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II
“Yes, if only….”
Far away, Lynn had been shocked and grieved by the news of her uncle’s death, but the true
significance of it was only now beginning to come home to her.
For as long as she could remember, her life, all their lives, had been dominated by Gordon
Cloade. The rich, childless man had taken all his relatives completely under his wing.
Even Rowley…Rowley and his friend Johnnie Vavasour had started in partnership on the farm.
Their capital was small, but they had been full of hope and energy. And Gordon Cloade had
approved.
To her he had said more.
“You can’t get anywhere in farming without capital. But the first thing to find out is whether
these boys have really got the will and the energy to make a go of it. If I set them up now, I
wouldn’t know that—maybe for years. If they’ve got the right stuff in them, if I’m satisfied
that their side of it is all right, well then, Lynn, you needn’t worry. I’ll finance them on the
proper scale. So don’t think badly of your prospects, my girl. You’re just the wife Rowley
needs. But keep what I’ve told you under your hat.”
Well, she had done that, but Rowley himself had sensed his uncle’s benevolent interest. It was
up to him to prove to the old boy that Rowley and Johnnie were a good investment for money.
Yes, they had all depended on Gordon Cloade. Not that any of the family had been spongers or
idlers. Jeremy Cloade was senior partner in a firm of solicitors, Lionel Cloade was in practice as a
doctor.
But behind the workaday life was the comforting assurance of money in the background. There
was never any need to stint or to save. The future was assured. Gordon Cloade, a childless
widower, would see to that. He had told them all, more than once, that that was so.
His widowed sister, Adela Marchmont, had stayed on at the White House when she might,
perhaps, have moved into a smaller, more labour-saving house. Lynn went to first-class schools. If
the war had not come, she would have been able to take any kind of expensive training she had
pleased. Cheques from Uncle Gordon flowed in with comfortable regularity to provide little
luxuries.
Everything had been so settled, so secure. And then had come Gordon Cloade’s wholly
unexpected marriage.
“Of course, darling,” Adela went on, “we were all flabbergasted. If there was one thing that
seemed quite certain, it was that Gordon would never marry again. It wasn’t, you see, as though
he hadn’t got plenty of family ties.”
Yes, thought Lynn, plenty of family. Sometimes, possibly, rather too much family?
“He was so kind always,” went on Mrs. Marchmont. “Though perhaps just a weeny bit
tyrannical on occasions. He never liked the habit of dining off a polished table. Always insisted on
my sticking to the old-fashioned tablecloths. In fact, he sent me the most beautiful Venetian lace
ones when he was in Italy.”
“It certainly paid to fall in with his wishes,” said Lynn dryly. She added with some curiosity,
“How did he meet this—second wife? You never told me in your letters.”
“Oh, my dear, on some boat or plane or other. Coming from South America to New York, I
believe. After all those years! And after all those secretaries and typists and housekeepers and
everything.”
Lynn smiled. Ever since she could remember, Gordon Cloade’s secretaries, housekeepers, and
office staff had been subjected to the closest scrutiny and suspicion.
She asked curiously, “She’s good-looking, I suppose?”
“Well, dear,” said Adela, “I think myself she has rather a silly face.”
“You’re not a man, Mums!”
“Of course,” Mrs. Marchmont went on, “the poor girl was blitzed and had shock from blast
and was really frightfully ill and all that, and it’s my opinion she’s never really quite recovered.
She’s a mass of nerves, if you know what I mean. And really, sometimes, she looks quite half-
witted. I don’t feel she could ever have made much of a companion for poor Gordon.
Lynn smiled. She doubted whether Gordon Cloade had chosen to marry a woman years younger
than himself for her intellectual companionship.
“And then, dear,” Mrs. Marchmont lowered her voice, “I hate to say it, but of course she’s
not a lady!”
“What an expression, Mums! What does that matter nowadays?”
“It still matters in the country, dear,” said Adela placidly. “I simply mean that she isn’t
exactly one of us!”
“Poor little devil!”
“Really, Lynn, I don’t know what you mean. We have all been most careful to be kind and
polite and to welcome her amongst us for Gordon’s sake.”
“She’s at Furrowbank, then?” Lynn asked curiously.
“Yes, naturally. Where else was there for her to go when she came out of the nursing home?
The doctors said she must be out of London. She’s at Furrowbank with her brother.”
“What’s he like?” Lynn asked.
“A dreadful young man!” Mrs. Marchmont paused, and then added with a good deal of
intensity: “Rude.”
A momentary flicker of sympathy crossed Lynn’s mind. She thought: “I bet I’d be rude in
his place!”
She asked: “What’s his name?”
“Hunter. David Hunter. Irish, I believe. Of course they are not people one has ever heard of.
She was a widow—a Mrs. Underhay. One doesn’t wish to be uncharitable, but one can’t help
asking oneself—what kind of a widow would be likely to be travelling about from South America
in wartime? One can’t help feeling, you know, that she was just looking for a rich husband.”
“In which case, she didn’t look in vain,” remarked Lynn.
