A Tale of Two Families (3 page)

His feelings became so intense that he lost count of time and only came back to earth when some church clock chimed the half-hour.
What
half-hour? He hastily looked at his watch and found it was twelve-thirty. He must have been here the best part of an hour. God knew what defects that hard-voiced, unnecessarily honest girl might have pointed out. Some might be serious.

He gave one last loving look around, praying it might not be a farewell look, then hurried back to the Dower House.

Before he reached the gate from the park he caught a glimpse of George and Sarah sitting on the window seat of a wide bow window. Seen thus, without being heard, Sarah certainly gave no impression of hardness. Indeed, there was something madonna-like about the pure oval of her face, her wide apart eyes and serene brow – except that Robert couldn’t for the moment think of any very dark madonna. Sarah’s hair, with its pronounced widow’s peak, was almost black. She wore it scragged back into a bun.

Unfortunately her voice, which he heard as soon as he entered the hall, was even harder than he had remembered, positively metallic. But at least it enabled him to locate the room she and George were sitting in.

She greeted Robert with, ‘Well, did you hate it?’

‘No one could hate it,’ said Robert fervently.

‘I ought to have warned you there’s no central heating there and the bath’s cracked. Of course you noticed.’

Robert, who had noticed neither the absence of central heating nor the presence of the crack, assured her that open fires would be enough for such little rooms. And George said he would provide a new bath.

Sarah, with a gentle smile, said in her harshest tones, ‘The things you plan to do! We ought to pay you to live here.’ She then looked at her watch and said she must dash. ‘Grandfather doesn’t like me to be late for meals. I’m sorry I can’t ask you to lunch but he doesn’t
quite
know about you yet. Anyway, our food’s always awful.’

‘I suppose he
will
sign the lease?’ said George.

‘Yes, he’s promised. But he seems to have an idea that some old ladies – like his sisters – are coming here and I thought I’d let him go on thinking it until the lease is signed. He’s not round the bend, you know; it’s just that sometimes he’s a bit… sort of withdrawn. Well, he’s had a lot to withdraw from, what with family deaths, and
no
money, and the Hall liable to fall on top of us. If you hear a terrific crash that’ll be what it is. Now I really must rush. See you and Mrs Clare and’ – she smiled at Robert – ‘your Mrs Clare, tomorrow. Oh, it’s raining again. Could I have my Burberry?’

Robert helped her into it. She gave them both a last smile and hurried out.

George, watching her from the window as she strode across the park, said, ‘What a very beautiful girl.’

‘Pity about her voice,’ said Robert.

‘What’s wrong with her voice? Sounded all right to me.’

Robert stared, then felt uneasy. If George really hadn’t noticed that voice… He looked his brother in the eye and said, ‘How old would you say she was?’

‘Twenty. She happened to mention it.’

‘Same age as Corinna.’

George looked defensive. ‘I
am
aware of my daughter’s age. Was that remark supposed to mean something?’

‘Yes,’ said Robert firmly. ‘For God’s sake don’t start anything here, George – right under May’s nose.’

‘You’re crazy. Just because I was reasonably pleasant to the girl…’ He broke off and surprisingly added, ‘All right, Robert. Thanks for the warning. Dalliance with Sarah is out.’

Robert believed him. It wasn’t always easy to tell when George was lying but Robert could usually tell when George was speaking the truth; a confusing distinction but Robert knew what he meant by it. He said heartily, ‘Thank you, George.’

As for George, the mention of May had reminded him of his main reason for living in the country. Goings-on were
not
to be under May’s nose. It simply wouldn’t be fair. A pity, rather, because he
had
been attracted – and he’d known several girls of twenty who hadn’t been put off by a little age gap of twenty-five years. But fair was fair.

‘Now we’ll chase some lunch,’ he told Robert cheerfully.

‘You wouldn’t like to see the cottage?’

‘It can wait till tomorrow when the girls are here.’

‘You’re sure about taking the place now?’

George looked surprised. ‘Of course. I told you I was ninety per cent certain. It’s an excellent proposition, even if that nice, honest girl did point out some defects.’

