The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  Tom, who had always been careful to keep himself to himself, looked up as he heard the general murmur of satisfaction around him, and registered that this was something for which everyone waited with some eagerness to hear; they waited to know how His Grace appreciated their work, waited for news of his appreciation.

  ‘Do we gather from that His Grace is not always pleased?’ a pleasant voice from beside Tom asked.

  Tom looked round.

  ‘I’m Bob Atkins.’

  Bob thrust out a hand for Tom to shake, at the same time staring at Tom with an amiable expression from under a mop of fine blond hair. Tom nodded absently and turned back, determined as always to be taciturn, collected his wage packet from Mr Blakemore’s large hands, but said nothing, before finally preparing to walk off towards the town and his lodgings.

  ‘Coming into town? Can I give you a lift?’ Bob Atkins persisted, nodding proudly towards a brand-new Morris convertible as he followed Tom back out past the sheds and greenhouses and into the waning light of the early evening.

  ‘I should walk, really—’

  ‘Oh come on, don’t be such a goody goody.’

  Tom shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘No, I just think that I should walk, that’s all.’

  ‘Look, I know I’m not like the rest of you chaps, but I wish you weren’t all such snobs about us temporary fellows. It’s like being back at school, being put in Coventry, and all that.’

  Tom coloured. It was true. There was a line drawn between the temporary people – students on their university holidays like Bob, young men taken on for a few weeks during the spring and summer months – and the permanent staff. He was only observing the unspoken rules.

  ‘Come on, hop in, it’s a grand little motor this, you know. Specially with the roof down.’

  Tom stared at the green paint, the red leather seating, every aspect of the dapper little car. The offer was irresistible.

  ‘Oh, OK. If you’re sure.’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’

  It was grand to lean back against the leather seat and push his cap to the back of his head, feel the breeze blowing into his face through the open car window, listen to Bob crunching through his gears and singing at the top of his voice, before finally stopping some minutes later outside the side entrance to Tom’s lodgings.

  ‘Coming on to the pub?’ Bob looked round from his driving seat nodding waggishly down the street to the pub sign. ‘Best bitter in town, you know, at the Fighting Cock.’

  Tom hesitated, not wanting to spend his hard-earned on beer, and then, noting the good-humoured expression on Bob’s freckled face, the eager look in his eyes as he stared up at his new companion from under his fringe of straight hair, he relented once more.

  ‘Wait while I leave my boots off and change into my shoes.’

  He had no intention of inviting Bob into his plain creampainted room with its one bed, one chair and the inevitable shared toilet facilities down the garden. Bob seemed to sense this, because he nodded affably at his passenger.

  ‘I’ll wait in the pub for you, but get your skates on, won’t you? My tongue’s getting the size of that gargoyle on the side of the town church.’

  The pub was already full when Tom pushed his way towards Bob, so that all of a sudden it seemed to be the jolliest of places.

  ‘Two pints, please, and my mug’s the one with the lion on it.’ Bob turned and once again grinned at Tom as he started to undo his pay packet to contribute towards the round. ‘Don’t be daft, Tom. This is my round.’

  As Bob picked up his own pewter mug and started to swallow his beer with large grateful gulps, Tom’s eyes moved from his own ordinary pub glass to Bob’s Adam’s apple that seemed to be moving up and down at an incredible speed as he drank. The pint of beer in his own hand suddenly looked much larger and its liquid contents vast. Nevertheless, he picked it up and started to drink.

  Alexandra’s eyes moved from the wooden dashboard in Douro’s car to stare out of the window. Douro had met her at the station, just as he had before, but now he no longer seemed the easy-going, charming man who had been so helpful before; now he seemed strained and anxious, hurrying her out of the station and into the car as if he dare not be late in returning her to Knighton Hall.

  They were not far out of the town and heading for the house when he stopped the car and turned to her.

  ‘I am afraid you will find a great deal changed at Knighton Hall during the past year, Alexandra. Your uncle has moved into a cottage on the estate, and only comes up to the house at weekends, for the sake of the children. You see, your uncle is in the process of divorcing your Aunt Tasha, after which she will be leaving Knighton and moving back to London where she is buying a small flat. It is all very sad but, as you know, these things happen, I’m afraid.’

