Music in the Hills (Drumberley Book 2)

by D. E. Stevenson

  They worked all morning and at lunch-time they knocked off and partook of boiled eggs and tea, for this was even more easy to prepare than an omelette and a cup of coffee. Mamie had hers upon a tray in the dining room and she found it extremely dull. She began to wish she had gone to Edinburgh with the others… where were they and what were they eating Mamie wondered?

  In the afternoon the three of them got busy in the drawing room, and so well did they work that by tea-time it was finished and everything was back in its appointed place. The room looked beautiful; the furniture was shining brightly and there was a delightful smell of beeswax and turpentine in the air.

  ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ said Lizzie, looking round. ‘I like cleaning. You can see your work when you’ve done a bit of cleaning. You’ve done enough, Mrs. Johnstone; you’ll just sit down and take your tea in peace.’

  ‘We could do the pantry’

  ‘Not you,’ said Lizzie firmly. ‘Mrs. Couper and me will have a go at the pantry. There’s no need for you to bother.’

  Mamie agreed. She washed and changed and sat down to have her tea in peace… and immediately began wondering where Jock and James were at this moment and whether they were having a good tea.

  Mamie was in the middle of her solitary meal when the door opened and Greta walked in. She had Topsy in her arms.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Mamie cheerfully.

  ‘Hallo,’ replied Greta.

  Since the birth of her black child Greta had lost her fear of Mrs. Johnstone and had become quite friendly. She had never expressed her thanks to Mrs. Johnstone nor shown the slightest sign of gratitude, but as Mamie had not expected gratitude she was not disappointed. All Mamie had wanted was that Greta should not fly from her as is if she were a leper with a bell, and this modest desire had been fulfilled.

  ‘How is Topsy?’ Mamie inquired.

  Greta held out one grimy little hand and opening it, displayed a black boot button.

  ‘Oh dear, it’s Topsy’s eye! Just give me my work-basket, Greta.’

  Greta stood and watched while the eye was sewn firmly into place. ‘It’s an operation,’ said Greta. ‘She’ll need a bandage. Maybe she ought to stay in bed.’

  They discussed the matter seriously.

  As Mamie sewed and chatted she began to wonder if there was anything she could do for Duggie. Duggie still fled at her approach. Perhaps Jock would be able to think of something to win Duggie’s heart.

  Mamie had just finished the operation and had returned Topsy to her mother’s arms when the front-door bell rang. Lizzie and Mrs. Couper were still thumping about in the pantry and were in no fit condition to appear, so Mamie would have to answer it herself.

  Perhaps it was Holly, thought Mamie, as she crossed the hall. She hoped sincerely it was not Holly, for although she disliked being alone she would rather be alone than entertain Holly. She had the greatest difficulty in finding anything to say to Holly! They had nothing in common.

  There was a girl standing upon the steps, not Holly but a stranger. At the bottom of the steps stood a motor bicycle, a magnificent machine which glittered and gleamed in the afternoon sunshine. Mamie looked from the girl to the machine and then at the girl again. She had never seen a girl riding a motor bicycle, but obviously this girl did; obviously this girl had arrived at the door of Mureth House upon the motor bicycle. The girl was tall and slender; she was wearing a lemon-coloured pullover and grey slacks and a duffle jacket open in front.

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed the girl. ‘Is Mrs. Johnstone… are you Mrs. Johnstone?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Mamie. She said it a trifle vaguely for she was thinking how very pretty the girl was, how more than pretty! She looked intensely alive. Her blue eyes sparkled, and her hair… Mamie had never seen such glorious hair before.

  ‘I came over from Catterick,’ explained the girl, ‘It isn’t terribly far and I had a splendid run. Blink went like smoke – that’s Blink,’ said the girl, smiling and pointing to her steed.

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Mamie.

  ‘What lovely country!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mamie. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘It was you who wrote to me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I wrote to you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Rhoda Ware.’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Mamie in blank amazement.

  Rhoda Ware nodded. ‘I only got your letter yesterday. It was forwarded to me from home. Dad is awful about letters; he simply won't forward them properly. He waits until there’s a whole batch of them and then puts them into a big envelope and sends them.’

  ‘I thought,’ began Mamie.

