A Week in Winter: A Novel (2 page)

‘And that’s what attracted Hector,’ murmured Maudie, picking up the long white envelope. ‘After Hilda’s perfection in the home he couldn’t resist the opportunity for fun. And we
did
have fun when the girls weren’t around to disapprove and make him feel guilty.’

There had been more disapproval—especially from Selina—when they learned that Moorgate was to be left to Maudie.

‘My whole childhood is wrapped up in that place,’ Selina had declared dramatically. ‘We always spent the summer at Moorgate with Mummy.’

‘But what would you do with it?’ asked her husband, trying to suppress
his embarrassment. ‘It’s been agreed that Maudie should sell the house in Arlington Road. What more do you want?’

Maudie had appreciated his partisanship but had no wish to be made out as a martyr.

‘I wouldn’t want to stay in London without Hector,’ she’d said abruptly. ‘But you and Patricia will get far more for that place than you will for an old farmhouse on the edge of Bodmin Moor.’ She’d smiled grimly. ‘Or do you feel that you should have
both
houses, Selina?’

‘Of course she doesn’t.’ Patrick had been horrified. ‘For heaven’s sake! Hector is being scrupulously fair …’

‘To me? Or to the girls?’ Maudie had looked innocently enquiring.

‘I meant, well, given the circumstances …’ Patrick had grappled with his confusion until Maudie released him from his misery.

‘I shall have my father’s house in Devon and an annuity. Moorgate is my insurance policy. Hector knows that neither Patricia nor Selina would ever use it or afford to keep it without a tenant in it. He believes that the money you’ll get from the sale of the house in Arlington Road will be enough to give you plenty in reserve for almost any emergency. Well.’ She’d shrugged, preparing to leave. ‘Shall I tell your father that you’re unhappy about his plans?’ She’d warded off Patrick’s protestations and beamed into Selina’s sulky face. At the door she’d paused. ‘Of course, there’s always the possibility that you might die first and then all your worries will be over. So
taxing,
deciding what other people should do with their belongings, isn’t it?’

Remembering the scene, Maudie chuckled again, briefly, then grew sober. What
would
Selina say when she discovered that Moorgate was about to be put on the market? The elderly tenants had died and Maudie had brooded long as to whether she should relet it or sell it. Expediency forced her hand. The bungalow needed a new roof and her car should have been replaced long since. She would sell Moorgate and give herself a buffer; it would be a comfort to have a cushion between herself and the sharp realities of life.

As she slit open the envelope and drew out the sheet of paper, Maudie wondered again what had happened to those investments of which Hector had told her years ago. She hadn’t taken much notice at the time but he had been scrupulous in showing her the extent of his portfolio. He wasn’t wealthy, but she knew that even after the purchase of her annuity there should have been certain shares and investments which had not, after all,
been mentioned in his will. Could he have changed his mind and given them to the girls much earlier? As usual she dismissed this recurring thought. Even had he bound them to secrecy, surely Selina could not have resisted displaying her triumph to her stepmother? Yet it seemed impossible to imagine Hector having financial problems which he had hidden from her. She pushed the nagging question aside and read the letter from the agents in Truro.

Maudie frowned. Surely she’d given Rob Abbot the full set of keys, having kept one spare front door key for herself and one for the agents? Rob wasn’t the sort to mislay keys. Aged about thirty-five, tall, tough, with a keen sense of humour, he’d appealed to her at once. He’d looked over Moorgate, making notes, cracking jokes, telling her that he’d given up his engineering job in London after promotion had made him more of an administrator than an engineer.

‘Boardroom politics aren’t my scene,’ he’d said cheerfully. ‘I like getting my hands dirty. So I’ve come West to make my fortune.’

‘Well, you won’t make it at my expense,’ she’d answered tartly. ‘I can’t afford to spend too much.’

‘You’ll be a fool if you don’t do it properly,’ he’d said seriously. ‘People throw money away. They refuse to spend a few pennies on a run-down cottage and they sell it to a builder who moves in and makes a killing. She’s worth doing up properly, this old place. You’ll get your money back twice over, believe me.’

