The Hardie Inheritance (28 page)

He put out a hand to take hers. The touch made her body tingle with excitement. Was this what was meant by falling in love? At one time or another she had thought herself to be in love with each of the three young men whose names had come into her mind when Gordon asked her if she had a boy. But probably what she felt for Rupert was a schoolgirl crush. And Jean-Paul and Terry were just good company. She liked working beside them – on the land with Jean-Paul, in the house with Terry – talking only occasionally; just happy to be with them. But neither of them had ever made her feel hot and cold at the same time, as Gordon Hardie was doing.

He was waiting for an answer. She looked at him with a gaze as direct as his own.

‘No,' she said. ‘I don't mind.'

Trish arrived home from school the next day to find that the household had increased still further in size. Jay, it appeared, had arrived soon after breakfast – and not merely for a short visit to see his mother. When Trish went to look for him she found that he had taken possession of his old bedroom and had already filled all the storage space it contained with the extensive wardrobe essential, he always claimed, for an actor. Books and photographs covered every available surface and there was still one trunk unpacked on the floor.

‘Are you coming to live here?' she asked.

‘Try that again with a different inflection. “Darling Jay, can it be true that you're coming to live here! Oh, goody, goody!” Well, I do seem to be in need of a new base. London is becoming just the teeniest weeniest bit unpleasant again. Not that you'd realize that. Living here, you –'

‘Don't know there's a war on.' Trish finished the remark in unison with him. ‘Are you talking about these pilotless planes?'

‘Flying bombs,' said Jay. ‘Doodlebugs, people are calling them. A toy name for something very nasty. You can hear them coming from a long way off. A horrid gritty noise.' He gave an imitation of it. ‘As long as the noise goes on, you're all right. Then it stops. If it stops directly overhead, you're still all right because the beastly thing will glide a bit further on. But if it stops before it reaches you, you're not all right at all. The show closed last night. People simply stopped coming.'

‘I suppose you can't really blame them.'

‘No. Ever since the Blitz we've been starting the evening performances much earlier than in peacetime, so that people
didn't have to cope with the blackout and could get home before the night raids started; but the doodlebugs are coming over in daylight. So the final curtain has descended.'

‘Bad luck.'

‘Well, mustn't complain. I've had one great piece of luck in my life. Born in the right year. Just too young to fight in the first war: just too old to be much use in this one, since my ENSA tours hardly rank as active service. And I shan't be unemployed for long. The management's trying to set up a provincial tour to keep the company together. But if I don't need to be in London, there doesn't seem much point in paying rent for a flat which may be blasted into little bits at any moment.'

‘Terry thinks this is the time to buy the place you live in, instead of paying rent,' said Trish. ‘Or at least, that's what he thought when the Blitz was on. While prices are low because lots of people in London want to sell and get out and most people think it's crazy to buy. If the house doesn't get bombed, it will be ever so valuable after the war, he says, because there won't be enough homes to go round. And even if it does get bombed, you'd have the land and the compensation. Terry says that if he had any capital at all, that's what he'd do, buy houses and then sell them again later.'

‘Terry will be a millionaire one day, no doubt about it,' said Jay. ‘But there's a difference between a house and a flat. There's no way I can get my hands on the land underneath my flat. Anyway, I haven't got any capital, any more than Terry has.'

‘I thought actors earned hundreds and hundreds of pounds.'

‘Then you thought wrong. I find no difficulty in spending everything I earn. And unemployment and destitution are always just round the corner. So it's just as well that I have a loving sister who'll make sure that I never lack a roof over my head. Long life to Grace, that's what I say!'

‘How's Grandmother?' asked Trish. That ought to have been her first question.

‘Hasn't come round after the operation yet. Grace and I
went down this morning to sit with her, but she didn't know we were there. Sister promised to phone us as soon as she starts to wake up. We'll go down again in any case in an hour or so. We've arranged to meet David there.'

‘But how
is
she?'

‘Honestly don't know, my duck.' But the lightness had disappeared from his voice. ‘The doctor seems to think that she may have had a slight stroke just before she fell – in fact, that that was
why
she fell. They won't know for a bit how much that's affected her. It'll be a little while, either way, before she's running around again. Grace is thinking of turning some ground floor rooms into a bedroom and sitting room for her if necessary. And I suppose she'd need a downstairs bathroom as well.'

‘There ought to be more bathrooms anyhow,' said Trish. ‘I don't know how you managed when you were all children.'

‘That's because you don't know what it's like to be waited on. The roaring coal fire in the nursery, with the bath towel warming in front of it. The tin bath filled with kettles of hot water by a succession of maids. And Nanny ready to soap your back while you played with your ducks. Bliss. Growing up is a great mistake.'

‘I'll go and help Grace choose,' decided Trish. There was nothing she liked better than changing rooms around, and for half an hour they discussed possibilities together. The morning room, which was the ground floor of the tower, would be ideal as a bedroom, but was too small to act as a sitting room as well.

‘No point in making up our minds yet awhile,' said Grace at last. ‘It may turn out that a bedroom's all she'll need. Have you had tea yet?'

‘Not yet. Where's Gordon?'

‘Finding out how to enlist. Don't look so horrified! He doesn't expect to be press-ganged straight away. He needs to know what the procedures are – and what choices he may have. I tried to suggest to him that the British Army might
not suit him too well. I can't quite see him saying “Yes sir, no sir” to someone he'll regard as a stuffy Pom.'

‘That must have set him back a bit, when he's come all this way specially.'

‘Yes. Well, I discovered that he can fly a plane – and make repairs to it, as well. He's used to visiting his friends and neighbours by air where you might get on your bike. It's not easy to get into the RAF, I don't think, but he'd be better qualified than most volunteers and he might find it more congenial if they'd have him. He should be back soon.'

