‘Bernard? No.’
There was another pause.
Then Ruby began to laugh. ‘You poor sap! For the first time in twelve years I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.’ She opened the door. ‘Go on, clear off and get what’s coming to you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Better take your knitting needle. You may need it.’
By the time that Bernard came back from the fishing, Sally had braced herself to tell him everything, but he stopped her. He said, ‘If this is about those letters, save your breath. I heard it all from Jonathan this morning. That little lad is growing up. He thought it was up to him to put me in the picture. That’s worth a lot to me.’
‘Did he tell you about the letter that hasn’t come back?’
‘He told me you were still upset. I guessed there had to be a reason.’
‘You’re not too angry?’
‘How can I be? It’s Friday. I’m off nights.’
As they prepared for bed that night, Bernard held up an envelope. ‘Is this what you were looking for?’
She took it from him. ‘Yes! Where did you find it?’
‘Not a million miles from here. I had another chat with Jonathan. Asked him if he stopped at every house.’
‘But so did I. He answered that he did. He really did. It just happened that he couldn’t reach the letterbox at Primrose Cottage.’ Sally caught her breath. ‘He must have pushed it under the door! It was under Ruby’s doormat all the time!’
‘No. Forget about Ruby. Every house, Jon said. That includes this one. He didn’t leave us out.’
‘Here?’ Sally frowned. ‘Jonathan posted one to us? I didn’t find it.’
‘Neither did I.’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘Michael?’
‘Look at the stamp. That, my darling, was posted on July 1st, 1969, the day Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales. The commemorative stamp. It’s gold dust to a stamp collector: a first day cover.’
‘Michael had it all the time?’
‘Picked it off the mat and put it in his album. Most of this time he’s been at school. Didn’t think we’d miss it. I found the letter in his waste bin. I don’t believe he gave it more than a glance.’
She felt herself blush. ‘I hope not. Bernard, you didn’t punish him?’
He shook his head. ‘As a matter of fact, I promised to look through mine for stamps.’
‘Your what?’
‘My love letters from you.’
‘You kept the letters I wrote you?’
Bernard took her hand. ‘But I had the foresight to keep mine on top of the wardrobe.’
The Bathroom
‘Sorry, darling. I mean to have my bath and that’s the end of it!’ With a giggle and a swift movement of her right hand, Melanie Lloyd closed the sliding door of her bathroom. The catch fastened automatically with a reassuring click. Her husband William, frustrated on the other side, had installed the gadget himself. ‘None of your old-fashioned bolts or keys for us,’ he had announced, demonstrating it a week before the wedding. ‘The door secures itself when you slide it across from the inside. You can move it with one finger, you see, but once closed, it’s as safe as your money in the bank.’
She felt between her shoulders for the tab of her zip. William could wait for her. Sit in bed and wait whilst she had a leisurely bath. What was the purpose of a luxurious modern bathroom if not to enjoy a bath at one’s leisure? William, after all, had spent weeks before the wedding modernising it. ‘Everything but asses’ milk,’ he had joked. ‘Mixer taps, spray attachment, separate shower, bidet, heated towel-rails and built-in cupboards. You shall bathe like a queen, my love. Like a queen.’
Queenly she had felt when she first stepped through the sliding door and saw what he had prepared for her. It was all there exactly as he had promised, in white and gold. All that he had promised, and more. Ceramic mosaic tiles. Concealed lighting. Steam-proof mirrors. And the floor — wantonly impractical! — carpeted in white, with a white fur rug beside the bath. There was also a chair, an elegant antique chair, over which he had draped a full-length lace négligé. ‘Shameless Victoriana,’ he had whispered. ‘Quite out of keeping with contemporary design, but I’m incurably sentimental.’ Then he had kissed her.
In that meeting of lips she had shed her last doubts about William, those small nagging uncertainties that would probably never have troubled her if Daddy had not kept on so. ‘I’m old-fashioned, I know, Melanie, but it seems to me an extraordinarily short engagement. You feel that you know him, I’ve no doubt, but he’s met your mother and me only once — and that was by accident. The fellow seemed downright evasive when I questioned him about his background. It’s an awkward thing to do, asking a man things like that when he’s damned near as old as you are, but, hang it, it’s a father’s right to know the circumstances of the man who proposes marrying his daughter, even if he is past fifty. Oh, I’ve nothing against his age; there are plenty of successful marriages on record between young women and older men. Nothing we could do to stop you, or would. You’re over twenty-one and old enough to decide such things for yourself. The point is that he knew why I was making my enquiries. I wasn’t probing his affairs from idle curiosity. I had your interests at heart, damn it. If the fellow hasn’t much behind him, I’d be obliged if he’d say so, so that I can make a decent contribution. Set you both up properly. I would, you know. I’ve never kept you short, have I? Wouldn’t see you come upon hard times for anything in the world. If only the fellow would make an honest statement...’
One didn’t argue with Daddy. It was no use trying to talk to him about self-respect. Every argument was always swept aside by that familiar outpouring of middle-class propriety. God, if anything drove her into William Lloyd’s arms, Daddy did!
She stepped out of the dress and hung it on one of the hooks provided on the wall of the shower compartment. Before removing her slip, she closed the Venetian blind; not that she was excessively modest, nor, for that matter, that she imagined her new neighbours in Bismarck Road were the sort who looked up at bathroom windows. The plain fact was that she was used to frosted glass. When she and William had first looked over the house — it seemed years ago, but it could only have been last April — the windows, more than anything else, had given her that feeling of unease. There were several in the house — they had been common enough in Victorian times when the place was built — small oblong frames of glass with frostwork designs and narrow stained-glass borders in deep red and blue. They would have to come out, she decided at once, if William insisted on living there. They seemed so out of keeping, vaguely ecclesiastical, splendid in a chapel or an undertaker’s office, but not in her new home. William agreed at once to take them out — he seemed so determined to buy that one house. ‘You won’t recognise the place when I’ve done it up. I’ll put a picture window in the bathroom. The old frames need to come out anyway. The wood’s half-rotten outside.’ So the old windows went and the picture window, a large single sheet of glass, replaced them. ‘Don’t worry about ventilation,’ William assured her. ‘There’s an extractor fan built in above the cabinet there.’ He had thought of everything.
Except frosted glass. She would have felt more comfortable behind frosted glass. But it wasn’t contemporary, she supposed. William hadn’t consulted her, anyway. He seemed to know about these things. And there were the Venetian blinds, pretty plastic things, so much more attractive than the old brown pelmet they replaced.