MISFIT
Pelham House,
London, March 1922
"Herbert Archibald Peregrine Pelham, seventh Marquess of Hexham."
The man, perched at the edge of the ottoman lounger, scowled. "Don't talk such rot, Peter."
"Rot?" The languid laugh barely shook the blue silk coverlet. "On the contrary, dear boy. I am in deadly- some might even say fatal- earnest."
The thin hand, pale and long-fingered, lifted from the embroidered coverlet and twisted up. Even through the muted light filtering between the muslin swathes of the master bed in Pelham house, the bloodstone signet ring, carved with the Pelham crest, flashed and burned.
"It does sound rather medieval." Peter Pelham mused. "And frightfully high-handed. But I have made the decision to cast you as my heir, dear Bertie. Successor to all my largesse. A situation that I imagine," The frail hand, as though overburdened by the weight of the centuries-old ring, fell back to the coverlet. "Should come to fruition sooner rather than later."
"Nonsense." It took an effort for Bertie to put the conviction in his voice. His cousin, always the smaller, more fragile of the two of them, seemed dwarfed by the bright silks and old-fashioned fourposter bed around him. "You'll see me down, Peter. We've always known that."
"I have had my share of luck." The fine dark hair flopped over the high Pelham forehead, lined with premature creases of pain. The diffidence in Peter's voice was belied by the puckish gleam in the blue eyes. His cousin, more accustomed than most to Peter's sense of dry humour, took heart from the momentary rallying. Bertie snorted as he recalled the many incidents when death seemed to nip imminently at his cousin's toes, only to be swept away at the eleventh hour by some unexpected turn of fate.
"Luck? Is that what you call it?"
Clambering to his feet, he strolled over to the window. "Was it luck that saw you stave off pneumonia after we got lost in those Roman ruins up Torr's Combe? D'you remember? We spent the whole night out on the moor with little more than our jackets on our backs in the middle of the January chill. I was in bed for weeks afterwards but you curled up by the nursery fire for no more than two hours before you were ready to head out again."
"Great-aunt Tabitha always observed I was a cold-blooded individual."
"Or that time we travelled to Wales for the Caerwent excavation. The very first day we arrived, I toppled into a bloody dig-hole and broke my ankle while you spent the next three weeks skipping around like a goat, without a care."
"Yes, but you have always had a heavy foot, Bertie. And I did warn you that the site was rather rough and ready."
"Then the three years you spent with that narcissist Lawrence, dashing around Palestine and Arabia…"
"…while you were up to your neck in mud and gore in Flanders. Where, if I recall the statistics correctly, the average life of a junior officer was little over ten weeks."
Six, Bertie thought. Six weeks. And some didn't even make it that long.
Aloud, he continued his argument as though Peter had not spoken. "Shooting Bedouin or whatever it was you were doing. I can't count the number of times Mother wrote to me with some complaint about your adventures."
"Shooting with the Bedouin. The distinction is, I think, a little important."
"With, at, around-"
"Around?"
"Suffice to say, old lad, you've seen off more than enough trouble in your life to stick your spoon in the wall just now."
"How heartening you are, dear boy." Peter murmured, his head leaning back against the mound of pillows that propped up his frail chest and eased the husky breathing. "A dose of liver salts, chicken broth and cod liver oil all wrapped up in one bracing personality."
"How anything can be bloody bracing in this stuffy room, I can't think." For want of something, anything to break the gloom of finality hanging about his cousin's sick room, Bertie wrenched back the curtains. "Look, fine bright morning. All of London at your feet, and if you can bring yourself to buck up and pack, Peter, there's the twelve-twenty northbound leaving St Pancras for York that we can grab. We should be in Brancaster-"
He turned back to the sumptuous bedroom and stopped.
The break in his cousin's diatribe was enough for Peter Pelham to summon the energy and lift one eyelid. A strange smile played a rictus dance on his sunken face. "Ah, yes. Rather worse in the light of day, old chap."
