The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  Alexandra showed her out, and promptly returned to the drawing room where, as was her habit, Mrs Smithers, net curtains parted, was watching her friend walking to the post box on the corner of the square.

  ‘That,’ she said, with some satisfaction, ‘is the last meal the poor soul will eat until she comes here next week.’

  She dropped the net curtain into place and went back to seat herself beside the fire.

  Alexandra cleared the coffee tray but did not wash it up. instead she quickly returned to the drawing room, eager to confront her employer before she nodded off into her usual post-prandial snooze in front of the small coal fire.

  ‘Mer-Mer-Mrs Smithers?’

  Mrs Smithers looked up at her, surprised to see her back in the drawing room so quickly.

  ‘Yes, Minty?’

  ‘I-er-I have had an idea.’

  ‘Yes, Minty?’

  Alexandra cleared her throat.

  ‘I was ther-ther-thinking about Lady Inisheen, and about the Honourable Mer-Mer-Martita, and Mrs Kelmsley and Mrs Jones-Melhuish, and how they all come here and use your writing per-per-paper.’

  ‘Yes, Minty?’

  ‘Ber-ber-but … how you never go back to their houses.’

  There was a small pause before Mrs Smithers replied.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to use their writing paper, I have perfectly good writing paper of my own, Minty, so I don’t expect to be asked back to their homes. More than that, I would not wish to be asked back to their homes. They have all fallen on hard times, which is one of the reasons they use my writing paper. They don’t want to let the side down. After all, some of them have been left very badly off by the Army, some of them by taxes and death duties, others by their husbands, or some inadvertent stroke of bad luck over which they had no control—’

  She stopped suddenly, looking cast down as she realised that since the awful news of her late husband’s company going bankrupt and the imminent cessation of her annuities, she could be talking about herself.

  Alexandra saw this.

  ‘I don’t mean to be imp-imp-impertinent, Mrs Smithers,’ Alexandra put in quickly. ‘Ber-ber-but this is what I have been thinking. All your friends and acquaintances come here not just to see you, if you don’t mer-mer-mind me saying, but also ber-ber-because, unlike them, you have a good address, and me; a mer-maid, and so on. I mean besides liking to see you, they like to use your address, don’t they?’ Just as Mrs Smithers was about to interrupt her, Alexandra quickly finished with a flourish. ‘So, well, supposing … you cher-charged them?’

  Mrs Smithers looked genuinely shocked.

  ‘Charge my friends to meet each other for lunch? I hardly think that is a good idea, Minty.’ She flicked at her lace jabot. ‘I hardly think that would be any solution to our present difficulties.’

  ‘I understand from something I rer-rer-read once, that Lady Johns, who has never had any money, has always charged for the luncheons and dinners she gives, and no one mer-mer-minds, because everyone is so charmed to meet all her rich and fer-fer-famous friends at her lovely house.’

  ‘Well, I dare say, but Lady Johns is titled, and titled folk can get away with anything they choose, because people will do anything to share even a cup of cocoa with a lord or a lady,’ Mrs Smithers stated. ‘Besides, none of my friends are quite grand enough now, and I don’t think they want to meet each other, and they are certainly not famous, so they would not have much interest in each other; and they have no money to speak of, so they would soon tire of the idea.’

  ‘No, not to meet each other, ner-no, to meet their fer-ferfer-friends and fer-fer-family, and so on. I-I-er-I-er … I mean—’

  Mrs Smithers looked up sharply as Alexandra’s stammer suddenly started to become worse.

  Alexandra gritted her teeth. She would will it to go away. She paused.

  ‘You ser-ser-see, if you ter-ter-take Lady Inisheen, I nerner-noticed that she always uses your writing per-paper after lunch, before she leaves.’

