by Betty Neels
He gave her a rare, kind smile. ‘We all want you to stay, Sadie.’
She looked at the little girls and was reassured by their pleased faces. She would be taking on quite a job, but at least it was a worthwhile one and in her own home. ‘Then thank you,’ she told him, ‘I’ll stay.’
Mr Trentham went and sat down at the table, facing her. ‘Splendid. Now there are several things to discuss. I’ve already made enquiries about the school. The new term starts in the middle of January, which gives us all time to shake down and see to one or two things. Sadie, I don’t think the children have the right clothes…’
‘No, they haven’t. Kilts and woollies and tights or trousers, anoraks and Wellington boots and lace-up shoes, warm nighties, woolly gloves…’
‘You’ll see to that. We’ll go shopping tomorrow. Where?’
‘Dorchester or Yeovil, there’s a Marks and Spencer there.’ She broke off to listen to Julie who wanted red boots and Anna who wanted everything green.
‘You shall both choose,’ she promised.
Two pairs of eyes were turned on their father. ‘You’ll come too, Daddy?’
‘Well, I suppose I’d better, then I can pay the bills, can’t I?’ He turned to Sadie. ‘There are several things needed. A new washing machine, a new Hoover, electric fires for the bedrooms, the shed in the garden leaks and we need another lock on the back door. The whole place wants painting, and we must have a new thatch.’
‘No, not now, you can’t,’ observed Sadie. ‘You’ll need dry weather for that. But old Martin and his son in the village would do the painting as soon as the weather’s right. The thatcher you’ll have to book,’ she added. ‘It costs an awful lot of money.’
The way he said, ‘Thank you for your good advice,’ sent the blood into her cheeks. He had a horrid way of making her feel foolish; she wouldn’t utter another word.
Mr Trentham watched the blush fade before he spoke. ‘There’s one other thing, Sadie. Would Tom mind if we were to have a dog?’
Joyful shrieks from the children prevented her from saying anything for a moment. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Would it be a puppy or a grown-up dog?’
‘I thought we might go to the nearest dogs’ home and see when we get there. We’ve never had a dog in Highgate, at least not since my marriage, and after my wife died there was no one to take a dog for walks—I was seldom home, and Miss Murch disliked them. Of course, Anna and Julie must look after him. You’ll have enough to do, Sadie.’
She looked at the two excited little faces. ‘I’m sure Tom can be persuaded, especially if we take care to spoil him for a bit,’ and they beamed at her. The difference in the little girls was really remarkable; it was amazing what Miss Murch’s absence was doing for them.
Mr Trentham broke in on her thoughts. ‘Lunch?’ he queried. ‘I should like to get in a few hours’ work…’ For all the world as though they had been preventing him.
She got up from the table. ‘Soup and toasted cheese,’ she said, ‘if you two will lay the table.’
The children had a lot to say during lunch— Christmas, the dog, their new clothes; there was no end to their chatter, and Mr Trentham laid himself out to be charming. He was tolerant of their piping voices, made jokes, discussed the presents they should buy and generally behaved as a father should. Sadie was a little astonished, but holding to the theory that one should not push one’s luck, she whisked the children into the kitchen to help with the dishes and then took them off to the village. Mrs Beamish had a nice old-fashioned assortment of paper chains, the sort one had to make oneself and gum together. They spent a long time choosing them and when they got back to the cottage they crept in and sat like mice in the sitting room, absorbed in their handiwork, speaking in whispers and giggling softly. They were still happily engaged when the typewriter stopped abruptly and Mr Trentham flung open the door and shouted: ‘Where’s the tea, then?’
When Sadie came back with the tray from the kitchen she found him sitting with the children, making a paper chain for himself.
‘I had no idea these things still existed—I used to make them when I was a small boy, my sister Cecilia was forever telling me how badly I did them, too.’
Sadie considered that he was making rather a botch of it now, but nothing on earth would have made her say so; just to see him sitting there making paper chains was nice.