  ‘You thought I wasn’t going to answer, but I only got it yesterday, you see.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘It’s awful of me to come like this without letting you know. I should have written to you, of course. I tried to write, honestly, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to say,’ repeated Rhoda helplessly.

  ‘Much better just to come,’ said Mamie, recovering herself. ‘I hate writing letters, myself. It’s so difficult to say exactly what you mean, isn’t it? And spelling is difficult too, at least, it is to me. I expect my letter was full of mistakes, I wrote it in such a hurry.’

  ‘It looked as if you were in a tearing hurry,’ said Rhoda, with a sudden smile.

  ‘If I hadn’t written it in a hurry I wouldn’t have written it at all.’

  ‘That would have been a pity.’

  Mamie nodded. She had regretted her letter several times since she had sent Duggie off to the post with it, but now she regretted it no longer. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I’m keeping you standing on the doorstep. You’d like some tea, of course.’

  Rhoda hesitated. ‘Is he in?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Perhaps I won’t come in if he’s there, it might be, I mean, I don’t know whether,’

  ‘He’s gone to Edinburgh for the weekend,’ Mamie told her. ‘Of course he had no idea you were coming or he wouldn’t have gone. Oh, dear, isn’t it a pity! But he’ll be back on Tuesday. You’ll see him on Tuesday. You can stay till he comes back, can’t you?’

  They were in the drawing-room by now. Mamie offered her unexpected guest a chair and began to pour out tea.

  ‘You must think I’m mad,’ said Rhoda, subsiding into the chair with awkward grace. ‘You must think I’m completely bats. Perhaps I am, really. I can’t explain it, but the fact is, when I got your letter it gave me such an awful shock…’ She hesitated and then added, ‘I suppose you know the whole thing. You must know or you wouldn’t have written.’

  ‘James told me quite a lot.’

  ‘You only know his side of it,’ said Rhoda quickly. ‘You probably think I’m a perfect beast. James wouldn’t have told you that, but you probably think so all the same, and I don’t blame you.’

  ‘I wrote to you,’ Mamie reminded her.

  ‘Of course! What a fool I am! You wouldn’t have written if…’ She hesitated and looked thoughtful.

  Mamie offered her a scone and some butter, rich creamy farm butter, and asked if she would like honey as well. It would be very interesting indeed to hear Rhoda’s side of it, but there was no sense in hurrying her.

  ‘James and I knew one another when we were children,’ said Rhoda, buttering her scone and beginning to eat it in an absentminded way. ‘We did things together, you know, all sorts of things. I was terribly fond of James but fond of him more as a brother than anything else. He was just like a brother, really. Then, when he came back from Malaya, he was just exactly the same only quite, quite different, if you see what I mean?’ She paused and looked at her hostess doubtfully.

  Mamie nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  Thus encouraged, Rhoda continued, ‘We had both grown up but we seemed to have grown up to exactly the same height. We still understood each other.’

  ‘That’s the important thing,’ said Mamie softly.

  ‘Yes. Well, then he asked me to marry him. He asked me beautifu
lly. It was so perfect that I almost said yes. But I didn’t say yes. There’s my painting, you see. I do so love painting. I can’t imagine life without it. I get absolutely lost in it. When I’m painting there’s nothing else in the world. I expect it sounds silly.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘You mean you understand?’ asked Rhoda incredulously.

  ‘I like music, you see,’ explained Mamie.

  Rhoda was aware that this must be an understatement of fact. She sighed with relief. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That makes things a lot easier. You’ll realise that it wasn’t because I didn’t love James, but because I’m mad on painting. I had worked terribly hard and was beginning to be really worthwhile. It may sound stuck up to say so, but it isn’t any good telling you anything unless I tell you the truth. I’m good, and if I go on I shall be very good. I wanted that.’

  ‘Of course, but couldn’t you,’

  ‘No,’ said Rhoda firmly. ‘No, I couldn’t. It must be one or the other , painting or James. If I married I could go on painting as a hobby but not as a career. It’s different for a man. A man can do the thing he’s good at and be married too. A woman can’t. I explained that to James and he understood. He’s very understanding. You see, if I married James he would want all of me – it would be no good if he didn’t – and I couldn’t give him all of me. We might have babies; it wouldn’t be right to marry James and not have babies, and as a matter of fact, I shouldn’t like it. When I do a thing I like to do it thoroughly,’ declared Rhoda.

