The Gropes Read Free Page A

female line. And in the tradition of her forebears she concluded that kidnap and enforced captivity was the only viable solution.
    Noting the inroads to the Grope estate afforded by the new railway lines, Adelaide embarked upon an ambitious plan by which to strengthen security and to ensure that any stray miners, once seized, stayed seized. After a particularly successful night-time sortie which saw two unsuspecting fellows contentedly fishing Mosedale River wake up several hours later trussed up like chickens under the watchful eye of two of the larger Grope daughters, these precautions took on a new urgency. A notice on the gate went up warning anyone attempting to get down to Grope Hall to ‘BEWARE THE SPANISH FIGHTING BULLS’ and indeed two lithe and dangerous bulls were loosely tethered next to the rough track that served as a drive to the house.After a number of mishaps largely involving gored postmen and an entire absence of any letters, however urgent, for the Grope household, a box had been fastened to the wall beside the gate for the mail.
    Adelaide had gone further to ensure that no one intruded and that, once in, no one would get out. The top of the wall had been implanted with iron spikes while especially thickened steel barbed wire was arranged on more iron stakes on the near side of the wall. In fact these precautions were almost counterproductive. The Gropes’ reputation had for centuries sufficed to keep the public at bay and that they had erected what amounted to a formidable defence system aroused a great deal of curiosity. People came over from Brithbury and even further afield to look at the spikes and the peculiar black bulls and of course went home to spread the word that the Grope family’s old traditions had evidently not died out.
    ‘They must be trying to keep some poor devil trapped in the place’ was the general opinion in the Moseley Arms. ‘Must be a very fierce fellow too to need all those spikes and wire and all. Cost a small fortune to put that lot up at that. Them rich, them Gropes, to afford to do all that. Goodness only knows where they got them bulls from.’
    ‘Spain supposedly. It says so on the noticeboard.’
    An old man by the fire grinned. ‘Supposedly is right,’ he said. ‘Bought the brutes in Barnard Castle is my opinion. No more fighting bulls than I am.’
    ‘I wouldn’t want to risk going down there for all that,’ said another man. ‘It’s them nine dogs frighten the lights out me. More like wolves than bloodhounds they are.’
    News of this gossip reached Adelaide. It didn’t worry her. But the accumulation of so much more wealth than they had ever possessed before, and its effect on her sisters, did. The two unfortunate fishermen had lasted a mere season in the Grope household with only a phantom pregnancy to show for it. And the continued presence of so many brawny miners passing below the house every day unsettled both the Grope women and the tethered bulls. The former spent their time yearning for marriage. The latter yearned too, but for an unspecified kind of consummation.
    After several years enduring this pent-up desire Adelaide finally allowed the younger Grope women to go out into the world with sufficient incomes to live in a style to which they were unaccustomed. She wisely kept the bulls tethered.
    Freed from the seclusion of Grope Hall and the dominance of Adelaide, the newly released female Gropes rapidly found husbands and settled down in towns and farms across southern England with husbands who knew nothing of the Gropes’ history. By the outbreak of the First World War, Adelaide herself had forced the chief accountant into marrying her by threatening to expose his acceptance of the percentage he received from cooking the books. And ayear later she had given birth, much to her joy and to everyone else’s amazement, to a baby girl. By then, mad old Aunt Beatrice had died and Adelaide, determined to celebrate, had completely transformed the