“I’d been home previously that year, during a term break,” Archie said, casting his mind back to that disastrous visit. “My mother had undergone a sharp decline in the weeks I’d been away. Her lapses—and outbursts—could no longer be explained away. My father began doubling down on his insistence that I take on more responsibility for the doings of the estate. He sat me down and instructed me to read aloud the latest report from the steward.” He paused, hating that the memory still had the power to make his face heat. “You can imagine how that went. I suppose the charitable interpretation is that evidence of Mother’s decline was inspiring him to think about the succession.”
“There’s also the true interpretation,” Simon said.
“And what is that?” Archie asked.
“That your father was a right arse.”
Archie lifted his glass in acknowledgment of that interpretation.
“The concept of family is a curious one, don’t you think?” Effie was staring at the fire as he spoke, looking broodier than usual.
“How do you mean, Ef?” Simon asked, and Archie sighed happily. Even though the ensuing conversation was likely to be gloomy, the fact of it comforted him immensely.
“Do you know that I felt worse when Sally died than when my grandmother died last year?” Effie said.
“Well, to be fair, your grandmother was a terrible person,” Simon said, continuing to not mince words.
Effie looked cheered. “She was, wasn’t she?”
Archie chuckled, though he did not disagree. The late dowager countess had been known for her casual cruelty. She would think nothing of, for example, “accidentally” spilling tea on a person whose attire she did not approve of and had done so to young Effie on several occasions. He still had a mark on the side of his neck from one incident in which he was burned quite badly.
“My point,” Effie said, “is that if you truly consider it, the idea of family is rather odd. You’re born into a group of people, and it’s as random as throwing salt into the wind. The grains land where they land.”
“Who is the salt here?” Simon asked.
“Anyone is. Everyone is. And perhaps you land on something you’re well suited to—a leg of lamb, say, that is improved by salting. But perhaps you land on something like a strawberry. What good is salt on a strawberry?”
“Is the strawberry . . . a parent?” Literal-minded Simon was struggling to make sense of Effie’s fanciful musings.
“Oh, I don’t know. The metaphor is admittedly terrible. Sally’s passing has got me thinking about how much I dislike my parents. Which would be one thing if Ilovedthem, but I don’t think I do. Although to be fair,theydon’t lovemeeither, so one could argue that they started it.” He considered Simon. “Did you love your father? Do you love your mother?”
Leave it to Effie to get right into it. One of the things Archie loved about Effie was his fearlessness.
“I suppose I did love my father, in a generalized, filial way,” Simon said. “Although, like you, I don’t believe my father loved me. Mind you, I don’t think heactivelydidn’t love me; it was more that he didn’t think of me at all. I was bound for the Church, and that was as much thought as he ever gave me and my fate. I think my mother loves me, in her way, but that love coexists with a sort of perpetual disappointment. Which I understand, to some degree. I was never meant to be earl. I was never meant to beborn. Do you know that she still talks about my brothers every day? I miss them, too—Ididlovethem, in the way a boy loves and idolizes older brothers.”
Simon’s much older twin brothers had died five years ago in a fire, thrusting Simon from the seminary into the earldom. As the third son, Simon had gone largely ignored by his mother until he suddenly inherited, at which point she threw herself into trying to make him “worthy of the title,” which really meant making him over in the image of his late brothers.
“Somehow,” Simon went on, “Mother’s constant and vociferous missing of the twins feels rather . . .”
“Hurtful?” Archie supplied. “As if her love for them must be subtracted from her love for you, even though that’s not at all how love should work?”
“Yes, I think that’s right.” Simon looked surprised at the revelation. “I know she will always miss them. I will, too. But I wish she wasn’t always comparing me to them.”
“And you, Archie?” Effie prompted. “I suppose it’s less complicated in your case. You clearly love your mother and she you. And your father . . .” He pulled a face to show what he thought of the late earl.
“I did love my father, I think, when I was younger. There were years where our annual hunting trip, just before the start of Michaelmas term, was the highlight of my year.”
Archie was seized with a kind of uncharacteristic melancholy, thinking of those trips. They’d always been much anticipated. His chance to be with Father away from the day-to-day workings of the estate. But there had been an edge of tension to those outings, too, like a loaf of bread overbaked and surrounded by a too-hard crust. Archie supposed his desire to excel at hunting and outdoor pursuits had originated in a desire to impress his father. He certainly hadn’t been going to do it with his marks.
He also remembered how lovely it had been to return to the comforts of home after their trips, and in those years Mother had been among them. She would tut over the state of him, send him off to bathe, and take tea with him in her sitting room while he rambled about the hunt. Archie had always made the time away seem much more exciting than it had actually been. He’d wanted to impress Mother with how congenial he and Father had been as well as with his own accomplishments. She’d always pulled him close to her on the settee and praised him, telling him what a good son he was and what a good earl he would make someday. Even when he was old enough to know the latter was not true, he always strove to be the former. He still did.
“And now the highlight of your year isthistrip,” Effie said with an exaggerated flourish.
“Yes,” Simon agreed jocularly. “No doubt this one is loads more fun than hunting with the late earl. For one thing, the weather is better this time of year. Secondly, one can get foxed with one’s mates in a way one can’t with one’s father. Better company in general, I should think.”
“That’strue.” Archie knew what they were doing. They had somehow intuited that he’d grown morose thinking about his parents. “And I think”—Archie turned to Effie—“that is the answer to your question about family.”
“How do you mean?” Effie asked.
