Paying Guests (32 page)

‘Then I mustn’t keep you longer,’ she said firmly, knowing he would keep her there for the rest of the day listening to him boasting of his success if he could. ‘I shall pay my bill and –’

‘Please to come to my counting house,’ he said, and laughed. ‘It’s a comfortable place to stop, if you know what I mean, not that I have that much time for comfort! And I can see old friends there. Come along in and see what’s what.’ And without waiting for her response he led the way downstairs again to the very back of the shop and a small curtained door in the far corner.

Beyond the door there was indeed a cosy room with a fire burning brightly in a highly burnished grate and a scatter of good chairs about and a tall desk in the far corner. The windows were curtained in green damask against the dimness of the late afternoon and the room was well lit with oil lamps, and she was happy to release the fastenings of her fur-trimmed mantle as she came in and met the blast of warm air.

It was perhaps because she was concentrating on wresting the buttons open that she didn’t at first realize there were other people in the room and was startled when she heard Jem’s voice.

‘Why, if it isn’t Tilly! How pleasant to see you! I don’t seem to have done that for a few weeks, now.’

She lifted her chin and smiled in genuine pleasure to see him. ‘I called at your shop not half an hour since!’ she retorted. ‘But since
you were not there, obviously I can’t be blamed for not seeing you! I trust you are well?’

‘Very well,’ he said with an odd emphasis in his voice. ‘Very well indeed,’ and he looked over his shoulder at the other chair beside the fire and someone who had been sitting there stood up and came to join him.

‘Well now,’ Charlie Harrod said heartily and rubbed his hands together. ‘If this ain’t downright cosy, I don’t know what is – We shall take a glass of ratafia and some of my newest Madeira biscuits to go with it, that’s what we’ll do, just to warm us, shall we? Now, don’t you shake your head, Mrs Q! Determined I am that we shall, for you haven’t met my Caroline’s cousin before, have you? And here we are with news for you, as well. Couldn’t be a better moment to share a glass. And it couldn’t be a better moment that you of all people should walk in today, for are we not all old friends, if I may be so bold?’ And he beamed at her and then at the young woman standing beside Jem. ‘Mrs Q, may I present Miss Frances Goodall, who is my Caroline’s first cousin on her mother’s side, as they say. Fanny, this is Mrs Quentin who has long been a good friend to me and my business and indeed to Jem.’

‘I know that,’ Miss Goodall said and held out a hand to Tilly. ‘I have heard much about you, Mrs Quentin, and am most happy to make your acquaintance.’

Her voice was pleasant if a little countrified and she had an equally pleasant but rather plain face with slightly bulging eyes beneath pallid thin brows. Her eyes were a mild brown and her complexion rosy, and she looked as wholesome as a currant bun. Tilly stared at her and then at Jem, puzzlement rising in her. Jem had an expression on his face that was quite remarkable, she thought, and one she could not remember seeing there before. He looked pleased and yet a touch alarmed, puffed up with a sort of pride he had certainly never displayed to Tilly, and an almost childlike beam creased his mouth.

Fanny looked at him and she too smiled, a quite different expression. Hers spoke of calm certainty of ownership, of assurance that she knew what was best for the man beside her and had every
intention of seeing he obtained it. She did not touch him or pet him as Tilly had seen other women do with men on whom they had set their sights, but had she had him tied to her side with a leather leash like a pet dog, Tilly found herself thinking waspishly, she could not be displaying ownership more clearly.

Fortunately she did not have to speak, for Charlie chose this moment to come fussing over with a tray of small glasses filled with the deep amber of ratafia and a plate of round yellow biscuits and chattered as he distributed them, giving Tilly time to untie her bonnet and remove her now burdensome mantle and sit down. And all the time she looked covertly at Frances Goodall, trying to understand what was happening here and certain, in a sick sort of way, that she knew perfectly well.

Miss Goodall was wearing a simple gown of fawn faille trimmed only with the minimum of brown braid, and her hair was dressed in the simplest of modern modes, parted in the centre and brushed back over a pad at the back of her head from which depended only one small coil. It was undoubtedly her best feature, being thick and flaxen pale and with a deep rich sheen which the simple style showed off to full advantage. She had soft cheeks which were already settling into incipient jowls, but she smiled so much they hardly had time to show themselves. And it was clear that Jem approved of her highly.

