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‘I’ve spent a lot of money,’ she told Jerome defiantly. ‘I needn’t have spent so much, I could have just bought for Philip and collected some of my clothes from Helen, she has them stored for me, but I didn’t want to do that.’ She handed over the sheaf of bills ungraciously. ‘There were other things—make-up, some perfume, things like that, little things. I paid for those myself.’

Jerome flicked through the bills, his eyebrows raised while she held her breath, thinking up things to say, like, ‘You’ll be expected to have a well dressed wife’ and ‘I can always slop around in jeans if that’s what you want’, but she had no opportunity of using these phrases.

‘Very economical.’ He sorted the bills into two piles, one for Philip’s things which he pocketed, giving the other pile back to her. There was the suspicion of a smile about his mouth. ‘Your allowance covers all that easily and I don’t expect you to clothe Philip out of it.’ For some unknown reason his generosity, instead of pleasing her or even making her feel relieved, made her cross and she spent the rest of the evening feeling like Oxfam. She was being donated to, and it took nearly all the pleasure out of spending so much money!

Nanny Hogg
and Philip occupied the rear of the large car on the journey north and enlivened the trip with renderings of ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’, ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’, ‘Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son’ and other nursery ditties. When this palled, Nanny told stories from
Winnie the Pooh
and
Brer Rabbit
and various episodes from a heartrending tale of
The Little Boy who Didn’t Look Where He Was Going.
Philip loved it, and as a proof, he refrained from being sick—although he recounted at length just how many times he had been sick before!

Kate therefore stepped from the car with no more than a faint crease in her skirt and decided that at times like these Nanny earned every penny of her considerable salary. Kate remembered previous journeys when she had stepped from the car, liberally bespattered with splashes from ice lollies and plastic cups of orange juice and feeling that she had been in intimate contact with a very grubby sweet-making factory.

Mrs Manfred’s house was not far from Hathersage and quite close to the river, a lovely place, and Kate loved it on sight. She had been expecting and dreading a stately home, and breathed a soft sigh of relief when Jerome had stopped the car on the gravel drive outside this low, rambling, and obviously unstately dwelling. It didn’t have the elegant perfection of the house in Kensington, it was solid, cosy and not at all fashionable. Jerome’s mother wasn’t fashionable either—not here. It was as if she had put off her skin of elegance here in this atmosphere and there was nothing to impede her direct tongue or her seemingly unfailing good humour.

She met them in the drive; clad in old fawn cord slacks which were tucked into the tops of muddy wellingtons, her upper half covered by an anorak so old and worn that the original green colour had become an indeterminate grey and her head covered with a bright spotted kerchief, tied gypsywise under her chin. She dropped the two plastic buckets which she was carrying and hurried towards them.

‘There!’ she smiled happily, ‘and I was trying to get all my outside jobs done before you arrived. Hasn’t the weather been foul? All this rain recently makes working outside a very chancy business, but I’ve nearly finished. Just the dogs left to feed.’

At the sound of the word ‘dog’, Philip’s ears pricked and he adopted a pose which suggested that his short, fat little self was planted firmly in the gravel of the drive and he had no intention of being uprooted.

‘Come for my dog,’ he informed his grandmother, eyeing her suspiciously. ‘Come in a car. Brm, brm!’

‘And you shall have your dog, my lad.’ Mrs Manfred looked at him and beneath her smile was a deep tenderness. Kate caught her breath at the look and forced herself to remember that Philip was Theo’s son as well as Shirley’s. The family resemblance was very strong and Mrs Manfred was probably tracing it and remembering when Theo was just this age. Jerome’s mother left the two plastic buckets where they had dropped and held out a hand to her grandson. ‘Come on then, Philip. We’ll go into the house and see your dog. Jessie’s been looking after him for you.’

‘Jessie?’ Philip wrinkled his brow at this extension of his little world, but he tucked his hand confidingly into his grandmother’s.

‘The thwarted mother,’ Mrs Manfred shouted the words to Kate over her shoulder. ‘I told you about her, didn’t I? The pup’s been a godsend to us, we haven’t had a bit of trouble with the old girl since he arrived.’ As she was talking, she was leading them into the house, pausing in the porch to kick off her muddy wellingtons and disclosing in the process a pair of narrow, high- arched feet in darned khaki wool socks. ‘I hope you’re staying for a few weeks. Holly, that’s another of my bitches, has just whelped, five lovely pups, and she’s a very good mother. There’ll be a nasty battle if Jessie goes interfering. On the other hand,’ she paused thoughtfully, ‘Tammy’s about due to give birth in three weeks’ time. Now, Tammy’s
not a
good mother, anyone can look after her pups and the poor little things get so cold when she leaves them, so Jessie will be quite welcome in that pen. She’ll save me pottering around with hot water bottles, so stay for a month, will you?’

