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

  She was full of curiosity as her finger pressed the bell. She had to wait some time before the door was opened, and then she was confronted by an old woman with a sparse figure and a long, lined face below a mass of white hair. She was small, no more than five feet three or four inches, so her eyes were almost on a level with Alison’s. And when she spoke her voice had a high, refined note. ‘Yes, you were wanting…?’ She waited.

  ‘I’ve come in Mr Aylmer’s place. He is indisposed at the moment with ’flu.’ She held out the letter for the woman to see. ‘I’ve an appointment with Mrs Gordon-Platt. Mr Aylmer phoned last night.’

  ‘Oh?’ The old woman seemed to hesitate. Her head went to one side and then she asked, ‘Which Mrs Gordon-Platt? Mrs Charles?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only know it’s Mrs Gordon-Platt.’

  The troubled look deepened on the woman’s face, then she turned from Alison and said, ‘Well, you’d better come in.’

  Alison followed the thin, stooped figure across the huge dim hall. Her eyes searched quietly, as was her business, for the period pieces that delight all dealers, but they found nothing interesting. There was furniture in the hall, but it was late Victorian stuff, large and ornate, and very ugly.

  ‘What’s your name?’ The old woman paused with her hand on the handle of a door.

  ‘Alison Read. Miss Alison Read.’

  The next moment Alison was standing behind the old woman in the doorway of a drawing room, and from where she stood she saw another woman sitting writing at a table drawn up close to the fire. She saw her turn her head towards the doorway, then swing round and say, ‘What is it, Beck?’

  ‘This young lady says she has an appointment with Mrs Gordon-Platt.’

  ‘Appointment?’ The woman had risen to her feet and was staring at Alison. ‘I’ve made no appointment with you.’

  ‘I’ve come in place of Mr Paul Aylmer. It was to value some glass and china.’

  She watched the woman’s hands go quickly to her neck, the fingers pressing gently on the windpipe. She watched her swallow before turning round and saying, ‘Oh, yes. Yes, now I understand. Come in. I did write to Mr Aylmer. That will be all, Beck.’

  As Alison went to move forward she glanced at the old woman, who was staring at the back of the tall Mrs Gordon-Platt. She watched her lower her head and bite on her lip before turning away. Then the door was closed, and she walked towards the fire. And the attitude of the woman who stood awaiting her caused her to ask, ‘You are Mrs Gordon–Platt?’

  ‘Ye…es. I’m Mrs Gordon-Platt.’

  ‘You were expecting me?’

  The tall woman smiled now, and gave a slight laugh as she said, ‘Well, not really.’

  ‘But you wrote to Mr Aylmer, asking for some things to be valued.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘And he phoned you last night to say I was coming.’

  Alison watched the eyes flit downwards. The smile had vanished from the woman’s face. She saw her glance sharply towards the ceiling before saying, ‘Oh. I can see where the mistake has occurred. I’m Mrs Gordon-Platt Junior, Mrs Charles. Mr Aylmer must have spoken to my mother-in-law. But do sit down.’ She motioned Alison to a seat. ‘This is going to be slightly awkward. I must explain. You see, my mother-in-law is very old and…well—’ There was a smile on the face again, and it was a bit too smarmy for Alison’s liking. ‘She is incapable of making decisions. My son manages the estate and I see to the household. And…and things are rather tight at present, so we decided to dispose of some glass and silver…By the way, how is Mr Aylmer?’

  ‘He has ’flu.’ Alison moved her head forward. ‘Do you know him?’

  The lids drooped yet again, and her face was once more wreathed in a smile. ‘Yes. Yes, I know Mr Aylmer. It is some years now since we met, but I knew him very well at one time. May I ask if you are his niece? You can’t be his daughter, as I understand he isn’t married.’

