He also wrote to Miss Whitecliff, confirming the appointment.
Getting out of the house unseen proved easy. Cook and Edith had gone for their first day at the Swan, Jane for her first day with Miss Willy. Choosing a moment when Clare was in the kitchen and Richard in his father’s study, he hurried down the drive and stood looking appealingly at approaching cars. Almost at once he got a lift to the station in time for an excellent train to London. There he changed stations, gazing at the crowded streets from the top of his bus on the off chance of seeing Merry, and ate an early lunch. He reached Whitesea, after a complicated journey, well on in the afternoon.
He was glad to find it was quite a small place. Indeed, ‘miniature’ was the word that occurred to him as he looked out of the window of the taxi he had taken at the station. He felt himself to be in a miniature resort, complete with narrow shopping arcades, an ornate little theatre (now, alas, a cinema) and on the promenade a white bandstand which somehow suggested a toy merry-go-round. Everything was spick and span but old – no, old was the wrong word; this little town was … embalmed, preserved unchanged since its heyday, as if in order to present him with the perfect setting for his novel. And how fortunate he should have come here in the autumn, with the holiday season over! Even the shopping district was almost deserted and he saw not one soul on the promenade. The setting awaited the characters with which he would people it.
The sea was so calm that it scarcely seemed to move and so pale, under a high mist, that he wondered if the town had first been given its name on such an afternoon as this. There were no sands; only a stretch of shingle as pale as the sea.
He wished to stay in a hotel on the promenade; there were only three and the taxi-driver advised against two of them:
‘They’re not what you might call properly open out of the season. The Royal’s all right. They have all-the-year-round regulars there.’
The Royal was the largest but, even so, not very large. It was built of red and yellow bricks and Drew was about to consider it hideous when he noticed, picked out in yellow bricks, the date 1905. This placed it in ‘his’ period, so he decided to like it. The bedroom to which he was shown disappointed him by having no personality whatever, but he had glimpsed a be-palmed and be-wickered lounge which attracted him and he hurried down in time to be served with tea.
Here, obviously, were some of the ‘all-the-year-round regulars’: three very old ladies and one slightly less old. He soon decided that the less-old lady was a paid companion. She was sent upstairs for a forgotten book, asked to find out if the evening paper had come, told to go and see why the waiter hadn’t answered a bell rung for more hot water. This thought Drew, is the kind of job you are applying for and you’re mad to think you could stick it a week, let alone a month. He had no desire to be kind to any of these old ladies, except the harassed companion, and even to her kindness would be more of a duty than a pleasure.
All these women had drab clothes, drab faces, drab hair, and peculiarly unattractive feet. When he went to tea with his village old ladies they usually wore mauve or powder blue, their skins were pink and their hair fluffily white; and their feet, though in one case plump, were neatly shod. Besides, all his village old ladies were spry. The women here looked infirm as well as ugly. Jane had described Miss Whitecliff as beautiful but the lady herself had mentioned her arthritis. Not without shame, he realized that, even for the sake of his book, he was only prepared to serve old age which was both decorative and healthy.
He finished his tea and went out for a walk, far from sure he would not go to London in the morning and then send a telegram calling his appointment off. He would anyway have this ideal background for his novel. The crones under the dusty palms had not destroyed his pleasure in the town; indeed, he now liked it even more than when seen from the taxi. Leaving the sea front he wandered past the shops, already closing, towards the residential district on the higher land at the back of the town.
Somewhere there, he guessed, was Miss Whitecliff’s house. He decided he would at least walk past it. He knew from her letter heading that White Turrets was in Chestnut Avenue. (He trusted the chestnuts were white.) A boy locking up a shop directed him.
It was the last of several avenues, reached after nearly a mile walking uphill. The houses on it were large, mainly imitation Tudor (his word for it was ‘Pseudor’) and not attractive. Most of them had been turned into boarding houses and looked as if already closed for the winter. He passed more than half a dozen of them, with their extensive gardens, without finding White Turrets. Then he unmistakably spotted it, the last house in the avenue, separated from its nearest neighbour by a long stretch of downland. He quickened his pace.
