`Natalie,' murmured Marcy. 'What a lovely name.'
Chumble straightened. 'Now, when you've been to
the bathroom, off to bed and get some sleep. You look worn out.'
`Yes, Chumble,' Marcy said submissively.
`Goodnight,' said Chumble, unmoved by her submission. She went out and Marcy made a little face at the door. Clearly, Chumble was no easy proposition. One had to build respect in her before she would view one with anything but disapproval. She slipped out to the bathroom, washed and cleaned her teeth, then went back to bed and fell asleep almost at once out of sheer exhaustion.
When she awoke it was to find the whole room flooded with bright sunlight. She lay against the pillows, watching the blaze of sunlight on the polished furniture of the room, admiring the clarity of the light. Somewhere she could hear the bleat of sheep, a constant sound which had comfort in it. The sky beyond the window was a blue so soft and bright it made her suddenly eager to get up. She sprang out of bed and found a silk negligee which matched the nightgown hanging from a hook on the door, where Chumble had neatly placed it the night before.
Sliding into it, she went out to the bathroom and took a swift shower. Returning, fresh and lively, she looked through the clothes which Walters had packed, and chose a very simple cream linen dress which, although it was clearly exquisitely cut, had a clean line which satisfied her.
Lucky Anthea, she thought, brushing her mop of wild hair until it had a sheen to it. It must be wonderful to have so many clothes. She wondered what sort of girl Randal's sister would be, her brow
wrinkled curiously. Would she ever meet her? It would be rather fun if they liked each other.
Chumble suddenly appeared and gave her a long, considering look, nodding approvingly.
`That's a very nice dress, miss,' she said. 'Your breakfast is ready. Lady Anne just got back from her ride. She's changing in her room now.'
Will she like me? Marcy wanted to ask her, but she said nothing of the sort, her small face rather pale as she followed Chumble down the wide main staircase into a white-painted hall.
Breakfast was laid in the morning room, Chumble informed her, opening a smooth oak door Marcy found herself in a square room flooded with sunshine, and Chumble indicated a seat at the pleasant round table. 'Lady Anne will be down directly. Will you have fruit juice or porridge ?'
Marcy was starving. 'Porridge, please,' she said.
It was deliciously creamy, she decided, sprinkling it with sugar and flooding it with milk. She made a moat in the thick texture of the cereal and watched as the milk filled it. Chumble stood behind her, staring over her shoulder.
There were brisk steps and Marcy, a mouthful of creamy porridge in her mouth, glanced round apprehensively, meeting a pair of clear blue eyes set in a weather beaten brown face, all angles and shrewd appraisal.
`Good morning,' said the newcomer, extending a roughened hand. 'I'm Anne Carlew. You must be Marcy Campion.'
Marcy took her hand, hastily gulping down por-
ridge, and the other woman glanced from her flushed face to her half eaten bowl of porridge with a peculiar expression. 'It's very kind of you to have me to stay,' said Marcy, when she could speak.
`I hope you enjoy your visit,' Lady Anne said, sitting down. 'Porridge, Chumble.'
`Yes, my lady,' said Chumble, placing the porridge in front of her.
Lady Anne concentrated on her food and Marcy obediently did the same. Her empty bowl was whisked away.
`Poached egg on toast or egg and bacon, miss ?' mumbled Chumble.
`Egg and bacon,' said Marcy. 'Thank you, Chumble.'
The meal proceeded in silence, then, as she drank a very large cup of very strong tea, Lady Anne leaned back and studied Marcy with blue eyes which reminded Marcy strongly of Randal's eyes.
`So you're the girl from Paradise Street,' Lady Anne said with a sudden smile. 'You aren't what I expected.'
Marcy looked impish. 'What did you expect ?'
`Difficult to say,' grunted the other woman. She was in her late fifties, Marcy decided. She had a hard, tough face with skin like tanned leather and a strong, decided mouth. Randal might one day have a face like that, she thought, shivering a little. He had that ruthless, determined expression already.
`So you're going to marry Randal,' Lady Anne went on.
Marcy made no reply. She did not like to deny it directly, yet she was wary of agreeing. Lady Anne
looked at her from under thick brows.
`Aren't you ?'
`We've only known each other for three days,' said Marcy. 'I don't think that's long enough.'
