Lord of the Manor: Chapter One
It all started one day in spring. Spring, when the head-gardener was most active in the gardens. Spring, when I enjoyed the Church Fairs and Flower Shows and, of course like any red-blooded man, the races. Spring, when the staff opened up all the rooms and got down to a good darn spring-cleaning.
The Melrose Manor was in the height of Springiness. All was well with the world. At least I thought so before that afternoon. However, I am getting ahead of myself.
As you may have guessed, I am Lord Melrose, master of the manor. No autographs please. In addition, I am about to relate to you the events that turned my world upside down, in some ways giving me great headaches. Yet in other ways bringing me great joy and pleasure.
I was heading down from my bedroom, to the dining room, to put on the feedbag at around 9 AM in the morning. A civilized hour to start breakfast. A very proper time to have breakfast. I mean, by Jove, I know some people who break their morning fast at 6 AM! Not people I would invite to my abode of course, but one hears rumors of the rougher types who live in the towns and villages of the country.
Anyway, I entered the dining room, nodded to Young, my butler, took my place at the food trough, and nodded to the family. My family is something I will have to describe in detail for the story to have any weight. Let me start in order of their appearance in my life.
First is my daughter, born from my first wife. Sadly, my first wife has left this world for another. Her daughter, Erika, took after her in the dark hair, brown eyes and the slim figure. One would say she was pretty, if they were slightly tipsy. You see, she wears her long hair in a bun or in one long ponytail. She also refuses to use make up, never plucks her eyebrows, and because of her weak eyesight wears thick glasses. They give you the impression that she is staring at something JUST behind your head when she is talking to you.
On top of that, she likes to wear tweed. No, really. Tweed suits, tweed shorts, tweed hats. If they had invented tweed underwear or shoes, she would have bought up the whole stock. Moreover, the worse is yet to come. Indeed, if you are standing, sit down and if you are smoking, put the cigar on the tray so not to shake the ash onto your shirt.
She is a socialist. Yes. Yes, I will wait. Breathe in and out. Count to ten. I’ll wait. Ready? Let us continue.
She can quote Lenin, Mao, Karl Marx and understands it. She talks about it all day. She chats about it throughout a seven-course meal. She explains it to guests while having tea in the garden. She will defend the ideals behind it during a game of golf at the Club. She’ll try to get the maids to free themselves while they get her ready for a grand costume party. In fact, even while I was reaching for my toast she was telling us about the student demonstrations in China, on the Fourth of May 1919.
Yet she cannot understand why the local socialists will not talk to her. It seems that she has no problem with the idea of private property. From what I understand, and I may not be grasping the idea properly, it seems that the chap Marx had no problem with people owning stuff. His focus was mostly on production and industry, the big capitalists, so private property was not really the point. Therefore, she has no problem with being rich.
As one of those capitalists who the Left plan to kill, with my blood, as they say, running in the streets, even I have to say I think she may be a tad loony. I know, she is my daughter, but really. Even I cannot help but feel for the poor people. Here they are, with their beards and soapboxes, trying to awaken the lower class and here comes this rich girl, trying to join them. Bad form for the cause, eh?
The second person to describe is Francine, my second wife. She is a teacher at a local college, an intelligent, wonderful woman with a heart as big as her breasts. Yes, I first noticed her because of her lovely, large, bust line. They remind me of the pumpkin that got First Prize in the Hampton Fair two years ago. You know the one. Huge. Well, Francine has what one would call an hourglass figure.
Not that she is just bust line, no. She has a natural smile, developed from years of enjoying life and dealing with teenagers. Her eyes are a light blue that suggest the color grey, while her long hair is pure white. No, not from age. She is a platinum, a real, honest to God, platinum blonde.
True, there are wrinkles about the eyes and her breasts are starting to head south, but even a man half my age would give a few teeth for a night with her. And I married her!
Sadly, my stepdaughter, the offspring of an earlier marriage that Francine had, does not follow in her mother’s footsteps.
Kathryn has the same appearance. The hourglass figure, the white hair, blue eyes, wonderful figure. Nevertheless, there was nothing warm about it. It is not that she disliked me or did not approve of the marriage. Oh no, she was very happy about it. She felt that somehow she deserved the new position in life.
