her into the back and, without more ado, set off.
There was little traffic on the road. Just before they reached Henley, Sir Colin turned off on to a narrow road running between high hedges which led downhill into Turville. Eustacia saw with delight the black and white timbers of the Bull and Butcher Inn as they reached the village, drove round the small village green with its fringe of old cottages, past the church and down a very narrow lane with meadows on one side and a high flint wall on the other. The lane turned abruptly and they drove through an open gateway into a short, circular drive leading to a long, low house with many latticed windows and a stout wooden door, the whole enmeshed in dormant Virginia creeper, plumbago and wistaria. It would be a heavenly sight in the summer months, she thought; it was a delightful picture in mid-winter with its sparkling white paint and clay-tiled roofing. Sir Colin stopped the car before the door and it was immediately thrown open to allow the two boys to rush out, shouting with delight.
Sir Colin got out, opened Eustacia’s door and helped her out, and left her to receive the exuberant greetings of the little boys while he went to help her grandfather. A grey-haired man came out of the door to join him. ‘Ah, Samways, here are Mr and Miss Crump.’ And, as he smiled and bowed slightly, Sir Colin went on, ‘Pipe down, you two, and give a hand with the luggage.’
He had a quiet, almost placid voice and Eustacia saw that they did as they were told without demur. They all went indoors to the hall, which was wide and long with pale walls and a thick carpet underfoot. The graceful curved staircase faced them, flanked by a green baize door on the one side and on the other a glass door with a view of the garden beyond. It was pleasantly warm and fragrant with the scent of the hyacinths in the bowl on a delicate little wall-table.
Sir Colin said in his quiet voice, ‘Samways, if you would show Mr Crump to his room…’ He paused as the baize door opened and a small, stout woman bustled through. ‘Ah, Mrs Samways, will you take Miss Crump to her room? And if we all meet for tea in ten minutes or so?’
Eustacia watched her grandfather go off happily with Samways and then, with Mrs Samways leading the way and the two boys following behind, she went up the staircase. There was a wide landing at its top with passages leading from it, and Mrs Samways took the left-hand one, to open a door at its end. ‘The boys are just next door,’ she explained. ‘They have their own bathroom on the other side.’ She led the way across the large, low-ceilinged room and opened another door. ‘This is your bathroom, Miss Crump.’
It was all quite beautiful, its furniture of yew, the walls and carpets the colour of cream, the curtains and bedspread of chintz in pale, vague colours. Eustacia was sure that she would sleep soundly in the pretty bed, and to wake up each morning with such a glorious view from her windows…
‘It’s lovely,’ she murmured, and peeped into the bathroom, which was as charming in its way as the bedroom with its faintly pink tiles and piles of thick towels. She gave a sigh of pure pleasure and turned to the boys. ‘I’m glad you’re next door. Do you wake early?’
‘Yes,’ said Oliver, ‘and now you’re here, perhaps we can go for a walk before breakfast?’
‘Just listen to the boy,’ said Mrs Samways comfortably, ‘mad to go out so early in the day. Not that I’ve anything against that, but what with getting the breakfast and one thing and another I’ve not had the time to see to them…’
‘I’m sure you haven’t,’ said Eustacia, ‘but if Sir Colin doesn’t mind and we won’t be bothering you, we might go for a quick walk as long as it doesn’t upset the way you like to run the house, Mrs Samways.’
‘My dear life, it’ll be a treat to have someone here to be with the boys. Now I’ll just go and fetch in the tea and you can come down as soon as you’re ready.’ She ushered the boys out ahead of her and left Eustacia, who wasted five minutes going round her room, slowly this time, savouring all its small luxuries: a shelf of books, magazines on the bedside table with a tin of biscuits and a carafe of water, roomy cupboards built into the wall, large enough to take her small wardrobe several times over, a velvet-covered armchair by the window with a bowl of spring flowers on a table by it. She sat down before the triple mirror on the dressing-table and did her face and hair and then, suddenly aware that she might be keeping everyone waiting, hurried down the stairs. The boys’ voices led her to a door to one side of the hall and she pushed it open and went in. They were all in there, sitting round a roaring fire with Moses stretched out with his head on his master’s feet, and a portly ginger cat sitting beside him.
Sir Colin and the boys got to their feet when they saw her, and she was urged to take a chair beside her grandfather.
‘You are comfortable in your room?’ asked Sir Colin.
‘My goodness, yes. It’s one of the loveliest rooms I’ve ever seen.’ She beamed at him. ‘And the view from the window…’
‘Delightful, isn’t it? Will you pour the tea, and may I call you Eustacia? The boys would like to call you that too, if you don’t mind?’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’
She got up and went to the rent table where the tea things had been laid out, and her grandfather said, ‘This is really quite delightful, but I feel that I am imposing; I have no right to be here.’
‘There you are mistaken,’ observed Sir Colin. ‘I have been wondering if you might care to have the boys for an hour each morning. Not lessons, but if you would hear them read and keep them up to date with the world in general, and I am sure that there have been events in your life well worth recounting.’
Mr Crump looked pleased. ‘As a younger man I had an eventful life,’ he admitted. ‘When I was in India—’
‘Elephants—rajas,’ chorused the boys, and Sir Colin said blandly,
‘You see? They are avid for adventure. Will you give it a try?’
‘Oh, with the greatest of pleasure.’ Mr Crump accepted his tea and all at once looked ten years younger. ‘It will be a joy to have an interest…’
Eustacia threw Sir Colin a grateful glance; he had said and done exactly the right thing, and by some good chance he had hit on exactly the right subject. Her grandfather had been in India and Burma during the 1940-45 war, and as a young officer and later as a colonel he had had enough adventures to last him a lifetime. He had stayed on in India for some years after the war had ended, for he had married while he’d been out there, and when he and her grandmother had returned to England her father had been a small schoolboy.
‘I am in your debt—the boys won’t be fit for school for a week or two. I hope they won’t be too much of a handful for you both. It is a great relief to me that they can stay here in the country.’ He looked at Eustacia. ‘You won’t find it too quiet here?’
She shook her head. ‘Oh, no, there’s such a lot to do in the country.’
They finished their tea in an atmosphere of friendly agreement, and when the tea things had been cleared away by Samways they gathered round the table and played Scrabble until Sir Colin blandly suggested that the boys should have their supper and go to bed. A signal for Eustacia to go with them, to a small, cosy room at the back of the rambling house and sit with them while they ate it. It seemed obvious to her that she was expected to take up her duties then and there, and so she accompanied them upstairs to bed after they had wished their uncle and her grandfather goodnight. Getting ready for bed was a long-drawn-out business with a great deal of toing and froing between the bathroom and their bedroom and a good deal of laughing and scampering about.
