'Nice timing,' she said.
'Look, please, let me explain.'
'I wish I could.' She couldn't bear the sound of his voice, and she went on talking over it. 'I'm sure it would be fascinating, but I really am pressed for time and I really don't care.'
Then she put down the phone and looked at her hand, resting on it, and the shaking was starting. Explain, he'd said! How could he explain what she'd just seen? Anger was making her shake, although perhaps she was being a hypocrite because last night she had been in Saul's arms. But that was different, that was a mistake. As soon as Saul had kissed her she had known and she had stopped it right away. Well, almost right away.
Even the memory made her heart lurch, and she mustn't think about Saul. Nor about Jeremy. She must get busy and keep busy. She looked in on her father, who was resting, with Nurse Betty sitting by the window knitting an emerald green sweater. Then she went into the kitchen where Aunt Lucy was cleaning the silver, and had everything spread out on a newspaper on the kitchen table. 'All right, was it?' Aunt Lucy enquired.
She was referring to Charlotte's job. 'I start on Monday,' said Charlotte. That was all right, although very little else was. If Aunt Lucy knew what had just happened she would be appalled, and of course she wasn't going to know.
- 'One thing I meant to do and didn't,' said Charlotte, 'was go into Pugh's and ask if someone would come out and value our furniture. What there is left of it.'
Aunt Lucy had been polishing the silver teapot. 'We're not letting this go,' she announced, clutching it. 'I haven't cleaned this every week for the last forty years to hand it over to somebody else. Mr Laurenson will be owning us lock, stock and barrel at this rate.'
Charlotte tried to grin, 'But not body and soul,' and Aunt Lucy snorted, 'I shouldn't think he's much bothered' about souls, but I've been thinking about bedrooms. Where yours is. And I think you and me could do with changing over.'
Charlotte's room was next to the guestroom that had now become Saul's, while Aunt Lucy slept down the other end of the passage, and Charlotte began to laugh. 'You don't really imagine he'll come marching into my room one night?' Aunt Lucy's lips pursed and Charlotte chortled, 'If he did I'd give a lot to see his face if you sat up!'
'I'm not laughing,' said Aunt Lucy, and she was right, it wasn't a laughing matter, because a night might come when Saul couldn't sleep, and if Charlotte should wake and find him near she might not have the strength to send him away. But she could lock her door, and would, although she was not changing rooms because that would be admitting she was scared to sleep near him.
She had to reassure Aunt Lucy with more than the promise of a locked door, so she said, 'I'll tell you something, love. Saul Laurenson doesn't need to put himself out to get all the women he wants, so he isn't going to waste his time trying to nab me. If I get myself involved with him it will be my own fault, and I've trouble enough on my hands.'
She looked down at her hands, on which the aquamarine sparkled, and while Aunt Lucy muttered she changed he subject. 'I might as well sell this too.'
'Your ring?' Aunt Lucy was shocked. 'Oh no, that would spoil the set—the collar and the earrings. Your father got you that to match.'
'They've gone,' said Charlotte. 'All the old jewellery's gone,' and for the moment the fight went out of Lucy Snowe. She slumped in her chair, and her hands, black with metal polish, lay heavy on the table.
'He shouldn't have done that.' She kept shaking her head. 'He shouldn't have got rid of that, he should have kept the collar for you. Has Mr Laurenson got that as well?'
'Saul didn't buy them,' said Charlotte. 'I don't know where they went, and it's no use fretting.'
'Men!' Lucy Snowe pulled herself together, picking up the polishing duster again and attacking the teapot. 'When Mr Colin's back on his feet I shall have something to say to him!'
Charlotte chuckled, 'Watch you don't give him a relapse!'
'A fine birthday you're going to have this year!' The aquamarine ring had been a birthday present. Charlotte's next birthday was less than two weeks away, and it would be very different from the celebrations of previous years.
'With luck,' she said, 'we'll have a few things straightened out by then,' and she went into the hall to ring Benedict Pugh, dealer in fine arts and antiques.
