Seaview House, page 27
But presently she realized that one interview in particular could not be postponed. She must see Nevil as soon as possible.
“Because our local grapevine is so fearfully efficient,” she told Edward. “And it would be terrible if he heard about it from someone else. I must bicycle over to Wanswick at once.”
“I am all for it. But of course I’ll drive you over, and then we’ll go on to Holsburgh and restore our morale with a strong drink before we face your family.”
“Oh, Edward! But I must see him alone. He wouldn’t like it if you were there.”
“He’s not going to like it anyway,” Edward pointed out. “But I promise you I’ll spare his feelings. I won’t appear.”
“But if we go in the car they will see us starting,” Lucy said anxiously. “They will want to know where—oh, and what about Mr. Heritage? He will be expecting you to drive him home.”
“He can send for his own car,” Edward said. “If he hasn’t already done so I shall owe your mother a profound apology for leaving him all this time on her hands.”
“But what happened? You are being very mysterious about Mr. Heritage.”
“So I am. But I’ll tell you all about it afterwards. . . . Darling, if the grapevine sees us like this we shall never catch up with it. I’ll go and fetch the car and meet you at this little gate.”
“Yes,” she said. “We’d better go.”
But they lingered on, not to discuss Mr. Heritage but for the joy of being together, and in love. The homely orchard could have taken its place among the traditional spots—shadowy waltz-haunted conservatories or moonlit romantic ruins that appeared in the Newby legends; but Lucy had ceased to worry about living up to the Newby legends.
“I didn’t know I was in love till long after that,” she said, going back to the day of the fire.
“I knew I was, then. But, to do him justice, Uncle Heritage got there first. He guessed before I did that I’d met my fate.”
“But, Edward, how could he possibly know?”
“He watched with his sharp little eyes.”
Lucy protested that there had been nothing to watch. “How did you know?” she asked, laughing.
“By my clumsiness,” he answered solemnly. “I suddenly became fearfully absent-minded, and I kept on breaking things. I thought it over, and I realized I must be in love.”
“Dear Edward, it’s a beautiful theory—but you’ve forgotten the bell. The first thing you did, when you came to the house, was to break the bell,” she pointed out, “before you’d even met me.”
Edward said that must have been clairvoyance. He was glad to know that clairvoyance came into the picture at last.
Outside the hotel door the scarlet car stood in full view of the garden and the front windows. Edward could not reach it without going through the kitchen or past the window of the private sitting-room; he chose the latter approach because it seemed likely to be quicker than an encounter with Mrs. M-J. The sitting-room, at the back of the house, did not overlook the car; once past it, he could hope to escape inquiries.
Inside the sitting-room Edith and Rose, with their one remaining guest, sat in a silence which none of them felt able to break. Mr. Priddy and Mr. Dinsdale had only recently left; and though they had stayed far longer than they were expected to their presence had been a great help and had made it possible to keep up a pretence of general conversation. But since their departure it was hard to pretend that this was even the companionable silence of three old friends recovering from a tiring social occasion.
Mr. Heritage sat on the sofa, and frequently consulted his watch. He would willingly have talked to Edith, if only Rose had not been there; but it was Rose’s outrageous behaviour that he wished to discuss, and her presence naturally made it impossible. Edith, on the other hand, wanted to talk to Rose and was inwardly cursing Edward for his disappearance. But Rose only wanted to be left alone; and, in a lesser degree, to take her shoes off and rest her aching feet.
She accomplished this, kicking the shoes under the flounce of the chair cover and hiding her feet as well as she could with her skirt. Edith was reminded of someone settling down to endure a siege. Were they to be kept here all night? She cleared her throat, looked Mr. Heritage full in the eye, and—as it happily occurred to her—took the offensive.
“Edward seems to have forgotten about you,” she said.
“Not at all,” Mr. Heritage snapped back. “I assume he has been delayed by the contractors. These provincial builders need a good deal of guidance; he has probably seen some stupid error and is getting it put right.”
“Shall I walk across and look for him?”
“Certainly not.”
To account for Edward’s absence—which might otherwise have looked like abandonment—Mr. Heritage had insisted that he must have walked over to the building site. But to go there in search of him, or to send someone else, would be to admit defeat. Here he was and here he would remain until his godson returned, with his grievance growing magnificently huge and real. He was a wronged man, an ill-treated host; and it all helped to cover up, in his own mind, his deficiencies as a guest.
“I suppose he is there,” Edith said sceptically.
“Where else, pray, should he be?”
As they all assumed that Lucy was in Wanswick with Nevil there was no obvious answer to this question. The minutes ticked by. Edith wanted to go and see how Wedmore and his assistants were getting on, but she did not like to leave Rose and Mr. Heritage alone. Or so she told herself; but it was fatigue as well as sisterly concern that kept her there. She was the daughter of a centenarian, and she felt like a centenarian herself. It was a relief just to sit still, with the excellent excuse of not daring to go. She only wished she could follow Rose’s example and take her shoes off; but her position right under Mr. Heritage’s coldly critical eye made it impossible.
