Strangers in a Garden Page 7
Chapter Four
‘Miss James. Miss James! Kindly sit up.’
Laura struggled upright and saw to her dismay that her alarm clock read 7.30. She’d been out with Adrian until gone two.
Miss Speddie, in her best Sunday black, was looming over her.
Oh hell, Laura thought groggily. What have I done now?
Miss Speddie was holding out a yellow envelope. A telegram.
‘It’s just arrived. I thought you’d like to see it at once.’
Laura ripped it open. She was so tired she could hardly see.
COME ROADNIGHTS IMMEDIATELY FATHER GRAVELY ILL STOP RICHARD
It was timed 9pm, 3 February 1964.
‘Not bad news I hope, Miss James.’ It was what people always said when someone received a telegram. In the same way that the next suggestion would be, ‘Let’s have a nice cup of tea,’ when what was really required was a hefty tot of brandy.
Laura reached for her dressing gown. ‘I have to phone my brother.’
‘Of course.’
As Miss Speddie removed herself, Marje sat up, fuming. ‘Selfish old bat. You’d think she’d let you use the phone in her office.’ Just as no one was invited to sit down in the office, so no one was allowed to use Miss Speddie’s telephone.
Laura ran downstairs and rang Roadnights, reverse charge. Richard answered immediately.
‘What’s happening, Richard?’
‘He had pneumonia.’
‘Had? HAD?’
‘He died last night. The hospital rang me at four this morning. I’d already sent your telegram, of course.’
‘But – but he was okay. He spent Christmas with you. He sounded just his usual self.’ Laura clung to the phone box. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.
‘They insisted on going to the farm. Utter lunacy. Usual story. No fire lit and starvation rations. Anyway, 11.30 one day Aunty Hilda hung the famous orange T-towel out of the window to flag to Uncle Bert that dinner was ready. He was in a field. On his tractor. He could see the orange thingy from the tractor, but he didn’t move. Father couldn’t understand it. He realised, if you start work, physical labour, at first light, by mid-morning you’re famished. Well Uncle didn’t come and didn’t come. Aunty Hilda was slamming about, according to Mother, calling him a silly bugger. So Father went out, into the field. And he found Uncle – frozen to the tractor. Literally frozen.’
‘Oh, how ghastly.’
‘Ghastly for Father too. He’s a City banker. Getting a semi-conscious thirteen stone man off an iced up tractor is hardly his line of country. Getting help took ages. Aunty was in an incomprehending rage, shouting his dinner was ruined. Not that anyone else was getting anything substantial, need I tell you. I’m surprised she doesn’t have a padlock and chain on that bloody larder. No phone at the farm, of course, so Father had to walk three miles to the next farm.’
‘What about the Wolsely?’
‘Battery problem. Anyway, cut a long story short, by the time the neighbours arrived, and the doctor, Uncle and Father were both in a bad way. The doctor telephoned me, we got there, took him and Mother back to Roadnights. The rest you know.’
‘I didn’t know he was ill. Why didn’t someone tell me?’
‘Nothing you could do at that distance, Laura.’
She whispered, ‘What about Mummy? How is she?’
‘You’ll see. Best if you get here, though. I shall arrange the funeral for Tuesday.’
Laura reeled out of the phone box and almost collided with Fiona, just coming in.
‘I saw the telegraph boy,’ Fiona said. ‘What’s up?’
Laura gave her the gist and went on, in a panicky gabble, ‘I’ve got to get packed, get to the airport and it’s too early to phone Adrian.’
‘Okay,’ said Fiona. ‘My – my boss will be here in an hour. He’ll drive you to Renfrew. And don’t worry about Adrian. I’ll go round and tell him myself, when he’s had time to wake up.’
Fortunately, Marje was advancing down the stairs with her laundry. ‘I’ll come with you to Livingstone Hall, Fiona. No, I insist. No trouble at all. And I’ll let your office know, Laura.’
The last time Laura had seen Mr MacDonald was on the night Kennedy was shot. Now, as he parked at Renfrew Airport he murmured, ‘Look Laura, I don’t want to intrude. But if this is helpful – ‘ He pressed into her hand four five-pound notes. As she began to protest, he went on, ‘You can pay me back any time. No rush.’
