‘Indeed, well, I hope you will find “Hilltops” just as comfortable. We are still … I do hope you will bear with us … having some
alterations
done but it will not be allowed to interfere with your stay. But perhaps it might be wise if you ate in your room, to avoid inconvenience. You will have a private sitting room, naturally and it will be no trouble to serve you there. Now on the menu tonight there is trout, caught only this morning, of course, lark pudding, breast of veal, rolled and stuffed, fillets of turbot done in cream sauce, lobster salad, fresh strawberries, or, if you and Mr Marring-ton have any other preference, anything at all, you have only to say so.’
‘Nay lass …’ Mrs Marrington laughed, heaving her round, comfortable body from the armchair, ‘that sounds grand, all of it, so why don’t I just leave it to you!’
‘… and of course, champagne!’
‘
Champagne
! Nay! I don’t think Albert will …’
‘Compliments of the hotel, naturally.’
Mr and Mrs Marrington had been tucked up in their splendid suite, their eyes hurried past signs of the recent upheaval which had torn the hotel apart for months, their feet treading the luxury of the deep pile carpets, their bodies warmed and cossetted by the central heating and the huge applewood fire in their sitting room, their stomachs filled with Miss Hughes’ delicious food, their heads pleasantly reeling from the excellent champagne they had drunk. The chauffeur had been housed and the magnificent Rolls Royce stored lovingly in solitary splendour in the garage. Edie had gone to her bed, devastated by the anxiety of catering, just her and Miss Hughes and Mr Tom, to the demands of their first, unexpected guests, declaring she was ‘fair wore out with it all’ and how Miss Hughes had managed to dish up that lovely meal and with no warning was a mystery to her and she doubted she’d sleep a wink for thinking about it and had Miss Hughes got a look at the diamond on Mrs Marrington’s finger …
‘Well, Meggie,’ Tom said fondly, reaching for her own diamond adorned hand and dropping a kiss into the palm of it. ‘How does it feel?’
She held the wonder of it to her like a glittering prize and her face was flushed with triumph. She clasped Tom’s hand lovingly for he had been superb, acting just as she had done after the initial shock, as though the Marringtons had been booked weeks ahead. He had been courteous and friendly, changing whilst the Marringtons were involved in signing the register from his ‘outdoor’ clothes, to his good, dark suit and gleaming white shirt. He had
carried
bags and served drinks and waited at table as though he had done it all his life and had even accepted the large tip a gratified Mr Marrington had pressed upon him. Meg was proud of him and proud of what they shared and the events earlier in the day might never have happened.
‘It’s the beginning, Tom,’ she said softly. ‘They will tell others and the word will get round amongst their wealthy friends and before you know it we will be famous.’
‘Aye lass, that we will.’
‘Oh Tom, what a wonderful day!’
‘Aye, but for one thing.’
‘What?’
‘You never got your new hat.’
He was quite disappointed when her eyes became suddenly shuttered and she stood up, declaring she was worn out and was off to her bed, since he had thought they would share this special moment for another delightful half hour.
‘Goodnight then, sweetheart,’ he said, warmly.
‘Goodnight Tom.’
‘Don’t I get a kiss, Meggie?’
She turned back awkwardly and he stood up and took her in his arms and with the new found confidence which his successful day had brought him, kissed her thoroughly, well pleased with himself.
IT SEEMED ALBERT
and Nellie Marrington had been most impressed with the service they had received at ‘Hilltops’ and had spoken of it quite lyrically to several of their friends and, more importantly, Albert, in the course of a business transaction with a gentleman of the manufacturing class, had recommended it to him most volubly.
