by Isobel Chace
“But not Pamela,” Wilfred added. “How very interesting! And she’s not down on the estate, so where is she?”
“How’s I to know?” Patience snapped back. “You boys go and get your things together. I’se not waiting to clean your rooms!”
Wilfred stood up slowly. “But then I’m not coming,” he said smoothly. “I’m staying in Port-of-Spain where I’m my own man. Nothing personal, cousin,” he told me casually. “But you can buy the rest of the family a soft berth. I’m about to see what kind of a living I can make by my wits. Pamela Longuet wouldn’t think it a proper kind of life, but I’ll like it well enough!”
“I’m coming with you,” Cuthbert said earnestly. He was scarlet in the face with disapproval at his brother’s behaviour. “You’d have to pay me to stay away!”
“Our father too!” Wilfred drawled with contempt.
“You’ve still got to tell him!” Cuthbert reminded him fiercely. Some of Wilfred’s bravado fell away from him and I felt quite sorry for him.
“That’s my business!” he snapped, but he still looked uncomfortable, and still more so when his father came back into the room.
“The seats on the train are booked!” Uncle Philip glowed with triumph. “There was no possibility of going by bus today. I imagine the train will be pretty crowded too!” He turned to me, a slight frown between his eyes. “You know,” he said, “this is the only time of year that the railways pay. They lose millions of dollars every year, except for this week when they make a profit! And this is the time we go on them! Never mind, Camilla will enjoy all the crowds as long as we can find a seat.”
Wilfred faced him squarely. “I’m not coming, Father,” he said, “so that will be one less seat to find.”
Uncle Philip went first white and then a curious mottled red. “What nonsense is this? Of course you’re coming. Aren’t you my son? Haven’t we been waiting all these years to get back on the land? What’s got into you, boy?”
“I’m not coming,” Wilfred repeated stubbornly.
His father smote the air with his fist. “Then explain to me why not!” he shouted.
Because I won’t be bought!” Wilfred roared back. “I’m not one of your pretty men to be bought by my cousin’s money—”
“Pretty men?”
Wilfred nodded. “It won’t be yours, Father, you know that. It won’t even be Camilla’s, because she’ll be far too busy laying it at Cousin Daniel’s feet—”
“My dear boy,” Uncle Philip exploded, “what are you talking about?”
“The facts, Father!”
I wished myself anywhere but there. It is seldom that I have felt so uncomfortable, or so much at a loss as to how to defend myself, or even to smooth over what looked like being an increasingly nasty quarrel. Like Cuthbert, I kept quiet for as long as I could, but my uncle was thoroughly roused now, and there was little doubt but that we should all be dragged into this family dispute and that Wilfred would neither forget nor forgive if either of us were to argue against him.
My uncle swung round and faced me. “Tell him, girl, tell him that the place is going to be Ironside property!”
“Run by courtesy of Daniel Hendrycks,” Wilfred put in quickly.
“Does it really matter?” I asked wearily. “It’s all in the family.”
“The Hendrycks family or the Ironside family?” Wilfred countered.
I sighed. “My name is Ironside,” I reminded him flatly.
He laughed. It was an ugly sound that grated on my ears and brought the colour rushing to my cheeks. “For how long?”
“For as far as I can see into the future!” I said.
He laughed again, but to my relief he didn’t go on with the subject. Instead he renewed his attack on his father, which was almost as bad.
“As for you, old man, how can you live on your niece, and without a thought as to what it’s costing her? As long as there’s some land down there bearing our name, you feel vindicated! Have you thought what it will be like when you get there? People have long memories, I can tell you that!”
He might as well have struck Uncle Philip across the face. Cuthbert started involuntarily, screwing up his mouth in an effort to say something, anything that might retrieve the family’s dream before Wilfred shattered it beyond all hope.
“But Camilla wanted to buy the estate, didn’t she?” he managed.
Wilfred obviously thought that such a remark was beneath contempt. He waited politely for me to deny it, knowing quite well why I had bought it and the muddled thinking that lay behind the whole deal. I thought my own doubts must have been written across my face, so clearly did his features reflect what he thought about it all. My mouth went dry.
“I wouldn’t have bought it if I hadn’t wanted to!” I said weakly.
Uncle Philip recovered himself a little. “Of course she wouldn’t have done!” he said, too heartily. “I told you so.”
Wilfred looked from one to the other of us, shaking his head from side to side. “It doesn’t make any difference. I’m not coming.”
“What will you live on?” his father asked him, still hoping to break him down.
“Money!” he answered tersely. “What I can make from buying and selling in the market place. It will be my money, honest money, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
I waited in silence for a renewed explosion as his family tried to argue with him, but there was none. Uncle Philip managed a weak smile and slapped his son on the back. “Well, that’s all right then. I’ve never been one to force on you anything you didn’t like. You know that!” He turned eagerly to Cuthbert, hardly able to conceal his hurry to be gone, with or without Wilfred. “Get moving, son,” he barked at the younger brother. “The train won’t wait for us!” He bustled out of the room, the train tickets in his hand, hurrying Cuthbert before him. I think he was already telling himself that it had never been a part of his plans that Wilfred should come with us.
