The Wind Off the Sea Read online

  ‘I promise I shall look both ways crossing the road.’ Meggie sighed, leaning over the table and holding up a lighted match for Waldo’s sputtering cigar. ‘I shan’t play with scissors, or matches, or fall asleep with a lighted cigarette in my hand – particularly since I don’t smoke no more, boss.’

  ‘I know I fuss, but it’s not always a bad thing,’ Waldo replied, taking a small notebook and pencil from his pocket. ‘Which is why I want to give you a name and number – just in case. I notice you still have that nasty cough, and just in case it turns into anything – or simply won’t go away – just in case – here’s the name and number of a top guy. Dr Farnsbarn’s OK for a village medicine man, but Albert Schweitzer he ain’t, and I want to make sure that while I’m away this time, if you do need anything you’re going to get it from the best. He’s a general specialist, and he’s a buddy of mine – we play a lot of cards together – and he’s also the guy who took the bullet from my chest. I only saw him last week, as it happens, for a check-up before I go away, and I told him about you. So he’ll know what to expect. He’s already fitting steel bars to his windows.’

  ‘Very funny I do not think, Mr Astley,’ Meggie said, taking the slip of paper from his hand and looking at the name, trying to maintain her air of devil may care but secretly happy that she now had someone who wanted to look after her because he loved her. ‘Very well,’ she sighed, folding and pocketing the paper. ‘If my hair catches fire I’ll give him a ring.’

  ‘You do that. Now come on – I have to leave in just over an hour.’

  ‘If you have that much time we could have another drink.’

  Waldo looked at her and shook his head very sadly. ‘It isn’t the drink I’d be wanting, Miss Meggie,’ he said in his stage Irish. ‘Sure it isn’t the drink at all, at all.’

  He thought she was still fast asleep as he slipped out of her bed and back into his clothes. But he was barely into his underthings before a warm arm snaked out from under the blanket and wrapped itself around his waist.

  ‘How can I possibly let you go after that,’ she whispered. ‘If I had a gun I’d hold it to your head and keep you as my prisoner.’

  ‘All I can say is it’s a pity you don’t have that gun,’ Waldo answered back. ‘But since you don’t, I shall have to overpower you with one more kiss and make my escape.’

  He kissed her for the last time and held her warm, soft and fragrant self to him, burying his face in her hair and holding her as tight as he could.

  ‘I love you, Meggie,’ he said. ‘Not just now, but always.’

  ‘You always pinch my lines,’ Meggie grumbled. ‘Now I don’t know what to say. Except that I love you too, and for ever more as well.’

  ‘That’ll do me just fine,’ Waldo said, gently letting her go. ‘Bye, sweetheart – you just take good care of yourself.’

  ‘God, how I hate life.’ Meggie sighed dramatically, falling back onto her pillow, one arm folded over her eyes not against the light but to blind her against what was happening. ‘Why can’t it all be just a little more straightforward?’

  ‘Because it wouldn’t be any fun, that’s why,’ Waldo replied, pulling his polo neck sweater over his head. ‘Now go back to sleep – and when you wake up—’

  ‘You’ll be gone.’

  ‘When you wake up I’ll be back.’

  Bending down, he kissed her once more on the lips. This time two long and slender arms wrapped themselves around the back of his neck and tried to pull him back down on to the bed.

  ‘No.’ Waldo resisted. ‘Don’t make this any harder than it already is.’

  ‘I hate you,’ Meggie said, her eyes locked on his. ‘I hate you for making me feel like this. I really, really hate you.’

  ‘Ditto.’ Waldo grinned. ‘Now go to sleep. That’s an order.’

  Meggie didn’t obey, as he knew she wouldn’t. She just lay there while Waldo finished dressing, watching him silently, committing every last thing to her memory. Before he went he pulled the soft wool blankets up under her chin, tucking her into her bed. Not daring to kiss her again, he kissed the tip of one finger instead and planted it on the centre of her mouth.

  She promptly seized the tip of the finger in her perfect white teeth and held it there.

  ‘Ow,’ Waldo said gently.

  ‘That’s to teach you for going,’ Meggie growled, then rolled on to her side away from him.

