Paying Guests (49 page)

Eliza sniffed then. ‘And so she should, the limb of Satan!’ But there was no anger in her voice at all. She seemed to have accepted Polly’s role in the disaster with amazing equanimity.

‘Poor darling Duff,’ Tilly murmured and went and crouched before him. ‘Has he not been to bed at all?’

‘No, I tried, but the firemen had to talk to him and then there was the matter of the lawyer –’

Tilly stared at her over her shoulder. ‘
Lawyer
? Firemen? What do you mean, Eliza?’

‘Ah,’ said Eliza, and bit her lip. ‘As to that, Mum, p’raps Mr Duff had better tell you himself.’

And that was the moment Duff chose to wake up.

‘HELLO, MA,’ DUFF said drowsily and closed his eyes again, only to reopen them sharply and gape at her. ‘Oh! Ma! Are you all right? Are you feeling better?’

‘I’m a great deal better than you are,’ she retorted. ‘I have slept all day – and why no one woke me I cannot imagine – and you have not slept at all, clearly! My dear boy –’

‘Ma.’ He struggled to sit upright, sending the rocker swaying wildly. ‘Ma, there’s a deal to tell you – oh, a great deal. The firemen, they came and said as everything Polly said was so. There had been people in there this past two weeks – and they had burned a hole through the drawing-room floor to the ground level. But there were no injured people there – no one was burned – they had just run away and vanished –’

‘Thank God for that,’ Eliza said piously and then spoiled it. ‘Polly’d have not been fit to live with if one of those beggars had got burned up, though it’d have served the varmints right if they had been.’

‘Hush, Eliza,’ Tilly said. ‘I too say thank God. I would not wish such a death on any person and neither should you.’

‘No, Mum,’ Eliza said, but it was clear she did not agree.

‘There is little that can be done,’ Duff said. ‘To that house, I mean – but I took the liberty, as you were sleeping, to send a message to Mr Collins, urgently –’

Tilly stiffened. ‘Mr Collins?’

‘He is your lawyer, is he not?’ Duff looked a little startled, for her tone had become very cool. ‘Or am I –’

‘I suppose so, yes,’ Tilly said unwillingly. ‘It is just that the last time I dealt with him I found him – shall we say, tiresome. I had been considering taking my affairs and putting them into other hands. But then – well, I have been lax. So, you sent for Collins. Why?’

‘Insurance,’ Duff said. ‘If the house next door is to be refused insurance payment – and the fireman told me that he was sure it would be, for it was not a truly accidental fire – then I wanted to be sure that we were safe with
our
insurances.’

Tilly stared at him, amazed. ‘My dear Duff, when did you become so – so businesslike? I have never told you much about the business side of Quentin’s, not wishing to discommode you, yet you seem to know –’

‘I learned a good deal in the weeks I was being kept out of Patrick’s way at Paton,’ he said grimly. ‘And I am determined to see to it that I shall use that knowledge – and gain more – to the benefit of Quentin’s. Ma, I have acted without your authority, but as your son should, I believe.’

He got to his feet and stretched and then held out his hand to her, while she remained crouched by the fire looking at him in continuing surprise.

‘There is much work to be done here to get the new Quentin’s going and I shall be the one to do it. I do not wish you to have to work so hard in the future as you have in the past. I am a grown man now and I must take my share. I acted for us this afternoon and though Mr Collins wishes your comfirmation’ – suddenly, he looked very young again – ‘for he says I am not yet twenty-one, so he must do so – I am sure you will not argue with what I have done.’

He frowned then with what was an attempt to be severe but which she found touching in the extreme, for he looked as he had as a small boy, telling her firmly what he intended to do.

‘What have you done, Duff?’ she said as meekly as she could. ‘I am all agog to hear. I thought you had done well enough to get Charlie here – which was an excellent thought and I do congratulate
you on it – and would have been deeply grateful for that. But clearly you have gone further.’

