Paying Guests (10 page)

‘That’s most kind of you, m’boy, most kind,’ he said heartily. ‘Give me a few minutes to change into more suitable clothes and I shall be with you directly.’

‘I shall check your own riding clothes, Duff, shall I?’ Tilly said and got to her feet to follow Mr Geddes from the room. ‘If you wish?’

‘Eh? Oh, no need, Ma – well, to tell the truth I’ve not fully unpacked yet.’

‘Oh, you probably didn’t notice, but Eliza saw to all that yesterday,’ Tilly said. ‘I shall put your riding clothes on your bed.’ And she led the way out of the dining room as Duff, a little gloomily, addressed himself to the remainder of his coffee.

‘I am much obliged to you, Mr Geddes,’ Tilly said as they reached the staircase. ‘It is clearly no secret that my foolish son overdid his entertainment somewhat last night.’

‘I would think less of him if he had not,’ Silas said heartily. ‘It’s not every day a boy leaves schooldays behind him and becomes a gentleman of leisure. At least for a little while. I imagine he will have some future occupation?’

‘As to that, we cannot be sure yet,’ Tilly said. She set her foot on the lowest step. ‘I really must go and deal with those riding clothes. Will you be here for luncheon?’

‘I will indeed.’ He smiled at her cheerfully. ‘I would not miss one
of Eliza’s collations for the world. Perhaps then we can speak of your attending my meeting?’

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But at present you must forgive me –’

‘Of course.’ He came up the stairs behind her. ‘In the meantime, if your son feels the need of a man in whom to confide his anxieties –’

She had reached the top landing and at this she stopped and turned to look at him, a faint frown between her brows. ‘I am not sure I understand you, Mr Geddes,’ she said stiffly, trying not to give credence to the thought that had come into her mind; that he had listened at the door to her conversation with Duff last night and was, for his own reasons, trying to involve himself in her affairs.

‘Oh, please,’ he said. ‘I’m not trying to meddle in what does not concern me. It’s just that I’m not so old that I can’t remember what it’s like to be growing up and to have anxieties that need a man’s opinion! I was reared by my maiden aunt, after my parents’ death, and there were times when, excellent lady though she was, I positively ached to find a sensible male ear into which I could pour some of my words. I found such a one in the son of our local vicar, and I much appreciated his friendship. I see certain parallels for your son in my own case. My aunt, like you, was a dear, caring lady who wanted only the best for her boy and who showed a most admirable delicacy of character. She never pried into my private thoughts, but was always there should I need her. I imagine you are like that. And that being so, it is harder for your son to tell you of those worries he might have of which he is not proud – and at seventeen or so we are all ashamed of the thoughts that beset us – than to tell someone else. He will be concerned to protect his own reputation in your eyes, d’you see? I am offering to be that someone else. Should he choose me for that task, of course. I would not impose myself on him for the world.’

She looked at him for a long time, uncertain what to say and after a while he laughed and shook his head. ‘I try too hard, I fear,’ he said ruefully. ‘Never mind, Mrs Quentin. Give it no more thought, I beg of you. I was but seeking to be useful. Ah, Duff!’ for downstairs the dining-room door had opened again and Duff had emerged.
‘You see, I gossip. But I shall be ready directly!’ And he nodded at Tilly and went off to his own room with a rapid lope, leaving her to help Duff find his riding clothes and prepare for his morning in the saddle.

She walked to the shops, thinking hard as she went. Mr Geddes certainly seemed to have a wise head on his not-so-old shoulders. How old was he? She hadn’t thought about the matter before. It was hard to tell, because he was not entirely like other men. He did not use tobacco, for example, so his face was never screwed up against rising smoke and that, she knew, made men’s faces line more swiftly than they might. Also he ate abstemiously, which would encourage his neat youthful figure. He might be older than he appeared, however, and she thought, Perhaps thirty five? and smiled to herself. The same age as I am. Yet because he had the impulsive eagerness of a youth he seemed younger. Why is it that women are so much older in so many ways? she asked herself as she lifted her skirts high to make her way across the dusty cobbles to the safety of the pavement on the far side. Why do I feel so much older than he, when we are probably the same age?

