Hilltop Tryst

She decided not to think about him for the moment, and instead pointed out the ancient and famous inn on the corner of the street and suggested that they might cross over, since Miss Mead’s little cottage was on the other side.

Miss Mead answered their knock on her door. She was tall and thin and elderly, and very ladylike. She wore well-made skirts and blouses, and covered them with cardigans of a suitable weight according to the time of year, and drove a small car. She was liked in the village, but guardedly so, for she had an acid tongue if annoyed.

But now her stern face crumpled into tearful delight. ‘Nobby—where have you been?’ She took him from Mr Latimer and hugged him close.

‘You found him. Oh, I’m so grateful, I can never thank you enough—I’ve hardly slept…’

She looked at them in turn. ‘He’s not hurt? Has your father seen him, Beatrice?’

‘Yes, Miss Mead. Mr Latimer found him down a rabbit-hole and carried him here.’

‘He seems to have come to no harm,’ interpolated Mr Latimer in his calm voice. ‘Tired and hungry and thirsty—a couple of days and he’ll be quite fit again.’

‘You’re so kind—really, I don’t know how to thank you…’

‘No need, Miss Mead. He’s a nice little chap.’ He turned to Beatrice. ‘Should we be getting back? I don’t want to keep your father waiting.’

A bit cool, she thought, agreeing politely, wishing Miss Mead goodbye and waiting while she shook hands with her companion and thanked him once again. Perhaps his placid manner hid arrogance. Not that it mattered, she reflected, walking back with him and responding politely to his gentle flow of talk; they were most unlikely to meet again. A friend of the Elliotts, staying for a day or two, she supposed.

He proved to be a delightful guest. Her mother sat him down beside her and plied him with breakfast and a steady flow of nicely veiled questions, which he answered without telling her anything at all about himself. That he knew the Elliotts was a fact, but where he came from and what he did somehow remained obscure. All the same, Mrs Browning liked him, and Beatrice’s three sisters liked him too, taking it in turns to engage him in conversation. And he was charming to them; Ella, fifteen and still at school, Carol, on holiday from the stockbroker’s office where she worked in Salisbury, and Kathy, getting married in a few weeks’ time…

They were all so pretty, thought Beatrice without rancour; she was pretty herself, but at twenty-six and as the eldest she tended to regard them as very much younger than herself, partly because they were all cast in a smaller mould and could get into each other’s size tens, while she was forced to clothe her splendid proportions in a size fourteen.

Mr Latimer didn’t overstay his welcome; when her father got up from the table he got up too, saying that he must be on his way. He thanked Mrs Browning for his breakfast, bade her daughters goodbye and left the house with Mr Browning, bidding him goodbye too as they reached the Land Rover parked by the gate and setting off at a leisurely pace in the direction of Telfont Evias.

‘What a very nice man,’ observed Mrs Browning, peering at his retreating back from the kitchen window. ‘I do wonder…’ She sighed silently and glanced at Beatrice, busy clearing the breakfast-table. ‘I don’t suppose we shall see him again—I mean, Lorna Elliott has never mentioned him.’

‘Perhaps he’s not a close friend.’ Ella, on her way to get the school bus, kissed her mother and ran down the drive.

And after that no one had much more to say about him; there was the washing-up to do, beds to make, rooms to Hoover and dust and lunch to plan, and as well as that there were the dogs and cats to feed and the old pony in the paddock to groom.

Mr Browning came back during the morning, saw several patients, just had his coffee and then dashed away again to see a sick cow; and at lunch the talk was largely about Great-Aunt Sybil who lived in Wilton and to whom Beatrice was acting as a companion until some luckless woman would be fool enough to answer her advertisement. Beatrice had been there three weeks already, and that, she pointed out with some heat, was three weeks too long. She was only at home now because the old lady had taken herself off to London to be given her yearly check-up by the particular doctor she favoured. She was due back the next day, and Beatrice had been told to present herself at her aunt’s house in the early afternoon.

‘If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s family, I wouldn’t go,’ declared Beatrice.

‘It can’t be for much longer, dear,’ soothed her mother, ‘and I know it’s asking a lot of you, but who else is there? Ella’s too young, Carol’s due back in two days’ time and Kathy has such a lot to do before the wedding.’

Beatrice cast her fine eyes to the ceiling. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, and no one applies for the job, I’d better get married myself.’

There was an instant chorus of, ‘Oh, has James proposed?’

And Kathy added, ‘I mean properly, and not just taking you for granted.’

‘He’s not said a word,’ said Beatrice cheerfully, ‘and even if he did I wouldn’t…’ She paused, quite surprised that she had meant exactly that.

Until that very moment she hadn’t bothered too much about James, while at the back of her mind was the knowledge that when he felt like it he would ask her to marry him, or at least allow his intentions to show, but now she was quite sure that she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth.

‘Oh, good,’ said Kathy. ‘He’s not at all your sort, you know.’

‘No. I wonder why I didn’t see that?’

‘Well, dear—he may never ask you,’ observed her mother.

‘That’s just what I mean,’ went on Kathy, ‘you would have dwindled into a long engagement while he deliberated about the future, and then got married without a scrap of romance.’

‘Great-Aunt Sybil offers an alternative, doesn’t she?’ Beatrice laughed. ‘I only hope she liked this doctor she went to see. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were dozens of replies to her advert for a companion? Then I can come back home and help Father.’

