by Maggie Ford
One of the Family
Cover
Title Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Next in Series
About the Author
Also by Maggie Ford
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
One
Sometime in the night Henry James Adair Lett died – in the comfort of his own bed surrounded by rich maroon drapes, olive furnishings and all the beautiful objets d’art he had collected over the years.
His physician, Dr Jameson, put the time of death at around three o’clock, announcing it to have probably been in his sleep, and reflecting aloud, “Quite the best way to go,” for all that Henry Lett was only fifty-five.
He had been discovered around seven o’clock by one of the staff who had brought up his usual morning tea. Marjory, his second wife, twenty years younger than he – his first had died five years earlier – was hurriedly informed, they having separate bedrooms because of his heart condition. His incessant smoking – a habit he had acquired as a young man prior to the First World War – had contributed to that problem and had proved a folly in finishing him off at fifty-five. Marjory immediately telephoned the doctor, the few relatives her husband possessed, and the family solicitor, who held her husband’s Last Will and Testament.
The following day, with the deceased installed in the parlour of a firm of funeral directors, his relatives, his one close friend and his two permanent staff – others usually got from an agency if and when needed - gathered at Swift House, his home at Halstead Green in Essex with its three acres of grounds, to settle themselves around the huge dining-table while his solicitor, Mr Benjamin Raymond, sorted out his papers in preparation to reading the will.
“We’ll miss him,” Sheila Hurshell whispered, blinking away tears. “I know I shall.”
Her mother, the deceased’s sister Victoria, only surviving member of the immediate family now – his other sister Maud no longer alive, her two daughters married on the other side of the world, Henry’s brother Geoffrey and his wife killed in the war by a V1 rocket, leaving one son - gave a shrug.
“Had good innings, I’d say.” She kept her voice down. “He had a very successful life. One of the best restaurants in London. Head of the whole thing after first your grandmother, then your Uncle Geoffrey died. All the big names went there before the war. Not so now. Place gone downhill. And to think, him marrying again after your Aunt Grace died. To a woman half his age. Yes, I say he had good innings.”
“He was only fifty-five, Mummy. He should have lasted a lot longer.”
“All that smoking. His doctor warned him. Anyway, when it’s my turn, I wouldn’t complain about going like him.” The solicitor was rustling papers, leaning his ear towards something being whispered at him by his clerk bending over him. Victoria took advantage of the moment to enlarge on her potted philosophy, ignoring her husband’s dig, a hint that she should be quiet and attentive.
“I mean, he’s died the best time for anyone to die. November, one of the most miserable months of the year. Had the best of the summer. Doesn’t have to look forward to a dreary winter like the rest of us. Went in the best possible way too, after a hearty dinner, his usual cigar and a nightcap. He must have had some sense of well-being when he went to bed. Two or three hours’ sound sleep before going like that. The doctor said he couldn’t even have been aware he’d gone. He wouldn’t have felt any fear of the unknown. I suppose had he been aware he was about to pop off, that would have been a bit of upsetting—”
“Will you shut up!”
Victoria drew a offended breath through her nose as her husband’s harsh whisper hissed at her.
“Can’t stop rabbiting, can you? Not even here?”
Mr Raymond cleared his throat. The whispering faded. The spacious dining-room, almost sacrilegiously bright for this occasion despite the drawn pale green drapes, became hung with a waiting silence seeming to emphasise a faint stale reek of cigar smoke that lingered regardless of air fresheners, as if the very walls had soaked it up so that an over-imaginative soul might feel the man still here.
Benjamin Raymond glanced around the table.
“I apologise for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. We were waiting for the deceased’s son. I have now been told he has arrived.”
His eyes took in those present: the deceased’s wife; his sister; her husband and daughter; the deceased’s nephew Edwin, only son of his brother; the housekeeper; the manservant Pool; and William Goodridge, his restaurant manager, close friend and confidant for thirty-five years. Eight people – when the deceased’s son finally made an appearance, nine. Not a large gathering for one who was so successful in business – or who had been at one time, the man in later years a very private person, unlike his brother Geoffrey.
Henry and Geoffrey Lett had inherited their father’s business around 1920, Letts Oyster Bar as it had once been known handed down to James Lett from his father who’d received it from his, he having begun with a barrow around 1830 before acquiring premises just off Haymarket, at that time a twice-weekly market for cattle and sheep, hay and straw. The oyster bar had proved a magnet for hungry traders, oysters in those days constituting a cheap meal. The business thriving, it moved on to two other locations before settling just off Jermyn Street. Although it was failing a bit now, in the forward-looking desperation of a badly knocked-about post-war London – Henry Lett had insisted on clinging to old-fashioned values and had not really moved with the times – it was still one of the haunts of the rich and famous.
Noisy footsteps interrupted the solicitor’s flow of thought. A voice unnecessarily noisy and hearty invaded the room, and the young man – a youthful version of his late father, or perhaps more his late uncle – burst in through the door.
“Sorry I’m late, folks. Got held up around Hampton Court. They’ve got a road up. Damned long queue – seems like everyone in England’s got a car these days. Anyway, hope I haven’t held anyone up.”