There was a long silence after he had snapped the door shut behind him. It was Wilfred who broke it, a Wilfred who looked older and more responsible than I had ever seen him before.'
“Look, Camilla,” he said. “It isn’t that I don’t thank you for getting this place and trying to push us on to our feet, it’s just that I’ve got to make my own way, without them and without you. Can you understand that?”
I nodded. “But where will it lead?” I asked him.
He smiled suddenly. “I shan’t be a millionaire, is that what you’re thinking? It won’t matter. I’ll be my own man and, with a bit of luck, one day Pamela Longuet will be my wife. She wouldn’t look at me if I stayed a field worker on a sugar estate!”
“But—” I began. I stopped myself from going on with what I had been about to say. “Do you think she will? Marry you, I mean,” I said instead.
He looked me straight in the face, a twinkle of amusement dawning in the back of his eyes.
“I think she might,” he drawled.
The train was as crowded as my uncle had said it would be. Half the passengers clung on to anything they could grab outside and whooping and cheering as we groaned our way out of the station, their shirts flapping in the wind. We who sat in staid respectability inside the compartment gasped each time it looked as if someone might lose their precarious footing, but I doubt that we ever went fast enough to put any of these agile young men in actual danger.
My own family were subdued. Even Patience was silent as she stared out of the window at the passing scenery. I tried to follow her example, but the even rhythm of the wheels got into my blood and what had been a small seed of excitement grew and expanded as the wheels hurried round, getting slowly faster and faster.
I remembered suddenly that Daniel had said he would have the house ready for us, but of course he wouldn’t be expecting us today—but he might be there and that was all that mattered. Even the image of Pamela Longuet queening it in his family home faded into insignificance as I dwelt in my thoughts on the house and the
sugar fields, and the extraordinary fact that they would belong to me. If Daniel was going to be there, it all would have been worth while. I had wondered if it would be, if I could bear to see him daily when he had someone else in his heart and not myself, but now I knew the answer to that. Anything was worth it, just to see him now and then. It was all I would ask and—I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat—it looked as if it was going to be all I would get!
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE stone lions that guarded the gates of the house and garden were just as I remembered them. Their Chinese faces grinned a welcome, their tongues lolling out of their gaping mouths. Beyond stood the house with its curly, oriental-looking roof shining in the hot sun.
“Do you like it?” I asked my uncle and Cuthbert anxiously.
My uncle grunted. “I know the house well,” he said briefly.
I winced, remembering how Mrs. Longuet had told me about my family in the very sitting-room where we were now going to live ourselves.
“But you don’t, do you, Cuthbert?” I pressed him.
Cuthbert shook his head. “I don’t remember ever coming here,” he said.
Patience was the first one out of the taxi we had hired from the station. She stood in the driveway, taking great gasping breaths of pleasure to be back. She loaded herself up with the luggage and with her arms bulging she walked slowly to the front door. A push was all that was needed for it to open. It had been left on the latch and there was a short note pushed through the side that hinged the door to its support. It fell to the floor, without Patience seeing it and she trod it underfoot as she passed into the hall.
It was astonishing, I thought, how quickly the dust had gathered on the porch and even in the house. I picked up the note and brushed it against my other hand impatiently, wondering who could have left it.
It was quite brief, and had been written in a flowing, feminine hand which I thought must have been Mrs. Longuet’s.
“To Philip Ironside: Be happy here for as long as you can be, for it won’t be for long. Nothing has changed!”
I folded it neatly and put it away in my pocket, a hollow, sinking feeling within me as I thought of the sheer spiteful malice that must have inspired the writer.
“What is it, Camilla?” Cuthbert asked me. He had come up behind me and must have seen me putting the note in my pocket.
“It’s nothing,” I said awkwardly.
He looked unconvinced, but at that moment he didn’t like to argue with me. He was clearly impressed by his new surroundings and longing to explore the place, and he was very conscious at that moment that the whole estate, the house, everything, belonged to me rather than to his part of the family.
“Don’t look so distressed,” he whispered. “We’ll make a go of it!”
“We shall have to!” I retorted.
Uncle Philip finished paying off the taxi and watched the car depart down the drive. “I never thought I’d live to see such a sight again!” he said at last. “To see a taxi going down my own drive. To have space! That’s what we’ve all been lacking, children, room to breathe!. Just feel that air! Sniff it! Can you smell the sugar? We’ve come home at last!”
Cuthbert laughed. “The house on Charlotte Street wasn’t so bad,” he said.
Uncle Philip shrugged. “It was a stop-gap, boy. No more than that!”
He wouldn’t come into the house. He threw the briefcase he was carrying, together with his coat and the newspaper he had been reading, on to the porch, and strode off to take a look at the estate for himself. There was a new spring in his step and a commanding look to his back. Perhaps he really could run the place, I thought hopefully. It would be good if he could.
“Was that a note I saw you hiding away?” Cuthbert asked as soon as his father was out of earshot. He asked the question reluctantly, as if he didn’t really want to know and could hardly wait for the answer.
“I think Mrs. Longuet must have left it,” I answered. “It’s not important.”
