ladling shepherd’s pie into exact portions.
‘Got the sack?’ asked Guy, and Thomas added,
‘Shouldn’t be surprised with that hair.’
‘Visitors for lunch,’ explained Matilda, ignoring her brothers. ‘I’m to go back at half-past two.’
‘You usually stay there even when there are visitors,’ mused her mother.
Matilda turned limpid eyes upon her parent. ‘Probably I’d have made the numbers wrong, Mother.’ She handed out the plates. ‘Is it Esme’s evening for dancing class? Do you want me to collect her?’
‘Well, that would be nice, dear; the bus takes so long to get here.’
Matilda went back to the manor-house after lunch and found Lady Fox and Roseanne arguing about the green outfit. They both looked cross and Lady Fox said at once, ‘This silly girl has been invited to stay in London and she doesn’t want to go…’
Matilda had collected the second post as she went in, and she sat down and began to sort it. ‘Why not?’ she asked, pleasantly. ‘I should think it would be the greatest fun.’
‘I don’t know anyone,’ mumbled Roseanne.
‘Well, you don’t expect to until you’re there,’ said Matilda reasonably, ‘but think of the theatres—you know, The Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love and Cats and there’ll be exhibitions at the Tate and the National Gallery. You might meet some artists.’
Roseanne brightened. ‘Well, yes—I suppose that I might; perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.’
Matilda went home again after tea, taken off a tray while she added up the household accounts for Lady Fox. It was a fine evening and the drive to Sherborne would be pleasant. Abner Magna was only a few miles from that town, but the roads were narrow and winding and the evening bus which Esme sometimes took stopped whenever someone wanted to board it or get off, making the journey twice as long. Matilda got a thick knitted jacket, poked at her hair and went to tell her mother that she was about to leave. There was no one in the kitchen but there were voices in her father’s study. She opened the door, stuck her head round it and cried, ‘I’m off to fetch Esme, we shouldn’t be—’ She came to a halt; Mr Scott-Thurlow was standing beside her father, surveying the rather untidy garden.
He said at once, ‘Good evening, Miss ffinch,’ and her father said mildly, ‘John Bramley asked Mr Scott-Thurlow to bring a book over which he had promised to lend me. You have met?’
‘Very briefly,’ observed his guest. ‘I mustn’t keep you, sir. Do I understand Miss ffinch to say that she is driving into Sherborne? I’m on the point of going there myself and shall be glad to offer her a lift.’
A delightful prospect, which she had to refuse with regret. ‘I’m going to fetch my sister—she’s at dancing class, and we’ve no way of getting back here—the last bus would have gone…’
‘I shall be coming back; I have to take something to the hospital for Dr Bramley, a matter of five minutes. We could collect your sister and I can stop at the hospital on our way back.’
‘Oh, well, yes—thank you very much. Do you want to go now?’
‘Certainly.’ He said all the right things to the rector and then stopped in the hall for a moment to bid Mrs ffinch goodbye before ushering Matilda outside.
He opened the door of the car standing there and she skipped inside. ‘What a treat,’ she declared happily, ‘a Rolls-Royce—wait till Esme sees it.’ She added the information that such a vehicle was seldom seen in Abner Magna. ‘Of course Sir Benjamin has a Daimler, but it’s a bit worthy if you know what I mean.’
He made some non-committal answer, but since she felt strangely at ease with him she enlivened their short journey with odds and ends of information, all of them good-natured, about the village and its inhabitants. ‘I dare say you live in London?’ she wanted to know.
Mr Scott-Thurlow was sitting back, not driving fast; he said idly, ‘Yes, I do. Your village is delightful.’
‘Well, I like it, but I was born here. Have you known Dr Bramley long?’
‘Er—he and my father knew each other in their youth…’
‘Oh, well, I didn’t think you were all that old,’ said Matilda kindly. ‘Dr Bramley is always saying that he’ll retire so he must be getting on a bit.’
Her companion allowed himself a faint smile. ‘I am thirty-eight,’ he told her. ‘And how old are you, Miss ffinch?’
‘Me? Oh, twenty-six.’
‘And heart-whole?’
A difficult question to answer. ‘Well, I was… Are you married?’
They were in Sherborne now and he asked, ‘Which way?’ before saying, ‘No, but I’m engaged.’
Matilda knew exactly how a balloon must feel when it was pricked. She said in a rigid voice, ‘I expect you’re looking forward to getting married. Here we are.’
He stopped the car and turned to look at her. ‘Do you know, Miss ffinch, I cannot remember when I was cross-examined so thoroughly?’
She stared at him, stricken. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—I just wanted—I was interested…’
He smiled then and her heart turned over. ‘I rather enjoyed it. Is that your sister waving to us from the other side of the road?’
A snub, a gentle one, but still a snub. Matilda went a delightful pink and frowned ferociously, remembering the string of questions she had flung at him; he probably thought her a dull country woman with nothing better to do than poke her nose into other people’s affairs. Her daydream had been shattered by a few well-chosen words on his part and life would never be the same again. The quicker he went away and she never set eyes on him again the better. She said in a sober voice, ‘Yes, that’s Esme.’
It was a good thing that Esme elected to sit beside him and chatter non-stop so that Matilda had no need to say much; she thanked him rather primly as he stopped at the rectory gates but it was Esme who urged him to go in with them. An invitation he declined pleasantly enough.
He had gone the next day, or so it seemed from a remark her father made the following evening, and it was then that she realised that she had no idea what he did or who he really was. He had the calm self-assured manner of a solicitor and she had heard him discussing a point of law with the rector during his brief visit. Solicitors, she had always supposed, earned themselves a good living, good enough to run a Rolls—she allowed her thoughts to wander—he might have to get a cheaper car when he married though; his wife would want clothes and the children would need to be educated. She made a resolution then and there not to think about him any more. That she had fallen in love with a man who was on the point of getting married to some other girl was a trick of unkind fate, and there was nothing to do about it.
A week went by, the boys went back to school and so did Esme, and Hilary was home again. Matilda’s days were full: Lady Fox each day, choir practice on Thursday evening, Sunday school, driving her father to one or two of the more distant farms; the pattern of her future, reflected
