Closed at Dusk (9 page)

‘Do come to tea, Miss Tessa, and bring the dear little lad. We couldn't get glacé cherries, so we're serving deadly nightshade in the sultana loaf.'

‘Good evening, Josephine.' Mr Richardson was out in his hillocky potato patch beyond the rusted iron fence that Jo was going to replace with white wooden rails. ‘The arthritis is terrible.' He never waited for you to ask.

‘Oh, dear. Shall I come and hoe for you?' She was not just a saint at The Sanctuary. Her reputation must spread far and wide.

‘You've got enough to do, my dear. I wish I could help
you
.'

‘You're a pal,' said Jo.

Sod off, thought Marigold. I don't need help from anybody. In the house, she drank half the glass of wine and muttered back and forth between her kitchen and living-room. Shut up, Marigold, don't crowd back in. Think Jo. Josephine. Poor, brave Josephine. Think widow. She took up the photograph of an unknown young man with curly hair and an inoffensive moustache and glared at it, holding it in both hands. Then, as the unseen director of her days commanded, ‘Roll 'em,' she melted into her wide Jo smile and shook her head tenderly and pressed the photograph to her shallow bosom. ‘Alec – dearest …'

Because Tessa and her child were there, Jo spent some time up at the big house, keeping her eyes and ears open, noting things that might come in useful, establishing herself as part of The Sanctuary.

She came up in the morning and explored more of the gardens, which she was allowed to do, as a member of the staff. She had only seen the weird old mausoleum from the other side of the lake, so she crossed the bridge and found the overgrown steps that led from the top of the mound down to the tomb's entrance.

Clutching the full flowered skirt round her legs (Marigold would gladly have set fire to it, but Jo was conscientious about the uniform), she scrambled down through the ivy and junipers. As she stood on the wide marble slab between the tomb and the water examining the inscription and the spread wings on the doors, she saw a small absorbed figure in swimming trunks wading about in the shallow water farther down the lake.

She climbed up the steps and went along the bank to where Rob was messing about with a funnel and some pieces of pipe.

‘Hullo again. I'm Jo, remember?' Although he was a painful reminder of what Tessa had had with Rex and she had not, Jo was going to try to get close to the child, to get him on her side.

‘I saw you at the mouse-o-leum,' he said, head down, scrabbling for something in the mud. He was shy but friendly
enough, like most only children who spend a lot of their time with grown-ups. ‘There's bodies in there, you know.'

‘Oh, I don't think so,' Jo said. ‘One of the gardeners told me that they were taken away long ago to lie in the churchyard.'

Rob lost interest. ‘I'm good at plumbing,' he said. ‘Me and my grandfather are going to drain a bit of this marsh, so we can build a bandstand.'

‘That sounds exciting.'

‘The silver band can play here, if we get it done in time for the Festival. I'm going to let off rockets.'

‘When is that?'

‘End of August.'

‘You'll have to get on with it, then.'

‘Oh, we will. Me and my grandfather have drawn the master plan.'

‘Will you be a plumber when you grow up?'

Jo was afraid she was being too arch, but Rob said, ‘Of course. And the first thing I'll do is tear out that Flusher.' He stood upright and pushed back his wet hair. His large rectangular front teeth clamped on his bottom lip. His face had changed from workmanlike satisfaction to a sort of fearful determination.

‘What's Flusher?'

He told her. ‘It eats babies. Come in the house. I'll show you. The cellars too.'

He waded out on to the bank and took her hand. He likes me. Well done, old Jo. Would he like Marigold?

She had not been into the great house yet, except up the back stairs and into the baking pantry where she and Ruth made up their doughs and cake mixes, and into the kitchen, to use the Aga.

She must not take liberties; she had to tell the child, ‘I've got to start getting things together for this afternoon.'

She helped Rob to carry his pipes and bottles to the back of the house. He dropped them where someone would fall over them, and disappeared.

Keith was in the kitchen, slicing vegetables to make cold soup. He heard someone come up the short stairs from outside and go into the back pantry. ‘Ruth?'

