At last Dauncy was home. Summer was nearly gone, but as far as Loopy was concerned it began all over again on the return of her youngest son.
‘My,’ she sighed, after she had hugged him welcome and stood back to appraise her boy. ‘My oh my, but I dare swear you have grown.’
‘I am nearly nineteen, Mother!’ Dauncy laughed, able now to put down his hand luggage. ‘I stopped growing years ago. Hey – I have missed this place.’
‘You sound quite American.’
‘That cannot be altogether surprising – seeing I spent most of the summer there.’
‘I hope it wasn’t as unbearably hot as the summer here. I thought we should all melt.’
Dauncy was as delighted to be reunited with his family as they were to have him back home. Being the youngest he had always had a special place in all their hearts as each of them considered he needed their protection. As a consequence, rather than being spoiled, which could so easily have been the case, despite the war and all its sorrows the youngest Tate grew up emotionally secure and confident, the most perfectly adjusted of the three boys. In fact, he was sufficiently self-assured to be immediately attractive to everyone. Whereas Walter was still the homecoming hero, and John the business success, young Dauncy now found his own fame as the most sportif and the most personable of the three Tate boys. So much so that he had barely been home for twenty-four hours when the invitations began arriving for him to go sailing, to play tennis, to grace cocktail parties and dances with his presence.
Naturally Dauncy allowed himself to be fêted, while privately confiding to his mother that, after his hectic time in America, he would really rather prefer just to relax with family, play a bit of tennis and golf but most of all take Dingy, the family’s ancient but speedy little sailing boat, out whenever possible. The very first day he sailed Dingy out into the estuary he was immediately noticed, and then watched, by a man in a garden on the north shore, a man much taken to watching events unfold in the little fishing port opposite which he now lived. Perhaps if he had realised this Dauncy would have felt uneasy, but as it was he merely set sail with a carefree heart and a determination to enjoy his precious time at home.
The man watching him was of course Waldo, and he too was happy. He was happy with his new house, with Rusty’s care of it, and in particular with the restoration work that Peter Sykes and two friends were carrying out in their spare time. Far from being irreparable, the roof, as Peter had forecast, had been easily fixed, so that all that now remained to be done was the redecoration and the furnishing. Of course, once Peter had finished the initial repairs, Waldo had further plans for the house, but being all too aware of the rumours that were now circulating around him, about how he was managing to get things done that others could not get done, he delayed doing anything more.
He was also in the Todds’ bad books for being responsible for the defection of not only Peter and Rusty from their household but also their much doted over grandson Tam. Waldo expressed his concerns to Rusty, but Rusty just shrugged it all off.
‘Look, Mr Astley, I been to hell and back on snow shoes, so I couldn’t care any more, so don’t you worry, really. We’re really happy where we are now, honestly, and we can’t thank you enough, so don’t you worry.’
So Waldo gave up that concern and instead enjoyed the good care that Rusty lavished on him as well as the honest toil that her husband was putting into building up their joint business. But just now his interests were on something quite different as through his field glasses he watched the handsome young man skilfully handling the blue-painted yacht that was dancing across the windswept waters of the Sound running at full tide below his lawns. Much taken with the young sailor’s skill and dexterity, Waldo found himself watching for far longer than he had intended, which was how he followed the little yacht home through his binoculars and saw it being dragged up on shore on the stretch of beach that ran directly below the Tate residence and was usually reserved for their craft.
‘This must be the prodigal returned,’ he said to himself, still watching through his glasses. ‘And then there were three brothers Tate.’
Once Dauncy was out of his sight, having let himself into the family property through the heavy old iron gate in the south garden wall, Waldo dropped his glasses, allowing them to swing round his neck on their leather strap as he contemplated his next move. He could see no possible objection to the request he was planning, although he judged there would be plenty of initial opposition. Indeed, the thought of it amused him as he strolled back up the lawns towards his new marine residence. Rusty, dressed in a pretty blue cotton dress, her hair brushed on top of her head, was busy laying his lunch out on the terrace, while to one side of the house Tam played on a garden swing. It was, Waldo thought, an idyllic sight. The sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky, glinting brightly off the waves and still hot enough to allow him to take off his jacket and hang it on the back of his chair as he sat down to taste a delicious salad of freshly caught crab washed down with a bottle of Chablis he had purchased under the counter from Richards at the Three Tuns. He smiled across at Tam who was now being pushed on the swing by his mother. Some way or another they would all of them remember this moment, the sunshine, the child on the swing and Rusty in her blue dress. It was a painting of a moment.
It was in the now thriving public house that the opportunity for which Waldo had been waiting arose that very Saturday, the day of the annual Bexham rowing races, a fixture said to date back to the Middle Ages when Grisham, the nearest small fishing port to Bexham, became involved in a rivalry with the latter that had lasted through the centuries to the present day. History had it that the rivalry was nothing to do with fishing skills or the size of catches but had been based rather on prowess and myth, the prowess being the strength of the Sussex longboat men and the myth being how far out to sea they rowed during their fishing excursions. At first boat had followed boat out into the Channel to see exactly how far they did in fact row, but this type of challenge ended when a freak storm blew up during one such match, sinking both longboats and claiming the lives of two dozen fishermen, a blow it was said from which neither of the little fishing villages recovered for half a century.
