by Betty Neels
Granny’s corner cupboard was one of the nicest pieces of furniture in the cottage. Sadie opened its door now and invited him to take what he wanted. He chose a heavy crystal tumbler and held it up to the light.
‘Very nice too—old—Waterford, I believe.’
‘Yes, everything there is mostly Waterford, but there are one or two glasses made by Caspar Wistar. My grandmother had them from her grandmother. I’m not sure how they came into the family.’
‘They’re rare and valuable.’
She closed the cupboard door carefully. ‘I don’t know if you bought them with the cottage. Mr Banks is going to send me a list…’
He had picked up a bottle of whisky and was pouring it. ‘No, I haven’t bought them, and if you think of selling them I should get a very reliable firm to value them first.’
‘Sell them?’ She looked at him quite blankly. ‘But I couldn’t do that!’
He shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘No, probably you couldn’t,’ he agreed goodnaturedly. ‘Something smells good,’ he added.
‘It will be ready in ten minutes,’ she told him, and went back to the kitchen.
Washing up in the old-fashioned scullery later, Sadie wondered what her chances of staying were. Undoubtedly, when they had met, Mr Trentham had made up his mind instantly that she wouldn’t do, but now, since making inroads into the splendid supper she had put before him, she had seen his eyes, thoughtful and a little doubtful, resting upon her as she had cleared the table. She hadn’t said a word, just taken in the coffee and put it silently on the table by the fire, then taken herself off to the kitchen, where she and Tom demolished the rest of the steak and kidney pudding and the afters before setting the kitchen to rights again. It was bedtime before she had finished. She refilled the hot water bottle, switched on the bedside light and went downstairs again to tap on the sitting room door and go in.
‘There’s plenty of hot water if you would like a bath,’ she told him, ‘and it will be warm enough by eight o’clock in the morning if you’d prefer one then.’
He looked up from the book he was reading. ‘Oh, the morning, I think.’
‘If you’d put the guard in front of the fire?’ she suggested. ‘I hope you’ll sleep well, Mr Trentham.’
He smiled at her. ‘No doubt of that,’ he assured her. ‘I’ve been sitting here listening for the proverbial pin to drop. I’d forgotten just how quiet it can be in the country.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Goodnight, Mr Trentham.’
‘Goodnight, Sadie.’
She went up the narrow stairs, Tom plodding behind her to climb on to her bed and make himself comfortable while she had a bath and got ready for the night. She was almost asleep when she heard Mr Trentham come upstairs. He came with careful stealth, trying to be quiet, but he was a big man and probably not used to considering others all that much. He was nice, though, she thought sleepily, used to doing as he pleased, no doubt, but then according to Charlie, who read the TV Times and watched the box whenever he had a moment to spare, he was an important man in his own particular field. She heard his door on the other side of the landing close quietly and then silence, broken by a subdued bellow of laughter.
She was too tired to wonder about that.
She was up before seven o’clock, creeping downstairs to clear out the ashes and light the fires in both rooms as well as the boiler and then to get dressed before going down to the kitchen to cook the breakfast—porridge and eggs and bacon and toast. By the time Mr Trentham got down the table was laid and the fire was burning brightly. She wished him a sedate good morning and added: ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please. God, I haven’t had a night like that in years!’
There seemed no answer to that. Sadie retired to the kitchen, made the coffee and took it in with a bowl of porridge.
‘I never eat the stuff,’ declared Mr Trentham, and then at the sight of her downcast face: ‘Oh, all right, I’ll try it.’
She had the satisfaction of seeing a bowl scraped clean when she took in the eggs and bacon. He demolished those too before polishing off the toast and marmalade.
‘It goes without saying that you made the marmalade as well,’ he observed as she cleared the table.
‘Well, yes, of course. Everyone does.’ She gave him a brief smile and went back to the kitchen, where she ate her breakfast with Tom for company until Charlie interrupted her with a pile of letters.
‘Brought a bit o’ custom to the village,’ he volunteered cheerfully. ‘That’s a posh car outside, all right.’
