The Stratton Story

by Elizabeth Cadell

  “I’m sure I shall,” Gail said. “I’ve got a large-scale map and—”

  “—plenty of good, sound sense; I can see that. Such a rare thing in a pretty girl. But those roads in the Basses-Pyrenees are very confusing. The Basque names confuse people, I don’t know why—really, you know, if you glance at a map of Scotland, you can see names every bit as tongue-twisting: Sithean Mor and Sgurr an Utha and Fraoch-bheinn. I studied Gaelic for a time, you know; helped, I confess, by my father, who was a Professor of Languages.”

  “Not Oswald Stratton, by any extraordinary chance?” Mr. Frank put in from behind her.

  Imagining this to be a rescue operation, Gail felt grateful — but a glance at Mr. Frank, as she made her escape, convinced her that the coincidence had made him beam with pleasure; he was listening with interest to Mrs. Westerby as she talked about her late father.

  There was a stir at the other side of the terrace;

  Mrs. Stratton was leaving. The plan had been that Mr. Thomas and Mr. Frank together would act as escorts—but Mr. Frank was re-living his linguistic past, and Mr. Thomas was trying to explain to his wife that he had known nothing, positively nothing, of any invitation to any Mrs. Westerby. It was Christopher Beetham who went to Mrs. Stratton’s side as representative of the firm.

  “Anita, you’re not leaving?” Mrs. Westerby shouted. “If you’d wait a little while, I could go with you; perhaps we could have a little dinner somewhere?”

  Mrs. Stratton did not shout back. Without pausing, she went away, and it had to be admitted that it was not the exit the Brothers had meant it to be.

  “I do hope,” said Mrs. Westerby, “that I’m not the last to go; if I’m enjoying myself, I tend to let time slip by. But I must be firm with myself. Goodbye, Mrs. . . . Thomas? Thank you so much! It’s been charming. Goodbye, Mr. Thomas, goodbye. Lovely party, lovely. Mr. Frank, I can’t tell what a joy it has been to find someone who actually remembered my dear father. He died at ninety, hale and hearty to the end, like your delightful older brothers over there. How charming of you to have remembered him! Do allow me to send you a little paper he wrote—not for publication, no, no, no! It deals with the history of languages—that was his hobby, you know. May I send it to you? Or better still”—she turned her ungainly body, peering this way and that—“Oh, there she is! If you could persuade your nice Miss Sinclair to come out on Sunday and lunch with me, I would give her the paper and I could also show her exactly how to get Mrs. Stratton to our little cottage at Chandon. Miss Sinclair, do say you will! I don’t live far out of London-but perhaps you spend your weekends in the country?”

  “Miss Sinclair usually goes—am I right, Miss Sinclair?” asked Mr. Frank, “to stay with her sister in Sussex.”

  “What part of Sussex?” Mrs. Westerby enquired.

  “A place called Downleigh,” Gail told her, and heard a loud cry of astonishment.

  “Downleigh! My dear girl, I live . . . But you know! I gave you my address! Shern is only eight miles from Downleigh! Do, I beg you, come over and lunch with me. I shall send my taxi to fetch you. What is the address?”

  “Green Willow Farm.”

  “No! It isn’t possible!” roared Mrs. Westerby. “You’re not related to that young man who inherited it from Colonel Weekes?”

  “He married my sister.”

  “Then you must, positively must, come and see me—and I must renew my acquaintance with your brother-in- law. He won’t remember me, but I knew his naughty old uncle very well indeed. My goodness, he was a shocker! Do say you’ll come! I shall give you the paper for Mr. Frank.”

  Gail decided to go. She did not like the look in Mrs. Thomas’s eye; Mrs. Westerby had pushed herself in, had called Mrs. Thomas a Beetham-Brother, had made nonsense of the firm’s smooth arrangements and wrecked the party. There was trouble coming, and it would be useful to have Mr. Frank as an ally.

  “You’re very kind,” she told Mrs. Westerby. “But don’t bother to send for me. I can—”

  “Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense! I shall send my dear old driver. Let us say Sunday at a quarter to one—just us, and entirely informal. Mr. Frank, you will remind her?” She studied him anxiously. “You do, I take it, really want to see the little paper?”

