‘Don’t you sometimes wonder what he’s up to?’ Meggie demanded of Judy, lighting up another cigarette before continuing to pace the drawing room of Cucklington House. ‘He arrives here out of the blue, gets himself installed as the house guest of that perfectly dreadful Morrison woman, and imposes himself on the rest of us.’ There was a short pause as Meggie stood drawing on her cigarette. ‘I dare say he seduced the stupid woman, flattered her, made love to her, and is now in the process of scalping her at the bridge table.’
‘Oh, really, Meggie,’ Judy protested. ‘Mrs Morrison may be a merry widow, but she’s surely not the idiot you make her out to be. Anyway, from what I heard Mr Astley is the perfect gentleman, whatever you say.’
‘That is such a contradiction in terms, Judy. An American? A perfect gentleman? Mr Astley is what most of his fellow countrymen are, Judy, believe me. He’s a businessman, or an out and out adventurer. Look at what he’s up to in the village! Buying up Peter Sykes’s garage? Why? Why buy up some run-down, hole in the wall garage in a village that is practically falling down, never mind closing down? You can’t tell me that’s either a bargain or a good investment. Yet along comes Mr Waldo Astley and what happens? He buys the tumbledown garage and not only that – he starts to invest in it! Someone told me they’re planning to build a showroom up there now. A showroom, Judy. In Peter Sykes’s old garage? That’s little more substantial than the privy that stands behind it? And that’s not all – Mr Astley it seems has also taken a fancy to the Wiltons’ house on the opposite side of the estuary. You know the house I mean. Markers – that lovely old house right on the edge of the water …’ Meggie pointed across the estuary.
‘I love Markers, I always have,’ Judy said. ‘We used to go to lovely parties there, before the war. Even my mother likes Markers. And you know what a house snob she is. She can’t generally abide Edwardian houses, but she’s managed to make Markers an exception.’
‘It seems Mr Astley has decided that this is the house where he would like to live,’ Meggie continued inexorably, as if Judy hadn’t even spoken. ‘So what does he do? He knocks on the door and proceeds to make the poor bewildered Wiltons an offer for their home that they could not possibly refuse without appearing to be utterly unreasonable. Never mind that they have nowhere to go – he just buys them out.’
‘The Wiltons are hardly poor, Meggie, and of course they have somewhere to go,’ Judy protested. ‘They have three other houses – one in London, one in Scotland and another waterside house down in Cornwall. They were probably delighted to get rid of Markers. They’ve hardly been in Bexham since the war, and as they readily admit – according to my mother-in-law – they far prefer Cornwall.’
Meggie stared at her, rather crossly.
‘Loopy told me,’ Judy assured her. ‘She knows them through the Yacht Club. In fact according to Loopy the Wiltons couldn’t believe their luck when Mr Astley made the offer on the house. No-one wants to buy old houses at this moment, as you well know. They were actually delighted by the offer.’
‘Even so,’ Meggie said, lobbing her cigarette out of a window, the wind blown considerably out of her sails. ‘It seems more than a little bit what you might call patronising.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Meggie!’ Judy laughed. ‘You’ll be going on about the War Debt soon.’
But in spite of her laughter, Judy felt a little cross with Meggie. She very rarely got on a high horse and took unreasonable exception, yet to Judy that seemed to be exactly what she was doing now. That she was taking particular exception to Waldo Astley annoyed Judy even more because what no-one was ready to admit was that Mr Waldo Astley was bringing more than a little excitement to Bexham, and not just at the card tables.
‘Why have you taken against Mr Astley?’ she asked. ‘Was it something at the party? Was he rude to you? I can’t imagine him being rude to anyone, actually – and he certainly didn’t get as drunk as everyone else, most of whom disgraced themselves.’
‘I don’t know what he was doing at my party, if you really want to know, Judy. I can’t think why I invited him.’
‘I know why – seeing what a shortage of young men there is in the village.’
‘I’m not in the habit of asking people to my house whom I don’t know. Particularly ne’er do wells such as Mr Waldo Astley. And what sort of name is that, for crying out loud? Waldo, for heaven’s sake. I don’t know where Americans come up with these names, I really don’t.’
‘Of course you could be taking such an exception to our Mr Astley for quite a different reason, couldn’t you?’ Judy suggested provocatively.
‘Do tell,’ Meggie said icily. ‘I cannot wait to hear.’
‘Because you’ve developed a bit of a pash.’
‘A bit of a pash? A bit of a pash?’ Meggie threw her head back and laughed.
‘You’re showing all the classic signs of falling,’ Judy replied.
‘And how would you know?’ Meggie asked lightly and she lit a fresh cigarette. ‘You’re hardly an expert – and no, I most certainly do not have a bit of a pash on Mr Waldo Astley. In fact I’d say if anyone’s developed a bit of a pash on our confidence trickster, I could well be looking at her.’
