A Girl to Love
‘So he’ll be here well before Christmas?’ asked Mrs Beamish, her eyes sliding over her shelves of tins and packets. He might be a good customer.
‘Yes, I expect so, but I don’t know if he’ll be here for Christmas. I suppose it’s according to whether he has to work.’
‘Well, love, we’re that pleased—it’ll bring a bit of life to the village, having a real writer here. I suppose he’ll have a car, but where is he going to put it?’
‘There’s room for a garage if he opens the hedge a bit further up the lane, and he can park on that bit of rough grass just opposite the gate,’ said Sadie.
Everyone nodded and Mrs Beamish said: ‘You just go into the sitting room, love, while I serve Mrs Cowley and Mrs Hedger, then we’ll have a nice cup of tea together—we could make out a list of groceries you might want at the same time.’
And for the next few days Sadie had no time to brood. She missed Granny more than she could say, but life had to go on and as far as she could see it was going to go on very much as before. She had run the cottage and looked after her grandmother for two or three years: instead of an old lady there would be a middle-aged man. She had a vivid picture of him in her head—rather like Mr Banks only much more smartly dressed because presumably playwrights moved in the best circles. He wouldn’t want to know about the running of the cottage, only expect his meals on time and well cooked, his shirts expertly ironed, the house cleaned and the bath water hot. Well, she could do all that, and she would be doing it in her own home too.
She took the bus to Bridport and bought herself two severe nylon overalls and a pair of serviceable felt slippers so that she wouldn’t disturb him round the house and experimented with her hair—something severe, she decided, so that she would look mature and sensible, but her fine mouse coloured hair refused to do as she wished; the bun she screwed it into fell apart within an hour, and she was forced to tie it back with a ribbon as she always had done.
After a week, things began to arrive from a succession of vans making their way through the mud of the lane to the gate. Rugs, silky and fine and sombre-coloured, a large desk, a magnificent armchair, a crate of pictures, fishing rods and golf clubs. Sadie unpacked everything but the pictures and stowed them away. The dining room, which she and Granny had almost never used, would be his study, she imagined. She moved out the table and chairs and the old carpet, and laid one of the splendid ones which she had unwrapped with something like awe, and when Charlie came with the letters, she got him to help her move the desk into the centre of the room. She added a straightbacked armchair from the sitting room, a small sofa table from Granny’s bedroom and the bedside lamp from her own room. It wasn’t quite suitable, for it had a shade painted with pink roses, but it would be better than the old-fashioned overhead light in the centre of the room. It looked nice when she had finished, and she laid a fire ready in the small grate; there was nothing like a fire to give a welcome.
She rearranged the biggest bedroom too, laying another of the rugs and moving in a more comfortable chair. The rest of the furniture was old-fashioned but pleasant enough, although the wall-paper was old-fashioned and faded here and there. The sitting room she left more or less as it was, shabby but comfortable; she had put the dining room table at one end of it and put the new armchair close to the fireplace and moved out a smaller table and another chair and put them in her own room. By and large she was well satisfied with her efforts.
She had had one brief letter from Mr Banks, assuring her that all was going well; he would let her know the date of Mr Trentham’s arrival as soon as possible. By then she had cleaned and polished, tidied the shed, chopped firewood and pored over the only cookery book in the house. It was to be hoped that Mr Trentham wasn’t a man to hanker after mousseline of salmon or tournedos saut; Sadie comforted herself with the thought that if he was past his first youth, he would settle for simple fare. She made an excellent steak and kidney pudding and her pastry was feather-light.
It was two days later that she had another letter from Mr Banks, telling her that Mr Trentham proposed to take up residence in three days time. A cheque was enclosed—housekeeping money paid in advance so that she could stock up the larder; her salary and the remainder of the household expenses would be paid to her at a later date. He regretted that he was unable to say at what time of day Mr Trentham would arrive, but she should be prepared to serve a meal within a reasonable time of his arrival at the cottage. He added a warning that her employer was deeply involved in a television script and required the utmost quiet, qualifying this rather daunting statement with the hope that Sadie’s troubles were now over and that she would make the most of her good fortune.
He didn’t need to warn her about being quiet, thought Sadie rather crossly. There was no TV in the cottage simply because Granny had never been able to afford one; there was a radio, but she would keep that in her own room and she wasn’t a noisy girl around the house. There was, in fact, nothing to be noisy with. Mr Trentham could write in the dining room with the door shut firmly upon him and not be disturbed by a sound.
