Stormy Springtime

Betsy was only too willingly reassured; she trotted back to the kitchen and Meg sat drinking her tea, thinking about the future. Of course it would be marvellous if a very rich man came along and bought the house and fell in love with her at the same time, but that only happened in books… What was needed was someone elderly who needed a housekeeper or companion and a good plain cook and who didn’t object to an elderly tomcat. Meg, who was a practical girl, thought it unlikely, though there was no harm in hoping.

Her sisters wasted no time. Within a week a pleasant young man from a London estate agent came to inspect the property. He walked round, with Meg beside him explaining about the old-fashioned bathrooms, the central heating, the Aga stove and why the large drawing-room was icy cold.

‘There’s only me,’ she pointed out, ‘there’s no point in having a fire there just for one—my sisters are seldom here. We switch on the central heating twice a week, though, because of the furniture—Hepplewhite, you know.’

He nodded, rather at sea; he knew a lot about houses but not much about furniture. He felt vaguely sorry for the rather mouselike girl who was showing him round with such a self-possessed air. He spared a moment to wonder where she would go when the house was sold, for sold it would be, he could see that. Fine old Georgian houses with a generous spread of garden were much sought after. He accepted the coffee she offered him, agreed with her that people wishing to view the house might do so only with an appointment, and took his leave.

The first couple came within three days. In the morning, because Meg was on the committee which organised the Church Bazaar and that would take the whole afternoon.

Mr and Mrs Thorngood arrived in a splendid Mercedes and Meg, rarely given to criticising anyone, disliked them on sight. She led them round her home, listening with a calm face to their loud-voiced remarks about old-fashioned bathrooms, no fitted cupboards and a kitchen which must have come out of the Ark. They didn’t like the garden, either: no swimming pool, all those trees and outbuildings which were of no use to anyone…

‘We use the end one as a garage,’ Meg pointed out.

‘Well, that wouldn’t do for us—we’ve three cars—we’d need to build a decent garage.’ The man looked at her angrily as though it were her fault, and presently the pair of them drove away.

The next day a middle-aged woman with an overbearing manner came. She was looking for suitable premises for a school, she explained, but it took her only a short time to decide that the house wouldn’t do at all. ‘Most unsuitable,’ she observed to Meg, who was politely standing on the doorstep to see her off. ‘All those plastered ceilings, and none of the bedrooms would take more than five beds.’

Meg liked the next couple. They were young and friendly and admired everything wholeheartedly. It wasn’t until they were drinking coffee with her in the sitting-room that the girl said suddenly, ‘We can’t possibly buy this place; actually we live in a poky little flat in Fulham, but when Mike’s between jobs, we go around inspecting houses—it’s fun, seeing how the other half live. I hope you don’t mind.’ She sighed. ‘It must be nice to be rich and live in a lovely old house like this one.’

‘Well’, began Meg and decided not to go on. ‘I’m glad you like it, anyway. It’s been in the family for a fairly long time.’

There were quite a few viewers during the next week, but none of them came back a second time, although one man made an offer of slightly less than the price the agents had set. Instantly rejected, of course.

Then no one came at all for four days. Meg breathed a sigh of relief; perhaps no one would want to live in her home and she would be able to stay on there. She knew it was silly to think that; she would have to go sooner or later to some tiny basement flat unless she could find something to do locally. That wouldn’t be easy, since she had no skills.

As each day passed she felt more and more lulled into false hopes; she ceased listening for the phone, put in hours of work in the garden and went for long walks. The weather had turned nasty—perhaps that was why no one came, but it made no difference to her. On the afternoon of the fourth day she came home from a muddy wet walk, kicked her sensible boots off at the back door and was met by an agitated Betsy.

‘There’s a gentleman,’ said the old lady, all agog. ‘The estate agent rang just after you’d gone and said he was on his way. I had to let him in… He’s in the drawing-room.’

‘Is he now? Well, he’ll have to wait a bit longer, won’t he, while I get tidied up? Bother the man!’

She had sat down on the floor of the back lobby, the better to pull off the old socks she wore inside her boots, and at a kind of gulping sound from Betsy, she turned her head. There was a man standing in the lobby doorway. A towering, wide-shouldered giant with black hair and even blacker eyes. Very good-looking too, thought Meg, and frowned fiercely at him. He had her at a disadvantage, and the nasty little smile on his thin mouth made that apparent.

