A Christmas Proposal

She wasn’t quite sure what she meant by this, it was something that she couldn’t put into words, but she knew instinctively that this elderly lady with her plain face and sweet expression was all that she would have wanted if her own mother had lived.

‘My dear.’ Mrs Hay-Smythe lifted up her face for her son’s kiss. ‘How lovely to see you—and these are the girls who had such an unpleasant experience the other day?’

She held out a hand, the glove pulled off. ‘I’m delighted to meet you. You must tell me all about it, presently—I live such a quiet life here that I’m all agog to hear the details.’

‘Oh, it was nothing, Mrs Hay-Smythe,’ said Clare. ‘I’m sure there are many more people braver than I. It is so kind of Oliver to bring us; I had no idea that he had such a beautiful home.’

Mrs Hay-Smythe looked a little taken aback, but she smiled and said, ‘Well, yes, we’re very happy to live here.’

She turned to Bertha. ‘And you are Bertha?’ Her smile widened and her blue eyes smiled too, never once so much as glancing at the yellow jersey. ‘Forgive me that I am so untidy, but there is always work to do in the greenhouse. We’ll go indoors and have a drink. Oliver will look after you while I tidy myself.’

They wandered back to the house—Clare ahead with the doctor, his mother coming slowly with Bertha, stopping to describe the bushes and flowers that would bloom in the spring as they went, Freddie and her small border terrier beside them.

‘You are fond of gardening?’ she wanted to know.

‘Well, we live in a townhouse, you know. There’s a gardener, and he comes once a week to see to the garden—but he doesn’t grow things, just comes and digs up whatever’s there and then plants the next lot. That’s not really gardening. I’d love to have a packet of seeds and grow flowers, but I—I don’t have much time.’

Mrs Hay-Smythe, who knew all about Bertha, nodded sympathetically. ‘I expect one day you’ll get the opportunity—when you marry, you know.’

‘I don’t really expect to marry,’ said Bertha matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t meet many people and I’m plain.’ She sounded quite cheerful and her hostess smiled.

‘Well, as to that, I’m plain, my dear, and I was a middle daughter of six living in a remote vicarage. And that, I may tell you, was quite a handicap.’

They both laughed and Clare, standing waiting for them with the doctor, frowned. Just like Bertha to worm her way into their hostess’s good books, she thought. Well, she would soon see about that.

As they went into the house she edged her way towards Mrs Hay-Smythe. ‘This is such a lovely house. I do hope there will be time for you to take me round before we go back.’ She remembered that that would leave Bertha with Oliver, which would never do. ‘Bertha too, of course…’

Mrs Hay-Smythe had manners as beautiful as her son’s. ‘I shall be delighted. But now I must go and change. Oliver, give the girls a drink, will you? I’ll be ten minutes or so. We mustn’t keep Meg waiting.’

It seemed to Bertha that the doctor was perfectly content to listen to Clare’s chatter as she drank her gin and lime, and his well-mannered attempts to draw her into the conversation merely increased her shyness. So silly, she reflected, sipping her sherry, because when I’m with him and there’s no one else there I’m perfectly normal.

Mrs Hay-Smythe came back presently, wearing a black and white dress, which, while being elegant, suited her age. A pity, thought Bertha, still wrapped in thought, that her stepmother didn’t dress in a similar manner, instead of forcing herself into clothes more suitable to a woman of half her age. She was getting very mean and unkind, she reflected.

Lunch eaten in a lovely panelled room with an oval table and a massive sideboard of mahogany, matching shield-back chairs and a number of portraits in heavy gilt frames on its walls, was simple but beautifully cooked: miniature onion tarts decorated with olives and strips of anchovy, grilled trout with a pepper sauce and a green salad, followed by orange cream soufflés.

Bertha ate with unselfconscious pleasure and a good appetite and listened resignedly to Clare tell her hostess as she picked daintily at her food that she adored French cooking.

‘We have a chef who cooks the most delicious food.’ She gave one of her little laughs. ‘I’m so fussy, I’m afraid. But I adore lobster, don’t you? And those little tartlets with caviare…’

Mrs Hay-Smythe smiled and offered Bertha a second helping. Bertha, pink with embarrassment, accepted. So did the doctor and his mother, so that Clare was left to sit and look at her plate while the three of them ate unhurriedly.

They had coffee in the conservatory and soon the doctor said, ‘We have a family pet at the bottom of the garden. Nellie the donkey. She enjoys visitors and Freddie is devoted to her. Shall we stroll down to see her?’