Ah, but that nice honest girl’s beauty had discounted the defects – and the rain. Robert felt deeply grateful to Sarah
Strange. Might put her into his Gothic anti-romance – her voice was certainly anti-romantic.

He took a quick look round in case George had left a cigarette burning. It would be a pity (and quite a bit Gothic) if the house burned down overnight. Then he followed his brother out through the driving rain to the shelter of the car.

Baggy was alone in his bedroom.

The removal van had gone. Robert and June, after seeing it off, had gone too, he to the
Onlooker
offices, she to Liverpool Street Station. May and June, going by train, would get to the Dower House before the van. Baggy was to lunch with George in the City and then, in the late afternoon, George would drive him and Robert to the country. Everything had been carefully planned by that arch-planner, May. Baggy was fond of May but not quite as fond as he was of June, whereas he was fond of Robert but not quite as fond as he was of George. Well, in the country he would gain George without losing Robert and June. And May was a superb cook.

He looked round the denuded room. The bed still remained, May having persuaded him to let her supply one more suitable for a bed-sitting-room. A really comfortable one, she had assured him. It was no use pretending the bed he had slept on for nearly fifty years was comfortable. It had, in fact, three sags, the middle one made by him during the years since his wife’s death. Still, he was fond of that bed, which had been the latest thing when he and Mabel chose it: reddish mahogany inlaid with yellow satinwood.

Well, it could remain here quite safely, and probably for a considerable time. For Baggy, until his retirement an astute house agent, considered this a bad time to sell the house. ‘Just think of it as money in the bank for you,’ he’d told Robert. ‘And later on it’ll be
more
money.’ Robert had of course agreed with the utmost vagueness – hopeless to discuss business with Robert. George had undertaken to keep his finger on the pulse of the property market.

Not that Baggy couldn’t do that himself. Often he wished that he hadn’t retired – and at sixty-five, much too early. But it had
seemed unavoidable. For nearly a year after Mabel’s death he hadn’t been normal. It wasn’t simply her death that had shattered him; it was also the manner of it. He’d come round after a week of coma without the slightest memory of the accident – though they assured him he must have seen the out-of-control truck that had hit them, for he had braked, swerved, done all the right things. All he recalled was sitting in the car beside his wife discussing the holiday they were setting out on; he distinctly remembered asking her if she was getting too much draught from his window. And he was suddenly asked to believe that she was dead, cremated, her ashes scattered. Instructions for that were in her will, as they were in his; but somehow it made her death harder to take in for a long, long time.

But of course he had accepted it eventually and, he supposed, got over it. Still, leaving this house… He pulled his thoughts up. It was people, not places, that counted and he was singularly lucky: two sons, two daughters-in-law, four grandchildren, and he was on excellent terms with all of them. You be thankful, he told himself, that you’re not a lonely old man.

He made sure the windows were closed and latched, then gave one last look at the bed. Damn it, he wished he’d insisted on taking it. May and her bed-sitting-room ideas! Well, his huge wardrobe and dressing table would put paid to those and quite right too. A bedroom was a bedroom, even if you sat in it.

He’d better take a look over the whole house. June was none too reliable about latching windows. He went up to the top floor: excellent rooms, they could be converted into a flat. He assessed the potential rent. Then he went down and paid a last visit to the bathroom. He’d always liked it, a good square room and you could warm it up by opening the cupboard which housed the hot tank. The dressing table had been left behind – June said
there would not be room for it. Automatically he opened the drawer to get his comb but June had packed it with all his other bathroom belongings. Better buy a pocket comb on his way to the Underground. With hair as thick as his, he needed one. Even thicker than Robert’s, it was, and had once been even fairer. It had gone white early, a nice clean white. He glanced in the dressing-table mirror. Odd to think it had reflected his face for nearly fifty years. He couldn’t remember how he had looked as a young man, couldn’t go back further than, say, his early forties when he’d looked much as Robert did now. Though he’d never been handsome, as Robert was, and always much heavier.

Strange that he should be so unlike George, when he felt so much closer to George than to Robert. George was like his mother, the same eyes and that wonderful smile.

