Love Song

by Charlotte Bingham

  He looked back from the window at her. She was as usual busy cooking for her ever growing family, and now that she felt him looking at her she looked up and smiled at him. She was a very pretty woman, she looked after herself – Alexander noted that her figure had already more or less returned to its normal slender pre-pregnancy shape – and there was no doubt at all in his mind that he still loved her. Even if his father had been less intransigent towards the idea of divorce, Alexander knew he would still be more than reluctant to give up Hope.

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ Hope announced, going to the door to call her daughters to table while Alexander finished his whisky. ‘And what are you smiling about?’ she asked, although she too smiled.

  ‘Nothing. Just happy.’

  ‘I like to see you smiling.’

  Perhaps if she had known quite what Alexander was smiling about, Hope would have thought differently. Alexander, and he could not have said why, all at once had a good feeling about the future.

  ‘Will you at least think about a vasectomy, darling?’ Hope said, finishing an earlier conversation.

  ‘Of course, sweetheart. I will think about it, soonest.’

  Hope kissed him tenderly on the mouth, and Alexander pulled her closer, wishing that they did not have to hold back so long after babies. The wait seemed interminable, but – and he could not prevent the idea coming into his head – he still had other avenues open to him.

  * * *

  Some months later a letter arrived in the post for Alexander written in a beautiful old-fashioned hand, formally addressed to ‘Alexander Merriott, Esq.’ After he had picked it out of the basket on the front door he opened it as he headed out to keep yet another sexual assignation with Imogen at the newly built Ilchester Hotel in South Kensington.

  Hope passed him on her way in from the shops, noticing the letter he was now standing reading on the doorstep.

  ‘Would you believe it?’ he said. ‘It’s from my old Great-aunt Rosabel – and you know what? She’s only asked herself for Christmas.’

  ‘We’ve hardly got over last Christmas yet,’ Hope called back over her shoulder as she hurried inside out of the rain. ‘Besides,’ she added, laughing, ‘you said your Aunt Rosabel hated you, ever since you married me!’

  ‘She seems to have forgotten that she does, because it appears that there is nothing she would like better than to come and stay at West Dean Drive.’

  ‘You can’t be serious, love?’ Hope wandered back to the doorway. ‘She’s terribly grand, far too grand for us, and besides, with all the girls, where on earth are we going to put her? She can hardly have the bottom bunk.’

  ‘You know, I think we should invite the old lady, if she really wants to come.’

  Alexander returned to the subject that evening after he had got home, pouring them both a glass of wine and smiling at Hope.

  ‘Alex – you hate her. She hates you. Hardly very Christmasy for everyone. I really don’t see the point.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time for us to stop hating each other. And what better time than the season of goodwill?’ He did his innocent act, holding up his hands like a martyred saint. ‘Look,’ he continued, ‘if she wants to come, why not? What harm? After all, I used to be her favourite great-nephew – not that she has any others. And she’s old, and lonely. I’ll write to her, and see if she was serious.’

  The reply, however, was addressed to Hope, since it would appear that the old lady assumed, since Hope was the cook and hostess, it would be more proper to address her rather than her favourite nephew.

  How very kind of them to ask her, she wrote, ignoring the fact that she had asked herself – how very kind of them to have asked her to spend Christmas with them. Generally she spent it with her cousin Bobs, but as it so happened this coming Christmas Bobs had been persuaded to visit her daughter and her grandchildren whom she had never seen, in Canada, so Aunt Rosabel would be only too delighted to come and stay with them in London and to meet Hope, whom she had after all not had the pleasure of seeing since their first and only meeting before she had married Alexander, as well as Alexander’s little girls, who must be quite big by now.

  ‘You look a little down in the mouth, now that she actually is coming,’ Hope remarked after Alexander had finished reading his great-aunt’s reply. ‘After all, it was your idea to say she could come.’

  ‘I thought I could effect a U-turn. I tried to arrange it so that she’d ask us all down to Hatcombe. I mean it’s a huge house and there’s just her rattling around there.’

  ‘Maybe she wants it cosy,’ Hope replied in her ever practical way. ‘If she asks us all down there, think of the work. She’s an old lady, Alexander. A big family Christmas she doesn’t need.’

  ‘Listen to you,’ Alexander sighed. ‘You’re beginning to talk television speak. A big family Christmas she doesn’t need indeed.’

  Hope laughed, and then turned back to her cooking, but Alexander was all too occupied with his own feelings and would not let it go. ‘Slovenly speech is not good in any of us.’

  Hope looked at him, head on one side, eyes sympathetic. ‘OK, sweetheart, to use yet more television speak – want to tell me about it?’

  Alexander turned away, sighed, shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows as high as they would go but finally said in a low voice, ‘The trout farm scheme’s down the tubes.’

  ‘Oh, Alex, I am sorry.’

  But even as Hope put her arms round him and showed him all the kindness and sympathy she could muster, she felt anxiety once more engulfing her as if someone had thrown a heavy velvet curtain over her, and all her old worries about security began to surface once more.

  ‘What next then, darling?’

  ‘Wait and see,’ he said. ‘Just you wait and see.’

