A Girl to Love. Betty Neels

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ impatient and coughed, then looked put out when Sadie said finally, ‘All right, Mr Banks, and thank you very much.’

      There were two more customers in the shop now, both listening hard. ‘What about the furniture, Sadie?’ one of them asked.

      ‘Well, he wants it, most of it, that is, but he’s bringing rugs and things like that—they’re to be delivered some time during next week. Mr Banks says I’ll have to be at home to put things straight and get in groceries and so on.’

      ‘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.

СКАЧАТЬ