  ‘Well, she can hardly write to her friends, people such as her friend Lord Harry and so on, from her own address, can she? She can hardly write from number two the Railway Cuttings, or wherever it is the poor woman has been forced to reside. She can hardly do that now, can she? And I don’t suppose she can afford anything more than her rent, so she certainly would not be able to afford writing paper properly printed in a raised manner on which to write to Lord Harry, could she? If she has any letters they come here. To keep up the pretence to her London friends, so necessary, as you know.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Alexandra looked excited. ‘Exactly, ther-ther-that is what I der-der-do mean, she can’t, can she? Nor can she invite them to two the Cuttings, nor can she afford restaurants or her-her-hotels, but if she cer-cer-could hire your elegant dining room and drawing room, if all the people in Deanford who are down on their luck coud ask their friends here, as if this were their house, instead of hiding away, they could have a social life again. They cer-could see their family and friends, and they would stop feeling lonely and ashamed, and people they haven’t seen for years, because they were so ashamed of their hard luck, they could see them again. And I could cook for ther-ther-them for much less mer-mer-money than it would cost them if they went to a restaurant or an hotel.’

  Since the catastrophic news of her late husband’s company going bankrupt, the truth was that Mrs Smithers had been juggling with only two ideas. The first was that she would have to sell her beloved home, and the second was that she would have to open it to lodgers of all kinds, all of whom were certain to have nasty private habits and irregular methods of payment.

  She now stared at Alexandra.

  ‘Sit down, Minty,’ she snapped.

  Alexandra sat down quite suddenly, as she had been commanded, at the same time straightening her starched hat and putting her feet in their shining black strap shoes together, while remembering not to cross her ankles, which Tasha Millington had always told the girls was ‘beyond the beyonds’.

  ‘Minty.’ Mrs Smithers breathed in and out, and her small black eyes seemed to have more sparks flying from them than the equally small fire now burning in the grate. ‘Minty, you have just come up with the answer to this old body’s prayer.’ She leaned forward. ‘I could charge for the use of my rooms, to nice people, genteel folk, and they could go away at the end of the afternoon or evening, leaving me with a delightful cheque. It is a grand idea, Minty. Perfectly grand. And it would mean … it would mean I would not have to sell my home.’

  She paused, and such was her emotion she quietly blew her small, retroussé nose on a lace-edged handkerchief.

  Alexandra shook her head slowly as her employer finished.

  ‘No, I der-der-don’t think that they should ler-ler-leave a cheque, Mrs Smithers.’ Alexandra paused as Mrs Smithers stared at her, and as she did so Alexandra remembered the phrase that the old butler at Knighton Hall had always used to Tasha Millington when he was tactfully trying to steer his mistress in the right direction. ‘If you der-der-don’t mind the suggestion, Mrs Smithers, ma’am, if you don’t mer-mind it, what I think wer-would be a good idea would be if you asked them for the cheque some weeks in advance, and that way you might fer-fer-find they honour it ber-ber-better, and you can cash it long before you’ve been to any trouble on their behalf.’

  Mrs Smithers stared at Alexandra, and yet again it seemed to her maid-of-all-work that there were sparks flying from the small black eyes set in the lightly powered face. She went to speak, but first, she flicked her lace jabot.

  ‘Minty,’ she finally said, sighing with some satisfaction, ‘you’re a maid in a million. We will put your plan into action straight away. We will not go under, will we, Minty?’

  ‘Ner-ner-no, whatever happens we will not go under,’ Alexandra agreed, standing up. ‘Shall I bring you the Daily Telegraph, ma’am? I have ironed it.’

  Mrs Smithers nodded happily, staring round her drawing room as she did so, knowing that if their plan w
orked she would never have to leave it. Alexandra also found herself smiling happily, but for a different reason. She could never now make it up to her grandmother for what had happened to her, for being thrown out of her home of forty years, leaving her beloved hens and her settled way of life, but she could at least help to stop it happening to Mrs Smithers.

  Later that day when she went down to her basement flat and was being greeted by the spaniels in grand fashion, Alexandra found herself sighing contentedly. She might be alone in the world now, but she was at least needed, and not just by the dogs.

