Someone Special (10 page)

‘Even when he’s home you won’t see much of him; he’s writing a book,’ Mrs Cledwen said. ‘He spends a lot of time in the little room over the arch – the gatehouse room. But he doesn’t usually leave the old place much; this past month he’s been in London. He has money invested and solicitors, men of business, to visit. He likes to keep an eye on them.’

‘What’s the book about?’ Hester asked. She had soon discovered that Mrs Cledwen liked talking cosily, in the kitchen; she must be as lonely as I am, Hester concluded.
It did not occur to her that, with Matthew and the baby, she could scarcely count herself as lonely. ‘Is it a story-book … fiction, I mean?’

Mrs Cledwen laughed. ‘Since it’s about Mr Geraint’s family it’s probably both – a story-book and fiction, I mean,’ she said. ‘I told him that what he doesn’t know he shouldn’t make up, but he got annoyed, so I left it. You may not see much of him even when he comes back from London, but when you do you’ll discover he’s a strange man, full of wild ideas.’

‘I’ve got a few wild ideas myself,’ Hester said comfortably, rubbing hard at the bowl of a huge silver spoon. ‘It’s all you can have, once you’re married, with your own baby.’

‘Yes, I suppose … you’ve never told me much about yourself, Hester. I know you were at a convent school in Liverpool, but I don’t know anything else and you never talk about a family, brothers or sisters. Here, you’ll rub right through that spoon in a minute, the bowl’s thin enough as it is. Have a couple of forks.’

She passed them over and Hester finished the big spoon and laid it reverently back in the long, baize-lined box.

‘There isn’t much to tell,’ Hester said, starting on the forks. There was no reason, however, to confess to her deplorably pitiful past since Mrs Cledwen was only asking out of idle curiosity, so Hester squared her shoulders and put her fertile imagination to work. ‘I was an only child, my mother died when I was very small, my father was a soldier, so my paternal grandmother brought me up. Well, I say that, but really the nuns brought me up, because grandmama, though she adored me, was crippled with rheumatism and confined to a wheelchair. Of course grandmama was awfully kind to me, she read me stories and sent me off to the zoo with her servant, or to the pantomime in the winter, but in the summer I usually
spent the long holiday in Rhyl with my other gran.’

‘And was she a kind woman? Did you enjoy your time with her?’ Mrs Cled asked. ‘It sounds a very varied sort of childhood, Hester.’

‘Yes, I suppose it was. But it was quite fun, really,’ Hester said, polishing forks and blessing the inventive streak which had so often got her into trouble in the past. She might have known it would be useful some day despite the unkind things the nuns had said about little liars. ‘Grandmother Sybil – my Rhyl grandmama – used to cook me marvellous meals and gave me a great deal of freedom. She didn’t mind me playing out most of the day and scarcely ever made me come home by a set time, though she liked me indoors before dark. But the evenings are long in the summer time, and anyway, when I was older I used to go to my room, then climb out through the window and slide down the kitchen roof and escape. I went to the dances, the cinema, the pier-shows; that was how I met Matthew. But when I was younger I loved the sea, the sand, and freedom to be with other kids. I spent my pocket money on cream ices and donkey rides, and I went on the funfair till my money ran out and then hung about down by the railway station, carrying luggage for a penny. In Rhyl I was far freer and happier than in Liverpool – I liked being with Grandmother Sybil much better than with grandmama, though they were both good to me in their way.’

‘It sounds wonderful,’ Mrs Cledwen said. She was embroidering a large tablecloth and delicately stitching at a golden butterfly. She bit off her silk and held the needle up to the light to rethread it with a different shade. ‘How often do you visit your Rhyl grandma now that you live so close to the town?’

There was a moment’s silence; Hester’s fingers stopped their work for a second or so, then she resumed her polishing with redoubled vigour.

‘Oh, didn’t I say? Sadly, she passed on just before Matthew and I were married.’

‘And your Liverpool grandma? Have you taken her great-grandchild visiting yet?’

‘My Liverpool grandmama didn’t approve of my marriage,’ Hester said sadly, laying the clean fork back among its fellows. ‘She said if I married Matthew I need never darken her doors again; so I haven’t, of course. But perhaps one day, when Helen’s a bit older, we might go back. Mrs Cled, do you have brothers and sisters?’

‘I’ve sisters, two of them, both married,’ Mrs Cledwen said. ‘I go and visit them a couple of times a year, but they’ve grown very staid, with successful husbands and a clutch of children. They consider me, well, shall we say rather unconventional?’

