A Winter's Child (25 page)

‘Darling – I'm hungry,' moaned one liberated young lady after another. The restaurant, for those who could afford it, was close at hand, and since orders for dinner were not taken after half past nine, it soon became the fashion among that ‘smart and crazy'set, to dine first while palates were still sharp and heads relatively steady before drifting downstairs, replete, pleasantly tipsy, faintly amorous, to flirt and make promises, to drink fruit-flavoured spirits, smoke Turkish cigarettes, and, above all, to dance.

There was the bunny hug, the shimmy. There was the foxtrot, the most perfect excuse yet invented for a man and a woman to embrace publicly. There was the tango. Girls danced without gloves, without programmes and with complete strangers. The need to be introduced had become obsolete alongside the need to be chaperoned. Young ladies – and they made no bones about it – did not come to the Crown in search of husbands. They came, unashamedly and as young men had always been allowed to do, for the adventure, the amusement, the
fun.
The great thing was not to be bored. In some cases not to remember. And where better to blur one's sense of resentment of the past and futility at the future in a haze of tobacco, jazz music and alcohol, than the Crown?

‘Nowhere,' said Kit Hardie, ‘but if we could fill the bedrooms we'd be making money all through the night as well, while everybody's asleep.'

‘Major Hardie, do you think you could help me out?' enquired a bright but suddenly earnest young thing. ‘We're having a party for my twenty-first – marquee in the garden and all that, and what with our cutting down on maids and moving to a smaller house after the boys were killed, Mummy wonders if you could possibly put up about a dozen of our guests – just overnight for the 24th and maybe the 25th?'

‘I only wish you had given me more notice,' replied the Major, looking grave.

‘Oh I say, Major Hardie, please don't let me down. If my friends can't come here then I'll end up with nothing but cousins and brothers-in-law and old grannies at my birthday party.
Please,
Major.'

He hesitated, glanced upwards speculatively, as if he just might have been deciding which of his numerous bookings could best be cancelled. ‘Mr Clarence,' he said, ‘Mrs Swanfield. Let's put our heads together and do a little juggling for this young lady.'

‘Oh, Major. Mother will be
so
thankful.'

Would she convey her thanks in person? She came, a sensible, handsome woman dressed with unobtrusive elegance, the ‘first lady', despite her removal to smaller premises, of the village a dozen miles from Faxby where her family had been settled for several generations. Kit Hardie, at his most impressive, escorted her around the hotel, a grand tour culminating with the Earl Grey tea in floral Coalport china, freshly baked scones and raspberry jam, hot muffins, a traditional English plum cake, nothing too elaborate or suspiciously continental, Claire noticed, nothing, in fact, which the lady might not have expected in the country homes of her friends.

‘This is really very pleasant,' she said, relaxing into a chintz armchair, glancing with approval around the quiet room, perfectly at ease with its unostentatious, reassuring solid comfort. ‘Very pleasant. I had expected something rather more flamboyant, I confess. I am so glad. Do you have facilities for private parties, I wonder? I chair a number of committees and when it comes to annual dinners and the like it seems sensible, these days – when one is afflicted with a servant problem, as I am – to take the catering out of one's home.'

She left with menus, brochures, prices.

‘The word is spreading,' said Kit.

Would it spread fast enough? But by the autumn, Claire no longer felt the slightest qualm about accepting her salary, being well aware that she often earned it twice over.

‘You can't possibly enjoy it,' said Dorothy, no question this but a statement she desperately wanted to be true, in order to assure Edward that her daughter's latest madness was over.

‘It gives me a reason to get up in the morning.'

‘Claire?'
Dorothy was plainly scandalized. ‘And you must know, I suppose, that – inevitably – there have been rumours. About your relations with that man.'

‘Inevitably?'

‘Well, of course, since you are always with him, shut up together for hours in his office by all accounts. Claire
is
that necessary? And you were seen, you know, in his company at two o'clock one morning, walking in the direction of Mannheim Crescent. I really didn't know how to explain it.'

‘It must have been a fine night.'

