by Maggie Ford
Echoes of the Past
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One 1953–1957
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part Two 1959–1968
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
About the Author
Also by Maggie Ford
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
For my three children, Janet, John and Clare
Part One
1953–1957
One
On this damp November morning, the gaze of those leaving the crematorium followed the elegant figure of Marjory Lett, the second wife of the deceased, Henry Lett. With her was Hugh, his son by his first marriage, Grace Lett having died five years earlier.
Neither appeared too saddened by the loss of a husband and father. Rather their step was light as they went towards the limousine returning them to Swift House, Henry and Marjory’s home. And why not? This drearier part of inheriting a fortune was over. Now they could sit back and enjoy the family business, left for them to carry on. Yet there was a snag, and by now everyone knew it.
As one of the deceased’s friends, a fellow restaurateur, here to pay his respects, said to a companion: “Pity about that restaurant. They say she never had any interest in it. I expect she’ll sell it now for what she can get.”
“It’s not what it once was,” returned the other man. “Been going downhill since 1947. Poor old Henry never did learn to move with the times. Place has become too damned old-fashioned.”
“Lost heart a long time ago,” said the first. “He fought so hard to keep it going. As you say, she was no help. Only after one thing – his money.”
The other agreed. “Now she can sit back and reap the rewards of those three years, eh? Bit of a gold-digger if you ask me. But he couldn’t see it.”
The first man nodded, making towards his Rolls beside which his chauffeur stood ready to open the passenger door. “My opinion is, if it hadn’t been for that Goodridge fellow, that manager of his, it wouldn’t have lasted this long. Carried him most of the time. The man deserved to have set up his own restaurant. Should have. In competition to Letts. But some are too loyal for their own good.”
“Maybe he will now that it’s gone to the wife and that feckless son of Henry’s,” put in the first man. “Budding Shakespearean actor or something, so I hear. With that sort taking over, the place won’t last six months. Poor old Henry – he deserved better.”
The chauffeur opening the car door for him, he slipped into the seat and, as the door closed, wound down the window to pop his head out.
“Mark my words, Bob, I give that restaurant six months.”
Bob nodded his agreement and, as the Rolls glided off, went to find his own car.
On the further side of the slowly dispersing group, Victoria Hurshell, the only surviving sister of the deceased, clung to her husband’s arm in a manner more possessive than loving. With her daughter Sheila close behind, eyes still red from grieving a much-loved uncle, she too let her gaze follow the progress of the woman in the expensive black outfit, high-heeled shoes and tiny veiled hat.
“So there she goes.” Victoria’s tone was an acidic hiss as the widow let herself be helped by her stepson into the leading Daimler taking them back to Swift House and a sumptuous funeral spread. Prepared by top-class caterers it lay awaiting fifty or more guests as well as the immediate mourners, Henry Lett having been much respected.
“Off to enjoy the fruits of her bereavement,” continued Victoria with a stiff smile to those around her while allowing her husband to conduct her towards the second of the five limousines provided by the funeral directors.
Keeping her voice low, she spoke rapidly as always. “I always said that woman knew what she was about, taking up with a man who’d already had a couple of heart attacks.”
“Mummy,” said Sheila in a cautious but accusing tone. “She didn’t take up with Uncle Henry. You make it sound as though they’d been having a sordid affair. They married legitimately and he was happy with that. He was so lonely after Aunt Grace died.”
Her mother paused to turn on her. “I still say she caught him on the rebound after Grace died. She knew it was only a matter of time before he popped off too and everything came to her. His own fault – refused to give up smoking. Saying cigars were safer than cigarettes, the fool! And what a fool he was to be taken in by her anyway. She knew what she was doing. Didn’t I say that from the very beginning, Harold? What woman takes up with a man twenty years her senior if not for his money?”
“She herself wasn’t exactly a chicken,” reminded Harold, anxious to get into the car out of the drizzle. “Thirty-three, for God’s sake, when she married your brother. You talk of Henry as though he was an old man. He wasn’t an old man. Fifty-five isn’t old. I’m fifty-nine, and I don’t feel old.”
With that he ducked his head angrily into the waiting car, the door held open by its chauffeur, leaving his wife and daughter to be helped in by the man, Victoria’s sarcastic, “Thank you!” directed more at Harold than him.
Those left to their own speculations about Marjory Lett, now being driven off with her nice little windfall from three years of marriage to a sick man, were having a field day. They dawdled to their conveyances, reluctant to get back to the gathering at Swift House where they might not so easily be able to express their various observations in the hearing of others.
The only two people apparently not touched by all this were Edwin Lett, nephew of the deceased, and Helen Goodridge, daughter of the dead man’s restaurant manager, William. Their eyes for each other alone, they lingered, oblivious to the drizzle that was beginning to come down harder.
Watching them as the last vehicle came alongside, William Goodridge’s features softened. Helen was his only daughter. Mary, his wife, killed in an air raid during the war, had not borne any other surviving children.
Theirs had been a strange marriage – arranged almost. By Henry Lett himself. But Will never cared to think about that.
