‘No,’ said Jane. ‘I haven’t begun to work for you.’
‘But you”re going to – both take the money and work for me. Will you stay a month and advise my children as best you can?’
‘I’ll stay as long as I can help.’ No point in arguing about the salary. ‘Will you be writing to them?’
‘Not for the present, anyway. It will be better for them – and safer for me – if they don’t even know what country I’m in. Extradition laws are treacherous; apt to turn and rend the poor criminal.’
She said: ‘I don’t believe you’re a criminal. Are you sure you shouldn’t stay and establish your innocence?’
He gave her a swift smile. ‘You must have a built-in sense of loyalty. It operates before it’s been earned. Yes, I’m quite sure I shouldn’t stay in England – or here, now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘As a law-abiding woman, do you feel you must notify the police as soon as I’ve gone? Frankly, I hope you won’t as it might enable them to intercept me. But if your conscience insists …’
‘It doesn’t. Anyway, I’ve only your word that the police would be interested.’
Again he smiled. ‘And you’ve already decided my word’s not to be trusted. Do you know, I’m rather truthful? One can combine truthfulness in one’s private life with dishonesty in one’s business.’
‘I still don’t believe you’re dishonest,’ she said stubbornly.
‘Well, I grant I’m no more dishonest than hundreds of men who pass for honest. But they’re luckier – or shrewder than I’ve been. Now listen: if you don’t notify the police you’ve seen me, you’d better not admit it, later, for your own sake. There shouldn’t be any need to. I’m pretty sure no one saw me come here. I haven’t been into the village. I’m driving a hired car – I sold mine to raise some more cash – and I’ve been wearing an atrocious and disguising cap, well pulled down over the eyes. In any case, I might have slipped in and out without your knowing.’
‘But your children will know – if I’m to tell them. Suppose the police question them?’
His manner had become brisker; now it was strained again. ‘I’m sorry – I can’t think clearly. You must work it out for yourselves, without considering me. Anyway, you’re not likely to be questioned before tomorrow, by which time I shall be out of the country – or have been stopped getting out. In either case it won’t matter to me what you all say, so suit yourselves. Now I must go. Thank you for your kindness. If we’d worked together for twenty years you couldn’t have been more loyal.’
She said: ‘I’m quite sure my loyalty’s justified.’
‘Not a bit of it. You’re a generous creature taken in by a shady character. You’ll learn that soon enough. Keep your eyes on the newspapers – oh, not the front pages; I’m quite insignificant but there should be something somewhere. Anyway, there will be if I’m arrested. If you don’t learn of that by tomorrow I shall have got away. Oh, lord, there are so many things I meant to tell Richard. About Merry: he’d better let her try the stage as soon as she can; she’s the only one whose talent I’m sure of. Not that I know any of them well. You must think me a hell of a father.’
‘I’m sure you’ve been a kind and generous one.’
‘There’s more to the job than that. My wife and I cared too much for each other to care enough for our children. My mother was wonderful with them, but I should have done more these last years since she died.’ He opened the door. ‘Goodbye, dear Miss Minton – Jane Minton, isn’t it?’
She nodded and said firmly: ‘You’ll come back. Everything will come right.’
‘I doubt that – really.’ He made sure the lane was deserted, then ran down the stairs.
‘Goodbye! Good luck!’ she called after him.
He reached the car, turned it, then leaned out and waved to her. She waved in return. The car shot forward. She watched until it disappeared round the bend of the lane.
3
Tuesday – Wednesday
Sitting on the divan in the dim music room, she asked herself how she could best break the news to the young Carringtons, how best advise them, help them; but again and again she failed to concentrate and, instead, found herself reliving Rupert Carrington’s visit, and trying to understand her own astonishing reactions.
