A Gentle Awakening. Betty Neels
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of grumbles, and anything was better than that after a day’s work.
They ate in silence. Her father had no interest in her day and, since he had done nothing himself, there was nothing to tell her. He got up from the table presently and went into the sitting-room to sit down before the TV. Florina started to clear the table, wash up and put everything ready for breakfast. By the time she had finished the evening was well advanced but still light; half an hour’s walk would be pleasant, she decided. She cheerfully countered her father’s objections to this and set off through the village, past the cottages, past the Trout and Feathers, past the lovely old house next the pub where old Admiral Riley lived, and along the tree-lined lane. It was still warm and very quiet, and if she stood still she could hear the river beyond the trees.
When she came to a gate she stopped to lean on it, well aware of the beauty of her surroundings, but too busy with her own thoughts to heed it. The need to escape was very strong; her mother had died five years previously and since then Florina had kept house for her father, pandering to his whims, because the doctor had warned her that a fit of temper or any major disturbance might bring on another heart attack. She had resigned herself to what was her plain duty, made the more irksome since her father had no affection for her. But things could be different now; her father had been for a check-up in Salisbury a week or so previously and, although he had told her that there was no improvement in his condition, she had quite by chance encountered the doctor, who had told her that her father was fit enough to resume a normal life.
‘A part-time job, perhaps?’ He smiled at Florina, whom he thought privately had had a raw deal. ‘He was in a bank, wasn’t he? Well, I dare say he could get taken on again. He’s only in his mid-fifties, isn’t he? And if he can’t find something to do, I’ve suggested to him that he might take over the housework; a little activity would do him good. Give you a chance to have a holiday.’
She mulled over his news. Her father had flown into a rage when she had suggested that he might like to do a few chores around the house. He had clutched his chest and declared that she would be the death of him, and that she was the worst possible daughter that any man could have.
Florina, having heard it all before, received his remarks with equanimity and said no more, but now she turned over several schemes in her mind. A different job, if she could find one and, since her father no longer was in danger, preferably away from home. Something not too far away, so that she could return for the weekends… She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear anyone in the lane until they were almost level with her. The man and the little girl from the car, walking along hand in hand. When she turned to see who it was, the man inclined his head gravely and the little girl grinned and waved. Florina watched them walk on, back to the village. Presumably they had found their bed and breakfast, and tomorrow they would drive away in their lovely car and she would never see them again.
She waited until they were out of sight, and then started back to the house. She had to leave home just after seven each morning, and tomorrow it would be even earlier, for there was a wedding reception at the hotel.
She went back without haste, made their evening drinks, wished her father goodnight and went to her room, where she wasted five minutes examining her features in the looking-glass. There was, she considered, very little to be done about them: sandy hair, even though it gleamed and shone, was by no means considered beautiful, and a slightly tip-tilted nose and too wide a mouth held no charm. She got into bed and lay wondering about the man in the car. He had been very polite in a disinterested way; she could quite see that there was nothing in her person to attract a man, especially a man such as he, used, no doubt, to enchanting girls with golden hair and beautiful faces, wearing the latest fashions. Florina smiled at her silly thoughts and went off to sleep.
It was the beginning of the most gorgeous day when she left early the next morning. Sir William Sedley, standing at his bedroom window and drinking his early morning tea, watched her pedalling briskly along the lane. The sun shone on her sandy head, turning it to gold, and she was whistling. He wondered where she was going at that early hour. Then he forgot her, almost immediately.
It was a splendid morning and there was almost no traffic. Florina, going at a great rate on her elderly bike, wished that she could have been free to spend the day out of doors. The hotel kitchens, admirable though they were, were going to be uncomfortably warm. She slowed a little as she went through the small town, still quiet, and passed the nice old houses with the high walls of Wilton House behind them. The hotel was on the other side of the road, a pleasant building, surrounded by trees and with the river close by. She paused to take a look at the green peacefulness around her, then parked her bike and went in through the kitchen entrance.
She was punctual, as always, but the place was already a hive of activity; first breakfasts being cooked, waiters loading trays. Florina called ‘good morning’ and went over to her particular corner, intent on icing petits fours, filling vol-au-vents and decorating the salmon in aspic designed for the wedding reception.
She was a splendid cook, a talent she had inherited from her Dutch mother, together with a multitude of housewifely perfections which, sadly, her father had never appreciated. Florina sometimes wondered if her mother had been happy; she had been a quiet little woman, sensible and practical and cheerful, absorbing her father’s ill-temper with apparent ease. Florina missed her still. Whether her father did so too, she didn’t know, for he never talked of her. When, from time to time, she had tried to suggest a holiday with her mother’s family, he had been so incensed that he had become alarmingly red in the face, and she had feared that he would have another heart attack.
Her thoughts, as busy as her fingers, darted to and fro, seeking an escape from a home which was no longer a home. Interlarded with them was the man in the car, although what business of his it was eluded her.
He wasn’t thinking of her; he was strolling down the village street, his daughter beside him. His appointment was for ten o’clock and it wanted five minutes to the hour. The church clock struck the hour as they turned in through the open gates leading to the house where Admiral Riley lived.
It was a delightful place, L-shaped, its heavy wooden door half-way down one side. It stood open, and there was no need to thump the great knocker, for the old man came to meet them.
‘Mrs Birch from the village, who looks after me while my wife is away, has gone to Wilton. So I’m alone, which is perhaps a good thing, for we can go round undisturbed.’
He led the way through the hall and into a very large room with a window at its end. There were more windows and an open door along one side. It was furnished with some handsome mahogany pieces, and a number of easy chairs, and there was a massive marble fireplace facing the windows. The admiral went across the room and bent down to roll back the carpet before the hearth.
‘I don’t know if the agent told you about this?’ He chuckled and stood back so that his visitors could see what he had laid bare. A thick glass panel in the floor, and under it a steady flow of water. ‘There used to be a mill wheel, but that’s gone. The water runs under this room…’ He led the way through the doors on to a wide patio and leaned over a stone balustrade. ‘It comes out here and runs through the garden into the fields beyond.’
The little girl caught her father’s hand. ‘Swans, Daddy!’ Her voice was a delighted squeak. ‘Do they live here, in this garden?’
‘Not quite in the garden,’ said the Admiral. ‘But they come for bread each day. You shall feed them presently, if you like.’
The kitchen wing was in the other side of the L-shape, a delightful mixture of old-fashioned pantries, with everything that any housewife could wish for. There were other rooms, too: a dining-room, a small sitting-room, a study lined with bookshelves. Upstairs, the rooms were light and airy; there were five of them and three bathrooms, as well as a great attic reached by a narrow little stair. ‘My playroom,’ whispered the little girl.
They went back to the drawing-room presently, and the Admiral fetched the coffee tray and bread for the swans. ‘I’ve been here for more than twenty years,’ he observed, ‘and we hate to leave it, but my wife has to live in a warm climate. She’s been in Italy