Second Chance at the Belfast Guesthouse. Anne Doughty
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overdraft. The present healthy balance was all their own work.
‘Hello love, how’s things?’ Andrew asked, as he took his briefcase from the passenger seat.
‘Not bad,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Wedding invitation from Ginny and wine from Robert. John’s arrived and says he has jobs to do at the front, so I though we’d be posh and have dinner upstairs as its Friday night.’
‘Great, I’m starving. Had to use the lunch hour to consult. Someone went out for sandwiches. Cheese with some sort of salad cream,’ he said, making a face, as they walked side by side along the corridor to their bedroom. ‘They were horrible.’
‘Never mind, we’ve got something nice for dinner. And dessert.’
She picked up his black jacket and pinstriped trousers as he dropped them on the bed, shook them and hung them up to air beside the open window.
‘You won’t mind if I don’t dress for dinner,’ he said, teasing her with his best English accent, as he pulled on some flannels and an open-necked shirt.
‘Well . . .’
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, putting his arms round her. ‘A wretched day, I’m sorry to say. One more victory for the status quo. I want to forget it all as quickly as possible. Can I carry something?’ he added vigorously, as if only immediate action would erase the memory of the shabby show he’d been forced to witness in court.
‘Yes, it’s all in the bottom of the Aga. Except the dessert,’ she added, laughing, as they pushed open the kitchen door. ‘That’s upstairs already.’
She loaded up the tray for him to carry and wrapped two warm dinner plates in a tea cloth, leaving her a hand free to open the door of Headquarters.
‘I say, what are we celebrating?’ Andrew asked, as he caught sight of the small table under the window. After years of squeezing round the large and very solid piece of furniture thought appropriate when Headquarters had been the morning-room at Drumsollen, Harry had found them a customer who had offered them a remarkably good price. The new table they’d chosen together stood below the window and was laid this evening with a white damask cloth. On it were laid two place settings, a slim vase of golden roses, two silver candlesticks and a bottle of red wine in an ornate silver wine cooler.
‘Food first,’ she said, as he put the tray down on the sideboard and she took the lid off the casserole.
‘Anything you say, ma’am. But I can almost smell good news,’ he confessed, as he carried the vegetable dish to the table and poured two glasses of wine.
They were both hungry and ate devotedly, finishing off every scrap of the tasty casserole and all the vegetables as well. As they sat sipping their second glass of wine with the remaining fragments of crusty roll, Andrew suddenly spoke.
‘It’s not your birthday, nor is it our anniversary. I’m sure of that.’ He paused and asked sheepishly, ‘Is this the day we met?’
Clare laughed and looked at him more closely.
‘Oh, Andrew dear, don’t be anxious,’ she said gently. ‘I wasn’t setting you a test. Anybody can forget anything if they’ve been as busy as we’ve been. It might be the anniversary of the day we met, but I certainly can’t remember. Have you any idea when that was?’
Andrew claimed never to remember personal things, but to her amazement, he proceeded to give her a vivid picture of the day when he found her bicycle, parked against the low wall beside the gates of Drumsollen, the tyres having been let down.
‘Dear Jessie. She really thought I’d let them down and she was very, very cross. But you said you didn’t think I had,’ he continued thoughtfully, his blue eyes sparkling as he put his glass down. He paused and looked at her. ‘What made you say that?’ he asked abruptly.
‘I’m not sure now,’ she began hesitantly. ‘I’m amazed you can remember. I think I just looked and saw what you were like. Your basic honesty, perhaps. Robert used to ask me about clients he wasn’t sure about. He always said I could see if there was any badness in people.’
‘Like Charles Langley?’
‘Oh yes, dear Charles, your one-time slave at school. I couldn’t believe it when he told me about fagging for you,’ she said, laughing. ‘I wish we’d been able to go to his wedding,’ she added, a little wistfully. ‘But you’re quite right. Charles is a good example. Like you, my love, he was doing a job he had to do. The old obligation of a family business descending to the next in line. He certainly did the job to the best of his ability, but he never looked quite right doing it.’
‘Was that why you had to explain to Robert about Englishmen and duty?’
‘Stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing,’ she agreed. ‘Robert was very shrewd about people. He’d read about the English Public School style and manners, but he’d never seen it in action, so he couldn’t judge for himself if Charles was completely honest or not.’
‘Was he?’
‘Of course he was. As honest as you are. But he couldn’t get excited about buying and selling fruit and needing money to expand the import business.’
‘Any more than I can go along with some of what passes for normal legal practice in this province,’ he said sharply. ‘And now he and Lindy have a flying school in the South Downs.’
‘And are coming over to stay sometime during the winter when they can’t fly,’ she reminded him.
He smiled wryly and Clare guessed what he was thinking. Charles and Lindy had already managed to do what they so much wanted to do. When Charles’s father had died suddenly, he was free to sell up. Weekend flying had become a major leisure pursuit in the south-east and both he and Lindy were passionate about flying. Now they had more customers than they could cope with and the project was a great success.
She stood up and cleared away the empty plates and dishes and carried a domed silver dish ceremoniously to the table. Once part of the equipment for serving a cooked breakfast to be laid out on the long sideboard in the dining room, it had been redeployed for covering whatever might be a temptation to the summer flies. She removed the cover with a flourish.
‘Shall I carve, or will you?’ she asked soberly.
Andrew peered at the soft icing decorating one of June’s Victoria sponges and looked at her quizzically. ‘Did you put this icing on?’
‘I added the little sugar flowers, but June did the house and the fields. She said a cow was a bit much at short notice.’
‘So it is an anniversary, or nearly. Are you telling me we can think about buying a cow and a field?’
‘Yes, I am,’ she said, as she picked up the cake knife and handed it to him. ‘Perhaps even two of each if we can do as well next year as we have this year. We can certainly open a new account. What shall we call it? Cows or fields? Or Drumsollen estate?’
Drumsollen House,
24, June 1963
My dear Robert,
I have some wonderful news. We have done it. We have broken even. Just. Only just, but as our good friend Emile used to say, ‘That my friends is a great achievement. Without that first step nothing else can happen.’
I still can hardly believe it! If you had seen me checking and rechecking the additions and not believing what they were saying you would have laughed. Had those been the figures presented by one of your clients I would have been satisfied right away.
Clare paused, shook her fountain pen impatiently, then reached for the