‘Me?’ Judy protested with a squeak, colouring bright pink at the same time. ‘How ridiculous! Me? Don’t be absurd!’
‘You’ve gone a jolly interesting colour.’ Meggie grinned, triumphant.
‘No I haven’t,’ Judy argued. ‘All I think about Mr Astley is that I can’t see what actual wrong he has done, at least not yet. Maybe he will prove to be a complete horror and take everyone for the most awful ride, but as things stand now I can’t see how Bexham’s become a worse place because of Mr Astley’s generosity, misplaced or not.’
‘Really?’ Meggie stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we? Meantime I’ll bet you my best new nightdress, not to mention my last pair of silk stockings, that Mr Astley’s motives are not exactly altruistic. That whom he is out for is in fact Number One. You just wait and see.’
‘I shall,’ Judy said. ‘And you’re on.’
‘On what, darling?’
‘The bet, silly. I accept your wager.’
Judy smiled and extended one hand to cement the bet.
‘The roof will last the summer all right,’ Peter Sykes assured Waldo as they inspected Markers, Waldo’s newly acquired Bexham home, together, while Rusty and Tam played happily in the garden. ‘In fact, I don’t think it’s near as bad as everyone’s making out. The trusses are perfectly sound – really the tiles more than anything. Where they got dislodged in the winter gales, and all the snow got in.’
‘That could account for the main bedroom ceiling collapsing, I suppose,’ Waldo agreed. ‘Not to mention all those large damp patches.’
‘Frankly, a few days spent refixing the tiles on the north side would sort out most of the troubles,’ Peter went on. ‘Probably have to do all the battens again because a lot of them have rotted – but that’s no great problem, is it, Mr Astley?’
‘Then let us go to it.’ Waldo smiled, tipping his hat back from his face, and putting his hands in his pockets. ‘If we muster a bit of extra labour I don’t think we have the need for any permissions, do you? We’re not going to be using any new materials.’
‘We can repair from old, Mr Astley – that should do the trick all right.’
‘Good. Now follow me, Peter – I want you to see something else. And call your wife and your little boy in too – this is something I think they too should see. It is, as they say, of interest.’
Waldo led the way through a pass door in the east wall of the house into a self-contained wing that contained two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and a living room, kitchen-diner and cloakroom downstairs. The windows of the main bedroom and the living room below had a southern aspect looking out over the grounds at the back so there was abundant light.
‘Room for a couple, dare I say – or even a young family.’ Waldo turned round and looked at Peter and Rusty.
‘Very nice too, Mr Astley,’ Peter agreed. ‘Make a perfectly good home for a live-in couple.’
‘Yes, perfectly good. I would agree, Peter. Plenty of room to swing an army of cats, I’d say.’
Rusty eyed what seemed to her to be unbelievably spacious accommodation, and tried to imagine what it would be like to live in such a place.
‘Besides which, the Wiltons have been gracious enough to allow me to buy all the furnishings in here. They’re not bad furnishings either, as furnishings go. That is to say, they’re well made, and not soaking with mildew after all that rain in spring.’ Waldo sat himself down on the sofa and bounced up and down as he tried it out. ‘Yes, not bad at all,’ he pronounced. ‘Properly sprung, I’m happy to tell you. And note the electric wall fires in all the rooms. No more freezing in winter, eh?’
‘Not for those that can afford such luxury,’ Rusty agreed shyly, feeling slightly awkward as she always did in Mr Astley’s company, since she had never quite got over his kindness the night he had found her in Mrs Morrison’s house. ‘Electricity doesn’t come cheap, you know, Mr Astley.’
‘I intend to throw the heating in as part and parcel.’
‘Someone’s going to be lucky then.’
Peter gave Rusty a brief look, raising his eyebrows as he did so.
Rusty frowned, wondering where all this was leading, yet finding herself oddly excited because she thought that Mr Astley could not possibly be cruel enough to lead a couple such as her and her husband up such a pretty garden path. There might well be more than an outside chance that this proposed enterprise would involve them.
‘No,’ Waldo continued. ‘I wouldn’t make anyone pay for their heating on top, not at today’s prices.’
‘Like I said, Mr Astley,’ Peter replied, interrupting hastily. ‘Excellent accommodation. Someone would fall lucky to have this.’
‘And what is your wife’s view?’
‘I agree with my husband, Mr Astley. It’s really lovely actually. Whoever lives here is going to be – well – very lucky.’
