However, he knew his absence from the supper table wouldn’t be questioned, for he often worked late, and so he took the back staircase that gave on to the end of the gallery, then made for his bedroom. There, he sat by his window for some time, but try as he might he could not get his mind to reveal that something that was troubling him.
Three
He dismissed the cabby at the gates of Meadow House, telling him not to wait as he didn’t know what time he would be returning. And he pushed open the iron gates and glanced towards the small lodge to the right of him before going on up the drive. He had walked about forty yards up the slightly curving tree-bordered drive to a sharper curve, almost a bend; and there was the house. It lay beyond a wide lawn, bordered on each side by a grassy bank. The house itself was tall and appeared narrow. There was no symmetry about it. To the right side of it three windows seemed to top each other, the last one disappearing under the eaves; to the left side of the door there was a blankness. The only redeeming feature of the house at this moment seemed to be its stone, which was a creamy-yellow.
There was a wide opening between the end of the house and the grassy bank, and he only just glimpsed that this led into a courtyard. The front door was of plain black oak, with a bell pull to the side.
He rang the bell twice before he heard a scurrying behind the door. And then it was pulled open, and there was Florrie McLean beaming at him, saying, ‘Why, Mr Douglas! How nice to see you. Come on in by. Come on in.’
After saying, ‘Good day, Florrie,’ he stepped past her into what appeared a very narrow hallway and waited. Having closed the door, Florrie now pushed open another that was already ajar, and he again passed her and almost stopped in surprise, for he was now in a short panelled corridor which led into a hall. This, too, was panelled, as far as he could make out, from floor to ceiling.
‘Oh, come an’ take a seat, sir. Look, I’ll send for miss. She’s down at the old stables. They’re doin’ them up, you know. Come in the sitting room and bide there. I won’t be a minute. She’ll be delighted to see you. The fire is ablaze; it’s lovely and warm in here.’
Again he was passing her and again he almost stopped in surprise as Florrie pointed down the long room, saying, ‘Make yourself comfortable, sir. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’
He was walking up the room now, smiling, and his eyes roaming from side to side. His view of the front of the house had certainly not kindled his imagination to assume the interior might be anything like this. The room was bright with colour, and strangely unfussy. The mantelshelf, he noticed at once, did not bear a fringed velvet border. There were no antimacassars on the chair backs. The chesterfield fronting the fire was covered with a chintz-patterned cover, as were the two big armchairs set one at each side of the large open fireplace, in which he became immediately interested because the surround was made of carved stone.
He now stood with his back to the fire and gazed about him. The walls were covered in an embossed paper; it was colourful but subdued, as was the carpet. He looked down at the carpet. It may have been a bright red at one time, patterned with bouquets of flowers, but now, like the rest of the room, it was subdued with wear. Right opposite him on the far wall was a davenport. This writing desk was the only evidence of the usual finicky lady’s touch in the room. On each side of it was a china cabinet and by the glint over this distance one was holding coloured glasses. There were a few occasional tables, and a sofa table at the head of the couch, but none was cluttered with knick-knacks. On one was a large bowl of coloured leaves, no flowers among them. He looked towards the door, waiting for her entrance. But after a moment he left the rug and walked further up the room to where the ceiling gave way to a narrow arch supported by columns. Beyond was what looked like a huge alcove, for in it was placed a grand piano and a number of chairs, and beyond these the whole length of the wall was taken up with an enormous window. Slowly now he walked to the window, and his surprise grew, for he was looking on to a set garden, some of the beds still showing late roses, others cleared for the winter. Putting his head closer to the window now he looked along to what appeared to be the real front of the house, and from what he could glimpse it stretched some good distance away.
He started back when the door opened and Bridget’s voice said, ‘Oh, hello. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.’ She came forward to him, her hand outstretched, and he took it and the first thing he said was, ‘What a remarkable and beautiful home you have here, Bridget.’
