‘Now?’
‘Not now. There’s pages and pages. You can take it home and give it back first thing in the morning. Not that I should have to give it back.’ Her cheeks had grown hot from juggling annoyance and seduction. ‘There are all sorts of drawings in here I don’t understand as well as lists of laws and Acts and what have you. None of them have anything to do with the boxing I thought was the problem. They make no sense to me.’ She reduced her tone to helpless.
‘You’ve lost me,’ said Martin Duffy, even more helpless as he flicked through the file. ‘What’s boxing if it’s not in a ring?’
‘It’s mixing your own sheep with your neighbour’s sheep so when you separate them you take a few that aren’t yours. That’s what Bluett accused Daddy of doing. That’s why he shot him. But he wasn’t boxing, because the land was ours.’ Martin needed reminding of who shot whom. ‘Adelaide’s father was arrested for it and it went to court but they settled.’ Maggie, spotting her beloved’s incomprehension, decided the mood was all wrong for passion. ‘Take it home and read it. Let’s have cake now.’
‘Good idea,’ said Martin Duffy, only too delighted. ‘A bit of cake, then I’ll crack on with the hen house. The boys can give me a hand.’
But the boys were at Theresa Fellows’. They were the last thing a sister needed when her aim was to impress on the man of her dreams her great gifts as a homemaker, sensible person, elegant hostess, potential wife and excellent kisser. Maggie guessed she would be an excellent kisser. The boys would have shown her in a light that was none of those things. Her intention was to introduce them gradually to their future brother-in-law.
That thieving little Maggie O’Connell might even entertain such a hope would never have occurred to Maisie Jenkins as she stomped towards The Arch, disgruntled because the grocer’s attentions, usually so ardent, had been distracted and short-lived. ‘Why don’t you,’ he’d mused, possibly insisted, after a single desultory peck despite her tantalising aroma, ‘wander along the road and see what’s happening? No need to report back unless there’s anything of interest. But on the off chance, you know. See if that cousin’s hanging about.’
She had no intention of going as far as the O’Connells’. The O’Connells were only interesting because the deceitful girl had stolen a pie from under Mr Stokes’ nose and Mrs Nightingale had, against all expectations, forgiven her. Maisie Jenkins, like everyone else in town, put it down to Mrs Nightingale’s feebleness. A proper Nightingale would have sought justice. An older Bluett would have sought justice. The whole town was agreed on that.
Mrs Jenkins was lost in thought that had nothing to do with the O’Connells as she passed the Widow Worthington’s, where there was no sign of the lodger. She crossed the road and peered into the Nightingales’ house, where again she failed to spot him even though her glance was drawn towards an open window facing onto the street. Through it she heard Captain Nightingale declaring to his wife, ‘Please, no more rabbit,’ and all she concluded from that was that captain was not alone. As she turned back towards home to prepare tea for the husband who was so inferior in every way to Mr Stokes, she found herself in torment. Why had her love suddenly lost interest? Was it something she’d said or done or something she hadn’t said or done?
It preoccupied her all the way back to her kitchen, when concern for the whereabouts of the housekeeper’s cousin would have served her so much better. Not two minutes later, she might have learned something to make Mr Stokes’ loins throb with gratitude. She’d have heard this from Captain Nightingale: ‘Give me the ledgers, Adelaide. I’ll take them to the shop myself.’ Then this from Mrs Nightingale: ‘No, I need them. I’m cross-checking.’ Followed by this from the Captain: ‘Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not in the office. Where are they? I’ll get them myself.’ And then she might have heard the sound of a crash as Captain Nightingale gave the door to Adelaide’s bedroom such an almighty shove that it flew open, he flew in behind it, and in the flying collided headfirst with the bedstead and stunned himself. ‘Miss McCleary, Miss McCleary,’ she might have heard Mrs Nightingale call. ‘Quickly. He could be dead.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
He wasn’t dead. Of course he wasn’t. Here was a man who’d survived unspeakable hardship. He was more than a match for a bedstead. But Pearl responded as if to a real emergency. She shoved the half-dressed baby at his mother and bent over the body, which was now on all fours and embracing life, and helped it to its feet. ‘Thank you, Miss McCleary,’ the Captain was gasping. ‘Just a bit dizzy.’