Sadie gobbled up the last of her bacon, offered a mug of tea and took the letters. Mr Trentham wasn’t in the sitting room and she could hear the typewriter going without pause. She didn’t fancy disturbing him, not after all his remarks about peace and quiet, but she saw no way out of it. She tapped on the door and getting no answer, went in, laid the post down on the edge of the desk and went out again. She rather doubted if he had seen her.
She whisked round the cottage, not finding much to do, for everything had been so scrubbed and polished it had had no time to get even a thin film of dust. And then, since the typewriter was still being pounded without pause, she went silently in with coffee. Without looking up, Mr Trentham said: ‘Open the post for me, Sadie, will you? Do it here.’
She thought of her own coffee cooling in the kitchen and picked up a paper knife on the desk. There were nine letters. Three of them were in handwriting and began Dear Oliver, and she laid them on top of the others—bills and what appeared to be business letters. Having done so she made silently for the door, to be stopped by Mr Trentham’s voice.
‘Where’s your coffee?’
‘In the kitchen.’ She put a hand on the door knob.
‘Fetch it and come back here, I want to have a talk with you.’ He sounded so noncommittal that she guessed that he was going to tell her that she must go. And where to? she asked herself, rejoining him, her tranquil face showing nothing of the panic she was in.
‘Mr Banks was quite right,’ he began. ‘He described you as a sensible countrywoman, and it seems to me you are. What my mother would have called an old head on young shoulders…I think we may suit each other very well, Sadie, but several adjustments must be made. We’ll take our meals together—it’s ridiculous that you should eat in the kitchen of your own home. You will share the sitting room as you wish, all I ask is that I should be left to myself in this room. You will refrain from lugging logs and coals into the house, I’ll do that each morning or if you prefer, each night. And you’re not to wear that depressing overall. We’ll go to Bridport and purchase something more in keeping with your age. What is your age, by the way?’
‘I’m twenty-three.’
He nodded. ‘There are things to be done to the cottage. It needs a new thatch, I need a garage; a shower room would be useful. I’ve already arranged for a telephone to be installed, and someone should be here later today to install television.’ He searched in his pockets and pulled out a cheque book. ‘Here’s housekeeping money until the end of the month, after that you’ll be paid it on the first of each month.’ He started on another cheque. ‘And here’s a week’s salary in advance. You’ll get a month’s money at the same time as the housekeeping.’
He pushed the cheques towards her and she picked them up in a daze.
‘All that, just for housekeeping?’ she wanted to know.
‘I like good food—good plain food, well cooked. I abhor things in tins and packets and frozen peas.’
‘Well, there isn’t a freezer,’ she explained, ‘and I hardly ever buy things in tins because they’re too expensive.’
He smiled at her and her heart lurched. ‘Splendid!’ He gave her an encouraging nod and thought how beautiful her eyes were in her plain little face. There was nothing about her to distract him from his work. ‘The tradespeople call?’ he wanted to know.
‘Yes, and Mrs Beamish has almost all the groceries we need. I get eggs from someone in the village and
I’ve ordered some more logs from a farm near by—they’ve cut down some trees and we can buy the awkward logs that won’t sell easily.’
‘Yes.’ He sounded a little impatient and she got up, put the coffee cups on the tray.
‘I’ll be in the garden if you want me for anything, Mr Trentham. What would you like for lunch?’
He had picked up a sheaf of papers and was frowning over them. ‘Oh, anything—we’ll eat this evening.’
There was plenty of soup left over from the previous day and a mackerel pâté she had made; toast wouldn’t take an instant and she could make a Welsh rarebit in no time at all. She got into her wellies and the old mac and went into the garden to cut a cabbage.
At one o’clock precisely she put her head round the door to say that lunch was about to be put on the table, and found him sitting back with a drink in his hand. He got up and followed her into the kitchen and watched while she ladled the soup and then carried the tray for her.
