The Last True Gentleman On The Planet Earth

Chapter One

The sisters were absently sipping tea while watching the snow fall. They watched it fall the whole afternoon. They were thin and pale, noses small, eyes almond, hair black and long and were often mistaken for triplets although they were each born a year apart. Sarah, the second oldest, pushed the fat orange cat with her foot; it rolled onto its back then slowly over. “If it doesn’t stop soon mother and father will be stranded, we shall not be able to leave the house and we will be left here,” she paused dramatically, “to die.”

The other two sisters said nothing.

“Well?” said Sarah.

Alice, the oldest, put her cup and saucer on the arm of the sofa, adjusted her glasses and looked up. “Well?” she said back.

Elizabeth, the youngest, got up, crumbs falling from her dress, taking with her the book she had been trying to read. “I suppose we could telephone,” she said.

“Sarah,” Alice said, “they’ve only been gone the afternoon, they said they’d be back after tea. It’s just a snowfall, it’s perfectly natural.” She took up her tea again and sipped.

The room was bathed in the orange glow of the fire as the dead grey of the afternoon light too tired to penetrate the thick windows. The fire crackled while ice pellets hit the window as if someone were petulantly throwing pebbles against it. The clock chimed absently in the distance.

Beneath the house in the icy root cellar the rows and rows of jams and preserves sat on the wooden shelves, chinking in the cold. There was no light save one electrical bulb that dangled umbilically like a pupa from a long wire. There was no sound save the lashing of the wind and snow against the storm cellar door. Robert curled on the dirt floor and closed his eyes.

In the book Elizabeth was holding she found a ticket stub to an opera from three seasons ago. Her father would use them for bookmarks as he carried books with him wherever, whenever. The book was titled The Old Grey Clock and was a mystery; both Elizabeth and her father liked a good mystery. The stub was from The Pearl Fishers. Elizabeth remembered that opera, not because she went (she didn’t) or that her favourite aria was in it (which it was) but because of the story her father had told them when he and her mother had returned.

That night the sisters had stayed up past their bedtime. They were playing Mahjong, eating crackers, changing the rules. They heard the car crackle on the pea gravel drive, then the sound of the front door opening. They held their breath as an autumnal gust of air raced up the staircase and swirled about the room. Father would be cross finding them still up; Mother, characteristically, would probably not notice.

“Mother, Father?” Alice said.

“We’re in here, we couldn’t sleep,” said Elizabeth.

“Did you enjoy the opera?” asked Sarah.

Their parents’ black silhouettes filled the doorway, framed by the light from behind. First came their scent: Mother’s perfume and her spent cigarettes, Father’s lemon hair tonic. Then came their mother, dressed in black with feathers that spread out around her neck and shoulders, her elegant thinness, her makeup icy white, her lips blood red below her small pointed nose. Their father, in his opera suit with the satin collar, followed behind, his coat over his arm, his wise, comfortable roundness. He was still in his top hat and had another in his hand.

“Father, you have two hats,” Sarah said.

He looked down as if surprised to find it there and stepped into the room. Their mother pulled off her feathers, like an exotic bird slipping off its skin. “I desperately need a drink,” she said and crossed the room to the bar. “Fix me one also,” their father said, very much out of character.