Recalling it even now after all these years carried a sense of unreality. He had obliged a request and reaped a grand reward because of it, and it still pricked his conscience. Yet he had loved Mary. He had brought up her child as if she’d been his own, in fact over the years often forgot to think of Helen as anything but his own.
His tender regard of the two young people with their fair heads close together faded. About to step into the car, he paused, his progress arrested by the implications that last thought conjured up. Edwin and Helen were cousins. Nothing wrong in that even if they were one day to be united in marriage. What did matter was that Helen was unaware of it. He’d never found the courage to tell her who her true father had been.
He should never have told Edwin in the pub that day, not thinking, but if Edwin were to tell her now, he dreaded to think what a shock it would be to her. What if she were to turn on him for keeping it from her? Should he tell her now, today, before it was too late? But he could visualise those wide grey eyes filling with pain and condemnation of him for springing this on her after all her years believing him to be her real father. Better to have a word with Edwin when they got back to Swift House, if it wasn’t too late – warn him against saying anythin
g to Helen just yet. “I’d prefer to tell her myself,” he would say, “so I would be glad if you were to say nothing to her for the time being.”
He was angry with himself in allowing his judgement that day in the pub to be clouded by thoughts of those two, married, eventually returning Letts to its past magnificence. It had gone through his mind that young Edwin had money left to him by his father Geoffrey Lett, Henry’s brother, and Helen had that substantial trust fund which Henry Lett as her natural father had made for her many years ago coming to her next year.
Swept away on a wave of enthusiasm, his mind’s eye had resurrected Letts as it had once been, before the war, the hub of society, the rich and famous pouring through its doors. No longer did the rich and famous haunt it. But he wanted to see it great again, and those two young people had been the means of its salvation. After having talked a load of tommyrot to Edwin following the reading of the will about what could be done about the restaurant if Edwin had a mind to get involved, he’d been encouraged when he’d seen Edwin’s eyes light up at the sight of Helen.
In all the world only three people had known the truth about Helen: he, her mother and Henry. Then he had to go and tell Edwin. The boy was obviously already in love with her and she with him, and if he wasn’t careful it could all get out of hand where Helen was concerned. That was the last thing he wanted.
Gnawing at his lip, William Goodridge climbed into the car, aware that he had been holding up four others of Henry Lett’s restaurant staff. The door with its darkened window closed with a solid thud, obliterating his view of the young couple strolling as if they had all the time in the world towards the third limousine still patiently waiting to depart the now vacated crematorium portico, already beginning to fill with another funeral party awaiting the arrival of the star player.
November was a popular if dismal month for deaths.
* * *
It seemed to Edwin ages since he’d taken Helen to that party, but it was only a week ago. Wrong, perhaps, attending a party so soon after the demise of Uncle Henry, but it had been arranged for weeks and Uncle Henry’s death had been so sudden, taking everyone by surprise. Anyway, it had been a quiet sort of party, a few drinks in a friend’s house with a few other friends, none of whom had any dealings with his family. And it had been the excuse he’d needed to ask Helen out without making it too obvious a date.
Helen had looked stunning when he picked her up to take her there. In a New Look tight-waisted, flare-skirted dress, her fair hair brushed out to curl loosely on her shoulders, and just the right amount of make-up showing up her hazel eyes, she’d taken his breath away. She had mixed with everyone so easily that as they had crowded around her, admiring her, one hopeful remarked that if Edwin had any thought of giving her up, he’d be more than pleased to step into the breach.
“Not if you gave me a million quid,” Edwin answered proudly. Indeed, he had felt proud of her, as though she’d been his girl for years, and knew he’d done the right thing asking her to go there with him. Better than being alone, at a loss about what to say to each other, the date ruined before it had begun, she wary of him and he self-conscious and stammering, making an idiot of himself.
He had been out with plenty of girls before, but none like Helen. Going to a place full of other people had broken any ice there might have been. Afterwards he had driven her home to her door and they had been alone together, but by then they had grown more at ease in each other’s presence. And she had let him kiss her.
He hadn’t been able to ask her out again with all the funeral arrangements, Aunt Victoria presiding of course, but expecting him to help, Hugh practically useless if not disinterested and Marjory Lett, the widow, not so much too bereaved to assist as stating quite openly and without a tear that it was a chore she’d rather not have to do.
“I need some time to myself so that I can consider seriously what to do about my future,” she’d said somewhat off-handedly, and even Hugh had been taken aback by the cold nature of the statement.
“Of course I felt it, the old man going like he did,” he said to Edwin. “But it wasn’t as if he and I were that close, me not exactly living under the same roof. Only saw him occasionally. She saw him every day. I know they had separate bedrooms – she led her own life – but it’s a bit heartless, don’t you think? She’s not missing him at all. And everyone knows it.”
To that, Edwin kept his own counsel and said nothing. He’d had other things to think about, such as when he was going to ask Helen out again.
Sitting in silence next to her as the Daimler took them back to Swift House, his mind alighted briefly on them being cousins though now wasn’t the time to mention it. Besides, it wasn’t important.