“You have. Come and sit down, Hugh,” his stepmother shot at him, but as he took his seat he gave her a look that said he wasn’t a child to be remonstrated with, nor was she his real mother with any right to do so.
Mr Raymond cleared his throat to help combat this brief display of animosity. He was aware that though there existed a long-standing dislike of each other, one aspect stepmother and stepson did share was that, since both expected to be vastly better off under the will, neither wanted involvement with the deceased’s presently declining business. Mr Raymond guessed that whichever became the majority shareholder would sell and be rid of the encumbrance. The wife was young – thirty-five. Henry Lett had been smitten by her, feeling the loss of his first wife, and his wealth had created a shining path before her feet. Now Henry Lett was dead and Mr Raymond half suspected Marjory Lett had an admirer lurking somewhere. She wouldoff at the first decent opportunity, she and the money Henry would leave to her. She had no wish to be burdened by a failing business that could collapse and take all her money with it.
Hugh – professional name Hugh Derwent – deemed himself a budding Shakespearean actor, having enjoyed quite a few small parts in several of the Bard’s major tragedies. Seeing himself in a leading role within the next few years, he had absolutely no interest in his father’s plebeian restaurant business, even less so now that it was going downhill. His eyes were set on grander horizons. He too would sell
the shares he was confident of inheriting – he and his stepmother were in agreement on that one. Then, each with their haul, they could go their separate ways.
Pity. Letts still had a lot to offer; in the right hands would rise again, phoenix-like, from the embers of the fine reputation in which it had basked during the years between the wars – its heyday, one might say. But as far as he was aware, Mr Raymond could see that not one of those around this table was willing or interested in carrying Letts on; each wealthy in his own way, none caring to inherit an ailing restaurant, only the shares Henry had left, and then they too would go in with the widow or the son and take their cut.
Mr Raymond cleared his throat again and began reading, inwardly amused by each reaction, the tiny satisfied sigh or the disappointed sniff.
* * *
“I expect you’re feeling quite happy with your little windfall,” Edwin Lett remarked to William Goodridge as they were handed their coats in the hall, the other beneficiaries beginning to split up in readiness to leave, the two staff named in the will already back on duty, eyes bright at their small gifts.
Edwin’s remark was made kindly and was taken in that vein, the fifty-seven-year-old restaurant manager nodding sociably.
“I am, Mr Lett. Very pleased. Your uncle and I became good friends with the passing years, even though he was my employer. He was that kind of man. I remember him in the old days, coming into the business after his father died late in 1920. I’d been there eighteen months, starting as a mere debarrasseur. I left the army at twenty-two after the first war, came out without a scratch and found work straight away – luckier than the poor blighters who’d copped one and couldn’t get any job. But I couldn’t get promoted very far. It was your uncle who gave me a chance. He was about two years younger than me. I’m sure he didn’t know what he was doing. But he seemed to have faith in me, perhaps because we were so close in years, neither of us sure of ourselves. He’d been in the war too, a captain. But he had no side to him. We often had a drink together in one of the pubs around the corner in London.”
A girl was coming in through the main door, her coat pulled round her against the cold November air outside. The sight of her turned Edwin’s gaze. He had only been half listening to Goodridge’s reminiscences, his mind more on the way Hugh and his stepmother had got their heads together after Hugh’s first shock of the wife having been given the controlling share of the business instead of him. They had agreed quite amicably, probably for the first time ever, that the business would go, and the others, including himself, were now faced with either selling their shares or hanging on to see who would buy it. Now Edwin forgot to think about it, his gaze concentrated on the young girl. She was stunning – tall, her fair hair loose about her shoulders, her hazel eyes the largest he had even seen, with a figure slim enough for a model’s. She looked to be about twenty-four, two years younger than he.
Her wide lips parted in a bright smile. “I’ve got the car outside. Are you ready, Dad?”
“Just about.” Seeing his companion’s eyes go from concentrating on the girl to glancing questioningly back at him, William Goodridge’s elderly features creased in an amused grin. “Helen, my daughter. Helen, this is Henry Lett’s nephew, Edwin. Helen dear, you go ahead, keep the car warm. I’ll follow you out. Won’t be a moment.”
As she turned away, treating Edwin to her wide smile, her father’s grin grew wistful. “Helen is our one and only child; I was thirty-three when she came to town. She looks so like her mother sometimes.”
Edwin was still gazing after his daughter and seemed not to have heard him. William’s eyes glazed a little, remembering a tall girl in a faded coat and ragged tam-o’-shanter, her face peaked with hunger, hanging around the kitchen door at the back of Letts. Under the wretched pallor of poor food she too had been beautiful. Her eyes had been hazel also, and very wide as she implored to be given work, no matter how menial. Mr Samson, the chef, a large, loud, bull-headed man, had been all for kicking her out but Will had been so struck by what he saw under all that deprivation, he had taken pity on her, or been smitten by her – he wasn’t sure after all these years what it had been – and had pleaded for her to be given a job of washing-up…
“Well, I’d best be off.”
