The Wind Off the Sea Page 17

  ‘Oh, really, Meggie,’ Judy protested. ‘Mrs Morrison may be a merry widow, but she’s surely not the idiot you make her out to be. Anyway, from what I heard Mr Astley is the perfect gentleman, whatever you say.’

  ‘That is such a contradiction in terms, Judy. An American? A perfect gentleman? Mr Astley is what most of his fellow countrymen are, Judy, believe me. He’s a businessman, or an out and out adventurer. Look at what he’s up to in the village! Buying up Peter Sykes’s garage? Why? Why buy up some run-down, hole in the wall garage in a village that is practically falling down, never mind closing down? You can’t tell me that’s either a bargain or a good investment. Yet along comes Mr Waldo Astley and what happens? He buys the tumbledown garage and not only that – he starts to invest in it! Someone told me they’re planning to build a showroom up there now. A showroom, Judy. In Peter Sykes’s old garage? That’s little more substantial than the privy that stands behind it? And that’s not all – Mr Astley it seems has also taken a fancy to the Wiltons’ house on the opposite side of the estuary. You know the house I mean. Markers – that lovely old house right on the edge of the water …’ Meggie pointed across the estuary.

  ‘I love Markers, I always have,’ Judy said. ‘We used to go to lovely parties there, before the war. Even my mother likes Markers. And you know what a house snob she is. She can’t generally abide Edwardian houses, but she’s managed to make Markers an exception.’

  ‘It seems Mr Astley has decided that this is the house where he would like to live,’ Meggie continued inexorably, as if Judy hadn’t even spoken. ‘So what does he do? He knocks on the door and proceeds to make the poor bewildered Wiltons an offer for their home that they could not possibly refuse without appearing to be utterly unreasonable. Never mind that they have nowhere to go – he just buys them out.’

  ‘The Wiltons are hardly poor, Meggie, and of course they have somewhere to go,’ Judy protested. ‘They have three other houses – one in London, one in Scotland and another waterside house down in Cornwall. They were probably delighted to get rid of Markers. They’ve hardly been in Bexham since the war, and as they readily admit – according to my mother-in-law – they far prefer Cornwall.’

  Meggie stared at her, rather crossly.

  ‘Loopy told me,’ Judy assured her. ‘She knows them through the Yacht Club. In fact according to Loopy the Wiltons couldn’t believe their luck when Mr Astley made the offer on the house. No-one wants to buy old houses at this moment, as you well know. They were actually delighted by the offer.’

  ‘Even so,’ Meggie said, lobbing her cigarette out of a window, the wind blown considerably out of her sails. ‘It seems more than a little bit what you might call patronising.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Meggie!’ Judy laughed. ‘You’ll be going on about the War Debt soon.’

  But in spite of her laughter, Judy felt a little cross with Meggie. She very rarely got on a high horse and took unreasonable exception, yet to Judy that seemed to be exactly what she was doing now. That she was taking particular exception to Waldo Astley annoyed Judy even more because what no-one was ready to admit was that Mr Waldo Astley was bringing more than a little excitement to Bexham, and not just at the card tables.

  ‘Why have you taken against Mr Astley?’ she asked. ‘Was it something at the party? Was he rude to you? I can’t imagine him being rude to anyone, actually – and he certainly didn’t get as drunk as everyone else, most of whom disgraced themselves.’

  ‘I don’t know what he was doing at my party, if you really want to know, Judy. I can’t think why I invited him.’

  ‘I know why – seeing what a shortage of young men there is in the village.’

  ‘I’m not in the habit of asking people to my house whom I don’t know. Particularly ne’er do wells such as Mr Waldo Astley. And what sort of name is that, for crying out loud? Waldo, for heaven’s sake. I don’t know where Americans come up with these names, I really don’t.’

  ‘Of course you could be taking such an exception to our Mr Astley for quite a different reason, couldn’t you?’ Judy suggested provocatively.

  ‘Do tell,’ Meggie said icily. ‘I cannot wait to hear.’

  ‘Because you’ve developed a bit of a pash.’

  ‘A bit of a pash? A bit of a pash?’ Meggie threw her head back and laughed.

