able to credit her good fortune in actually marrying Godfrey Barratt. Bessie had stood waiting in the hall to welcome her – of course she hadn’t been Bessie Meacham then, but Bessie Forrest. She was twenty years older than her young mistress; she had worked at Oakfield ever since she’d left the village school at fourteen.
Pauline had never been able to rid herself totally of the notion that Bessie regarded the house – and the domestic quarters in particular – as her own property. Her impersonally pleasant manner always seemed to imply that Pauline was a temporary interloper to be casually humoured until she saw fit to drift off elsewhere.
‘I don’t think there’ll be any strawberries left.’ Pauline was determined to find some point on which she could assert authority. ‘The beds were picked over pretty thoroughly a couple of days ago. Better make it a raspberry flan.’
Bessie took a loaf from the bin. ‘Mr Meacham’ll find some strawberries for me,’ she said comfortably. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’ She liked to refer by this formal title to the man she had met and married during her holiday in the spring. She had gone off to Torquay with no special thought of romance, nothing beyond what any seaside holiday might be expected to offer – she had been Miss Bessie Forrest for fifty-three years, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her fancies and inclinations like everyone else even if she’d never previously got as far as the altar.
A piercing ring sounded from the back door. Bessie glanced at the clock. ‘That’ll be the butcher.’ Tradesmen in the nearby town of Chilford still found it worth while to send their mobile shops the four or five miles inland to the prosperous village of Westerhill.
‘Let me see.’ Pauline wrinkled her brow. ‘A chicken, stewing beef—’
‘I’ve got it all in my head,’ Bessie said amiably. ‘No need for you to trouble yourself, madam.’ She went unhurriedly out into the passage.
The flowers, Pauline thought, I suppose I ought to go and see what Meacham has cut. All those vases to be arranged and herself the only person who could be relied on not to make a hash of the job.
From somewhere in the upper regions she caught the drone of a vacuum cleaner. Better go up and run her eye over the bedrooms, make sure everything was being done properly. A small squad of daily women assisted in a piecemeal fashion with the running of Oakfield, each with her own methods, duties, schedule of hours.
In the doorway Pauline turned and surveyed the room with its high ceiling and long windows. One day when there was money to spare – if ever such a day should dawn – it could be transformed into a glitteringly modern kitchen. In the meantime it would benefit considerably from rather more thorough cleaning and tidying than it was getting at present. Or was likely to get before the pace slackened in October.
Ah well – she smiled fleetingly – just as well there wasn’t any question of giving the room a good turn-out just yet; she wouldn’t in the least have relished raising the matter with Bessie. Like many people with an easy-going surface and slightly slapdash ways, Mrs Meacham was capable of fierce resentment at the suggestion that other methods might have something superior to offer.
Pauline made a dismissing movement with her shoulders, stepped into the passage and set off at a brisk pace towards the stairs.
The study at Oakfield was a comfortable room facing south. The furnishings – leather, mahogany, dull gold velvet – were much as they had been in the time of Godfrey Barratt’s father and grandfather.
Godfrey sat at his desk, staring out at the blue and gold morning. Utterly impossible that Osmond’s could fail. A firm of builders known and respected across half the counties of England, providing employment for a host of satellite concerns, sub-contractors, suppliers, manufacturers of everything from a paintbrush to a window-frame. And somewhere pretty far down on that list was Barratt’s, woodworkers and turners, a tiny firm – looked at from the standpoint of the giants – but reasonably efficient and prosperous. Or so it had seemed until four days ago.
Godfrey stood up and pushed back his chair. He thrust his hands into his pockets and paced about the room, still a little dazed by the shock that had struck him on Tuesday morning as he ran a casual eye over the business pages of his newspaper. Just a whisper of rumour at first, the merest shadow of a hint that things might not be everything they should be at Osmond’s, but he had felt the muscles of his throat tighten with apprehension.
By Wednesday morning company spokesmen were blandly asserting in radio interviews that nothing was seriously amiss; when the Stock Exchange closed for business on Thursday, Osmond’s shares stood at a third of Monday’s price; on Friday morning Godfrey assembled his men.
They were very quiet as they waited for him to speak. Their eyes looked back at him with disciplined blankness as if they couldn’t as yet abandon themselves to either fear or hope. Unemployment was at a high level; in a seaside town like Chilford there was scarcely any alternative work for a skilled man. But a miracle might yet happen. Currents might move unseen in the City, fresh capital might flow in from a dozen different sources, political pressures might compel the Government to shore up Osmond’s.
He’d explained the situation as he saw it, he’d answered their questions honestly, refusing to indulge in meaningless optimism.
All that remained to them now was to wait. Every action that controlled their immediate future would be taken by men they would never even see. Only another week to go and the firm would close for its three weeks’ annual holiday. That week would be spent in completing an order for a Chilford builder, the kind of order Godfrey had been accustomed to look on merely as an act of goodwill towards the local community. It occurred to him now with wry force that if his entire order-book had been filled with such benevolent commitments, he would be in a much healthier position.
He flung himself down into an armchair, leaned back and closed his eyes. No point in spending a single further minute in work for Osmond’s – unless the miracle happened. No point in going into the works this morning; there would be no Saturday opening, no overtime of any kind, till the whole complicated muddle was sorted out.
The whirligig of thought began again . . . This is the end of Barratt’s, there won’t be any rescue operation for Osmond’s, you won’t be the only small woodworking firm abruptly stripped of its chief contract, competition will be cut-throat for every other piece of business in sight, you won’t be able to hold out, there’ll be the men’s wages, the relentless overheads, Osmond’s won’t be paying another penny to suppliers, not even for deliveries already made . . . A light sweat broke out on his forehead at the remembrance of the large consignment Barratt’s had despatched to Osmond’s only ten days ago, a consignment for which they would normally have expected payment at the end of the month.
He jerked his eyes open and stared up at the ornate ceiling. They’ll have a receiver in by the end of the month, he thought, still hardly able to believe it, I can whistle for my money.
On the table beside him the phone shrilled suddenly and he snatched up the receiver, glad to be forced out of his obsessive thoughts.
‘Mr Barratt?’ The deep, soft voice of Theresa Onil, edged now with anxiety. ‘I think perhaps you ought to come up to see Miss Tillard, she’s not very well this morning. She asked me to see if you would call in.’
‘Of course I’ll come,’ Godfrey said at once. Elinor Tillard was his wife’s aunt. Headmistress years ago of a girls’ school in Africa, she was now seventy. She lived a short distance away, looked after by Theresa, the half-African girl she had brought to England seventeen years ago. ‘I take it you’ve asked the doctor to call?’ Godfrey added. Miss Tillard inclined