That afternoon she went down to Mrs Beamish’s shop with a list of groceries and spent a delightful half hour stocking up necessities to the satisfaction of herself and still more of Mrs Beamish. And the next morning she went into Bridport and cashed her cheque before purchasing several items Mrs Beamish didn’t have, as well as visiting the butcher’s and arranging for him to call twice a week. He delivered to Mrs Frobisher and the Manor House anyway, and she assured him that it would be worth his while. It was sitting in the bus on the way home that she began to wonder about Christmas. It seemed unlikely that Mr Trentham would want to stay at the cottage, especially as he had children, in which case she and Tom would spend it together, but Christmas was still five weeks away and it was pointless to worry about it.
She spent the evening storing away her purchases and the next morning went to pay Mrs Beamish’s bill, ask William the milkman to let her have more milk, and then tramped through the village to Mrs Pike’s Farm to order logs. Together with almost everyone else in the village, she was in the habit of wooding in the autumn and she had collected a useful pile of branches and sawn them ready for burning, but with two, perhaps three fires going, there wouldn’t be enough. And that done, she went home and had her tea and then sat by the fire with Tom on her lap, deciding what she would cook for Mr Trentham’s first meal.
She made a steak and kidney pudding after breakfast the next morning because that couldn’t spoil if he arrived late in the day, and then peeled potatoes and cleaned sprouts to go with it. For afters she decided on Queen of Puddings, and since she had time to spare she made a batch of scones and fruit cake. With everything safely in the oven she made a hasty meal of bread and cheese and coffee and flew up to her room to tidy herself. It was barely two o’clock, but he could arrive at any moment. She donned one of the new overalls, a shapeless garment which did nothing for her pretty figure, brushed her hair and tied it back, dabbed powder on her nose and put on lipstick sparingly; if she used too much she wouldn’t look like a housekeeper.
The afternoon wore on into the early dark of a winter’s evening. She made tea and ate a scone and had just tidied away her cup and saucer when she heard a car coming up the lane. She glanced at the clock—half past five; tea at once and supper about eight o’clock, perhaps a bit earlier, as he was probably cold and tired. She gave the fire in the sitting room a quick nervous poke and went to open the door.
Mr Trentham stepped inside and shut the door behind him. In silence he stood, staring down at her, a long lean man with thick dark hair, grey eyes and a face which any girl might dream about. He wasn’t middle-aged or short, or stout; anyone less like Mr Banks Sadie had yet to meet. She stared back at him, conscious of a peculiar feeling creeping over her. She shook it off quickly and held out a hand. ‘Good evening, Mr Trentham,’ she said politely, ‘I hope you had a good drive down. I’m Sadie Gillard, the housekeeper.’
He was smiling at her with lazy good humour, and she smiled back, relieved that he was so friendly, not at all what she had expected. Indeed, already the future was tinted with a faint rose colour. Thoughts went scudding through her head: she should have made a chocolate cake as well as the usual fruit one and got in beer. Mr Darling at the Bull and Judge would have known what to sell her…thank heaven she had made that steak and kidney pudding… She was brought down to earth by his voice, slow and deep, faintly amused.
‘There seems to have been some mistake—I understood that there was to be a sensible countrywoman.’ His smile widened. ‘I’m afraid you won’t do at all.’
CHAPTER TWO
SHE FOUGHT DOWN instant panic. ‘I am a sensible countrywoman,’ she told him in a calm little voice, ‘your housekeeper, and I can’t think why I won’t do, especially as you haven’t eaten a meal here or slept in a bed or had your washing and ironing done yet.’
He had his head a little on one side, watching her, no longer smiling. ‘You don’t understand,’ he told her quite gently. ‘I’m looking for a quiet, experienced woman to run this cottage with perfection and no unnecessary noise. I write for a living and I have to have peace.’
‘I’m as experienced as anyone will ever be. I’ve lived here in this cottage for twenty years, I know every creaking board and squeaking door and how to avoid them…’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Of course, stupid of me—you’re Mrs Gillard’s granddaughter. To turn you out of your home would be decidedly unkind.’ His faint smile came again. ‘At least tonight. We’ll discuss it in the morning.’ He turned to the door again and opened it on to the chilly evening. ‘I’ll get my bags.’