"Good… God, Peter."
The sixth Marquess of Hexham drew in a rattle of breath. His skin, pale in the dim light of the bedroom lamps, was translucent against the white winter sunshine. His had always been a plump face, square and strong-jawed like all the Pelham clan. Now, cheekbones appeared in the shrunken planes of his face, scored with deep lines of pain like the vicious slash of a cat's claws. The Oriental blanket, a souvenir from Peter's time with General Allenby in Cairo, lay heavily across his shoulders. The bright scarlet and poppy embroidery served only to accentuate the black punches of exhaustion under Peter's eyes.
Bertie, face-to-face with death for the first time since the Armistice four years previously, took an instinctive step back. It shamed him, that sudden revulsion at his cousin's mortality. Squaring his jaw, he buried down the disquiet and advanced towards the bed. "Peter, why on earth didn't you tell anyone?"
"And have the harpies decry it as divine judgement on my sinful ways?" The words came out hoarse. "Do stop looming, Bertie, and sit down."
"Aunt Tabitha and… and Mama have more sense." Bertie settled himself onto the large four-poster. In a move he had not made since he was a boy in short trousers, he swung his legs up and leaned back against the bed head. "Has Harvey seen you?"
"Doctor Harvey has been a veritable shadow around these halls. Marcus is driven quite distracted by him. He claims Harvey no sooner appears than he's dashing out yet another prescription to take to the pharmacist. A cure-all to trump all cure-alls."
"I haven't seen your… secretary this morning."
Peter twisted his head to the side. A satirical eyebrow quirked up. "Really, old chap?"
Bertie tightened his lips. Marcus Lamont occupied a place in his cousin's life that sent a quiver of distaste to the pit of his stomach. A former playwright, poet and actor- "such a flamboyant resumé for a personal secretary" as Aunt Tabitha quipped in her acid tones- he favoured a Bohemian hairstyle, town living and refused to touch any form of liquid apart from creme de cassis. His position in Pelham house was the bone of contention that had alienated much of the family from their traditional gatherings at the start of the various seasons: social, hunting and grouse. Despite this, Peter appeared to dote on the whimsical fool and refused to reconsider his relationship with the man.
Bertie knew that Marcus was far more than a mere secretary to his boyhood friend. It was that side of Peter's life to which he preferred to turn a blind eye. Instead, he focussed on their shared history and passions: Roman archaeology, on which Peter was the acknowledged expert, and estate management, for which Bertie surprised himself by having a certain flair.
Meeting the wry smile with a stolid stare, Bertie shot down Peter's attempts at levity. "Where is the dratted man gone off to now? The Palladium? The Black Cat club?"
"The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation offices actually." Peter twitched the coverlet, the same way he had when they were boys and climbing over each other's rooms. "Bertie, you're crushing that silk in a dreadful fashion."
"The where?"
"The P O offices. Oh, come Bertie, I know you prefer to travel on your own two feet but surely you have-"
"Stop joshing, Peter. What the devil is he doing there?"
"What one habitually does at the P O offices, I imagine. Booking passage on a liner."
Bertie Pelham had been accused of many things in his lifetime. Diffidence, wilful ignorance (his mother's favourite aphorism), being ancient before his time. He had never, however, been accused of stupidity. Looking across at his cousin's ravaged body, fading into death from the dank London fog, he felt the band of tension across his shoulders soften and break. The tight line in moss-green tweed slumped back against the padded headboard. Like Peter, he let his head tip back until he was staring up at the ancient canopy.
"This call-to-arms isn't just a whim, is it, Peter?"
"Like I said, old chap." The sixth Marquess of Hexham's voice was low, the faint drawl he adopted falling by the wayside in his seriousness. Traces of his childhood burr softened the words and made them musical. "It will come sooner rather than later. I would prefer that you were prepared. Not," a gleam of caustic irony broke in. "That you are not eminently more suited to propagating the Hexham line with heirs of your body than I."
