by Judy Nunn
Sam stared into the eyes of the young Phoebe Chisolm. And as she did so, she heard a sudden burst of laughter. The laughter of a young woman, impish and tantalising. The sound was as clear as a bell, but came from some distance, there was someone in the front garden, surely. She crossed to the bay windows and looked out, but no-one was there.
‘Did you hear that?’ she asked.
‘What?’ Reg paid her scant attention as he continued to admire the painting.
‘A girl. Laughing.’
‘No. You didn’t tell me you had a Hampton portrait. It came with the house, did it? Rather generous of the owners to throw it in with the deal, I must say. It’d probably be worth a bit. Not that he’s widely known outside art circles, but he’s very respected.’
Sam crossed back to the fireplace and looked once again into Phoebe’s eyes. The laughter had gone now. Then she noticed the family photograph sitting on the mantelpiece. Arthur Chisolm, his wife Alice, and baby Phoebe. She stared in bewilderment at both the photograph and the portrait. ‘How did they get here?’ she whispered.
Reg glanced at her, realising for the first time her complete amazement. ‘You mean you didn’t know they were here?’ he queried. ‘Well, I suppose it must be the surprise your friend Jim Lofthouse was referring to.’ He turned back to the painting. ‘Lucky you,’ he said. ‘She’s quite lovely. Look at the movement, the way he’s captured her head turning into that shaft of light. Magic.’
Of course, Sam told herself, this was Jim’s surprise. And the laughter had been of her own imagining. A reaction to the shock of seeing Phoebe’s portrait. The chain of events that had taken place had left her altogether too keen to read the extraordinary into the perfectly explicable.
‘Yes, she is lovely, isn’t she?’
As Reg had said, it was generous of the owners to allow the portrait and photograph to stay with the house, but it was also rather out of character, Sam thought, recalling Jim’s description of the businessman who couldn’t wait to sell the place. Oh well, the full story would have to wait until tomorrow when she could call in to the real estate office. She didn’t dare leave the house until the furniture had arrived. The removal company had promised delivery by early afternoon, and she wanted to get fully settled in today.
Reg insisted upon waiting with her. ‘What happens if it doesn’t turn up?’ he argued. ‘You can hardly sleep on the floor, we’ll have to book you into a hotel.’ Which had been his suggestion from the outset. He’d thought it ludicrous she should plan to spend that first night in the house, but she’d been adamant.
Reg’s fears were unfounded, however. The furniture arrived at half past two, by which time she’d given him the full guided tour and unpacked the supplies she’d bought en route. As the removal truck pulled up in the driveway, they were leaning on the island bench in the cosily heated stables draining the last of the coffee from the thermos flask and devouring a packet of chocolate biscuits.
The furniture which Sam had acquired for her small London flat would fit perfectly into the stables, Reg had suggested as they’d chatted over their biscuits and coffee. It’d be madness to attempt setting herself up in the main house. She’d nodded agreement as if it was a breakthrough idea, not telling him that it had always been her intention.
She refused to allow him to stay and help. ‘You’ll be arriving home in the dark if you leave it much longer,’ she insisted, and Reg took one look at the two hefty removal men lugging an armchair apiece and agreed there was little he could add by way of assistance.
‘Don’t forget to do your homework,’ he said before he left, patting the script which sat on the island bench. Reminding young actors of the necessity for homework was Reginald Harcourt’s standard procedure, although he knew it wasn’t necessary in Sam’s case.
Outside in the courtyard, he surveyed the vastness of Chisolm House. ‘Well, I suppose it could be a whole new career for you if the movie bombs and Hollywood fails to beckon.’ She gave him a querying look. ‘You could employ a manager,’ he said, ‘and turn it back into a B and B. I believe they do very well in Fareham.’
‘Always an option.’ She laughed as she hugged him. ‘Goodbye, Reggie, thanks for everything.’
‘Enjoy your hibernation, Sam. I’ll see you in a week.’
The workmen moved speedily. It was their last delivery of the day and an easy one at that; they’d be able to knock off earlier than anticipated. Barely an hour later everything was in place. The wooden bed base was the only item which proved a bit of a problem, and the railings of the staircase bore the scars to prove it.
