Ancient Appetites

your duty, God help us.'

'I'm not-' Nate tried again.

'This couldn't have happened at a worse time, what with talk over there of a civil war and a slave revolt – as if the black wretches had the wherewithal to organize a bloody tea party, let alone a revolution-'

'I'm not going!' Nate exclaimed.

He lifted his eyes for a moment, amazed at his own courage. He would never have dared to raise his voice to the old man before. But he couldn't hold his father's fierce glare, and he dropped his gaze to the floor once more. The claw's tips clicked together like a telegraph. He could feel Edgar's eyes bore into his skull. There was menacing silence.

'A bit of time with the savages has given you some nerve,' Edgar growled finally. 'I'm glad; it was sorely needed. You're still not half the man your brother was. I suppose there's nothing that can be done about it; I put it down to your mother's weak blood.'

Nate flinched, but said nothing. Edgar rarely mentioned his dead wife and he had never insulted her before.

'But you are a man now, whatever kind of man that might be. The time for frivolity is over.'

Given that most of his childhood had been divided between his formal education and the family's inevitable self-defence training, Nate felt that he was due a few more years of frivolity yet. But to make such a remark to the old man now would be a step too far.

'You will listen now, boy. Because I will not repeat myself again.' Edgar pushed his chair back and stood up. Even slightly hunched as he was, he stood over six feet tall, and his bulk was still almost as much muscle as fat. 'The funeral is on Saturday. The archbishop will perform the ceremony. Once it is over, Silas will begin teaching you the fundamentals of our business.

'You will learn as much as you can from him. Then you will go to America and take up the reins there. And by the time I shuffle off this mortal coil – and we can only hope that is after you have aged enough to have developed some sense of propriety – you will take over the company that has made this family what it is today.

'Roberto is the Heir, through this capricious act of fate. But given that he is a feckless dandy wastrel with less sense than God gave a giggling dolly-mop, it falls to you to shoulder Marcus's responsibilities. And you will. You will do your duty. Do I make myself clear?'

Nathaniel was trembling with suppressed rage and frustration. It wasn't right. The old man had all but ignored him for most of his life. Everything had always been about Marcus. Edgar had never given a damn about the rest of his children – Nate had never understood why. And now he was expected to step into this role that had been shaped for his favoured brother, and give up all his own hopes and ambitions. It wasn't right.

'Do I make myself clear?!' Edgar bellowed.

The brooding dogs in front of his desk flinched. The two Maasai servants did not.

'Yes!' Nathaniel shouted back, with tears in his eyes. Then, more quietly, he added: 'Yes. Yes, I understand.'

'That will be all,' his father said.

He eased his bulk down into his seat and opened a thick leather-bound accounts ledger.

Dismissed as if he were a lowly servant, Nate stood listlessly for a moment, staring into space. Then he turned and walked unsteadily to the door, stepping over the reclining hound that blocked his path. He glanced back once at his father, but Edgar paid him no more attention, the tip of his crab claw tracing columns of figures in the book.

Nathaniel closed the door behind him. At the far end of the corridor was a window, and he made his way slowly towards it. It faced south, and looking out and down, he saw the grounds: the beautiful gardens, the woods beyond, and the hills that stretched away to the horizon. And far below, the roofs of the surrounding buildings. His eyes fell on the grey slate tiles of the stables, and he suddenly knew what he had to do.

VI

A DISCUSSION ABOUT FAMILY TRADITIONS

Melancholy Wildenstern, or Daisy, as she was better known, sat with her husband in the breakfast room. She was drawing him as he sat there, staring into the fire and fretting away to himself. The sliding, squeaking of the charcoal was the only sound that could be heard, apart from the crackling blaze in the fireplace.

'Do you have to do that now?' Roberto asked, playing with the watch chain that dangled from his waistcoat pocket.

'Would you rather I just sat here and brooded with you?'

'Well, yes I would, frankly.' He frowned at her for a moment. 'You're not even getting my best side.'

'Then move, darling.'

Silence again, while the charcoal traced Berto's contours.

'The old cove just doesn't listen,' he said at last when he realized she was not going to offer any comfort. 'I don't want to be the Heir! 1 don't even want to manage the estates. It's a soul- destroying job and I have no interest in it – it'll bore me senseless. And we do such horrible things to the peasants sometimes. Debt collecting! Evictions! I haven't the heart for it, Daisy'

Daisy knew it. That was one of qualities she loved in him. He was the gentlest man she'd ever known. An extraordinary thing, when one considered his upbringing. She wondered if this was the right time to bring up her suspicions about Nathaniel. Roberto's younger brother was not so gentle. And everybody knew who would wield the real power in the family now that Marcus was dead. Berto had always claimed that he and Nate were eager for Marcus to marry, so that their big brother would have a son and take them out of the running for Patriarch if anything happened to him. But Daisy suspected Nate had more ambition than that.

'I've no head for numbers either,' Berto grumbled. 'I'll never keep track of everything. Do you think Father would notice if I just sold all the land and bought myself a little island in the Indian Ocean? I quite fancy Madagascar.'

'I've said I'd help you with managing the books,' she told him as she shaded the creases on the arm of his jacket. 'And you'll have accountants to deal with all the little details. It won't be all that hard, you know.'

Daisy had mastered all the skills required to become a good wife. Drawing, painting, poetry, music, croquet, crochet, embroidery, interior decoration and domestic management; there was little that she couldn't do if she put her mind to it. She had a keen eye for fashion and could maintain a polite conversation with tedious house guests for hours, before forcefully ejecting them from her home in such a way that they would sing praises about her hospitality. And she was so incredibly bored by it all.

Before her marriage she had been one of the first women – and possibly the youngest – ever to attend London University and had graduated with honours. For nearly a year she had helped to run the accounts office for her father's cotton mills, and saw for herself how his gambling debts were costing him dear. He had come close to losing everything. Roberto Wildenstern had been courting her by this time and, with her father facing ruin, Daisy did some simple arithmetic and then did what any good daughter should. She married into money.

It wasn't that Daisy didn't love her husband. She could have done a lot worse. Berto was kind, considerate and sensitive; an amusing and entertaining companion. He would read her poetry and sing to her. He took her rowing on lakes on long summer afternoons.

But he lacked ambition. He had a wonderful way with people – he was warm and witty and had scores of friends – and that seemed to be all that mattered to him. He paid no attention to all the plotting and back-stabbing that went on in the Wildenstern family, preferring instead to laugh at their vanities and taking a perverse delight in infuriating his father at every opportunity. There were times when she suspected he had only courted her because the family considered her to be nouveau riche and therefore unsuitable for him.

She would never forget the month of torture when he decided to teach himself the trumpet – deliberately choosing a small room directly below his father's study to practise. Thankfully he stopped when the Patriarch