"There is always Cousin Oswald."
"You'll forgive me, Bertie, but I prefer not to leave a solicitor whose specialism is bankruptcy cases in charge of my lands and estates. It is you, or the whole bloody lot goes to the Crown."
"There are details." Bertie could see them rising above his head like the grey tide of Longhoughten beach. "Proprieties, precedents. Good God, Peter, duty of care alone will require you to search through the whole bloody family tree in case there should be a heir in closer blood relation than I."
"Marcus has already set the wheels in motion. He may irritate you, Bertie- no, don't protest, I know he does. I am sure you are also aware that he exaggerates his foibles for the sake of your reaction. But he is thorough. There will be no Grantham surprise waiting for you when this mortal frame should cease to function as it should."
Bertie fell silent. Against his shoulder, Peter's weight was slight. He always had been fragile in appearance but that fragility belied a tough endurance that honed generations of Pelhams to survive and thrive in the moors and brushland of Northumbria. Bertie could recall hundreds of occasions, before the war, when Peter had appeared, at the door of the simple Manor House where Bertie had lived with his parents, in small hours after dawn. Stalking cap perched on his thin dark hair, sturdy boots on his feet, the Pelham signet tapping impatiently against his leg. Waiting for Bertie to fall from his bed or to finish stuffing the final square of toast in his mouth.
"Come on, old chap. The day won't wait forever, you know. We could be dead tomorrow."
They walked all over the estate, from the rough, undulating hills around Shillmoor and Barrow Burn to the salt marshes at Alnmouth and Warkworth. Peter searched for ruins, pointing out dips in the land that signified the southern reaches, he claimed, of Hadrian's wall. Bertie kept his eyes peeled for birds and game, the wildlife that populated this barren and beautiful corner of England. In everyday life, Bertie was far below his cousin in station, a junior agent on the lands Peter owned. On their hikes, the roles were reversed: Bertie was the more knowledgeable one, finding sheep tracks and trails that took them deep into the Northumbrian countryside.
It was a shock, one that hit him with the dull thud of a land mine erupting beneath his feet, to realise he would never walk around Hexham with Peter again.
To his horror, Bertie felt his throat swell as though on the breach of tears. Swallowing back fiercely, he folded his arms across his chest.
"Where will you go?"
"Tangiers." The name came out on a low exhale. "Marcus thinks the heat will suit me. And the city is said to be amenable." Peter's hands stopped twitching at the coverlet and lay still. "I should like to live somewhere… amenable for a while."
"I will miss you."
The words were forced out from between his lips. Years of education and training had set a lock upon Bertie's impulses. The opinions of his schoolmasters and his father had been clear: a gentleman did not indulge in sentimentality. Yet even as he ground out the admission, his voice strained by the unaccustomed break, he was ashamed.
How inadequate, how twee he sounded. One would think Peter was going for a brief jaunt to France. Not resigning himself to disappearing into the heat and foreignness of Morocco, to die an exile from his home and heritage.
He should offer to travel with them. No matter that Lamont's simpering set his teeth on edge or that Bertie suffered from hideous sea-sickness even when paddling a raft in the middle of Brancaster's duck pond. It was his duty to see that Peter was properly set up, that a decent doctor was on hand to attend him. God knew what kind of quack would try to wring money from his cousin in that foreign city and Lamont was hardly the type of man to…
"I will miss you too, old chap." Peter had been trained in the same schools, yet compassion rose to the fore more easily in his voice. His hand settled on the sleeve of Bertie's jacket, weighed down only by the heavy bloodstone signet. "Of all our family, you are the only one whom I can say that I will truly miss."
There was a ring of loneliness in his cousin's voice, not unfamiliar. Peter had always been unconventional. When other boys his age would run around in packs, playing cricket and rugby or grouse shooting on the moors, the young Marquess of Hexham preferred solitary hikes, taking some old classics tome with him up to prehistoric tor at the summit of Torr's Combe. Bertie was the only company Peter would tolerate on these trips, a concession that did nothing to lessen his unbecoming eccentricity in the eyes of his relatives.
