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Nicholas Coleridge is managing director of Condé Nast in Britain, the magazine publishing house that includes Vogue, Tatler, House & Garden and Vanity Fair. His bestselling novels have been published in twelve languages. He lives in England with his family.

Chapter One

July, 1966

‘You are not going to believe what’s turned up in this morning’s post,’ said Lady Crieff to her husband in the breakfast room at Ardnessaig House. ‘I must say, I do call it a nerve.’

Alistair Crieff, who was known throughout Angus for the elegance of his calves in canary-yellow shooting stockings, was frowning over an item in the Dundee Courier. The new socialist Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was threatening to introduce a wealth tax, which would oblige the Crieffs to estimate the value of their pair of Landseers and the small Lely in their bedroom, and pay a proportion of their value every year to the Exchequer.

‘An invitation for Charlie to stay in the South of France,’ said Verena sharply. ‘When I tell you who it’s from, you’re going to be horrified … Marcus Brand.’

‘Marcus? Good heavens, we haven’t heard a squeak out of him for five years.’ ‘Longer. Not since Charlie’s christening. That was the last time he was up. Of course nobody realized what he’d been up to then, or we’d never have asked him at all.’

‘And he’s asked Charlie to stay in France? Why the devil has he done that?’ ‘I’ll read you what he says,’ said Verena. ‘The letter’s written on his office writing paper, which is typical. A not very nice address in Broad Street. ‘ "My dear Verena, I haven’t seen you for far too long" – I should think not – "nor, I’m sorry to say, have I seen Charles since his christening eight years ago and I feel it’s time I started to get to know my godson" – well, I call that presumptuous, considering what happened – "so I have decided to invite my six godchildren to the South of France for the third week in August, where I have recently bought a villa on Cap Ferrat." Oh, yes, with poor Lucy’s money, no doubt! "I have engaged a couple of maids to help look after them all, so I can assure you the children will be well cared for. If you feel able to part with Charles for that week, I will send his aeroplane ticket for Nice which I will, of course, provide." ’

Verena Crieff emitted a sharp little cough of disapproval. ‘The sheer cheek of the man astonishes one. Wait until I tell the Macphersons … Hector told me that if he ever set eyes on Marcus again, he couldn’t be held accountable for his actions. They’ve never got over it – Lucy was always the favourite – though they have to accept some of the blame themselves. They never should have allowed her to marry someone like Marcus. I mean, nobody knew the first thing about him. Such a frightful fellow, as I said right from the beginning. Didn’t I say so?’

‘You never were quite sure about him,’ agreed Lord Crieff, as he invariably did agree with any statement made by his forceful, dogmatic wife. ‘But we did ask him to be one of Charlie’s godfathers, so we must have liked him at the time.’

‘Nonsense! We merely asked him to stand in for Lucy. It was Lucy we wanted, not Marcus. Lucy we all loved. The christening was only a week after that ghastly motor accident. Marcus was still up here, and after all, nobody had the slightest idea then about his awful fiddles.’

‘I wonder what Marcus is up to now? He always was a clever fellow.’.

‘Too clever by half, that was his trouble. Imagine using Lucy’s money for his business deals. Macpherson family money! It would be like you using Arbroath money.’ Verena Crieff invariably invoked her own side of the family when she wished to imply great wealth and grandeur. ‘Hector got to the bottom of it all eventually, but he could never retrieve the missing money. How could Lucy have left it all to Marcus? I thought that’s what trusts were for, to prevent capital from leaving the family.’

Nothing aroused greater outrage in Lady Crieff, as the elder daughter of the youngest sister of the 13th Earl of Arbroath, than the thought of inherited money passing into the hands of outsiders.

‘Do we know whether Marcus ever remarried?’ asked Alistair.

‘I wouldn’t put it past him. I was never convinced he was all that faithful to Lucy while she was alive, if you really want to know. Now he’s got his hands on her money, he’s probably shacked up with some brassy little piece of work. The Macphersons couldn’t bear him. He used to give Lucy the most awful common jewellery, which he bought somewhere in London.’

‘What will you do about the invitation?’ asked Alistair.