Beyond stating that he seldom stopped for a meal when he was working, he had nothing to say, but Sadie noticed that every drop of soup was eaten and when she replaced that with Welsh rarebit, he ate that too—moreover, the pâté followed it. It was obvious to her that he hadn’t been eating properly. Well, the housekeeping money he had given her was more than enough to buy the best of everything.
She put his coffee on the table by the fire and went away to wash up. He had insisted that she should take her meals with him, but that didn’t mean that she was to bear him company at any other time. She tidied the kitchen, told him that she would be going out for an hour and would be back in good time to get his tea, and wrapped up in her old coat, walked down to the village. Mr Trentham wanted papers to be delivered each morning and they needed to be ordered. She paused outside the gate to look at the car: an Aston Martin Volante. It looked a nice car, she considered, and beautifully upholstered inside, and she remembered vaguely that it was expensive. It was a shame to keep it out in the cold and damp of November, the sooner Mr Trentham had a garage built the better.
The newspapers were ordered from Mrs Beamish and that entailed a brief gossip about the cottage’s owner. Everyone in the village seemed to have seen him driving through and there was a good deal of speculation about him. Sadie was forced to admit that she knew next to nothing about him and wasn’t likely to.
When she got back there was a van parked behind the car and a man on the roof fixing an aerial and another man inside installing the TV. Sadie went into the kitchen where Tom was drowsing by the stove, laid a tray for tea and made two mugs and carried them out to the men. Judging by the impatient voice coming from the dining room, Mr Trentham was being disturbed in his work and wasn’t best pleased. She smoothed them down, poured them second mugs and gave them a pound from the housekeeping. When they had gone Mr Trentham summoned her into the dining room, where he was sitting at his desk; there were screwed-up balls of paper all over the floor and he looked in a bad temper. ‘How can I work with all that noise?’ he demanded of her.
‘You arranged for the television to be brought,’ she reminded him mildly. ‘They’ve finished and gone, and since you’re not working for the moment I’ll make the tea.’
The ill humour left his face and he smiled at her. ‘You’re not at all like a housekeeper—I have one at my Highgate home and she spends her days running away from me.’
‘Whatever for?’ asked Sadie matter-of-factly. ‘Would you like your tea on a tray here?’
‘No, I would not. I’ll have it with you.’
And later over his second cup of tea and third slice of cake, he observed: ‘I shall get fat.’
‘You can always go for a walk,’ she suggested diffidently. ‘The countryside is pretty and once you’re out you don’t notice the weather.’
‘I’ve too much work to do.’ He sounded impatient again, so she held her tongue and when he had finished, cleared away with no noise at all, and presently, in the kitchen peeling potatoes, she heard the typewriter once more.
The next morning he drove her into Bridport and much to her astonishment stalked into the biggest dress shop there and stood over her while she chose some overalls. Money, it seemed, was no object. The cheaper ones she picked out were cast aside and she was told with what she recognised as deceptive mildness to get something pretty. Taking care not to look at the price tickets, she chose three smocks in cheerful coloured linen and watched him pay for them without so much as a twitch of an eyebrow.
It was two days later when the washing machine arrived, and she had barely got over her delighted surprise at that when someone came to install the telephone with an extension in the dining room so that Mr Trentham could use it without having to move from his desk. It was becoming increasingly apparent to her that his work was very important to him; he made desultory conversation during their meals together and he regarded her with a kind of lazy good humour, but for the rest she was a cog in smooth-running machinery which engineered his comfort.
At the end of a week she knew nothing more about him and he in his turn evinced no interest whatever in herself. On Sunday she had been considerably surprised when he had accompanied her to church and after the service allowed her to introduce him to Mr Frobisher, who in turn introduced him to the Durrants from the Manor House. They bore him off for drinks, and Mrs Durrant bestowed a kindly nod upon Sadie as they went. She hadn’t meant to be patronising, Sadie told herself as she went back to the cottage. She got the lunch ready and sat down to wait. After an hour Mrs Durrant rang up to say that Mr Trentham was staying there for lunch, so Sadie drank her coffee and made a scrambled egg on toast for herself, fed Tom and got into her old coat, tied a scarf round her hair and went for a walk.
