So This Is Love

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Sheridan Adams, young, attractive, but saddened by disillusionment, is totally unlike the fat, smiling, middle-aged housekeeper Richard Hayden has in mind when he advertises in the local paper. A young widower, left alone with his small son Dick, he badly needs someone to look after his home. Sherry, though she may not be quite the person he has pictured, suits the post admirably. Having found a home for herself and her little daughter Anne, she is able to forget her troubles for a time. But her tranquillity is short-lived and it is only after many misunderstandings that Sherry can find true happiness. A compelling classic romance from the inimitable Patricia Robins, first published in 1953 and now available for the first time in eBook.

Release date: April 9, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

It had had a strange beginning – this friendship between Richard Hayden and his young housekeeper Sheridan Adams. Sherry’s few friends said it was an amazing coincidence. Richard’s little son, Dick, called it ‘jolly lucky’. Sherry herself felt it to be the first decent break life had offered her for ages.

It had started one Friday when she had picked up the local paper and looked through the ‘Domestic’ column to find her advertisement. She had phrased and rephrased it so often that the printed words were unfamiliar after her pencilled efforts on sheet after sheet of paper. Then she caught sight of an ad. so similar to her own that it attracted immediate attention.

WANTED. Capable housekeeper to take complete charge; widower with child aged six. Nice home for right person.

Then – and here, perhaps, was the coincidence – followed her own ad.

WANTED. Post as housekeeper by capable lady with child. Could take complete charge.

One above the other, they seemed already joined by their joint requirements.

‘It’s too good to be true,’ Sherry had thought, excited in spite of herself. For a moment, the grey-green eyes clouded as she thought: ‘He won’t want Annabel if he has a child of his own. She would be relegated to the kitchen – the staff quarters. She’d grow up in a position which wouldn’t be fair to her.’

‘Why be so pessimistic?’ Susan, her dearest friend, had replied when Sherry told her about the ads. over lunch. ‘He may be fond of kids. He may be glad that Annabel is old enough to keep his child company. He’s probably terribly rich and will end up marrying you and having to advertise for another housekeeper!’

Sherry had laughed, her beautiful almond-shaped eyes lighting with humour and her wide, generous mouth curling upwards. Glancing at her, Susan sighed. It was really a shame that a girl as beautiful and sweet natured as Sheridan Adams should have had such a raw deal from life – should be forced into taking a job as a cook-general – for that’s what it really amounted to. At twenty-eight, with her education, background and looks, Sherry should be having a wonderful time as Bob’s wife, entertaining for him in his huge country house, hunting, dancing, holidays abroad – lacking for nothing financially or spiritually.

Instead, Bob had had to be killed in that terrible hunting accident and left Sherry at twenty-four a widow with a baby only a few months old.

Bob, being Bob, had left no will but, as his next-of-kin, Sherry inherited everything – the gorgeous old house, his large private income which, even after death duties had been extracted, still left enough for her to live a life of comparative luxury. His death might not have been such a ghastly tragedy if it had not brought to life an episode in Bob’s past that was to alter completely Sherry’s and Anne’s future.

Bob de Lage had been a handsome, gay, irresponsible, young man with more than his fair share of good looks, charm and wealth. Perhaps it was those very things which had made him so irresponsible. Susan was not in the least surprised when Sherry, quiet, home-loving, sensitive, humorous, was swept into marriage after a crazy whirl-wind courtship. Susan felt Bob could have swept her off her feet if he’d ever tried. Every woman loved him – but none other so whole-heartedly as Sherry. Susan, who had known Sherry since childhood, was fully aware that it was the first serious love-affair in Sherry’s life and that with her nature, generous and impulsive beneath the quiet thoughtful exterior, it must always be all or nothing. With Bob, it had been all her heart and her heart had been broken not so much by Bob’s death, for she might always have treasured his memory, but by the astounding piece of information that came from Bob’s solicitors: Bob had been married before – and Sherry was not legally his wife.

‘But who was she? Why didn’t we know about her?’ Questions had poured from Susan’s lips when she arrived at Bob’s home in answer to Sherry’s telegram.

Sherry, white faced with deep shadows beneath her eyes, but unnaturally calm and untearful since her one outburst of crying the week Bob had been killed, said in a whisper: ‘She is a French chorus girl. Bob married her one week-end in Paris, the day after he had met her. They spent a fortnight’s honeymoon on the Riviera and then Bob left her. He’s been sending her money all these years. Apparently, he realized he had made a mistake but she wouldn’t divorce him. The solicitor told me he isn’t sure whether it is because of Bob’s money or because her religion forbids divorce. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Bob knew he was committing bigamy when he married me. I could have forgiven him if he had told me. I might have… oh, what does it matter what I might have done?’ Her voice broke, and she continued in a whisper, ‘I loved him. But what I shall never forgive him for is – Anne.’

