Echoes of the Past

by Maggie Ford

  “Not bad at all,” he answered, and remained with forearms leaning on the chromium rail while Goodridge moved off to take himself down the small curving flight of cerise and blue carpeted staircase to the main restaurant, the man moving with great dignity that made one proud of the whole place.

  Looking down, Edwin saw the restaurant manager position himself in a far comer of the lower restaurant where he could see all the staff and be sure they were applying themselves as was expected of them. Nothing escaped his eagle eye and his staff knew it, each station working smoothly as a team, customers fully satisfied.

  Watching him, Edwin wondered what he would have done without him, in a way felt as though he were still being carried by him, but grateful. Goodridge was right, the place was doing well. Halfway through the year already and at last Edwin felt he was able to breathe again.

  As he said to Goodridge, fast becoming his adviser and confidant in nearly all things, there being no one else to turn to, “Amazing how fast the money’s going. I just hope I can pay it all back.”

  “You will, Mr Edwin,” was the man’s reassuring response.

  Even so, he’d got through sums of money on modernisation, though modernisation only up to a point – it was no good completely obliterating the well-loved character that had made the place what it was. It had to be money well spent and was necessary, as was stuff like advertising. Done tastefully, no blare of trumpets to cheapen it, it had done wonders.

  He had taken on new staff at slightly higher wages to get the best. Letts had always been known for its top-quality waiter service and of course its fine cuisine. He had a top-class head chef, Ericson, ruling over equally fine sous-chefs and supportive kitchen staff. He had installed modem equipment to replace that from earlier years which the war had prevented being renewed. Then there was the everyday outlay – general maintenance, wages, entertainment, provisions necessary to place quality menus and choice wines before a customer if the name of Letts was to survive. But all nibbling into, or more like devouring, the extensive bank loan.

  The bank was already looking for its returns but for the time being it was better not to say too much to the rest of the family. Shrunken these days, it consisted of Hugh, Aunt Victoria, her husband and children and himself. (His late Aunt Maud’s husband and children had moved to Canada.) Marjory Lett gone, Hugh and Victoria had finally decided to hang on to their shares, trusting him but still with a say in the business though they seldom showed themselves.

  Occasionally Hugh put in an appearance, checking up on him, Edwin felt. Aunt Victoria merely sent occasional letters full of demands rather than requests on how things were progressing.

  “I’m almost tempted at times,” he remarked to Goodridge, “to tell her to get stuck into some of the business herself and realise what it entails.”

  The only shareholder not family was Goodridge, the only one he felt secure in consulting, knowing he’d get an honest, unbiased answer.

  Edwin thanked God for William Goodridge. Without him he’d have been entirely alone to take the flak if things went wrong. A hundred things could go right, but if one thing didn’t, Hugh and Victoria would be sure to be on him like a ton of bricks, scared their share in the place might suffer. He had a warm feeling that Goodridge would never be like that.

  At the moment, thank God, things were beginning to show a profit, allowing him to keep up repayments on the interest without much pain. But it meant keeping his nose to the grindstone twenty hours a day, more or less, enticing the regular valued and more distinguished customer.

  “I’m getting to be more like my uncle every day,” he told Goodridge. “They say he could be a bit too solemn at times.”

  “At times one has to be slightly serious. Life’s not all tinsel and glamour and, if I may say so, Mr Edwin, gambling.”

  “At times I wish I was more like my father,” Edwin countered the reference to his father’s shortcomings. “More adventurous, more devil may care.”

  “Wouldn’t be good for the firm for you to be too headstrong,” came the reply. “Though between them your father and uncle did make a good team.”

  “At least my father made customers laugh,” put in Edwin, faintly defiant despite that modifying remark. Goodridge was being a bit too honest for his peace of mind. Older, wiser, beside him Edwin knew he was a mere boy even at twenty-six, still green to the blows that running a business could deal, yet he had to trust the man and certainly needed his guidance. “It was that which brought customers in,” Edwin persisted, trying to overcome this slight sense of rebellion, more because that struck him as the attitude of a boy, not a man.

  “There’s more to it than just making them laugh,” said Goodridge.

  “But it helps. I think they preferred my father to my uncle.”

  “They certainly enjoyed a laugh with him, Mr Edwin, but they trusted your uncle, knew that whatever they told Mr Henry in confidence would go no further than his ears.”

  “I know. But my father lightened the place up. That must count for something.”

  “Oh, it did, Mr Edwin.”

  “Then perhaps that’s what I need. To be a bit more light-hearted.”

  But he now knew whom he resembled. It came to haunt him every time he thought of that conversation. He might strive to be like his father, but sobriety was a trait he’d inherited from his uncle and nothing he did would change that. He would just have to make the best of it. Henry Lett had been popular, for all his sober ways; but oh, to have inherited a bit of his father’s debonair light-heartedness, the sort of nature that revealed itself in Hugh, making Edwin almost jealous of his cousin.

  He’d been light-hearted enough when he’d taken on this venture, but five months later saw him growing more and more – what was it? Stuffy? Stodgy? Laden down by the weight of what he’d taken on? He was certainly no longer happy-go-lucky. His social life was suffering, and would Helen put up with that for much longer? He didn’t think so.