The telephone rang a week later and a voice enquired of Meg, who answered it, if she could ‘put up’ a certain Mr Nicholson for a few nights. He was to be on business in the area, he said pleasantly, but his wife and daughter had voiced a desire for a day or two in the country and if Miss Hughes … yes … he had heard of her from Mr Marrington, and if she could manage a suite and a single room with bathroom he would be grateful. He was a merchant from Liverpool, in shipping like Robert Hemingway, he said, who also had spoken of her very highly, in trade as both those gentlemen were, but when he and his wife and daughter arrived it was very evident that his wealth was of long standing, as was Robert Hemingway’s, for his voice was cultured and his wife certainly a lady and his daughter well educated, well spoken and confident. She was to paint a little, she said, taking her easel down to the river which she had heard from her father, who had heard it from Mr Marrington, was very beautiful and if Miss Hughes could pack her a lunch basket she would be so pleased. If the day remained fine she would not return until evening. Her mother drove into Buxton with her father, or sat in the winter garden with her embroidery, taking tea, served to her by the new, hastily fetched parlourmaid and when they left they had booked a long weekend in August and would certainly tell the Hemingways, the younger Hemingways that is, who were dear friends of theirs, to ‘try her out’.
At Easter she had a dozen guests. The weather was blessedly kind and they sat about her lawn and drank in the crisp wine of the clear air and played croquet and the more adventurous even
hired
a hack or two from a local stable to take them exploring the bridle paths which led across the fells, or motored to Buxton spa to take the famous waters. They sat in her lounge, as it was now fashionable to call it, in sofas deep enough and comfortable enough for the most robust of gentlemen, to take coffee after dinner, or perhaps a cocktail before. There were fragile, round-backed chairs on which a lady might sit to show off her straight posture and the soft curve of her bosom to its best advantage and the colours of the room, flame and gold and white were really as smart as any they had seen anywhere, they told one another.
There was a smaller lounge where the ladies might while away a wet afternoon playing bridge and sipping chocolate or coffee brought specially from France, and choose from a dozen French pastries made by Meg, the art taught her by the pastry chef in the kitchens of the Adelphi.
The men used the billiard room, going there for masculine conversation which bored the ladies, and to smoke their cigars, and in the bedrooms and private sitting rooms were deep, pale carpets, crystal lamps and chandeliers, paintings and delicate furniture, and warmth, always warmth if the day was cool, and discreet service and the comfort to which they were accustomed in their own homes.
It was May when Martin came over, his face cool and quite threatening in his arrogant determination to talk to her and Tom, he said, his meaning quite clear. He would have been over before but a hitch in the planning of the Wren had prevented it. Her heart missed a beat for in five weeks she had scarcely given him a thought in the overwhelming excitement of being, at last, as she had dreamed, the proprietor of a first class, successfully growing hotel and her own mind was amazed that it should be so.
‘I waited and you did not come,’ he said, ‘so I came to you.’
‘Please, Martin … I have a hotel filled with guests. Not now …’
‘Then when, Megan?’ His voice was dangerous and he gripped her arm painfully. They were in her small sitting-room where she had bundled him – unwillingly, for no-one ‘bundled’ Martin Hunter anywhere these days – pleading with him for God’s sake to keep his voice down since those in the lounge had already begun to turn their heads towards the disturbance in the foyer.
‘Can’t you see I’m run off my feet.’
‘And Tom! Where is he?’ His voice had become a snarl for Martin Hunter was curiously afraid of this new thing which had
come
into her life. He had been so
sure
of her. She loved him, she had told him she loved him and the only thing which stood between them had been Tom but this hotel business had a fascination for her, an obsession which was as strong as his own for the automobile and the airplane and it seemed she was not, now that it was suddenly successful, willing to turn away from it.
‘He’s in the garden seeing to …’
‘Then let us go and tell him together!’
‘Martin!’ She was appalled but even in the midst of the explosive tension which Martin’s anger created she could feel her body move, almost as though it had nothing to do with her brain, her strong will, of it’s own accord to be near his, excited even more by his masculine jealousy. ‘Don’t do this to me now. I meant to … I was going to … but people came and … then others and before I was aware of it the hotel was so busy … over Easter … oh Martin, is it not wonderful …?’ Her face was flushed now with the joy of it and she wanted to share it with him as he had shared his with her but he was beyond reason and would have none of it.