You see, her mother and herself were solid upper middle class. She had everything she had every needed. Yet she had wanted so much more. Still did. Here I have five cars. She thinks I need ten. I have a garden. She thinks I need a lake. I grow pumpkins and enter them into the Fairs. She thinks I need a stable and should breed horses.
You see, I want to enjoy my wealth. She wants to show it off. I think, deep down, she felt she was poor. I think when she first stepped into the main hall and realized just how wealthy I was she could not help but compare her old life to this new, shiny one. And it was left wanting. Her eyes are always weighing everything’s worth. They are hungry eyes.
As you can guess, Kathryn and Erika did not get along. Ericka was a rich girl who was a socialist. Kathryn was a newly rich girl who wanted nothing to do with socialism. Here is a plain, dark haired girl sprouting slogans and ideas of changing history and there is a girl who looks like a Viking Princess who wants to be treated like one. A princess, not a Viking.
Now before I continue I would also like to point out I do not drink milk. I prefer orange juice. And not a small glass, oh no, a like them large. Orange juice, I have been told, it NOT a beverage. But I disagree. Give me orange juice or give me death, I say.
Now, everybody else was drinking milk. Women seem to gulp it down like many men absorb Gin and Tonic, or some laborers suck down coffee. Just watching my family drink the stuff made me shiver and hug my O.J. even closer.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, let me move ahead in the story, so you may start to see the link.
Later during the day, I was enjoying my garden, sniffing the flowers, and checking for bugs. The head-gardener was a wonderful man, but he was from Scotland and you had to keep on top of things with their type. I mean, perfectly good in following orders and wonderful when it comes to keeping the soil just right, but you never know with those people.
Suddenly the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up and I knew I was about to get a lecture about socialism again. I glanced up and there she was, Erika, marching towards me. It was too late to do anything. Hiding behind a tree or in a bush would have been useless. If I had been deeper in the woods maybe, or near one of the thorn bushes, but no, I was out in the open.
“Father,” she said. She always called me father. Never daddy, papa, or even pop. Even Kathryn called me pop, which I preferred to father. When Erika said it, the word always came out more as a title, with a capital f, then a greeting. As if she was saying Capitalist.
“Yes, what?” I replied, becoming ready for the verbal attack on me, my way of life, my manners and habits. How a father must suffer.
“Father,” she said again. “I have decided to give all my things away to the Church.”
My eyebrows shoot up. What was this? Was she becoming a Nun?
“Are you becoming a Nun?” I inquired.
“No,” she said, slowly, as if thinking that maybe that was a good idea. “If I give away my wealth, I assume I may be able to join the socialist party in town.”
“No, no, no,” I said, “do you really plan to give away all your clothes? Your golf clubs? Your pearls? Party dresses?” I had to say, I was steamed. It was one thing to hear the nonsense every single second but for her to plan to carry out the ideas of that flag waving party of workers and artists. No.
“No more talk of socialism,” I stated, shaking my head. “No more blood of the workers, no more after the revolution, no more putting people against the walls. No more. And stop telling me how many people my cigars could feed. I refuse to stop eating red meat. I refuse to give up brandy. I refuse to even give up the scones at tea time.”
I prepared myself for the backlash. Erika had spine. That was one good thing I could say about her. And when her temper was lit, she became a stonewall. In that, I mean, she will refuse to back down, becoming so suborn that it would take a forklift to move her.
“Ok,” said Erika.
You could have dropped me with a feather to the forehead. I was really for fight or flight and neither happened. My body was shaking, full of energy and no way to release it.
“Eh?”
“I said ok,” said Erika. “I’ll stop talking about socialism.”
“What?”
“No more talk about socialism.”
“No more lectures on the evils of horse racing?”
“Yes, Father.”
“No more lectures on the evils of exploiting the proletariat?”
“Yes, Father.”
I blinked and relaxed. Well, as you could guess I was pondering what had happened. Was she in love? Was she as tight as an owl? Had my real daughter been kidnapped and replaced with some kind of evil clone?