‘Sorry about that, but it can’t be helped,’ one of the men gruffly apologised. ‘Just as well it’s not a queen size, we’d never have got it up here.’
‘No worries, it’s fine,’ Sam assured him. It was amazing the men had managed to manoeuvre the heavy wooden double bed base upstairs at all, she thought, recalling the small iron bedstead with its single mattress upon which she and Pete had slept entwined.
‘Have a beer,’ she said when they’d finished, ‘my shout.’
They were bewildered by the term, but not by the tip. ‘Anything else we can do for you, love?’ they asked as they pocketed their twenty quid apiece.
‘No thanks, you’ve been great.’
They left, and Sam looked about at her new home. The four-seater dining table and chairs, the small three-piece lounge set, the bookcase, the coffee table and other sundries all sat comfortably in the open-plan living space. It was as if they’d been made for the stables.
She decided to go for a walk before the early autumn dusk set in – the unpacking of boxes and suitcases could wait. As the owner of Chisolm House she was a part of Fareham now and she needed to reacquaint herself with the town.
She turned left into Osborn Road. Across the street was Ferneham Hall, but she wouldn’t visit the theatre, she decided; it was the older parts of Fareham which beckoned. She rounded the corner at St Peter’s and St Paul’s Church and walked down High Street to the broad avenue of West Street, passing the popular bakery on the corner and recalling the smell of hot bread and the queues which had stretched for blocks. But it was Sunday now and the place was closed. West Street was deserted and she recalled how they used to joke that Fareham ‘closed on Sundays’. As always, however, across the road at the Red Lion the lights were on and the windows were opaque with the steam of activity inside. Perhaps she’d call in for a beer and a snack on her way home. But she’d explore the back streets for a while; she still had a good hour before dusk.
She turned into the small laneway of Adelaide Place which she’d never noticed before, her intention being to cut through to the Quay. But she found it was a dead end. A line of mews faced narrow, wire-fenced garden allotments on the other side of the tiny street, a locked gate opposite each front door. Some yards were neglected, some served as large playpens with a kiddy’s bike or a sandpit dug in the corner. Others proudly boasted vegetable gardens, or shrubs and carefully tended flower beds, here and there a potting shed at the rear. It was a private world locked away from the mainstream hustle and bustle and Sam felt like a trespasser. She heard a man’s voice through one of the half-open windows.
‘Now you two be careful on that train, Jane, no talking to strangers, mind.’
Quickly she retraced her steps before the door behind her could open and her intrusion be discovered. She turned left into Quay Street and eventually crossed the railway line to arrive at the grassy recreational park beside the water.
Several young boys were kicking a soccer ball around and an elderly couple were seated at a bench. They smiled at Sam and she smiled in return as she leaned on the metal railings overlooking the water. The tide was out and the several dinghies, listing on their sides upon the muddy flats of the Upper Quay, looked stranded and ineffectual, but the nearby ship-building yard with its slipways and hoisted vessels currently under repair was proof of a thriving trade. She looked across Fareham Creek to the Lower Quay where boats we
re moored side by side in the deeper water and the large redbrick facade of the old grain store towered over the neighbouring dockyard buildings. Linking both quays was the promenade of Gosport Street which forded Gillies Brook, and she crossed the bridge, passing the Castle in the Air, the old sailors’ pub, white-washed, cheery and inviting. From the Lower Quay, she looked back across the creek to the ship-building yard and the wide expanse of public recreation ground. The elderly couple had gone now, but the boys continued to kick the soccer ball about in the gathering dusk and, in the distance, a pair of young lovers walked hand in hand along the railed waterside path which extended the full length of the park. It seemed strange to think that these sleepy quays and dockyards remained an active port; that they had indeed been a hive of industry in years gone by. But then that was Fareham’s fascination, Sam thought. It held its own in the modern world, and yet it retained such a link with times past that it was as if she had stepped into yesteryear.
She called in at the Red Lion on her way home. It was as crowded and noisy as ever, but then there was nothing else to do in Fareham on a Sunday night. Things hadn’t really changed at all, she thought. People jostled at the bar and crammed their chairs around the packed tables in the back rooms, making movement impossible but nobody minded.