Many years therefore passed before the challenge between the ports could be renewed, the rules of the contest being redrawn by the womenfolk, who, although prepared to lose their husbands and sons to the sea in the natural order of things, were determined not to increase the odds of their being prematurely widowed by the staging of an absurdly dangerous rowing competition. For the competition was infinitely more risky than any daily fishing expedition, since both crews, fuelled by alcohol and rivalry, would row out far beyond the normal limits in order to prove their point. So the match became a straightforward boat race held in the relative safety of the estuary at full tide. Before the war it had been a famous local attraction, but this was the first year it had been held since global hostilities had ceased, and not unnaturally was not nearly as well attended as in previous times.
Even so, as it turned out, it was still a busy and successful day for the village, with at least two hundred or so visitors descending on Bexham and bringing a welcome albeit brief influx of commerce.
‘But as I always say,’ Richards had announced authoritatively after lunch as Meggie helped him to wash up dozens of pint glasses in anticipation of even livelier trade in the evening, ‘and as I always have said, if people enjoy themselves they will come back again and spend even more.’
‘Of course,’ Meggie had replied, poker-faced. ‘You used always to say that – when? When you were serving dinner, was it? Or polishing the silver.’
‘This was in one of my former lives, Miss Megs,’ Richards had told her, without batting an eyelid. ‘This was when I was deeply in trade, selling fish off a slab in Billingsgate Market.’
He eyed her as if in challenge, but Meggie knew better than to take Richards up on anything to do with one of his previous incarnations. All she knew was that some time in his previous life, whenever and whatever it had been, had made him an expert on everything from fish to how to lay a banquet. How this had all happened before he went to work for her grandmother after the first world war it never occurred to Meggie to ask, but happen it must have, surely, or Richards would not have ended up with such a fund of knowledge that ranged from the mind-boggling to the quite utterly trivial.
To help with local trade, not least that of the Three Tuns, the race itself was staged as late in the afternoon as possible, depending naturally on the tides, and since this particular year high tide was at 5.20 p.m. the trade in the old inn that evening was as brisk as anyone could remember since the dark days of the war. Blessed with a fine sunny evening, the drinkers spilled out on to the quays where they sat drinking and eating in the warm September sunshine, while inside the regulars stayed drinking where they always drank, as if afraid that should they forsake their regular bar stool or seat in the window they would never be able to reclaim it. Meggie, enjoying the day to the full, had stayed on to help Richards behind the bar, much to her old butler’s delight since her glamour helped to pull the punters and keep them drinking.
Waldo, who for once had wandered in more or less unnoticed, was most impressed by Meggie’s performance behind the polished copper bar. He was taken not only by her apparent skill at pulling pints, which by now he knew to be quite a considerable art, but by her entire manner. Since her now famous cocktail party he had really only caught the occasional glimpse of her, either walking briskly through the village with her small shopping basket on one arm and her blond hair well concealed under a patterned silk headscarf, or whizzing past, far too fast for anyone’s safety, in her ruby red Austin 10. Yet few though those glimpses had been, they had been enough to intrigue him, since Miss Gore-Stewart was undoubtedly one of those women with a very well defined aura.
As far as Waldo was concerned, from a purely academic point of view, Miss Meggie Gore-Stewart had what Hollywood called It – that indefinable appeal of the star, that palpable sense of mystery and glamour. Tonight as he watched her at work behind the bar, he got a heightened sense of her allure, because he supposed to himself that she surely must be slumming it? She had on something in silk that obviously had seen better days, which he imagined Miss Gore-Stewart had now decided would suffice for much less elegant occasions than the ones for which it had originally been purchased. The dress was a dark red, with short puffed sleeves and a quite considerable décolletage in which the stream of male customers who formed an almost constant queue to be served by her were taking an inordinate and unashamed delight. With her customary applomb Meggie was ignoring the innuendoes and the open flirtations, deciding only to deliver choice put-downs to those who over-stepped the limit, several of which Waldo was privileged to overhear, and all of which did nothing to deter the male population from returning to the bar for more.
Waldo stood at one corner of the bar sipping his whisky and soda watching the unusual barmaid. He half hoped to catch her eye so that she and not Richards would come over and take his next order, and another part of him hoped that she would do nothing of the sort, so that he could simply go on observing her and appreciating her performance. After some time, Meggie, turning to get something from behind her, seemed to catch sight of him, or at any rate glance in his direction, but then the moment passed and she turned back to the next customer, and Waldo, it would seem, became as interesting to her as the pints she was pulling, or the whisky she happened to be pouring the attentive customer.
Once again the barman who stood in front of him was Richards, wearing his best and most expectant landlord’s face.
‘OK,’ Waldo said, finishing his whisky. ‘Hit me again, Mr Richards. Large Scotch, thank you.’
‘I feel sure you would rather be drinking Bourbon, Mr Astley,’ Richards replied, carefully measuring the whisky into the glass.
‘I would if you kept some. Maybe I should bring you back a few bottles after my next trip?’
‘You are returning to America, sir?’
‘Not necessarily. Not necessarily at all. On the other hand, I could be – I even might be.’
With a smile, and knowing that everyone around him was not only listening but interested, Waldo paid his money over, splashed some soda into the Scotch and leaned back against the wall behind him.
