CHAPTER four

‘I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.’

Pride and Prejudice – Chapter 11

Bapops spent most of his time in the library, the room my grandparents used as a sitting room. Two large leaded-light windows provided the library with a double aspect over the sweeping lawns, the terraced gardens and The Bottles to the side of the house. An oil portrait of my father’s younger sister, Ann, hung above the fireplace on the only clear wall in the room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, packed with books, covered the other walls. The art deco wooden clock on the mantel above the open fire governed the rhythm of Bapops’s day. He sat in an armchair in the corner to the left of the fireplace and opposite the television, which was usually on. He liked to watch horse racing, current affairs programmes and Crown Court. Granny’s armchair, separated from Bapops by a small, high wooden table piled with newspapers and racing guides from weeks gone by, also faced the television. Granny and Bapops studied the racing form in the newspaper and made bets between themselves for pennies.

Two large upholstered sofas set against the opposite walls faced Granny and Bapops and provided seating for Uncle Robert, who lived with my grandparents, and for visitors. Oak side tables, low drop-leaf coffee tables and a telephone table and chair at the side of the room completed the furniture. Family photographs of weddings and christenings and of grandchildren in their school uniforms were proudly displayed in a variety of silver frames on the bookshelves. The oak floors were covered with a large, plain, beige carpet that almost reached the edges of the room. The Axminster rugs that had once covered the floors were now threadbare and considered too dangerous for young children and an ageing squire.

During the school holidays, when my parents were at work, I usually joined my grandparents for lunch. On Sundays, or for a special family lunch, Granny would roast a large leg of lamb or joint of beef and serve it with crispy roast potatoes, heavenly Yorkshire pudding and gravy. The leftover meat was made into a shepherd’s pie or meat rissoles for a midweek lunch. I liked watching the minced meat squirm onto a plate as I cranked the handle of the metal meat grinder round and round. Lunch was served when the mantel clock in the library struck one o’clock. Granny often cooked brains especially for Bapops—sweetbreads she called them—but they looked disgusting to me.

If there were only a few of us for lunch, we didn’t dine in the Great Hall; we ate off our laps in the library. After lunch, Bapops would quietly watch television, read the newspaper or study the day’s racing guide. When Granny or Robert spoke to him directly, he would respond with a few words but rarely continued the conversation. I often flicked through the pages of country-house architecture and gardens in Country Life, the glossy magazine that was delivered weekly. I knew to be quieter than usual when Bapops was in the library. No one had specifically said he was not to be disturbed—I instinct­ively knew.

I saw my aunts, uncles and older cousins talk to Bapops, but I never saw him engage in animated conversation. He sometimes smiled, but he was a man of few words from my observations. I thought it was his place, as head of the house, to talk to me if he wanted to; I didn’t have the courage to start a conversation with him. I didn’t know whether his distance was usual for a man of his position, as I had no one with whom to compare him. We lacked the finances to socialise with other people who lived in grand houses, and no one I knew had a grandfather who was a squire. So I accepted the distance between us. I saw it as a mark of his superior position and respected him for this, although I would have been overjoyed if he had taken an interest in me. I was in awe of Bapops—‘king’ of everything I could see. If he wandered into a room in which I was alone, such as Granny’s kitchen or the study, I would discreetly leave so as not to be in his way.

I never saw Bapops or Granny look at any of the books in the library. It was as if the spines of the books were merely decorative wallpaper. My grandparents went to bed early, and the library was often empty at night. I would sneak in sometimes, pull a large book off one of the many shelves and peek inside. Some of the spines cracked as I levered open the hard leather covers. I particularly liked the books with beautiful hand-painted illustrations of flora and fauna from around the world. As I carefully turned the pages over one at a time, I would marvel at the pictures—bright and clear as the day they were printed. I couldn’t help but run my fingers over the thick pages. I kept a listen out so that I could quickly put the book away if anyone came into the room, which they rarely did. All I could hear was the familiar ticking of the mantel clock and the occasional hoot of an owl.

