by Anne Morice
The extraordinary thing about Nannie was that, despite her villainy, she had distinct charm when she chose to exert it and her stories, however rambling and highly coloured, could sometimes be hilarious. I could not imagine why she should put herself out for me in this way, or of what use I could be to her as an ally, if that indeed was her purpose, but when Serena put her head round the door to announce that the bathroom was free, I was staggered to find that I had been sitting in the nursery for all of half an hour and had not been bored in the least.
‘Make yourself look nice and come down as soon as you’re dressed,’ Serena instructed me when I joined her on the landing. ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me what it is?’ I asked, as she started down the stairs.
‘No, can’t stop now, I must confer with Mrs Thorne; but remember what I said. It will be all hands to the pump this evening.’
2
Spurred on by this rallying call, I endeavoured to strike the delicate balance between making myself look nice and not taking too long about it and, sprinting out of the bathroom some twenty minutes later, was halted in my tracks on reaching the upper landing by the ominous and familiar sound of Nannie’s voice raised in anger. The next minute Mrs Thorne stumbled out of the nursery and almost knocked me over as, with head bent, she plunged towards the stairs.
‘Oh, beg pardon,’ she mumbled, flattening herself against the wall to let me pass. There was nothing amiable in her manner now. She was red in the face and, although her lip trembled and her eyes were clouded by tears, these were all too obviously the manifestations of rage or mortification.
‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘Has that old woman been making trouble again?’
‘She’s no business to say such things to me,’ Mrs Thorne muttered. ‘She’s wicked, that’s what she is, downright wicked! As though I hadn’t put up with enough, without being accused of . . .’ She pressed a hand to her mouth, as though to stop the flow of words, and I said:
‘Forgive my asking, but didn’t Mrs Hargrave warn you that she was liable to make a scene if she discovered you were here and that it might be advisable to keep out of her way?’
‘Yes, but just now she asked me to bring the water carafes up to the bedrooms and I thought I might as well go and say good evening to Nannie, to sort of break the ice. Between you and me, I thought it was silly trying to pretend I wasn’t here, because you can’t keep anything secret from her for two minutes, and I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, have I? I can work where I please, without her permission. Besides, I’d found her glasses, you see. At least, I guessed they were hers and that gave me a good opportunity.’
‘Where did you find them?’
‘In the spare room, where Mr Pelham’s sleeping. Goodness knows how they got there, but I daresay she was poking about one day, when someone was staying here, and then she forgot where she’d left them.’
‘Whereabouts in the spare room?’
‘In that silver biscuit barrel thing. I was just taking a look to make sure the biscuits hadn’t gone stale, because I remembered from the old days that they used to be left there for months on end, without anyone touching them, and there they were; her glasses, I mean. Whoever it was who was staying must have found them and popped them in for safe keeping. I thought she’d be ever so pleased and it would sort of clear the air, but not a bit of it. You’d have thought I’d done it purposely to aggravate, and you should have heard the dreadful, cruel things she said to me. Guilty conscience, I shouldn’t wonder. Didn’t like me knowing what she’d been up to.’
‘Yes, I expect that’s all it was.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have given her away, if only she’d been a bit civil about it, but she needn’t worry. I shan’t be doing her any more good turns in a hurry. She’s seen the last of me. Well, this won’t get the parsnips buttered, will it? I must go down and get on with dinner.’
‘Mrs Thorne!’ I called softly, but she was halfway downstairs and did not hear me. Unwilling to risk being overheard in the nursery, I went after her, still calling her name:
‘Mrs Thorne, listen a minute! I do hope that what you said just now – I do hope it doesn’t mean you won’t be coming here any more, because . . . you know . . .’
‘No, don’t worry yourself on that account, Miss. I shan’t be leaving. It’s what she wants, after all, isn’t it? And I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. No, that’s not at all my way of getting even with her.’
CHAPTER SIX
1
Serena was alone in the parlour, every inch the gracious hostess, with needle poised over the tapestry and wearing a long, pale blue silk dress, which perfectly suited her alabaster complexion.
‘Yes, isn’t it gorgeous to sit back and be a lady, for once?’ she asked when I had complimented her on this turn out. ‘It’s not the cooking I mind, you know; in fact, I quite enjoy that part. It’s the dishing up which defeats me. I can never understand how some women manage it so smoothly, without getting crimson in the face and spattered with gravy. What kept you so long, my dearest? I thought you were never coming.’
‘I ran into a little fraças upstairs. Nothing important. I’ll tell you about it some time, but the great news is that Primrose is back. Splashing about in the bath too, to judge by noises off.’
‘I know, you can hear every sound from that bathroom, can’t you? I wish now that we’d put it between the other two rooms, instead of next to yours, but one can never foresee how things are going to turn out, can one? And it’s marvellous about Primrose. All thanks to my little ruse, I might tell you.’
‘That’s right, you were going to elucidate.’
‘Well, darling I’m sure you’ll say I’m vain and silly, because people always ought to be admired for their own qualities, and not for what others try to make them out to be, but you see I’m afraid Primrose made rather a poor impression on Pelham when they first met. Once he gets to know her properly, of course, he’ll soon realise how fundamentally good she is, but it would be so unfortunate if he were to be put off before there’s been a chance for that.’