‘I must apologise,’ he said in a voice which held no apology at all, and waited for her to speak. She sat there looking up at him. There was not much point in getting up until she had the socks off; for one thing she guessed that he must be over six feet and she was a mere five foot three; he would still look down on her. She disposed of the socks, stood up and pushed her feet into a shabby pair of slippers and flung off her wet raincoat, dragged off the scarf she had tied round her hair and addressed him coolly. ‘No need,’ she told him. ‘You weren’t to know that I wasn’t at home.’ She tossed back her damp hair, hanging untidily round her damp face, rosy from the wind and rain. ‘You would like to see round the house?’

‘You are right, that was my object in coming,’ he informed her.

Oh, very stuffy, decided Meg, and led the way to the front hall which was, after all, the starting point. She had the patter off by heart now: the Adam fireplace in the drawing-room, the strap work on the dining-room ceiling, the rather special Serpentine scroll balustrade on the staircase, and as they wandered in and out of the bedrooms on the first floor she pointed out the quite ugly cast-iron fireplace—writhing forms, a mid-Victorian addition which her companion pronounced in a cold voice as frankly hideous. But other than that, he had little to say. She thought it very likely that the sight of the old-fashioned bathrooms with pipes all over the place and great cast-iron baths sitting on clawed feet in the middle of the rooms left him bereft of words. She was quite sure that it was a waste of time taking him round; she took his final comment— ‘A most interesting house’—as a polite way of getting himself out of the door. Not that she considered him a polite man; he should have stayed where Betsy put him, in the drawing-room, until he could have been fetched at the proper time and with suitable dignity.

She stood with him on the steps outside the front door, waiting for him to go. Only he didn’t. ‘You live here alone?’ he asked.

‘No—Betsy lives here with me.’

He glanced at her ringless, rather grubby hands. For a moment she thought that he was going to say something more, but he didn’t. His, ‘Thank you, Miss Collins,’ was brisk and impersonal as he trod down the steps and got into the dark grey Rolls-Royce parked on the sweep before the house. He didn’t look round either, but drove away without so much as a backward glance.

‘’ andsome man,’ remarked Betsy, coming into the hall as Meg closed the door. ‘Nicely spoken, too. P’raps ‘e’ll buy…’

Meg said quite vehemently, ‘I found him a rude man, and I hope never to see him again, Betsy.’ Whereupon she flew upstairs and took a good look at herself in the pier glass in what had been her mother’s room. Her reflection hardly reassured her; her nose shone, her hair was still damp and wispy and the serviceable guernsey and elderly tweed skirt she wore when she was gardening hardly enhanced her appearance. The slippers completed a decidedly unfashionable appearance. She wondered what he had thought of her, and then forgot him; he had joined all the house-hunters whom she would never see again. She wasn’t even sure of his name—he had given it to her, but she hadn’t paid attention. She could, of course, have asked Betsy, but she didn’t; for some reason she wanted to forget him.

January slipped away into February and it turned cold and snowed. Cora and Doreen phoned each week, wanting to know if anyone had made a bid for the house and giving excellent reasons why they couldn’t get down to see her. Meg, accepting them without rancour, none the less wished for more sisterly support. She was happy as things were, but there all the time at the back of her mind was the thought that sooner or later she would have to give up her home and live in some poky flat in an endless row of equally poky flats… Indeed, Doreen had told her only the evening before that she had heard of a semi-basement on the fringes of Highgate; two rooms and bathroom and kitchen—there wouldn’t be much money over by the time Meg had bought it with her share, but then Meg would get a job easily enough.

‘What at?’ asked Meg of Betsy, who shook her head and said nothing at all.

No one could come until the snow had gone. Meg pottered round the house, polished the silver and got in Betsy’s way in the kitchen. It was something of a shock when the estate agents phoned to say that there was a Mrs Culver on her way.

Meg, who had been in the kitchen making marmalade with Betsy, went to her room and tidied herself, re-did her hair, ran a powder puff over her face, changed into the cashmere sweater she kept for special occasions, and went downstairs just in time to watch an elderly but beautifully kept Daimler draw up before the door. She skipped into the drawing-room and picked up a book; it would never do to be caught snooping.

The doorbell rang and Betsy, in a clean apron, but smelling delightfully of marmalade on the boil, answered it and presently ushered Mrs Culver into the room.

‘You’re making marmalade,’ observed that lady as she advanced across the wide expanse of Moorfields carpet. ‘One of the most delightful aromas there is.’ She smiled at Meg. ‘How do you do? You will be Miss Collins? You must forgive me for coming at such an awkward time and at such short notice; I am only just back in England.’

