The Stratton Story Read online

  Gail released the thick, flabby hand. Yes, she had made Mrs. Stratton go on—and she had gone to her death. There had been a choice, and it had been left to her to make the final, the fatal decision. She had told Julian that all this was nothing to do with her, and she thought that she had spoken the truth, but now she could see that her involvement began on the day of the reception given by the Beetham Brothers on the terrace of the Courtier restaurant.

  She saw the two men assisting Mrs. Westerby to rise. She opened the door and watched them as they went into the hall and up the stairs. Then she turned slowly back to the quiet room and stared out at the gleaming water, waiting for Julian. Out there Anita Stratton had died—because she had not been permitted to run away. She had been persuaded to go on — to the end.

  Chapter 11

  They had left the mountains behind. Before them was the coast; every kilometre was bringing them nearer to lie heavy traffic and the tourists.

  Julian was driving Tim Sinclair’s car; his own would be driven back to England by his father — and Mrs. Westerby would go with him. Julian’s immediate objective was to restore the car he was driving to its owner; he did not propose to give up his passenger too.

  “But he’ll expect me to go back with him,” Gail pointed out.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Not without you, naturally—but suppose he’s got—”

  “Let’s suppose nothing until we see him,” Julian suggested.

  “And we tell him nothing?”

  “Not yet. Perhaps not at all. What, after all, has it got to do with anybody but the people directly involved? It’s finished. You can tell your family as much or as little as you want to, but if you decide to tell them, I’d wait a few months.” He paused. “It’s going to be hard for you, going back to the Beetham Brothers.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes, you have to. Not for long.”

  The Stratton file, she thought. It would not be closed. The money would still pour in, the book would still sell, but there would be no more lunches with Mr. Thomas, no more receptions. No more interviews. Miss Teller would marvel at her own psychic powers; she had sensed, she would say, that something was going to happen . . . “Promise not to brood,” she heard Julian saying. “Promise. Do we tell Tim straight off that we’re going to get married? Couldn’t we give him the impression that we’d known each other for . . . well, for longer than we have?”

  “Let him ask the questions first; then we’ll think of the answers. Does he look anything like you?”

  “No. More like Noelle.”

  Julian, however, found that there was very little likeness to either sister. All he recognised was Gail’s directness of speech.

  It took some time to locate him. They began at the hotel, went on to a house in which, they were told, he was visiting friends. The friends had just left; yes, an Englishman had left with them.

  “Scotsman,” Gail said, as they drove to the next clue. “Why can’t people differentiate?”

  “He couldn’t have been wearing his Tam o’ Shanter. Where’s this restaurant?”

  “Second on the left.”

  He was not there. They went back to the hotel and found that he had returned. Would they go up to his room?

  He yelled from the bathroom, and a few minutes later, emerged draped, Roman-fashion, in a large towel. He kissed his sister, shook hands with Julian and asked what the hold-up had been.

  “I said I’d drive somebody to a place—” Gail began.

  “Car going well?” he enquired anxiously.

  “The car’s all right. Julian drove it from Chandon to here.”

  “Chandon? Oh, this place you were talking about. Women,” he explained to Julian, “think that cars can run indefinitely without servicing. A girl in Malta actually wrecked the engine of a beautiful job —and when it was towed to the garage, ‘ Oil?’ said she, all wide-eyed. ‘Oh, I for-got’ You mean you came here in my car with Gail?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you meet? At this place—what’s it called? Chandon?”

  “No, we met in England and then we met again out there,” Gail said. “You’d better take a good look; he’s coming into the family.”

  “No!” Surprise made the bath towel slip, and Tim clutched it. “What—really? Mrs. Julian Meredith, and that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Blow me down,” Tim said simply. “Well, congratulations. Nobody breathed a word.”

  “Nobody had a word to breathe. You’re the first—early —to know.”

  “Bless you, my children. I must say this makes things rather easier for me. I had a little problem.”

  “A girl?” guessed Gail.

  Tim hesitated. Then a happy smile spread over his face.

  “Well, in a manner of speaking, yes,” he said. “A female. Very beautiful, very expensive. She’s flying to England today.”

  “And you want to go with her. And you didn’t know what to do with Gail—is that it?” Julian asked.

  “Correct.”

  “What’s her name?” Gail asked.

  “It’s . . . well, it’s an odd name. I first saw her down in the south, about eighteen months ago. I fell in love with her, but I couldn’t do much about it then. I fixed it so’s she’d be here to meet me—and she’s flying home at four-thirty, which means a pretty swift move for all of us, if you want to come and see us off.”

  “English?” Gail asked.

  “Good Lord, no. She . . . well, she’s got a lot of Arab blood.”

  “She’s not a girl,” Julian said. “You’ve bought a horse.”

