Paying Guests (4 page)

Absurdly, Tilly’s spirits lifted. She was the most foolish woman alive. Duff must be down in the kitchen with Eliza, in the old comfortable way, and the young man she had seen in Brompton Road hadn’t been him at all. She caught up her dark green surah skirts and went hurrying to the back of the hall and the green baize door that led down to the kitchen quarters.

She stood for a moment at the top of the stairs that led into the kitchen, staring down into its familiar comfort. Ahead of her the stairs sparkled with clean white paint on each side of their runner of dark red drugget; the brass stair-rods that held the drugget in place glittered with the rich polish given them by Mrs Cooper, the woman who came in by the day to do the roughest of the housework. The well scrubbed floor of the kitchen itself looked, in the midday light, as though it were made of a dish of rich cream instead of humble sandstone and the many coloured rag rugs that were scattered across it winked brightly back at her. Everywhere there was a gleam and glitter from the copper pans that hung across the beam in the centre of the whitewashed ceiling and the blue and white dishes on the great Welsh dresser and the glow of the fire in Eliza’s highly polished black stove.

Eliza was at the table, itself scrubbed to warm amber by years of loving attention, slapping bread dough rhythmically from side to side with regular turns of her muscled wrists which showed clearly under a dusting of flour, for her black housekeeper’s dress sleeves were rolled back. Her face beneath the neat white cap she liked to wear over her carrotty hair was scarlet with the heat and the exertion of her work, and she had unbuttoned her dress at the throat so that her neck was clearly visible too, in a way that made her look vulnerable. Tilly felt a wash of affection for her. All these years of building up Quentin’s that she and Eliza had shared had formed a bond between them that no amount of trouble could strain.

She moved on down the stairs and Eliza looked up and grinned, splitting her wide freckled face into its familiar creases. She was still
a young woman, barely thirty, but the long years spent over cooking stoves had permanently reddened her cheeks and dried her skin. But she was still good to look at.

‘There, and I thought I could be done with this before you got home!’ she said comfortably. ‘You must have gone like the wind, Mum, to be back this soon.’

‘I’ve ordered turbot for tonight, Eliza,’ Tilly said. ‘And shrimps for a sauce.’

‘And there’s a nice bit of cold beef to make a platter of beef cakes,’ Eliza said, and gave her dough one last thump before putting it under a clean white cloth in a yellow pottery bowl to rise beside the stove. ‘And I got a dish of macaroni for Mr Geddes all planned – poor man, to live on such sorry stuff! – and a couple of nice fowls that’ll boil up lovely. And the last of the lettuces from Mr Morton’s market garden together with a few of his late tomatoes fit for baking. We shall contrive an excellent dinner, and economical too.’ She laughed richly. ‘It do add to the pleasure, Mum, to know I’ve done a dinner as’ll protect your cash box.’

‘As long as we do not keep them on short commons, Eliza,’ Tilly said, a little absently. She was trying to think of a way to ask about Duff that would not be too pointed. She was almost ashamed of her thoughts, and could not have shared them even with Eliza, or at least not at present.

‘As if I would!’ Eliza said indignantly. ‘Does anyone ever have cause for complaint?’

‘No, Eliza, of course not.’ Tilly settled herself in the chair on the far side of the kitchen table, not wishing to overheat herself in the fireside rocker, comfortable chair though it was. ‘I just meant –’

‘Well, never you think it, Mum.’ Eliza was genuinely ruffled and stood there with her hands on her hips, looking down at Tilly with her face crumpled with concern. ‘It’s one thing to be economical and quite another to be mean. Like it says in my new
Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine
, the art of kitchen management is to –’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Tilly said hastily, anxious to stave off the torrent of information that Eliza liked to give her from her favourite weekly reading. ‘Indeed, I meant no reproof, and I am very happy you are
so thrifty. Ah, have you planned anything special for the pudding course? Perhaps a damson tart?’ The fact that such tarts were great favourites with Duff she did not mention for there was no need to do so. Eliza knew it perfectly well.

