This Time It's Love

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1943-2

It was Nanny who took charge of the household then and who told Simon that London was no place for ‘the poor motherless lambs’ who wanted a breath of ‘God’s good air’ if they were to be brought up healthy and strong.

At Four Gables the children knew nothing and heard less of what was happening in the great world outside. All they knew of their father was that he would appear suddenly like a typhoon, sweep into the house and galvanise the whole place into noisy tempestuous action.

Then he would go as suddenly as he had come, leaving a strange calm and quiet behind, so that they were not certain whether they missed him or were merely relieved at his absence.

It was difficult indeed for them to form an independent opinion, for Nanny made no bones about her feeling in the matter.

Once, half seriously, half laughingly, Simon accused her deliberately of putting the children against their father. Nanny had faced him defiantly.

“I’ll lead no child in my charge into the devil’s ways,” she said.

“So that’s what you think of me,” Simon had challenged her.

“I was never good at lying,” Nanny retorted sturdily.

As Fenella grew older, she began to resemble very closely her dead mother. Simon often felt a strange pang as he came upon her suddenly or watched her walk into the room.

Only one thing was lacking. Her hair was dark, not red, and being Simon it was impossible for him to admire or find real beauty save in a red-haired woman.

Moo also was dark, but she had a very different type of looks from her elder sister. From the moment she was born Moo had been what Nanny called ‘a picture-book baby’.

As Raymond said once,

“Moo is exactly like a box of chocolates, large, succulent, soft-centred ones, tied up with the thickest and most glossy satin ribbon.”

Nobody could help liking Moo and she was as pleased as a small friendly puppy with the attention she received.

The arrival of Timothy and Susan after their father had married Inez in 1936 had really made very little difference. Simon Prentis’s marriage had meant just nothing to his children.

There had been so many women after Arline’s death in and out of his life that one more or less could not be expected to stir them, even though he put a gold ring on her third finger.

The county were slightly scandalised, of course, at what they heard about Simon Prentis, but he certainly had a name and they were prepared to forgive him a good deal because he was reputedly a genius.

But their tentative gestures of friendship were stillborn from the moment Simon Prentis came to Four Gables to live. The stories that were told about him after he arrived were, of course, incredible, fantastic and malicious.

A great many had no foundation in fact, but many, unfortunately, were true.

One, which never failed to be related with bated breath to every newcomer who had not heard it before, was when a local dignitary, Lady Coleby, an elderly woman who owned the neighbouring estate and was undoubtedly one of the most important people in the district, came to call.

She had been shown by an inexperienced maidservant straight into the barn where Simon was at work.

As usual most of the household were with him. Raymond and Fenella were playing table tennis in a corner of the big room, Moo was singing to her dolls and accompanying herself by strumming on a toy piano.

Simon was standing back from his easel when the visitor was shown in, the maid merely making from the doorway a mumbled sound that nobody heard.

He had half-turned towards the newcomer and there was no doubt that she must have felt a quick gasp of admiration and perhaps even coquetry was not wholly lost in that withered bosom.

At any rate, she had moved forward with a sweeter smile than was usually seen on her narrow straightened lips.

Then, as she held out her hand, an astounding thing happened.

Simon had swooped towards her, taking her arm in his firm grasp and pushing her a few steps to the right.

“Tell me,” he had shouted. “Tell me what you think? Is that shadow under the left breast green or purple? I’ve painted it green, but don’t hesitate to say if you think I am wrong.”

The startled visitor, conscious of being hurried across a slippery floor, bewildered, yet undeniably aware of the proximity and grip of this giant-like Adonis, had looked with widening eyes across the room to where on the model throne Inez reclined.

Lady Coleby was not to know that she was Simon’s wife, although if she had it would have made little difference.

All she was aware of in that horrifying breathless moment was that she was staring at the recumbent naked body of a young woman posed on a divan of purple plush across which was thrown a Spanish shawl.

Everyone in the painting world was to exclaim later at the daring of the picture – an indescribable riot of colour that no other painter would have ventured to use with a red-haired model.

It had been a much-criticised painting, but not from the angle that the County considered it, that had been something entirely different, for the question of morals had superseded all thought of whether purple plush and crimson flowers were legitimate against the red of a girl’s glowing hair.

That incident, alas, had, of course, prevented a large number of people from calling at Four Gables, but the few who did go out of curiosity had found Simon’s indifference to their condescension almost more difficult to accept than his morals.

While the County might eventually have accepted Simon, they would never have accepted Inez, not, as Raymond put it, ‘in a million years.’

She was beautiful, there was no denying that, but she had only to open her mouth for her accent to betray her and the empty banality of her mind to appal those who had been expecting at least something amusing.

Why Simon had married her remained a mystery until Timothy was born five months after the ceremony had taken place and then a number of people pitied Simon because he had ‘done the right thing’.

The marriage was doomed to failure from the beginning. In fact after Timothy arrived they each led their own lives until the war and the imminent danger of air raids frightened Inez into leaving London and taking up her residence at Four Gables.

