All at once, Lena glanced up at the clock. ‘Time to shut up the chickens.’
Having spent most of the spring receiving invitations to other people’s parties, on the day of Agatha’s fiftieth birthday party, a small army of workers, caterers and suppliers had arrived at Muntham Court. Most of the food came in a Fortnum & Mason’s van.
‘Don’t tell me that’s Fortnum & Mason of London?’ Freddie gasped when he looked out of his bedroom window as he heard it pull up outside. ‘Does your mother realise that will cost her an arm and a leg?’
‘You said you wanted the best, darling,’ Pearl cooed. ‘My mother never does anything by halves.’
‘I’m beginning to see that,’ Freddie muttered. He frowned darkly. At this rate, she’d use up all his money in no time.
For the whole day, the house became a hive of activity. People seemed to be everywhere, all doing their best to get everything ready before seven, the time the guests were to arrive. It seemed that everywhere he looked there were snowy-white tablecloths, the family silver was polished to a mirror shine, chairs were dusted and brushed, and just about every vase in the house had been filled with flowers and brought into the dining room. Before long, the heady scent of fuchsias and roses filled the air, and Freddie was left wondering where on earth they could have come from so early in the season. More expense!
Agatha supervised it all magnificently, until five-thirty when she disappeared upstairs to get ready. Pearl had already been up there for hours with a local hairdresser. Freddie changed in his dressing room and, as soon as he was ready, he came back downstairs and poured himself a stiff drink. He was a bag of nerves. He’d better not fail this one. Christoph depended upon him, and there had been murmurings because he was giving them the same names over and over again.
As the guests arrived, waiters and waitresses mingled around them with trays of canapés and wine. A quartet tucked into the alcove played classical music as the great and the good wandered through the downstairs rooms.
When she finally came downstairs, Agatha wasted no time in introducing him to their illustrious guests.
‘Darling, you haven’t met my son-in-law, have you,’ Agatha would say. ‘This is Freddie. Freddie, this is Colonel Peregrine Fosset (or His Worship the Mayor of Worthing, or Dr Frasier, the Medical Officer of Health for Sussex),’ and Freddie would shake hands before offering the colonel, or His Worship, or the doctor a drink. By the time the dinner gong sounded, Freddie had been invited for a game of golf, to look around the council chambers of the New Town Hall and to visit the local hospital. It was wonderful.
Agatha was the perfect hostess, and the meal that followed was the best that money could buy. The guests could choose from chicken breast basted with lemon and herbs, herb-rolled loin of pork, or roast sirloin of Richmond beef with Yorkshire pudding. For dessert the choices were French parfait, Manchester tart or summer fruits pudding with lemon cream and raspberry coulis, each one looking more tempting and delicious than the one before. Afterwards they were served coffee with handmade chocolate truffles. When the meal was over, people began to move around again; the women went off to the drawing room and the men to smoke a cigar.
Freddie had many useful conversations. For instance, he found out that the local scoutmaster was vehemently opposed to Hitler, calling him a ‘jumped-up nobody’, and the colonel was already putting in place a scheme to pull down a large estate of bungalows to hinder the invasion in Shoreham. Someone else mentioned a plan to blow up Worthing Pier to prevent alien troop ships from using it to bring their tanks and heavy armour ashore, should war be declared. He’d also been delighted when the leader of the Freemasons hinted that he might be able to secure him a meeting at the local Lodge. People like him had good contacts in the world of business. It was all going well. Who knows what else he might uncover.
As the evening wore on, the local folk club arrived with their instruments. The chairs were pushed back, and those who knew the old dances began with the ‘Bridge of Athlone’ before moving on to the ‘Cumberland Square Eight’ and the ‘Gay Gordons’.
By the time the party ended around three in the morning, everyone agreed that the gathering at Muntham Court had far outshone every other.
Agatha went to her room, tired but contented. She had done them all proud, and everyone had been so appreciative that she couldn’t help feeling smug about it. This was truly her forte, and she had missed being able to host lavish gatherings. It was what she was born to do.
Pearl was already asleep when Freddie finally came to their room. He sat at her dressing table for a while, jotting down a few pointers in his little red book to remind himself of what he had heard and overheard during the evening.
