The Second-last Woman in England (5 page)

The girl followed her. She was tall, taller than one expected so that her eyes were at the same level as Harriet’s own—or perhaps even an inch higher. She was thin-faced and pale—a childhood of slum tenements, dark alleyways and air raid shelters, presumably. But her nails were clean and her clothes and shoes sensible (though what dreadful shoes!) and her hair tightly crimped in a ghastly home permanent wave which was, after all, what one wanted from a nanny. And the children seemed to have taken to her. Not that one could imagine the children not taking to someone—they seemed amazingly indiscriminating.

‘I do apologise, Miss Corbett, for not concluding our interview.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, I understand—’ and the girl stopped because that was leading her perilously close to matters which did not concern her. At this point she seemed to realise she was still holding Panda and she dropped her arms down to her sides as though to hide him.

‘Quite. Well, I am satisfied that you have proved yourself adequate to the position, so if you are happy with the conditions outlined by the agency you may commence employment with us at once.’

The girl seemed to take a deep breath, but whether this was because she was relieved or because she was having second thoughts—or simply because she was short of breath—it was impossible to ascertain.

‘Thank you. That would be wonderful,’ she said.

Would it? Were the girl’s ambitions so stunted that working as a child-minder for some other woman’s children on two pounds a week plus board seemed wonderful? Apparently so. And thank God for it, Harriet reasoned, otherwise one would be forced to look after one’s children oneself. At least during the school hols anyway.

Two floors below, voices could be heard in the hallway.

She turned back to the nanny. ‘Now, perhaps if you’ll see that the children are ready, Miss Corbett? We are having lunch at my brother-in-law’s house, Mr Leo Mumford’s at Hampstead, so we shall be away till teatime, I would think. I suggest you move in tomorrow morning around nine o’clock when Mrs Thompson will show you your room and give you a tour of the house.’

‘On a Sunday?’ said the girl blankly.

‘Yes. Unless, of course, that arrangement does not suit you?’

The girl said nothing, as there was nothing one could say to such a question, and Harriet forestalled any further discussion by ushering her back into Anne’s bedroom and closing the door behind her.

Downstairs the front door opened and the policemen at last appeared to be taking their leave.

‘That would probably be for the best, Mr Wallis. Until we know the full extent of the situation it’s very hard to ascertain.’

The inspector’s voice got louder as he crossed the hallway then less distinct as he neared the front door.

‘Well, I am usually at my desk by nine o’clock, Inspector, should you or your men need to speak to me. And naturally we shall be going through our books with a fine-toothed comb—though I must say it seems like …’

Cecil’s voice trailed off so that she never heard what exactly it seemed like to him.

Downstairs the front door closed and there was silence. Harriet went over to the window and looked out at the street below. She watched the hat and the helmet of the two policemen go down the steps, the constable hold open the gate and the two of them climb into the police car. After a long moment (to compare notes? To weigh up the various suspects? But no, she doubted the inspector would do that with his constable. Perhaps they were deciding where to go for a cup of tea?) the car moved off. The street was deserted, the only presence a solitary figure in a hat seated on a bench in the garden opposite.

Harriet leaned, for a moment, against the wall. They were going to Leo’s. Would Simon be there? And, if he was, what would she tell him? Everything? Or nothing?

Chapter Three

SEPTEMBER 1952

The two policemen had gone and Cecil Wallis stood in the hallway for a moment, half listening for the sound of the police car’s engine—which came after an intolerable delay—and half wondering what exactly to do. Harriet would need to know what had happened, of course. He must tell her at once.

A noise upstairs from the children’s rooms—a thump followed by a child’s plaintive voice—distracted him and instead of going in search of Harriet he went quickly and silently upstairs to his study and closed the door firmly behind him.