Pearl guided him gently to the drawing room, prepared him a drink, and soon he was in his favourite chair with a double something in his hand inviting her to join him. The ledgers were for the time being forgotten, and as soon as she could, Adelaide told Pearl to scoot across to Louisa’s to retrieve them and to place them somewhere in the office where they might easily have been overlooked.
‘Who will join me?’ the Captain called sadly.
Adelaide replied, ‘I’ll join you, darling. Just give me a minute to settle the baby.’
Pearl was not halfway across the road when she heard yet again, ‘Miss McCleary, Miss McCleary,’ as Norah Quirk tottered down the road towards her in a dress that revealed an alarming amount of calf. She was brandishing a letter like a fan as if the air somewhere to the right of her nose was pungent. Pearl waited. ‘I thought I’d deliver it personally. It looks important.’
Miss Quirk handed over the letter and waited, imagining Pearl might read it and report its contents on the spot, or at least have the courtesy to explain its condition, which was dirty and crumpled. Its postmarks indicated it had been forwarded from Sydney but posted originally in Cooma, a good sixty miles away. ‘Thank you,’ Pearl said, putting the letter into her pocket. ‘Nice evening for a walk anyway.’
‘I was on my way home. I said, this probably can’t wait until tomorrow.’
‘Oh it probably could have,’ said Pearl. ‘Not much in my life can’t wait until tomorrow.’
‘Going for a nice walk yourself?’
‘Just dropping over to Mrs Worthington.’
‘To see your cousin. Nice man. I hope he finds work soon.’
Pearl moved away without comment, leaving Miss Quirk to turn back reluctantly towards the town. She paused at The Arch, remembering what she’d heard from Theresa Fellows who’d heard it from Maisie Jenkins, and she concealed herself behind a pillar. ‘I had a premonition,’ she later reported. Within seconds, it can’t have been more than a minute, she’d seen the housekeeper go in then out of Mrs Worthington’s, carrying the very large blue books Theresa Fellows had told her were of such interest to Mr Stokes.
Pearl, without giving Norah Quirk a second thought, pushed opened the Nightingale door, which had been left ajar, tiptoed into the office, dropped the ledgers onto the floor and pushed them under the desk. They were no concern of hers. Her concern was burning a hole in her pocket. Baby Freddie was whimpering and there was dinner to be put on the table but she headed straight to her room and, carefully closing the door behind her, took a deep breath to compose herself. The letter might have been dirty and crumpled but the script was Daniel’s and even though she resented him with all her heart, she found herself trembling.
My darling Pearl, she read. I am sending this to you at Annie’s even though I know you are closer to me than you are to her. I’m begging you to stop looking for me. You are placing yourself in danger and not doing me much good either. I am in much hotter water than you could ever imagine and am in too deep to turn back. I beg you to go home. Beattie needs you. I will cherish you always, Daniel.
Bloody idiot. Bloody, bloody idiot. Never knowing when to stop. Where was he? He should go home. Why didn’t he go home? She had sworn to bring him home and she would.
‘From an excellent family touched by tragedy,’ Mother Declan had told Annie. ‘The boy’s a good scholar. But headstrong and stubborn.’ Pearl stared at the letter so recently touched by him and at the dirty fingermarks she kn
ew weren’t his because he’d have found a way to wash his hands. He might have been feckless in the pursuit of what he thought was right, but he was always clean. He’d have given the letter to post to a person whose hands weren’t washed. Someone who either didn’t care to wash or wasn’t used to washing or wasn’t in a position to wash. Someone living rough.
‘Miss McCleary, are you in there?’ called Adelaide. ‘I know we said rabbit but I think it needs to be something with cow in it.’ Pearl stared at the letter. What kind of hot water? How deep in could he possibly be? ‘Are you coming?’ Adelaide put her head around the door. ‘I think we can’t have rabbit tonight or Marcus will leave home for good.’
