The Wind Off the Sea

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I know, Walter. It’s all right.’

  ‘I couldn’t help myself. It was as if – it was as if the sky kept falling down on me, as if there was hardly ever any daylight.’

  ‘It’s all right, Walter – you have nothing to apologise about. If anyone should apologise—’

  ‘It certainly isn’t you, my darling. You have done nothing wrong whatsoever.’

  ‘I think I have, Walter. But nothing deliberately wrong. I should have been more understanding. I should have been more – more loving.’

  Walter eased her a little away from him so that he could look down into her eyes. He smiled at her, then kissed her once more on the forehead.

  ‘Nobody could have been more loving than you,’ he assured her. ‘Whenever I had one of my really black moods on – and I’d look up and see you sitting there, reading your book or doing your sewing, and you’d look back at me with those big anxious eyes, I could just feel your love. I couldn’t do much about it, I couldn’t say anything at the time – and God knows I wanted to, but I just couldn’t – but it was just the fact that – well. That you were still there. That you were sitting it out, sitting out what must have been a terrible time for you, that was what counted. Because you were still there I knew you had to still love me.’

  ‘Which I did, Walter. And which I do now more than ever.’

  And now Walter was hurtling down the stairs of the cottage after her, still calling for her to wait, leaping off the staircase and grabbing Judy by the hands as she was getting Hamish’s lead and a coat for herself.

  ‘I really do want to come with you!’ he laughed. ‘So don’t you dare go without me!’

  Grinning up at her he sat on the bottom step and started to pull on his outdoor shoes. Judy smiled back at him, clipping the tartan lead onto her little dog’s collar. Hamish barked joyously, knowing a walk was in the offing.

  ‘I’m only going to check up on the house, Walter. I’m not going to be long.’

  ‘I don’t care, Mrs Tate. I do not want to miss a moment of your company.’

  ‘OK – if you get bored that’s your hard cheese.’

  ‘Jolly hockey sticks!’ Walter laughed teasingly. ‘Up school and at ’em.’

  ‘Don’t start,’ Judy warned. ‘Or I’ll set Hamish on to you. I thought you wanted to begin clearing up the leaves?’

  ‘I did – but now I have other things in mind.’ Walter stood up, shoelaces tied, and kissed her full on the mouth. ‘Come along, Mrs Tate,’ he ordered. ‘At the double.’

  He took Hamish’s lead from her and jogged out of the cottage in front of her. Judy laughed and ran on up the lane behind him.

  ‘That was a wonderful night last night,’ Judy said, when they’d slowed down to a walk to continue hand in hand. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me!’ Walter laughed. ‘I just wish we could have afforded to stay the night.’

  ‘I don’t. There’s nothing quite like one’s own bed.’

  ‘No.’ Walter turned and smiled at her. ‘No, there isn’t, is there?’

  They walked along for a while in silence, swinging arms the way young lovers sometimes do, caught up in their memories of the night before and thinking hopefully of the happiness that could lie ahead for them now.

  ‘One thing I meant to ask you – that I have to ask you,’ Walter said, breaking it. ‘Did you flirt with Waldo on purpose, Judy? To make me jealous?’

  ‘I never flirted with him once,’ Judy replied with perfect truth.

  ‘Very well.’ Walter mock sighed. ‘Did he flirt with you on purpose?’

  ‘Well of course!’ Judy laughed. ‘What else did you think that was all about?’

  ‘I was meant to get jealous?’

  ‘It was Waldo’s own rendition – is that the word? Waldo’s interpretation of Othello. Better. Waldo’s rendition of Iago.’

  Walter frowned as he thought about this, then raised his eyebrows. ‘Likes to sail close to the wind, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He has been taking sailing lessons from Dauncy,’ Judy teased.

  ‘He didn’t learn that sort of jiggery pokery from young bro.’

  ‘He got a black eye for his trouble.’

  ‘Lucky I didn’t knock him over the cliff.’ Walter snorted.

  ‘You couldn’t have done that. Waldo was too strong for you.’

  ‘No he wasn’t!’

  ‘He was, too. He managed to make sure you didn’t hit him again.’