‘Well, yes, Serena, I can understand your maternal pride not wanting to take a knock and all that, but does it really make so much difference what they think of each other? Pelham will be going back to London on Monday and Lindy assures me that they’re moving on to Paris soon afterwards, so I can’t see that it’s of any great moment.’
‘It is to me,’ Serena answered. ‘He’s head of the family, after all, and she ought to have her proper place in it. She may never marry and I should hate to think of her being written off as a poor relation, of no account to anyone. Also I’m sure she has always suffered acutely from growing up without a father, from actually being born without one. I suppose if I’d been unselfish I’d have married again and provided a substitute, but I’ve never been able to contemplate sharing my life with anyone but Rupert. It would be a weight off my mind if Pelham could deputise for him to some extent with Primrose.’
‘Right,’ I agreed, ‘so that’s the battleground, and now tell me about the strategy. What threats and torture did you use to get the campaign off to such a flying start?’
‘I had the brilliant idea of inviting Jake to dine here tonight.’
‘Oh!’ I said, somewhat deflated by this tame explanation. ‘Did you really? And what’s so miraculous about that?’
‘Well, can’t you see? It’s all so beautifully neat, really. If Jake had been dining on his own, he’d have kept Primrose there until the last possible moment, chatting about withers and girths and all the rest of it for hours on end, anything to delay the terrors of solitude. He’d never admit it, but he’s really very lonely, you know, in these alien surroundings, but also very meticulous and conventional, and once he’d been invited here, he’d be conscious of the need for both of them to smarten themselves up. So he’d make sure she got home early for once, which is exactly what has happened. It was a pity that by the time I’d thought of
it Mrs Thorne had already made the gooseberry tart because, being diabetic, he can’t eat them, but she’s going to knock up some caramel custard as well, so he’ll never know he was invited as an afterthought.’
‘Clever thinking!’ I said. ‘And congratulations! But tell me one thing: won’t the advantages of Primrose wafting around and smelling of Lifebuoy be outweighed by having Jake as a fellow guest? You said he was such a bore.’
‘Well, a little heavy on hand, I admit and, like most people who have nothing to say, rather inclined to say it twice over, but Pelham must be quite accustomed to that, and no one could be kinder and more generous than Jake. We’re all devoted to him.’
The deep sincerity with which this praise was uttered caused a strange and beautiful notion to take possession of me, whereby the relationship between her and Jake, so solidly founded as it was on mutual trust and economic convenience, might blossom into an even more romantic flower and that, with a little help from her god-daughter and other well disposed parties, she would yet return as mistress of Chargrove. It was but a step from there to the next move in the game, that of prevailing on Lindy, who, on her own and everyone else’s admission was in the strongest position to do so, to persuade Pelham to grant his tenant a permanent lease. However, on the principle of clearing away unwanted debris first, I asked Serena if Jake had a wife.
‘I believe not. There have been several, as you might expect, but I understand the last one died in rather tragic circumstances only a year or two ago.’
‘What tragic circumstances?’
‘I forget the details, but I gather she took an overdose or something. He’s never referred to it, though and naturally I wouldn’t dream of asking.’
So far so good, but I could not glean any more information for the time being, because we were joined by Pelham and Lindy, the latter wearing a pink and silver sari. She told me, when I reeled about in admiration, that she’d bought it in the bazaar in India, but had been so frightened of all those terribly starving people spitting and crowding in on her that she’d never nerved herself to take it out of its wrappings until this evening. She did not reveal where she had acquired her new found confidence.
Primrose arrived next, looking oddly distinguished in a long black skirt and purple, hand knitted pullover. By no stretch of the most charitable imagination could she have been called good looking, but at least she had combed her hair and dabbed on a bit of lipstick. The secret look of satisfaction was still much in evidence.
Jake came last of all, a tall, rangy man with a leonine head and deeply grooved lines in his face. It was interesting to discover that he had chosen the opposite extreme from Pelham’s and taken on all the more flamboyant features of his adopted fellow countrymen. Besides looking like a superannuated cowboy, he spoke with a heavy Texan drawl, spacing out his words between long pauses and showers of aws and ahms. He had also cultivated a Southern colonel style of manners, particularly in evidence, I was pleased to note, where Serena was concerned.
During the ten minutes it had taken for the party to assemble I had allowed myself to sail through one of those happy little daydream sequences concerning my first encounter with this J.K. Farrer. It was not that I had any personal designs on him, but the grinding obsession with furthering one’s career rarely lets up, even during a holiday weekend, and in my dream he had strode into the room in precisely this way, had taken one look at me, realised that retirement had been premature and that I was the star he had been searching for all his life and had instantly started ringing up millionaires, to get his next great epic on the move.
