There was no outrage or indignation. I felt, perhaps out of grief as much as rational reasoning, gratitude to Harriet and Patrick for raising me, even as the revelation settled on my soul that I could not be blood of their blood. I studied my biological father coolly, as one might study any sample which one suspects of being a placebo rather than the cure. I wondered not why or how, but what. What if he was like me?
I must admit, my scrutiny was hardly informative. With Harriet dead and my adopted father retreating ever deeper into his loneliness and grief, I increasingly took over his duties, forsaking school altogether to become the all-purpose boy of the estate. The Great Depression was coming upon us and the Hulne family had not been wise in its investments. My grandmother Constance had a level fiscal head on her shoulders, but also a great pride which resulted in a conflict of interests. She hoarded coin on fuel and repairs to the grounds, pinched at every penny and derided any and all expense, yet would every year throw a feast for all relatives and distant friends of the Hulnes to come and hunt on the lands, which single event would easily consume two times the expenditure she had saved. Of my aunts, Alexandra married a pleasant if essentially bland civil servant, and her sister Victoria continued in a lifestyle of excess and scandal which my grandmother simply refused to acknowledge. The frost between my biological father and his wife kept both of them from any great expense. She wasted most of her time in London, an activity permitted on the basis that it was her own money or the money of her family that she wasted; he spent most of his days in the countryside or dabbling, unwisely, in local politics, and when the two shared a house or a bed they did so with the same stiff efficiency and impassioned rigour of my grandmother’s yearly feast. In this way the family declined, first by vacancies in the household not being filled, and then by servants being laid off altogether. My adopted father was kept on as much for pity for his position as the services he rendered the family; also, I began to realise, for a certain debt owed by the Hulnes to the Augusts for a child raised without complaint.
I earned my keep, as I had in my first life, and was in fact of rather more use now that I had so many years to draw upon. I knew the land almost better than my father, and had over the years also acquired skills such as fixing an engine, patching a pipe, tracing a faulty cable back to its home, which seemed at the time marvellously advanced technological skills, especially for a teenage boy. I went out of my way to ensure that I was everywhere and nowhere, indispensible and unseen, as much to avoid the monotony of my life as to observe what I now understood to be my biological family. My grandmother studied the art of ignoring me; Aunt Alexandra was rarely in the house to perceive me; Victoria ignored me without having to try; and my father Rory stared until he was caught staring, though whether it was curiosity or guilt which motivated his gaze I was at a loss to say.
I looked at this man, stiffly dressed and stiffer born, a moustache sitting on his top lip like an old family pet, which he cared for secretly in a little green net, and I wondered if he was like me. When they fired the butler and I became a cheaper form of house servant, I would stand behind his chair at the head of the table and watch him cut his overcooked chicken into smaller and smaller pieces, never touching them until every last piece was square. I observed the one ritual kiss on the cheek he gave his wife when she arrived, and the one ritual kiss he gave her on the other cheek when she departed the day after, her wardrobe renewed for a trip back to town. I heard Aunt Victoria whisper when the weather was cold that she had just the thing for the pain in his hip, where in the war he’d been briefly grazed and which his mind had confounded to a greater thing, an injury I hardly begrudged for I too had fought in a war and knew the power of such things. Aunt Victoria knew a funny little man in Alnwick, who knew another excellent man in Leeds, who received regular shipments from Liverpool of a new-fangled thing, diacetylmorphine, just the stuff, just what he needed. I watched through the door the first time my father took it, and saw him shake and twitch and then grow still, the spit running down the side of his face from his open jaw and pooling just in front of his ear. Then my aunt caught me peeping and screamed that I was a foolish ignorant boy, and hit me with the back of her hand and slammed the door.