by Anna Jacobs
The husband put his arm round her. ‘If it is, we’ll pay for the repairs.’
Georgie looked at Patrick and shook her head slightly.
He picked up what she wanted instantly. ‘No, thank goodness.’
The woman’s whoosh of relieved breath could be heard clearly.
‘Would you kind folk like a cup of tea?’ the father asked. ‘I certainly would. Put that young madam to bed, Mary, love, and she’s to stay there until I let her come downstairs again. I’ll put the kettle on while you take her up.’
It was an hour before they were able to leave the little farm.
As they got into the car, Georgie asked in a low voice, ‘I’m sure my father won’t mind about the damage. It’s only a scrape and a slight dent, after all.’
‘That child must have a hard head.’
‘Yes. I’ll pay myself if Father complains, because in spite of their generosity with the cream cake today, I could see that those people didn’t have a lot of money to spare.’
‘They’re not alone in that,’ he said curtly. ‘It sounds as if that little girl is very naughty.’
‘Yes, but this’ll probably have taught her one important lesson, at least. A lot of people don’t realise how fast cars are travelling, or that cars can’t get out of your way like horses do. You read about serious motoring accidents in the newspapers all the time, people getting killed or maimed.’
He leant across from the driving seat and kissed her cheek suddenly. ‘Well, I’m most relieved you weren’t hurt. You did well today, lass.’
As they drove off, she asked flippantly, ‘Whatever will happen to us next, do you suppose?’
He answered more seriously. ‘Nothing dramatic, I hope. We’ll find a place of safety and leave a message with someone about where you are. Then we’ll lie low till your father sends for you. End of the adventure.’
‘Mmm.’ She could still feel the warmth of Patrick’s lips on her cheek and wished she’d had the courage to kiss him back. It suddenly occurred to her that he was probably being careful about what he said or did because he knew he’d not be considered a suitable man to court her.
And yet she’d never felt as comfortable with anyone else except her twin. If she was interested in Patrick, she’d have to pluck up her courage and make it clear that she wanted him.
Could she do that? She hadn’t had a lot of experience in flirting, let alone conveying her feelings to a man about that sort of thing. Well, let’s face it, she hadn’t had much experience with men, because her so-called mother had kept her tightly penned up.
She looked sideways and caught Patrick looking at her. She smiled involuntarily and blew him a little air kiss.
He looked surprised then pleased.
Yes, she decided. She could and would find ways to make her feelings clear. She wanted very much to get to know him better. A lot better.
She liked to think she was a thoroughly modern woman when it came to driving motor cars. She now intended to be just as modern when it came to finding a husband. No one was ever again going to push her into an unsuitable relationship. Not even her father.
Just before they got to Honeyfield, Patrick began worrying about the car running out of fuel, so when he saw a big wooden shed at the side of the road, he slowed down. ‘That looks like it might sell fuel – yes, it does! Look at the sign.’
Painted on the dark wood in white were large uneven letters saying Motor Car and Cycle Repairs. Below it was another smaller sign saying Carburine Motor Spirit Sold Here. He heaved a sigh of relief and drew up in front of the big double doors.
‘That sign’s a bit crooked. They must have painted it themselves. Let’s stop and see if we can buy a couple of cans of fuel.’
As he got out he said ‘Aha!’ and pointed to the right, just inside the open door. There was the familiar pile of wooden crates each containing a couple of tall, narrow two-gallon cans.
A lad came out to see what they wanted and looked distinctly relieved when they told him they wanted to buy some motor spirit.
‘Are you alone here?’ Patrick asked, not seeing anyone else around.
‘Yes, sir. I was worried you wanted something repairing, but my master, Mr Leatherby, isn’t well today, so he can’t repair any cars. One man got angry with me about that, but I haven’t learnt enough to do repairs on my own yet.’
‘Well, I’m not angry with anyone. I’d like to buy three cans of motor spirit, please. I’ll use one straight away to fill my car up.’
