Vera’s father, Duncan Murdoch, was over seventy when he died and he had been in declining health for several months. But his death had all the same struck his daughter a shattering blow.
He had been working in his study on the ground floor of Lynwood – he ran his own business, the Cannonbridge Thrift Society, and he used the Lynwood study as a subsidiary office in addition to his regular office in the town.
Vera had just looked in to see if her father wanted coffee. He glanced up and smiled at her with his usual look of affection. He said, ‘That would be a very good—’ and suddenly clutched at his chest and fell forward across the desk.
He was dead from a massive heart attack before Doctor Tredgold arrived eight minutes later, snatched from the middle of morning surgery.
But that was all nine years ago, when Vera was still a pretty young woman, certainly a total stranger to the sciatica that afflicted her these days. Now she settled herself further back against the pillows and levelled a mulish look at Miss Jordan’s straight and elegant back.
‘I have no intention of stirring from this bed for another week,’ she said in a louder tone than was necessary. ‘I’m sure Doctor Tredgold doesn’t expect me to get up so soon.’
Miss Jordan turned from the window. Her neat overall covered a tailored dress cut on classic lines. She wasn’t good-looking but there was something in her calm face that drew the eye.
Her delicate skin had a pale, creamy tint and she wore no make-up. She had a good deal of thick dark hair arrestingly streaked with white; it was drawn back into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes, a light clear hazel, were large and well set.
‘Oh, come now, Mrs Foster,’ she said in a rallying tone. ‘I’m sure Doctor Tredgold expects better results than that from his treatment. When he was here on Monday he told me I wouldn’t be needed here much longer.’ Miss Jordan went out from the Cannonbridge agency on short-term postings. ‘He thought I’d be able to leave early next week.’
‘You can’t possibly leave as soon as that,’ Vera said in loud protest. ‘I won’t hear of it.’
There was a sound of movement along the corridor, footsteps in the adjoining bedroom. Vera glanced towards the connecting door. It opened a little and her husband’s face appeared in the aperture.
‘Just seeing to my overnight bag,’ he said with amiable briskness. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’ His face vanished from the doorway.
Vera drew a long sighing breath. ‘I’ve finished with the tray,’ she said abruptly to Miss Jordan. ‘I’ll do my hair now.’
Miss Jordan removed the tray and brought some toilet articles over from the dressing table. She set them down within Vera’s reach.
Miss Jordan had very smooth white-skinned hands with long slim fingers. She did a good deal of fine needlework and took great care of her hands.
She held the mirror while Vera teased the front of her hair into artless curls. Her hair had always been fine and delicate and was now growing perceptibly thinner. The colour, once a soft honey-blonde, was now harsher and deeper from regular tinting. The sciatica had prevented her from visiting the hairdresser in Cannonbridge and greyish streaks showed along her temples and parting.
‘My make-up tray,’ she commanded and Miss Jordan brought across the lipstick and powder, the eye-shadow and mascara.
‘Are you good with hair?’ Vera asked as she worked on her face. Perhaps Miss Jordan could wash her hair with a colour shampoo; it might serve as temporary concealment for the grey. ‘Today’s Thursday,’ she added. ‘Alma could buy a shampoo for me this afternoon in Cannonbridge.’ Alma Driscoll was the Lynwood housekeeper. Every Thursday she set off from Lynwood after lunch for a jaunt into Cannonbridge.
Each alternate week Alma didn’t return to Lynwood till next morning, spending the night at another house in Abberley village, an Edwardian villa called Pinetrees, standing about a quarter of a mile from Lynwood.
Pinetrees belonged to a couple who had been friends of Vera Foster’s father. They were both old now and frail, very dependent on the services of their resident house-keeper. Once a fortnight this housekeeper went off to see her married daughter in a neighbouring village. She spent the night there and caught the first bus back in the morning. By arrangement with Vera, Alma Driscoll stayed the night at Pinetrees in her place, to keep a friendly eye on the old couple.
‘If Alma gets me the shampoo,’ Vera went on, ‘do you think you could wash my hair tomorrow?’
‘Certainly.’ Miss Jordan had spent nearly ten years in one post – before she took up temporary work with the agency – and she had washed and waved the long white tresses of that fastidious employer on a great many occasions. She could certainly cope with Mrs Foster’s scanty locks.
Vera patted turquoise eye-shadow – too lavish and too bright – over her crêpy lids. ‘If you didn’t know how old I was,’ she said suddenly, ‘what age would you take me for?’ She stared intently at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Be honest, I shan’t be offended.’
She had told Miss Jordan at their first encounter that she was thirty-two. In fact she was forty and looked fifty. She cherished the illusion that Miss Jordan was about to reply twenty-eight. Or thirty at the very most.
Miss Jordan knew well what Mrs Foster wished to hear. ‘Twenty-nine,’ she said judicially, splitting the difference.
Vera’s expression softened. She made a pleased inclination of her head and for a moment Miss Jordan could see the girl she once had been, Daddy’s little darling, pretty, cherished. And hopelessly spoiled.
Vera brushed mascara – too thick and too dark – over her sparse lashes. ‘I’ve been married for eight years now, believe it or not,’ she said with a complacent air.
‘Indeed.’ Miss Jordan had no difficulty in crediting the eight years, she could have swallowed eighteen without demur.
‘I take it you’ve never been married?’ Vera asked.
‘I have not.’
‘You’ve never felt the need?’ Vera persisted with unlovely curiosity.
‘I most certainly have not.’ Miss Jordan’s lips came together in a grim line. ‘Nor am I likely to.’
‘Oh, you never know,’ Vera said lightly.
‘Indeed I do know,’ Miss Jordan said with force. ‘One does not marry by accident.’
The connecting door opened wide and Gerald Foster came into the room.
‘I think I’ve got everything,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll be off in a few minutes.’ He advanced towards the bed, smiling at his wife.
He was a little above average height, with a spare figure and narrow shoulders. He was six years younger than Vera but looked considerably older than his age, not because of any greying or fading but from the many lines on his face. His habitual expression was of reflection and calculation, of devoting sustained and intense thought to the complicated business of living.
He had never really looked young, not even as a lad, he had always looked like a serious adult temporarily inhabiting the skin and flesh of a child – a boy – a youth.
Eight years ago when he and Vera got married, with Vera at thirty-two briefly restored by the stimulus of the event to the pretty flush of youth, and Gerald at twenty-six looking even more solemn and unsmiling under the weight of his new responsibilities, anyone would have taken Vera for the younger of the pair. Now they seemed much of an age, somewhere in the vague stretches of middle life.
‘I’ll phone you about nine o’clock this evening,’ Gerald said. ‘Just to see that everything’s all right.’ He patted his wife’s hand with an affectionate smile.
Miss Jordan turned from the bedside