Silence. Peace. Calm. Here everything was in order. His desk, solid and immovable, standing where it had always stood, its polished walnut veneer gleaming satisfyingly in the midday sunlight. It was a kneehole flat-top desk, late Victorian, and one of the few items he had decided to keep from Father’s estate. His leather writing pad rested at a gentle angle on the desk top, his ink pen sat in its holder. Beside it was the wooden paperweight in the shape of a ship’s wheel, carved from the mast of an eighteenth century clipper. He had picked it up for a shilling in a shop in Cornwall twenty or more years ago, brought it home and placed it on his desk, where it had sat ever since, and as far as he could recall it had never weighted down a single sheet of paper in all that time. He reached out and traced its smooth weather-worn surface. There was something satisfying, almost comforting, about old timber, especially timber infused with the sea and the thrill of maritime history.

Rocastle.

He placed both hands on the edge of his desk and closed his eyes for a moment. He had made a bad error of judgement. He had compromised the firm. He had compromised himself.
Damn
Rocastle!

Harriet would need some kind of explanation, of course; no way he could keep this quiet. Perhaps he should talk to Leo this afternoon? Good God, no, not Leo of all people. But it was bound to be in the press soon enough.

Well, so be it! It was surely no reflection on him? To what extent was a firm, a director of a firm, responsible for the actions of his employees? Liability, yes, if an accident occurred in the workplace, but if an employee stole from the firm, then surely the firm, the directors, were not liable at all?

Unless of course one had suspected.

He pulled out the chair and sat down at his desk. The fleet of Empire and Colonial Lines was displayed in large format black and white photographs, expensively framed, on all four walls of the study from the 300-ton steam packet
Tilbury
in 1860 to the 80,000-ton
Swane
, head of the current fleet, in pride of place on the wall opposite his desk. The old girl had 16 steam turbines, ten decks and a cruising speed of 30 knots—at her launch she had been the largest and fastest ship in the world. The photograph showed her on her Blue Riband run in ’38. He had been on board for that trip. There had been a buzz of excitement aboard the majestic three-funnel liner, a thrill that had swept through the decks so that every crewmember, every passenger had felt it at Southampton. And when she had sailed into New York a mere four days later! The press, he remembered, had been camped at the dockside to welcome them! Five times the
Swane
had won the Blue Riband.

But that voyage in ’38 had been the last time. Last week the
United
States
had won the Blue Riband for doing the journey in a little over three days! That would have seemed inconceivable a few short years ago.

A few short years that had contained the war. And now nothing was the same.

There was dust on the glass that covered the photograph, a film of dust that turned the
Swane
’s clean white flanks a dull shade of grey and obscured the smiling faces of the crew. He was in that photograph, a small white face cheering as loudly as anyone, standing right beside the captain. What was the man’s name?

But he found he could no longer recall it.

It was the war. Nothing was the same. One did one’s bit for the war effort, endured it so that things
would
remain the same, could return to how they had been. But now the war had been over for seven years and nothing was the same. And what did three days to cross the Atlantic mean when the Comet could fly the same distance in ten-and-a-half hours? Nothing was the same. The
Swane
needed a refit but how could you justify such an expense when the rest of the fleet was heading for the breaker’s yard?

And now this.

Damn and blast Rocastle! How much damage would it do? Theft by an employee could be covered up—that is, it could be dealt with discreetly. But embezzlement … That was bad. That was the kind of thing that affected public confidence, caused share prices to plummet, brought companies down. Resulted in directors being prosecuted.

Ought he to telephone Clarendon? Did one call in a solicitor in such circumstances or did that look like guilt? Or, at the very least, panic?

Somewhere above him a door slammed and footsteps tumbled down the stairs followed sharply by Harriet’s voice.

‘Anne. We do not slam doors in this house.’

There was a new nanny, he remembered. The children must be getting ready to go out. Oh Lord, they were lunching at Mumford’s and—

There was a knock on the door and he felt the colour drain from his face. He got up and called out, ‘Yes. Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Cecil. I’m assuming everything is all right and that we shall be going to Leo’s?’

He hesitated. He would tell her, of course; after all, there was no actual shame in it, not for himself at any rate. But perhaps not quite yet. And no need to mention what had happened in August.