Most of the books were extremely old, and many were in languages I didn’t understand. Tales of foreign travel; illustrated natural histories; books of letters; volumes of poetry; novels; and books on politics, law, sport, history, estate management, art, and religion were interspersed with estate records, family history and our Chawton heritage. Many of them were complete with a bookplate inside the front cover, indicating which of my ancestors had been their original owner.

I was fascinated by each ancestor’s choice of bookplate design—and books—because I considered their choices an indication of personality. Edward Austen Knight’s bookplate was much plainer than Thomas Knight’s. Unlike the rest of the family, who appeared to have satisfied themselves with one bookplate design, Montagu had three—and each was elaborate and bold. I particularly liked Montagu’s round design; it was the only circular bookplate I had seen. Sitting side by side on the bookshelves were the personalities and preferences of generations of Chawton squires. I knew the faces of most from their portraits, but the bookplates brought my ancestors to life. There were no bookplates for Lionel or Bapops, so the library provided me with no clues about their personalities. Bapops spent his days sitting in the library—what I considered the heart of our heritage—but he seemed so disengaged from it all.

The library was very much a male domain, despite the fact that a woman—Jane—was the celebrated and much-revered literary member of the family. The bookplates showed that the collection had been largely put together by the men of the family, and most of the books had been written by men. The journals of foreign travels were of gentlemen’s journeys—photographs and illustrations focused on men’s achievements and interests, not women’s. Jane would have known the older books, either at Chawton or in the library at Godmersham Park before they were moved to Chawton. I could imagine her browsing through the eclectic mix of books, perhaps to gain knowledge and inspiration for her writing.

I wondered which books had been Jane’s favourites. Was Jane, the most talented writer in the family, resentful of the lack of female representation in the library? When I later read Persuasion, I couldn’t help but notice that Jane perhaps shared her own views through the voice of Anne Elliot in a lively conversation with Captain Harville about the fickleness of women: ‘I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men,’ says Captain Harville. ‘Perhaps I shall,’ responds Anne. ‘Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.’

My mother had modern copies of Jane Austen’s works, but I didn’t see any copies of Jane’s novels, new or old, in the library. Years later, I discovered that four of Jane’s books were listed in the Godmersham Park library catalogue of 1818, the year after she died. At the very end of the catalogue, in a small section labelled ‘Drawing Room’, the novels published in Jane’s lifetime were listed: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). They were recorded as having been printed in London, as sitting on shelf six and as comprising three volumes each. The volumes were originally sold unbound and would likely have been bound with Edward Austen Knight’s bookplate. Much of the Godmersham collection was moved to Chawton when Godmersham was sold. A set may also have been held in the Chawton collection, but first editions of Jane’s work would have been valuable, and I could guess what their fate would have been.

I could see from a photograph of the Great Hall in Montagu’s book that Chawton House had once been full of opulent possessions: dark antique wooden tables, chairs with barley-twist legs and high backs, and tall candlesticks by the side of the fireplace. I recognised a couple of pieces of furniture and was certain they were still in the house. I could clearly see the miniature coats of arms still in place around the top of the panelling and the large ornate wooden carving that depicted a scene of Abraham about to sacrifice his only son, with both a mosque and a church in the background, high above the doors.

But most of the portraits that had once hung between the antlers were gone, as were the plates that had shone so brightly in the daylight streaming in through the windows of the Great Hall. I was unable to tell from the photograph whether the plates had been pewter, brass or china. Paul told me about a beautiful and extensive collection of fossils and shells kept in narrow drawers in a dresser in the servants’ passage. He had played with the collection for hours when he was young, but one day it was gone, and no one ever mentioned it.

Despite the obvious loss of valuable possessions, Bapops kept certain stand­ards and was always smartly dressed in tailored trousers, white shirt and tie, and a gentleman’s cardigan. His dark hair, regularly cut by a visiting barber, was slicked back with Brylcreem, and he was always clean-shaven. But Bapops had always been old and frail to me—he walked quietly and slowly, but always upright. From time to time, I would pass him in a hall or passage, and he would usually make some acknowledgement—a brief hello or nod of the head before he continued on his way. He didn’t stop to talk.

