The Lotus House (3 page)

“I’m in very good health,” said Mrs Sanderson, “and people of my age aren’t really old nowadays. You said yourself that I did well out of selling John’s practice and
that the Bournemouth house should bring in a good sum.”

Mr Donovan was silent. He was, as a matter of fact, very surprised. He had looked upon Mrs Sanderson as a sensible woman, a little shy and reserved, rather repressed he had thought, but decidedly intelligent, and now she appeared as rash and romantic and not sensible at all. She had explained that the property had a special sentimental appeal for her, but it was Mr Donovan’s opinion that sentiment could easily be carried too far where house property was concerned. However, if she was absolutely determined on so rash a purchase, he could not stop her, and possibly the flats might be made to yield a reasonable return; the house was certainly in a good neighbourhood.

“Well, we mustn’t do anything in a hurry, must we?” he said at last. “We’ll get a good surveyor first. I know of a thoroughly reliable firm and we’ll abide by their decision.” Letty went away with the surveyor’s name and address but was secretly determined not to abide by any decision but her own compelling urge.

The surveyor’s report when it came was neither damning nor particularly reassuring. There was at present no sign of dry rot, but of course with houses of this date this was no assurance that it might not occur at any time. The roof, though needing some repair, was in fairly good condition, but a valley roof was never very satisfactory. Mr Donovan shook his head but reluctantly agreed to forward an offer to the owner’s solicitor after a rough estimate had been made of the cost of conversion.

“Planning permission for the necessary alterations should offer no difficulty, I think, as your aim is to restore the outward appearance of the house as much as possible to its original condition.”

“Certainly,” replied Letty, “and the inside too.”

Mr Donovan was not aware of the implications of this remark until they came to discuss the planning of the flats
with the architect and Letty refused to allow the spacious living-rooms on the ground floor to be divided.

“It will ruin their proportions,” she said, “and the hall must remain as it is too, with that pretty archway and staircase.”

“But, my dear Mrs Sanderson,” said Mr Donovan, and the architect chimed in for he was proud of his plans, “that is really impracticable — how are you to get the necessary bedrooms and offices? And, besides, no one nowadays wants such big rooms to heat.”

“Then I shall have to have the ground-floor flat for myself,” said Letty. She had been undecided as to which of the four projected flats she should choose. At first she thought lovingly of the night nursery for her bedroom, but the rest of the top-floor rooms which had been the servants’ were decidedly poky and the stairs, too, might prove a disadvantage with increasing age. Then she favoured the basement for its direct access to the garden, but much of this was rather dark and had fewer friendly associations so, although Mr Donovan again sadly shook his head and said she was sacrificing the most financially promising return of the whole project, it seemed that the dining-room and drawing-room (grand and august as she still held them in memory) would become her living-room and bedroom, and she would squeeze both a bathroom and kitchen and a second little bedroom out of the old cloakroom and the study, to the poor architect’s distress.

Meanwhile communications were crossing and recrossing oceans and continents. Letty wrote a personal letter and got a friendly reply from Jack’s son. He and his boys worked a profitable ranch and had no intention of coming back to the old country. His father, too, he felt sure, had not contemplated returning, but had never brought himself to sell the Lotus House for purely sentimental reasons. Now, however, he himself was anxious to be rid of the property. It would have been different if his aunts
had lived, but the younger had not long survived the transplanting from England, he did not even remember her, and his Aunt Mary had died some years before his father. Of his Aunt Rosamund he knew nothing but believed she was living somewhere in the wilds of Canada. He was glad that the house should go to an old friend of the family as he felt sure this would have pleased his father and aunts.

So
that
is
that,
thought Letty. She was not sure whether she was glad or sorry that she was to know so little about those unreal characters — the Lotus House children grown up. She had had some qualms about whether she ought to have mentioned the discovery of the doll’s house, but now she decided she could count it in with “the articles contained within the house and the garden at the time of the sale”. Six months later, after having disposed of her Bournemouth house satisfactorily, old Mrs Sanderson moved herself into the ground-floor flat of the Lotus House and set about looking for tenants.