  ‘Love you the most,’ he said from the doorway.

  But the figure now huddled under the bedclothes said nothing. The figure under the bedclothes was not the sort of person to be heard to be crying.

  There was not a lot to occupy Meggie’s mind over the next few days as she tried to get used to life without Waldo, thinking as she did how ridiculous it was to find herself feeling as she did when only a matter of weeks before she had been an utterly independent person, able to cope with everything life had to throw at her without relying on anybody in particular. Yet now here she was, all because of this thing called Love, wondering how she was going to cope with even the most mundane tasks and routines without Waldo. She thought of him all the time, from the moment she woke up in the morning, usually after a night spent dreaming about him, right through the day up to going to bed at night, possibly to spend yet another fitful night dreaming about him again.

  So when she found herself getting involved in the preparations for Mattie and John’s marriage it came as a relief. For a few hours of the day she could stop herself mooching and involve herself instead in the utterly enjoyable business of helping Mattie Eastcott prepare for her wedding.

  The main problem was, as always with the shortages, the wedding gown. By the time Meggie had become reinvolved with her circle of friends it seemed that the situation was so grim that Mattie was trying to get herself used to the notion of walking up the aisle in her tennis dress.

  ‘If only I’d worn my mother’s wedding dress, you could have borrowed that,’ Judy sighed. ‘We’re both exactly the same size so it would have fitted you perfectly – but she gave it to some museum or other. The beading alone apparently makes it invaluable.’

  ‘Beading.’ Meggie frowned, and then smiled. ‘I remember … an old white dress with gorgeous beading on it in the attic at home. I remember seeing it when we were going through the things up there when I’d put the house up for sale.’

  ‘Then what are we waiting for, girls?’ Judy smiled excitedly. ‘Let’s go play in the attic.’

  They hurried over to Cucklington House and up to the dusty and dark old attics, lit only by one dim and cloudy light bulb that swung in the draught generated by a missing pane in the grubby window. Meggie soon found what she was looking for, an old sea trunk, the label on its handle clearly marked OLD CLOTHES in Richards’s best copperplate writing.

  From within Meggie took a beautiful gown and held it up.

  ‘Gracious heavens, that is so beautiful,’ Mattie almost whispered, carefully feeling the material with one hand as Meggie stood up, holding it against her. ‘How old is it? It must be quite old.’

  ‘Turn of the century I’d say,’ Judy guessed, appraising the exquisite garment, her head on one side.

  ‘Not bad,’ Meggie said. ‘About 1910-ish I think. If you look at the slender cut, and the slightly raised waist line.’

  ‘I love that beaded lace bodice,’ Mattie said. ‘And this pleated silk top—’

  ‘And look at the sleeves,’ Judy remarked. ‘Look at the way they’re almost sort of sculpted – and look? They’ve got matching pearl decorations here at four points.’

  ‘The skirt’s quite a lot heavier,’ Meggie said, holding the bottom of the gown out before her. ‘And it has a little train. See? Must be wonderful on.’

  ‘Put it on, then,’ Judy urged. ‘Go on, Megs – try it on.’

  Meggie hesitated, holding the dress once more up against her before deciding.

  ‘There’s no point,’ she said. ‘Anyway I’m far too tall for it. Who we want to see it on is Mattie
. Come on, Mattie. It should be perfect for you, darling – and being a light cream we should be able to find an old piece of lace for your head somewhere …’

  ‘I can’t possibly wear this,’ Mattie said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘Like I just said, cloth ears.’ Meggie clicked her tongue. ‘I’m far too much of a beanpole for this. I towered above my grandmother, so come on – let’s go downstairs and try it on you.’

  ‘Are you sure, Meggie?’ Mattie asked.

  ‘Don’t start getting wet,’ Meggie warned her. ‘You’re getting an awfully wet look about the old eyes. Come on.’