  For a moment Alison didn’t answer: she was looking at this woman with new interest. She was the type that could wear a sack and yet appear smartly dressed. She was wearing a plain blue wool dress without any attending ornament. She did not even wear a wedding ring, and her hair, which was fair and not unlike the colour of Paul’s, was lifted straight back from her forehead. She was an imposing-looking woman. She might be anything between thirty-five and forty, yet she could also pass for thirty. A strange uneasiness had been filtering into Alison as she summed up Mrs Gordon-Platt, and her voice betrayed this with a stiffness, as she replied, ‘No, I am not his niece, I am his ward.’

  ‘Ward? Really, you surprise me, I couldn’t imagine Paul having the patience to bring up a child. Is he still as taciturn and grumpy?’

  The uneasiness was deepening but whatever answer Alison might have made to this was checked by the drawing-room door being thrust open with such force that it banged against the wall. Both she and the woman swung round, and her own mouth dropped into a gape when she saw the grotesque and almost frightening figure of an old lady. She was fat, enormously so, and this was exaggerated by the amount of clothes she was wearing, for underneath a voluminous dressing gown there showed a nightdress, and around her shoulders were draped at least two shawls and a scarf. But it was her head that was the most startling. This was bare of any covering other than hair which could not possibly have been real, for the woman in the doorway must have been eighty if she was a day and her hair was a startling mass of a bright auburn colour.

  ‘So, so!’ The voice was as big as the body. ‘Am I interrupting anything?’ She took a few steps into the room. They were slow and unsteady, giving the lie to the strength that her size and voice suggested.

  Alison turned swiftly to the younger Mrs Gordon-Platt, and she noticed that her expression was a mixture of defiance and hate, and that these emotions looked frozen into the whiteness of her skin.

  Now there appeared from behind the voluminous skirts of the old lady the figure of Miss Beck. She was making a motion with her hands as if she were clapping them gently, and her voice had a whimpering sound as she said, ‘Oh, madam…madam…please come…come away back to bed. You’ll make yourself ill. Oh, please, madam.’

  ‘Quiet, Beck! I won’t make myself ill. I’m never ill; I just imagine I am. Isn’t that so, Freda?’ The small pale eyes seemed to be squirting jets of red light onto her daughter-in-law, and when she received no answer she laughed. In contrast to her age and size, the laugh was young and had a quaint, tinkling sound. And then she turned to Alison and said abruptly, ‘You’re the young person Mr Aylmer has sent?’

  All Alison could do was to incline her head. For the moment she was speechless and continued to be so as the old lady went on, ‘I did not tell Mr Aylmer last night when he was on the phone that it was not I who had written to him; also that if I wished to dispose of any of my property there is a firm in Brighton which has served me very well in the past. I wanted to get to the bottom of this. If I had prevented you from coming and spoken about the matter to my daughter-in-law’—the eyes flashed towards the pale woman—‘she would, with her usual duplicity, have been able to wriggle out of the situation. So I thought I would let it come to a head…Sit down.’ She pointed an imperious finger at Alison, and Alison, as if she had been prodded with a long pole, sat down. Then, doddering forward like a top-heavy old battleship, the old woman shuffled to the fireplace, with Beck spluttering at her side. After lowering herself slowly onto an upright chair, she turned to her daughter-in-law and said sharply, ‘I’m waiting.’

  The tall, pale woman, speaking through lips that barely moved, now answered, ‘It can’t go on forever.’ She said these words slowly and they seemed to make little impression on the old woman, but Beck gasped in horror as she looked towards her mistress’ daughter-in-law and murmured reproachfully, ‘Oh, how could you, Mrs Charles.’

  ‘She could all right, Becky, don’t let it worry you.’ The old head was shaking. ‘But I’ll not die just to spite her.’ She flung the words to
wards the stiff back that moved now, with what Alison grudgingly admitted was an example of quiet dignity, towards the drawing-room door. And when it was closed, and this done quietly also, the old lady gave the whole of her terrifying and scrutinising attention to Alison, and Alison sat under it like a hypnotised rabbit for some minutes until Mrs Gordon-Platt’s voice broke the spell, saying, ‘What do you know about good silver or glass, or anything else in this category, for that matter? You are still a child. He had a nerve to send you.’