Annabel, Sherry’s infant daughter asleep in her pram in the beautiful grounds of Hardley Manor – Anne, with no right to her father’s name – and Sherry had been so wildly happy when the baby was born. Susan had visited her in hospital and Sherry, starry-eyed and proud, had vowed there was nothing more she wanted from life – unless it were Bob’s son – later.

Gradually the dreadful tangle had sorted itself out. Bob’s parents who lived in London, had wanted to buy the French girl’s silence. They minded only because of the scandal attached to Bob’s name. They admitted his blame but could not concern themselves with what was past. It was the future that counted and they were afraid of what people would say. They had tried to persuade Sherry to stay on at Hardley Manor – or else close it temporarily, and go to their London house. To them, Sherry was Bob’s widow, but to Sherry, facts were facts. The French girl was Bob’s wife – his heir – and none of this belonged to her – the house, his money, his name. Only Anne was hers; and her pride. Steadfastly, she refused to be pitied or cajoled by her erstwhile ‘in-laws’, or persuaded by the family solicitor to ‘go on as if nothing had happened’. How could she, when her heart as well as her life was broken into irreparable pieces?

She had packed only her own personal belongings which she had brought with her when she was married, and together with Anne, she had gone to London to live with Susan. Anne was placed in a crèche, and Sherry got a job selling clothes in a fashionable store so that she could pay her own and Anne’s way. The staff at Hardley Manor were given notice and Sherry told Bob’s parents that she intended to start life again and that since she would rather forget everything to do with Bob and the past two years, she would prefer not to see them again.

‘They didn’t care about seeing me,’ she told Susan rather bitterly, after her final interview with them. ‘They only cared about Anne – said she was Bob’s child and all they had left to live for. I’m afraid I was a little cruel. I told them that Anne belonged only to me and I would rather she grew up to know nothing whatever about the man who was her father. I had to be cruel – for Anne’s sake. As to – Bob’s – wife – they can do as they please about her. I never want to see her and the money doesn’t interest me.’

Susan had admired Sherry’s attitude even while she wondered if she would have had the courage to do the same thing in her friend’s place. After all, money did matter, and Sherry, who, even before she was married, had been used to a reasonable standard of luxury, was finding it extremely hard to pinch and scrape. The long hours of standing at her job took two stone off her weight and she was far too thin. Her cheeks were hollowed and there were always violet shadows under her eyes, for, when she got home, there was still Anne to be coped with – Anne’s night and early morning bottles, then, as she grew older, wakeful nights teething. She never had enough sleep, and if it hadn’t been for Susan who did all the cooking, she wouldn’t have had enough to eat.

What had happened to Hardley Manor, Bob’s wife and his parents, neither she nor Sherry knew for, true to her word, Sherry refused to see them or even correspond with them. That phase of her life was past and she lived now only for Anne; was friendly only with Susan and the girls she worked with, dropping her old acquaintances of her ‘married’ life and leaving Bob’s family to make what excuses they chose for her disappearance.

Susan, who knew Sherry better than anyone, understood what her friend suffered, how low were her spirits when she grew tired, how much it worried her to have to leave Anne always in the care of strangers; having no real say in her upbringing, none of the real joys of her babyhood. Anne’s first words, her first steps, her gay happy laughter occurred in the daytime. By six o’clock at night, when Sherry collected her from the crèche, Anne was sleepy, sometimes irritable and wanting little but her cot and a warm drink.

‘I’ll have to change my job,’ Sherry had said finally, when Anne was four and practically a stranger to her mother. ‘I must see more of her. If I got a job – say, as a housekeeper, she could be with me all the time.’

‘A housekeeper!’ Susan had echoed. ‘But you’d hate that, Sherry dear – cooking, cleaning, counting the laundry!’

‘I wouldn’t hate anything if I had Anne with me,’ Sherry said, glancing down at the sleeping child. Anne, at four, was oddly unlike either of her parents. She had Sherry’s dark, wavy hair, and the blue of her eyes was Bob’s colouring, but the shape was different. Her nose was tip-tilted, unlike Sherry’s which was longish and straight, and her mouth a childish rosebud, showing no signs of her mother’s wide, generous lips. Sherry was glad that she wasn’t like Bob. Three years had helped to soften the blow, as well as the memory, and she could even forget him for weeks at a stretch until some mannerism of Anne’s brought him back to mind, and all her suffering with it.

‘I could always pack the job in if I didn’t like it,’ Sherry said, continuing their conversation. ‘But I think it would be best from all points of view. You’ve been terribly good putting me up so long, Susan. It isn’t really fair on you, especially now there’s Gerald. You have every right as an engaged couple to have a bit of privacy and a fat lot of chance there is at the moment with either Anne or me barging in at the wrong moment! Oh, I know you are far too nice to admit it, and so is Gerald, and I don’t want you to think it’s because of you both that I’m going. I’ve been considering it for ages and it’s for myself. I must see more of my child.’

