The Wind Off the Sea Read online

  He paused to make a final adjustment to his bow tie, cocking his head to one side and sighing deeply, knowing that since he hardly ever set foot outside Bexham there was precious little chance of his meeting anyone else who might be suitable for a man of his standing.

  I’m afraid it looks like Ellen, he told his reflection gloomily. I’m afraid it very much looks as though I am to be stuck with the dreaded Ellen as occasional company, until I am finally gathered to my maker. Dear Lord above us – perish the thought, and let this Waldo Astley leave Bexham before too long so that Gloria will notice me.

  With a last look at his now fully dressed and dapper self in his dressing glass, Lionel gave another sigh, packed his silver cigarette case into his inside pocket, checked the wad of notes in his front money pocket, and headed downstairs. He met Mattie on the stairs, happily with only his grandson in tow.

  ‘The very man we were coming to see, all pink and perfect, bathed and ready for bed,’ Mattie told him. ‘Come for our goodnight kiss.’

  ‘Goodnight, Nipper,’ Lionel said, picking up the little boy and smiling at him. ‘Sorry we don’t have time for a bedtime story tonight.’

  ‘It’s all right, Daddy,’ Mattie reassured him. ‘John’s promised to read to him.’

  ‘John?’

  ‘John Tate? Remember? This afternoon?’

  ‘John Tate?’ Lionel repeated, trying to feign ignorance. ‘What’s he doing back here?’

  ‘I asked him in for a drink. If that’s all right.’

  Lionel was about to tell her that it most certainly was not all right, what with him going out for the evening and Mattie being left all alone in the house, when he suddenly realised the absurdity of the situation. He couldn’t possibly play the strong father, not with a daughter who not only was well and long over the age of consent, but had a five-year-old son whom he was standing holding in his arms. With a weak smile he gave Max a kiss on his cheek and handed him back to his mother.

  ‘There’s some gin in the dining room cabinet, and some whisky,’ he told her. ‘He’ll probably prefer whisky.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Mattie smiled suddenly. ‘Have a lovely evening, Daddy. And don’t let Gloria hog the auction. It only makes you overbid. Remember what Mummy used to say – it’s only a game, not a gunfight.’

  ‘Try telling Gloria that – her and her pearl-handled pistols,’ Lionel said gloomily, making his way downstairs, knowing all the same that Mattie was right.

  Ever since Gloria had teamed up with Waldo Astley it seemed to Lionel that he had never suffered such a run of defeats at the bridge table, and it was precisely because he was letting the two of them get to him that he was overbidding, something which would normally be entirely against his nature. With that very much in mind he left the house, determined that this would be the evening when he would resume his former conservative style of play. No damn Yankee was consistently going to get the better of Lionel Eastcott at the bridge table, no sir. Tonight he would show them how to play bridge by the British book.

  Unfortunately Waldo Astley was there before him, with, it would seem, his own plan well and truly already mapped out.

  By the time John had finished reading The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies he realised that Max was fast asleep, obviously knocked out by his exertions on the beach, not to mention the wonderful sea air. Carefully brushing a lock of hair from the child’s eyes, he pulled his sheet tighter round him, and tiptoed downstairs to where Mattie had bottles and glasses ready for their drinks.

  ‘Every time I return to Bexham, I seem to see it as if for the first time,’ he confessed, after his first generous whisky. ‘Everything anyone could ever want is in Bexham, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Bottoms up!’ Mattie replied, raising her refilled glass because she did not want to be drawn on the subject of Bexham.

  ‘Cheerio.’ There was a pause, before John continued. ‘Isn’t it strange that we’ve both lived in this village since we were small and yet we hardly know each other.’

  ‘Exceptionally strange, but probably just as well. I was a beastly little girl, and I know from everything that was said about the Tate boys that you, on the other hand, were quite perfect.’ Mattie pulled a mock straight face and John laughed.