She bit her lip as if to stop herself saying too much, if she hadn’t done so already. Since Peter had got his windfall from the sale of the Jaguar to Mr Astley, Rusty had begun imagining that her dream about the flat for rent above the greengrocer’s shop in the High Street might now become a reality, but however well they did it up it would never measure up to accommodation like this. This was so much more spacious and light, being more like a small house in itself rather than a somewhat cramped set of rooms stuck above the smell and noise of a busy greengrocery. Of course, compared to how they were living now at her parents’, any place of their own would be a blessing, but a place like this would be more than just a blessing, it would be heaven.
Even the ultra-conservative Peter, a man who worried night and morning about money and security, had finally allowed that with the huge profit he had made from the sale of the Jaguar to Mr Astley they could now seriously consider a move to an apartment such as they had found in the High Street. However, thanks to the expressions of foreboding and repeated forecasts of economic doom and gloom that had emanated from Mr Todd following the announcement of the Sykeses’ proposed evacuation, Peter was now having second thoughts, believing his father-in-law’s assertion that economic recovery was far from certain, and that if this was indeed so, rather than find themselves over their heads in debt, the best move to make was no move.
‘If the government fail in steadying the ship,’ Mr Todd had taken to warning the young marrieds, ‘which in my opinion they have every chance of doing given the present economic climate, we could all find ourselves even worse off than we were before. So much the best thing to do with this windfall of yours is to save it for the famous rainy day, which as far as I’m concerned could be any day now.’
Mindful of her father’s prognostications, Rusty decided that much the best thing was not to say another word, just in case of quite what she wasn’t at all sure, but just in case. In order to make absolutely sure she wasn’t going to be responsible for anything that might somehow jeopardise her little family’s future, she took her little boy’s hand and began to lead him towards the doors that opened on to the garden, only to find her way blocked by Waldo.
‘Rusty? Is something the matter? You’ve said so little about this place, I am beginning to wonder whether you really like it one bit.’
‘Sorry, Mr Astley.’ Rusty looked mortified. The last thing she wanted to do was upset Mr Astley because ever since the night she had been discovered in Mrs Morrison’s house she had always had it at the back of her mind that if Mr Astley should suddenly take against her, or if she did something stupid and upset him, he would tell on her, tell the whole of Bexham, and what small and relatively unimportant life she had would be well and truly ruined.
She felt a tug on her sleeve, and coming back to earth saw from Peter’s frown that she had been quite carried away by her worries.
‘As far as I can gather you said this would be an agreeable place to live, Rusty,’ Waldo was saying, in a tone that suggested he was repeating himself. ‘But what you did not say was whether or not you might find it agreeable.’
Now Rusty was completely at sea, able only to imagine that during her reverie she had missed some vital part of the conversation. Unable to respond sensibly, she found herself staring from one man to the other, from Peter to Mr Astley and then back to Peter.
‘I don’t think she heard a word you said, Mr Astley.’ Peter smiled. ‘Or else she didn’t quite catch your drift.’
‘Then we shall have to start over, Peter.’ Waldo took an exaggeratedly deep breath, half closing his eyes while he prepared to begin again.
‘Mr Astley is suggesting that we live here, Rusty,’ Peter chimed in. ‘That we have this quite splendid accommodation in return for working for him.’
The information he was about to repeat having been relayed for him, Waldo closed his eyes entirely and sighed.
While Rusty frowned.
‘I don’t understand, Peter,’ she said. ‘How could we live here – I mean how could we possibly work for him? For Mr Astley here? What about the garage?’
‘The garage will not be affected, Rusty,’ Waldo assured her. ‘You could both live here, and Peter can still work at the garage – in fact I shall insist that he does, such is my investment in the place – the only condition being that you agree to be my housekeeper. Because I am most definitely going to need a cook-housekeeper. You’re looking at a fellow who boils eggs in a kettle, and has absolutely no idea how to make toast let alone a pot roast.’
Rusty smiled shyly. Encouraged, Waldo continued.
‘The idea, Rusty, would be for you to look after me and my house, while your husband looks after my business interest in his garage. You can both live here rent free, since you will be working for me, and I can keep a weather eye on your husband in case he decides to take the day off and spend it in bed rather than go and plough our joint furrow. So what do you say? Seems a very sensible arrangement to me.’
Rusty wanted to agree, more than anything else in the world. But she knew it couldn’t be. She knew it had to be a daydream or a cruel joke, because no-one had thought it through properly. No-one had considered the one thing – or more properly the one person – who could prevent this dream from becoming a reality. So she said nothing, hoping that as long as she remained silent on the subject the others might agree to it before they discovered the snag.