‘Where’s Aunt Cecilia?’ asked Julie.
‘At her villa in Cannes, my dear, conserving her strength for the excitements of Christmas at Kingsley Park.’ He dismissed the lady with a wave of the hand, and asked, ‘Crumpets for tea?’
‘Yes, Mr Trentham. We’ll have to have tea round this small table, if you don’t mind, the chains might get muddled up if we try to move them.’
Tea was a boisterous meal with the children getting a little too excited and Mr Trentham not seeming to mind. It was Sadie who suggested that since they were all going shopping in the morning, the little girls should have their baths and get ready for bed before supper so that they could go to bed immediately after.
‘A splendid idea,’ observed their father. He got up and went to the dining room. At the door he said: ‘I’ll be out for dinner, Sadie. You two can creep in and say goodnight before you go to bed.’
Later, listening to the car roaring off much too fast down the lane, Sadie wondered where he was going. He had many friends by now, of course, and a good-looking man, famous in his own field and unencumbered by a wife, would be much in demand. She sighed as she put her solitary supper on a tray and carried it through to the sitting room. She had her daydreams like any other normal girl, but they had never worried her overmuch, but now she found herself wishing fervently that they might come true just once. Dining and dancing with a handsome man and herself in a beautiful dress, turned into a beauty overnight, queening it over everyone within sight. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Sadie told herself loudly, and started to clear away the paper chains. They were in a hopeless tangle and Mr Trentham’s was only half finished. She unravelled them patiently and laid them in a large box ready to finish the next day.
Of course, very little got done the next day. Its short daylight hours were taken up with getting to Dorchester, shopping from the long list Sadie had made, eating their lunch and allowing the little girls to buy Christmas presents. Sadie found it sad that there were so few people they wanted to give presents to, but they spent a long time buying socks and a simply shocking tie for their father, and Sadie obligingly admired a very gaily patterned headscarf, which she felt sure she would be wearing after Christmas Day.
The vexed question of a present for Miss Murch was debated and settled out of hand by Mr Trentham, who decreed that a card was sufficient. ‘And don’t forget your Aunt Cecilia,’ he reminded them. So they spent another twenty minutes or so making up their minds at the handkerchief counter and after that a further ten minutes while they took Sadie apart in turn and asked her advice as to what they should give each other. She’d already thought of that; and with an eye to Mr Trentham’s desire for quiet, suggested modelling clay and a painting book and paintbox. Their father whisked them away then, looking mysterious, and she was left free to nip back to Longmans’ bookshop and buy something she had seen there during the morning—a large book which with care and patience could be turned into an Edwardian town house, complete with family, servants and furniture; guaranteed to keep everyone absorbed for hours on end, she hoped.
She wondered what Mr Trentham had bought the children; probably they had all the toys they wanted in London. Sooner or later he would have to go there and bring some of them back, she supposed, for there was no question of the house at Highgate being given up—indeed, she had already faced the prospect of him wishing to go back there once his scripts were finished; he would want to go out and about and see his friends again, travel perhaps. He would sell the cottage and the little girls would be sent to a boarding school and he would be free to lead a bachelor’s life until he started to write som
ething else. And she—she had no doubt at all that when the time came, if it suited him, he would give her a splendid reference, a month’s wages and forget her.
It was fortunate that she had no more time for these gloomy thoughts, for when she got to the Judge Jeffreys restaurant where she was to meet them for tea, they were already there, the children very giggly and excited, their father still, she was thankful to see, tolerantly goodnatured.
She had left a casserole in the oven and a rice pudding, creamy and stuffed with raisins, with it, so that once they were back home there was little to do save lay the table, while the children undid all the parcels and then went upstairs with their own purchases and strict instructions to Sadie not to look.
Mr Trentham had gone straight into the dining room and shut the door, and she heard the clink of glass as he poured himself a drink. Sadie, whose drinking had been limited to birthdays and Christmas and the occasional party, wouldn’t have minded one herself. She was tired and after supper there would be the children to put to bed, the dishes to wash and all the new clothes to be put away, and it would all have to be done without a sound, because he was at the typewriter again.
