An Old Fashioned Girl. Betty Neels

parents she had lived with them at Sheringham where her father had been a doctor in general practice but in the school holidays they had often stayed with the aunts at Themelswick and since there were no other relations she had been given a home by them when her parents were killed. They had been kind to her and loving and had managed, even while their capital dwindled, to send her to a good boarding-school. When she left school she stayed at home with the old ladies and ran the house for them with help from the village and when they found themselves without money she had seen to all the tiresome details concerning the renting of a small house and the letting of their home, assuring them that matters were bound to get back to normal and that they would be able to return to their old home as soon as things improved. She wasn’t sure how this would come about but it had made it easier for them to bear leaving the house. Not that they complained; elderly and forgetful they might be, but they had a pride which wouldn’t allow them to complain.

      Patience was almost at the end of the hedge with another smaller gate in sight when there was a rustling in the hedge and a smallish dog wormed his way through it. He was very wet and of no known breed as far as she could see, but his rough coat gleamed with good health as well as rain and he was obviously happy. He pranced around her, uttering little yelps of pleasure and she stooped to look at the tag on his collar.

      ‘“Basil”,’ she read. ‘What a handsome name for a handsome dog.’ The beast licked her rain-wet face and she stroked his damp head. But he had gone again, obedient to a whistle from the other side of the gate, and a moment later the owner of the whistle appeared, not bothering to open the gate but vaulting it lightly despite his size and weight—a giant of a man in a Barbour jacket and cords stuffed into wellington boots. Patience got to her feet as he came towards her. ‘Good day. That’s a nice dog you’ve got,’ she said. The man might be a stranger but the habit of speaking to everyone she met—as everyone did thereabouts—died hard. He would be one of the guests at the manor, she supposed.

      He had drawn level with her now—a handsome man, she noted, but unsmiling. His ‘good day’ was civil but that was all. He passed her without a second look, striding along the hedge with the dog frisking around his heels. Patience watched him go and, mindful of the time, went on her own way, becoming once more immersed in pleasant speculations as to how best to lay out her wages when she got them, and when she got back to the little terraced house it was to find that her aunts were awake and anxious for their tea. She didn’t give the stranger another thought until she was curled up in her bed hours later. ‘If he didn’t look so cross, he might be a very nice man,’ she muttered as she dropped off.

      It was strange the following morning, going in through the side-door of her old home, presenting herself in the housekeeper’s room exactly on time and waiting to be told what she was to do. If she had had any ideas about not having enough to keep her occupied she was quickly disillusioned; the coal hadn’t been delivered, the milkman had got his order wrong and someone was needed to put in extra points to boost what Miss Murch described as woefully inadequate lighting. Patience spent her first hour sorting out these problems, drank her coffee—rather to her surprise—with Miss Murch and then settled down to make a list of the local tradesmen. This done, she was sent to the kitchen garden to find old Ned Groom and ask why he hadn’t brought the vegetables up to the house.

      ‘Tiresome ol’ woman,’ said Ned when she tracked him down in the dilapidated greenhouse, brooding over his cuttings. ‘Now these ‘ere should do all right—got ‘em in just in time.’

      ‘Splendid,’ said Patience soothingly. ‘Look, Ned, you go on with the cuttings and tell me what I can take. When we left the cabbages were going on well and there must be masses of sprouts unless someone helped themselves— after all, the place has been empty for quite a while.’

      ‘Sprouts enough; take what you want, Miss Patience, and there’s carrots ready for pulling and plenty of kale and leeks. It’s all a bit untidy like but what do you expect with no one to tend the place?’

      She left him grumbling to himself, pulled carrots, leeks and cut a couple of cabbages and bore them back to the kitchen.

      ‘And about time too,’ said Miss Murch.

      ‘Well, it will take a little while for Ned to get the garden going again,’ Patience pointed out. ‘There’ll be sprouts tomorrow.’

      The day went quickly. Her lunchtime wasn’t long enough; as soon as she was paid she would get Mrs Dodge to go for an extra hour each day and get the midday meal for her aunts. They had been waiting placidly for her to get a meal and she had barely had the time to cook omelettes and lay the table before it was time to go back to the house. She hurried back, still hungry, and spent the afternoon trailing Miss Murch round the house, noting down all the things that lady found it essential to replace or add to what she considered to be a woefully ill-equipped household. Patience, who had lived most of her life using wooden spoons and pudding basins and old-fashioned egg whisks, couldn’t for the life of her see the sense of all the electrical equipment Miss Murch needed. Mr van der Beek was going to be very out of pocket by the time he had paid for everything, but that of course was his business.

      There had been no sign of him; the study door on the other side of the hall had remained shut although of course he could easily have gone in and out several times without her seeing him—her duties carried her all over the house as well as down to the village on an errand for Miss Murch.

      She was glad to go home at four o’clock. At Miss Murch’s instruction she had laid a tea-tray, presumably for Mr van der Beek, before she went, cut sandwiches of Gentleman’s Relish, arranged a fruit cake on a cake stand, and warmed the teapot. Miss Murch nodded approval. ‘The electrician will be here tomorrow morning; be sure that you are not late, Patience.’

      Patience raced back to the village, got tea for her aunts and herself and sat down thankfully to tell them about her day, making light of the more menial tasks she had been given. She suspected that she was being tried out by Miss Murch and that that lady, formidable in appearance though she was, wasn’t as awe-inspiring as she had at first thought.

      By the middle of the week she had found her bearings. There was plenty for her to do; the phone, after the first day, rang a great deal, and she had got quite good at telling whoever it was at the other end that Mr van der Beek was either not at home, in his bath, or closeted with his publisher. She varied her fibs according to the time of day, but took careful note of the caller’s name. She had had strict instructions to fob off any callers but, all the same, each afternoon before she went home she left a neat list on the tea-tray.

      Mr van der Beek, his notes carefully sorted and the bare bones of the first chapter of his learned volume lying before him on his desk after four days’ hard work, laid down his pen and strolled out of the study. Each morning before his household was stirring he had let himself out of the house with his dog and walked until breakfast-time; he walked again in the evening but so far he hadn’t taken much interest in the house. Miss Murch cooked delicious meals for him, kept the house quiet and disturbed him not at all but now he had an urge to look around him.

      It was a chilly morning; he would find his way to the kitchen and ask for his coffee. He stood in the hall, looking around him, and his eye lighted on the bowl of winter jasmine set on the wall table. It was a splash of colour and he wondered who had put it there. Miss Murch, splendid housekeeper that she was, wasn’t one to waste time arranging flowers. A faint sound behind him made him turn his head, in time to see a grey skirt disappearing through the dining-room door, with such swiftness that he wondered if he had imagined it. He shrugged huge shoulders, went to the kitchen and had his coffee sitting on the kitchen table while Miss Murch made pastry and then made his way back to the study. He was in the hall when he came face to face with Patience.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS Basil who made the first move; he trotted forward and jumped up at Patience, recognising someone he had already met and liked. She bent to pat him, glad of something to do, for Mr van der Beek’s stare was disconcerting.

      ‘Ah, yes,’ his voice was cool, ‘Basil remembers you.’ His tone implied that he himself did not. ‘I take it you are the—er—general