And Nadine did not think for a single moment that it was true. She no more believed that Jim Malony was an Irishman than she believed he was what Tommy had said he was, a tinker. She did not know what he was. She was utterly nonplused by the pair of them. They were not of the class that she was accustomed to describe as working people, nor were they exactly gentlefolk. What on earth were they?
“Troubadour. . . .”
It was Ben who had spoken. He was sitting next to his mother, Annie-Laurie upon his other side, and now that she had finished her Spam and salad he had turned to her and was shyly and kindly trying to talk to her.
“Your father is like a sort of troubadour,” he said. “You know, one of those men who traveled from house to house in the old days, telling wonderful tales and cheering everyone up.”
“He’s always cheerful,” said Annie-Laurie. Her voice was clear and charming, educated, without the trace of an Irish accent, and when she turned to smile her crooked smile at Ben an unsuspected dimple appeared in her left cheek. “It seems the right place for a troubadour, this old house. They were the ancestors of the strolling players, weren’t they? And the old players liked best to play at inns.”
“They played in the inn galleries,” Ben agreed enthusiastically.
“And stepped onto their stages out of the lovely old rooms with their flower names: fleur-de-lis and herb of grace.”
As she spoke she turned to smile at her hostess, and Nadine marveled at her knowledge and her grace. “Do you like flowers, Annie-Laurie?” she asked. “You have some lovely pansies growing in the garden on your houseboat.”
“I like flowers, children, birds, and animals,” said Annie-Laurie. “Anything that needs looking after. My pansies are pretty, but you can’t grow many flowers just in a bath. It was because your garden was so lovely that my father and I stopped and had a look, and then the old house looked friendly, like a person. And it looked so safe, too, like a fortress. We hoped it was an inn and we came round to the front to see. But I think perhaps you are only using it as a private house and that we ought not to have asked to come in?”
“That’s all right, Annie-Laurie,” Nadine assured her. “It is going to be an inn one day, when we have got things straight. We have only just moved in, and nowhere, simply nowhere, can I find a bath to put in the bathroom we want to make.”
“Bath, is it?” inquired Mr. Malony. “Glory be to God, ma’am, I’ve two baths!”
“Mr. Malony,” said Nadine, “I will pay you any price within reason you like to mention for those baths, and if you are a sufficiently skilled workman to help our local plumber put them in for me I will double it.”
“Ten quid the pair?” suggested Malony instantly. “Let you give us twenty quid and our food, now, and I don’t know but what Annie-Laurie and I won’t stay here until you’ve got the place to your liking. There’s nothing Annie-Laurie can’t do—cook, clean lamps, wash, iron, sew—and, glory be to God, there’s no mouser to touch Smith in the whole of the United Kingdom. Done, ma’am?”
“Done,” said Nadine.
— 3 —
And they were still here, sleeping in their houseboat that was anchored now beyond the boathouse at the edge of the wood, spending their evenings there, but having their meals at the Herb of Grace, and toiling there from morning till night. They were invaluable. Malony, with such tact and humor that he gave no offense in the process, had helped a local plumber to install two bathrooms, one for the guests and one for the family. Procuring the paint from no-one-knew-where, he had repainted the house from top to bottom quite superbly. He had worked in the garden with Ben and Tommy, assisted George to get the garage into order, scrubbed floors, washed up, cleaned shoes, polished silver, carried luggage, done anything and everything that his quick eye saw needed doing. In spite of the sadness of his face he was always cheerful and good-humored. They had already had a few guests, friends who came to give them a good send-off, as well as casual droppers-in, men from the Hard coming for a pint when the day’s work was over, picnic parties and river folk, and Malony had known exactly how to deal with all of them. With a green baize apron tied round his middle he shared the duties of hall porter (only the children insisted upon the old name of chamberlain) with Ben, and attired in a white apron or a leather one he was Tommy’s better half as waiter or garage mechanic, though woe betide him if he forgot to refer to himself as drawer or ostler. And upon the very rare occasions when there was a little liveliness at the inn at night George had found him the most excellent chucker-out. And when Jill was helping Nadine with the cooking (for they had no cook as yet), he minded the twins with a skill that came little short of genius.
