A Good Wife

Gregory looked relieved. ‘What a sensible girl you are, Serena. You understand me…’

Serena stood up. ‘Oh, I do, Gregory, and nothing would make me marry you if you were the last man living. Now, will you go away? I don’t want to see you again, and now I come to think about it, I wouldn’t like to be married to you. Run along and find that rich girl!’

Gregory started towards her. ‘Let us part…’ he began.

‘Oh, do go along,’ said Serena.

After he had gone she went to the kitchen to get her supper—scrambled eggs on toast—and, since she felt that this was something of an occasion, she took the keys of the sideboard and chose a bottle of claret.

She ate at the kitchen table, with Puss at her feet enjoying a treat from a tin of sardines. And she drank two glasses of claret. She supposed that she would have been feeling unhappy and worried, but she was pleased to discover that all she felt was relief. She had five hundred pounds and the world before her in which to find the man of her dreams. She tossed back the last of the claret in her glass.

There was no need to look for him. She had already found him, although she wasn’t sure if a brief acquaintance with Dr van Doelen was sufficient to clinch the matter. She thought not. Indeed, it was unlikely that their paths would cross in the future. She would do better to get herself a job and hope to meet a man as like him as possible.

Nicely buoyed up, she by the claret and Puss by an excess of sardines, they went upstairs to bed and slept dreamlessly.

Henry came in the morning, telling her importantly that he had taken a few hours off in order to look round the house and claim anything to which he was entitled. Which turned out to be quite a lot: the table silver, a claret jug and three spirit bottles in a metal frame, and the best part of a Spoke tea service which had belonged to their mother, that Matthew would have no use for nor would Serena, Henry pointed out.

‘But I have no doubt that Matthew will be glad to have the dinner service. Father bought it from Selfridges, I believe, so anything which may break can be replaced. There’s the new coffee percolator, too; I’ll leave that for him. Where is the Wedgwood biscuit barrel, Serena?’

‘In the cupboard in the dining room, Henry. Shouldn’t you wait and see what Matthew wants—and what I might want?’

‘My dear girl, Matthew will want useful things which he can use in his home. Remember that he is, after all, living in a very small house, and has no social life worth mentioning.’

‘But he will have when he gets a parish of his own…’

Henry ignored that. ‘And you—you won’t want to be lumbered with a number of useless things.’

‘I don’t know why you say that, Henry. You have no idea what I am going to do or where I’m going. You don’t want to know, do you? Do you know that Gregory has jilted me? Or perhaps I should say he jilted my five hundred pounds.’ She added bleakly, ‘I thought he wanted to marry me, but all he wanted was this house and the money he thought Father would be sure to leave me.’

Henry looked uncomfortable. ‘You must understand, Serena, that Gregory has his way to make in the world.’

‘And what about me?’

‘You’re quite able to find a good job and do very well. You might even marry.’

Serena picked up a fairing from the side-table in the drawing room, where Henry was inspecting the contents of a china cabinet. The fairing was small, a man and woman holding hands, crudely done, yet charming. The kind of thing Henry and Matthew would find worthless. She would keep it for herself, a reminder of her home in happier days when her mother had been alive.

Henry bore away what he considered to be his; he had written a list of various other things, too. Serena hoped that Matthew wouldn’t wait too long before making his own choice. Henry was obviously going to exert his rights as elder son.

Matthew came the next day, bringing his wife with him. The dinner service was packed up, as was an early-morning teaset which hadn’t been used since their mother died. To these were added two bedspreads, a quantity of bedlinen, the cushions from the drawing room and, at the last moment, the rather ugly clock on the mantelpiece.

‘We shall probably be back,’ said Matthew’s wife as they left.

‘My turn,’ said Serena to Puss, and went slowly from room to room. She would take only small things that would go in her case or the trunk: her mother’s workbox, family photographs, two china figurines to keep the fairing company, a little watercolour of the house her mother had painted. She tried to be sensible and think of things which would be of use to her in the future. The silver-framed travelling clock which had stood on the table by her father’s bed, writing paper and pens, the cat basket from the attic—for of course Puss would go with her.

