Hearts And Minds

"This way, Daniel," said Marie, his moon-faced, pale governess. She fussed at his collar and his hair, pressing both flat with her pale, blue-veined hand.

"This is goodbye, dear heart," she said, cupping his face in her hands.

"Why?" Daniel asked, seeing her blue eyes swim behind red rimmed lids. In his own way, Daniel understood that Marie was not the governess his mother would have chosen in an ideal world, yet he loved her. "What is it, Marie?"

"Now, don't you worry," she said, stepping back to see how he looked. " There is someone very special here to see you. In you go now," and she kissed him once, high on his forehead; a dry, brief kiss. Then she ushered him through the high door to the drawing room with an unusually firm hand.

Daniel turned to say something more, but the door was closing and she was gone. He heard one brief, wracking sob and then the patter of her feet as if she were running through the empty, cold corridors of Benthley Manor.

"Daniel," said a voice behind him. He turned. The fire blazed in the corner beneath the ornate fireplace and the stern faced portrait of his grandfather. His mother was sitting, hands clasped demurely in her lap on a seat. "Oh, Daniel, isn't it wonderful?" She nodded towards the window.

As the man turned towards him, Daniel wondered how it was that he had not noticed his presence, because now it dominated the room. he was resplendent in dress uniform, whiskered and so impossibly tall that mother appeared frail and bird-like next to him.

"So this must be the young lord of the manor, eh?"

Daniel stood straighter, pushing his arms flat to his sides.

"Yes, sir!" he said in a voice as firm as he could muster, so struck was he by the uniformed masculinity of this man.

The man laughed, a deep booming laugh which startled Daniel, so used had he become to the morose silence which had settled on the house during the last few months of his late father's illness.

"Look at this little soldier in the making!" he said. Daniel stood an inch taller. The strangers eyes investigated him. They were startlingly blue and glittered with good humour. Daniel couldn't help thinking of his father's own sunken eyes as hope had left him towards the end.

"Daniel," said mother, "this is your uncle Cecil, returned from soldiering. He has come to help me run the estate until you come of age."

"Indeed I have. I shall take charge of the finances - your mother has no head for figures and I fear this world is full of predators." He smiled, showing a wealth of slightly tarnished teeth and just a hint of pink gums. A gold tooth glittered in his upper jaw. "Now," he said, smoothing his prodigious whiskers, and placing one hand proprietorially on Daniel's mother's shoulder, "I have given much thought to your future, young Daniel. Your late father - no Maud, I shall not speak ill of him here - did not give your future the attention it deserves. To this end, I have taken the liberty of contacting an old army acquaintance of mine, a colonel Spigott who runs a most excellent boarding school in Sussex."

Some kind of silent communication passed between his mother and uncle then. She seemed to stiffen and looked over her shoulder at him, his raised eye-brows and mild smile, before casting her eyes back down to the floor. He caught Cecil smiling triumphantly at him for the briefest of moments as if some conquest had been achieved.

Thoughts raced through Daniel's mind. His mother, Marie. He opened his mouth to speak.

"Now, Daniel, it seems to me that a man who spends his time behind the skirts of the women of the house is no man at all, Hmmm?" There was a watchful intensity about Cecil now. The fire heaved and spat. The clock ticked time away. "Hmmm?" he repeated, eyebrows raised.

"No, sir, although I am very fond of mother. I had no idea I even had an uncle, sir."

"Why of course you are fond of her. You have the makings of a fine son and indeed man. And you want her to be proud of you, yes? And the way to achieve this is to follow my lead." He approached Daniel and put one huge paw upon his shoulder. He smelt somehow both manly and animalistic, a deep heavy scent that spoke to every instinct in Daniel's heart and mind of strength and purpose and solidity.

"Yes, sir." he said.

"Well, then, it is decided. Old Spigott will make a man of you, of that you can be sure."

Daniel looked up at Cecil as he towered above him.

"You needn't fear for your mother or for your inheritance. I shall cherish both as if they were my own." Again that flash of gold beneath the whiskers. "You are to leave tomorrow."

The next morning dawned, cold and foggy. Daniel gave his mother a brief hug, before she turned and walked, head down, back into the house. His uncle lifted his trunk, hastily filled with all the treasures he had left to him on to the handsome cab, shook his hand sombrely and closed him in.

With a heave and a clatter of hooves and wheels, they moved off into the fog. Looking behind him, Daniel watched all that he held dear grow dim and distant, until all that was left was a red smudge of uniform. Then that too was gone.