Meggie was still down the other end of the bar, her back turned to him, serving some of the victorious Bexham crew. Observing this, Waldo lit his cigar and surveyed the rest of the inhabitants of the pub. At that moment the person he had been hoping to see strolled in through the pub door, dressed in his tennis whites, with sweat still on his brow. By an extension of such good chance, the newcomer happened to come and stand up at the bar, next to Waldo.
‘Good evening, young sir.’ Waldo smiled, his lit cigar now firmly in his mouth. ‘Good game?’
Dauncy Tate smiled, but at the same time looked rueful.
‘Thought it might be a bit of a walk over, but there’s life in the old man yet. As a matter of fact I was playing my father.’
‘Did you beat him?’
Dauncy paused, looking Waldo in the eye. ‘What do you think, sir?’
‘I’d say it went to a third set, which you won 7-5 after a series of deuces.’
‘That’s really quite incredible,’ Dauncy laughed. ‘Where were you hiding?’
‘I used to play tennis with my uncle, who was damn good too, as it happens, but he didn’t much like getting beat by a whippersnapper like me, so the better I got the closer I kept the score line.’ Waldo inhaled some cigar smoke. ‘Drink, young man?’
‘Sure, yup, thank you. I’d like some beer, please. One thing I missed in your country – a decent glass of British beer. I’m Dauncy Tate, by the way, and I’ve just come back from the States. I can speak American, a little, not much, but a little.’
‘That’s great, you can teach me, I’m forgetting – fast. Waldo Astley.’
They shook hands, before Waldo nodded at him, and waited for Meggie who was just about to serve another young man to move up the bar towards them.
‘Another pint, please, Miss Gore-Stewart.’
Mickey Todd, the young man whom Meggie was about to serve, put his glass down on the bar and smiled at Meggie, before somewhat incongruously lighting up a self-rolled cigarette with a gold lighter.
Meggie watched him as she filled his glass with what was currently passing as beer. ‘Smart lighter, Mickey.’
Mickey glanced at it briefly before quickly slipping it back into his pocket again.
‘Yes.’ He took his glass from Meggie. ‘I got it in France – on D Day. The spoils of war, you know. Gold, too. Real blooming gold it is.’ He grinned. ‘Cheers!’
‘Could I see it for a moment?’ Meggie leaned over the bar to Mickey and Mickey put his hand in his pocket to fetch the lighter back out.
‘Course you can, Miss Gore-Stewart.’ He grinned. ‘Your word is my command. Hey!’
It was then he noticed his lighter had gone missing, picked from his pocket by one of his drinking mates to light his own smoke.
‘Hey, Paul! Give that lighter back here!’ he shouted, pushing a couple of his friends out of the way. But the game was on, as one by one the gang threw the lighter from one to another, keeping it out of Mickey’s reach.
‘Some other time, Mickey!’ Meggie called. ‘I’ve got a busy bar here!’
Happily that was as near as Meggie got to discovering the identity of the man who killed her German lover. A man who had risked his life to protect her while she posed as his mistress, sending messages out of Germany to SOE in London.
Down the other end of the bar, after yet another round, tongues were now well and truly loosened, and Dauncy and Waldo had become fast new friends. However, Dauncy was regretfully indicating that he was going to have to leave shortly, since it was high time he got home and changed for his parents’ dinner party.
‘Can’t be late, you know how it is, since it’s for me, in honour of my return. Wouldn’t be taken too well. Will you excuse me, Mr Astley, sir?’
‘But of course,’ Waldo replied gracefully. ‘I’ve not only kept you, I’ve been hogging your company. But before you sprint off, I wonder would you do me a favour? I wondered whether it might be possible for you to teach me how to sail as brilliantly as you?’
Dauncy stared at him over the top of the pint he was just finishing.
‘How do you know how well I sail?’
‘How did I know the result of your tennis match? Because I have second sight!’ Waldo laughed. ‘Hell, I spied you in the estuary this morning, and you looked pretty good to me. And what I need most of all is someone with local knowledge to help me brush up my sailing techniques.’
‘I should be happy to oblige, sir.’ Dauncy handed his empty glass to Meggie with hardly a look, as he was still staring intently at Waldo. As it happened Meggie was too. ‘How long are you going to be here? There’s not a lot of easy sailing weather ahead, I’m afraid.’
‘I live here, young man. I am now a resident of Bexham – at least this is one of my residencies. And because of that I intend to be able to sail as well as I can be taught to sail.’
‘Very well,’ Dauncy nodded. ‘When I’ve got a bit more organised we’ll give it a go. You may not make the grade, you do realise that.’
‘Of course. And if I don’t you have my permission to throw me overboard. You going to the dance here later on?’
‘Thought I might, once the grown-ups at home get fed up with me.’
‘Very well, I’ll probably see you there, or rather here, later.’
Dauncy laughed, picked up his second tennis sweater, bade Waldo farewell and wandered out of the bar in the unhurried manner of a young man who knows he is both home and at home. Waldo watched him go, puffed on his cigar and pretended not to know that someone else had been listening in on their conversation.
‘Why ask poor old Dauncy to teach you?’ a voice said from behind him. Waldo knew at once to whom it belonged. He also knew that Meggie must have been listening in, that was after all a barmaid’s perks. ‘Why ask him?’ she persisted ‘There are plenty of qualified instructors at the Yacht Club, you know.’
