by Susan Barrie
The tea revived them magically, and they went on until it was pitch dark, and a large number of lights were blazing throughout the house.
Marianne returned from her visit to the hairdresser looking ten times more alluring than when she set out, and within a few minutes of her return the bath taps were running in her stepmother’s apartment. Marianne’s social occasions always involved a lot of borrowing from her sisters—and frequently from Alison—and to-night was no exception. Although Jessamy was occupied with her flower arrangements, and Alison and Mrs. Davenport were still toiling in the main house, Marianne, in a bath robe, raced backwards and forwards along stone corridors and up mysterious short flights of stairs to achieve her objective.
From Alison she won permission to use an as yet unopened bottle of perfume, as well as borrow her best pair of sheer stockings; and from Jessamy she won a grudging assent to borrow a pair of pearl ear-clips. As Lorne was still in Murchester she had no need to ask permission there, and rifled her room until she found an unopened box of lace-edged handkerchiefs, one of which she filched. She was about to close the drawer when she noticed a small gold-mesh handbag, which was Lorne’s fifteenth birthday present from her father, just before he died, and without the smallest shred of conscience she decided she could make use of that, too.
Then she raced back to her room, finished her dressing and emerged looking like a twentieth-century Cinderella whose slacks and sweater were thrust in the back of her wardrobe, and happily forgotten for that one night, at least.
It was the main staircase of Leydon Hall that she descended when she was finally ready, and not one of the fine ladies in the portraits lining the gallery above her and the walls of the vast hall below her had ever looked more captivatingly sure of herself or more confident that this was her rightful setting. While Alison organised the activities of her helpers in the kitchen and rushed from newly lit stove to huge electric cooker to make certain her specially thought out menu was not likely to be ruined, and had no other thought in her head but the success of the nerve-shattering evening ahead of her, Marianne, in a wild silk dress of creamy pink worn beneath a velvet coat with a touch of mink on the collar—Alison had once possessed a short mink jacket which had been cut up to adorn various portions of her stepdaughters’ anatomies—smelling delightfully of Alison’s perfume, paused for a half second on each tread of the stairs as she made her way down to the hall.
Golden and gleaming and beautiful, and entirely satisfied with herself, she paused for rather longer near the foot of the stairs to cast an appreciative glance around the hall and listen for the arrival of her escort, whose car could usually be heard roaring up the drive long before he was anywhere near the front of the house. He was a young veterinary surgeon by the name of Robert Marquis, and he was merely the latest incumbent, as it were, in a long line of aspiring hopefuls for the hand of the beguiling Marianne. Whether Marianne regarded him with more pleasure than she had any of her earlier admirers no one member of her family could tell, but she certainly looked very contemplative as she stood with her graceful head backflung waiting for the sounds of his approach.
As she stood there she took note of the amount of attention the hall itself had received from her stepmother and Mrs. Davenport during the course of the afternoon, and Jessamy had put flowers on the gigantic hall table. A not very successful fire was smouldering on the baronial hearth, and away up amongst the roof beams a cold current of air stirred a couple of faded banners that had been carried by Leydons in various historic skirmishes.
Marianne stiffened slightly as she thought she caught the sound of car wheels ... But they were far too silent to be the wheels of Robert Marquis’s convertible that he had had fitted with a racing engine. She could have moved or disappeared behind one of the numerous doors that opened off the vast expanse of hall when it became clear to her that this was the owner returning, but she did nothing of the kind. She simply stood there, waiting and smiling very slightly, as if she was the mistress of the house expecting to be taken out for the evening by the master.
Charles Leydon thrust open the great door with an impatient hand. He knew perfectly well that if he pulled the old-fashioned bell-chain (which was probably rusty in any case) no well-trained manservant would be likely to answer him, and as yet he was not quite clear about the duties of Mrs. Fairlie. She had struck him as an obliging if somewhat reticent young woman, but he had not so far ascertained whether she received a salary or anything of that sort. Mr. Minty was a trifle vague on the subject ... as indeed, he was vague on most subjects that had nothing to do with land values and tenures and rights of disposal. It was one of Mr. Leydon’s list of points that had to be raised and cleared up before this first visit of his to Leydon Hall terminated.
