A Suitable Match

He had a quiet, almost placid voice and Eustacia saw that they did as they were told without demur. They all went indoors to the hall, which was wide and long with pale walls and a thick carpet underfoot. The graceful curved staircase faced them, flanked by a green baize door on the one side and on the other a glass door with a view of the garden beyond. It was pleasantly warm and fragrant with the scent of the hyacinths in the bowl on a delicate little wall-table.

Sir Colin said in his quiet voice, ‘Samways, if you would show Mr Crump to his room…’ He paused as the baize door opened and a small, stout woman bustled through. ‘Ah, Mrs Samways, will you take Miss Crump to her room? And if we all meet for tea in ten minutes or so?’

Eustacia watched her grandfather go off happily with Samways and then, with Mrs Samways leading the way and the two boys following behind, she went up the staircase. There was a wide landing at its top with passages leading from it, and Mrs Samways took the left-hand one, to open a door at its end. ‘The boys are just next door,’ she explained. ‘They have their own bathroom on the other side.’ She led the way across the large, low-ceilinged room and opened another door. ‘This is your bathroom, Miss Crump.’

It was all quite beautiful, its furniture of yew, the walls and carpets the colour of cream, the curtains and bedspread of chintz in pale, vague colours. Eustacia was sure that she would sleep soundly in the pretty bed, and to wake up each morning with such a glorious view from her windows…

‘It’s lovely,’ she murmured, and peeped into the bathroom, which was as charming in its way as the bedroom with its faintly pink tiles and piles of thick towels. She gave a sigh of pure pleasure and turned to the boys. ‘I’m glad you’re next door. Do you wake early?’

‘Yes,’ said Oliver, ‘and now you’re here, perhaps we can go for a walk before breakfast?’

‘Just listen to the boy,’ said Mrs Samways comfortably, ‘mad to go out so early in the day. Not that I’ve anything against that, but what with getting the breakfast and one thing and another I’ve not had the time to see to them…’

‘I’m sure you haven’t,’ said Eustacia, ‘but if Sir Colin doesn’t mind and we won’t be bothering you, we might go for a quick walk as long as it doesn’t upset the way you like to run the house, Mrs Samways.’

‘My dear life, it’ll be a treat to have someone here to be with the boys. Now I’ll just go and fetch in the tea and you can come down as soon as you’re ready.’ She ushered the boys out ahead of her and left Eustacia, who wasted five minutes going round her room, slowly this time, savouring all its small luxuries: a shelf of books, magazines on the bedside table with a tin of biscuits and a carafe of water, roomy cupboards built into the wall, large enough to take her small wardrobe several times over, a velvet-covered armchair by the window with a bowl of spring flowers on a table by it. She sat down before the triple mirror on the dressing-table and did her face and hair and then, suddenly aware that she might be keeping everyone waiting, hurried down the stairs. The boys’ voices led her to a door to one side of the hall and she pushed it open and went in. They were all in there, sitting round a roaring fire with Moses stretched out with his head on his master’s feet, and a portly ginger cat sitting beside him.

Sir Colin and the boys got to their feet when they saw her, and she was urged to take a chair beside her grandfather.

‘You are comfortable in your room?’ asked Sir Colin.

‘My goodness, yes. It’s one of the loveliest rooms I’ve ever seen.’ She beamed at him. ‘And the view from the window…’

‘Delightful, isn’t it? Will you pour the tea, and may I call you Eustacia? The boys would like to call you that too, if you don’t mind?’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’

She got up and went to the rent table where the tea things had been laid out, and her grandfather said, ‘This is really quite delightful, but I feel that I am imposing; I have no right to be here.’

‘There you are mistaken,’ observed Sir Colin. ‘I have been wondering if you might care to have the boys for an hour each morning. Not lessons, but if you would hear them read and keep them up to date with the world in general, and I am sure that there have been events in your life well worth recounting.’

Mr Crump looked pleased. ‘As a younger man I had an eventful life,’ he admitted. ‘When I was in India—’

‘Elephants—rajas,’ chorused the boys, and Sir Colin said blandly,

‘You see? They are avid for adventure. Will you give it a try?’