‘Mother is on her favourite hobbyhorse,’ Jerome murmured to Kate, and he sounded amused. ‘She has several, you know, and they all lead on to bigger and better things. This one leads to a consultation of the Kennel Club records, and then she’ll discuss the good and bad points of every champion she’s raised and how much more difficult it is to raise terrier champions than any other breed. Stop her now, before she really gets started, that’s the only way.’ He raised his voice slightly. ‘Mother, this is Nanny Hogg. Nanny, my mother, Mrs Manfred. That ought to do it,’ he dropped his voice and muttered in Kate’s ear. ‘Now they can talk babies!’

In the big, tidy kitchen of the house, by the side of a gleaming solid fuel cooker sat Philip’s puppy in a lined basket, the side of which he was hopefully gnawing in search of nourishment. Philip gave a delighted yell of ‘My dog!’ and flopped down inside the basket with his puppy. A bright-eyed, hairy little face with tan ears, sharply pricked, peered at the newcomer over the arm of a chair and Kate experienced a moment’s fear as a middle-aged, rather rotund fox terrier heaved herself out and went to investigate.

‘Jessie,’ Mrs Manfred was brief. ‘No need to worry, she won’t hurt the boy, he’s too young, and the silly old fool can’t tell the difference between pups and babies.’ Kate didn’t believe it at first and kept a watchful eye on the little group, but after a while she lost her fear and turned away, leaving Philip and his dog together in the basket under the watchful eye of the small terrier who sat with pricked ears and a quivering tail, giving her two charges alternate licks. Just in case anything went wrong, Nanny Hogg sat herself firmly in the chair which the dog had vacated and took over guard duty.

Mrs Manfred, who had by this time stripped herself of her anorak, smiled an ‘I told you so’ smile and yelled, ‘Hattie!’ just as a gaunt, sour-looking woman came into the kitchen.

‘No need for you to yell your head off, Mrs Manfred,’ she scolded with the informality of long acquaintance. ‘Tea’ll be ready just as soon as you’ve fed those dogs and got yourself tidy to sit down and eat it.’ She rounded on Jerome. ‘So this is your new wife, eh? Well, you’ve got better taste than I gave you credit for, my lad! Now, you get off and feed those dogs. Leaving plastic buckets all over the front of the house—I’ve never seen such a thing! No better than gypsies!’ Alternately scolding, Hattie harried Jerome and his mother while she advanced on Kate. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Jerome—and this is young Philip again, is it? My, but he’s grown, and down with a dog, I see. Taking after his grandmother—well, he can do worse than that. Dogs are friendly things and good companions. I can’t stand cats!’

‘Hattie and I grew up together,’ Mrs Manfred confided as she led Kate upstairs to a big, old-fashioned bedroom. ‘She looks as though she’s made of lemon juice and vinegar, doesn’t she? But it’s only a look. Inside, she’s as soft as marshmallow. Don’t pay any attention to her scolding, she really doesn’t mean a word of it.’ She gestured round the room. ‘Do you like it? I was born in this house, in this very bed. Of course, we didn’t live here when Jerome’s father was alive, we had a much bigger place near Buxton. That was what was wrong with it—too big, and not at all home like, so I brought Hattie and Theo back here. Jerome was quite grown up and always away at that time and there was more scope here for the dogs.’

Kate moved about the room, unpacking and hanging clothes away in the gigantic wardrobe while Jerome’s mother talked on. Kate liked this house; it was a relief. She had been expecting something much more ornate, but here she felt relaxed and comfortable, at ease, and gradually her tension melted away so that she could give a genuine chuckle at some tale about the dogs or a humorous episode during a rehearsal of the local amateur dramatic society’s production of
The Importance of Being Earnest.
When Jerome came upstairs later he found a Kate he’d never met before.

‘Your mother’s been telling me about the amateur dramatic society.’ The face she turned to him no longer wore its mask of thinly veiled hostility. ‘It sounds hilarious. I hope we’re still here when the performance takes place. I’d love to see it.’

