Dear Trustee (4 page)

“I thought it was wonderful,” said Cecile sincerely.

“Did Gregory Picton bring you?”

“Oh, no. A—a friend of mine did. Mr. Picton happened to be sitting just in front of us.”

“He didn’t suggest you should come and see me, did he?”

“Oh,
no
!”
said Cecile again, but this time with emphasis—more emphasis than she had intended—and her mother asked quickly, “Did he tell you
not
to come and see me?”

“He wanted me to wait until he had talked to me first.”

“And why didn’t you do what he told you?” her mother asked curiously.

“I thought,” Cecile said simply, “that I was a better judge than Mr. Picton of the right time to go and see my own mother.”

“You’re rather sweet,” exclaimed Laurie Cavendish, amused and not displeased, Cecile saw, and at last she leaned forward and kissed her daughter. “How would you like to come home with me now and see where I live?”

“I should love it!” Cecile looked eager. “Is it far?”

“Not by taxi. Come along.”

Together they went out of the office, but not through the foyer this time. A door at the other end of the passage took them out into a side street, and here Cecile’s mother hailed a taxi.

During the short drive very little was said between them, but Cecile kept on telling herself, “It’s all right. It’s
going
to be all right. It was a shock for her. But she’s pleased really.”

Presently Cecile realized that they were quite near her own hotel. And then they stopped before a tall house in a quiet but otherwise unattractive street near Lancaster Gate.

“Here we are.” Her mother paid off the taxi and led the way up the shabby stairs. “It’s expensive here, of course,” she said, to Cecile’s surprise.
“But
one has
to live somewhere reasonably
central, or else one drops out of everything.”

As she was walking on ahead Cecile could not see her expression, but there as a discontented note in her voice, and Cecile thought, with sudden and dismayed conviction, “She isn’t at all a happy person.”

The flat to which she was presently admitted, on the top floor, proved to be unexpectedly spacious and attractive, and for the first time Cecile realized why her mother had added “of course” to the statement that it was expensive.

“It’s charming!” Cecile went to the window of the big living room, and looked out through a gap between houses to a beautiful view of the Park. “And even if it is expensive, it’s worth it for the view.”

“If you happen to have the money.” Her mother laughed drily, “But I’ll have to get someone to share it, now they are putting up the rent. And I shall hate that.”

“Oh, yes. That would spoil it,” Cecile agreed. “Unless—” A sudden, breath-taking idea made her stop. “You wouldn’t like—I mean—I’m probably coming to London to live, and I’ll have to find a place. You wouldn’t like
me
to share it with you, would you?”

“Your trustee, or rather, Gregory Picton, wouldn’t agree.”

“They haven’t the final say, I mean, he hasn’t. Both he and Mr. Carisbrooke kept on saying the trustees could act only in an advisory capacity. Well, I don’t have to take their advice, do I?”

Her mother laughed, and actually patted Cecile’s cheek. “You don’t believe in the family tradition, then? This isn’t just a visit of curiosity, to be followed by complete ostracism?”

“Of
course
not. How could you think so?”

“Because it would be the most natural thing,” her mother said drily. “Very few people ever outlive their early upbringing or prejudices. I don’t know why you should be different.”

“But I wasn’t given any early prejudices. I was just told that you were dead.”

“Yes. That’s true.” Her mother looked reflective. “So you think you might like to live here with me?”

“If—if
you
liked the idea—yes.” Cecile stifled the sudden sense of misgiving which told her she was acting too hastily.

“There is nothing in the world I should like better,” her mother said slowly, and so totally unexpectedly that Cecile felt the tears come into her eyes.

“Then of
course
I’ll come,” she cried. And, without any reservations this time, she flung her arms round her mother and hugged her. “It’s a wonderful solution.”

“I hope you can make Gregory Picton see it that way,” was her mother’s dry reply. “Would you like a drink, Cecile? I can’t keep you long, because I want to rest before the performance.”

“I’d rather have some tea,” Cecile said frankly.

“Very well, if you don’t mind making it yourself. You’
ll
find everything in the kitchen—through the door on the right. If you are going to live here, you’d better start finding your way about.” And, flinging herself down on the sofa by the window, she seemed prepared to leave Cecile to her own devices.

Cecile was enchanted, and asked if she would have tea too. “Yes. China tea. And you’ll find some biscuits in the square red tin.”

To Cecile it seemed that she was being made free of a new home, to replace her old one. In the small but well-appointed kitchen she found all she wanted, and she took the greatest pleasure in setting an attractive tea-tray for herself and her mother.

“Look, Mother! I found everything.” She carried in her tea-tray and set it down triumphantly.

Her mother glanced over her handiwork with a faintly indulgent air, but she said firmly,

“For heaven’s sake! Don’t call me that. You put years on to my professional age.”

“Oh—” Cecile looked dashed. “What shall I call you, then?”

“Laurie, I suppose. What else?”

Cecile did not know what else. Only she felt that Laurie was an absurd name by which to call one’s mother.

However, she saw that this was neither the time nor the subject for argument. So she changed the subject to the much more congenial one of the play she had seen the previous night.

“You’re really a wonderful actress, aren’t you?” she said almost naively. “I was simply thrilled.”

“No. I’m not. I’m a good, reliable stand-by. I haven’t even a glimmer of the divine spark. I know that now.” Laurie Cavendish spoke with a sort of bitter candour.

“Oh, that isn’t true!” Cecile was emphatic. “I just could not imagine anyone playing that part better than you did.”

“But then you’re not very experienced, are you?” Her mother smiled slightly. “And, anyway, in all essentials, that part
is
me.”

“Oh, it isn’t!” Cecile was shocked, and showed it. “Why, she’s rather a—a horrid woman in the play.”