‘It's me,' Jo called out in her clear sing-song. She seemed to be coming in earlier and earlier. Doreen had always skulked in late, but Jo turned up before Ruth most days, and started bashing pans and rolling-pins about. ‘How are you, on this lovely day?'

She was always so damn cheerful. Worse than Ruth. Bit depressing, if you were having a low day.

‘Depressed.'

‘I'm sorry.' Jo came to the doorway between the two rooms. ‘That's a result of your illness, isn't it? My cousin's daughter had it.'

‘Did she?' Keith was pleased. Nobody ever seemed to know anything about ME. ‘Hit her hard?'

‘Oh, terrible. All sorts of problems. We thought she might go blind, at one point.'

‘I had double vision for a week. My mother thought I'd been drinking.'

Jo went back to her bowls and boards, and they talked back and forth comfortably, two people working.

‘Rob wanted to take me through the cellars,' Jo said.

‘He's morbid. Did he tell you about the ghost of Maryann Button who hung herself in the game room?'

‘Hung herself?' Jo brought a broad smile into the doorway, dangling doughy hands. ‘Goodness, how spooky. He's already told me about a toilet that eats babies.'

‘Rob likes to alarm himself, but it's all fantasy. This isn't a spooky place.'

‘I don't believe in psychic phenomena anyway. Do you?'

Because she glibly dismissed all the supernatural possibilities of the universe and took her sticky hands so cheerfully back to her work, Keith was moved to say gloomily, ‘I live at The Sanctuary. Anything is possible.'

‘Like what?'

‘I prefer not to talk about it.'

Jo came in early on Sunday as well, because Ruth liked to go to church with her family. As she was sweeping the porch and the cobbles outside the tea-room, Dorothy Taylor rode into the stableyard on the large grey pony.

‘You're in early,' she called to Jo.

Jo leaned on her broom in the time-honoured posture of maidservants. ‘A lot to be done, Mrs Taylor.' Then, in case that could be interpreted as a veiled complaint, she added, ‘I like to get ahead of the day. You're
out
early, for that matter.'

‘Same reason. I've got work to do, and people coming to lunch
and
dinner.'

She led the pony under the clocktower arch to the other part of the yard where the loose boxes were. Jo left her broom and followed her. The pony stopped by its own stable and put its head over the door while Dorothy unbuckled the girth.

‘You always seem so busy,' Jo said. ‘Perhaps you'd like me to help you in the house sometimes.'

‘Oh,
no
, you're needed in the tea-room.'

‘I could come in at other times. My time's my own now.'

Dorothy Taylor was too shrewd to be conned into harmonizing ‘Yes, poor you' to the ‘poor widow' tune, as some people did. She said briskly, ‘That's all right. I've got Mrs Smallbone. And Ruth and Brenda give me a hand if I need them.' She put the saddle on the half door and took the pony inside.

Not the first time you've brushed me off, Dorothy, if you
only knew it. You brushed off poor Marigold when I came here looking for your help: ‘I must ask you to leave' – oh, that cool, secure voice.

But Jo was a different customer. Any way she could, she would get into the house, infiltrate this confident family and destroy it from within, like a weevil.

‘Don't forget,' she said over the stable door. ‘If you ever do need extra help …'

‘Get over,' Dorothy said to the pony.

There was a mirror in the tea-room scullery, because Ruth was inclined to get flushed and dishevelled on a hot busy day. Jo looked in it to confirm once again that neither Dorothy nor William could connect their long-ago glimpse of rain-sodden Marigold with this sunny, obliging person with the bright, noticeable mouth. Good thing red lipstick was in again now, for her new smile. Very different from the unassuming mouth that had attracted no attention in the days of the pale cantaloupe lipstick.

The drastic hair colouring and the eyebrow and eyelash dye were holding up well. Her lashes had not looked nearly as thick as this when they were sandy. Now that she had got used to it, she liked herself as a dark lady. How had she ever put up with being colourless?
Because Rex had liked it
. The first time they met, he had said, ‘You make every other woman in the room look like a cartoon.'