‘It isn’t bad.’ She was smiling broadly at him. ‘I must show you round. Come and sit down; I’ve ordered tea. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’
‘Oh, there are many reasons I could give you and all would be lies. But what isn’t a lie is, I’ve been very busy. I’ve…well, I could say’—he now struck a pose—‘I’m a businessman. Like yourself, I’m in business: I have taken on a mason, besides the boy I already had. He is a retired man, at least forced into retirement because of lack of employment. But he’s a very good man with his hands, and what is more he has got a good head and he has put me wise as to how to go about selling my wares.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad, Douglas. And it’s wonderful to have an occupation. But come and sit down.’
They were sitting side by side on the couch and she was looking at him, and there was a tender note in her voice as she said, ‘Oh, I am pleased to see you, Douglas. It’s awful to admit…well, not awful, but it’s strange for me to say that I have no-one to talk to. Yet I am among people all day either in the house or out of it, but having said that I really have no-one to whom I can talk.’
He gazed at her in silence for a long moment before he said, ‘You don’t need to try to explain that feeling to me, Bridget, for I think I was born with it: I cannot remember ever being able to talk to anyone in that house of ours. Right from a child I was told to be polite to the staff, but, and you may not believe this, but my Mama once said to me, “You must not talk to the staff, Douglas, as if they were ordinary people. They are not. God has seen fit to make them lesser mortals. To a degree you are expected to be considerate, but you mustn’t talk to them as if they were intelligent beings. All that is required of you is to be polite, correctly polite.”’
When Bridget said nothing to this, although her eyes widened and her mouth fell slightly apart, he nodded at her and said, ‘Oh, yes, that was Mama. As for Papa and Lionel, and my two uncles who are long since dead, and cousins from my Mama’s side who would visit us now and again, should I speak to any of them what was in my mind, as I once did—’ He wagged his head now before, adopting a childish voice, he said, ‘I heard a blackbird singing today. It sang four notes of a Beethoven Sonata. This was received by one of my cousins with, “I think you should look out for that one, Will; his brains are as undersized as his body. You’ll have trouble there, mark my words. If I had him I know what I would do with him.”’
Douglas started to laugh now, saying, ‘Oh, yes, I know what Uncle Herbert would have done with me. He had a farm up in Scotland. He couldn’t keep his staff; I would have been put to see to the pigs.’
Bridget, too, laughed now as she said, ‘Well, don’t forget that was what Claudius did before he became Emperor of Rome. Oh, here’s tea.’
When Mary Benny came in, pushing a tea trolley, and Florrie carrying a large silver tray, made more heavy with a silver tea service, Douglas rose to his feet and, taking the tray from Florrie, said, ‘Where do you want it?’
‘It would be a good idea to put it on the table, sir.’
There was laughter all round at this, and the girls were still laughing as they hurried from the room.
It was as Bridget was pouring the tea, she said to him, ‘What would your mother have made of that pair?’
‘Oh, that the devil had entered into them. He would have been made the culprit, daring them not only to speak as they did, but also to speak before they were spoken to. Out of the gates they would have gone with their bundles, quick march, an
d without a reference.’
‘Well, thank God, times have changed. And they’re changing fast in all ways, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, but not fast enough.’ He looked down at the cup and saucer in his hand and into the steaming tea as he said now, ‘I wish I was clever. I wish I had brains. I wish I was tall and forceful. I wish all things that are impossible, all those things that would mean I could make myself felt: get into Parliament and force them to right the wrongs that I see every time I go into a town, or pass a factory. But what am I saddled with? A mass of frustrations because I have none of these things that I wish for.’
‘Mr Disraeli was a very small man. He had also the disadvantage of being a Jew, yet he was the favourite of the Queen.’