It was impossible for me to imagine Bapops as a young and active man, so I asked my father what he had been like. Bapops had never worked in the traditional sense—that is, he had never had a job, not as my parents did. There had been business ventures, such as commercial flower growing, my father said, but nothing had taken off. Bapops had been a keen photographer. He had taken friends on photographic safaris in Kenya, and large black-and-white prints in narrow dusty frames hung in the disused servants’ hall at the back of the house. He had also taken cine film of my father and his siblings as they ran around on the lawns. The reels were occasionally projected onto a pull-up screen when our extended family came to visit. I had also seen a photo­graph of Bapops as a younger man sitting in the driver’s seat of an open-top car. I guessed it was taken when he was in his thirties. He looked confident and dapper, with slicked-back hair and a sharp suit—like a character from Bugsy Malone, I thought.

One Christmas, my parents invited their long-standing friends, Jake and Amber, to join us for the festive period. Many years earlier, when Jake was a young vet, he had rented the north-wing quarters that would later become our quarters. Being of similar age to my parents, they had become great friends. My grandparents knew Jake and his then girlfriend, Amber—they later married—and we were all invited to join Granny and Bapops in the library for six o’clock drinks a couple of days before Christmas. Bapops went to pour the drinks from a secret cupboard behind a row of book spines. I saw him take a swig of whisky before he harmlessly but unmistakably flirted with Amber. It was only for a brief moment, and I don’t remember what he said exactly, but I was struck by how cheeky and funny he was. I had never seen this side of his personality before, and I never saw it again. For a few seconds, he showed a glimpse of his former self, and I could imagine what a charming man he had once been.

The only other photograph I had seen of Bapops as a younger man was in his military uniform. In the far left corner of the house kitchen was a staircase that led to the attic rooms. Behind the bottom of the stairs was a large alcove full of old military uniforms—coats, boots, trunks and bags—all piled on top of each other. Everything was covered in dust and looked as though it had not been touched for decades, or perhaps centuries. Paul, who had thoroughly explored every corner of the house, had looked through the pile and said it was like a time machine—as he had dug deeper into the pile, the uniforms had been older, going further back in time as he peeled back the layers.

I was too wary of spiders to rummage as Paul did. Paul had ventured up the staircase to the attic rooms and turned the first of them into a den for himself. He had painted it blue and installed an old sofa and a CB radio, and he spent hours there talking to people over the airwaves. Being high up at the top of the house, he could pick up signals all the way from the Isle of Wight.

In their early years together, Granny and Bapops had enjoyed a busy country-estate life and hosted dinners, shooting parties and hunt meets. But other than family lunches, Granny and Bapops had given up entertaining a long time ago. When my parents arrived from Australia as a married couple, Bapops gave them the ‘Austen Knight china’, as we called it, as a wedding gift. Before my parents’ arrival, the china had been stored for years in boxes in the attic above the servants’ wing, but now it was being used for dinner parties once again. The grand dinner service had been commissioned from Wedgwood by Edward Austen Knight on a visit to London with Jane and Fanny. Jane wrote of the occasion in a letter to Cassandra from Henrietta Street on Thursday, 16 September 1813—‘after dinner’. In the letter, Jane first gives Cassandra a horrifying account of their companions, Lizzy and Marianne, friends of the family who were staying at Chawton House, receiving dental treatment before the visit to Wedgwood:

and poor Marianne had two taken out after all . . . Fanny, Lizzy and I walked into the next room, where we heard each of the two sharp and hasty screams . . . I would not have had him look at mine for a shilling a tooth and double it. It was a disagreeable hour.

I winced as I imagined the pain. My mother had taken swift action when my teeth started to overcrowd and become crooked. Our family dentist in Alton had removed five of my baby teeth and four of my adult teeth over the years. I knew the extractions would help straighten my teeth, and each tooth was pulled with the help of a local anaesthetic, but I still dreaded every visit. I could only imagine how scared Marianne would have been.

