‘I’m glad to hear it.’ The words were sincere, but he was beginning to look grim. Joy knew without being told that he was accustomed to everyone he met being so impressed by the Bainbridge money, however much it might be, and the trust he represented and that he did not like to be thwarted. ‘Is that your last word, Sister?’ he asked very quietly.
‘I’m afraid so.’ Joy looked steadily at him, willing him to go, but he cast a last appealing glance in Aileen’s direction before returning to the attack.
‘Then listen to me, just a moment, young woman,’ he began. ‘If I start out to, I can make things very difficult for you. I don’t want to do that ... for your mother’s sake.’ Again that glance at Aileen, but she sat quiet and still, not responding. ‘But if you drive me to it, I’ll fight!’
‘I can see nothing in what you say to make me change, my mind,’ Joy said firmly, but she was beginning to tremble slightly. The way in which this man persisted in looking at her mother was beginning to alarm her. Aileen was still an attractive woman. She had kept her youthful figure, though sometimes Joy had wondered whether her mother’s slenderness, which might have been envied by many a girl half her age, was the result of all the miles she had walked over the years to save bus fares, the plain and scant meals she vowed she enjoyed, to save expense! Whatever the reason, Aileen was slender and lithesome, her face in spite of all the worries and cares she had carried alone for such a long time, was still almost free of lines and wrinkles. Her eyes and her hair were attractive, and she still had all her own teeth which showed prettily white when she smiled. Altogether Aileen was an attractive woman in the prime of life, and Samuel Bainbridge was showing his appreciation of the fact in a manner which left Joy in little doubt as to his thoughts.
‘You will do,’ he said menacingly, taking out his cigarette case again and proffering it almost, it seemed, automatically, but both mother and daughter shook their heads. ‘Just listen to me for a few minutes,’ he invited, ‘and then see if you wouldn’t like to sing a rather different tune!’
CHAPTER X
‘My business partner has managed to buy the land adjoining your house and garden,’ Samuel Bainbridge told them, articulating each word with such emphasis that they could not possibly misunderstand. ‘We shall build as closely to your property as we possibly can, but,’ he held up an admonitory finger, ‘we shall not build a staff residence, because I feel sure, before the project is completed, that you’ll see how useless and unbusinesslike it is to refuse my offer.’
‘What you choose to do with the adjoining land—or with anything else, for that matter—is of no consequence so far as I’m concerned,’ Joy announced relentlessly. ‘I would like to explain something to you, Mr. Bainbridge, if you have still a few minutes to spare.’
‘Go ahead,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘I’m a reasonable man, as I’ve already explained to your mother. I’ll listen to anything within reason.’
‘This house,’ Joy was annoyed to find her voice trembling a little as she thought of Miss Barnes and her entrusting her ‘dearest possession’ to herself, ‘its contents and the grounds surrounding it, were entrusted to me in the will of the late Miss Muriel Barnes. She did not wish the further development of Vanmouth, or so I understand.’
‘She and a few more like her,’ he agreed quickly enough. ‘They’re none of them young enough to appreciate the quick, modern way of living. They still think of the place as it was when their grandfathers or fathers built their big, often ugly old houses here. They don’t think of the youngsters of today, those who want their pleasures while they’re still young enough to enjoy them. They don’t want the little ones to have their fill of fresh air and sea breezes, not if it means sacrificing a bit of their precious old town.’
‘I hardly think that’s fair, Mr. Bainbridge,’ Joy drew a deep breath as she interrupted his flow of words. ‘I walked along the front two or three days ago, and there were lots of children, paddling, bathing, building sand-castles. Their parents were relaxing, letting the beach patrols take care of the children’s safety. The town appears to have catered very well indeed for its visitors, and so far as I could see they were apparently a well satisfied crowd.’
‘Maybe, maybe, for those who’ve been coming here year after year since they were children themselves and don’t want to see changes made any more than do the old stagers still living here. We want to attract the young folks, the new parents...’
‘Those with big wages and money to spend, eh, Mr. Bainbridge? That’s what you’re thinking about, isn’t it?’ Joy asked, waving a protesting hand as he began to speak again. ‘Just a minute, please,’ she urged.