She gave the potatoes a vicious prod as the door was opened by a shrewd kick from Mr Trentham’s large foot as she became aware that the typing had ceased.
He had a bottle in one hand and a couple of glasses which he put carefully on the table. ‘I had no idea that little girls in large doses could be so tiring. A glass of sherry is the least I can offer you, you must be worn to a thread.’
He filled the glasses and handed her one and toasted her silently. She took a good sip and then another one, savouring the fragrant dryness, ‘Oh, how very nice,’ she said inadequately, and he smiled, so that she went on, not wishing to appear ungrateful: ‘I don’t know anything about sherry, or anything else for that matter.’
He smiled again. ‘No, I know. Don’t drink it too fast, it’s quite heady.’
She had already discovered that. There was a pleasant wave of lighthearted warmth washing over her; the sips she had taken had been large ones, there wasn’t much left in the glass and she should have refused when he filled it again. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t let you get tipsy,’ he assured her. ‘Did you enjoy your day?’
‘Very much, and so did the little girls, didn’t they? Thank you for sparing the time to take us, Mr Trentham.’
‘Did you buy anything for yourself, Sadie?’
She gave him a surprised look. ‘Me? Why, no, but I will later on. The sales will be at the end of December and I’ll buy some more clothes then.’
‘I’ll drive you in to Dorchester again if you like, you can get what you want straight away.’
She shook her head and took a cautious sip of sherry. ‘Thank you, but there’s no need. I’ve got a new dress for Christmas and a blouse I’ve not even worn yet.’
He was watching her gravely, but she had the uneasy feeling that he was laughing at her behind the gravity. ‘We might get asked out to a party.’
‘Well, I shan’t, though I expect you’ll get any number of invitations. Lady Benson and Mrs Durrant call sometimes, or they did when Granny was alive, but we don’t get asked to their houses. Sometimes I’ve been to Mr Frobisher’s house for lunch and several times to a social evening…’
‘What on earth’s that?’
‘Well, everyone in the village goes, and we all sit and talk and sometimes someone gives us a lecture and we have sandwiches and coffee…’
Mr Trentham’s lips twitched. ‘Have you ever been out to dinner with a man, Sadie?’
She considered, her memory slightly clouded by sherry. ‘Well, no, not just on my own—I used to go to the Young Farmers’ annual dinner and dance, but when Granny couldn’t get around any more, I stopped going.’
‘And the theatre?’
‘Oh, yes—I went with the WI to the Weymouth Operatic Society’s production of The Gondoliers—it was very good. And I’ve been to Lyme Regis several times, there’s a small theatre there—but not much else.’
Mr Trentham got up abruptly from where he had been sitting on the kitchen table. ‘I’m going to London tomorrow, I shall probably not be back for a couple of days. Will you be able to manage?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Sadie wondered what he would say if she said no, she couldn’t.
She told herself during the next couple of days that it was a good thing he wasn’t in the house, because the children were able to get over their first excitement over their new clothes and run up and down stairs as much as they liked with the presents they had bought, now being packaged in gaudy paper and crooked Sellotape and laboriously labelled. And it gave her the chance to see to the puddings, make the cake and get old Martin up from the village to see to the leak in the shed; Mr Trentham would never have borne with the hammering.
All the same it was terribly quiet without Mr Trentham roaring for his meals when he wasn’t thumping his typewriter. She cleaned out the dining room, too, taking care to replace everything just where she had found it, even the piles of books and papers on the floor, and when she had finished, she sidled up the table and took a look at the sheet of paper in the typewriter. There were a few words only: A Girl to Love, he had written, and although she looked for the sheet that must have preceded it, she couldn’t find it anywhere. Feeling guilty, she picked up her dusters and polish and went back to the kitchen, feeling as though Mr Trentham’s grey eyes were on her back.
