don’t say, mind you, that it won’t be an improvement … Gives you a view—and them shrubs made it dark in the drawing-room. Still they was growing a treat—never seen a healthier lot of forsythia. Lilacs isn’t much, but them wiglers costs money—and mind you—they’re too old to replant.’
‘Oh, I know. But this is much, much nicer.’
‘Well.’ Foster scratched his head. ‘Maybe it is.’
‘It’s right,’ said Gwenda, nodding her head. She asked suddenly, ‘Who lived here before the Hengraves? They weren’t here very long, were they?’
‘Matter of six years or so. Didn’t belong. Afore them? The Miss Elworthys. Very churchy folk. Low church. Missions to the heathen. Once had a black clergyman staying here, they did. Four of ’em there was, and their brother—but he didn’t get much of a look-in with all those women. Before them—now let me see, it was Mrs Findeyson—ah! she was the real gentry, she was. She belonged. Was living here afore I was born.’
‘Did she die here?’ asked Gwenda.
‘Died out in Egypt or some such place. But they brought her home. She’s buried up to churchyard. She planted that magnolia and those labiurnams. And those pittispores. Fond of shrubs, she was.’
Foster continued: ‘Weren’t none of those new houses built up along the hill then. Countrified, it was. No cinema then. And none of them new shops. Or that there parade on the front.’ His tone held the disapproval of the aged for all innovations. ‘Changes,’ he said with a snort. ‘Nothing but changes.’
‘I suppose things are bound to change,’ said Gwenda. ‘And after all there are lots of improvements nowadays, aren’t there?’
‘So they say. I ain’t noticed them. Changes!’ He gestured towards the macrocarpa hedge on the left through which the gleam of a building showed. ‘Used to be the cottage hospital, that used,’ he said. ‘Nice place and handy. Then they goes and builds a great place near to a mile out of town. Twenty minutes’ walk if you want to get there on a visiting day—or threepence on the bus.’ He gestured once more towards the hedge … ‘It’s a girls’ school now. Moved in ten years ago. Changes all the time. People takes a house nowadays and lives in it ten or twelve years and then off they goes. Restless. What’s the good of that? You can’t do any proper planting unless you can look well ahead.’
Gwenda looked affectionately at the magnolia.
‘Like Mrs Findeyson,’ she said.
‘Ah. She was the proper kind. Come here as a bride, she did. Brought up her children and married them, buried her husband, had her grandchildren down in the summers, and took off in the end when she was nigh on eighty.’
Foster’s tone held warm approval.
Gwenda went back into the house smiling a little.
She interviewed the workmen, and then returned to the drawing-room where she sat down at the desk and wrote some letters. Amongst the correspondence that remained to be answered was a letter from some cousins of Giles who lived in London. Any time she wanted to come to London they begged her to come and stay with them at their house in Chelsea.
Raymond West was a well-known (rather than popular) novelist and his wife Joan, Gwenda knew, was a painter. It would be fun to go and stay with them, though probably they would think she was a most terrible Philistine. Neither Giles nor I are a bit highbrow, reflected Gwenda.
A sonorous gong boomed pontifically from the hall. Surrounded by a great deal of carved and tortured black wood, the gong had been one of Giles’s aunt’s prized possessions. Mrs Cocker herself appeared to derive distinct pleasure from sounding it and always gave full measure. Gwenda put her hands to her ears and got up.
She walked quickly across the drawing-room to the wall by the far window and then brought herself up short with an exclamation of annoyance. It was the third time she’d done that. She always seemed to expect to be able to walk through solid wall into the dining-room next door.
She went back across the room and out into the front hall and then round the angle of the drawing-room wall and so along to the dining-room. It was a long way round, and it would be annoying in winter, for the front hall was draughty and the only central heating was in the drawing-room and dining-room and two bedrooms upstairs.
I don’t see, thought Gwenda to herself as she sat down at the charming Sheraton dining table which she had just bought at vast expanse in lieu of Aunt Lavender’s massive square mahogany one, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a doorway made through from the drawing-room to the dining-room. I’ll talk to Mr Sims about it when he comes this afternoon.
Mr Sims was the builder and decorator, a persuasive middle-aged man with a husky voice and a little notebook which he always held at the ready, to jot down any expensive idea that might occur to his patrons.
Mr Sims, when consulted, was keenly appreciative.
‘Simplest thing in the world, Mrs Reed—and a great improvement, if I may say so.’
‘Would it be very expensive?’ Gwenda was by now a little doubtful of Mr Sims’s assents and enthusiasms. There had been a little unpleasantness over various extras not included in Mr Sims’s original estimate.
‘A mere trifle,’ said Mr Sims, his husky voice indulgent and reassuring. Gwenda looked more doubtful than ever. It was Mr Sims’s trifles that she had learnt to distrust. His straightforward estimates were studiously moderate.
‘I’ll tell you what, Mrs Reed,’ said Mr Sims coaxingly, ‘I’ll get Taylor to have a look when he’s finished with the dressing-room this afternoon, and then I can give you an exact idea. Depends what the wall’s like.’
Gwenda assented. She wrote to Joan West thanking her for her invitation, but saying that she would not be leaving Dillmouth at present since she wanted to keep an eye on the workmen. Then she went out for a walk along the front and enjoyed the sea breeze. She came back into the drawing-room, and Taylor, Mr Sims’s leading workman, straightened up from the corner and greeted her with a grin.
‘Won’t be no difficulty about this, Mrs Reed,’ he said. ‘Been a door here before, there has. Somebody as didn’t want it has just had it plastered over.’
Gwenda was agreeably surprised. How extraordinary, she thought, that I’ve always seemed to feel there was a door there. She remembered the confident way she had walked to it at lunch-time. And remembering it, quite suddenly, she felt a tiny shiver of uneasiness. When you came to think of it, it was really rather odd … Why should she have felt so sure that there was a door there? There was no sign of it on the outside wall. How had she guessed—known—that there was a door just there? Of course it would be convenient to have a door through to the dining-room, but why had she always gone so unerringly to that one particular spot? Anywhere on the dividing wall would have done equally well, but she had always gone automatically, thinking of other things, to the one place where a door had actually been.
I hope, thought Gwenda uneasily, that I’m not clairvoyant or anything …
There had never been anything in the least psychic about her. She wasn’t that kind of person. Or was she? That path outside from the terrace down through the shrubbery to the lawn. Had she in some way known it was there when she was so insistent on having it made in that particular place?
Perhaps I am a bit psychic, thought Gwenda uneasily. Or is it something to do with the house?
Why had she asked Mrs Hengrave that day if the house was haunted?
It wasn’t haunted! It was a darling house! There couldn’t be anything wrong with the house. Why, Mrs Hengrave had seemed quite surprised by the idea.
Or had there been a trace of reserve, of wariness, in her manner?
Good Heavens, I’m beginning to imagine things, thought Gwenda.
She brought her mind back with an effort to her discussion