  Mamie nodded again. She had realised that Rhoda was not the girl for half-measures.

  ‘I chose painting,’ continued Rhoda. ‘It wasn’t entirely selfish. It seemed to me a sort of duty. I’d been given this talent and I had no right to wrap it up in a napkin and bury it. That was how I saw it. So I said no to James. I went ahead with my painting and I put James out of my head… or at least I tried to.’

  ‘You couldn’t?’ asked Mamie with interest.

  ‘He kept coming into my head at odd moments; not when I was painting, but at other times… at night, mostly… sometimes on a bus… sometimes if I happened to see the back of a man’s head that looked like James’s head. I thought it would pass but it seemed to get worse instead of better. Then one day in the studio I found I had stopped painting and was thinking about James. That gave me a jolt,’ declared Rhoda. ‘It gave me a terrific jolt. I decided I had better have a holiday so I went to Catterick to stay with a friend… and then I got your letter.’

  Mamie refilled her guest’s cup and put a large slab of fruit cake upon her guest’s plate. Her guest made no comment upon these attentions.

  ‘Your letter!’ exclaimed Rhoda. ‘Goodness, it upset everything! It made a sort of earthquake inside me. I found I just couldn’t bear anyone else to have James.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mamie.

  ‘It sounds awfully dog-in-the-mangerish, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Mamie. ‘No, I don’t think it was that. I think you meant to marry James all the time.’

  Rhoda considered this. She found the idea extremely interesting and her opinion of the intelligence of her hostess rose to new heights. ‘I wonder if you’re right,’ said Rhoda slowly. ‘It would explain a lot of things. You mean the idea that someday I would marry James was latent in my subconscious mind.’

  Mamie would not have put it in those words, but it was exactly what she meant. ‘I’m sure it was,’ she said.

  Rhoda took a large bite of cake and chewed it thoughtfully.

  After a little silence they began to talk of other matters. Rhoda knew Caroline, of course, for her home was at Ashbridge, not far from Vittoria Cottage; she had seen Caroline quite recently and reported her as very happy indeed.

  ‘Mr. Shepperton is a dear,’ said Rhoda. ‘He really is. I’m sure you’ll like him. He’s very quiet at first, but when you get to know him you realise what a lot there is behind his reserve. Leda hates him like poison, but you know what Leda is! I never could bear the sight of Leda,’ added Rhoda frankly.

  Mamie made no comment upon this statement. She was not particularly fond of her niece, but she was sorry for her and thought she had been badly treated… and as it was Rhoda’s brother who had treated her badly by breaking his engagement to Leda in an extremely highhanded manner and marrying the daughter of the Toothpaste King instead, Mamie felt it might be as well to change the subject to a safer one.

  ‘I’m glad Caroline is so happy,’ she said.

  ‘She deserves happiness,’ nodded Rhoda. ‘She’s a perfect pet. I’ve always adored Mrs. Dering – I mean, Mrs. Shepperton, of course – and admired her too. Someday I’m going to paint her. You’re like her, you know,’ said Rhoda, regarding her hostess with an impartial stare (exactly as if I were an orange on a plate or something, thought Mamie). ‘You have the same structure of skull and your colouring is the same, but of course you’re much younger.’

  ‘Six years, that’s all,’ said Mamie.

  ‘Is that all?’ exclaimed Rhoda in surprise. Mrs. Shepperton had always seemed to Rhoda a thoroughly ‘grownup person’, and therefore of a different generation from herself, but there was something very young and innocent about Mrs. Johnstone.

  ‘Well, thank you awfully,’ said Rhoda, rising as she spoke. ‘Not only for the lovely tea, but even more for listening and understanding everything so marvellously.’

  ‘But you’re not going!’ exclaimed Mamie in surprise.

  ‘I think I’d better. It may be difficult to find a room. Your nearest town is Drumburly, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can’t go and stay at Drumburly!’ cried Mamie in alarm.

  ‘Isn’t there a decent hotel?’