  ‘You’re showing all the classic signs of falling,’ Judy replied.

  ‘And how would you know?’ Meggie asked lightly and she lit a fresh cigarette. ‘You’re hardly an expert – and no, I most certainly do not have a bit of a pash on Mr Waldo Astley. In fact I’d say if anyone’s developed a bit of a pash on our confidence trickster, I could well be looking at her.’

  ‘Me?’ Judy protested with a squeak, colouring bright pink at the same time. ‘How ridiculous! Me? Don’t be absurd!’

  ‘You’ve gone a jolly interesting colour.’ Meggie grinned, triumphant.

  ‘No I haven’t,’ Judy argued. ‘All I think about Mr Astley is that I can’t see what actual wrong he has done, at least not yet. Maybe he will prove to be a complete horror and take everyone for the most awful ride, but as things stand now I can’t see how Bexham’s become a worse place because of Mr Astley’s generosity, misplaced or not.’

  ‘Really?’ Meggie stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we? Meantime I’ll bet you my best new nightdress, not to mention my last pair of silk stockings, that Mr Astley’s motives are not exactly altruistic. That whom he is out for is in fact Number One. You just wait and see.’

  ‘I shall,’ Judy said. ‘And you’re on.’

  ‘On what, darling?’

  ‘The bet, silly. I accept your wager.’

  Judy smiled and extended one hand to cement the bet.

  ‘The roof will last the summer all right,’ Peter Sykes assured Waldo as they inspected Markers, Waldo’s newly acquired Bexham home, together, while Rusty and Tam played happily in the garden. ‘In fact, I don’t think it’s near as bad as everyone’s making out. The trusses are perfectly sound – really the tiles more than anything. Where they got dislodged in the winter gales, and all the snow got in.’

  ‘That could account for the main bedroom ceiling collapsing, I suppose,’ Waldo agreed. ‘Not to mention all those large damp patches.’

  ‘Frankly, a few days spent refixing the tiles on the north side would sort out most of the troubles,’ Peter went on. ‘Probably have to do all the battens again because a lot of them have rotted – but that’s no great problem, is it, Mr Astley?’

  ‘Then let us go to it.’ Waldo smiled, tipping his hat back from his face, and putting his hands in his pockets. ‘If we muster a bit of extra labour I don’t think we have the need for any permissions, do you? We’re not going to be using any new materials.’

  ‘We can repair from old, Mr Astley – that should do the trick all right.’

  ‘Good. Now follow me, Peter – I want you to see something else. And call your wife and your little boy in too – this is something I think they too should see. It is, as they say, of interest.’

  Waldo led the way through a pass door in the east wall of the house into a self-contained wing that contained two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and a living room, kitchen-diner and cloakroom downstairs. The windows of the main bedroom and the living room below had a southern aspect looking out over the grounds at the back so there was abundant light.

  ‘Room for a couple, dare I say – or even a young family.’ Waldo turned round and looked at Peter and Rusty.

  ‘Very nice too, Mr Astley,’ Peter agreed. ‘Make a perfectly good home for a live-in couple.’

  ‘Yes, perfectly good. I would agree, Peter. Plenty of room to swing an army of cats, I’d say.’

  Rusty eyed what seemed to her to be unbelievably spacious accommodation, and tried to imagine what it would be like to live in such a place.

  ‘Besides which, the Wiltons have been gracious enough to allow me to buy all the furnishings in here. They
’re not bad furnishings either, as furnishings go. That is to say, they’re well made, and not soaking with mildew after all that rain in spring.’ Waldo sat himself down on the sofa and bounced up and down as he tried it out. ‘Yes, not bad at all,’ he pronounced. ‘Properly sprung, I’m happy to tell you. And note the electric wall fires in all the rooms. No more freezing in winter, eh?’

  ‘Not for those that can afford such luxury,’ Rusty agreed shyly, feeling slightly awkward as she always did in Mr Astley’s company, since she had never quite got over his kindness the night he had found her in Mrs Morrison’s house. ‘Electricity doesn’t come cheap, you know, Mr Astley.’

