A minute or two later, James made his way across the hall to where Matthew stood surveying the array of buffet dishes. Nowadays, it wasn’t only Matthew’s manner that was expansive; years of affluent living had done little to hold his waistline in check. His good looks were also losing the battle. His hairline was receding, he had the slightly flushed face of the man who drinks a little too much. Like James, he was a chartered accountant, but, unlike his brother-in-law, he had set up on his own twenty years ago. His offices were situated in an upmarket block close to the centre of Brentworth.
Matthew watched James cross the floor towards him; James exuded his customary air of power, positive success. ‘A pretty good turn out,’ James commented as he came up. ‘Better than I’d hoped for.’ He directed Matthew’s attention to dishes he considered especially good. ‘I’ll give Nina a ring when I’ve got the final figures,’ he added. ‘She’ll be delighted.’
James drank a sociable cup of coffee as they stood chatting. He passed on to Matthew a rumour he had heard earlier in the day: a firm of asset managers in a neighbouring town was being investigated by the Fraud Squad. Matthew expressed surprise at the rumour; he would have thought the firm soundly based; they were certainly long established.
‘You can’t always go by that these days,’ James said with a knowing movement of his head. More than one good firm had gone down in the recession through spiralling difficulties, and the sorry saga was not yet over, even though better times were on the way. ‘A bit of speculating, soon it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, next thing it’s outright gambling. Over-extended all round, no margin anywhere, teetering along on the edge of the precipice. Only takes the smallest extra shove – some international ruckus, a blip on the currency markets – and over they go, for good.’ He eyed Matthew. ‘How are you finding things these days?’
Matthew helped himself to a particularly appetizing dish. ‘Pretty good, all things considering,’ he responded heartily.
As James set off once more in pursuit of donations, Matthew stood gazing after him. Oh, boy, he said wryly to himself, if you only knew the half of it. There wasn’t much anyone could tell Matthew about the perils of recession and the unorthodox easements always so temptingly close to hand. He gave a little shudder and closed his eyes for a moment.
He had a brief flash of vision: his father’s face, his shrewd eyes contemplating him. What would that principled man of business have to say if he could see him now, could know the dire straits he had got himself into? He shuddered again at the thought. His father would dearly have liked him to go into the family business but Matthew had little interest in printing and publishing, and shrank moreover from the idea of working for the father he had always found intimidating.
All he had received outright on his father’s death had been a modest legacy of precisely the same amount as that left to his sister, Esther.
He began to eat, scarcely tasting the food. If he could just manage to keep going, struggle through into the boom that must surely come, without ruin or disgrace – or, paralysing thought, a gaol sentence. If he could scrape through without Nina ever having to know. That would be the part of any catastrophe he would relish least of all, letting down his beloved Nina, having to break the news to her that the glory days were over, the gravy train had finally smashed into the buffers. Pray God it never came to that, but if, God forbid, it ever did, then thank God for a wife with backbone and loyalty. Whatever happened, Nina would never whine or indulge in self pity. However low the depths to which he sank, there was always the cast iron certainty that she would stand by him to the end.
A business acquaintance came up, calling out a friendly greeting. Matthew at once switched on his cheerful smile, his look of lively interest, his genial, on-top-of-the-world manner.
It was easy to imagine Nina Dalton as a fashion model, with her tall, willowy figure, fine-boned face, honey-coloured skin and large, expressive eyes of a clear golden amber. Her wealth of pale blonde hair, full of natural waves and curls, was taken up on top of her head, displaying the graceful line of her neck.
She had worked for charity in one capacity or another, paid or voluntary, since the day she had left secretarial college. She wasn’t a native of Brentworth but came from a small town some distance away. It was when she was on the payroll of a national charitable organization that she had first met Matthew Dalton; she had called on him in the course of a fundraising campaign directed largely at businessmen.
She had walked in through the door of his office at a crucial moment in Matthew’s life. He had just managed to break away from a long entanglement with an older woman, a divorcée, good-looking and sophisticated, with more than one string to her bow. Matthew had finally realized the relationship was leading nowhere, it was time his bachelor days were done; what he needed now was a conventional marriage, settled and supportive. He married Nina three months after she walked into his office.
She had spent the latter part of Friday morning dealing swiftly and competently with the affairs of a small local charity set up a hundred and fifty years ago for the benefit of retired governesses by a wealthy widow who had herself been a governess before her marriage. The endowment, so munificent seeming in its day, was now greatly eroded and governesses were a dying breed. These days, the charity’s business required only an hour or two of Nina’s time on alternate Friday mornings. For this purpose she was allowed a corner in the Brentworth office of a national charity for the welfare of the elderly: Friends of the Third Age. Any mail that arrived for her was always put aside unopened against her next visit.
On Friday afternoon, Nina gave her time to the Cannonbridge hospice appeal, taking her seat at a desk in one of the rooms behind a thrift shop in a side street; the shop had offered free use of the room for the duration of the appeal.
The bulk of essential money had now been raised and building work was due to start on the hospice site at the end of February. A well-known television entertainer, a dedicated supporter of the hospice movement, had promised to lay the foundation stone a month later. But there could be no slackening in the fundraising. Money would be needed for the upkeep and running of the hospice, for the many extras, improvements and refinements that would be looked for along the way.
Nina spent the first part of her stint sketching out yet another publicity campaign; publicity was one of her fortes. She was still busy with minor matters at the end of the afternoon when the other voluntary workers had gone. The phone rang on her desk: James Milroy, acquainting her with the outcome of the buffet lunch. As he had predicted, she was delighted with the figures.
‘Wonderful weather we’re having just now,’ James went on to remark. ‘I imagine you’ll be thinking about opening up the cottage any day now.’
‘I imagine I will,’ she agreed. The cottage stood in beautiful countryside, the best part of two miles from the nearest village, in a spot roughly equidistant from Brentworth and Cannonbridge. It had belonged to the Dalton family for a great many years and currently formed part of the trust property. James and Esther had spent weekends there in the early days of their marriage and Esther had made regular use of it later, when the boys were small; she still retained a key. The cottage was now used chiefly by Matthew and Nina. Nina had devoted considerable time and effort to having it extended and modernized, the furnishings and decorations renewed, the garden set to rights. Esther made little use of her key these days. She would sometimes drive over there when she felt particularly low, wandering round the garden in a fruitless nostalgic attempt to recapture the happiness of the first years of her marriage when her days were full and satisfying, without the need to go searching for activities to fill them.
‘I might take a run over there myself, one day next week, if the weather holds,’ James continued, his voice light and easy.
‘Might