‘I haven’t quite finished. I have nothing whatsoever against any plans you may have to brighten the town and to augment its facilities, although when the twins asked me to help them find somewhere to go the other evening the problem was rather which place to choose than where to find one! You appear to have three good cinemas, a live theatre, and an open-air show twice each week of the season. There are two bathing pools, one, I understand, used only by children, which I think is a wonderful idea. No,’ she shook her head until her curly mop, unrestricted by her Sister’s cap, danced about her ears, ‘I really don’t see the necessity for all this fuss about a holiday village, when you obviously have enough boarding houses and private landladies, to say nothing of hotels, where your visitors can be accommodated.’
‘They still have to spend money on entertainment,’ Samuel Bainbridge said angrily. ‘Our idea is everything in one little part of the town—it won’t detract from any other business, either the boating lake or anything else. The council would never have passed the plans if they had thought that might be the result. No, it’s the young parents, the courting couples I want to see here.’
‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for living quarters for your staff, Mr. Bainbridge,’ Joy said firmly. ‘I gave my promise to Miss Barnes that I would look after her interests.’ A faint smile touched the corners of her mouth as she remembered the moment, then was gone ... gone as Miss Barnes had gone, she thought, remembering swiftly. ‘That I intend to do. I’m sure she wouldn’t have sold out to you.’
‘She could have done.’ He let the words slip out and then obviously and immediately regretting them, added: ‘If she’d lived long enough, that is.’
‘Did you offer to buy the house in her lifetime, Mr. Bainbridge?’ Joy asked directly, and he had the grace to look a little uncomfortable.
‘Yes,’ he said briefly, ‘that’s why I thought it might be possible to buy it, after she’d ... now she’s gone.’
‘Then I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.’ Joy turned to go back to bed, but somehow she did not want to leave this man with her mother. Aileen got so agitated when people shouted, and obviously Samuel Bainbridge was accustomed to shouting when things were not going the way he wanted them to go! ‘I gave my word,’ she insisted, ‘and apart from the fact of what this house means to us as a family, I should never go back on a promise made to a dying woman,’ she ended softly.
‘Poppycock!’ If Joy had not felt so upset and so serious about this menace to their happiness she knew she would have laughed in his face. He looked so very outraged. ‘A promise made to anyone in that state should never be considered binding,’ he asserted. ‘If it is then it’s a form of emotional blackmail. How could you know that one day someone would come along and offer you maybe three times the value of the house and land, because it happened to be just what he wanted? You can’t tell me a promise should be kept in the face of something so advantageous to all of you as that?’
‘I can and I do,’ Joy said firmly. ‘I gave my word, and Miss Barnes trusted me to keep it, as I intend to do. And now’—she smiled brightly and opened the door as an added hint—‘if you will forgive me I must get some rest, and I know my mother has a great deal of work planned for today...’
Reluctantly, and with a last, lingering glance in Aileen’s direction, he got to his fe
et and allowed himself to be shown through the door and conducted to the hallway.
‘You haven’t heard the last of me, young lady,’ he said in ringing tones as he stood on the step. ‘I’m always prepared to fight for what I want. And I’m warning you now, now we’re out of the earshot of your dear mother, who appears to be a far more reasonable person than you’ll ever be, I fight with any weapons I can lay my hands upon, all the time!’
Joy watched him go roaring away down the shore road in an obviously new and opulent car which her recently acquired interest in such matters told her was a super Mercedes, then she turned and went slowly back to where Aileen sat, chin cupped in her hands, staring into space.
‘Nice individual,’ commented Joy with a touch of sarcasm, something she seldom used. ‘What did you think of him, darling?’
‘I felt sorry for him,’ was the unexpected answer, and Joy knew she must have registered her surprise in her face as her mother turned fully towards her, frowning slightly.
‘Why, for goodness’ sake?’ Joy felt the question to be perfectly justified. She could not, at the moment, see any reason whatsoever to be sorry for such a self-important man as Samuel Bainbridge appeared to be.
