What the Heart Keeps (37 page)

She
flung out her hands to him. “Can’t you see what I’m offering you? The business is a bargain! You could build it up as I would have done if my father’s debts hadn’t dragged us down and down.”

“
And the nature of those debts?”

She
drew her lower lip under her teeth and frowned unhappily. “My father likes to drink. It’s as simple as that. When I was a child it was a prosperous little business, but after my mother died he simply gave way completely to his predilection for alcohol. I’m afraid that these days we owe money everywhere. He has borrowed on everything we own. All his promises and his attempts to keep sober have come to naught. Now the bank is to foreclose. Unless I can find a purchaser willing to pay a price to get us out of our financial difficulties we shall be left penniless and without a roof over our heads.”

He
was deeply dismayed. It had not been his intention to draw painful domestic details out of her. He had thought to show by her own answer that the business had foundered on its own and was not the bargain she had purported it to be. He recalled too late that Ingrid had mentioned the father was an alcoholic, and realised that he might have guessed there was some connection.

“
What price are you asking?” he heard himself say.

She
raised eyes so ashine with sudden hope that he was further dismayed, feeling that he was being caught in a whirlpool. The price she gave was one he could have managed with a loan if he had been looking for investment in a business, which he was not.

“
Come with me now and see the premises,” she urged, refastening the buttons of her coat as if he had already agreed to accompany her. When he shook his head and raised his hand in a gesture to emphasise the futility of her request, she pretended not to notice, seemingly absorbed in pulling on her gloves. “I have the sleigh outside. I will drive you back again afterwards. Don’t feel you have to decide at once either way. I do want you to see the horses. If you love horses as I do you will appreciate the drive into town for that alone.”

Maybe
if she had not displayed an affection for horses that was similar to his own, he would not have found himself putting on an overcoat to face the winter weather with her. Perhaps if she had not continued to remind him of Lisa in a will-o’-the-wisp way he would have bluntly refused the whole preposterous proposition she had put to him. Whatever the reason, he went to take a seat in the sleigh beside her, she talking all the time as if even now she feared that if she paused for breath he might utter too soon the dreaded negative answer that would bring her own existence to destruction.

It
was a marvellous ride. The bells on the sleigh jingled merrily and all around them the snow lay soft and sparkling over tree and roof and mountain slope. When they came within sight of the town, with the fjord lying like molten silver beyond, she drew the horse to a halt, its breath and theirs hanging mistily in the cold air.

“
Look!” she said, pointing across the wide fjord to the panorama of eighty-seven peaks of the Romsdal Mountains on the farside. “Where else in the world could you wake to such a view each morning? You’ve come home to Norway, Peter Hagen.”

He
smothered a grin at her exuberance and her persuasiveness. They drove on into town and came to the premises she was offering for sale which were located close to the quayside and faced the fjord. There was a three-storeyed house in need of paint and repair, and the stables and a coach-house on the side were in a similar state of neglect. Nevertheless, it was a prime site and he could see at once why she had feared the premises’ being purchased for some other line of business to the cost of her horses’ well-being.

“
I know the house is large,” she said quickly as if to forestall any comment, “but my father and I could have the ground floor and you could have the rest. In lieu of rent I’d be willing to keep house and book keep and drive a wagonette when needed. My father would help tend the horses and look after the garden.”

She
seemed to have thought of everything. He followed her into the stables. There were four horses, including the one in the sleigh-shafts, and all were the Westland breed—small, sturdy animals of the characteristic cream colour, with a clearly defined black streak running through the pale manes and tails. Gentle-eyed, patient, hard workers and sure-footed as any goat on mountain slopes, they had been dear to his heart since childhood. He clapped their necks and gave them the apples that Astrid had taken from a box on the shelf to hand to him on the way in.

“
They’re fine animals,” he commented, “and in good condition.”

“
I’ve made sure they’ve never gone without anything they have needed,” she answered quietly.

He
glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was stroking the head of one of the horses, unaware of being observed, and her whole face reflected her affection for them all. He was certain that although she had kept the horses in good bran and mash, she herself had known what it was to go hungry.

He
wandered on into the coach-house and examined the vehicles there. Half a dozen ancient wagonettes and a carriole that would have been more at home in a museum, were all there was to be seen, except for something under an enormous dust-sheet. He lifted a corner and then gasped, pulling the sheet away. It was a comparatively new automobile, its gleaming black paintwork badly damaged where it must have suffered a collision on the right side, the mudguard and running-board badly twisted, the front wheel at a curious angle.

Behind
him Astrid heaved a heavy sigh. “That was our last effort to put the business back on its feet. It was my idea that we should start a motorised taxi service, and I practically went down on my knees to the bank manager for a final loan. Then, in spite of my father’s resolution to turn over a new leaf, he smashed it up while drunk.”

“
You should have driven it yourself.”

“
I wanted to, but he wouldn’t allow me to learn. Not that I haven’t learnt more or less how to handle it simply by observation.”

“
Why haven’t you had it repaired?”

“
Nobody will give us credit anymore.”

He
walked around the automobile, keenly interested. Horses were his first love, but the day was coming when mechanisation would take over completely. He had seen increasing signs in the lumber camps. Although to date his horse trade had not suffered, simply because of the good name he had made for himself as an honest dealer, he had faced the fact that before long he would have to consider an alternative means of livelihood.

“
When does the bank intend to foreclose?” he asked.

“
The day after tomorrow.”

He
was taking a look at the engine which seemed to have escaped damage, and he raised his head to meet her eyes. “That’s the day I leave here.”