Annie-Laurie was as valuable as Malony. She took over entire charge of the lamps, and all the duties of a chambermaid. She was very nearly as good with the twins as Jill and Malony, and she was deeply attached to Mary the Pekinese. But though she was friendly she was not very forthcoming. She replied courteously and sweetly when spoken to, but she never told anybody anything, and all of them except Nadine found her reserve a little difficult to live with. But Nadine liked it. She liked Annie-Laurie, and she believed that Annie-Laurie liked her. There was a deep unexpressed sympathy between them.
As for Smith, he was an animal of parts. He was an excellent mouser, prompt and efficient in the execution of his duties, but not lingering over them in the painful manner of so many mousers. He was clean, dignified, and benevolent, and even Mary eventually found his presence at the Herb of Grace an added amenity.
Malony had himself given Nadine and George a short sketch of his history. He had begun life as plumber and house decorator, which was how he had come by the baths, but a bad bout of pneumonia had left his lungs weak, and strengthening sea air having been ordered by his doctor he had started a bathing-machine business. He had owned twelve bathing machines and done very well out of them, which was how he had come by the bathing machine.
But the bathing business palled on him. He had a longing to see the world. He also had a pal who was a bargeman, but who was sick of it and wanted to settle down. They did an exchange, the pal taking over six of the bathing machines and Malony the barge, which he made into an excellent houseboat with the help of one of the bathing machines and an engine which another pal gave him in exchange for the remaining five. Smith had been the bargeman’s cat and had come into their possession with the barge.
Since then he and Annie-Laurie had just been seeing the world, picking up a living by doing odd jobs of work at riverside houses. Annie-Laurie was his only child. Her mother had died at her birth. She was the living image of her sainted mother. She had had a very good position at a dressmaking establishment, but had thrown it up to look after her father in his illness. This tale, admirably and amusingly related, George swallowed in simple faith after adding a few grains of salt, but Nadine did not believe a word of it.
But her unbelief had not prevented her from agreeing whole heartedly with George’s proposal that they should turn their unused coachman’s quarters into a comfortable little flat, suitable as a winter home, and invite Malony and Annie-Laurie to stay with them for always. Whoever they were, she liked and trusted them, and last night she and George had made the proposal, and after one hurried strange glance at each other they had asked if they might think it over. They had given no answer as yet. Annie-Laurie had been very quiet all day and Malony had made his jokes with difficulty.
Nadine looked at her watch. It was 3:30. In another hour or so their first real guests would be arriving, for the personal friends who had hitherto stayed with them had hardly counted. But these two, John Adair and his daughter, were strangers. And important strangers too. The familiarity of the name John Adair, when she received his brief business note asking for accommodation for an unlimited period, had sent Nadine to her Who’s Who to find to her dismay that he was what she suspected, John Adair the painter, a wealthy and famous man who would require to be
fed as such; and she still had no cook. And the bath water still showed a tendency to come out of the tap a curious shade of yellow-brown, and not always as hot as might be wished. A crease of anxiety showed between Nadine’s eyebrows as she looked at her watch. She had an uneasy feeling that the offer she and George had made to Malony and Annie-Laurie had upset them in some way, and that they might perhaps take themselves off just at the moment when they were most urgently wanted.
There was a tap at the door.
“Come in,” said Nadine.
Annie-Laurie entered softly and came and stood by Nadine’s chair. She looked neat and fresh in her flowered overall, but her old-young face looked strained and weary.
“Yes, Annie-Laurie?” asked Nadine.
“If you please, Mrs. Eliot, my father and I think it would be best if we were moving on now.”
“But, Annie-Laurie, you surely won’t leave me just when I have guests coming?”