‘Oh, with the greatest of pleasure.’ Mr Crump accepted his tea and all at once looked ten years younger. ‘It will be a joy to have an interest…’

Eustacia threw Sir Colin a grateful glance; he had said and done exactly the right thing, and by some good chance he had hit on exactly the right subject. Her grandfather had been in India and Burma during the 1940-45 war, and as a young officer and later as a colonel he had had enough adventures to last him a lifetime. He had stayed on in India for some years after the war had ended, for he had married while he’d been out there, and when he and her grandmother had returned to England her father had been a small schoolboy.

‘I am in your debt—the boys won’t be fit for school for a week or two. I hope they won’t be too much of a handful for you both. It is a great relief to me that they can stay here in the country.’ He looked at Eustacia. ‘You won’t find it too quiet here?’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, no, there’s such a lot to do in the country.’

They finished their tea in an atmosphere of friendly agreement, and when the tea things had been cleared away by Samways they gathered round the table and played Scrabble until Sir Colin blandly suggested that the boys should have their supper and go to bed. A signal for Eustacia to go with them, to a small, cosy room at the back of the rambling house and sit with them while they ate it. It seemed obvious to her that she was expected to take up her duties then and there, and so she accompanied them upstairs to bed after they had wished their uncle and her grandfather goodnight. Getting ready for bed was a long-drawn-out business with a great deal of toing and froing between the bathroom and their bedroom and a good deal of laughing and scampering about. But finally they were in their beds and Eustacia tucked them in, kissed them goodnight and turned off all but a small night-light by the fireplace.

‘We shall like having you here,’ said Oliver as she went to the door. ‘We would like you to stay forever, Eustacia.’

‘I shall like being here with you,’ she assured him. To stay forever would be nice too, she reflected as she went to her room and tidied her hair and powdered her flushed face. She was a little surprised at the thought, a pointless one, she reminded herself, for as soon as the boys’ parents returned she would have to find another job. It would be a mistake to get too attached to the children or the house. Perhaps it would be a good idea if she didn’t look too far ahead but just enjoyed the weeks to come.

She went back to the drawing-room and found Sir Colin alone, and she hesitated at the door. ‘Oh, I’ll go and help my grandfather unpack…’

‘Presently, perhaps? I shall have to leave early tomorrow morning, so we might have a little talk now while we have the opportunity.’

She sat down obediently and he got up and went over to a side-table. ‘Will you have a glass of sherry?’ He didn’t wait for her answer, but poured some and brought it over to her before sitting down again, a glass in his hand.

‘You are, I believe, a sensible young woman—keep your eye on the boys, and if you aren’t happy about them, if their coughs don’t clear up, let me know. Make sure that they sleep and don’t rush around getting too hot. I’m being fussy, but they have had badly infected chests and I feel responsible for them. You will find the Samwayses towers of strength, but they’re elderly and I don’t expect them to be aware of the children’s health. They are relieved that you will be here and you can call upon them for anything you may need. I shall do my best to come down at weekends and you can always phone me.’

He smiled at her, and she had the feeling that she would put up with a good deal just to please him. She squashed it immediately, for she strongly suspected that he was a man who got his own way once he had made up his mind to it.

She said in her forthright way, ‘Yes, Sir Colin, I’ll do my best for the boys too. Is there anything special you would want me to know about them?’

He shook his head. ‘No—they’re normal small boys, full of good spirits, not over-clean, bursting with energy and dreadfully untidy.’

‘I’ve had no experience—’ began Eustacia uncertainly.

‘Then here is your chance. They both think you’re smashing, so they tell me, which I imagine gives you the edge.’

He smiled at her very kindly and she smiled back, hoping secretly that she would live up to his good opinion of her.

Her grandfather came in then and presently they crossed the hall to the dining-room with its mahogany table and chairs and tawny walls hung with gilt-framed paintings. Eustacia sat quietly, listening to the two men talking while she ate the delicious food served to her. Mrs Samways might not be much to look at but she was a super cook.