‘Well, let me propose a toast to us all, and waste no time over it,’ Charlie said jovially and held up his glass. ‘Here’s to new friends and old, to new business and old, to the future and the past – and let the best part of it all be to come!’

Jem said heartily – more heartily than Tilly could remember hearing from him before, ‘Amen to that, Charlie!’ while Miss Goodall smiled brightly and Tilly herself just smiled, and they all sipped, Charlie managing to make his sip empty his glass by fully a half.

‘Agreeable though this is,’ Tilly said as carefully as she could, ‘I really cannot stay long. I must return to my own business if your kind toast is to come true for me. It cannot prosper in my absence for very long!’

‘Oh come, Tilly!’ Jem said. ‘With your Eliza there? How can you be so mistrustful of her? She will handle any problems while you stay half an hour with old friends, surely!’

‘I was not being mistrustful!’ Tilly said with a sudden flash of anger. ‘I was, rather, saying that I have much that must be done. And excellent though Eliza is in every way I would be a poor mistress of an establishment if I did not treat my servants with some consideration!’

‘To my certain knowledge, you’ve always treated everyone with the utmost consideration,’ Charlie said owlishly, and sipped again, this time so depleting his glass he had to refill it. ‘You’ve shown it to me since I was just a young lad under my father’s thumb when this shop wasn’t much bigger than this room here!’ And he looked fondly round the tiny chamber and chuckled, and even Tilly, irritated though she was by all that was being said – and not said – around her, had not the heart to point out what a severe exaggeration that was.

‘I didn’t mean to suggest any lack of care on your part, Tilly, in asking you to stay a while,’ Jem said, and some of the joy had gone from his face and he looked a little anxious. ‘I wished only to – well –’ He glanced sideways at Miss Goodall. ‘I thought it would be agreeable for us all to get to know one another, don’t you know, Miss Goodall being new to you, if you see what I mean.’

His discomfiture was obvious and so uncharacteristic that Tilly could not help but stare and Charlie burst out laughing.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, isn’t he making a sorry fist of it? The thing is, Mrs Q, our Jem here is about to take the plunge. I thought he might do so many times in the past –’ And he looked at her roguishly for a brief second and then away, ‘but it wasn’t to be. But now he is, and what’s more he’s joining my family! Affianced, that’s what they are, Jem and Fanny here. Now, isn’t that worth half an hour of jollity among old friends like us?’

TO CALL IT a difficult half hour was to understate the situation to the point of absurdity. She smiled and congratulated them. She beamed with apparently the same pleasure as Charlie when Jem looked at his bride-to-be in what Tilly privately considered a disgustingly mawkish manner and she looked back at him in what Tilly interpreted, much more sinisterly, as a possessive manner. She was angry and hurt and, worst of all, she knew that she was being totally unjust.

She accepted a second glass of ratafia, though she managed to refuse the biscuits, a new purchase of which Charlie was inordinately proud, and listened with all the interest she could pretend as Jem and his Fanny prattled on about seeking a house and a new shop in one of the quieter and pleasanter London suburbs, and tried to be pleased for them. She failed totally.

‘We thought of Holloway,’ Jem said. ‘It’s most green and charming and there are many handsome new houses and excellent shop properties there. We should deal very comfortably.’

‘But your shop here,’ Tilly managed to say through rather stiff lips. ‘How will you care for that if you move so far away?’

‘Sold it to me, ain’t he?’ Charlie said in a high good humour. ‘Oh, I got plans I have, and Jem here’s helping me with ‘em! I’ve bought his premises and I shall rent ‘em to some suitable well-set up tradesman, and then wait till I can buy all the property twixt me and him. And then I’ll break the lease and I’ll join all of the places together and won’t I have a handsome establishment then!’

‘But Charlie,’ Tilly protested, glad to have something different to think about. ‘How big a shop can you have? You already sell all the groceries there are in the world, and have added such things as perfume and stationery and medicines. Why should you want the burden of so vast an emporium?’