What a nice man, Laura thought, running to buy her ticket. What a very nice – er boss – Pussycat Fiona possessed.
Laura arrived home to be greeted with an expression of reproach from Penny, her sister-in-law.
‘The plane was delayed and then it took ages getting into London. Where’s Mummy?’
‘Upstairs, in bed,’ Penny said.
‘Oh, I’ll –‘
‘No, I should leave her. Shock, you know.’
‘Penny, why didn’t you tell me Daddy was ill? I could have come and helped nurse him.’
‘I don’t think so, Laura. You’re always so busy with Adrian.’
Richard came in with Uncle Bert. From the latter’s glassy expression it was obvious they’d been at the pub.
‘Hi, Richard. Uncle Bert. How are you feeling now?’
‘It were a bad do, if you get my meanin? Doctor says lucky I were wearing my cap.’
‘These quacks. What do they know?’ Aunty Hilda bustled in. ‘Main thing was to get you back to work.’
She was a wispy-haired woman with the raw skin of someone who has spent too many years exposed to the piercing wind that knifes across the Fenland.
‘I brought a ham from the farm,’ she told Laura.
Oh land of milk and honey, thought Laura. And how typical, to travel half way across the country on a coach, with a ham nestling in your case along with your bloomers.
‘But of course, that’s for the Funeral Tea,’ Aunty Hilda declared. ‘Tonight it’s Bubble and Squeak.’
To Laura, this was better than caviar. Immediately, she forgave Aunty Hilda for all that frugal farm fare. Bubble and Squeak meant cabbage. When had she last been given anything green? Dear Miss May served up generous helpings of potatoes, swede, turnips and carrots, but the Scots seemed to have no taste for anything green, which was strange when she considered how partial they were to the colour in their furnishings.
The following morning, Laura took a nostalgic walk past the library her father had introduced her to, aged five, then on to her old school, which in autumn would flame with Boston creeper. At the cross-roads she passed Uncle Bert, counting the cars. Laura supposed that if the only vehicle you saw all year was a sugar beet lorry, then two Ford Populars waiting at the traffic lights constituted a cavalcade…
And here was the maze of safe suburban streets where Laura had learned to drive, and Richard had taught her the trick of reversing round a corner using a matchstick on the back windscreen as a guider. Back at Roadnights, she observed the rockery, the porch where she’d first kissed Adrian and in the garden, on the lower lawn, her childhood swing, near the raspberry and gooseberry bushes.
Laura went straight upstairs to her mother’s room, where Aunty Hilda was busy packing up Mr James’s clothes.
‘May as well get it done. Pity he wasn’t the same size as Bert.’
Mrs James was in bed, wearing a winceyette nightie. She was in tears.
Laura knelt down and took both her mother’s hands.
‘I haven’t got anything to wear!’ Mrs James burst out. ‘All I’ve got is my tan. I can’t wear tan to a funeral.’
On a chair near the net-curtained window was laid out a tan suit, a tan coat, a tan handbag, tan gloves and tan shoes.
‘Mummy, I’m sure your tan will look fine.’
‘I’ve told you, Kay,’ Aunty Hilda said, ‘You can borrow my black velour hat.’
Laura returned to the sitting room. ‘Mummy will look awful in that hat. Black has never suited her.’
In the James family, when you were given a dry sherry it meant you were also about to be given unpleasant news. Penny put down her tapestry and immediately left the room, muttering about phoning her mother, the children, the measles outbreak at school…
Richard moved aside Penny’s canvas and murmured, ‘I wonder, is there anyone in the entire Western hemisphere who hasn’t had their dining chairs retapestried by my wife?’
He turned to his sister. ‘Laura, we need to talk about Father’s Will.’
Laura hadn’t thought it necessary to give the Will a moment’s consideration. ‘Surely the solicitor – and of course he’ll have left everything to Mummy.’
Richard said carefully, ‘Well, no. As you’re aware, our mother is hardly adept at making decisions. Particularly of a financial nature.’