During her fifteen years as a secretary she had several times been attracted by her employers and some of them had been attracted by her, but the attractions had never coincided and, on her side certainly, had been so mild that she had merely chaffed herself about them – lacking the woman friend who by rights should have done the chaffing. Never had she really fallen in love and she had begun to think she never would. But now—
Time after time she pulled herself up. One couldn’t fall in love with a man one had only met twice, anyway a woman of her type and age couldn’t. It must simply be that she was attracted – as she had been, even at their first meeting – and now the unusual circumstances, her sympathy for him, his appeal for her help, all were combining to heighten her emotions. She mustn’t let this … this absurd sense of exhilaration have its head. She must calm down, be practical, and above all remember that Rupert Carrington had relied on her.
She heard the church clock strike six. The family would be home any minute. Picking up her armful of flowers, she hurried down the stairs and through the garden. Indoors, she filled the pantry sink and left the flowers there, then ran into the hall and lit the fire.
Soon she heard the car coming up the drive and being driven to the garage. Then Richard entered, alone. He said Clare had gone to call for Merry.
Jane had imagined telling them all together – silly of her, she now saw, for she could hardly wait until they all arrived. She rather wished she could have talked to Drew first, then remembered that all Rupert’s messages had been for Richard, who would now have to act as the head of the family. As he came towards the fire she said: ‘I’m so very sorry. I have to break bad news.’
It was easier than she had expected. Richard, after one horrified ‘Good God!’ took it very calmly, simply eliciting from her all the information he could – which amounted to less than she had foreseen because she found she could not bring herself to repeat some things Rupert had said. She cut his kind references to herself, his reflection on himself as a father and his description of himself as a crook. But she did make it clear that he had tacitly admitted his guilt.
Richard accepted this. ‘Oh, yes, otherwise I’m sure he wouldn’t have bolted. Well, I hope he makes it – I suppose he may get caught at some port or airport. He gave you no idea how he hoped to get out of England?’
She shook her head, then handed over the envelope of notes. ‘He sent apologies that it wasn’t more.’
‘It would have been if he could have managed it. I don’t see why he doesn’t want to write to us. Surely the police can’t intercept letters – or can they, if they can tap telephone calls? Perhaps he just wants to get away from us, as well as the police – and I wouldn’t blame him; this household must cost a fortune. But he insisted that things should go on as in my grandmother’s day, that we should live here just cultivating the talents she credited us with. What are we going to do?’
‘People do earn their livings,’ said Jane. ‘We must think of things.’
‘I’m glad you’re going to stay with us for a bit.’
She had told him his father wanted her to, but she’d made no mention of her salary.
‘I’ll advise you in any way I can. Oh, I’ve remembered something else he said –’She relayed Rupert’s wishes about Merry but censored his remark that hers was the only talent he was sure of. ‘Not that she can legally leave school until she’s fifteen – and that’s far too early, really.’
‘I wonder if her school fees are paid,’ said Richard. ‘And where can she live while she’s at school if we others get jobs and close this house?’
‘Perhaps you can get local jobs.’
‘Well, there’s always a shortage of domestic help in the village. I
might go out as a male char.’
She heard voices outside and went to a window. ‘They’re all back. I think you should tell them on your own. Shall I make some tea?’
‘They’ll have had it. Perhaps you’d start preparations for supper – Cook leaves us things. Not that I’m exactly hungry.’
‘Nor I,’ said Jane. ‘Still, food can be a help at times like this.’
As she reached the kitchen she heard the front door open and a cheerful babble. After that, with the kitchen door closed, she could hear no more. She looked around her dazedly – how lost one felt in an unfamiliar kitchen! Well, that was obviously soup on the stove, waiting to be heated, and sandwiches had been mentioned that morning. She located them in the refrigerator, found plates and soup cups and then began preparations for coffee. Still no sound from the hall. Would Merry cry and need to be comforted? A few minutes later the kitchen door was flung open and Merry rushed at her saying, ‘Poor darling Miss Minton, what a thing to happen when you were all alone – and in that gloomy music room! But how wonderful for poor father to have someone like you to talk to!’ Jane then dissolved into tears and found herself being comforted by Merry, after which she was tenderly escorted to the hall to be treated, by both Merry and Drew, as a cross between an invalid and a heroine.
