The Siamese cat sprang down from the sofa and rubbed herself against his leg. He glanced down at her, stooped and picked her up, burying his cheek in the soft fur.
‘Can’t let you starve while I’m gone, Princess,’ he said. ‘When I get back there may be salmon and cream for you, but in the meantime—’
In the meantime there was Hilda Browning, tap-tapping at her hopeless novel on the floor below.
‘Come on, Princess!’ He went rapidly from the room, down to Hilda Browning’s door and rapped loudly.
‘Open up, Hilda! It’s me, Tim!’
The typewriter keys rattled to a halt. Footsteps inside the room, the door flung open and Hilda Browning smiling at him with sudden renewed hope.
‘Tim! It’s been ages—’ Ages since he’d banged on her door, ages since their brief flare of affection had fizzled out into darkness. ‘Come in!’ She threw the door wide open.
‘I have to go away for a day or two,’ he said, stepping inside. ‘On a matter of business. Would you do me a favour?’ He threw her his most winning smile with the charm turned full on. ‘Look after Princess for me while I’m gone? I’m leaving the day after tomorrow, very early. I’ll make it up to you when I get back.’ He kept his smile going at full beam. But Hilda didn’t even pause to consider the matter.
‘Of course I will!’ she cried. ‘I’d be glad to, you know that! Bring Princess down tomorrow evening. She’ll be quite at home here.’ She ought to be, Hilda thought with a fleeting thrust of nostalgia, she spent most of her time down here a few months ago. She stretched out a hand and stroked the cat’s fur. ‘I’ll take very good care of her.’
Tim began to edge his way back towards the open door.
‘I knew I could rely on you,’ he said, allowing his face to glow with gratitude. ‘Thanks, Hilda, I won’t forget.’ He let his eyes send out a beam of promise. ‘I think I’ll have something to celebrate when I get back. You can help me to celebrate.’
Another minute or two of rather fatiguing encouragement and radiant goodwill and he was able to make his escape back to the studio. He dropped Princess on the sofa, picked up the newspaper and with great care tore out the half-page to be folded away safely in his pocket. He dropped a kiss on the demurely smiling features of Carole Stewart, now Carole Mallinson of happy memory.
‘Get out the champagne, Carole, my love!’ he said. ‘Old Tim’s riding into town!’
BREAKFAST TIME at Tall Trees. Fragrant coffee in a silver pot, hot rolls in a napkin-lined basket, delicate whorls of creamy butter in a crystal dish. The uniformed maid lifted the cover from the platter of bacon and kidneys. She left the room, closing the door behind her with well-trained noiselessness.
‘I don’t want any of that.’ David Mallinson frowned at the succulent kidneys. ‘I’m not very hungry.’ He took a roll and broke it in two. ‘I didn’t sleep very well.’
‘I slept like a log.’ Carole Mallinson had acquired that knack in the grim days, when she’d been Carole Stewart, she’d learned that sleeplessness didn’t help. Whatever disasters the morning might see fit to bring, it was better to meet them rested and refreshed. It was just a trick, really, you closed your eyes and switched off – pouf! like a bright light being extinguished, you sank down, down into the pit of unconsciousness where there was no yesterday and no tomorrow, no ambitions, no memories, no hopes, no fears.
‘I thought Father looked surprisingly well yesterday evening,’ she said. ‘I think he’ll start getting up for a little while in a day or two. He can’t bear staying in bed.’ She had started calling Henry Mallinson Father as soon as the wedding-ring was safely on her finger. No father of her own, it gave her a feeling of security, of background, to use the name. And the old man liked it, she knew that. Such a pleasant, unspoiled girl, his son’s wife – she was aware of the regard in which he held her – so refreshingly unsophisticated and uncalculating in this day and age.
David glanced at the small French clock on the mantelshelf.
‘Kenneth will be arriving some time this morning.’ It wasn’t anxiety for his father’s health that creased David’s brow into deep lines. The old man had the constitution of an ox, it would take more than a heart spasm to finish him off or even keep him out of action for more than a day or two. It was the thought of his elder brother walking up the curving staircase at Whitegates that took away his appetite, the prodigal son come home again – to what? To the fatted calf, reconciliation, the old man’s will changed, his fortune sliced in two instead of being delivered whole into the hands of his younger son, the one who had faithfully stayed at home, who had run the business, had taken care in the whole of thirty-eight years of living, never once to cross swords with his father, knowing even in childhood on which side of his bread the butter lay?
Carole ate her bacon and kidneys with relish. ‘I would have expected Kenneth to drive down immediately, as soon as Doctor Burnett phoned,’ she said. ‘He’s certainly taking his time.’
David shrugged. ‘Some business matter, some meeting he couldn’t postpone, apparently.’ Kenneth was doing well by all accounts. A busy man couldn’t just drop everything and jump into his car, however urgent the summons.
‘Then I don’t imagine he’ll be staying very long,’ Carole said soothingly. ‘If he’s as busy as all that.’
‘No, perhaps not.’ David crumbled his roll moodily. Long enough though, Kenneth would spare a day or two all right as soon as he got wind of the solicitor being sent for, a new will being drawn up. He pushed his cup forward. ‘More coffee, please.’
Carole lifted the silver pot. ‘I take it he’ll be staying at Whitegates?’
David jerked his head round. ‘Why yes, of course. Where else would he stay? Not here, surely?’ The two brothers had never got on well together, not even as small boys. There had always been the twin swords of jealousy and resentment between them.
‘Well, no, not here.’ It hadn’t even crossed her mind that Kenneth would think of staying at Tall Trees. It would have been too difficult, the atmosphere too charged with tensions, with all the long hostilities of boyhood and youth that might explode into the fierce quarrels of grown men. ‘But I thought perhaps one of the Hallborough hotels. It might be awkward up at Whitegates, a visitor, with illness in the house.’
David set down his cup with a tiny clatter. ‘Kenneth is hardly a visitor. And they can cope at Whitegates, there’s staff enough up there to cope with a dozen visitors.’ He picked up a fragment of his bread roll and smeared it with butter.
‘Mother always liked Kenneth best,’ he said abruptly, taking Carole by surprise. David hardly ever mentioned his mother to her. Dead these ten years or more, closing her eyes and letting herself drift out of life after a minor illness, her painted likeness still hanging in its great gilt frame over the fireplace in the entrance hall at Whitegates, the calm, disciplined, beautiful, unhappy face turned a little to one side, the wide thoughtful eyes looking back into the past, at the memory of pain.
‘Does it matter now?’ Carole asked sofly. ‘You’re both grown men.’ Almost middle-aged, she added in her mind. Surely swept by the maturing years to some point beyond childish jostlings for position?
‘Of