by Carola Dunn
‘Good for you,’ said Daisy, who had listened with amusement to the would-be ladykiller squabbling with his little sister.
He saw her amusement and flushed. It must be difficult carrying on clandestine flirtations when his fair skin coloured so readily. ‘I’d better go and see what that ass Bretton and the pater are saying to each other,’ he said with dignity, and he went off.
Kitty turned eagerly to Daisy. ‘You don’t think it’s wrong for a lady to work, do you, Miss Dalrymple?’
‘I work myself. I write, as you want to, but for magazines, not newspapers. I’m a journalist rather than a reporter.’
‘I wouldn’t mind that. Or I might be a nurse, then I could help Judith take care of my brother Raymond. He’s got shell-shock, you see, from the War, so he can’t get a decent job, and Judith’s a silly flapper, with no idea how to do anything practical. But he’s in love with her so I think he’ll be happiest if they get married, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps,’ Daisy said cautiously.
‘I do want him to be happy. He’s my best brother by miles. He’s the nearest my age, though he’s ten years older than me, and he never bossed me around or teased me like Jeremy and George. Well, hardly ever. Not,’ she hastened to add, ‘that I’m not sorry George died in the War.’
Daisy assured her she quite understood. ‘My brother used to tease, and try to boss me,’ she said, ‘but I still miss him frightfully.’
‘He was killed in the War, too? I can’t exactly say I miss George,’ Kitty candidly admitted.
‘I miss my Mummy sometimes,’ Belinda said in a woebe-gone little voice. ‘She died of flu when I was four.’
‘So did my father,’ Daisy told her, pushing up the folding arm-rest and patting the seat at her side. Belinda slipped across and nestled beside her. ‘In the flu epidemic, that is, not when I was four. But what a fearfully depressing subject. Tell me, Kitty, what makes you think you’d like to be a reporter?’
‘I get jolly good marks in English, and writing a book would take much too long. I don’t really care what I do, though, as long as it’s interesting. I wish I was a man, they can do anything.’
‘Just about.’
‘Jeremy works for a shipping company. He wanted to stop at the end of the War – he has flat feet so he couldn’t be a soldier – and he’s still mad as fire that he has to go on working because Daddy lost lots of money. I don’t mind. I think it’ll be fun being a reporter.’ Turning to Belinda, she asked in a stern tone more suited to a cross-examining barrister than a newshound, ‘What did you mean when you said you’re sort of traveling with Miss Dalrymple?’
‘I stowed away,’ Belinda confessed.
Kitty gawked. ‘Golly,’ she breathed, ‘did you really? Tell me all about it!’ She swung over to sit next to Belinda.
Left alone on the opposite seat, Tabitha opened her mouth wide to protest. A preliminary squawk was cut short when her mother returned, sans Baby, to Daisy’s relief.
‘Sorry I’ve been so long,’ Anne apologised. ‘Mother saw me pass and called me in. She agrees Grandfather’s most likely to bequeath the money directly to Baby, but Father’s being difficult. He wants to try to talk Grandfather into leaving it to Mother. Harold says if we don’t all try for the same result, we won’t get anywhere.’
‘I should think he’s right as far as Alistair McGowan is concerned,’ Daisy agreed. ‘The baby’s the only new factor, after all. But if he won’t change his will in his namesake’s favour, Albert might be more easily persuaded to leave at least part of the family fortune to your mother rather than your son. A niece is closer than a great-great-nephew.’
‘Oh, Uncle Albert! I don’t believe the selfish beast has the slightest spark of family feeling. Uncle Peter’s found out he’s leaving the lot to that ghastly little Indian. All very well when it was nothing but his flat and his bits and pieces – though what a savage wants with a London flat is beyond me – but to let a rank outsider get his grubby hands on the McGowan fortune is more than a bit thick!’
Abandoning her tête-à-tête with Kitty, Belinda turned with an indignant protest obviously hovering on her lips. Daisy glared her to silence and said hastily, ‘The Indians aren’t exactly savages, Anne. They were writing books and building cities when our ancestors lived in mud huts and painted themselves with woad.’
‘Even if this Chandra Jagai person had written a hundred books, he has no right to our money. What is it, darling?’ she asked as Tabitha tugged on her arm.
‘I need to tinkle, Mummy,’ demanded the little girl in an urgent whisper. ‘Now.’