  Mattie stared at him for a second. After another day on the beach his town pallor was already being supplanted by a healthy colour. He looked boyish, and handsome, but most of all reassuringly kind.

  The hurt that Mattie had known getting over Max’s father’s wartime exit from her life was, she thought, enough to have left its mark on her for ever. Handsome, older, American and married, following his call to duty, Max’s father had left Mattie behind in London. Mattie who probably really was no more than his London fling, his pretty little driver, who had not unsurprisingly fallen in love with the handsome American general in the back seat. He might sometimes have given her a thought when he returned to the States, but, she reckoned, no more than a thought and he certainly never knew about Max.

  Mattie Eastcott – pretty little driver I used to have in England during the war – I remember her. That’s all she would be now, a recollection, a memory. Not the very real part of his life she had been during the terrible bombardment of London when together they had dodged the bombs and made passionate love in Michael’s little apartment in Marble Arch. When they were together, it seemed as though that is how they would stay: as one, lying there in bed listening to the bombs whistling down from the skies above to explode in a neighbouring part of the city. They never talked about their future because they knew they had none, yet such was the intensity of their affair – a love affair that had sent them both to heaven in the middle of a terrible war – that even though no mention was made of the impossibility of its enduring beyond the moment, while they were together both of them truly believed that they could never be apart. That was the nature of that sort of love, its very insecurities locking it into some mad non-existent security.

  And then suddenly Michael had gone, forced to leave her as suddenly as he had come into her life, ordered back to the States to help lead the invasion of Europe, leaving Mattie alone and, as she’d already known, pregnant. For a long time Mattie thought she might never recover from either shock – that of Michael’s sudden departure – although she had always known such a thing was inevitable – or from the reality of her pregnancy. She had wanted the baby, had never considered anything other than having the baby, but in her moments of solitude she had wondered how she would now cope with the aftermath of her passionate affair, or with the reality of bringing up a child alone. But now, as she sat talking to the sweet-natured and thoughtful John Tate, for the first time since the war had ended Mattie found herself thanking God that she hadn’t married Michael, that he had gone home without any knowledge of the physical state in which he was leaving her, that he knew nothing about Max. Now John Tate had come into her life Michael had all of a sudden become the past, a figure quickly becoming dim and distant, a memory to be buried for ever in the mists of time, just as half of their London had been buried in the thick choking dust of the bombed-out buildings.

  She felt so different now, sitting there with John. It seemed as they talked and laughed that they had always known each other, and yet the questions they asked were the questions strangers ask. In other words it was a classic case of two casual acquaintances, who had grown up in the same place at the same time, suddenly falling in love and finding themselves to be almost perfect strangers. They talked into the night, until long after the moon had taken the place of the summer sun, when just as suddenly as they had begun their long conversation, they fell to silence, not because they had nothing more to say to each other but because their emotions had finally overtaken their words.

  ‘It’s getting late. I think perhaps it’s time I went home,’ John said, after they had spent what seemed like an immeasurable amount of time staring into each other’s eyes. They were still sitting well apart from each other, Mattie on the edge of the stone balustrade
that fronted the terrace and John in a wooden armchair that was part of the garden furniture, yet such was the feeling of intimacy that hung in the summer night air that they might just as well have been lying in bed together.

  ‘I really think I ought to go home,’ John repeated, but still he made no move.

  ‘You don’t have to go,’ Mattie said, trying to sound matter of fact but not succeeding at all. ‘At least not on my account.’

  ‘I think I ought to,’ John insisted. ‘I don’t think really I should still be here when your father gets back. Might not quite be the done thing. Not as early on as this.’

  ‘Early on?’ Mattie laughed. ‘I thought you said it was getting late.’

  ‘I meant as early on in – in our – well. In our – I mean it is the first time we’ve been – I was about to say been out.’ John grinned. ‘But of course we haven’t actually. We’ve rather stayed in I’d say, haven’t we? Anyway – I think it might be better if I went now, before your father came back – came back and said – you know – I say – what, you still here, John Tate? Isn’t it high time you made some sort of tracks?’

