He started to make long-term plans. Perhaps he should move them to a state school, join them up for Cubs and Brownies rather than Woodcraft Folk, and then, out of the blue, Viola phoned and gave these new instructions for Sunny. Teddy had baulked at the idea of Sunny going to Jordan Manor, but what could he do? Viola was the one with all the rights. All this time, Viola had given the impression that she was living at the peace camp and only when she returned months later did he discover that she had gone off with Wilf Romaine after some big CND demo in Hyde Park and they had been “shacked up,” as she put it, in Leeds ever since. The first he knew of it was when she said, “I’m getting married next week, do you want to come?”
An avenue of elms must have once provided a magnificent guard of honour for the long drive that led to Jordan Manor, but now all that was left were the stumps of the diseased trees. The same tragedy had struck at Ettringham Hall over a decade ago, but they had replanted with oaks. It seemed to Teddy that to plant an oak was an act of faith in the future. He would like to plant an oak. He had returned to Ettringham Hall many years later, in 1999, on his “farewell tour” with Bertie. The Hall had become a “country house hotel.” They had a drink in the “Daunt Bar” and ate a not-bad meal in the restaurant, but stayed in a cheaper B&B in the village. It was hardly a village any more. Fox Corner and Jackdaws had been surrounded by a new estate of expensive detached houses. “Footballers’ houses,” Bertie said. They had been built on the meadow. The flax and larkspur, the buttercups and the corn poppies, red campion and ox-eye daisies. All gone.
The changes made Teddy sadder than he had expected, and Bertie too, because it was a place she had never known and never could know and yet in some way she understood that it had made her the person she was. She wanted to knock on the door of Fox Corner and ask the current owners if they could come in, but there were electronic gates with security cameras on them and when Bertie pressed the buzzer no one answered. Teddy was enormously relieved. He didn’t think he would have been able to step back over the threshold.
Dutch elm disease,” Teddy explained to Bertie as they drove towards Jordan Manor. “It’s killed all the elms.” “Poor trees,” she said. Unlike at Ettringham Hall, the felled elms had not been replaced by any new planting and the resulting scene was dismal, as if there had been a war fought in the grounds. The air of neglect was palpable long before they reached the front door. Viola must have overestimated the Villierses’ wealth. It would cost a fortune just to repair the roof on a place like this.
Perhaps, Teddy castigated himself, if he had brought Sunny here himself he would have realized how dilapidated the Villierses were in both home and character, but instead Dominic and his mother had driven to collect him one afternoon at the beginning of the school holidays.
“Antonia,” Teddy had said amicably, putting a hand out to shake, and she had given him a cold limp claw in exchange and said, “Mr. Todd,” without actually looking at him.
“Ted, please,” Teddy said.
“Antonia” was wearing a handful of diamond rings, grey and cloudy with dirt. He had given Nancy a little diamond ring when Viola was born—nothing flashy—and she said it was illogical to have an engagement ring when they were already married (“post facto”), but they had never been properly engaged during the war and he wanted her to have a token of his faith in their future together. Despite her scepticism she said it was a lovely gesture. She cleaned the ring every week with a brush and toothpaste so that it always sparkled. He had kept the ring for Viola and gave it to her on her twenty-first birthday but he couldn’t recall ever seeing her wearing it.
And Dominic, it became apparent during the course of the afternoon, had either taken some kind of hallucinogen—LSD, Teddy supposed—or was as mad as a hatter. “Cake!” he said, rubbing his hands together when Teddy laid out slices of the cake on a plate. “How about that, Ma?” he said, taking three slices off the plate and wandering away, leaving Teddy and Antonia to fend for themselves in the conversation stakes.
“Tea, Antonia?” Teddy offered, not unaware how calling her by her first name riled her. It seemed important to him, however, that she reconciled herself to their equality as progenitors of the small squirming child who was reluctantly suffering their company.
Sunny and Bertie had disappeared almost as soon as their visitors had alighted from the car and Teddy had to cajole Sunny into returning to the living room. The boy was a terrible fidget and within minutes his newly introduced grandmother was saying “Sit still” to him and “Stop bouncing around on the sofa.” Teddy knew then that it was a mistake to let him go with her, but nonetheless he had, hadn’t he?
“How do you take your tea?” he asked politely and Antonia said, “China, weak with a little lemon,” and Teddy said, “Sorry, I’ve only got Rington’s English Afternoon Blend. Loose though, not tea bags.”
“I must go and see that the dogs are all right,” Antonia said, standing up abruptly and putting her cup and saucer down, tea untouched. “They’re in the back of the car,” she added when Teddy looked blankly at her. He hadn’t noticed any dogs and he said, “Dogs,” to Sunny, who perked up a bit at the idea. Sunny liked dogs. “Why don’t you go with your granny and see her dogs?” Teddy said, noticing that she flinched at the word “granny.”