The Ladies of Missalonghi (10 page)

Octavia was sitting in the kitchen of Missalonghi, changed back into her workaday clothes, with the small provender of their meal simmering away in a pot on the stove. Stew. Her misshapen hands were busy with knitting needles, magically producing the most fragile and cobwebby of evening shawls as a wedding present for the ungrateful Alicia.

“Ah!” she said, laying her task aside when Missy walked in. “Did you have a nice time, dear? Is your mother with you?”

“I had a wretched time, so I left ahead of Mother,” said Missy briefly, then seized the milk bucket, and escaped.

The cow was waiting patiently to be let into the shed; Missy reached out to stroke the velvety dark muzzle, and looked deeply into the big sweet brown eyes.

“Buttercup, you’re
much
nicer than Alicia, so I just don’t understand why it’s such an unforgivable insult to call a woman a cow. From now on, the women others call cows, I shall call Alicias,” she told it as she led it into the shed, where it moved of its own accord into the milking stall. Buttercup was the easiest cow to milk, letting down without a struggle, never complaining if Missy’s hands were cold, as they often were. Which of course was why its milk was so good; nice cows always gave nice milk.

Drusilla was home when Missy returned. It was customary to pour most of the milk into the big flat pans which lived on the shady side of the back verandah; as she poured, she could hear her mother enthusiastically regaling her aunt with a full description of Alicia’s bridal party.

“Oh, I’m so glad one of you had a good time,” said Octavia. “All I could get out of Missy was that she’d had a wretched time. I suppose her trouble is lack of friends.”

“True, and no one is sorrier for it than I. But dear Eustace’s death removed any chance of brothers and sisters for Missy, and this house is so far out of Byron on the wrong side that no one ever wants to come and see us regularly.”

Missy waited for her sins to be divulged, but her mother made no reference to them. Courage seeping back, she went inside. Ever since the heart trouble came on it had become easier for her to assert herself, and apparently also easier for her mother to accept these signs of independence. Only it wasn’t really the heart trouble that caused the change. It was Una. Yes, everything went back to Una’s advent; Una’s forthrightness, Una’s frankness, Una’s unwillingness to be sat on by anyone. Una would have told a supercilious twerp like James Hurlingford to go bite his bum, Una would have given Alicia something verbal to remember if she condescended, Una would always make sure people treated her with respect. And somehow this had rubbed off on such an unlikely pupil as Missy Wright.

When Missy walked in, Drusilla leaped up, beaming.

“Missy, you’ll never guess!” she cried, reaching round to the back of the chair where she had been sitting and plucking a very large box off the floor. “As I was leaving the party, Alicia came and gave me this for you to wear at her wedding. She assured me that the colour would suit you beautifully, though I confess I would never have thought of it for myself. Only look!”

Missy stood turned to stone while her mother scrabbled in the box and unearthed a bundle of stiff and crushed organdie which she proceeded to shake out and hold up for Missy’s dazed inspection. A gorgeous dress of a pale toffee shade, not tan and not yellow and not quite amber; those in the know would have understood that its frilled skirt and neckline put it at least five or six years out of date, but even so it was a gorgeous dress, and with extensive alterations it would suit Missy down to the ground.

“And the hat, only look at the hat!” squeaked Drusilla, clawing a huge cartwheel of pale toffee straw out of the box and twitching its artless piles of matching organdie into place. “Did you ever see a more beautiful hat? Oh, dearest Missy, you shall have a pair of shoes, no matter how impractical they are!”

The stone dropped away from Missy’s limbs at last; she stepped forward, arms extended to receive Alicia’s bounty, and her mother placed dress and hat in them at once.

“I’ll wear my new brown satin and my home-made hat and good sturdy boots!” said Missy through her teeth, and took to her heels out the back door, the masses of organdie billowing up about her like the skirts on a swimming bêche-de-mer.

It was not yet fully dark; as she raced for the shed she could hear the frantic cries of her mother and aunt somewhere behind, but by the time they caught up with her, it was too late. The dress and hat were trampled beyond repair into the muck of the milking stall, and Missy, a shovel in her hands, was busy heaping every pile of dung she could find on top of Alicia’s grand gesture.