‘I shall refuse it, of course. It would be highly unsuitable. We’re never going to see Marcus Brand again, nobody is, so there’s no point encouraging him.’

There was the sound of subdued voices on the staircase, and the despotic figure of Nanny Arbroath appeared at the dining-room door trailed by Charlie and his elder sisters, Mary Jane and Annabel.

‘Good morning, Nanny,’ said Alistair. ‘All had your breakfast already upstairs, have you?’

‘Yes, thank you, Lord Crieff,’ replied Nanny Arbroath in her severe Peebleshire accent. ‘I’m taking the children for a walk up to the end of the drive to see if the men have made any progress with that gate. Come along now, Charlie, don’t put your hands on that table, I’ve told you I don’t know how many times. And you can wipe that smile off your face too, Annabel. If there’s anything to smile about, I’d be the one to know about it – not you.’

At the age of forty-four, Nanny Arbroath, who was always known by the surname of the grandest of three families whose offspring she had systematically terrorised, was at the height of her intimidatory powers. Physically rather a small woman – her height augmented by the two-inch lifts in her black walking shoes – with close-cropped black hair, she had an ability to inspire obedience in her employers and charges alike. Never known to take a day off in the twenty-eight years since she’d entered service as a nursery maid, she admitted to no family of her own. Too conscious of her status in the hierarchy of life to fraternise with the other servants, she spent her evenings alone in the day nursery surreptitiously tippling sweet liqueurs. As she endlessly reminded the Crieff children, she had accepted the position at Ardnessaig House with considerable misgivings, finding it a comedown after Arbroath Castle. Alistair Crieff did his best never to be trapped in the same room as Nanny Arbroath from one month to the next, with the consequence that he scarcely saw his children. Even Verena Crieff had to remind herself of her own well-mapped lineage before broaching any subject liable to inconvenience her children’s keeper.

Charlie Crieff, gangly and curly haired, slunk across to the mahogany sideboard. There, under the guise of inspecting the stuffed stag trophies which punctuated the walls of the dining room, he dug his fingers into a jar of marmalade and thrust them into his mouth.

Nanny Arbroath was reminding Lord Crieff that when she’d been at Arbroath Castle she’d had not one but two nursery maids working under her. ‘And neither one of them ever took a single day off, that was something I was always most particular about.’

Charlie’s hand edged towards a cut-crystal pot of honey. It stood, along with the marmalade and jams, on a round silver tray, covered by a linen napkin. A horn spoon, its handle engraved with the Crieff crest, had all but submerged itself in the honey.

He glanced round to see if he was being observed, and sunk his fingers into the pot.

‘Charlie’s stealing honey!’ Mary Jane’s tell-tale voice sang out. ‘Look, everyone, his fingers are in the honey.’

Nanny Arbroath, darting with the quickness of a cobra, caught Charlie a sharp slap across the back of his legs.

Jumping back to avoid her, and trailing honey across the mahogany surface from his fingertips, Charlie knocked over a large silver-plated capercaillie which stood, tail feathers displayed, on the sideboard. The hideous table-centre toppled forwards, its silver beak gouging into the polished wood while its clawed feet left skidmarks an inch long.

‘Charles, you will go straight up to your bedroom and stay there,’ snapped Verena Crieff. ‘And you will not come out again until breakfast time tomorrow morning.’

Charlie shot out of the dining room before anything worse should happen, leaving Mary Jane smirking sanctimoniously behind him – he hated Mary Jane – and Nanny Arbroath huffing and puffing and declaring that she’d never come across a more troublesome child in all her born days. Only his father, who dared say nothing, and Annabel, who loved her little brother dearly, had any sympathy for Charlie.

After the fuss had died down, and the girls set off on their walk up the drive, Verena Crieff said, ‘I really don’t know how we’re going to get through these summer holidays with Charlie behaving as he is.’

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ Alistair replied. ‘He’s no worse than any other boy of his age.’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me if Nanny handed in her notice. She’s at the end of her tether.’

‘Why not send him to France then? That’d give us all a break.’