The voice broke through William’s thoughts, startling him back to the present. “Yes, me too.” They struggled into their coats. “Are you going to sell your shares now?” he asked Edwin Lett on a sudden impulse.
“I suppose so,” came the absent reply. They moved together towards the large main door with its porticoed frontage. “A bit sad though. I know the whole thing’s going down, but it’s a shame to see something die.”
“You think so?” Hope rang in William’s tone. “You know it could still be saved if—”
“No hope,” Edwin cut in, surveying the November mist that lay across the gardens beyond the open door. In London it would be thick yellow fog, spoken of these days as smog, because of all the smoke it held suspended in it. “It’s had its day. My uncle refused to change with the times and this is his reward. He’d turn in his grave if he knew.”
“He’s not buried yet,” reminded William, a little sternly.
Edwin gave a small apologetic grimace, then attempted to make light of the error. “Well then, he’d turn in the funeral parlour if he knew.”
“That he would,” agreed William. “He put his life into that place. It was a wonderful place, right up to the war and all through it. It’s only since 1947 that it’s gone down. But you wouldn’t know about the old days, you just a young boy in the thirties. I could tell you some tales.”
* * *
Edwin Lett felt a little annoyed – well, not annoyed exactly. Sad. Yes, he’d been willing enough to sell his shares in agreement with the rest of the family. They all knew that trying to keep Letts going in its present old-fashioned state would be like rolling a granite rock uphill. Any attempt at modernising it would take up a lot of time and money, and no one, including himself, fancied spending their time and money on it. It had had its day, and his step-aunt, now holding the majority share, had been approached by two people eager to buy the business, one offer too good to refuse though made by a company who intended changing the name to bring it under the umbrella of their own business.
She had called a meeting and they had all agreed: cash in hand was far better than a failing restaurant. But the name of Letts would die, and that was Edwin’s regret. He felt sentimental. He’d liked his uncle, who’d worked all his life keeping that name going. Letts was still one of the best known oyster and fish restaurants in London. Members of Parliament came there, the lesser royals on occasion, stars of stage and screen – though maybe not the great film names of yesterday – and they liked the outdated decor, the atmosphere. But it no longer thrived as it had done in years gone by, those years between the wars that old William Goodridge had described briefly as they’d left that day after the reading of Uncle Henry’s will.
Edwin sat by the telephone, one hand lying on it, his mind indecisive. Should he ring William Goodridge? What would he say to him? That he was selling his shares and that Goodridge ought to sell his while he had the chance? But that wasn’t the reason he would lift the receiver and dial the number on the piece of paper in his hand. There was another reason.
* * *
“We could discuss it in my local,” William had suggested over the phone.
Uncertain why a pub rather than a quiet restaurant or his own flat or even Goodridge’s home, Edwin had agreed. Perhaps Goodridge felt more at ease in his own local. Now they were sitting together at a small, unsteady, black-painted bentwood table in this dark panelled pub, William with a pint of bitter, he with a double Scotch which at this moment he felt he needed.
Unloading his dilemma on to the man was proving disconcerting. Edwin was having to raise his voice uncomfortably over the Tuesday lunchtime hubbub of drinkers. This wasn’t his world. He moved in a world of night-clubs, he and his friends, the gra
nd circle or a box at the theatre or opera, Ascot royal enclosure or the stands at Goodwood; tennis clubs; private house parties, always with a girl on his arm, often looking up old service chums, all of them, like him, ex-army officers.
Since being demobbed he’d enjoyed a lot of time on his hands to decide what to do with his life but so far he had done nothing, unable to make up his mind. He was pretty well off with the house and money that had come to him on his parents’ death. There was no need to work. Yet work was the staff of life. Without it, life was nothing, vacant, or had became so of late. With the pleasure of freedom after army restriction at last starting to rub off, he had begun to feel he should be doing something with his life.
But why choose Goodridge to unload these problems on? Why need to confide in him, a mere friend of Uncle Henry, of all people? Why not his own friends?
He knew why. None of them would feel as he was feeling at this moment. None of them would put themselves in his shoes; they would merely laugh, shrug, and mutter, “It’s up to you, old boy, what you do.”
There was something about William Goodridge, something solid and dependable. One felt any words issuing forth from that square mouth set in that square jaw beneath the large nose, grey deep-set eyes and thick greying eyebrows would be words of wisdom and experience, well thought out. Even the way the man was contemplating his pint glass of beer instilled a sense of trust. Edwin took a fortifying swig of his whisky.
“This meeting my family had. They’re all for selling the business and having done with it. None of them wants the burden of it. Neither do I, I suppose. It’d cost the earth to bring it up to date. Anyhow, there’s been two interests. One is offering silly money though they say they’re happy to keep the name going. The other is far more attractive and it does let everyone off the hook. They all see the business as a weight around their necks. The only trouble is the people want to drop our name and use theirs. Nor are they a particularly high-class establishment. A sort of mediocre waitress service, a self-service area for office workers’ lunches so I am told, and even sandwiches for taking away. Bloody uncivilised way of eating.”
