The Lady on my Left (The Mists of Memory) Read online

  Alison was twelve years old when she first saw Paul Aylmer. Her Uncle Humphrey had often spoken of his wartime friend. Whenever he went south from Leeds to see him, he would leave her in the care of their housekeeper. On his return from one such visit, he said, ‘Paul wants me to give up here and go into partnership with him, so I returned the compliment, as we are both in the same line. He likes the south coast, but I like good old Leeds and I can’t see myself working anywhere else.’

  A month later, she had met Paul Aylmer when he attended her Uncle Humphrey’s funeral. She had come home from school one evening to find their housekeeper in floods of tears. Mrs Crosbie had said to her, ‘Sit down, me dear; sit down and I’ll tell you.’ But even when she had heard the details she had difficulty in comprehending that her Uncle Humphrey was dead and that she was once more alone. Other people got pinned against walls by out-of-control lorries, but not her uncle. She couldn’t remember her parents and her Uncle Humphrey had been both mother and father to her. Her mother had died when she was two years old and her father had committed suicide soon after. She hadn’t known about the suicide, though, until she was eleven years old, when she heard two men talking to her uncle in the shop. ‘Tragic, that was,’ one said, ‘the mother dying and him not able to bear it. There’s something to be said about restricting the ownership of firearms.’

  After her uncle’s funeral, the fact that she was now a wealthy little girl made little impression on her; what did was that her life and her affairs were entirely in the hands of her uncle’s friend, Paul Aylmer. The big, quiet, fair man. And she also became aware, long before she left the solicitor’s office, where gathered were her uncle’s solicitor, their housekeeper, Paul Aylmer and herself, that her future guardian had been surprised to find himself with a ready-made daughter, as it were—and not altogether pleasantly surprised, either.

  When they were alone together, she sat staring up at him, her wide dark eyes showing her loneliness and her fear of the future; her deep, inherent fear of being without folks…a family. And she was speechless with her fear. Then Paul Aylmer had smiled, and taking her hand, had said one word: ‘Well?’ It had broken through the spell of her fear and she had gabbled, ‘I’ll be no trouble. Uncle found me no trouble. I’ll be very useful. I know a lot about furniture. Uncle taught me. I’ve been going to the sales for years; everyone knows me. I’ve even made bids.’

  For the first time during their three days’ acquaintance she saw him smile, and when she heard his laugh, deep and warm, and it rumbled around her, enfolded her, it drew her immediately out of herself and into him. From that moment she was lost and no part of her belonged to herself any more; it was as quick as that. He had said, ‘I would hate to be called Father or Daddy,’ and they had laughed again. ‘My name’s Paul. What about it?’

  Paul, Paul, Paul. She had thought it the most wonderful name in the world. She still did. She went towards him now, saying, ‘You know, you’ve worked it nicely, for it isn’t fit for a dog to be out.’

  The left-hand corner of his mouth moved further upwards. ‘You’ve been trained well; you’ll survive.’

  ‘Cruelty.’ She sat down near the table, and lifting the heavy silver teapot, began to pour out the tea, purposely keeping silent. And when she handed him his cup he nodded at her, saying, ‘Well, out with it. How many snips did you get? Did you get the chairs?’

  ‘Not the Georgian ones, but the Chippendale design, for thirty-eight pounds.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘Pity! I knew where I could place that lot straight away at a hundred and thirty. Pity! Still, the Chippendale aren’t bad. From what I saw of them they’ll fetch sixty with a quick sale. Likely attract some young madam from the St Pierre section of the town.’

  ‘But Paul, they’re worth seventy at the least. If you start cutting so low you’ll have old Broadbent on your tail again.’

  ‘He’s been on before and it hasn’t made much impression.’ They both laughed. Then reaching down to the foot of the couch he picked up a letter and handed it to her, saying casually, ‘This is interesting.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Read it and see.’

  After Alison had read the letter she turned her eyes towards Paul and there was a note of excitement in her voice as she said, ‘Beacon Ride. That’s the enormous place standing back off the main Brighton road, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one.’