Meg murmured politely; she hadn’t met anyone like Mrs Culver before. She was a small, rather plump woman, well into middle age, but so well dressed and exquisitely made-up that she gave the lie to that. Not pretty but with a delightful smile and twinkling eyes so that one was forced to smile back at her.

‘It’s quite convenient,’ Meg assured her. ‘Would you like to sit and rest for a few minutes or would you like to look round now?’

‘May I look round?’ Mrs Culver studied her surroundings. ‘This is a charming room.’

Meg found herself liking the little lady. She led the way back into the hall and started her tour, and found for once an appreciative companion. What was more, Mrs Culver didn’t seem at all put off by the bathroom pipes, and remarked upon the elegance of the Adam fireplace before Meg could even mention it.

‘I like this house,’ observed Mrs Culver as they returned to the drawing-room. ‘I shall buy it.’

Meg said rather faintly, ‘Oh, will you? Would you like some coffee?’

‘Indeed I would,’ and when Meg returned from the kitchen, ‘Tell me, has it been in your family for a long time?’

‘Ages. It was built in 1810, but of course it’s had things done to it since then.’

‘But not very recently,’ remarked Mrs Culver drily, ‘therein lies its charm. I promise you that if I do do anything at all it will be done so well that you wouldn’t even notice it.’

Meg poured the coffee, wrestling with a variety of feelings. It was splendid news for Cora and Doreen, of course, but not for her and Betsy. The poky flat loomed large, and how was she going to bear leaving her home? She stifled these feelings with the common sense she had cultivated since she was a child; the house had to be sold, and who better to buy it than this nice elderly lady who liked the making of marmalade and knew an Adam fireplace when she saw one? She said, ‘You’ll be very happy here,’ and meant it. ‘Do you want the name of our solicitor or would you like to think about it first?’

‘I’ve thought, my dear. I shall go straight to the estate agents and then instruct my solicitor.’ She paused and frowned. ‘There is just one thing.’

Meg waited for Mrs Culver to go on. Problems sometimes turned into insurmountable snags—it would be the bathrooms and those pipes. She herself had grown up with them, but every single person who had inspected the house had remarked upon them. She assumed a sympathetically listening face and looked across at her companion.

‘My housekeeper,’ began that lady, ‘has been waiting for some months for an operation—something to do with her toes—and only this morning she told me that there was a bed for her at last. She offered to put the whole thing off, bless her, until it was convenient for me, but I can’t have that—it isn’t an emergency, you understand, but it will take time before she can come back to me—nasty little pins in her toes to straighten them, so I’m told, and when she does return she must have someone to do the lion’s share of the work until she can cope once again. I’m told that when she has got over whatever it is that they intend to do to her, her feet will be like new. She has been with me for more than twenty years and is a treasure as well as a friend.’ She stopped to take a breath. ‘Very like that nice woman who opened the door to me.’

‘Betsy—she’s been with me since I was a baby.’

Mrs Culver eyed Meg thoughtfully. ‘It’s scarcely my business to ask, but when you leave here, will she go with you? If not, would she consider staying on until my Kate is well enough again? Two months at least…and I suppose you wouldn’t know of a good cook? Someone to work with her—it’s a big house and I’m not allowed to be energetic. I dare say I could get someone from the village to help with the rough work.’ She smiled at Meg. ‘I’m an impertinent old woman, aren’t I? And you’re at liberty to say so if you wish.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, and I don’t think you are anyway,’ declared Meg. ‘It’s a most sensible idea. As a matter of fact, my sisters want me to go and live in London in a flat and find a job, and they thought Betsy could find a room in the village.’ She felt a strong urge to tell Mrs Culver all about her sisters’ arrangements and plans, but of course that was out of the question.

Mrs Culver nodded and gave Meg a sharp glance, sensing that there was a lot left unsaid. ‘What work will you do?’ she asked.

‘I have no idea. I’m not trained for anything; our mother was ill for a long time so I took over the housekeeping, and Betsy taught me to cook…’ She stopped suddenly and stared at her companion, who stared back.

‘It’s as plain as the nose on my face,’ said Mrs Culver. ‘I suspect that we’re being unbusinesslike and impulsive, but I’ve always relied on my female intuition, and it tells me that I can’t go wrong. Will you stay on as housekeeper and have your Betsy to help you? It would give you time to settle your future; I dare say you’re in no hurry to go and live in a London flat. And dear old Kate can have her feet put right without worrying about getting back to me until she’s quite fit and well. Would you mind being a housekeeper, my dear?’