Someone Special (14 page)

‘Morning, Mrs Bellis,’ she said loudly. ‘You’ve overslept; breakfast’s all ready for you to cook. You’d best hurry; Mr Geraint will be down any time.’

The bed heaved like an erupting volcano and Mrs Bellis appeared. She was wearing what looked like a trawlerman’s net on her head and her cheeks and mouth seemed to have sunk, giving her the look of an incredibly ancient and ill-treated monkey.

‘Whassa time?’ she lisped, reaching towards the bedside table not for the cup of tea, as Hester expected, but for a round pink bakelite mug which stood by the tea. ‘Issit late, ’en?’ As she spoke she removed her large, pink and white dentures from the mug and scrunched them horribly into her sagging jaws, which became full and self-confident again.

‘It’s getting on for nine,’ Hester confirmed. ‘Did you see Mr Geraint yesterday? What time does he want breakfast?’

‘Oh my Gawd, at a quarter to the hour. Get back to the kitchen an’ start cookin’,’ the woman in the bed
quavered, clutching the tea and bearing it carefully to her mouth. ‘Tell ’im I’m not well – travel sickness, me monthlies, tell ’im anything; I’ll get up now, keep ’im outa the way, I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Hester said doubtfully, moving towards the door. ‘But I can’t cope with everything, you know.’

She hurried back down the corridor and burst into the kitchen, her heart hammering. She was no cook; after many early disasters she had taught herself to make reasonably decent meals for Matthew and herself but she had no confidence in her cooking abilities. Mrs Cled cooked lovely food for the men, and had taught Hester how to make good pastry and a respectable dinner, but though she felt able to fry bacon and eggs, she did not intend to start doing Mrs Bellis’s job as well as her own. The lazy old devil would just have to learn to get up earlier. Having made up her mind to tell Mrs Bellis that so far as cooking went she was on her own, Hester hurried over to the range, threw a knob of dripping into the frying-pan and pulled it over the heat. Today was an emergency, she would make breakfast today, but tomorrow …

She had the bacon spitting and the eggs ready for the pan when she realised she had forgotten to ask Mrs Bellis where Mr Geraint ate his breakfast. Was she supposed to take it to his room on a tray? What on earth would she do if she’d cooked the meal before Mrs Bellis put in an appearance?

Her dilemma was solved, just as the second egg slid into the hot fat, by the kitchen door opening.

‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ Hester said in heartfelt tones, scooping hot fat over the golden yolk and turning to look over her shoulder at the doorway. ‘Did Mrs Cled tell you …?’

He smiled at her. He was in shirtsleeves and stockinged feet and a red china mug swung negligently from one finger.

‘Good morning, Hester, how pink you look, all flushed from the fire. Is my porridge ready?’

‘Oh! I thought you were Mrs Bellis. I d-didn’t know you had porridge, but there’s eggs and bacon,’ Hester gabbled, totally taken aback. ‘Where do you eat it? In the study?’

‘In here; where else?’ He put his mug down on the wooden draining-board, then sat down at the table and turned expectantly towards her. ‘Well? I can’t see my coffee pot.’

‘You can’t see your cook, either,’ Hester snapped, then could have bitten her tongue out. This was her employer, Matthew’s employer, she must not be rude to him no matter how badly he treated her. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Geraint, but this isn’t my job so I don’t know where things are. Mrs Bellis isn’t well.’

He raised a dark eyebrow, looking sceptical. ‘Not well? Do you mean drunk?’

Hester frowned, sliding the bacon and eggs on to a warmed plate, arranging them nicely, carrying the plate over to the kitchen table. She set it down before her employer and then turned to the stove once more.

‘Drunk? I don’t know what you mean, she isn’t well. Can you have tea this morning instead of coffee? I’ve never made coffee.’

‘Then you’ll have to learn,’ Mr Geraint said, reaching for a slice of bread. ‘Suppose Mrs Cledwen had been taken ill? Would you have expected me to make my own breakfast?’

‘Matthew made his own breakfast when I had Helen, in fact he made all his own meals after his mother died,’ Hester observed. ‘So I suppose you would have done the same. I’m not usually here until ten you see, so I couldn’t have made it. Only Mrs Bellis was in such a state yesterday that I said I’d come in early for once.’

Mr Geraint took a big mouthful of bacon and eggs,
then spoke thickly through it. ‘Well, you’d better come in early every day. That woman can go; I’m not having a drunk in my kitchen.’