‘To Marcus Brand?’ ‘Seems a God-given opportunity. Get him out of our hair for a week.’ ‘But Marcus is such a ghastly man. I couldn’t bear to be beholden to him.’ ‘We wouldn’t be. We need never see him at all.’

Verena considered the matter. ‘It would free up Charlie’s bedroom. We’ve asked far too many people to shoot that week. I’ve been having sleepless nights worrying where we’re going to put them all.’

‘That’s settled then. Fire off a letter to Marcus and tell him his godson can’t wait. It’ll be a nasty shock for Marcus once Charlie gets there, but that’s his look-out.’

‘Just so long as the Macphersons never find out,’ said Verena. ‘We mustn’t breathe a word. They’d see it as treachery.’

Saffron Weaver crept downstairs to the kitchen of her mother’s house in World’s End and opened the Electrolux fridge. Inside she found a saucer of lemon slices, a bottle of Polish vodka, an open bottle of white wine, a mug half-full of black olives and a bottle of milk. Carefully removing the milk without spilling any, she carried it over to the table. Her bare feet felt cold on the kitchen lino. Then she fetched the cornflakes from the cupboard, tipped some into her bowl and poured the milk on top. She did everything as quietly as possible – hardly daring to place the milk bottle down on the table – so as not to disturb Amaryllis and Trev who were asleep upstairs.

It had never occurred to Saffron that she shouldn’t get her own breakfast. No one else had ever offered; no one had ever been around. In her eight-anda-quarter years, she had seldom seen a grown-up before lunchtime. At weekends, Amaryllis – which was what Saffron called her mother – never got out of bed until three or four o’clock. Even when her dad was still around, nobody had surfaced before lunchtime.

When she’d finished her cereal she carried the bowl over to the sink and went upstairs to get dressed. One of the best things about Saturday mornings was deciding what clothes to wear. Saffron liked trying things on. With her pale blonde hair and enormous blue eyes, she resembled the heroine of a Grimms’ fairy story, Gretel or a neglected Goldilocks. Sometimes, in the hours and hours before anyone else got up, she liked to see what she looked like with Amaryllis’s scarves wound round her head or her waist; and sometimes she tested out her mother’s lipstick and kohl-stick too.

Another thing she did on Saturday mornings was colouring. She liked to do pictures for Amaryllis to put up in the kitchen. Today Saffron drew a picture of her mother and Trev asleep in bed, Trev with a hairy face and all his cameras over the floor. When she did her best colouring she screwed up her face and clenched her tongue between her teeth, she was concentrating so hard. Trev always said, ‘Take care, angel, or you’ll bite it right off one day.’

At nine o’clock the postman delivered some letters, and a few hours after that Trev came down to look for his cigarettes.

‘Seen my fags anywhere, doll? It’s no good all this, you know, I’m gasping.’ Amaryllis and Trev had been together since Christmas, and if they got married Saffron was going to be a bridesmaid.

Around two o’clock Amaryllis appeared in the kitchen in her black transparent kaftan. Saffron thought her mother was beautiful, just as pretty as Twiggy who got all the best work. Amaryllis had already been in Nova and been called in for a look-see by Queen. Trev was helping her get together a portfolio.

‘Be a kind girl and fetch me a black coffee, won’t you?’ croaked Amaryllis, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘I don’t know what time it was we got in last night …’

Saffron made a coffee and carried it to her mother, along with the picture she’d drawn.

‘Is that meant to be me and Trev? There we are, look, Trev and his scratchy face and me looking like death warmed up. That’s really nice, Saffron. Did you do it all by yourself?’

They could hear Trev moving about upstairs, searching for his clothes amidst the debris of the bedroom. To find anything in that house you had to act like a rag picker, sifting through the shallow mounds of old frocks, scarves and kaftans.

‘You will be all right on your own if Trev and I go out for a couple of hours?’ said Amaryllis. ‘He wants me to meet this creative director of an ad agency.’

Although Amaryllis loved her daughter, she was conscious that eight-year-old Saffron was a bit of a giveaway about her own age. She had lopped several years off when she’d told Trev she was twenty, and fortunately he hadn’t puzzled it out yet. But having Saffron around her neck could be a drag at times.