  It was this that stopped him referring to marriage again, regretting the hasty way he’d proposed. He should have been more sure of the future before leaping in as he had. What if she had to put up with this for the rest of her life if she did marry him? Maybe she already realised it and that was why she had grown colder towards him lately. Maybe he’d lost her already. Maybe he’d left it too late to ask her again. But this he did not confide to Goodridge.

  * * *

  The dinner things could wait. Let them soak awhile until the baked grease had eased off the pots and pans. Then she would go back and finish the job.

  Helen went into the lounge where her father sat reading his Evening Standard. Picking up the magazine she’d bought this morning on her way to work, she sat down in an easy chair and opened it up three or four pages in. But she didn’t read. Tilting her head, she glanced at her father.

  “Daddy, what do you make of Edwin?”

  As he looked up she saw a mixture of enquiry and vague impatience in his brown eyes. It was Monday evening and he was enjoying a few hours off at home in his flat. The restaurant was usually quiet this first working day of the week, people doing the same as he – taking it easy. But it wouldn’t be long before he grew restless. Around nine he would put down his paper, mumble that he would just pop along to Letts to make sure his assistant manager was coping OK, then return home around ten. The restaurant was a mere couple of minutes’ brisk walk from the flat, though these days his walk wasn’t quite so brisk as it had once been.

  Fifty-eight wasn’t a great age and he was still upright and sprightly, not an ounce of fat on his gaunt frame, nor all that much grey among the brown hair. Helen felt immense pride looking at her father, yet the years were beginning to tell just a little bit. Maybe for him the walk to Letts would be more like four minutes now.

  “What do I make of Edwin?” he echoed her question.

  “Not as a boss or a restaurateur. As a person.”

  Her father was scrutinising her closely, his expression now filled with concer
n for her. He was obviously coming to realise how worried she felt.

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve asked me that, Helen. What do you want me to say, poppet? He’s a very likeable young man.”

  She fiddled with the magazine. “Yes, but I wondered what you think of him, personally. Does he ever mention me to you?”

  The concern had not diminished. “I don’t think he would judge it correct to talk about you during business hours.”

  Her father was hedging. “But does he ever give you the impression that he misses me when we’re not together?”

  William put his newspaper down on his lap and leaned back in his easy chair. “Helen, my dear, I can’t be inside his head. When we’re at work we talk about work and little else. What’s bothering you, poppet?”

  “Nothing.” She said it far too quickly. “It’s just that we don’t see as much of each other as we did a few months ago.”

  “He still takes you out.”

  “Once a week.” Her voice took on an angry note. “If he’s not bogged down with his blessed restaurant.”

  “He’s working hard trying to make a go of it,” excused William.

  “He’s always working hard. He should have made a go of it by now. Seven months since that proposal of his – if it was a proposal.”

  William gave her a severe look. “A restaurant’s not a job with an end product, Helen. You don’t just complete one job then sit back to wait for the next, and while you’re waiting take time off. A restaurant never stops. It goes on from day to day, from week to week, from year to year.”

  “I know. But does he still want to marry me or not? He’s never so much as whispered it to me since that time in February. As far as I’m concerned, Daddy, if he has changed his mind, I don’t see why I should hang around waiting for him. In fact there’s a young man I often see at lunchtime who has asked if I’d go out with him.”

  “Then why don’t you, Helen?”

  It was an open challenge, and it confused her. Her father had seemed so keen at one time that she and Edwin should get together, and now this. As she fell silent, he gave a low cough, deep in his throat, and lifted his newspaper to begin reading again. At odds with herself, Helen stood up and hurried out to the kitchen to deal with the washing-up and vent her confusion on the undeserving pots and pans.

  It occurred to her as she washed up noisily that Edwin wasn’t turning out to be the ideal man she’d imagined. His cousin Hugh was so much more lively. She had only ever met him once, at the restaurant when she had been with Edwin. Taller than his cousin and good-looking to the extreme, she had to admit that he’d turned her head for a moment – but only for a moment. His bearing had immediately proclaimed him to be a bit too charming, a bit too cocksure, perhaps a bit of a womaniser, perhaps not to be trusted with someone’s heart. She had turned back to Edwin and had noticed the vast difference between them, and, yes, she much preferred Edwin. She would always be able to trust Edwin, give him a lasting place in her heart. But the way things looked at the moment, did she still hold a place in his?

  Five

  “I’ll tell you one thing, old man – if you don’t ask her soon, you’re going to lose her. Hopefully to me!”

  Panic welled up in Edwin. Hugh had popped in on one of his rare visits, though they were lately becoming less rare. Edwin realised he’d been labouring under two misconceptions about Hugh’s increasing visits: one being that Hugh, acting in some Shakespearean play at a small London theatre nearby, was taking the advantage of being able to look in more often; and the other, that he was genuinely taking more interest in the restaurant.