It was built of rich red brick but with so much painted woodwork that the predominating note was white. He counted six white balconies, of different sizes and shapes. There were white wooden frames to bow windows and bay windows and to corner windows that formed three-quarters of a circle; white framed dormer windows in the roof and – joy of joys – four white turrets suggestive of dovecots. Higher even than these, in the middle of the roof, was what looked like a white-painted play-pen.
Nowhere was there a flat, undisturbed stretch of brick wall; always some jutting window or balcony broke the line. Here, as he delightedly told himself, was a supreme, perfectly preserved example of Edwardian Protuberant.
Already the curtains of the downstairs rooms were drawn; but as he gazed, entranced, a bedroom was brightly lit by electric bulbs scarcely dimmed by frosted glass shades. He saw a pale grey wall down which trailed sprays of wistaria. Then a maid in muslin cap (a mob cap – actually!) drew the curtains. He caught one gleam of dark pink satin (‘crushed strawberry’ he believed) reflecting the bright electric light, before he was faced with the blank drabness of the linings.
Now the house was closed against the night and him. But he would return tomorrow and get inside, even if Miss Whitecliff and her maids finally ejected him by main force. The maid he’d seen wouldn’t have much force to contribute; she appeared to be little more than four feet high. He remembered with pleasure that there had been a muslin cuff on her tight black sleeve.
The daylight was fading now. He gave one last loving look at White Turrets, then strode cheerfully along Chestnut Avenue and down the hill to the town.
After dinner (the crones returned his smiling ‘good evening’; the poor old things weren’t so bad) he went to the pictures, mainly to see the inside of the theatre. It was nearly empty and he learned that the gallery, upper circle and boxes were never used now. He enjoyed most the musical interlude – a piano selection from Véronique – though he could have played it better himself. He collected the scores of old musical comedies.
The next morning he explored the town further and had morning coffee at a café established in 1903. Gossiping with the elderly waitress he asked if the town was very different in the summer. She said it got pretty full in August, ‘but never what you could call rowdy. Well, it’s awkward to get to, isn’t it? And there are no sands for the children. We mostly get old people.’
He ate several cakes and decided to skip lunch. Treated as merely an outing to gain local colour, his trip to Whitesea was a colossal extravagance. And he felt more and more that nothing now lay ahead beyond an embarrassing interview – and, of course, a glimpse inside White Turrets.
At one minute to three he opened the wrought-iron gate. The garden was neat but contained little but grass, a few bushes and some stunted trees; it was extremely exposed. Feeling quite sick with nervousness, he rang the bell.
The door was opened by the maid he had seen drawing the curtains the previous evening. Though nearer to five feet than four she was still very small, and he saw why she had reminded Jane of a little black fly. The lines on her face were so deeply incised that they might have been made with a black lead pencil; her eyes were almost as dark as the small amount of hair (a wig, almost certainly) revealed by the mob cap. He thought her black alpaca dress ugly but
was enchanted by her spotted-muslin lace-trimmed apron.
Blushing, he asked if he might see Miss Whitecliff. ‘She’s expecting me. Mr Carrington.’
‘She’s expecting a Miss Carrington.’ The voice was childishly high but cracked with age.
‘I know. I’ve come to explain.’ Would that get him in?
It did. She said, ‘Very good, sir,’ with no hint of comment in her tone. But when she opened a door and announced him, she allowed herself a faintly satiric stress on ‘Mr’.
A tall, painfully thin woman rose from the fireside. He was astonished that Jane had considered her beautiful but he liked her floor-length, clinging grey dress; could it delightfully be a tea-gown? She looked at him in bewilderment, saying, ‘Oh, dear! Was Miss Evelyn Carrington unable to come?’