‘I’m sorry for anyone who believes that money can purchase anything—or anyone—on the face of the earth,’ Aileen said quietly. ‘I know the old joke about “money can’t buy happiness, but at least it makes it possible to be miserable in comfort”, but that’s not the whole of it by a long chalk. It can buy books, but not brains. It can buy the best food in the world, the most expensive, but what good is that if a person, for some reason, hasn’t an appetite? It can buy a house but not always a home, and that’s what I seem to feel Mr. Bainbridge lacks, whatever else he possesses.’
‘I suppose you could say it could buy a pew in church—or it could at one time—but not a place in heaven! Just as it can buy a bed to sleep in, and the softest of sheets and pillows, but there are many sufferers of insomnia who would like to purchase sleep! I’m not one of them, thank goodness, though early this morning I was beginning to feel I might bet I think he’ll have gone about his business now, whatever it is and wherever he goes to conduct it, but when I heard him shouting I just had to come and see what it was all about.’
Aileen smiled but made no further comment, and when Joy left her and went back to bed her mother was already fitting paper and carbons into the new electric typewriter she had just purchased, and for her another day’s work had begun.
Joy expected to lie awake worrying about their recent visitor, but to her surprise she fell asleep almost at once and did not waken until Sylvia tapped on the door and brought in a cup of tea, saying it was time to dress and go back on duty.
‘You should see the gorgeous flowers Mum’s had sent,’ she told Joy as she perched on the end of her sister’s bed, her shining cap of sleek chestnut hair bobbing with excitement. ‘Simply out of this world!’
‘Who’s sent them?’ Joy asked idly. ‘Doctor Quentin?’ for Quentin had turned up at Fernbank on more than one occasion with a sheaf of freshly cut flowers from his mother’s garden, for Celia was an ardent gardener and co-operated with the man who attended to theirs by her own clever skill in the choice of flowers guaranteed to give the most exotic blooms.
‘No.’ Sylvia shook her head until her long, almost shoulder-length hair swung like a bell around her small, pointed face. ‘A man who called this morning. Must have been about some typing he wanted doing or something. Anyhow, seems Mother’s made a conquest. You should just see them!’
‘They aren’t from somebody called Bainbridge, by any chance, are they?’ Joy challenged.
‘How did you guess? You must have known something,’ Sylvia said accusingly. ‘That isn’t fair. You didn’t say anything to me. There was a card with them. It said “with apologies for my disturbing you this morning. S. Bainbridge”. That was all,’ she ended in a tone of hurt disappointment.
‘And quite enough, too,’ Joy said shortly, inwardly more disturbed than she would allow her sister to guess. ‘Run along now, poppet, and run my bath for me, please. I’m going to be late if I’m not careful.’
‘Jenny Wren’—that was Sylvia’s name for Mrs. Wrenshaw ever since she had discovered that lady had an initial J in her name—‘says you didn’t get much sleep this morning, Joy. Was something the matter? Had it anything to do with this Mr. Bainbridge, whoever he is?’ ‘Something like that. Now, scat!’ Joy waved her arms in a mock threat, and laughing, Sylvia ran away to do her sister’s bidding, but there was no laughter in Joy’s eyes or in her heart as she had her usual quick, refreshing bath and prepared to go to St Lucy’s.
‘I must make some enquiries about him,’ she told herself as Nigel sounded his horn outside and she hurried out to meet him, but she shrank from making enquiries from Nurse Byecroft, Nigel or anyone she had only recently met. She did not want their affairs to become the talk of either the hospital or the town.
‘Quentin will know all about him,’ she consoled herself. ‘It’s one of his nights on Casualty. If I can get down there before I go on duty I might get the chance of a word or two.’
As it happened there was a lull in the casualty block when she went down. Quentin greeted her with the sort of smile she still could not make up her mind was reserved for his favoured friends or distributed to all and sundry.
‘Care for a cup of tea, Sister Benyon?’ he greeted her. ‘Nurse here has just made a fresh brew.’