It had turned much colder and the rain had stopped at last. She crunched over the frosty ground, finding plenty to think about. She had been paid a month’s salary the evening before and she intended to spend most of it on clothes. She climbed the hill briskly, her head full of tweed coats, pleated skirts, slacks and woolly jumpers. She wouldn’t be able to get them all at once, of course, and after those would come shoes and undies and at least one pretty dress. She had no idea when she would wear it, but it would be nice to have it hanging in the wardrobe. Besides, there was Christmas. She hadn’t been able to accept any invitations for the last two Christmases because of Granny being an invalid, but perhaps this year she would be free for at least part of the holiday. She frowned as she thought that possibly Mr Trentham would go home to his other house for Christmas and New Year too; he’d want to be with his family and he must have loads of friends in London, in which case she would be on her own.
There was a biting wind blowing when she reached the top of the hill, and she turned and walked back again in the gathering dusk. There were no lights on, the cottage was in darkness; Mr Trentham would be staying at the Manor for tea. Sadie let herself in quietly, took off her coat and went into the kitchen to put on the kettle. Mr Trentham was asleep in the comfortable shabby old chair by the stove with Tom on his knee. He opened his eyes when she switched on the light and said at once: ‘Where have you been? I wanted to talk to you and you weren’t here.’
‘I go for a walk every afternoon,’ she reminded him. ‘I thought you might be staying at the Durrants’ for tea. It’s almost tea time, I’ll get it now if you would like me to.’
He nodded. ‘And can we have it here?’
She didn’t show her surprise. ‘Yes, of course.’ She put a cloth on the table and fetched the chocolate cake she had made the day before and began to cut bread and butter, a plateful thinly sliced and arranged neatly.
‘You’d better go into Bridport and buy yourself some clothes,’ said Mr Trentham suddenly. ‘Better still, I’ll drive you to a town where there are more shops. Let’s see—how about Bath?’
Sadie warmed the teapot. ‘That would be heavenly, but you don’t need to drive me there, Mr Trentham, I can get a bus to Taunton or Dorchester.’
‘I have a fancy to g
o to Bath, Sadie. When did you last buy clothes?’
She blushed. ‘Well, not for quite a long while, you see, Granny couldn’t go out, so there wasn’t any need…’
‘Nor any money,’ he finished blandly. ‘I must buy the girls Christmas presents and I shall need your advice.’
‘How old are they?’
‘Five and seven years old—Anna and Julie. They have a governess, Miss Murch. Could you cope with the three of them over Christmas?’
Sadie didn’t stop to think about it. ‘Yes, of course. Only you’ll need to buy another bed—would the little girls mind sleeping in the same room?’
‘I imagine not, they share a room at Highgate. What else shall we need?’
She poured the tea and offered him the plate of bread and butter. ‘That’s blackcurrant jam,’ she told him. ‘Well, a Christmas tree and fairy lights and decorations and paper chains.’ She was so absorbed that she didn’t see the amusement on his face. ‘A turkey and all the things that go with it—I’ll be making the puddings myself, and a cake, of course, and crackers and mince pies and sausage rolls…’ She glanced at him. ‘The children will expect all that.’
‘Will they? I was in America last Christmas; I believe Miss Murch took them to a hotel.’ He smiled a little and she saw the mockery there. ‘Don’t look so shocked, Sadie, I suspect that you’re a little out of date.’
She shook her head. ‘You can’t be out of date over Christmas. Even when there’s not much money it can still be magic…’
He passed her the cake and took a slice himself. ‘You’re so sure, aren’t you? Shall we give it a whirl, then? Buy what you want and leave the bills to me.’
‘Yes, Mr Trentham—only you are sure, aren’t you? The country is very quiet—I mean, in the town—London—there’s always so much to do, I imagine, and there’s nothing here. The Carol Service, and a party for the children and perhaps a few friends coming in.’
