by Betty Neels
She found what she wanted: a fine green wool for the skirt and green knitting wool to match it—the jumper pattern was intricate and boasted a pattern of small flowers in a number of colours—but she was a good knitter and there was time enough in her free time to work at it. She had a frugal lunch in a little café away from the main street and caught an early bus back.
Back in her flat, she lit the fire, fed Horace, and got her tea. She had brought crumpets back with her; with the curtains drawn and the lamp by the fireplace alight, she sat down contentedly munching and drinking tea. How nice the simple pleasures of life were, she observed to Horace, and licked her buttery fingers.
There was still plenty of time before dinner. She tidied away the tea things, made up the fire and spread her material on the floor and cut out her skirt. She would have to sew it by hand, but that didn’t worry her; she tacked it together, tried it on in front of the small bedroom looking-glass and then got ready to go over to the house.
There was no sign of the professor during the next week, but then she hadn’t expected to see him and certainly no one mentioned him. She worked away at the press cuttings, sewed her skirt in her free time and took a brisk walk each day. A dull week, but its very dullness gave her a sense of security. She went to Marlborough again on her free day, but she spent very little of her pay; the future was beginning to loom. Another three weeks and she would be finished. There were only the letters and diaries to sort and read now, and the cataloguing, now that she had made sense of the muddle, presented no difficulties. Next week, she promised herself, she would decide what was to be done. Hopefully, she would get a good reference from Lady Manbrook and a study of the domestic situations in The Lady seemed hopeful. She treated herself to tea in a modest café and caught the bus back.
The letters, when she began on them, were fascinating. The contents were, for the most part, innocuous enough; accounts of morning calls, tea parties and dances with descriptions of the clothes worn by the writer’s friends, some of them a trifle tart. But a packet of envelopes tied with ribbon Suzannah opened with some hesitation and then tied them up again. The top letter began ‘My dearest love’, and to read further would have been as bad as eavesdropping. She took the bundle, and another one like it, down to the drawing-room before dinner that evening and gave them to Lady Manbrook, who looked through them, murmuring from time to time. ‘Great-Aunt Alicia,’ she said finally, ‘and Great-Uncle Humbert—before they became engaged. How very interesting. But you did quite right to give them to me, Suzannah; if there are any more of these letters, will you fasten them together—put them into an envelope, perhaps?—and write “Private” on it. I scarcely feel that they were meant for any eyes, but those for whom they were intended. Are there many more?’
‘I don’t think so, Lady Manbrook, but there are several in another language—it looks a little like German…’
‘Dutch,’ said Mrs van Beuck promptly. ‘Are they written or typed, my dear?’
‘Typed, for the most part.’
‘Marriage settlements when I married dear Everard. Dear me, such a long time ago.’
Suzannah wasn’t sure what to say; she knew nothing about marriage settlements, and Mrs van Beuck was looking sad. ‘We went together to the family solicitor,’ she ruminated. ‘I had a lovely hat—grey tulle with pink roses,’ a remark which led to the two ladies talking at some length about long-forgotten toilettes. Suzannah sat between them an appreciative audience, until they went in to dinner.
It was as they drank their coffee afterwards that Lady Manbrook said, ‘We shall miss you, Suzannah; you have worked so hard and I am sure you have made a splendid job of arranging those tiresome papers. Do you have any plans?’
‘Not at present, Lady Manbrook. I think that I shall be finished in three weeks; the cataloguing will take a good deal of time, but I’ve almost finished looking through the letters and I left those until last.’
‘I’m sure you will find something nice to do,’ observed Mrs van Beuck comfortably. ‘It must be very quiet for you here.’
‘I’ve been very happy here, and I love the country.’ Suzannah excused herself presently and went to her flat, feeling anxious. It seemed to her that the two ladies were eager for her to finish, although they hadn’t said so. She sat down by the fire with Horace on her lap and studied the situations vacant column in the local paper; several pubs wanted barmaids, but even if she had known something about the work she doubted if anyone would consider her suitable; barmaids were usually pretty and buxom, and she was neither. There was a job for a home help to live in; five children in the family, must love dogs, be cheerful and prepared to assist a handicapped granny when needed; salary negotiable. Suzannah wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but she had a nasty feeling that she would come off second-best in negotiations of any kind. She folded the paper tidily and decided to go to the domestic agency in Marlborough on her next day off.
It was almost the end of another week and she was sitting in the room Snow had made ready for her, carefully cataloging the last of the dance programmes, when the professor walked in.
‘Still at it?’ he wanted to know, and went to stand in front of the small fire, effectively cutting off its warmth.
Suzannah looked up from her work. ‘Good afternoon, Professor Bowers-Bentinck,’ she said pointedly, and waited for him to speak.
‘If it will take the disapproving look off your face, good afternoon to you too, Suzannah. Almost finished?’
Here was another one anxious for her to be gone. She said carefully, ‘Very nearly, I’m going as fast as I can…’
‘Good. Have you another job to go to?’
‘I have several likely…’ She caught his hard blue eyes boring into her. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘I haven’t really, but I’ve applied to three.’
