by Nicola Slade
‘Something sad happened, Granny.’ Alix told her about poor Major Maxwell’s wife and when I could get a word in edgeways I enlarged upon my brilliant plan to turn next door into a guest house. ‘You remember Papa put in extra plumbing and had both houses wired for electric light?’
‘Indeed I do.’ Granny’s voice was dry. ‘As I recall, that was the time he reappeared after a month in Monte Carlo and strolled through the front door with enough money to pay for it all. We were surprisingly lucky to see any of it but there, the money was soon gone and with it your Papa’s enthusiasm for domestic improvements.’
She barely looked at the rabbits as she worked because she learned her skill as a child from the gamekeeper at her family’s Scottish castle. Alix averted her eyes from the blood, but I’m not often afflicted with nerves, so I admire Granny and try to be like her. Stoicism is a quality I very much admire.
She finished skinning the rabbits and began to joint them in a thoughtful silence while the cats oozed closer till they were jostling for position. When they were almost sitting on her feet the boldest kitten ill-advisedly ran up her leg. Luckily, she was wearing our late grandfather’s leather gaiters which she always does when the weather is cold, so she gently swatted the kitten off. ‘I also recall your father coming up with some tale that our neighbour, God rest his miserable soul, had agreed to go halves on the cost and have his own house modernised too.’
She shook her head while, as always, her forehead creased into a fierce frown whenever she remembered Papa. ‘To think we were foolish enough to believe a word Percival Fyttleton ever said. After so many years you would think we’d have had more sense. As for his foisting that white elephant of a house on us… Oh well, going over and over what’s past won’t solve any problems. Christabel, peel these vegetables while you tell me more about this plan of yours.’
‘We don’t know why or when Papa bought next door.’ I ran water into the bowl and looked for my favourite paring knife. Granny raised an eyebrow and I nodded, because we knew perfectly well that Papa always avoided discussions about money. ‘We do know, though, that the two of them agreed Mr Clarke could stay there till he died. That’s good because it means the house is in a reasonable state of repair.’
I enlarged on my theme. ‘You didn’t go in there, Granny,’ I said, remembering the brief tour of exploration Addy and I had made when we heard the news. It was before we had the key too for we climbed in through the scullery window. ‘He was a dreadful hoarder and all the downstairs rooms are crammed with furniture that he kept buying at auctions.
‘There’s hardly any furniture upstairs apart from wardrobes and bedsteads, because lugging them all up there must have hurt Mr Clarke’s back and he ended up living in the kitchen after he’d filled all the other rooms. Addy and I could see what looked like chairs and tables, as well as those iron bedsteads he bought when the asylum was demolished.’
‘We could open up a door between the two houses.’ Alix blew her nose and sat up, damp and red about the eyes but interested. ‘I’m sure we could knock through the coat cupboards on either side and we’d keep our side locked most of the time, of course. The lodgers could have the whole house and we’d be perfectly private here.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder how much we could charge them. Two-and-a-half guineas a week each, do you suppose? Or three? It’s true that people are finding it impossible to get rooms in town, so we might actually make some money…’
‘And who will be doing the cooking and all the work, might I ask?’ Granny interrupted, looking sceptical.
‘You’ll be Head Housekeeper as you are now, of course, Granny, dear,’ I said, jumping up to throw my arms round her and give her a kiss which she brushed off kindly but firmly. Granny does not approve of excessive displays of affection. ‘You’ve taught us all you know about cooking and running a house, so we could go out as housemaids if things get really desperate. In the meantime, we’ll be your obedient slaves.’
I took a deep breath and talked eagerly, desperate to convince her. ‘We can’t ignore the house next door so we need to make it work for us. Everywhere you go people are complaining about rising prices and our joint income is only just keeping up, so I vote we try the guest house idea. The lodgers should bring in a bit more money, perhaps enough to engage another girl to help with the extra work.’
‘Besides,’ Alix added, ‘think what a draw it will be, to be a guest at the home of the Lady Elspeth Gillespie and the well-known authoress, Margaret Gillespie, better known to us as Mrs Percival Fyttleton. That will be worth at least a guinea a week extra.’