When he came back with the first of them Sadie asked: ‘Would you like tea, sir?’
‘Yes, I would, and for God’s sake don’t call me sir!’ He disappeared into the blackness again and she went to put the kettle on and butter the scones. She had laid a tray with Granny’s best china and one of her old-fashioned traycloths and she carried it into the sitting room and put it on a small table by the fire. By the time he had brought in a considerable amount of luggage and taken off his sheepskin jacket, she had made the tea and carried it in.
‘What about you?’ he asked as he sat down, ‘or have you already had yours?’
‘Yes, thank you, I have. If you want more of anything will you call? I shall be in the kitchen.’ At the door she paused. ‘Would you like your supper at any particular time, Mr Trentham?’
He spread her home-made jam on a scone and took a bite. ‘Did you make these?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Wild strawberry jam,’ he observed to no one in particular, ‘I haven’t tasted it since I was a boy. You made it?’
‘Yes.’ She tried again. ‘Your supper, Mr Trentham?’
‘Oh, any time,’ he told her carelessly. ‘I’ll unpack a few things and get my books put away. Where have you put my desk?’
‘In the other room. If you wouldn’t mind having your meals in here, you could use the dining room to work in.’
He nodded. ‘That sounds all right. Whose cat is that, staring at me from under the table?’
‘Oh, that’s Tom—he’s mine. I did ask about him, and you said you wouldn’t mind…’
‘So I did.’ He buttered another scone. ‘Don’t let me keep you from whatever you’re doing.’
She went out closing the door soundlessly. The kitchen was warm and smelt deliciously of food. She put the custardy part of the Queen of Puddings into the oven and began to whip the egg whites. Her future was tumbling about her ears, but that was no reason to present him with a badly cooked meal. When she heard him go into the hall she opened the kitchen door to tell him: ‘Your bedroom is the one on the right at the top of the stairs. Would you like any more tea, Mr Trentham?’
He paused, his arms full of books. ‘No, thanks. It was the best tea I’ve had in years. In fact I don’t normally have tea, I can see that I shall have to get into the habit again. Did you make that cake too?’
‘Yes.’ She went past him up the stairs and switched on the light in the bedroom and pulled the curtains. It looked very pleasant in a shabby kind of way but a bit chilly, she was glad she’d put hot water bottles in the bed.
‘You can come in here and help,’ he called as she went downstairs, and she spent the next half hour handing him books from the two big cases he had brought with him, while he arranged them on the bookshelves she had luckily cleared. He had a powerful desk lamp too and a typewriter, and a mass of papers and folders which he told her quite sharply to leave alone. Finally he said: ‘That’s enough for this evening.’ He gave her his lazy smile again. ‘Thanks for helping.’
He went outside again presently to the car parked in the lane and came back with a case of bottles which he arranged on the floor in a corner of the sitting room, an arrangement which Sadie didn’t care for at all. There was a small table in one of the empty bedrooms; she would bring it down in the morning and put the bottles on it. She collected the tea tray and started to lay supper at one end of the table, and he asked for a glass.
Granny’s corner cupboard was one of the nicest pieces of furniture in the cottage. Sadie opened its door now and invited him to take what he wanted. He chose a heavy crystal tumbler and held it up to the light.
‘Very nice too—old—Waterford, I believe.’
‘Yes, everything there is mostly Waterford, but there are one or two glasses made by Caspar Wistar. My grandmother had them from her grandmother. I’m not sure how they came into the family.’
‘They’re rare and valuable.’
She closed the cupboard door carefully. ‘I don’t know if you bought them with the cottage. Mr Banks is going to send me a list…’
He had picked up a bottle of whisky and was pouring it. ‘No, I haven’t bought them, and if you think of selling them I should get a very reliable firm to value them first.’
‘Sell them?’ She looked at him quite blankly. ‘But I couldn’t do that!’
He shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘No, probably you couldn’t,’ he agreed goodnaturedly. ‘Something smells good,’ he added.
‘It will be ready in ten minutes,’ she told him, and went back to the kitchen.