He said: ‘I’m Evelyn Carrington. I’m most terribly sorry I misled you.’
She gave a gasp of dismay and then, to his intense relief, began to laugh – a light, musical laugh, no doubt the rippling laughter performed by the heroines of so many old novels.
‘Good gracious, what an absurd mistake! And I’ve let you come all this way. But – do sit down, please – you see, I took it for granted that— Well, companions always are female, surely?’
‘But not secretaries, and I would so like to help you with your memoir. And I play the piano – and even sing a little. I was looking forward to trying your parents’ songs. And I think I could make you a really good companion.’ He found himself speaking with the utmost earnestness and gazing at her appealingly.
‘Do you mean you really want to work for me?’
He assured her he did and meant it. He had now realized that she was, indeed, beautiful. Her features, once one got used to thinness amounting to emaciation, were exquisite, the expression of her grey eyes flowerlike. She was certainly no pink-cheeked, white-thatched old lady; her skin was ashen and her hair, worn parted down the middle and looped over a black velvet ribbon, was a faded brown. But she was far more appealing than any of his conventionally pretty old ladies and he knew, he absolutely knew, that she was as Edwardian as her room – not that he’d dared take time to look at it fully yet.
‘I can’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Why should a charming young man want such a dreary job? Being a companion is considered dreary – very few people have answered my advertisements, and no one at all nice has come to see me except Miss Jane Minton. How surprising she should think the work might suit you!’
It was then he decided to tell her the truth about himself. He described his background and the family’s present difficulties, even spoke frankly about his father’s troubles, for he felt that, if he did persuade her to let him work for her, he would have to be on an honest footing. She listened with great interest, frequently expressing sympathy. His father must, she insisted, simply have been unfortunate; no doubt his name would eventually be cleared.
‘And how I wish I could offer you work,’ she added. ‘But I do assure you, ladies don’t have gentlemen companions.’
‘Do you feel it wouldn’t be respectable?’
Again she laughed ripplingly. ‘My dear Mr Carrington, I’m seventy. It’s just that … well, it wouldn’t do.’
He said with resignation, ‘I understand. You couldn’t be at ease with me – as you would be with a woman.’
She considered this for a moment, then said in a faintly surprised tone, ‘I’m more at ease with you – already – than with my great-niece when she comes to see me. And I think I’m more at ease than I was with Miss Jane Minton – I was a bit in awe of her. Let me … try to get used to the idea of your coming here – while we talk of something else.’
He assented eagerly, his hopes springing up. She rose and rang the bell, twice; then turned to him smiling. ‘Once would mean Annie was to show you out; twice means “Bring tea”.’
He had risen when she rose, and had time for a swift glance around. He noted gilt-framed, gilt-mounted watercolours, anaemically pretty. Then his eyes rested on a white-painted cosy comer. Its carved roof was supported by delicate pillars and there were oval portraits let into the blue silk upholstered back. He said: ‘What a lovely room this is!’
‘You like it? I haven’t quite got used to it. Our local decorator has always been able to repeat the satin-striped paper but last year he had to make a change in the frieze under the picture rail – the roses are larger and the blue ribbon wider. My mother was distressed; she considered our regular re-decorations were a memorial to my father’s superb taste and liked everything to be just as it was in his day.’
‘When did your parents die?’ asked Drew, puzzled. Surely she couldn’t have meant her mother was alive as recently as last year?
‘Oh, my father died many, many years ago. My mother lived until last March – just after her ninety-fifth birthday. She was a wonderful woman, fully alert until a few days before her death. And my father was a wonderful man. Such admirable characters – and they were both so gifted!’
She went to the glossy grand piano near the semi-circular window and opened the long piano stool. ‘I used to play their songs almost daily until my right hand became arthritic. Such a nuisance – and so unsightly.’
‘I hadn’t noticed it,’ said Drew, truthfully. ‘Though I had noticed the beauty of your left hand.’
She smiled. ‘That’s the hand I let people notice – not that I see many people nowadays.’