MRS SANDERSON DID
not admit to herself that she was influenced in Mrs Royce’s favour by the colour of her hair, which was of that warm auburn hue that she had admired above all others ever since she had fallen in love with Rosamund long ago. Nor indeed was it necessary, for there was much else to be said in favour of this, her earliest applicant for the first floor flat. She had a charming smile, was beautifully dressed and was suitably enthusiastic about the whole house.

“I’m always very sensitive to houses, Mrs Sanderson,” said Margot Royce, “and yours has such character. You’re an answer to prayer, you know. I’ve been feeling I simply couldn’t stand our poky little cottage any longer and this is perfect — two good living-rooms, one quite big enough to take Andrew’s piano, it’s only a baby grand but it’s crowded out our present sitting-room. I must warn you he plays on it quite a lot, I do hope you don’t object.”

“No,” said Letty, hoping the other tenants, when they had materialized, would not do so either, but the walls and ceilings were pretty soundproof, not like modern houses, and anyway, nowadays people were so used to background music of all kinds. So she added that she was fond of music, though she was afraid she did not know much about it.

“Just the same with me,” said Margot Royce, “and
three bedrooms too, it will be such a comfort to have a spare room, we’ve had to put up our guests in our sitting-room, such a bore, and the little room at the end of the passage will do nicely for my small daughter. You don’t mind children, do you, Mrs Sanderson? Harriet is a very harmless one.”

Mrs Sanderson was really pleased at this. She very much wanted children at the Lotus House again, in fact it turned the scales decisively in Mrs Royce’s favour, but she felt a little doubtful about the room at the end of the passage. It had been used as a box-room in the old days, though it did possess a tiny window. Letty could not help thinking it was a pity not to allot one of the proper bedrooms to Harriet, but of course it was not her business.

“It’s all just what I might have dreamed of, but never thought to find, and to discover you, too, Mrs Sanderson,” said Margot, turning to Letty with that entrancing smile and opening her large very blue eyes wide — “you too, how lucky we shall be to have
you
as our landlady and friend.” She drew a silvery scarf round her neck, which was of just the right proportions, not too long and thin, nor too short, like Letty’s own. Her thick little neck and, worse still, her double chin, had always been a grief to her. “I must fly,” said Margot, “Andrew comes home for lunch and I always like to have something ready for him, and I’m simply longing to tell him all about you and this wonderful flat. We shall certainly want to take it and to move in as soon as possible.”

She swept gracefully out of the house and into her rather shabby little Mini, leant forward to wave through the window and was off, leaving Letty, quite delighted, on the doorstep.

“I don’t think I could do better,” she said to herself contentedly, and it was only later that she remembered that she had not said anything about references.

“One thing I must impress upon you, my dear Mrs Sanderson,” Mr Donovan had said, “don’t agree to anything without taking up references, and be sure you don’t trust to written ones only; I will gladly investigate personally myself if you would like me to do so.”

So
kind
of
him,
thought Letty,
and
now
I
have
practical
ly
agreed
to
let
the
best
flat
without
even
mentioning
the
matter.
Still,
I’m
sure
it’s
all
right.
He
is
a
Doctor
of
Science,
she
said,
and
she
is
so
delightful,
such
lovely
hair
and
obviously
a
good
wife
too,
and
with
a
little
girl
nearly
eight
years
old.
She confessed her lapse to Mr Donovan but there was such a gleam in her eye as she did so that, though he intended to look into the matter himself, he was convinced that nothing less than a proven record for crime could shake her determination to allow Dr and Mrs Royce and Harriet to move in as soon as possible.