Rose, by the window, was miserably brooding on her own loss of temper and the hatefulness of Mr. Heritage. Her thoughts were extremely confused; maternal anxiety persisted, but vivid and painful memories of the scene in the dining-room overlaid it. Besides, she was too tired, and too shaken, to start making new plans for Lucy’s rescue. If only Mr. Heritage would go, and never come back! But when he went, she would have to face Edith.
Suddenly, in the garden she hadn’t been consciously looking at, she saw Edward. He came from the direction of the orchard; he walked quickly and lightly across the lawn; and, as he passed the window, he smiled at her and put his finger to his lips. It was a gesture that begged for her silence. But it was more than that. It drew her, startled but certain, into a conspiracy. It told her there was a secret to be kept from the others, and that it was a secret she would not dislike.
Edward had come from the orchard; he could not have been anywhere near the building site. That he should have been alone in the orchard all this time seemed to Rose beautifully improbable, and she did not need to ask herself who had been there with him. (After all, if one thought about it why should Lucy have rushed off to Wanswick with Nevil when it was Edward she loved?) She did not know how it had happened, or what would happen next; she only knew—with all the strength of her maternal instinct—that Lucy was saved.
She looked back across the room at Mr. Heritage, who was keeping up his own little pretence that Edward was with the building contractor. He fired off a remark at Edith about the unreliability of the British workman. For no reason, unless it was the overflow of relief and happiness, Rose felt sorry for him; and to his and Edith’s surprise she stood up and walked towards them.
“It’s very late, but why shouldn’t we have tea while we’re waiting?” she said.
After a pause Mr. Heritage grudgingly accepted the olive branch held out to him, and replied that tea would be a—er—not unwelcome refreshment.
“I’ll go and get it.—Oh, dear, I’m walking about in my stockings.”
“I’ll go,” said Edith, while Rose hunted under the chair for her shoes.
Mr. Heritage managed the ghost of a sour smile.
“Let Edith go,” he said, knowing that Edith was the practical one and that her tea would be drinkable.
Rose put on her shoes and sat down in her usual chair by the hearth. She looked charming, Mr. Heritage reflected—serene and lovely and touchingly eager to placate him He shifted his position slightly and then realized it wasn’t necessary; Canon Newby’s portrait was not there to disturb him with its sneer.
“Yes,” said Rose, following his glance. “But we’ll put it back tomorrow. Everything will be just the same. And I hope you’ll often come and have tea with us, as you used to do in the past.”
THE END
About The Author
Elizabeth Mary Fair was born in 1908 and brought up in Haigh, a small village in Lancashire, England. There her father was the land agent for Haigh Hall, then occupied by the Earl of Crawford and Balcorres, and there she and her sister were educated by a governess. After her father’s death, in 1934, Miss Fair and her mother and sister removed to a small house with a large garden in the New Forest in Hampshire. From 1939 to 1944, she was an ambulance driver in the Civil Defence Corps, serving at Southampton, England; in 1944 she joined the British Red Cross and went overseas as a Welfare Officer, during which time she served in Belgium, India, and Ceylon.
Miss Fair’s first novel, Bramton Wick, was published in 1952 and received with enthusiastic acclaim as ‘perfect light reading with a dash of lemon in it . . .’ by Time and Tide. Between the years 1953 and 1960, five further novels followed: Landscape in Sunlight, The Native Heath, Seaview House, A Winter Away, and The Mingham Air. All are characterized by their English countryside settings and their shrewd and witty study of human nature.
Elizabeth Fair died in 1997.
By Elizabeth Fair
and available as Furrowed Middlebrow titles
Bramton Wick (1952)
Landscape in Sunlight
(1953, published in the U.S. as All One Summer)
The Native Heath
(1954, published in the U.S. as Julia Comes Home)
Seaview House
(1955, published in the U.S. as A View of the Sea)
A Winter Away (1957)
The Mingham Air (1960)
FURROWED MIDDLEBROW
FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK
FM10. Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM11. Begin Again (1936) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM12. Company in the Evening (1944) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM13. The Late Mrs Prioleau (1946) ... MONICA TINDALL
FM14. Bramton Wick (1952) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM15. Landscape in Sunlight (1953) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM16. The Native Heath (1954) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM17. Seaview House (1955) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM18. A Winter Away (1957) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM19. The Mingham Air (1960) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM20. The Lark (1922) ... E. NESBIT
Elizabeth Fair
A Winter Away
“My last secretary was thirty-five,” old M. said gloomily, “and no more sense than a child of ten. Or else she wasn’t all there. You all there?” he asked suddenly, giving Maud a searching look. “No banging your head on the table? No throwing the china at me? Hey?”