“We’ll stay another week.”
“A week’s not long. Mr. and Miss Adair are coming here indefinitely.”
“My father says—just another week.”
“Then you have decided not to accept the General’s offer of staying with us permanently?”
“No.”
The little monosyllable dropped bleakly, and looking up at Annie-Laurie’s face Nadine saw it desolate. She pulled forward the little armchair. “Sit down, Annie-Laurie, and let’s talk this over.”
“It would be best for us not to stay,” said Annie-Laurie wretchedly, but she sat down.
“Listen, Annie-Laurie,” said Nadine. “I am very fond of you. I—love you, I think.”
She had not known she was going to say that. She wasn’t the sort of woman who said that sort of thing. She had not even known until she spoke that she did love Annie-Laurie. But it was true. Astonished, bewildered, she put out her hand as though for support against the sun-warmed paneling. And again she had that sensation of a warm and living personality, the personality that had prompted her to speak as she had. She looked at Annie-Laurie. The girl’s face was white, and wore again that sealed-in look that had struck Nadine so painfully on the day of her arrival.
“Your father would like to stay. It is you who have decided against it,” said Nadine.
“How did you know that?” whispered Annie-Laurie.
“I felt it, somehow. Why, Annie-Laurie? I know you are fond of me.”
A curious pulsation passed over Annie-Laurie’s sealed face, as when the first breath from the south passes over a frozen world. It passed, but she could not regain the old stillness. She struggled, but Nadine’s warmth had pierced right through her defenses and beneath them the life was painfully quickened. But she did not cry. She pushed her thin hands up into her lovely gold hair and held them there as though she carried in her head a burden too hard to bear; her eyes seemed dumbly beseeching Nadine to deliver her from its weight.
“You’ll have to try to tell me a little about yourself, Annie-Laurie,” said Nadine gently. “That tale your father told us, the plumbing business and the bathing machines and all that nonsense, I didn’t believe it. Nor do I believe that he is Irish. Tell me the truth about him.”
Annie-Laurie’s hands slipped to her lap. They were trembling and she clasped them tightly. But Nadine had helped her over the first hurdle and she could speak now. “He was a comedian. He was on the halls, and in pantomime. We did acts together. He sang Irish songs and I sang Scotch ones, and we both danced, and he told funny stories. It got sort of second nature with him to talk Irish. He was an engineer before he went on the halls. He’s clever. There’s nothing he can’t do, nothing he doesn’t seem to know. We made a lot of money at one time. We had—everything.”
Music-hall artists. Nadine was surprised at herself that she had not guessed that before. Ben, with his usual intuition, had described Malony as a troubadour and had been wiser than she. Their bizarre appearance, vitality, adaptability, and imagination were explained now. But the change-over from engineer to comedian was odd.
“What made your father go on the halls?” she asked.
“He couldn’t keep his engineering jobs.”
“Why not?”
“They didn’t satisfy him—and then he drinks sometimes,” said Annie-Laurie. Her hands had stopped trembling and her face now was quite expressionless.
“But not now,” said Nadine.
“Not since we’ve been here,” said Annie-Laurie. “Something new, something that interests him, and he’s all right for a bit. But when he gets accustomed to anything—”
“And that’s why you think you ought not to stay with me?” asked Nadine gently. “You think he’d disgrace the Herb of Grace?”
“Not only Jim—Father. I would. I’ve been in prison. Wherever we go, whatever we do, it comes out.”
The desolation in her voice seemed to open a sort of pit at Nadine’s feet. She was shamed. Women like herself, sheltered, indulged, secure, beloved, and yet they dared to find life hard; they dared to pity themselves because the path they trod was strewn with pink rose petals when their own choice would have been crimson. She hated herself. Her hatred choked her and she could not speak. “So you see why we must go,” said Annie-Laurie.
