Chapter 12 #2
‘I see . . . Here we are.’ Roxie sighed and wished her spirits had risen at the sight of her old home, but she was thinking of the quarrel between her father and Tommy.
Her father had pondered whether Gilda and her family had set a marriage trap for Tommy, but her brother had been either too besotted, or too angry to listen to reason, or even to agree to postpone the wedding for six months until the new house was taking shape.
She had a feeling Lucy knew more than she was saying.
They were both surprised to see Gilda hurrying out of the door at Willowbrook carrying a cardboard box as they arrived. She was clearly startled at the sight of them. It was obvious she was not expecting to see Roxanne.
‘You! Why have you come? I didn’t believe you would ever return!’ Gilda seemed more alarmed than annoyed. ‘I’m just going . . .’ She still stood blocking the door.
‘Aren’t you going to let us in?’ Roxie asked, summoning a smile with an effort. There was not a vestige of warmth from Gilda, but maybe married life, and being a new mother, was not easy for her either.
She stepped back to allow them to pass.
‘Come in, Lucy. I’ll not be a minute. I’ll take my bag up to my room and bring the dress to let you see if you still want it.’
‘There’s no hurry.’ Lucy turned to Gilda, whose blue eyes seemed to be darting everywhere like a frightened rabbit.
‘How are you enjoying married life, Gilda, and living in the country?’ she asked pleasantly.
‘It must be a big change for you. Is your baby, Liam isn’t it, a good sleeper?
I remember how I struggled with my two for the first six months, and more. ’
Before she could answer, Roxie came running down the stairs calling Gilda’s name.
Gilda ran across the kitchen, grabbed some keys from the table and darted past Lucy and out to her car.
One glance told Roxie her sister-in-law was intending to escape.
Roxie ran after her, her face white as a sheet and her green eyes blazing.
Bemused, Lucy followed slowly. Before Gilda could get the key in the ignition, Roxie wrenched the door open.
‘Where are all my things?’
‘Your clothes are still in the wardrobe where you left them,’ Gilda replied sullenly. She tried to shut the car door.
‘I didn’t mean clothes! Where is my sewing table? My little desk? My other small pieces of furniture? What have you done with them?’ Roxanne knew her voice was rising, but she couldn’t help it. Gilda glared back.
‘It was only furniture,’ she muttered. ‘I wanted some cash. I don’t like dark-coloured stuff,’ she added.
‘They were all in my room. You didn’t need to look at them. Where have you put them? You — you haven’t painted them for a nursery for the baby?’ Roxanne asked faintly.
‘Let me shut the door!’ Gilda jabbed the car key at the ignition but it wouldn’t fit.
She realised she had grabbed the key for Tommy’s car in her hurry.
She hadn’t thought Tommy would send for Roxanne, or that she would ever come back.
She had destroyed his mobile phone, making sure he had lost Roxanne’s number so he couldn’t contact her, unless he used her employer’s landline phone and she knew he wouldn’t want to do that.
Before that, she had, accidentally on purpose, deleted most of the email addresses from the computer.
Tommy had been angry over that because she hadn’t realised a lot of them were business email addresses, as well as friends’ and Roxie’s.
‘Where are my antique pieces?’ Roxanne asked again, holding the car door open.
‘I sold them. So there!’
‘S-sold them! You sold my antique table? I can’t believe this. Who to? When?’
None of them noticed Tommy coming across the yard towards them.
‘What’s going on? You!’ He stared at Gilda with contempt. ‘What are you stealing this time?’ he asked icily.
‘Who bought them?’ Roxanne demanded sharply. Gilda was a captive in the car. She had no option but to answer.
‘A man in a white van,’ she muttered.
‘Surely not those people who travel round the countryside looking for bargains?’ Roxanne gasped in dismay.
‘That’s right,’ she said jubilantly. ‘He hadn’t room for the bigger stuff from your room, but he paid me for it,’ she added exultantly, casting a defiant glance at Tommy.
‘He’s collecting it next week, except the wardrobe.
He said that was too big to go with the things he plans to send to America.
’ Roxanne was leaning against the car, white-faced and shaking, before becoming aware of Tommy, who was staring at them both.
‘How could you let her sell my precious sewing table?’ Roxanne asked in a shaking voice.
‘You knew it belonged to our great-grandmother. Grandma Horne left it especially to me in her will, and my little desk, and . . . and . . .’ The woman’s voice almost broke in her distress and she was clearly struggling to hold back her tears.