‘It’s Tam, isn’t it?’ Waldo asked out of the blue. ‘You’re worried about your little boy. You’re wondering how could you manage with Tam running about all over the place – and not only that, you’re worried about how I would cope. Well, don’t. I don’t see any difficulty with your boy, Rusty. If you were at home rather than here doing your housework, what would you do? You’d have Tam running about the place while you set about your duties, and anyway he’ll be starting school soon. When he does, you’ll have more time to yourself, and in the meantime he’s old enough to play by himself in the garden here, which we shall make quite childproof. Lord above, when I was his age I spent most of my time playing by myself, being an only child just like young Tam. It’s good training. Teaches you to be resourceful and independent.’
‘Mr Astley’s right, Rusty,’ Peter put in quickly to prevent Rusty saying anything more. ‘Besides being extremely generous. There’s really nothing to stop us agreeing to this proposal.’
At the mention of Tam’s being an only child Rusty had immediately retreated back inside her head. There was no reason now why Tam should have to go on being an only child. If the three of them moved into this wonderful accommodation there’d be plenty of space for a new baby. And what a wonderful place to bring up a child – large, light rooms that overlooked the estuary from the front and the wonderful big garden that ran out to the rear. Perhaps now she would be able to make up for the loss of her baby, for the death of little Jeannie, and if not bury at least assuage the hurt she still felt so keenly. No-one had understood – nor, it seemed to her, tried to understand – what the loss of a baby meant to its mother, to the person who had been carrying the tiny life around within her for nine long months. Having gone through two pregnancies Rusty now believed there was something mystical in that state, that being pregnant must be part of a mystery that had to do with the rhythms of the universe, the movement of the stars and the moon – that this all too common human condition lifted a woman into a state of spiritual consciousness that made others either envious or wilfully uninterested, so that perhaps it came as a strange relief when they found you had lost your baby, such were the primal and numinous sentiments having a baby encouraged. Once some people knew your mysterious odyssey had ended not in joy, but in tragedy, they felt this strange relief, and consequently were all too ready to come up with idiotic reasons why the baby had died.
Listening to the radio too much was one. According to one mean-minded old woman in the village this was the reason Rusty had lost Jeannie, because she’d been listening to too much radio. Radio waves killed babies, didn’t she know that? Just as eating green potatoes might – or at the very least could – leave you with a deformed child, which again would be entirely your fault. But now if they lived in a place of their own, away from the know-alls, the wiseacres and the prophets of doom, Rusty might be able to have a beautiful brother or sister for Tam, and Peter and she could bring up a family in peace, health and happiness, which was a heart-stopping thought.
‘Yes,’ she announced suddenly, to the two men’s surprise. ‘I think you’re right, Peter. I think we should accept Mr Astley’s very kind offer.’
‘You will?’ Waldo’s face lit up with a mix of genuine relief and pleasure. ‘You really will?’
‘I think so. Yes. I can’t see any reason why not to.’
She wanted to ask him why. Very badly she wanted to ask why he was singling them out to help, why her and Peter and no-one else in the village. There were other deserving cases he could have considered, some perhaps even more deserving than their own, yet he had picked them, and Rusty was curious to know why. Yet she dared not ask just in case she might learn something that would quite spoil the pleasure and excitement of the moment, or, even worse, something that might jeopardise their whole future, that might be so dreadful that they would not be able to take up his offer after all and would be forced to go back, cap in hand to her mother and father, to live with them once more in abject misery. So of course she didn’t ask the question. She simply affirmed her decision, thanked Mr Astley as best she could and stood aside while the two men talked through the fine details. And it was just as well she did. For by doing so, by remaining silent, she was able to see why Mr Astley was being so benevolent. It wasn’t that he felt sorry for them, although she was sure that might well have been the reason for his Christian behaviour the night she was caught in Mrs Morrison’s. No, it wasn’t pity at all. This time Mr Astley’s charity was motivated by something entirely different. Rusty saw it as she stood by watching the two men talk business, making plans and foreseeing their joint future. Mr Astley was doing what he was doing not because they were some deserving cause, but because, unlike her own father, Mr Waldo Astley believed in Peter.
With this realisation came an enormous surge of relief. Rusty didn’t need any more pity. Rusty reckoned she had endured from certain people recently enough pity to keep her humble for the rest of her life. But now that Mr Waldo Astley believed in Peter enough not only to invest money in his enterprise and make him a business partner, but also to take on his once errant young wife as his housekeeper, she knew that she could rebuild her life, that she could pull her shoulders back to where they had been during the war, stand straight again and walk as tall as she should. She could look people in the eye again, rather than pass them by with her eyes on her feet, trying not to notice how they shook their heads sadly at her, at that poor Rusty Sykes who lost her baby and used to wander round half demented clutching a dolly, poor soul.
