“I see you are entertaining without me,” Beryl said. “Won’t you introduce me to your friends?” Beryl sank down proprietarily onto the sofa next to Simpkins and gave him a reassuring smile. She slipped her arm through his for good measure.
“This here is Mrs. Kimberly, the widow of Colonel Kimberly. And with her is Mr. Armitage, who says he’s the chairman of the board of directors for Colonel Kimberly’s Condiment Company,” Simpkins said.
Beryl thought he had done rather well to keep their names straight, considering that a decidedly green hue tinged his skin. Simpkins was in no condition to be out of bed, let alone wrangling with the sort of circling sharks Beryl was quite certain these two would turn out to be.
“A pleasure to meet you both, I’m sure,” Beryl said. “I’m Beryl Helliwell, and do allow me to extend my own welcome to Walmsley Parva. I understand you’re staying in rooms above the pub.”
She released her claim on Simpkins’s limb, hoisted the teapot, and inclined her head towards Mrs. Kimberly, who nodded. She poured out a cup for the other lady, then turned to Mr. Armitage, who nodded that he would appreciate a cup as well.
“That is correct,” Mr. Armitage said. “There were no other accommodations to be had.”
“Who would have thought the best we could do was to take poky little rooms above a pub?” Mrs. Kimberly said. “It’s not what we are used to, not in the least.”
“Village life is quite different from that of the city, Mrs. Kimberly,” Mr. Armitage said. “I have found it quite charming. I understand you are the Beryl Helliwell, celebrated adventuress and thrill seeker. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Mr. Armitage inclined his head in a semblance of a slight bow. Beryl noted that Mrs. Kimberly looked decidedly unimpressed.
“You have me at a decided disadvantage there. You seem to know exactly who I am, but I know nothing about you besides your connection to Colonel Kimberly’s company. What brings you to Walmsley Parva? As I’m sure it’s not the view from the rooms above the pub.”
She passed a cup of tea to Simpkins, having added two lumps of sugar but no milk. She doubted his stomach could take it.
“We are here on business,” Mr. Armitage said. “There are any number of matters to discuss with Mr. Simpkins.”
“I expect you wanted to see for yourself the new head of the company, did you not?” Beryl said. She heard Mr. Armitage stifling a guffaw.
“That’s just it exactly. At least it is as far as I’m concerned,” Mrs. Kimberly said.
Beryl noticed for the first time the rather wide gap and stiff manner Mr. Armitage maintained between himself and Mrs. Kimberly. Perhaps he thought no better of the young widow than Edwina did. Beryl held out no illusions that either of them was there with Simpkins’s best interest in mind. But she did wonder if their own perceptions of their own best interest differed from one another.
“Mr. Simpkins may be just what we need to bring a breath of fresh air into what I don’t mind saying is a rather stodgy atmosphere at Colonel Kimberly’s,” Mrs. Kimberly said.
Beryl noticed the young woman batting her eyelashes flirtatiously in Simpkins’s direction. Unless she missed her guess, Mrs. Kimberly had no intention of relinquishing her claim to part of the Kimberly wealth to an outsider.
She seemed inclined to employ her strengths unabashedly. If Simpkins thought the stress of the day before had taken its toll, Beryl greatly feared he had no idea what he was in for. Beryl’s first thought was to whisk Simpkins off somewhere far from their clutches. Her second thought was that keeping him under her and Edwina’s watchful eyes at the Beeches was perhaps the best course to take.
“Let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves,” Mr. Armitage said. “What I wished to impress upon Mr. Simpkins is that the company is well in hand and that he can have full confidence in our ability to see to his interests without him needing to go to the trouble of learning the ins and outs of the world of commerce.”
“What do you think, Simpkins?” Beryl said. “These two seem to have very different takes on how you should handle your situation. I think the only one who really matters here is you.”