  ‘I intend to throw the heating in as part and parcel.’

  ‘Someone’s going to be lucky then.’

  Peter gave Rusty a brief look, raising his eyebrows as he did so.

  Rusty frowned, wondering where all this was leading, yet finding herself oddly excited because she thought that Mr Astley could not possibly be cruel enough to lead a couple such as her and her husband up such a pretty garden path. There might well be more than an outside chance that this proposed enterprise would involve them.

  ‘No,’ Waldo continued. ‘I wouldn’t make anyone pay for their heating on top, not at today’s prices.’

  ‘Like I said, Mr Astley,’ Peter replied, interrupting hastily. ‘Excellent accommodation. Someone would fall lucky to have this.’

  ‘And what is your wife’s view?’

  ‘I agree with my husband, Mr Astley. It’s really lovely actually. Whoever lives here is going to be – well – very lucky.’

  She bit her lip as if to stop herself saying too much, if she hadn’t done so already. Since Peter had got his windfall from the sale of the Jaguar to Mr Astley, Rusty had begun imagining that her dream about the flat for rent above the greengrocer’s shop in the High Street might now become a reality, but however well they did it up it would never measure up to accommodation like this. This was so much more spacious and light, being more like a small house in itself rather than a somewhat cramped set of rooms stuck above the smell and noise of a busy greengrocery. Of course, compared to how they were living now at her parents’, any place of their own would be a blessing, but a place like this would be more than just a blessing, it would be heaven.

  Even the ultra-conservative Peter, a man who worried night and morning about money and security, had finally allowed that with the huge profit he had made from the sale of the Jaguar to Mr Astley they could now seriously consider a move to an apartment such as they had found in the High Street. However, thanks to the expressions of foreboding and repeated forecasts of economic doom and gloom that had emanated from Mr Todd following the announcement of the Sykeses’ proposed evacuation, Peter was now having second thoughts, believing his father-in-law’s assertion that economic recovery was far from certain, and that if this was indeed so, rather than find themselves over their heads in debt, the best move to make was no move.

  ‘If the government fail in steadying the ship,’ Mr Todd had taken to warning the young marrieds, ‘which in my opinion they have every chance of doing given the present economic climate, we could all find ourselves even worse off than we were before. So much the best thing to do with this windfall of yours is to save it for the famous rainy day, which as far as I’m concerned could be any day now.’

  Mindful of her father’s prognostications, Rusty decided that much the best thing was not to say another word, just in case of quite what she wasn’t at all sure, but just in case. In order to make absolutely sure she wasn’t going to be responsible for anything that might somehow jeopardise her little family’s future, she took her little boy’s hand and began to lead him towards the doors that opened on to the garden, only to find her way blocked by Waldo.

  ‘Rusty? Is something the matter? You’ve said so little about this place, I am beginning to wonder whether you really like it one bit.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Astley.’ Rusty looked mortified. The last thing she wanted to do was upset Mr Astley because ever since the night she had been discovered in Mrs Morrison’s house she had always had it at the back of her mind that if Mr Astley should suddenly take against her, or if she did something stupid and upset him, he would tell on her, tell the whole of Bexham, and what small and relatively unimportant life she had would be well and truly ruined.

  She felt a tug on her sleeve, and coming back to earth saw from Peter’s frown that she had been quite carried away by her worries.

  ‘As far as I can gather you said this would be an agreeable place to live, Rusty,’ Waldo was saying, in a tone that suggested he was repeating himself. ‘But what you did not say was whether or not you might find it agreeable.’

  Now Rusty was completely at sea, able only to imagine that during her reverie she had missed some vital part of the conversation. Unable to respond sensibly, she found herself staring from one man to the other, from Peter to Mr Astley and then back to Peter.

  ‘I don’t think she heard a word you said, Mr Astley.’ Peter smiled. ‘Or else she didn’t quite catch your drift.’

  ‘Then we shall have to start over, Peter.’ Waldo took an exaggeratedly deep breath, half closing his eyes while he prepared to begin again.

  ‘Mr Astley is suggesting that we live here, Rusty,’ Peter chimed in. ‘That we have this quite splendid accommodation in return for working for him.’