  Not so in either case. It had become apparent that the source of Hugh’s interest was Helen. From the first Edwin should have been warned by the way Hugh’s grey eyes twinkled on being introduced to her. Since then his visits had grown more frequent. Worse, he’d begun to ask questions then make comments as he was doing at this moment, high-flown thespian rhetoric giving way to a breeziness that had always got under Edwin’s skin.

  “Quite a smasher, your Helen,” he was saying blithely. “I say you’re a lucky devil. But if you don’t realise it and get off your miserable arse and marry her soon, you’ll find me hot on your heels ready to step in.”

  He gave a low chuckle as Edwin continued to glare, and changed the subject, to Edwin’s mind deliberately trying to emphasise his earlier comments.

  “So, Edwin, old thing, how’s business coming along?” he breezed.

  By the time he left, having taken a look around the kitchens, exchanged the odd word with a few waiters as well as William Goodridge and gone up to the office to examine a few files, then into the penthouse his father had once used, all as though he were sole owner of Letts, Edwin was wishing him miles away. More to the point, he needed to keep Hugh away from Helen – without letting his cousin know how closely they were related. If Hugh found out about her it would only be a matter of time before she too found out about herself. He knew Hugh only too well – never one to keep his mouth shut, and warning him would be betraying Goodridge’s trust.

  With Christmas a few weeks off, the restaurant with its hands full taking bookings by the score, every cover filled daily, nightly, with people often being turned away disappointed, it was hard for Edwin to get to Helen.

  Money was rolling in and it should have felt good. But every iota of his time was being taken up, and although Helen said she understood he could see her getting short of patience. What if Hugh pounced first? The result would be disastrous.

  It would be a year come February since he made that impulsive proposal. If he wanted to save her from Hugh, he’d have to spring it on her as he’d done once before. But this time it had to be right, the right place, the right atmosphere or she could say no, again, and add to the complications. The odd half-hour would not be enough to create the conditions needed for so important a question as asking her to give her hand to him in marriage.

  Then there was the engagement ring. He could have surprised her with it. That was how his flamboyant cousin would have gone about it. But he had a feeling that Helen would want to choose her own, carefully and with great deliberation – a protracted and solemn ritual for every girl. Helen was not one to treat having surprises sprung on her lightly, as he’d learned to his cost early this year. The last thing he needed was Hugh leaping in.

  He knew his cousin – girls flocked around him like silly birds. He had the looks and the manner that could make any girl flip. He took pleasure in loving ’em and leaving ’em when he’d had his fill. Edwin could take no chances of having Helen drift into Hugh’s clutches and have her world collapse about her.

  * * *

  It was Tuesday – not usually a busy day of the week, but tonight a party had booked a table, a titled person planning to entertain several distinguished American guests before taking them on to a theatre.

  “I do apologise for the short notice,” he had told the receptionist who had taken the booking that morning. “But I don’t expect you’ll be overbooked on a Tuesday. My people have to be back in the States well before the weekend to commence filming. They tell me it’ll cost them big bucks if they delay. So I wonder, can Letts accommodate us at short notice?”

  Of course Letts could accommodate them. Edwin put off his Tuesday arrangement to see Helen. He usually saw her on that day; normally it was quiet and the restaurant able to afford his absence.

  Trouble was, and he cursed himself for it now, he had cried off last Tuesday as well, that night being a little more busy too, there being only three weeks left to Christmas. He hoped Helen would understand.

  Next week, come what may, he would put work to one side despite the mounting Christmas rush. He would get tickets for a show, afterwards take her to supper, not in his own restaurant, but somewhere like the Dorchester or even the Ritz, booking a secluded table. Having been stood up two weeks running she deserved somewhere really special, would need to be appeased.

  Over a good wine, he would renew his
proposal, suggest a Christmas engagement – surely that would delight her. They would go together for her to choose the ring. After that they would set a date for the wedding. All this, of course, would have to be done sensitively, discreetly, gently, respectful of her feelings.

  Hastily he telephoned her at lunchtime at her workplace to make his excuses for this evening, his heart in his mouth. There was silence at the other end of the phone as his voice died away.

  “You still there, Helen?”

  “Yes.” Her tone was sharp. She was disappointed. She was angry. He had let her down. What did he expect?

  “Please understand, darling. I know you’re upset. I’m upset too. I was really looking forward to tonight because I had something extra special to tell you. But it looks as if it might have to wait until next week.”

  “If there is a next week!”

  Terse. He must tread carefully. “Helen, I’ve said I’m sorry, and I really am. But I can’t let these people down. They expect me to be there. Uncle Henry never let himself be absent when someone special was coming in.”

  “But you’re not your Uncle Henry, Edwin.”

  “No, but I am trying to do the job as he would have done it.”

  He too was becoming angry, irked by her disparagement of his efforts to be like the man who had spent his whole life turning Letts into a special place. Well, he was going to make it great again. His uncle would have been proud. But Helen didn’t see that.

  “I’m sorry you feel like that, Helen,” he went on. “I was going to make it up to you next week, but if you feel like this about it, I shan’t bother.”

  “Don’t then!” came her response. The phone went dead.

  * * *