  ‘I thought once was quite enough!’ Walter protested, shadow boxing as he walked.

  ‘Walter – Waldo’s twice your weight!’ Judy laughed. ‘And probably twice as strong!’

  ‘I hope he’s not twice as attractive,’ Walter said suddenly, stopping his boxing and dropping back to a walk. ‘Is he?’

  ‘Of course he isn’t. He’s not one quarter as attractive as you.’

  ‘I don’t know. He seems to have the whole of Bexham womanhood at his feet.’

  ‘He is not nearly as attractive as you, silly,’ Judy assured him. ‘And even if he was, so what? You’re the one I lerve.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to.’ Judy crossed her heart in an elaborate schoolgirl way which always made Walter laugh.

  ‘I believe you, Mrs Tate,’ he said. ‘But there’s thousands that wouldn’t.’

  Judy smiled and slipped her arm through his, walking as close to him as she could.

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you – or rather I wouldn’t have blamed you,’ Walter said thoughtfully. ‘If you had found him attractive and – well. And had a bit of a fling, say. Because let’s face it, I was being a pain.’

  ‘No you weren’t.’

  ‘Of course I was. But it was difficult – coming home. Coming home after all that time.’

  ‘Of course it was.’

  ‘Particularly when I found out that you hadn’t got any messages. That you thought – that you didn’t know I was still alive and kicking. I think walking through that gate back there – into the garden – I think now that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Harder than anything I had to face during the war. I had no idea what you’d think of me. Whether you still – you still felt anything. Three years is one hell of a long time. I quite expected you to have forgotten all about me – even if you had known I was still alive. I mean three years, Judy? And then suddenly there I am again, except I’m not, because I’m not the same me, and you – you hardly even knew the old me, so what were you to make of it? I’ll tell you what it was like, shall I? For me anyway. It was as if I’d taken off all my clothes in 1942 to go for a swim in the sea, left them there on the beach, only I didn’t come back again. Not for three years. Then when I did I picked up my clothes where I’d left them and expected them still to fit me – which of course they didn’t. They couldn’t. They were bound either to hang off me, or be too tight, or just look all wrong – they were never going to fit me after all that time. Poor you.’ He stopped and turned to Judy, standing in front of her in the path that led up to the front door of her parents’ house. ‘You were meant to just take it or leave it. You were meant to welcome back with open arms this stranger in ill fitting clothes who hardly knew himself let alone his wife.’ He shook his head and looked sadly at her. ‘Poor darling Judy – how I missed you. God how I missed you – not just when I was away from you but even when I was back home and couldn’t reach you. I’ve missed you so much.’

  Judy took both his hands in hers and kissed him.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s all over now. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ Walter said decisively, all doubts at last banished. ‘Yes it is, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘And I suppose we’ve got old Iago to thank for it, have we?’

  ‘I think he played a part.’ Judy smiled. ‘But most of all I say, thank God.’

  She opened the front door of her old family home with
a large iron latchkey and they stepped into the cool darkness of the hall. Judy went to turn the lights on but Walter stopped her, drawing her back to him.

  ‘No, I like it like this, There’s something about old houses when they’re empty. Something exciting.’

  Judy knew what he meant. Whenever she had been left alone in the house when she was a girl, she often felt a peculiar thrill from it, as if there was danger in being solitary. She seemed to be getting that same thrill, but it wasn’t a sense of danger that was exciting her. It was something else.

  ‘Do you remember?’ she asked, taking Walter’s hand and leading him through the hall.

  ‘Of course I remember. What sort of person do you think I am?’ He laughed

  ‘Do you think it was wrong?’

  ‘Not a bit. We thought we might not ever see each other again. Which as it turned out, wasn’t far from the truth.’

  ‘I used to worry so much about it. I really thought I’d go straight to hell.’

  Walter smiled and held her hand even more tightly as he leaned over and opened a door.

  ‘What are you doing, Walter?’

  ‘What do you think?’ He smiled mischievously. ‘Putting Hamish in the kitchen.’

  He pushed the little dog gently into the kitchen and shut the door behind him.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be all right in there, Walter?’

  ‘I think he’ll be perfectly all right in there. Come on.’