Peter never joined in the shooting and hunting that was the social bread-and-butter of his set, never showed an interest in the young ladies Aunt Tabitha and Bertie's own mother contrived to dangle under his nose. Even before Peter took up with the theatrical Marcus, he had been written off by the majority of the family as an effete, a gun-shy pacifist and a liability. His war record, spangled with commendations from Allenby to Sir William Marshall- even a caustic side-note in Lawrence's memoirs, published only the previous year- was treated by all but Bertie as an unpleasant and ill-considered surprise.
Bertie cleared his throat. "Mother and Aunt Tabitha will-"
"Be delighted to see the back of me and count down the days until the four strawberry leaves of my coronet rest upon your worthy brow." Peter's smile was faint. "There's a streak of Puritanism in the Pelhams that can be most unpleasant at times. It was my fortune, I suppose, that you, dear Bertie, have such soft spot for misfits."
"Rot."
"Is it?" The noise of the London street, rumbling from the far window, was louder than Peter's voice. "The world isn't kind to those who, for one reason or another, don't fit with its views. And it has devised so many, many ways to hurt us and remind us of our sin for being different. When we find a little sympathy, it can be more precious than any title or any number of acres."
The frail hand squeezed on Bertie's arm, a shadow of the strength that had once lain in the blunt-ended fingers. Bertie turned his head and found the pale blue eyes staring into his own with an intensity that unsettled him.
"Don't forget that, Bertie." Although they were close in age, Peter no more than two or three years his senior, the age gap suddenly felt like decades. Bertie was struck with the unsettling sensation that the man, staring at him with the burning, tired eyes, was not his familiar cousin but someone much older, who had seen much more than could be encompassed in mere years.
"Don't underestimate kindness, especially to those who so rarely receive it. Don't lose your soft spot for misfits and mistakes. If you ever find you do... think of me. Please. Just a thought. Remember our friendship. Remember the comfort it has brought me over the years."
As quickly as it came, the power vanished from Peter's hand. He fell back against pillows, his chest caving in as though exhaustion was a boulder that crushed down on his lungs. His eyes fell closed. They stayed closed so long, Bertie was afraid to pick up his cousin's wrist in case he should no longer feel a pulse.
"Go." Peter's lips barely moved. The order was unmistakeable. "Marcus will be home soon from his errands. You will not want to make small talk with him over tea and crumpets. I shall see that our lawyers deliver the necessary papers."
For a moment, Bertie was tempted to argue. He would stay, remain at Peter's side, follow his cousin to the very edge of the quayside if it should come to it. Let the title and Hexham go hang, for a few months at least. The bloody thing had survived thus far. It would survive a few weeks neglect from its caretakers.
Something at the set of Peter's face, the exhaustion that crashed down on his limp body, held Bertie's tongue. For a moment, he saw the strength Peter had needed to conduct even this brief interview and how much that demand had taken from his diminishing reserves.
With an awkward pat on the shawl-covered shoulder, he manoeuvred his angular frame off the mattress edge. He took his time, as much as he dared. He did not want to jolt Peter any more than necessary. Picking up his homburg from the side table where he deposited it on entering, Bertie shuffled to the door of the master bedroom.
Impulse, the same dreadful foreboding of death that dogged his steps since he saw Peter's state in the harsh morning light, made him pause with his hand resting on the doorknob. Bertie turned back to the bed. Between his fingers, the brim of his homburg crumpled and crushed.
"I will miss you." He blurted out again. "I will."
"Oh, Bertie." The laughter was faint, barely a rattle down Peter's exhausted lungs. It echoed to Bertie's back as he clicked open the bedroom door and let himself into the rich, carpeted hallway of the upper landing. "Oh, my dear chap. Such a soft heart for misfits..."