  Hope did wait and see, and unfortunately she did not have to wait for very long. She was alone in the house, with Verna out walking Letty in the park and the other three girls still in school. She wasn’t expecting anyone, so when the doorbell rang and through the double glass doors she saw two very large men waiting to be let in, not unnaturally she hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, having let herself into the porch while still keeping the outer door shut and bolted.

  ‘Mrs Merriott?’ the larger of the two men enquired loudly, holding up a white business card. ‘Swaine Debt Collection, madam.’

  ‘I don’t think you have the right house,’ Hope replied. ‘We don’t have any debts. I’m sure we don’t.’

  ‘I’m very much afraid you do, madam,’ the man replied with a smile and a tilt of his shaved head. ‘At least Mr Merriott does.’

  Hope hesitated.

  ‘If you don’t let us in, Mrs Merriott, we can get quite loud,’ the man assured her. ‘And streets like this have a lot of ears.’

  ‘To whom does my husband allegedly owe money?’ Hope asked as she opened the door, still leaving it on the chain.

  The second debt collector pulled an invoice from his pocket, holding it up for Hope to see. It was headed Bridge Street Garage. Seeing the letterhead, Hope slipped the chain and stood to one side, allowing the two men in.

  ‘Very sensible if I may say,’ the first one said, coming into the hall and looking round him. ‘Nice place.’

  Uninvited, he wandered into the double drawing room, followed by his stooge.

  ‘Yes, very tasty indeed,’ he said, looking closely at the fixtures and fittings. ‘Very classy. I can tell classy, Mrs Merriott, because we see a lot of interiors in this line of work, you know. And do you know what I say? When I see a place like this, I say I don’t get it. Grot, yes, OK, so they stretched themselves, got into too much debt – but when we come into houses like this I just don’t get it. I really don’t.’

  ‘Could you just tell me what this is about, please?’ Hope said. ‘My husband isn’t in at the moment—’

  ‘Your husband is as slippery as the proverbial eel, Mrs Merriott. He doesn’t answer his phone, he doesn’t answer any letters—�
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  ‘Just tell me what this is all about.’

  The stooge produced the invoice once again, this time handing it to Hope who read it carefully. It was for the fourth time of asking, the sum in question being £745.25 inc VAT for repairs to Alexander Merriott’s 1968 Mercedes 280SE coupé.

  ‘There must be some mistake. I’m sure my husband paid this.’

  ‘If he had done so, Mrs Merriott, we would not be here, I most earnestly assure you,’ the first man said. ‘And I’m afraid our orders are not to leave here without being paid. If you won’t pay us, then we shall have to collect in kind.’

  ‘You can’t possibly do that. I happen to know my rights. You don’t have the authority to do that.’

  The man in charge gave her a patronizing look. ‘You have some very nice things here, Mrs Merriott,’ he said, leaning his hand on Alexander’s prized Queen Anne bureau. ‘You wouldn’t like anything to happen to them, I feel sure.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Simply stating the obvious. People who have nice things don’t like nasty things happening to them. I would hardly call that a threat. Like I said, a statement of fact, that’s all.’

  Panic struck at last, Hope tried to reach Alexander on both his numbers but he was at neither one.

  ‘We don’t mind waiting, Mrs Merriott,’ the stooge said. ‘You get to be very patient in this job.’

  Knowing her children would be home any moment, Hope asked them to wait while she ran upstairs to get her personal cheque book. With a hand that shook with the worry and tension of it all, she wrote a cheque for the full amount, leaning on her dressing table before hurrying back downstairs.

  ‘We do normally prefer cash, Mrs Merriott,’ the head man said, ‘but seeing as you’re obviously a lady, we’ll make an exception.’

  The stooge took his cue, replacing a statuette he had been examining back on the china shelves and smiling at Hope.

  ‘Just as well you weren’t in here a moment ago, Mrs Merriott,’ he said. ‘I as near as dammit dropped that lovely little piece.’

  ‘If ever you or your hubby needs help collecting the rent, Mrs Merriott, just say the word,’ the leader said. ‘I’ve left my card on the mantelpiece.’

  Hope said nothing. After all, when all was said and done, there really was nothing left to say.

  She closed the front door behind them and leaning against it let out a sigh that as it ended sounded more like a sob.

  Naturally Alexander protested vigorously when Hope related the afternoon’s events to him, swearing that he had paid the account and ordering her to stop her cheque. For her part Hope doubted very much that any mistake had been made, advising Alexander first to check his bank statements and if he did find any anomaly to make representations to the garage in question.

  Finally Alexander muttered something about the state of the post nowadays before pouring his inevitable whisky and going to stare out at the rainsodden garden through the conservatory windows.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a private bank account!’ he called after Hope as she headed past him for the kitchen. ‘That’s a bit underhand, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s only that little bit of money my father left me. That’s all I have in it, just to help out with small things. We agreed that when I was left it, remember? Or perhaps you don’t.’

  ‘I do now, darling. But if you’d only reminded me we had something put aside—’

  ‘I never thought you would need it so badly.’