Drusilla was unspeakably hurt. “How could you? Oh, how could you, Missy? Just this once in your life, you had a chance to look and feel like a belle!”

Missy laid the shovel against the shed wall and dusted her hands together in complete satisfaction. “You above all people ought to understand how I could, Mother,” she said. “No one’s pride is stiffer than yours, no one I know is quicker than you to interpret the most well-meaning gift as charity in disguise. Why then are you denying me my share of that pride? Would you have taken the gift for yourself? Why then take it for me? Do you honestly think Alicia did it to please me? Of course she didn’t! Alicia is determined to have her wedding perfect down to the last guest, and I – I
spoiled
it! So she decided to make a silk purse out of Missy Wright the sow’s ear. Well, thank you very much, but I’d rather be my own sow’s ear in all its natural homeliness than any silk purse of Alicia’s making! And so I shall tell her!”

And so indeed she did tell her, the very next day. Though Drusilla had crept out in the dead of night armed with a lamp, the dress and hat had disappeared from their vile resting place, and she never saw them again; nor did she ever discover what had happened to them, for no one who knew remembered to tell her, so shocking were the other events of that memorable Friday morning in the Marshall residence.

Missy arrived at the front door of Mon Repos about ten o’clock, hampered by a large and exceedingly well wrapped parcel which she carried rather gingerly by a string loop. Had the butler any idea of the consternation already reigning in the small drawing room, it is doubtful whether Missy would have got any further than the front stoop, but luckily the butler did not have any idea, and so was able to contribute his mite to the general atmosphere of disaster.

The small drawing room, not really small, was nonetheless rather full of very large people when Missy sidled round the door with her parcel on its string. Aunt Aurelia was there, and Uncle Edmund, and Alicia, and Ted and Randolph, and the third Sir William, and his son and heir, Little Willie; Lady Billy was not there, as she was assisting a mare to foal.

“I don’t understand it!” Edmund Marshall was saying as Missy gave the butler a smile and a gesture which indicated she would announce herself as soon as maybe. “I just don’t understand it! How could so many shares escape us?
How?
And who the hell sold them and who the hell bought them?”

“As far as my agents can gather,” said the third Sir William, “every share not held by a Hurlingford proper was bought up for many times its actual value, and then the mystery buyer began to make inroads on shares held by Hurlingfords. How or when or why I don’t know, but he managed to discover every Hurlingford in need of money and every Hurlingford not tied to Byron, and he made offers no one could refuse.”

“It’s ridiculous!” cried Ted. “For the sort of money he’s been paying, there’s absolutely no way he can ever recoup his outlay. I mean, the Byron Bottle Company is a very nice little enterprise, but it’s not gold we’re taking out of the ground, nor is it the elixir of life! Yet the prices he’s been paying are the sort of prices a speculator might pay on receipt of an infallible tip that the ground is solid gold.”

“I agree with all that,” said Sir William, “but I can’t give you an answer, because I just don’t know it.”

“Are we reduced to minority shareholders, Uncle Billy, is that what you’re trying to say?” asked Alicia, who was fully acquainted with the practices and terminology of the business world – and a not inconsiderable shareholder in the Byron Bottle Company herself, since Chez Chapeau Alicia had put capital in her hands and an acquisitive nature had tempted her into the safer realms of speculation.

“Good God, no, not yet!” cried Sir William; then, with less confidence, he added, “However, I admit it’s going to be touch and go unless we can either stem the tide of shares we’re losing, or buy more ourselves.”

“Aren’t there any stray small shareholders living here in Byron whom we can get to first?” asked Randolph.

“A few, Hurlingfords on the distaff side mostly, and two or three of the old maids who accidentally inherited shares they weren’t really entitled to. Naturally they’ve never been paid a dividend.”

“How did you manage that, Uncle Billy?” asked Randolph.

Sir William snorted. “What do they know about shares, silly old biddies like Cornelia and Julia and Octavia? I didn’t want them thinking they were hanging onto something valuable, so as well as never paying them a dividend, I told them the shares were worthless because they belonged by rights to Maxwell and Herbert. However, rather than make a big fuss, I merely told them they could best rectify the mistake by willing the shares to the sons of Maxwell and Herbert.”

