Paying Guests (50 page)

He held out the sheet of paper in his hand and Tilly, a little bemused, took it and she and Duff together bent over it.

It was a simple but clear document. The house next door to Quentin’s, known as number eighteen, was to pass into the sole ownership of Mrs Matilda Austen Quentin for the sum of two hundred pounds, including the freehold for which there would be no additional charge, the price of the house being deemed to be one hundred and sixty pounds and the freehold forty pounds. It was unencumbered land and property, the paper said, and went off into a great many other lawyerlike sentences that Tilly made no effort to read. She just raised her head and looked first at Duff and then at Mr Lansdown.

‘Are you sure this is fair?’ she asked.

‘You think it too much?’ Mr Lansdown looked perturbed. ‘I can if you wish go to the vendor and ask her – but – um – it may take time to find her and she may not be willing to drop her price.’

‘No,’ Tilly cried. ‘I did not mean – I was thinking –’ And then stopped. Why was she worrying about whether the sum offered to Dorcas was a fair one? Had Dorcas ever shown any concern for fairness in her dealings with Tilly? She bit her lip and looked up at Duff. He was staring at Lansdown with his face quite incandescent with delight.

‘Then my offer is accepted –’ Duff said.

‘Less forty pounds. Yes, Mr Quentin,’ the lawyer said. ‘It is accepted. If you will arrange with me to have the papers signed and
the money paid into the bank within three working days, then all will be arranged to everyone’s satisfaction, I hope –’

‘Satisfaction?’ cried Duff. ‘I should say so!’ And he laughed aloud in his delight.

‘I shall have to seek a loan,’ Tilly murmured, looking down at the paper. ‘Charlie perhaps –’

‘As to that,’ Mr Lansdown said smoothly, ‘we do have clients who are able to offer some venture capital on loan at advantageous rates. I am empowered to act for them – it is not unusual to arrange matters so – if you wish. I would have to see you from time to time to oversee the repayment of the loan, of course, if that were not too tiresome.’

‘Tiresome?’ Tilly said and now it was her turn to smile. ‘No, it would not be tiresome. We must think about this, of course. Three days, you say?’

‘Yes,’ Mr Lansdown said gravely. ‘You have three days to sign finally.’

‘It will be done,’ Tilly said and folded the paper and tucked it into her waistband, and then looked at Duff. ‘Well, Duff?’

Duff seemed to glow as though a great lamp had been lit inside him. ‘Then I did the right thing, Mamma? You will let me work here with you? We could make Quentin’s into a glorious hotel, Mamma, better even than the guest house it has been so long. A big and elegant hotel for the
ton
and the –’

‘An hotel?’ Tilly said and stopped and stared and then repeated slowly, ‘An hotel. Quentin’s Hotel. Well, my dear Duff, my own darling Duff, why not? We shall indeed have an hotel. You and I together. And Eliza too, of course.’ And she held out a hand to Eliza who came round the table to stand at Duff’s other side.

‘Well, well,’ Mr Lansdown said. ‘An hotel. What an interesting thought. It would be gratifying indeed to act for an
hotel
. We have none in our practice at present and as one with an interest in and a taste for fine foods and wine, why, I think it will be a pleasure to act for you, Mrs Quentin, Mr Quentin.’

She looked up at him and smiled as the last shred of lingering guilt that she had been feeling about parting from Silas Geddes
shrivelled and died. She would still have to see him, talk to him, tell him that she had, regretfully, to release him from their engagement and try to explain why without hurting his feelings. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for how do you tell a man you find him no more than physically interesting, that his tendency to talk rather than do, and to pose rather than be, was too irksome, and a destroyer of affection? A way would have to be found, and soon, but at present it was enough to be where she was, and with whom she was.

‘Do you know, Mr Lansdown, I suspect you will be a great asset to us here at Quentin’s Hotel. Thank you for your interest.’

‘It will be consistent, I promise you,’ he said gravely, and then got to his feet. ‘I would like, if I may, to see the damage next door. I have not had the chance to look.’

It was Duff who led the way out of the area door and up into the street above, and they stood there in the darkening evening, the four of them, Duff with an arm round the shoulders of both Tilly and Eliza, with Mr Lansdown alongside them, staring up. The front of number eighteen was stained with smoke and soot, and the gaping holes that showed where once windows had been and where bricks and stucco had caved in, seemed ominous and sad at the same time. Beside it the spruce front of Quentin’s lifted its head and seemed to glow bravely in the darkness, each of the windows where there was still glass winking cheerfully and the paint gleaming softly.

And Duff said quietly, ‘Just you wait. Oh, Ma, Eliza, just you wait. This time next year – well, it will be the best thing you ever saw. Quentin’s Hotel! I shall fetch some champagne from the cellar – for no amount of fireman’s water down there will have harmed that! – and we and all our guests, our
friends
– shall drink to the future. What do you say? Shall we?’

And they did.