Her father drove her over to Wilton the next day after an early lunch. ‘I’m sorry about this, love,’ he said as they drove the few miles to the town, ‘but your great-aunt is my mother’s sister, and I did promise that I’d keep an eye on her.’

‘And quite right too,’ said Beatrice stoutly. ‘Families should stick together.’

Her aunt’s house was Georgian, its front door opening on to the street which divided a square, tree-lined and ringed around by similar roomy old houses. Beatrice kissed her father goodbye, picked up her case and pulled the bell by the door. Mrs Shadwell, the sour-faced housekeeper, answered it and stood aside so that she might go in, and with a final wave to her father Beatrice went into the dim and gloomy hall.

Her aunt hadn’t returned yet; she went to her room and unpacked her few things, and went downstairs again to open the windows and the glass doors on to the garden at the back of the house; her aunt would order them all closed again the moment she came into the house, but for the moment the warm sun lit the heavily furnished room. Too nice to stay indoors, decided Beatrice, and skipped outside. The garden was quite large and mostly lawn bordered by shrubs and a few trees. She went and sat down with her back to one of them and allowed her thoughts to turn to Mr Latimer. A nice man, she decided; a thought dreamy, perhaps, and probably he had a bad temper once roused. She wondered what he did for a living—a bank manager? A solicitor? Something to do with television? Her idle thoughts were interrupted by a sudden surge of movement within the house. Her aunt had returned.

Beatrice stayed where she was; she could hear her aunt’s voice raised in umbrage and she sighed. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she were paid for her companionship—if one could call it that: finding things, running up and down stairs with knitting, books, a scarf, answering the telephone, reading aloud to her aunt until that lady dozed off, only to wake a few minutes later and demand that she should continue reading and why had she stopped? Companion, Beatrice decided after a few days of this, wasn’t the right word—there was no time to be a companion—who should have been someone to chat to and share jokes with and take little jaunts with on fine days. The word was slave.

Her aunt’s voice, demanding to know where Miss Beatrice was, got her slowly to her feet and into the drawing-room.

‘I’m here, Aunt.’ She had a nice, quiet voice and a pleasant, calm manner. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

‘No, I did not. It was a waste of my time and my money—that old fool who saw me told me that I was as sound as a bell.’

She glared at Beatrice, who took no notice, but merely asked, ‘But why don’t you believe him, Aunt?’

‘Because I know better; I am in constant pain, but I’m not one to moan and groan; I suffer in silence. You cannot possibly understand, a great healthy girl like you. I suppose you’ve been at home, idling away the days.’

‘That’s right, Aunt,’ said Beatrice cheerfully. ‘Nothing to do but help Father in the surgery, feed the animals, groom the pony and do some of the housework and the cooking…’

‘Don’t be impertinent, Beatrice! You may go upstairs to my room and make sure that Alice is unpacking my case correctly, and when you come down I wish you to get the telephone number of a heart specialist— No, on second thoughts you had better open the letters. There are bound to be answers to my advertisement.’

But from the little pile of letters Beatrice opened there were only three, and they didn’t sound at all hopeful. The first one made it a condition that she should bring her cat with her, the second stipulated that she should have every other weekend free and the third expected the use of a car.

Beatrice offered them to her aunt without comment, and after they had been read and consigned to the wastepaper basket she observed, ‘Perhaps if you offered a larger salary…?’

Her aunt’s majestic bosom swelled alarmingly. ‘The salary I offer is ample. What does my companion need other than a comfortable home and good food?’

‘Clothes,’ suggested Beatrice, ‘make-up and so on, money for presents, probably they have a mother or father they have to help out, holidays…’

‘Rubbish. Be good enough to take these letters to the post.’

A respite, even though brief; Beatrice lingered in the little town for as long as she dared, and when she got back she was rebuked for loitering. ‘And I have made an appointment with this heart specialist. I shall see him on Wednesday next and you will accompany me. He has rooms in Harley Street.’ She added in her loud, commanding voice, ‘Jenkins will drive us, and I intend to visit several of these agencies in the hope that I may find someone suitable to be my companion.’

‘What a good idea. There’s bound to be someone on their books. Will you interview them here or there, Aunt?’

‘You may safely leave such decisions to me.’ Great-Aunt Sybil turned a quelling eye upon her, only Beatrice took no notice of it; she was a sensible girl as well as a pretty one and had quickly learnt to ignore her aunt’s worse moments. There were plenty of Great-Aunt Sybils in the world and, tiresome though they were, they had families who felt it their duty to keep an eye on them. Only she hoped it wouldn’t be too long before she could go back home again, which thought led to her wondering how Miss Mead’s Nobby was doing and that led naturally to Mr Latimer. An interesting man, she reflected, if only because of his great size and good looks; she speculated as to his age and quickly married him off to a willowy blonde, small and dainty with everybody doing everything they could for her because of her clinging nature. There would be children too, a little girl and an older boy—two perhaps… She was forced to return to her prosaic world then, because her aunt wished for a glass of sherry. ‘And surely you can do that for me,’ she grumbled in her overpowering voice, ‘although you don’t look capable of anything, sitting there daydreaming.’

Beatrice poured the sherry, handed it to her aunt, then gave herself one, tossed it off and, feeling reckless, poured a second one. Great-Aunt Sybil vibrated with indignation. ‘Well, really, upon my word, Beatrice, what would your father say if he could see you now? Worse, what would that young man of yours think or say?’