Chapter Four

Dotted about London in the less fashionable quarters of the town there loom here and there enormous houses which were built at a time when everybody had ten or eleven children, lots of money and vassals and serfs in comfortable profusion. No longer able to be used as private residences, principally because the serfs and vassals now know a thing or two and prefer to make their living elsewhere, some have become blocks of flats, others hostels for students and the younger wage-earners. Each of the latter has a communal living-room and dining-room and each resident his or her bedroom, and the general effect is of an informal and rather cosy club.

One of these younger wage-earners was Sally Fitch, and on the Sunday following the night on which her shoes had proved so untrustworthy she was in her room, discussing with her friend Mabel Potter the latter’s marital problems.

Mabel was the secretary of Edgar Sampson the theatrical manager, but leaving shortly to get married, unless she decided to stay on after the honeymoon, and she wanted Sally’s views on which course she ought to pursue. Charlie, it seemed, who made quite enough for two in a stockbroker’s office, wished her to retire and concentrate on the home, but she wavered because she liked being a secretary.

‘Sammy is awfully nice to work for, and you meet such interesting people in a place like that. There was a newspaper man in the day before yesterday who had delirium tremens right in front of my desk. Do you like your work, Sally?’

‘I love it.’

‘You must meet a lot of interesting people, too.’

‘All the time. Have you ever seen an existentialist poet? Well worth a glance. The one I did offered me absinthe, not to mention a weekend at Bognor Regis. And on Tuesday I’m doing Ivor Llewellyn, the motion picture man. He ought to be good. The trouble with the job is that it’s so ships-in-the-nightish.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You meet someone you like, chat awhile, and part for ever. You never see them again.’

‘Well, you can’t expect celebrities to swear eternal friendship.’

‘A paper like mine doesn’t go in much for celebrities, though I suppose Ivor Llewellyn’s one. Never heard of him myself. We get the lesser lights. I was thinking of Joe Pickering.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘You see. The name means nothing to you. He had his first play on at the Regal and it flopped. I was awfully sorry for him. I ran into him again last night, but only for a minute. I suppose that’s the last time I shall ever see him, and I’ve never met anyone I liked so much at first sight. We got on like long-lost brothers.’

‘Good-looking?’

‘Not a bit. He does a lot of boxing, and that’s apt to impair the appearance. But I’ll tell you something for your files, young Mabel. Looks aren’t everything. A cauliflower ear doesn’t matter if it covers a warm heart, which I could see Joe Pickering had. He hated being interviewed, but he remained perfectly courteous throughout, even when I was being most inquisitive about his private affairs.’

‘Don’t you feel awkward, butting in on perfect strangers and asking them about their religion and do they love their wives and what their favourite breakfast cereal is?’

‘You get hardened, like a surgeon.’

‘Sammy says interviewers ought to be drowned in a bucket. Oh well,’ said Mabel, her interest in that branch of the literary world waning, ‘carry on if you enjoy it. What do you think I ought to do? What would you do if you were me? About Charlie?’

‘You can’t go by what I’d do,’ said Sally. ‘I’m the meek, yielding type. I’d tell myself I had promised to honour and obey the poor fish, so why not get started. I suppose a lot depends on the man. Is Charlie one of those tough domineering characters who thump the desk and shout “Listen to me. Once and for all…“?‘

‘Oh no, he’s not a bit like that. He says “Anything that will make me happy”.’

‘But he wants you to chuck your job?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then chuck it, honey, chuck it. A man like that is worth making a sacrifice for.’

‘I think I will.’

‘Do. It means, of course, that your life will lose a little in the way of entertainment, but what of it? I always say that when you’ve seen one Gentleman of the Press having delirium tremens, you’ve seen them all. Your Charlie sounds a pretty good egg. The unselfish type. Just the sort of man I’d like to marry myself.’

‘Why don’t you get married, Sally? You’d probably have the time of your life.’

‘No one has asked me, not recently. I was once engaged, but it didn’t jell.’

‘You quarrelled? Misunderstanding, and both too proud to explain?’ said Mabel, who read stories in women’s papers like Sally’s, when not working or watching newspaper men have delirium tremens. ‘Who was he? A curate?’

‘Why a curate?’

‘Your father was a vicar. You must have been up to your knees in curates. Or was it the doctor?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘There couldn’t have been a wide selection in a one-horse place like Much Middlefold. Was it—?’