  ‘Nothing of the sort.’ The spell was broken and the tone of her voice surprised even Alison herself. ‘I was brought up in the business. Mr Aylmer wouldn’t have sent me here unless he felt I was sufficiently experienced to value your property.’

  The muscles of the old face worked vigorously for a moment before she said, ‘Well, whatever your qualifications, you have made your journey for nothing. My daughter-in-law owns nothing in this house, and she hasn’t the power to sell a button. Yet…yet she has been doing it, hasn’t she, Beck?’ As she asked this question she turned to her maid with a pathos that was in absolute contradiction to her manner of a few moments before. She was now like a child seeking protection from its mother, and Beck was the mother. The maid lifted up the wrinkled, bejewelled hand, saying, ‘Yes, madam; no-one has any legal right to anything in the house except yourself. It’s all yours.’

  Alison saw the other wrinkled hand tap Beck’s in a gesture of thanks. Then turning her attention to Alison again, the old lady said, ‘My daughter-in-law is a thieving, scheming she-cat,’ and her head had bounced with the words. It would seem that she was well back in her stride, and Alison dared to ask, quietly, ‘Then why do you live together?’

  The old head jerked up so quickly that Alison had to suppress a smile when the neat pile of hair moved slightly. ‘You are an impertinent young woman,’ she was told.

  ‘Madam, she was only—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, Beck. Be quiet! And don’t tell me I’ve asked for what I’m getting. I know. I know. All right.’ She now bowed deeply towards Alison and went on in a maudlin way: ‘You ask why my daughter-in-law and I live together. Well, I’ll tell you. It doesn’t matter now; everyone knows…When my son married that woman twenty years ago I turned him out and I haven’t seen him from that day to this.’ Her voice trembled as she continued, ‘And I won’t see him now, for he died two years ago.’

  Alison was silent, and Beck, patting her mistress’ shoulder, said, ‘There, now. There, now. Don’t distress yourself.’

  ‘And my husband was a fool, a kindly fool, so what did he do when he died last year but leave everything to his grandson, provided that he came and lived here. And so he came; but he had been brought up by his dear mama and wouldn’t stay without her. What can I do?’ She spread her arms wide and then gave a little senile chuckle as she added, ‘But what a surprise that madam got, for the inheritance is a mortgage that would throttle the Bank of England. They can’t sell the land until I’m gone, and even with the fancy prices they are getting today it wouldn’t meet the debts anyway.’ Again came the senile chuckle. ‘And then you know, my dear’—the old lady’s manner changed again and she clutched at Alison’s hands and began talking as if to a dear friend—‘look what they did when I was in hospital. They only sent me there because they were so sure I’d never come out again. But I did, didn’t I?’ Without waiting for Alison to answer she went on, her voice now breaking into a sob, ‘They were so sure I was going to die they stripped my room. They sold my cabinets…Oh, my cabinets.’ The auburn hair bounced gently on the nodding head. ‘But it wasn’t the cabinets, it was what was inside them, wasn’t it, Becky?’

  As Beck answered by patting the old lady and murmuring soothing endearments, Mrs Gordon-Platt’s attitude changed yet again and, her eyes narrowing, she exclaimed, ‘You say you are a dealer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You get about, then?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  ‘You go to all the sales?’

  ‘No. No, just the ones where we think there’ll be useful pieces, the kind of pieces we sell.’

  ‘You might have seen my cabinets, then. Oh, my cabinets.’ The face was awash with tears, and Beck, her face also crinkling, murmured, ‘Now, madam, you’ll only upset yourself. And you can’t do anything about it. Come along. Come along.’

  ‘Yes; yes, it’s too late to worry. I’m tired, Beck. This has been too much. Give me your arm.’

  It was as much as the maid could do to get the old woman to her feet, but when Alison went hastily to her assistance she was rebuffed quietly but firmly. ‘It’s all right, miss, I can manage. Madam is all right.’

  Helplessly, Alison stood watching the two women shambling from the room, and it was hard to tell who was leaning on whom.