  ‘Do you think we should?’ Judy asked fearfully as they tiptoed in semi-darkness down the rest of the corridor towards the conservatory that lay at the back of the house.

  ‘Your parents are hardly going to burst through the door, are they?’

  ‘I thought they were before. I was convinced they were before.’

  Walter laughed and opened the heavy double doors of the conservatory. At once they were both hit by the tropical warmth of the huge glassed room as well as overcome with the heady intoxicating smell of the jasmine.

  ‘That smell. My God, the jasmine was out then, too.’

  ‘Afterwards I carried the scent of these flowers wherever I was.’

  Judy sighed, standing quite still, looking around, remembering. ‘It was romantic.’ She turned to him and Walter kissed her, before slowly and carefully beginning to undo the pearl buttons on her blouse.

  ‘But there’s a big difference this time, Mrs Tate. This time I’m not going away from you. I’m never going to go away again – not ever, I hope.’

  After which he kissed her again.

  And again.

  And again.

  ‘You’ve been asked to dinner, Mattie!’ John called upstairs in excitement after Lionel had let him in and retired to the quiet of the drawing room to study his latest book on bridge technique. ‘Mattie?’

  Mattie hurried out of her bedroom and appeared on the landing.

  ‘I’ve been what?’ she echoed. ‘Asked to dinner? When?’

  John held out his hand to beckon her down to him, and Mattie hopped down the stairs two at a time, missing out the last four to jump straight into John’s arms.

  ‘They haven’t actually given a date yet, set a day – you know – they have a somewhat full social calendar,’ John said, slightly evasively. ‘But when I brought the subject up about you and me, instead of the usual objections et cetera, my mother smiled and said that it would be very nice if one day I brought you home to meet them properly. And have dinner.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ Mattie said cautiously. ‘But you really have no idea when?’

  ‘Just that obviously it will be very soon, or they wouldn’t have bothered to mention it,’ John said happily, before kissing her on the cheek. ‘I think they’re sort of finally coming to their senses. Trying to be reasonable – just in case I rush off with you to Gretna Green.’

  ‘I wonder why they’ve suddenly started coming to their senses, as you call it,’ Mattie said. ‘As far as your father was concerned I thought we didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘Search me,’ John shrugged. ‘It can’t just be the success of Mamma’s exhibition. That sort of thing wouldn’t affect the dear parents’ attitude to you and me.’

  ‘So what could it be?’

  ‘Maybe what they’ve come to realise is how mad I am about you and that there’s no point in any further resistance.’ John grinned and then kissed Mattie gently on the mouth. He had discovered recently that he could resist most things, but not Mattie’s luscious, full lips.

  ‘Will you two lovebirds stop billing and cooing and come in here for a drink?’ Lionel called. ‘A man could die of thirst!’

  ‘And talking of sea changes—’ John nodded towards the sitting room. Mattie widened her eyes and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Don’t ask me. Must be something in the air.’ She laughed. ‘Or maybe in the gin!’

  In his armchair by the fireside, Lionel smiled to himself as he began a new chapter on Slam Bidding. He knew exactly what the young people were talking about without even having to hear, just as well as he knew the explanation for his own change. It was nothing to do with Waldo’s and his triumph at the card table, nor indeed with the delectable as well as extremely rich Mrs Van der Beek’s growing interest in him – although he would be a fool not to admit that carried quite a considerable sway – but all to do with Waldo’s apparently idle conversation one evening subsequent to their famous victory when they were discussing how they had actually pulled it off.

  ‘By taking a risk, of course, my dear fellow!’ Waldo had laughed. ‘Drinking from the far side of the cup no less.’

  ‘That is not a characteristic of mine, Waldo,’ Lionel had replied, surprised. ‘That is not the sort of person I am.’

  ‘You were that night, and you don’t regret it, do you?’

  ‘No, but I do wonder at it.’

  ‘You took a risk, but what were you risking? Reputation only. What other people might or might not think of you, and what you might or might not think of yourself. You weren’t risking your money – it doesn’t matter about mine because that’s academic at this point – and so you weren’t risking your livelihood, simply your reputation, and what is that anyway? Reputation is nothing without achievement and achievement is never arrived at without risk. So let’s admire risk, shall we? Let’s raise our glasses and drink to risk – because without the taking of it, we are all absolute dullards.’