Once everything had been agreed in principle, Waldo drove off in his beautiful, newly acquired Jaguar, a car that seemed to Rusty to have been tailor made for him, so well did it go with his flamboyant personality and extraordinary good looks. Rusty watched him drive away down the causeway that led back to the estuary road, the hood of the car down, the wind blowing through his thick dark hair, his famous hat chucked onto the back seat, with the sunlight dancing off the brightly polished chrome, and felt a sudden pang. His dash and his style, and above all his huge appetite for life itself, reminded her of the late Davey Kinnersley, Meggie Gore-Stewart’s great love, a passion Rusty had secretly shared. Rusty was reminded of how Mr Kinnersley would arrive back in Bexham aboard his yacht the Light Heart, standing at the helm with the wind off the sea blowing through his shock of fair hair, and how Rusty and her brothers would be there lined up on the quays to watch him, enthralled by his seemingly carefree manner, his style, and his dash. Rusty would have given anything she had to be seated in the passenger seat of the beautiful white sports car with Waldo Astley driving. To be driven away by him into the unknown would be like going to heaven. It would be like taking the open road leading only to unimaginable happiness and bliss.
Instead he had left her another taste of paradise, the right to live in the lovely wing of Markers, to be a resident in one of Bexham’s most elegant of houses.
‘Do you ever wonder why he’s doing all this?’ Peter asked Rusty as they wandered back, towards the centre of the village. ‘Do you ever wonder why us?’
‘Course I do, Peter,’ Rusty replied. ‘All the time. It worried me at first – but now I know why, I’m not the least bothered by it no more.’ She picked up Tam and swung him onto her hip, walking along more jauntily than Peter had seen her move for weeks and months.
Peter hesitated then hurried on after her, as best he could with his gammy leg. ‘Wait!’ he called. ‘Hey – wait for me, Rusty!’
She waited, smiling happily to herself while Tam played around her feet, chasing a big coloured butterfly that was fluttering over the wild flowers along the verge.
‘What did you mean – now you know?’ Peter demanded, once he had caught up. ‘Now it doesn’t bother you any more. Why did he pick us?’
‘He didn’t, Pete,’ Rusty answered simply. ‘He didn’t pick us, love. He picked you.’
* * *
Waldo’s next port of call was Shelborne. He had telephoned Loopy earlier that morning to ask if he might pay her a visit because he had some important news for her, and after the briefest of hesitations Loopy had agreed to see him at lunchtime over a glass of sherry.
‘That’s one of the few drinks which I don’t enjoy, if you wouldn’t mind,’ Waldo said as he was offered a glass from a cut crystal decanter. ‘Once when I was at Harvard we were very bored, as students perpetually seem to be, even though they have everything at their feet, and I overindulged in dry sherry. I thought it was a nothing drink – the kind of drink you gave to your maiden aunts at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Next thing I knew was waking up in hospital. I actually don’t want a drink, to tell you the absolute truth. This is actually a business call, not a social one.’
As Loopy smiled and poured herself a tonic water, as much to mark time as anything else, Waldo stroked her little dog’s head and noted with admiration how trim and lithe Loopy Tate’s figure still was.
‘Sure I can’t tempt you to something?’ she called from the other end of the room.
‘I can be tempted to most things, Mrs Tate, believe me – but not sherry wine.’
‘Yet so far no-one’s tempted you into marriage.’
Loopy turned back to him and looked at him with a slight smile intended to hide her deliberate provocation. She was interested to note that for once Mr Waldo Astley was at a loss for words – but only temporarily.
‘If I were to be married, Mrs Tate, I would not want to be tempted into it. I’d really want to be married for love.’
‘How delightfully old-fashioned.’
‘Being a Southerner – like yourself, Mrs Tate – I declare some of the oldest fashions still to be the best.’
‘Then forgive my modern impertinence – and this is a lot to do with living in this country, particularly in these parts and at this time in our history – but given that there is generally a great shortage of eligible young men, I simply must know if you have ever been even close to what my husband calls the state of unholy deadlock.’
Waldo laughed and shook his head. ‘I rather agree with whoever it was,’ he replied. ‘Voltaire, I think. That marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Present company excepted.’
‘Would you count your parents as cowards too, Mr Astley?’
‘Do you think you might call me by my first name? And I you by yours? After all, we are fellow Americans.’
‘But of course, Waldo. So, to get back to what we were saying—’
‘My parents were a classic case of two people marrying only to wake up the next morning and find they’d married someone else.’
‘If I get your drift,’ Loopy said, taking the easy chair opposite Waldo and indicating with an elegant hand that he should also sit down, ‘if I catch your drift, you’re saying your parents – what, didn’t know each other that well before they married?’
‘I have to wonder why you’re so curious not only about my marital or non-marital status but also about my family, Loopy,’ Waldo said with a smile, taking his cigar case from his inside pocket as he saw Loopy lighting herself a cigarette.