In those early undeveloped days when he fancied he was artistic, he had adored Marigold's opaque ivory skin. He had wanted her not to use make up, to let her pallid hair grow and arrange it very simply, to wear flat heels, so that the contrast between his height and hers was even more dramatic. When they were with noisy people, he wanted her to he the quiet one, for effect. ‘The still calm centre of that hellish throng,' he said at home later, pleased with her, turning her into an inferno in bed.

Jo busied herself checking the stores, making a list for Ruth's orders tomorrow. She stood on the step stool to get the big cake tins down. She weeded out broken biscuits and tired rock cakes into a bowl of crumbs that would be scattered for the fantails. Customers liked to see the symbolic white birds pecking about.

She could imagine Rex here as a son-in-law, slumming it in the tea-room – what a riot – among all the old ducks and daddies, mooching casually round the corner, hands in pockets, eyes crinkled against the western sun, expecting instant attention from Ruth, as he had long ago from Marigold when she was busy.

That was when Rex still needed her, not just the money with which she could fuel his ambitions. But after he met Tessa – no, long before that, when he was dabbling with women about whom Marigold pretended to know nothing, because she still believed that fable that if you were patient, they would come back to you – the very things that had intrigued Rex about Marigold gradually became grievances.

Ruth bustled in with her wicker trays of fruit cake. ‘Better check the stores first thing, so I can get my list done for the Cash and Carry.'

‘I've done it.'

‘Oh, you are a marvel, Josephine. Thanks ever so. We're in good time, then.'

‘I made tea when I saw your car. You can sit for a minute.'

Ruth beamed. They sat at one of the tables, colleagues, good friends. Ruth admired the charm bracelet which Jo had put together to embellish the saga of Alec.

‘This heart was for our fifth anniversary. The fish we bought in Cornwall when we were doing the cliff walk. The little bell … Alec said he liked to know where I was. And he got me the silver book because we used to read the same books, you see, and talk about them.'

‘Miss him, don't you?' Ruth's comfortable face was so kind.

Jo nodded, then pushed back her hair and said courageously, ‘Back to work.'

‘We could do with some more flowers.' Ruth stood up. ‘I'll start on the sandwiches, if you'll run up to the cutting garden and get us a big bunch.'

‘Will anyone mind?'

‘They'd better not. We help to support this place, and I'm not waiting for those gardeners to bring down what bits of rubbish they might condescend to spare us.'

Returning from the walled plot where vegetables and flowers were grown for the house, Jo saw William Taylor and his daughter coming across the lawn, and although she was glad to be seen looking picturesque with an armful of flowers, she made a detour to avoid Tessa. She had not yet seen her close to, or spoken to her. She was not quite ready. It could wait. Ruth had told her that Tessa came here often.

‘She loves it in the summer, and she needs to be with her family, poor dear, having gone through so much.'

Excuse me while I vomit.

‘“Upsets me,” I said to George, “to see her so thin.” Quite haggard she was for a while.'

‘What did George say?'

‘Nothing.'

If you'd said it to me, I could have told you. Save your sympathy. She got what she wanted. Stole a man and then dropped him when it suited her. Haggard? She didn't give a damn
.

‘Who's that?' Tessa asked, as the woman with flowers turned on to the path behind the rhododendrons.

‘The new helper in the tea-room. Great success. I take my hat off to her, coping so well after such a recent tragedy.' He explained Jo's situation.

‘It must be horrible.' Tessa looked inwards, as women do when they hear of a new widow. ‘Wum, dear.' She put an arm through his.

‘What do you want?'

‘Nothing. Just to tell you a secret.'

She had come here determined not to say anything about Chris, because families could wither a budding affair on the vine quicker than a late frost. But her father was confidable.

‘Tell me.' He inclined his head towards her.

‘
Well
. I've got a – at least, I think I've got – a new man.'

‘Is that the fellow on the phone too late last night and too early this morning?'

‘No, that was Colin. You know Colin. The one with the jokes.'

William groaned.

‘This is …' Suddenly she was shy about saying Christopher's name, because it meant so much, and brought an instant image of his gentle presence that somehow smelled of hay, even in Finchley. ‘His name is Chris Harvey and he's lovely. Mid-thirties, and he's a potter and a sort of sculptor too.' She did not mention the department store.