Mr Pugh's shop was a few doors from Dunscombes in Chipping Queanton high street, and when Charlotte explained he said he would come out himself, and at once. When he arrived he held her hand longer than necessary, telling her how sorry he was about everything. She extricated herself with a smile. She didn't want to offend him, but she felt he had done enough patting, and she took him into the drawing room and produced Saul's bills of sale and asked if he thought these prices had been reasonable.
Mr Pugh checked pieces and prices and announced, 'Not over-generous, but fair enough.' So her father hadn't been cheated. Except by himself, of course, as his own worst enemy.
'You're wanting to sell some of your other things?' The dealer's acquisitive glance was darting around the room, and Charlotte said, 'I just want them valued, I want you to put a price on them. I do have a buyer who's getting first refusal.'
'A dealer?'
'A friend.'
Like every other local businessman Benedict Pugh knew about Saul Laurenson. 'Yes, of course,' he said.
'Anything he doesn't take,' said Charlotte, 'we'll probably have to sell anyway, so if you're interested—
That put Mr Pugh in something of a spot. If somebody else was buying he wanted Charlotte to get the best market price, because he always had had a soft spot for her. But if he was buying himself he had to make a profit. In the end he valued at the price he would have asked. If he was offered second refusal he would explain that, or suggest putting the items into his shop and taking a commission on a sale. He was sure that he and Charlotte Dunscombe could come to some arrangement.
He enjoyed going round the house with her, the scent of her hair in his nostrils, brushing against her more or less by accident from time to time. They ended in the drawing room again, and Benedict tore the pages from his notebook and handed them over, and Charlotte thanked him and asked what she owed him.
'That's what friends are for,' he said. 'It's been my pleasure.'
She protested prettily, 'But you're the expert and you've come out here and done all this valuation.' He was of course entitled to a fee, but she had hoped he might waive it, because every penny counted with her these days.
'I won't hear of it,' he assured her.
'That is kind of you.'
'Think nothing of it.' He was squeezing her hand again. 'And if there's anything else I can do—'
'Such as what?' asked Saul. 'It's the furniture that's on offer, not the girl.'
He was in that blessed high-backed armchair again, and Benedict dropped her hand like a hot coal. She said, 'I do apologise, Benedict, and I'm very grateful to you,' and went to the front door with him and thanked him again and said she would be in touch.
'I hope you will,' said Benedict, 'any time.' But he looked down the hall before he said it, as though checking that Saul hadn't followed them out, and Charlotte knew that if Saul had appeared Benedict would have made his goodbye very crisp and businesslike.
She went back into the drawing room, demanding, 'What was that all about? Did you have to be so boorish? He was doing me a favour, valuing the furniture for nothing.'
'For nothing?' Saul's tone was derisive. 'You can't be so naive that you don't know the bargain he had in mind.'
Benedict Pugh was overweight for his height and balding, but his admiration had been a little balm to her pride, reassuring her that when she walked down the street men's eyes followed her. But the memory of Jeremy standing in the doorway of the bedroom, and behind him the swirl of Lesley's red hair, kept coming back and she said savagely, 'Of course I know he fancies me. I'm broke, but I still get whistled at.'
She thrust Benedict's list at Saul. This was the rest of the good pieces. Some t
ime they would have to furnish a small home of their own, but she was only keeping the basics for that. She said, 'He's a friend, but I'm sure he hasn't let that influence the prices.'
Saul totted up the figures in his head, running his finger down the pages, and she knew he would reach the right answer as sure as a calculator. Then he took out a chequebook and wrote a cheque.
Charlotte felt hollow. It was done so quickly, like settling a grocery account, and that one signature meant that from now on almost everything here belonged to Saul. Roger Fairley had said he made quick decisions, so she asked, 'Don't you want to check for woodworm or anything?'
'Bound to be some,' he said, 'but nothing's falling apart.'
Except me, she thought. She put a hand over her mouth, looking at the cheque: date, figure, signature, of course it was all correct. She opened the little walnut davenport, which Benedict had valued at two hundred and fifty pounds, then asked, 'May I?'
'Of course,' said Saul, and she put the cheque in the top drawer.