At Swift House, they soon became separated, Helen spending most of the time with her father who seemed to Edwin to prefer her by his side, perhaps because she knew no one. For himself, he readily took part in the general conversation, knowing everyone, though the laughter, encouraged by their hostess’s lively tones tinkling out above the buzz and making no one feel they must be solemn any more, made it seem as if Henry Lett had in fact never passed away.
To Edwin it felt like sacrilege. Most after-funeral gatherings invariably did brighten up, maybe helping take the bereaved’s mind off the loss, if only temporarily. But Marjory’s brightness jarred on his nerves. It was as though she saw herself freed of some sort of chain and was making no secret of it. Even Hugh, grown increasingly independent of his father, was more affected than she – but then, blood had to be thicker than water.
“What are you going to do now?” asked Edwin.
Hugh looked up from a whisky and soda and lifted his shoulders in a don’t-know attitude. Edwin strove to enlighten him.
“Are you going back to acting or have you given any more thought to what’s going to happen about the business?”
“What’s there to think about?” returned Hugh, taking a large gulp of his drink. He was already a little drunk. “Up to Marjory really. As for me, I’m not particularly anxious to give up my career and play waiter. That’s what it boils down to. If Marjory wants to sell the place for what it brings, that suits me. Puts a bit of money in the old pocket to help me get somewhere in my profession. The place has become run down. It’s not all that much to speak of these days.”
“It was once.”
“Once. But it isn’t now. Trying to make it what it once was would be a monumental uphill struggle, old man. Marjory has the controlling interest and she’s keen to sell; not much point me hanging on to my shares. We’ve had a few long chats about it and have finally come to an agreement.”
Edwin felt the anger rise up in him.
“To let it go to some third-rate chain of restaurants with no knowledge of what a fine history it has and caring even less!”
More than ever he wanted to get his hands on the place. After everything Mr Goodridge had told him the day following the reading of his uncle’s will, he’d been gripped by enthusiasm for the idea of buying Marjory out. Still unsure whether there’d be enough in his own inheritance from his father to match what they were looking for, even boosted by a sizeable bank loan, he could almost visualise her putting up the stakes to wring the last penny out of him. Old-fashioned and no longer patronised by the best people though it was, Letts was still a restaurant that gave good account of itself and could still command a good price.
Edwin had heard that when his grandfather had died there had been the self-same feelings of uncertainty in the two sons as he had now, but they had pulled it out of the doldrums into which it had floated following the old man’s demise. And if they could do it, so could he.
But there had been two of them: his father and his uncle – he’d be doing this on his own. It was daunting. Even though William Goodridge had boosted his enthusiasm and could still help him over the rough bits, he was no longer a young man and his own enthusiasm would wane with age.
All in all it was something of a Sisyphean task he was contemp
lating taking on. Would it be worth all that effort, all the money needed for it? He would have to mortgage himself up to the hilt. Perhaps he should think again.
He kept to the far side of the gathering, well away from the restaurant manager. If he got into Goodridge’s clutches again he’d be persuaded all over again, and lose sight of straight thinking once more. Yet if the place were to go…
Unbidden and without warning, in the way the mind has of winging back to the past of its own accord, Edwin’s dredged up the memory of the time of his parents’ death.
They’d been killed by a doodlebug, a flying bomb, a V1 rocket, it didn’t matter what they called it. It had landed on a restaurant in Piccadilly where they’d gone to eat. Brought home from college, he had been gently told by Uncle Henry, with Aunt Grace sobbing quietly in the background so that his uncle had had to turn round to look warmingly at her from time to time while explaining things in a faltering, roundabout way until finally coming to the point. But having already guessed what his uncle had been trying to tell him, Edwin had found his uncle’s tactics made the news harder rather than easier to bear.
For the first time in his young life he was made aware how swiftly people can be cut from life – there one minute, gone the next, annihilated, no longer existing, the world going on without them as if they had never been. That was how it had seemed to him at that moment. Even now he couldn’t think how he’d got through those first months, his recollection of that time failing him to some extent.
He did know that Uncle Henry and Aunt Grace had taken charge of him, perhaps mistakenly saying that he need not go back to college. What exactly he did do over those months was not there in his brain as though it meant to erase the pain.
But the day he learned that he’d lost both parents in the blink of an eye stood out to the last detail in his memory: how people had come and cuddled him, sobbed over him, crooning over him, saying, “Oh, you poor dear!” as if that helped. He could recall standing alone for a few brief minutes during a lull in the commiserations in the middle of the huge drawing room at Tilse Hall, his parents’ home in High Ongar, the room looking more vast than he had ever realised. He remembered staring at his reflection in the big gilt-framed mirror over the marble fireplace and wondering why he wasn’t crying like everyone else was. That pale, drawn, teenage face had stared back as if to say, Who are you? He remembered Beryl, their young housemaid, coming in for something – he didn’t know what – and, seeing him, her already reddened eyes had filled up again as she gabbled, “I’m so sorry, Master Edwin, I didn’t mean…” Then, blubbering, she had rushed out.
