I may take advantage of you in a way you won’t like. Anyway, the only person you’re hurting is your mother.’ He let her go almost contemptuously, and walked unhurriedly away. Morgana watched him go, but she didn’t follow. Instead she almost ran down the passage to the kitchen.
Elsa was standing at the deep enamel sink, washing up, but she glanced round as Morgana flew in.
‘Dear soul,’ she remarked. ‘Where’s the fire to?’
‘It’s him. He’s here.’ Morgana sank down on to a chair beside the kitchen table, unfastening her cape, and pushing it back from her shoulders.
‘Well, better late than never, they do say,’ Elsa said comfortably, subjecting a plate to a minute inspection before placing it on the drying rack on the draining board.
‘I don’t say it.’ Morgana pushed her hands through her dishevelled hair, lifting it away from the nape of her neck. ‘Oh, Elsa, he’s vile! And he’s fair,’ she added.
‘The cards don’t lie, my lover. A fair man, they said, and pain and woe.’
‘He’s that all right,’ Morgana said petulantly. ‘Oh, what are we going to do?’
‘As we’re told, I daresay.’ Elsa held out a tea-towel with an inexorable air. ‘No point in fretting without reason, neither.’
Morgana accepted the cloth with a little sigh and began to wipe the dishes. ‘You can hardly say we have no reason,’ she objected.
‘What I say is it’s best we wait and hear what the genn’lman says before we start calling ‘um names,’ Elsa returned.
‘I don’t want to hear anything from him,’ Morgana said passionately. ‘But at least he’s not staying the night here—that’s something to be thankful for. I can’t bear the thought of having to share a roof with him, even for one night.’
From the doorway Lyall said drily, ‘Do you think you could bear to share it for long enough to show me a little of the house? Your mother is otherwise occupied, or I wouldn’t trouble you.’
The cup she was drying slipped from her hands and smashed into a hundred fragments on the flagged floor.
‘Now see what you’ve done!’ Elsa scolded. ‘Of all the clumsy maids! Don’t go treading through it, making things worse neither. Tek no notice of her, sir,’ she added to Lyall who stood watching, his face expressionless. ‘She’m mazed with worry, that’s all. She don’t mean half of what she says.’
‘Even the half is more than sufficient.’ He walked into the kitchen, ignoring Morgana, who had fetched a dustpan and brush from the broom cupboard and was sweeping the fragments into it with more scarlet-cheeked vigour than accuracy. ‘You must be Elsa, the mainstay of this establishment.’ He smiled. ‘Mrs Pentreath’s own words, not gratuitous flattery from me, I promise you.’
‘Mrs Pentreath’s a nice lady.’ Elsa wiped a damp hand on her overall and shook hands with him. ‘And the late master was a well-meaning genn’lman. More than that I can’t say.’
Lyall was looking around him. Watching him under her lashes, as she dumped the broken crockery into the kitchen bin, Morgana was resentfully aware that she was seeing the kitchen through his eyes—the big old-fashioned sink with its vast scrubbed draining board, the range, the enormous dresser which filled one wall, in all its homely inconvenience.
He said almost idly, ‘It must be hell having to cope without a dishwasher in the height of the season.’
‘Tesn’t wonderful, that’s true.’ Elsa allowed graciously. ‘But we manage. And hard work never hurt no one.’
‘How right you are.’ He glanced at Morgana. ‘I suggest as we’re here, you may as well begin by showing me the rest of the kitchen quarters. I take it that this isn’t the only room.’
‘No.’ She would rather have cut her throat with one of Elsa’s brightly honed knives than have shown him a shed in someone else’s garden, but she gritted her teeth. ‘There is a scullery—through here. I suppose these days, you’d call it a utility room. The washing machine’s in here, and another sink, and the deep-freeze.’
‘At least there are those,’ he observed, glancing round, his brows raised. ‘What about a tumble-dryer? How do you manage the laundry in wet weather?’
‘There’s a drying rack that works on a pulley in the kitchen. We’ve always found it perfectly efficient,’ she said coldly.
‘But then,’ he said smoothly, ‘the hotel has never precisely operated at full stretch, has it?’
‘As you say,’ she agreed woodenly. ‘That door leads to a courtyard, and the former stables. Do you want to look at them now? They’re rather dilapidated.’
‘I can imagine. Is there electricity laid on?’
‘Well—no.’
‘Then I’ll save that particular delight for another occasion. What kind of garden is there at the rear?’
She said reluctantly, ‘Beyond the stables there’s a walled area which is quite sheltered. We grow vegetables there, and soft fruit, but not to any great extent.’
‘And use the home-grown produce in the hotel dining room?’
She was a little taken aback. ‘Well, sometimes. We don’t grow all that much. There are a few apple trees as well.’
Lyall gave a sharp sigh. ‘Perhaps we’d better look at the rest of the ground floor rooms—leaving the drawing room out of the tour. I’ve had enough of the stares of the curious.’
‘I suppose you think we should have told our guests to go,’ Morgana said defensively.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘No—but you obviously don’t want them here. Only it is—or it has been our living, and we didn’t hear from you, so we didn’t know what to do for the best.’
His mouth curled sardonically. ‘That last phrase I’d say sums up the present situation pretty accurately. Now, might we get on, please? As I’ve pointed out, my time here is limited.’
Oh, that it were true, Morgana thought in impotent rage leading the way along the passage to the dining room.
Lyall said little as she did the honours of the house in a small remote voice—like a bored house agent with a reluctant client, she realised with unwilling humour, as she heard herself uttering phrases like ‘original mouldings’ and ‘local stone’.
She tried to look at him as little as possible, so it was difficult to gauge his reactions to what he was seeing—to know whether he was impressed, appalled, or simply indifferent. One of his few abrupt questions was about central heating, and she had to confess there wasn’t any, but that they’d always fround the open fires perfectly adequate. It wasn’t true. Her mother had bemoaned the lack of radiators on innumerable occasions, but Morgana wasn’t prepared to admit that. As far as this—interloper was concerned, the present occupants thought that Polzion House was perfect, warts and all.
Besides, she didn’t
