Love Song

by Charlotte Bingham

  Aunt Rosabel nodded sympathetically. ‘Oh yes, I know, Alexander. I read the Daily Telegraph every day, don’t I, Hope? I know all about the property market going flat.’

  Oddly relieved that she was once more ‘Hope’ and not ‘Victoria’, Hope smiled and came to sit near her. ‘Of course you do, darling,’ she said warmly, ‘and the property column is always interesting to you because you’ve known so many of the big houses being sold. You’ve been to parties and dances and stayed in them. It’s always fascinating to hear you talk about the old days.’

  ‘Well, exactly.’ Aunt Rosabel smiled across at Hope and then turned to Alexander. ‘You know she is the best thing that has happened to you, don’t you? I never had much time for you before, but since you came to live here and Hope and I became such friends, I’ve been happier than I’ve ever been since John was killed in the war.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Oh, but good gracious. Now. Where was I, I wonder? I do ramble on so, don’t I?’

  ‘You were telling us all about your friends and their houses and so on.’

  ‘That’s right, I was, wasn’t I? That’s how I realized, through reading the paper, just how valuable Hatcombe is, and of course when that nice gentleman came back – you know, my dear, when you were in Worcestershire on your little break – the nice man from the Orphan Welfare Trust, and told me how really valuable Hatcombe was, I decided there and then to take his wise advice and I have sold the house to him. So you have no need to worry in the least. I shall be perfectly fine. He has bought Hatcombe from me for a very fair price, almost too fair, considering that Uncle Harold only paid five thousand pounds for it in 1922 or thereabouts.’

  She leaned forward and whispered to Alexander, ‘He has paid me one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for this house. Imagine! I signed everything when he called again last week. Imagine! If Harold was alive he would never believe it. He has bought the house for his nephew, who lives with him, his nice young nephew whom he brought to see me when Hope was away on her little break. And so, as he said last week when he was here – or was it the week before? At any rate, he said that now I can move into a nice warm apartment at Bath and not be a trouble to you all after all. And you can all go back to London, which Alexander does so prefer anyway.’

  ‘Where were you when this man kept calling for God’s sake, Hope? I mean you must have suspected something, mustn’t you? You must have seen that he was a suspicious character, surely?’

  ‘But he wasn’t. And he didn’t just keep calling, he came once a month to have tea with Aunt Rosabel. I didn’t know he came to see her with his so-called nephew when I was in Worcestershire.’

  ‘Yes, I meant to speak to you about that—’

  ‘Not now, Alexander—’

  ‘How come you had enough money to go to an hotel in Worcestershire?’

  ‘I didn’t go to an hotel, I went to a Landed Heritage house – it’s very cheap in winter.’

  Alexander turned away, already bored with what she was saying. How tedious Hope was, and how virtuous. More than anything her virtue bored him. She had never had affairs, never really lived. Thank God, he at least had learned to live.

  He moved away from her, and Hope noticed that the hand which reached towards the drinks tray was trembling and he looked flushed. He poured himself a drink, and started to walk up and down their sitting room.

  ‘This man from this charity is obviously bogus. He has obviously duped the old woman out of all her money, and then charmed the house out of her for the princely sum of what a one-bedroomed flat in Bath would cost her. He’s a crook, obviously. And we can sue him. We shall sue him. We’ll sue him for everything he has, and more. What criminals these people who prey on old ladies are! But why, why in God’s name you couldn’t see this one coming I do not know. Why you couldn’t have at least said something to me—’

  ‘I tried to, Alexander. I tried to warn you that her mind was coming and going.’

  ‘Did you? I don’t remember your words of wisdom!’

  Hope turned back to the window at which she was standing. Due to the gravity of the crisis Alexander had not returned to London so she had been forced to cancel her meeting with Jack in Bradford-on-Avon, but Alexander was going back to London that afternoon and Hope would be meeting Jack the following day.

  As she thought of him she imagined his face as she told him all that had happened, and wondered what he would say. It was nice to imagine being with Jack. It made whatever insults Alexander chose to hurl at her somehow pathetic and irrelevant.

