Today's Reading
CHAPTER ONE
MASTER OF NONE
The dreaded call from Beatrice, eighty-five years old and finally moving into care, was an unwelcome reminder of how quickly time passed. If the indestructible Beatrice was succumbing to old age, surely his own demise was just around the corner.
Sir Flyte had a soft spot for his uncle's widow and knew he was overdue for a visit. Consulting the National Gallery on an upcoming exhibit of Old Masters had taken up much of his attention in the past year. He had let other obligations slide, although he dutifully telephoned Beatrice once a month.
The calls on his time as an art expert were becoming more frequent, and while his success enhanced the prestige of the college, being master of Hardwick College was his main job, along with writing books and delivering the occasional lecture to art history students. Everything else was a sop to the ego.
He did try to resist calls from museums and auction houses to weigh in on their planned acquisitions, but he rarely succeeded in stifling his curiosity. He liked being good at his job, bustling off to London or staying at a stately home, being plied with champagne and dinner after weighing in on the merits (or not) of a work of art. Being hailed as a hero when he was able to pronounce an artwork authentic or—more often—saving someone from spending thousands of pounds on a work of doubtful value.
Both guilt and affection compelled him this early September day to put aside these worldly distractions and drive the old Audi to Beatrice's house in the country. With the weather cooperating, offering a shimmering sun, white clouds, and a sustained light wind, he found he was enjoying the drive and looking forward to his visit. Of course, it would be tedious work helping her pack things in boxes and organize what was going into storage, which was most of her belongings. He had dressed for the job in what was, for him, casualwear: neatly pressed khakis and a button-down shirt with loafers.
Her accommodation at Elderwood wouldn't allow for the accumulated goods of over fifty years of marriage to his uncle, let alone the detritus of her career as a writer of children's books. That would be the hard part: helping her decide what could go and what could stay. Much of the physical work, packing the contents of shelves into boxes, must be left for the removers due to come the following week. Copies of all of Beatrice's published books were going into storage, along with a few treasured volumes she didn't trust to her new situation.
He was, he supposed, her sole remaining heir, and what he was meant to do with them all—well, he would cross that bridge later. He doubted they were worth as much as she thought they were.
She had put off calling him for help until the last minute, when the sheer amount of work became overwhelming. This was typical of her—even with her health quickly fading, her first concern was 'not to be a bother'.
She lived in what had been the manor house for Lower Snaverton, the original village that time forgot, nearly a two hours' drive from the Master's Lodge. If there ever had been an Upper Snaverton it had long vanished from modern maps.
The village was closer to being a hamlet, but for having a church, which elevated it to village status. It was connected to the main road by a single rutted strip of macadam, but there were no intersecting roads, no further entrances or exits. Once you were in Lower Snaverton, if you found you didn't like it, you had no choice but to turn round and go back the way you came.
The journey took him through the beautiful Fen country. Many people found the Fens bleak, flat, uncompromising, and rather boring, but Sir Flyte had always felt something about the stark isolation of it all matched something within him. Not that he was stark and bleak, but that he felt in his bones his ancestors had seen this identical landscape. The Fens were a tie to the past. His past.
Sir Flyte was all about the past. He was an expert in the Old Masters and, apart from a handful of Impressionists (excepting Gaugin; he detested Gaugin, both the man and his work), modern art interested him not one jot. His expertise had carried him into a place of honour as master of Hardwick College at the University of Cambridge. He could hardly believe the title himself, let alone the 'Sir' before his name. His father, if anything, had been anti-intellectual, a commercial traveller who was all about hail-fellowing and business deals. In his absence, amidst his many disappearances into pubs 'for work', his mother had been the one who made sure there were books on the shelves and galleries to visit and plays to see. Many of their weekend outings included visits to museums, which was of course where he met the love of his life: Rembrandt.
...
