Tomorrow they opened the doors to the first guests. Poppy would supervise the kitchens, Mary the bedrooms, while Marigold was in charge of the public rooms. John, surprising himself as much as his family, asked Mr Endersby to show him how to keep accounts, saying it was the only thing he could usefully contribute, and once he grasped the basics of bookkeeping he became surprisingly adept.
For the moment they had only two other staff, a young man invalided out of the army with gas poisoning, who was to be porter and waiter, and a girl who would help both in the kitchens and as a chambermaid. Two women came in daily to do the main cleaning.
Marigold was certain, as she looked round, she had forgotten something. But now it was too late. It was time to go to bed, ready for the day that was to make their fortune.
*
'Mrs Endersby, I assure you it would give me great pleasure if you allowed me to teach your sister. She has a remarkable talent and so far as I can tell almost totally instinctive. She seems to have had no tuition of merit and it is a wonder, from what she tells me, that her talent was not perverted by ignorant teachers. As for the one she has now, Miss Burton, she is adequate I suppose for the average girl, but not for Ivy!'
Silas Frome stopped talking abruptly, bit a huge chunk out of the slice of fruit cake he held in one hand, and gulped some tea from the cup in the other. Marigold and her mother looked at one another, perplexed.
'I know nothing of the techniques of painting, Mr Frome,' Marigold said slowly. 'You say you teach at the art college? I am hoping to send Ivy there when she is old enough, if she is good enough to be accepted – '
'She's far too good!' he snorted, rudely interrupting. 'She can do more already than some of our prize students. I despair of the general mediocrity but it is the same everywhere. What I am suggesting is that she comes to me for a lesson once a week. Or I will come here if you prefer, although in my own studio I have all my equipment and can do more, obviously. I do not ask for payment,' he added.
Marigold flushed.
'I can afford your fees if you teach Ivy, Mr Frome,' she said sharply.
He smiled suddenly, and at once she found her antagonism melting. He had a charming, almost puckish smile which transformed his face.
'My dear young lady, I did not mean to imply differently! I understand you are in the process of converting this place into a select hotel? I am sure that, with such charming proprietors,' he bowed slightly towards Mary, 'it will be a great success. I meant that I would feel privileged to help Ivy. If you insist on payment, may I ask for a meal in lieu? I detest cooking and am always forgetting to eat. If your other cooking is as good as these cakes it will be a feast fit for a king. Well, are we agreed? Today is Sunday, but she could come one evening during the winter months, for she must use what free time she has in daylight on her own work. How about Tuesday? I live nearby, just across the Hagley Road, in Ladywood. A shack of a studio but ideal for me. Naturally one of you must accompany her as a chaperone, for I know artists are regarded as monsters of depravity by ordinary mortals.'
Marigold managed to stem the flow.
'It is so kind of you, and I'm sure Ivy would love to have some lessons – '
'Good, then I will expect you on Tuesday at five o'clock.'
'And perhaps you will come back here for your meal afterwards?' Mary asked faintly.
When Marigold saw that Mr Frome had a ground floor studio, converted from an old conservatory, ideas began to flow.
Although she had taken a book to read she was intensely bored sitting listening to incomprehensible instructions. All Mr Frome seemed to be doing was show Ivy how to draw lines and curves, and Marigold considered she already could do that well enough to satisfy the most exacting of tutors. Besides, she was so busy she could not afford the time every week.
She suggested her idea to Mary, who went with Ivy the following week, and then they proposed it to John.
'You have your wheelchair, Pa,' Marigold said. 'It's only a short distance and no steps to negotiate. Ivy can push you there and back and you could enjoy the lessons too. It would help enormously by giving me more time to supervise all the arrangements here.'
John was tempted, for his inactivity bored him and he was terrified he might descend into an even deeper mood of despair and frustration if he did not make some attempt to help himself. He spent his days either in the room which had been converted into a family parlour for them, on the ground floor next to the kitchen, or in the kitchen itself.