  ‘Yes, what we will do is sue Mr Bell. He obviously took advantage of your stupid trip to Worcestershire to get the old woman to finalize everything with him. My God, we will sue him, I will sue him, until the pips squeak. Watch it, Bell, because I’m coming for you. But really.’

  ‘Bell?’ Jack said. Hope nodded.

  They were back in their favourite wine bar in Bradford-on-Avon, and although Hope knew that the prawns should not taste so good, or the bread quite so fresh, or the white wine so crisp, yet they did, because Jack was seated opposite her, and he was wearing his cashmere coat, and his thick hair was brushed back from his broad forehead, and although the look in his eyes was thoughtful it was also comfortingly unshocked, as if he was grown-up enough to know that while the situation at Hatcombe was grave, it was not the end of the world.

  ‘I know Bell,’ he went on. ‘He comes from Bath. He’s well known to move in on old ladies – and gentlemen too, I might add. Charms the furniture out of them for his antiques business, or the money out of them for his Orphan Welfare Trust – rather misnamed, I should think – and he’s also a sleeping partner in one of the solicitor’s firms around here. These old firms can be hotbeds of God knows what, you know? Old family trusts are particularly their speciality, because the beneficiaries, usually at least one generation removed, all live in some far-flung spot and know nothing of what has been left to them, and half the time careless, so whatever the dear old family lawyer cares to throw at them they pocket all too gratefully. Fantastic how some of these west country firms have grown rich on so-called trusts. Misnamed again – or perhaps well named in order to avoid suspicion.’

  ‘You mean he doesn’t really collect for orphans?’

  ‘Oh no, you’ll find that’s all above board and perfectly administered, until you look at the costs of running, that is, and then I think you’ll find that surprise surprise those costs are all trickling back, one way or another, to you-know-who. He’s going to be a very difficult fellow to sue. Good luck, but – well, in the meantime, what are you going to do, Hope?’

  Hope gazed out of the window at the rain that always seemed to accompany their trysts, and shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘All I do know is that I was right when I said to you that time that we shouldn’t worry about the future, because something always happens.’

  Jack took one of her hands and kissed it, after which he held it to the side of his face as he stared across the table at her.

  ‘Maybe something does always happen, Hope, but as far as I’m concerned the only thing that has truly happened is – us.’

  Hope smiled. ‘We had the three days, Jack, didn’t we?’

  Jack was silent, and then, ‘We must have many more than three, or I will never believe in anything again.’

  Now Hope was silent, seeming only to hear the ticking of her watch in her head. In another thirty minutes she must get up, go to her car and go back to Hatcombe, and poor Aunt Rosabel, and – everything.

  ‘We must make love again.’

  Hope looked at Jack. It was true. They must, but where, and when? And when it was all over, there would still be the going-back. There would never not, now, be the going-back. The going-back that seemed always to overshadow the going-to.

  ‘My dear, I didn’t think to see you here!’

  By some extraordinary freak of fortune Jack had let go of Hope’s hands, although his eyes had never left her face, and only now reluctantly,
and almost lazily it seemed to Hope, raised themselves to Mrs Taylor-Batsford’s face that was even now reflecting the story she would start in her circle as soon as she should be able to. My dear, the awfulness of it, quite alone, and quite obviously together with that song-writer man and – you know – quite obviously.

  ‘You don’t know Mrs Taylor-Batsford, do you, Jack?’

  Jack’s expression of utter resignation made it quite clear that he wished Hope did not either.

  ‘Oh, but yes, I think my little gel is in the church choir where you teach once a fortnight, is she not? Mary Jane Taylor-Batsford?’

  ‘Oh – MJ? She yours, is she? Nice little thing.’

  ‘Well, well – I mustn’t keep you.’

  She nodded and passed on into the main part of the wine bar where Hope saw her raising a gloved hand to someone in greeting.