Amaryllis gathered up the post and idly examined the envelopes. She was half expecting one from her ex-husband in Limerick, with money inside for Saffron’s maintenance, but – no surprise – it hadn’t come. Billy was hopeless.

The bills she didn’t bother with, but there was one interesting-looking letter with writing she dimly recognised.

‘Saffron, come and look at this,’ she said when she’d opened it. ‘You remember your godfather Marcus?’

Saffron shook her head. ‘You haven’t seen him since your christening, so I suppose you wouldn’t. Anyhow, he’s invited you down to the South of France.’

For Saffron, whose horizons had hitherto extended no further than Edith Grove in Chelsea, the words ‘South of France’ conjured up almost nothing. But for Amaryllis, they encapsulated everything glamorous and desirable. ‘What a jammy invite,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably get to visit St Tropez.’

It was strange seeing Marcus’s handwriting. He’d been more of a friend of Billy’s originally, that was how they’d first met. And, for a while, he’d been a big thing in their lives. Amaryllis wondered how he was getting on. Judging by his notepaper, he was doing very nicely, thank you. Not that there had ever been much doubt about that where Marcus was concerned.

Trev appeared in the kitchen in tight black hipsters, holding a motorcycle helmet. ‘We ought to hit the road, angel. I told Davey we’d meet at the Goat in Boots.’

‘Saffron’s going to the South of France,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Her godfather Marcus has asked her down to his pad in August.’

‘That’s great, baby. We can get away somewhere ourselves without the kid, just you and me together.’

Belinda Merrett heard the post drop on to the doormat at Fircones while she was preparing nine o’clock breakfast for her husband and their daughter Mary. On weekdays, Belinda liked to provide Derek with a proper cooked breakfast before he ventured off to the railway station; then she’d go back to bed for fifteen glorious minutes with a cup of tea and the newspaper, before getting Mary dressed and ready for school. But on Saturdays they all enjoyed a bit of a lie-in, and breakfast wasn’t until nine o’clock. This gave them just enough time to get organised before running Mary up to Miss Green’s livery stables for her Saturday morning riding lesson.

The moment Belinda read the letter, standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, she ran upstairs to tell Derek. He was wet-shaving in front of the bathroom mirror, which he still preferred to the new electric jobs that were coming on to the market.

‘Derek, you’ll never guess! Mary’s been invited to the South of France by Marcus Brand. He’s asking all his godchildren to stay.’

‘Good Lord. Well, I never. How absolutely wonderful.’ Derek felt, at that moment, an extraordinary surge of pride. His daughter had been asked to stay by Marcus Brand. He rinsed the shaving cream off his chin and quickly read the letter. Then he read it a second time, taking in every detail. Marcus’s company writing paper was considerably thicker than his own, he noticed, despite their working for the same firm. Chairman’s privilege.

‘I wasn’t even aware Marcus owned a place in France,’ he admitted to his wife. ‘Knowing him, I bet it’s one hell of a set-up.’

The more Derek thought about it, the happier he became. It really was the most unexpected, incredibly generous thing for Marcus to suggest. And, in a way, it vindicated their choice of him as a godfather. Recently, the Merretts had felt almost uncomfortable about having Derek’s boss in that role, but, as they reminded themselves, they had selected him long before he’d become so successful. At the time when Mary was born Marcus and Derek had actually shared the same office, with four desks in it, and the whole firm hadn’t employed more than twenty people altogether. When you told people that today, they didn’t believe you.

As the company diversified, Derek had seen much less of his old friend. Months would pass and their paths hardly crossed. Marcus and the directors were on a whole separate floor and, from what you heard, were up to all kinds of tricks. Shipping and property were only a small part now, apparently.

But this invitation to Mary proved that old friendships still counted for something. If truth be told, Marcus hadn’t always been the most attentive godfather, from the point of view of sending Christmas and birthday presents, which was hardly surprising when you considered how busy he was. But he’d more than made up for that now. A week in the South of France!