‘Because I have a son of seventeen,’ she murmured aloud and then bit her lip, amused, as an elderly lady bustling by on her way to Colonel Nichol’s shop threw her a sharply enquiring glance. But it was true. Nothing, she told herself a little bitterly, is more ageing than fretting over an errant child, and then as the thought came her spirits lifted, for wasn’t she going to buy linen for new bed sheets? And did that not mean she must see her old friend Jem? She could think of no one more suitable in whom to confide her worries about Duff.

She was so determined that Jem’s conversation was what she most required that she broke her own careful housewifely rule and didn’t go first to all the other linen drapers’ shops to check their prices. She knew really that Jem was never undersold, and that if she told him she had seen the same goods elsewhere at a lower price than the one he was asking, he would have no hesitation in reducing his charges especially for her.

She stood for a moment staring sightlessly into the window of his neat shop where swatches of good cloth were pinned up to show their quality and ribbons had been displayed in such great bows and swirls and stripes that the whole window seemed to shimmer with colour. Dear Jem. To have stood her friend so many years, when she had been so captious with him.

There had been a time when she had seriously considered marrying Jem Leland. He had loved her dearly and made no effort to hide that regard and had continued to love her unswervingly all through the difficult days when she decided to get married again, to poor dear Freddy, when Duff was but a little boy of four. Jem had stood foursquare her friend all through the long months and years after her second widowhood, when all had seemed so confusing and difficult, and she had been so busy growing her home into the handsome guest house it had now become. He had never asked her for anything for himself, except, from time to time, to repeat his offer of marriage.

I have been unfair to him, she thought as she went on staring sightlessly at his ribbons, and I must tell him that he should find himself someone else. He seems content enough, but it is not good for him. He needs a wife and child of his own, not this half-hearted attempt to pretend that Duff is his own boy, though he loves him as though he were, I swear. And I must also tell him that I will never be more to him than what I am now. I will never marry again. I know that. I am well past that stage of life and all my efforts now must go into Duff and, of course, into our property. For it was for Duff’s need for property that I married Freddy, after all, and changed my plans to marry Jem –

Her reverie was broken into sharply as the door of the shop opened with a melodic jangle of the bell that hung on a spring just inside it, and Jem appeared beside her. She looked up at him with genuine pleasure.

He was, in fact, some five years her junior, not that that had ever worried either of them particularly, for unlike Silas Geddes, there was a somewhat staid air about Jem that made him seem older than he was. He was ageing now, too, in a rather obvious way. Even
though he was only thirty, his thick dark hair was receding on both forehead and temples, giving his square face a most serious air, and his blue eyes were well surrounded by lines because of his tendency to narrow them when he looked at fabrics, in order to sharpen his vision. He had tried spectacles, he had once told Tilly, and couldn’t be doing with them. ‘I shall settle to ‘em well enough when I have to,’ he had said and laughed. ‘Till then I’ll fettle along well enough as I am.’

Now he stood squinting at her in the bright sunshine and she smiled warmly at him.

‘Good afternoon Tilly! I saw you from inside.’

‘Good afternoon, Jem. I hope you are well?’

‘I am very well,’ he said and held out a hand and they shook cordially. There had been a time when they had greeted each other with kisses on the cheek, but they had been considering marriage then. All that had changed, but the handshakes were as warm as ever the kisses had been, and indeed warmer, for there was an easy friendship in them that, to Tilly at least, mattered far more than anything more intimate. ‘Is this but a social visit? Or –’

‘How well you know me! It is, of course, an
or
. I need some new linen for bed sheets. I find that the laundress is very heavy-handed and I need to add a further half dozen pairs to my store. A hard-wearing linen, now, one that will see me well over the next few years. It is so laborious making the sheets that it’s poor economy to buy cheap stuff for them.’

‘Whenever would I sell you cheap stuff, Tilly?’ he said and led the way to the shop door, holding it open to invite her in. ‘You really know me better than that! Cuthbert! A chair for Mrs Quentin, if you please.’

The shop boy darted forward from between the piled bolts of cloth and the long mahogany counters and cutting tables and pulled a high chair out invitingly, and gratefully Tilly sat down. It had been a long walk on a hot day and her boots were on the tight side. She sighed contentedly and pulled off her gloves.