‘Oh botheration! Well, we must go anyway. My mother wants to show off Tabitha to Aunt Enid and Mattie,’ she explained to Daisy, ‘while Father and Harold are in confab with Uncle Peter and Jeremy.’
As Anne and Tabitha departed, a voice was heard calling ‘Tickets, please.’ Daisy scrabbled in her handbag for her ticket, and took out her purse to pay Belinda’s fare.
‘I’m really sorry, Miss Dalrymple,’ Belinda said guiltily, ‘but Daddy will pay you back.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘I expect I shan’t get any pocket money for years and years.’
‘Golly, how frightful!’ said Kitty. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you some of my sweets and if you hoard them p’raps you can make them last for a while. Not a whole year, though.’
‘Gosh, you are a brick!’
‘I can always buy some more. Daddy will always give me half a crown if I ask, just to make me go away. Everyone talks about not having any money but . . . Hallo, Ray. Oh, you’ve brought my ticket, jolly good. I was about to dash back to Mummy to get it.’
‘She sent me after you.’
The tall young man was darker than his brother and sister, his hair a decided brown rather than sandy. Daisy thought he’d be better looking than Jeremy if he wasn’t so painfully thin, almost gaunt. He at least had bowed to the interior climate of the train: he was in his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, his tie discarded. Those who had suffered in the trenches tended either to cling more tightly to the conventions or to consider them utterly irrelevant.
Raymond Gillespie had not dispensed with manners. With a charming, hopeful-small-boy smile, he said to Daisy, ‘Do you mind if we come in for a minute? The ticket-man’s coming and we’re rather in his way.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I’m Raymond Gillespie, and if you’re Miss Dalrymple, as I assume, I gather you already know Judith.’ As he spoke, he stood aside and Anne’s sister entered the compartment.
Judith Smythe-Pike had taken off her hat, revealing shingled ash-blond hair like a dandelion puff. Her plucked eyebrows were thin, pencilled lines, her lashes darkened, lengthened, and thickened with mascara. Her mouth was a scarlet bow against her powder-white face, touched with rouge at the cheekbones. Though not gaunt like Raymond, she was boyishly slender, flat front and back as fashion demanded. Her lilac silk-chiffon frock hung straight from shoulder to hem as its designer intended, the line scarcely indented by the darker purple belt about her nonexistent hips.
The belt matched the embroidery at the neckline. An expensive frock, Daisy noted. As Kitty had said, everyone talked about not having any money but . . .
‘Hallo, Judith,’ Daisy said as the bright young thing subsided languidly onto the seat opposite her. ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you.’
‘I should jolly well hope not,’ Judith drawled. ‘Let’s see, you stayed into the upper sixth, didn’t you? When you left school, I must have been in the fifth form, and covered with spots. Too, too tiresome.’
‘I remember the spots,’ Raymond said reminiscently.
Judith flashed him a glance full of sparkling mischief and affection. ‘As a gentleman, darling, you are honour bound to forget them. That’s the sort of thing that gives marriage between cousins a bad name.’
‘Second cousins,’ said Kitty. ‘Ray, this is my new friend Belinda. Guess what, she’s a stowaway!’
‘Tickets, please.’ The inspe
ctor stepped in, a small man with a fierce cavalry mustache to complement his quasi-military railway uniform. ‘What’s this I hear about a stowaway?’ he asked sternly.
Belinda looked frightened. Daisy took her hand in a comforting clasp and said, ‘My young friend bought a platform ticket and somehow didn’t manage to get off the train in time. I shall pay for her ticket, of course.’
‘Come to see you off, did she, miss? Well, it happens now and then, though not half as often as it’s claimed.’ He winked as he took out his pad of forms and book of fare prices. ‘York or Edinburgh?’
‘Edinburgh, single, child’s fare.’ She would worry about paying Belinda’s return fare if and when she could not get hold of Alec. ‘Does the train stop long enough at York for me to make a telephone call or send a cable to her grandmother?’ she asked as he made out a ticket for Belinda.
‘Six minutes, miss. Even if the exchange put you through quick, you’d be cutting it fine. If you was to write down a cable and give me the money, I’ll see it’s sent off all right and tight. I get off at York.’
‘Thank you, that would be very kind.’ Daisy was glad of an excuse not to ’phone Mrs. Fletcher.