‘Burden?’ cried Charlie. ‘How can a business ever be a burden? I wish it to grow and grow! Like a tree – and just as trees have leaves and fruit as well as twigs, so shall I have many different sorts of goods as well as groceries and patent medicines. I can sell silks and linens and fashions, like Jem here – only he’ll be selling his over in Holloway or some such spot so we won’t be in competition – and I can sell children’s stuff and dresses for funerals and millinery – anything that that there William Whitely sells over in Westbourne Grove, I can sell here in Brompton! Do you know he’s put in a Refreshment Room? So he has! I ask you – and a house agency – there’s no stopping the man. Well, I shan’t be put down by such a one as that. So I’m taking Jem’s premises until such time as I need ‘em, and he’ll be my cousin-in-law and all very nice too, ain’t it? Don’t you think so, Mrs Q?’

‘Oh, yes indeed,’ Tilly said, and then spoke no more as Miss Goodall, with the minimum of prompting from Charlie, launched herself into an account of the sort of furniture she hoped to put in her new home and the plans she and Jem had for making a garden if they could find a house nice enough, and what sort of wedding trip they would take. Listening to it all was almost more than Tilly could bear.

Yet why should she be so ungenerous? she asked herself as she walked home when, at last, Charlie could be persuaded to let her escape. Charlie had wanted to send one of his men with her, since it was almost dark and not safe, with some of the streets she had to pass so unsalubrious. But she had managed at last to choke him off by being almost ill-mannered which she much disliked, but he had been overflown with ratafia and she hoped would forget all about it by the time they next met. So, alone and walking briskly, she thought hard.

Why should she be so set down by the news of Jem’s approaching
marriage? Had she not refused him many years ago and persisted in refusing him ever since? The poor man had been her devoted admirer for so long now, and so often she had told him firmly that he mustn’t waste his time on her. That she would be his friend and no more.

And now he had taken her at her word, she should be glad for him, glad he had found his sensible Miss Goodall, glad she was his best friend’s kinswoman, glad that his lines were falling in pleasant places. But all she felt was bereft, almost desolate at the thought of losing him. She had relied on him and his good opinion more than she realized, she told herself as at last she reached her front door, and let herself in. He was my best friend and I did not value him as I should.

All through dinner she remained remote and silent, thinking her own thoughts about Jem, and her guests seemed to pick up her mood for there was less talk at table than usual, excellent though dinner was (and the special recipe for fish dumplings à la Madame Salinas met with unanimous approval, and provided the only short period of animation of the entire meal). Eliza too became aware of Tilly’s mood and said less than she usually did, and indeed vanished immediately after dinner, leaving the coffee service to Lucy’s charge, feeling, she told her deputy – who later told Tilly – a little less well this evening, and fit only to go to her bed early.

Even hearing about that didn’t rouse Tilly. Normally she would have gone to Eliza’s room to see if there was anything she needed, but she contented herself with sending Rosie, who reported that Eliza was asleep and seemed to want nothing. So Tilly felt able to vanish into her own little morning room after dinner, leaving her guests to the drawing room and their own devices. She had much to think of, and much to do – including finding the right moment to speak to Polly of her father – but the news of the afternoon had left her curiously limp and weary.

She sat in her private morning room as the fire there died down – she could not make the effort to feed it with coals – and listened to the house around her going its usual evening way. There was the tinkle of the piano from the drawing room; Sophie entertaining the
company, she thought. Then there was Silas’s light tenor and after that Duff’s easy baritone followed by a general joining in of all of them. But the jollity there did not seem to be well based, for the evening broke up early. She heard them leave the drawing room one by one, as she sat there in her favourite high-back chair, the fire dying at her feet, the Salinas family bidding shrill goodnights to Mr Hancock and Mr Cumming; the Graylings calling on Rosie for some more hot water for Mr Grayling’s nighttime grog; Miss Fleetwood rumbling away to Miss Knapp as they climbed the stairs with Miss Barnetsen giggling shrilly behind them.