The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  Tom hesitated, disinclined to be anything but truthful, since they both knew it was really owing to Florazel that they were where they were, at any rate at that moment. He certainly owed everything to Florazel, but then remembering how she had thrown him away so callously, he raised his glass.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Let’s drink to the Queen Mary!’

  They touched glasses and drank, and once again Alfred gave his sweet low whistle, which made Tom smile.

  Part Three

  THE HOUR

  Home Chats

  In some ways Mrs Smithers was a great deal tougher than Alexandra, her comments certainly more pithy, but most of all she was less sympathetic to women of her own age. This puzzled Alexandra sometimes, most particularly when it was someone she knew who had booked a luncheon or a dinner.

  ‘Not Lydia Passmore! We don’t want her, do we? Surely we’re not so hard put as to need to cater to Lydia Passmore’s whims?’

  Alexandra looked up from her bookings list surprised by Mrs Smithers’s tone. Lydia Passmore was a little older, a great deal more frail, and perhaps a little more vaguely desperate than most of the ladies who used the house for socialising.

  ‘She seems a very nice lady.’

  ‘You did not know Lydia Passmore when she was young. She was always such a flirt, such a show-off, never had any time for anyone. Now of course she’s down on her luck, so it’s all different, I suppose.’

  Alexandra put her head on one side. It was over a year since Bob’s death, and although the extreme sensitivity that goes with the first state of mourning had passed, she still found unkindness of any sort shocked her. Doubtless it was inevitable when a light went out in your life that you woke up not just to your own darkness, but to that of other people’s, and certainly Mrs Passmore had evoked a sense of protectiveness in her, for she had none of the assumed grandeur and snooty ways of some of the ladies of the town.

  ‘Mrs Passmore’s just giving a lunch here for a couple of younger people. Relatives, I think.’

  ‘I dare say they both think she is wealthy.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Poor deluded creatures.’

  Alexandra smiled.

  ‘Could be. On the other hand they might just like having lunch with her.’

  Mrs Smithers sniffed and started to take herself off to the comfort of her upstairs rooms, rooms that she could still reach without growing out of breath, rooms where she could set out her card tables and entertain the Major and others.

  ‘Mark my words, if you had known Lydia Passmore when I knew her, you might not want to serve her lunch, Minty,’ she called over her shoulder as she left the room.

  Alexandra shrugged her shoulders, checked the dining room, made certain that Jane, the young girl who now helped at the table, was quite sure of her duties, and, since Jane was busy, went to answer the front door in her stead.

  Mrs Passmore might have been a flirt and a show-off when she was young, but nowadays she was a fragile old lady with a heartbreaking, valiant sort of air, and clothes that had once been smart and fashionable but were now a little faded, a little shiny, a little sad.

  ‘Mrs John Passmore, I booked some months ago.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Passmore, of course, how nice to see you, do come in.’

  ‘Have my young guests arrived yet?’

  She stared up at Alexandra with faded grey eyes.

  ‘Not yet, Mrs Passmore, no, but I expect they’ll be here very soon. It’s not yet one o’clock, so I dare say they’re on their way.’

  Mrs Passmore nodded.

  ‘I dare say,’ she agreed, and followed Alexandra upstairs.

  Once in the drawing room Mrs Passmore glanced anxiously at the clock as if to make sure that it was true, that it was not yet one o’clock.

  ‘Sherry?’

  ‘Oh my dear, should we?’

  ‘Of course, you must have a winter warmer, mustn’t you?’

  Alexandra loved the way the ladies who lunched and dined always said ‘should we?’ and then happily bolted down their sherries, as if once they had Alexandra’s approval they felt quite free to drink as much as they wanted, or perhaps even more, which they very often did.

  ‘It’s my niece and her husband, that’s who’s coming, that’s whom I invited today. My only relatives, you know, but I am so looking forward to seeing them. They have been abroad for some years, but are now back in London. So looking forward to it, I remember her as a little girl you know. So sweet and charming, and not at all a nuisance.’