‘The landlord of the village pub? The odd-job man? The school master? No, it wasn’t. It was a baronet, my girl, and a seventh baronet at that. Father used to coach a few assorted young men for Diplomatic Service exams and that sort of thing, and Jaklyn was one of them. So we met. ‘

‘That’s an odd name.’

‘Family name. Handed down through the ages.’

‘Did you break it off?’

‘No, he did. He said it would be years before we could afford to get married, and it wasn’t fair to ask me to wait.’

‘Then he hadn’t any money?’

‘No, the sixth Bart had spent it all, backing losers.’

‘Is he in London?, Do you ever see him?’

‘Who’s asking questions now? Yes, he’s in London, and I see him occasionally. We sometimes go to the theatre.’

‘I suppose you’ve got over it all right?’

‘Oh, completely.’

Mabel rose and stretched herself. She said she must be getting back to her room.

‘Letters to write?’

‘I don’t write letters on my day off. The Sunday papers to read. There’s a terrific murder in the News of the World.’

Left alone, Sally fell into a reverie. It was not often that she found herself thinking of Jak Warner these days, and now that Mabel’s inquisitiveness had brought him back into her mind it was with some surprise that she realised that in stating so confidently that his spell had ceased to operate she had been in error. A good deal of the old affection, she discovered, still lingered. A man may not be an object of admiration to severe male critics like Mac the stage-doorkeeper, but if he combines singular good looks with a smooth tongue and a pathetic wistfulness it is not easy for a warm-hearted girl to erase him entirely, particularly if she still sees him from time to time.

Magic moments of those days at Much Middlefold returned to her. Moonlight walks in the meadows. Kisses in the shadows. Drifting down the river in the old vicarage punt. By the time Mabel returned she had fallen into a mood which in anybody else she would have classified as mushy and getting deeper and deeper into that foolish condition.

Mabel’s entry acted as a corrective. She had flung the door open with a violence that made the window rattle and was advancing into the room with wrought-up squeaks. She was waving a paper.

‘Look at this, Sally! ‘

‘Look at what?’

‘It’s about you.’

‘What’s about me?’

‘Read this. Where my thumb is.’

Sally took the paper, and instantaneously the past with its moonlight walks and kisses vanished as if turned off with a switch. She had no need to call on Mabel’s thumb for guidance. The moment she scanned the page her own name leaped at her.

‘Golly!’ she said, and Mabel’s comment that she might well say ‘Golly’ was unquestionably justified.

If, the advertisement stated, Miss Sarah Fitch, formerly of Much Middlefold in the county of Worcestershire, will call at the offices of Nichols, Erridge, Trubshaw and Nichols, 27 Bedford Row, she will learn of something to her advantage; and if a girl was not entitled to say ‘Golly’ on reading that, it would be difficult to see what would entitle her to say ‘Golly’.

Mabel’s emotion had reached new heights.

‘You know what that means, Sally. Somebody’s left you a packet.’

Sally had begun to recover from the first dazed illusion that she had been hit over the head with something hard and heavy.

‘They couldn’t have.’

‘They must have. It always means that when lawyers put in that bit about learning to advantage.’

‘But it’s impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Who could have left me anything?’

Mabel had not read women’s papers for nothing. ‘Your grandfather,’ she said with confidence. ‘He disinherited your mother for marrying a clergyman when he had got it all lined up for her to marry the Earl of Something. It’s happening all the time.’

‘Not this time. My grandfather has always been particularly fond of my father.’

‘Oh,’ said Mabel, disappointed.

‘And what’s more he’s still alive. I had a letter from him yesterday.’

‘Oh,’ said Mabel.

‘And even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be leaving people money. He hasn’t a bean except his pension. If you ask me, it’s probably a practical joke. It’s the sort of thing some of the girls where I work would think funny.’

‘But if it was that, they would have cut the thing out and shown it to you.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Anyway, you’ll go and see these Bedford Row people?’

‘Oh, I’ll go. I’ve enough curiosity for that. I’ll go on Tuesday morning. I’m not seeing Mr Llewellyn till the evening.’

‘Why not tomorrow?’

‘I can’t tomorrow. I’ll be down at Valley Fields. My old Nanny lives there, and I’ve orders from home to go and see her every week. I missed last time, so I shall have to go twice this week. But don’t worry. Nichols, Erridge, Trubshaw and Nichols will still be there on Tuesday.’