  * * *

  Tom stared first at the note in his hand, and then at Mrs Posnet.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom, to have to be the person to tell you this, but your mother has died. You left so early this morning that when the boy first arrived with the telegram I’m afraid I had gone back to bed, and so he had to come back. As soon as I received it I went straight to the corner and telephoned to the lady in question, and a nice woman she sounds, but it was too late by then. Although I don’t suppose you could have got there in time, not really. I mean this place Deanford, it is hours away, by train.’

  Tom turned. All right he had never heard of Deanford himself, but Mrs Posnet was making it sound as far away as New York.

  ‘I’ll have to get the next train.’

  ‘You can probably make the midday fast train if you hurry, but you’ll have to change your clothes, Tom. I will lend you my husband’s, my late husband’s, black tie and a mourning band.’

  Tom nodded and went straight to his ground-floor bedroom.

  All he could think of as the train pulled its way through the serene, pale English countryside was that if he had not left Mrs Posnet’s house so early he might have been able to reach his mother before she died. But why hadn’t she ever tried to reach him after she left Norfolk? Why had she disappeared?

  He knew what the answer must be, and long before the landlady of the down-at-heel bed-and-breakfast establishment opened the door to him. His mother had not just fallen on bad times, she must have returned to her bad old ways.

  ‘I’ve laid her out as best I could,’ the landlady told him in flat tones. ‘But I have no idea what arrangements she would have wanted. Seeing that she is called O’Brien, I naturally assumed she must be Roman Catholic. I’m afraid she died from lack of eating,’ she added tactfully. ‘Just wasted away. She died before I could call a priest.’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, she’s not, she wasn’t Roman Catholic. She’s Church of England, I think.’

  ‘Funny that, with an Irish name you would have thought she would be Roman Catholic.’ The woman paused, considering. ‘In that case I’ll ring our undertaker,’ she stated. ‘My undertaker,’ she reiterated, sounding strangely proprietary, a vaguely proud look in her eyes.

  It was not a pride that Tom could have understood until he saw the age of the inhabitants of the run-down bed-and-breakfast hotel, and then it seemed to him that the landlady, if she had any business sense, would have been forgiven for investing in the funeral business, or at least for taking a cut of the considerable trade she must send him.

  ‘Do you want to see her? As I say, the doctor and I have laid her out, and the death certificate is signed.’

  ‘No, no, really. I’d rather not. Rather remember her how she was.’

  Tom turned away.

  ‘I can understand how you feel, Mr O’Brien, but don’t you think perhaps you should? After all, she might not be your mother. It does happen. I have known it to happen, more often than you would think too. It has happened quite a few times, here in Deanford, particularly when a surname is the same – Smith, Brown, O’Brien, that kind of thing.’

  Looking at Ma confirmed to Tom that she was indeed his mother; but as Tom stared down at her, although frightened to do so at first, he found that his first feeling was one of relief, because she looked so beautiful. With a shock he saw that in death she was not just his mother, but that she was actually beautiful, and that she must once have been a beautiful young girl, not the always-anxious, put-upon cook, not the woman whose constant battle with alcohol had meant that his childhood had been spent following her from job to job, in an endless and finally pointless quest for some sort of security.

  ‘It’s got too dangerous, all the bombs dropping too near,’ had been one of her many wartime explanations whenever she had been summarily dismissed from some domestic position.

  When he was very young Tom had readily accepted her explanation, but by the time he grew older he found he had not only given up on school, he had given up on his mother. Every night he would pray for one thing only, that Ma would somehow hold down a job for more than a few weeks, that he could count on having a regular hot meal, that life would get better for them both.

  ‘Ma.’ Tom knelt by the dreary little bed and put his handsome dark head on her cold hand. ‘Oh Ma, where did you go? Why did you leave Norfolk? You could have come and lived with me. I have a job. A good job, I have a good job now.’

  But his mother was gone to somewhere much better, and Tom knew it. Hearing what must be the solemn, respectful tread of the undertakers’ footsteps on the stairs outside, he quickly stood up, and turned away, one question now haunting him. How would he pay for the funeral?