‘Hmm,’ Granny sniffed but I knew she was weakening. She, more than anyone else, knows the pitiful extent of our entire joint income.
When Addy arrived home from school where she does as little work as possible, she was very much in favour of the plan. The mistresses distrust clever girls and Addy is very clever indeed, so they have set themselves the thankless task of taming her, with no discernible success as yet. She will, however, work like a Trojan if the subject interests her, but that’s not usually at school. We all adjourned to the house joined on to ours to count rooms that could be let: two bedrooms – one large and one smaller – at the front on the first floor; two further bedrooms at the back, along with a box room. Downstairs there was the morning-room for anyone too infirm to manage the stairs.
We would hold in reserve the large attic. In our own house Granny sleeps downstairs and Mother sleeps in the smaller front bedroom and uses the large one as a study-cum-sitting room. The box room is where I keep Mother’s paperwork and files and do all her typewriting. Addy and I have a room each at the back, though we shared the larger one until Alix took over Bertie’s attic after Christmas. We were upset at that but as his twin she had the right so we helped her move her belongings, knowing that we all mourned in different ways.
‘It’s not as bad as I thought.’ Alix sounded surprised as she wiped the woodwork and looked with distaste at her now grubby handkerchief. ‘The woodwork is good enough though it all needs washing down, but upstairs we could simply paint the bedrooms. The drawing-room will need to look grand to impress the lodgers, the dining-room too, so perhaps it will need wallpaper. We can probably get away with a fresh coat of paint in the kitchen.’
‘I really wish Papa had told us he’d bought the house.’ I was wondering how much rent Mr Clarke had paid and what Papa had done with it, although with Salisbury race-course less than twenty miles away that took very little imagination. Even more of a puzzle was what had become of the rent after Papa went down with the Lusitania nearly three years earlier. I suspected that his tenant had previously paid in cash and quietly let the matter lapse.
‘I expect Papa did tell Mother,’ put in Addy. ‘You know what she’s like. If she was in the throes of creation she probably stared at him blankly, signed everything he put in front of her and said, “Thank you, Percival, how kind, but I’m sure we had a house already” – and then forgot all about it.’
Even Granny laughed at that and I pulled out a notepad and pencil and began to make lists. Besides the rooms that could be let, the house boasted a bathroom on the first floor which had been fitted in to another bedroom, and there was a cloakroom with a basin and water-closet tucked in next to the morning-room downstairs. The exact twin to our own house there was electric light everywhere, even – reminding us of Papa’s lordly extravagance – the attic and the cellar.
‘The furniture is a surprise,’ I remarked, as I waded into the drawing-room. Underneath heaps of newspapers, bags and boxes I could see what looked like a large sofa covered in cobwebs. I’d started sneezing as soon as we moved the first boxes, so I waited to let my nose become accustomed. It’s strange that I can cope perfectly with the smell of fish but a dusty smell catches the back of my throat and sets me off. The dust makes me sneeze too, which is a nuisance. I blew my nose and was trying not to breathe too deeply, when Alix peered over imaginary spectacles and said sternly, ‘Really, Christabel. Sur
ely you should have grown out of these vulgar and unladylike displays?’
Addy started to giggle and I spluttered, torn between sneezing and laughing.
‘Oh, don’t, Alix,’ I implored, laughing at her impression of the ineffectual headmistress at St Mildred’s. ‘That’s Miss Hereford to the life. I had a sudden panic and thought I was still at her mercy.’
I don’t know why they call it hay fever because I sneeze at practically everything including hay between Spring and Autumn, and I’m still waiting to grow out of this distressing habit. Meanwhile I tied one of Papa’s old handkerchiefs over my nose and mouth as we moved tables and a large sofa so we could plough a path to the bay window.
‘I believe there are some quite acceptable armchairs over here, though it’s possible they’re full of mouse nests.’ I scrambled out, dusty and daunted. ‘Why on earth did he buy so much stuff, then never use it? More to the point, what on earth are we going to do with it all?’
