Paying Guests (3 page)

‘I am afraid he has had none as yet,’ she said as lightly as she could, and turned away, ostensibly to look closely at a pile of jars containing preserved peaches. ‘He – oh – he was very tired and did not take dinner with us last night. And this morning I was out and about my affairs before he rose.’

‘Well, that’s natural enough,’ Charlie said heartily. ‘A lad just released from school – why, he must feel like a prisoner newly out on parole! He’ll be wanting to take life as easy as may be for a few days yet. But that ham’ll improve with keeping, and he’ll try it soon enough, I dare say. As long as your guests don’t get there before him and wolf the lot!’ He laughed even more heartily and picked up one of the jars of peaches. ‘Do you take one of these, Mrs Q. They
are a new line I’m trying and I’d be glad of an honest opinion. You’ve got the most taste of any customer I have and –’

‘Fiddlesticks,’ she said and shook her head at him. ‘You are always giving me extra items and it really must stop. It cannot be good business to give away your goods in such a manner.’

‘It is when it’s you I give to, Mrs Q,’ he said, and lifted a finger at one of his assistants who came rushing over at once. ‘Put that in Mrs Q’s order,’ he instructed and then turned back to Tilly as the man obediently hurried away. ‘You’re one of the best customers I have, you know. Why, if you like a new line and choose to buy it, look at how much you buy! How many guests have you at present?’

‘Twenty,’ she said.

‘Then there you are! That’s a big household and no error. And what with Eliza and her four girls to feed as well – I’d be a fool to myself if I didn’t treat you special!’

She shook her head, amused and irritated at the same time. ‘Nonsense, Charlie. You must do business with much larger households than ours! I have but the one son and no husband, while there are other houses where there are so many children and cousins and aunts and uncles besides, and far more servants, that they must surely outnumber my total greatly. You must not give me goods, but put them on my bill. I am willing to try new lines, as well you know. I do not need such coaxing. But I always have and always will pay my way.’

‘It was you that taught me the value of not allowing credit, Mrs Q,’ Charlie said. ‘I owe you for that, as well you know. I’ve never been held back by bad debts like some I could mention. Poor old Jobbins.’ He shook his head sadly but with an air of suppressed satisfaction. ‘I warned him he’d come a cropper and a cropper he came. And the man as took his shop ain’t doin’ no better. You mark my words, Mrs Q, I’ll be taking over his premises and all when I’m ready, and the one alongside him too, come to that. He’s losing money fast, for he’s as poor a saddler as ever I came across. By the time I’m ready they’ll be glad to sell to me.’

‘Well, as long as you don’t run too fast, Charlie,’ she said and
reached into her reticule for her shopping list. ‘I wouldn’t wish to see you fall over your own feet in your hurry.’

‘I won’t,’ he said, supremely confident. ‘Any more’n you would if you did the same, Mrs Q. You’ve got twenty guests? Why, you could take that house alongside yours, what’s been up for sale these last ten months or more and improve your business by fifty percent.’

‘I have quite enough to keep me busy as it is, Charlie,’ she said firmly and held out her list. ‘Now, let me see, I require pudding rice – it had better be a half sack, I think – and sago and semolina. Then some curry spices – Eliza is heart set on making more curries since we’ve had a retired officer from India among our guests – and raisins, and almonds, and loaf sugar and –’

For the next half hour they were heads together over her extensive list and when at last she buttoned her gloves ready to venture back into the street and her last call of the morning, at Mr Spurgeon’s the butcher, she was once again in full command of her own thoughts. Duff, she told herself as Charlie saw her to the door and on her way (with a further reassurance that the peaches would be sent, no matter what she said and were to be regarded as a gift of the establishement, at which point she gave up arguing; Charlie Harrod could be amazingly stubborn), was just tired. She had imagined his remoteness and unwillingness to be part of the company at dinner last night. He had been her own sweet Duff, as usual, of course he had. It must have been a megrim of her own that made her think him aloof and impatient.