Sam bought herself a beer, queued up to put her order in at the food counter, then managed to grab a spare seat near the front bay windows, others being more interested in scoring the booths on either side. A waiter delivered her plate of crispy potato skins with melted cheese. Even when you could find a place in Sydney that served them, they somehow never tasted the same, she thought. And, as she watched the groups intent upon having a good time, she didn’t feel at all lonely.
‘ ’Ello love, can we buy you an ale?’ He was a pleasant-looking young man in his early twenties, a little the worse for drink but harmless. ‘Me and me mate are down from London and we’ve got a bet on. We know you’re from the telly, but we dunno which show.’ He beckoned to his friend who started elbowing his way through the crowd. ‘Bert reckons …’
‘I’m a local, actually,’ Sam said.
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, I’m not.’ She swilled back the last of her beer and rose from her chair.
‘I don’t believe it. You’re Samantha Lindsay, that’s what I told Bert, I’ve seen you on the telly. He has too, but he reckons you’re …’
‘I’m a local, I swear it, I live here. G’day, Bert.’ She gave them both a friendly smile and, just as Bert reached her side, she ducked out the front door.
That night, she expected to dream of Pete, but she didn’t. She dreamed of Fareham instead. Of the private world that was Adelaide Place, of the Quay and the boats and the recreation park and the path beside the water. In the loft above the stables of Chisolm House she was part of it all. And throughout her dreams, she heard laughter. Two young girls. No longer children and not yet women.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘He is, I swear it. He’s sweet on you.’ Jane couldn’t help giggling as she said it. She was deadly serious, but Phoebe’s laughter at the mere suggestion had got her started, as it always did — Phoebe’s laugh was very infectious. ‘Stop it,’ she said whilst Phoebe rolled on the floor pretending uncontrollable mirth. ‘Why else do you think he’s asked us out sailing? It’s because he’s sweet on you, Maude told me.’ As usual, Jane didn’t know what on earth Phoebe found so funny, but she was starting to lose control herself and her giggles were turning to laughter.
‘Lofty!’ Phoebe gasped. ‘He’s a spider. A daddy-longlegs.’
Phoebe hadn’t found the fact that Ben Lofthouse was sweet on her at all surprising, but she could never resist the urge to make Jane laugh, and together they rolled about hysterically on the wooden floor of the loft, safe in the knowledge that no-one could hear them. The stables were their favourite place and the loft their hideout. Every weekend, they’d climb up the broad, wooden ladder, through the open trapdoor and into their own special world.
Both girls attended Wykeham House School in High Street, Phoebe excelling at hockey and Jane at debating, but their differing interests had little effect upon the friendship they’d shared for more than half of their young lives. Neither did the fact that they came from different walks of life. They were inseparable and such trivialities never entered the scheme of things. And now that they were fifteen years old and looking at boys in a whole new light, another dimension had been added to the pleasure they found in each other’s company, a complicity and secrecy all of their own.
Jane wasn’t jealous that Phoebe appeared to have a serious admirer in the form of Lofty; to the contrary, she was fascinated. Lofty was two years older than the girls and attended Price’s, an old and well-established school with a history of achievers. Despite the fact that his family had been, for generations, market gardeners, Lofty was expected to break the mold and go on to university whilst his brothers took over the business, but he didn’t really want to.
At seventeen years of age, hormones racing, all Ben Lofthouse wanted to do was kiss Phoebe Chisolm, and hopefully more. He’d tell himself, time and again, that she was only fifteen, and who ever looked at fifteen-year-olds? But there was something different about Phoebe Chisolm.
And there was. Phoebe herself didn’t recognise it. Not really. She knew she could get her way if she wanted to, with her father and schoolmates and now boys. And she flirted and teased and promised her friendship. She never considered that she used people, she simply set out to get what she wanted, like Maude Cookson’s pony for weekend rides at Titchfield. She took advantage of occasions when they presented themselves, she told herself, that was all.
It was Jane who recognised Phoebe’s power. She didn’t envy it and she didn’t wish to possess it, but she definitely recognised it. Her friend Phoebe could get whatever she wanted if she tried. Phoebe made things happen. That was why she’d danced three times with Lofty at the invitation school dance at Foresters Hall last night, Jane knew it. The following weekend was the Aquatic Games and Regatta, an annual gala event at Fareham, and Phoebe wanted Lofty to take her out sailing. But Jane had to come too, Phoebe had insisted, and now it was all arranged.