Washing up in the old-fashioned scullery later, Sadie wondered what her chances of staying were. Undoubtedly, when they had met, Mr Trentham had made up his mind instantly that she wouldn’t do, but now, since making inroads into the splendid supper she had put before him, she had seen his eyes, thoughtful and a little doubtful, resting upon her as she had cleared the table. She hadn’t said a word, just taken in the coffee and put it silently on the table by the fire, then taken herself off to the kitchen, where she and Tom demolished the rest of the steak and kidney pudding and the afters before setting the kitchen to rights again. It was bedtime before she had finished. She refilled the hot water bottle, switched on the bedside light and went downstairs again to tap on the sitting room door and go in.
‘There’s plenty of hot water if you would like a bath,’ she told him, ‘and it will be warm enough by eight o’clock in the morning if you’d prefer one then.’
He looked up from the book he was reading. ‘Oh, the morning, I think.’
‘If you’d put the guard in front of the fire?’ she suggested. ‘I hope you’ll sleep well, Mr Trentham.’
He smiled at her. ‘No doubt of that,’ he assured her. ‘I’ve been sitting here listening for the proverbial pin to drop. I’d forgotten just how quiet it can be in the country.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Goodnight, Mr Trentham.’
‘Goodnight, Sadie.’
She went up the narrow stairs, Tom plodding behind her to climb on to her bed and make himself comfortable while she had a bath and got ready for the night. She was almost asleep when she heard Mr Trentham come upstairs. He came with careful stealth, trying to be quiet, but he was a big man and probably not used to considering others all that much. He was nice, though, she thought sleepily, used to doing as he pleased, no doubt, but then according to Charlie, who read the TV Times and watched the box whenever he had a moment to spare, he was an important man in his own particular field. She heard his door on the other side of the landing close quietly and then silence, broken by a subdued bellow of laughter.
She was too tired to wonder about that.
She was up before seven o’clock, creeping downstairs to clear out the ashes and light the fires in both rooms as well as the boiler and then to get dressed before going down to the kitchen to cook the breakfast—porridge and eggs and bacon and toast. By the time Mr Trentham got down the table was laid and the fire was burning brightly. She wished him a sedate good morning and added: ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please. God, I haven’t had a night like that in years!’
There seemed no answer to that. Sadie retired to the kitchen, made the coffee and took it in with a bowl of porridge.
‘I never eat the stuff,’ declared Mr Trentham, and then at the sight of her downcast face: ‘Oh, all right, I’ll try it.’
She had the satisfaction of seeing a bowl scraped clean when she took in the eggs and bacon. He demolished those too before polishing off the toast and marmalade.
‘It goes without saying that you made the marmalade as well,’ he observed as she cleared the table.
‘Well, yes, of course. Everyone does.’ She gave him a brief smile and went back to the kitchen, where she ate her breakfast with Tom for company until Charlie interrupted her with a pile of letters.
‘Brought a bit o’ custom to the village,’ he volunteered cheerfully. ‘That’s a posh car outside, all right.’
Sadie gobbled up the last of her bacon, offered a mug of tea and took the letters. Mr Trentham wasn’t in the sitting room and she could hear the typewriter going without pause. She didn’t fancy disturbing him, not after all his remarks about peace and quiet, but she saw no way out of it. She tapped on the door and getting no answer, went in, laid the post down on the edge of the desk and went out again. She rather doubted if he had seen her.
She whisked round the cottage, not finding much to do, for everything had been so scrubbed and polished it had had no time to get even a thin film of dust. And then, since the typewriter was still being pounded without pause, she went silently in with coffee. Without looking up, Mr Trentham said: ‘Open the post for me, Sadie, will you? Do it here.’
She thought of her own coffee cooling in the kitchen and picked up a paper knife on the desk. There were nine letters. Three of them were in handwriting and began Dear Oliver, and she laid them on top of the others—bills and what appeared to be business letters. Having done so she made silently for the door, to be stopped by Mr Trentham’s voice.
‘Where’s your coffee?’
‘In the kitchen.’ She put a hand on the door knob.
‘Fetch it and come back here, I want to have a talk with you.’ He sounded so noncommittal that she guessed that he was going to tell her that she must go. And where to? she asked herself, rejoining him, her tranquil face showing nothing of the panic she was in.