But Cuthbert was not convinced. “Do you think there’ll be others?” he asked anxiously.
“I shouldn’t think so,” I replied with a great deal more confidence than I was feeling.
“I hope not. It would upset the old man.” But Cuthbert was incapable of worrying for very long. A smile broke across his face and he was off like a rocket, rushing through the house, looking at this and that as he hurried along.
I followed him more slowly. It was hard to take in the fact that this house now belonged to me. I wandered through the bedrooms, wondering which one to have as my own. The Longuets had occupied the biggest, a room decorated in sea green and gilt and with a heavily encrusted ceiling. Not that one, I decided, it was too much of a good thing! I went hastily through another door and found myself in what had obviously been Pamela s room. It was pretty and the smell of her scent seemed to have become impregnated into the walls. I could almost imagine her standing at the window and smiling at me, a faint superior smile, because although I had the Longuets’ house for my own, she was happily ensconced in Daniel’s family home!
“Miss ’Milla?”
“I’m up here!”
Patience came struggling into the room, carrying my luggage which she deposited in the middle of the plain white carpet. “Why’s you in here?” she asked crossly.
“I was just looking round,” I explained inadequately.
She wrinkled up her nose, smelling each corner of the room. “We’se got cleaning to do!” she said darkly. “This house ain’t had more’n a touch for some days now. You’d best be gettin’ on some old things, Miss ’Milla! We can’t have it smellin’ of them Longuets, not an instant longer!”
I protested in vain that we had only just arrived and that I wanted to have a good look round first. Patience was adamant. She wouldn’t settle until the whole house was gleaming and fresh, nor would she do so much as get something to eat until she had assured herself that the kitchen was as clean as the one she had left in Charlotte Street.
I am afraid I proved a reluctant helper. I was far more interested in the house itself and the furnishings I had inherited from the Longuets. Most of them I liked well enough, but a few changes would be a pleasant luxury for their taste was more ornate than mine. Still, one couldn’t complain. The general effect was very pleasant indeed. It would provide the whole family with a proper background, not perhaps in the same class as the Hendrycks’ home, but a very satisfactory kind of house to entertain in and make one’s own.
I was exhausted by the time we had finished. Patience had elected to do the downstairs, so I was left with the bedrooms. I had made up a bed for each of us, pleased to discover that the linen cupboard was full to bursting with sheets and blankets. I was just finishing the last bed when Patience uttered a scream of wrath down below. Anxiously I went to the top of the stairs and peered down into the hall below.
“What is it?”
“Has you seen this?” An irate Patience waved a piece of paper through the banisters. “Well, has you?”
I knew without looking at it that it was another note. “I found the first one,” I told her wearily.
“They sure meant him to see it,” she responded, her great body shaking with anger. “Is you thinkin’ there’s one in the office too?”
“I dare say,” I said carefully. “The best thing is to ignore them, I’m sure of that. I think Mrs. Longuet was funny about some things.”
“This ain’t Mrs. Longuet!” Patience said flatly.
“But it looks like a woman’s writing!” I exclaimed.
“It ain’t Mrs. Longuet!”
I straightened up, feeling my aching back as I did so. “Don’t tell me any more!” I begged. “I don’t want to know!”
Patience gave me a sulky look. “If you’se sayin’ so. But—”
I fled back to the room I was doing. I didn’t want to know how it was that she knew that the notes hadn’t been written by Mrs. Longuet. I didn’t want to know anything about them at all.
When the telephone went, Patience was still sulking and she wouldn’t answer it. I was gratified to discover that there was a second receiver upstairs and I took the call there.
“Hullo,” I said.
There was a lengthy silence. “Who’s that? Where’s Mrs. Longuet?”
“She’s gone,” I said baldly. “This is Camilla Ironside.”
“Ironside?” There was a gasp followed by a chuckle. “You’ve moved in already? I wish we’d known! Mrs. Longuet left instructions about a welcoming party for you—”
“Oh, please don’t bother!” I interrupted him.
“It’s no bother. Besides,” he drawled, “I’m an obedient kind of person. I follow instructions, see. It pays me well.”
I swallowed. Was there some kind of threat underlying his words? But there couldn’t be! “Well, it’s very kind of you, Mr.—Mr.—?”
“Just a caller,” he said. “Tell your uncle I called, won’t you?” The telephone went dead and I put the receiver down with suddenly cold hands. The Longuets, I remembered miserably, had been very popular locally and the Ironsides had not! But surely nobody would wish us any actual harm?
The telephone jangled again almost immediately and I jumped, and nearly dropped the receiver as I picked it up for the second time. I muttered a rather timid Hullo, sure that it was a mistake and that I hadn’t put the receiver back properly from the previous call. Part of me knew that it wouldn’t make it ring again even if I hadn’t, but the feeling persisted and I was more than half afraid that the same voice would greet me over the wire. But it was Daniel, warm and reassuring, who spoke into my ear.
“I was told you’d arrived! I didn’t expect you for a day or so yet! Is everything all right?”
“Y-yes, I think so.”
I could almost hear him smiling. “You don’t sound very sure!”
“Daniel, I’m not!” I wailed. “Do you know anything about a party to welcome us?”