Simpkins turned towards Beryl and looked directly into her eyes. She could see that he felt dreadful. No wonder Mr. Armitage had every reason to wish Simpkins as far from the boardroom and corporate headquarters as humanly possible. His appearance made her grudgingly admire Mrs. Kimberly’s overtures of a romantic nature. It took a certain sort of gumption to look on the hungover Simpkins and determine it worth the effort. She hoped there was enough grey matter still firing away inside his head for him to have something to say that would protect his own interests.
“For now, I am going to rely upon the advice of my trusted solicitor. You’ll have to excuse me. I’m going to go and have a lie-down,” Simpkins said.
He rose to his feet, and as he did so, Beryl could hear the joints of his knees creaking and popping. What he needed was a hot bath and at least eight hours of sleep. Even so, he had done an admirable job of deflecting decision making.
She had to wonder at his reliance on a solicitor to get him out of difficulties. Had he actually hired one? It would be a question for Edwina, she thought as she watched his shambling progress out the parlour door. She turned back to their guests.
“As I’m sure you have plenty of matters to attend to, as do I, please allow me to see you out,” Beryl said. She rose and pointed towards the door.
Chapter 18
Edwina felt quite restored after removing herself to the garden. The birds were twittering in the trees and the bushes. The roses were at the height of their bloom. Decorating the banks of her beloved koi pond were tall stands of Japanese irises unfurling deep purple blossoms atop rich green stalks. From her seat on a bench next to the clear water, she watched the flash and sparkle of sunlight playing upon its surface and upon the scales of the school of koi sliding just below the serene pond surface.
Once, the pond had been nothing more than a boggy depression where frogs and toads and mosquitoes gathered in their search for moisture. While her mother had been ill, Edwina had stolen moments here and there, digging and mucking about, using the damp low area to its advantage. Despite the fact that most physical activity had been discouraged by her mother, they had shared a love of gardening, and Edwina had always made her excuses for leaving her mother’s side in order to go and work on the pond.
She was quite pleased with the fact that it appeared to have been there for decades rather than only a couple of years. So much had changed in so little time, and not all of it had been for the worse. While there had been so many losses and so much grief during the war years, there had also been the opportunity to grow, to rise to the occasion, to find out what one was made of. She thought about the change of Simpkins’s fortune and what it might mean to her own life, and she decided she would concentrate on what good might come of it rather than the fact that she was likely to lose her garden help and one of the only constants left in her life.
Simpkins had joined her in creating the boggy pond more often than not. While he had been content to leave much of the heavy lifting to her younger and more willing back and arms, he had been filled with notions, suggestions, and queries that, as she gave it thought, had helped her to clarify her own wants and beliefs about the project. As much it had felt like a goad in her side at the time, in some ways Simpkins had done her a service by his needling. In fact, if it had not been for many of his argumentative suggestions, Edwina might have given up on the project long before she had completed it. Truly, it had been a great deal of work.
She wasn’t used to thinking of him in this way. More often than not, he simply struck her as someone who did not remember his place and who made it his business to provoke her at every opportunity. What was it about the possibility of such a large life change for her gardener that made her consider him with fresh eyes? Was she really so shallow as to value someone based only on their financial standing? No, that couldn’t be it. She had met
many vulgar millionaires, and she had not come to consider them as more worthy of her acquaintance because of their financial position.
Edwina realized with a jolt that it was his new capacity to abandon his job at the Beeches that had forced her reconsideration of his worth. Like it or not, she would miss him, should he choose to go. That most likely explained why she had not put up more of a fuss when she discovered that Beryl had installed him in one of the back bedrooms, hobnailed boots and all. As she reflected on this, she heard the sound of someone clearing his throat just behind her. She turned, expecting to see Simpkins or Charles Jarvis.
“I do hope I’m not disturbing you, but I was irresistibly drawn to the beauty of your garden,” Mr. Armitage said.
