An Old Fashioned Girl
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She turned off the bridle path, climbed a gate and, keeping to the hedge because of the winter wheat showing green, began to walk its length. The open country stretched all around her, desolate under a leaden sky with only farm buildings in the distance to break the emtpy vastness. Not that Patience thought of it like that; she loved every stick and stone of it, just as she knew the names of every person who lived in Themelswick. Before the death of her 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 factotum whom Mr Bennett urged me to employ.’
She didn’t allow herself to be disconcerted by his cold eyes. ‘Yes, Mr van der Beek, I’m Patience Martin.’ She added, wishing to be friendly, ‘We met out walking on Sunday afternoon.’
‘Did we?’ He turned away. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your work.’
She put away the table silver she had been cleaning and went back to the kitchen to make a neat list of the groceries Miss Murch wanted delivered on the following day. ‘Tell that butcher that I want the best Scotch beef; if he hasn’t got it, he need not bother to send anything else.’
Patience called in on her way home that afternoon to warn the butcher. ‘I know you have excellent meat, but the housekeeper is determined to find fault with everything. I don’t think she likes living out of London.’
Mr Crouch leaned his elbows on the counter. ‘She’s going to like it even less—there’s bad weather on the way, Miss Patience; snow and a nasty east wind. Like as not she’ll be holed up there in the house for days on end.’
Mr Crouch was noted for his weather predictions. ‘I might get holed up too,’ said Patience. ‘Just to be on the safe side I think I’ll talk to Mrs Dodge … she might have to keep an eye on the aunts.’
‘Yes, do that, love. Got plenty of stores up at the house, have they?’
‘Enough for a week, but not bread or milk, and there might be power cuts.’
‘Well, you bear it in mind. Remember that winter four years back—you was all cut off for days—us as well—real blizzard that were and no mistake.’
‘It’s only half a mile away from the village,’ observed Patience.
‘Might just as well be ten miles when there’s drifts.’ Mr Crouch wiped down the counter. ‘I’ve a tasty pair of chops if you fancy them to give Miss Martin and her sister …’
Patience took the chops and herself off home to the aunts, waiting with ladylike patience for their tea.
She broached the subject of possible bad weather to Miss Murch on the next day.
‘There’s nothing on the weather forecast,’ said Miss Murch. ‘I shall want some carrots from the garden; Mr van der Beek likes a carrot.’
Patience didn’t think that Mr van der Beek would enjoy anything as homely as a carrot but she went and found old Ned, who filled her trug and remarked gloomily that there was bad weather on the way and how was he supposed to get at the cabbages and leeks if they got snowed up?
‘Miss Murch says there’s nothing on the weather forecast …’
Old Ned’s snort dismissed Miss Murch. ‘And what do she know about it, eh?’ He patted a string of splendid onions with a loving hand. ‘You mark my words …’
Patience, who had more faith in old Ned and Mr Crouch than the weathermen, had another go at Miss Murch. ‘This house has been cut off during bad weather,’ she volunteered, not mentioning that she and her aunts had been cut off too. ‘The snow drifts badly here—it’s rather flat, you see.’
‘Then what are the snowploughs for?’ asked Miss Murch witheringly. ‘This may be the back of beyond but presumably it is entitled to the same public services as those enjoyed by more civilised parts.’
Patience gave up and went away to answer the doorbell. Someone from a firm in Norwich wanting to know if the owner of the house would like double glazing.
‘Well, he’s not here—away for a few days.’ Patience, hardened to telling fibs, after a little pause added, ‘If you want to come again it would save a lot of time if you phoned first. He’s not often at home.’
She smiled kindly at the man, who looked as though he could have done with a warm drink. On her own she would undoubtedly have given him one. ‘You could try the vicarage if you haven’t called there already …’
He went away quite cheerful; she was sure the vicar couldn’t afford double glazing but she was just as sure that the man would be given a cup of tea. Selling double glazing in January was no way to earn a living; she thought of Mr van der Beek, secure in the cosy fastness of his study, having regular meals and earning fabulous sums just by sitting at a desk and writing.
Mr van der Beek was indeed sitting at his desk, but he wasn’t writing. To his annoyance his powerful brain was refusing to concentrate upon transcribing his notes into plain English—interlarded with Latin medical terms of course—instead, he found his thoughts wandering towards his general factotum. A mouse-like creature if ever there was one, he reflected, and surely with that ordinary face and mouse-like hair she didn’t need to dress like a mouse? Her eyes were beautiful, though; he reflected for a few moments on the length and curl of her eyelashes. She had a charming voice too … He picked up his pen and summarily dismissed her from his mind.
