The Mingham Air by Elizabeth Fair

Author:Elizabeth Fair [Fair, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2017-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Anthony Bavington was a very quick painter indeed. His mother said so, and the exterior of Firenze proved it. In no time at all— well, just a weekend—the blistered woodwork turned white, bright blue, and emerald green. Only the attic window and the gutters and eaves remained in their former state, because he had not been able to borrow a ladder long enough. But the rectory possessed such a ladder and Mrs. Merlin had promised to lend it when Anthony started his holiday.

“Professional decorators always begin at the top,” Hester pointed out.

“Anthony says it doesn’t matter a bit. This is a jelly paint so it won’t run down on the bits he’s already done. Doesn’t it look absolutely smashing?”

Chrysanthemum beamed with pride and Hester said politely that the house looked quite different and very gay. Then the front door of Bonnie Appin, outside which she had been standing, opened cautiously, and Mrs. Hyde-Ridley peered round it and exclaimed:

“Oh, it’s you, Hester! How nice to see you—do come in quickly as I thought it was my tenant as I know she’s hanging about trying to get me alone. Mrs. Vandevint has gone to the doctor as he didn’t call yesterday and I’m not surprised after all the fuss she made the time before. She’s awfully nervous about herself as it comes of being a V.A.D. and seeing all those awful amputations. Come in, come in!”

During the course of this welcome, Chrysanthemum had withdrawn behind her own front door. She had popped out when Hester rang the bell of Bonnie Appin, just to tell whoever it was that both the old ladies had gone to the doctor and to gather a few compliments about the beauty of the new paint. “She thought you were both out,” Hester said to her hostess, defending Chrysanthemum against the charge of hanging about, which was repeated as soon as they got indoors; but Mrs. Hyde-Ridley replied sharply that if her tenant said that she was lying.

“She knows Mrs. Vandevint went alone as she was watching from her front window as I saw her! She seemed quite a lady when she was new but she isn’t really—she stands at the window and looks out as bold as brass.”

Mrs. Hyde-Ridley gave a satisfied glance at her own front window, where the net curtains were carefully pinned together down the middle to give cover to ladylike espionage.

“Still, she’s quite a good tenant, isn’t she?” said Hester, who had learned not to argue with her Clifford aunts about whether being a lady mattered.

“I suppose so but I wish I could get the Leverett-Mannings back. They were here in the war, you know, as they came to escape the noise as their own house was right in the path of all the enemy bombers and they never got a single night’s sleep! He’d been an ambassador and knew everyone and all the diplomatic gossip, and she was a Crosby from Harlington where all my people are buried so we had lots to talk about.

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