Nadine took a quick decision. “There’s no need to go, Annie-Laurie, if you would like to stay.” Annie-Laurie stared at her incredulously. “Whatever it was that you did, that is in the past. It is what you are now that matters, and what you are now I trust. I trust you, Annie-Laurie, both you and your father.”
Annie-Laurie took a deep breath. “He’s not my father.”
Again Nadine put out her hand, as though for support, and again the old woodwork warm in the sun was like the clasp of a reassuring hand. Yet really, she told herself, she ought to have guessed that, with Malony so obviously younger than he looked. And Annie-Laurie, perhaps, much older.
“How old are you, Annie-Laurie?” she asked.
“I don’t look it, but I’m over thirty,” whispered Annie-Laurie. She was looking at her hands clasped in her lap, her head bent, and Nadine could not see her face. She too looked at Annie-Laurie’s hands. The knuckles were showing white through the sunburned skin. She stretched out her hand and put it over them.
“I had to tell you,” said Annie-Laurie. ‘“I had to—after you’d said you trusted me—even though—”
“It’s all right,” said Nadine. “You can still stay if you want to. You do want to, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Annie-Laurie.
“Why?” asked Nadine.
“Because of you . . . and the house.”
She looked up at last, her adoration warm in her eyes, but her relief a thing of such intensity that she could not speak of it. “He stuck to me through it all,” she said.
“You can’t marry him?” asked Nadine.
“It’s not possible,” said Annie-Laurie. “But we’re not, really, doing anything wrong—I can’t explain—”
“Listen, Annie-Laurie,” said Nadine. “What you have told me is between us. I will not speak of it to anyone—not even to my husband. And I will not speak of it to you again, either, but if at any time you would like to tell me more about yourself, then I shall be glad to hear it.” She paused, but there was no answer, and Annie-Laurie was looking at her hands again. “For your own sake, not mine.”
Annie-Laurie looked up speechlessly, and the light and warmth that had been in her face were gone. She was sealed in again.
“Very well,” acquiesced Nadine. “That’s settled then. And keep a firm hold on your Jim. We don’t want him to start drinking again.”
Annie-Laurie stood up, her usual poised and steady self, and smoothed her overall. “I don’t think he will . . . not here.”
“Is ‘here’ so different from other places?”
“Yes. You’re different. The General and the chi
ldren and Jill. He likes you all . . . and the house.”
“What is it about the house that attracts you so much?” asked Nadine.
“It’s so safe,” said Annie-Laurie. “Seeing it that day from the river—well—you know what it looks like from the river, towering up above that gray wall. I thought that morning—one could be safe there.”
“You’re safe here,” said Nadine gently. Annie-Laurie folded her lips tightly and Nadine saw that she was about at the end of her tether. “Run along now,” she said lightly. “Those guests will be here soon and you’ve the tea to get.”
Annie-Laurie vanished and Nadine turned at once to her housekeeping books to stave off what she knew was coming. But it was no good. By the time she had added up the butcher’s account the reaction had set in. What on earth had she done? Well, why ask that? She knew perfectly well what she had done. She, the respectable wife of a distinguished husband, the mother of five young children, two of them boys at the most impressionable age, had of her own deliberate choice taken into her household a man who at any moment might start drinking, and a girl who had been in prison; and the relationship between the two of them, though Annie-Laurie had assured her they were doing “nothing wrong,” was, to say the least of it, odd. She put the meat bills aside and tackled the fish, but the fish didn’t make her feel any better. She felt cold all over, and was astonished, when she looked up, to see that the sun was still shining. She had been mad, she told herself, stark staring mad. Well, it was too late now. The thing was done and she must abide by it. What on earth would Lucilla say if she knew? She could not imagine what Lucilla would say; she only knew that Lucilla must never know. No one must know. She was used to keeping secrets—there was David. But how she hated concealments! They made one feel imprisoned, walled in. Poor Annie-Laurie! What was walled in there? The girl was obviously, mentally and nervously, in a bad state, and also afraid, or she would not have spoken as she had about the sense of safety that the house gave her.