She needed to do something energetic. If she stood around, staring about her, she was going to burst into tears. What a day! she thought. I lose the man who said he loved me and all the things I've lived with all my life. She went but into the garden to find something to do that would exhaust her, the lawns needed mowing for a start. Yesterday's rain and today's dewy-damp atmosphere had revived them remarkably.
Old Tom was putting away his tools in one of the outhouses. 'I've come for the mower,' she said, and he warned her, 'Don't get overdoing it,' as he did every time Charlotte pitched into the heavier work. 'Mr Pugh's been calling, then,' said Tom. 'What was he wanting?'
According to Saul, me, thought Charlotte, and the suicidal way I feel right now if he'd asked me out tonight I'd have accepted. She said, 'He came to value some of the furniture. Mr Laurenson's buying it. You know he's buying the house.' Everybody knew that Saul was buying the house, and Tom nodded, taking his pipe out of his pocket. Half the time there was no tobacco in it, he didn't light it now, just clamped it between his teeth.
'I remember him coming up here,' he said, 'before he went off to Australia.' Aunt Lucy didn't, but the saddles would probably be delivered to the stables. 'I can see it as plain as yesterday,' old Tom went on. 'He was walking up and down, looking up at the house, and I wondered what he was up to—I thought he was a gyppo—and I shouted across what did he want, and he grinned and said, "This'll do." I didn't know what he was talking about, but the way things have turned out it makes you wonder whether he'd got this place marked.'
'With his luck,' said Charlotte bitterly, 'if he had, my father might as well have handed it over to him there and then.'
The mower, a pull-starter, proved sluggish, making her hot and cross before she began. It was nearing the end of summer and the mower needed servicing. She would have to get it to the garage and she would hand the bill to Saul, because surely that came under overheads. It was a fairly heavy machine, capable of pulling her into hedges or over flower beds unless she kept her mind on the job and turned down the throttle in time for turning, and even then it often whirled her round so that it was all she could do to stay on her feet.
She didn't want to give Saul the bill. She didn't want him paying for anything around here, but she couldn't and her father couldn't, and it was a ridiculous quibble when he had just bought the place lock, stock and barrel.
She could imagine the tall gipsy-like boy Tom saw in the old days walking up and down by the stables, looking up at the house, maybe comparing it with the van he was living in at the time. He had told her when he first came back here that for the last ten years he couldn't recall a single thing he had wanted that he hadn't got; and now he had the house, and of course the business, and she was almost sure he wouldn't mind having her, but not enough to put himself out to get her.
If she ran into his arms, like last night, he'd take her fast enough, but that was never going to happen. Nothing good could come of that, because it would mean no more to him than acquiring another piece of furniture. Less probably, the furniture would keep its value.
She turned up the throttle of the lawnmower and roared up and down the lawn a couple of times, passing Georgy who was lying on the grass under the walnut tree and warning him, 'You'll get rheumatism in your turn lying there.' Passing the tree for the third time the mower spluttered and stopped and Charlotte swore and began the cord-jerking routine all over again. She got a click but no following whirr, and she pulled and panted to no avail until she was gibbering with frustration. 'You great ugly useless thing—shift, can't you?'
'Talking to me?' said Saul.
She hadn't noticed him coming across the grass. She sat down, cross-legged, beside Georgy, and fastened her hair again in the wide tortoiseshell slide that held it back from her face. Tendrils of hair were sticking to her cheeks and forehead, making her skin tickle.
'I never thought I should see you sweating.' Saul sat down too and grinned, and she glared.
'I often do, when I mow the lawns. What did you expect me to do? Glow, like a Victorian lady?'
'Did Victorian ladies mow lawns?'
'Shouldn't think so, in those crinolines. But that was the saying, wasn't it? "Horses sweat, gentlemen feel the heat, and ladies glow".'
He gave her a leer of mock admiration. 'It must be a fine thing to have had that grand education.'
Charlotte had gone to a good school, but she had no doubt that Saul's mind was more cultured than hers, and so far as brain power went she wasn't competing. 'And you were usually top of the class, according to your old school friend,' he reminded her.