Trish waited for him with a mixture of impatience and shyness while Grace and Jay made their second journey to the Infirmary. Would he want to kiss her again? Did she want him to? Yes, she did. It was odd, when she thought about it now, that neither Jean-Paul nor Terry had ever kissed her; although neither of them, as far as she knew, had any other special girl and each of them was in a way ‘interested' in her. As for Rupert, he planted kisses on her forehead or cheek when they met and parted, but only in a cousinly way. Was Gordon treating her as an adult because he had not known her as a child? Or had she unconsciously given him some kind of signal that she was ready for a flirtation?

No, not a flirtation. She was eager for something deeper than that, and Gordon had sensed her eagerness. She hoped he would not be too quick to disappear into the armed forces.

He returned, by chance, only a few moments after his aunt and uncles came back from the Infirmary. David and Grace had gone straight into the house but Trish, watching out, was disappointed to see him introduce himself to Jay and accept the suggestion of a walk.

Max had arrived as well, trailing behind the others. Trish saw his eyes brighten at the sight of the two long ropes which hung from a branch of the cedar tree. Originally fastened there for Dan and Boxer to climb, they were close enough together for a boy to grip one in each hand. Setting down his suitcase, Max gave a little jump on the spot and then ran with long,
high strides before leaping into the air and grasping the ropes higher up than Trish would have believed possible. He swung his legs until they pointed straight up in the air above his head, and then pushed himself off the ropes in a somersault, taking pains to keep his balance steady after landing.

She found his agility incredible. Even more extraordinary was the fact that he showed no interest in what he could achieve on the ropes or bars. Gymnastics was simply one kind of exercise to help him develop strength and balance. All he wanted to do was to dance. Though Trish did not go as far as David in disapproving of such an ambition, she did secretly consider it to be rather cissy. But remembering her manners as a hostess, she went outside to welcome him.

‘How did you get on with your exam?' she asked. Grace had confided the situation to her.

Max's pointed face creased with mischief. He gave a little run and leapt into the air, his body turning while his toes crossed each other more quickly than Trish could count.

‘Jolly well,' he said. ‘All my jumps went right. Where's Boxer?'

‘Playing cricket. I'll look after your case if you want to join in.'

For the time being, she left it in the hall and took her sketch pad and pencil and a pair of scissors into the library. If Mrs Hardie were to need a ground floor room when she returned home, the library would be almost as suitable as the morning room, and far larger – large enough to be divided into two sections. True, it did not get the early morning sun; but there would be plenty of afternoon brightness. Since Philip's death, nobody ever looked at the books which had once been Mr Hardie's, for neither Trish nor Grace was a great reader. There could be no objection to moving some of them in order to make room for a bed.

Indeed, perhaps two of the heavy bookcases could be turned at right angles to the wall to cut off a sleeping cubicle, with the wide space between them leading to a comfortable sitting
room. The solid backs of the bookcases could be covered with some kind of fabric and used to hang a few of Mrs Hardie's watercolours so that she could see them from her bed. After pacing out the size of the whole room, Trish sat down on the steps which were used to reach the highest shelves of books and began to sketch an outline of the room and cut out the shapes of furniture to arrange on it.

So engrossed was she in the task that she was not immediately aware that Grace and David had come into the drawing room. There was a corridor running round the edge of the internal courtyard of Greystones to give access to each of the downstairs rooms, but every room was also connected with its neighbours directly by means of double doors. To reach the library, Trish had walked from the hall through the drawing room, and had left both sets of doors open behind her.

There was a quarrel in progress. Even without hearing the words, the tone of the two raised voices told her that. Trish moved quietly towards the wide doors with the intention of closing them, but realized that the action would draw attention to her presence and perhaps make two angry people even angrier. The right solution was to make her way out into the corridor, but curiosity proved to be too strong. Standing still against the end wall of the library, she began to eavesdrop.

‘It only goes to prove what I've always said.' David, in the middle of some argument whose subject she would have to work out gradually, was in a state of fury. ‘I can't think what possessed anyone to give a house like this to a
girl
.'

‘I take it you don't hold me responsible for that, since I was only one year old at the time.' Grace's voice was calmer, but icy.

‘But you have the responsibility now to take proper care of it. For goodness' sake, Grace, don't you know anything at all about death duties? Suppose you had died a month ago, and Mother today, do you realize what would have happened? The family would have had to find an enormous sum of money to pay the duty on the value of Greystones when you died, and
then within a few weeks would have had to pay the same sum all over again. Since none of us has got that sort of money, or anything like it, the only way it could have been paid would be by selling the house. Is that really what you wanted to happen?'

‘It was never likely that I would die before Mother.'

‘That's what wills are for, to deal with the consequences of the unlikely as well as the inevitable. Any lawyer would have told you what a mess you were getting yourself into.'

‘You were the one,' said Grace – and she too was growing angry now – ‘who was concerned lest Philip and Mother should lose their home if anything happened to me. I promised that I'd guard against any danger of that, and I took the necessary steps.'

‘I assumed that at least you'd have the sense to take advice. You could have set up a family trust, for example. I don't consider that you kept your promise in any proper sense of the phrase. I did you a big favour and I remind you that you're still under an obligation to keep the spirit of your promise as well as the letter.'

Grace sighed so heavily that Trish could hear it in the next room. When she spoke again the anger had gone out of her voice, which was low and unhappy.

‘This isn't the right time for this kind of discussion. We ought not to be quarrelling now. I must go and find Trish and tell her.'

Tell her what? Trish guessed what it must be, and could not understand why she had not realized at once.

‘Grace, Grace!' she called, hurtling into the drawing room at such speed that she might well be assumed to have only just run the length of the library. ‘How's Grandmother?'