‘I’m a naturally curious person,’ Loopy replied, exhaling a long line of blue smoke. ‘Particularly about people who interest me.’
‘I’d far rather talk about your paintings than my parents, if it’s all the same to you, Loopy,’ Waldo replied as he cut the end of his cigar with a small silver implement. ‘And I’ve changed my mind about a drink, if that’s all right? No, don’t move – I’ll help myself if I may. Is that whisky in the other decanter?’
‘I have a terrible feeling they’re both sherry wine. One dry one sweet.’
‘Then I’ll have a pink gin, if it’s all the same to you. I’ve developed a bit of a taste for this most English of drinks.’
Shaking a couple of drops of Angostura Bitters into a glass, Waldo swilled them round then tipped the remains into the fireplace before adding a generous amount of gin with a dash of water. As he prepared his drink Loopy smoked her cigarette, wondering privately why he seemed so unwilling to elaborate about his background. But she knew better than to ask further. She had been far too well brought up not to recognise the fine line between polite curiosity and impolite nosiness.
‘I have some rather exciting news for you,’ Waldo announced, as he sat back down once again. ‘I find it so, at least, and I sincerely hope you do as well. Do you know of Richard Oliver, the art dealer?’ Loopy nodded and frowned. ‘Richard’s a good friend of mine. His gallery did some business on behalf of my father some years ago in New York – or rather his late father who was running the Oliver Gallery then did, and his son and I became friends. Whenever Richard was in New York, he and I played a lot of cards together, drank a lot of whisky and listened to a lot of jazz. But to cut to the chase, I showed him the four small pictures you kindly allowed me to borrow and he demands to see more. I mean demands. He was suggesting he might come down here, to see the body of your work – but I sense that might prove difficult.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Loopy protested. ‘They’re my paintings and surely I can show them to whomsoever I choose.’
‘I seem to remember you had a certain amount of difficulty showing them to me.’
‘This is different. This is business.’
‘Excellent. I’m glad to hear such determination,’ Waldo replied. ‘Now of course you know what this could mean? If Richard gives you an exhibition, your whole life could change – and that might not be quite as convenient as it sounds.’
Waldo smiled at Loopy but she just nodded, anxious for him to proceed.
‘You might become not just successful, but famous. And because of that, you might want to think about it some. It opens up all kinds of maybes. So you might want to think about it, because once you’ve opened Pandora’s box, afterwards is way too late.’
‘I shan’t become famous, don’t worry. If my work is any good I might become moderately well known, but I shall eschew fame. It really would not suit me. But as for something changing my life, why not?’ Loopy smiled and shrugged. ‘Look – I’ve lived my whole adult life at the disposal of other people – to me the most important people in the world, namely my family – waiting on them, worrying over them, thinking only of them, but that part of my life is over now. So I really have no intention of remaining at their beck and call for what’s left. It wouldn’t be good for them, and it would be even worse for me. And even if the absurd did happen and I became monumentally famous, it’s a little late for me to have my head turned. I’m getting too old for that.’
‘OK! That’s settled then,’ Waldo said cheerily, draining his glass and standing up. ‘No more talk of you getting spoiled by the trappings of fame – we shall stick strictly to business. Richard is genuinely very excited by your work, just on the evidence of those four small pictures. He feels you have an original talent, and after all that is what art is all about – producing something unique and original. But I have to say here, I can’t understand why none of them hang in the house. I do find that odd.’
‘Let’s just say Hugh finds my colours too bright for his taste.’
‘Don’t you think that’s something that husbands do? And fathers as well? I sometimes think it’s because they feel it distracts from them. Why do so many male birds have brighter feathers than female birds? So that the males can strut and show off, and no-one will even notice the poor old drab female behind them. The male sex are born show-offs, Loopy, believe me. Nature has given us a love for centre stage and we don’t like relinquishing it.’
‘Does the same thing go for you, Waldo? Do you like to strut?’
‘You are looking at the prime example, my dear Mrs Tate, believe me.’
‘Good. Then I insist you stay to luncheon and expound your theory some more, so that I shall be able the better to handle my husband on his return. Come on, Beanie,’ she called to her little dog. ‘We shall eat al fresco.’
They sat out on the terrace eating a sardine salad dressed with a strange mayonnaise Gwen had invented during the war and to which she had become oddly addicted, but since both Loopy and Waldo were far more interested in their conversation the state of the salad dressing was by the by.
What was not by the by was that it seemed that Loopy really was going to be invited to have an exhibition at a famous London West End gallery. But however much Waldo kept insisting it was true, the more he did so the more impossible the notion seemed, particularly since if the show was in any way successful it very well might establish Loopy as a professional artist. As she listened to Waldo expound, Loopy couldn’t help imagining the reaction of her family and friends, and wondering what on earth they would make of it. Not even her children had ever bothered to comment on their mother’s ‘daubs’. As far as they were concerned Loopy’s paintings were just the reason she was often late for dinner, or was forever catching them up when they went out for a walk on the Downs. Not one of them had ever considered her paintings might possibly have some merit.