‘Any money?’
She went rather pink. ‘Really, Professor, I hardly think that’s your business.’
‘I asked you if you had any money, Suzannah. I can see no reason why you shouldn’t answer my question.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you can.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘But let me tell you something. I’m not in your employ; you were kind enough when Aunt Mabel died, although probably that was bedside manner—I imagine you can put that on and take it off again whenever you want to—but I won’t be patronised…’
Her calm voice had become a little shrill; she took another steadying breath and added, ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my work…’
She had been annoyed with him; she was even more annoyed now when he strolled away, closing the door gently behind him.
There was no sign of him when she joined the two old ladies in the drawing-room that evening.
‘Such a pity that Guy had to go back to his consulting rooms,’ observed Mrs van Beuck. ‘The dear boy works far too hard; it amazes me where these people come from.’ And at Suzannah’s puzzled look, ‘People with brain tumours, my dear. And of course dear Guy is so clever, he knows exactly what to do…’ She drew a sharp breath. ‘My dear child, I am so sorry, for the moment I forgot that your aunt…’
Suzannah said composedly, ‘It’s quite all right, Mrs van Bueck, there was nothing to be done for my aunt; Professor Bowers-Bentinck examined her most carefully and was kindness itself.’
Quite a different man to the visitor she had had that afternoon. She supposed that she must annoy him in some way, certainly he needled her into being rude. Aunt Mabel would have been vexed; so, too, would her two companions if they could hear her!
She sat listening with half an ear to the two ladies’ gentle chatter. ‘I cannot believe that the dear boy will be thirty-five next week,’ observed Lady Manbrook. ‘It seems only the other day he and his dear parents were here on a visit—while he was at Marlborough, was it not? Such a pity they haven’t lived to see him achieve fame in the medical world. And so modest, too; never an unkind word.’
Obviously, thought Suzannah, there was a side to the profes
sor which she had failed to discover.
And not likely to either; another week went by with no sign of him—and why should there be? she argued to herself. He was a busy man and his work kept him in London. She was almost at the end of her cataloguing by now; another four or five days and she would be finished. She was too honest to spin it out for a few more days, but she was sorely tempted, for she had had no replies to the advertisements she had answered.
She resisted the temptation, arranged the last of the letters in a neat pile beside everything else and went to tell Lady Manbrook that four more days’ work would suffice to tidy everything away once more.
That lady looked surprised. ‘Already, my dear? How very quick you have been. You will need a day or so to clear up your own things, of course, and make arrangements. Croft will drive you back…’ She paused. ‘Where to, Suzannah? Is not someone living in your former home?’
‘Mrs Coffin will give me a room until I go to another job, Lady Manbrook.’
‘Ah, yes, of course. I’m sure you must be much in demand.’
Suzannah hoped that she would be, too. But the last day came with nothing in the post for her, so she stowed Horace in his basket, packed the geranium carefully, wished the two old ladies goodbye, made her farewells in the kitchen and then got into the car beside Croft. Mrs Coffin had sent her a cheerful letter, happily agreeing to let her have a room for as long as she would need one; all the same, Suzannah’s heart sank as Croft drove her away from what had seemed to her to be a haven of security. True, she had saved almost all her wages, but they weren’t going to go far…
Mrs Coffin welcomed her with genuine pleasure, and over high tea, eaten after the shop was closed for the day, listened with sympathy to Suzannah’s doubts about the future.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ she said in her comfortable voice, ‘something’ll turn up, and you’re welcome to stay here just as long as you want to.’
She patted Suzannah’s hand over the table and went on, ‘Now tell me all about your job? Was it interesting? Did you meet anyone nice?’
She meant young men, of course. ‘No, but I’ll tell you who I met, and I was surprised. That professor who came to see Aunt Mabel when she was so ill…’ Her voice faltered for a moment. ‘He’s Lady Manbrook’s nephew or something.’
‘That was nice, dear…’
‘Not really. He doesn’t like me, you know, and he asked a lot of questions!’
‘Did he, now? I do hear from the housekeeper at the manor that Miss Phoebe’s in a rare bad temper these days. Everyone thought that the professor was going to marry her; she boasted about it too, but I met Mr Toms the other day and he said that he’d heard her telling some friend or other that she hadn’t seen him in weeks. Don’t know much about him myself, but he was always very civil to me and Dr Warren sets great store by him. I shouldn’t think he’d put up with Miss Phoebe’s nasty tempers.’
Suzannah wondered silently if he had a nasty temper too; she thought it quite likely. A man who liked his own way, she felt sure.
It was pleasant to be back in the village again, although she didn’t go near her old home. Indeed, she spent a good part of each day writing replies to the advertisements Mrs Coffin obligingly allowed her to look for in the papers and magazines which she sold. After three days she had two replies, both of them quite obdurate about pets. To leave him behind was impossible; Mrs Coffin liked him well enough, but she had a cat and a very elderly dog of her own, and although they tolerated Horace as a temporary lodger, there would be no question of him settling down with them.