“Clever!” said Alicia admiringly.

Sir William gave her one of his hot lusting glances; she was beginning to wonder privately how easy it was going to be to keep Uncle Billy at arm’s length after she married and moved into Hurlingford Lodge – but cross that bridge later.

“We’ll have to acquire the old maids’ shares now,” said Edmund Marshall, looking very gloomy. “Though, Billy, I must be frank and admit that I don’t know how I’m going to find any ready money. I’d have to retrench drastically, which would be most disagreeable for my family – Alicia’s wedding, you know.”

“I’m in the same boat myself, old man,” said Sir William, the words sticking in his gullet. “It’s all this flap over a big war in Europe, dammit! Rumour-mongering is all!”

“Why
buy
the shares?” asked Alicia, just the smallest tinge of contempt for their stupidity in her voice. “All you have to do is go to Auntie Cornie and Auntie Julie and Auntie Octie and
ask
! They’ll hand them over without a murmur!”

“All right, we can do that with those three, and with Drusilla as well, I imagine. What on earth possessed Malcolm Hurlingford to leave shares to his daughters, I ask you? He always was soft over his girls, though thank God Maxwell and Herbert don’t take after their father in that regard.” Sir William sighed impatiently. “A pretty pickle we’re in! Even if, as Alicia says, the old biddies hand over their shares without a murmur, we’ve still got to deal with the various ne’er-do-wells and half-Hurlingfords who most certainly won’t want to part with what shares they have for nothing. Oh, we’ll manage, I have no doubt, just as long as they don’t get wind of the mystery buyer. Because we can’t match his prices.”

“What can we sell in a hurry to raise cash?” asked Alicia crisply.

They all turned to look at her, and Missy, as yet quite unnoticed, shifted stealthily from her spot in front of the door (against which her brown dress and person didn’t show at all) to a safer spot behind one of the potted Kentia palms Aunt Aurelia had placed everywhere inside her lovely house.

“There’s Lady Billy’s bloody horses, for a start,” said Sir William with relish.

“My jewels,” said Aurelia with great resolution.

“And my jewels,” said Alicia with a nasty look at her mother for getting in first.

“The thing is,” said Edmund, “that this mystery buyer, whoever he – or they – might be, seems to know more about who owns shares in the Byron Bottle Company than we do, and we’re the board of directors! When I consulted our list of shareholders I discovered that in a great many cases the shares had passed from the person listed as owning them into other hands, mostly sons or nephews, admittedly, but strange hands nonetheless. It never occurred to me that
any
Hurlingford would sign away his birthright this side of death!”

“Times are changing,” sighed Aurelia. “When I was a girl, Hurlingford clannishness was a legend. Nowadays it seems as if some of the young Hurlingfords don’t give a tuppenny bumper about the family.”

“They’ve been spoiled,” said Sir William. He cleared his throat, slapped his hands on his thighs, and said with great decision, “All right, I suggest we leave matters as they stand over the weekend, then on Monday we get down to raising some cold hard cash.”

“Who is to approach the aunties?” asked Ted.

“Alicia,” said Sir William instantly. “Only not until a bit closer to her wedding, I think. That way she can hoodwink them into thinking they’re giving her a wedding present.”

“Won’t the mystery buyer get to them first?” asked Ted, who always worried about everything, and so had drifted into accounting quite naturally.

“One thing you can be absolutely sure of, Ted, is that none of those silly old chooks would dream of parting with anything Hurlingford to anyone outside the family without first asking me or Herbert. The buyer could offer them a fortune, and they’d still insist upon consulting me or Herbert first.” So positive was Sir William of his ground on this point that he smiled when he said it.

Taking advantage of the general mêlée as several worried and overwrought people endeavoured to find the right way to break off their meeting, Missy slid out the door and came back inside very noisily. And they all noticed her at once, though none of them looked pleased to see her.

“What do you want?” asked Alicia rudely.

“I came to show you how I feel about your charity, Alicia, and to tell you that I am happy to come to your wedding in good old brown,” said Missy, marching across the room and dumping her parcel on the table in front of Alicia. “There! Thank you, but no thank you.”

Alicia stared at her much as she might have stared at a dog turd she had almost stepped in. “Please yourself!”