  Alexandra dropped her eyes and stared in front of her. She wished he would go on driving while he talked. There was something rather irritating about people stopping a car to talk. Perhaps he realised this, because he turned the key in the ignition, and they proceeded on their way.

  ‘Per-per-haps I shouldn’t have come …’

  ‘On the contrary, Jessamine and Cyrene, they need some distraction. No, you are all too welcome, I’m afraid. You see, everything must go, your Aunt Tasha will not be very well off after this, however good her lawyer. And new wives, well … new wives of rich men do not feel very disposed towards the children of the previous marriage. I doubt that any of the children will be very welcome at the Hall at all in a few months’ time, or however long it takes. No, not at all welcome. It is just a fact.’

  Alexandra stared ahead of her, feeling guilty at having written to her uncle asking herself to stay, or rather taking up his permanent invitation, and at the same time – despite the fact that her own life had changed so suddenly on the remarriage of her own father, not to mention the death of her grandmother – feeling shocked.

  As soon as they arrived at the beautiful old house, the changes were evident. No Jeffryes to open the door in his black coat and striped trousers, no sudden sighting of a uniformed maid bearing a basket filled with cleaning materials, no vast flower arrangement on the hall table. No sounds of a bustling household, doors opening and shutting somewhere everywhere, only an odd sort of silence, as if everyone all over the house, even the staff, had gone to their rooms and were lying staring at the ceiling, wondering what would become of them. Perhaps Douro Partridge sensed her surprise at the sudden feeling of emptiness around them, at the bareness of the hall table.

  ‘I’m afraid all the servants have gone, Alexandra,’ Douro murmured. They all went, almost as one. It happens, you know. A scandal scares them off, they see change coming, and suddenly they disappear.’

  Alexandra turned round and stared at him, realising at once that this was one of the many reasons he himself looked so different, harassed and older, his shoes not polished, his shirt collar frayed at the ends.

  ‘Oh, Alexandra, how kind of you to come, my dear.’

  Tasha Millington was sitting beside a dead fire in the library, her hair held back in tight combs, her tweed suit looking tired and creased, as if it had been worn for too many days at a time on far too many consecutive occasions, her face as tightly drawn as her coiffure. She was a sad contrast to the woman to whom Alexandra had said goodbye on her last visit; the woman who had so enjoyed having people come up to her prettily festooned dressing room as she tried on the latest fashions, gossiped and laughed, looking forward to a full social diary, to being not just the centre of her husband’s world, but the star of it.

  Alexandra stepped forward and kissed Tasha Millington’s cold cheek. She herself took one of Alexandra’s still-gloved hands and held on to it tightly, both of them realising that Alexandra now looked more suited to their surroundings.

  ‘It is so nice to see you, my dear, so very nice. You were such a bright presence here on your last visit, truly you were. Now everything’s changed, so much, too much; so we need your bright
presence even more, a great deal more.’

  She tried to smile over Alexandra’s head at Douro who tried to smile back in his old relaxed way, but also failed. They were neither of them wearing black clothes, neither of them much older, neither of them ill, but as she stepped back from embracing her aunt by marriage, Alexandra had the feeling that perhaps the two older people between whom she was now standing were actually both in mourning, so laden with sadness was the atmosphere in the library.

  ‘I dare say Miss Millington would like a glass of lemonade after her journey, Douro,’ Tasha stated, talking to him in the same way that she had been used to talking to the now departed Jeffryes, something which poor Douro seemed to accept as part of their new way of life.

  The telephone started to ring, and Tasha was now moving towards it, answering it by bending towards it, almost grabbing it, as if she could not wait to hear who it was, or as if she knew exactly who it might be. Meanwhile Alexandra followed Douro Partridge to the kitchens, which now seemed vast and deserted.