‘We then went to Wedgwoods,’ Jane continued ‘where my Br & Fanny chose a Dinner Set . . . the pattern is a small Lozenge in purple, between Lines of narrow Gold;—& it is to have the Crest.’ I approved of Edward’s choice. The pattern was beautiful and far more tasteful than many of the other bright and garish antique designs I had seen. Clearly inspired by our Knight heraldry, the dinner service had been made specifically and uniquely for Edward Austen Knight, and it must have taken Wedgwood months to make. Made of thick white porcelain, each piece was hand painted with a narrow border of lozenges in purple, edged with gold leaf. A tiny gold flower had been painted in the middle of each lozenge, reminiscent of the lozenges and flower on Edward Austen Knight’s coat of arms. The pattern, which trimmed the outer edge of each piece, was interrupted with a single image of our Knight crest, the Greyfriar, intricately painted in miniature.

It had been a substantial dinner service. I didn’t know how many dinner plates had been broken in the 170 years it had been in the family, but thirty-six plates remained. Small and large plates, soup bowls, a range of serving dishes (some with lids), large meat platters and three grand soup tureens had largely survived intact, although some pieces were damaged, and clearly some items were missing.

For some reason, Bapops and Granny must have decided they didn’t want to entertain on a grand scale, which I could not understand at all—I loved it. My parents used the china on very special occasions and only with a small group of familiar and trusted guests. Some pieces were too damaged to use, but others were in mint condition and were the perfect backdrop for delicious home produce cooked to perfection by my mother.

The estate had hosted pheasant shoots for generations, and my father and Uncle Robert continued this tradition. Shooting and hunting were still popu­lar pursuits in the English countryside. From the first day in October until the end of January each year, invited friends and acquaintances would bring their guns and join shooting parties through the woods. The ‘guns’ and ‘beaters’ would meet in the Great Hall for a tot of whisky early in the morning before setting off down the back drive to enter the woods at the bottom. Sometimes I joined the beaters.

Lined up together, twenty feet or so apart, we walked slowly through the woods in front of the guns and waved sticks, beating the ground to make as much noise as possible to encourage the birds to take flight. The guns were careful to point their weapons high into the air to ensure no beaters were accidentally shot. Fallen birds were collected by gun dogs and then tied and carried in pairs by the guns, who took the majority of their kill home. Throughout the autumn, my father would traipse through the woods in all weather to feed the pheasants, ensuring our stocks on the estate remained plentiful.

Once the shooting party was over, my father would hang his pheasants undrawn—that is, complete with guts and feathers—in the old kitchen for a week to allow the meat to tenderise and develop a gamey aroma before the birds were plucked, gutted and trimmed. My parents preferred a medium intensity flavour; others liked their game ‘high’ and hung it for longer. At the end of a good season, we would have a dozen brace of pheasants in our freezer for dinner parties. Roast pheasant was delicious, but a pheasant pie with moist gravy and a pastry top was even tastier.

The Hampshire Hunt still held meets at the front of the house occasionally, and Bapops would stand on the front steps to watch. Paul and Fiona sometimes went out with the hunt on friends’ horses, but I wasn’t a good enough rider and could only look up at the horses and smart riders in their black coats and red riding tails.

My father had ridden since he was a young boy, but he didn’t ride much anymore. As a child, he had kept his pony, Rusty, in the stables and enjoyed riding across the paddocks and around the estate during the school holidays. He laughed as he recounted riding his horse through the house—from the lawns, in through the side door, along the servants’ passage and out the back door—much to Bapops’s chagrin. Bapops had occasionally taken him hunting on a lead rein until my father was old enough to ride alone. Bapops had been a keen and talented horseman and had kept his best hunters at Hall Farm in the nearby village of Bentworth. I knew of Hall Farm—about five miles away—as Paul was friends with the family that lived there. I don’t know why Bapops chose not to keep the horses in our stables, which were only a short walk down the drive.

The stonework above the front door of the stables was dated 1593. When I was young, the stables were still fitted out with old-fashioned boxes, and although they had not been used for decades, it took little imagination to picture them bustling with life—Edward Austen Knight’s mount being prepared for his ride around the estate and horses being hitched to a coach in the rear yard. Perhaps on a cold day, Jane, Cassandra and Fanny waited in the Great Hall for the coach to take them all to a dance at the Assembly Rooms in Basingstoke. Edward’s horses were stabled at Godmersham, but he brought a carriage and riding horses with him on his annual visits to Chawton.