Laura nodded. Kay James had always been content to refer to her husband as ‘The Exchequer.’ Which was fair enough, considering he was a banker.
‘I thought I should explain, Laura. Basically, Father wanted to be sure, of course, that Mother was totally protected. So the upshot is, Father has left everything to me. On the understanding, of course, that I look after Mother.’
‘You! He’s left the money, the house, the Wolseley to you! But what about me? Surely I’m entitled –‘
‘You would have been, if Father had died intestate. That means without making a Will. But he did make a Will. You can read it. Properly signed, witnessed, dated. I’m sorry, Laura, but it’s what Father wanted.’
‘But why?’ Laura passed him her empty sherry glass. ‘Why did he do this to me?’
He refilled her glass. ‘Look, I don’t think you realise how much you meant to Father. He didn’t tell me, actually, he told Penny. When you started work, Father used to drive you to the station and you’d travel in together. In the evening, often he’d hang around so he could meet you off your train and drive you back home. He treasured those times with you. It had got so he couldn’t really talk to Mother. But you were his golden girl. His companion. And then you upped sticks and buggered off to Glasgow.’
‘I was in love! I wanted to be with Adrian.’
‘But you didn’t come back, not once, to visit.’
‘I couldn’t afford it. And I wrote home every single week.’
‘Oh yeah. I remember your letters to Penny and me. Your terrific job, what fun you had at Arundell House, the parties with Adrian. How do you think all this made Father feel?’
Laura regarded him sourly. You try it, Richard. You try sounding jaunty when you’re freezing to death at Glasgow Central station.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t want him worrying about me.’
‘All I can say to you, Laura, is that Father was very disappointed.’
‘Surely,’ Laura whispered, ‘he didn’t cut me out completely?’
‘No. He’s left you his mother’s jewellery.’
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Laura reached for a cigarette. Laura had seen the crusty collection of jewellery that had been handed down from their grandmother. It included a brooch advertising the wearer as MOTHER. ‘I wouldn’t wear any of that stuff, even as a joke,’ Laura snapped.
‘I should hang on to it.’ Penny had arrived, cavalry- style. ‘Might come back into fashion. Be worth a bit.’
She glared at Laura’s cigarette. Laura glared back. I would remind you this is still my home.
‘And our mother,’ Laura said to Richard. ‘She’ll need more help here.’
‘No. Mother realises she can’t manage here. The house is too big, not to mention the garden. She wants to move to the cottage.’
The cottage, bought by the James’s some years ago, was in fact a chalet bungalow, in the Wye Valley.
As Laura was digesting this, Richard struck her the hammer blow. ‘Roadnights will have to be sold.’
Laura walked out.
As she was steaming down the road, Penny, panting, caught her up. ‘My word – you do walk fast.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Richard was worried. He didn’t want you left on your own.’
Laura turned on her, incandescent. ‘Piss off, Penny. Just piss off!’
She caught the bus into town. Impossible to go to the funeral in an emerald green coat. She must find something black. She couldn’t let her father down, even if he had treated her so shabbily.
Laura wished she’d realised he had felt so hurt when she had gone to Glasgow. He’d reacted furiously, but she hadn’t grasped that she was causing him so much pain. But it had to happen sometime, this separation. If she’d gone to university… or if she’d married and they’d moved away, perhaps abroad.
She wished they’d been able to talk about it, she and her father. Yet she had always been given to understand that heart-to-hearts were not what the James family went in for. Even so, Laura thought venomously, he’d been able to unburden himself to that snake Penny.
The black coat she was looking for was the fourth she tried on. Laura handed over three of Mr MacDonald’s fivers and then, reluctant to go home, went to the pictures.
For Laura, her father’s funeral passed in a blur. As did Aunty Hilda’s Funeral Tea.
‘I can never understand,’ Kay James said, mashing up her peas, ‘why you have a Funeral Tea and a Wedding Breakfast. It’s called a Wedding Breakfast even when it’s tea time. I wonder why that is?’
Laura said boldly, ‘When I get back, I’ll ask Adrian. He’ll know.’
Richard’s mouth tightened, but Laura was unrepentant. He’s my boyfriend. I want to marry him. You’d better get used to him being around.