They went back to the drawing-room for their coffee and presently she wished them goodnight and took herself off to bed, first going in search of her grandfather’s room, a comfortable apartment right by the Samwayses’ own quarters. He hadn’t unpacked so she did that quickly, made sure that he had everything that he might need and went upstairs to her own room.

The boys were asleep; she had a bath and got into bed and went to sleep herself.

She was wakened by a plump, cheerful girl, who put a tray of tea down by the bed, told her that it was going to be a fine day and that her name was Polly, and went away again. Eustacia drank her tea with all the pleasure of someone to whom it was an unexpected luxury, put on her dressing-gown and went off to see if the boys were awake.

They were, sitting on top of their beds, oblivious to the cold, playing some mysterious game with what she took to be plastic creatures from outer space. Invited to join them, she did so and was rewarded by their loud-voiced opinions that for a girl she was quite bright, a compliment she accepted with modesty while at the same time suggesting that it might be an idea if they all had their breakfast.

She made sure that their clothes were to hand and went away to get herself dressed, and presently returned to cast an eye over hands and hair and retie shoelaces without fuss. They looked well enough, she decided, although they were both coughing. ‘I’d quite like to go for a walk after breakfast,’ she observed casually. ‘I mean a proper walk, not on the road.’

Breakfast was a cheerful meal, with Samways hovering with porridge, bacon and scrambled eggs, and her grandfather, after a good night’s sleep, willing to recount some of his youthful adventures. Eustacia left them presently, went upstairs and made their beds and tidied the rooms, did the same for her grandfather and then went to remind the boys that they were going to take her for a walk.

‘There’s a windmill,’ she reminded them. ‘It doesn’t look too far away—I’d love to see it.’

She had hit on something with which to interest them mightily. Had she seen the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? they wanted to know, because that was the very windmill in it. They walked there briskly and returned to the house for hot cocoa and an hour’s reading before lunch. The afternoon was spent with her grandfather and she was able to spend an hour on her own until Mrs Samways suggested that she might like to look round the house. It was quite large and rambled a good deal. ‘Rather a lot to look after,’ observed Eustacia, peering at family portraits in the library.

‘Ah, but there’s two good girls who come up from the village each day, and Sir Colin comes mostly at weekends and then not always… He brings a few guests from time to time and we have Christmas here, of course. He’s not all that keen on London. But there he’s a clever gentleman and that’s where he works. I dare say if he were to marry—and dear knows I hope and pray he does, for a nicer man never stepped—he’d live here most of the time. London isn’t a place for children.’

Eustacia murmured gently; she realised that Mrs Samways was doing her an honour by talking about her employer and she was glad that the housekeeper seemed to like her. It hadn’t entered her head that making the beds and tidying up after the boys had endeared her to Mrs Samways’ heart. ‘That’s a nice young lady,’ she had informed her husband. ‘What’s more she gets on with the boys and they listen to her, more than they ever did with me.’

They had their tea in a pleasant little room at the back of the house and gathered round the table afterwards to play cards until the boys’ supper and bedtime. Eustacia tucked them in finally, listening rather worriedly to their coughs, although neither of them were feverish. They had certainly eaten with youthful gusto and, by the time she had got out their clean clothes for the morning and gone to her own room to tidy herself, they were sound asleep, their nice, naughty-little-boy faces as peaceful as those of small angels.

After dinner she sat with her grandfather in the drawing-room, listening to his contented talk. He hadn’t been so happy for a long time, and it reminded her of his dull existence at their flat in London; this was like a new lease of life to him. Her thoughts flew ahead to the future when the boys’ parents would return and she would know that she was no longer needed. Well, she reflected, she would have to find another job similar somewhere in the country and never go back to London. She had said goodnight to her grandfather and had seen him to his room and was on the point of going upstairs when the phone rang as she was turning out the drawing-room lights.

She picked it up hesitantly, not sure if this was something the Samwayses would consider to be their prerogative, and indeed Mr Samways appeared just as she was lifting the receiver.