Gone Away by Hazel Holt

Author:Hazel Holt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1988-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

I woke up early the next day, which was just as well, because, not surprisingly, I’d forgotten I’d promised to make a cake for the Help the Aged Bring and Buy sale, which was being held that morning. I quickly threw together a sponge, but alas, when it had finished cooling on the wire rack, it looked decidedly lop-sided. I put an extra lot of jam filling in it and strewed the top liberally with icing sugar and hoped that nobody would notice. Needless to say, it didn’t escape Marjorie Fraser’s eagle eye.

“Oh dear – it seems to have sunk a bit,” she said, examining it critically.

“What a cheek!” Rosemary said indignantly as Marjorie moved away to supervise the making of the coffee. “She can’t make cakes at all!”

“No,” I agreed, “but she did bring those marvellous bowls of hyacinths. Did you see, all coming out at once and every single one the same size? I wish I knew how she did it.”

“I expect she speaks to them sharply,” Rosemary said acidly.

Then the doors of the church hall were opened and there was the usual serum round the cake and jam stall, which soon looked as if it had been attacked by a swarm of locusts. Even my despised sponge was snapped up, by an elderly man in a deerstalker and a bright blue anorak. As I tidied away the paper plates that the cakes had been on and pushed to the front of the stall the remaining two jars of bramble jelly, I wondered if I should tell Rosemary about my visit to Jamie. My instinct was to keep it to myself. The fewer people who knew about his connection with Lee the safer he would be, and Rosemary could never keep a thing like that to her-self. It was, indeed, very fortunate that Mrs Dudley hadn’t said anything about it to her daughter. But I could understand that she wouldn’t want any-thing to diminish the grandeur of the Hertford family in Rosemary’s eyes, now that she could claim Mrs Hertford as a friend. Telling me was different. Jeremy had been Jamie’s friend – she had always resented that – so she wouldn’t scruple to pass on to me anything that might denigrate Jamie. I marvelled at the complexities of the English class system that could produce such fine degrees of snobbery! So perhaps I shouldn’t tell Rosemary. But I dearly wanted to tell someone, and I knew that Rosemary would be as astonished as I was at the transformation in Jamie’s appearance and in his life-style. The hall finally emptied, and Rosemary and I went into the small, inconvenient kitchen to wash up the coffee cups.

“I’ll wash, shall I?” Rosemary asked. She looked at the plastic washing-up bowl and made a face. “This really needs a good scrub. Oh well, never mind, pass me those cups will you.”

She started to talk of Lee’s death and how upset Charles would be.

“Well, I don’t know…” I said slowly. “He’ll get over it and he’s well out of it, if you ask me.

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