  Once down the rickety attic steps the three of them made their way along the corridor to one of the main bedrooms, which Meggie unlocked. It had not been occupied since Madame Gran’s day and as Meggie went in ahead to draw back the curtains Judy and Mattie could see that it was as if time had not dared to move even its second hand on within its pale cerise portals. The dressing table, large and lace-flounced, the glass drops on all the light fittings cascading down the faded silk walls, the curtains, exquisitely pleated and carefully draped, caught up at points by silk rosettes, the large Aubusson rug with just a hint of Versailles, the palely painted lithographs of ancestors set about with cherubs, the gold-painted putti holding up the bedhead, the bed itself silk covered, the trimmings so tightly pleated that, it seemed to Judy and Mattie, they must be a work of art in themselves, so intricate were their workings, so precise the stitches that held them. The whole room transported them all back into an age of leisured elegance, something they would never now know.

  ‘Heavens.’ Judy stared about her. ‘It’s a bit like being in a shrine.’

  ‘It is a shrine.’ Meggie laughed. ‘It’s dear old Richards’s shrine to Madame Gran, the only woman ever in his life.’ She fell silent for a moment, fondly remembering the wonderful woman who had brought her up, who had steered her through all the difficult times of her young life and had set her on the road to self-determination. She knew she owed Madame Gran everything and as always when put in mind of her resolved to make sure to try to continue honouring her memory. ‘Of course, now Waldo has bought Cuckers, I might have to work on him to keep it like this,’ she said idly.

  ‘Waldo has what?’ Judy asked, even more astonished than Mattie.

  ‘Sorry,’ Meggie said, pulling a face as she laid the gown on the bed. ‘I thought you knew. I thought I told you. Waldo bought the house. And gave it back to me.’

  She smiled, remembering the moment she had unwrapped the key to the house and saw Waldo’s delighted face watching her – and how they had joked and laughed and then how they had embraced; and as she did she felt a strange, sad and quite inexplicable ache in her heart, so powerful that she suddenly had to sit down.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Judy asked, hurrying over to her.

  ‘Waldo bought you Cucklington?’ Mattie echoed, her back to the other two as she stood examining the lovely silver set on the dressing table. ‘We have to face it, Waldo really is the most amazing man.’

  ‘I’m fine, Judy,’ Meggie said quietly, taking Judy’s hand and getting back up, throwing Mattie an anxious look, determined not to let anything spoil this moment. ‘I just got this sudden – I don’t know. It wasn’t déjà vu, exactly – but it felt as if it was something – something prescient. Do you ever get that feeling? Probably not,’ she concluded quickly, seeing the concern on her friend’s face. ‘I think I probably had a little too much gin last night. Come on, Mattie – time to get you undressed and dressed.’

  ‘Did Waldo really give you this place, Meggie? You’re not making it up? Because that has to be the most romantic thing I have ever heard,’ Mattie said as Judy and Meggie began to undress her. Meggie related the whole tale of how a certain eccentric Irish inventor had sent in the highest bid, a buyer who in fact turned out to be Waldo, who had bought it for Meggie as her Christmas present.

  ‘He’s obviously going to propose then, isn’t he?’ Mattie said, standing before them in her petticoat.

  ‘There’s nothing obvious in this life, darling,’ Meggie replied. ‘And you’re going to have to take your slip off.’

  ‘I’m freezing.’

  ‘And the bride wore goosebumps,’ Meggie observed. ‘Off’.

  ‘Of course he’ll propose,’ Judy smiled. ‘The point is, will you accept?’

  ‘I accepted the house, didn’t I?’

  ‘That would be bribing you. And knowing you, you don’t bribe easily.’

  ‘Even if he hadn’t given me the house, and the Light Heart—’

  ‘He gave you the Light Heart as well?’ Mattie gasped.

  ‘Just put the dress on, Mattie – here.’

  Meggie, being the tallest, lifted the dress up above Mattie’s head. Mattie put both her arms up straight and Meggie eased and dropped the exquisite garment on to Mattie’s lithe, trim figure. ‘As if it had been made for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Go and take a look.’

  ‘I suppose I will – you know.’

  For some reason it only now came to Meggie that she and Waldo really were going to marry.

  ‘So,’ Judy said as they gathered round the floor standing dressing glass. ‘So there could be a summer wedding at Cucklington House, could there?’