  The more he’d thought about Waldo’s words, the more Lionel had considered them to contain the right kind of truth. Applying them to himself, and to the way he looked at life, of a sudden changed him, in every way. To start with, he decided not to employ Ellen any more. Since he had learned to cook in the war, he would now learn to keep house and thereby ensure himself a great deal more privacy – important if Mrs Van der Beek came to visit, say, which Lionel very well thought she might.

  ‘It’s not doing you any good coming here, and, frankly, it’s getting me down,’ he told Ellen, making sure to take a kindly tone. ‘There’s a much better position for you at Sir Arthur and Lady Melton’s at the top of the village. I met old Gardiner in the street and she’s all for giving up now, so why not go up to the Manor—’

  ‘I know where Lady Melton lives, thank you, Mr Eastcott.’

  Ellen had sniffed, removed her pinny, gone to see Lady Melton, and been taken on for twice the money.

  For a few days Mattie had kept wondering aloud who would do the housework, to which Lionel kept replying that he would, and that it would be good for him, until Mattie had to admit that the house was a great deal cleaner now that Ellen had gone and the atmosphere a great deal more cheerful.

  Lionel’s next concern had been with his daughter. If he continued to oppose Mattie’s romance, it would surely be what Waldo would call playing safe, and really what mattered now was that John Tate obviously adored Mathilda. So it might be a terrible thing to spoil their chance of happiness together. Besides, Lionel further considered, if anyone was taking risks, it was surely John and Mat
tie, and since they were more than prepared to do so, why not let them? Having come to his conclusions Lionel decided he would sit down and put such thoughts as he had on the matter in a letter to John’s parents, in an attempt to bring some common sense to bear on the situation. This he had finally done, which was why he was now sitting so contentedly by his fireside with a freshly poured gin and tonic and a newly opened book without a single proper care in the world.

  Meggie, on the other hand, found herself suddenly full of cares. Through her agents she seemed quite unable to raise any interest in Cucklington House, at least not at the price she was asking, a price which both she and they considered eminently reasonable for such a beautiful and historic house. It seemed no-one in these days had much interest in buying a place of such architectural merit, particularly in Sussex, but more especially since poor old Cucklington House required a considerable amount of repair at a time when, due to building restrictions, repairs of such magnitude were all but forbidden. Yet Meggie had to sell. She had taxes to pay and debts to meet and no income other than the few shillings her former butler insisted she take for helping out behind the bar. Her grandmother had left her a certain amount of money for sure, but she had also very generously left her the great, grand old house without for a moment thinking how much it would cost to repair.

  Then too there were the problems she had inherited from her parents. She had lost them both out of the blue when their car veered off the highway one night when they were returning home from an all night party at Cape Cod, crashing in flames at the bottom of a steep wooded valley. Typically they had made absolutely no provision for their only child, assuming in their usual feckless way that since Meggie was the apple of her grandmother’s eye their daughter had already inherited a small fortune when Madame Gran had died in 1940. Such had not, alas, been the case, and finally Meggie found herself far from rich, having inherited only a crumbling house as well as a great many effects for which little money could be raised from anywhere, shortages having extended themselves not just to food and petrol, but to people’s disposable incomes as well.

  Meggie thought more about her parents now that they were gone than she did when they had been alive. During their lifetime she had thought of them hardly at all because she hardly saw them. Her father had been posted to the US at the start of the war, and what with his being in the diplomatic service, and extremely handsome with a beautiful wife, doors were opened to them everywhere, and the doors that opened in New York led to a far more enjoyable social life than the one they had abandoned in war-torn London. Within six months of settling in New York her father had resigned his diplomatic post and accepted an extremely lucrative position on the board of a highly successful firm of investment bankers. Nevertheless, the Gore-Stewarts went through their money as if they owned a private mint, Sir Anthony adding to their growing financial difficulties by his unsuccessful but compulsive gambling. By the time their car had swerved fatally off the highway, the Gore-Stewarts were not just heavily in debt, they were all but penniless.