‘Do you think we should allow her to go?’ asked Belinda. ‘She is really rather young to go off on her own.’

Derek frowned. In his elation at the invitation, he’d never considered the possibility of refusing. And, of course, Belinda had a point, Mary was very young. Had it been anybody else inviting his daughter to go abroad with them, Derek would have said no. Only a few weeks ago, Mary had been asked to sleep over with her best friend Sarah and, having given the matter a lot of thought, the Merretts had decided it would be best to wait until after her tenth birthday.

‘Marcus does say he’ll have people to look after them all.’

‘It’s not the same,’ said Belinda. ‘Mary’s never spent a single night away from home. And remember how shy she is with people she doesn’t know.’

‘It could be good for her, mixing with youngsters her own age.’

‘I’m sure she’ll have other opportunities. Eight isn’t very grown-up, it worries me.’

But Derek had set his heart on Mary going. He wanted her to go for her own sake, because she ought to know her godfather. And he wanted her to go for his sake too. Lately he had felt the distance between himself and his boss. It now seemed barely credible that, only eight years ago, they’d sometimes enjoyed a glass of beer together at the end of the working day, at the Ship’s Compass in Minster Lane. He’d like to have a channel to Marcus again.

During the course of this conversation, Mary arrived at the breakfast table, dressed in jodhpurs and a tweed hacking jacket, where she unobtrusively ate a boiled egg. Her clean black hair was pushed back from her forehead by a navy blue hairband. It did not occur to either of her parents to elicit Mary’s own wishes on the subject of the invitation to Cap Ferrat, because the decision would naturally be taken by themselves. At this time, in a town like Dorking in the heart of the commuter belt, few happy families would have reacted differently.

After breakfast, Derek drove his daughter up to the old Godalming Road where the livery stables were situated. For every little girl within a radius of five miles, a Saturday morning hack with Miss Green was an institution, and – it must be admitted – a mark of status for their parents. Already a small crowd of fathers was congregating in the concrete yard, watching the girl grooms saddle up the ponies and adjust the girths and shorten or lengthen the stirrups, while their daughters in jodhpurs with elastic beneath the heels patted the sleepy old nags.

Taking Mary by the hand, Derek loped over to the stables. A tall man in a navy blue blazer with brass buttons, he already walked with a slight stoop and wore a permanent expression of anxious self-effacement.

‘Morning, Dudley,’ he eagerly greeted his train friend from the 7.53 to Waterloo. ‘Everything all right?’

As they leaned together against the iron fence, Derek found himself telling Dudley Mount-Jones about Mary’s invitation from Marcus Brand, and how Belinda and he were in two minds about letting her go.

‘I say, we are moving in rarefied circles these days,’ said Dudley. ‘Marcus Brand’s villa in the South of France, no less.’

‘He’s a very old friend,’ explained Derek. ‘We used to share an office together. So one doesn’t think of him as anything very special.’

‘Well, he’s certainly making a name for himself. They say he’s buying Pettifer & Drew next.’

Derek, who had heard nothing of any scheme to take over that well-established firm of stockbrokers, made a non-committal blowing sound, meant to imply that he couldn’t possibly comment.

Belinda Merrett, meanwhile, had nipped down to the shops to buy an Arctic Roll for pudding. While queuing up to pay in the Post Office and General Stores, she bumped into Mary’s school friend Sarah and her mother, Ann Whitley. She soon found herself confiding in Ann about Mary’s exciting invitation and asking her honest opinion on whether or not they should allow Mary to go.

Ann Whitley, remembering how strict the Merretts had been when they’d suggested the sleep over, said that she reckoned Mary was still on the young side for unaccompanied foreign travel.

‘Well, Marcus did say there’d be proper help to take care of them all,’ said Belinda, almost beseechingly. ‘They would be supervised.’

‘I suppose it partly depends on how well Mary knows her godfather,’ said Mrs Whitley.

‘He is rather a special person,’ replied Belinda. ‘He’s the chairman of Derek’s company, you know, and a very longstanding family friend. He’s a charming man and doing awfully well for the firm. He’s really got it going, Derek says.’

