At Odds With Love

She listened carefully to the two men debating what was best to be done and presently the professor wrote out a prescription. ‘This won’t make your grandmother drowsy or prevent her from enjoying her daily routine, but it will keep her calm and unworried. Discontinue everything else.’

‘Will you come again?’

‘I am at your disposal should I be needed.’ She got up and he shook her hand. Looking up into his face, she saw that his eyes were a clear light blue and his glance serious. She thanked him gravely and saw them both to the door.

‘I’ll be round this evening,’ Dr Willoughby promised. ‘You know you can phone me at any time.’

She watched the car go down the drive and turn into the lane beyond and then she went in search of Bessy.

The housekeeper was washing up the coffee-cups. ‘Bad news, Miss Jane?’

Jane told her. Bessy had been with her grandmother for a very long time; Jane remembered her from when she had been sent as a child to stay with her grandmother while her parents were abroad, and she was as much a family friend as a housekeeper. ‘And I must phone Basil …’

Basil was Jane’s only other relation, a cousin, an orphan like herself, but that was all they had in common. They had never liked each other as children and now they were adults they saw very little of each other. He was older than she was by a year or two and would eventually inherit his grandmother’s house and possessions. He was making his career in banking and hadn’t been to see Mrs Wesley for a long time. When she rang him presently it was apparent that he had no intention of doing so now.

‘Let me know how the old lady is,’ he told her. ‘I can’t possibly get away, and I doubt if she knows who I am anyway.’ He rang off before she could say anything else.

It was three days later, as Jane was reading the last few pages of Phineas Finn, that her grandmother said softly, ‘Basil will look after you, my dear,’ and died as gently and quietly as she had lived.

There was a great deal to do; Jane got on with it, holding her grief in check, time enough for that when everything which had to be done was done. Basil, when told, said that he would come for the funeral and made no offer of help, not that she had expected him to. Dr Willoughby was a tower of strength and Bessy, tight-lipped and red-eyed, saw to it that some sort of a normal routine was maintained.

Mrs Wesley had had many friends—the village church was full and after the service those who knew her well went back to the house. Jane, circulating with plates of sandwiches and offers of coffee or tea, saw that Basil had already assumed the air of master of the house. Presently, when everyone had gone and Mr Chepstow, their solicitor, had taken a seat in the sitting-room, he followed her into the kitchen where she had gone with a tray of plates. ‘You’d better come, I suppose,’ he told her. ‘Old Chepstow seems to think you should be there.’ He turned to Bessy. ‘And you—whatever your name is—you are to come too.’

‘This is Bessy, grandmother’s housekeeper,’ said Jane coldly. ‘She has looked after her for years.’

He shrugged and turned away and they followed him back to the sitting-room where Mr Chepstow was toasting himself before the small bright fire.

‘Well, shall we get started? I must get back to town this evening—I’ve an important meeting …’

Mr Chepstow wasn’t to be hurried. He read the will slowly and Jane was pleased to hear that Bessy was to have a small pension for the rest of her life; she herself was to receive five hundred pounds with the wish that her cousin Basil would take upon himself the duty of giving her a home for as long as she wanted it, and making such financial provision for her as he deemed fitting. The estate was left entirely to him.

Mr Chepstow folded the will carefully and stood up. ‘You will wish to make financial arrangements, no doubt,’ he told Basil. ‘If you care to make an appointment when it is convenient to you, I will be pleased to deal with anything you may have in mind.’

Basil wasn’t listening; he nodded impatiently and bustled the solicitor out to his waiting taxi and then came back into the house.

‘I’ve no time now,’ he told Jane. ‘I’ll be back in a day or two.’

His goodbye was perfunctory and he was gone, driving away in his flashy car.

‘’E didn’t ask if we ‘ad any money,’ observed Bessy tartly. “E may be yer cousin, Miss Jane, but I don’t like ‘im.’ She picked up the poker and bashed the logs in the grate. ‘And ‘e don’t need ter think I’ll be staying—not for ‘im—there’s me sister in Stepney, got a nice little ‘ouse now she’s widdered—me and me pension will be more than welcome …’

She glanced at Jane sitting composedly by the fire. ‘And you, Miss Jane, what about you?’

‘I’ll go back to nursing, Bessy. It may take a few weeks to get a job but I can stay here. There are Bruno and Percy and Simpkin to think of too. I must try and find homes for them, although Basil might take them over.’

‘’E might, and then again ’e might not. You can ask ’im when ’e comes again.’

Jane was kept busy for the next few days; there were letters to write and answer, friends calling, small household bills to be paid and their own modest needs to be dealt with. She kept a careful account of the money she spent and wondered what she was to do once the housekeeping purse was empty. She had a little money of her own but she hadn’t earned any for the last few months and it might be a month or more before she would get a pay packet. While she pondered her future she did her best to keep her sorrow at bay. She would go as soon as possible, she reflected; there were plenty of large provincial hospitals and she knew that she would get an excellent reference from the London hospital she had left when she’d come to look after her grandmother. She knew that Basil didn’t like her over-much but it was unlikely that he would want to come and live in the house immediately. She was never quite sure what he did in the city; if it was a high-powered job then he might commute at weekends as so many of her grandmother’s neighbours did and the will had stipulated that he should give her a home as long as she needed one and financial help too. The latter she had no intention of accepting if it were offered; she was quite capable of supporting herself, but it would be nice if he allowed her to stay sometimes …

She and Bessy cleaned and polished the house and tidied the flowerbeds, already touched with the first autumn frosts, and waited for Basil to return.