‘You could not do it, then. You were afraid if you told him that you loved me and not him he would have left you in the lurch with no-one to dig your potatoes and milk your cow and that would never do. Is that all he is to you, Meg, for if so he is easily replaced.’
‘God in Heaven … give me time to …’
‘How much time does it take to tell a man that you love another, my pet, for I swear I can wait no longer …’
He had gone and Tom was not aware that he had even been, and though Edie had seen him swerve up to the front door in his flashy motor car, she said nothing and each week brought fresh guests and though Meg meant to tell Tom, indeed she did mean to, the opportunity seemed always to elude her. Often in the night, though she was tired almost to breaking point, her mind consumed with the need to be chef and book-keeper, charming hostess and every other function she must perform to smooth the way for her chambermaids, her kitchen-maids, her waitresses and porter and barman, her body burned most desperately to arrange itself beside the long, hard length of Martin’s and she knew no peace and she determined that tomorrow she would tell Tom. She would go to Martin, she told herself, to his rooms, or anywhere they could be alone and to hell with Tom, to hell with the hotel, to hell with
the
increasing number of guests who clamoured each week at her door.
At the end of June the hotel was, for the first time, completely full. The weather was perfect that summer. Tom’s fruit and vegetables could not wait, it seemed, to fall plumply into his hands and on to the immaculately set out tables in Meg’s dining-room. The cows he was grazing in the meadow at the rear of the hotel gave so much milk he had to employ a dairy maid to turn the surplus into butter and cream. Meg surpassed herself each night, turning her lovely rooms luminous with candlelight and crystal, and fragrant with the flowers Tom grew for her, and the superb odours of fine wines and foods that had never been seen outside the Adelphi or the Ritz. Salmon and game and pâtés, sauces and pastries, fondues and soufflés, ices in fancy moulds with nuts and cherries from Tom’s trees, and mountains of home-churned cream from Tom’s overflowing dairy, and still they continued to come that summer for perhaps they had a premonition, as they say animals do, when disaster is on the way.
It was on a lovely day in July when Martin came again. She tried to keep the encounter light-hearted though her own pulse throbbed like a drum, afraid he might give offence to the several ladies who were sitting beneath her trees taking afternoon tea.
‘Now what’s up?’ she called cheerfully from the open window of the sitting room, just as though they had met only yesterday. His face was quite set though it did not seem that his severity was directed at her. ‘Don’t tell me the paint’s the wrong colour on the bodywork of the motor, or is it that manager of yours? You told me he was an awkward devil and when you meet someone as stubborn as you are there’s bound to be sparks.’
‘Well, you would know about that, Megan Hughes,’ he said quietly and he was not smiling, and her own slipped away from her face as she opened the French windows to let him in. He brushed past her, moving absently into the pool of sunlight which fell across the carpet.
He sighed deeply, then turned to look at her and she felt a feather of disquiet brush her spine.
‘What is it, Martin? Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something important.’ She put out a hand to him and he took it gently between his own and she was frightened for he seemed so … so sad!
‘Where’s Tom?’
‘He’s gone down to Buxton. Some seeds he wanted and one of the guests offered him a lift.’
‘He should be here.’
‘Why? Dear God …’
‘Do you remember … last month when that Archduke … Ferdinand I think his name was … yes, that’s it … when he was shot and killed at Sarajevo?’
‘Yes, it was in the newspapers but what …?’
‘He was the heir to the Austria-Hungary throne. Well, it appears the chap who murdered him was from Serbia and now Austria have accused the Serbian government of having encouraged the crime. Anyway, they delivered several ultimatums to the Serbian government which have not been fulfilled and the upshot is the Austrians have declared war on Serbia.’
‘But what has that to do with us?’
‘Don’t you see, sweetheart …’ Even in her increasing dread, caused by Martin’s unusual sobriety, the endearment gave her pleasure and she gazed up into his eyes with an intensity which made it hard for him to continue.