Clare finished getting supper, and shortly everyone was sitting round the fire eating. Richard, Jane noted, ate less than anyone. She might have thought it callous of the younger Carringtons to eat so much when their beloved father was a fugitive from justice had she not, in spite of her great anxiety for him, suddenly felt so ravenous herself.
But was Rupert Carrington a beloved father? His three younger children, discussing his chances of getting away, sounded boisterously cheerful; and even Richard, though quieter, expressed no concern. Almost as if he had read her thoughts, Drew said: ‘Are you thinking we mind very little – on Father’s account? I’m sure we’re all very sorry for him. You must blame our seeming callousness on the resilience of youth. We seem to have rather a lot of it.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Richard.
‘Poor Father!’ said Clare. ‘But we shall need all the resilience we can work up. How people in the village will gloat over us now! They think we’re spoilt and lazy.’
‘I deny lazy,’ said Drew. ‘And it’s hardly our fault we’ve not been trained to earn. Anyway, we shall soon find some way to.’
‘I shan’t,’ said Clare. ‘I feel worse equipped than a Victorian girl. She could always be a governess. But what can I do?’
Merry said: ‘Clare, darling, you really are wet. If I wasn’t going on the stage I can think of lots of jobs I could do. Serving in a shop, being a waitress – or going into a factory; that’s jolly well paid.’
‘A factory? I should wreck the machinery.’
‘I must say I can’t see her in a factory,’ said Jane. ‘Is there no job you ever fancied, Clare?’
Clare shook her head gloomily.
‘You once said you’d like to be a king’s mistress,’ said Merry. ‘But there’s such a shortage of kings now. Could you marry somebody? Not that I can think of anyone. All the well-to-do unmarried men in the village are over seventy.’
‘There’s one good thing. I needn’t go to that art school now – I never really wanted to. And thank goodness Father hasn’t paid the fees yet. Oh, dear, there are dozens of bills waiting to be paid. He hasn’t been here to sign cheques for nearly a month.’
‘I wonder if they can make him bankrupt while he’s out of the country – if he gets out,’ said Richard. ‘We’d better listen to the News. It just might mention him; there was quite a lot about City scandals yesterday.’ He turned on the television.
A play was finishing – with the arrest of the criminal.
‘Plain-clothes men,’ said Merry. ‘I wonder if we shall get some here, looking for Father.’ She watched absorbedly until the play ended, then said regretfully, ‘We seem to have missed something good.’
The News began. Jane, remembering Rupert had spoken of himself as insignificant, thought it unlikely there would be any reference to him. But her heart began to beat wildly when, after dealing with the arrest of a financier whose name had been in the news for days, the newscaster began reading a list of firms whose books had been taken over by the police. She heard the words ‘also those of Rupert Carrington …’ A moment later the newscaster, allowing himself a flicker of a smile, concluded with a little story about a recaptured monkey.
‘Well, they haven’t captured Father, anyway!’ said Merry.
Jane found herself faintly proud that Rupert had been mentioned. Even as a crook, she did not care to think of him as insignificant.
‘Has anyone the vaguest idea what he’s really done?’ asked Clare.
‘I think it’s known as fraudulent conversion,’ said Richard. ‘You finance a company and then use the money for yourself and to pay dividends on the next company you finance, and then go on financing more and more companies. It’s all right – until you get stopped. And when a big fish gets caught, smaller fish get into the net too.’
The telephone rang. Richard went to the study to answer it.
‘Probably Father, wanting to be bailed out,’ said Merry.
Jane wondered if her entire savings would be enough. She doubted it – for a man mentioned in the same breath as one alleged to have fraudulently converted two million.
