As each day passed she felt more and more lulled into false hopes; she ceased listening for the phone, put in hours of work in the garden and went for long walks. The weather had turned nasty—perhaps that was why no one came, but it made no difference to her. On the afternoon of the fourth day she came home from a muddy wet walk, kicked her sensible boots off at the back door and was met by an agitated Betsy.
‘There’s a gentleman,’ said the old lady, all agog. ‘The estate agent rang just after you’d gone and said he was on his way. I had to let him in… He’s in the drawing-room.’
‘Is he now? Well, he’ll have to wait a bit longer, won’t he, while I get tidied up? Bother the man!’
She had sat down on the floor of the back lobby, the better to pull off the old socks she wore inside her boots, and at a kind of gulping sound from Betsy, she turned her head. There was a man standing in the lobby doorway. A towering, wide-shouldered giant with black hair and even blacker eyes. Very good-looking too, thought Meg, and frowned fiercely at him. He had her at a disadvantage, and the nasty little smile on his thin mouth made that apparent.
‘I must apologise,’ he said in a voice which held no apology at all, and waited for her to speak. She sat there looking up at him. There was not much point in getting up until she had the socks off; for one thing she guessed that he must be over six feet and she was a mere five foot three; he would still look down on her. She disposed of the socks, stood up and pushed her feet into a shabby pair of slippers and flung off her wet raincoat, dragged off the scarf she had tied round her hair and addressed him coolly. ‘No need,’ she told him. ‘You weren’t to know that I wasn’t at home.’ She tossed back her damp hair, hanging untidily round her damp face, rosy from the wind and rain. ‘You would like to see round the house?’
‘You are right, that was my object in coming,’ he informed her.
Oh, very stuffy, decided Meg, and led the way to the front hall which was, after all, the starting point. She had the patter off by heart now: the Adam fireplace in the drawing-room, the strap work on the dining-room ceiling, the rather special Serpentine scroll balustrade on the staircase, and as they wandered in and out of the bedrooms on the first floor she pointed out the quite ugly cast-iron fireplace—writhing forms, a mid-Victorian addition which her companion pronounced in a cold voice as frankly hideous. But other than that, he had little to say. She thought it very likely that the sight of the old-fashioned bathrooms with pipes all over the place and great cast-iron baths sitting on clawed feet in the middle of the rooms left him bereft of words. She was quite sure that it was a waste of time taking him round; she took his final comment— ‘A most interesting house’—as a polite way of getting himself out of the door. Not that she considered him a polite man; he should have stayed where Betsy put him, in the drawing-room, until he could have been fetched at the proper time and with suitable dignity.
She stood with him on the steps outside the front door, waiting for him to go. Only he didn’t. ‘You live here alone?’ he asked.
‘No—Betsy lives here with me.’
He glanced at her ringless, rather grubby hands. For a moment she thought that he was going to say something more, but he didn’t. His, ‘Thank you, Miss Collins,’ was brisk and impersonal as he trod down the steps and got into the dark grey Rolls-Royce parked on the sweep before the house. He didn’t look round either, but drove away without so much as a backward glance.
‘’ andsome man,’ remarked Betsy, coming into the hall as Meg closed the door. ‘Nicely spoken, too. P’raps ‘e’ll buy…’
Meg said quite vehemently, ‘I found him a rude man, and I hope never to see him again, Betsy.’ Whereupon she flew upstairs and took a good look at herself in the pier glass in what had been her mother’s room. Her reflection hardly reassured her; her nose shone, her hair was still damp and wispy and the serviceable guernsey and elderly tweed skirt she wore when she was gardening hardly enhanced her appearance. The slippers completed a decidedly unfashionable appearance. She wondered what he had thought of her, and then forgot him; he had joined all the house-hunters whom she would never see again. She wasn’t even sure of his name—he had given it to her, but she hadn’t paid attention. She could, of course, have asked Betsy, but she didn’t; for some reason she wanted to forget him.
January slipped away into February and it turned cold and snowed. Cora and Doreen phoned each week, wanting to know if anyone had made a bid for the house and giving excellent reasons why they couldn’t get down to see her. Meg, accepting them without rancour, none the less wished for more sisterly support. She was happy as things were, but there all the time at the back of her mind was the thought that sooner or later she would have to give up her home and live in some poky flat in an endless row of equally poky flats… Indeed, Doreen had told her only the evening before that she had heard of a semi-basement on the fringes of Highgate; two rooms and bathroom and kitchen—there wouldn’t be much money over by the time Meg had bought it with her share, but then Meg would get a job easily enough.
‘What at?’ asked Meg of Betsy, who shook her head and said nothing at all.
No one could come until the snow had gone. Meg pottered round the house, polished the silver and got in Betsy’s way in the kitchen. It was something of a shock when the estate agents phoned to say that there was a Mrs Culver on her way.
Meg, who had been in the kitchen making marmalade with Betsy, went to her room and tidied herself, re-did her hair, ran a powder puff over her face, changed into the cashmere sweater she kept for special occasions, and went downstairs just in time to watch an elderly but beautifully kept Daimler draw up before the door. She skipped into the drawing-room and picked up a book; it would never do to be caught snooping.
The doorbell rang and Betsy, in a clean apron, but smelling delightfully of marmalade on the boil, answered it and presently ushered Mrs Culver into the room.
‘You’re making marmalade,’ observed that lady as she advanced across the wide expanse of Moorfields carpet. ‘One of the most delightful aromas there is.’ She smiled at Meg. ‘How do you do? You will be Miss Collins? You must forgive me for coming at such an awkward time and at such short notice; I am only just back in England.’
Meg murmured politely; she hadn’t met anyone like Mrs Culver before. She was a small, rather plump woman, well into middle age, but so well dressed and exquisitely made-up that she gave the lie to that. Not pretty but with a delightful smile and twinkling eyes so that one was forced to smile back at her.
‘It’s quite convenient,’ Meg assured her. ‘Would you like to sit and rest for a few minutes or would you like to look round now?’
‘May I look round?’ Mrs Culver studied her surroundings. ‘This is a charming room.’
Meg found herself liking the little lady. She led the way back into the hall and started her tour, and found for once an appreciative companion. What was more, Mrs Culver didn’t seem at all put off by the bathroom pipes, and remarked upon the elegance of the Adam fireplace before Meg could even mention it.
‘I like this house,’ observed Mrs Culver as they returned to the drawing-room. ‘I shall buy it.’
Meg said rather faintly, ‘Oh, will you? Would you like some coffee?’
‘Indeed I would,’ and when Meg returned from the kitchen, ‘Tell me, has it been in your family for a long time?’
‘Ages. It was built in 1810, but of course it’s had things done to it since then.’
‘But not very recently,’ remarked Mrs Culver drily, ‘therein lies its charm. I promise you that if I do do anything at all it will be done so well that you wouldn’t even notice it.’
Meg poured the coffee, wrestling