  ‘Supposing—’ Hope looked after her, frightened and guilty, but Jack merely shrugged.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, having stood up to watch the woman’s progress down the bar. ‘She’s meeting a man friend herself!’ He laughed and sat back down again.

  ‘Probably her husband.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No way.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He didn’t kiss her like a husband, Hope.’

  ‘How, then?’

  Jack would not be drawn and shortly after, or so it seemed to Hope, their precious time together was over. Despite Jack’s shrugging off the chance meeting with Mrs Taylor-Batsford, Hope drove home feeling uneasy, and sad, because she knew that they could never again risk going to Bradford-on-Avon. Whatever happened they would have to meet somewhere else. A door had shut, and for the first time it was not on Hope and Alexander, but on Hope and Jack.

  Until the moment when Mrs Taylor-Batsford had happened upon them in the wine bar Hope had not, as yet, contemplated guilt. It was strange that she, who had known guilt at so many times in her life – when her mother ran off with her publican lover, when she herself married Alexander and left her father to fend for himself – with Jack had felt not a shred. She had allowed herself to be swept up into her relationship with Jack as carelessly as Alexander seemed to be intent on driving his helpless family into the darkest of times.

  It was difficult to see how they would be able to survive the coming months. As Hope stared into the darkness of the winter nights that followed her lunch with Jack, for once she could see no way out, and her normal optimism was no longer there to be drawn upon.

  The house was sold, and whatever the law said, it would be years before that particular battle was settled. And although Aunt Rosabel would no doubt continue to be as sweet as ever, Hope knew that the old lady would never be able to cope with the idea of living anywhere but Hatcombe. Indeed, now that she had gradually come to realize that her days at Hatcombe might well be numbered, the old lady seemed curiously uninterested in anything, and not even walks with Letty and crumpet teas by the drawing room fire could bring the old look back to her eyes.

  Verna too, without being told, knew that the writing was on the wall, but busily pretended it was not so until the inevitable day when she came to Hope and explained that it was time for her to return to Australia, thereby letting Hope off having to tell her that they could no longer afford to pay her wages.

  ‘I shall miss you all. You’ve been quite the happiest family I’ve ever been with. Such lovely girls, all of them,’ she said sadly, which made Hope suddenly turn away, this time hearing the sound of not one door shutting, but many. ‘But I must go home.’

  From accidentally hearing her nanny speaking on the telephone Hope knew that Verna already had another family to go to, her trip home to Australia was only for a month’s break, and soon there would be some new little Letty at the centre of her life, but nevertheless they both smiled, mutually thankful that a tactful way round the situation had been found.

  ‘Letty will miss you.’

  ‘I know, but it’s probably best if I do go, before I can’t!’

  They both smiled briefly, once again mutually covering the agonizing heartbreak that those few words always embraced, and to cover the moment Verna took out some photographs from the summer and they immediately started to remember those sunny, happy days which suddenly, to Hope at least, seemed already very far away.

  Afterwards Hope walked round the garden on her own, despite the growing dusk.

  It was four o’clock. Everywhere children were being collected from their schools by their mothers. Her own three daughters would be sitting down to school tea, moaning about homework, sharing jokes with friends from whom they would soon have to be parted, because Hope knew that, after this term, they could not possibly stay at the school any longer. They would have to come home and go to a non-fee-paying school and find part-time jobs in after-school hours. From now on what they did for themselves would be as important as what she could do for them. They would all have to look after each other, the way they had been becoming used to do at West Dean Avenue.

  For perhaps the thousandth time Hope wished that they had not forfeited Rose’s place at her ballet school, that they had never moved to Hatcombe. Yet another thousand times she wished that she could have the past year back again, that time could be returned for a refund and she could be allowed to put the past year in an envelope and get back a credit by return of post.

  So irrational did her anxiety over the future make her that when she was yet again propped up against her pillows and staring out into the dark, once more wondering what she could do to save her family from destitution, she found herself hating Hatcombe and Aunt Rosabel, and wishing that the old lady had never come to visit them that Christmas, but had stayed in Wiltshire, had never come to inspect Alexander to see if he had changed for the better, had never promised him that she would leave him Hatcombe, had just left them all alone.