And then, seeing that Dorothy was sincerely upset, she said tartly, ‘Mother, whoever it was who saw me, must have been out in the streets at two o'clock in the morning themselves, you know.'

‘Yes. Yes. We all know about that.' Dorothy's temper, under pressure from her nerves and from Edward, was fraying. ‘Just the same – since you are so clever – you should also know that it is downright foolish to allow yourself to be seen in compromising circumstances with a man to whom you
cannot possibly
be attached.'

‘Can't I, mother?'

‘No. No you can't. Certainly not. Claire – for Heaven's sake – he was in service.'

And had she said ‘in prison', ‘infected with a social disease', ‘insane', her expression could not have been more shocked and bitter.

‘Yes, mother. But he was a war hero too, you know. You should see his uniform – absolutely covered with ribbons and medals.'

‘The war,' snapped Dorothy in direct quotation from Edward, ‘is over. And now that things are back to normal again – well …'

‘Yes mother. A lady is a lady. And a butler is a butler.'

And what, she knew Edward had demanded, would the Swanfields say should she misbehave herself with theirs?

Did she care? No. Only insofar as it would hurt Dorothy. And both she and her mother – and Edward – would just have to live with that. If she decided, that is, to ‘misbehave'.

Throughout Claire's life every one of her close relationships had been, to some degree, painful and she knew of no reason why her future ones should not follow suit. Intimacy, therefore, implied a certain amount of hurt and, still bearing more or less bravely the scars inflicted by Dorothy and Jeremy and Paul, what concerned her now was not to avoid wounds altogether but to make sure they were light, superficial, quick to heal. And in her present frame of mind, Kit – as he seemed to know – was too much for her. Not that he would hurt her. On the contrary, should she go to him now, this minute, she rather imagined that he would take her straight upstairs to the elegant little flat he had made for himself from the attics of the Crown and make love to her so thoroughly that she would have no breath left to worry about what anyone might say. And afterwards she would be able to lean against him, firm hands upon her, a firm will to guide her, allowing him to blend her and merge her with himself until they became a couple. She was almost sure he wanted that. Not, of course – and she found herself smiling tolerantly, with affection – that he was prevented by anything he might feel for her from succumbing promptly and with a goodwill to any temptations strewn along his path by certain ladies from the Princes Theatre and elsewhere. He was a man of appetite who had never had any reason for restraint. She understood that. And until he
had
a reason it would not occur to him to be celibate.

Was it only a question of breaking the barrier between the warm camaraderie they now shared and the more exclusive passion of lovers? It could be done, she sometimes felt quite certain. And to be cherished by a man like Kit, who did nothing by halves, could be no mean experience. Yet what – at present – had she to give him? He would want a great deal. If he ever made a commitment he would expect, quite rightly, as much in return. And even on the days when it seemed to her that she would be glad of that, she did not feel fit for it. In her present state of mind it would be an act of weakness, not of giving so much as of surrender. So much less than he – or any decent man – deserved, that she could not really think of it. Not yet.

And in the meantime, since he was evidently in no hurry, she admired him,
liked
him, was very happy to learn from him. There were times, of course, usually early mornings following too little sleep, when she found him exacting, exhausting, over-meticulous, extravagant. Yet when, at his insistence, the silver which had seemed quite bright enough, had been polished once again, the flowers which, in everybody else's opinion, could easily last a few more days, had been replaced, when everyone had grumbled that it could hardly be necessary to rearrange those newspapers, empty those ashtrays, plump up those cushions so constantly over and over, there was – when one surveyed the final picture – no denying that the Major had raised the Crown a decided cut above the station hotels. And when tempers flared, crisis or panic or chaos broke out as it inevitably, and fairly regularly did, the mere appearance of Kit Hardie upon the scene provided instant reassurance, a speedy return to calm.
Here
was the man who would take the decision, provide the solution, shoulder – if necessary – the blame.
Here
was the man who would put things to rights, would save the day and everybody's bacon, reducing disaster to a little extra work and ingenuity and sending it tamely away.