Mr. Minty was hard on his client’s heels as they entered the hall, and even he felt a trifle surprised by the sight of one of the young women they had met that morning apparently poised to receive them on the staircase. She was very differently dressed from the way in which she had been dressed that morning, and in fact he would have said she was a little overdressed for a caretaker’s dependent. And it certainly did strike him that she hadn’t any real right to be where she was ... not without a feather duster in her hand, or a polishing rag, or something of the sort.
Her quarters were in the south tower, where no one could take exception if she chose to dress up like one of those young women he had seen occasionally on television—and he was not a television addict; or in a glossy magazine. And he was not a great magazine reader, either.
“Good evening.” She spoke pleasantly and absolutely confidently as she descended the stairs. “I do hope you had a good lunch at the Leydon Arms. They do a good meal, I know. As a matter of fact, I’m going to have dinner there to-night.”
She addressed herself to Leydon, and it was into his eyes that she smiled with extraordinary sweetness as she reached the hall.
“Thank you, but I’ve already forgotten what I had for lunch. I’ve been into Murchester since then,” he replied curtly.
He was vaguely irritated by so much grace and elegance in sherry-coloured velvet and some strikingly good-looking fur. And beneath the coat her silken skirts were full and reached to her small satin slippers.
“Oh, really?” She was ready to be chatty, and he sensed it. “How do you like our little country town? I expect, after New Zealand, it seems terribly, terribly rustic and rural—”
“I haven’t been to New Zealand since I was a very small child! so I have no idea what goes on out there or how badly, or otherwise, it contrasts with England,” he snubbed her quite deliberately this time. And then, as she tried to ignore faint prickles of annoyance that made her delicate skin feel as if it had been rubbed up the wrong way, a diversion was created by Jessamy making her appearance from the flower-room with a great stone vase of chrysanthemums that was plainly far too heavy for her to carry, and as a result of her awkward movements the water was slopping all over the place, one of the prize blooms was interfering with her vision by doing its best to poke her eye out; and when she suddenly realised that the gentleman for whom all this tremendous effort was being made had already returned to Leydon, and was in the hall, she uttered a nervous gasp and the stone vase crashed to the floor.
Marianne, instead of going to her assistance, stood still and shook her head at her.
“Alison will thank you for that!” she exclaimed. “She’ll have to clear up the mess!”
But Charles Leydon, suddenly all concern, took a few quick strides across the hall and righted the stone vase for Jessamy. He went round gathering up the chrysanthemums and stuck them in the vase that was now depleted of its water content, and then assured Jessamy that accidents will happen and, in any case, the vase was far too heavy for her, and she shouldn’t have attempted to carry it. Someone else should have carried it for her—he shot an almost baleful glance at Marianne—and whatever she did in future she must not attempt to do anything of the kind again. With her unreliab
le foot she might have had a serious accident and hurt herself.
Jessamy, nineteen and extremely impressionable, with a retentive memory and a head full of Scott, Tennyson, Keats and other lyrical writers of the same period, found herself simply gazing at him as she had done that morning. She recalled that she was the only one that morning who had received a kind word from him. And now, when he might have felt annoyed because of the mess on his great hall floor, he was being unbelievably nice.
His curiously light blue eyes smiled at her. She noticed what very long and thick black eyelashes he had. and what a beautifully shaped chin and jaw he had. His nose was almost straight—Grecian, she thought—and his hairline was most attractive. The way his thick black hair, with a sheen like polished satin, grew back from it was intriguing and at the same time endearing. She wanted to put out a finger and touch it as he bent down and rescued yet another chrysanthemum.
“I hope you don’t mind my getting all these flowers out of the gardener,” she said, in her soft, husky, breathless voice. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“I’m not surprised.”
