‘Never a dull moment,’ said Emma to her reflection as she tidied her hair and dried the rain from her face. The buzzer Mrs Smith-Darcy used whenever she demanded Emma’s presence was clamouring to be answered, and she picked up her notebook and pencil and went unhurriedly upstairs.
Mrs Smith-Darcy had heaved herself out of bed and was sitting before the dressingtable mirror, doing her face. She didn’t look up from the task of applying mascara. ‘I have been buzzing you for several minutes,’ she observed crossly. ‘Where have you been? Really, a great, strong girl like you should have done those few errands in twenty minutes…’
Emma said mildly, ‘I’m not a great, strong girl, Mrs Smith-Darcy, and cycling into the wind isn’t the quickest way of travelling. Besides, I got wet—’
‘Don’t make childish excuses. Really, Miss Trent, I sometimes wonder if you are up to this job. Heaven knows, it’s easy enough.’
Emma knew better than to answer that. Instead she asked, ‘You wanted me to do something for you, Mrs Smith-Darcy?’
‘Tell Cook I want my coffee in half an hour. I shall be out to lunch, and while I’m gone you can fetch Frou-Frou from the vet. I shall need Vickery with the car so I suppose you had better get a taxi—it wouldn’t do for Frou-Frou to get wet. You can pay and I’ll settle with you later.’
‘I haven’t brought any money with me.’ Emma crossed her fingers behind her back as she spoke, for it was a fib, but on several occasions she had been told to pay for something and that she would be reimbursed later—something which had never happened.
Mrs Smith-Darcy frowned. ‘Really, what an incompetent girl you are.’ She opened her handbag and found a five-pound note. ‘Take this—and I’ll expect the correct change.’
‘I’ll get the driver to write the fare down and sign it,’ said Emma quietly, and something in her voice made Mrs Smith-Darcy look at her.
‘There’s no need for that.’
‘It will set your mind at rest,’ said Emma sweetly. ‘I’ll get those invitations written; I can post them on my way home.’
Mrs Smith-Darcy, who liked to have the last word, was for once unable to think of anything to say as Emma left the room.
It was well after five o’clock when Emma got on to her bike and took herself off home—a small, neat house near the abbey where she and her mother had lived since her father had died several years earlier.
He had died suddenly and unexpectedly, and it hadn’t been until after his death that Mrs Trent had been told that he had mortgaged the house in order to raise the money to help his younger brother, who had been in financial difficulties, under the impression that he would be repaid within a reasonable time. There hadn’t been enough money to pay off the mortgage, so she had sold the house and bought a small terraced house, and, since her brother-in-law had gone abroad without leaving an address, she and Emma now managed on her small pension and Emma’s salary. That she herself was underpaid Emma was well aware, but on the other hand her job allowed her to keep an eye on her mother’s peptic ulcer…
There was an alley behind the row of houses. She wheeled her bike along its length and into their small back garden, put it in the tumbledown shed outside the kitchen door and went into the house.
The kitchen was small, but its walls were distempered in a cheerful pale yellow and there was room for a small table and two chairs against one wall. She took off her outdoor things, carried them through to the narrow little hall and went into the sitting-room. That was small, too, but it was comfortably furnished, although a bit shabby, and there was a cheerful fire burning in the small grate.
Mrs Trent looked up from her sewing. ‘Hello, love. Have you had a tiring day? And so wet and cold too. Supper is in the oven but you’d like a cup of tea first…’
‘I’ll get it.’ Emma dropped a kiss on her mother’s cheek and went to make the tea and presently carried it back.
‘Something smells heavenly,’ she observed. ‘What have you been cooking?’
‘Casserole and dumplings. Did you get a proper lunch?’
Emma assured her that she had, with fleeting regret for most of the sausages she hadn’t been given time to eat; Mrs Smith-Darcy had the nasty habit of demanding that some task must be done at once, never mind how inconvenient. She reflected with pleasure that her employer was going away for several days, and although she had been given a list of things to do which would take at least twice that period it would be like having a holiday.
She spent the next day packing Mrs Smith-Darcy’s expensive cases with the clothes necessary to make an impression during her stay at Torquay’s finest hotel—a stay which, she pointed out to Emma, was vital to her health. This remark reminded her to order the central heating to be turned down while she was absent. ‘And I expect an accurate statement of the household expenses.’
Life, after Mrs Smith-Darcy had been driven away by Vickery, the chauffeur, was all of a sudden pleasant.
It was delightful to arrive each morning and get on with her work without having to waste half an hour listening to her employer’s querulous voice raised in criticism about something or other, just as it was delightful to go home each evening at five o’clock exactly.
Over and above this, Cook, unhampered by her employer’s strictures, allowed her creative skills to run free so that they ate food which was never normally allowed—rich steak and kidney pudding with a drop of stout in the gravy, roasted potatoes—crisply brown, toad-in-the-hole, braised celery, cauliflower smothered in a creamy sauce and all followed by steamed puddings, sticky with treacle or bathed in custard.
Emma, eating her dinners in the kitchen with Cook and Alice, the housemaid, savoured every morsel, dutifully entered the bills in her household ledger and didn’t query any of them; she would have to listen to a diatribe about the wicked extravagance of her staff from Mrs Smith-Darcy but it would be worth it, and Cook had given her a cake to take home, declaring that she had made two when one would have done.
On the last day of Mrs Smith-Darcy’s absence from home Emma arrived in good time. There were still one or two tasks to do before that lady returned—the flowers to arrange, the last of the post to sort out and have ready for her inspection, a list of the invitations accepted for the luncheon party…
She almost fell off her bike as she shot through the gates into the short drive to the house. The car was before the door and Vickery was taking the cases out of the boot. He cast his eyes up as she jumped off her bike.
‘Took bad,’ he said. ‘During the night. ‘Ad the doctor to see ‘er—gave her an injection and told ‘er it were a bug going round—gastric something or other. Alice is putting ‘er to bed, miss. You’d better go up sharp, like.’
‘Oh, Vickery, you must have had to get up very early—it’s only just nine o’clock.’
‘That I did, miss.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’ll see to yer bike.’
‘Thank you, Vickery. I’m sure Cook will have breakfast for you.’
She took off her outdoor things and went upstairs. Mrs Smith-Darcy’s door was closed but she could hear her voice raised in annoyance. She couldn’t be very ill if she could shout like that, thought Emma, opening the door.
‘There you are—never where you’re wanted, as usual. I’m ill—very ill. That stupid doctor who came to the hotel told me it was some kind of virus. I don’t believe him. I’m obviously suffering from some grave internal disorder. Go and phone Dr Treble and tell him to come at once.’
‘He’ll be taking surgery,’ Emma pointed out reasonably. ‘I’ll