Richard returned to say Cook and Edith had also been listening to the News and wanted to be assured that ‘it didn’t mean your father’. On hearing it did, they had wanted Richard to come and get them at once so that they could ‘help’. He’d promised to come in the morning. ‘They sent their love and said it would all come right in the end and they and we must stick together – which we obviously can’t but I didn’t mention that.’
‘We might,’ said Merry. ‘Suppose we turned this house into a guest house?’
The idea was welcomed by everyone except Richard who said it was out of the question.
‘But why, Richard?’ asked Drew. ‘If you and I share a room and the girls shared, there’d be quite a few free bedrooms.’
‘And surely there must be attics?’ said Jane. ‘Are they usable?’
‘Only the nice ones Cook and Edith have as bedroom and bathroom,’ said Glare. ‘The others are just garrets with skylights.’
‘Still, even without the attics …’ Drew began to plan eagerly, backed up by Merry and Jane. It took Richard a long time to convince them that a guest house would need capital – and guests, who would certainly not be available in the winter when the Swan could never fill its bedrooms.
‘And though I hate to mention it,’ said Jane, ‘it’s just struck me that if your father’s made bankrupt all your furniture will belong to his creditors, surely?’
‘It’s a mercy he doesn’t own the house,’ said Richard. ‘I wonder if the lease will count as one of his assets? We can only hang on and hope for the best. Luckily the rent’s very low.’
‘But there are rates,’ said Clare. ‘And the upkeep’s so high. Do any of you realize what even the heating costs?’
By the time Clare had finished a dissertation on the house-keeping in general, Jane saw that Dome House would swallow three hundred pounds in no time at all. It could only be kept going – even with the most rigid economies – if the three elder Carringtons got jobs immediately. As for Merry’s education … But she wasn’t bringing that topic up now.
They listened to the final News broadcast but the City’s affairs were omitted. Richard then said he could neither think nor talk any more and was going to bed.
‘Me, too,’ said Drew. ‘I find the resilience of youth is wearing off.’
Clare began collecting the supper plates. ‘We’ll wash these up with the breakfast things. You have your bath, Miss Minton.’
Drew said: ‘As you’re such a friend now, could we stop calling you Miss Minton? Perhaps “Minty” – no, I’m sure you’d hate that.’
Jane had often suffered Minty but never willingly. She said now: ‘I’d prefer Jane. It’ll make me feel younger.’
‘I wish something would make me feel older,’ said Drew. ‘Catastrophe’s obviously thrusting maturity on you, Richard, but I’m beginning to feel like a fatherless child. Not that I’ve depended on Father for anything but material comforts. To be honest, I’ve never felt I knew him at all well.’
‘I doubt if any of us have,’ said Richard.
‘He hasn’t really given us the chance to,’ said Merry. ‘Still, when we have seen him he’s always been terribly nice. And I wish him good luck with all my heart.’
She spoke cheerfully and without a trace of sentiment. Jane tried to think it a good thing that Rupert’s children were not stricken emotionally as well as financially, but she found it hard to understand. Later, lying in bed, she told herself she was more callous than they were. Why, if she really had fallen in love with Rupert, wasn’t she miserable? Why did she find life so interesting, exciting, full of hope? She tried to harrow herself by thinking of him flying from the law through the night – or already in a prison cell. But she went on feeling interested, excited and hopeful. Well, at least she would keep vigil for him, lie awake …
She slept eight hours and only got downstairs when breakfast was ready.
‘Just toast and marmalade,’ said Glare. ‘I thought we’d better start economizing.’
‘Perhaps we can sell the toasters,’ said Drew, as the musique concrète began.
After breakfast, Richard and Drew drove off to call for Cook and Edith. Jane, Clare and Merry did the bedrooms.
They were in Clare’s room when they heard a car arrive.
Merry, looking out of the window, said: ‘Two men getting out – probably from Scotland Yard. Leave this to me.’