‘Yes, indeed. Nothing to worry about,’ he called out. His voice sounded strained, unnatural. He cleared his throat and tried to speak more normally. ‘A minor matter, my dear. I shall be along directly.’

He sank back down into his chair and heard the reassuring creak of the leather. The old chair emitted a musty, almost antiquated, odour. He breathed it in hungrily.

Rocastle was an Etonian. They had been to the same Cambridge college, albeit fifteen or more years apart. The man and his wife had dined here, at this very house.

But it would seem that, in the end, these things counted for little.

There had been an irregularity in Rocastle’s bookkeeping. Cecil had discovered it quite by accident three weeks ago, on the last Friday in August. The directors had shared a traditional Friday afternoon glass of sherry in Sir Maurice’s office at the end of the day—not that there had been much to toast but Sir Maurice’s sherry was always first class—and afterwards Cecil had returned to his own office to lock up. There had been a light on in Rocastle’s office and on an impulse he had popped his head around the door to wish him a good weekend.

Rocastle had not been in his office, though he had clearly been intending to work late as a ledger had been open on his desk. It was part of Rocastle’s duties to authorise the weekly wages of the head office staff.

Cecil might so easily have turned and left and noticed nothing at all—had he not seen a name on the ledger that caught his eye: Arthur Laurelstone. It was an unusual surname and a name that one tended to remember. The man, Laurelstone, had worked briefly in the shipping clerks’ office down on the ground floor but had been dismissed for drunkenness. He had returned to the office a day later and there had been some unpleasantness—a brick thrown through a window or something along those lines—and a constable had been called to remove the man from the premises. It had caused quite a stir at the time.

The incident had been in June. And now here was Laurelstone’s name on the ledger of employees receiving their weekly pay packet even though he was no longer employed by the firm. It seemed hard to imagine Rocastle would make a mistake of such magnitude. So what was the explanation? He ought to confront Rocastle, of course; that was obvious. But to accuse a man of such a mistake? Or worse, to hint at … irregularities. Nevertheless, one’s first loyalty was to the company.

He had waited in Rocastle’s office until he returned.

‘Ah, Rocastle, glad I’ve caught you. That fellow Laurelstone—chap that was dismissed some weeks ago. Noticed he was still on the payroll. Wondered why?’

And Rocastle had provided a plausible explanation—there had been some overtime owing, that was all. Somehow it had been overlooked at the time of the man’s dismissal. No harm done. The man had since got himself a position elsewhere.

And that had been that. A simple explanation. Rocastle had made an error but he had admitted the error, had rectified it and there was surely little reason to report it. Yet Cecil had gone back to his desk and noted the incident, written down the details on a sheet of paper and kept it, not at the office, but here at his desk at home.

He reached for the sheet of paper now and glanced again at the dates and names and figures. The thing was, there had been no overtime since the December rush. It was only necessary when things were excessively busy and Lord knew it had been months since they had been even remotely busy. Not only that, but usually overtime was paid from the overtime ledger, not the weekly staff wages ledger. He had realised it at once. He had resolved to report it to Standforth first thing the following Monday morning.

There were more footsteps outside his study door.

‘Cecil, are you coming?’

‘Yes, almost ready.’

He didn’t move from the desk.

He had resolved to report it to Standforth—and yet, in the end, he had not done so.

Cecil stood up and went to the door and opened it. His family were assembling outside, Harriet marshalling them. Anne came tearing past with all the hysterical urgency of youth, clutching a hat, then stopped and twirled in a bizarre pirouette, suddenly and for no obvious reason, in the middle of the landing.

On an impulse he turned and went back to his desk and put the sheet of dates and names and figures inside the large cabinet that stood behind it.

‘Are you coming, Daddy?’ called Anne from the hallway.

‘Yes, just a moment, Anne,’ and he turned the key in the lock and stowed it safely in the bottom drawer of the desk.