  ‘Do you think it’s all right? Me getting married in white, I mean?’ Mattie asked anxiously as the thought occurred to her, but not for the first time.

  ‘Perfectly,’ Meggie assured her, carefully pulling the dress down at the back so that all the creases disappeared. ‘Particularly since the dress isn’t white – it’s cream.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Megs.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Meggie laughed. ‘It’s what you want that matters. And you look wonderful.’

  Meggie began to cough as they all stood admiring the beautiful sight. Unfortunately, rather than just being a bout it turned into a fit, so in order to avoid any more anxious looks from her two friends Meggie hurried off into the large bathroom off the bedroom and quickly drank some water. She stood for a moment, clutching the sides of the hand basin and taking deep breaths to stop herself from coughing any more, and much to her relief after a few more well stifled splutters the fit was over. Wiping from her eyes the tears the coughing had caused, she adjusted her hair and returned to the bedroom, where it seemed Judy and Mattie were so involved in admiring the beautiful gown in which Mattie was to be married that they had quite forgotten Meggie’s sudden disorder.

  But Meggie hadn’t. Nor had she forgotten the strange turn that had caused her to sit down so suddenly on the bed, with her breath seemingly stuck in her throat and her heart pounding like a hammer in her chest.

  ‘Coffee,’ she remembered later, when she was alone and sitting by the fire she had laid for herself in the library. ‘It happens every time I drink too much coffee.’

  The more she thought about it the more she saw it was true. Richards had sourced a supply of fine French coffee from his contacts, and Meggie had fallen happily back into her pre-war addictive days. Normally she had restricted the amount she drank, knowing that there had been other occasions when she had been left in a highly agitated state after taking in too much caffeine. But now, since giving up smoking, she had begun to drink too much coffee. Only that morning, having woken after a good night’s sleep to find herself feeling oddly exhausted, Meggie had staggered down to the kitchen and made herself a large and extremely strong pot to get her motoring, as she called it.

  Even so, the combination of such a bad coughing fit and the reaction to an overdose of caffeine had left her quietly shaken. Retrieving the piece of paper from her overcoat pocket, a name and number she thought she would have no need of, Meggie put in a call to Waldo’s friend in Harley Street, who agreed to see her as soon as she could get herself up to London.

  ‘I could come up tomorrow,’ Meggie said, ‘if you could see me then.’

  ‘I owe our mutual friend Waldo so much money at cards,’ a cheerf
ul voice informed her on the other end of the line, ‘that if you insisted, I’d see you the day before yesterday.’

  Again after a good night’s sleep, helped by a large draught of cognac before retiring, Meggie awoke feeling utterly exhausted and wondered at first if she was going to be able to make it out of bed. For a while she lay staring out of her window at the daybreak, wondering what sort of legacy the wretched influenza might have left her with. From her brief and cryptic conversations with Dr Farnsworth she knew that that winter’s bug had been a particularly virulent one, so she wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that it had left her with some chronic infection, just as it had done apparently in the cases of several of Farnsworth’s patients. But rather than return to the local surgery for yet another superficial examination followed by yet another dose of Farnsworth’s bromides, Meggie thought she owed it not only to herself but to Waldo as well to have herself properly examined by the man Waldo said was the best in his class.

  ‘I’d like you to stay in the clinic overnight,’ the good-humoured Dr Wright told Meggie after he had listened to her case history and completed his initial examination. ‘There’s absolutely nothing for you to get concerned about, but in order to run a full and exhaustive series of tests – which I do for all my patients who come to me with the post-effects of influenza, I assure you – I really need you to stay in my care for twenty-four hours. It involves no unpleasant procedures, I promise. Some further X-rays certainly, but I want to do a full chest X-ray and I want to run some blood tests, too, and some other niggling little examinations which take time and a bit of patience on your part – but that’s all. By lunchtime tomorrow we shall have all the results and I’ll be in the best position possible to tell you what ails you, as they say, if anything.’

  ‘Other than an addiction to French coffee,’ Meggie said, doing her blouse back up. ‘And a long but now a no-more habit of smoking.’

  ‘The moment you give up smoking is the moment you start to recover,’ Dr Wright assured her.