It had been decided that Seebold would return to the Wonderland on Monday. By then he would have spent almost three weeks in the cottage, and was anxious to get back to work. Lena would make sure he had enough food in his caravan larder, while Milly would take the bus over on Wednesday, her half-day, to check that he was managing all right. The pair of them had already spent the previous Sunday giving the caravan a spring clean, so they were confident that they had covered everything, which was why they all decided to make their last Sunday together a little bit special.
Nothing more had been said about Seebold between Milly and Lena, for which Milly was glad. Lena’s revelation had come as a surprise – a nice one, but what could she do about it? A lot of water had gone under the bridge by now. How could she broach the subject? Perhaps she had left it too late and missed her chance.
Lena was a fantastic cook, so she prepared a roast dinner, and Milly made an apple pie. To walk off their meal, the three of them took Nipper along the lane over the hill and towards Long Furlong. It was a beautiful late afternoon and already the days were getting even longer. As they chatted about the Wonderland, Milly realised that Seebold was behaving as if this would be his last season. She sighed. An air of doom and gloom seemed to be hovering everywhere. The girls in Hubbard’s talked about the prospect of war all the time in their tea breaks. Mary from accounts and Sonja from the beauty counter had both brought their wedding days forward. They were concerned that their fiancés might be spirited away by the navy and the army respectively, and who knew when they would see each other again? It was all very unsettling.
‘What will you do if there’s a war?’ Milly asked Lena.
As a matter of fact, Lena had been finding out about what she could do. She didn’t want to be in the battle arena, and she was too squeamish to be a nurse. She would definitely find out about homing pigeons, but she had also toyed with the idea of joining the RSPCA, because some propaganda was already making the British public aware of what bombing raids might do to beloved family pets. Leaflets had also been circulated advising people that ‘in the event of war, a women’s Land Army will be organised’. It went on to say that it would be a mobile force of women who would undertake farm work anywhere in the country. Although they would be employed by individual farmers, the organisation would supervise their accommodation and welfare. As Lena shared her scant knowledge about the scheme, Milly said indignantly, ‘And so they should. I mean who would want some lecherous farmer wanting to share your bed?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Lena quipped.
Milly and Seebold laughed.
‘What about you, Milly?’ asked Lena. There was a twinkle in her eye. ‘Are you still seeing Eustace?’
Milly shot her a look. Her sister knew perfectly well that her relationship with Eustace was well and truly over, and she certainly didn’t want to talk about him – especially in front of Seebold.
‘When do we get to meet him?’ Lena continued as she raised her eyebrows.
Milly glared at her. ‘You won’t.’
‘Who is Eustace?’ Seebold wanted to know.
‘Nobody,’ said Milly. She was uncomfortable with this. Why on earth had Lena mentioned him? She knew very well that hell would freeze over long before she would see that creep again. Seebold was staring at her. ‘I told you,’ she said stiffly, ‘nobody important.’
Seebold kicked at a broken branch.
They walked on in silence. The lane went through a small wooded area which was overgrown through lack of use. Just beyond the trees they could see the back of Muntham Court, and Milly felt the old familiar and distressing pang again. Why did her mother hate her so? What on earth had she done to make her feel that way? Even if her mother didn’t want a mother–daughter relationship, they could still have some sort of relationship, couldn’t they?
As the lane veered to the left away from the house, Lena suddenly pointed her finger and said, ‘What on earth is that?’
Milly turned to look at something rather odd in the bank. Someone had cleared the brambles and ivy away from part of a door, but only the huge handle was visible. There didn’t seem to be any brickwork, or perhaps that was behind the brambles, and the door seemed to be built into the hillock. If Lena hadn’t had such a sharp eye, they would have walked past it, none the wiser.
‘It looks to me a bit like an ice house,’ said Milly, as Nipper came back and sniffed around.
‘An ice house,’ Lena repeated.
‘In Victorian times every big house had one,’ said Milly. ‘They used to fill it with huge blocks of ice and store food inside. Funny, I thought I knew every inch of this place like the back of my hand, but I never knew this was here. It can’t have been used for years.’
‘Well, somebody’s been here,’ said Seebold. ‘Look at all the footprints by the door. They’re everywhere.’
‘They’re ours,’ said Lena.
‘That one isn’t,’ Seebold said stoutly, pointing to a large print just ahead of them.
‘I guess somebody else must have come across it,’ Milly suggested. ‘That’s probably why some of the ivy has been pulled away. It’s no big deal. The people in the village sometimes walk across the hill as a shortcut.’ She tried the door but it was locked.