‘What name can one give for what you do?' enquired Dorothy. ‘We rather think you should be called an assistant manageress. At any rate, that is what we tell our friends. I don't see how you can object.'

She did not object, thinking it as good a title as any for her range of tasks, for the miles she ran every day from Kit Hardie's office to every part of the hotel; to the lobby where Mr Clarence, his charm being interspersed with brief fits of melancholy, could not always copy; to the little flower room to make sure the girls had remembered ‘blue for the Blue Room, pink for the Rose'; to the housekeeper's room to investigate an unaccustomed moodiness in a chambermaid, or a discrepancy in the linen stock. She calculated and paid out the wages, checked the bar accounts, arbitrated in Chef Keller's many disputes with tradesmen, kept within sight of the lounge at teatime and made herself pleasant to any solitary ladies. Three nights a week, often four, wearing a long tunic of black net covered with jet beads, she moved through the restaurant and the cocktail bar, available for conversation, compliments, complaints; ready to preserve order and keep an eye on the barman, MacAllister, an agreeable fellow but quite likely – said Kit – to give short measure at full price and pocket the difference if he could. She spent hours listening, with half her mind, to men who boasted of their virility and their bank balances and men who charmingly confessed that they had little of either; to the beginning and end of love affairs; to Arnold Crozier's discourses on the art of making and drinking wine; Toby Hartwell's abandoned ambitions to be a test pilot, a racing motorist, to ride the winner of the Derby; the claims of the restaurant pianist, Miss. Adela Adair, that only the envy of her music teachers and her own generosity to a series of feckless lovers had kept her from the international concert stage. In obedience to Kit Hardie's instructions that the Kellers, upon whose culinary expertise so much depended, must be kept happy at any cost, she made frequent visits to the kitchen, where more often than not, she was able to convince Aristide Keller of his own genius, the high value the Major and the entire gourmet population of Faxby – never large – put upon him, and that no one was in the act of stealing his recipes which he kept scribbled down on scraps of paper and impaled on a spike behind the door, except for their one most vital ingredient which remained locked inside his shrewd, suspicious mind.

‘Yes, mother. I think you might call me an assistant manageress.'

‘Oh – very well,' said Dorothy doubtfully, still wondering how to convince Edward that one could feel proud of that. ‘But do you
like
it? Is it what you want?'

‘It keeps me busy. It occupies my mind.'

It also enabled her to stand back, not altogether tut sufficiently, from the Swanfields so that, at this safer distance, she could see them in less threatening colours. Eunice and Toby had never alarmed her. Nola, she decided, must be taken at her face value, not high perhaps but often amusing, intriguing, more or less inevitable. To the enigma Benedict represented, she could find no solution and had concluded that it would be pointless, therefore, to study him too closely. While Polly, as Claire had always suspected, seemed more than able to look after herself, having solved the problem of her independence by the acquisition of a more acceptable chaperone than her mother, a young admirer, a possible fiance, Mr Roger Timms of Taylor & Timms, a weighty, amiable young man who had avoided conscription because of his weak eyesight and whose friendship not only enabled Polly to behave in a very queenly fashion in the Millinery and Perfumery Departments of his father's store but to visit, in the supposed security of his company, the hitherto forbidden Crown Hotel.

‘I know I can
rely
on Roger,' beamed Miriam, ‘to look after Polly.' And if she knew that he seemed perfectly content to spend his evenings blinking owlishly into a whisky and lemon juice while Polly flirted – never with him – and danced, then at least the conventions of escort and chaperonage were being observed and Miriam had no need to feel – no need to worry that anyone else might feel – that she was neglecting her youngest, never particularly her favourite, child.

‘Roger darling – I'm ready to go now.'

‘Right ho, princess.'

And short-sighted, muddle-headed, wanting nothing more, it seemed, than a pat on the ear like a good dog, he would shamble to his feet.

‘What a devoted soul he is,' mused Miriam speculatively. ‘Rather backward as a child, of course – I remember his mother being most anxious about it – but always sweet-natured. And very rich. Polly could do much worse.'