  The information he was about to repeat having been relayed for him, Waldo closed his eyes entirely and sighed.

  While Rusty frowned.

  ‘I don’t understand, Peter,’ she said. ‘How could we live here – I mean how could we possibly work for him? For Mr Astley here? What about the garage?’

  ‘The garage will not be affected, Rusty,’ Waldo assured her. ‘You could both live here, and Peter can still work at the garage – in fact I shall insist that he does, such is my investment in the place – the only condition being that you agree to be my housekeeper. Because I am most definitely going to need a cook-housekeeper. You’re looking at a fellow who boils eggs in a kettle, and has absolutely no idea how to make toast let alone a pot roast.’

  Rusty smiled shyly. Encouraged, Waldo continued.

  ‘The idea, Rusty, would be for you to look after me and my house, while your husband looks after my business interest in his garage. You can both live here rent free, since you will be working for me, and I can keep a weather eye on your husband in case he decides to take the day off and spend it in bed rather than go and plough our joint furrow. So what do you say? Seems a very sensible arrangement to me.’

  Rusty wanted to agree, more than anything else in the world. But she knew it couldn’t be. She knew it had to be a daydream or a cruel joke, because no-one had thought it through properly. No-one had considered the one thing – or more properly the one person – who could prevent this dream from becoming a reality. So she said nothing, hoping that as long as she remained silent on the subject the others might agree to it before they discovered the snag.

  ‘It’s Tam, isn’t it?’ Waldo asked out of the blue. ‘You’re worried about your little boy. You’re wondering how could you manage with Tam running about all over the place – and not only that, you’re worried about how I would cope. Well, don’t. I don’t see any difficulty with your boy, Rusty. If you were at home rather than here doing your housework, what would you do? You’d have Tam running about the place while you set about your duties, and anyway he’ll be starting school soon. When he does, you’ll have more time to yourself, and in the meantime he’s old enough to play by himself in the garden here, which we shall make quite childproof. Lord above, when I was his age I spent most of my time playing by myself, being an only child just like young Tam. It’s good training. Teaches you to be resourceful and independent.’

  ‘Mr Astley’s right, Rusty,’ Peter put in quickly to prevent Rusty saying anything more. ‘Besides being extremely generous. There’s really nothing to stop us agreeing to this proposal.’

  At the ment
ion of Tam’s being an only child Rusty had immediately retreated back inside her head. There was no reason now why Tam should have to go on being an only child. If the three of them moved into this wonderful accommodation there’d be plenty of space for a new baby. And what a wonderful place to bring up a child – large, light rooms that overlooked the estuary from the front and the wonderful big garden that ran out to the rear. Perhaps now she would be able to make up for the loss of her baby, for the death of little Jeannie, and if not bury at least assuage the hurt she still felt so keenly. No-one had understood – nor, it seemed to her, tried to understand – what the loss of a baby meant to its mother, to the person who had been carrying the tiny life around within her for nine long months. Having gone through two pregnancies Rusty now believed there was something mystical in that state, that being pregnant must be part of a mystery that had to do with the rhythms of the universe, the movement of the stars and the moon – that this all too common human condition lifted a woman into a state of spiritual consciousness that made others either envious or wilfully uninterested, so that perhaps it came as a strange relief when they found you had lost your baby, such were the primal and numinous sentiments having a baby encouraged. Once some people knew your mysterious odyssey had ended not in joy, but in tragedy, they felt this strange relief, and consequently were all too ready to come up with idiotic reasons why the baby had died.

  Listening to the radio too much was one. According to one mean-minded old woman in the village this was the reason Rusty had lost Jeannie, because she’d been listening to too much radio. Radio waves killed babies, didn’t she know that? Just as eating green potatoes might – or at the very least could – leave you with a deformed child, which again would be entirely your fault. But now if they lived in a place of their own, away from the know-alls, the wiseacres and the prophets of doom, Rusty might be able to have a beautiful brother or sister for Tam, and Peter and she could bring up a family in peace, health and happiness, which was a heart-stopping thought.