‘Yes, I did know. Thank you.’
‘I suppose you asked him because you thought you might get poor old Dauncy’s services for free.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Waldo turned and looked at the young woman who was challening him so overtly. ‘No, Miss Gore-Stewart, that really wasn’t the case at all.’
With a polite smile Waldo placed his empty whisky glass on the bar and left the pub. Meggie stared at it before deciding to leave the glass.
Naturally Dauncy told his family over dinner of his meeting with Waldo Astley in the Three Tuns, as he was bound to do. Besides his immediate family of father, mother, two brothers and sister-in-law, there were six other guests sitting down to dinner at Shelborne that night. The Wilkinsons who sailed with Hugh, the Smith-Hughesons, who owned one of the large estates that backed from Bexham up on to the edge of Goodstock Lane, and Caroline Percy and Georgina Fairfax, whom Loopy had invited to keep John and Dauncy entertained. Both of them were the daughters of rich men and both were busy being all but ignored by the Tate brothers, who dreaded Loopy’s attempts at matchmaking, until Dauncy dropped his bombshell about his meeting in the pub and the party ground to a sudden silence.
‘What on earth have I said?’ Dauncy laughed. ‘What’s the matter? Have I shaken hands with the devil?’
‘No, no – no of course you haven’t, darling,’ Loopy quickly assured him with a smile. ‘It must be twenty past and an angel’s passing overhead.’
‘It’s ten to,’ Hugh corrected her, ‘and I cannot imagine for a moment why we have all lost our tongues. Mr Astley is a most interesting fellow, most interesting.’
‘I thought I remember you said you found him rather attractive?’ one of the guests asked Loopy.
‘I don’t recall saying any such thing!’ Loopy gave a little laugh, hoping to turn the conversation on its head and make light of it. ‘In fact I’m almost sure that was your first impression, Georgina. Gracious no.’
‘I actually find him very charming,’ Judy put in quickly, not wanting to see her mother-in-law embarrassed any further.
‘And when have you had the chance to discover the beauty of his character, might I ask?’ Walter teased, tapping the table lightly with a knife. ‘Is this some handsome acquaintance you’ve been cultivating in my absence?’
It was Judy’s turn to look embarrassed. She went to say something, but before she could Loopy came to her rescue.
‘Bexham is a small place and people bump into each other. People also talk – and from what I’ve heard—’
‘From what I have heard,’ John interrupted, ‘Waldo Astley’s a bit of a show-off who can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business.’
‘That’s not like you, John.’ Loopy frowned. ‘And quite wrong. Why on earth should you say such a thing?’
‘Because that is the impression I have gathered, Mother. He uses people apparently, just to suit himself—’
‘Such as? Like who, please?’
‘Well – the poor old garagiste on the hill, for instance. Sykes, isn’t that his name? Astley moved in on his business and then not content with that he has set about getting the poor fellow to restore his house,’ Jakie Smith-Hugheson chimed in.
‘Yes, I gather old Mr Todd is furious with his son-in-law.’
‘Mmm. How about that? And not content with buying the only garage he must buy himself a house in Bexham too. The Wiltons’ house no less. He’ll end up buying up everything, mark my words.’
‘No, Walter,’ Loopy put in. ‘I think that’s quite wrong. Really, I do.’
‘Not only does he get Sykes to do all his labour on the cheap,’ John went on, taking up the general chorus. ‘But he moves Sykes’s wife, Rusty, in as his housekeeper. Old Mrs Todd is stunned beyond words, they told me down at the Three Tuns. She’s forever moaning about how she’s not allowed to see her grandson now.’
‘Hark at you. You surprise me. You sound like a bunch of schoolgirls envying someone else having a better time than them. Why, if I didn’t know you better, I would almost think you were all jealous of Mr Waldo Astley.’ Loopy stared round at her guests and family, feeling vaguely ashamed of them.
‘Jealous?’ they all chorused, looking at each other, and Walter laughed out loud.
‘Why should we be jealous of Waldo Astley, Mother?’
‘That is something at which I can only guess, Walter,’ Loopy told him lightly. ‘Doubtless you can tell yourself the real reason.’
Judy kept her napkin to her face, this time to hide not her blushes but a private smile.
‘We hear all sorts of things about him,’ Sheila Wilkinson continued. ‘Down at the Yacht Club a lot of people are saying that he might be – well, that he might be some sort of – what do they call them over there, George?’ she asked, turning to her purple-nosed husband.
‘How should I know? Hoodlums, mobsters, search me. They say all sorts of things at the club. The truth is that he could be anything, anything at all.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Loopy insisted quietly. ‘I really don’t think so.’
‘Could be part of organised crime, that sort of thing,’ George continued blithely.
‘How rather exciting,’ Caroline Percy put in. ‘I’ve always had a bit of a secret penchant for the underworld, all dead bodies and guns and things.’