This time his eyes smiled at her. She knew she would never quite forget the way he smiled at her. A sensation like anguish took possession of her. If only she wasn’t wearing quite such an old jumper and skirt, and a little of Marianne’s tinsel-like charm could replace the melancholy gloom of her great dark eyes, and the way she knew she smiled ... diffidently. For this one night at least!
She wanted to be able to dazzle him with her charm, feel him recoil before the impact of it ... as Marianne’s young men recoiled before her charm. She wanted to be able to impress him, not with her Dresden-china fragility, her helplessness, her awkwardness, but with her vital, glowing beauty.
A car came roaring up the drive, and Marianne rushed to the door and opened it. She slammed the door after her. Alison appeared in the gallery above them and looked down and sighed when she saw the watery mess that had to be cleaned up.
Mrs. Davenport thrust her aside.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
CHAPTER III
THE dinner went off marvellously, considering the brief amount of time that Alison had had to prepare for it and devote to it. Her two helpers in the kitchen were both untrained girls who could prepare vegetables and wash up, but knew little about the finer points of cookery.
Alison herself, as soon as she had satisfied herself that there was no more that could be done to the rooms prepared for the new owner, disappeared into the nearest bathroom and cleaned herself up, found one of her own overalls—a clean one—hanging on a door, donned it, and raced downstairs to the kitchen to really get to work on the dinner.
Luckily, a few telephone calls to reliable tradesmen had resulted in a brace of pheasants being brought to the Hall, some tinned turtle soup, a carton of frozen strawberries, cream, and some tins of anchovies.
The anchovies she used for a savoury, the strawberries were incorporated in a fresh fruit salad, the cream whipped to be served with them, and some of it retained for coffee. The pheasants were accompanied by a rich brown gravy when they were carried into the dining room, and amongst the vegetables that she served were creamed potatoes and potato straws.
Having had little to eat herself since breakfast she felt quite hungry herself when dishing up the meal.
Before beating the gong—unused since Sir Francis’s day—she made certain the fire in the dining-room was behaving itself. It was in actual fact roaring up the chimney, Mrs. Davenport having piled the log-basket with logs, and the table that had been laid by herself looked attractive if a little funereal where the candles in the gleaming silver candelabrum that she had set at one end of the table did not succeed in dissipating the shadows with their flickering light.
For some unknown reason the electric lights in the dining-room had failed, and therefore candles were essential. Fortunately she had a supply of coloured ones in her own store-cupboard.
Just before the meal was served Mr. Leydon found his way to the largest of the three kitchens, where the ovens were sited, and placed a bottle of wine on the table.
“Chill this if you can,” he requested. “Don’t chill it too much or you’ll ruin it.” He cast a glance round the kitchen, recognised that a transformation had taken place since morning and that the place was actually warm. He seemed surprised. “You must have done a lot of work,” he said, “to achieve this.”
Alison, in her blue overall, and with her pale gold hair lightly smudged with flour, answered a trifle drily.
“I engaged some help from the village.” For the first time he became aware of the two young women scouring saucepans and putting away used utensils at the far end of the kitchen. “I hope that’s in order. I mean,” a little awkwardly, “they have to be paid—”
“Of course.” He spoke loftily. “Naturally I shall pay them, and you must let me know the cost of all this...” waving a hand to indicate the contents of the littered table.
Alison flushed slightly.
“I didn’t mean the food, Mr. Leydon,” she protested. “I’m perfectly happy to provide you with dinner.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” he exclaimed. His expression was good-humoured, and she was not entirely surprised to find that he had changed into a dinner-jacket. It was perfectly tailored and fitted him so well that for the first time it was really borne in on her that he was an extremely personable man ... a handsome man by any standards. His cool grey eyes flickered over her. “I feel I ought to ask you to join us at dinner, but I’m not quite certain who would take over here if you did. Could matters proceed now without you?” He directed a more doubtful glance at the washers-up.