‘So what’s the next step, Waldo?’ Loopy enquired as he prepared to take his leave of her. ‘Will young Mr Oliver really come to visit?’
‘I really think he will,’ Waldo replied. ‘Unlike a lot of gallery owners, Dick likes to come to artists’ studios himself. Doesn’t send a subordinate; he comes in person. That way he gets a much better feel for their work. He’ll go anywhere in search of fine art, sometimes to the most outlandish places. He really is very dedicated.’
Picking up the large straw panama hat that he now always wore during the heat of the day in place of his slouch hat, Waldo smiled in farewell and made for the door.
‘I wonder why,’ Loopy said quietly, as she opened the front door for her guest.
‘I just told you, Loopy. Because Dick really is one dedicated fellow.’
‘I meant why me? I meant I was wondering why you have spent all this time and bother on me. Is this something you do? Find artists for your friend Richard? Or is there some other reason you’re taking all this trouble?’
Waldo looked at her carefully, then at his hat, on whose perfectly clean brim he seemed suddenly to find some small traces of lint which he carefully picked off. Finally he put his hat in his other hand, preparatory to donning it, and cocked his head to one side as he looked back at the beautiful woman standing before him.
‘No, Mrs Tate,’ he said slowly. ‘No, this is not something I do. This isn’t something I do at all. In fact this is something I have never done before. So why you? Why not you? Why not ask yourself that? Why not you?’
With an enigmatic look, Waldo gave a smile and a small bow before donning his hat and departing, leaving Loopy with an almost irresistible urge to pull an infuriated face behind his back. Instead she went back inside, changed her dress – for reasons she knew not – dotted some scent on the inside of each wrist and in the centre of her neck and suddenly smiled happily at her image in her dressing glass.
‘I am going to be famous,’ she told herself. ‘I am going to become a painter of some renown.’
She had already decided to take a walk down by the estuary and was about to put Beanie on his lead when she thought better of it, remembering how the little dog had suffered in the heat the last time she took him out in the afternoon. So with another pat to his fond little head she left him in the cool of the kitchen and took herself out the back door.
She had meant to take her sketchpad with her, but the heat had become so oppressive that she decided if she sat somewhere to draw she would simply frazzle in temperatures that must by now be well in the nineties. So armed only and very sensibly with her parasol she was wandering along the path beside the water in the direction of the quays, meaning to stop and sit for a while on the jetty when she got there before returning home via the lane that ran past the church and back round the top of the village, when suddenly she saw her husband’s car.
At least at first sight she thought she saw the big black Humber, before realising she could not possibly have done so because Hugh was still in London and not returning as always until Friday evening. So cupping a hand over her eyes to protect them from the sun into which she was looking, she stared across the estuary again to make sure she was right and that she was in fact not seeing things.
There was a car and the car was large and black, of that there was no mistake. It was driving west, on the road on the far side of the estuary, heading for the abandoned boatyard on the promontory that lay beyond Markers, Waldo’s new house. From such a distance it was impossible for Loopy to clearly identify the vehicle, yet something told her it was their car, not just because it was the only one of its sort in the neighbourhood, because such a car might easily belong to some incoming stranger or visitor, but because of the way it was being driven. Why she could identify their car for such an absurd reason Loopy had absolutely no idea, yet she was convinced enough to hurry to the quay and to pay one of the boatmen to ferry her across the stretch of water which was now at high tide.
As to what she was going to do once she got to the other side Loopy had no real idea, other than to have it confirmed or denied that the big black Humber was their car or not. If it was, she might ask Hugh what in hell he was doing home – and then again, remembering her husband’s line of business, she might not. But if she possibly could she would find out what exactly Hugh might be up to here, in his own backyard, in the middle of the week.
In line with her instructions, Jed the boatman dropped her well east of the derelict boatyard so that she could not be seen disembarking. Loopy instructed him not to wait for her, so Jed turned the motor dinghy about, to return to the quays. Ahead of her, Loopy could see the big black car parked with its back to her next to the boat shed, to one side of the jetty that ran out from the front of the yard beside the slipway. Unfortunately whoever the driver was had parked the car behind the upturned hull of an old boat so that the number plate was obscured from Loopy’s view. In order to get close enough to identify the vehicle Loopy would have to get to the back wall of the boat shed, from where she would be able to get the clearest of views. Unfortunately to do so she would have to run the risk of being spotted by the driver in his rear view mirror, should he chance to look into it. But, as Loopy realised, that was a chance she would have to take, and if the driver was her husband she would have to somehow convince him either then, or later, that she was out for a stroll, even though she was the wrong side of the estuary, and with the tide still running high a good three miles from their front door.