  ‘I could have used some of that, Hope. Saved us a little embarrassment.’

  ‘You should have told me you had got into debt. That might have been a much bigger help all round. To know where we stand.’

  ‘Trout farms! I can’t look at fish at the moment,’ Alexander muttered, clearing some condensation off the window in front of him. ‘It was the blasted trout farms that did me.’

  ‘Alex?’ Hope came back to his side and slipped her arm through his. ‘Talk to me. Tell me about it.’

  ‘How much money do you have?’

  ‘How much do you need?’

  Her husband turned and looked at her, then after a moment shook his head. ‘I wish you would leave these things to me,’ he said, and he looked irritated. ‘It really isn’t your worry, really. You get on with your things, and I’ll get on with mine.’

  ‘We have school fees to pay, Alex. We have to buy all sorts of new stuff for Rose, and Mellie needs some shoes – so does Claire. There are obviously other bills that need paying, so it is my worry too – I need money for my things, as you call them, as well, you know.’

  ‘It’s OK, darling,’ Alexander said, with his bravest smile, putting an arm round Hope’s shoulders and hugging her to him. ‘We’ll be all right.’

  ‘Are we always going to live this hand to mouth, Alexander?’

  ‘When I make a strike it won’t be hand to mouth any more. You just wait. It just needs one scheme to come good …’

  ‘How much do you need meantime, Alex?’

  Alexander breathed in deeply and sucked his teeth. ‘Five grand to be going along with,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you have it back.’

  Once Hope had written the cheque and done her subtractions, she discovered that she was left with just three and a half thousand pounds of her rainy day money; just three and a half thousand pounds from her small bequest.

  As she put her cheque book back in its secret place, Hope wondered how long she’d be able to hold on to the remainder. Obviously if she wanted to keep a hold on any of it, the most sensible thing would be for her to go out and get a job of some kind. Melinda already had a Saturday job, and Claire was talking of taking a computer course so that she could work as a ‘temp’ as soon as it was possibly possible – so why not her?

  The following evening when Alexander was out at a business dinner and the girls were in bed and asleep, Hope sat herself down at the kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate, a plate of biscuits and a copy of the local paper.

  There were so many situations vacant it made her head spin, and of course nothing suitable. She was above office cleaning and below accountancy, not trained in office work and unsuitable for bar work. She was too fastidious to become a ‘masseuse’ and certainly not desperate enough – and had far too much of a sense of humour – to become a ‘kissogram’. She was nearing the end of the paper when at last her eye was suddenly caught by something for which she really could be suitable. She sighed with relief. Wanted, it read. Trained dancer to teach ballet to infants. It might be that her much despised hoofing, as Alexander called it, was going to pay off after all.

  Chapter Four

  At first Alexander was not pleased. The way he saw it was that for his wife to be going to work meant a certain amount of loss of social face. It meant that he was not doing as well as he would have people believe, and – worse – it meant that Hope was not always at hand when he needed her.

  But as winter set in and Christmas with all its expense approached, Alexander realized there were advantages as well as disadvantages, and not all of the advantages were monetary. One of the main ones, in his eyes, was the fact that if Hope was out working, and therefore absent at regular times, he could pop next door to Imogen and save on the hotel bills. Hope’s working could be a saving all round. As long as Verna, the nanny, did not come back too early and find out he was next door, everything in the garden would be pretty perfect.

  Then again, Christmas was coming up in two weeks, and there was a goose to be plucked – not one for the table but one up from the country.

  The girls needed to be briefed about Great-aunt Rosabel. None of them knew anything about her, except that Hope had only met her once before her marriage to Alexander, and had possibly not been approved of by the old lady since she had never met her since. Nevertheless Hope did her best to paint a sympathetic picture of their father’s ageing relative, not wanting them to be put off the undoubtedly grande dame that she remembered. Most of all she w
anted them to recognize that Rosabel Williamson, wife of the late Harold Fairfield, came from another era, an era with different rules, and quite different attitudes.

  The little that Hope herself knew of the old lady led her to believe that Alexander’s great-aunt was, whatever else she might be, most definitely formidable. She had been successfully married to a much older, and very rich, man. Harold Fairfield had been one of the country’s leading archaeologists, as a result of which, Alexander teased the girls, Aunt Rosabel was prone to start every sentence, As you may well know, it was a common habit among the ancient Egyptians …

  Still, the old woman exercised a sort of fascination over the imaginations of both Hope and the girls, not least because she lived in a large house in the Vale of Pewsey in Wiltshire to which they had never been invited, but about which they loved to fantasize. Alexander, remembering Hatcombe from his boyhood, often described idyllic holidays spent there when he had used to go visiting in a pony and trap down the English country lanes, and he spoke of the house as being beautiful and classically set in lovely countryside.

  ‘Perfection,’ was how he finally described it. ‘Classical Georgian, those lovely long sash windows down to ground level, south facing – wonderful grounds. It could be one of those perfect English country houses that everyone wants and never can find.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she ask us down there for Christmas?’ Rose grumbled when Hope had finished instructing the girls on how not to behave in front of the old lady. ‘Such a large house, and just her!’