  After two schooners of sherry, when the hands of the drawing-room clock were pointing to quarter to two, it was really rather obvious that Mrs Passmore’s guests had either forgotten or decided not to be bothered with their elderly relative.

  ‘I wonder what happened to them …’ Mrs Passmore glanced for the fiftieth time at the clock, as if willing it not to be telling the truth. ‘Do you think they put down the wrong day? Do you think they forgot?’

  ‘Perhaps there is a message – a message at home, perhaps there is a message at home?’

  ‘Oh no dear, I know there isn’t.’ Mrs Passmore glanced up hopelessly at Alexandra. ‘There isn’t a telephone, let alone a message box at my lodgings, dear, that’s how I know there isn’t a message, and can’t be.’

  ‘Why don’t we all have lunch, anyway?’ Alexandra asked brightly. ‘After all, everything is cooked and ready, we might as well all enjoy it, don’t you think?’

  Mrs Passmore shook her head and put her empty glass down on a side table.

  ‘Very kind of you, dear, but I don’t think I feel I could eat anything, not now. I was so looking forward to this, you know. So looking forward to it.’

  She sat down very suddenly and Alexandra went to her at once as she took out a handkerchief and blew her nose delicately making no sound.

  ‘I’m sure there is some explanation. Their car might be broken down; something delayed them.’

  ‘Oh yes, dear, there is an explanation, I know there is, and I’ll tell you what it is. The explanation is that no one wants to know about the old. When you’re old you’re a nuisance to yourself, and to everyone else, believe me, really you are. I know.’

  Alexandra patted her shoulder.

  ‘I dare say, but don’t you think you should eat lunch, even so? It would do you good. I’ll eat lunch with you, and so will Jane, we’ll all sit down together and have a jolly lunch, and what’s more I will make sure we give you a refund, after such a horrid disappointment.’

  ‘Give Lydia Passmore a refund! Over my dead body.’

  Mrs Smithers was looking quite furious. Alexandra stared at her, half amazed by her reaction, and half shocked.

  ‘I will pay for it, out of my own pocket, Mrs S., promise. It will be down to me, all of it, including Jane. Only fair, after all.’

  ‘More fool you,’ Mrs Smithers stated, but she sat down rather suddenly, and Alexandra, thinking discretion the better part of valour, went to leave the room.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said, after a short pause. ‘I suppose you’re right. The young are awfully cruel. It was cruel not to let Lydia know, I will admit.’ She paused again. ‘And really, I suppose I should stop taking it out on Lydia, just because she stole my beau from me.’

  Alexandra bit her lip. She might have known. So much in Deanford was down to the past, things that had happened forty years before, never to be forgotten, sometimes never to be forgiven.

  ‘I know you must think me cruel, but Lydia stole Pip from me.’ An unusually tender look came into Mrs Smithers’s eyes. ‘Pip was the love of my life – Pip Passmore. Died in the war, finally, dismantling a bomb. He was handsome and charming, and do you know? I still miss him. We were so in love, but his parents didn’t approve, or was it mine? I can’t now quite remember. Perhaps it was both?’ She paused. ‘No, well, perhaps – no, I have to admit it, it must have been mine. My mother, you know, she wanted something better for me. But when did a mother not want something better for her daughter?’ For a second she
sounded almost bitter. ‘At any rate Pip married Lydia, on the rebound everyone said, but it was the start of the war when everyone was marrying everyone, because we all thought we were going to be killed, and then of course he was killed.’

  Alexandra stared. Somehow she had never thought of Mrs Smithers having been the romantic type; she’d always had the impression that Mrs S. considered husbands to be a mere convenience, good at providing amply for their wives – or not, as the case might be – but not up to much else.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Alexandra sat down beside her, and once again she took an old hand into hers, and looked into eyes that were no longer so bright as she would wish them to be, or they might long to be. As Mrs Chisholm had once said to her, there were two rules in life. One was that when talking to someone of twenty it was best to address them as if they were seventy, and to those who were seventy as if they were twenty. At that moment Mrs Smithers was quite definitely twenty.