  ‘And they want you to go there and value some pieces? Very nice, very nice, Mr Aylmer! It’s a compliment, isn’t it? They’ve passed over the three pushers, Broadbent, Fowler and Wheatley. Ah! That’s what comes of having the name of an honest dealer attached to you! Yet … yet, isn’t it a bit odd?…Beacon Ride’s close to Brighton. There’re dozens of dealers, not to mention auctioneers and valuers in that quarter, and just by the law of averages, some are bound to be honest.’

  Paul laughed again as he said ‘Perhaps it isn’t so strange after all; there’s honesty and…honesty.’

  ‘Don’t be so smug.’ Alison playfully punched him. Then looking sharply at the letter again she said, ‘They ask you to go at your earliest convenience, but you won’t be out of this house for another week or more.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’ve thought of that, and we can’t keep them waiting a week. When people want to sell they are usually in need of money.’ He now rubbed the side of his nose with his finger as he murmured thoughtfully, ‘I thought it was all gone, all the decent stuff…Odd.’

  ‘How do you know? Have you been there before?’ Her voice was pitched high.

  Paul’s eyes were cast down towards his plate as he remarked nonchalantly, ‘Yes, a number of times.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Oh…Oh, many many years ago, before you were born.’ He slanted his gaze towards her and she smiled tenderly at him. The reference to her birth meant something that had happened before she came under his care eight years ago…She said now, ‘Well, you don’t want to lose this. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m sending you.’

  ‘Me? As a valuer?’

  ‘Remember what you said to me the first day we came into partnership?’ He pursed his lips on the word. ‘You said you had been going to auctions for years. You said you knew…stuff.’

  ‘Well, I did, and I do, don’t I? But…this could be a big job. You’ve never let me go alone on anything like this before.’

  ‘Nothing like this has cropped up before, so now’s your chance. You’ll go tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, Paul!’ She leant towards him and grasped his hand. ‘I’ll love that, you know I will. What do you think it will be?’

  ‘Well, it says in the letter there. Can’t you read? Various pieces, including George the Third cutlery, Chinese porcelain, and some old English drinking glasses. It sounds interesting enough. What I can’t understand is why they haven’t sent them to London. Sotheby’s would have been the people for that kind of stuff…if it is that kind of stuff.’

  ‘Oh, lordy! I’m getting cold feet already.’

  ‘Well, you needn’t. All you’ve got to do is to list the items and work it out when you get back. You needn’t state any price there, not if you feel in the least uncertain.’

  ‘I’m shivering with excitement.’

  She knelt down on the hearthrug, twisted her feet under her, and leant her back against the couch. Life was wonderful, excitingly glorious and wonderful. She glanced towards the fire, wondering now, as she had done many times before, if she would have developed a taste for fine things, beautiful things, had her parents not died so tragically and had she not come under the care of her uncle. Her father had been nothing more exciting than a greengrocer. Perhaps if they had lived and she had grown up and married and had had a house of her own, the latent talent might have shown itself then. On the other hand, perhaps she had no innate talent in this direction. Perhaps it was merely the result of environment and chance, for her uncle had been extremely fond of her and had got into the habit of taking her
to auctions with him whenever he could. As a child she had sat in corners in the old auction room in Leeds, surrounded by legs, while her uncle made his bids.

  Her early dreams had been threaded by a voice saying, ‘Going at ten shillings; going at twenty pounds; going at one hundred and fifty guineas. Going, going, gone.’ She used to dance in the little backyard attached to the shop, skip and dance to a tune she made up and to lyrics that consisted solely of ‘Going, going, gone.’ Anyway there was one thing certain, wonderfully certain: whether her knowledge was born of innate talent, or mere chance, she had it.

  She was brought from her dreaming by Paul saying, ‘I had a visitor this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes?’ She was still staring into the fire.

  ‘Bill Tapley.’

  ‘Oh, him…I wondered why I didn’t see him at the auction rooms.’

  ‘He had more important business.’

  ‘I can’t imagine him thinking anything more important than making a deal, pushing somebody up.’