‘He probably sat on it, like a dragon on its golden treasure.’ Addy emerged from the cellar accompanied by the two latest kittens that had sneaked in with us. ‘As for what we do with it, that’s easy. We use what is usable, sell what is saleable and give the rest away.’
‘What’s it like in the cellar, Addy? Anything interesting down there that’s going to make our fortune?’
Addy winked at me and ignored Granny’s disapproving expression.
‘You mean apart from the chests of gold doubloons and jewels?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s perfectly warm and dry and there are trunks and wicker baskets full of what I think are sheets and tablecloths. It looks as though he bought job lots and just pushed them down there unopened when his back seized up. I expect he couldn’t manage the cellar stairs anymore.’
I should explain that if you look at our two houses from the road, you can see their matching front doors side-by-side at the top of a short flight of steps (strictly separated by a railing) which leads down to adjoining garden paths – these separated by a hedge.
Below the steps you catch a glimpse of high windows, indicating the cellar that runs from front to back of each house; there are larger windows at the back and a half-glazed door to the garden, as well as a narrow stair up to the kitchen. Our own cellar is used for storage but with imagination and effort, next-door’s could be turned into an extra room. Before we can contemplate that, we have to make a success of our ambitious new venture.
Our front hall is wide with a tiled floor and a handsome staircase so we gladly decided to sacrifice the coat cupboards. We would be completely separate from the lodgers and a table could be set up in next-door’s hall to form a reception area.
Fortunately, Mother is the least inquisitive of women because if she had any inkling that there might be extra money coming in, she would certainly spend it all on books rather than boring but necessary items such as food, coal, electric light, water and clothes.
I pulled myself together. ‘Let’s make a start and sort everything into heaps or at least into rooms. We’ll divide it as Addy suggested. Things we need at once; stuff we should keep for future use; anything good enough to go to the auction rooms or the second-hand shop by the station; and the rest to the church jumble sale. If it’s too disgusting for anything else it can go to the rag-and-bone man, and anything wooden or wormy can be chopped up for firewood.’
We threw ourselves into the task and it became a game, a distraction from thinking about Bertie. Now and then one of us would choke and wipe away a tear but we said nothing. Our brother was dead and nothing would bring him back but working together did help us to cope. A note to the auctioneer in town brought him the next day and he took some of the larger pieces off our hands. He was foiled in his attempt to commandeer the enormous walnut bedstead that Addy unearthed in the morning-room.
‘We really ought to keep it, Christy,’ she insisted. ‘We might have a very fat lodger.’
We were lucky enough to find a builder whose next job had been cancelled because of a death in the customer’s family, and once the communicating door was in place, we spent the next three weeks scrubbing walls and floors and windows in our spare time, until our hair looked like birds’ nests and our hands were a disgrace.
Employing the builder meant we were committed to the plan otherwise we would have wasted the money, so we set to with renewed determination. Granny and I have frugal minds so we both love a bargain and we managed to do everything on a shoe-string.
‘I’ve solved the paint problem,’ I announced in triumph. ‘Mr Golding, the ironmonger, gave me some tins of cream paint for nothing. I went in to see what he had in the shop and he offered me these tins. They’re all rusty because he’d left them in the shed and forgot them, so there may be some orange streaks.’
‘What did you promise him in return?’ Alix was suspicious but this time my conscience was clear.
‘He was happy to help,’ I sniffed haughtily. ‘The bottle of home-made cough syrup Granny gave him at Christmas cleared up his chest miraculously.’
We painted the upstairs walls, and ourselves, and those in the kitchen, then – rather ambitiously – we papered the reception rooms. Granny took a turn at bargain-hunting and bought some wallpaper at half-price from our helpful ironmonger and we soon realised that paper-hanging is easy enough once you’ve shown the paper who’s in charge.
Alix, who is the artistic one, (not that there’s much to choose between us, we are not budding Burne-Joneses), soon discovered a talent for hanging pictures to hide places where the pattern wasn’t quite lined up properly. She also copied the pattern with her paints to disguise any unsightly gaps. The smell of paint is another of the many things that make me sneeze and cough and splutter but I tied a scarf round my face and was happy to paper or distemper below the dado rails. I have no head for heights and felt sick every time Addy hopped carelessly on to a table to paint the ceiling with a brush that she had tied to a broom handle.