  She was assured by Mr. Frank that he wanted very much to read the little paper.

  “Then that’s settled. Sunday at a quarter to one, Miss Sinclair. I shall show you my garden—I’m very proud of it. Goodbye, goodbye . .

  Her exit was regal: a hand upraised in general salute, a kind smile for the company to share, Mr. Frank at her elbow, Mr. Walter behind as though drawn on an invisible string. The last roar died away; the guests faded away; the reception was over.

  “I’ll stay and support you,” Miss Teller said, as Mrs. Thomas advanced. “After all, the invitation was as much my doing as yours.”

  “Next time—”

  “—will be just the same, only next time, it’ll be Mrs. Thomas issuing the invitations.”

  “She’ll never let Mrs. Westerby in again,” Gail asserted.

  “Don’t you believe it. What Mrs. Westerby wants, Mrs. Westerby gets. By hook or . . .”

  She paused, and Gail looked at her curiously.

  “Or?”

  “Or by crook, I shouldn’t wonder,” Miss Teller ended, and prepared to put Mrs. Thomas in her place.

  Chapter 3

  On Saturday night, Gail went to a dance; she did not arrive at the farm until the early hours of Sunday. She slept late, and then went down to the orchard with her niece and nephew and a Shetland pony; the pony had the fun, the children the thrills and Gail the exercise.

  In a neighbouring field, Alan was mending a trough which had begun to leak. When he had finished, Gail walked with him to the house. A savoury smell floated out to greet them.

  “Rosbif.” Alan sniffed appreciatively. “Pity you won’t be here to lunch.”

  Gail thought so too. The table was laid for nine, the joint was in the oven; one amateur cook was peering into saucepans while another peeled potatoes; a third was mixing salad in a vast wooden bowl.

  “Can’t you call this lunch of yours off?” Alan asked, opening a cupboard and beginning to mix drinks.

  “No. I’m being called for.”

  “How far are you going?”

  “Only to Shern,” Gail said. “And that reminds me. Do you remember someone—”

  Alan had turned, bottles in hand, and was staring at her in surprise.

  “I didn’t know you knew anybody at Shern,” he said.

  “I don’t. I was just going to ask you about someone called Mrs. Westerby,”

  “Mrs. Westerby! What on earth . . .”

  “You know her?”

  “Everybody knows her. What are you going to see her about?”

  “Some paper or other she’s giving me for one of the Brothers.”

  “What connection does she have with publishers?”

  “She’s Mrs. Stratton’s sister-in-law.”

  For some moments he was too amazed for speech.

  “Well I’m . . . You mean that the Shern Strattons . . . you mean this author you’ve been talking about is the woman who married Edward Stratton of Shern?”

  “She married an Edward Stratton. I didn’t know he—”

  “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know he had any connection with anyone living near here. You’ve never once mentioned Shern, except to tell us that your uncle supported its pub single-handed. How did I know there were any Strattons there?”

  Noelle, folding garments on an ironing board in a far corner of the room, put in a word.

  “Is Mrs. Westerby the enormous woman we ran into at that cattle sale last month?” she asked Alan.

  “That’s the one,” Alan said. “Edward Stratton was her brother.”

  “You knew him?” Gail asked.

  “I met him once or twice when I came down here to stay with my uncle. I can’t say I knew him—or
that I remember him very well; I was only about eighteen. I heard later that he’d married a widow who lived somewhere in or near London, and—apart from a brief visit just after they were married—she and Stratton never came to Shern again.”

  “I don’t wonder,” Gail said. “How would you like to stay with Mrs. Westerby?”

  “I shouldn’t mind at all,” Alan answered. “She’s inclined to bellow, but she’s amusing and she’s no fool.” He turned back to the cupboard, still murmuring his astonishment. “Edward Stratton’s widow! Well, well.”

  Totsy brought the children in, and nothing more was said about Shern or the Strattons—but when the taxi came for Gail, Mrs. Westerby was in it. Alan walked out to the decrepit vehicle and handed out the large figure seated inside.

  “Mr. Weekes. I don’t suppose you remember me,” Mrs. Westerby said, standing and surveying him. “Do you retain your Naval rank, and should I say Commander?”

