Free A Stairway to Paradise by Madeleine St John Page A

‘with her ayah.’
    ‘Not really!’ he exclaimed. ‘ Snap! ’
    She smiled at him. ‘Not you too?’ she said, wonderingly.
    ‘Yes, me too,’ he replied.
    They both laughed with astonishment.
    ‘Were both your parents—’ he said.
    ‘Yes, both. What about yours?’
    ‘Only my father’s lot. My mother was merely Anglo–English. And still is, come to that.’
    ‘So—of course you couldn’t have been born there, could you?’
    ‘No, not even I, old as I am!’
    ‘But the memory lingers on,’ she said. ‘Or the melody, or whatever it is.’
    They were both looking rather grave now.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How it does.’
    ‘Shall we go?’ she said. ‘We might compare notes over a plate of—er—curry, or something.’
    He laughed. ‘Something French, I thought,’ he said. ‘Someone told me about a place up in Hampstead—shall we see if we can get a table there? We might be lucky—it’s fairly late now. I mean, you do like French food, do you? Or would you rather somewhere else? Do say.’
    ‘Yes, I like French,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it funny how we all like French?’
    ‘No, it’s not funny,’ he said. ‘It’s only natural. After all, we’re English.’
    She laughed.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m ravenous.’ He took her by the hand, but it felt perfectly natural, as if they were companions, and led her out to the car.

28
    They were eating duckling and drinking white burgundy, and somewhere a tape machine was playing a just-audible stream of the animadversions of George Shearing.
    ‘Who are these people you work for?’
    ‘Two lawyers, name of Hopetoun. And their two sons, aged thirteen. Twins, they are. Identical twins.’
    ‘Are they nice, these Hopetouns?’
    ‘Yes, very.’
    ‘That’s all right, then. What exactly do you do for them?’
    ‘I get their dinner ready every night, from Monday to Thursday, inclusive. And I do a bit of cleaning—nothing much; not the heavy stuff. Someone else comes in to do that. And in return I get the flat, plus fuel.’
    ‘No actual money, then?’
    ‘I earn some outside: I do dinner parties at the weekends for people, and the odd lunch, and things like that. You see…’ and so she gave him an account of her career to date.
    Barbara’s widowed mother had become ill with cancer some months before Barbara’s finals, after sitting which she had gone home to look after her: her rather older sister, who was married to a Yorkshire GP, was fully occupied with their three children, plus assorted animals. After her mother’s death, which had occurred some eighteen months later, Barbara had gone to stay with this sister for a month or two. ‘I was feeling pretty useless, you see,’ she told him. ‘Quite helpless, actually. Couldn’t get going on that career thing.’ She paused, and then shrugged. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘we were into another recession by then. So I just felt I’d altogether missed the boat.’ She paused again. ‘I suppose I didn’t even want to have caught it,’ she added.
    ‘Yes,’ said Andrew. ‘I see.’
    ‘So then,’ she sat up, smiling brightly, ‘I saw this ad in the Lady for a mother’s helper, in Kensington.’
    ‘Ah, the Lady .’
    ‘Yes, absolutely. And so I came to London.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Oh, one thing led to another; you know. I just sort of faffed around—I just did odd jobs; and sometimes in between I signed on. And then, well—then fate brought me together with Fergus Carrington. Via Claire Maclise, as a matter of fact.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘You may well say so.’
    She sat back and looked pensive. She had finished eating; she minutely adjusted the knife and fork on her plate. ‘That was one of the things I taught Fergus,’ she said, half to herself.
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Table manners. I was very strict, you know.’
    ‘That’s good.’
    ‘Yes. I mean, he knew what to do; it was just that I was the first person who’d had the time and the energy to insist absolutely on his doing