‘Oh, yes, Mum.’ Eliza was diverted at once. ‘I’ve the fruit already steeping in a sugar syrup, and I’ll add the pastry directly. And an Exeter pudding too – rich as may be, it says in my receipt book, with its rum and cream and jam and lemon and all – Duff’ll like that as much as the damson tart.’

‘I’m sure he will.’ Tilly was elaborately casual. ‘Did he take much breakfast?’

‘Oh, that he did, but ate it that fast I told him as he’d hurt his digestion, but he paid no heed, and why should he, young as he is?’ She smiled fondly. ‘And it was very good ham and ate as sweet as butter. One of Charlie’s best offerings, that is.’

‘Yes,’ Tilly said, still being as casual as she could. ‘Er, is he in his room now, then? Or perhaps –’

Eliza chuckled. ‘Not he! Dressed himself up all elegant and was away like a shot from a gun at eleven on the dot. Said he wouldn’t want no luncheon, on account he was meeting a friend. I must say he looked very well. Such clothes! I never thought to see him so fashionable! Not when I remember how scapegrace he used to be, ripping his breeks and his coats to shreds with his rushing about! He has grown up smart, and no error.’

‘Well, young people you know, like to be in the first stare,’ Tilly said, and tried to hide how wretched she felt. It must have been Duff she saw in Brompton Road after all, she thought miserably. With his friend. But why, oh why?

‘Is there something amiss, Mum?’ Eliza said and Tilly glanced at her and managed a smile. She had forgotten just how sharp Eliza’s understanding was.

‘Oh, no, I am just sorry not to have seen him today,’ she said. ‘But I dare say I can last till he returns for dinner. I assume he will do so?’

Eliza looked a little puzzled. ‘Well, as to that, Mum, I can’t say. I didn’t ask him, like – I just sort of took it he would be. I mean, he
knows everyone always eats together, don’t he? And he knows the Misses F and K’ll be all agog to see him too, so I never thought to
ask
him.’

‘Quite right, Eliza,’ Tilly said as heartily as she was able, and got to her feet. ‘Why should you? He is home now and is free to do as he chooses. It must have been irksome for him as he grew older to be under the constant direction of schoolmasters, after all. We must be patient with him while he feels his freedom. I am sure he’ll settle down in a day or so.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Eliza said, looking somewhat puzzled, but Tilly did not notice. She just made for the stairs.

‘I must deal with the household books, Eliza,’ she said as she picked up her skirts and began to climb, ‘before I take a little luncheon. Are yours on my desk?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Eliza said and watched her go, a small frown between her eyes.

In her own private room, which had been the morning room of the original family house in which she had been born, Tilly was able to busy herself about her work and push away her concerns about Duff, which, she assured herself yet again, were exaggerated and foolish. It was as she had herself told Eliza: the kicking over the traces of a young colt newly free to trot and canter at will. He would be here at dinner time and she would be able to discover that he had not even seen her this morning. The traffic in the road and all – of course he hadn’t.

Dealing with the household books absorbed her for a half hour, and it was a very agreeable half hour. She set herself careful budgets, month by month, seeking always to give her guests the best of care and provisions while at the same time ensuring she made not only her costs but a respectable profit as well. The past twelve years had made her adept at it, and she totted up her figures and wrote totals in her neat round handwriting – not copperplate but easily legible – and closed the books and her cash box tolerably satisfied. Eliza was managing her staff exceedingly well and she had avoided the necessity to employ another housemaid, for which Tilly
was deeply grateful. Young housemaids needed not only their wages but also a good deal of feeding and Tilly could never bear to keep her servants ill fed, which was the way some housekeepers made their ends meet – so that had helped the budget greatly. Maybe one day she would indeed be able to contemplate purchasing the empty house next door and so make Quentin’s into a larger establishment, an ambition she had felt growing in her this past two years, though she would never admit it to anyone, not even Eliza. Yet.

She put the books back in her desk drawer, set the cash box on top of them and locked the drawer with her special key, worn on the bunch at her waist, and then sat with her elbows on her desk and her chin resting on her clasped hands as she looked about her room.