‘We heard he was buying up Bexham lock, stock and barrel in order to move his family in, that soon there will hardly be a decent house that isn’t in his ownership,’ Helena Smith-Hugheson put in, an expression of such boredom on her face that it seemed she might fall asleep before she even reached the end of her comments. ‘And really, it would hardly be surprising. It’s because we’re so frightfully poor, don’t-cher-know? Rich outsiders know they can buy up everything, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘Well, there is something,’ Loopy put in with some asperity. ‘We could start building houses again, we could start rewarding the returning forces, and most of all we could start being less bureaucratic. The end of the Roman Empire was caused by letting an indifferent class of person take over the bureaucratic running of everything, which brought about total inertia in the populace, and consequently the ruination of Rome. And that is a fact.’
There was a short silence as everyone stared at their hostess, and Loopy feigned sweet innocence, although hoping all the time that no-one would challenge her. Only she knew that she was actually quoting something Waldo Astley had said to her.
‘Can’t imagine why on earth this Astley fellow picked on Bexham, that’s the real mystery,’ George Wilkinson announced. ‘It’s not as if he’s a sailor.’
‘It appears he’s going to be,’ his wife said, nodding towards Dauncy. ‘Seeing he’s intent on young Dauncy here teaching him the ropes.’
‘Tell you what, Dauncy.’ George laughed. ‘Why don’t you take him out and show him a thing or two? Make sure he gets a good few clouts to the bonce with the old jib and a couple of good duckin’s, and he might choose to stay at home in future and twiddle his thumbs, or preferably hightail it out of Bexham and leave us all to get on with our lives.’
‘Might go off the whole idea of Bexham altogether,’ Helena Smith-Hugheson agreed with a complacent smile.
‘I thought he seemed a more than half-decent sort of chap actually,’ Dauncy said staunchly. ‘Besides, I’d like to give him a few sailing lessons, it might make living here a bit more interesting for him— if he’s taken to sailing.’
Everyone except his mother stared at Dauncy as if he’d taken leave of his senses.
‘If you want a first mate, just give a shout,’ Caroline Percy said to him with her sweetest smile, hoping to beguile the handsome young man with not only her good humour but also her really quite exceptional bustline.
‘Very kind, Caro.’ Dauncy thanked her with his bright smile. ‘But you can’t be too careful. After all, he might be packing a gat.’
‘I trust he isn’t hoping to be invited by anyone who matters,’ Helena Smith-Hugheson sighed to Loopy later when the ladies had retired.
‘I should imagine that’s the very last thing Mr Astley wishes, Helena,’ Loopy replied. ‘Truly, the very last.’
There was hope for an invitation that night, but Waldo wasn’t nursing it. Oddly enough the person living in hope was Meggie, who had stayed on at the Three Tuns to help Richards and other volunteers with the refreshment side of the hop that was being held in the large hall used for functions that was attached to the back of the pub. A four-piece dance band hired from Radnor especially for the occasion was playing its way through the usual repertoire of tunes for this sort of affair, the band comprising tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums, their sound and rhythm good enough to have most people on the floor and dancing within half an hour of striking up.
By now the dance was a good two hours old, and Meggie, relieved of her duties by Richards for a well-earned break, had sat her weary self down on a hardback chair to one corner of the makeshift band from where she could observe the activities on the dance floor. There weren’t a lot of people she knew except by sight a group lads from the fishing families and some of the girls she would see hanging round the shops in the High Street, or sitting swinging their long suntanned legs on the capstans outside on the quays. A number of the younger visitors to Bexham had stayed on for the dance, in the hope of picking up some of the local talent, but from the amount of giggling and grouping of the girls around the room the poor things weren’t achieving much success.
Two people she did know, however, were two people whom she was surprised to see were there at all, namely young Dauncy Tate and his new friend Waldo Astley. Much to her relief she saw Waldo encouraging Dauncy to go and dance with a very pretty red-haired girl who was unknown to Meggie, but was possibly the most striking young woman present, so outstandingly pretty in fact that only one young man before Dauncy had even dared ask her to dance. She took no time at all in accepting the dashing young Tate’s invitation, Meggie noted with interest, lighting a fresh cigarette.
She watched them for some time, slowly smoking her cigarette and remembering dancing with Davey. He had been a wonderful dancer, light on his feet, quick, with that ability to always make his partner feel as if she were a better dancer than she really was. Not that Meggie was a bad dancer – far from it. Davey always used to compliment her on her grace and her lightness, saying that when they danced he could barely feel her in his arms. Smiling at the memory, Meggie turned back to the bar just as Waldo appeared to order himself a lemonade to quench his thirst. He was standing less than four feet away, but he steadfastly ignored her, which irritated Meggie since she happened to know that he’d spent a good deal of the evening watching her closely, trying to catch her eye on several occasions, something which she’d steadfastly and deliberately ignored. But now it seemed it was her turn to be ignored and it began to irritate her. Why she couldn’t understand, since up to that moment she’d always found the man himself without merit, so assured was he, so confident of his charm and his persuasion. Yet now she found herself being piqued by his quite wilful lack of interest and that in turn irritated her further. After all, if anyone was to ignore anyone, it should be Miss Meggie Gore-Stewart ignoring Mr Waldo Astley – not vice-versa.
Then suddenly she saw him turn and stare right at her, catching her eyes with his before she had time to avoid them. After what can only have been a split second of time, Meggie swung her head away, blew out a plume of smoke and pretended to laugh and smile at someone across the room. The next thing she knew was that an extremely tall and more than a little drunk stranger had staggered across the room and asked her to dance. Afraid he was going to topple over right on top of her, Meggie tried to get up off her chair and escape, but she could not. The man was standing with one hand either side of her shoulders gripping the back of her chair, his head not six inches from her face as he repeated his request for a dance.
