Peggy had dreamt that Jim was having a bath in the jungle, with roaring lions and tigers and chattering monkeys surrounding him while the flames of a raging bushfire slowly encroached on the camp and girls in bright saris danced for him. It had been a disturbing, muddled dream, for he’d got out of the bath fully dressed in a dinner suit and black tie, and had begun to waltz a pretty nurse across a ballroom floor. She’d called out to him, but he hadn’t heard her, and she’d woken to discover she was crying.
She was cross with herself for being so daft, and as Daisy was awake, decided to bath and feed her before the morning rush of breakfast and getting all the girls to work on time. There was no sign of Ron, and she suspected he’d left early to take Harvey and Monty for their morning run over the hills before breakfasting with Rosie. Peggy admired his stamina, for he’d come home very late last night and could only have had a couple of hours’ sleep.
Once breakfast was over, the girls did the washing-up and tidied everything away, and Ivy hung out her bits of washing on the line before she scampered off to her job at the aeroplane factory. Peggy knew she was blessed with her girls, for they helped around the house without being asked, and often kept Daisy amused so she could get on with the mending or relax over a cup of tea.
As Cordelia read the morning newspaper, Peggy looked out of the kitchen window and watched Queenie, who was sitting by the back wall transfixed by something in the grass. The only moving part of her was the occasional twitch at the end of her tail, and Peggy was fascinated by the length of time the kitten could keep so still and focused. She watched for a while, hoping Queenie hadn’t found a vole or fledgling that had fallen from its nest – the mouse had been bad enough, but trying to trap a vole in the house would be almost impossible.
She gave up on Queenie when it was clear the kitten was biding her time, and sat down at the kitchen table to have a second cup of tea and a cigarette. Daisy was pushing her doll’s pram around the room, and it was making a horrid squeaking sound which would drive everyone mad if those wheels weren’t oiled. Peggy made a mental note to ask Ron to see to it.
Cordelia was looking much brighter this morning after her disappointment of the previous night, and Peggy wondered if she really would refuse any further invitations from Bertie. Peggy rather hoped she would, for Bertie had proved to be an utter cad, and no amount of posh dinners and drives out into the country could change that.
Peggy heard the slam of the back gate, swiftly followed by a scamper of paws up the concrete steps from the basement. Harvey charged into the room and delightedly nuzzled Daisy before trying to climb onto Peggy’s lap to lick her face.
‘Urrgh. Get down, for goodness’ sake,’ Peggy spluttered, shoving him away. ‘You’re filthy and you stink to high heaven.’
Ron came clumping up the steps and just managed to grab Harvey’s collar before he gave Cordelia the same boisterous welcome. ‘Get down, ye heathen beast,’ he rumbled. ‘Outside with you, you smelly eejit.’
Harvey hung his head and, with a look of utter despair and shame, slunk back down the steps with his tail between his legs.
‘He’s had a good roll in dead badger,’ said Ron. ‘I’ll hose him down after I’ve had a cup of tea.’
Peggy wrinkled her nose. ‘You could do with a hose down yourself.’
Ron sniffed his coat and then grimaced. ‘Aye. I had a bit of a tussle with the old fella to get him away from the mess. I must have got some on me too.’
‘You certainly did,’ said Peggy, eyeing the smears on his poaching coat.
‘Well, I’ll have that cup of tea first, and perhaps a wee slice of toast.’
‘Didn’t you eat at Rosie’s?’ asked Peggy.
‘She sent me off with a flea in my ear, so she did,’ he said ruefully. ‘Made me promise not to go back until me and Harvey were smelling sweeter – cheeky wee girl.’ He bent down to pick up Daisy and give her a cuddle, but she didn’t appreciate being in such close proximity to that filthy coat and wriggled furiously until he put her down again.
Peggy poured him a cup of tea, added a half-spoon of sugar and placed the sugar bowl out of his reach. Ron was inclined to over-sweeten his tea, and sugar was now a precious commodity.
He scowled at Peggy and stirred his tea with some vigour. ‘Ach, to be sure, Peggy girl, ’tis a poor state of affairs when a man can’t have three sugars in his tea.’
