She interviewed the workmen, and then returned to the drawing-room where she sat down at the desk and wrote some letters.
Amongst the correspondence that remained to be answered was a letter from some cousins of Giles who lived in London.
Any time she wanted to come to London they begged her to come and stay with them at their house in Chelsea.
Raymond West was a well-known (rather than popular) novelist and his wife Joan, Gwenda knew, was a painter. It would be fun to go and stay with them, though probably they would think she was a most terrible Philistine. Neither Giles nor I are a bit highbrow, reflected Gwenda.
A sonorous gong boomed pontifically from the hall. Surrounded by a great deal of carved and tortured black wood, the gong had been one of Giles’s aunt’s prized possessions. Mrs. Cocker herself appeared to derive distinct pleasure from sounding it and always gave full measure. Gwenda put her hands to her ears and got up.
She walked quickly across the drawingroom to the wall by the far window and then brought herself up short with an exclamation of annoyance. It was the third time she’d done that. She always seemed to expect to be able to walk through solid wall into the dining-room next door.
She went back across the room and out into the front hall and then round the angle of the drawing-room wall and so along to the dining-room. It was a long way round, and it would be annoying in winter, for the front hall was draughty and the only central heating was in the drawing-room and dining-room and two bedrooms upstairs.
I don’t see, thought Gwenda to herself as she sat down at the charming Sheraton dining table which she had just bought at vast expense in lieu of Aunt Lavender’s massive square mahogany one, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a doorway made through from the drawing-room to the dining-room. I’ll talk to Mr. Sims about it when he comes this afternoon.
Mr. Sims was the builder and decorator, a persuasive middle-aged man with a husky voice and a little notebook which he always held at the ready, to jot down any expensive idea that might occur to his patrons.
Mr. Sims, when consulted, was keenly appreciative.
“Simplest thing in the world, Mrs. Reed –and a great improvement, if I may say so.” “Would it be very expensive?” Gwenda was by now a little doubtful of Mr. Sims’s assents and enthusiasms. There had been a little unpleasantness over various extras not included in Mr. Sims’s original estimate “A mere trifle,” said Mr. Sims, his husky voice indulgent and reassuring. Gwenda looked more doubtful than ever. It was Mr. Sims’s trifles that she had learnt to distrust. His straightforward estimates were studiously moderate.
“I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Reed,” said Mr. Sims coaxingly, “I’ll get Taylor to have a look when he’s finished with the dressing-room this afternoon, and then I can give you an exact idea. Depends what the wall’s like.” Gwenda assented. She wrote to Joan West thanking her for her invitation, but saying that she would not be leaving Dillmouth at present since she wanted to keep an eye on the workmen. Then she went out for a walk along the front and enjoyed the sea breeze. She came back into the drawing-room, and Taylor, Mr.
Sims’s leading workman, straightened up from the corner and greeted her with a grin.
“Won’t be no difficulty about this, Mrs.
Reed,” he said. “Been a door here before, there has. Somebody as didn’t want it has just had it plastered over.” Gwenda was agreeably surprised. How extraordinary, she thought, that I’ve always seemed to feel there was a door there. She remembered the confident way she had walked to it at lunch-time. And remembering it, quite suddenly, she felt a tiny shiver of uneasiness. When you came to think of it, it was really rather odd…. Why should she have felt so sure that there was a door there? There was no sign of it on the outside wall. How had she guessed — known — that there was a door just there?