She’d listened to him, making tea for them both with an old kettle in the huge, bare kitchen, and then they’d gone from room to room whilst
he showed her what might be done. His ideas were simple but good and she decided, with one or two restrictions, that she’d allow him to go ahead if his price were reasonable. He’d encouraged her to visit two other properties he’d renovated and she was privately impressed.

He’d grinned at her. ‘Wait and see. When I’ve finished you won’t want to sell her.’

‘Then you won’t get paid,’ she’d answered. ‘Send me an estimate and I’ll think about it.’

That had been at the beginning of the summer. Perhaps it was time to make a visit to Moorgate; to meet Rob again and to check out his work for herself. She’d made one visit and meant to go back but the right moment had never yet arisen.

Maudie decided that now it had. She would drive down to Cornwall, see Moorgate and Rob, sort out the problem of the key. She removed her spectacles, collected her post together and, rising from the breakfast table, went to make a telephone call.

Listening to the enthusiastic voice of the young agent in the office in Truro, Maudie was able to imagine him quite clearly—although she had never met him.

‘It’s an absolutely super property, Lady Todhunter, quite my favourite. I can’t wait to start marketing it properly. It’s just this thing about the keys to the office …’ His voice, rather breathless, rattled on in her ear as she visualised the clean, floppy hair and scrubbed, fresh complexion; imagined the leather Filofax whose leaves she could hear rustling as he flicked through the pages; envisaged the head at an angle, shoulder hunched so as to grip the telephone receiver. In her mind’s eye she saw his tie; silk, of course, and decorated with some cartoon animal: Daffy Duck, perhaps? Of course, he would also own a mobile phone, a laptop and a small hatchback: the necessary toys of his profession.

‘I quite understand, Mr …?’ She peered at the name typed beneath the scrawled signature on the letter she held in her hand. ‘Mr Cruikshank, is it …? Oh, very well, then, Ned,’—she hated the modern informality but could never resist the young—‘I understand that the keys have gone missing but I don’t have a spare set for the office and the side door. What does Mr Abbot say about it?’

‘Well, you see that’s the whole point.’ Ned’s voice was confiding, now, inviting her to share his bafflement. ‘He can’t remember ever having them.’

Maudie frowned, cudgelling recalcitrant memory. ‘I’m quite certain I
gave him the whole set,’ she said firmly. ‘As I recall, there was only ever the one complete set of keys and I thought it sensible for Mr Abbot to have them until he’d finished. I kept one front door key for myself, in case of emergency, and gave you the other to be going on with. How very tiresome.’

‘I suppose,’ he suggested diffidently, ‘that there couldn’t be another set somewhere? You know? Just knocking about at the back of a drawer, or in the bottom of an old vase, or something?’

‘I suppose it’s possible. The tenants returned the set which I passed on to Mr Abbot. There might be a faint chance that my husband had another set somewhere.’

‘Perhaps you could ask him.’ Ned sounded hopeful.

‘Rather tricky, under the circumstances,’ said Maudie drily. ‘He’s dead and I have no inclination towards spiritualism … No, no. Don’t apologise. How could you possibly know?’ She felt a stab of remorse for her abruptness which had caused his embarrassment and spluttered apologies. ‘My fault. You must forgive my bad taste. I’ll look about for the keys but I’m not at all sanguine. Everything was sorted out when I moved down from London, you see, but I’ll just make absolutely certain. No, not a nuisance … Don’t give it a thought … Yes, I’ll be in touch.’

She replaced the receiver and returned to the living room, picking up the big wooden tray and piling up the breakfast things ready to be taken into the kitchen. Pausing to watch a nuthatch, upside down on the nut container which hung from a hook on the bird table, she was distracted for a moment from the problems at Moorgate. She loved these two big sunny rooms which opened on to the veranda and the garden. They were divided from the other rooms by a wide passage, with the front door at one end of it and a box room at the other. An adequate-sized kitchen, a surprisingly large bathroom, a tiny cloakroom and a spare bedroom made up the rest of the accommodation but it was quite big enough for Maudie. Each holiday Hector had chafed at its lack of space, at the impossibility of giving parties or inviting friends for the weekends.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ she’d cry impatiently, ‘we’re only here for a few weeks. Surely you can survive without them? Isn’t it nice to be on our own for a while?’