  ‘He’s a good businessman.’

  ‘Good luck to him.’

  ‘He wants to marry you.’

  ‘What!’ She shot round with the agility of a deer, and with her small, slim body, her elfin face, great dark eyes and mop of black hair she did resemble a startled animal, a frightened young animal. ‘Bill Tapley wants to marry me? Are…are you serious?’

  ‘He is.’

  She bent forward and leant her elbows on his knees. Her face was below his now as she whispered, her voice laden with distaste, ‘But he’s well over forty! Bill Tapley! Him?’

  ‘That’s nothing against him.’ Paul’s lids were lowered. ‘I’m on that way myself and I don’t consider I’m in my dotage.’

  She jerked her head back. ‘You’re only forty, you’re only just forty. And anyway, he looks old enough to be your father.’ She was exaggerating wildly and she knew it. She went on now, her nose wrinkled with distaste, ‘But Bill Tapley! I never dreamed…I don’t like him.’

  ‘I think he knows that.’

  She sat back on her haunches. ‘Then I’m glad, for I like nothing about him, his business ways least of all. And you’re to blame there.’ She nodded solemnly at him now. ‘You shouldn’t have brought me up to play fair. I’ve seen some of Bill Tapley’s dealings with the Broadbent crowd…Marry him! Did he say so outright?’

  ‘Yes, he did. He wanted my opinion on the matter.’

  Her voice was very quiet when she asked, ‘And what is your opinion on the matter?’

  Again Paul was looking away from her. ‘I said that it was entirely up to you. If you felt that way it was all right with me.’

  She put her head on one side and surveyed him in astonished silence for a moment. ‘You said that? You said that you would let me marry Bill Tapley?’

  ‘Yes, if you wanted to.’ He was looking down at her now. ‘That is the main thing: if you…wanted…to.’ He spaced out the last words.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to.’ Her voice was loud, even shrill, and she turned from him and dropped onto her knees. ‘I don’t want to marry him or anyone else, and if it was a choice of dying alone or marrying Bill Tapley, I’d choose the former.’ She jerked her head around to him. ‘Do you know why Bill Tapley wants to marry me?’

  ‘I think he’s in love with you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! Bill Tapley’s in love with money. He knows that in seven months’ time, when I’m twenty-one and free of my guardian’—she smiled gently at him—‘I’ll have a tidy bit of cash: somewhere in the region of eighteen thousand pounds.’

  ‘Much more than that. There’s the interest, eight years of it.’ Paul’s voice was quiet.

  ‘Well, eighteen thousand would be quite enough for Bill Tapley to get on with. Just let him ask me to marry him.’ She nodded her head towards the fire, then swung round as Paul gave vent to one of his rare laughs. He was lying back on the couch shaking with his laughter, and now she bent over him, gripping him by the shoulders, trying in turn to shake his great frame. And then she too was laughing helplessly. But when her head dropped onto his chest just below his chin she felt the rumbling fade away as he became still. And after a moment, when she looked up, his face was straight and his eyes held that expression she didn’t like, the one that shut her out. That was the only trouble with Paul, if she could call it trouble: one minute he was laughing and you thought he was as happy as a sandboy, the next he had that look in his eye which was always followed by silence.

  She withdrew herself from him and rose to her feet, and sitting by the tea table again, she refilled the cups, and as she drank she looked round the room, the room that she had created, the room which Paul had once described as a stolen world.