Simon’s desire then to go into the Services and to do his bit to the best of his ability brought them together for a fleeting and not very convincing reunion.

Susan was born in 1940 and immediately she was about again Inez announced that she had had an offer of a film contract in Hollywood.

A year later she wrote to Simon to say that she was divorcing him in Reno as there was someone she particularly wanted to marry. The divorce would not be valid in the United Kingdom, but she thought that it was unlikely she would ever return.

She wished him the best of luck and sent her love to the children.

But Fenella was not thinking of Simon as she carried the shepherd’s pie from the kitchen into the dining room.

The children were waiting, their bibs tied round their necks, Susan in her high chair next to Nanny who sat at one end of the table while Fenella sat at the other.

She put the dish down on the table and was just going to take her place when she heard the front doorbell ring.

It rang insistently and loudly, as if someone had tugged imperiously and with an unusual strength at the long chain that hung from the lintel down beside the warm old red brick of the wall.

“I wonder who that is?” Fenella said, looking at Nanny.

“I’ll go, dearie,” Nanny said, half rising in her chair.

It was then Fenella heard Simon’s voice calling her name so that it echoed along the passage and seemed to fill the low-ceilinged dining room.

“Fenella! Fenella! Where are you?”

Everything in the small hall with its low oak-beamed ceiling was dwarfed in comparison with Simon Prentis.

In his blue Air Force uniform he looked a giant and his vivid colouring was intensified so that he stood out with an almost poster-like flamboyance against the simple cottage surroundings.

Fenella, hurrying forward to kiss her father, noticed that he was not alone and, with a sinking in her heart, took stock of the stranger he had brought with him.

‘The usual type!’ she thought and then added, ‘A little older than most.’

“How are you, my dear?” Simon asked her.

He accompanied his kiss with an ardent smack on her behind and then, throwing his cap and heavy overcoat down on a chair, he enquired,

“Well, what about lunch?”

“But, Daddy,” Fenella exclaimed in dismay, “you never let me know you were coming!”

“Didn’t let you know! Of course I did,” Simon Prentis retorted. “I sent you a wire, at least I gave one to my secretary. Don’t say she forgot!”

“Now did you give it to her, Daddy?” Fenella asked. “Or did you merely think of doing so?”

Simon ran his fingers through his hair.

“Damn it, I believe I did forget!”

“You are hopeless,” Fenella said, with the air of one stating a fact rather than making an accusation.

She turned towards the newcomer.

“I am afraid we are not giving you a very enthusiastic welcome.”

“Elaine, this is my daughter Fenella,” Simon said simply.

Fenella, taking a soft rather limp hand in hers, thought,

‘I dislike her – I wonder why?’

Elaine, whoever she was, was certainly very attractive. Her vivid red hair, cut pageboy style, was offset by a jaunty black velvet tam-o’-shanter.

She was fashionably thin and her tightly fitting black coat and skirt accentuated the fact. She had too, Fenella noted swiftly, the type of face that most artists admire, pronounced features with the heavily moulded eyes and rather prominent lips.

“You had better make a cocktail, Daddy,” Fenella said, “while I see what I can find you for lunch. The children are having shepherd’s pie, but I don’t suppose you would like that.”

“God forbid!” Simon Prentis ejaculated piously.

“Well, I’ll go and look in the larder, but I cannot promise miracles, so don’t expect them.”

“I want to wash first,” Elaine answered.

“I will show you the bathroom,” Fenella said. “Will you come upstairs?”

She led the way while Elaine followed behind her in what Fenella sensed was a sulky silence.

‘I wonder who she is?’ Fenella mused. ‘I hope Simon paints her, because we need some money badly. I am afraid you will have to sleep in my room,” she said aloud as they reached the door of her bedroom. “I will move my things immediately after lunch. We are rather cramped here and, although the house looks big, it is really inconveniently small.”

Elaine moved disdainfully towards the looking glass set on the plain oak dressing table.

“Do you live here all the time?” she asked. “It must be pretty deadly for you.”

“I am used to it,” Fenella answered, “but I am afraid that you will find it rather quiet.”

She went out of the room and closed the door behind her.

‘She is one of the worst,’ she thought as she went downstairs. ‘I hope Daddy has not got a long leave. This sort of thing is really awfully bad for Moo.’

She hurried into the kitchen and going to the store cupboard took a precious tin of tongue from her invasion store on the top shelf. It took her a few minutes to make a salad to go with it.

Luckily Nanny had already grated some carrots for the children and she used these, adding beetroot and chopped cabbage heart until the dish looked quite attractive.

There were three eggs, which she had collected from the fowls early that morning and these she made into a small omelette, adding some cheese and herbs in the way that she knew her father liked best.

She ran along the passage to the barn. Simon and Elaine were sipping their cocktails in front of the fire, which had just been lit.

“Luncheon’s ready, such as it is,” Fenella announced gaily, “and do hurry because you have an omelette and it will spoil if you keep it waiting too long.”

Simon was in good spirits, Fenella thought as she watched him walk towards the dining room humming to himself, moving with that particularly buoyant lilt in his step which was characteristic of him.