did he like working here? Did he mind not having a name of his own until he got home to the people who loved him? He didn’t smile back.
‘Let’s drink to your Oxford admissions. Thanks to our shared alma mater – STAGS – it’s in the bag.’
I supposed this was a hunting term. I raised my glass half-heartedly and the bubbles went straight up my nose.
I was dying to ask what Rollo and Shafeen had been up to today, and luckily Rollo spotted someone he knew and said, ‘Ah, the Attorney General. Excuse me. I must invite him to the meet.’
And we three were alone, a little island in the middle of that breathtaking room.
‘How’s dear Rollo been?’ asked Nel, with a twist of a smile.
‘Good as gold,’ said Shafeen. ‘He couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful. He’s introduced me to pretty much the most powerful men in the British medical profession. As well as the Medical Council chap, I met the Secretary of State for Health, and the Surgeon General. Then the editor of The Lancet, only Britain’s foremost medical journal. Rollo seems to really want to help me get on. I think it’s something to do with my father.’
‘But do you really want to get on in that way?’
Shafeen looked into his champagne glass, as if he might find the answer in there. ‘I don’t know, Greer. I really don’t know. It’s a means to an end. I could take a stand, right up there on the moral high ground.’ He pointed to the frescoed ceiling, to the cherubs parting the clouds. ‘But who would I be hurting but myself? If I end up where I want to be, and spend my life helping people, including people who look like me, would that be so bad?’
I supposed it made sense. But it was strange to hear Shafeen talking like that. He’d been so bullish about unelected privilege only the day before. This was quite the turnaround. But was it any different to me taking a place at STAGS, and all the privileges that came with it? I wondered what had won him over, and I thought I knew the answer. ‘What did you do all day?’
‘We had lunch, then we had coffee and brandy in the Smoking Room. That’s when he introduced me to the medical types. Then we played billiards in the Billiard Room.’
‘What’s billiards?’
‘Posh pool,’ said Nel.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Cluedo,’ she said briefly.
‘Then we went upstairs to this amazing place on the first floor called the Fencing Gallery,’ Shafeen went on. ‘It’s this really long room – the length of the whole club – so it’s apparently three townhouses. There were black-and-white tiles on the floor, like a chessboard. I’m not describing it very well.’
‘No, I think I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘There’s something similar in Die Another Day – sidebar: my least favourite Bond film – when Toby Stephens fights Pierce Brosnan.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Shafeen said drily. ‘Anyway, there were two guys there fencing, and we watched for a bit. They were all done up in the white suits and the face guards, really going at it. They were attached to the wall by a rope to pull them back if they got too feisty.’
‘God,’ said Nel. ‘Sounds serious.’
‘Well, yes, but they then stopped at the end of the bout and shook hands. Rollo told me they used to have duels up there. Proper ones with swords. On some of the white tiles you can see bloodstains that they couldn’t wash out. And they even fought with pistols there too. There are musket balls buried in the wall.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Way to settle a dispute.’
‘Quite. Then he took me down to the cellars. They’re amazing – they must go right down under the street, they’re so huge. There are just racks and racks of the most incredible wine.’
‘Probably where Rollo got his expensive tastes,’ said Nel, sounding more admiring than critical. ‘I’ll bet they’re full of – what’s his favourite? – Veuve Clicquot 1984.’
‘Probably. He showed me this one bottle which was worth 40k.’
I could feel my lip curling. ‘That could almost pay two nurses for a year.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought. But then he took me upstairs again and said he had a meeting and would I like to sit in. They were talking about all the charities they support, and all the fundraising they do, and allocating the money. That was really interesting because they do work in a lot of Commonwealth countries, former colonies. Places like India. It was as if they were –’ he searched for the words – ‘trying to make amends.’
I said nothing.
‘Then we came up here, and he introduced me to Lord Fenton – the one in the bow tie. We were talking about vaccinations and herd immunity. I suggested that the STAGS club members support this vaccination project that I know of back home in Jaipur. And he’s going to bring it up at the next meeting.’