Young Maud has made her escape from an overbearing stepmother and come to stay with her cousin Alice and Alice’s companion Miss Conway in the countryside. Alice and “Con” have arranged a job for her as secretary to Mr Feniston, an eccentric and intimidating neighbour who seems to have driven his previous secretary to a nervous breakdown.
In between cataloguing Mr Feniston’s library, dodging his temper, and encounters, awkward and intriguing in turn, with his son and an alienated nephew, Maud finds herself involved with local eccentricities and dramas, including a “secret” romance which has everyone talking. She may never be the same after this winter away!
Furrowed Middlebrow is delighted to make available, for the first time in over half a century, all six of Elizabeth Fair’s irresistible comedies of domestic life. These new editions all feature an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.
“Miss Fair’s understanding is deeper than Mrs. Thirkell’s and her humour is untouched by snobbishness; she is much nearer to Trollope, grand master in these matters.” STEVIE SMITH
“Miss Fair makes writing look very easy, and that is the measure of her creative ability.” COMPTON MACKENZIE
FM18
Chapter One
“I am small and insignificant,” said Maud, “but this room is going to make me feel much more so.”
She gazed at herself in the speckled looking glass which hung on the wall. A giant’s wardrobe near the window cut off the daylight and the single electric light was behind her at the other end of the room. As well as the wardrobe the room contained a white-painted iron bed, a chest of drawers, a chair and a carpet. The carpet had once been crimson with green and yellow flowers. The wallpaper, as faded as the carpet, had been striped brown and beige, with blue flowers dotting the beige part. The bedspread had never been anything but cochineal pink.
“I expected something better than this,” she said gloomily. She spoke aloud, addressing her speckled image in the looking glass; but she spoke softly, in case there was anyone outside on the landing. “Not even a dressing table,” she added, thinking of her new brushes and the powder bowl and the box that held manicure things and little jars for face cream.
Still, she must unpack. She had come to stay; she would be here for a long time; she must put up with it. Perhaps when she had settled in she could make some improvements.
“Wilbraham!” called Cousin Alice, from the head of the stairs.
Downstairs, another voice called for Puppy. Cries of “Wilbraham” and “Puppy” resounded through the house, as Maud struggled with the awkward lock of her trunk. But there was no response to the cries, and presently the voices grew squeaky and hoarse, died away into mutters, and were then heard, more faintly, outside in the garden.
Maud had been in the house less than an hour, but she had already made out that Puppy and Wilbraham were alternative names for the same animal. He was Wilbraham to Cousin Alice and Puppy to Miss Conway. She had not yet seen him but she gathered from their talk that he was their joint property and that they had had him for seven years. Puppyhood must be far behind him, but perhaps he was exceptionally skittish for his age; or perhaps Miss Conway disliked being reminded of the passage of time. Hearing the cry of “Puppy” grow louder, Maud straightened up from her unpacking and walked to the window to take another look at Miss Conway if she was in sight; she had already guessed that Miss Conway was a person to be reckoned with. Cousin Alice had written of her as “my companion,” but they were so different that one could hardly imagine it as a companionship based on common interests, and yet Miss Conway quite lacked the docile air of those who are paid to be agreeable. Moreover, her hearty welcome to Maud had not wholly concealed a defensive—or possibly offensive—vigilance.
Miss Conway was standing in the middle of the small lawn and loudly beseeching Puppy to emerge from a clump of rhododendrons. She wore a very brightly patterned cotton frock, no stockings, and scarlet sandals. Her brown hair was streaked with grey, but like the rest of her it looked full of life. She was plump, but not flabby; her plumpness, Maud thought, was probably kept in check by vigorous daily exercises. She was middle-aged; or, at any rate, she was a good deal older than Maud, who had recently celebrated her twentieth birthday.
But she’s much younger than Cousin Alice, she thought, dismissing the idea that they had been friends from childhood. At this moment Miss Conway swung round and saw her. She smiled and waved, and Maud was forced to open the window wider and enter into conversation.
“Ahoy there,” Miss Conway began it, like a mariner hailing a castaway. “Finished your unpacking?”
“Almost,” Maud said, untruthfully.
“Splendid. Do you want a bath?”
“No, thank you. I had a bath this morning.”
“I thought you might like one after the journey.”
“I don’t seem dirty. But perhaps I could wash my face.”
“Yes, do. The bathroom at the end of the passage—remember? And then come down and join us. We might go for a walk—I expect you’re longing to stretch your legs.”
“Perhaps you could show me Glaine.”
“Oh, not this evening. Time enough for that tomorrow—you’ll be seeing quite enough of it once you start the job, you know! And then, old—your boss doesn’t encourage people to drop in casually.”
“I meant, just show me how to get to it from here.”
“Wilbraham!” called Cousin Alice, appearing from the other side of the rhododendrons.
“He’s in there,” said Miss Conway. “Right in the middle. I saw him for a second but I can’t get him to come out.”
“I think we shall have to try a bribe. Have you got a biscuit?”