Lady Anne looked past her at Chumble, raising a curious eyebrow. Chumble stood, with her gnarled, pale blue hands linked at her waist, her expression guarded.
`Well, never mind,' said Lady Anne. 'After breakfast I'll take you on a tour of the place. Like horses, do you ?'
`I like animals,' Marcy said. but I don't ride.'
For a moment Lady Anne looked at her as if she had said something blasphemous, then she said roughly, 'Well, you'll soon learn. 'Randal's wife must ride. He loves horses.'
`Walters packed some of Anthea's jodhpurs,' Chumble observed.
Lady Anne nodded. 'There you are, then.'
Randal, thought Marcy wryly, must have intended her to ride, since he had picked out the clothes which Walters had packed. After breakfast she followed Lady Anne into a rectangular drawing-room and looked around it with pleasure and admiration. It was not the elegant, formal sort of room which she had seen in Randal's house. This room was as cosy and homely as her sitting-room at home—the chintz-covered chairs were loose with age, sagging from use; there were ornaments and pictures everywhere, photographs of people, vases of flowers, fringed lamps, little tables, piles of books. The profusion and confusion was comforting.
'What a lovely room,' she said, sighing with relief. She had feared to find herself in grand isolation as she had when she came down to breakfast in Randal's
house and looked with horror at the gleaming dining-
,
room.
Lady Anne led her into the next room. It was a library, lined with shelves of books, a dusty cold room after the previous one, but on a wail hung a portrait which drew Marcy's eyes at once. Forgetting Lady Anne, she walked over to it and stared intently at a picture of a very young girl in a simple, beautiful white dress, whose soft dark hair and wide, gentle eyes had a beauty beyond that of feature.
Her slight body had a fragility which was visible, but there was the hint of a smile in the blue eyes which was very touching. Marcy traced hints of Randal in the shape of the features, the colouring, the tantalising smile.
`My cousin Natalie,' said Lady Anne gruffly, behind her.
Marcy turned, her own mouth gently smiling. 'Yes, I recognise the look of Randal.'
Lady Anne stared at her oddly. Her brows levelled out and her eyes softened. 'Humm . . .' she said in a tone like a grumpy bear. 'Come on, then.' She turned and stumped away, and Marcy followed her.
After a brief tour of the house they went out to the stables. They were neat and clean, Marcy noted, three horses peering out at her curiously as they crossed the cobbles towards the stalls.
An old man in a flat cap with a yardbroom in his hand came sulkily towards them. 'Yes, m'lady ?' His
tone defied her to ask him to do anything.
`Just looking, Grimshaw,' said Lady Anne sarcastically. 'Don't mind if we do that, I suppose ?'
`I've got a lot to catch up with,' he said in the same sulky tone. 'My back's playing up again, and I've got the muck to shift.'
Lady Anne ignored him. 'You can ride Ladybird tomorrow,' she told Marcy. 'She's safe as houses.'
Marcy looked at the fat, white horse and knew she was not alarmed at the prospect.
`Ladybird don't like going out any more,' Grimshaw said jealously. 'She's too old for work, like me.'
`I'm very light,' Marcy assured him earnestly. `She'll hardly notice me
on her back.' Ladybird looked capable of carrying several girls on her back, indeed, her broad well-filled expanse hugely efficient.
Grimshaw growled at her. 'She's obstinate, is Ladybird.'
`She's lazy,' said Lady Anne derisively. 'She eats too much and doesn't do a stroke. I'll sell her to a knackers' yard if she doesn't pull her socks up.'
Grimshaw's little black eyes looked nasty. `Hrrr!' He mumbled as he shuffled away, his broom trailing.
Marcy looked at Lady Anne in alarm. 'You've hurt his feelings.'
`Hasn't got any,' said Lady Anne. 'Worked here all his life and thinks he owns the place. Sometimes I have to saddle the damned horse myself because he won't do it. If he had his way, the animals wouldn't do a stroke.' She grinned, watching Grimshaw disappear into the back of the house. 'Now he's gone to pick a row with Chumble. They lead a cat and dog
life downstairs. God, the rows they have! I keep out of it. If I try to smooth them down they both turn on me, and life isn't worth living until they get out of their black mood.'