  What was she to do now? Go home, she supposed. She looked round the great ugly room. Oh, it was pitiable that families such as these should end in this way. She loved old houses. She loved old families. Her eyes fell on a high-backed chair upholstered in velvet, with the overall colour being a dark grey, although the corners gave evidence that it had once been red. As she stared at the chair an odd feeling of recognition spread through her…She knew that chair; she had seen it before. Her common sense told her she was being silly, and she asked herself how she could possibly have seen it when she had not been in this house before. And yet, she knew she had seen it…

  She looked towards the open door through which the two elderly women had passed and realised she had seen them before too. But then she thought, Come on, get out of this place. You’re light-headed … or going around the bend. You couldn’t possibly have seen them before…or that chair.

  No, of course she couldn’t. They had both made such a strong impression on her in the last few minutes, more of an impression than some people would make in a lifetime, that it had given her the idea she had met them before…that was it. But did she have the same feeling about the younger Mrs Gordon-Platt? No. No, she had no feeling that she had met her before. But she did have the feeling that she didn’t want to see her again. And this feeling was strong.

  She picked up her bag and gloves from the floor, cast one look at the high-backed chair and turned about, intending to march briskly from the room and the house, but there in the doorway, standing quietly and gazing at her, was a young man.

  ‘Hello,’ he said and smiled.

  She did not answer him but looked him up and down. He was about her own age, or perhaps younger. She had no need to ask herself who he could be. This was the heir to the mortgage, all right. And although he was clearly his mother’s son, he had a pleasant face.

  ‘Are you waiting for someone?’

  ‘No. I was just leaving.’

  He did not move to let her pass. ‘You came to see my mother?’

  ‘Yes, I came to see your mother.’ Her voice was curt. ‘And I’ve seen her; also your grandmother.’

  ‘Oh Lord!’

  Her manner towards him changed abruptly as she watched him close his eyes and droop his head in boyish dismay. ‘That would be something to see. They were together in the same room?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice held a hint of laughter now. ‘Your grandmother made the journey downstairs.’

  Again he said, ‘Oh, Lord!’ and then moving aside as if to let her pass he asked, ‘What was your business?’

  ‘I was given to understand that I was to value some glass and silver.’

  Now his face showed concern as he asked, ‘At whose request?’

  ‘Your mother’s, I understand. It is a bit confusing having two Mrs Gordon-Platts.’

  ‘Yes…yes.’ He nodded his head and although he was staring at her she realised that his thoughts were not on her. She was given to making snap decisions and to quick likes and dislikes. She knew that she disliked the younger Mrs Gordon-Platt and she pitied the elder. She also knew that she could like Mr Gordon-Platt. He was merely a boy, yet already he was loaded with responsibility. She wondered how he w
ould stand up to it. He was pleasant, but not too strong, she thought; there was nothing firm or mannish about him. She had a mental picture of Paul. She said quickly, ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Wait a minute. May I ask your name?’

  ‘Alison Read.’

  ‘You live nearby?’

  ‘Not far.’ She smiled, and he answered it, then asked on a laugh, ‘Is that your car outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s nice. I like Rovers. You can’t go wrong with them.’

  ‘That’s what I think too.’ They walked together through the hall and down the steps, silent now and both awkward. He opened the car door for her and not until she was at the wheel did he speak again. And then he smiled quizzically at her as he said, ‘Pity we can’t do business with you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She laughed now. ‘It is.’

  ‘You don’t look like a dealer.’

  ‘You should never go by appearances.’ She found it easy to banter with him. Suddenly she was sorry for him. He was entirely out of keeping with this house. Symbolically, it was like a large tombstone balancing precariously above him and when his grandmother died it would fall on him, and from the look of him she did not think he would be able to withstand its weight. She had the strange urge to make him feel happy. She was concerned for him as if he were a brother. That was the daft part about her, she told herself. She was forever forming people she liked into close relationships with herself. They were either brothers or sisters, or fathers, or aunts, or uncles, but…but never husbands. She said now, ‘If you unearth any bags of diamonds from behind the secret panels, give me a ring. We’re Aylmer’s of Tally’s Rise, in Sealock.’