Mary added her persuasions after they had gone to bed, hinting she was worried about Marigold.
'She misses little Dick, and she'd maybe feel cheated if things don't work out right here. She's still hoping Richard is alive too, and she occupies herself all day long so as not to dwell on other possibilities,' she said softly. 'It's bad for her to have time to brood. I wish she would accept that after all this time, almost two years, he won't return alive. Then she could mourn, and get on with her own life.'
Half reluctantly, half intrigued, John took on the task of chaperoning Ivy, and found a great deal of satisfaction in learning for the first time to use his own drawing skills. Silas Frome encouraged him and introduced him to several other artists, and soon John had his own circle of friends and was selling all the wooden carvings he could produce. His spells of silence became shorter and fewer, and Marigold turned with renewed energy to running her hotel.
***
Chapter 15
'It's going to be a marvellous success!' Lexie exclaimed, looking round the light and airy dining room.
'I hope so,' Marigold said more cautiously. 'We've been almost full all the time after the first two weeks, and people are already booking to come back.'
'Satisfaction, that proves it,' Lexie replied. 'They'll tell their friends, and soon you'll want to expand.'
'I've already had to employ two more staff, Mom and Polly couldn't cope. Now, what will you have for dessert?'
Later, when they had retired to Marigold's sitting room which she also used as an office, Lexie became more serious.
'You're looking too pale and thin,' she declared bluntly. 'Despite your fashionable clothes. I know you've been working hard to get this started, but it's more than that. You're strung up so tightly it's like a violin string about to snap.'
'It's been tough making everyone do the work on time, and I'm not used to directing a large house and a staff,' Marigold defended herself.
'You could do that without a blink,' Lexie opinied. 'It's Dick, isn't it? You're missing him.'
Marigold sighed, then reluctantly agreed.
'It hurts more than I ever thought it could,' she confessed. 'I see him every week when I go to The Place on Sundays, but he's beginning to forget me. He turns to Sophia when he falls over and hurts himself. He isn't quite two yet but I feel I've lost him. Yet what else could I have done? It wasn't right to keep Richard's son in the sort of damp, insanitary house I grew up in. I remember so many children dying. We thought it was normal and we were just lucky because we all survived, but Dick isn't as strong.'
'Darling Marigold, you did your best for him and you had to consider the rest of your family too. You were brave to let Sophia have him.'
'She does love him, more than she ever admits.'
'Sophia's a funny creature, more aristocratic than the bluest blooded English Duke! But underneath she's as soft as a blancmange. She'll care for him.'
'I know, and I'm glad for him but I miss him so. We were together almost all the time until a few months ago.'
'You miss Richard too, don't you?' Lexie asked softly.
Marigold nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
'It gets worse,' she whispered. 'I thought the pain would grow less in time, duller. But it's worse than ever, particularly when I think Richard is missing seeing Dick as a baby. He won't know him when he comes home. He probably doesn't even know he has a son.'
Lexie regarded her sadly.
'Do you still hope Richard is alive?'
she asked gently.
'I don't hope, I know he is!' Marigold insisted. 'He's somewhere, and he's unable to let me know where, but he'll come back in the end. It isn't possible he won't. I'd know if he were dead,' she added more quietly. 'I think I'd die too if I knew he was dead. And I would know, Lexie, don't think I'm just feeding on hope. Richard and I – it was so perfect! I'd know,' she repeated with absolute confidence.
'It's the only thing that keeps her going,' Lexie said later to her husband. 'I'm afraid for her, either when we get news that he's dead, or when the years go by without us knowing for certain. She'll end up in Burntwood Asylum. No one can stand the sort of strain she's under without cracking.'
'Marigold has a strength we none of us appreciate,' Archie said thoughtfully. 'That was partly the attraction she had for Richard, I suspect. His mother is strong and so is he. He responded to it in her, although she was so young when they met. You say the hotel is flourishing?'