Suzannah had taken over the cooking and some of the household chores from her kind landlady, anxious not to be too much of a burden to her, and each afternoon, after they had eaten their midday dinner, she took over the shop too while Mrs Coffin had what she called ‘a bit of a lie down’. It was on the fourth day of her stay that Professor Bowers-Bentinck walked in.
She was adding up the items that Mrs Batch, from the other end of the village, had bought and, since Mrs Coffin didn’t believe in new-fangled things like electric cash registers but wrote everything down on a bit of paper, any that came in handy, Suzannah was totting up her sums on the outside wrapper of the best back bacon she had just sliced.
The doorbell jangled as he went in and she looked up briefly, muttering, ‘One pound fifty-three…’ and then, at the sight of him, forgot how far she had got to.
She said vexedly, ‘Oh, look what you’ve made me do—now I’ll have to start again.’ Which she did, adding her sums twice to make sure before giving Mrs Batch the total.
That lady knew the professor by sight, of course, she bade him good afternoon now, hoped he was well, remarked upon the weather and handed Suzannah a five-pound note.
Suzannah counted out the change, put her customer’s purchases in her plastic carrier bag, and wished her good day, and when she had gone turned her attention to the professor.
‘Good afternoon. Do you wish to buy something?’
He looked faintly surprised. ‘Er—no. Have you taken over the shop from Mrs Coffin?’
‘No but while I’m here I mind it for her while she has a short rest.’
‘So you have no job?’
She didn’t answer that at once, then she said briefly, ‘No, not yet.’
‘Then may I put a proposition to you and hope that you will overlook your dislike of me sufficiently to listen to it?’
‘You don’t like me either,’ said Suzannah matter-of-factly.
He looked down his commanding nose at her. ‘I am not aware that I have any feelings about you, good or bad, Suzannah.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Now, if you would listen to me and not interrupt.’
A high-handed remark which left her conveniently without words.
The professor pushed aside a basket of assorted biscuits, several tins of soup and a large card announcing that there would be a whist drive in the village hall next Wednesday, and sat down at the edge of the counter. He took up a great deal of room, and Suzannah had to look up to see his face, which rather annoyed her.
‘I have a patient,’ he informed her, ‘who has recovered from a cerebral tumour which I removed some weeks ago. She is fit to return to her home—in Holland, I should add—but she needs a sensible companion with plenty of common sense to remain with her until she feels able to resume a normal life. She refuses to have a nurse, and quite rightly; she is no longer in need of nursing care, but she needs someone reliable to depend upon who, at the same time, will remain in the background unless she is needed. I believe that you would be absolutely right for the job.’
‘You put it very clearly,’ said Suzannah, digesting this opinion of herself. So she was just right to sit meekly in the background, was she, waiting until she was wanted? I’d like to show him, she thought, fiercely, I’d like just one chance to dine at the Ritz with a duke wearing black tulle and diamonds and cut this wretch dead when he saw me there…
‘Suzannah,’ the doctor’s voice was compelling, ‘you are allowing your thoughts to wander. I trust you have understood me?’
‘For how long?’ she asked briskly, and, ‘What would my salary be?’
He gave her an intent look. ‘A few weeks at the most. The salary is adequate.’ He mentioned a sum which seemed to her to be excessive.
She said, ‘Isn’t that rather a lot of money to pay someone to sit in the background, even if she is reliable and dependable and—what was the other virtue?—sensible?’
He said with scarcely veiled impatience, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I explained rather badly; I intended nothing personal.’
She said kindly, ‘No, I don’t expect you did, but you should be more careful you know, especially when you are talking to girls like me.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, just think for yourself, Professor: I’m no beauty, I’ve no money, no job and the future’s a bit vague; I don’t want to be reminded of any of those things. But it was kind of you to ask me, only of course I can’t…’
> ‘Why not?’
‘Horace. He can’t stay here with Mrs Coffin; she has a cat and a dog already and they put up with him, but only for the moment. No one else would want him.’
Professor Bowers-Bentinck was surprised to hear himself say, ‘He can come to my home. I have a housekeeper who I know will welcome him and take good care of him.’
‘Would she? He might escape…’
‘There is a garden-room behind the house where he can roam without going outside. I assure you that I will be responsible for his safety.’
She was surprised to find that she believed him when he said that; he might be a disagreeable man, at least towards her, but she felt that he was a man of his word. She nodded her neat head. ‘Very well, I’d be glad of the job; if I can save enough money I thought I might train as a nurse or a nanny…’
‘And Horace?’ he wanted to know.
‘Oh, that’s why I must save some money first, so that I can find a little flat or a room and live out.’
He stood up then and said with a return of his impatience, ‘Have you any idea of the high rent you would have to pay?’
‘Oh, yes, but I’d go to one of the provincial hospitals—Yeovil or Salisbury, somewhere like that.’ She was aware that he was no longer interested; he had got what he had come for and her future was no concern of his.
‘Will you let me know when I am to start work—I’ve no passport…’
He was at the door. ‘You will get all the details in a letter. Send for a passport at once—better still, fill in the form and send it to me—I’ll forward it with a note asking for the matter to be treated urgently.’