It was the only one she had never redecorated. Every other part of the house gleamed with new white paint and enjoyed the comfort of good Axminster carpet underfoot or, at the very least, oilcloth; there were new water closets created out of slices cut from rooms, of which she was very proud. Each had, in addition to their modern high cisterns and mahogany-handled pull chains, a wash-hand basin in tasteful blue and white bird designs to match the pedestal of the water closet itself, and in the house’s three bathrooms, an amazing number for so modest a household as hers, there were equally tasteful furnishings. The bedrooms with their polished mahogany wardrobes and bedsteads, tallboys, dressing tables and wash-stands were the last word in modernity and her drawing room and dining room, everyone agreed, were the
dernier cri
in well chosen ornamentation, drapery and furnishings.

But in her own room nothing had been changed. The carpet on the floor was the old Turkey carpet her mother had put there when she had come to the house as a bride. It was almost threadbare now and its original red could just be discerned here and there, but its familiarity made it possible still for Tilly to see it as she remembered it, in all its glorious intricacy of pattern. The furniture was still the light fruitwood chairs and tables of seventy or more years ago, and her desk was even older, with its curved cabriole legs and sadly
scratched, sloping front. But she loved it just as she loved every bit of the room as it was, only ensuring that the walls, which were covered in very faded Chinese paper, were brushed down occasionally with bread to remove stains, and the windows and fireplace well polished. It was the one room in the entire house where she felt totally at ease. When she had been a small child, afraid of her booming, ill-tempered father, it had been here she would hide, close to her mother, a gentle soul who had, in those baby days, been able to make the small Tilly feel safe. Some of that feeling lingered still, so that now not even Tilly’s bedroom, which was as well appointed as that of any of her guests, gave her the serenity and quiet sense of comfort that this room did.

Everyone knew, almost from the moment they came to Quentin’s that this room was out of bounds. Only Eliza ever tapped on the door to speak to her, and it was well understood among the guests that if they wished to speak to Mrs Quentin and could not find her elsewhere in the house, the answer was to ring for Eliza who would tell the mistress she was required. And Tilly would emerge from her happy fastness, her features composed and her hands folded neatly against her skirts to deal with whatever it was.

So when there was a tap on the door now she did not even lift her head, but remained staring a little vaguely at the window and its view of the garden, saying only, ‘Come in, Eliza!’ and sighing a little because she had been disturbed. She knew what it was Eliza wanted, though, and she turned her head to assure her she need worry herself no further; she would come directly to the dining room and take a little luncheon so that Lucy could clear the table and prepare it for its most important role of the day, the setting for dinner at Quentin’s.

But it was not Eliza who stood framed in the doorway, but the tall figure of her most recently arrived guest, Mr Silas Geddes. He looked at her with his brows a little raised and she stared back, startled. Not that he was disagreeable to look at in any way. Indeed, when he had first come to see her and discuss the matter of her large back room on the second floor she had thought him a most interesting-looking man; clean-shaven in spite of the current fashion
for whiskers, with hair that was dark, did its best to curl but failed because it was cut short and brushed back firmly, and wide, oddly coloured eyes, a sort of deep amber. He was well dressed without being extravagant in his appearance and smelled pleasant, with an aura of bay rum but no tobacco about him.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I suspect I have strayed where I should not have done. I was looking about for a newspaper, you know, and thought perhaps – I do apologize.’ At once he bent his head and drew back, closing the door behind him.

She was embarrassed and annoyed with herself at the same time; but perhaps she shouldn’t have looked so forbiddingly at him. She must have done so, for why else would he have withdrawn so precipitately?

She was on her feet at once and reached the hall to see him halfway up the staircase, and she called a little breathlessly, ‘Mr Geddes!’

He stopped and turned towards her and she managed a smile. ‘I am so sorry, Mr Geddes!’ she said. ‘I did not mean to seem unwelcoming.’

‘I did not mean to intrude,’ he said and came down the steps to walk back to her and make a small bow. ‘I realized as soon as I saw you sitting there so pensively that I had strayed beyond where I should have done, and I do apologize.’

She set her head to one side and looked at him consideringly. ‘It is indeed true that that is my own room and people don’t usually disturb me there, once they know.’

‘I know now,’ he said gravely. ‘I will never trespass again, you have my word.’

‘Heavens!’ she said ‘Such a fuss over a minor matter. Now, what was it you wanted?’