'Yes, she has all sorts of people staying. There are some who are visiting the Cathedral, on Church business, or the University, or come on civic matters. It's a good position for everywhere, out of the main city centre yet near everything and quiet. And she is beginning to build up a regular clientele of commercial travellers, the better sort who can afford her prices. They will be one of the mainstays of her business, I suspect.'
'We shall have to stay there ourselves if we turn the rest of the house over to the Army,' Archie commented. 'Have you finished packing all your clothes?'
'I'm giving most of them away. I can't wear evening dresses while I'm working in London, and by the end of the war they'll all be hopelessly out of date. They can have our rooms now as well as the others. Mrs Glover is coping marvellously. We can go back tomorrow but I'd like to see Marigold again before we catch the train.'
Early on the following morning they entered the hotel to find Marigold talking to an army officer in the foyer. He was tall, fair-haired, and ruggedly handsome. The scar on his cheek added to rather than detracted from his bold good looks.
Seeing them waiting he flashed them an apologetic smile, and took what was an obviously reluctant farewell of Marigold. Saluting smartly, he swung on his heel and left, a small valise in his hand.
'A guest?' Lexie asked as Marigold turned to greet them.
'Yes, he's been several times. A Captain Thomas. He's working on some sort of liaison, with the gun manufacturers, I think, but I'm not sure what. He has to travel a great deal and he says he can't tolerate mess food,' Marigold said rather abruptly.
She seemed rather flushed and Lexie wondered, unable to decide whether it was embarrassment or anger. The handsome Captain seemed to have been making his admiration too obvious, but did it annoy Marigold or flatter her?
Lexie had been convinced Richard must be dead until Marigold's utter confidence had made her admit, reluctantly, that there might still be hope.
Of course she wanted Richard to come back alive, she thought in some confusion, but more than that she wanted the uncertainty to be over. Seeing the Captain's attitude to Marigold made her realise that other men might want to court her friend, and Marigold would be placed in an impossible dilemma. Even if she came to love one of them could she ever marry again? At the moment her love was all for Richard, but she was still very young, and would not want to spend all her life alone. Having lost Dick to his grandmother she might crave other children.
Lexie sighed and thrust the problem out of her mind. She'd come to say goodbye before she went back to London.
*
Richard vented some of his frustration on the logs he was chopping. It was already April, and it would be a couple more weeks before he could leave the Müller farm and travel home.
It had been a winter of horror and frustration worse than any he had known. The scenery in this remote Swiss valley was spectacular, incredibly beautiful with the soaring mountains in the distance, the deep crisp clean snow, and the sturdy evergreen trees covering the lower slopes with their dark, mysterious shades.
But within the small old farmhouse everything seemed to have gone wrong.
In the first place his exertions had brought about a relapse, and for several weeks he had been too ill to move far. Even if he had been able to ski he could not have reached the nearest town with a railway, some twenty miles away.
The cold mountain air seemed to have an invigorating effect on him later, however, and he gradually recovered his strength. By Christmas he was able to chop wood for the voracious stoves which kept the house warm, and go out to shoot game, supplementing their diet of dried and smoked meat with the occasional fresh rabbit or partridge, and even venison.
Herr Müller had been more seriously injured than any of them had supposed. His leg was mending slowly, but the concussion seemed to have affected his wits. He had no recollection of events of the last twenty years, and thought Frau Müller was his mother.
The strain of nursing both her husband and Richard, with only the assistance of a willing, but not particularly bright Inge, finally told on even the indomitable Frau Müller. At the beginning of February her heart failed and within hours, despite all Richard could do, she was dead.
'What shall I do on my own?' Inge wailed piteously.
'We must look after your uncle,' Richard said patiently. 'When the thaw comes we'll be able to take him to the town and get professional help.'
And also bury Frau Müller properly, he thought, but didn't voice this worry. He had been able to scratch a pitifully shallow grave in the cultivated vegetable patch of the garden, and had covered it with all the small rocks he could collect, but every day he dreaded seeing that marauding animals might have dug through to the body. He hadn't been able to go and see what had happened to the truck driver's body, but he guessed it would no longer be there.