‘Yes, please.’ Joy smiled at the girl, who trotted off to the kitchen, as Joy had expected she would, to produce the required beverage. As soon as they were alone Joy turned to Quentin.
‘Do you know a man called Bainbridge, Quentin?’ she asked. ‘Samuel Bainbridge. A big, well-set-up man physically, iron grey hair, and a thick thatch of it. Wears expensive clothes—they look like Savile Row tailoring to me, what little I know about such things—and drives an enormous, brand-new Mercedes car?’
‘Yes,’ Quentin said briefly, ‘I know Sam quite well. A nice enough chap—if everything’s going his way—and a bad one to cross if things aren’t going the way he wants them to go. Why?’
It did not take long to give him a brief outline of the morning visit of Samuel Bainbridge to Fernbank, and of the subject of their conversation. She mentioned the gift of flowers as a finale, indignation oozing from every pore.
‘That sounds most unlike him, I must say,’ was Quentin’s comment. ‘He’s as tough a nut as you could meet in a month of Sundays, and that’s not underestimating him! Your mother must have made quite an impression on him. But beware of him, Joy. He likes his own way, and he has the dickens of a temper. Dad’s his doctor, and I know he’s treating him for heart trouble, but I’m not sure what form it takes. I know he shouldn’t get as excited as he does, but I suppose that’s the way he’s made. All the same’—he gave her an anxious glance—‘you need your sleep in the day, remember. If you like I’ll ask Dad to have a word with him.’
‘I’m all right, thank you,’ Joy assured him, and indeed at the moment she felt fine. ‘This is one of the times I’m glad I was trained with discipline. It makes one respond to duty, to normal working hours and demands, even if one feels fit to drop, even if one has worries or anything else. It simply doesn’t occur to one to ... give in.’
‘No.’ Quentin gave her a long, cool stare which, for some unknown reason, brought the colour into her cheeks. ‘It never occurs to you to give in, does it, Joy? Anyone else of your age, faced with so much responsibility as you’ve had these last years, would have “given in” long ago. I admire you,’ he said very softly. ‘You just aren’t the giving in sort!’
Fortunately, Joy felt, she was spared the necessity of a reply as the nurse, came back with the cup of strong, sweet tea favoured by most of the staff when on duty. Then two boys arrived, carrying a third and younger boy who had fallen down the cliff. Joy left the casualty department to its own devices, and went back to her own ward, but as she went out Quenti
n hurried after her.
‘Don’t let old Sam get you down,’ he advised. ‘His bark’s worse than his bite, I think. Anyhow, since his wife died, about ten years ago, he’s had little to occupy his mind but building up his moneybags into an even greater pile. Bound to have narrowed his outlet somewhat, even though he has a family, I think he more or less leaves them to their own devices, providing they toe his particular line. If he gives you any more trouble let me know and I’ll see if I can do anything to help. The kids are nice enough, what little I’ve seen of them, so he can’t be all that difficult to deal with unless he’s out adding another corner to his own little empire!’
Joy thanked him and hurried away, but there was a little warm glow in her heart which had not been there before. Crumbs from her rich—emotion-wise—sister’s table, she thought wryly, but at least she felt better for having told Quentin what had happened and for his understanding.
There were no further immediate difficulties where Sam Bainbridge and his affairs were concerned. Before the end of the week he had sent round a vast pile of work for Aileen, with a request that it be ‘completed as soon as possible, please’. Aileen worked almost all night, but the job was done, and done perfectly. The next morning she went round to the labour exchange and engaged a copy typist and to the office equipment showrooms and ordered another typewriter. If he came with another order like that last one she was going to be prepared!’ But when Joy protested that she did not want her mother to work like that, Aileen merely laughed.
‘He may be testing us or something,’ she said gaily. ‘Let him send all the work he likes. I’ll cope. But he’ll have to pay and pay well for it, especially if he wants work done in a hurry!’
‘Why not let him have the house and charge him double what he offers?’ Lana asked suddenly. ‘You could set up a trust fund of your own then, for the Wrenshaws, Cousin Emma and all of us, and we could find somewhere else, I’m certain.’
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