We had no horses of our own, so Paul and I were excited to look after two ponies for an aunt who was travelling overseas one summer. We kept the ponies in wooden boxes behind the stables and rode them daily in the four-acre paddock in front of the church. The stables had been sold towards the end of the 1970s and converted into a family home. I had played in the old boxes for hours, and it seemed a significant loss. Bapops had rented out apartments in the wings of the house for as long as my father could remember, but this was a sale, not a tenancy. It happened quietly and without explanation; Granny didn’t mention it, but I remember it well. For the first time, the gate at the end of the long gravel drive did not mark our boundary. The first half of the driveway was now shared with the residents of the newly converted stables, and the edge of our estate was only yards from our front door.

In the past, Bapops had ridden his own horses in point-to-point steeplechases organised by the local hunts. Most years, Uncle Robert, my parents, Paul and I—often joined by various friends and family—went to the point-to-point race event held at Hackwood Park near Basingstoke where Bapops himself had ridden as a younger man, but this year Bapops came with us. Cousin Georgina was riding. Bapops had left the grounds of Chawton House only once in my lifetime, as far as I could remember.

Granny and Bapops travelled in Robert’s car, and we parked the two cars side by side on the edge of the course and unloaded chairs and blankets to sit on. Picnics packed into cool boxes and baskets were served from the car boot. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the day and walked around the show stalls. I looked at the horses in the parade ring and joined the family sweepstake for each race. For much of the day, Bapops sat in the car. He joined us at the back of the car to watch the races and for a homemade sausage roll. He seemed content enough but didn’t say much. He looked pleased as Georgina rode her mount over the brush fences. Was it a joy for Bapops to be back at the racecourse where he had raced in a former life when he was active and connected with the outside world?

My father had gone to boarding school from a young age, so he was unable to tell me much else about those days at Chawton. With term times at school and a few weeks annual holiday at the seaside with the nannies, my father had spent only nine weeks or so each year at home in Chawton. When he was eight, my father did spend a year at home when a burst appendix put his life in danger. The family were very concerned, and like Jane in her last weeks, he travelled from Chawton to Winchester for treatment. Fortunately, my father returned home where he remained for a year until the family doctor deemed him fit enough to return to boarding school. My father fully recovered and went on to break the high-jump record at Milton Abbey, in Dorset, where he was boarding. He remembered that Bapops came to see him play rugby at school, but they were not close. I was so grateful not to be sent away to school. I couldn’t imagine being away from Chawton for months on end—it was our home.

Although my parents didn’t want either my brother or me to attend boarding school, in the end it was the only option for Paul. After he left Chawton Primary, Paul went to Amery Hill Secondary School in Alton. Everything seemed fine for a couple of years until I was eight and Paul was thirteen. For weeks, I had sensed something was not right. My parents had attended meetings with Paul’s school, and I was aware of private phone calls made in quiet tones but didn’t attempt to listen. Paul never returned to Amery Hill, and for the next few weeks he remained at home. I could see the concern on my mother’s face as she read leaflets and filled in forms.

One Sunday afternoon about a month later, my parents explained to me that Paul had a learning difficulty called dyslexia. It was 1978, and I had never heard the term ‘learning difficulty’, let alone ‘dyslexia’. My mother explained that Paul found it difficult to learn by reading, so he would have to go to a special boarding school that was able to teach him. I was upset and cried for Paul. I was scared for him: What did it all mean, and would he be all right? I was also sad for myself that Paul was going away to boarding school; our home would not be the same without him.

My parents explained the sacrifices that would be made to meet Paul’s school fees. Horse riding and piano lessons, my only regular activities outside the estate, would have to stop, and we would be ‘economising’. A moment of disappointment was quickly replaced by the realisation that these were small inconveniences for me in comparison with Paul, who had to leave Chawton. I was upset to see him go.