  ‘As you can see not only have the staff all gone, but so has the food and drink. No more of Mrs O’Brien’s home-made lemonade, no more of her elderflower champagne, d’you see?’ Douro called back to her as he opened and shut endless cupboards in search of drink. ‘Ah, here we are.’ He produced a bottle of lemon barley water and poured it into a glass before filling it with water from the tap, and handing it to Alexandra.

  Alexandra was undeniable thirsty, but unfortunately Douro had poured too much barley water into the glass, and the tap water was tepid, so the drink was by no means thirst-quenching. She sipped at it, remembering with sudden nostalgia exactly how Mrs O’Brien’s home-made lemonade had tasted and how delicious it had been, tasting of proper lemons and not too much sugar.

  ‘Mrs O’Brien had to go, along with Jeffryes, and all the rest, well, they went too; everyone’s gone, except the dailies, they still come in to clean the place twice a week, but as you can see …’ Douro looked round the kitchens, his eyes wandering towards the deserted sculleries. ‘As you can see, the life has gone out of the place. We miss Mrs O’Brien greatly, especially her roasts and her pastries. Mrs Millington has never cooked, can’t even boil an egg and so the meals are pretty scratchy affairs at best, nowadays. She does her best …’ His voice tailed off. ‘Happily the boys are both off in the Army, which is probably just as well. Anthony’s so cut up about it all, he won’t come home. All happened so quickly really, that was the trouble. One minute we were literally just one happy family, the estate, the house, everyone, and the next … well, you can see.’ He glanced round the kitchens once again, an expression of sad resignation on his face. ‘I shouldn’t be saying this to you, but I dare say you will find out anyway. You see’ – he looked at Alexandra – ‘you see, the worst of it is, your uncle is not allowing Tasha to divorce him for adultery, despite his being quite obviously the guilty party.’

  In order perhaps to accompany Alexandra and her barley water, Douro had opened a bottle of whisky and poured himself a glass, which seemed to loosen his tongue.

  ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘despite the fact that … well, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, Tasha is having to divorce your uncle on grounds of mental cruelty. If she does not it seems she will be even worse off than she is going to be anyhow. Trouble is, as she says, she has never had any money of her own: her parents both died after the war and everything went to her brother in the Bahamas, and he is a hopeless alcoholic. She is, as she says, defenceless – has to go along with whatever your uncle says, pretty much. But your uncle is buying her a flat, she will at least have a flat.’

  Alexandra now found herself staring around her, wondering if the house too would be sold, or if new people would be found to come in and look after her uncle and his new wife.

  ‘My fa-fa-father ter-too has just remarried.’

  ‘I heard.’

  Douro looked uninterested, too preoccupied with the state of play at Knighton Hall to be even vaguely interested in life at Lower Bridge Farm.

  ‘My father’s new wife’s ex-ex-ex-pecting a baby, so I won’t be going back to the farm, I shall have to find a job, perhaps go to London,’ she finished hurriedly, before her hesitation could cause her even more embarrassment.

  This admission also failed to arouse Douro’s interest. He merely stared ahead, his eye focusing on a future devoid of Mrs O’Brien’s cooking, perhaps a future devoid of all the benefits to which he had grown so accustomed over his years at Knighton Hall. Seeing this, Alexandra felt a fleeting impatience, for knowing as she did from her grandmother that the Millingtons thought the Stamfords were beneath them socially, she quickly realised from Douro Partridge’s indifference that he too must consider the Stamfords not really worthy of his attention.

  ‘Your father’s new wife is not the only one to be expecting a new baby, so is your uncle.’

  Alexandra dropped her eyes, remembering suddenly that Douro Partridge had a house that he rented on the Knighton Estate, and realising that he must be in fear of losing it. He must be worried that when and if the new woman in her uncle’s life moved into the Hall, a new man might be moving into Douro’s house. Wives were not the only people who were replaceable.

  ‘Shall we … shall we ger-go and fer-find Jessamine and Cyrene ner-now?’ she asked suddenly as she saw Douro’s hand reaching out once more for the whisky bottle.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. We must. They will be so pleased to see you.’