  “You can just say Alan. It’s clever of you to recognise me after all these years.”

  “It isn’t clever at all,” Mrs. Westerby told him. “You look just like your uncle.”

  “God help me,” Alan said simply.

  “You look just as he used to look when he was your age,” Mrs. Westerby amended, and turned to greet Noelle, who had come out of the house. “If this is your wife,” she said, holding Noelle’s hand warmly in her own, “you’ll never suffer from loneliness and go to pieces as your poor uncle did. Has your sister-in-law told you I’m taking her off to lunch?”

  Gail, finding eyes turned towards her, made an effort to recover from the astonishment into which she had been plunged since Mrs. Wester by’s arrival. She had been trying to connect this sensible, matter-of-fact woman clad in a neat, dark suit and a small, sensible hat with the carnival figure that had disrupted Friday’s reception. Mrs. Westerby had not shrunk; she was still outsize; her voice was still a trumpet blast—but there the resemblance ended. Gail wondered confusedly if the clothes in which she had appeared the other day had been Mrs. Westerby’s notion of what the smart woman would wear to a London reception. The thought, however, only increased her bewilderment.

  “Won’t you come in and have a drink before you go?” Alan was asking.

  Mrs. Westerby glanced through one of the long windows at the animated scene in the living room. Astonishment kept her silent for some time.

  “Goodness gracious!” she said at last. “I wish your uncle could see that picture of hospitality. He shunned us all, you know; he wouldn’t have any of us in his house. Did you knock down the wall between those two rooms?”

  “Yes,” Noelle said. “And we’re all on one floor. Visitors go upstairs.”

  “One, two, three, four, five visitors,” counted Mrs. Westerby, still gazing with undisguised interest through the window. “And such nice young men. Navy?”

  “Most of them,” Alan said. “They’re no bother. They turn up with plenty to eat and drink—and as you see, they’re useful about the house.”

  “They are indeed,” Mrs. Westerby said, and reluctantly withdrew her gaze. “I feel very guilty, taking your sister-in-law away from you all. Are those your two delightful children in there?”

  “Yes,” Noelle said. “Don’t be misled by the dirt. They start off clean every morning.”

  “How lovely, how lovely to be young and dirty,” Mrs. Westerby said wistfully. “What a perfect place this is for children. Did you expect to inherit it? Everybody thought it would go to whichever woman happened to be living with your uncle at the end.”

  Alan laughed.

  “I didn’t expect to get it,” he said, “and if I hadn’t had to leave the Service, I wouldn’t have been interested. As it was, it was a godsend. But I’m no farmer.”

  “Neither was your uncle—but he was a good judge of cows,” Mrs. Westerby said. “And—though I wouldn’t like to say so except to you—a good judge of women. Every one of them was either a beauty, or a magnificent cook.”

  “And only one at a time,” Alan said. “We inherited the last one.”

  “Totsy Baker? She was once my housemaid. Your uncle stole her. I’m afraid you didn’t inherit much money—the Colonel was very generous to the lady—loves he pensioned off. Ah me, those were the days! And now, I must take Gail—may I call you Gail?—away with me.” Gail followed her into the taxi. The journey was a long-drawn-out affair, for the driver was as decrepit as his taxi; at every curve of the road, he slowed down to walking pace and played a fanfare on the horn; Gail would not have been surprised to see him get out and walk round the corner to see if anything was coming. They reached a little village at last, and entered a drive leading to a large, beautifully-proportioned house.

  ‘‘That’s it,” Mrs. Westerby said. “This was the house my mother came to when she married. My brother and I were born in it. But I don’t live in it now,” she added unexpectedly—and Gail saw that the taxi, instead of drawing up at the entrance, was going round the side of the house and along a narrow, stony lane, to stop at last before a very small cottage with a thatched roof.

  “Here we are,” Mrs. Westerby said. “I moved here—it was the gardener’s cottage—at the end of December—just after my brother died. I knew I should never need the big house again. It was a good idea, don’t you think, to move into smaller quarters?”