“Very well,” I said, straightening my jacket and trying to look comfortable around the alien invader. “Good, well, it was silly anyway. A smart girl like you should never have even bothered with such ideals. Yes, well…”
She seemed to just stand here. I realized she was waiting for me to say something. I find myself starting to sweat. Good grief, what was going on? What had happened to her?
“Eh,” I continued, “why don’t you go toss your silly books on revolution and communism and such into the furnace, eh?”
I waited for the rush of outrage, the shouting, and the insults. If anything, she was a book worm as much as a socialist. Well, ex-socialist.
“Ok, Father,” she said. And she was off; marching down the pathway like a brick wall could not stop her.
Of course, as you can guess, my mind was going a million miles an hour. I mean, really, what was happening here? Was she ill? Had she snapped? I knew she was a tad loony before, but really, well, this took the cake.
I retreated, if the term retreated could be used in this situation, to my library. It was known, to the staff and to the family, that this was my private place. I enjoyed a good book here. Alternatively, some brandy. And sometimes a cigar, which is what I started to do now. I carefully cut and lit the cigar, keeping my hands as steady as I could. I have to say, I was a mess. My mind was rushing here and there.
Then Kathryn came into the library and I wanted to yell at her to leave. I could not help it, my nerves were in a bad shape and her appearance never helped them. She was always well mannered, but there was always something in her pose. Her body suggested she was always disappointed with the manor. Where was my silver collection? Where were my hunting dogs? Where was the animal heads on the wall?
“Yes, dear,” I said through my teeth as I tried to make sure the cigar did not go out.
“Mom said I had to give you a list of the guests for my next party,” she said, holding over a folded piece of paper. “Here it is pop.”
The problem with HER calling me pop is that is always seemed to come out too casual. It was all lower case and I had heard her use it with Young my butler, the head-gardener and even the mailman. It was more of a noun used for man who happened to be older than she was.
I took the list, give her a half smile, and opened it. The names, of course, were all friends of hers and, I have to stay, I hated most of them.
I did not have anything against a good party. Drinking, dancing, singing, all for it. However, breaking chairs, throwing up on the pool table, and dancing outside my bedroom door was something else. And these…people…on the list had done all those things last time.
I shivered at the memory, sat up in the chair, puffed on my cigar and said, “No.”
“These guests I continued, shaking the paper at her, “are barbarians. Young is still having nightmares. You made him serve…what are those tiny hot dogs? My God, I thought he was going to swoon.”
I ripped up the list and said, “No. I will pick the people who are coming. From solid families. Tea drinkers. People who prefer to play tennis and like a good sing-a-long. Understood?”
Maybe it was because of my encounter with Erika that I had reacted like that. Most likely, I just did not want to see what a second party would do to my house. And of course Young had to be protected. It was amazing how sensitive butlers could be. Those tiny hot dogs had unnerved him for a week. Not that he expressed any dismay aloud, being the perfect butler, but one can sense such things.
“Yes, pop,” she said, without a batting of the eye.
While I knew, in the back of my mind, that she was going to agree, a part of me was still shocked. A robot? She had to be a robot. Yet, if she was acting like this….maybe, she wanted money?
I eyed her and said, “Dear, from now on I want you to…behave. No more pestering me about a yacht. No more complaining about not having a horse stable. And no more hinting that we need to take up fox hunting.”
“Sure, pop,” she said. Then she just stood there. And stayed standing there for a full minute.
I know, I timed it on the clock on the wall. Frankly, I had mixed feelings. These alien robots had been badly designed. Not at all like the real blood and flesh humans had they replaced. They should have sent out a recall, send them back to the factories, have them repaired.
Yet, they were easier to get along with.
I puffed on my cigar, being polite enough not to blow the smoke at her face, and finally said, a tad embarrassed, “Why don’t you go and help your mom plan the party. Remember, a good, wholesome party. No booze, none of those weird, new age snacks. Let the cook decide the menu.”
“Right, pop,” she said before leaving the room. Sadly, her figure was wonderful to look at, but did not have the grace of her mother. Not that I really noticed. I was puffing on my cigar and my mind was working away at the problem. The problem being, what was going on?