Laura and Penny washed up.
‘It was all most unfortunate,’ Penny said. ‘They might have been able to do more for Father, the pneumonia, but the ambulance men were looking for a house number, and your mother didn’t know it.’
‘Well neither do I,’ Laura said. ‘I don’t think there is one.’
‘Absolutely ridiculous.’ Penny wrung out the dishcloth. ‘Precious time lost. Now, I wonder if Aunty Hilda needs a hand with the packing?’
Richard was taking Aunty Hilda and Uncle Bert to the coach station at nine sharp the following morning. By 6 am, Uncle Bert, accustomed to early starts, had got the luggage downstairs and was engaged in something he called ‘getting the cases forward.’
This involved inching the ancient luggage down the hall, standing in his best cap with the front door open, letting blasts of cold air into the house, and then advancing, with the luggage, down the drive to wait at the gate so as ‘not to cause Richard any trouble.’
During this performance, Uncle Bert could not be persuaded to let go of either case. Because of a mix-up over coach times, Mr James had once been obliged to escort the pair to the railway station. He had returned apoplectic.
‘No question, of course, of Bert buying the tickets. Total fake confusion. Me country bumpkin. You rich banker. We had three minutes to the train, so of course I paid. In comes the train. I opened the door. I said, Well Hilda, well Bert, safe journey, and you know what? He still wouldn’t let go of the bloody luggage. He tried to get in the carriage with a case in one beefy hand and another case in the other and in the end Hilda solved it by knocking the silly sod flat and stepping over him.’
The morning after the funeral, at Roadnights, Laura knew what Hilda had in her famous case. Laura had watched her making ham sandwiches for the journey, and wrapping up the rest of the meat to take home. Aware of Uncle Bert standing in the chilly pre-dawn dark, waiting for Richard, Laura had suggested taking him out a mug of tea. Aunty Hilda had vetoed this. ‘He’s not been working. He won’t need much.’
When Richard got back from seeing them onto the coach, Penny had his breakfast ready. Bacon, sausage, fried egg, fried bread, toast, marmalade.
She gave Laura a plateful too, and Laura sensed a peace-offering.
‘I’ll give you a lift to the airport,’Richard said, mopping up his egg.
‘Oh, thanks. I can’t take any more time off work.’
‘Course not. And you’ll have had expenses. Have you got enough money?’
Laura’s first thought was to tell her brother to go boil his head. How dare he patronise her?
Then common sense kicked in. Richard had scooped the inheritance. All she’d got was a brooch with MOTHER on.
‘I had to borrow the fare to get here. And of course, I’ve lost three days pay.’
He took out his wallet and put £50 on the table. ‘That cover it?’
Hell, having to grovel to her brother. Ghastly, ghastly, ghastly.
When she was upstairs, trying, unsuccessfully, to stuff her emerald coat into her bag, Penny came in. ‘Laura, why don’t you let me send that coat on to you?’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
Penny said, ‘You know, one doesn’t want to pry. But, you and Adrian. Are you – is there –‘
Laura forestalled her. ‘Oh yes! We’re very much in love. Very happy together.’
Penny hadn’t finished. ‘I just want you to know, Laura, how sorry I am that things have turned out this way. The thing is, Richard and I do need Father’s money. We have to extend the house. I haven’t told anyone else this, but we’re trying for another baby.’
Laura simply hated this expression, trying for a baby. Fiona, who seemed the self-appointed expert on all matters sexual, had told the amazed girls that some couples limited their sexual endeavours to the days when the woman would be most fertile. The woman could use a thermometer to check the exact time.
‘You mean,’ said Lol, ‘they sit watching TV and then at 9.20 she takes her temperature and says, ‘Right. Let’s get on with it.’
Surely, Laura thought, as Richard blared his horn. Surely Richard and Penny weren’t doing this? Laura had never, of course, thought of her brother as a sexual animal. To her, he had as much allure as an amoeba.
‘I won’t wait to see you off,’ Richard said at the airport. ‘Better get back and round up some estate agents. Get the show on the road. Then I can get Mother settled in the chalet.’