‘I think a glass of some of that excellent lemonade Charlie Harrod
sent over,’ he said. ‘I’ve been keeping it in the cellar to be cool. Cuthbert, a tray and jug and glass, if you please – bustle about!’

Cuthbert duly bustled and brought the lemonade and she and Jem settled to a cosy prose over the relative merits of Irish as opposed to English linen, Lancashire as opposed to Sea Island cotton and the various available weights of cloth on offer and at last settled on the amount that would be needed, so that Jem could cut it.

‘Six pairs of sheets, with three-inch top hems and a narrow turnback at the foot,’ Jem muttered, pulling a pencil from behind his ear and making jottings on his cuff. ‘That’ll be – let me see – plenty of hem, under and at the sides – hmm – full width, then – hmm. Twenty-six yards, I make it, Tilly, and I shall throw in the hem bindings as a discount. There. Measure that up, Cuthbert, and be quick about it. And if there are faults in the bolt, then start a new one. D’you understand me, boy?’

Cuthbert indeed understood and Jem was at last able to relax. His other more senior shopman was busily occupied in dealing with a brace of ladies buying ribbons at another counter and clearly set to spend the whole morning at that delectable occupation, much to the shopman’s obvious boredom, and that meant Jem had time for her. He settled himself against his counter comfortably, leaning over it so that they could talk easily.

‘How is he, then?’ he said. ‘You’ve not said a word, so I supposed all is well.’

‘Not entirely,’ she said after a moment, knowing there was no need to ask him of whom he spoke. ‘He has had some troubles at school and they bid fair to be brought home with him.’

He stiffened. ‘Oh? And what might those troubles be? Nothing much I’ll be bound and no fault of Duff’s. That boy could never be anything but all he should be.’ Jem’s loyalty to Duff was fierce and now Tilly smiled at him gratefully for it.

‘You can’t cast him as an angel, you know, Jem. He’s a boy after all, and boys are prone to scrapes. He is far from perfect.’

Jem looked carefully at her. ‘What has he done?’

‘Nothing, to the best of my knowledge.’ She kept her head down,
twisting her gloves between her fingers. Even with Jem, her good old friend Jem, it was difficult to be honest about what Duff had said and she certainly could not have voiced her own fears for his virtue. She could not even be sure herself what Duff had done or not done. His speech had been so elliptical and her own understanding of such matters so patchy, how could it be otherwise?

‘It is what might happen that concerns me,’ she said, in a rush of confidentiality. ‘I cannot pretend I fully understand the way boys think and behave, but last night –’ Her voice dwindled.

‘Well?’ Jem leaned over the counter in his familiar manner and she felt a little stronger; being physically close to him like this made it easier to speak honestly.

‘I’m not sure that I am not misunderstanding – but let me assume I am not. He told me he has developed a
tendresse
for –’

She stopped, and bent her head and Jem smiled, slowly and a touch bitterly. No one knew better than he did what it felt like to yearn for a person who remained stubbornly unavailable, except as a friend. ‘He has found himself a pretty lady to admire, has he?’ he said and grinned.

‘I wish he had!’ Tilly said in a burst of anger. ‘That would be no problem!’

There was a long silence and then Jem said a little woodenly, ‘I see.’

‘I wish I did,’ Tilly said bitterly. ‘I find it hard to comprehend, but you are a man so perhaps you –’

‘I find such emotions as strange as you appear to do,’ Jem said, clearly uncomfortable now. ‘I am told it is a natural stage in the life of a boy, but to tell you the truth, it never appeared in mine.’

‘So, you cannot advise me.’ She felt bleak.

‘As to that, I may – well, let us both think. There must be a remedy.’

‘I have thought long and hard,’ Tilly said, ‘and I believe there is an obvious way to distract his attention from this tiresome school-fellow. I think that he needs to widen his acquaintance. He has spent too much time with boys, do you see, all these years.’

‘Too much time with boys,’ Jem repeated and was silent. So was
Tilly and they both sat there in the sweet-smelling shop, the scent of new linen thick in their nostrils, in a silence broken only by the giggles and chatter coming from the heaps of ribbons on the other side of the shop.

‘So,’ Jem said at last, clearly unable to deal with the silence any longer. ‘A dancing class, perhaps? I hear Miss Hodgkins over at Kensington Gore runs very good classes for young ladies and gentlemen.’