‘Oh, indeed I have!’ he said with a sudden excess of glee and behind the unshaven cheeks of the man once again the boy appeared, full of pride at his own achievement and energy. ‘I have made it possible for you to enlarge Quentin’s quite marvellously.’

‘Enlarge Quentin’s?’ She stared at him. ‘What
are
you talking about?’

‘Well, Mr Collins assured me that the insurance we will definitely get will cover the repairs here and some more besides. He also told me’ – and here the glee almost boiled over – ‘that he acts for the house next door! It seems that when Dorcas lived here – I wonder if you know this? It is all very surprising – she followed you to his firm to become a client and after the first two partners died, and he took over, she remained with him. It was he who bought the house for her, and well, to cut it short, Mamma, she gave him full authority to do as he thought best for her benefit while she was unable to do so for herself. She told him this, he said, two years ago when she had to go away for some purpose – he would not say what – and she has not countermanded it. So –’

He stopped and looked at her, for the first time showing a moment of doubt. ‘I hope I did not do the wrong thing, Mamma. Perhaps I should have woken you and asked but you know, I was so sure. I thought and – well, I was sure and felt so light-headed and yet so full of energy –’

‘Not enough sleep, that’s all,’ Eliza said sapiently from the other side of the kitchen table, where she was slicing beef for the dining-room platters, but Duff paid her no attention.

‘Well, I did it. I told him that the house would get no insurance payments, for we knew the fire not to be accidental, and would make sure the insurers were told of the fact if the firemen did not, which they will. And that means, I said, the house had no value to his client at all and that we would buy its lease. I told him we could give two hundred pounds for it and not a penny more, unless we could have the freehold which would cost us another forty pounds. And he said it was a fair offer and he would ask her as soon as he
could find her, but I said he must decide now, for if he did not the offer would be taken away and he would never find anyone else who would take the place but us, for why should they, when it is such a wreck, and he said – he said –’ Duff swallowed, ‘he said he would consider it.’

‘He said he would consider it,’ Tilly said, almost stupefied by the turn events had taken. ‘I cannot believe that – Duff, I have wanted to take over that house for – well, for some time, but after the affair of Greenwall –’

‘Greenwall?’

‘Oh, you did not know of him, perhaps. Well, let that be for the present. Let me just say it seemed unlikely I could ever buy the house, for I had managed to save less money than I had hoped. And I dislike going into debt if I can avoid it. Yet now you tell me you have made an offer for a house that – How much did you say?’

He repeated the money terms and she listened intently and then nodded slowly. ‘Well, it is a great deal of money, but –’

‘Say we can, Mamma! I am determined it will work well for us!’

‘I see little point in saying anything before we hear whether or not the offer is acceptable,’ she said with a hint of asperity. ‘I must warn you, dear boy, that there is more to doing business than merely speaking of offers and so forth!’

‘I know that!’ Duff said and went a little pink. ‘I am not entirely foolish! But it seemed to me important that we strike at once or lose all. Anyway, Collins said he would return and let us know.’

‘He is coming himself, the old man?’ Tilly said.

‘He said to me when I took him out to the door as he’d probably send his young partner,’ Eliza said. ‘Seeing as how he’s too tired to make the journey twice in one day. Not best pleased, he wasn’t, I thought. But glad to get the offer from Mr Duff. He stood outside and looked at the mess there next door for a bit before he told his driver to whip up the horses and take him off, and I never saw a man so grim.’ She laughed then. ‘It’s my belief he knows when he’s well off, that one. I’ll bet you any sum you like Mum, as the answer’ll come back that the house is ours for the asking.’

‘Ours?’ Tilly said and looked at her and then at Duff, and could
not help herself. She began to laugh and could not control it, until she was laughing so much that she wept. They stood and stared at her until at last she caught her breath and dried her streaming eyes and managed to speak again.