His eyes were shining.
‘Wow,’ I said, not wanting to rain on his parade. ‘That’s quite a day.’
‘Yes. And there’s something else.’
Here it came.
‘Greer, Nel –’ he bit his lip with something like joy – ‘Rollo invited me to join the STAGS Club.’ He lifted his chin an inch, defiantly. ‘And I’m thinking about it.’
Just then, into our stunned silence, Nel’s phone rang.
It was a shrill, shocking sound – she had it on that classic, jaunty, tinny little tune. Everyone shut the hell up and their noble heads swung round to look right at Nel. I’m pretty sure that sound had never been heard in this hallowed place before. The metallic robot song sliced through the dusty silence as Nel scrabbled, scarlet-faced, in her bag. Of course, when you want to find your phone you never can, and it took what seemed like an eternity of her fishing beneath gum and gloves and Tube tickets before she could shut it up. The Christians and infidels on the walls suspended hostilities to glare down at us, united in their disapproval. By now the assembled gentlemen in the room were muttering, magenta-faced, and a few of them began to approach. But before they reached us, Jack from the door – Jackdaw – had appeared at Nel’s elbow, and Plain Jack the waiter, almost as puce in the face as Nel and clearly hating this, stood before her.
‘Excuse me, miss. Regrettably, I will have to ask you to leave the premises.’ His voice, high and nervy, broke unimpressively in the middle of the sentence, but Jackdaw still stood over Nel, impassive, his bulk underwriting the threat.
None of us moved, our tableau as still as the mosaics on the wall, until Rollo sailed over and broke the deadlock.
‘That’s all right, Jack. The young lady is with me. We’re going in to dinner now. There will be no further … disturbance.’
This was a definite These-aren’t-the-droids-you’re-looking-for moment. Plain Jack stood for a moment, torn between the power of the STAGS Club and the power of Rollo. Rollo won easily.
‘Very good, my lord. But …’
Rollo turned and fixed the unfortunate Jack with his steely blue de Warlencourt gaze. To give him credit, the waiter just about stood his ground. ‘The Secretary’s compliments, but I must ask the young lady to hand over her mobile telephone. It can be collected from reception on her departure.’
For a moment I thought Rollo would rip his head off, but he just nodded. ‘That seems fair. My dear?’
As ever, he didn’t look at Nel. But those last two words were a direct order.
I saw Nel clock the little ‘missed call’ banner before reluctantly placing her treasured phone in Jack’s sweaty palm.
‘Your ticket, miss,’ said Jack, sounding visibly relieved and handing over a ticket bearing two little black antlers and the number seventeen.
At that, both Jacks pissed off with Nel’s phone, and we had to follow Rollo all the way through the library, this time enduring the stares of all the STAGS members and their shocked tuttings and mutterings.
Once we were on the stairs and Rollo and Shafeen were well ahead, I murmured to Nel, ‘Well, that was great timing by someone. Are you OK?’
She was still absolutely scarlet in the face. I could tell Nel didn’t like what had just happened. The beautiful confidence she’d shown downstairs, while I’d cowered behind her, had evaporated. Now she looked near to tears. Suddenly I was angry. Screw those guys and their rules, making Nel feel like shit.
‘It was Ty,’ she said in a small voice.
‘What?’
‘The phone call. It was Ty.’
Dammit.
‘Did she leave a message?’
‘Gee, Greer,’ she said snippily, ‘I don’t know. Maybe I could check when the phone Nazis aren’t breathing down my neck.’
She had a point. We followed the two gentlemen in silence and were in time to hear Rollo say to Shafeen, ‘I say, old boy – about what we were saying earlier … I think there’s something you’d like to see.’
He stopped on a corner of the stairs and pushed at a picture, a large hunting scene (of course) featuring a red stag. A door opened from nowhere, like the bit in The Remains of the Day when Anthony Hopkins appears on the stairs as if by magic. Not knowing if we were invited or not, Nel and I followed Rollo and Shafeen into a darkened room.