Gilda had never believed Miss Roxanne Carr of Willowbrook could get emotional.
Even at her father’s funeral she had been pale-faced, but composed.
She had acted with dignity, greeting many in the crowd of folk who had packed the church.
Later that night, Gilda had sneered to herself when they had heard her sobbing in the privacy of her bedroom, but Roxanne had been up the next morning as usual to milk the bloody cows.
* * *
‘What are you talking about, Roxie?’ Tommy asked. It was Lucy who told him what had upset Roxie so badly.
‘You can’t have sold Roxie’s things! All her treasured pieces were in her own room!’ he said, staring incredulously at Gilda.
‘You promised we would have a new house with modern furniture, not an old barn of a place.’
‘Don’t speak to me about promises!’ Tommy said through gritted teeth.
‘What did you need the money for? When did you sell them?’ He knew how much his sister had cherished the family heirlooms from their grandmother.
He had inherited his grandfather’s gold hunter watch and chain.
The memory of his father came back as though he was standing beside them.
‘It is worth a lot of money, but it is unlikely you will wear it unless such things come back into fashion. I will take it to the bank. It will be safe there in case you do need it sometime. I wouldn’t like to think that girl’s father might get his hands on it and sell it for beer money.’
Tommy remembered how furious he had been at the time, not because he’d wanted the watch, but because he’d known his father had had no respect, and no trust either, for Gilda or her family.
He had learned several hard lessons since then. How he wished he had listened to his father. He sighed heavily and looked unhappily at Roxie.
‘‘We shall never be able to trace him to get my things back,’ she said dejectedly. ‘I can never replace them. It’s the sentimental value as much as . . .’ She broke off, biting back a sob.
‘Wait a minute,’ Lucy said. ‘Didn’t you say he had paid for some bigger items, Gilda? If he is coming back to collect them, he must have left some sort of invoice or receipt? Maybe that will have his name?’
‘It’s nothing to do with you!’ Gilda screamed at Lucy hysterically.
‘You’re right, Lucy,’ Tommy said. ‘He must have given you an invoice and kept a copy himself to claim the other items. When were you here? Did you arrange to meet him? Did he come the day I was at the auction mart making arrangements for the sale? That is the only time I have been far away from the farm recently, at least long enough for a van to come in and take things away. Show me the receipt.’
‘Don’t know where it is.’
‘You must know. How else can he prove he paid for the rest? Gilda, I want that receipt.’
When she refused to answer, Tommy frowned.
‘Perhaps we should get the police here and tell them you have sold some rare antiques that did not belong to you?’ he said, his voice ominously quiet.
He saw Gilda turn pale and her eyes widen in shock.
Her father had been to prison. It was the reason they had moved down here.
‘You wouldn’t do that! I’m — I’m still your wife . . .’
Tommy bit back a sharp retort, remembering the solicitor’s advice not to antagonise her until they decided how to proceed. He pulled the car door wide and took her arm in a firm grip.
‘Let me go! All right, he did have a white van. It belonged to Mr Jacobs, the antique dealer in town. He said it was a sin to leave them in a house where nobody appreciated them and I was doing the right thing to sell them.’
‘I appreciated them!’ Roxie said. ‘Anyone would appreciate the beautifully inlaid design on the top of my little sewing table, not to mention the Devonport desk.’
‘Well, I didn’t!’
‘You should not have been in that room!’ Tommy knew Gilda had resented Roxanne from the beginning, and more so since Mr Robson, their solicitor, had read his father’s will, leaving Roxie with money of her own.
‘The solicitor! Of course! He will know what to do, Roxie. Mr Robson and Jacobs are both in the Rotary Club, I think, or the Round Table, one of the men’s clubs in town anyway.
They are bound to know each other. Jacobs will not want to be known for handling stolen property — and that’s what it is, Gilda.
’ He glared with contempt at the girl he had married.
‘He can’t have disposed of your things yet, Roxie.
I promise I will do my best to get them back for you.
’ He looked at Gilda. ‘You understand he will want his money back.’
‘I hope you’re right, Tommy,’ Roxie said wearily. ‘I know Mr Robson will help if he can. He was a good friend of our father.’
‘His son has joined him in the law firm now and he is very on the ball.’ Tommy’s expression was grim. ‘He often works late at the office. I’ll telephone him right away and see if I can catch him.’
* * *