Chapel was obligatory; I was an atheist – it made no difference – a weekly surrender to hymns and sermons. An almighty fuss was made over the financing and purchase of a new organ as if such a thing would be transformative for the school. I had rejected the choir on principle—five years of chorister life at Mowden was enough. At Sedbergh I began to feel the urge to do things my way: busking Bowie ballads and composing my own songs.
Dad arrived in his gold coloured Mercedes SLK. The M6 run to Appleby was to become familiar: Tebay, Orton, then the twisting lanes to Appleby. We approached Appleby Castle from the south, ducked around the curtain wall then over the cattle grid at the main gates and lodge. Dad probably got out to swing open the gates into the 15th century gatehouse then pulled the car up by the steps up to the great hall the other side of the swimming pool.
This might only have been my second or third visit ever. I was still having things pointed out to me. The false windows at two storeys high disguising the double-height great hall. The chapel. The wine cellar. The Roman well by the car port. The round tower where Lady Anne Clifford had once sat. The mannequin we nicknamed Charlie in Civil War armour.
My brother and I played darts, table tennis, bar billiards in the old hall in the basement now part of a modest business training centre. In those moments the castle became another kind of school, but freer, stranger.
We children were lodged in a modest flat above dad’s rooms—two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchenette and sitting room with views of the courtyard and the Eden valley. His new wife was brittle, declaring to my face outright she had no intention of staying with my father. Meals likely came from the basement kitchens, delivered to ‘our’ kitchen on the first floor. Meals were prepared for office staff and delegates attending management courses.
In the grounds Dad showed us his projects: the moat lined and filled, Shetland ponies and potbellied pigs, rescue falcons and a golden eagle. Dreams of a rare breed trust. Then he disappeared, as always, leaving us to our own devises.
The drive back to Sedbergh after dusk was different to Mum’s: a few packets of biscuits or bottles of pilfered alcohol tucked into bags, headlights sweeping the fells. I never knew if I returned feeling more myself, or less.
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