When was a housekeeper allowed time to have thoughts of her own? Pearl left her room deciding to turn tomorrow’s sausages into tonight’s curry with the help of Captain White’s curry paste, and she did this with good cheer even though she’d spent the morning making the most delicious rabbit rissoles. While she cooked, she weighed up options, discarding the unlikelys and concentrating on the possibles since there were no probables.
He must be on the railway or he must be near the railway or someone on the railway must know him. It would account for him knowing she was looking for him and for the dirt, which could easily be railway dirt. She would resist jumping to conclusions and wasting time and energy on fruitless enterprises, but she was decided. She’d go back to the railway with the next-to-useless blockhead and this time she wouldn’t come away without proper information. If it meant leaving him in the cart while she accosted rough-looking strangers with no inclination to help her, then so be it.
The next-to-useless blockhead, meanwhile, was standing amid a pile of charred timbers and some less charred timbers wondering where to start. ‘What have you got in the way of tools?’ he was asking and Maggie was saying there was a load of stuff in the shearing shed and here she nodded to a decrepit outbuilding that gave no indication of containing anything useful or even salvageable.
‘Want to look?’ she asked doubtfully, but Martin Duffy said he would measure first then see what she had later. He paced the area that was required to cage the eight birds Maggie imagined she might manage and when he asked her roughly how many feet she thought it would convert to she said thirty feet by ten feet. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. When he asked her to guess again how many posts she might need to build that size of run, she said at least a dozen and they would need to be eight feet high so two feet could be embedded and he told her he’d thought the very same himself.
‘I’d also like a roof and some laying boxes,’ she said and he told her that was precisely what he’d had mind and what were her feelings about methods of construction? When they found themselves to be in complete agreement as to how the thing could be built and held together, Martin Duffy said he might as well take a look in the shearing shed and Maggie said it wasn’t locked so he could help himself.
He said, ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’
She shrugged. ‘Not dressed for it.’
To another girl, he might have replied, Then take your dress off, but to Maggie, young and pretty and blushing, he said only, ‘Leave it to me then.’ It was laughable. They both knew it. Maggie watched from a distance as he pushed open the door and she bit her lip as he recoiled because that shed was heaving with mess of all sorts and God alone knew what wildlife. There was ancient timber in a hundred different shapes and sizes, posts, planks, beams. There was corrugated iron, tools of every size, shape and purpose, all rusting. There were hundreds of tins, piles of newspapers, half a dozen old trunks, sacks spilling stuff, and everything in a jumble that would require an army to sort. Frank O’Connell had given up once he’d been shot, a spent man, winning the argument but losing his spirit, restored only by the red-haired girl at the Post Office.
‘Find anything?’ Maggie called.
‘Plenty,’ he said as he strolled towards her. ‘Here’s what I’m going to do.’ Overnight, after he’d read the document concerning her land, he’d draw a plan for the hen house and if she liked it, he would build it, one way or another. There was plenty in that shed that could be turned into something good enough for chooks. He spoke with such confidence that, once they’d parted company, Maggie chuckled. She knew he hadn’t the faintest idea how to build anything and she loved him for it. They would learn to build together. They would restore and expand the home that would be theirs and the boys’ and they would live in it and be happy ever after. The prospect of such a life, such a romance, such a breathtakingly lovely future was so transforming that Theresa Fellows commented on it when Maggie unexpectedly arrived fifteen minutes later to collect the boys even though they were, as Theresa Fellows also remarked, old enough and ugly enough to see themselves home as they’d done a thousand times.
‘I felt like a walk,’ Maggie said, which of course she had when the first hundred yards had been with her intended.