‘Oh, Bridget, you are so practical, so down to earth. You are trying to tell me that if I liked I could have risen above my obstacles. But no, dear, I couldn’t, because I know my capabilities. I have a grasshopper mind. It only seems to rest, or come to a standstill, when I take a mallet in my hand and beg the stone to show its heart and to guide me to chip out a hand, or the curve of an arm, or better still, the soft cheeks of a child.’
‘Here’—she pushed a plate of sandwiches towards him—‘there’s fresh salmon in them. Now, while you’re eating, let me tell you, Douglas Filmore, that you are a fraud, because you know that you are a highly intelligent individual, you know that you bring poetry out of stone, and not only out of stone, you put it into words, and here you are, sitting there trying to get me to sympathise with you because you’re not tall, because you cannot get into Parliament and talk the ears off a donkey and at the end of it will have said nothing.’
Douglas had taken a bite of the sandwich and now he had to press his hand tight across his mouth because he was about to splutter it out. When he finally managed to swallow it his shoulders were shaking and his eyes were wet, and with suppressed laughter still in his voice he was able to say, ‘Oh, Bridget, you do me good. And you’re so right. I wasn’t playing on your sympathy, though, but only trying to make you understand I knew how you felt with regard to feeling alone. I know it’s an awful thing to say, but a few years ago I had come to the conclusion that I preferred animals to people; for instance Gippo. I talk and mutter to him by the hour when I’m working.’ In answer to the look of enquiry on her face, he explained, ‘Gippo’s my dog, he’s a mongrel, a cross between an Airedale and a Labrador. I don’t know which end of him belongs to which. But I’m sure that animal understands every word I say. I know for sure he understands my moods. He is nine now and I dread the time when he’ll be no more. He was the runt of a litter and I saved him from the water tank. One of the men was taking him across the yard by the scruff of the neck and he was yelping, and when I stopped him the little beast put its forepaws out and clawed towards me, and that was that.’
They had almost finished their tea when she asked quietly, ‘Did you say anything to your brother…about the matter we discussed before I moved?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, I said something to him all right.’
He was looking towards the fire, and after waiting longer than she could stand for him to enlarge on the something, she said sharply, ‘Well, what did he say? What was his reaction?’
He turned and looked at her and replied quietly, ‘I don’t really know. I’m puzzled by it still. At first when I tackled him he seemed concerned; in fact his face drained of colour. Then when I accused him of taking down an innocent working girl, he almost laughed, and he treated the matter so lightly that I got flaming mad. One thing led to another so that we almost came to blows…Oh, don’t look so surprised, Bridget; he would have come off second best, I can assure you. My size and slimness is very deceptive, I’m really quite strong. There are, you know, such things as lightweight boxers.’ He smiled at her. ‘But…’
‘Yes, but?’ She prompted him now.
‘Well, I don’t know how to put this, but there’s something troubling me, something I am trying to recall but yet don’t want to recall.’
‘Is it anything to do with Joe or Lily, or the baby?’
‘I…I don’t know. And by the way, from what Victoria said yesterday, I understand that you have taken the girl and the baby under your care. She didn’t seem at all pleased.’
‘No, I know that. But then it’s got nothing to do with her.’
‘Are they here, in the house?’