Mrs. Marchmont sighed.
“It seems so extraordinary. Gordon was such a shrewd man always. And it wasn’t, I mean,
that women hadn’t tried. That last secretary but one, for instance. Really quite blatant. She was
very efficient, I believe, but he had to get rid of her.”
Lynn said vaguely: “I suppose there’s always a Waterloo.”
“Sixty- two,” said Mrs. Marchmont. “A very dangerous age. And a war, I imagine, is
unsettling. But I can’t tell you what a shock it was when we got his letter from New York.”
“What did it say exactly?”
“He wrote to Frances—I really can’t think why. Perhaps he imagined that owing to her
upbringing she might be more sympathetic. He said that we’d probably be surprised to hear that
he was married. It had all been rather sudden, but he was sure we should all soon grow very fond
of Rosaleen (such a very theatrical name, don’t you think, dear? I mean definitely rather bogus).
She had had a very sad life, he said, and had gone through a lot although she was so young. Really
it was wonderful the plucky way she had stood up to life.”
“Quite a well-known gambit,” murmured Lynn.
“Oh, I know. I do agree. One has heard it so many times. But one would really think that
Gordon with all his experience—still, there it is. She has the most enormous eyes—dark blue and
what they call put in with a smutty finger.”
“Attractive?”
“Oh, yes, she is certainly very pretty. It’s not the kind of prettiness I admire.”
“It never is,” said Lynn with a wry smile.
“No, dear. Really, men—but well, there’s no accounting for men! Even the most well-
balanced of them do the most incredibly foolish things! Gordon’s letter went on to say that we
mustn’t think for a moment that this would mean any loosening of old ties. He still considered us
all his special responsibility.”
“But he didn’t,” said Lynn, “make a will after his marriage?”
Mrs. Marchmont shook her head.
“The last will he made was in 1940. I don’t know any details, but he gave us to understand at
the time that we were all taken care of by it if anything should happen to him. That will, of course,
was revoked by his marriage. I suppose he would have made a new will when he got home—but
there just wasn’t time. He was killed practically the day after he landed in this country.”
“And so she—Rosaleen—gets everything?”
“Yes. The old will was invalidated by his marriage.”
Lynn was silent. She was not more mercenary than most, but she would not have been human if
she had not resented the new state of affairs. It was not, she felt, at all what Gordon Cloade
himself would have envisaged. The bulk of his fortune he might have left to his young wife, but
certain provisions he would certainly have made for the family he had encouraged to depend upon
him. Again and again he had urged them not to save, not to make provision for the future. She had
heard him say to Jeremy, “You’ll be a rich man when I die.” To her mother he had often said,
“Don’t worry, Adela. I’ll always look after Lynn—you know that, and I’d hate you to leave
this house—it’s your home. Send all the bills for repairs to me.” Rowley he had encouraged to
take up farming. Antony, Jeremy’s son, he had insisted should go into the Guards and he had
always made him a handsome allowance. Lionel Cloade had been encouraged to follow up certain
lines of medical research that were not immediately profitable and to let his practice run down.
Lynn’s thoughts were broken into. Dramatically, and with a trembling lip, Mrs. Marchmont
produced a sheaf of bills.
“And look at all these,” she wailed. “What am I to do? What on earth am I to do, Lynn?
The bank manager wrote me only this morning that I’m overdrawn. I don’t see how I can be.
I’ve been so careful. But it seems my investments just aren’t producing what they used to.
Increased taxation he says. And all these yellow things, War Damage Insurance or something—
one has to pay them whether one wants to or not.”
Lynn took the bills and glanced through them. There were no records of extravagance amongst
them. They were for slates replaced on the roof, the mending of fences, replacement of a worn-out
kitchen boiler—a new main water pipe. They amounted to a considerable sum.
Mrs. Marchmont said piteously:
“I suppose I ought to move from here. But where could I go? There isn’t a small house
anywhere—there just isn’t such a thing. Oh, I don’t want to worry you with all this, Lynn. Not
just as soon as you’ve come home. But I don’t know what to do. I really don’t.”
Lynn looked at her mother. She was over sixty. She had never been a very strong woman.
During the war she had taken in evacuees from London, had cooked and cleaned for them, had
worked with the W.V.S., made jam, helped with school meals. She had worked fourteen hours a
day in contrast to a pleasant easy life before the war. She was now, as Lynn saw, very near a
breakdown. Tired out and frightened of the future.
A slow quiet anger rose in Lynn. She said slowly:
“Couldn’t this Rosaleen—help?”
Mrs. Marchmont flushed.
“We’ve no right to anything—anything at all.”
Lynn demurred.
“I think you’ve a moral right. Uncle Gordon always helped.”
Mrs. Marchmont shook her head. She said:
“It wouldn’t be very nice, dear, to ask favours—not of someone one doesn’t like very
much. And anyway that brother of hers would never let her give away a penny!”
And she added, heroism giving place to pure female cattiness: “If he really is her brother, that
is to say!”
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