And then he was gone, as quickly as he had arrived, except he didn’t depart on his feet. Instead he found himself sliding on his more than ample backside across the dance floor to roars of derisory laughter from friends and strangers alike. When Meggie looked up she saw Waldo standing in front of her, dusting his hands together before adjusting his hallmark bow tie.
‘Since you won’t be dancing with him, I guess, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ he said, ‘perhaps you will do me the honour?’
He gave a little bow and extended a hand. For a moment Meggie hesitated. Then with a small sigh, accompanied by a little raise of her eyes to heaven, she got up and allowed Waldo to lead her by her hand on to the dance floor. He put his right hand in the small of her back, so lightly that she could hardly feel the contact, took her right hand in his left, and proceeded to quickstep Meggie quite beautifully and skilfully around the floor. After only two choruses of ‘Pennies From Heaven’ Meggie discovered to her amusement that they seemed to have the dance floor to themselves. Everyone else had retired to the bar, or to the edges, to watch this display of what must have looked like exhibition dancing, so expert was her partner and fortunately so expert also was she, able to keep right there with him every step, reverse, twist and turn of the way, all the time keeping her gaze straight over her partner’s right shoulder in the traditional manner.
She barely heard the girl vocalist sing her chorus, being only aware of the thrill of being danced with beautifully for the first time since she had danced with Davey. It was heaven to be in a man’s arms like this again, not thinking of anything except dancing. As the number finished and the onlookers broke into spontaneous applause, Waldo bowed, thanked her, and led her back to her seat where he left her without saying another word. Meggie remained where she was, ignoring the stares of the curious and the admiring, taking a cigarette out of her case and lighting it while trying to compose herself. Most of all she was trying to dissuade herself of a dawning truth: that not even Davey Kinnersley had managed to have quite such an electrifying effect on her as Waldo Astley had just had, so much so that when she held her small gold lighter up to light her fresh cigarette she saw that her hand was shaking quite considerably.
Calmed and distracted by her smoke, she looked slowly about her to see where her dancing partner had gone. But he was nowhere to be seen. Meggie sat where she was for a moment thinking that he might have hidden from her but still be watching, and reluctant for him to see that she was actually looking round for him. As casually as she could, she got to her feet, wandered along the bar and round the other side of the hall. But it seemed Waldo had altogether vanished.
Dauncy was still there, dancing slowly with his delightfully pretty partner. Meggie waited until the number was finished then quietly asked Dauncy if he knew where his companion might have gone.
‘Absolutely,’ he replied with his brilliant smile. ‘He’s gone home.’
‘But you can sail!’ Dauncy exclaimed, laughing as Waldo swung Dingy to perfectly, heading her back into the wind. ‘You can sail very well!’
‘Not quite well enough!’ Waldo called back over the wind. ‘And I never said I couldn’t sail, young man! I just said I wanted you to teach me to sail as well as you!’
‘I can’t do that in an afternoon, Mr Astley! That might take a good few months!’
‘I don’t expect to learn what you have learned over the years! I just want to learn more of the theory so that I can practise!’
‘You’ll need a boat!’
‘Then I shall find one! Or you will find me one?’
After an entire afternoon spent sailing in waters becoming increasingly troublesome as the first of the autumn winds started to blow in off the sea, an exhausted Waldo and a still relatively fresh Dauncy repaired to the Three Tuns where the latter insisted Waldo should at least try to acquire a taste for draught English ale. Waldo tried his best with half a pint but got no further than a couple of distasteful mouthfuls.
‘It is a taste you have to get used to,’ Dauncy laughed, ordering a whisky from Richards to help restore his companion’s good nature.
‘I think I would rather drink bathwater, Dauncy, I mean it. And please – do call me Waldo, since I have already taken the liberty of first-naming you. You shouldn’t have any difficulty with that, seeing that you have just spent a considerable time in the land of apparent social intimacy.’
‘I like America,’ Dauncy protested. ‘I won’t hear a word against it.’
‘Good man,’ Waldo said. ‘I do too. Love it. Love England too. Your good health, Dauncy.’
‘Yours too, Waldo.’
‘Dauncy is a none too common name, I would guess,’ Waldo observed after they had finished their mutual toast.
‘Not at all. We’re all named after my mother’s family firm, John Walter Dauncy. John, Walter and Dauncy. And you? I’d say Waldo was a none too common name either.’
‘It’s short for Waldophanophosteropous,’ Waldo replied with a sigh. ‘Which means Wisest Son Of An Extremely Stupid Tribe.’
‘The Astley tribe?’
‘The AS in our name should be spelled A double S,’ Waldo growled, drinking some more whisky, and then selecting a cigar from his case.
‘Your family is what? Your family isn’t a success, you mean?’
‘My family – young sir – is the greatest of successes, if you quantify success by the amount of money banked.’
Dauncy, a little intimidated by this information, took a sup of his ale and lapsed into silence, uncertain how to pursue this tack. Waldo looked sideways at him and grinned.