That had to be Jo-Ann, and Charlotte knew exactly how she would have said it, because Jo-Ann considered intelligence in a girl was not sexy. Low cunning was all right, Jo-Ann had plenty of that, and Charlotte was sure they didn't waste much time talking about her, and just stopped herself from snapping, 'Jo-Ann never came top in anything—but then she always had other things on what passes for her mind.'
She was shocked at the cattiness Jo-Ann was causing in her these days. Jo-Ann had never been one of Charlotte's favourite people, but now the very mention of her name irritated her like prickly heat.
Georgy had rolled over on to his back and Saul was scratching his stomach and Charlotte said, 'I can't make up my mind if he's paralysed with terror, or whether you've done the impossible and he really isn't scared.'
Saul laughed and went on tickling Georgy for a few minutes, then he got up and started the mower. Charlotte clapped her hands, giving him a round of applause although she would have preferred him to have found it just a little harder to get the engine ticking over. 'You'd flooded the carburettor,' he told her.
'How careless of me. Know a lot about the machinery, do you?'
'I've tinkered with some in my time.' He took off his jacket and dropped it on the grass. Under it he wore a grey silk shirt. He set off with the lawnmower and Charlotte called after him, 'Jack of all trades?'
'And master of none,' he countered cheerfully, and he could afford to be cheerful because that didn't apply to him. All his talents, so far as Charlotte could see, had paid off, and he was handling the lawnmower very competently too. Coming back, he slowed down when he reached her and said, 'I find that experience is rarely wasted,' and leaned over as though he was going to kiss her but she swayed back against the tree. He kept the engine running. 'Your father could be watching us. Don't you want him to think we're very good friends?'
'I'm not sure that I do,' she said. 'And have you stopped to consider that Aunt Lucy also could be watching?'
'If she is,' said Saul, 'I'm drinking none of her cocoa tonight.'
'You never do.'
'I'm no fool.' He touched the throttle and moved off again. 'She could still have some of those sleeping pills.'
Charlotte got a fit of giggles at the thought of Aunt Lucy doping Saul into sound slumber at nights. She sat chuckling, watching him, and when the chuckles subsided she was still smiling inside as the peac
e of the evening stole over her. Even the hum of the lawnmower seemed soothing. She pulled Saul's jacket around her shoulders. She wasn't cold, but it would be the easiest thing to catch a chill, sitting here after getting so overheated. Anyhow it felt good, like a light arm around her.
Rooks were wheeling over the tall trees, black against the pearl-grey sky, and she watched the man and the movement of his muscles rippling under the thin silk of his shirt. The mower didn't take him off his feet when he turned it around, it wouldn't have dared, and she smiled when he looked across at her and he smiled, but neither spoke, even when he passed close by, and the silence was strangely healing. Her fingers closed on Saul's jacket, holding it around her, and she felt contentment growing and the misery of the day receding until, for the moment, she was strong and happy again.
He finished the lawns—and a very professional job it was—and came across to her, and she got up and handed him his coat. As she did his wallet fell out and she thought, I could have had a quick peep at that while you were down the far end; and then, My stars, what am I coming to?
She asked, 'Do you carry photographs?'
'No,' he said. 'Why?'
'Roger Fairley showed me his family.'
'Well, I'm sorry I can't. No family and no photos.'
He wasn't sweating from the exercise, his skin looked cool; and she wondered if it felt cool and wanted to touch it, along the hard lines of the cheekbones. 'Where does this go?' asked Saul, hand on the mower, and she said, 'I'll show you.' When it was stacked in the outhouse she said, 'I'm going to check that Kelly's all right for the night.'
There were three stalls in the stables. Long ago there had been three horses, and a governess cart, but that was before the age of the car. Charlotte remembered her father riding to hounds, but after Prince had died some time ago the only horse in the stables had been hers. Kelly ambled around a field all day, unless Charlotte was riding him, and she was going to have less time for that in the future.
The warm smell of hay filled the air and Kelly nuzzled her shoulder and she said, 'I was thinking of letting him go to the riding school for exercise. Mary Whitehead who runs it is a friend of mine, she'd only let experienced riders near him.'
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