‘I have to go home,’ Jane said an hour later after they’d talked about the next picture that was coming to the Savoy Cinema, and discussed film stars in general, and agreed that, given their current interest in boys, their favourite Greta Garbo had been replaced by Ronald Colman. They’d also come to a decision as to whether or not Lofty should come with them to the Savoy on Friday night.
‘I think we’d better let him,’ Phoebe said quite seriously, ‘it’s the regatta the next day.’ And that brought about another giggling fit. Phoebe really was shockingly manipulative.
Jane wished she could stay in the loft all morning as they often did on a Saturday. But this was a Sunday and it was eleven o’clock. Time to go.
Every Sunday Jane would come to Chisolm House after the early church service she attended with her father, always popping home to change first. Ron Miller would certainly not allow his daughter to play around in ‘those mucky old stables’, as he called them, in her best Sunday clothes. And now it was time for her to go home and cook the huge weekend roast. There would be only the two of them, but they’d live happily on cold mutton for the rest of the week.
The family roast had remained a tradition after Jane’s mother’s death when she was four and, as her father never broke with tradition, it continued to be a weekly event, despite the fact that her two older brothers had long since left home. Twenty-two-year-old Dave had joined his older brother Wilfred in London a whole three years ago. The family was regularly reunited at Christmas, but apart from the brothers’ odd brief visits to Fareham, there was little contact. Jane was too young to go to London on her own, Ron maintained, and he steadfastly refused to go himself. He hated the city.
Jane’s father was not a martinet, but he was a proud man, and his pride sometimes made it hard for others.
A tile worker, prematurely retired from the Fontley Brick and Tile Works due to a back injury, Ron Miller would accept no financial help from his adult sons, apart from the payment of Jane’s school fees.
‘I’ve no need for your money,’ he’d say gruffly, ‘but if you’ve a mind to help with your sister’s schooling, I’d not refuse.’
In the meantime, his frugal household survived on the income he made as a gardener, his principal employer being Arthur Chisolm. Ron had originally refused the doctor’s offer. Their daughters having forged a strong friendship from their early school days, he’d presumed it to be an act of charity and he’d have none of it. ‘Accept naught for nowhit’ was Ron Miller’s philosophy and the adage was repeated time and again to his children.
It had taken all of Arthur Chisolm’s considerable diplomacy to persuade the man to reconsider. ‘A good day’s work for a good day’s pay, Ron,’ he’d said. ‘There are few who give value for money these days, but you’re one who does and I’d appreciate it if you’d take up the offer.’
Put that way, Ron could not refuse and, over the years, a bond had been formed between the gruff, burly gardener and his employer, a bond principally forged through the friendship of their daughters. Sometimes, after their respective days’ hard work, the men would even share an ale at the King’s Head or the Red Lion, and only then would Ron, at Arthur’s insistence, refer to his friend by his Christian name. At all other times Arthur remained ‘Dr Chisolm’.
‘A proud man,’ Arthur would comment to his wife on many an occasion. ‘At times too proud, I think.’ He was unaware that his comments were falling upon deaf ears, for Alice Chisolm privately considered it only correct Ron Miller should show deference to her husband.
Fine-looking at forty, with an air of regality and without yet a fleck of grey in her auburn hair, Alice was considered by some to be over-conscious of her image, indeed even ‘a bit of a snob’. But in truth it was her husband’s image which was of the greatest concern to Alice. Arthur Chisolm was a man of refinement and a benefactor to many. He believed in helping the underprivileged, accepting barter from the poorer market gardeners in lieu of a consultation fee, or visiting their sick children and waiving the fee entirely. His philanthropy met with Alice’s approval. Although she thought on occasions he went too far, it was right, she believed, for such a man to do, and to be seen to be doing, good works for the community. But his dignity must be maintained at all costs. The fact that it was Arthur himself who invited familiarity amongst those he treated often displeased her. She chided him on occasions, always gently, always mindful of her position as his wife, but her remonstrations invariably went unheeded.