It was a fifty-fifty shot and Loopy took it, gambling that there was more than one person in the car. To her way of thinking there had to be, because it seemed unreasonable to believe that if a solo driver wanted to feast his eyes on a beautiful view, some broken old boats and rusting up machinery would hardly be his choice.
So as quickly and as quietly and as circuitously as she could Loopy made her way to the cover of the boat shed, from where she could observe the car and its occupants.
She was right – there was more than one person in the car. There were two. On the passenger side, Loopy could clearly see a woman’s elbow resting on the sill of the wound down front window while the fingers of one red-nailed hand drummed a slow tattoo idly on the roof. Beyond the woman, who had her head turned away from her, she could also see the driver, an outline she recognised at once as belonging to her husband Hugh, whose own elbow was also resting on the sill of his open window as he talked to his companion.
Despite being well hidden from the car, Loopy pulled back further into the shadows. What exactly she was going to do now she wasn’t at all sure, except perhaps just look and listen, which was what she did.
It was a very quiet spot, the nearest building being Markers which stood a good half-mile down the lane. Apart from the mournful hoot of a distant ship somewhere out in the Channel, the only noise was from the run of the tide, but it was a windless day and the sea was running calm. So from her hiding place Loopy could hear what was being said almost too well.
‘But I need you,’ Hugh was saying.
‘Of course you don’t,’ came the reply. ‘I don’t think you really need me so much as I happen to be readily available. And, most important of all, I’m still single – but you needn’t start trying that line on me because it won’t wash. I’m not that wet behind the ears any more. Not like before, not like I used to be. I really have no desire to play the heroine any more. Germany was enough.’
She had known from the very first words the woman had uttered who she was – but even if she hadn’t that last phrase would have revealed her identity. Meggie Gore-Stewart.
Then she heard her husband laugh, laughing his delighted flirtatious laugh, the laugh that still entranced his wife.
‘Your problem,’ Hugh said, his voice carrying to Loopy all too clearly, ‘your problem is that like so many members of your sex since the war, you’ve lost any idea of your worth – of your value. You’d rather people saw you as a social butterfly now than as the person you really are. But I know you better than that. I know the real you. And however much you protest, you’ll come round to saying yes in the end.’
‘Do you know what you have, Hugh Tate? A nerve. You really do have a nerve thinking that all you have to do is smile and lift your little finger and I’ll come running back to you. As if I was like a wireless set you just turn on and find it’s still playing exactly the same programme as it was the last time you listened to it. Not me, Hugh. I’m playing something quite different now, and I’m very much afraid you are just not part of my programme any more. Got it? I sincerely hope so.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Yes I do – and stop looking as if it’s the end of the world. Because it ain’t.’
‘You really have no idea how much I need you. Really, Meggie.’
‘Then you’re just going to have to go on needing. Now can we go home, please? I have things to do.’
Hugh went to say something but he was cut short by his passenger’s suffering a sudden coughing fit.
‘You all right?’ Loopy heard him asking anxiously.
‘Course I’m not bloody well all right!’ came the angry reply. ‘I’m half choking to death – can’t you hear!’
‘That really is a dreadful cough,’ Hugh said, as the fit eased.
‘It was that damned winter,’ Meggie spluttered. ‘I got the worst cold, and I’ve never been able to get rid of the cough since.’
‘Nothing to do with cigarettes, of course.’
‘If it was, that’s got nothing to do with you,’ Meggie replied shortly. ‘Now take me home or I’ll get out and swim, I really will.’
Loopy waited until the car was completely out of sight before taking another breath, let alone moving. While she waited, she wondered what on earth was the true import of the conversation she had just overheard. Knowing Hugh and his security work it could be anything – but then knowing men it could equally well be something else altogether.
Meggie and Hugh? It seemed the most unlikely of liaisons. As a rule Hugh, while admiring Meggie’s courage, had only ever joked about her. It was always ‘Meggie-Long-Legs’ or ‘Meggie-Won’t-Settle’. Loopy had always stood up for Meggie whom she very much liked as well as admired, particularly after her heroic actions during the war. Yet Loopy also knew that according to Judy, Meggie could be notoriously unreliable or even, dare she think it, unstable, given to sudden fancies which Judy described as Meggie’s whims.
So there might be good reason to suppose that her very own husband had been the subject of one of Miss Gore-Stewart’s whims.
Once the car and its occupants were well out of her range, Loopy began her long walk home. She made no attempt to take any short cuts this time round. She had far too much to think about.