  It would have been, Gail thought, following her into the cottage and tripping over a chair and a footstool, if the move had been made without moving all the furniture too. It was impossible to believe that a woman as large as Mrs. Westerby could move at all in the room, crammed as it was with chairs, tables, chests, stools, pictures, china ornaments. Nothing, Gail felt certain, had been left behind at Vizcaya Lodge.

  “It’s not large,” Mrs. Westerby pointed out unnecessarily. “At first, I must admit, I felt a little cramped—but I soon got used to it. I felt—oh dear, I should have warned you that there was a little step there!—I felt I couldn’t bear to part with any of my . . . no, it doesn’t matter at all; it was my fault for putting so much china on that little table. Just come and sit here, by the fire.”

  The fire was two logs set in a grate no larger than a preserving pan. Mrs. Westerby removed the wire screen, rolled the logs into a new position and pushed aside two tables in order to allow Gail to draw nearer.

  “If you own lovely things,” she said, “and all these are lovely, don’t you agree?—you can’t, you simply can’t make up your mind which you’re going to keep and which you’re going to part with. I ended by keeping most of my favourite pieces.”

  So much was evident, Gail thought, and tried to warm her cold hands. It was all right for Mrs. Westerby to warm herself at this one-candle-power heat; Mrs. Westerby had several layers of natural protection and could have slid down a glacier in comfort. Less well-cushioned guests were at a distinct disadvantage.

  “I expect you’re wondering why I haven’t got a little cat or a dog to keep me company,” Mrs Westerby said. “The fact is that I’m out of the house a good deal—committees and so forth—and I hate leaving the poor things alone. Mrs. Meredith, Julian’s mother —Julian is my godson, and you’ll meet him presently, because I asked him to pick you up on his way back to London today—his mother looks after his three beautiful dogs, and would gladly keep an eye on mine, if I had any, but I’ve decided against it. Besides, I’m worried about damage to my rose garden—and my little vegetable garden, and my herb garden which you can see through that side window. Put another log on the fire, Gail—oh, I see the basket is empty. I can’t remember whether I asked Julian to fill it for me or not; he does these little things for me when he comes down to see his parents at weekends. He works up in London—computers; his parents live down here and are my greatest friends. Just push that knitting off that chair and sit down, won’t you? It’s cosy in this little room, don’t you think?”

  “Very cosy,” Gail agreed, and felt that Mrs. Westerby would have got on well with her grandmother, who lived in the few remaining habita
ble rooms of a crumbling castle and said that draughts were healthy.

  “My friends thought I wouldn’t fit into this little house—but as you see, I do,” Mrs Westerby said with satisfaction. “There were only four small rooms, two up and two down; I added a little kitchen at the back, with a bathroom above it, and here I am. I wouldn’t have moved out of the Lodge while my brother was alive; he was very fond of it, although he only saw it once after he was married. We were born in it, you know; I left it on my marriage, but came back when I was widowed a year later. He never left it until he married. Do you like drinking before lunching? I have some sherry, if I can lay my hands on it. I asked Julian to get me some and I think I put it . . . would you mind getting up for one second while I peer into that little cupboard behind you? Can you see a bottle of sherry there?”

  “No.”

  “That’s very odd. We had a ... oh, now I remember! I took it along to the Church bazaar as a little contribution. I’m so sorry. Could I make you some lemonade or something of that sort?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You haven’t taken off your coat—let me have it, and then you can settle down comfortably. That’s right. And now tell me how a pretty girl like you comes to be working for all those dried-up old gentlemen.”

  “An agency sent me.”

  “I thought their reception the other day a little dull,” Mrs. Westerby said. “Nobody seemed to stand out. Will you come into the dining-room and talk to me while I put the mats on the table?”

  She opened the door of the adjoining room. Gail, following her in, came to a halt on the threshold and the years fell away as she looked at the confusion of objects before her. She had seen them all before, in the crumbling castle: the sewing machine, so ancient that the makers would have been happy to put it on show; the thick red woollen mittens, the gardening gloves and battered straw gardening hat, the Chinese bowl spilling out snippets of material, the mangy fur foot-warmer, the snuff boxes gaping with pins; pot-pourri, a rusty music stand, a small bust of Wellington hung with skeins of wool and surmounted by a man’s hat—the godson’s, or the dead brother’s?