‘Nicholas Carey? Yes, I told you. Here, Thea – wasn’t he a friend of yours way back in the dark ages before we came to Grove Hill? Benighted place it must have been! But I’m sure somebody told me he used to be a pal of yours. Heartless the way they go off and leave us, isn’t it? However, lots of good fish in the sea is what I say. I was telling your mother she ought to take you off on a cruise.’
Althea pushed open the door and went out with her tray, but when she came back for the cake-stand they were still talking about Nicholas. She heard her mother say,
‘I always thought he was wild.’
Mrs Harrison laughed.
‘Most young men are. Or else just dull. Of course I only met him once, quite a long time ago, but his aunt Emmy Lester is a sort of cousin of Jack’s. I used to say he ought to have married her – didn’t I, Jack?’
Mr Harrison said, ‘Yes.’ No one could have told that he was filled with a burning resentment.
‘They’d have suited each other to a T,’ said Mrs Harrison brightly. ‘A pity about me, but I couldn’t very well die to oblige them – now could I? And after all, Jack and I are very well as we are. We took the house over from Emmy, you know. She had a lot of Nicholas’s things there up in the attic, and she asked if she could leave them, so I expect he will be coming down to sort them out. You’ll have to come up and meet him, Thea.’
Every time Mrs Harrison came to the house Althea was convinced all over again that she was the most blatant woman she had ever met. She removed the cakestand and took as long as she could over washing-up.
In the drawing-room Mr Harrison had misdealt and the cards had to be shuffled again. Mrs Graham dropped her voice and said in a sweetly confidential tone that Nicholas had behaved very badly and she didn’t think Thea would care to meet him again.
‘Just a boy and girl affair, you know – nothing in it all. But I don’t think she would care to be reminded of it, Ella. She was quite ridiculously young.’
Mrs Harrison said tolerantly that she had broken her heart at least six times before she was fifteen, and they picked up their cards and began to play.
It was the following morning that Mr Martin had a telephone call from Mrs Graham. He recognized her high fluting voice as soon as he picked up the receiver.
‘Oh, Mr. Martin, is that you? I am so glad, because I really did want to speak to you… Yes, about the house. I believe you spoke to my daughter about it yesterday, and I am afraid she may have misled you. Not intentionally of course, but it is really so easy to give a false impression without meaning to. And when she told me about her conversation with you I was afraid that was just what she had done. Of course the house is a very nice one and we should want a very good price for it.’
Mr Martin diagnosed a difference of opinion in the family circle. He said in a soothing voice,
‘Oh, yes, Mrs Graham, I quite understand. I believe Mr Blount would be prepared to make a very reasonable offer. He seems to have taken a fancy to the house, and so has his wife.’
Her voice sharpened a little.
‘I didn’t understand that anyone had actually made a proposal.’
Mr Martin continued to soothe.
‘Well, it hardly amounted to that. Mr Blount said they had walked down Belview Road, and that he and his wife were particularly taken with The Lodge. They liked its being a corner house and they were greatly taken with what they could see of the garden. There was no actual offer made, but I formed the impression that they would be willing to pay a good price.’
‘And what would you call a good price, Mr Martin?’
‘Well, No. 12 fetched five thousand and five hundred, but that was some years ago, and there has been a considerable drop in prices since then.’
Mrs Graham gave a high, sweet laugh.
‘Oh, but, Mr Martin No. 12! It doesn’t compare in any way!’
‘Ah, yes, but the Forster estate hadn’t been opened up then. Those modern labour-saving houses have made a lot of difference to what the older ones will fetch.’
‘Everyone says they are jerry-built.’
‘Now, now, Mrs Graham, that is really quite a mistake, if you will allow me to say so. There has been very good work put into them, I can assure you.’
Mrs Graham was not in the least interested in the Forster estate, which had been thrown on the market by an impoverished peer. She said quite tartly,
‘How much would Mr Blount pay? If he doesn’t make an offer, how am I to know whether it would pay us to accept it or not? We might go away on a cruise, but we should have to get something to live in when we came back. My daughter doesn’t think I am business like, but I have thought about that! And I think that a cruise would be very good for us both. A little change, you know – fresh people – not just seeing the same dull faces every day. I’m sure I get quite tired of seeing them go by!’
Mr Martin being one of the people who passed by her windows every day, he could hardly escape the implication. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that Althea Graham must have a trying time of it, and that it would be good for her to get away for a change, though what she really needed was to get away from her mother.
Mrs Graham’s voice was fluting again.
‘So perhaps you will just find out what he is prepared to offer.’ A click at her end of the line informed him that she had rung off.
Althea was out when this conversation took place, but she was at home at two o’clock when Mr and Mrs Blount arrived with an order to view the house. She was not pleased, and perhaps her manner showed it.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘but I told Mr Martin yesterday that we are not thinking of selling.’
Mr Blount was a heavily built, ruddy man with a well-to-do kind of air about him. He put a hand under the elbow of his flabby, drooping wife and guided her past Althea into the hall. Without absolute rudeness it would not have been possible to keep them out. Mr Blount’s voice was resonant and good-humoured. He said,
‘Well, well – what a pity. I certainly understood from the house-agent… You are Mrs Graham?’
‘I am Miss Graham.’
He beamed.
‘Ah, then there is some little misunderstanding. Mr Martin said it was Mrs Graham he had been talking to. Perhaps we might see her…’
‘My mother is resting.’
‘Now isn’t that a pity! We certainly understood that she might be disposed to consider a favourable offer. Perhaps as we are here we might just have a look round. The fact is my wife has taken a wonderful fancy to the neighbourhood. Up and down and all over the place we’ve been, looking for somewhere to settle down now I’m retiring, and there’s been something wrong with all of them. Either the water or the soil, or too high or too low down – there’s always been something that didn’t suit. And what all the doctors say is, “Let her do as she wants, Mr Blount. Don’t push her, or you’ll be sorry for it.” Very interested in her case the doctors are. And what they say wrapped up in the doctor’s language, which I’m no good at and I don’t suppose you are either – well, it amounts to this, if there’s anything she wants, get it for her, and if she wants it badly get it for her quick. Now this house, we’ve been walking past and looking at it and she’s taken the biggest kind of fancy for it – haven’t you, Milly?’
Mrs Blount had sunk down upon one of the hall chairs. She had a limp discouraged look, from her stringy sandy hair to her toed-in feet. She drooped on the upright chair and looked past Althea with pale watery eyes. She didn’t seem capable of having a violent enthusiasm about anything. She opened the lips which hardly showed in the general pallor of her face and said,