Neither listened. They seemed to be having the conversation with each other over her head; it was almost as if she were not there.
‘Are you staying at Harecroft House tonight?’ father asked son.
‘Yes, but I will probably be late back, so do not wait up for me.’
‘I gave up waiting for you years ago, Richard. Do not wake the household, that’s all.’
They reached the ground floor and left the building, while Mr Harecroft senior locked the premises, Diana tried once again to say she could manage on her own.
‘You are very stubborn, Miss Bywater,’ Richard said. ‘But rest assured I can be equally obdurate. You are not to be allowed to walk home alone and that is an end of it.’ He led the way to the tilbury and helped her into it, then unhitched the pony and jumped up beside her, the reins in his hand. ‘Now, you will have to direct me. I have no idea where you live.’
‘Southwark. I usually walk over Waterloo Bridge, so if you let me down this side of it, you will avoid paying the toll.’
‘Miss Bywater, I am not so miserly as to begrudge the few pence to take you across,’ he told her, setting the pony off at a walk.
The streets were not quite as busy as they had been earlier in the day and the vehicles on the road were, for the most part, those taking their occupants to evening appointments. A troop of soldiers were rehearsing their part in the coronation parade, a man with a cart was hawking the last of the flags and bunting he had set out with that morning. A flower girl was offering bunches of blooms that were beginning to wilt and a diminutive crossing sweeper stood leaning on his broom waiting for custom. The evening was like any other, but for Diana it was different. She was riding and not walking for a start and, instead of thinking what she would make for supper, her whole mind was concentrated on the man at her side and how to persuade him not to take her all the way home.
The prospect of him seeing the run-down tenement in which she lived, and, even worse, her equally run-down father, was enough to make her quake. She could imagine his disgust, the tale he would carry to his father. And they would say, ‘We cannot have a person like that working at Harecroft’s. It lowers the whole tone of the establishment and who knows what pestilence she brings with her? I knew it was a mistake to employ her.’ And she was quite sure Lady Hare-croft would not intervene on her behalf a second time.
‘Do you enjoy working for Harecroft’s?’ Richard asked her, breaking in on her thoughts.
‘Very much.’
‘It is a strange occupation for a woman,’ he said, as they turned down the Strand. ‘How did you manage to persuade my father to take you on?’
‘If you are implying that I—’ She started angrily, remembering the disapproving expression on his face when he had entered her office and seen his father’s hand on her arm.
‘Heavens, no!’ He lifted one hand from the reins in a defensive gesture. ‘There was no hidden implication in my question, do not be so quick to rise. I was simply commenting on the fact that I have never heard of a female clerk and I am sure the idea never entered my father’s head of its own accord.’
‘I saw the advertisement for a clerk and applied.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘I do not think he would have even considered me but for your great-grandmother, who arrived while I was talking to him. She told him to give me a trial.’
‘That sounds like Great-Grandmama. How long ago was that?’
‘A year.’
‘And now you are an indispensable adjunct to the business.’
‘Of course not. No one is indispensable, but I pride myself that I have justified Lady Harecroft’s faith in me.’
‘She has rather taken to you, you know. I gather she has invited you to her party.’
‘Yes, it was kind of her, but of course I cannot go.’
‘Why not?’
‘Saturday is a working day, besides, I cannot leave my father for long. He is an invalid.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She died fourteen months ago.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. Is that why you must work?’
‘Only the rich can afford not to work.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘But could you not have found something more suitable than becoming a clerk?’
‘What’s wrong with being a clerk?’ she asked defensively.
‘Nothing at all, for a man, but it is evident you have had an education, you could perhaps have become a teacher or a lady’s companion.’
‘I think, sir, that a companion’s lot is harder than a clerk’s. At least with Mr Harecroft my work is clearly laid out and I do have regular hours and can live at home.’
‘Except when you decide to work late.’
‘Sometimes it is necessary. It is best to be flexible.’
‘And what do you like to do when you are not working?’ Having stopped to pay the toll, he steered the tilbury on to the bridge, but she would have known where they were even with her eyes shut; the overpowering smell of the river assaulted her nostrils, a mixture of stale fish, sewerage, damp coal, rotting vegetation and goodness knew what else.
‘I read to Papa and we go for walks in the park on a Sunday afternoon if he is not too tired.’
‘He is your constant companion?’
‘Yes. He needs me.’
‘But you leave him to go to work.’
‘He is used to that and our housekeeper keeps an eye on him for me. When I am late she cooks him supper.’ Housekeeper was an euphemism; Mrs Beales, their landlady, lived on the ground floor and did as little as possible for them and then only if she was paid.
‘Will he be concerned that you are so late home tonight?’
‘He knows I sometimes work late to finish a particular task.’
‘My goodness, how conscientious you are! No wonder my father sings your praises.’
‘Does he?’
‘Oh, yes. I have heard him using you as an example to the others.’
‘Oh. I wish he would not. I do not like to be singled out.’
He laughed. ‘Too late, you have been. Stephen thinks you are a paragon of virtue and industry and Great-Grandmama has a mischievous gleam in her eye whenever your name is mentioned. She is up to something, I know it.’
‘I cannot think what it could be.’
Neither could he. He did not think it was simply concern that Stephen should not make a mistake in marrying her. ‘Now we are over the bridge, which direction shall I take?’
‘You can let me down here. I am not far from home and can walk the rest.’
‘Certainly not. I am going to take you to your door. What do you think my father would say if I admitted to him I had left you short of your destination?’ He looked about him at the people in the street. Working men and women trudging home, seamen, dockers, costermongers with their empty carts, a brewer’s dray with its heavy horses, a stray dog worrying something it had found in the gutter. It was not the place to leave a young lady on her own and it was obvious that if she was not a lady in the accepted sense, she had been brought up genteelly. She had said she did not want to stand out, but she did. She was well spoken, educated and neatly if not fashionably dressed, so why was she living in an area that was only one degree above a slum? ‘Come,