A New Dream, Maggie Ford [books to read romance txt] 📗

‘They’ll understand,’ she reassured her mother. ‘Chester’s father is in business too.’

From the hall came the tinkle of the telephone. Victoria leaped as if struck. ‘It must be your father. How could he…’

‘Let Mary answer it,’ Julia interrupted. ‘She’ll take the message.’ She saw her mother relax though her hands remained clasped tightly together beneath her chin. The phone terrified her. She went into an instant panic if it rang, looking for Mary or Mrs Granby to take the call for her.

The dining room door opened slowly, just a fraction. Mary’s face appeared round it. ‘Madam, it’s a person wanting to speak to you.’

The girl’s expression sent Victoria into a flurry. ‘Not the master? I can’t speak to anyone at present. We are awaiting our guests. Julia, my dear, go and tell whoever it is that we are about to sit down to dinner.’

The telephone sat on a small table in the hall, its earphone lying on end beside it where Mary had left it. Picking it up, Julia put it to her ear and, bending towards the telephone’s mouthpiece at the top of the long black stem, said tentatively, ‘Hullo?’

‘Mrs Charles Longfield?’ enquired a female voice at the other end.

‘I’m Miss Longfield, her eldest daughter. Who is this?’

‘I do really need to speak to Mrs Longfield, personally.’ The voice sounded annoyingly efficient, not at all apologetic.

Julia felt irritation mounting. ‘My mother is unused to telephones. You may tell me what you want and if it’s important I will tell her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the voice replied obstinately. ‘But it is necessary I speak to her.’

‘I’m sorry too, whoever you are. Goodbye!’

She was about to replace the earpiece when the voice almost shouted down the wire, ‘Please, Miss Longfield. It is about your father!’

Julia felt her heart give a little jump. ‘What about my father?’

‘This is the London Hospital. My name is Cunningham. Would you please bring your mother to the telephone, stay by her side and make sure she is sitting down. I am afraid I have some bad news.’

‘What bad news?’ Julia heard her voice rising. ‘What’s happened?’

Her mother, having overheard this last part of the conversation, was already coming from the dining room almost at a run, her face wrought with fear.

Julia turned back to the phone. ‘You’ll have to tell me,’ she said. ‘My mother is in no fit state to hear any bad news.’

At the words ‘bad news’, her mother gave a little squeak of panic, but the person at the other end of the phone was still talking.

‘Very well, my dear.’ The voice had softened. ‘I regret to tell you that your father suffered a heart attack and was immediately brought in to the hospital but unfortunately he died about fifteen minutes ago. There was nothing we could do for him. I am so very sorry.’

For a moment Julia couldn’t speak. Then she heard herself say, ‘Thank you’ in a small, stunned voice as she slowly replaced the mouthpiece on the stem’s forked metal bracket.

Two

Turning to her mother, she realized her own devastated expression had caused Victoria’s gaunt cheeks to pale.

‘What is it?’ The words came as a gasp but already her mother was fearing the worst.

‘It was the hospital,’ Julia whispered, hearing her own voice quivering with delayed shock. ‘They said…’

She trailed off, unable to shape the words, but her mother was ahead of her. ‘It’s your father! What has happened?’

It was like a spectral cry, shrill yet faint. ‘There’s been an accident. Is he hurt? How bad? Oh, my dear God! And we have Chester and his parents arriving at any moment. What are we going to do about dinner? Will they be sending him home? What will our guests think?’

Inconsistent, illogical, the words tumbled from her lips. Stephanie, drawn from the dining room by the torrent of emotion, ran to catch her as she began to sag.

To Julia the hall seemed suddenly full of people. Mary was still hovering uncertainly in case she was wanted; Mrs Granby, having heard the cries, had hurried up from the kitchen to see what the trouble was; young Virginia was now standing by helplessly, as well as herself, Stephanie and their mother.

‘Take Mummy into the parlour,’ Julia ordered, half in panic at the sight of them all while she tried to come to grips with her own shock of grief. ‘It’s all right, Mary, Mrs Granby, we’ve had some bad news, that’s all.’

Choking on the stupid words, incapable of going into any further explanation, she hurried after Stephanie and Virginia as they helped their mother into the parlour, closing the door behind them.

Mrs Granby, back in her kitchen, heard her mistress’s screams tear through the house, on and on until she thought they would never stop. She listened as, finally, they subsided into heart-rending weeping; deep, hollow sobs that reached right down to the kitchen and tore at the cook’s breast. The master had been in an accident was all she’d gathered. Any other woman would have mustered up some control but not Mrs Longfield. But how bad was the master?

Not knowing what to think, she gazed at the food on the preparation table and on the hob waiting to be conveyed upstairs as soon as the dinner guests had seated themselves. She thought regretfully of the lovely meal over which she had taken such a long time: anchovy eggs for starters; mock turtle soup keeping warm on the kitchen range; a main course of duck breasts in plum sauce, very light with potato croquettes, green beans, carrots and cauliflower; for dessert, strawberry gateaux with cream, all made by her own hand. No one would eat any of it now with Mr Longfield in hospital. She found herself praying that he wasn’t too badly hurt.

Biting at her lower lip for that poor creature upstairs, she made up her mind that anything that could be saved would have to be put back in the larder. If not eaten, and she didn’t think it would be now, she,