It was hard, heavy work but we three girls were all strong and healthy. Bella, the young woman who comes in twice a week to do the scrubbing and the laundry, helped us. Luckily for us her other employer decided to retrench so Bella was happy to come to us for the full week. During the renovations and cleaning she brought along her thirteen-year old sister, Penny, who had just left school, to fetch and carry and run errands.
‘We’ve engaged extra staff,’ I wailed to Alix one night. ‘We simply have to make a success of this now.’
Gradually we uncovered the floors and could see the size and shape of the rooms clearly. Rugs, dressing-tables and chairs went up to the bedrooms, and the large sofa and armchairs – mercifully not ravaged by mice or moths – graced the drawing-room, so we were able to arrange them to our satisfaction. The huge bed stayed in the morning-room and although we had to buy new mattresses, the auctioned pieces paid for them.
‘I was cross when Mr Clarke’s nephew refused to clear out the house,’ Addy remarked one day, as she teetered on the stepladder. ‘I saw him on the front steps the day he came to inspect the house contents he’d inherited, so I asked him what he was doing. He said he didn’t want any of the furniture. He’d been hoping for a modern horsehair sofa and chair set, but it was just old rubbish and we were welcome to it. Wouldn’t he be vexed if he knew how useful it’s been?’
While we tackled the decorating Alix reported that life went on as usual for the convalescents up at Groom Hall. Officers arrived and departed regularly, sometimes in batches and at other times in a trickle. They complained about the lack of accommodation locally for their wives and mothers, sisters and daughters. Alix, by some miracle, managed not to blurt out our plan and continued to appraise the patients in the hope that a suitable husband might be among them. She’d had no luck so far, saying they were pleasant enough, but that she had now raised her sights and hoped to add good looks and a kind heart to her initial list of qualities. That list had demanded only that a candidate should be alive, which was a given, not disfigured or too incapacitated, should h
ave a comfortable income and be, like Jane Austen’s single gentleman, “in need of a wife”.
She told us about one poor young man who had stayed behind when the Hall was changed to accommodate only patients who were on the brink of going home. He was blind in one eye, paralysed from the neck down and suffering badly from shell shock. ‘Nobody knows how much he understands,’ she told me one day, with a sympathetic catch in her voice. ‘Poor fellow, he has awful nightmares; the other officers say he screams all night unless he’s sedated. He’s waiting for a place to fall vacant in a home for incurables nearer his family in Kent, but meanwhile he has to stay here. He can’t take up a bed elsewhere when nothing can be done for him.’
I forged a letter from Mother to the bank, and Granny and I arranged for the lodgers’ potential rent money to be paid into an account we had already set up in Granny’s name, when Papa died. Mother has no interest in money apart from its power to buy books, so a sum each month goes into her own account and the rest of it, including her writing income, goes into what we privately call the Family Fighting Fund. Mother rarely engages with the outside world as she lives on a higher plane than the rest of us, which suits us very well. She has no common sense when it comes to money so God forbid she should ever find out what we’re up to!
Granny has a small private income, her sole inheritance from her parents, and twenty pounds a year that was all Grandpapa was able to leave her. That goes into the pot and I contribute as well with our latest source of income, the money I earn from writing adventure serials for boys’ magazines and annuals. This is a deadly secret known only to my sisters and grandmother.
It came about like this. When Bertie was at boarding-school he and I used to send each other parodies of Boys’ Own adventure stories, but a year or so ago I decided to submit them to a magazine. I rewrote them as yarns that might appeal to boys and young men at the Front and was delighted when they paid me. Wondering whether I could find a second income for my stories I contacted Mother’s publisher, using her name; we’re all expert forgers, the Fyttleton girls. Writing as Mother, I explained that Lt Jasper Crombie was a young relative, and would her publisher consider reissuing the stories as books? Happily, her publisher snapped up the stories and the first of Lt Crombie’s efforts had already come out as a short novel last October. The second one, serialised last summer, was due out at the end of April, and I was now three-quarters of the way through the third, which was being serialised as I wrote.