  John’s more than passable imitation of Mattie’s father made her laugh, much to John’s relief.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Mattie assured him. ‘When Daddy’s out playing bridge at Mrs Morrison’s he loses all trace of time. Him and his bridge. Honestly.’

  ‘The first resort of the lonely, and last of the loveless,’ John said, getting to his feet. ‘Hope I don’t become a hardened bridge player.’

  ‘It’s not the real reason you’re going,’ Mattie said quietly as she too stood up to move in front of John and look into his eyes. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ John admitted after a moment. ‘But it won’t do any harm to make a good impression.’

  ‘Very crafty.’ Mattie laughed. ‘A sort of Trojan horse really. It won’t fool Daddy, don’t you worry. Daddy is not that easily gulled.’

  John grinned and was just about to lean forward to kiss Mattie when he thought better of it and wished her good night instead.

  ‘You really are going then?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s been a wonderful evening.’

  ‘I was forgetting what good boys you Tates were.’

  ‘Absolutely, Mattie,’ John agreed with a straight face. ‘But I wouldn’t count on it for too long, Miss Eastcott.’

  John was long gone by the time Lionel arrived home in the best of spirits, having enjoyed a surprising triumph at the card table. He was loth to think his success was in any way due to Waldo Astley, yet as he now sat on the edge of his bed slowly undressing and reviewing the events of an evening that was turning out to be wholly remarkable, he had to admit that his good fortune had started the moment Waldo had taken charge.

  ‘Mr Eastcott.’ Waldo had greeted him on arrival, taking him aside at once. ‘I have a little strategy, in which I am sure you might take an interest. I noted your card skills from day one, if I may say so, and am a little envious of your generally scrupulously correct bidding.’

  ‘Generally being the operative word here, Mr Astley,’ Lionel returned. ‘Of late I’ve become somewhat quixotic. It’s not like me to be sorry rather than safe.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t consider you a safe player by any means, Mr Eastcott. It’s just that you have been increasingly handicapped by the partners you have been allotted, and quite deliberately so.’ Waldo glanced with an indicative smile in the direction of their hostess. ‘Which brings me to my strategy, Mr Eastcott. Namely that tonight I shall be your partner. I think we shall make an excellent team. Now before you protest—’ Waldo held up one beautifully manicured hand. ‘The die is already cast. I have already had the matter agreed by Mrs Morrison, but for entirely different reasons from the ones I have given you. I’m afraid I made out that it was your partners who were suffering, rather than you.’

  Waldo stopped and looked at Lionel, smiling a sideways smile at him as if challenging him to protest. To his surprise, Lionel did not feel affronted, so, having agreed their playing conventions, after a brief buffet supper they sat down to play.

  This time there was no upping or downing of stakes since all rubbers now played in Gloria’s increasingly select bridge school were set at the daunting level of one shilling a hundred, meaning that rash bidding and careless lay were felt very hard in the pocket.

  But from the moment Waldo teamed up with Lionel the wind was in their sails. It was a marriage made in Contract Bridge heaven. Lionel’s classical conservatism and intelligence allied to Waldo’s brio and bravura made them a formidable team, so that by the end of a long evening of cards they got up to leave the table thirty pounds the richer. Lionel finally got his way about how to split the winnings, managing to persuade Waldo to take half despite Waldo’s initial and very genuine reluctance to take any part of the winnings whatsoever.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ Waldo had said. ‘It was purely your skill that saw us through tonight, and my pleasure has been to play as your partner. That is reward enough. But wasn’t I right about us? Didn’t I say we would make a splendid team?’

  So Lionel had left Gloria’s house well pleased, an emotion not shared by Gloria who he was convinced had actually slammed the door behind him. Or perhaps the slam had been directed at Waldo, since he had found himself being joined very shortly after his own departure by his partner at cards.