He came at the end of a week, and not alone this time. Jane, watching from the drawing-room window where she had been arranging a bowl of chrysanthemums on the rent table, saw him help a girl out of the car; a small slim creature with a cloud of dark hair and dressed unsuitably for the country, although the black and white striped suit she was wearing was the last word in fashion. Even at that distance Jane felt a surge of dislike. I am becoming a spiteful old maid, she reflected as she went to open the door.

‘Hello,’ said Basil. ‘This is Myra, my fiancée. Darling, this is Jane, my cousin, remember?’

Myra wasn’t a girl, she was a woman, older than Jane, exquisitely turned out and very sure of herself. She said, ‘Oh, hello, Jane, Basil’s brought me to see the house. I dare say it needs a good deal of refurbishing—old, isn’t it?’

‘Two hundred years or so,’ said Jane drily. ‘Do come in.’

Basil threw her a dagger glance which she ignored; it was still her home until he asked her to leave. ‘I’m sure you would like coffee. I’ll make some—there’s a fire in the drawing-room. We light it once or twice a week to keep the room aired.’

‘We’ll start looking round,’ said Basil, ‘we haven’t got all day. Let us know when the coffee is ready.’

He swept Myra out of the room and across the hall into the dining-room and Jane, speechless at his rudeness, flounced along to the kitchen where she vented her ill humour on the cups and saucers.

‘What’s bitten you?’ asked Bessy, coming in with a pile of washing. ‘Smashing round like a bull in a china shop.’

‘Basil’s here,’ said Jane between her teeth. ‘He’s brought his fiancée; they’re touring the house. They can have instant coffee and those biscuits I made yesterday.’

She bore the tray away presently and went in search of Basil and Myra. They were in her grandmother’s bedroom. ‘We’ll throw this stuff out for a start,’ Myra was saying, and looked over her shoulder as Jane went in.

‘It’s large enough,’ she conceded, ‘but some of the furniture is pretty out of date …’

‘Most of it is antique.’ She looked at Basil and added, ‘And quite valuable, I understand.’

‘Well, that’s for me to decide now. Is that coffee ready?’

‘In the drawing-room, if you’d like to come downstairs.’

Seething with rage though she was, Jane didn’t allow it to show; she handed the coffee and biscuits with perfect civility and made polite conversation.

‘Aren’t you bored here?’ asked Myra. ‘It must have been dull living here with an old lady.’

‘She was my grandmother,’ Jane replied tartly. ‘She was Basil’s too, you know. I like the country.’

‘Don’t you like living in London?’ asked Myra curiously.

‘I had friends there and a good job but I came here when I had weekends or holidays.’

Basil said suddenly, ‘Well, you’ll miss that. You’ve had your fair share of living in comfort here; you won’t be able to get round us the way you got round Grandmother. Myra and I are to be married within the next week or so, and we shall be living here. I suppose you’ll have to stay a few days longer to pack up your things—you can go and stay with some of those friends of yours,’ he added with a sneer. ‘And that woman in the kitchen, she can go too.’ His eye lighted on the basket under the rent table. ‘That dog and the cats—two of them? I’ll get the vet to collect them, they can be put down.’

Jane stared at him, willing herself not to speak until she could control her tongue. ‘In Grandmother’s will,’ she reminded him as soon as she could trust her voice, ‘she asked if I might regard this as home; I see now that that isn’t possible and I’m sure that if she had known that you intended marrying she wouldn’t have wanted that—I certainly don’t. Nor do I want any financial help from you, not that you’re likely to offer it, are you? She did, however, ask that the animals should be cared for. At least give me time to find homes for them.’

He laughed. ‘Well, I am taking care of them, aren’t I? And you’re right, Jane, I have no intention of doing anything for you; you can earn your own living any way you like. Find yourself a husband if you can, though with that sharp tongue of yours I doubt if you’ll succeed. I’ll be back in two days’ time. That woman who looks after the place can stay until I get new staff but you will go, you and the dog and cats.’ He got up. ‘Come along, darling, we’ll go back to town and get hold of a good interior decorator. He can get started by the end of the week and we can live in part of the house until he’s finished.’

They went to the door and Myra lingered for a moment. ‘You shouldn’t have much trouble finding a man,’ she observed kindly. ‘Doctors mostly marry nurses, don’t they? Nice meeting you.’

Jane stood on the steps outside the door for a long time making a great effort to get calm so that she could explain it all to Bessy. Presently she went along to the kitchen. The postman was there, drinking the mug of tea the housekeeper had poured for him and Jane said, ‘No, don’t get up, Jimmy, I’ll have a mug too, if I may, Bessy. Any letters?’