  “A magnificent beast,” Tim said with a rapt expression. “I was staying with these Spanish people, and I went riding with them—they knew I was keen on riding, but until that morning, I’d never—Gail will vouch for this —never had the slightest interest in anything else to do with horses. But it was like being on the flying trapeze . . . And now she’s mine, and what I’d like you to do, Gail”—he dropped the towel absent-mindedly and reached for a shirt—“is get on the phone to Alan when you’ve seen me off, and tell him I’d like to keep her at the farm and—”

  “It isn’t Alan you need,” Gail said. “I’ll get through to Lydia, his sister.”

  “What for?”

  “Because she knows more about horses than you’re likely to pick up for years. She’ll stable it and she’ll look after it, while you’re on leave and when you’ve gone away again. Lydia’s the one you want.”

  “You’ll explain, won’t you, that this animal is something rather special?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks. Did I give you two my blessing, incidentally? If not, take it as read. Is the car downstairs?”

  “Yes,” Julian said. “When we’ve taken you to the airport, do we—”

  “Then you simply go on as you’ve been going-only in the opposite direction. I’ll see you at the farm. In a way, it’s silly to drag out to the airport—why don’t you just put me in that coach affair? We’ll make it if we go now. Go down and pay my bill, Gail, will you? Step on it.”

  He drove away in the airline coach, already looking, Gail commented, like a horse.

  “That’s that,” she said. “You’ve met my family—all except my grandmother. Now I’m going to telephone to Noelle.”

  “Noelle? I thought you were going to get hold of that girl—what was her name?”

  “Lydia. Noelle will fix it.” She slipped her hand into Julian’s. “Isn’t it like an answer to prayer?”

  “What is?”

  “Well, Tim and Lydia.”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me. She’s going to look after his horse, or so I gathered. What else did you have in mind?”

  She began to tell him, and then decided not to. The farm was a long way away; they would get to it in time. For the moment, she and Julian were alone, far from home and family—and with an open road before them. />
  “Julian—” she said.

  “Well?”

  She wanted to say that she loved him, but they were not as alone as all that, she remembered.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  THE END

  The Lark Shall Sing

  A salesman. It was a pity, browsed Pietro, that he could not sell on the spot; having worked the housewife up into a state in which she would have bought all his wares, suitcase and all, it was humiliating—it was an anti-climax to have to pack his samples away again, take her name and address and merely promise her brushes in the future. He would have liked to have a car, a van, a pantechnicon full of brushes, one for every room in every house at which he called. It was a pity he had spent his...Giuseppi’s capital. He could have set himself up in brushes and made his fortune here in England, and gone to America a rich man instead of a humble younger brother.

  It was hot! It was a pity he had had no money to spare for a cool drink. An ice! How wonderful the feeling of an ice-cream would be, trickling down his parched throat. Even water would do—but the only liquid in sight was the dark brown, murky ooze in the ditch running beside the road.

  Pietro’s imagination, which seemed always to work most cheerfully in adversity, here came to relieve his distress; for the next mile or so, he walked in a happy dream in which a large car drove silently by and stopped some way ahead; from one of its windows appeared a white, rounded arm; answering its invitation, he hurried along and found himself looking into the car, into a pair of glowing eyes. A uniformed lackey opened the door; Pietro stepped in and was borne along a wide, tree-shadowed avenue beside his beautiful companion. Pressing a secret spring, she opened a cabinet and disclosed two glasses and a tall, slender-necked bottle; he opened it and they drank, and the wine was cool, cool as her lips were warm. She took his glass from him and her lovely arms closed round him. Drawing him to her, she—

  At this interesting point, Pietro stumbled on a large stone and had to stop to recover his hat. When he had picked it up and put it back on his head, the lovely woman and the car had vanished, and he was alone on the dusty road once more.

  And yet not quite alone. Glancing back over his shoulder he saw that behind him, in the distance, was a bicycle. He gave it no more than a glance, and then walked on; this was no gleaming car, and there was no lovely woman —only a little boy, or a little girl on a machine that looked to be too big and that wobbled dangerously from one side of the road to the other.

  Remembering this fact, Pietro moved himself cautiously to the extreme edge of the road; he had no wish to find his new suit brushed by dusty bicycle wheels.

  Behind him, Julia came on. She was riding, by now, in a dream—but not of the delightful kind that whiled away the minutes and the miles for Pietro. She had fallen off twice, and her clothes were torn and dishevelled. Her hat was gone, her elbows were showing through her sleeves, her face was tear-stained and mud-streaked and there was a buzzing in her ears. She had very little idea where she was—but this was the road and she had to keep on it. Somewhere along it was home. She would come to it in time...perhaps.

  She saw a figure ahead, and then it became two figures, both dim, both hazy. She tightened her grip on the handlebars, but she was on a bicycle that had proved, more than once, to have ideas of its own. She steered for a point midway between the two figures, and plunged on.

  The next moment, something hit Pietro straight between the shoulders and sent him flying. His suitcase went one way, his hat another; Pietro himself went straight into the ditch, and on top of him came a large bicycle.