  Since her cousins did not even bother to stand up and greet her when Alexandra eventually found them lying about their interconnecting bedrooms listening in a desultory fashion to the radio, it was difficult to tell how pleased or displeased they actually were at seeing their cousin.

  ‘I’ll bring your suitcase up later,’ Douro told Alexandra as he left her at the door to their suites of rooms, once more seeming to take on the role of the butler.

  ‘Shut the door, Douro!’ Jessamine shouted from her halfprone position, but as the door remained half open she was forced to go to it herself and slam it. ‘Bloody man!’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re here, really,’ Cyrene told a now bewildered Alexandra. ‘They should not have let you come, Mummy and Douro should not have let you come. I mean, can’t you see everything’s changed?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of cour-course I ca-ca-can.’

  ‘Everything’s gone,’ Cyrene continued, seeming not to hear her reply. ‘All the servants have fled. Frightened they were going to get caught up in the divorce, I say. Frightened they were not going to be paid, I should think. They just grabbed their wages and a lot of the silver spoons and some of Mummy’s jewellery she’d left lying about, and got the hell out, and you can’t blame them, not with all that was going on, all the shouting and screaming. Mummy trying to take an overdose, the doctor being called, and I don’t know what.’

  One of Cyrene’s long, tanned legs moved up and down on the bed constantly, up and down, up and down, restlessly, so that finally, seemingly in response to its demands, she too moved, and started to walk up and down the room.

  ‘Oh do shut up, Cyrene! Shut up that walking! Shut up, I tell you!’

  Jessamine, on hearing her pacing up and down, sprang off her own bed in the next-door room, and walking through pushed Cyrene back down on to her four-poster bed.

  ‘Don’t do that!’

  Cyrene sprang up, and they started to punch each other, and pull at each other’s hair making both their Cavalier King Charles spaniels run round them, tails wagging, thinking it was a game.

  ‘Ster-ster-stop it, stop it, both of you!’ Alexandra tried to push her way between them. ‘Ow! Wer-wer-wer-will you both stop that! Please!’

  Eventually, reluctantly, they parted, both panting, both unrepentant, waiting only to start again at any moment.

  ‘This is ner-ner-not going to help!’ Alexandra stared from one to the other of them. ‘Really. It’s ner-ner-not going to help. I know you’re ber-both pretty angry at what’s happenin
g ter-ter-to your parents, at what’s happening to you, but hurting each other is not going to help, really it’s ner-nernot.’

  ‘What do you know about anything, Alexandra Stamford? You know nothing, you know less than nothing, you’re just a country bumpkin who likes to hang up her hat wherever she can.’

  Jessamine spat out the words, but in the end walked unwillingly back to her own bedroom, and lay down on her bed looking flushed and miserable. Alexandra followed her.

  ‘Look, I ner-ner-know, it’s true, I don’t know mer-much, and I der-don’t mind what you call me, but I do ner-ner-know a bit, because mer-my father has just remarried, and I had to leave home with my grandmother and live in his girlfriend’s cottage, and then he per-put Grandma into an old people’s ward, which broke her heart, and so she der-died. And now my stepmother is having a ber-baby, and they don’t really care what happens to me, because people who get mer-married and have ber-babies together forget all about everyone else, my grandmother ser-said. She said when people get married and have ber-babies they go off into a different land, and only cer-come back when they’re quite old, and the children have grown up, and all the ner-nesting is over. So I know what it’s like to have to leave home, leave everything behind and start again, really I der-do.’

  But Jessamine was not listening, and neither was Cyrene, they were both crying.

  ‘They’ve taken the horses and sold them, the stables are empty, and Douro says our dogs may have to be put down, because Mummy absolutely won’t have dogs in London, she says it’s too cruel, and anyway we will all be out all day, and she won’t do that to them; and she won’t pass them on to anyone else who might be cruel and try to sell them. So they may have to be put down.’

  Alexandra stared at the younger girl’s tear-stained face as she hugged the small brown and white Cavalier King Charles spaniel, which was now on her knee.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asked with sudden pragmatism.