***Chapter 50***

***Nieces and Nephews***

Colonel Geoffrey Maddocks paused at the kissing gate of Whistledown Cemetery for a moment, stilling Slugger Jones in mid-pace with a gentle hand on his shoulder. His friend looked at him questioningly and smiled his broken-toothed smile as the old soldier nodded towards the memorial bench, where Ron sat inbetween Dora and Bertha chatting animatedly. Although there were still dried tears shining on his niece's and the old lady's faces, the scene would suggest that, as he often did, the irreverent, red-haired youth, who was often at odds with the law, shirked work at every opportunity, and even once rode with the Night Riders, had successfully chased them away with his jokes and banter.

"Did you ever think...?" Geoffrey didn't need to finish the question.

"Never. Not for a bleedin' minute," Slugger chortled, scratching his ear where the faithful woollen hat sometimes itched. "'E were a wild one, were Stryker. Still is, that's why I 'ave to keep the b****r in line. Soft 'eart to match the soft 'ead though." He gazed at him fondly. Ron was this university-of-a-hard-life-graduate's son in all but biology.

The colonel tapped on his ever-present pipe. Out of respect for the late friend they'd come to honour, it was unlit but Geoffrey's had always been a contemplative nature. Back in his schooldays he could frequently be found tapping pen or pencil against his lips while deep in thought. The pipe was a natural replacement.

He smiled wistfully. "My niece has come a long way too since first she arrived at Follyfoot. A long, long way."

The words echoed down to the memory of the summer afternoon struck by a sudden thunderstorm and the delicate girl who alighted from the sleek Rolls Royce.

Uncle and niece had never met before. Post war politics and important Army business had kept Geoffrey Maddocks far, far away from his homeland for many a long year. Besides he had had no real reason to return. The annual tradition of the The Great Christmas Dinner, held every Christmas Eve in the Grand Hall of Maddocks Castle owned by his brother Henry, when the Maddocks clan would gather in all their jewels and finery, and the press would swoop to capture their glittering arrival, had dwindled into being attended by a smattering of elderly relatives and one very small, wide-eyed and much overlooked child.

Her much older cousins, the sad little child never knew. The four nieces and nephews, for whom Geoffrey, to the great disapproval of his three brothers and their spouses, would cut up meat, mop up spilt drinks and dry tears (Good Lord in Heaven, the Maddocks whispered among themselves, there were household staff for that kind of thing, but really children needed to learn to bally well learn to look after themselves, and not spill drinks or handle cutlery clumsily or burst into tears in the first ruddy place!) had long since grown up and flown the nest. The breaches of dinner table etiquette were no more.

Nowadays nobody had to silently seethe as Dotty Geoff, blatantly ignoring the hints and glares and tsk-tsks of the other adults (it was considered a shocking faux pas in upper class society to disagree in front of such lower beings as servants, therefore his brothers and their wives furiously held their tongues) pampered to the dreadful brats every whim and entertained them with fairy-tales, nursery rhymes and tales of Santa Claus.

And yet, despite being so carefully moulded to fit neatly into their vast wealth and superior class status as a Maddocks should, in later years every one of the grown-up nieces and nephews, each in his or her own way, fell from grace. Although they dutifully sent polite letters and cards to their parents and telephoned at regular intervals, their visits home were rare, their letters and telephone calls stilted, and only Geoffrey ever received genuine news from any of the four.

Winston would actually take time out from sailing the seven seas and his many dalliances with the opposite sex, and from some distant shore ring Uncle Geoffro, old bean, and, in his booming, terrifying voice (that must surely have had enemies quaking in their boots) bring him up to speed with his derring-do and often, too, fondly reminisce about the Great Christmas Dinners, and of how as a boy, and thanks to Uncle Geoffro, he'd firmly believed in Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny and even fairies (here, Winston always chuckled knowingly, aware he was being most politically incorrect but he was on excellent terms with Robyn who took his cousin's teasing as it was intended, in good humour) though, in his defence, he added, the latter really did exist!