‘Right-oh, miss, I’ll come back for it when I’m done with me round.’ He clipped their tickets and backed out into the corridor. ‘Want the door left open for air, do you? This heat’s a bit much, innit? They’ll be taking orders for morning coffee soon, but you can always ask for lemon-squash instead.’ He saluted and disappeared.
‘If I hadn’t found you, Miss Dalrymple,’ Belinda said timorously, ‘could the inspector have arrested me and put me in prison for not having a ticket?’
‘That I could, young lady!’ Unexpectedly reappearing, the man stuck his head in. ‘So mind you don’t get up to such-like tricks again.’
‘I won’t,’ the child promised with a shudder.
For the present, Daisy decided, it was just as well if Belinda believed in the railway official’s powers of summary arrest and imprisonment.
CHAPTER 3
After lemon-squash all round, Kitty took Belinda off to find her sweets and a book to borrow. Judith and Raymond stayed in Daisy’s compartment with her.
‘I expect Anne told you why we’re all traipsing up to Scotland,’ Judith said. ‘It’s a frightful bore. Dunston Castle is a positive mausoleum, and I don’t imagine there’s the least chance of Grandfather changing his will.’
‘If he does,’ said Raymond, ‘he ought to change it in poor Aunt Julia’s favour. She’s suffered the mausoleum and his filthy temper for a lifetime – my lifetime, anyway – and she deserves a comfortable old age. Great-Uncle Alistair doesn’t owe the rest of us anything.’
‘But do stop saying so to Daddy and Uncle Peter, darling. It’s bad for their blood pressure. Aunt Julia is Uncle Peter’s sister, Daisy. The poor old thing has been Grandfather’s housekeeper and general skivvy forever, and now I suppose his nurse as well, since he’s far too stingy to hire one. Anyone would think he intended to take every penny he’s ever saved with him to the grave.’
‘Perhaps we can talk Uncle Albert into doing something for her,’ Raymond proposed, ‘even if he loathes and despises the rest of us.’
‘He’s about as unlikely to do that as to leave the lot to Aunt-Geraldine-who-ran-away.’
Daisy gave up her noble effort to restrain her curiosity. ‘Jeremy mentioned Aunt-Geraldine-who-ran-away,’ she said. ‘Where does she fit in?’
‘She’s Mummy’s younger sister,’ Judith told her.
‘Great-Uncle Alistair’s younger daughter,’ Raymond amplified. ‘When Aunt Amelia married, Geraldine foresaw being stuck in the mausoleum looking after her father for life, so she hopped it – and who can blame her? No one’s heard from her since. That’s how her cousin, my Aunt Julia got stuck with the job. Please refer to family tree in frontispiece.’
‘I need to,’ said Daisy, laughing. ‘It’s all the honorary aunts and uncles who complicate matters. My family’s the same. The “aunt” who remembered me in her will was actually some sort of second or third cousin several times removed. I never did work it out exactly.’
‘That’s the kind of aunt we need if we’re ever to get married,’ Judith said enviously.
‘Oh, it’s not enough to live on. I write for a living.’
Judith was distinctly taken aback. ‘You work? But I thought at school . . . That is, isn’t your father a peer?’
‘He was. A cousin inherited the title and Fairacres. I could live with him, or with my mother in the Dower House, but I decided I’d rather be independent. During the War, after I left school, I worked in a hospital office. It wasn’t bad, so later I took typing and shorthand classes, but I must admit I hated being a stenographer. Then I helped my friend Lucy in her photography studio. I still give her a hand when she needs me, but mostly I write magazine articles.’
‘Gosh! And Lady Dalrymple doesn’t mind?’
‘Mother can’t stop me,’ Daisy said firmly.
‘I bet Daddy would find a way to stop me.’ Judith sounded almost wistful.
Raymond clutched her hand. ‘There’s no need for you to work,’ he said in a harsh voice. His face was pale. ‘I’m almost well. I’ll soon be able to get a decent job.’
‘If only you’d try in the country, darling. The city noises are not good for you.’
‘But I couldn’t earn as much, and besides, you loathe the country. I’ve heard you say it often enough.’
‘Darling, that’s just something one says. I was brought up in the country and I can easily turn back into a tweeds-and-pearls type just like Mummy.’