“Well, I’m rather a horrid woman,” was the cool reply. “You don’t battle with life as I have had to do, and watch most of your hopes wither, without becoming rather horrid in the process.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.” Cecile was distressed. “I’m sure it isn’t true. You’re just posing.”

“Sometimes one has to if life’s tough,” her mother told her. But she smiled and gave Cecile that half-indulgent glance again. Then, without embarrassment or apology, she said that she must go.

“It’s later than I thought.” She glanced at her watch. “You can come again sometime.”

“But when?” Cecile was taken aback at the vagueness of this.

“Oh—I don’t know. Where are you staying? The Stirling House Hotel? Oh, that’s quite near. We’ll arrange something.”

She did not offer to kiss Cecile goodbye. But neither did she seem to mind when her daughter bent over and lightly touched her cheek with her lips.

“Goodbye, Laurie—” Cecile managed it quite well—“I’ll see you soon.”

“Perhaps,” was the skeptical reply. And then Cecile went. She walked the short distance to the hotel in a turmoil of excitement and agitation. And so concerned was she with all that had happened that she was quite astonished to be greeted by Maurice Deeping as she stepped inside the hotel. He was like another chapter in her life. Quite a distant chapter, at that.

However, quite unaware of this of course, Maurice took her off to a secluded corner of the quiet little bar, provided her with a long, cool drink, and queried her.

“Well? What happened today?”

“I don’t know where to begin,” Cecile confessed, pushing her hair back, with a gesture which was reminiscent of her mother, if she had but known it. “At least—oh, yes, I do! Tell me, have you got an Uncle Algernon?”

“Yes, indeed. Rich as a nabob, old as sin, and mean as they make them,” replied Maurice cheerfully.

“Oh. Well, he has been made one of my trustees.”

“I don’t believe it!” Maurice looked quite startled, and then began to laugh. “One of them, did you say? How many are there?”

“Three,” she explained about Aunt Josephine and Gregory Picton, adding, “I met him this afternoon, and I don’t like him.” Which somehow seemed quite all right to say to Maurice, whereas to her mother it would have savoured of disloyalty, though she was not quite sure why.

“Why?” asked Maurice.

“Oh—I don’t like his air of expecting the world to stand aside, because he knows where he is going. And, anyway, he was horrid about my mother and didn’t want me to go and see her.”

“Your mother? But I thought you had no mother.”

“So did I until this afternoon,” said Cecile, which naturally involved her in further explanations.

“It’s a fascinating story,” declared Maurice at the end. “But why do we sit here discussing it? I’d like to take you out to dinner. Somewhere I know outside London, where we can dance, if you like, or otherwise look at the river and tell each other our life-stories.”

“You know mine,” Cecile said. “In fact,” she added soberly, “I’m afraid I’ve talked altogether too much about myself.”

“You couldn’t,” he assured her.

But she laughed and declared he should have his turn. And so, half an hour later, as they drove out of town in Maurice’s undistinguished but useful little car, she said, “Tell me some more about Uncle Algernon. If he’s going to be a trustee of mine, I had better know the worst.”

“Oh, he won’t trouble you much.” Maurice was reassuring. “He’ll probably leave you to your own resources, so long as you don’t bother him. Or ask him for money,” he added, so feelingly that Cecile felt he must himself have done that some time, with discouraging results.

“Well, I shan’t need to do that, anyway,” Cecile smiled.

“No, of course not.” Maurice laughed with such genuine amusement that she then recalled that she had not explained about her being a comparatively poor girl, after all. But she felt ashamed to go back to her own affairs again, so she did not pursue the subject. Instead, she enquired if he lived with his Uncle Algernon.

“Heavens, no! What gave you that idea?”

“Oh, I just thought—you obviously live somewhere outside London, as you’re staying at a hotel. And I wondered if—Where does Uncle Algernon live, by the way?”

“Near Aylesbury. In a great big splendid house which he doesn’t enjoy in the least.”

“I begin to be quite sorry for him,” Cecile said. “Now tell me where
you
live.”

“Not anywhere at the present moment,” Maurice confessed. “I’ve been in Leeds for about a year, in digs, while I worked in the Yorkshire laboratory of my firm. But now I’m coming south again. That’s why I went to Slough today—to fix up the transfer. And now I’m having a few days’ leave before starting in the new place.”

“How nice!” Cecile smiled with frank pleasure.

“That I have a few days’ leave?” He grinned.

“That too, of course. But I really meant that I’m glad you’re going to live near London. I expect I’ll be settling here too. So we won’t have to say goodbye at the end of these few days.”

“We weren’t going to anyway,” he assured her, with such conviction that she smiled again. And, after that, the evening seemed to have a special enchantment.

They dined on a terrace overlooking the river, as he had promised, danced in a small, but gay and friendly ballroom, and drove home finally when a benign full moon was touching even the roofs of the Stirling House Hotel with silver magic.

Tired but exceedingly happy, Cecile hardly dared to glance at her clock when she got into bed at last, and inevitably she slept unusually late the next morning.

It was the sound of the telephone which finally dragged her to the surface of consciousness once more, and sleepily she grasped the receiver and said, “Yes? Who is that?”

“It’s Laurie. You sound as though you’ve only just woken up,” replied her mother’s voice.

“I have.”

“Do you want to go back to sleep again?”

“No, no. Of course not.” Cecile glanced at her clock. “Why, it’s nearly ten o’clock. Almost too late for breakfast.”

“Is it?” Her mother yawned slightly. “Why don’t you dress leisurely and come and have coffee with me? Would you like that?”

“I’d adore it!” Cecile declared. And, as soon as her mother had rung off, she jumped out of bed, rushed through bathing and dressing, and emerged from her room an hour later, in a green linen suit which was infinitely becoming, besides being a happy salute to the lovely day.