Edwina felt instantly wary. While she was inclined to pridefulness as concerned her garden, there was something about Mr. Armitage that instantly put her back up. He did not wait for an invitation but drew near and took a seat on the bench beside her.
“Have you concluded your business with Simpkins, then?” Edwina asked.
“Mr. Simpkins concluded his business with us, and rather abruptly. But I’m sure you are most familiar with his rather unorthodox manner,” Mr. Armitage said.
Edwina suspected that had he been a member of a lower class, he might have rolled his eyes. It would not matter to Edwina how many compliments he bestowed upon her garden. She was disinclined to warm to him.
“I expect he’s not at all the sort of person you are used to dealing with at Colonel Kimberly’s,” Edwina said. “Still, one must learn to change with the times and to learn different ways of doing things, wouldn’t you agree?”
A sleek koi slid closer to the edge of the pond where they sat. Edwina leaned forward and admired its pleasingly smooth form and the way it gracefully swished its tail.
“Not to argue with a lady, but I am inclined to feel differently. I’m not quite sure Colonel Kimberly’s should have to become accustomed to an unfamiliar manner of operations. The company is in fine, fine shape and needs no adjustment to our way of doing things,” Mr. Armitage said.
“Surely every good businessman is interested in growth,” Edwina said.
“Growth indubitably, but not always change. When your hand is on the rudder and you are on course in the right direction, change is entirely undesirable.”
“Are you implying that Simpkins is somehow undesirable?” Edwina asked. She pulled her attention from the pond and looked Mr. Armitage in the face. His full head of silver hair was cut into a sophisticated and expensive style. His bright blue eyes bored into her own, and the way he cocked an eyebrow in surprise said he felt the two of them ought to be in accord.
“I’m sure Mr. Simpkins is perfectly well suited for many things. Mucking out stalls, dividing dahlias, swilling lager at the local pub. But heading a large corporation, or even owning one, seems unlikely to be the destiny of a man like him,” Mr. Armitage said. “On that, I am certain we can agree.”
“You are aware, sir, that you are discussing a company that makes it their business to sell items made of vegetables and fruits. Who better than a gardener to know about such things?” Edwina said.
“My dear lady, I can only assume that you are making sport of all this for reasons of your own,” Mr. Armitage said. “Certainly a gentlewoman such as yourself can easily understand that Mr. Simpkins must be dissuaded from participating in any of the activities at Colonel Kimberly’s. I implore you to use what must be considerable influence upon your employee to remove himself utterly from any expectation of interfering with daily operations. In fact, I beseech you to convince him to sell his interest in the company as soon as he is able to do so.”
Edwina felt roiling indignation fill her stomach. Simpkins was often someone who she felt unfit for a wide variety of activities. She also felt he was her someone to consider unworthy of those activities, and not anyone else’s.
“Mr. Armitage, I fear you have overstepped in your assumptions. It is not my place to tell Simpkins how to conduct his own considerable business. Should he ask me for my advice, I would be glad to give it. But you mustn’t make the mistake of believing I would thrust myself upon him with opinions that were not solicited,” Edwina said. She tried to keep her voice even and devoid of the shrill tone she knew it often held when she spoke of Simpkins.
“Surely you must feel as though a gardener from this piddly little village is doing the entire society an affront by getting so far above himself,” Mr. Armitage said. “What will it take to convince him to sell up his shares and leave those qualified to get on with the job at hand?” He drummed his manicured fingers against the arm of the bench.
Edwina found him entirely repellent. Who was he to say that anyone from Walmsley Parva was not good enough to take an interest in or to hold on to anything he or she chose?
“I have always found Simpkins to be a man with a mind of his own. But should I have the opportunity to influence him in any way, you may rest assured that I will tell him to take every opportunity to educate himself on every aspect of Colonel Kimberly’s Condiment Company in order to best involve himself in it. Now, I am afraid you will have to excuse me, as I have a meeting to attend at our piddly little village hall.” Edwina stood, forcing a man with manners to get to his own feet. “I bid you good day.”