But where would she go? Mr Perkins had told her that she would be able to stay at the house for two or three weeks. Tomorrow, she decided, she would go to Yeovil and go to as many employment agencies as possible.

Without much success, as it turned out. She had no qualifications, and she couldn’t type, the computer was a mystery to her, and the salesladies asked for had to be experienced. She was told, kindly enough, to leave her phone number, and that if anything suitable turned up she would be notified.

But nothing turned up. The charity, anxious to take possession, were kind enough to let her stay for an extra week, and at the end of that week, still with no job in sight, Serena, Puss, her trunk and a large case, moved unwillingly into Henry’s house.

Just as unwillingly she was welcomed there. There was room enough for her, for Henry lived in a large house on the outskirts of the town, but, while he wasn’t slow to confide his generosity towards his sister to his colleagues, his wife made no bones in letting Serena see that she was a necessary evil. It was bad enough having her, her sister-in-law pointed out in the privacy of their bedroom, but to have to give house room to a cat as well…

As for Serena, she redoubled her efforts to find some sort of job. Housekeepers were in demand, and that was something she could do, but she wasn’t going to part with Puss, and no one, it seemed, was prepared to accept a cat, especially when the applicant had no references from previous employers.

Between fruitless visits to Yeovil, she was given no chance to be idle. Her sister-in-law, a social climber by nature, quickly saw her opportunity to widen her social life, since Serena was so conveniently on hand to do the shopping and prepare meals. And when the children came home from school there was no reason, since she had nothing better to do, why she shouldn’t give them their tea and keep an eye on them while they did their homework.

Serena, gritting her splendid teeth, accepted the role of unpaid domestic and put up with the childish rudeness of her nephew and niece and her brother’s pompous charity. His wife’s ill-concealed contempt was harder to bear, but since she was out a good deal Serena was almost able to ignore it.

She had been living with her brother for more than a week when one morning, as she was washing the breakfast dishes, alone in the house, there was a ring on the doorbell. She didn’t stop to dry her hands; it was possibly the postman—probably with the answer to two more jobs she had applied for. Perhaps her luck had changed at last…

It wasn’t the postman. It was Dr Bowring on the doorstep.

‘I had to come to Yeovil,’ he told her smilingly. ‘I thought I’d just see how you were getting on.’ He glanced at her wet hands and pinny. ‘Is Mrs Lightfoot at home?’

‘No, just me. Do come in. How nice to see you. If you don’t mind coming into the kitchen, I’m sure no one will mind if I make coffee.’

He looked at her enquiringly. ‘No job yet?’

‘Well, no. You see, I must have Puss with me, and so far no one will have her…’

He followed her into the kitchen. ‘What kind of job?’

‘Housekeeper or companion. I can’t do anything else.’ She spoke lightly, but he noted her rather pale face and the shadows under her eyes.

He said bluntly, ‘You’re not happy here?’

She put the instant coffee into two mugs. ‘Well, it’s not really convenient for Henry to have me here, and they don’t like Puss.’ She smiled. ‘But something will turn up.’

He stayed for a little while, vaguely troubled about her, deciding silently that he would keep an eye open for a job which would suit her. It was obvious that she was unhappy, although she had made light of it.

He told his wife about her when he got back home.

‘All we can do is keep our eyes open for a job for her,’ said Mrs Bowring, ‘and we shall have to go carefully; Serena is proud in the best sense, and she would hate to be pitied.’

Mr van Doelen had spent a busy day at one of the London hospitals; he was an orthopaedic surgeon of some repute and had come to assist at a complicated operation on a boy’s shattered legs. It had been successful, and he was free to return to Holland that evening, but, leaving the hospital early that lovely summer evening, he decided against driving up to Harwich and instead picked up the car phone and dialled Dr Bowring.

Of course he was to come and spend the night—as many nights as he could spare. ‘We’ll wait dinner for you,’ said Mrs Bowring. ‘It’s only four o’clock; you’ll be with us in a couple of hours.’

Once free of the London suburbs, the traffic thinned and he sent the Bentley powering ahead. The countryside was bathed in sunshine, green and pleasant and exactly what he needed after hours in an operating theatre. And he need not return until the evening ferry on the following day; he had expected to be away for two days, but the operation had gone better than they had expected.