‘It’s OK – this sort of thing doesn’t embarrass me. I guess the English don’t wash their family laundry in public that often, at least not the well bred English – but Americans are different. We tell it all, much to the amazement of our European friends. My family and I don’t hit it off – simple as that really. It was finally suggested by my uncle that I should take a trip to Europe ostensibly to pick up a bit more refinement, but really to get out of his hair – and so since nothing could please me more, here I am. Or rather here I still am. I began my travels before the war, and now the war is over I picked up where I left off.’
‘Bexham was on your itinerary?’ Dauncy wondered in some amusement. ‘I can’t imagine what attracted you here – and then to stay here. And to buy a house.’
‘No,’ Waldo said, suddenly surprisingly serious. ‘No, Dauncy, I don’t suppose you can imagine what attracted me here. But as to why I should choose to buy a seaside house here, I don’t think that would take a lot of imagining.’
‘You can’t find this more charming than say Nantucket, or Martha’s Vineyard, or – say – Long Island?’
‘Let’s say it’s different,’ Waldo replied. ‘And then let’s leave it at that. As the man says – there’s no accounting for taste. Now let me get you a decent drink – or are you still too young for spirits?’
‘Hardly,’ Dauncy replied. ‘I’m due for my call-up papers any day.’
Waldo looked round at him again, this time with surprise, before he realised what his friend was saying.
‘Oh sure! I was forgetting.’ He nodded. ‘National Service. You’re at the age, of course.’
‘Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.’
‘You’ll go in the Navy, I guess.’
‘I guess.’ Dauncy smiled. ‘Not so bad, really.’
‘Then you had better start to learn how to drink rum,’ Waldo announced. ‘Landlord – a whisky, please, and a good tot of your finest rum!’
Despite the growing intensity of the gossip surrounding Waldo and his ever increasing activities, Loopy watched the friendship between her youngest son and Waldo develop with only the faintest of interest and certainly no concern. Besides, she was far too busy preparing for her show during the weekdays when Hugh was absent in London to pay much attention to the backbiting. Anyway, she had her own problems. She still hadn’t told Hugh about her exhibition, and as yet no good opportunity to do so had occurred, for when Hugh was not sailing, or at the Yacht Club, it seemed to Loopy he was busy trying to stick his oar in where it might not be wanted, most particularly with Dauncy.
‘I take it he’s paying you for all these sailing lessons,’ he was now demanding of his youngest son at the family lunch on the last Sunday of September. ‘He’d better be paying you, or really, I’m afraid I don’t see the point of you seeing so much of the fellow. It’s not as though he’s a contemporary of yours. So if he’s not recompensing you in some way, I can’t see the point at all.’
‘The point is, Pa, Waldo wants to learn how to sail really well which as it happens he’s already doing – and I happen to enjoy teaching him.’
‘I just hope he’s paying you for it, that’s all,’ Hugh insisted, at which Loopy frowned. She really couldn’t quite see what that had to do with anything, just as she couldn’t for the life of her understand this growing antipathy within the bosom of her family to a man in whom she herself could only see good.
‘Waldo’s good company, Pa,’ Dauncy was saying. ‘I’m learning a lot from him. And he’s not stuffy.’
This last remark was made not unkindly but in Dauncy’s usual airy way. Loopy laughed, partly from relief, and partly because it was true. Waldo was certainly not stuffy, not like most of the other men of her acquaintance in Bexham.
‘That doesn’t answer my question, young man.’
‘I didn’t realise it was a question, Pa,’ Dauncy stated lightly.
‘He may be good company, but he’s teaching you a whole lot of bad habits,’ Walter put in, helping himself to more wine.
‘Such as?’ Dauncy gave his brother a particularly stern thanks very much for that look.
‘Such as drinking rum chasers with your beer.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Bexham is a very small place, little bro.’
‘If I’m old enough to be called up for National Service, I’m old enough to drink rum.’
‘Mr Astley’s thinking, no doubt,’ John chipped in, eyeing his watch and wondering when he could safely sneak away to meet Mattie.
‘Perfectly sound thinking I would say,’ Dauncy replied. ‘Waldo says I’d look an idiot if I get half throttled when the rum ration’s passed around – and I agree with him.’
‘And I agree with him too. I think Waldo has a very good point,’ Loopy said, ringing her bell once more in the increasingly faint hope of summoning Gwen from the kitchen. ‘We were all perfectly happy to send Dauncy to America on his own to travel about any old how – and really, compared to that what’s a few tots of rum?’ Loopy threw her husband a good hard look while she continued to ring her little bell.
‘Depends who you’re drinking them with,’ John muttered.
‘What is it with all of you about Waldo Astley?’ Loopy exclaimed in sudden exasperation. ‘And you in particular, John.’
John at once dropped his eyes, pretending to brush some crumbs off the table with his napkin to avoid his mother’s stare. She had already accosted him about his relationship with Mattie and had only been prevented from taking the matter up with his father by John’s not altogether convincing protestations that there was nothing between himself and Mattie Eastcott that was really at all serious. Naturally, having witnessed their completely serious embrace on the beach, Loopy had not been at all persuaded and had warned John about the perils of becoming too deeply involved with a young woman who had a reputation for being fast as well as a son born out of wedlock. John was her eldest and much was expected of him, so he could put from his head any idea he might have of marrying the girl. At which John had begged her to agree to a moratorium on the matter until he had sorted himself out emotionally, and above all not to say a word to his father until he had done so.