‘Oh, no, no. They are down in the lodge. You would pass it at the entrance to the drive. It’s only a very small place, a kitchen-cum-living room and two bedrooms. But she’s happy to be there. She comes up and helps in the kitchen and brings the baby with her.’ She smiled now. ‘That was another thing: I had to put it to my small retinue whether they would accept her…well, make a place for her among them. They’ve all been with me for a long time, you know, Jessie, and Danny, and Peggie the cook, and my two merry maids, Mary and Florrie. They work happily together and I didn’t want to spoil that. But they were in sympathy with my suggestion, not that she should live in the house but that she should make her quarters down in the lodge. It used to be Jimmy Tierney’s quarters. He helps Frank Matthews do the gardens, you know. He also helps Johnny Moran, who is the yard man. So Jimmy didn’t mind moving his quarters to the rooms above the stables. I’ve made them quite comfortable for him. I told him that he can go back into the lodge later, once I get the old farmhouse and the barn rebuilt. These are some buildings at the bottom of the field. You’d be interested in them, the walls are two feet thick. Once I get them done I’ll fit them up for Lily and the child. And you know something, Douglas Filmore…that baby boy is your nephew, legitimate or not.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to remind me of that, Bridget. I’ve thought of that for some time now and felt something should be done for him and his mother. Yet, what could I do? But then there was you, you were doing everything you possibly could. It was as if the tables were turned and it was your nephew.’ He paused before adding, ‘And the fact that it wasn’t even Joe’s child and you’re doing all this is something so admirable that I can’t find words to express what…’
‘Well, don’t try, Douglas, just don’t try. I don’t need any thanks. I don’t feel I’m doing anything other than what another thinking person would do for the widow of one of her valued employees. Look at it like that, will you? Well then, have you had enough to eat?’
‘More than enough. And now there is something I would like to do.’
‘What is that?’
‘I would like to see the rest of the house and this old place that has stone that might interest me, as you said.’
‘Well, what’s stopping us?’ She rose from the couch and he with her. ‘Where shall we start? By the way—’ She spread out her hand towards the window and the gardens beyond, saying, ‘That part is really the front of the house. You come in by the side wall, a very odd arrangement. The entrance isn’t attractive at all. Well now’—she was walking into the hall—‘I understand the house was built over a hundred years ago by a shipowner. It was the only one of its kind in this part of the county at that time, and being who he was he had all this mahogany brought in. Hence the hall here and the passages, and the staircase’—she now pointed to the broad spiral staircase—‘were all panelled. Upstairs, too; wherever he could stick wood on the walls that’s what he did. The dining room, also, is panelled. Here it is.’ She had turned to her right and was opening a door, and again he felt compelled just to stand and gaze about him; and his voice was full of admiration when he said, ‘It’s beautiful, really beautiful. And the furniture, too, really beautiful.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is; but I find it a little heavy, for it’s difficult to bring colour into rooms that are panelled. They all have a certain austereness, a certain dignity that says: Now don’t play about with me.’
She smiled at him now before turning and walking out into the hall again. Here, pointing to the end of it, she said, ‘That door leads into the kitchen and beyond the kitchen are six rooms in all: Danny
and Jessie’s bedroom and sitting room, and the girls’ rooms. And, of course, Peggie’s. They each have a room to themselves; the other one used to be called the wine cellar. We now use it mainly for storing hams and such. I understand the racks in it were packed from floor to ceiling when the first owner was alive. But Father wasn’t a heavy drinker, so our wine cellar was nearly always bare, except for occasions. I’ll show you that part later. But over here—’ She now crossed the hall to a corridor and, opening the first door, she said, ‘This is the breakfast room. How he missed panelling this one I’ll never know. We use it mostly for eating in; in fact, I use it all the time for eating, breakfast, dinner and supper, because after Father died I found no need to entertain.’
He had gone quickly to the window now and stood viewing another aspect of the garden. ‘It’s an amazing house,’ he said. ‘How much land have you?’
‘About six acres, that is besides the field where the stables and the old farmhouse stand.’
Out in the corridor again, she opened another door, saying, ‘This is my study.’
‘Oh yes? Yes, it is a compact library. I’m sure you have more books in here than they have back at the house.’
‘Yes, there are a great number, but I’m afraid I’ve only managed to read a smattering of them here and there. My grandfather, you know, collected books, not I’m afraid for the knowledge or the entertainment they might have afforded him but for the bindings.’ She laughed as she pointed to the rows and rows of leather-bound volumes, saying, ‘He wanted them to match the panelling.’
He was looking at her desk now and from there to the two tall wooden filing cabinets set in the wall, one at each side of a fireplace in which a fire was burning brightly, and he said, ‘This is where you conduct all your business?’
The Black Candle Page 19