The thought of meeting George for lunch caused him to survey the rest of the house briskly. Hugh’s room, Prue’s room, the big room used by Robert and June… but they were all big rooms in his good, solid house. Downstairs the sitting rooms were still fairly full of furniture, his furniture. He’d offered it to June but she’d said it would be too big. She’d taken all the stuff she and Robert had first set up house with, small, inexpensive things; they’d had only a tiny house. Baggy liked to think how much more comfortable they’d been since coming to live with him.

Well, that was that. He closed the front door and tested that it was closed. He felt slightly uneasy about leaving the house all on its own but it was fully insured and the police had been notified.

A pity it looked like rain. June had so hoped to have a fine day for the move.

May, scurrying into the Dower House porch, said, ‘Have we ever come down here when it wasn’t raining?’

‘It wasn’t that first day,’ said June.

‘The sun wasn’t shining. Still, if we’ve liked the place on dreary days it’s a good test.’ She unlocked the front door and said happily, ‘Almost
too
warm, isn’t it?’

The taxi driver followed them in, carrying two suitcases of food. Sarah Strange had undertaken to get in bread and dairy products but May was taking no chances on such things as meat, and had come prepared to feed her family, and June’s, until she could get the hang of local shopping. It was the same taxi driver who had first brought them to the house and he said this was a good omen. May, as she overpaid him, heartily agreed. ‘Though why it should be, I can’t think,’ she remarked to June, as he went.

They unpacked the food in the kitchen and Long Room (now its official name) and then awaited the removal van. May’s ‘line’ on the Long Room had come off handsomely. She had happened to mention to Sarah that she wanted a long, scrubbed pine table, whereupon Sarah had offered one from a disused kitchen at the Hall. Smuggled in to see this, May had also collected a dozen kitchen chairs, a low dresser to use as a carving table, and four red leather armchairs from an Edwardian smoke-room unsmoked in for a good forty years. (Sarah had shown May this room and others but allowed no glimpse of old Mr Strange.) Thus equipped May had only had to buy curtains (handwoven, beige and white) and some heavy rush matting, and might have found such economy thwarting had she not gone to town on new furniture for all the bedrooms – which, as she pointed out, was necessary as she could not denude the flat.

All the new furniture had already been delivered so the bedrooms, as well as the Long Room, were in good order. The removal van would mainly be bringing June’s belongings – and, of course, Baggy’s mammoth bedroom suite.

The van did not arrive until May was cutting sandwiches for lunch. She fed the removal men before breaking the news to them that all the furniture for the cottage would have to be carried there, as there was no road and the van could not be driven across the waterlogged grass of the park. The rain had stopped, but there was every indication that it would shortly start again, so there was a rush to do the job quickly. Luckily Sarah arrived and worked quite as hard as the men, and May and June carried what they could.

It was gruelling work but it was finished eventually, just as the rain began again. May then went back to the Dower House with the men and Sarah stayed to help June get straight.

June did not particularly want to get straight. She would have preferred to sit down and do a little quiet gloating – about the bliss of leaving Baggy’s house and coming to this jewel, about Robert’s happiness at moving to the country, about the joy of being so close to May. All this plus the glory of the fact that she would be seeing George at dinner. However, she acquiesced in Sarah’s determination to get the beds made up and put the kitchen in some kind of working order. They then went back to the Dower House.

May, having tipped the men nobly, was just seeing them off.

‘And now I must telephone George,’ she said. ‘I want to be sure he makes an early start. There’ll be a lot of City traffic to drive through.’

But George, when she eventually got him, had decided against driving – ‘Not in all this rain.’

‘It’s not too bad here,’ said May. ‘It actually stopped for a while, and it’s
thinner
now.’

‘It isn’t here. It’s very, very thick and looks determined. We’ll come down on the 6.36 and eat on the train. That’ll save you cooking dinner.’

‘But I’ve got steaks.’

‘Steaks will keep,’ said George firmly.

Well, they would. And if she didn’t have to cook a full meal she could unpack her clothes and all George’s things. Also she was determined, from now on, never to nag George about what time he got home or what meals he missed. So she agreed cheerfully, and assured George the move had gone splendidly. Then she rang off and said brightly, ‘Tea now, and I could eat an egg. I could eat two eggs, possibly three. Sarah, stay and eat three eggs with us.’