  ‘Aunt Rosabel!’

  Hope found herself whispering.

  The old lady was lying against her pillows staring ahead. Dawn had long come and gone and with it any shred of desire for sleep, and so it was that as Hope had passed her door, on the way to make herself a cup of tea in the old kitchen below, she had noticed the light still burning, and, since both the light and the open door were unusual, had looked in on her.

  At first Hope was sure that she was dead, such was the still look of her, the eyes open but not seeing, the beautiful old hands lying on the lace of her upper sheet quite unmoving, but as she hurried to the bedside she noticed that the old lady was still breathing, and it was with a strange feeling of gratitude that Hope found herself taking Aunt Rosabel’s wrist, for whatever had happened or would happen to them all on her account, Hope knew at once that the last thing she really wanted was that the old lady should die.

  ‘Just don’t move,’ Hope said, realizing as she did so how pointless and meaningless her words sounded as she tried to feel her pulse with the tips of her fingers. ‘I’ll go and ring the doctor straight away.’

  And yet at the sound of Hope’s voice Aunt Rosabel’s eyes seemed to register her presence and she turned her head slightly towards the younger woman, and it seemed to Hope that she was trying to speak.

  She quickly returned to the old lady’s bedside and leaned her head towards her.

  ‘I’m all right really …’ Aunt Rosabel whispered, but her speech was so quiet it was hardly above the sound of a sigh.

  ‘I know, you’re fine, but even so I shall ring for help straight away.’ Hope pulled the bedclothes closer around her and she noticed that the old lady attempted a smile before her eyes closed. Hope ran from the room down to the hall and the nearest telephone.

  Please, please, don’t die, Aunt Rosabel. I’m sorry for thinking bad things because of not having any money and you selling Hatcombe to the man from the Orphan Welfare Trust – please don’t die and leave me all alone.

  As the ambulance at last arrived and Letty was woken by the sound of their activities and cried to be lifted, and Hope followed the
men up to Aunt Rosabel’s room, the thought came to her that she must be past redemption, for even as the poor old woman might be poised between this world and the next all Hope had been able to think of was herself.

  But when she confided this to Jack, much later that day, he laughed a rich laugh that rang down the telephone with a warm reassuring acceptance of human frailty. ‘Join the human race, Mrs Merriott,’ was all he said, and then, more softly, ‘Can you feel my arms about you? Shut your eyes. I am about to put my arms about you and hold you to me.’

  Hope closed her eyes and for a few seconds she was able to fool herself that this was all that mattered, before replacing the phone and going to find Letty.

  In hospital that evening Aunt Rosabel lay against alien pillows, not soft cotton with old lace like her own but stark white with County Hospital embroidered in red down their sides, and her eyes were closed. Hope found herself tiptoeing towards her bed, still afraid that she might not be sleeping but already gone from this world.

  She must have sensed Hope’s presence because she opened her eyes after a minute and turning towards her smiled in warm if tired recognition, and although it was obviously an effort she spoke. ‘I had these pains in my chest in the night. It’s my age, d’you see? I am so sorry, Hope, just when you have so much with which you have to cope.’

  Hope said nothing, only lightly squeezed her hand, feeling absurd relief that she was not gone. She loved Aunt Rosabel, more than she could tell her, because they were both, in their way, shy of emotion.

  Back at Hatcombe as the ambulance had driven her away, leaving Hope and Letty to breakfast alone together, the house had seemed to be leaning towards the departing vehicle with its flashing lights and whispering over and over, Don’t go, don’t leave me alone with people who don’t really know me. And the flagstones that lined the halls and the corridors, they too had echoed to the sound of their two sets of hurrying feet with, Where’s she gone? Bring her back! because until that moment even Hope had not realized just how much Hatcombe was Aunt Rosabel, or Aunt Rosabel was Hatcombe.