Marcy looked around the neat stable. 'It must be a lot of work for him to do. He's rather old.'
`He's pensioned off,' said Lady Anne tartly. 'He's got his own cottage and enough to live on, but he refuses to retire. This is his life, poor old Grimshaw, and he's determined not to let someone else come in and lay a hand on his stableyard. I'd have some help for him, but he won't hear of it.'
Marcy looked along the rambling facade of the house as they strolled round to the front. 'It's a beautiful house,' she said 'It must be very hard to keep clean.'
`Two women from the village do the hard work,' said Lady Anne. `Chumble looks after all that.' She grimaced. 'Like Grimshaw, she refuses to retire. She wants to feel needed, and, to be honest, she is, here . . . I'd miss her like hell if she went, and she knows it. We've been together for years, ever since Randal and Anthea grew up.'
`Oh, she was Anthea's nanny, too ?'
`Oh, yes, she took Anthea from birth, Delighted to, as well,' because by then Randal was at school and she was bored stiff. Chumble likes to be busy.'
`So do I,' admitted Marcy.
The soft air of the Somerset downs flooded the facade with light. She sniffed appreciatively. 'It's very beautiful down here,' she said.
`After London it's heaven,' said Lady Anne. `Londoner, aren't you ?'
Marcy shook her head, smiling. 'Not really. I w. born and brought up in Cornwall. My father and mother lived there all their lives.'
Lady Anne stared at her. 'Campion ... Cornwall . . .' Her face had a thoughtful frown. 'Whereabouts did you live ?'
`A small village called Trebode,' Marcy told her. `We lived outside it, actually.'
`Trebode,' said Lady Anne. 'Got it . . . Campion ! Your father was a naturalist, wasn't he ?'
Marcy smiled affectionately. 'Sometimes, yes. He wrote articles for magazines about wild life.'
`Read some of them,' Lady Anne nodded. 'He took some very good photographs of wild birds. I admired them.' She gave Marcy a brisk, approving smile. `Dead, is he ?'
Marcy nodded. 'And my mother—killed in a car crash. Father was very interested in furniture. He was going to an auction at Bodmin when he crashed. Heart attack, they said.'
`Pity,' said Lady Anne. 'I'd like to have met him. So he liked birds and furniture . . what else did he like ?'
Marcy gave a wry smile. 'He liked a lot of things. He spent most of his time reading. He and my mother were much older than parents should be, I think .. . they were already set in their ways when I was born. I think I was a shock to them. I disrupted their comfortable lives, although they were fond of me.
They'd never needed anyone but each other. They were perfectly matched.'
`That's nice,'. said Lady Anne. 'Nice for them, I mean.'
Marcy laughed. 'Nice for me, too, in a way. Marriage should be like that, don't you think ?'
`And you don't think you and Randal are perfectly matched ?' asked Lady Anne with a sudden directness that made Marcy gasp.
Flushing, Marcy said honestly, 'Well, we can't be, can we? Coming from such different backgrounds and being such different ages.'
`The age gap bothers you ?' asked Lady Anne.
Marcy met her eyes. 'Doesn't it bother you?'
Lady Anne laughed abruptly. 'It did, but now I'm not so sure. You remind me a little of his mother. Natalie wasn't as open and direct as you are, Marcy. She was shy and rather retiring. But to look at, you have a similar build, and Natalie was always a warm, affectionate creature.' She turned towards the house. `Come along, Chumble will be waiting to serve luncheon. Are you hungry?'
`I'm always hungry,' Marcy admitted, grinning. And Lady Anne laughed. 'Good. Come on, then, before Chumble starts to sulk like an old chimney!'
CHAPTER SIX
MARCY'S first riding lesson was a disaster. Ladybird, saddled and bridled by Grimshaw with a thunderous expression, stood like a white rock, refusing to move while Marcy helplessly kicked at her fat sides.
`Told you so,' Grimshaw observed in satisfaction, making no attempt to help.
Lady Anne slapped Ladybird crossly with her crop on her haunches, and the fat white horse gave a sideways jump of annoyance, but still refused to budge. Marcy leaned forward, her slender body even more boylike in the biscuit-coloured jodhpurs and white shirt, and whispered coaxingly into Ladybird's backward flicking ears.
`Dig your knees in,' Lady Anne suggested.