The following morning when Patience went down to the kitchen garden she found old Ned stacking carrots, leeks and turnips in neat piles in the greenhouse. ‘Them turnips will be tough,’ he pointed out, ‘seeing as ‘ow there weren’t no one to dig ‘em up at the proper time. They’ll bake, though, and likely keep you going while the snow lasts.’
Patience didn’t argue with him; she could see that the weather was changing with sullen clouds creeping in from the sea and a nasty cold wind.
‘It’ll be snowing by the morning,’ said old Ned.
He was right; there was already a light covering when she got up and the still dark sky had a nasty yellow tinge to it. She was glad that she had seen Mrs Dodge, who lived close by and even in very bad weather would be able to get to the aunts. She had stocked up the kitchen cupboard too. She made sure that the house was warm and her aunts suitably clad and fed before setting out for the house; the weather report had mentioned light snow in East Anglia and for the moment, at any rate, it was quite right; the snow drifted down, occasionally blown into a flurry by a gust of east wind, cold enough to take her breath. It was pleasant to enter the warm house and sniff the fragrance of bacon, still lingering in the kitchen after Miss Murch had cooked Mr van der Beek’s breakfast.
‘You’d better fetch the vegetables while you’ve got your outdoor things on,’ said Miss Murch, adding grudgingly that it wasn’t a nice morning.
Old Ned in mittens and an overcoat was in the greenhouse. ‘No good me staying ‘ere,’ he told Patience. ‘I’ve picked some sprouts; you’d better take ‘em with you. What’s it to be today?’
‘Onions and carrots, but I’ll take the sprouts and a cabbage, in case I can’t get down tomorrow.’ She added hopefully, ‘Perhaps the snow won’t last.’
To which remark her companion gave a derisive cackle of laughter.
It snowed gently all day but not alarmingly so, Mrs Croft and Mrs Perch came and went, and the house, polished and hoovered and delightfully warm, made nonsense of the chilly weather outside. Patience went home at four o’clock and, being country born and bred, sniffed the air with a knowledgeable little nose—there was more snow on the way. She called at Mr Crouch’s shop and bought braising steak and plenty of bacon; a really large casserole would last them two days and only need warming up …
As she went out of the shop the Bentley whispered past with Mr van der Beek at the wheel—so he’d been away all day. She frowned, thinking of the care with which she and Mrs Croft and Mrs Perch had moved silently around the house so that he shouldn’t be disturbed—and all for nothing. She stood looking after the car and Mr van der Beek watched her in his side-mirror. She was wearing the old Burberry again and a woolly cap in some useful colour pulled down over her hair. Really, he thought irritably, the girl had no dress sense.
It was still snowing when she left the little house in the morning and the sky was ominously dark. She had left a substantial casserole cooked and ready, peeled potatoes for two days, and left everything as ready as possible for her aunts just in case she wouldn’t be able to get home at midday. Mrs Dodge would go in, of course, and almost everyone in the village knew where she was; all the same she felt a faint unease, for the wind was getting strong, blowing the snow into spirals going in every direction.
The worsening weather seemed to have no effect upon the occupants of the house. Patience, unaware that Mr van der Beek had been out early with Basil, thought that probably he had no idea how wintry it could be in Norfolk at that time of the year, and, as for Miss Murch, she had no interest in the outside world; she was already in the kitchen making marmalade.
The weather became steadily worse as the morning wore on and Mrs Croft and Mrs Perch left earlier than usual, declaring that the school would surely close early because of the weather and the children would be sent home. Patience, taking a look out of the window, decided not to try and struggle home and back again—in less than an hour it wouldn’t be possible and, as if to underline her decision, the wind increased with a quite frightening suddenness.
By mid-afternoon it was dark and the wind was howling around the house. Patience, bidden by Miss Murch to draw the curtains, could see nothing but a curtain of snowflakes outside and when the lights began to flicker and the wind increased she went round the house, setting candlesticks and matches at strategic points.
Miss Murch, coming upon her setting an old-fashioned candelabrum on the hall table, remarked tartly that anyone would think that she had done it all before, to which Patience made no reply.
Wrapped in the Burberry and the woolly cap, she knew before she had reached the end of the drive that getting back to the village would be impossible. There was a hollow in the lane a hundred yards from the house and she could see that the drifts were already head-high. Almost blown off her feet, she was half blinded by the snow and so she went back to the house.
Miss Murch eyed her sopping figure. ‘You’ll have to stay the night,’ she pronounced. ‘You can telephone to your home.’