Inge, instead of helping, had taken to her own bed in a frenzy of despair and terror. Richard felt a weight of responsibility. He knew the accident to the truck and Herr Müller's injury had not been in any way his fault. Indeed if he hadn't been there Inge could not have brought her uncle back to the farm on her own, or they might all have gone over a cliff at the next bend in the road. He nevertheless was grateful to Frau Müller for her nursing of him, and could scarcely abandon her bedridden husband and distraught niece to themselves.
Gradually he induced Inge to do the cooking and housework. Most of his time was spent searching for wood. He began to question Herr Müller's competence when he realised the stack of wood under the deep overhanging roof would not last much beyond the end of February.
'Where is the wood you were fetching the day we met?' he asked one evening as they sat over a surprisingly appetising stew. At least when she put her mind to it Inge could cook, he reflected gratefully.
'What wood? Oh, yes, I remember. We can't fetch it now, we can't use the cart.'
'There's a sled in the hut behind the house,' he pointed out patiently. 'Could the horse pull that?'
'Oh, yes, of course. I didn't think. But you can't ski. The snow's too deep to walk through.'
'I'm learning, slowly,' he replied. 'There's a pair of short skis which I think must be used for walking on, like snowshoes. I can manage on them quite well, but I can't bring a lot of wood back without some sort of cart or the sled.'
'Why do you want to bother? There's plenty outside, and soon Uncle Friedrich will be able to get some more.'
'There's only enough for a couple of weeks,' he told her bluntly. 'And Uncle Friedrich won't be able to walk again for a couple of months at the very least. He isn't even trying to walk with that crutch I made for him.'
'Poor Uncle Friedrich!'
She began to cry softly, and Richard ground his teeth together in order not to speak sharply to her. Poor child, she was unable to face the disasters of her life with courage.
He thought of Marigold, and wished as he did a hundred times a day she was here with him. She would not give in so feebly. She would be devising ways of making life easier, always cheerful a
nd always loving.
Soon, though, the thaw would come, they could get out of this valley and he could resume his journey home. At long last he could hold Marigold once more, kiss her dear face and hear her beloved voice.
He tried out the sled, and with some urging the horse ploughed through the snow. They brought back, painfully slowly, small loads of wood, just enough to keep them going.
He would have to go to the nearest village as soon as the tracks were passable and try to discover where and what sort of help was available. He could also, he hoped, send a letter home. Only a few more days, but each one dragged more than the early months had done, every hour seemed longer.
He occupied the evenings writing to Marigold, explaining the reasons for the inordinate delay in contriving his escape. He poured out his love for her, promising tenderly that once they were reunited he would make up to her for all the unhappiness she must have suffered.
Inge sat and talked to her uncle, by now thoroughly confused after his wife's death. He mourned her as his mother and thought Inge was his sister, which was distressing for the child as his real sister, her own mother, had died five years ago.
Each night Richard went to his lonely bed praying for the thaw to come, to release him from this soft white smothering prison of snow and obligation.
*
Poppy paced nervously up and down the platform waiting for the train. She was wearing her new tweed costume with a belted, military style jacket and short, ankle length box-pleated skirt. She also had a small fur-trimmed hat and dashing, buttoned gaiters over her shoes. At last, she thought with satisfaction, there was money for new clothes, and Marigold was generous, insisting they all dressed smartly.
George was coming on leave and spending a couple of days with her. More accurately he was staying in the hotel. She hadn't told her family about him and had been able to conceal their correspondence.
'Why are you so secretive?' he'd asked in one letter when she'd admitted they didn't know about him.
'I suppose it's silly,' she replied, 'but I can't help being superstitious. My dog Scrap died, and he was the only thing that had really been mine. I feel that anything I value will be lost to me. Besides, Ivy will be jealous. She made a tremendous fuss when Marigold got married even though she'd already left home. Everyone was deserting her, she said. I couldn't bear to have her constantly complaining while we wait for the war to end, and until we're old enough to get married.'
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