He straightened up and looked at Louise, rightly proud of his personal rectitude.
Both Louise and Celia gasped at this information, and Celia felt sick, because it tended to confirm her poor opinion of Cousin Albert. It did not occur to her that Albert merely wanted to check that Mr Billings handed over the correct sum each month.
Louise was so shaken that she actually threw back her veil, to reveal a plump, blotched face, which might have still been pretty in happier circumstances. ‘But he has no right,’ she faltered.
‘Precisely, Ma’am.’
Mr Billings smiled knowingly at her. ‘But it so happened, Ma’am, that I was a trifle late making up me books this quarter and didn’t do your account till this morning. One tenant, Mrs Halloran, being late with her rent – she owed five shillings – I held back to give her a chance to get up to date before I reported to Mr Gilmore that she was in arrears. I read your sad news in the obituary column, Ma’am – and I’m proper sorry about it, Ma’am – so I held the cheque back until I heard from you. I’d have written to you in a few days, if you hadn’t come in.’
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and brought out a key ring. Then, selecting a key, he got up and went to a small safe at the back of the room. He took out an envelope and handed it to Louise.
‘There you are, Ma’am. A cheque for three months’ rents in total. Mrs H. paid up, and there was no repairs this quarter – it’s less me commission, of course. All rents up to and including last Saturday, payable to you today, Lady Day, as per usual, Ma’am.’
Louise looked up at him with real gratitude. She was not sure how to cash a cheque, but she did know that it represented welcome money. In her cash box at home, she had a month’s housekeeping in five-pound notes, which Timothy had given her, as he usually did on the first of each month; beyond that she had no idea what she was supposed to do about money. Behind her expressions of woe a deeper fear of destitution had haunted her as well as Celia.
Her thanks were echoed by Celia, who hastily added that they would, as soon as the cottage was habitable, be leaving their home in West Derby, Liverpool – it was already up for sale – and that she or her mother would let him know, before the next quarter day, which would be Midsummer’s Day, exactly where he should send the next cheque.
He was a kindly man, and, as he gently clasped Louise’s hand when they took their departure, he felt some pity for her. Women were so helpless without menfolk – and there were so many of them bereaved by the war. They had the brains of chickens – and it appeared to him that these two already might have a fox in the coop.
He said impulsively, ‘If I can be of help, dear ladies, don’t hesitate to call on me.’
Though Louise only nodded acceptance of this offer, Celia, whose stomach had been clenched with fear ever since her father’s clerk had come running up the front steps with the terrible news of Timothy’s sudden death, felt herself relax a little. She longed to put her head on the little man’s stout shoulder and weep out her terror at being so alone. Instead, she held out her hand a little primly to have it shaken by him and apologised for keeping him late at his office.
Exactly how does one cash a cheque, she worried inwardly, and she wished passionately that Paul and Edna were in England to advise her.
They were exhausted by the time they returned home, and were further alarmed by the notice hooked on to their front gate. It announced that This Desirable Property was For Sale. The estate agent, in response to Cousin Albert’s instructions that he wanted a quick sale, had not wasted any time.
Louise immediately broke into loud cries of distress, and it was with difficulty that Celia and Dorothy, the house-parlourmaid, got her into the sitting room. The pretty, formal room, ordinarily used for teas and at homes, still smelled faintly of hyacinths and lilies, despite having been carefully aired after the funeral, and Celia felt slightly sick from it.
While Dorothy fled upstairs to her mistress’s bedroom to get a fresh container of smelling salts, Celia laid Louise on the settee. She carefully removed her bonnet and put cushions under her head.
Then she kneeled down by her and curved her arm round her. ‘Try not to cry, Mother. Everything will be all right in the end. Please, Mother.’
Louise shrieked at her, ‘Nothing’s going to bring your father back – or my boys! Nothing! Nothing!’ She turned her back on Celia, and continued to wail loudly. ‘My boys! My boys!’
‘She’d be better in bed, Miss.’
Startled, Celia looked up. Winnie, the cook, had heard the impassioned cries, and had run up from her basement kitchen to see what was happening. Now, she leaned over the two women, her pasty face full of compassion.
‘This isn’t the right room to have her in, Miss. What with the Master having been laid out here, like.’
Celia herself, frightened by the faint odour of death, would have been thankful to run upstairs to her own bedroom, shut herself in and have a good cry. Instead, she rose heavily to her feet.
‘You’re quite right, Winnie. Will you help me get her upstairs?’
‘For sure, Miss.’ She turned towards a breathless Dorothy, who dumbly held out the smelling salts to her.
Winnie took the salts and said above the sound of Louise’s cries, ‘Now, our Dorothy, you go and fill a hot water bottle and put it in the Mistress’s bed. And put her nightgown on top of it to warm.’
Dorothy’s face looked almost rabbitlike as her nose quivered with apprehension. She turned to obey the instructions, but paused when the cook said sharply, ‘And you’d better put a fire up there. It’s chilly. You can take a shovelful of hot coals from me kitchen fire to get it started quick.’
The maid nodded, took a big breath as if she were about to run a marathon, and shot away down the stairs to fetch the hot water bottle and the coals.
As Celia and Winnie half carried Louise up the wide staircase with its newel post crowned by a finely carved hawk, the widow’s cries became heavy, heart-rending sobs.
‘She’ll feel better after this,’ Winnie assured Celia. ‘A good cry gets it out of you.’
Dorothy stood at the bottom of the staircase, hot water bottle under one arm, in her hands a big shovel full of glowing coals, and waited for the other women to reach the top. The shovel was heavy and she dreaded setting the stair carpet alight by dropping a burning coal on it.
Have a good cry? And what had she in her fancy house to cry about? Her old man had probably left her thousands, and not much love lost between them. And here she was howling her head off and the house up for sale, and never a word to her maids as to what was happening. Proper cruel, she was.
Would she turn Winnie and Ethel and herself off as soon as the house was sold? And, if not, where would they be going to live?
As her coals cooled, Dorothy’s temper grew. She plodded up the stairs after the other women, handed the hot water bottle to Winnie, and then skilfully built the bedroom fire, while Winnie and Celia partially undressed the sobbing Louise, removed her corsets and eased her huge Victorian nightgown over her head.
Behind