  Mrs Smithers looked contrite.

  ‘I shouldn’t hold out against Lydia, should I, Minty? I mean it was all so long ago, I should be kind now we are all so old.’

  Alexandra said nothing, and at that moment Jane knocked at the drawing-room door.

  ‘I’m just off now, Miss Minty, all right?’

  ‘Yes, Jane, yes of course. Goodnight.’

  ‘Letter for you, Miss Minty.’

  Alexandra stared down at the letter in her hand, dreading to open it, convinced as always that, despite the airmail stamp, it must be bad news.

  ‘Shall I open it for you, dear?’ Mrs Smithers took it, as she so often did with letters nowadays, and stared at it. ‘It’s from America. Since you don’t know anyone in America, shall I read it for you?’

  ‘Would you?’

  There was a long silence, and then Mrs Smithers looked up from a quick perusal of the letter.

  ‘It’s all right, dear, it’s not too sad. A bit, but not too. It’s from a friend of poor Bob’s, someone living in New York. And when he comes to England, he would like to meet you. It will not be for some while yet,’ she finished, sounding relieved, because their little business was now flourishing, and with hardly a day passing without some sort of booking they both knew they could ill spare Alexandra from the house. ‘Not until the spring. He will be over then, and would like to meet you.’

  Alexandra took the letter now, and started to read it, feeling as she always did that she should be stronger, and yet knowing that she was not, and perhaps never would be. The mere arrival of a letter, the mention of someone else of the same name, a myriad things, and suddenly the fog of sadness would return and she would once more begin to struggle from day to day as if on crutches, finding getting up in the morning as difficult as going to sleep.

  As if realising this, feeling ashamed and wanting to make it up to her, Mrs Smithers said gently, ‘I tell you what, Minty dear. I’ll ask Lydia Passmore to tea next week, because if what you seem to think is true, and she is a bit lonely, it might make her feel less so. We might make it a regular thing. She might even play bridge with the Major’s friend, he’s always looking for a partner.’

  In the event when she finally read the letter for herself Alexandra found that, despite it being typewritten on office paper and headed BODEL O’BRIEN with a secretary’s initials at the top, it was nothing if not courteous in tone.

  Dear Miss Stamford,

  I understood from my old landlady, Mrs Posnet, whom it seems you visited last month, that you were unofficially engaged to my late friend Bob Atkins. I hope it does not seem presumptuous, but when I come to London next spring I should very much like to meet you and talk over old times. Besides Muriel Posnet there is no one I know who knew Bob, of whom I have to say I was very fond. I was, as you must have been, devastated by his death. I do hope that this will prove possible. Please send Mrs Posnet my regards.

  Yours sincerely,

  Thomas O’Brien

  After due consideration Alexandra allowed a few days to elapse before she sat down to write a handwritten letter on the very same writing paper that had finally proved to be the inspiration for their business.

  Dear Mr O’Brien,

  Thank you for your letter. It would be very nice to meet you. Bob talked about you often. I am seeing Mrs Posnet next month. I will send her your regards and wait to hear from you when you come to London next spring.

  Yours sincerely,

  She signed herself Minty Stamford because that was what was on the envelope, and that was how she knew Bob would have referred to her, as ‘Minty’ or ‘Mints’. Then she determinedly forgot all about the letter, put it out of her mind, simply because that was her only way of coping with her ever-present sadness, to push everything firmly from her mind, just concentrate on the day-to-day details of running the business. Besides, she had money now from the sale of her cottage, a sale that the lawyer had hinted had irritated her stepmother to boiling point, and it was high time she spent it. However, she did not buy a cottage as she and Bob had planned, she bought the house next door.

  ‘Is that wise, Minty dear?’

  For some reason Mrs Smithers always said that when she secretly really rather approved of whatever was being mooted.

  ‘We can do the same thing next door as we are doing here, only a little differently.’

  ‘Oh yes, and how would that be, Minty dear?’

  ‘Well, I thought we should make the first-floor drawing room over to bridge playing, little tables always ready, that sort of thing. And some of the upper rooms, we can turn into suites like yours, can’t we?’