  When she had first come to live in this house with Paul, the top floor had been divided into a sitting room and a dining room, with a conservatory leading off it. The conservatory was supported on a natural jut of rock, and from it you had a splendid view over tumbled roofs below and towards the sea. The rooms were furnished with pieces of good furniture, although all big Victorian stuff, and the whole had looked dull, everything forming a square. She had been seventeen when she left school and firmly determined to make the furniture trade her business, and so she had said to Paul, ‘Let me start on the house. I could make it beautiful, I know I could.’ So alive was her enthusiasm, so strong her conviction that the alterations she had in mind would transform the floors above the shop, that he fell in with her wishes, and part of the result was this, this lovely long room with the garden room looking out towards the sea. The wall between the sitting room and the dining room had been demolished. The ugly partition that had screened off most of the conservatory had also disappeared. If there now arose a need to screen off the glass room it was done simply by closing the heavy magenta velvet curtains. The room itself was thirty-eight feet long and twenty-two feet wide and covered the entire length of the shop and outbuildings. Covering the middle part of the floor at the drawing-room end was a Chinese washed carpet, with a smaller one at the dining-room end. Across the corner of the room at this end was no usual corner cabinet. Instead, there stood a Queen Anne bureau in walnut and sycamore, while in the opposite corner there was a William and Mary long-cased clock. This was also in walnut, with beautiful floral marquetry panels. Near one long window was placed a Georgian dining table with chairs to match and, opposite it, against the far wall, stood a sideboard of the same period, its fluted tapered legs supporting bow-fronted cupboards. Most of the furniture at this end of the room was of the Georgian period. At the drawing-room end was a Bergère suite with acanthus leaf carving and paw feet. This suite was upholstered in the same rich velvet that curtained the garden room. Flanking the alcoves at each side of the large white marble fireplace were a magnificent pair of Sheraton mahogany card tables and on each of them stood a wrought-silver candelabra. The plain grey mottled walls bore only three pictures, and these had been chosen for their colour rather than for their intrinsic value. One was a full-length portrait of a lady in blue brocade and lace with the simple title, ‘The Frenchwoman’. The other two were flower studies. There were no expensive prints, which in spite of their value would merely have dulled this room. The walls held one other object and this was a column-sided Regency gilt mirror. It hung above the fireplace, although at the time of its installation there had been some protest from Paul, the only one in all her arranging. It was a foolish place to put a mirror, he said. He himself was sensible and didn’t stand on the raised tiled fender to reach the mantelpiece, he said, but Alison was in the habit of doing this to give a last-minute adjusting touch to her hat and never troubled about her skirt billowing towards the fire.

  Indeed, the room was a stolen world, and no-one saw it without remarking on the unusualness of it.

  Alison looked round it now. ‘Marry Bill Tapley and leave this!’ Her shoulders hunched just the slightest with the inward ‘Huh!’ she gave. Then her eyes dropped to Paul Aylmer’s profile. Marry Bill Tapley and leave all this?
Her eyes remained fixed on him as she repeated to herself: And leave all this?

  Chapter Two

  At eleven o’clock the following morning Alison turned the car slowly from the slushy main road into the dark tree-lined drive that led to Beacon Ride. About a quarter of a mile along the road she had caught sight of the house across the park, the bare branches of the trees scratching a pattern across the vast, flat-faced façade. The drive seemed to wind away from the house before swinging in its direction again, and along its whole length it was bordered by stark, intertwined trees. Although leafless, they made a dark tunnel, and when at last she emerged from it there in front of her stood the house. And her aesthetic feeling was numbed by the sight of it. Nowhere was it protectingly covered with any kind of creeper that lends charm to old houses and often hides their scars. Here the scars were naked to the eye: great patches of peeling stucco, a whole length of guttering slanting drunkenly from one corner, and the pointing on the wall at this corner deeply eroded. Once it must have looked a mighty, dignified dwelling. Now it looked senile.

  Alison drew the car to a stop at the foot of the broad steps leading up to the front door. The condition of the house, she thought, was likely the reason for her visit today. Money was needed badly here, that was evident. But it would take a great deal of furniture, glass and porcelain to repair even the façade of this great place. It was a nice little horde of jewels that was wanted here. She smiled wryly to herself as she slowly mounted the steps. Say a diamond tiara, two or three old necklaces and a dozen rings or so, just to start with. If it was big money they were after then it should be, as Paul had said, someone from Christie’s or Sotheby’s who should be about to knock on this front door. Although Paul’s business was very good, their main sales were in a range of £10 up to £100, occasionally reaching the £200 mark, but it would take thousands, even tens of thousands, to put this place on its feet.