Right away I felt afraid, but at first I didn’t know why. It was just a long room with seats either side of it, almost like the choir of a great church. In between the seats was an ornamental scarlet carpet, woven with – yet again – a hunting scene. And at the far end of the carpet was a chair.
I knew then that it was the chair that made me afraid. It was as if the evil in the room was emanating from it, as if it had some power of its own. You know in the summer when the council doesn’t take the bins away for a couple of weeks, and you might see a maggot or two on the bin lid, then you open it to put the bag in and there are millions of maggots squirming around the bottom? The chair was like that – it was the source of something rotten. I could swear it was humming with some strange energy, humming very, very faintly like a dormant generator. It was a big thing, more like a throne, made along medieval lines with a tall, triangular back. The arms were ornamented with carvings and worn smooth with use. Horribly, the four legs of the chair all terminated in the cloven hooves of a deer, a design that reminded me uncomfortably of the Longcross portrait of Elizabeth I, with those greasy, hairy feet and glossy cloven hooves.
We must’ve been at the top of the building because there was one window in the place and it was above that chair. A shaft of light cut through the dark like a knife-strike and illuminated the great wooden throne, highlighting the oddest thing of all. The chair had wooden antlers rising out of the headrest, all of a piece with it, as if it was all carved out of one huge block of wood. The antlers reached, branch-like, up to the light, as if it were a tree craving the sun.
‘There,’ said Rollo, with reverence, laying his hand on the horns. ‘This is the chair of the STAG. New members sit here to be invested.’
‘What happens at the ceremony?’ I asked, half in dread. ‘Is there an oath and stuff? Do you roll up your trouser legs?’ It seemed very necessary, suddenly, to make a joke.
‘I can’t say, I’m afraid,’ said Rollo enigmatically. ‘Only STAGS members find out, and they never tell.’ He turned to Shafeen. ‘Try it,’ he prompted.
I thought Shafeen would refuse, but he only hesitated for a moment before sinking down onto the scarlet cushion.
The antlers were clearly designed to line up perfectly with the sitter, because they looked like they were sprouting from Shafeen’s head. And they changed him. He looked like a king on that throne, but a bad king, a murderous Mughal, a rajah of darkness. With those antlers sprouting from his forehead, he looked like the Grand Stag. And suddenly, under his evil eye, I was back in the De Warlencourt Playhouse and once again on trial. My heart began to race, and my breath seemed to stick in my throat. I’d never revisited the subject of the trial, not since we’d gone over it all in the car. Of course, so much had happened, but truly? I found it too frightening. Of all the strange things I’d been through since I first went to STAGS, I’d found that trial the most terrifying. I think my mind, even with the daily reminder of the brand on my thumb, had blocked it out. But now I could feel the panic rising. I didn’t know Shafeen any more, or what he might do.
I would have turned and run, but at that moment he got up from the chair and was himself again. He lingered for a moment, patting one of the arms affectionately, even longingly. But I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. As Rollo held the door I pushed past him, back onto the staircase where I could breathe again. I grabbed Shafeen’s arm to hold him back as we followed Rollo along yet another grand passageway.
‘You’re not serious about joining, are you?’ I whispered.
‘If I did, it would be to change things from within.’
‘And Rollo’s told you that you can? He’s told you there’s a place for you?’
‘Well, he would nominate me. And then you need a second, but he said Lord Bow-tie would do that. But as to the place, they come up very rarely. It’s literally dead men’s shoes. They have an opening.’ He didn’t quite look at me. The penny dropped horribly.
‘Because of Henry?’
He said nothing but looked straight ahead as he walked.
‘It is, isn’t it? You’re literally taking Henry’s place.’
‘He didn’t say it in so many words. But I guess so, yes.’ Shafeen still couldn’t quite look at me.
‘Jeez …’ This was a whole new creepy dimension to the whole creepy business.