Yours very sincerely,

Henry Cort

Paris, 1890

CHAPTER 1

My father is the gentlest of men, but has always been subject to periodic outbursts of insanity which render him incapable of work. He did not come from a rich family, and was brought up by his aunt and uncle, but inherited somewhere along the line enough money to ensure a modest life. He trained as an architect, the idea being that he would inherit my great-uncle's business, but illness prevented consistent application to any project. Instead, he lived quietly in Dorset, where he would occasionally build an extension to a house, or oversee the rebuilding of a church roof. For much of the time he would read, or work in the garden. As I was used to his long silences and sudden refusals to answer questions, I did not think anything of behaviour which others considered decidedly queer.

My mother died when I was very young, and apart from that I never knew much about her. Only that she was beautiful, that my father had loved her. I think her death broke his heart; certainly it was about the same time that he became ill. He recovered somewhat, but my young life was periodically interrupted by sudden disappearances which (I was told) were due to father being called away for a project. Only later did I learn that he spent these periods in a special hospital where he was slowly coaxed back to health.

I left home at eight to go to school and never really returned. My best friend – he was as miserable as I was – invited me to his home for the holidays, which was where I realised how difficult, in contrast, was my own family life. He had a father who was cheerful and playful and a mother who became the first love of my life: warm, graceful and utterly devoted to her family. They lived in a big house in Holland Park during the winter months and in a lovely Adam house in the Borders in the summer. They became my family, for Mrs Campbell all but kidnapped me, telling my father she was quite happy to have me indefinitely. He thought it was for the best and surrendered me. He was a good man, but the responsibilities of parenthood were too much for his frail constitution. I visited him every summer, but each time he was more vague, and eventually I think he stopped recognising me altogether; certainly he stopped caring whether I came or no.

Money is not something which concerns the young; that my father's hospital bills were paid, that my school fees were settled did not excite any curiosity in my juvenile mind. It did not occur to me to wonder how this was happening. I assumed that the Campbells had taken on this responsibility as well. I loved them all the more for it, and I do believe no boy was ever more devoted to his real parents than I was to these delightful people.

Nonetheless, I repaid them poorly and was constantly in trouble. I was ill-disciplined, forever fighting, indulging in escapades which were often dangerous, and frequently illegal. I would break into the headmaster's study at night, simply for the pleasure of escaping undetected; would leave the boy's dormitory to go wandering illegally through the local town; would destroy the clothes and possessions of older boys who had bullied my friends. My school work ranged from indifferent to poor and, although considered intelligent, it was clear I lacked the application ever to be a serious student.

A boy of small years must necessarily be a poor criminal; the ability to judge chances is insufficiently developed. I was finally run to ground in a housemaster's lodging – not my own housemaster, who was a decent enough man, but another who was universally disliked – apparently looting his small store of wine. In fact I was not, as I have never been a drinker. Rather I was busy trying to spike the bottles with vinegar, using a syringe of my own devising that could, I believed, introduce the contaminant without having to remove the cork. This was to be his punishment for the merciless beating which he had inflicted on a boy in my house, a somewhat diffident, frightened lad who naturally attracted the bullies to him like flies around a horse's head. I could not protect him – and felt more the injustice of the master than the suffering of the boy – but I did what I could to ensure that his misery did not go without some reply.

I should have been expelled; certainly the offence more than merited it, especially as there was some suspicion that the discovery also solved the mystery of who had locked the chapel doors and concealed the key so that the salvation of three hundred pupils was at risk until it was found four days later; punctured all the rugger balls the night before a tournament with five other schools, and committed a series of other offences against the corporate well-being. I admitted nothing, but since when did headmasters follow strictly the dictates of legal procedure?

But I was let off lightly. A thorough thrashing, detention for a term, and nothing more. A few bruises and cuts to add to the burn mark I had on my arm, received as a baby when I rashly put my hand into a fire. That was all. I did not understand it; and as the Campbells never referred to the matter, nor did I. Someone, though, was looking after me.

William Campbell's sudden death, when I was sixteen, was as great a shock as I had ever endured, and the atmosphere of despair and gloom in the house affected everyone. We – that is I and my adopted brother Freddie – were kept completely in the dark; it was our comrades at school, as kind as young boys are, who told us that he had blown his brains out because he could not face the disgrace of ruin. With great consideration they provided the details when we did not believe them.

And it was true; Mr Campbell was caught up in the Dunbury Scandal and his fortune was destroyed. That, however, was not the worst of it; it was whispered that he had been part of a fraud to deprive other investors of massive amounts. The precise circumstances were never very clear to me; the matter was hushed up – he and others involved had been in the governing party at the time – and, in any case, I was not really old enough to understand. Young men of my type are prone to be impatient of details, and give their loyalties without regard to evidence. I remembered him as the kindest man in the world. Nothing else was of any importance to me.

It was clear that my schooldays were coming to an end, though. Mrs Campbell assured me that the funds were there to continue to pay the fees, but I felt I could no longer impose myself on their goodness. I must begin to make my own way in the world, and so I began to consider how that way might be made. I was not denied assistance. It is one of the curiosities of the English that they are often excessively judgemental in the abstract yet match that with private kindness. The name of Campbell was hardly mentioned any more; amongst his friends and old political comrades it was as though he had never existed. Yet for those whose lives he had ruined, there was constant sympathy and discreet help.

Mrs Campbell herself refused to take any assistance; she remained as devoted to her husband's memory as she had been loving while he lived. She refused any offer of help that came from the opinion she was also one of her husband's victims, and took her fall with pride and defiance. She moved out of the grand house into more modest accommodation in Bayswater, where she maintained a household which ran with only two, rather than twenty, servants, and eked out a dignified, if straitened, existence for the rest of her days. I believe she had at least one offer of marriage, but refused as she did not wish to abandon the name her husband had given her. It would, she said, be the last betrayal.

I insisted that, come what may, Freddie should finish school and go to university; he was immensely talented and, more importantly, devoted to learning. My arguments prevailed; he gave up all fine notions of working to support the family, and eventually proceeded to Balliol to read Greats and become, ultimately, a Fellow of Trinity, living out his life in studious contentment, rarely straying from the narrow acreage bounded by the High Street in the south and Crick Road in the north. Eventually, his mother came to live with him and died last year, cutting an ever-stranger figure pottering around the streets dressed in the widow's weeds of twenty years ago.