Wish Her Safe at Home Read Online Free Page A

was irrational) anywhere more than fifty miles from London seemed to me un-normal, lacking in amenities, almost hostile; and at the very last moment I did what I had sworn this time I wouldn’t do—I lost my nerve. I felt so grateful to my mother as she came away from the telephone, and yet, at the same time, already disappointed and even resentful: grateful she didn’t look displeased, resentful for practically the same reason. That afternoon she took me to see
The Lavender Hill Mob
at the New Gallery in Regent Street. But at seventeen I might have gone to Paris... and I was convinced it would have changed my life.
    “It’s obviously a moneyed sort of family.” (I had said this, sullenly, next morning over breakfast.) “I’m surprised you didn’t try to make me go. I know how much you idolize the rich.”
    My mother had come round the table and slapped my face. But she hadn’t suggested I should ring again to ask if I could change my mind. I waited for her to do so, in timorous suspense.
    I hadn’t suggested it, either.
    Thirty years later, however, embarking on my first real escapade I was seventeen once more; and I was setting off for Paris.

3
    The exterior of the house was beautiful. Terraced, tall, eighteenth-century, elegant. Oh, the stonework needed cleaning and the window frames required attention—as did the front door and half a dozen other things. But it was beautiful. I don’t know why; I just hadn’t been expecting this.
    “Who was Horatio Gavin?” (Philanthropist and politician—had lived here, apparently, from 1781 until his death in 1793.) “Perhaps I should have heard of him?”
    Mr. Wymark’s eyes followed mine to the plaque between the ground-floor windows. He was a young man: small-boned and, underneath the well-cut overcoat, neatly dark-suited.
    “Oh,” he said vaguely, “he did a lot for the poor. Tried to introduce reforms. That kind of thing.”
    “Nice.”
    “Yes. But if I remember rightly he didn’t meet with much success. Ahead of his time, most likely.”
    I warmed to him still further, this former resident. From a distance there is always something a little touching about failure.
    We went inside and for some reason—with my high heels clattering on bare boards—began our exploration at the top. Not counting the basement there were two large rooms to each of the three floors. I wondered at first how Aunt Alicia had negotiated the steep stairs; and Bridget, too, of course. The answer was they hadn’t—in any case not during their latter years. They had mainly been confined to the ground floor.
    The topmost rooms had an air of Dickens. You almost expected to see Miss Havisham sitting solitary in the twilight, always the spinster in her wedding dress, swathed in cobwebs and depression.
    It was like a museum with no curator to disturb the dust. The larger exhibits up here comprised several chests of drawers, a mahogany wardrobe, two single divans, a harpsichord and a loom.
    “As I say,” remarked Mr. Wymark, “there are evidently a few good pieces.”
    I nodded. I didn’t remember the harpsichord but the loom was something I had seen. And perhaps my great-aunt had been standing close to it on one occasion as the tea was brought in. “Bridget, why must you cut such horribly
thick
slices?”
    “Ah, do you good, you know it will.”
    “Such doorsteps; no refinement. So utterly
Irish
!”
    “Excuse me for asking”—this wasn’t Bridget—“but are you in a position to spend money on all of this? It would probably cost you thousands, yet you’d quickly make it back. And by the way I know a handyman I’d be happy to recommend. Also, as it happens, when you
do
place the house on the market I know someone who—”
    “But I’ve no intention of placing it on the market.”
    He was clearly surprised. I was as well, probably more so. I seldom made snap decisions.
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I was under the impression... ”
    And understandably. Before