‘She’s a woman; women don’t drink,’ Hester said uncertainly. She knew men got drunk but it had never occurred to her that women drank at all, far less to excess. Walking in a demure crocodile along the Liverpool streets, the children had sometimes seen men lying in the gutter, drunk and incapable, the nuns told them, but on the rare occasions when they saw a woman in a similar position, the nuns always said the poor creature was unwell.

Mr Geraint stopped eating to stare at her. ‘Women don’t … good God, girl, where were you brought up?’

‘In Liverpool. By the nuns at the convent school of Sister Servina.’

‘Oh, well, that explains a lot.’ Mr Geraint started to eat again, chewed, swallowed, then turned to face her once more. ‘If you can’t make coffee, tea will have to do. I’ll have a mug, not a cup, no sugar and not too much milk.’

‘All right,’ Hester muttered. ‘But what you said about Mrs Bellis, sir … you didn’t mean she’d have to go, did you?’

‘Indeed I did. But I’ll have a word with her later. Have you made any toast?’

‘No, but there’s plenty of bread cut,’ Hester said. Didn’t he know that people had toast spread with dripping at teatime on a Sunday, not at breakfast? She felt like telling him a thing or two – just what did he think she was? Cook, scrubbing woman, toast-maker, what next, for God’s sake? Aloud, she said, ‘There’s butter and stuff on the table. No, it’s on the dresser – can you get it? I’m trying to make you fresh tea.’

He got up and fetched the butter and marmalade, then began to spread it on a round of bread. When the tea had brewed, she poured him out a big mugful and took
it to the table. He must have brought the newspaper with him for he laid it down beside him and began reading it, ignoring her. Hester put the mug down rather too firmly for politeness and turned away from the table. As she did so, Helen gave a squeak; she was trying to retrieve a piece of jigsaw which she had thrown just too far from the bars and annoyance and frustration were turning her cheeks pink and making her lower lip wobble ominously.

‘It’s all right, darling, I’ll get it,’ Hester said quickly, knowing how rapidly Helen’s patience would give out once she realised her task was impossible. A screaming child was really more than she could bear on top of everything else. ‘Here it is, darling. Say thank you.’

‘Ta,’ Helen cooed, taking the piece of jigsaw and promptly beginning to suck it. ‘Ta, ta, ta, ta …’

‘Good Lord, I hadn’t realised she was down there,’ Mr Geraint observed, putting his paper aside. ‘Good morning, young lady, and how is Miss Nell this morning?’

‘Book,’ Helen said at once, clearly remembering their previous encounter and staggering to her feet to clutch the bars of her playpen in grubby fists. ‘Book man, book!’

‘It isn’t a book, it’s a newspaper … here, come and have a read.’

And without so much as a by-your-leave he lifted the baby out of the playpen, sat her on his knee and spread the newspaper out, while Hester could only watch and seethe.

‘Here we are; today’s news. Once upon a time …’

I ought to be pleased that he’s paying Helen so much attention, Hester thought, starting the washing up. Why aren’t I, I wonder? Why do I resent it? After all, she’s my darling baby, I should be complimented that he seems to like her. But she was not; she was annoyed over his presumption that he might do as he liked with her child.

Worse was to come. When he finished breakfast Hester went to take Helen away from him and put her back in
the playpen, but Mr Geraint made no attempt to hand her over.

‘She can come with me; I’ll be working in the room over the great arch,’ he said easily. ‘She’ll come to no harm there, and you’ll be able to get on with your work unimpeded. Send Mrs Bellis up to me when she finally appears, will you?’

Hester started to say that the baby would do very well in the playpen, but found herself talking to an empty room. Mr Geraint had walked out, closing the kitchen door firmly behind him.

Mrs Bellis arrived in the kitchen around ten o’clock, looking dreadful. When Hester told her that Mr Geraint wanted to see her, she gave a little moan and began gabbling that it was too bad, she had been brought here under false pretences, did not intend to stay, would charge Mr Geraint for her fares, for the work she had done, for the meal she had cooked him the previous evening.

‘But Matthew fetched you from the station,’ Hester pointed out. ‘And I remember Mrs Cledwen saying she’d sent money for your train fare. Anyway, if you explain you weren’t drunk I’m sure Mr Geraint will understand.’

‘Wasn’t
what?
I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Miss, and if you’ll take a word of advice –’ Mrs Bellis had gone all dignified suddenly, Hester was alarmed to notice, ‘– if you’ll take advice, you’ll watch that nasty tongue of yours before you perjure people and get give a slap in the eye.’