Robyn (formerly Robin) banned from all future family gatherings "until he saw sense and brought a nice gaaal with him" visited Follyfoot Farm when it was in the throes of being re-built after decades of abandonment and still in all its muddy, tumble-down, pre-horse glory, he and his boyfriend picking their way carefully, with wrinkled noses and pursed lips, through what was then nothing more than a noisy construction site, causing great scandal among the villagers and construction workers by wearing effeminate clothing and holding hands. One or two more visits followed, after which, realising that the colonel and Slugger, who had both seen too much of the world to be be surprised by anything, didn't even blink at the sight, everyone else decided, as the main characters in the play were unperturbed, it wasn't worth the trouble of their being bothered by it either and breath could be saved for more interesting gossip. The couple had since gone off to live in Los Angeles, pledging never to return until both their families – apparently, Michael's family were as homophobic as the Maddocks – accepted their relationship.

Poor over-anxious Clarissa, a musical genius who could compose the most exquisite tunes, had in later years succumbed to severe mental illness and was confined to an exclusive psychiatric hospital. Little information on her condition was forthcoming from her parents. "We never talk about such taboo subjects!" was the horrified answer when Geoffrey enquired after their daughter's welfare, which had been exactly the same response when he gently suggested perhaps they ought to accept Robyn's sexuality or risk losing him forever. All visits to the hospital they curtailed, but Geoffrey was determined one day to bring Clarissa to Follyfoot Farm to recuperate, confident the magic that worked on so many would work its charm on Clarissa and bring peace at last to her troubled mind.

Penelope, the eldest of the quartet by eight years, had inherited the heaviest dose of the infamous Maddocks' snobbery. She owned a ranch in Texas ranch where she lived with her husband and four children and had more or less cut all ties with her family although she did occasionally send her Uncle Geoffrey photographs. He couldn't help but notice that all four children looked every bit as snobbish as his brothers had been at the same ages. And he couldn't help but ponder on the fact, with a guilty pang in his heart, that the first eight years of Penelope's life had coincided with his determined, but failed, attempts to combine his Army career with opening an animal sanctuary and consequently his often empty place at the Maddocks' Great Christmas Dinner. Had he, by his absences, contributed to Penelope's dismissive attitude towards those perceived beneath her? Or was it arrogant to suppose so?

Too well he remembered the self-sufficient little girl and the coldness of her big blue eyes as she copied her mother and father and aunts and uncles and gazed at him with the same contempt, cynically declaring, to their approval, that she didn't believe a word of his "silly" stories. Oh, often when night fell over Follyfoot and he sat by the dying embers of the fire, when all were abed and the only noises came from the wind whistling down from the Moors and a contented shuffling in the stables, or perhaps, if the wind carried the brewing of an as yet faraway thunderstorm, a small whinny or two seeking reassurance from those that loved them so, yes, often, Geoffrey Maddocks would puff on his pipe and frown in concentration, wondering whether or not he was to blame.

But Dora...Dora was an unknown quantity. The colonel had been anxious not to repeat the same mistake he'd made with Penelope – if indeed it was his mistake; despite hundreds of hours used up in contemplation as he puffed away, he never did resolve the conundrum – but Army and diplomatic affairs kept him abroad and all the precious time he'd hoped to spend with his niece was stolen away instead on calming the volatile, for people, being people, will argue over politics or money or religion or anything else at all they can think of to argue about.

Sad to say, his first impression was that his niece would not settle in as easily as he'd hoped. Like her mother, who, upon their first arrival at Follyfoot, held a scented handkerchief to her odd-looking nose (disfigured in a horse-riding accident many years before and Prudence's excuse for hating horses ever since) while loudly expressing her distaste for everything Follyfoot, the pale, beautiful teenager was dressed as though she had just stepped out of the 1930s. Granted, she did look enchanting, but the expensive dress, long white gloves, wide-brimmed summer's day hat and, to complete the ensemble, impossibly high heels, were more suited to a débutante's ball or Buckingham Palace garden party than horse manure, a piercing wind, and a rugged old farm in the middle of the wild Yorkshire countryside...