‘I didn’t know anyone ever ate three eggs,’ said Sarah, ‘but I could certainly eat
some
. I can’t tell you what lunch was like. Well, our poor old cook’s nearly eighty.’

‘I could teach you to cook,’ said May.

‘But if I did the cooking, our poor old dear couldn’t do the housework I do. And anyway, she’d be terribly upset if I cooked.’

As far as May knew, the only other help at the Hall was an elderly man who combined the offices of butler, valet and male nurse. She had a great desire to
cope
with Sarah – ask about her circumstances, advise her, help her. But Sarah, in spite of her frightful old clothes, her friendliness, and her habit of deferring to May and June, retained a touch of aristocratic aloofness. ‘Or am I being class-conscious?’ May asked herself, starting to get tea. ‘I only know I’d as soon offer advice to royalty.’

Sarah, after her eggy tea – never before had she handled an electric toaster – said she must go, in time to have sherry with her grandfather. The rain had now definitely stopped and there was a hint of watery late-afternoon sunshine beyond the Hall. May, gazing at it through the bow window, said, ‘I never realised this window faces west. Then the others must face south.’

She opened the French window, to let Sarah out, and let in a gust of cool, damp air.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said June.

‘Heavens, no. Everything’s sopping wet.’ May hastily closed the window behind Sarah. ‘And I’ve lots to do. Come and see what you think of Baggy’s room. That awful wardrobe and dressing table have wrecked everything.’

‘They won’t look as bad to me as they do to you. I’ve seen them every day for ten years.’

But they looked worse than June had expected. Baggy’s Edwardian house had been their spiritual home. This austere room wasn’t. But at least she could praise the curtains. ‘They must have cost you a fortune – for those enormous windows.’

‘Yes, they’re good ones, but I’d have liked something more modern. George didn’t think I could risk it. I wanted to get some good rugs but when Baggy heard about the parquet he said he didn’t want it covered.’

‘He sets a lot of store by parquet. That’s the old house agent coming out.’

‘Let’s make the divan up. I’ve got the blankets and linen out. I wonder how soon I can find some domestic help.’

‘Sarah says there isn’t any,’ said June.

‘There will be. It’s just a matter of hunting efficiently and paying enough.’

May’s efficiency and ability to pay enough had really staggered June during the month since the move had been decided on. Builders, plumbers, house furnishers… all had been invincibly driven to work at enormous speed – and at enormous cost. Even the expenditure on the cottage must, June knew, have been considerable. May had insisted on supplying new curtains and new carpets, not to mention the bath and all sorts of improvements June would never have thought of making. For May’s generosity kept pace with her extravagance. Actually,
June never thought of May as extravagant. There was a shrewdness about her expenditure which made the word unsuitable. But money certainly poured out. And if June protested May invariably said, ‘George can afford it.’

Darling May… and darling George… and of course darling Robert. June, when Baggy’s room was in readiness, said, ‘What time will the boys be back?’

To May and June, their husbands were still ‘the boys’, just as to George and Robert their wives were still ‘the girls’.

‘Let’s see…’ May worked it out. The hour’s journey from London, then the taxi drive… ‘They should be here by eight. We’ll unpack our clothes and then have baths. Is your immersion heater on?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Well, you can have a bath here. And we’ll dress up a bit. I only hope they don’t miss the train.’

Owing to Baggy’s opinion that any train journey was a serious undertaking, he and George arrived at Liverpool Street Station before they were allowed on their departure platform. They had to stand in a patiently waiting queue.

‘Ridiculous, when the train’s actually in,’ said George.

‘They probably have to tidy it up,’ said Baggy pacifically. He’d had a wonderfully pleasant afternoon sitting in George’s office, marvelling at George’s business capacity and feeling that he, Baggy, was basically responsible for George’s success. As a very young man George had said he fancied some business which was connected with money and Baggy had given him an introduction to an old friend who was an investment consultant. George had made himself invaluable and, on his employer’s retirement, taken over the business with extreme success. This was mainly
because he combined flair with caution and had a talent for both stimulating and reassuring his clients. It was Baggy’s opinion that George would end up as a millionaire. George said this was laughable… but did not consider it inconceivable.