Chapter 2: Hamblingham Hall

"The long gallery at Hamblingham Hall is one of the finest examples of Tudor architecture in the south-west of England and holds an extensive gallery of portraits of the scions of the St John-Ferris family from the time of the Hall's construction to the present day. Works by Holbein, Gainsborough, and, more recently, Millais, Gertler and Peter Blake depict the history of the family and, at the same time, present a cavalcade of the best of portraiture." Freddie Clegg looked up from the guidebook to the array of gilt-framed oil paintings that lined the high-ceilinged room, with its twisting, uneven timber floor. It wasn't hard to imagine, Freddie thought, earlier times with the St John-Ferris family parading in this airy, well-lit room. Now, though, the Barbour -wearing, Ugg-booted, bucolic set of National Trust members elbowing their way through the house would be the last thing that any of the earlier householders would have welcomed.

"Makes you sick, doesn't it?" A tall, thin, bespectacled man hooked a teasel — a small spiky dried plant head intended to prevent visitors using the furniture — from of one of the gallery's seats and sat himself down on the faded, velvet-covered seat. One of the Trust's room guardians, busily chatting to visitors at the other end of the room, scowled at him but said nothing. "It used to be a home, now it's just something for tourists to gawk at." Norman St John-Ferris cradled his chin in his hands and stared past Freddie at a small family group, the mother pointing at one of the paintings.

"You're not letting the fact that it used to be your home colour your judgement?" Freddie had known Norman since his early twenties. He'd watched as Norman had worked his way through three unsuitable wives, each sapping the St John-Ferris estate as settlements in acrimonious divorces marked the conclusion of each union. Finally, Norman had to let the Hall go to the National Trust. They let him live on in a small suite of rooms in one corner of the building but, as Norman said, it wasn't the same.

"I feel like a vampire; I can only come out after dark. When the sun has fled the sky and the last of them," he nodded towards a woman tugging a reluctant child in her wake, "has gone, then I can emerge."