  Mamie hesitated. Of course there was. No hotel could be more comfortable than the Shaw Arms and Mrs. Simpson would welcome Rhoda with enthusiasm and treat her like a queen, but all the same Mamie knew that she could not let this girl, this lovely golden-haired creature, go to the Shaw Arms. It just wasn’t possible. The news of her arrival would sweep through Drumburly like a devouring fire and in half an hour everybody would be talking about her; wondering who she was, wondering why she had come. If she happened to walk along the High Street everybody would see her (out of the backs of their heads in some extraordinary manner, for they were much too polite to stare), and one Drumburlian would say to another, ‘My, she’s bonny! She’s a friend o’ the Johnstone’s, ye ken. It’s queer the Johnstone’s not having her at Mureth.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Mamie earnestly. ‘Why not just stay here with me?’

  ‘It’s awfully sweet of you, Mrs. Johnstone, but I would rather,’

  ‘And then you’ll be here when James comes home.’

  ‘But that’s just it!’ cried Rhoda. ‘Don’t you see, I can’t stay here, because James would feel, would feel he had to,’

  ‘You can’t go to the Shaw Arms. People would think it odd, and it would be odd,’ declared Mamie.

  ‘Odd! How could it be odd? It would be much more odd to arrive here out of the blue and stay here. I never thought of such a thing for a moment. It simply isn’t done.’

  ‘It is, here,’ said Mamie firmly. ‘What isn’t done, here, is letting your friends go and stay at a hotel.’

  Rhoda began to laugh.

  ‘You will stay, won’t you?’ pleaded Mamie. ‘I’m all by myself and it’s so dull for me. Please stay, Miss Ware.’

  ‘I shan’t stay if you call me Miss Ware,’ declared Rhoda, laughing helplessly.

  ‘Rhoda,’ said Mamie, smiling. ‘Please, Rhoda.’

  They went out together and found Blink still waiting patiently for his mistress. Rhoda unstrapped her suitcase and her painting outfit (she never went anywhere without paints and canvases and other paraphernalia connected with her art). Lizzie and Mrs. Couper were summoned and the spare room was prepared.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When Mrs Couper had helped Lizzie to make up the bed in the spare room and fill it with hot-water bott
les she went home to prepare supper for her family. She was not surprised to find Mrs. Bell and Daisy on the lookout for her, nor did the arrival of Mrs. Dunne ‘to borrow a pickle of tea’ astonish her in the least. She had barely reached her doorstep when Willy Bell appeared from the byre and Willy Dunne from the stable; and the group was further augmented by her husband and her father-in-law and by Wilson who had come down for Charlie’s milk. Mrs. Couper glanced round to see if they were all there before she began her tale and, as nobody was missing except Daniel Reid, who was raking his sheep upon the hill and therefore had missed all the excitement, she began her tale forthwith. Luckily, Mrs. Couper was unlike Lizzie and scorned to beat about the bush.

  ‘It’s a Miss Rhoda Ware,’ said Mrs. Couper. ‘She’s come over from Catterick on her motor-bike, unexpected-like, but she’s having the best sheets with initials in the corner and pillow-cases to match.’

  The audience nodded gravely. Obviously Miss Rhoda Ware was an honoured guest.

  ‘She’s about medium height and nice and slim, and she’s got the bonniest hair you ever saw. It put me in mind of yon king-cups in the marsh – gold as gold – all wavy and shining. Her eyes are blue like wild hyacinths and sort of twinkly. She’s got nice features and a lovely skin. Her mouth is a bit painted up, but not her nails. She was wearing a yellow jersey and grey trousers – mind you, she looked awful nice in them.’

  ‘Trousers!’ exclaimed Mrs. Dunne.

  ‘You wouldn’t expect a lady to be wearing a kilt, riding a motor-bike,’ said Daisy sweetly.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect a lady to be riding a motor-bike,’ retorted Mrs. Dunne.

  Mrs. Couper went on hastily, for she was not going to have her story ruined by an argument between these two old antagonists.

  ‘I went with her to the garage,’ continued Mrs. Couper. ‘I offered to put the bike away myself, but she’d not have that at any price. She said she’d saved up to buy Blink – that’s what she calls it – so it was ‘terribly precious’. She talks very English, but not stuck up like some, and she talks a lot – friendly and jokey as you please.’ Mrs. Couper paused and looked round to make sure everybody was listening with all the ears they had. She lowered her voice and added, ‘Lizzie says her photo was standing beside Mr. James’s bedside table.’