If she had slipped up over references for the Royces, Mrs Sanderson was able to produce impeccable ones for Aubrey Stacey, the would-be tenant of the top-floor flat. He was a schoolmaster, a bachelor with a brother who was a barrister. Moreover he and his brother had both been educated at Westminster.
Such
a
coincidence,
thought Letty with pleasure, for Westminster had been Edward’s public school. She remembered this because he had once impressed her with its superiority over all other public schools. “It is the only one left up in London, the only one that counts, and London is the greatest city in the world.” Yes, of course, he had told her this at George V’s coronation. Edward had been in the upper school then and had a seat in the Abbey with the Westminster boys. This proved his point. Of course this had been long before Aubrey Stacey’s time. He had read English at Oxford and was on the staff of a neighbouring large comprehensive school. He was not very communicative about his career but she got the impression that besides teaching he also wrote a little.

“Aubrey Stacey, an attractive name, don’t you think? And he looks like Shelley,” Letty said to Mr Donovan. “At least,” she added honestly, “he has a brow like Shelley’s.” His receding chin beneath a straggling beard were less impressive, but he was an old Westminster boy with a poetic forehead and had a barrister for a brother.

“I don’t consider that Shelley would have been a very desirable tenant,” said Mr Donovan. Really, there was no satisfying him! “Still,” he admitted, “he is certainly respectably connected. I think I have heard of that brother of his and he has a secure job.”

Letty discovered another point in Mr Stacey’s favour — he seemed to take especially to the old night nursery. No one had happened to tell the workmen to remove the bars from the windows and Letty apologized for this.

“I remember peering through such bars with my brother,” he said smiling. “We used to play that we were monkeys in the zoo. I think I should like them left, so don’t trouble about them. I shall make this my bedroom, Mrs Sanderson, if I am lucky enough to be allowed to take your attractive flat. It is on the quiet side of the house and I am a poor sleeper.”

“Do you know,” said Letty, “I often used to sleep here myself as a child and I remember the shadow of those very same bars falling across the whole room in a pattern. You’ll think me fanciful, I expect, but I still feel this room is the safest place in all the world.”

The basement flat took the longest to be settled for there were several applicants before a really satisfactory one materialized. There was the young couple, unmarried, uninhibited and very untidy. Old Mrs Sanderson was not yet acclimatized to the permissive society and although she found the couple interesting, she was bewildered by them. The girl announced that she was an artist, “entirely committed”. What the young man did she never
discovered — he remained speechless throughout the interview. “We want to find somewhere to leave our things while we tramp around Europe for the next month or so,” explained the girl. “You see, I am not sure yet whether Jason is quite sound on the baroque and it makes a difference to our future. I may not wish to remain with him, but in any case if we take the flat, it will be in my name and I shall be responsible.” But to Letty this did not appear a promising enough proposition for the Lotus House, whatever Jason might think of the baroque.

Then there was the anxious lady with the cats. Not that she was physically accompanied by them but they were very much with her in spirit.

“I am having to give up my home, alas, since my friend with whom I have shared it hitherto has moved away. There was a little difference between us about the pussies. It is quite a large house and what with the rates and the repairs and the heating, I cannot keep it on alone and must find somewhere smaller. But the pussies — I had ten of them and I’ve managed to find homes for Don and Titus and Sammy and Bogey. It’s the girls who are the problem, though they are not really so, the dears, they are so good and I should hate to lose any of them. Susie is a wonderful mother and Di, she’s the huntress, why she even caught a swallow once, and Plush is so affectionate, and of course it’s out of the question to part with Clytemnestra, the largest black Persian that ever was seen I assure you, Mrs Sanderson, and Yum Yum and Peep Bo are Siamese and were given me by a dear, dear friend. So you see I must have a flat with an access to a nice garden and this would suit me perfectly. You’ve no idea how hard it has been to find just the right place for my little family.”

Letty felt she did indeed know just how hard it had been and was still going to be, for she wondered how long the nice garden would remain nice with six cats dividing it between them — and would they even stay at six with
Susie being such a good mother? Besides, she loved birds as well as flowers, so she screwed up her courage to say “No” and to send the poor cat lady reproachfully and sorrowfully on her way.