The lad nodded and lugged out a crate containing two full cans, then brought another full can and a funnel. They traded in their empty cans and paid him.
The lad was in a chatty mood and it didn’t take much to keep him talking. ‘Mr Leatherby’s been ill all week, getting old, he is. When he sells this place, I might lose my job, but he’s going to try to get the new owner to take me on.’
‘He hasn’t sold it yet, then?’
‘No. He thought he could sell it himself, because of being on the main road here, but he hasn’t managed to, so far. Well, he’s a bit sharp with folk sometimes. He’s going to get Mr Perry from Malmesbury to sell it for him. Everyone knows Mr Perry’s the best in the county for selling houses and businesses.’
‘I wish your master well. Um, you don’t know how much he wants for the place, do you?’
‘No, sir, sorry. He wouldn’t tell me, said I’d only blab it to my friends.’ He let out a huff of laughter. ‘He was probably right. I might have let it slip by mistake. My mam says my tongue’s hung in the middle and wags at both ends. Are you staying in the village, sir? I can ask him to send a message to you about the price.’
‘We may be staying. Not sure yet. If we do, I’ll come back and knock at the house door and ask him.’ He handed over the money.
‘I’ll crank-start your car for you, sir, if you like. I’m good at that now.’
‘Yes, please.’
So Patrick handed over a threepenny bit for him to swing the starting handle and left a smiling young fellow pocketing his tip as they drove away.
‘Thinking of buying that little business?’ Georgie asked with a smile.
‘I might be. One like that is my only chance. It’s not much of a place now but that might make it cheap enough for me to be able to afford it. Eh, I’d work my fingers to the bone to have my own workshop and build the trade up into a decent living. That one is well situated if you had bigger signs.’
‘And properly painted ones!’
‘Yes, definitely. I’m good at repairing cars – well, all motor vehicles, actually, and motorcycles too. The Army taught us well.’
‘And that’s what you’d most like to do with your life.’
It was more of a statement than a question but he answered it anyway. ‘Yes.’ Then he sighed, glanced quickly sideways at her and back at the road.
‘I like being around cars too,’ she said. ‘I think my father plans to stop me driving myself and hire a chauffeur once things have settled down, but I’m not going to let him dictate how I live. At the very least I’ll buy a car of my own and possibly move into a house of my own too.’
‘Not many women are that interested in cars.’
‘Well, I am. I’d like to learn to repair them. It’d be fun.’
‘And get your hands dirty?’
She chuckled and waved one to and fro. ‘I can always wash them more often. Now, carry on along the side of the village green till you reach that big tree, then turn right after it.’
He followed Georgie’s instructions for getting to her friend’s house and said, ‘Thank goodness!’ when he saw Mr Cotterell’s big black car standing in the street outside the end house.
‘They got here safely. Oh, Patrick, what a relief! They must have been so worried about us.’
The front door burst open and Bella rushed out towards them, throwing her arms round Georgie the minute her friend got out of the car and giving her a big hug. ‘We’ve been so worried since your friends arrived and
told us what’s been happening! Where on earth did you get to?’
Tez came to join them. ‘Calm down, love. They’re obviously all right.’
Georgie stepped back and took Patrick’s arm. ‘This is Patrick Farrell, who helped me get away. We’ve had such a time of it.’ Then she saw Rosie, Dennis and Martin standing further back and called, ‘I’m so glad you all got here safely. We’ll have to swap tales.’
Tez put an arm round his wife and pulled her gently back towards the house. ‘Come in, love. Let’s not give the neighbours a free show, eh? Come in, everyone, do.’
Talking and laughing, they crammed into the sitting room and Bella refused point-blank to do anything about refreshments till she’d heard about their adventures.
The telling took a while, with interruptions and exclamations stopping the narrative.
It was lovely to be part of such a nice group of people, Georgie thought wistfully. She hadn’t had much experience of this in her lonely life, wanted more of it, much more.