‘It wasn’t me that said you were drunk, I said you weren’t,’ Hester exclaimed, outraged at this unfair and nasty remark. ‘But perhaps I was wrong, perhaps you were drunk – at least, you’re being awfully rude for someone who’s supposed to be ill.’

Mrs Bellis snorted, then swayed out of the kitchen and into the back yard. Soon she swayed back in to
say she’d be much obliged if Miss would accompany her to the room above the arch since she didn’t seem able to find it for trying, and what was them big white birds, a-hissin’ and a-carryin’ on in the next yard?

Hester explained that they were geese and took the older woman round to the narrow stairway which led up to the room above the arch, but Mrs Bellis took one look at the steep stone steps and said firmly that she hadn’t the slightest intention of going up them since she’d either get stuck halfway or never get down again. Hester thought about getting behind and pushing her, then decided against it; if Mrs Bellis fell on anyone it most certainly wasn’t going to be on Hester Coburn, who had a dependent child and a husband to think about.

‘I’ll ask Mr Geraint to come down,’ she said wearily. ‘You wait here.’

She ran quickly up the narrow stone stairway and found herself facing a low, arched door at the top. She knocked sharply and went straight in, too incensed for once to worry about the rights and wrongs of her behaviour. It was nearly eleven o’clock and she’d hardly started on her morning’s work thanks to Mrs Bellis and their employer.

The room was attractive, far nicer than she would have guessed from the outside. It was about ten feet long and six feet across, the walls were whitewashed and covered in paintings, mostly bright, modern-looking water-colours of the local countryside, and sunshine simply flooded in through the three arched windows which overlooked the wild garden and the drive.

Mr Geraint sat behind a big desk with his back to the window so that the light fell on the page before him. The floor was carpeted and cushions were scattered across it, and Nell lay on her tummy on the carpet with a fat red crayon in her hand, scribbling on a piece of rich-looking, cream-coloured paper. She looked up when her mother
came in, smiled and made a contented little purring sound, then returned to her work. Hester saw that the cushions had been put all round Nell so that she could not fall and hurt herself and, angry though she was with Mr Geraint for taking her child away and for involving her with Mrs Bellis, she was grateful for his forethought.

Mr Geraint looked up as she came in and frowned at her. He seemed impatient and abstracted, but Hester was in no mood to apologise for her presence.

‘Yes?’

‘Mrs Bellis is in the courtyard, sir; she can’t climb the stairs so I said I’d come up and ask you to come down.’

Mr Geraint sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Can’t you just tell her … no, I suppose I’d better go down. You stay here, keep an eye on the child.’

Hester stared at him, open-mouthed. Did he think she would dream of leaving Helen alone here, even surrounded by cushions? Besides, she might as well take her down with her now, back to the kitchen. Yet when Mr Geraint passed her and left the room, closing the door none too gently behind him, she did not immediately pick the baby up and follow him. Instead, she walked round the desk and peered out of the big middle window directly behind the chair in which Mr Geraint had been sitting.

There it was below her, the wild garden. The paths were clearer from up here than from down below. It was thus that he had seen her, nearly two years ago, lost in the wilderness, trying to make her way home. She remembered the statue; it had been taken away by Matthew in the wheelbarrow, because it blocked the path and also because Hester told him she felt like a murderer every time she came across it. It no longer lay there, a mute reproach, but their encounter on that long-ago night had probably been noisy enough to bring Mr Geraint to
the window. She disliked the thought, even in retrospect, that he might have watched her struggling through the brambles and briars, cursing as she went. Because if he had seen her his face would have worn that mocking, amused look … She was glad it had probably been her falling out with the statue which had caught his attention, made him look down.

Abandoning the window, she sat on the wide windowseat and looked around. She really liked it; it was much nicer than the drawing-room, which was very grand and formal and not terribly comfortable. Here there was a big couch against the wall to her right – it must have been piled with the brightly patterned cushions which now walled Helen in – and a footstool, comfortably upholstered in worn blue velvet. Against another wall was a sturdy table made of interesting wood – a deep shade of gold with satisfying, swirly patterns all over it – and in a small wall alcove above the table stood an elegant green china vase which held a breathtaking display of flowers. They were nothing special, just flowers which flourished at this time of year in the wild garden, but they had been gathered with care and arranged in the same manner, and to Hester’s eyes they looked prettier than any hothouse blooms.