Susan hadn’t argued, partly because she knew Sherry could be very obstinate once her mind was made up, partly because it was true that she and Gerald never had two moments alone together. If Susan were really going to settle down in some job, they might even get married. They could afford it if Gerald got the rise he expected in the new year.

So the advertisement had been composed and sent in. And here it was in print, directly above one from a widower wanting a housekeeper. It really was a coincidence.

Sherry had taken a day off from the office and gone down to the address in Buckinghamshire to see the ‘widower and child’. They lived in a very large, rambling modern house on the side of a hill overlooking the Vale of Aylesbury. The house was not particularly attractive, nor unpleasant to look at, but the surroundings were perfectly beautiful and, as Sherry came to know later, belonged mostly to the National Trust.

Sherry was shown into the drawing-room by what was obviously the ‘daily help’ and asked to wait. While she studied the furnishings, which were tasteful if somewhat shabby and uncared for and lacking any feminine touch, a small boy came into the room and studied her carefully.

‘Are you the vicar’s wife?’ he asked after a while.

Sherry judged his age to be five, though she knew from the advertisement that he was a year older. This must be the ‘child’. He was a small but sturdily built little boy with sandy hair and freckles and a rather over-serious expression that was not in tune with his humorous little face.

‘No!’ she said smiling. ‘I’ve come in answer to your father’s advertisement for a housekeeper.’ She wondered if he knew about it.

‘Oh, so you’re one – a housekeeper, I mean. Daddy said you’d probably be middle-aged and very fat and smiling. You’re not a bit like that.’

Sherry smiled, but it was a little ruefully. If that was the type of woman his father wanted to employ, she wouldn’t get the job. She wished she hadn’t worn her new suit and that absurd, if smart, little beret. She should have dressed down and not up to the part.

‘I’m afraid I’m not,’ she said. ‘Will your father be coming soon?’

‘No!’ the small boy said, and then, seeing that more was required of him, he went on: ‘Daddy said I wasn’t to ask him to come in until I’d made up my mind. You see, if I don’t like you, I don’t have to have you.’

This time Sherry laughed outright. She had an intuitive picture of some tall man saying to the small boy, ‘You don’t have to worry, old boy, if you don’t like her, we needn’t employ her. You can take a quick look at her and make up your mind. She’ll probably be middle-aged and fat and motherly.’

‘Why are you laughing?’ the child asked.

Sherry bit her lip.

She knew from experience that children don’t like to be laughed at, so she said:

‘Oh, I just like laughing. I have a little girl, you know. She’s younger than you, but we always laugh a lot. It makes us feel happy.’

The little boy considered this gravely, then said:

‘I laugh sometimes, but not very often. My mummy used to laugh a lot. But she’s gone to live with Father God, you know. I think it was jolly unkind of her to go off like that without taking Daddy ’n me too. Daddy says we’ll go and live there too one day, but goodness only knows when.’

The unconscious pathos touched a weak spot in Sherry’s carefully rehearsed armour. She had meant to judge this job and its prospects so unemotionally. Emotion always brought pain and this time she had meant to be hard-headed, level-headed. Instead, she was forcing herself not to put her arms around this pathetic little figure as she knelt on one knee beside him and took his hands, saying:

‘If I came to live here, we’d laugh a lot, just as you used to do. My little girl, Anne, is very funny. She’d make you laugh, too. What’s your name?’

‘Dick! Is your little girl like you?’

‘To look at? No, not very. She’s not like anyone, except herself.’

This made Dick laugh.

‘Well, you’re always like yourself, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve only got to look in the mirror! I’m not like my mother either. Nor my daddy. He’s ever so tall and I’m only three foot six, cause we measured me last night on the nursery door, so I know that’s right. I growed five inches last year.’

‘Then you’re heaps taller than my Anne. But she’s only four. She’s a real tomboy. She likes climbing trees and she keeps a snail she found in Hyde Park in a matchbox.’

‘Gosh! I’ve got a beetle in my box. Goodness only knows why – or that’s what Mary says. She’s the “daily”, you know. She opened the front door because Daddy said it would make a good ’pression. What is a good ’pression?’

Sherry fought back another smile.

‘Well, it’s what I hoped to make when I came here. I try to look and behave my very best so that you and your daddy think you would like to have me here.’

‘But why do you want to come here? Mary says the stairs are a death-trap, but I haven’t seen any traps. Daddy says the house is far too big with just us and there’s absolutely nothing to do all day. Of course, Daddy goes to work. When I’m grown up I shall go to work, too. Daddy calls it the “Old Bind” and that’s what I call school. I like school. It’s fun there, and there are lots of boys my age to play with. We do lessons, too. I can read and write, you know. Can your little girl?’