‘Why?’ Hester asked baldly.

‘Well, it’s a little unusual for a woman of my age to reside in a bachelor household,’ Mrs Cledwen said, dimpling at Hester. ‘My sisters would be happier if I was to marry, settle down. But what would Mr Geraint do without me? He wasn’t cut out to make meals or darn socks.’

‘I supposed he could get another housekeeper,’ Hester observed. ‘Or he could marry, perhaps.’

Mrs Cledwen had been smiling; the smile cut out as though someone had switched it off. She bent her head so that her face was hidden and Hester could see only the crown of her dark head. Without looking up, she spoke. ‘No. He’s not the marrying kind. And now, if you’ve finished those forks I’ll give them a wash in warm soapy water before returning them to their drawer.’

Feeling unaccountably chastened, Hester gathered up the forks and laid them on the draining board, tipped the rest of her saucerful of pink plate polish down the sink
and rinsed her hands under the tap. Then she turned to the older woman once more.

‘All right if I go now, Mrs Cled? Matthew’s awfully good, but he does like his dinner by one o’clock.’

Mrs Cledwen had tidied away her silks and was folding her tablecloth. She smiled pleasantly at Hester.

‘Yes dear, you run off now. I’ll see you at ten o’clock tomorrow.’

Making her way down the drive with Helen sitting up and staring around her, Hester thought that perhaps she should not have mentioned those grandmothers; too easy to check. Still, Mrs Cled shouldn’t have been so nosy – but then I shouldn’t have upset her. Yet what had she said? Only that if Mrs Cledwen was to leave him, Mr Geraint could marry or get another housekeeper. Perhaps it had been a bit tactless, but not unkind surely?

‘Dadadada,’ Helen burbled, reaching for the woolly bobble which Hester had painstakingly made and hung on the front of the pram. ‘Dadadada!’

‘Oh, you!’ Hester said, leaning forward across the handle of the pram and kissing Hester’s small button nose. ‘You don’t care for anything or anyone, do you? You’ll never invent a couple of grandmothers and a whole interesting childhood, not if it were ever so. But then you won’t need to, my honey-pot darling.’

And Helen, beaming and chattering in baby-talk, seemed to agree that she most certainly would not.

3

IT WAS A
beautiful spring day with a breeze coming off the distant sea and golden sunshine pouring down on the lodge and its struggling garden while the birds sang their hearts out and flirted and courted around Hester’s cherished vegetable patch. It was the sort of day when seaside holidays and other excitements come to mind and though Hester, fastening Helen into her pram, was only going to work, she felt a glow of vicarious pleasure because today Mrs Cledwen was going off to stay with her family for a week or so, leaving Hester, if not in charge, at least to her own devices so far as cleaning went.

‘No pram, no pram,’ Helen shouted as her mother lifted her up. She wriggled impatiently. ‘Nell walk!’

‘No, love, it’s too far. Just sit in the pram for a bit, then when we reach the lamb field you may walk.’

‘Wanna walk,’ Helen whined as Hester tied her securely into the pram. ‘Nell wanna walk.’

Helen had been too much of a mouthful for a small child so the baby had christened herself Nell and although Hester had been sad, at first, to lose the name she had chosen so carefully, Nell was a lot easier to shout – and now that the baby was toddling Hester found herself shouting a good deal.

‘Well, you shall walk, sweetheart. When we get to the lamb field.’

‘Nell wanna walk now,’ Helen insisted, trying to wriggle out of the piece of washing line which Hester had secured under her arms. ‘I’s big girl … wanna
walk
!’

‘We’ll pick some dandelion leaves for the lambs,’ Hester said, beginning to push the heavy old pram round the side of the lodge and out on to the drive. Experience had
taught her that arguing with Helen, young though she was, seldom resulted in victory and usually meant frayed tempers all round. I don’t know where she gets her pigheadedness from but it isn’t me, and I don’t really think it comes from Matthew either, Hester thought as Helen continued to try to escape from her bonds. I suppose it’s from way back. Perhaps my father was obstinate and my mother weak-willed, and the strain was mixed in me but came through truer in Helen. Or perhaps old Mr Coburn was a tartar, or Mrs Coburn …

‘Feed lambs?’