“Oh, no, thank you all the same.” Alison was heartily glad that she had no option but to refuse. “Jenny and Margaret are not really cooks, and I have to supervise them. But Jenny will wait at table. She’s had quite a lot of experience, and she’s not clumsy.”
“Good!”
He helped himself to a grape from a dish on the table.
“What about dessert?”
“It’s on the dining-room sideboard.”
“Splendid.” Another grape, and then he turned away. “By the way, polish up a couple of liqueur glasses and bring them to the library with the coffee, will you? There’s a bottle of Napoleon brandy upstairs in my room, and I’ll fetch it.”
He was half way to the door when something else occurred to him, and he turned back.
“Don’t those stepdaughters of yours ever help you? That poor little thing with the lame foot appears to have done the flowers, but the other two, who struck me as very fit specimens, don’t seem to have rallied round. One of them has apparently just gone off for the evening, looking like a contestant in a beauty contest. Is she allergic to housework, or does she consider that my coming here has nothing whatsoever to do with her?”
Alison flushed again. She could have told him that that was exactly the way Marianne looked at it. His coming to Leydon Hall was nothing to do with her, although circumstances forced her to live in a corner of it.
“Marianne has a boy-friend who was coming to collect her to-night. He was taking her to dinner and a dance. This is rather a dull part of the world for young people ... She doesn’t get many opportunities to enjoy herself.”
His eyebrows went up slightly.
“And the other young woman? Is she old enough to have a boy-friend? You must make allowances for me, because I’m quite ignorant about these matters,” with a good deal of dryness.
Alison explained. “Lorne has gone to the cinema in Murchester after a Spanish lesson this afternoon.”
His eyebrows remained up.
“Spanish lessons and the cinema, dinners and dances. Life can’t be all that dull!”
Alison dived for the oven-cloth as soon as he left the kitchen. Her nostrils were offended by the smell of too-well-done pheasant.
But when Jenny carried them to table they could not have looked more gloriously brown, nor smelled
more succulent. There was a disused hatch between the kitchen and the dining room, and this was opened for the meal. Margaret on the one side handed dishes through it to her fellow helper on the other, while Alison remained discreetly in the background and hoped for the best. In fact, she prayed fervently that all would go well ... the chestnut stuffing, the crisp curls of bacon, the tiny sausages, the vegetables in the piping hot dishes. The dishes were so hot, in fact, that Jenny burned herself carrying them to table, but they were cooling rapidly by the time they reached the candlelit oasis in the middle of the vast, shadowy room.
Nevertheless, Jenny reported excitedly, through the hatch, that Mr. Leydon and his guest were falling to with a will. They had drunk a couple of sherries in the library before dinner, and now it was quite obvious they had worked up an appetite. Even Mr. Minty looked as if he was really enjoying himself, although when he arrived it was quite plain he had more or less resigned himself to the worst type of evening imaginable. What with talking business with his client and freezing in his great house, the outlook had not been good. Attired in an antiquated dinner-jacket, and sniffing into his pocket-handkerchief, Alison had felt quite sorry for him when she showed them to the library. But the sight of the roaring fire that awaited him had wrought quite a transformation.
And now matters were proceeding more favourably still, and Mr. Minty was making quite a pig of himself with the chestnut stuffing. The fresh fruit salad and the cream disappeared in a flash, and then the savoury was placed before the diners. It wasn’t merely an anchovy savoury, it was an artistic as well as a culinary triumph, and the result of a secret recipe Alison possessed. Afterwards the cheeses remained untouched, but Mr. Leydon cracked himself a walnut, and Mr. Minty nibbled at a few muscatels.
Then the gentlemen withdrew to the library
The fire had been made up in their absence, and it would have threatened the flues if Alison hadn’t had the chimney swept recently. Two leather chairs were drawn close to the flames, and as soon as she heard footsteps crossing the hall Alison nipped round through the service door and placed the tray with the coffee and the liqueur glasses on a little table between them. She was beating a retreat when the two men entered the room, and Mr. Minty overwhelmed her with his appreciation.