While this was going on, Nathan arrived and knocked on the front door but no one heard him, even when he repeated the action more loudly.
There was quite a hubbub inside, but it sounded happy, so in the end he simply opened the door and walked in. Standing in the sitting room doorway, he waited for a lull in the conversation to say, ‘I did knock.’
Tez turned round and chuckled. ‘As you can see, my dear friend, we’re having quite an exciting time catching up on news.’ He summarised what his visitors had been doing, indicated a chair for Nathan and said, ‘I suppose I’d better put the kettle on myself since my lazy wife refuses to lift a finger.’
Bella pulled a face at him. ‘I don’t want to miss anything. There’d be more room if we all sat round the kitchen table. Come on, everyone. Let’s go through to the back. We don’t need to stand on ceremony, surely?’
Nathan held out his hand to the nearest stranger and introduced himself, then nodded to the others, repeating their names and hoping he wasn’t giving away how carefully he was studying them.
As Tez had said on the phone, the three men looked like returned soldiers and the young woman with them had a cheerful, honest face. Nathan was a big believer in faces being the mirrors of the soul. He took after the Latimer side of his family in that, with a touch of fey understanding about people. He was usually able to see through any attempts at deception and feel whether they were decent folk or not.
Once in the kitchen, the conversation turned to refreshments and Tez left Bella to sort that out with Rosie and Georgie’s help. He managed to get Nathan into a corner and say quietly, ‘They seem all right to me.’
‘Yes. I like the looks of them, too. After we’ve finished our cups of tea, we can show them round the house next door, if you like. Apart from any other considerations, it’d be good to get it cleared out. If we do that and ask a slightly cheaper price, we’ll sell it more easily.’
Bella had come close enough to overhear this. ‘Let’s all go round it. I’ll need to see what furniture is missing if everyone is to have a proper bed for the night.’ She turned to her friend. ‘You’ll stay here with us, won’t you, Georgie?’
‘Thank you, yes.’
Patrick frowned. ‘Then one of us ought to stay here as well. We still need to keep a careful watch on your friend, I’m afraid, Mrs Tesworth. I’ve no doubt these people will come here, and quite soon too. They seem very determined to capture her and get a hold over her father that way, I suppose.’
‘Desperate men can be particularly dangerous,’ Tez agreed.
Bella’s face fell.
‘In that case, I think it’d be better if I stayed at the house next door,’ Georgie said at once. ‘I don’t want to put you and little Philip at risk, Bella.’
Her friend betrayed herself by laying a hand protectively on her stomach in the age-old gesture of a woman expecting a child, but no one was rude enough to comment openly on that, though a couple of the men smiled briefly.
Georgie broke the silence. ‘That’s settled, then, and it solves another problem: Rosie and I can share a bedroom, and our three heroes will keep watch over us.’
Her voice was teasing but the glance she shared with Patrick betrayed her own secret feelings to her friend Bella, who immediately turned to study him more closely.
Dennis didn’t say much but he was sorry he wouldn’t be spending time alone with Rosie. She didn’t seem to care in the slightest that his hand looked so ugly. She was such a lovely lass. Could his life really have turned the corner and brought him a chance for the family life he craved? He really hoped so.
Just let these villains try to get in the way of that!
Chapter Sixteen
Nathan led the way next door and took out a large, old-fashioned key. ‘I’m afraid the whole place is in a terrible condition and needs a thorough going through, inside and out.’ He opened the door and stepped into the hall. ‘Oh dear! It’s worse than I remembered. If the house wasn’t so pretty, it might be better to knock it down and build a new one, but the outside fits in well with the others in the street and a modern building might not.’
He stopped to look at one side of the entrance hall, then the other, frowning. From it, open doors showed dusty rooms with rubbish on the floors, occasional pieces of shabby furniture and peeling wallpaper. ‘I haven’t been here since the new owner took away some furniture. He has left it in a mess, hasn’t he? Can you gentlemen clear up the floors, throw away the rubbish and perhaps whitewash the kitchen and laundry areas, do you think? That alone would be a great improvement.’