Helen, who had earlier seemed to brush aside her mother’s remark, now repeated it thoughtfully, a smile spreading across her small triangular face. She was not a pretty child in the accepted sense of the word, but she was a fascinating little creature. At her age, most children had baby hair, soft and fluffy, but Helen’s black and silky crop had grown until Hester had been forced to cut it into a fringe. This made the child look like a Dutch doll, especially so today because she was wearing a white cotton bonnet which she had tugged rakishly over one eye. Hester straightened it and kissed her daughter’s small nose.

I don’t know where she got those eyebrows from either, Hester thought, pushing the pram into the drive. They were strongly marked for a baby, winging above the slanting, amber-coloured eyes which were the only feature, Hester concluded wryly, that she had passed on to her daughter.

‘Mummy, Nell feed lambs?’

The shrill little voice showed no signs of developing temper now; she could be distracted by guile, and she adored animals. She was at that age when she was closer to her father’s skinny border collie and Mrs Cledwen’s ginger tom-cat than she was to anyone else.

‘Yes, you shall feed the lambs. I’ll pick some dandelion
leaves when we reach the drive and you may hand them over. Only we mustn’t be long or Mrs Cled will be cross with me, because she’s off on her holidays today and won’t thank me if I make her late.’

Helen chuckled and pointed over the side of the pram at a clump of primroses growing at the foot of the wall which surrounded the lodge.

‘Feed lambs?’

‘Yes, but not with primroses; lambs don’t like primroses. When we reach the dandelions I’ll tell you, pet.’

A short way up the drive she saw the dandelions, flowerless but growing strongly in the short wiry grass. She put the brake on the pram and bent to pick. Behind her, Helen squeaked and struggled.

‘My pick, my pick,’ she shouted urgently. ‘Nell … get … out!’

‘Not yet, sweetheart …’ Hester was beginning when she heard a loud thump. Heart in mouth, she turned. The pram was upside down on the gravel and from beneath it there came no sound.

Matthew had driven Mr Geraint into St Asaph in the Lagonda early that morning to take a look at the sheep on sale in the market. The flock on offer had not been particularly impressive, but Mr Geraint had also wanted breeding sows and had fallen for the charms of a couple of in-pig gilts, Tamworths with bristly ginger bodies and the tiny, squinty eyes of their kind. Having bought them on sight, they loaded the young sows into the trailer and decided to go straight back to the castle to settle them into their new home. Normally, they would have stayed in St Asaph, having a pint at The Plough at lunchtime, maybe even a round or two of their speciality, raw beef sandwiches, but the pigs were good ones and Mr Geraint was obviously itching to see them in his newly restored sties.

‘Everything’s ready for ‘em,’ he remarked to Matthew as they removed the ramp and closed the gate across the end of the trailer. ‘No point in hanging around here. You can have a meal with Willi and Dewi up at the castle if your wife’s not prepared anything.’

Matthew stiffened a little.

‘Hester always does a dinner,’ he said. ‘If she’s workin’ over I’ll get it a mite late, mebbe, but it’ll be there.’

Mr Geraint shot him an amused look, one eyebrow hiked up. Matthew knew just what expression would be on his employer’s face even though he had not taken his eyes from the road ahead. Mr Geraint hardly ever mentioned Hester, but when he did he often looked … oh, mocking, as though he doubted the girl’s ability, not just as a housewife but in other spheres too.

Matthew frowned at the ignoble thought. They had the child, surely Helen was proof enough that he and Hester enjoyed an active married life? But it was Mr Geraint’s way to mock; he should take it in his stride, ignore it. It was only because his Hester was so young that he felt he must defend her, even against a criticism which was covert, never put into words.

‘Why should she cook a midday meal on market day, when she doesn’t expect you home until late afternoon?’ Mr Geraint asked equably. ‘I don’t doubt she has something hot for you each evening.’

The words were innocent enough but the tone was not; Matthew actually took his eyes off the road to shoot a fulminating look at his employer. What was he up to now? Why couldn’t he save his breath to cool his porridge?

‘She’s a good girl,’ he heard himself saying, his tone almost defensive. ‘We do right well, me an’ Hester.’

‘My dear chap, who am I to suggest otherwise? I believe Mrs Cledwen is very pleased with her work, so I’m sure I’ve no possible grounds for complaint.
No, what worries me at the moment is whether we should put both gilts in one pen or whether they would be better apart?’

‘Ask Dewi,’ Matthew said grumpily, though he would not have put a couple of in-pig gilts in the same pen himself for fear of fights and rollings-on when the sows farrowed. ‘He’s your pig-man; tes all one to me.’