Belinda found that, in the course of discussing the invitation with her neighbours, she became less opposed to the idea herself. In fact she was inclined to interpret any objections they might put forward as signs of jealousy. She was certain that Sarah Whitley’s godparents included no one half so prominent as Marcus Brand, with a villa in Cap Ferrat. Outside the bakery, she told Meryl Dunn she felt sure Mary would derive benefit from a trip to France, and that it would be an education for her to experience foreign food. ‘One could become awfully insular if one never left Surrey.’ She said much the same to Jennifer Jones, when she found her collecting for the lifeboats on the corner of Market Street, and to Mrs Dodd-Harvey whose husband Gerald was a governor of Mary’s school.

Over lunch, when the Merretts talked of little else, Belinda began to feel that her original misgivings had been unjustified. And by the time Derek returned home from his regular Saturday afternoon golf game, the matter was decided.

When the invitation had arrived that same morning at the Boltons’ flat in a Smethwick terrace, it was conspicuous as the only item of post. Jean Bolton was making her son Stuart his proper Saturday morning fry-up, which was something he looked forward to; on weekdays there was never an opportunity because of Jean’s job.

‘Now whoever can this be, writing to us from London?’ she asked. Rhetorical questions played a large part in Jean Bolton’s conversation. She felt it was good for Stuart to be enveloped by chatter. As an only child without a father, she didn’t want him to grow up in a silent home.

‘Goodness me! I can’t believe it.’ After eight years, she thought she had come to terms with everything that had happened, but the letter still made her uncomfortable. Even the way Marcus Brand put things, the phrases he used, his almost illegible, impatient signature, brought it all back.

‘Who’s it from, Mum?’ asked Stuart. ‘We haven’t won the Premium Bonds, have we?’

‘No, love. It’s from your dad’s old boss, Mr Brand. The man he used to drive for.’

‘Aw, that’s unfair! I hoped we’d won a million pounds or something. Then we could buy a television.’

‘Eat up your breakfast, love. I’m reading.’

Jean found the invitation a bolt from the blue. It was the last thing she’d ever have expected. She regarded that period of her life as utterly closed; associated it only with tragedy. She could never forgive Marcus Brand, though she accepted he’d been generous financially. But every decision she’d made since Ron’s death – the move to Birmingham to be near to good schools, her part-time jobs at the solicitor’s and with the cleaning contractors – had been taken to draw a line under the episode.

She had almost forgotten that Mr Brand had insisted on becoming Stuart’s godparent. It had been his idea and, in the aftermath of the terrible crash, with Ron dead and Mrs Brand first in intensive care and later dying herself, Marcus had taken over.

‘You have my word, I’ll always see Stuart’s all right,’ Marcus had declared when he came round to the cottage that afternoon with his lawyer, Mr Mathias. ‘Your husband demonstrated personal loyalty to me, and I always reciprocate.’ Then he had appointed himself Stuart’s godfather, though she never did get round to having him baptised.

For eight years they’d heard nothing, though the money had arrived at the bank like clockwork. And now this.

‘You’ve been reading that letter for hours,’ Stuart said. ‘What’s so interesting?’ Jean looked at her son. Sometimes she thought he seemed much younger than eight – Stuart was the smallest lad in his class, though he ate like a horse. His short brown hair was cut in a lopsided pudding-bowl fringe and his new wire-framed glasses gave him a bug-eyed, studious air.

‘As a matter of fact, it’s to do with you.’ A part of Jean was reluctant to tell Stuart about the invitation, but it didn’t seem right to keep it from him, so she read out the letter, explaining as she went along. ‘The South of France is very, very hot in August, and everyone has a sleep in the afternoon called a siesta because you can’t go outside.’ She had no intention of allowing him to go, but to suppress Marcus’s letter would have gone against the truthfulness she promoted in her small family.

When she’d finished, Stuart said, ‘Wow, great! Flying in an aeroplane. When am I going, Mum?’

Excerpted from Godchildren by Nicholas Coleridge.

Published in 2008 by St. Martin’s Press

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Excerpts

Chapter One
July, 1966