He smiled at Bertha’s eager face and Freddie was already on his feet when Clare said quickly, ‘Oh, but we are to see the house. I’m longing to go all over it.’

‘In that case,’ said Mrs Hay-Smythe in a decisive voice, ‘you go on ahead to Nellie, Oliver, and take Bertha with you, and I’ll take Clare to see a little of the house.’ When Clare would have protested that perhaps, after all, she would rather see the donkey, Mrs Hay-Smythe said crisply, ‘No, no, I mustn’t disappoint you. We can join the others very shortly.’

She whisked Clare indoors and the doctor stood up. ‘Come along, Bertha. We’ll go to the kitchen and get a carrot…’

Meg and Dora were loading the dishwasher, and the gentle clatter of crockery made a pleasant background for the loud tick-tock of the kitchen clock and the faint strains of the radio. There was a tabby cat before the Aga, and the cat with the orange coat was sitting on the window-sill.

‘Carrots?’ said Meg. ‘For that donkey of yours, Master Oliver? Pampered, that’s what she is.’ She smiled broadly at Bertha. ‘Not but what she’s an old pet, when all’s said and done.’

Dora had gone to fetch the carrots and the doctor was sitting on the kitchen table eating a slice of the cake that was presumably for tea.

‘I enjoyed my lunch,’ said Bertha awkwardly. ‘You must be a marvellous cook, Meg.’

‘Lor’ bless you, miss, anyone can cook who puts their mind to it.’ But Meg looked pleased all the same.

The donkey was in a small orchard at the bottom of the large garden. She was an elderly beast who was pleased to see them; she ate the carrots and then trotted around a bit in a dignified way with a delighted Freddie.

The doctor, leaning on the gate to the orchard, looked sideways at Bertha. She was happy, her face full of contentment. She was happily oblivious of her startling outfit too—which was even more startling in the gentle surroundings.

Conscious that he was looking at her, she turned her head and their eyes met.

Good gracious, thought Bertha, I feel as if I’ve known him all my life, that I’ve been waiting for him…

Clare’s voice broke the fragile thread which had been spun between them. ‘There you are. Is this the donkey? Oliver, you do have a lovely house—your really ought to marry and share it with someone.’

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY didn’t stay long in the orchard—Clare’s high-heeled shoes sank into the ground at every step and her complaints weren’t easily ignored. They sat in the conservatory again, and Clare told them amusing tales about her friends and detailed the plays she had recently seen and the parties she had attended.

‘I scarcely have a moment to myself,’ she declared on a sigh. ‘You can’t imagine how delightful a restful day here is.’

‘You would like to live in the country?’ asked Mrs Hay-Smythe.

‘In a house like this? Oh, yes. One could run up to town whenever one felt like it—shopping and the theatre—and I dare say there are other people living around here…’

‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs Hay-Smythe spoke pleasantly. ‘Oliver, will you ask Meg to bring tea out here?’

After tea they took their leave and got into the car, and were waved away by Mrs Hay-Smythe. Bertha waved back, taking a last look at the house she wasn’t likely to see again but would never forget.

As for Mrs Hay-Smythe, she went to the kitchen, where she found Meg and Dora having their own tea. She sat down at the table with them and accepted a cup of strong tea with plenty of milk. Not her favourite brand, but she felt that she needed something with a bite to it.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Since you want to know, ma’am,’ said Meg, ‘and speaking for the two of us, we just hope that the master isn’t taken with that young lady what didn’t eat her lunch. High and mighty, we thought—didn’t we, Dora?’

‘Let me put your minds at rest. This visit was made in order to give the other Miss Soames a day out, but to do so it was necessary to invite her stepsister as well.’

‘Well, there,’ said Dora. ‘Like Cinderella. Such a nice quiet young lady too. Thanked you for her lunch, didn’t she, Meg?’

‘That she did, and not smarmy either. Fitted into the house very nicely too.’

‘Yes, she did,’ said Mrs Hay-Smythe thoughtfully. Bertha would make a delightful daughter-in-law, but Oliver had given no sign—he had helped her out of kindness but shown no wish to be in her company or even talk to her other than in a casual friendly way. ‘A pity,’ said Mrs Hay-Smythe, and with Flossie, her little dog, at her heels she went back to the greenhouse, where she put on a vast apron and her gardening gloves and began work again.

The doctor drove back the way they had come, listening to Clare’s voice and hardly hearing what she was saying. Only when she said insistently, ‘You will take me out to dinner this evening, won’t you, Oliver? Somewhere lively where we can dance afterwards? It’s been a lovely day, but after all that rural quiet we could do with some town life…’