She made her way along the street, automatically weaving through the strolling shoppers, towards Mr Spurgeon’s shop and yard, which was making its presence felt on this warm August morning: the farmyard smell of his animals waiting to be killed for the table wafted across the hot pavements in a way that was, while far from agreeable, at least not as unpleasant as it might be, because of its overtones of the countryside. She ignored it, and walked with her head up and her step springing. The important thing was that Duff was home. That he would never again go away to school.

She bit her lip as, against her will, the memory that had plagued
her all through his schooldays came wafting back to her: the small Duff, his face white and pinched beneath his pertly tasselled cap, staring at her wide-eyed and brave as he struggled not to let the tears show; her own aching desire to snatch him back from the train on which he was to travel with the other boys dressed as he was all the way to Dorset and how Miss Fleetwood and Miss Knapp had held her back, one on each side, and stopped her from doing anything so foolish.

‘It is for his own good,’ they had assured her earnestly. ‘He is a clever boy, a most intelligent lad. If he remains here with you, even if he does go to a day school, he will lack the benefits that attendance at such a school as Sherborne must give him! He is a boy without a father, dear Mrs Quentin! He needs the company of men and boys, you must see that. If it were not so he would not be so tearful now, and he eleven years of age! He is too old to be so attached to his dear Mamma – you must let him go if you want a man made of him.’

Since they had had the teaching of him since his infancy and had indeed made a splendid job of it, imbuing him with the rudiments of Latin and Greek as well as a good understanding of the use of the globes and natural philosophy and some theology, she had deferred to their opinion.

But it had hurt. Every holiday had been a mixture of delight and misery; starting with the huge excitement of his return home at the end of the term and culminating, as always, with the dreadful pain of parting. But the school had been the making of him, she had to admit. Each year that passed had seen him taller, more muscled – for he played many games and played them well at Sherborne – and more clever. He would talk to her sometimes on long winter holiday evenings and amaze her with the breadth of his new knowledge of such matters as chemistry and physics and mathematics. He enjoyed history and geography too; altogether, she took a pride in him that almost made her burst. She had looked towards with such eagerness the end of his schooldays.

And now it had come. Nearly eighteen, he had completed his studies at Sherborne and was home for good. She had been in an
ecstasy of excitement when he had arrived yesterday in a flurry of trunks and boxes fetched from the station in two cabs, since one was not large enough for it all; and he had refused to let her meet him there, telling her in an earnest letter that, at his age, it would be demeaning to be greeted like a boy of the first or second years when he was a swell of the Sixth.

But then as the afternoon had worn on, and she had stopped gasping at the way he had grown in this past term (he was fully four inches taller than when he had left Brompton after the Easter holidays, and much more solid) and at the fact that he now clearly shaved (she had suffered a pang too as she remembered the downiness of his infant cheeks but had managed not to speak of it to him), the feelings had changed. He had been uneasy, remote, not like himself at all as he had gazed round at the little changes she had rushed to show him in the house: the new seat covers in the dining room which the guests so much preferred and the extra chairs in the drawing room that made it possible for so many more of them to spend time there in the evenings if they wanted to. He had been quiet, not at all as interested and excited as once he would have been; she saw him off to bed early, as he had insisted he wanted only a sandwich on a tray for dinner, with her feelings in a turmoil. She had slept little, still worrying over the change in him and her concern had stretched itself into this morning.

But now, she told herself, it was all a hum. She had been a foolish, over-excited woman, allowing her anticipation of her only son’s return home for good to overshadow her normal good sense. She must give the boy time to catch his breath and be comfortable again and then all would be well. She was sure of it.

