Chapter 5 #2
“Ill? Lady Dalrymple? By Jove, no. At least, not that I know of. Why?”
“For pity’s sake,” Daisy said, exasperated, as she handed in her ticket, “because your telegram was so urgent and so obscure I didn’t know what else to think. Unless it’s something to do with Miss Arbuckle?”
“Sshhh!” he hissed in an agony of apprehension, casting another rapid glance over his shoulder. “I’ll explain when we get there.”
Daisy sighed. They emerged onto the station forecourt and she looked around. “Where’s your car?”
“I don’t know,” Phillip said gloomily. “Please, Daisy, don’t ask questions, just wait till we get to Fairacres.”
A green Vauxhall pulled up in front of them. Daisy recognized the chauffeur. Bill Truscott had worked for her father before the War, returned when demobbed, married a parlour-maid, and stayed on with the new viscount. He grinned at her, jumping out and tipping his peaked cap.
“Hello, Bill. How’s Mrs. Truscott?”
“Morning, Miss Daisy.” He opened the car’s back door for her. “The wife’s doing fine, still helping up at the house now and then. Three nippers we’ve got now, and his lordship’s moved us into the lodge.”
“Good for you. The flat over the garages wasn’t designed for a family. Edgar seems to be doing quite well,” she added to Phillip, stepping up onto the running board as the chauffeur went to open the boot for her bag.
“Considering he wasn’t brought up to it, and his head is full of moths and butterflies.”
Laughing, Daisy conceded, “He still has Father’s bailiff, who knows what he’s about. I doubt Edgar has to do much but approve his plans.”
“Lady Dalrymple acts as if she’s still married to a housemaster,” Phillip grumbled, “and the rest of the world is made up of small boys.”
Daisy laughed again. “I know what you mean. She’s never actually ordered me to wash off my powder and lipstick, but she looks as if she’d like to. Only Scarlet Women paint.”
“She forbade me to drive this morning because of my head.” Phillip joined Daisy in the back seat after tipping the porter. “It’s perfectly all right now.”
Bill took his place behind the steering wheel and pressed the self-starter. The Vauxhall proceeded in stately fashion out onto Avenue Road and turned down the hill away from the town.
The back of the chauffeur’s head before her, Daisy managed to subdue her rampant curiosity but for one low-voiced question. “Does Geraldine … do she and Edgar know why you called me down here?”
“Actually,” Phillip said sheepishly, “as a matter of fact, you see I spent last night there and I’m afraid I rather left them with the impression that I was going home. I didn’t actually say so, mind.”
“They aren’t expecting me? And they think they’ve rid themselves of you? Phil, you hopeless ass, I can’t just march in as if I still lived there. We’d better go to the Dower House if you don’t want to go home yet.”
“No, I can’t stay at your mater’s. You’ll think up a story to tell your cousins, old bean. I know you can if you’ll just put your mind to it. After all, isn’t that what writers do for a living?”
Reluctantly flattered by his confidence, Daisy bit back a vigorous protest and a reminder that she wrote factual articles, not fiction. She put her mind to it.
The final details fell into place as they rolled past the Dower House, a charming red-brick Georgian residence set in its own gardens at the edge of the park.
“You promised to call on Mother,” she said.
“I haven’t had half a chance!”
“No, that’s the basis for our story. You asked Bill to stop while you popped in to say hullo and.…”
“He knows I did nothing of the sort.”
“No one is at all likely to ask him, and if they do, he won’t mind telling such a little fib for me. I’ll ask him.” She leaned forward. “Bill, you remember stopping at the Dower House on your way to the station, to let Mr. Petrie call on my mother?”
“If you say so, miss.” He flashed a grin over his shoulder. “Won’t be the first taradiddle I’ve told for you or poor Mr. Gervaise. Quite like the old days.”
Coming to the lodge, they turned in through the open gates and proceeded up the elm avenue, while Daisy rapidly explained the rest to Phillip.
“Mother asked you to pick me up at the station, because her car wouldn’t start.”
“She won’t fib for you.”
“She hardly speaks to Edgar and Geraldine. She still resents their getting Fairacres. Listen, we’re nearly there. When we got back to the Dower House, you were dead-beat.…”
“Oh, I say, a feeble sort of chap that makes me out!”
“Do you or do you not want to go on staying at Fairacres?” Daisy snapped, thoroughly peeved.
“If you want me to make up a farrago of lies for you, just let me get on with it. You were feeling pretty rotten because of your head so I insisted on you coming back here, Mother being what she is. Like it or lump it, it’s too late to change,” she added, as the Vauxhall drew up before the front door.
Coming back to Fairacres now it was no longer home was too painful for her to have much sympathy with Phillip’s chagrin. Memories, which might have been exorcised had she gone on living there, haunted every nook and cranny.
She had no time to dwell on the spectres. Geraldine, looking disconcerted and somehow dowdy despite her smart tailored costume, was coming down the steps beneath the pillared portico.
“Hello, Daisy,” she said. “I didn’t know you were down here.
I’m always happy to see you, naturally, but if you have come to call, I’m afraid I’m on my way out.
I have an appointment in Worcester and I’ve just been waiting for Truscott to return with the motor.
” She frowned at the chauffeur as he opened the door for Daisy.
“You mustn’t blame him for taking longer than intended.
” Daisy stepped down and brushed cheeks with her cousin’s wife.
Glancing back, she saw Phillip leaning heavily against the Vauxhall, with one hand pressed rather theatrically to his bandaged head.
He was going along with her story. She just hoped he wouldn’t overdo it and groan.
Geraldine greeted the tale with annoyance visibly repressed.
“Of course you must stay, Mr. Petrie.” She spoke to the butler who stood on the threshold, then turned back to Daisy.
“You’ll have to excuse me, though, and Edgar is out after butterflies.
Will you do the honours? Make yourself at home.
You know Edgar and I wish you would look upon Fairacres as a second home. ”
“Thanks, Geraldine. I’ll try to make Phillip comfortable,” Daisy said diplomatically. “I expect a spot of brandy will buck him up.”
“Spirits? I hardly think.…” The arrival of a footman to help Phillip into the house mercifully cut her short. “Well, dear, I’ll have to leave it to you. Worcester, Truscott.”
Daisy and Phillip settled in the formal drawing-room since Daisy was reluctant to make herself sufficiently at home to use the family sitting room.
The drawing-room’s furnishings, an eclectic mix of the best of the past two centuries, hadn’t changed a bit.
It gave Daisy an eerie feeling, as if her father or Gervaise might walk in at any moment.
Phillip refused with loathing to put his legs up on an elegant Regency sofa but condescended to raise his feet onto the footstool solicitously provided by the footman. Luckily his face was tanned enough from sporting weekends to conceal the absence of invalidish pallor.
“Coffee, miss?” inquired the butler, who had followed them in.
“Yes, please.”
“Ernest, coffee.”
“Right away, Mr. Lowecroft.” Passing Daisy, he whispered, “I’ll bring the brandy, too, miss.”
“Thank you, Ernest,” said Daisy, noting for future need his willingness to brave her ladyship’s disapproval, though she did not intend to let Phillip drink a drop. She wanted a straight explanation from him, unclouded by a spirituous haze.
He would not say a word until the young footman had departed, returned with brandy, coffee, and strawberry tartlets, and left again. Then he kicked away the footstool.
“Right-ho,” he said, accepting the cup of coffee Daisy handed him and absently helping himself to two tarts. “Here we go.”