‘Robert has decided to take an interest in Willoughby House,’ she says with a forced smile. ‘He will inherit it one day, of course, along with his two older brothers.’
I feel an inner lurch. Is he the evil nephew, come to close down his aunt’s museum and turn it into two-bedroom condos?
‘What kind of interest?’ I venture.
‘A dispassionate interest,’ he says briskly. ‘The kind of interest my aunt seems incapable of.’
Oh my God, he is the evil nephew.
‘You can’t close us down!’ I blurt out, before I’ve considered whether this is wise. ‘You mustn’t. Willoughby House is a slice of history. A sanctuary for culture-loving Londoners.’
‘A sanctuary for gossiping freeloaders, more like,’ says Robert. His voice is deep and well educated. It might even be attractive if he didn’t sound so impatient. Now he surveys me with an unfriendly frown. ‘How many volunteers does this place need? Because you seem to have half the retired women of London downstairs.’
‘The volunteers keep the place alive,’ I point out.
‘The volunteers eat their body weight in biscuits,’ he retorts. ‘Fortnum’s biscuits, no less. Isn’t that a bit extravagant, for a charity? What’s your biscuit bill?’
We’ve all gone a bit quiet. Mrs Kendrick is examining her cuff button and I exchange shifty looks with Clarissa. Fortnum’s biscuits are a bit of a luxury, but Mrs Kendrick thinks they’re ‘civilized’. We tried Duchy Originals for a bit, but then went back to Fortnum’s. (We rather love the tins, too.)
‘I’d like to see a full set of accounts,’ says Robert. ‘I want cash flow, expenses … You do keep your receipts?’
‘Of course we keep our receipts!’ I say frostily.
‘They’re in the Box,’ confirms Clarissa, with an eager nod.
‘I’m sorry?’ Robert looks puzzled, and Clarissa darts over to the bookshelf.
‘This is the Box …’ She gestures. ‘And the Red Box and the Little Box.’
‘The what, the what and the what?’ Robert looks from Clarissa to me. ‘Is any of this supposed to make sense?’
‘It does make sense,’ I say, but he’s stalking around the office again.
‘Why is there only one computer?’ he suddenly demands.
‘We share it,’ I tell him.
Again, this is a bit unconventional, but it works for us.
‘You share it?’ He stares at me. ‘How can you share a computer? That’s insane.’
‘We make it work.’ I shrug. ‘We take turns.’
‘But …’ He seems almost speechless. ‘But how do you send each other emails?’
‘If I want to correspond with the girls from home, I send a fax,’ says Mrs Kendrick, a little defiantly. ‘Most convenient.’
‘A fax?’ Robert looks from me to Clarissa, his face pained. ‘Tell me she’s joking.’
‘We fax a lot,’ I say, gesturing at the fax machine. ‘We send faxes to supporters, too.’
Robert walks over to the fax machine. He stares at it for a moment, breathing hard.
‘Do you write with bloody quill pens, too?’ he says at last, looking up. ‘Do you work by candlelight?’
‘I know our working practices may seem a bit different,’ I say defensively, ‘but they work.’
‘Bollocks they do,’ he says forcefully. ‘You can’t run a modern office like this.’
I don’t dare look at Mrs Kendrick. ‘Bollocks’ is very, very, very much not a Mrs Kendrick word.
‘It’s our system,’ I say. ‘It’s idiosyncratic.’
Beneath my defiance I do feel a tad uncomfortable. Because when I first arrived at Willoughby House and was shown the Boxes and the fax machine, I reacted in the same way. I wanted to sweep them all away and become paperless and lots of other things, too. I had all kinds of proposals. But Mrs Kendrick’s Way ruled, as it does now. Every idea I put forward was rejected. So gradually I got used to the Boxes and the fax machine and all of it. I suppose I’ve been conditioned.
But then, does it matter? Does it matter if we’re a bit old-fashioned? What right does this guy have to come and swagger around and tell us how to run an office? We’re a successful charity, aren’t we?
His gaze is sweeping around the room again. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he says ominously. ‘This place needs knocking into shape. Or else.’
Or else?
‘Well!’ says Mrs Kendrick, sounding a little shell-shocked. ‘Well. Robert and I are going out for lunch now, and later on we’ll have a little chat. About everything.’
The two of them turn to leave, while Clarissa and I watch in silence.
When the sound of their footsteps has disappeared, Clarissa looks at me. ‘Or else what?’ she says.
‘I don’t know.’ I look at the carpet, which still bears an impression of his big, heavy man-shoes. ‘And I don’t know what right he has to come and order us around.’
‘Maybe Mrs Kendrick is retiring and he’s going to be our boss,’ ventures Clarissa.
‘No!’ I say in horror. ‘Oh my God, can you imagine him talking to the volunteers? “Thank you for coming, now please all fuck off.”’
Clarissa snuffles with giggles, and she can’t stop, and I start laughing too. I don’t share my slightly darker thought, which is that there’s no way Robert wants to run this place, and it’s a prime piece of London real estate and it always comes down to money in the end.
At last, Clarissa calms down and says she’s going to make coffee. I sit down at my desk and start typing up my report, trying to put the morning’s events behind me. But I can’t. I’m all churned up. My anxious fears are fighting with defiance. Why shouldn’t this be the last quirky corner of the world? Why should we conform? I don’t care who this guy is or what claim he has on Willoughby House. If he wants to destroy this special, precious place and turn it into condos, he’ll have to go through me first.
After work I have to go to a talk on Italian painting given by one of our supporters, so I don’t arrive home till nearly 8 p.m. There’s a quiet atmosphere in the house, which means the girls have gone to sleep. I pop upstairs to kiss their slumbering cheeks, tuck them in and turn Anna the right way around in bed. (Her feet always end up on the pillow, like Pippi Longstocking.) Then I head downstairs to find Dan sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of wine in front of him.
‘Hi,’ I greet him. ‘How was your day?’
‘Fine.’ Dan gives a shrug. ‘Yours?’
‘Some pencil-pusher is coming to boss us about,’ I say gloomily. ‘Mrs Kendrick’s nephew. He wants to “take an interest”, apparently. Or, you know, shut us down and build condos.’
Dan looks up, alarmed. ‘Did he say that? Jesus.’
‘Well, no,’ I admit. ‘But he said we had to change, or else.’ I try to convey the menace of those two words with my tone of voice, but Dan’s features have already relaxed.
‘He probably meant “or else no Christmas party”,’ he says. ‘You want some?’ He pours me a glass of wine before I can even answer. As he slides it across the table, I eye him, and then the bottle. It’s half-empty. And Dan seems preoccupied.
‘Hey,’ I say cautiously. ‘Are you OK?’
For a few moments, Dan just stares into space. He’s drunk, I suddenly realize. I bet he went to the pub after work. He sometimes does, if I’m going to be out and Karen’s on duty. And then he came home and started on the wine.
‘I sat at work today,’ he says at last. ‘And I thought: Am I really going to do this for another sixty-eight years? Build offices, sell offices, build offices, sell offices, build offices—’