‘It’ll be even poorer when there’s none left for the rest of the month,’ she retorted, placing slices of bread on the hot plate. ‘And you haven’t exactly earned extra sugar this morning.’
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said triumphantly. He reached into one of the many inside pockets of his poaching coat, drew out a brace of pheasant and held them aloft.
‘Shooting season finished three months ago,’ said Peggy. ‘Where and how did you get them?’
‘I’m thinking they evaded the guns and that gamekeeper and escaped for the good fresh air and freedom of the hills.’ His blue eyes twinkled as he laid the pheasants on the wooden draining board.
‘You’ll get arrested,’ she said, trying to be stern.
‘They were on common ground,’ he said with all the dignity he could muster. ‘I’ll not be arrested by anyone.’ He grinned and stroked the pretty feathers. ‘Ach, to be sure, Peggy, the birds walked right into me hands, so they did. It would have been foolish not to wring their necks and bring them home for the pot.’
Peggy giggled and placed his toast in front of him. ‘You’ve got an answer for everything, you old scallywag,’ she teased. ‘But you’d better not leave them lying about for Queenie to get her teeth into.’
‘I’ll be hanging them in the shed for a wee while until they’re ready for cooking, so don’t fret yourself.’
He liberally spread margarine and home-made jam on his toast and looked across at Cordelia, who was making a show of not being impressed at Ron’s prowess as a poacher by pretending to be immersed in her morning paper. ‘I’ll be betting they didn’t have something as grand as pheasant at the Conservative Club last night, did they?’
Cordelia looked back at him from over her half-moon reading glasses. ‘Certainly not. We had cod roe on toast followed by liver, bacon and onions. There was jam roly-poly too, although I never got to eat any of it,’ she said tartly.
‘Bertie was in a hurry to get to some special meeting of the Cliffehaven Gentlemen’s Society,’ said Peggy quickly and went on to tell him about Cordelia’s upsetting evening. ‘Have you heard of that society, Ron? It’s a new one on me.’
Ron chewed on his toast before he replied. ‘I can’t say I’m familiar with it,’ he said. ‘To be sure, Cordelia, I’m thinking you should give Bertie his marching orders. That’s no way to treat a woman of your advanced years.’
‘It’s not the way to treat a woman of any age,’ said Peggy. ‘He’s an utter disgrace, and he won’t be welcome here again, I can assure you.’
‘And I’ll have you know,’ said Cordelia waspishly, ‘that I do not appreciate being called old – especially by someone like you, Ronan Reilly.’
‘Aye, well, to be fair, Cordelia, you’re no spring chicken, and it’s probably time you stopped gadding about with the likes of Grantley-Adams.’
‘I shall gad about as much as I want,’ she retorted rather grandly. ‘And with whomsoever I might choose to escort me. I’m sure Bertie will come round to apologise, and if he does, then I’m prepared to forgive him. As long as he doesn’t expect me to encounter those ghastly people again. We were quite happy in each other’s company before he got embroiled with that set.’
Ron finished the toast and sipped his tea, his gaze thoughtful as he regarded Cordelia over the rim of the cup. ‘What was it about them that you didn’t like, Cordelia?’
She shrugged. ‘They were all far too pleased with themselves, and the women were rather fast, with their jewellery and questionable behaviour. Not my sort of people at all,’ she added with a sniff of disdain.
Ron drank the last of his tea, poked his pipe in his mouth and shoved back his chair. ‘If you want my advice, Cordelia, you’ll give the lot of them a wide berth.’
‘For once, Ron, I’m inclined to agree with you,’ she said, and returned to her perusal of the morning paper.
Peggy was grateful to Ron, for although Cordelia rarely agreed with him on anything much, she did value his opinion in certain circumstances – and this seemed to be one of them. She could only hope that Bertie Grantley-Adams didn’t show his face here any time soon, for if he did she would certainly give him a piece of her mind and show him the door. Yet she was sad for Cordelia. She had so little social life and few opportunities to have fun. It was a terrible shame that Bertie had turned out to be a complete rotter.