He joined her in looking through the songs she had taken from the piano stool. Most of the titles suggested love combined with patriotism. Stay not if duty calls, love, Beloved, when the trumpet sounds, Love’s Banners Blow … elaborate penmanship curled itself round ‘Words by Melicent Whitecliffe. Music by Albion Whitecliff’.
‘An unusual name, your father’s,’ Drew commented.
‘It was originally Albert Whitely. He adopted Whitecliff by deed poll and – well, just assumed Albion. My mother felt the whole name so suitable for a composer of such typically English songs. We often laughed about the many “Whites” in our name and address. Ah, here is tea.’
The black fly had entered with a silver tea-tray obviously too heavy for her. Should he offer to help? He was about to when she got the tray down safely, to his relief and her own; her grimly set lips parted to emit a gasp, and her firm tread as she left the room was suggestive of triumph.
‘You must have impressed her,’ said Miss Whitecliff. ‘We never use the silver tea service nowadays and I’m far from sure I can lift the teapot.’
‘Then let me pour out for you,’ said Drew. ‘I’ll always do that if you let me be your companion. And I could carve for you, too. I’m quite good at it.’
‘Really? No joint has been properly carved in this house for many years. Yes, do pour out, please. I hope you don’t dislike Indian tea. I do, but Annie and Lizzie prefer it.’
‘But surely you’ve only got to tell them—’
She interrupted him. ‘One doesn’t wish to. It would be … difficult. You see—’ She looked vaguely distressed and left the sentence unfinished; then, as if pushing the subject away from her, she added brightly: ‘Annie and Lizzie are sisters.’
It seemed to him no valid reason for putting up with tea she didn’t like. But he only said: ‘Oh, our maids are sisters too. They’ve been with us fifteen years and they’re absolute angels.’
‘Mine,’ said Miss Whitecliff, ‘have been here over fifty years. And they’re absolute fiends.’
2
Miss Whitecliff
He took it for granted that she was joking and responded only with a smile, being much occupied in pouring out tea. Undoubtedly a companion ought to be an adept tea-pourer and he was finding the heavy silver teapot more awkward to handle than he had expected. However, he managed without disaster.
Having skipped lunch he was glad to see a plate of solid bread and butter. He handed it to Miss Whitecliff, then helped himself. He found the bread stale and the butter so rancid that it took him all his time to finish his slice. The c
akes, in splayed-out paper cases, proved staler than the bread. But what worried him far more than the food was that the conversation had ceased to flow easily. And his hostess, somehow looking thinner than ever, kept avoiding his eye, until, with sudden directness, she not only faced him but spoke in a tone of defiance.
‘It’s no use, Mr Carrington. You mustn’t go on hoping – if you really do want to come here and aren’t just being kind. It’s out of the question, anyway. A cheque will be sent to you, to cover the expense you’ve incurred.’
He looked at her in bewilderment. ‘Dear Miss Whitecliff, what is it? Have I offended you?’
‘No, no, you couldn’t have been more charming. I’d like to have you here – I’m sure of that now. But it wouldn’t work. No man could live here. Apart from everything else, you’d starve. Hasn’t this tea convinced you?’
He decided to be blunt. ‘It’s convinced me you need looking after. Your maids shouldn’t give you such a tea.’
‘It’s partly my fault – or misfortune.’ Again she avoided his eyes. ‘And one has to economize.’
‘One can be economical without having stale bread and rancid butter, surely?’
‘Oh, that’s just Lizzie’s fiendishness. She decides about the food and does the cooking. She’s much worse than Annie.’
‘Do you really mean they’re fiends?’
‘It’s only since my mother died. And they may not be completely to blame, about the staleness. One can’t any longer do the shopping. One can’t face the pull up the hill.’
‘Don’t the tradesmen call?’
‘Well, sometimes – or one would starve completely. But … oh, it’s all so complicated. And one doesn’t like talking about it.’