After a few months, Paul settled in at Slindon College, an independent boarding school on the West Sussex coast. A converted manor house, Slindon College was grand and imposing, much like Chawton House, and Paul seemed happy enough. The headmaster’s racehorses were kept in a stable at the school. Paul was a talented rider and worked the horses every day. I missed Paul during term time and looked forward to sports days at his school. I beamed with pride as he ran past the finish line first in the hurdle race.

Paul had got into some fights at Amery Hill, and I did not want to follow in his footsteps, so when it was time for me to leave Chawton Primary, my mother arranged for me to take the entrance exam for the Convent of Our Lady of Providence in Alton. The prospect filled me with excitement and horror—only the highest performers would be offered a place. I had no sense of my intelligence in comparison with others, and I didn’t know whether I would pass the exam or not. I was known as the girl who talked too much and who frequently got into trouble for chatting to the person next to me in class, and I didn’t think this reputation was likely to stand me in good stead with a new school. To top it all, my talent on the sports field had not improved.

I completed the exam, and after an agonising wait, my mother opened the letter confirming a place for my senior years—just as we had hoped. It was my first experience of personal achievement; I had passed a fair and equal examination where everyone was judged by the same standard, regardless of their circumstances, and I liked it. My mother was thrilled, and I knew my parents were proud of me as well as relieved. The convent offered a good education locally; boarding-school fees were out of the question. I was relieved as it was an all-girls school, which I thought would be nice, and I would not need to leave Chawton. I was glad I would be attending the same school as my friend, Bronte, who also lived in the village.

I wasn’t particularly popular at school, but I did have a few friends. Bronte, the friend I played with the most, lived with her parents and sister in a large thatched cottage at the other end of Chawton, opposite Alphonsus House, a monastery that had originally been built as the estate dower house by Montagu in 1810. Bronte lived close enough for me to bicycle to her house, as long as my mother knew where I was going and when I would be back. Her father, who had once been in the navy but was now retired, was related to Lord Nelson, the celebrated British admiral killed at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Bronte’s family were proud of their heritage and equally enthusiastic about mine, and they welcomed me with warm smiles and strawberry Quikshake—milk mixed with flavoured pink powder—which I vigorously stirred into my milk in an attempt to dissolve the fine grains. Bronte and I would play for hours and listen to her Eurythmics records.

I was also relieved that I would not be the only grandchild not to go to a private school—I wanted to fit in with my cousins. Paul and Robin were away at boarding school, and Fiona went to a private school seventeen miles away in Fleet. As Fiona was older than me, she was always ahead in the milestones of life, such as going to senior school and becoming an adolescent. I looked up to her and sought her approval—much like a younger sister would do.

I settled into the convent well enough. I liked most of my teachers and classmates, although I was never part of the in-crowd and didn’t mix easily with the other girls. I wished I had inherited some of my father’s sporting or horse-riding talent, as I am sure that would have helped. I missed Paul terribly during term time and worried about him. My mother had explained dyslexia to me as best she could and had reassured me, but it wasn’t clearly understood by the experts, and she didn’t have all the answers. My father had always struggled with reading and writing, and subsequent testing showed that he too was dyslexic. I didn’t know what effect it would have on Paul or his future.

But my worries were allayed a year or so later when I went to watch Paul ride in his first horse race. It was an ambition of Paul’s to ride for his headmaster’s stables, but he had a pair of knee-length riding boots only, not the ankle-length leather jockey boots he needed, so Paul borrowed £50 from Granny and then worked around the estate over the summer holidays to pay it back.

I was allowed a rare day off school and went with my parents to Southwell Racecourse in Nottinghamshire for the day. I was in awe as Paul, in brightly coloured silks with his initials ‘PEK’ clearly visible on the front of his skullcap, rode his racehorse out of the parade ring and towards the starting line. He was so high up on a tiny jockey saddle, but he looked confident in his seat as his horse danced about. I had wanted to wish Paul good luck before the race, but with throngs of people everywhere and Paul high up on his horse, I was unable to. Paul rode off towards the start, and my parents and I went to stand by the finishing line, stopping on the way at the on-track bookmakers to back Paul in an each-way bet.