At Mr Spurgeon’s shop she spent a half hour in close colloquy on the subject of the proper hanging of beef and the chining of mutton chops. Mr Spurgeon was an excellent butcher, or always had been, but now as he grew older and his son Walter took a more active part in the working of the business, standards seemed to have slipped a little. Last night’s steaks had been less than perfect, she told Mr Spurgeon severely, and he was mortified and talked to her for some time of the way sons meddle in matters they didn’t
understand and assured her that in future he and only he would deal with her order. She came out again into the street, having left with him a full description of all the meat she needed until the end of the week, well satisfied.

Outside the street was beginning to thin of passers-by and she glanced at the clock set over the jeweller’s on the corner and lifted her brows. A quarter before noon. Close to time for luncheon. She must hurry home and see how Duff was, now he was up, as surely he must be at this hour of the morning. And, she thought fondly, ravenously hungry I’ll be bound. We must see what is available in Eliza’s larder for a special luncheon for him. The ham, perhaps.

She saw him before he saw her: on the other side of the road, with another young man who looked much the same age as he was. Standing taller than his companion, Duff was wearing a glossy top hat tilted at a somewhat rakish angle over his eyes, so that his long side-whiskers, curled and very elegantly trimmed, were clearly visible. They were the first thing she had noticed yesterday afternoon when he had stepped out of his cab in Brompton Grove and it had made her heart contract then as it did now. The length of the side-whiskers, which reached almost to the point of his jaw, made him look so very adult and elegant, and now, seeing him in a high-buttoned fine worsted frock-coat in a deep blue with the most elegantly tied of octagons, and narrow trousers in silver-grey checks over spatted patent-leather shoes, she was amazed. He was exceedingly good to look at; and again she could have burst with pride.

She stood at the side of the road, impatiently waiting for a gap in the traffic as great lumbering carthorses plodded by dragging their loads, and faster stepping cabhorses tried to overtake them, her skirts held high above the dust, hoping to catch his eye before he moved away. It would never do to shout across at him, for that would be the height of vulgarity, but she could hold her head high in the hope he would glance her way and see her; and she did, craning above the traffic towards him.

And he did see her. He had half turned to speak to the young man at his side who had stopped to look into the jeweller’s window, and he glanced across the road and saw her. She was certain he had;
she could tell by the way his eyes widened and his face half froze. Automatically she lifted one hand in a half wave, but he seemed not to see it. He turned his head away, his face still blank, and spoke to the young man at his side, who at once turned towards him, looked up at the clock above their heads and moved away with him at a sharp pace.

She had not imagined it, she told herself as she stood there at the side of the new Brompton Road, staring across at the space where he and his friend had been. He had seen her and cut her dead. She, his own mother, had been totally snubbed.

BY THE TIME she reached home, walking as quickly as she could through the dust of the summer-dried streets, she had almost convinced herself that she had, once again, misread the signs. He hadn’t seen her; he could not have snubbed her – not her Duff. And with that thought firmly in her mind she let herself into the coolness of her entrance hall and stood there for a moment as she removed her gloves and her wrap, glad to be out of the glare of the sun, and made one last effort to compose herself before going to speak to Eliza.

Around her the house was quiet and yet had an air of being occupied with purposeful people. The hall stand was draped in coats, hats and umbrellas which were reflected in the high gloss of the black and white squares of the tiled floor, and the mahogany table at the foot of the stairs bore a few letters awaiting collection. The arrangement of dried grasses and flowers in the tall floor vase which stood beside it had a slightly rumpled look, as if someone had brushed past it in a hurry. Above stairs she could hear the faint sounds that meant Rosie and Dora, the housemaids, were finishing off the cleaning of the rooms up there, and from the dining room came the clink of cutlery and china that showed Lucy was at work. She could smell the beeswax and lavender used to polish the drawing-room furniture, the bowls of roses from the garden that were everywhere, and beyond that the shadowy scent of hot bread. Eliza baking, she thought; that will be for Duff. He adores her doughnuts and she only makes them when she bakes bread. So, she
would be baking an extra batch just so that she could make doughnuts for Duff.