‘Mr Banks was quite right,’ he began. ‘He described you as a sensible countrywoman, and it seems to me you are. What my mother would have called an old head on young shoulders…I think we may suit each other very well, Sadie, but several adjustments must be made. We’ll take our meals together—it’s ridiculous that you should eat in the kitchen of your own home. You will share the sitting room as you wish, all I ask is that I should be left to myself in this room. You will refrain from lugging logs and coals into the house, I’ll do that each morning or if you prefer, each night. And you’re not to wear that depressing overall. We’ll go to Bridport and purchase something more in keeping with your age. What is your age, by the way?’
‘I’m twenty-three.’
He nodded. ‘There are things to be done to the cottage. It needs a new thatch, I need a garage; a shower room would be useful. I’ve already arranged for a telephone to be installed, and someone should be here later today to install television.’ He searched in his pockets and pulled out a cheque book. ‘Here’s housekeeping money until the end of the month, after that you’ll be paid it on the first of each month.’ He started on another cheque. ‘And here’s a week’s salary in advance. You’ll get a month’s money at the same time as the housekeeping.’
He pushed the cheques towards her and she picked them up in a daze.
‘All that, just for housekeeping?’ she wanted to know.
‘I like good food—good plain food, well cooked. I abhor things in tins and packets and frozen peas.’
‘Well, there isn’t a freezer,’ she explained, ‘and I hardly ever buy things in tins because they’re too expensive.’
He smiled at her and her heart lurched. ‘Splendid!’ He gave her an encouraging nod and thought how beautiful her eyes were in her plain little face. There was nothing about her to distract him from his work. ‘The tradespeople call?’ he wanted to know.
‘Yes, and Mrs Beamish has almost all the groceries we need. I get eggs from someone in the village and I’ve ordered some more logs from a farm near by—they’ve cut down some trees and we can buy the awkward logs that won’t sell easily.’
‘Yes.’ He sounded a little impatient and she got up, put the coffee cups on the tray.
‘I’ll be in the garden if you want me for anything, Mr Trentham. What would you like for lunch?’
He had picked up a sheaf of papers and was frowning over them. ‘Oh, anything—we’ll eat this evening.’
There was plenty of soup left over from the previous day and a mackerel pâté she had made; toast wouldn’t take an instant and she could make a Welsh rarebit in no time at all. She got into her wellies and the old mac and went into the garden to cut a cabbage.
At one o’clock precisely she put her head round the door to say that lunch was about to be put on the table, and found him sitting back with a drink in his hand. He got up and followed her into the kitchen and watched while she ladled the soup and then carried the tray for her.
Beyond stating that he seldom stopped for a meal when he was working, he had nothing to say, but Sadie noticed that every drop of soup was eaten and when she replaced that with Welsh rarebit, he ate that too—moreover, the pâté followed it. It was obvious to her that he hadn’t been eating properly. Well, the housekeeping money he had given her was more than enough to buy the best of everything.
She put his coffee on the table by the fire and went away to wash up. He had insisted that she should take her meals with him, but that didn’t mean that she was to bear him company at any other time. She tidied the kitchen, told him that she would be going out for an hour and would be back in good time to get his tea, and wrapped up in her old coat, walked down to the village. Mr Trentham wanted papers to be delivered each morning and they needed to be ordered. She paused outside the gate to look at the car: an Aston Martin Volante. It looked a nice car, she considered, and beautifully upholstered inside, and she remembered vaguely that it was expensive. It was a shame to keep it out in the cold and damp of November, the sooner Mr Trentham had a garage built the better.
The newspapers were ordered from Mrs Beamish and that entailed a brief gossip about the cottage’s owner. Everyone in the village seemed to have seen him driving through and there was a good deal of speculation about him. Sadie was forced to admit that she knew next to nothing about him and wasn’t likely to.
When she got back there was a van parked behind the car and a man on the roof fixing an aerial and another man inside installing the TV. Sadie went into the kitchen where Tom was drowsing by the stove, laid a tray for tea and made two mugs and carried them out to the men. Judging by the impatient voice coming from the dining room, Mr Trentham was being disturbed in his work and wasn’t best pleased. She smoothed them down, poured them second mugs and gave them a pound from the housekeeping. When they had gone Mr Trentham summoned her into the dining room, where he was sitting at his desk; there were screwed-up balls of paper all over the floor and he looked in a bad temper. ‘How can I work with all that noise?’ he demanded of her.