Admittedly, there was some conflict of interest between this and the other private fantasy, whereby Serena was re-installed as lady of the manor, but as it turned out there was no need to wear myself to a rag deciding between their relative importance, because neither Serena nor I really got a look in when it came to competing for Jake’s attention and the instant he discovered that I could not tell a hoof from a fetlock he virtually lost interest in me. Lindy fared slightly better, getting off to a good start by confessing that she was crazy about horseback riding. I suspect that she was equally ignorant on the subject of five-year-olds and equally reluctant to learn more, but she managed to conceal her boredom with a more soulful expression and the suppressed yawns, which occasionally tightened her mouth, as he listed the virtues and defects of his new steeplechaser, were swiftly transformed into little gusts of delighted appreciation.
Primrose, however, was his principal target and they seemed beautifully content to tell each other all over again what they had done together during the previous forty-eight hours, re-stating opinions they had stated at the time and congratulating each other on the acumen each had displayed. This performance aroused a faintly puzzled, but nonetheless respectful attention from Pelham, while Serena, watching it all as the needle dipped in and out, looked as though she were about to burst into song. Any clairvoyants among us would have needed to be on their toes to catch even a whiff of the calamities in store.
That the first thing to go wrong should have been the sirloin was particularly unfortunate, both on account of the prevalence of the American way of life among us, and also because it could so easily have been avoided. Serena had been in such a dither of happiness during the pre-dinner session that she had failed to herd us into the dining room until at least ten minutes after Mrs Thorne had given the signal to go. Moreover, still under the influence of this trance-like mood, she had allowed the schedule to get even further knocked about in the first course, when Jake had gone drooling on about some boring experience he had had in a Moscow hotel, with the rest of us simpering and twitching and casting anxious looks at our empty soup plates. It was a round table, so no one could jump up and start removing them, in pretended ignorance of one being still untouched.
Pelham was invited to carve and he stood at one end of the sideboard, with Primrose at the other piling up a tray for Nannie, and his voice carried less and less conviction as he asked us whether we preferred it well done or rare.
The answers varied a little, but the end product was the same in every case, crumbling chunks of brown boot leather.
The conversation had been general during this operation and so was the silence which followed it. Serena made a few tentative efforts to start the ball rolling again, but no one threw it back, mainly I imagine because we were all equally intent on maintaining the balance between eating enough broad beans and new potatoes to stay alive, and leaving enough to camouflage the uneatable beef.
In desperation, she embarked on a course which presumably she would have seen the folly of, had the situation been a trifle less tense:
‘Oh, by the way, Tessa,’ she said brightly. ‘Weren’t you going to tell me what happened upstairs this evening?’
I opened my eyes as wide as they would stretch, registering blankness, shot through, as I hoped, by a subtle gleam of warning, the latter passing unnoticed, however, for as though goaded beyond endurance by this universal lack of support she said impatiently: ‘Oh, you know, didn’t you say something rather amusing had cropped up while you were dressing for dinner?’
As it happened, I had not said anything of the kind, but considering that I should only worsen matters by arguing about it, I replied:
‘Oh, that? Well, it wasn’t so desperately funny. Just that the missing spectacles have been found and restored to their owner.’
‘Well, that’s good news! Where had the poor old silly put them?’
‘No one has any wine,’ Pelham said, bounding up and crossing to the sideboard to collect a fresh bottle, carefully scrutinising the label before he brought it to the table. ‘Where did you get this one?’ he asked, refilling Serena’s glass. ‘Rather going it a bit, aren’t you, old lady?’
‘What is it? Let me see, Pelham! Oh dear me, no, that never came out of my store cupboard. How could I have drunk a glass of it without realising that? Now, I wonder who we have to thank? Not you, by any chance, playing Santa Claus, was it, Jak
e?’
‘Well now . . . um . . . aw . . . ahm . . . must allow me my ar . . .’
‘You’re much too generous, my dear, and all your good deeds done by stealth! You don’t even give one a chance to say thank you.’
Naturally, I had hoped that this diversion would effectively smother the subject of Nannie and her spectacles, for Primrose had left the dining room door open and I considered that the least said about it the better while Mrs Thorne was in earshot. However, to my intense annoyance, the little murmurs of gratitude and appreciation over the claret petered out into another silence and Serena broke it by saying in a tone of command:
‘Well, come along, Tessa, what about the rest of the story? There must be more to it than that?’
This time it was Jake who came to my rescue:
‘You know,’ he began in his ponderous, gravelly voice, prefacing every second word with a whole spate of ahs and ums, ‘the greatest . . . single . . . impact on . . . returning to . . . this country is this fantastic . . . dichotomy . . . of attitudes.’
This led him into a most detailed and tedious exposition of the public concern for pollution, inflation, social unrest and a few dozen other undesirable things, as compared to the private individual’s preoccupation with life’s trivia, for all of which I felt excessively obliged to him.
‘I so agree,’ Lindy informed him earnestly, placing her elbows on the table and her palms together in a suitably prayerful attitude.
‘What happens,’ Jake continued, ignoring her intervention, ‘is that the ahm ahm ar entire world is . . . ah . . . in turmoil . . . and we sit here . . . ar um . . . worrying about whether some . . . ah old woman gets ar ar ar spectacles back. I don’t know ah whether to call that beautiful or just plumb crazy,’ he admitted, finishing with a burst of speed.