The horses gathered at the starting line on the other side of the track. The starter gave the signal, and they were off. Paul had struggled to settle his mount before the start, and as the horses set off, he was facing the wrong way and had a late start. I could see that Paul was at the back, about twenty lengths behind the rest of the field. It was a long steeplechase, and the riders and horses would come by the winning post twice before the end of the race on the third pass. There was a clear gap between the pack and Paul at the rear as they came past the post the first time. Paul had caught up with the back of the pack by the time they came past the post for a second time, and we watched him work his way past the other horses as they ran the last lap and jumped the brush fences.

I had never felt such excitement as I watched Paul come round the last bend towards the winning post. My parents and I whooped with delight and waved our betting slips in the air as Paul came in second behind Mark Pitman, son of Jenny Pitman, who the following year became the first female trainer to win the Grand National. As Paul rode his horse to the winners’ enclosure, we looked on with pride. I had never seen such a beaming smile on his face, and I was so very proud of my big brother and knew he would be OK. He had been determined to race, and he had done so, triumphantly.

My father didn’t know whether Bapops had ever won a race—or come second or third. Bapops was so reserved that I couldn’t picture him punching the air with delight. But despite his quiet nature, it was hard to imagine life without Bapops. I loved my extended family and our ancestors, and if what my parents said were true, we would have to leave our ancestral home. I didn’t even want to try to imagine it—there simply had to be a solution.

I had been to Longleat House and Safari Park in Wiltshire, about an hour and a half from Chawton, with Paul and my parents. Longleat was the first stately home in England to open to the public on a fully commercial basis in 1949, and to me this seemed worth considering for Chawton House. I had seen hundreds of visitors queuing, happy to part with the entrance fee to peek inside the grand house at Longleat. But although Chawton House was still rich with our heritage and the spirit of our ancestors, the most valuable family heirlooms had gone, the village properties and viable outbuildings had been sold and, except for Granny and Bapops’s quarters, every wing and floor of the manor had been rented out or had fallen into disrepair. My mother explained that the investment required to prepare the house and attract visitors was far more than they could ever afford. But why hadn’t this been done when the house was still in good repair? Through my young eyes, it seemed so simple.

At the end of the summer in 1983, we moved up to the first floor of the north wing as planned. I was particularly pleased that our new quarters were big enough to house my piano as I would no longer have to play in the cold of the rear servants’ passage. My favourite tunes were Song for Guy by Elton John, Chariots of Fire by Vangelis and Yesterday by The Beatles. I enjoyed singing along but did not like being heard by the tenants who used the back entrance to the house. I liked music and drama. The convent had an associ­ation with the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and in the new school year, I would start acting classes. I had already passed my first ‘Verse and Prose’ speaking exams.

I liked living ‘above stairs’, with high ceilings, oak panelling and the portraits. I passed by Elizabeth Martin Knight every day—‘We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be,’ Jane had written, and I could see in Elizabeth’s eyes the confidence of a woman who made her own decisions without the need for approval from others. I wondered whether Jane had thought the same as she passed Elizabeth’s portrait on the way to dinner.

My parents didn’t host dinner parties for a couple of months after we moved while my father made alterations to our quarters. After he had finished my bedroom, my father installed a new kitchen that included built-in cupboards he had constructed from a flat-pack kit, a fitted sink, a free-standing cooker, a refrigerator and our first microwave. My father fitted the kitchen into the north corner of the room, but no sooner had he finished the work than he took it all down and refitted it into the west corner. I didn’t know why my father had decided to rebuild the kitchen, but its new location did improve the layout of the whole room. It was a large square room with a high ceiling, sash windows, ample space for a scrub-top table big enough to seat ten that had been used for generations of servants in the servants’ hall, and a seating area with comfy armchairs around the open fireplace with stone mantel and a large mirror above. As soon as the new kitchen was finished, my parents were keen to entertain and invited some friends for dinner.

The first guests invited for dinner in our new quarters were Trish and Dennis and another local couple, John and Anne, who lived opposite the front gate in the rectory stables, which had been converted into a house long ago. My father had known John since childhood—at one point, they had attended the same school—and had rekindled their friendship as adults. John ran his own small business, and Anne was the manager of the health centre in Alton. Their two sons were of similar age to Paul and me, and our families socialised often.