‘We aren’t on the phone, but it’s all right, my aunts won’t worry; they would know that once the snow started drifting there wouldn’t be a way back.’
‘This Godforsaken place,’ declared Miss Murch crossly. ‘Get those wet things off; since you’re here you can help me with Mr van der Beek’s dinner.’
The kitchen was warm and smelled deliciously of something roasting in the Aga. ‘You had better have the room opposite mine,’ said Miss Murch. ‘You can have one of my nightgowns and then we can make up the bed presently. We’ll have our supper once Mr van der Beek has had his dinner.’
The electricity wavered for another half-hour and then went out. Patience went around lighting candles and the oil-lamps her aunts had always kept handy. The dining-room looked quite cosy when she had set candles on the table, but she didn’t linger; she had heard the subdued roar from Mr van der Beek when the power was cut, and he might not be in the best of tempers. She went to the lamp-room behind the kitchen and found another oil-lamp; the moment he went into the dining-room she would nip into the study and light it.
Miss Murch took the dinner in, tapping discreetly on the study door to let him know that it was served. Patience heard his voice, coldly annoyed, as she slid out of the kitchen and into the study. There was a splendid fire burning; by its light she lit the lamp and set it on his desk.
She itched to tidy the piles of papers strewn around. How, she wondered, did he ever find anything in all that muddle?
She had her supper with Miss Murch later that evening, listening politely to that lady’s accounts of the convenience and comfort of Mr van der Beek’s house in London. ‘He has a house in Holland as well,’ she told Patience. ‘He visits there from time to time. He is, as you doubtless know, very well thought of throughout the medical profession.’
Patience murmured politely, and helped with the washing-up while Miss Murch sang the praises of the dish-washing machine at the London house, and retired to her room. It was close to Miss Murch’s at the back of the house and the wind howled against the window, its glass peppered with snowflakes. Patience pulled the curtains, had a very hot bath in the rather antiquated bathroom and jumped into bed. She had experienced weather like this several times and it was unlikely to disturb her sleep. She set the alarm clock Miss Murch had thoughtfully given her for seven o’clock and went to sleep.
It was the dead of night when she woke and she knew at once what it was that had awakened her. One of the shutters in the unused scullery beyond the kitchen had broken loose and was banging against the wall. Then she lay and listened to it for a few minutes and decided to go down and see if she could close it. She lighted her candle and crept along the passage, pausing at Miss Murch’s door. Judging by the snores coming from her room, Miss Murch hadn’t been bothered by the noise. Patience remembered uneasily that Mr van der Beek’s bedroom, at the other side of the house, while not above the kitchen wing, was on the same side. She pattered silently on bare feet down the stairs, across the hall and through the baize door to the kitchen.
Mr van der Beek’s sleep, untroubled by the violence of the wind, was disturbed by the regular banging of the shutter, the kind of noise which would prevent even the most placid person from dozing off. He got into his dressing-gown and slippers by the light of his torch and went to the head of the stairs, just in time to see the faint glow of Patience’s candle dwindle from the hall. Following it quietly, he was in time to see Patience, shrouded in one of Miss Murch’s winceyette nighties, cross the kitchen and open the door leading to the various rooms beyond … She paused on her way to stoop and pat Basil curled up before the Aga. Mr van der Beek, standing in the kitchen doorway, watched her, the corners of his thin mouth twitching. Miss Murch’s nightie covered her from just under her chin to her heels and beyond for there was a good deal of surplus trailing behind her, the full sleeves she had rolled up to allow her hands to emerge and her hair hung in a mousy cloud halfway down her back.
Mr van der Beek coughed politely and hushed Basil who had got up to greet him, delighted to have some company.
Patience nearly dropped the candle. She turned slowly and said severely, ‘I might have screamed, Mr van der Beek.’
‘Oh, no, you’re not the screaming kind,’ he told her. ‘If you were you would be upstairs now with your head under the bedclothes. Is it a loose shutter somewhere?’
‘In the pantry, I think, or the scullery. Through here …’ She led the way, much too concerned about the noise to think about the strange appearance she presented. It was a loose shutter in the scullery. Mr van der Beek secured it and looked around him.
‘What an extremely dreary place,’ he remarked, and without looking at her added, ‘I am chilled to the bone; let us have a hot drink before we return to our beds.’
‘Well, that would be nice,’ said Patience, ‘but I’m not sure—I mean, I haven’t got a dressingg-gown …’ She had gone rather red but she gave him a steady look.