Miss Jordan gave a little nod and busied herself gathering up the toilet articles while contriving with professional ease to efface herself from the presence of the married couple and whatever private conversation they might be about to engage in.
‘I’ll try not to be late back tomorrow,’ Gerald said. ‘With luck I should be here by seven or eight.’
He was off on a business trip to Lowesmoor, a large town some seventy miles away. He had worked as a clerk for Vera’s father, had been highly thought of by that shrewd gentleman. After Murdoch’s death Gerald had taken charge of the business; he had gone in for a programme of systematic expansion and made a considerable success of it.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go away,’ Vera said with a pout that had ceased to be girlishly attractive a good ten years ago but which she mistakenly retained in her armoury. ‘You know I hate it here on my own.’
‘I go away as little as I can,’ Gerald said with an air of great reasonableness. ‘Hardly ever for more than one night and never more than twice in a month.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t want me to neglect the business, do you?’
‘All this expansion,’ Vera said mutinously. ‘I can’t see it’s necessary. I’m sure Daddy would have thought it risky.’
He gave her a humouring smile. ‘I never take unnecessary risks, my dear, you know that.’
She wasn’t to be won over so easily. ‘Daddy didn’t find it necessary to keep going away. He hardly ever went away on business.’
She led a very shut-in life. She had no close women friends, no relatives, scarcely any visitors. She had been very close to her father, had been desolated by his death, had tried to replace him with Gerald, not altogether with the success for which she strove and was still striving.
He stooped and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll get my things,’ he said, ‘then I must be off.’ As he turned towards the connecting door he added mildly, ‘Times have changed a good deal since your father’s day. The business is very different now.’
Indeed it was. Duncan Murdoch had been the grandson of a Scottish crofter. His father had left the croft as a young man and gone south, to England, in search of lusher pastures. He worked for some years as a clerk, living with the utmost frugality, saving every penny. He laid out this little capital by way of small weekly loans to workmates spent up before pay-day.
Eventually he left paid employment and started a thrift and credit-voucher business of his own. The little enterprise prospered. He never overreached himself, was content with a modest success.
His son Duncan worked as his assistant, inheriting the business on his father’s death. He broadened its scope to include hire purchase and various other kinds of minor financial transactions. He kept it all on a very sound and stable footing; indeed, his temperament and upbringing made him excessively cautious. He was never gifted with imagination or business vision.
On his death the business passed to Vera, his only child. She would have been incapable of running it on her own and was greatly relieved when Gerald Foster – at that time her father’s clerk – agreed to take over the running.
Six months later they were married and became joint owners, joint partners in the enterprise. In actual practice this meant that Gerald continued to run the business and at regular intervals placed a sheaf of papers before his wife for her signature.
Duncan Murdoch had kept a lot of good capital locked up, earning its safe little percentage, risking nothing, producing nothing. Gerald Foster knew the value of capital from never having been able to lay his hands on any. He had inherited nothing from his poverty-stricken parents.
In his clerking days he had saved every penny, done what he could with it, but it never amounted to a row of beans.
As soon as he found himself in control of the Cannonbridge Thrift Society he lost no time in putting Duncan Murdoch’s reserve capital to work, shrewdly and carefully.
He kept all the original basis of the business but branched out to embrace small property deals, very small to begin with, tail-end bargains from executors’ sales and the like, run-down shops, clapped-out businesses, disreputable-looking cottages.
Everything he touched prospered. The cottages cleaned up and modernized remarkably well, the shops sold to developers who pulled them down and reared in their place neat modern frontages.
And Foster was above all fortunate in being able to jump on the bandwagon at the right time. When the markets took a tumble and inflation ran riot, he was busy buying and selling, trading and dealing.
But he didn’t lose his head, didn’t start to fancy himself a potential tycoon. He had the little office in Cannonbridge done up and made a good deal more efficient and convenient. But that was all.
He employed only one assistant, a general clerk. She was a formidably competent and respectable woman of powerful build and indeterminate age. He would no more have dreamed of employing some daft and decorative little eye-catcher unschooled in letters and numbers than his father-in-law would have done.
Foster came back now into his wife’s bedroom carrying a briefcase and an overnight bag. ‘You’re certainly looking a lot better,’ he said bracingly. ‘You should be up in a day or two.’
‘I feel very far from well,’ Vera said with one of her sudden fits of moodiness. ‘You have no idea how painful sciatica can be.’
‘I don’t suppose I have,’ he said with an air of apology. He stooped and kissed her cheek. ‘But I do know I’m leaving you in very good hands.’
He gave a little formal nod in the direction of Miss Jordan, who made a vestigial bow in return, to indicate that she had heard and appreciated the compliment, while still contriving to remain invisible – and indeed absent from the scene.
‘It’s so boring,’ Vera said fretfully. ‘Stuck here all day with nothing to do.’
‘You can surely find something to entertain you.’ Gerald waved a hand at the television set, the radio, books, magazines. ‘If there’s anything else you want, I’m sure Miss Jordan or Alma will be happy to get it for you.’ Vera moved her head sulkily but made no reply.
He patted her shoulder. ‘Do cheer up, my dear. It’s a lovely day.’ He picked up his cases. ‘I must be off, I have to call in at the office first. Miss Greatbach will be wondering where I’ve got to.’ He smiled again and was gone before Vera might decide to allow tears to trickle down her cheeks.
Downstairs in the kitchen the housekeeper, Alma Driscoll, was busy with her chores and at the same time chatting amiably to her uncle, Matt Bateman. Matt was sitting at the table, finishing off the substantial snackmeal Alma had set before him.
He was a retired labourer living alone in a tiny cottage half a mile along the road to Abberley village. He had never married, had never seen much good come of it, nothing but loss of freedom and general aggravation. He dropped in at the Lynwood kitchen most days, to see his niece, drink a cup of tea, have a bite to eat. And cast his sharp eye round for any little unwanted trifles that might be doing nobody any good just lying about, but might come in very handy at his little cottage.
Alma rinsed out the teapot and set it down on a shelf. The room was large, with what had once been a butler’s pantry opening off it.
Vera’s parents had had the house modernized when they moved into it immediately after their marriage. Gerald Foster had caused further substantial improvements to be carried out after his own marriage. Vera would have been quite happy if he had left the house as it was; she would have felt that this enshrined her father’s memory.
But she was pleased all the same when the improvements were carried out. She appreciated the new comfort and convenience even if her nature didn’t allow her to open her mouth and say so.
Alma picked up the teacups from the table and carried them to the sink. She was a plump, cheerful-looking