‘It can be arranged.’ Jerome’s face was expressionless, although he was watching her closely.

‘So much effort for just one performance!’ Kate was still wrapped up in her own thoughts and hardly noticed his scrutiny. ‘They all sound so keen and enthusiastic. Do you know that one man walks five miles to rehearsals, actually walks it, whatever the weather? That’s a ten-mile round trip!’

‘Wouldn’t you walk five miles to do something you like doing?’ Jerome sounded amused.

‘Oh yes!’ she assured him. ‘But this isn’t a young man, he’s quite old, your mother says; well over sixty, yet he walks all that way! You’d think he’d stay home by the fire and watch T.V., especially if the weather was bad, but your mother says he never misses.’

‘Mmm.’ She surprised a lurking humour about his mouth. ‘But you must remember that Mother’s the stage manager. I don’t think he dare miss.’

‘Pooh!’ she dismissed the thought. ‘You’re making your mother out to be some sort of a dragon, and she’s nothing of the kind!’

‘But I can remember when you thought of her as something much more unpleasant than a dragon,’ he pointed out gently.

Kate’s hands, which had been busy laying out underwear neatly in drawers, stilled as she took a breath.

‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ She turned to face him squarely, her chin lifted and her green eyes steady on his. ‘I shouldn’t have allowed myself to form such an opinion on second-hand information. I was wrong, and I apologise for it.’

‘That’s generous of you, Kate.’ She thought she detected a faint sneer about his mouth. It was so fleeting that she could not be quite sure, but it ruined her pleasant mood. Her back snapped straight and her eyes sparked.

‘At least I’m apologising,’ with an obvious effort she held her temper in check, ‘and that’s more than you’ve ever done to me. You thought that I was a promiscuous little trollop—and don’t bother to deny it, because I know you did!’ Her voice shook with indignation and her fingers clenched around the delicate garments she was holding. ‘You even had the gall to admit that you hadn’t expected me to be a virgin.’ Her face flashed hotly at the memory. ‘You’ve never apologised for thinking that about me, so don’t look so high and mighty when I admit that I may have been wrong!’ And gathering up her toilet bag and an assortment of flimsy underwear, she flounced out of the room and along the passage to the bathroom.

Kate inched her way through the door of the study with a tray of coffee neatly balanced on one hand, then, because her balancing act looked like falling apart, she grabbed the tray with her free hand and closed the door by putting her foot against it and pushing. She had determined to be useful and this was one of the few tasks which Hattie allowed her to do, the provision of elevenses.

‘I can’t sit around all day with my hands folded,' she had grumbled to the sour-looking housekeeper, ‘and I don’t get a look in with Philip nowadays, Nanny is too efficient. You’ll have to find me something to do.’

Hattie had sniffed down her long, thin nose. ‘I don’t see as there’s much you
can
do, Mrs Jerome, not to my way of thinking.’ She wrinkled her forehead thoughtfully. ‘There’s the bit of dusting, if you wouldn’t mind. That would give young Dodie more time for her vacuum cleaner, but I’m not having you in my kitchen. I can’t bear people in my kitchen.’

Kate had been warned of Hattie’s forthright tongue and after two days had accepted the dour-looking woman’s scathing remarks. ‘She was a sergeant cook with the Army during the war,’ Mrs Manfred had explained. ‘It gave her a feeling of power and she’s never got over it. She treats us all as if we were privates and runs the place like a barracks. But she’s a wonderful cook and a good friend as well, so we put up with her rough tongue for the sake of her warm heart.’

Jerome was deep in a pile of bills and receipts when she put the tray down on a side table, and he turned from the big, old-fashioned desk to look at her, gesturing ruefully.

‘Mother gets her affairs into a muddle,’ he encompassed the littered desk with a wave of his hand. ‘I usually have to spend a couple of days sorting them out when I’m here.’

Kate nodded, although it was more a gracious inclination of the head than a nod, as she was still cross with him. ‘It all looks very businesslike,’ she commented remotely as she eyed the row of filing cabinets on the far wall.

His eyes followed hers. ‘Not all Mother’s,’ he explained. ‘A lot of it is mine, things I don’t leave in the London office. Private things.’ He accepted a cup of coffee and stirred it thoughtfully. ‘The New York visit’s been arranged and I’m going on Tuesday, would you like to come with me?’