  ‘Might I offer you a lift, Mr Eastcott?’ Waldo had said genially, puffing away at his cigar, which was fast becoming a trademark. ‘Do you have far to go, sir?’

  ‘Very kind of you, but no, I don’t have far to go. As you must surely realise by now, Mr Astley, there isn’t a great deal of Bexham.’

  ‘Perhaps not, my good fellow. But there is certainly quite a lot to it. Do you get up to town much? There’s quite a game arranged for the beginning of October, and I would be delighted if you would consent to play as my partner again. I assure you we shall be well within our depth.’

  Lionel had looked at his companion with a certain amount of interest tinged with a certain amount of trepidation. He had never in his life before played bridge for the sort of money he was now playing for, and which he could certainly not afford to lose. Yet he sensed that the offer Waldo Astley was making might well entail stakes considerably higher than one shilling a hundred.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Mr Eastcott, but don’t you worry about it, sir.’ Waldo had smiled. ‘I shall underwrite the entire enterprise. You won’t have to risk a penny of your own cash.’

  ‘You must know so many players who are better than I – richer too.’

  ‘I am asking you for your great card skills and those alone, my dear fellow. Don’t look so worried – there are no catches, no bear traps.’ Waldo grinned hugely, puffing on his cigar. ‘Life is for the living, sir – and if you come along with me, we shall live it to the full.’

  ‘Might I let you know?’ Lionel had wondered. ‘I’m getting a little long in the tooth to go rushing into things headlong.’

  ‘Take just as long as you like, Mr Eastcott. Provided I have a “yes” by the end of the month. Goodnight to you, sir.’

  Doffing his large-brimmed summer hat, Waldo had disappeared into the darkness.

  So yes, Lionel considered, leaning back and slipping off his thin silk black socks. Yes, all in all, it had been a most interesting evening, as well as a most rewarding one – spoiled only by his growing concern over his daughter’s relationship with young John Tate.

  Mattie had still been up when Lionel had returned. He found her in the drawing room listening happily to her Bing Crosby records on the gramophone, sitting by the open French windows with her feet up on a footstool in front of her gazing happily up at the stars. Lionel didn’t even have to ask how her evening went or how she was feeling. He simply poured himself a nightcap, wished her a gruff good night and took himself off to bed.

  His daughter’s happy frame of mind managed to take more than a little gilt off the night’s gingerbread
, jolting Lionel back to reality. On his way home he had been contentedly imagining himself sitting at the smartest of London card tables making a lot of money in partnership with his new colleague, only to open his front door and find himself being reminded of his current nagging fear, that of the possibility of losing the daughter he had counted on to take care of him in his old age in return for the way he had taken care of her in what he thought of as her time of extremis.

  It wasn’t a lot to ask for, he told himself as he continued to prepare himself for bed. He certainly wouldn’t stop her from having any relationships with the opposite sex, but not anything serious and certainly not with anyone like young John Tate. The Tate boy would just take her for a ride, and even if he didn’t, as soon as his parents found out they would have a blue fit. Their eldest boy having a liaison with a young woman with an illegitimate child? It would be quite out of the question, and Lionel doubted very much that young John Tate wasn’t already aware of the inevitable opposition. So what would he do? He would just muck about with Mattie’s affections. He would flatter her, make it look as though he was serious, have his wicked way with her and then vanish over the hills in a cloud of dust. In fact he probably had it all mapped out to fit nicely in with his seaside holiday.

  Over my dead body, Lionel growled to himself as he turned his bed down. Let him just try – because it will be over my dead body.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Don’t you sometimes wonder what he’s up to?’ Meggie demanded of Judy, lighting up another cigarette before continuing to pace the drawing room of Cucklington House. ‘He arrives here out of the blue, gets himself installed as the house guest of that perfectly dreadful Morrison woman, and imposes himself on the rest of us.’ There was a short pause as Meggie stood drawing on her cigarette. ‘I dare say he seduced the stupid woman, flattered her, made love to her, and is now in the process of scalping her at the bridge table.’