‘My dear Duff, Eliza too, you are both almost too much for me sometimes! You get a notion of what you would like to see happen and then you – you simply arrange matters so that it does! You, Eliza, and your plans for Polly and her baby and – and well, you understand. And you, Duff, with your great dreams of buying houses. I feel like a cork bobbing on the water between you.’

‘Well, that’s all right then,’ Duff said and grinned at her. ‘You let us carry you along and all will be well.’

They all stood very still then, as a bell pealed from above and Eliza pulled up her apron and rubbed her streaked face with it.

‘That’ll be the lawyer,’ she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact and not succeeding too well. ‘I’ll let him in myself, shall I, Mum?’ and she went, leaving Duff staring at his mother across the kitchen.

‘Is it all right, Ma? Have I done wrong?’ he asked and she looked at him and shook her head and then held out both hands to him.

‘Dear Duff, I cannot say you have done anything right or wrong until we have talked to Mr Collins, but I will say only that I am happy, indeed more than happy, quite delighted, to see you take such an interest in my affairs. I thought you were ashamed of Quentin’s and me with it –’

‘Perhaps I was when I was younger and more foolish,’ he said, sounding as old as he was able. ‘I know better now. I can see the fascination of making something that will grow, of making things happen the way you want them to – it is much better than being in the hands of people like Patrick, who run their lives on whims and notions.’ His face darkened for a moment, but then he set his mouth and shook his head as if to rid himself of unwanted thoughts. ‘I tell you I will be very content to work here with you.’

She held on to his hands warmly, giving him time to compose himself again, for some of the old misery was back in his face. ‘Well, I am quite overcome with it all, dearest Duff,’ she said. ‘To have you to share my work would be – well –’

‘I shall do so very well, Ma,’ he said seriously. ‘And if we are allowed to buy the house next door, you will need me anyway. It will be a mammoth task, will it not, to –’

Eliza appeared on the stairs above them and they looked up at the sound of her rather elaborate throat clearing.

‘I got Mr Lansdown here, Mum. Come in place of Mr Collins,’ she announced with heavy deliberation and came down into the kitchen, followed close behind by a tall man who had to bend to negotiate the way without banging his head on the low ceiling. ‘This way, Mr Lansdown.’

He behaved as though they were all in the most elegant of drawing rooms in the richest of houses. He seemed sublimely unaware of the cooking smells, of the state of the floors, of the general mess, and bowed politely over Tilly’s hand and murmured his greetings and Mr Collins’s apologies.

‘I am doing most of his work now, Ma’am, since he is becoming more tired and is less able to work as he should like. I would have attended you this afternoon, had I not been previously occupied in a matter that was unavoidable, though happily now complete.’

‘I hope it went well,’ she said with automatic politeness and he suddenly seemed to change before her eyes. He had seemed at first glance a somewhat dour man with very dark eyes under heavy straight brows, and a saturnine expression, but now he smiled and his whole face lifted into a much younger cast and she felt herself warming to him.

‘As to that,’ he said with great satisfaction, ‘the rogue did not, as he believed he would, get off scot-free, but was dealt with sharply by the magistrate and my client is now a happy man!’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ she murmured, a little startled and then, as Duff pushed forward a chair for her and then one for Mr Lansdown, was glad to relax into it. This day was becoming more and more bewildering.

‘I have all the necessary information you require here,’ Mr Lansdown was saying, and he reached into the leather case he was carrying and extricated some papers. ‘The deeds are to be re-written and will be available in due course, but at this stage –’

‘Do you mean our offer is accepted?’ Duff cried, no longer able to contain himself and Mr Lansdown looked up and stared at him.

‘But of course,’ he said simply. ‘I told Mr Collins as soon as I heard of it that it was clearly the best course of action for all our clients, both you and Mrs – urn – the vendor of the house. The offer you made was misrepresented to me, I fear.’

He smiled again and once more it lit his face agreeably. ‘I suspected Mr Collins had got it a little wrong. I checked the asking price of our – of the vendor, and here are the details. I think you will find them in order.’