Chapter 19
As soon as Edwina left for her meeting of the Women’s Institute, Beryl turned her attention to making good on her boast of writing an adventure guide. She realized with a jolt that she had not done so merely to distract Simpkins from the distressing news about Hector. She had felt a bit disconnected from her old life of late and had a hankering to revisit her gadabout lifestyle, if only on paper.
A small voice in the back of her head told her she had been foolhardy to put forth such an outlandish idea without giving it due consideration. Although she knew it was a weakness in her character, she had difficulty backing down once she had announced an intention to tackle something new. As soon as Edwina had suggested she might find writing a book more difficult than she assumed, she had telephoned the local stationer’s and ordered a Remington portable typewriter, to be delivered at the shop’s earliest convenience.
The stationer’s had proven lamentably efficient in its delivery service. Beryl glanced down with gnawing regret at the typewriting machine in front of her. Beryl’s hopes for a career as a celebrated author had been somewhat dimmed by the wretched machine. When she had lifted it from its wooden crate and given it pride of place on the small desk in the morning room, she had expected to master it just as easily as she had the controls of an airplane or those of her beloved motorcar.
But such was not the case with the typewriter. Every time she tried to press on one key, at least two clicked forward and entangled themselves, marring the surface of her sheet of paper. It put her in mind immediately of her ineptitude with a sewing machine at Miss DuPont’s Finishing School for Young Ladies. If it had not been for Edwina’s surreptitious assistance during the lessons devoted to household management, Beryl might have found herself a captive of Miss DuPont to that very day.
It wasn’t just the machine that was troubling her, though. Determined to get her ideas out of her head and into written form, Beryl had dug a notebook from a drawer in a cabinet in the library. But every time she set out to put pen to paper, she found her thoughts would not run out of her brain and down through her hand. Still, she could not credit Edwina’s admonition that in order to be an author, one ought to first be a reader. Beryl decided that the muse was simply not with her and that she ought to be taking action on something else while awaiting its arrival.
She rolled the sheet of spoiled typewriter paper out of the machine, folded it in half, and tucked it under the blotter, where it would be unlikely that Edwina would see it. Beryl was in no mood to discuss her lack of progress on her new project. She decided to kill two birds with one stone and head to the village to speak with Alma Poole.
While Edwina lived in constant fear of offen
ding Alma and alienating herself from the village’s only hairdresser, Beryl felt no such compunctions. As much as she was well aware that her appearance was one of the secrets of her celebrity, Beryl was perfectly capable of attending to her own grooming needs. Many was the time she had made do with a hunting knife in the bush when it came time to trim her own hair. In fact, a new style of asymmetrical bob named the Seesaw had taken the world by storm after she appeared in a newspaper photograph after having done so.
Beryl set out at a rapid pace and arrived in the village in good time. She strode into the hairdressing salon and looked around. Alma, a shampoo girl, and a woman from the village whose name Beryl could never remember were all assembled inside. The shampoo girl looked up expectantly as Beryl advanced towards her.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“I don’t happen to have an appointment, but I did hope that you might be able to squeeze me in. Are you available for a wash and set?” Beryl said.
The girl motioned Beryl forward after glancing at Alma, who nodded with approval. Beryl settled herself in the reclining chair and gave over to the relaxing twin ministrations of warm, sudsy water and firm fingers. By the time she sat upright once more, a fluffy towel draped over her damp head, she had formulated an idea.
“I wanted to ask if any of you knew of someone here in Walmsley Parva who would be willing to give me typing lessons?” Beryl said. She looked expectantly from face to face.
Alma scrunched her eyebrows together thoughtfully. The nameless village woman simply shook her head. Fortunately, the shampoo girl seemed to be in the know.
“You’ll be wanting to talk with Geraldine,” the shampoo girl said, wiping her hands on a second towel.
“Where might I find this Geraldine?” Beryl asked.
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