Marcy pushed her knees into the soft white back, her small hands gripping the reins, and sulkily Ladybird turned to sneer at her.
Lady Anne grabbed the bridle and walked forward on her own bay mare, yanking at Ladybird's recalcitrant head. Ladybird obstinately lowered her nose and looked immovable.
`You go on,' said Marcy. 'I'll try to get her used to me.'
Grimshaw leaned on an open door, a grim smile on his face. Lady Anne gave him a furious glare but went on ahead. Ladybird flicked her tail irritably, then
slowly, sulkily, followed. Lady Anne looked round at Marcy with a grin.
`Make you sick, don't they? Feather-brained animals!'
Suddenly Ladybird began to trot and helplessly Marcy jogged up and down, unable to grasp the rhythm, while Lady Anne bellowed at her to go with the horse, not fight it.
By the time Marcy had grasped exactly how to fit in with the movement, Ladybird had sulkily lapsed back into a walk. Sore, aching, cross, Marcy sat and felt like kicking the fat white back.
On the way back to the house Ladybird broke into a trot again, and after a moment of confusion Marcy began to find herself rising and falling with her mount. Lady Anne gave her an approving smile. `Better, Marcy, much better,' she said, nodding.
After breakfast Marcy and Lady Anne did some gardening, working in the sunny garden with trowels and wicker trugs, pulling up weeds, pruning, cutting out dead flowers. Chumble had decided, for her own reasons, to serve lunch out in the garden, so they ate salad and cold ham at a white-painted wicker table on the grass, drinking lemonade with it out of a frosted blue jug.
During the afternoon Lady Anne drove in a battered old car over to visit a friend, so Marcy went down to the kitchen and helped Chumble to pot gooseberry jam. Chumble was disconcerted at first, but by the time she had got around to telling Marcy about Randal's obstinate, wicked behaviour as a small boy, she had forgotten her first sullen dis-
approval, and by the time Lady Anne returned the two of them were happily polishing silver around the kitchen table while the whole room held the warm fruity fragrance of the hot jam.
After dinner Lady Anne got out a tapestry frame and began to work. `D'you embroider, Marcy ?' she asked.
`Mother taught me to do some,' Marcy admitted. She had spent hours with pricked fingers and tangled threads as a child, but at length she had achieved a passable imitation of a tablecloth.
Lady Anne sorted out a piece of oblong linen. `Why don't you make a traycloth ? Peaceful occupation, embroidery.'
Marcy chose a simple
heraldic design of a black gryphon on a green base—Lady Anne grinned at her. `My family crest,' she said. 'Have it on a lot of my things.'
The evening passed peacefully as they sat embroidering while they listened to a record.
In bed that night Marcy sleepily thought of Randal. What was he doing? Was he thinking of her? Or had his absorbing business life already swallowed him up into its maw, removing all traces of her from his mind? Beyond her window the country 'silence echoed darkly. She heard the wind whispering through the trees, the distant whistle of a train. What was happening in Paradise Street? Had Sim and Lisa become reconciled? That seemed a world away from here and now. Life was as strange as Lady Anne's tapestry, a mass of loose threads and jumbled colours, contradictory, confused and baffling.
Day after day passed and she became used to the routine of the house. She rode on Ladybird each morning, and found her gradually more malleable. `She's losing weight, thank God,' said Lady Anne, eyeing Ladybird's white bulk with grim amusement. `Exercise is doing her good.'
Sometimes if Lady Anne were busy Marcy went to the stables and helped Grimshaw with his work, despite his grumbled protests that he didn't need it.
She worked in the garden, enjoying herself enormously as she weeded or planted out. She helped Chumble in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, washing up. She dusted and tidied the rooms. She read some of the piles of books Lady Anne left lying about, enjoying the illustrations in some of the natural history tomes. She ate with her usual eager appetite, and she did her embroidery.
Lady Anne took her to the village nearby and they sorted old clothes for a jumble sale. They went to church on Sunday and she listened with amusement to Lady Anne shouting out the hymns roughly in her penetrating voice. The bespectacled, smiling vicar shook her hand and accepted an offer of flowers for the altar next week, so she went down later with a large plastic bucket full of cut flowers from the garden.
Sweet Compulsion Page 11