  Having instructed the men to lay her out as she was, he left the two sober-suited men to their work, measuring and scribbling, and walked down to the hall. He had his watch, which he could hawk, and some cash that he had saved in his Post Office account, but he hardly thought that would be enough to cover the expense of a funeral.

  ‘Are you worried about the funeral expenses? Well, don’t be quite yet. There’s a deposit box key here. I don’t know why, but Mrs O’Brien, poor woman, she gave me the key, in the early hours, when we both knew she was slipping away.’

  Tom stared at the landlady, realising instantly how honest she must be.

  ‘They always say landladies are a race apart. I say “they”; what I really mean is that my mother always believed that landladies, particularly in the North of England, were kindness personified,’ he said quietly, looking at the key she had just handed him. ‘And she was right.’

  The landlady ignored his compliment.

  ‘She said to tell you the box is at the National Bank in the High Street, that she was sorry that it was all she had, she wished it was more, but that she wanted you to have it, and to say sorry. Those were her dying words, that she was so sorry.’

  Sorry?

  Tom turned away. Why should she have said sorry? It was not her fault that she had a weakness that she had always tried so hard to fight. And yet. Yes, there was a great deal for which to be sorry, and he and Ma had both known it. It hadn’t meant that they hadn’t loved each other. It hadn’t meant that they had not both depended on each other, but sorry as far as he was concerned was not one word, just five letters long, sorry was a lot longer than five letters.

  Sorry, Tom, for not having been anywhere long enough for you to attend school, sorry for you finding me collapsed against walls, on bathroom floors, in other people’s kitchens. Sorry for never meeting you at the school gates, never going to sports days the few days or weeks you did manage to be at school. Sorry for no hot dinners when we were so down on our luck that all I could give you was a tin of beans. Sorry that you were always the poor boy in the basement in an endless succession of grand houses. Sorry that I never could give you what you wanted most. A father.

  The landlady touched him briefly on the arm.

  ‘I should get down there and see if what you hope is true, that there’ll be enough in that box at least for the funeral expenses.’ Sensing the confusion of his feelings, she moved her hand up and patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’s all right, son, her rent was paid up, right until the end of the week. She always paid on time, never missed.’

  Tom walked out into the street, and then he started to run towards the High Street. He knew now that he needed money badly, not leas
t because he was sure that Mr Blakemore was going to sack him for making love to Lady Florazel, not least because of that.

  ‘Name of O’Brien.’

  He showed the manager not just the key, but his Post Office book, to prove his identity, and then followed the bank clerk through to the vaults where he watched him undo the cage, before leading Tom to the appropriate box, which he then laid out on the table.

  Tom opened it.

  As the landlady had uncannily predicted there was indeed cash inside the box, rolls of it done up in elastic bands, and that was not all, there were many small boxes, which when he opened them he found contained jewellery of various kinds: rings and lockets, gold bracelets, pearl earrings, items that he would never in a million years have associated with his mother, Mrs O’Brien the cook.

  There was also an old pre-war passport whose photograph proved to him that the owner was indeed a younger version of the woman he had always known as his mother. There was only one difference, and that was the name in the front of it. The name on the passport was not Heather O’Brien, or anything like it. It was something quite other. There was also a letter.

  ‘Minty!’

  Mrs Smithers was calling down the stairs to Alexandra in her usual sudden fashion, and Alexandra was rushing up to the first-floor drawing room to do whatever was necessary, when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Leave it,’ Mrs Smithers told her as she reached the drawing room. ‘It will be Lady Inisheen, but we must not let her in until we have seen to this disaster.’

  Alexandra looked round expecting at the very least a fallen vase or a broken ornament.

  ‘Missing lightbulb!’

  Since it was broad daylight on a sunny day it hardly seemed the disaster that Mrs Smithers felt it to be; nevertheless, Alexandra ran to the landing cupboard, plucked a lightbulb from a box, changed it, and then flew back downstairs to the front door, which she opened in an unhurried manner, having first made sure that her cap was as straight as it was starched.