‘So I need to take you through the whole thing again?’
‘Yes. Come on. Let’s go to the fashion cupboard and you can talk me through it there.’
While I repeated the entire sorry story of Friday night, Lala and Allegra the magazine’s French fashion editor (nicknamed Legs on the basis that hers were skinnier than a pair of chopsticks), clicked through websites looking for suitably tweedy clothes. After half an hour of umming and aahing, they decided I needed the following:
1) One tweed Ralph Lauren coat
2) One brown felt hat with a feather sticking out of it (‘You must wear a hat, Pols, toffs like everyone wearing hats because it means they can pretend it’s still two hundred years ago and they rule everything’)
3) One pair of Jimmy Choo riding boots
4) One three-quarter-length black Dolce & Gabbana dress
5) One pair of Charlotte Olympia heels.
‘And not too much make-up, Pols, they don’t like too much make-up,’ Lala added sternly.
‘Why? What’s wrong with make-up?’
‘It’s vulgar. Makes you look like you’ve tried too hard.’
‘OK. And what shall I do with my hair?’
‘Mustn’t be too perfect, otherwise that suggests that you’re vain and have been indoors all day.’
‘Instead of running around outside killing things?’
‘Exactly. Happy? You never know, you might fall madly in love with Jasper and end up marrying him. Imagine that. Oh, except you don’t need a boyfriend any more.’
‘Callum is not my boyfriend. Did you not listen to a word of my story?’
‘But do you want him to be? You must like him, otherwise you wouldn’t have talked on and on about him.’
‘I had to keep talking on and on about him because you weren’t listening. And I don’t really know. I think maybe he’s just a distraction. Or maybe it’s just my biological clock.’
‘What ees thees clock?’ interjected Legs. Being French, she disliked most things, but she especially disliked: fat people, most forms of carbohydrate, London buses, flat shoes, any kind of comfortable or functional clothing, Peregrine and rain.
‘It’s a thing you supposedly get when you turn thirty,’ I explained. ‘It means you want to have babies.’
‘Pfff. You cannot possibly ’ave a baby. Babies are so unchic,’ said Legs.
‘No, no. Well, I don’t mean “no”. I want them at some point. But not now. I couldn’t afford one anyway. I can barely afford my own lunch.’
‘Pffff.’ Legs wasn’t big on lunch either. She always had an Americano with macadamia nut milk for breakfast, a Diet Coke for lunch, then several Martinis at whatever fashion dinner she had that night while she pushed a piece of fish so tiny you could hardly see it, let alone eat it, around her plate.
Later that week, I did my homework on the Montgomerys, which meant Googling them and leafing through old copies of Posh!. As far as I could work out, there were four main characters, all of whom would be there for the weekend. The main focus was obviously Jasper. Thirty-three-year-old Jasper, the Marquess of Milton. Suave, sandy-haired playboy, tall and obsessed with horse racing. By all accounts, he had impeccable manners until approximately ten minutes after he’d slept with you, when he would lose all interest and go back to studying the Racing Post. After leaving the Army he had moved home and seemingly learnt how to run the family estate.
Then there was his father, Charles, the Duke of Montgomery. Clearly, as a former army major, he was the kind of man who always had toast and marmalade in his 153-room house at 0755 hours and would then take a post-breakfast shit at precisely 0840, before walking his black Labrador and then settling down at 0930 hours to write a letter to the Telegraph about the state of the armed services. He had been hospitalized a few times for various heart operations, according to several newspaper reports, and remained as frail as a green bean.
The Duke’s wife, Jasper’s mother, was a woman called Eleanor, the Duchess of Montgomery. She grew up in a Scottish castle and was mad. Properly, totally mad, according to past Posh! interviews in which she only talked about her chickens. She was, as far as I could tell, in love with her chickens. At one point she had thirty-nine of them, all with different names. She had told one interviewer that, when they were born, her trick was to carry the chicks around in her bra so that she bonded with them. ‘I’ve never crushed any of them,’ she’d said. ‘I love them like they’re my own children. Maybe even more.’
Meanwhile, Jasper’s sister, Lady Violet, was in love with her horse. Apparently, nobody in this family could form proper human relationships, so instead they made questionably close friends with their animals. Violet was twenty-five and also living at home in Yorkshire, having attempted a cookery course, a secretarial course, an art foundation course and a needlework course. Presumably, she had now run out of courses. No boyfriend, although she had once been linked to Prince Harry. Who hadn’t?
So, that was the line-up for the weekend, the family that I had to interview for an eight-page piece in Posh! to prove what a normal, upstanding family they were.
Mum sent me a message that same afternoon.
Got the letter, the appointment is at 4.15 on 2nd February at St Thomas’ Hospital. Is that all right, darling? X
I checked my diary. It was the week after I was going to Castle Montgomery, so I would make Peregrine give me the afternoon off.
Course, easy-peasy. Will ring later Xxxx
ON THE SATURDAY MORNING, I caught the 7.05 from King’s Cross, which arrived in York station just before 10 a.m., where an idling taxi driver outside picked me up.
‘You’re wanting the castle?’ said the driver. His car smelt of dogs.
‘Yes please,’ I said, shutting my eyes and leaning back in the seat to try to denote that I wasn’t up for chatting.
‘I know that young Lord Jasper,’ said the driver, as the car kicked into action.
‘Mmmm,’ I replied, eyes still closed.
‘I’ve been driving him about since he was a lad.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘And if you ask me…’
I wasn’t.
‘… there’s something not right about that family. All that money, all them rooms, all them horses. And now Lord Jasper in the newspapers again. Still no wife. And all that carrying on between the Duchess and that gamekeeper, I ask you. It ain’t right.’
‘The gamekeeper?’ I opened one eye.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘If you ask me, it’s disgustin’, behaving like that while your husband’s heart’s playing up. If my Marjorie ever even thought about it, I’d have something to say about it. Not that I’ve ever given her cause for complaint in that department.’
I decided to gloss over this personal detail. ‘Does everyone know about the Duchess?’
‘Oh yeah. Everyone up ’ere does anyway. And Tony, he’s the chap, braggin’ about it in the pub every night.’ He shook his