My mother chose courses that would complement each other and utilised as much of our estate produce as possible: prawn cocktail, pheasant pie with roasted vegetables from the garden and poached pears for dessert. The pears had been harvested the month before and kept fresh in the apple store, so only the prawns and a handful of ingredients needed to be bought.

I enjoyed my parents’ dinner parties as much as they did. I did not attend the dinner; that was for the grown-ups. I liked to help my mother plan and cook for the evening and retrieve produce from our freezers and stores, and I loved the trip into Alton to buy anything else we needed. My mother made sure that friends they dined with often didn’t get the same meal twice. It was also important to consider what could be prepared in advance and what had to be done at the last minute. Dishes that required minimal attention in the final stages of cooking were preferred so that my mother would not be away from her guests for long periods. Both my mother and Granny were highly complimented by friends and family for their cooking skills. I wanted to cook as well as they did so that I could ‘wow’ my guests when I was older, and I listened intently to my mother’s tuition.

My mother and I enjoyed each other’s company and chatted away as we worked. Before the end of term, I had to choose what I wanted to study for my O levels. Maths, English literature and English language were compul­sory, but other subjects were optional. My mother wanted me to take history, science and French, but I wanted to take art, needlework and geography. We had already talked about it a couple of times, and I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to talk about it again so chatted endlessly about other things.

For the first half hour or so I joined the party, warmed myself by the roaring fire and enjoyed the light-hearted conversation before I retreated for the rest of the evening to a comfy fireside chair in the kitchen to watch television.

By the time I was up and dressed the next morning, my father had cleared the dining table and washed the dishes. He was nowhere to be seen—already out in the grounds somewhere. I opened the refrigerator to see what delights were left over from the night before. There on a side plate, complete with lozenge border and the Greyfriar, sat the last slice of pheasant pie—my favour­ite. It was breakfast time, but I couldn’t resist. It was the first pheasant pie of the season!

I removed the cellophane wrapping, popped the plate into my mother’s new microwave, closed the glass door and pressed start. As the plate began to turn, I could see sparks flying. Within seconds, rapid flashes of bright light, like small bolts of lightning, were shooting in all directions. I suddenly realised it was coming from the gold leaf around the plate and pulled open the door. My heart was racing as I grabbed a cloth and carefully lifted it out. I didn’t want to plunge it into cold water in case a sudden change in temperature cracked the plate. I put it on the draining board and inspected the damage.

Had the gold leaf come off? Had the colours faded? To my astonishment and absolute relief, there was no damage. The pheasant pie was stone cold, despite the spectacular light show. I waited a few minutes, re-wrapped the plate in cellophane, popped it back in the refrigerator, and never mentioned the incident to anyone. With so few of our precious heirlooms left, there seemed little reason to confess I had been so careless when no damage was done.

We had the perfect surroundings for entertaining—from large parties to intimate dinners and Sunday lunches, and everything in between. I would be turning eighteen in five years, and I had been hoping to host a big party of my own, but my plans would soon be thwarted.

Paul and Martin, a close friend of Paul’s from school, threw a couple of parties in the Great Hall, and teenagers arrived in droves. At the last party, fifty guests became far more than a hundred, as more and more people arrived. My parents were anxious to ensure revelling guests were kept under control and did not damage the house or cause unnecessary disturbance to my grandparents, who were only a flight of stairs away. I tried to imagine what Bapops must have thought. He couldn’t have been asleep in his bedroom above with the 1980s music blaring below. Was he horrified at the noise? Did he wish it was all over and his privacy restored, or did he nostalgically recall his younger days when he had hosted his own parties?

The party spilled into the inner hallway of my grandparents’ quarters and out onto the lawns—there were people everywhere. Luckily, the evening passed without serious incidence, other than the mess left in Granny’s kitchen by a drunken partygoer. But far too many people we didn’t know had attended, and it could easily have got out of hand, so my parents decided there would be no more teenage parties at Chawton House.