‘I won’t have you making sacrifices for me!’ he cried.
‘You’re hurting my hand, darling,’ Judith said softly.
He let go at once. ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Oh God, I’m sorry.’
His eyes were screwed shut and he was breathing very fast and shallowly. Daisy, trying to pretend to be suddenly fascinated by the view outside, was afraid he was going to cry. From the corner of her eye, she saw Judith put her arms around him and kiss him full on the mouth. He clung to her, his head bowed to rest his forehead on her shoulder.
After a moment, he said on a long, shuddering breath, ‘I’m all right now.’
‘That’s good,’ she said lightly. ‘I don’t suppose my lipstick is.’ She stood up and turned to the mirror to repair the damage.
‘Ah, there you are, Raymond.’ The short, portly man in the doorway had a face like a sulky bulldog, incongruously adorned with a bristling soup-strainer mustache which belonged to some other breed of dog. The mustache was russet-red, whereas his hair was that indeterminate salt-and-pepperish shade to which sandy hair tends to fade with age. Peter Gillespie, Daisy guessed, the would-be war profiteer. He looked uncomfortable in his too-new tweeds, the townsman making concessions to a country visit.
Raymond stood up. ‘Exactly, sir. Here I am.’
‘Sit down, sit down, my boy. You don’t look at all well.’
In the mirror, Daisy saw Judith’s scarlet lips tighten. Catching Daisy’s eye, she raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘Raymond is perfectly well, Uncle Peter,’ she said, turning. ‘Hallo, Daddy. Where are you two off to then? Going to beard the lion in his den?’
Over Gillespie père’s shoulder loomed a florid face with silver-white hair, a beak of a nose, and a sweeping white cavalry mustache which put the other’s rusty brush to shame. Daisy vaguely recognized it from school Open Days. Desmond Smythe-Pike was a large man, as corpulent as his wife’s cousin but solid rather than flabby. He tended to speak as if addressing foxhounds in full cry.
‘Lion? Stuff and nonsense! Your Great-Uncle Albert’s no more dangerous than a badger in its sett, Judith, but we’re not ready to stick the terriers onto him yet. No, Gillespie and I are going to consult old Alistair’s solicitor, Braeburn. He’s in the next compartment, between this and Albert’s.’
‘You’re hoping he’ll tell you Great-
Uncle Alistair’s plans, sir?’ Raymond asked.
His father answered. ‘That’s part of it.’
‘But we also want to know,’ Smythe-Pike barked, ‘what are the chances of shooting down Albert’s will.’
‘Then you’d better keep your voice down when you get next door, Daddy,’ Judith advised pertly. ‘Contesting a will is hardly a respectful thing to do and won’t endear you to the old gentleman.’
‘Bah!’ With a ferocious scowl, Smythe-Pike limped off down the corridor, leaning heavily on his silver-headed cane. In his aged tweed shooting jacket and knickerbockers, he was the image of the gouty country squire.
‘It’s for you children we’re going to all this trouble,’ Peter Gillespie said, belligerent yet defensive. Daisy imagined that was the attitude he had taken when charged with defrauding the government He scurried off after his cousin’s forceful husband.
A moment later, the door of the next compartment slammed shut, privacy being more important than comfort for their business. The rumble of Smythe-Pike’s voice came through the wall, but no words were distinguishable.
‘Amazing,’ said Judith. ‘Daddy must be whispering.’
‘Oh blast,’ said Kitty, ‘the chocolate’s melted. Look, it’s all squishy. We could scoop it up with our fingers, but Mummy will be livid if I get it on my frock.’
‘I don’t think Miss Dalrymple would be livid, but I haven’t got any other clothes with me,’ Belinda said regretfully. ‘I didn’t know it would take so long to get to Scotland.’
‘She’s nice, isn’t she, your Miss Dalrymple? Was she a friend of your mother’s?’
‘No, she’s Daddy’s friend.’
‘Gosh, are they in love?’
‘I don’t know,’ Belinda admitted. ‘When I said I wished she’d marry him, she said they’re just friends, but her face went all pink’.
‘She might just have been embarrassed,’ said Kitty with all the worldly wisdom of fifteen years. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that. We’d better have aniseed balls or liquorice bootlaces instead of the choc. Or there’s Dolly Mixture. Which d’you like best?’