A piercing ring sounded from the back door. Bessie glanced at the clock. ‘That’ll be the butcher.’ Tradesmen in the nearby town of Chilford still found it worth while to send their mobile shops the four or five miles inland to the prosperous village of Westerhill.
‘Let me see.’ Pauline wrinkled her brow. ‘A chicken, stewing beef—’
‘I’ve got it all in my head,’ Bessie said amiably. ‘No need for you to trouble yourself, madam.’ She went unhurriedly out into the passage.
The flowers, Pauline thought, I suppose I ought to go and see what Meacham has cut. All those vases to be arranged and herself the only person who could be relied on not to make a hash of the job.
From somewhere in the upper regions she caught the drone of a vacuum cleaner. Better go up and run her eye over the bedrooms, make sure everything was being done properly. A small squad of daily women assisted in a piecemeal fashion with the running of Oakfield, each with her own methods, duties, schedule of hours.
In the doorway Pauline turned and surveyed the room with its high ceiling and long windows. One day when there was money to spare – if ever such a day should dawn – it could be transformed into a glitteringly modern kitchen. In the meantime it would benefit considerably from rather more thorough cleaning and tidying than it was getting at present. Or was likely to get before the pace slackened in October.
Ah well – she smiled fleetingly – just as well there wasn’t any question of giving the room a good turn-out just yet; she wouldn’t in the least have relished raising the matter with Bessie. Like many people with an easy-going surface and slightly slapdash ways, Mrs Meacham was capable of fierce resentment at the suggestion that other methods might have something superior to offer.
Pauline made a dismissing movement with her shoulders, stepped into the passage and set off at a brisk pace towards the stairs.
The study at Oakfield was a comfortable room facing south. The furnishings – leather, mahogany, dull gold velvet – were much as they had been in the time of Godfrey Barratt’s father and grandfather.
Godfrey sat at his desk, staring out at the blue and gold morning. Utterly impossible that Osmond’s could fail. A firm of builders known and respected across half the counties of England, providing employment for a host of satellite concerns, sub-contractors, suppliers, manufacturers of everything from a paintbrush to a window-frame. And somewhere pretty far down on that list was Barratt’s, woodworkers and turners, a tiny firm – looked at from the standpoint of the giants – but reasonably efficient and prosperous. Or so it had seemed until four days ago.
Godfrey stood up and pushed back his chair. He thrust his hands into his pockets and paced about the room, still a little dazed by the shock that had struck him on Tuesday morning as he ran a casual eye over the business pages of his newspaper. Just a whisper of rumour at first, the merest shadow of a hint that things might not be everything they should be at Osmond’s, but he had felt the muscles of his throat tighten with apprehension.
By Wednesday morning company spokesmen were blandly asserting in radio interviews that nothing was seriously amiss; when the Stock Exchange closed for business on Thursday, Osmond’s shares stood at a third of Monday’s price; on Friday morning Godfrey assembled his men.
They were very quiet as they waited for him to speak. Their eyes looked back at him with disciplined blankness as if they couldn’t as yet abandon themselves to either fear or hope. Unemployment was at a high level; in a seaside town like Chilford there was scarcely any alternative work for a skilled man. But a miracle might yet happen. Currents might move unseen in the City, fresh capital might flow in from a dozen different sources, political pressures might compel the Government to shore up Osmond’s.
He’d explained the situation as he saw it, he’d answered their questions honestly, refusing to indulge in meaningless optimism.
All that remained to them now was to wait. Every action that controlled their immediate future would be taken by men they would never even see. Only another week to go and the firm would close for its three weeks’ annual holiday. That week would be spent in completing an order for a Chilford builder, the kind of order Godfrey had been accustomed to look on merely as an act of goodwill towards the local community. It occurred to him now with wry force that if his entire order-book had been filled with such benevolent commitments, he would be in a much healthier position.
He flung himself down into an armchair, leaned back and closed his eyes. No point in spending a single further minute in work for Osmond’s – unless the miracle happened. No point in going into the works this morning; there would be no Saturday opening, no overtime of any kind, till the whole complicated muddle was sorted out.
The whirligig of thought began again . . . This is the end of Barratt’s, there won’t be any rescue operation for Osmond’s, you won’t be the only small woodworking firm abruptly stripped of its chief contract, competition will be cut-throat for every other piece of business in sight, you won’t be able to hold out, there’ll be the men’s wages, the relentless overheads, Osmond’s won’t be paying another penny to suppliers, not even for deliveries already made . . . A light sweat broke out on his forehead at the remembrance of the large consignment Barratt’s had despatched to Osmond’s only ten days ago, a consignment for which they would normally have expected payment at the end of the month.
He jerked his eyes open and stared up at the ornate ceiling. They’ll have a receiver in by the end of the month, he thought, still hardly able to believe it, I can whistle for my money.
On the table beside him the phone shrilled suddenly and he snatched up the receiver, glad to be forced out of his obsessive thoughts.
‘Mr Barratt?’ The deep, soft voice of Theresa Onil, edged now with anxiety. ‘I think perhaps you ought to come up to see Miss Tillard, she’s not very well this morning. She asked me to see if you would call in.’
‘Of course I’ll come,’ Godfrey said at once. Elinor Tillard was his wife’s aunt. Headmistress years ago of a girls’ school in Africa, she was now seventy. She lived a short distance away, looked after by Theresa, the half-African girl she had brought to England seventeen years ago. ‘I take it you’ve asked the doctor to call?’ Godfrey added. Miss Tillard inclined to the view that sending for a doctor during a bout of illness was a desperate remedy to be adopted only when all others had failed.
‘Yes.’ A touch of hesitation in Theresa’s tone. ‘It’s the new young man, Doctor Nightingale, I’m not sure he’s—’
‘He struck me as perfectly competent,’ Godfrey said reassuringly. The local doctor – ageing, old-fashioned – had taken himself off a week ago for a holiday in Minorca, he wouldn’t be back for another three weeks. Godfrey had called in a couple of days ago during the evening surgery, to get a renewal of Pauline’s prescription, the stuff she took for her headaches. He’d had a word or two with Nightingale, sized the fellow up. ‘He may be young, but at least that means his methods are up to date,’ he pointed out.
‘Mm, perhaps so,’ Theresa said without conviction, preferring the man she had known for years. ‘Anyway, he said he’d call in shortly after half past eleven. If you could come up about then you could have a talk with him after he’s seen Miss Tillard.’
‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ Godfrey glanced at his watch. ‘Would Miss Tillard like my wife to come along too?’ In the course of the last year or two Godfrey had grown a good deal closer than Pauline to the old lady. He had helped her with one or two business matters, had fallen into the habit of calling in on her on his way home in the evening. She looked on him now as a kind of unpaid confidential adviser.