She
held herself completely still, tense and anxious, and she mouthed more than spoke her reply. “But you’re not going, are you?”

There
was some grease on his fingers from the engine and he reached for a piece of rag from a nearby bench to wipe them clean. As he did so, he stood straight-backed and regarded her steadily. “No, Astrid. I don’t believe I am.”

Later,
when everything was settled and the property and business were his, he mulled over the extraordinary change to his life’s plans that had come about in such a comparatively short while. He intended to make a success of his future, the surge of ambition taking over once again. Already he had ideas springing to mind how profits could be gained and innovations made. As for Astrid, he had realized almost from the start that in her he had found a woman with the forceful spirit and sexual magnetism to match his memories of Lisa. Perhaps with time she might even obliterate them. If she did, he would love her for it.

*

In London, Lisa’s antidote to memories was work. At first it had been both strange and familiar to be back in her own country. The streets had seemed too narrow and the buildings too close, giving her an almost claustrophobic sensation after the open spaces in which she had lived for such a long while. Nevertheless, the beauty of England had pulled at her heart, moving her to tears on the train from Southampton to London as she had viewed the clustered villages and the hills and woods of gentle watercolour hues, the gardens glowing with late summer flowers. Then she had experienced a full sense of homecoming.

They
were met at Waterloo Station by Alan’s only close relative, his cousin Sylvia, who welcomed Lisa like a sister. She gave parties to introduce them to many of her friends, not wanting Lisa to feel lonely, and after three weeks put her house at their disposal, as previously arranged, while she herself departed for India to rejoin her army-major husband there. Before leaving, she found a capable young nursemaid, Maudie Harris, to take charge of Harry when Lisa was otherwise engaged. Lisa liked the girl, as did Harry, which gave her an easy mind about giving most of her time and all her assistance to Alan, who had located a building suitable for conversion into a cinema not long after their arrival back in England.

It
was an old music hall that had waned in popularity and had been closed down for a number of years. After a surveyor had pronounced it sound in structure, Alan had consulted his bank and the necessary funds were forthcoming. While he dealt with the architects and builders and suppliers of cinematographic equipment, Lisa handled the paper work, met British film distributors and renters, visited studios to see the making of future offerings and selected colours and fabrics for the refurbishing of the building. One of the great points in its favour, as far as she and Alan were concerned, was the fact that it was located in an area that encompassed a complete cross-section of the community. He was as keen as she was that they should be able to offer good entertainment as much to those who could only afford a few pence as to people able to pay much higher prices. Factories and slum dwellings, good shops and middle-class homes, art galleries and museums and elegant residences were all to be found within a radius of the building. Although its location was several miles from the theatre world of the West End, Alan never doubted that the day would come when a larger, grander version of the first Fernley cinema would open there.

“
This is a stepping-stone,” he had said to Lisa on the day the purchase of the property was completed. “There will be several more before we can open in Leicester Square or thereabouts, but we’re on the way now.”

She
was pleased when he gave her a free choice in the naming of their cinema and decided it should be known as The Fernley. It was a good name with which to begin a whole chain of cinemas and made a refreshing change from all the Electric Palaces, Picture Palaces, Picturedromes, Theatres Elite and the innumerable Majesties and Empires. Set in illuminated bulbs above the glass-canopied steps of the entrance, the letters made an eye-catching spread across the arched facia that could be sighted from all directions in the traffic-congested streets. The patrons would pass under these lights through opened glass doors into a vestibule where the pay-box was situated, before passing on into the foyer. There was a wide staircase branched to the Grand Circle and the Balcony above it. This area was thickly carpeted and everywhere the walls were gilded and ornamented. Lisa had chosen the rose-tinted chandeliers with special care. The aim of cinema proprietors of any forethought and business acumen was to give patrons an exotic setting to waft them from the mundane into the fantasy world that awaited them.

Sometimes,
when Lisa watched Alan checking on the progress of the building’s conversion, she could tell by his absorbed expression that he had come into his own at last. He would have been a truly happy man if it were not for the fact that in their personal life things were not as they should be. Although to him she blamed her lack of response on tiredness or whatever reason seemed plausible at the time, her excuses were lame ones and at times she despaired of herself. It was natural that as a result tension between them was acute on occasions. Sometimes they quarrelled fiercely over a trifling matter that neither really cared about, simply as an outlet. More than once there was such burning anger in his eyes that she was reminded of the time long ago on Quadra Island when Harriet had vowed to find her a husband in Seattle. She longed for his sake to tear down the barrier that she had set against him, but the truth was that although she was reconciled to a life without Peter, she had not yet readjusted to her marriage bed. She felt nothing and wanted to feel nothing. Work had become her fulfilment.

As
the conversion of the building neared completion, Lisa appointed the female staff. With so much unemployment everywhere, women came from far afield to apply for vacancies, forming such a long queue outside the cinema in the bitter February weather that some passers-by thought the place had already opened and a performance was due to commence. Lisa interviewed each applicant and regretted she did not have more work to offer, but Alan was too heavily committed to the bank to allow more than the minimum amount of staff for the time being. Her choice of a cashier for the pay-box proved to be particularly fortuitous. The woman, Ethel Morris, was married to a retired boxer, Billy, who had similarly applied to Alan to be commissionaire and, whenever it should prove necessary, the chucker-out. After Lisa and Alan had talked together, they offered the couple the chance to be caretakers in the living accommodation incorporated into the property. The additional position was accepted without hesitation.