He’d smile repentantly. ‘Withdrawal symptoms,’ he’d say. ‘Give me a day or two …’ But he’d never been able to hide his pleasure and anticipation as the day for their return to London drew near.

Maudie took the tray into the kitchen and unloaded the contents on to the draining board. Hector had always been at his best surrounded by people—selected people, if possible, but almost any people were preferable to his own company. Maudie was happier in a more intimate setting, one friend at a time so that she could concentrate upon them, rather than the bustle and noise of large parties. Nevertheless, they’d managed pretty well, given that Maudie had never entertained more than six people at a time before she’d met Hector. Naturally, Hilda had been the perfect hostess…

The sudden jet of hot water, splashing against the back of a spoon, sprayed Maudie’s jersey and she cursed sharply, turning off the tap. How foolish, how utterly
pointless
it was, to feel such antagonism against a woman who had been dead for more than thirty years. The irritating thing about dying young—well, forty-four was fairly young—was that it immediately hallowed the dead with a kind of immunity. They were always ahead of the game, one point up, they didn’t play fair. Maudie bashed the dishes about in the hot soapy water with a splendid disregard for their welfare. Even now, with Hilda and Hector both dead, she still felt the frustration of what she called ‘second-wife syndrome’. Perhaps it would have been easier to deal with if Patricia and Selina had been prepared to meet her halfway. To be fair—did she want to be fair?—Patricia had been tolerant enough. She simply wasn’t interested in her new stepmother, too immersed, at sixteen, in her own growing-up to make any efforts to make Maudie feel part of the family. Selina had demanded her sister’s partisanship in her battle, however, and Patricia, through loyalty or indifference, had added her weight to Selina’s resistance.

Drying the dishes, putting away the marmalade and butter, Maudie struggled for rationality. It had been difficult for Hector to remain unmoved by his daughters’ hostility. Patricia’s attacks had been spasmodic, distracted as she was by boyfriends and parties, but Selina had waged a determined, unflinching war. At twelve she’d missed her mother terribly and had no intention of sharing her father with this stranger. It was perhaps unfortunate that she’d started at boarding school in the autumn following the wedding so that, although it had been arranged for years, she could always blame Maudie for packing her off to school in true wicked stepmother style.

‘Absolute rubbish!’ Hector had shouted irritably, driven to distraction by Selina’s tears and recriminations. ‘You knew quite well that you’d be going away to school next term. Patricia went at thirteen and you were
perfectly happy about it until … until now. You know that I’ve been posted to Geneva and that Mummy would have wanted you to be settled with Patricia at school by the time I leave. It has absolutely
nothing
to do with Maudie.’

He’d slammed himself into his study leaving Selina, tear-stained and furious, outside the door.

‘Look,’ Maudie had said awkwardly, ‘I know it’s hard to understand but he feels it too, you know.’

Selina’s face was as stony and unyielding as granite. ‘I hate you,’ she’d said—but quietly, lest Hector should hear and come storming out—‘and I wish it was you who was dead.’

‘I expect you do,’ Maudie had answered cheerfully. ‘But while we’re waiting for that happy event can’t we try to be friends?’

Selina had not bothered to reply but had gone away to her room, locking herself in, refusing to come down to lunch, and the house had been wrapped in an atmosphere of gloom and ill-feeling until the term started. Oh, the joy of being alone with Hector, ghosts and guilt banished—only temporarily, however. Both would be resurrected with monotonous regularity at half terms and each holiday.

‘We must be patient,’ Hector had insisted—also with monotonous regularity. ‘After all, at least we get the term times to ourselves.’

Hanging up the dishcloth Maudie smiled secretly to herself. What fun they’d had; careless, selfish, glorious fun.

‘I must say,’ he’d admitted, just once or twice, after afternoons of love, or an extra brandy after a particularly good dinner party, ‘I have to admit that it’s rather nice not to be worrying about the girls all the time. If Hilda had a fault it was that she used to fuss about them. Know what I mean? I felt that I was a father and provider first and husband and lover second.’