Reluctantly Loopy had agreed, her reluctance born out of her belief that the longer the matter remained undebated by his parents the more deeply John was going to become involved with someone Loopy could not help but think of as being entirely unsuitable for him. Yet such was her love for her eldest son, and such was the look in his eyes when he pleaded with her to give him some more time, that Loopy had been persuaded to give him her word.
But now, the more John made unkind remarks about someone Loopy regarded as the soul of consideration and kindness, the more Loopy wondered at the wisdom of the promise she had made him.
‘Be warned, John, because I am serious. I will not have these unkind aspersions cast on someone who has done no harm to you or to anyone sitting at this table. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Mother.’ John looked as unrepentant as his father looked bored, and Gwen had still not appeared with the pudding.
‘I wonder why you should be so keen to leap to this chap’s defence, my love,’ Hugh remarked. Having given up on the pudding’s ever appearing, he tapped a Senior Service cigarette on his silver case before putting it in his mouth.
‘Because none of you seem able to find one good word to say about him.’
‘Or could it be—’ Hugh said slowly, flicking his cigarette alight with his small gold Ronson and looking down the table at his wife, ‘might it be because he’s got you some sort of exhibition of your paintings in London?’
Astounded into silence, Loopy stared blankly across the dining table at her husband, who in return just raised his eyebrows, blowing a line of blue smoke out of one corner of his mouth.
‘As someone recently remarked, Bexham is a very small place, my dear.’
‘You told him?’ Loopy repeated disbelievingly as accompanied by Waldo she walked a distant headland. ‘I just can’t believe it was you who told him!’
‘I told him, Loopy,’ Waldo agreed, ‘because I was quite certain that you were not going to. At least not until the very last moment – and then God knows what might have happened.’
‘I would not have told him at the last minute.’
‘So what do you call this? You have ten days to go till the opening – your pictures have to be in London next week to be hung – and you think Hugh isn’t going to notice anything?’ Waldo stopped and looked at Loopy quizically. ‘What were you going to tell him? That you had sent them off to be cleaned, or revarnished?’
‘You don’t know Hugh well enough to tell him something like this. You don’t. You don’t know him well enough to discuss my personal business with him – to discuss something that could affect my relationship with my husband! I’ve a good mind to call this damned exhibition off.’
‘Please yourself,’ Waldo said calmly.
‘I simply don’t understand why you think you were in a position to tell my husband something as important as this.’
‘That’s simple. He wanted to know what was going on between us.’
Loopy put a hand to her throat and stared wide-eyed at Waldo. ‘Hugh thought there was something going on between us?’
‘You think that an unlikely notion?’ Waldo said, raising his eyebrows as high as he could to make her laugh.
‘Be serious, Waldo.’
‘OK. I shall be serious. It’s perfectly all right for you to suspect that your husband might be having an affair with Meggie, but not all right for your husband to think that you and I might be having an affair. Isn’t that sort of against all your fair is fair all round principles?’
‘You just surprised me, that’s all.’ Loopy looked vaguely unsettled.
‘You people,’ Waldo sighed. ‘I don’t know, really I don’t.’
‘Which people? Who do you mean by you people?’
‘The lot of you sometimes,’ Waldo replied in quiet exasperation. ‘Each and every one of you.’
‘Leaving aside what you might think about each and every one of us,’ Loopy said tightly, ‘perhaps you’d just like to explain the circumstances of your revelation to Hugh. Did you come to him – or did he seek you out? I find it hard to understand how you became this intimate when you hardly know each other.’
‘We might not know each other that well,’ Waldo said after a pause. ‘But we see quite a lot of each other.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Confidential, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re not a mason, surely?’
Waldo stared at her then threw back his head and laughed. ‘No, Loopy – I most certainly am not a Mason.’
‘Then how can it be confidential? What could you possibly have between you that should give you confidentiality – unless … my God, you’re not?’ Loopy stared at Waldo with a mixture of dismay and amazement. ‘You’re not one of Hugh’s bogeys, are you?’
‘Hugh’s bogeys?’
‘That’s what John calls his— the people who work for him. His bogeys. My God, you’re not one of them, surely?’
Waldo gave her the look that he knew always made her smile, half tilting his head at her and slightly widening his eyes.
‘Wonderful view from here, don’t you think?’ he remarked, taking her arm and continuing to walk her along the cliff path. Loopy sighed and shook her head sadly, knowing that by the rules that bound them this conversation was at an end.
‘I should hate you, really, but I don’t.’
‘So what do you do for me?’
‘I like you, Waldo, that’s what I do. You’re a friend. As a matter of fact I consider you to be a really good friend.’
‘That’s exactly what I want to be to you.’
‘Then that’s good. Now let’s just enjoy our walk, shall we?’
For a moment as they ambled in friendly silence along the clifftop path Loopy’s thoughts turned to Meggie, and to her husband, but as those thoughts began to make her feel uncomfortable she took hold of the arm that was linked to hers, at the same time deciding to banish all further contemplation of the unknown, preferring instead to enjoy both the sea views and the present company.
All of a sudden she felt oddly independent, and she relished the moment, embracing the new found feeling as strongly as she was embracing the arm that held her, knowing that somehow this newly discovered independence was something that was long overdue.