  “Mother of God,” he said in his own language. “Am I a cow that I should be—”

  He stopped. Wet, filthy, dripping clods of mud, he stared over the side of the ditch into a pair of frightened, streaming eyes.

  “Oh!” cried Julia, “Oh, are you...are you hurt?”

  Pietro said nothing, for suddenly his heart was too full for speech. He could only gaze at her, this thin little girl with the red stringy hair and the dirty face and the torn clothes—-this little girl on this huge bicycle which had plunged him into the ditch—this exhausted-looking, this dreary little miss, who—herself scratched, bleeding—could yet look at him and, forgetting herself and her troubles, cry out in concern for him, Pietro Faccini—could ask if he was hurt.

  He scrambled out and held out a muddy hand to help her up.

  “Me? Hurt? How can a toss into a ditch hurt me, a so-big fellow?” he asked in magnificent astonishment. “All that is for me is a little mud, yes? And I say to myself, how lucky for me that I had my bad clothes—that will not be spoilt. A hot sun to dry them, and then a brush—see, I have a whole box full of brushes.”

  There was not quite a boxful; the suitcase had burst open, and a good proportion of Pietro’s stock-in-trade lay in the ditch.

  “Oh,” said Julia, “you were selling brushes and they’re...I’ve spoiled them!”

  “You? No, no, no!” protested Pietro. “And nothing is spoiled—nothing. Now let me look and see if you have hurt your arm.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Julia, surveying a number of scratches and bruises. “That was the last time I fell off.”

  “You fell off before?”

  “Yes, twice. The bike’s too big, and I shouldn’t have ridden it when the tyres were flat, and the road was bad and they came off in the end and after that it...it wasn’t very easy to...

  Pietro, watching her throughout this speech, was appalled by what he saw. Questions rushed to his lips and he choked them back. Later; for the moment, it was enough to recognise that she—like himself—was being driven by necessity. She would not ride on a machine of that kind, so many miles, unless something compelled her. She was, perhaps, running away...but it was plain to see that she was almost at the end of her resources.

  “See—” Pietro went round recovering their fallen property. He dragged the bicycle out of the ditch, handed it to Julia to steady and then stuffed brushes—clean, dusty, muddy or bent brushes into his suitcase. He looked for his hat, saw its crown appearing out of the mud in the ditch, and decided to treat it as abandoned. He opened the suitcase again, selected a clothes brush and, kneeling before Julia, dusted the worst of the dirt from her skirt. He borrowed her handkerchief and cleaned her cuts as best he could and then, ignoring his own lamentable state, flashed his beautiful white teeth at her in his enchanting smile.

  “Now, my idea!” he said. “I am sick of carrying this box; if you will take him and sit on the bicycle, I will push you—and him.”

  “Oh—no! I’ll walk,” protested Julia. “You can’t possibly—”

  “Oh, no, no, no, no! That will not do,” said Pietro. “We have to push the bicycle and carry the box—yes? So we shall have two birds with one stick—one stone. Why shall we push this bicycle with no one upon it? I am too big, so you cannot push me; so you will sit up on it and I will push you. Now see how well we shall go.”

  Too tired to argue, grateful beyond words for the thought of progressing, even for a short distance, without having to use any effort, Julia, assisted by her new friend, sat perched side-saddle, the suitcase balanced on the handlebars, while Pietro walked firmly beside her, pushing, guiding the bicycle. It was slow, but it was progress. It would take time, but they would get there.

  She let a feeling of relief and repose flow over her. She had knocked a man into a ditch, but instead of the abuse, and worse, which she dreaded, he had proved a forgiving, an understanding man—a benefactor.

  To read The Lark Shall Sing by Elizabeth Cadell, look for it on kindle, kobo, paperback and Audible .com

  About the Author

  Elizabeth Vandyke was born in British India at the beginning of the 20th century. She married a young Scotsman and became Elizabeth Cadell, remaining in India until the illness and death of her much-loved husband found her in England, with a son and a daughter to bring up, at the beginning of World War 2. At the end of the war she published her first book, a lig
ht-hearted depiction of the family life she loved. Humour and optimism conquered sorrow and widowhood, and the many books she wrote won her a wide public, besides enabling her to educate her children (her son joined the British Navy and became an Admiral), and allowing her to travel, which she loved. Spain, France and Portugal provide a background to many of her books, although England and India were not forgotten. She finally settled in Portugal, where her married daughter still lives, and died when well into her 80s, much missed by her 7 grandchildren, who had all benefitted from her humour, wisdom and gentle teaching. British India is now only a memory, and the quiet English village life that Elizabeth Cadell wrote about has changed a great deal, but her vivid characters, their love affairs and the tears and laughter they provoke, still attract many readers, young and not-so-young, in this twenty-first century. Reprinting these books will please her fans and it is hoped will win her new ones.

  Also by Elizabeth Cadell

  My Dear Aunt Flora