The two days became three. The little girls had finished their parcelling up and Sadie, to keep them occupied, had given them dough and told them to make mince pies. But even that had palled after a time, so they had put on their anoraks and wellington boots and Sadie had got into her old coat and they had gone for a long walk. Up the hill to the top and a look at the view and then down again, with the prospect of buttered toast for tea. It had got cold, cold enough to have snow, Sadie had said and she doubted very much if Mr Trentham would be home before the next day: ‘So you shall have your supper,’ she promised, ‘and while I’m getting it, you can finish those paper chains.’
The walk had given them an appetite: ‘Sausages and chips,’ said Julie, and, ‘Bacon and eggs,’ chipped in Anna, ‘with fried bread.’
So when tea was done and they had sat for a while and watched Blue Peter and Sadie had shown them how to make the paper chains more elaborate, she went into the kitchen and got out the frying pan. The sausages were done to a turn and so was the bacon, and she had just started on the chips when she heard the car. The children heard it too. They flew to the door and flung it wide, letting in a stream of icy air, shrieking a welcome to their father. She heard him laughing and the door bang, and then he was in the kitchen, his dark head powdered with the snow that she had forecast.
‘What a welcome!’ he declared, and smiled down at Anna and Julie, hanging on to his jacket. ‘You’ve never done that before.’
It was Anna who replied. ‘Miss Murch wouldn’t let us, she said that you were never to be disturbed and that you didn’t like to be kissed or hugged.’
‘Did she indeed?’ He looked at Sadie, a pinny tucked round her small person, carefully turning her chips. ‘And what do you say to that, Sadie?’
‘I shouldn’t think there was anything nicer than being kissed by your own children,’ she said calmly.
He took off his jacket. ‘Drag that into the sitting room and look in the pockets, there’s something for each of you,’ and as the children rushed out: ‘There are several things just as nice,’ he said softly. He took the fork from her hand and laid it on the table and put his arms round her. ‘This, for instance,’ and he kissed her.
Sadie stood quite passive, in his arms, looking up at him with her lovely eyes. She said in a clear little voice: ‘People do strange things at Christmas—the—the festive spirit and all that…’
He was smiling at her with the faintly mocking kindness she found so disturbing. ‘Wise Sadie, let us by all means call it the festive spirit.’ H
e let her go with a casual movement. ‘Whatever it is you’re having for supper smells good. Will there be enough for me?’
‘Of course. I’ve still got the eggs to do, the children chose what they wanted.’ It was a relief to talk about normal things. Being kissed like that had shaken her badly—only, she told herself; because no one had kissed her in such a fashion before; the kisses at the Young Farmers’ dance, and they weren’t all that in number, hadn’t been like that at all.
He sauntered away presently, leaving her to cook more of everything while the children laid the table, and over supper he entertained them with an account of the Christmas lights in Regent Street and how lovely the shops were. But not a word as to what he had been doing or who he had been with.
Whatever it was, it must have inspired him to work harder than ever. He was downstairs before breakfast, demanding tea before banging the door on himself and his typewriter. But he came out when the bacon was sizzling in the pan and made himself amiable over breakfast, teasing the children, discussing the chances of the snow lasting, making a few commonplace remarks to Sadie about more logs, the telephone which was to be installed that very morning and the need to put some ashes outside the back door to cover the icy patches there. Looking at him stealthily, she found it hard to imagine him as he had been on the previous evening, holding her close and kissing her. He’d been glad to be home, she told herself sensibly, and resolutely shut out the picture of lovely ladies in London.
The snow started again after breakfast, and Sadie, tearing mouselike round the cottage tidying up while the little girls had another go at the paper chains, decided that a walk before lunch would be a good idea. She made the coffee, left it to keep warm on top of the stove, put a note on the kitchen table asking Mr Trentham to help himself and crept upstairs for the children’s anoraks and gloves. They were leaving the cottage in the stealthiest of manners when Mr Trentham opened his door.