‘You’re looking very well on it,’ Theresa Fellows told her, as well as noting privately, to be reported publicly later, that the astonishing outfit young Maggie was wearing was in no way suitable for the walk. It was all flimsy bits of this and that and hugging her figure so tightly it was a wonder she could put one foot after the other. ‘I can’t remember when I saw you last looking this well. You’re quite grown up. If I didn’t know better, I’d say –’
Maggie was spared what Mrs Fellows was going to say by the wayward boys tumbling past her, lashing out at each other and landing a painful blow on their hostess’s plump right arm. This required so many demands of apology that the original thought was abandoned and Maggie hurried away before it could be recovered, saying she’d get the scamps out of there before more harm was done. If she stared longingly into the Worthington house as they passed, it was only briefly.
Louisa had closed the drawing-room curtains the minute her lodger had returned and now he was washing before joining her for dinner, an excellent sign, she was telling herself. A man who took trouble over his presentation clearly wanted to impress. She’d taken some trouble over her own presentation and was looking easily as fetching as a woman ten years younger. Not only that, she’d whipped up a quite miraculous meal of sardines on toast, which resembled nothing so much as sardines on toast and could only be improved by a few minutes gathering flavour while they enjoyed a pre-dinner drink.
‘I wouldn’t mind a beer,’ Martin said when the drink was offered. But Louisa had no beer, only rum because rum was all Archie Stokes currently had under his counter. The gin that had sustained her through her very hard times had been a gift from Larry Murdoch, husband of the infinitely more memorable Baby Worthington, who’d barely spoken to her since the gift had been given. In fact had snubbed her completely the night of the Mayberry speech.
‘We’re lucky to have anything at all,’ she remarked when Martin Duffy commented on the taste. ‘I’m very fond of a drink before dinner and this rum is so much better than nothing, thank you, Mr Stokes.’
‘Who supplies Mr Stokes?’ Martin Duffy asked.
‘How would I know? No one ever asks where he gets anything. We’re just grateful he gets it so we can live better than most. Now, how did you get on with Adelaide? She seemed positively bouncing as she crossed the road.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
Louisa had every reason to close her curtains. Incessant nosy traffic was not only passing her house but entering it as and when it felt like it. Next morning it included Maisie Jenkins (passing, more than once), Maggie O’Connell (entering) and Miss McCleary (entering). It was the merest fluke it didn’t also include Adelaide (entering), as she returned from town having delivered the ledgers first thing. She was about to look in on her neighbour when she spotted Maisie Jenkins plodding into view, so she didn’t bother and it was just as well because Louisa was in no mood.
If the number of uncalled visits was outrageous, the neglect of the one person whose attention she craved was worse. It seemed to her that because he was her lodger, her problems wer
e being ignored in favour of everyone else’s. She was certainly not in the mood for Maggie turning up in yet another strange outfit claiming not only more time for the chook house – which, Louisa reminded herself bitterly, Maggie’s own family had burned down – but for something that hadn’t cropped up on any previous agenda and so had to be unconstitutional.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she very nearly spat at her. ‘What file?’
‘My file. Martin was attending to it overnight.’
‘What’s in it?’ They were at the dining table, sitting opposite each other like angry patients in a doctor’s surgery, each insisting they had priority owing to the greater severity of their symptoms. They were waiting for Martin Duffy to rouse himself from his bed so he could cure their lives.
‘I’m afraid it’s confidential,’ Maggie said.
‘What do you mean confidential? Our arrangement doesn’t stretch to secrets.’ It was insulting, and even more insulting that Louisa was sure Maggie had given a tiny, insolent smile and here she was, not only pretending she hadn’t smiled, she was changing the subject as if Louisa was too stupid to notice.
‘I think Martin will be just what my boys need. You should see the way he’s tackling the chook house. So calm and sensible.’
‘Doesn’t it make better sense for the boys to fix the chook house? They burned it down.’
Maggie raised her eyebrows as she had seen Louisa do, and replied in a tone Louisa might have used. ‘I have more to do with my time than supervise them doing something none of us can manage. I have to go to work to support them and lately I’ve realised I have no clothes to speak of so I’ve been making myself some.’
‘So I see,’ said Louisa, and if Maggie saw Louisa’s small spiteful smile, she said nothing because Martin Duffy had appeared in the doorway and everyone else in the room was invisible to her.
‘Another pretty dress,’ he said.
Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband Page 16