Sherry was about to answer when the sitting-room door opened and a tall man in his late thirties came into the room. He was frowning slightly and looked harassed and worried. Sherry noticed that the sandy hair was touched at the temples with grey, and that his face was long and thin with an unhappy mouth.

Dick turned to his father and grinned.

‘I thought you weren’t coming till I called, Daddy?’ he said, ignoring, or perhaps unaware of the embarrassment on his father’s face.

‘Well, you were such a long time, old chap, and I thought Mrs Adams would be wondering–’

‘Oh, we were talking,’ Sherry broke in quickly, feeling a fraud at the sound of her maiden name with ‘Mrs’ before it. But she had no wish to explain her private life to strangers and it seemed the easiest way since she would not again take Bob’s name.

‘She’s ever so nice, Daddy,’ Dick said, clinging on to his father’s hand and jumping up and down. ‘She’s got a little girl called Anne who’s got a snail like my beetle.’

‘That’s nice, old chap! Now run along up to the nursery, or else go to the kitchen and tell Mary to get some tea sent up there. We’ll be up in about ten minutes.’

‘Are you going to view her now?’ Dick asked as he went obediently to the door.

His father shot a quick, agonized look at Sherry but, seeing her smile, his face seemed suddenly to relax its tension and he smiled too.

‘Children!’ he said. ‘They can be very embarrassing.’

‘But refreshing, too,’ Sherry said. ‘As your son would put it, goodness only knows what we’d do without them.’

‘He’s picked that up from Mary. Heaven knows what else he’s learnt from her. Still, she’s fond of him – and kind. Won’t you sit down?’

The tension was back in his voice and Sherry realized that this interview was as much a strain for him as for her; that he was wretchedly embarrassed, if not shy. Like a lot of Englishmen, he was clearly out of his métier in domestic affairs. To put him at ease, Sherry said:

‘Dick has already told me that I am not what you expected. I’m afraid I also omitted to tell you on the phone last night that I have a little girl – she’s four. I shall quite understand if you feel, therefore, that I’m not the kind of person you wanted.’

Dick’s father handed her a cigarette and lit it before replying. His face was turned away from hers when he spoke and was reserved and thoughtful

‘To be quite honest, Mrs Adams, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and when you telephoned, I hadn’t made up my mind what I wanted. You see – my wife – she only died last year. My son went to his grand-parents for six months and I went abroad. Since we both returned here, we have made do with Mary.’ He looked at her as if apologizing for the obviously inadequate arrangements. He continued in a low, jerky voice, filled with acute suffering which Sherry recognized only too well. ‘My wife’s sister wanted to come and keep house, but I felt – that I didn’t want anyone around – just Dick and myself. He didn’t care very much for his aunt though she’s quite a nice girl. Still, that’s getting off the point. The idea was that we’d live here just during term time and Dick would go back to his grand-parents for his holidays. But he said the other evening that he didn’t want to go away from me. Naturally, I don’t want to part with him. It was only for his sake – so I realized I’d have to make better arrangements than Mary. Dick will need to be properly looked after during the holidays and so it seemed that a housekeeper was required. I had in mind a–’

‘Plump, motherly woman, about middle age,’ Sherry finished for him. He met her eyes and his face lightened for an instant into a smile. ‘Yes!’ he agreed. ‘I thought that would be best for Dick.’

In one of her impulsive moments, Sherry identified herself with this worried, harassed father and forgot her own interests in the situation.

‘That type of person is very hard to find these days. They were the now almost extinct breed of Englishwomen reared to domestic service. They started at the bottom and worked up to the trusted, respectable position of housekeeper. Well, they are all too old for work now, and the new generation didn’t go into domestic service. The war changed that. They wanted something better – more exciting, better paid. You’ll only find such types as war widows who are forced to take a job to keep themselves and their children, untrained and for the most part unreliable. I’m sure it would be better if you changed your idea and got someone young for Dick – someone who would still be adaptable to your way of life and – and…’ she broke off, the blood rushing to her face, as she realized it was someone like herself she had the temerity to recommend to him! What must he be thinking of her. ‘Look – I wasn’t trying to force myself – force you – I mean, I wasn’t considering myself when I spoke just now. I’d forgotten I was even here – oh, dear – I really think I’d better go.’

This time it was he who broke in. His eyes were lit again with that curiously gentle smile, and the sadness had momentarily gone.

‘No, I think you’d better stay. I think you’re right! And I know you weren’t thinking of yourself just now. It’s perfectly obvious that you are far too young to have had such a job before – if any job, come to that. You spoke from your heart and I appreciate your consideration for Dick. Maybe it is better for him to hav. . .