  Mrs Smithers stopped playing Patience and looked up.

  ‘You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not really, it’s just I like what we’re doing, and I think it’s needed.’

  ‘You’re going to come a cropper, you know that? You have an endlessly bleeding heart when it comes to old people. I do believe it all must have started with your grandmother. It marked you for life. Just don’t expect people to like you better for trying to be kind to them, will you? If you want to make an enemy, the saying goes, help someone.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, in the event that some of the older ladies or gentlemen who come and live with us next door, or just visit here on their high days and holidays, if they leave you a legacy, or even just a pair of etchings, the town will be on to you like a shot. You’ve lived here long enough to know that. Now we have not one, but two houses, the town will just think you’re after their money, not trying to make them happy and comfortable. You know how it is. People can be unkind to a degree.’

  ‘I already thought of that.’ Alexandra laughed. ‘What an embarrassment that could be. But you’re quite right to mention it. I shall ask any residents who come to live next door to sign something that will guarantee they leave their money away from me, to their favourite charity. It will be a condition.’

  ‘You are, Minty – what is it that American said in that film you took me to the other day? – ah yes, you are one cute kid!’

  Alexandra smiled. She was glad that Mrs Smithers approved. She was glad to have a new challenge. She was glad that the sun was shining outside. She was just sorry she was feeling so tired; and that was all before Christmas arrived and she felt she had to make sure to round up all the lonely and neglected in the town for what Mrs Smithers called, sighing deeply, ‘Minty’s big bash’. She nevertheless seemed to enjoy it inordinately, even down to dancing with the dreaded Major until the rest of the guests had gone, after which he was sent on his way in no uncertain terms, as if he had been forcing her to dance and she the most reluctant of party-goers, and only there from duty.

  ‘You know I don’t think she’s ever going to marry me,’ he said to Alexandra as they parted at the door this particular Christmas.

  Alexandra watched him climbing down the steps to the pavement, before weaving his way back to his own house in the next-door square, and sighed. Most unfortunately for the p
oor old Major she had the feeling that he was right. Mrs Smithers valued her freedom and her business far too much to take on another husband.

  Later, Alexandra lay on her bed with her two dogs on her feet and thought over the unlikely turn her life had taken. She stroked the tops of the dogs’ heads and wondered how everyone else spent their Christmases – not running about after Mrs Smithers and her guests, and waiting for their favourite conjuror to arrive to play magic tricks before Christmas tea. She knew what her presents under the tree would be, they would be just like last year. There would be at least a half-dozen pairs of knitted gloves, some with different coloured finger tops. There would be chocolates, various, and pull-on woollen hats, some of which she would have to oblige the donors by wearing when she shopped in the town. There would be scarves, also knitted and woollen, and there would be some bars of soap and tins of talcum powder. She rolled over on her side and buried her face in her pillows. She was very lucky. She was loved, and she was lucky – if rather over-endowed with hand-knitted gloves.

  Mrs Smithers stared at Alexandra.

  ‘I’m not terribly certain about the colour of those gloves. A trifle light, wouldn’t you say, even for the time of year, Minty?’

  Alexandra stared down at her light-coloured suede gloves. She had thought them really rather fetching; now however she was filled with doubt, and went back to the drawing-room mirror to stare at herself. There was no doubt about it, she did look chic, but perhaps Mrs Smithers was right about the gloves. She had to admit that going to Brighton on the train and buying the smartest and most expensive outfits she could find had cheered her out of her winter blues in a way that she would not have thought possible.

  ‘Oh I think they’re all right,’ she said, addressing herself rather than Mrs Smithers in the mirror. ‘Apparently they’re absolutely the thing in London, lighter-coloured gloves, really they are.’

  She stared appreciatively at the pleated skirt and simple, fitted jacket with scarf collar in which she had chosen to travel, and pulled her chic close-fitting hat down with her gloved hands. She looked and felt an attractive young woman again, something which she had not felt for far too long.