Taken At The Flood

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 That will, of course, was revoked by his marriage.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!’

CHAPTER 2 (#u87ffecb9-f8f2-595c-8c9f-ee439f23ca8c)

Frances Cloade looked thoughtfully across the dinner table at her husband.

Frances was forty-eight. She was one of those lean greyhound women who look well in tweeds. There was a rather arrogant ravaged beauty about her face which had no make-up except a little carelessly applied lipstick. Jeremy Cloade was a spare grey-haired man of sixty-three, with a dry expressionless face.

It was, this evening, even more expressionless than usual.

His wife registered the fact with a swift flashing glance.

A fifteen-year-old girl shuffled round the table, handing the dishes. Her agonized gaze was fixed on Frances. If Frances frowned, she nearly dropped something, a look of approval set her beaming.

It was noted enviously in Warmsley Vale that if any one had servants it would be Frances Cloade. She did not bribe them with extravagant wages, and she was exacting as to performance—but her warm approval of endeavour and her infectious energy and drive made of domestic service something creative and personal. She had been so used to being waited on all her life that she took it for granted without self-consciousness, and she had the same appreciation of a good cook or a good parlourmaid as she would have had for a good pianist.

Frances Cloade had been the only daughter of Lord Edward Trenton, who had trained his horses in the neighbourhood of Warmsley Heath. Lord Edward’s final bankruptcy was realized by those in the know to be a merciful escape from worse things. There had been rumours of horses that had signally failed to stay at unexpected moments, other rumours of inquiries by the Stewards of the Jockey Club. But Lord Edward had escaped with his reputation only lightly tarnished and had reached an arrangement with his creditors which permitted him to live exceedingly comfortably in the South of France. And for these unexpected blessings he had to thank the shrewdness and special exertions of his solicitor, Jeremy Cloade. Cloade had done a good deal more than a solicitor usually does for a client, and had even advanced guarantees of his own. He had made it clear that he had a deep admiration for Frances Trenton, and in due course, when her father’s affairs had been satisfactorily wound up, Frances became Mrs Jeremy Cloade.

What she had felt about it no one had ever known. All that could be said was that she had kept her side of the bargain admirably. She had been an efficient and loyal wife to Jeremy, a careful mother to his son, had forwarded Jeremy’s interests in every way and had never once suggested by word or deed that the match was anything but a freewill impulse on her part.

In response the Cloade family had an enormous respect and admiration for Frances. They were proud of her, they deferred to her judgment—but they never felt really quite intimate with her.

What Jeremy Cloade thought of his marriage nobody knew, because nobody ever did know what Jeremy Cloade thought or felt. ‘A dry stick’ was what people said about Jeremy. His reputation both as a man and a lawyer was very high. Cloade, Brunskill and Cloade never touched any questionable legal business. They were not supposed to be brilliant but were considered very sound. The firm prospered and the Jeremy Cloades lived in a handsome Georgian house just off the Market Place with a big old-fashioned walled garden behind it where the pear trees in spring showed a sea of white blossom.

It was to a room overlooking the garden at the back of the house that the husband and wife went when they rose from the dinner table. Edna, the fifteen-year-old, brought in coffee, breathing excitedly and adenoidally.

Frances poured a little coffee into the cup. It was strong and hot. She said to Edna, crisply and approvingly:

‘Excellent, Edna.’

Edna went crimson with pleasure and went out marvelling nevertheless at what some people liked. Coffee, in Edna’s opinion, ought to be a pale cream colour, ever so sweet, with lots of milk!

In the room overlooking the garden, the Cloades drank their coffee, black and without sugar. They had talked in a desultory way during dinner, of acquaintances met, of Lynn’s return, of the prospects of farming in the near future, but now, alone together, they were silent.

Frances leaned back in her chair, watching her husband. He was quite oblivious of her regard. His right hand stroked his upper lip. Although Jeremy Cloade did not know it himself the gesture was a characteristic one and coincided with inner perturbation. Frances had not observed it very often. Once when Antony, their son, had been seriously ill as a child; once when waiting for a jury to consider their verdict; at the outbreak of war, waiting to hear the irrevocable words over the wireless; on the eve of Antony’s departure after embarkation leave.

Frances thought a little while before she spoke. Their married life had been happy, but never intimate in so far as the spoken word went. She had respected Jeremy’s reserves and he hers. Even when the telegram had come announcing Antony’s death on active service, they had neither of them broken down.

He had opened it, then he had looked up at her. She had said, ‘Is it—?’

He had bowed his head, then crossed and put the telegram into her outstretched hand.

They had stood there quite silently for a while. Then Jeremy had said: ‘I wish I could help you, my dear.’ And she had answered, her voice steady, her tears unshed, conscious only of the terrible emptiness and aching: ‘It’s just as bad for you.’ He had patted her shoulder: ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes…’ Then he had moved towards the door, walking a little awry, yet stiffly, suddenly an old man…saying as he did so, ‘There’s nothing to be said—nothing to be said…’

She had been grateful to him, passionately grateful, for understanding so well, and had been torn with pity for him, seeing him suddenly turn into an old man. With the loss of her boy, something had hardened in her—some ordinary common kindness had dried up. She was more efficient, more energetic than ever—people became sometimes a little afraid of her ruthless common sense…

Jeremy Cloade’s finger moved along his upper lip again—irresolutely, searching. And crisply, across the room, Frances spoke.

‘Is anything the matter, Jeremy?’

He started. His coffee cup almost slipped from his hand. He recovered himself, put it firmly down on the tray. Then he looked across at her.

‘What do you mean, Frances?’

‘I’m asking you if anything is the matter?’

‘What should be the matter?’

‘It would be foolish to guess. I would rather you told me.’

She spoke without emotion in a businesslike way.