‘Yes, of course, but could we walk round it all first?’ Patrick asked. ‘Before we agree to stay, we need to be sure that we can keep Georgie safe here.’
‘Yes, of course. Good thinking. I think it’s slightly larger than the house next door. There are three rooms as well as the kitchen and a housekeeper’s room on the ground floor, plus the usual scullery and laundry. Oh, and there’s a lavatory beyond them with inside access.’
‘Thank goodness for that!’ Georgie said fervently.
‘The main thing we need to do is inspect the ground floor and study its ways of accessing the outside,’ Patrick reminded him.
‘Yes, sorry.’ Nathan set off and they followed.
When they got back to the hall, Patrick said, ‘I think we can manage to look after Georgie here. All windows are weak points when defending a position, though, especially sash windows like these.’
‘Let’s go upstairs and make sure there are enough beds for everyone,’ Tez suggested.
‘And that the mattresses aren’t damp,’ Georgie added.
They inspected the four bedrooms, which all had sagging beds. There was no bathroom, of course, and though there were three other bedrooms in the attic, they were tiny, presumably for maidservants.
Georgie felt all the beds and grimaced. ‘These are only cheap flock mattresses but the ticking looks clean. They definitely feel damp, though, so we’ll have to dry them out. Is there some coal or firewood available? There are plenty of fireplaces, after all.’
‘If the chimneys aren’t blocked,’ Rosie put in.
‘Pray that they aren’t,’ Dennis said. ‘We’ve no equipment or time to get chimneys swept.’
‘We can do our best to clear some of it for you, Mr Perry,’ Georgie said. ‘Come on! Let’s make a start and light some fires to air the mattresses. I’m sure I saw a pile of wood outside at the back.’
With the help of Tez, who fetched some old newspapers and kindling from his own home, they got fires started in several rooms. Soon the mattresses were propped up in front of their warmth and the rooms started to get a damp feel to the air.
Brushes were found and more borrowed. The men swept the floors, while the women tied clean rags from torn sheets in the linen cupboard round soft-bristled brooms and went round the house clearing the crevices and cornices of spiders’ webs.
‘I can put up with dust but not with spiders. I hate the horrible
things.’ Georgie shuddered as one ran out from a crevice and Rosie disposed of ‘the fearsome beast’ for her, laughing.
Nathan stayed longer than he’d expected, because Patrick and Georgie both wanted to know about selling houses and how much this one was worth.
After a while, Tez suddenly stopped collecting rubbish and his voice echoed across the hall. ‘Oh dear! I forgot. We ought to telephone my mother and tell her you’re here, Georgie. She’ll know how to get in touch with your father, if anyone does, or her friend Constance Berrens will.’
‘I suppose we’d better.’
Patrick came out into the hall to join in. ‘You don’t sound enthusiastic.’
‘To tell you the truth, I don’t want to go back to my old life with my father. When I wasn’t out on driving duties, I had to find things to fill my time because he didn’t like people coming to the house unless he was going to be there too. And the car wasn’t always available for me to go out. He didn’t like me going out on foot on my own, you see. So it was hard to make friends or have a social life.’
‘Did he give you a reason for all these precautions?’ Patrick asked.
‘No. Just that the modern world wasn’t a safe place for a young woman.’
‘I’ll make a quick call to my mother,’ Tez said. ‘I won’t mention any names, so even if the operator is eavesdropping, I won’t be giving your presence away, just hinting.’
He went across to his own house and returned a short time later. ‘Done. Thank goodness my mother is quick on the uptake. I didn’t have to say much at all for her to realise why I was calling.’
‘But she didn’t say anything to hint at where my father is?’
‘No. ’Fraid not. Well, she might not know.’
‘Sometimes I wish I had a less inscrutable father,’ Georgie said bitterly. ‘It’s hard to work out what he’s thinking or planning at the best of times – and this isn’t the best of times.’