At last, after one or two more unsatisfactory aspirants, a Miss Cook arrived from the agents one day. She was a retired Post Office official. Letty gathered that she had inherited a little money lately and wanted to settle in a place of her own.

“My brother is selling my parents’ house with my full consent. I think I would prefer a flat if it is entirely self-contained.”

“Oh yes,” said Letty, “this is the most self-contained flat in the whole house because it is the only one with a separate entrance, as you see.”

The basement, having practically no associations with the child Letty, and needing more radical conversion than any other part of the building, had been turned over to the architect without restrictions. As a result it was the most convenient of the flats with really modern offices, all shining with tiles and white paint and stainless steel. The big old kitchen had been divided into a very pleasant small sitting-room and a bedroom — the sitting-room with a door opening into the garden.

Miss Cook had a singularly inexpressive countenance. Her black hair was cut close in a tight fringed cap. She had the type of face that one cannot imagine as ever having looked young. It had a small buttoned-up mouth and round black eyes, and her cheeks, innocent of face powder, were reddened with a network of roughened veins. Letty wondered why she looked vaguely familiar. Later it suddenly came to her — Miss Cook reminded her of a Dutch doll — indeed of one particular Dutch doll, the one that had been Mr and Mrs Golightly’s cook in Selina’s doll’s house, and who had been selected at the toy shop for this purpose because of Jane, the cook, in
Beatrix Potter’s
Two
Bad
Mice,
but Selina had not called her Jane, she had always just been ‘Cooksie’.

“Of course,” Letty said to herself, very amused at the thought, “the resemblance is striking and her name actually
is
Cook. How very right and proper to have a cook in the basement of the Lotus House again, only unfortunately she’s not a real one. How convenient if she were.” She had yet to cope with the problem of domestic help for herself — the lodgers would see to their own rooms, of course, but she felt she herself would like some help if she could get it.

Miss Cook, or ‘Cooksie’ as Letty could not help secretly calling her, provided a watertight reference from the Post Office and was accepted for the basement flat, and so the problem of tenants was settled to Mrs Sanderson’s satisfaction.

Meanwhile they in their turn were summing up their future landlady and the Lotus House. Margot Royce, as she drove away, not actually to prepare a meal for a husband but to keep an appointment with her hairdresser, congratulated herself on a good morning’s work. She had left a note for Andrew about his lunch, she herself would have a sandwich and a cup of coffee while her hair was being re-tinted. She got back to the cottage a couple of hours later to find, as she expected, that he had not bothered with eating, but was busy working out some problem in his head while playing accurately and endlessly one of Bach’s Fugues.

“I think it will do very nicely,” she said switching on the cooker.

“What will?” enquired Andrew politely at the end of the next bar.

“That flat I told you I was going to see this morning, nice rooms, good outlook, good garage and convenient for shops.”

“Good,” said Andrew again, and then, more attentively,
“you sound like a house agent. What about the rent?” Though he admitted that Margot had quite a flair for business, yet she was apt to be oblivious of costs once she had set her heart on something.

She named the rent and Andrew lifted his eyebrows. “You can’t get anything decent for much less in that neighbourhood, really, Andrew.”

“We can’t afford that
and
Harriet’s school,” he said.

“Oh well,” said Margot, “she’ll have to leave, then. Anyway it’s about time she got away from Queensmead now, she’s had long enough there.”

“You said the other day she was so happy that it would be a mistake to move her for another year at least.”

“It wasn’t the other day, it was last term. Mrs Campbell’s over-protective, I consider, and it’s time Harriet learned to rough it a bit at an ordinary school. There’s a good one within easy reach I believe — I’ll make enquiries.”

Andrew said no more. He did not particularly want to move from the cottage, but he was not unprepared. He had noticed apprehensively when it had turned from being “an adorable find, so easy to heat and look at the garden, a dream, and really plenty of room for your piano,” into “a poky little hole with your piano taking up the whole sitting-room, and the garden! Neither of us have time to cope with it, it’s absurd.”