The Secret Generations Read Free Page A

and a wealth of winters, a cycle of springs and summers.
    The dog cart stopped within the square-U of the Manor fr ontage, and Giles looked up, a sudden weak last flicker of winter sunlight glancing off one of the big leaded windows of the second floor; as though God was vainly trying to flash a heliograph message of hope.
    The doctor was there, with a nurse; and the house, usually so lively, had taken on that quiet hushed quality of places where death has come, suddenly, uninvited.
    William lay unconscious, as though asleep, upstairs.
    Once the doctor had told him that it was only a matter of time, Giles sent for young Billy Crook to run down the hill and warn the vicar. He asked the nurse to let him know as soon as there wa s any change, then, with professional speed, went to The General’s study.
    The room faced south, to the back of the house; and in summer you could step through the tall windows, into the sheltered rose garden, from the top of which almost the entire estate, together with the home farm, could be seen.
    Giles went quickly through the papers, knowing what should be destroyed, and what kept. So it was that he became the first to read the will, and perceive the immediate problems.
    Only when he had completed the careful sorting of documents did The General ’s only brother set about informing the family that the old soldier’s end was near. He died at ten o’clock that night, and the nurse reported he had clearly spoken the word ‘Patience’, at the end. It puzzled the nurse, though Giles merely nodded.
    Soon, from the town below, the passing bell began to toll; the tenor, ‘Big Robin’, the ringers called it: great melancholy booms of resonance, vibrating the frost already forming on the trees; the sound creeping, like a warning, into every household.
    In the Market Square, the butcher, Jack Calmer, blew his nose, looked at his wife, and their daughter, Rachel, pausing in his eating. ‘We should make a prayer for him, I reckon. A good brave man. A gentleman.’
    They heard the bell in the Royal Oak, the Blue Boar, the Swan, the Leg of Mutton, and the Railton Arms. Men who had known The General, and even fought under him, put down their beer mugs and stood in respect, for they knew it meant inevitable change.
    The bell notes were heard for miles, clear above the town. They heard it in the almshouses half way up Red Hill, and old Miss Ducket shed a tear, for she had known The General as a young man. To many people the steady bell-notes brought home the fact that the winter of their own lives was upon them, and the clock on the mantel ticked for all. The Redhill Manor farm manager, young Bob Berry, heard it, and felt fear for other reasons, as indeed did the estate manager, Jack Hunter.
    John, Charles, and their families, arrived before luncheon on the next morning; Andrew, and his family, were there by the afternoon. Marie, and her husband, Marcel Grenot, were again making the journey from Paris, having only just returned following the Christmas festivities; while Malcolm and Bridget – spending the New Year with Bridget’s parents in County Wicklow – would get to the Manor by the next evening, and stay until after the funeral.
    So, it had been Giles who made certain that the family secrets remained safe, and Giles who broke the news of The General ’s will to the old man’s two sons; Giles who anticipated the trouble, and did his best to counteract it.
    The difficulties presented by the will were threefold, resting wholly within the areas of property and finance, together with the individual characters, and ambitions, of The General ’s sons, John and Charles. With John, the problem was multiplied by his young wife, Sara, considered by some of the family to be immature, spoiled and headstrong.
    John had been unlucky in marriage, his first wife, Beatrice, having died giving birth to their only son, James, now in his seventeenth year. The boy had been brought up by a series of nannies, and then