A Dangerous Deceit by Marjorie Eccles Page A

we’re to believe Councillor Daley’s mayoral promises to provide three hundred new homes in Folbury—’ She broke off. ‘Oh, drat that squirrel! Stealing the bird food again!’ Jumping up, she rushed to the open window and clapped her hands. The squirrel remained motionless for a split second, then swung like a trapeze artist to the branch of a nearby tree, poured itself down the trunk and disappeared.
    Deborah resumed her seat, switching on a lamp as she did so. The room blossomed and the garden receded into darkness while into the quiet space came the vibrant chimes of the Holy Trinity church clock. ‘Now why,’ remarked Kay as its echoes ended, ‘didn’t that occur to me? That Aston didn’t want the warehouse but the land it stands on? And also that you,’ she added, smiling affectionately at her aunt, ‘are holding on to it until the council wants to build more houses?’ People were always doing that, herself included, underestimating sweet Aunt Deborah, who was really quite sharp, and could summon up an equally sharp tongue, too, when the occasion warranted it.
    â€˜Unlike Mr Aston, though, I shall see it’s sold at a fair price.’
    â€˜Not, I hope, at lower than the market value. That would be so like you, Aunt Deb, but not a good idea.’
    â€˜There’s very little spare money in the municipal kitty for new council housing,’ Deborah answered evasively, fingering the long, old-fashioned rope of amber beads round her neck. ‘But I wholeheartedly support the need for them. I hear they are marvellous. Three bedrooms, electricity and a bathroom! Ask Maisie Henshall what her sister thinks about living there. After a two-up and one-down in Arms Green, three children and a husband out of work, it must seem like a taste of heaven.’
    Heaven to Deborah Rees-Talbot, when she was a girl, had always seemed to be a matter of finding Mr Right, living in a nice house and filling its nursery with children. After all, what more could any girl hope for, however clever she was? And she was clever, she knew that without boasting, much more so than her sister Caroline, and at least as clever as either of their brothers. But whereas the boys were sent away to school to learn Latin and Greek and so on, she and Caroline were left at home to be taught by a governess who knew less than Deborah herself, she discovered as she grew older.
    It came upon her in later life that other women of her age and class had managed to overcome the same sort of restrictions and gone on to work at all manner of things – but they had been of a different nature to Deborah, not so naturally compliant and with perhaps more courage. And somehow Mr Right had never appeared on the horizon.
    When the South African war was over, her brother Hamer’s regiment had been sent to India, where he was in fact destined to serve for most of his army life. Her younger sister Caroline was married with a small daughter, and Osbert was also married by then with a son and another baby on the way, living in the old family home, Alma House, which Deborah herself had never left. Even more than usual, she had felt her life was without purpose, a maiden aunt, not exactly an embarrassment but certainly
de trop,
in her own eyes at least
.
    So that when Hamer wrote to her and encouraged her to join him in India, she had been unable to resist the spirit of adventure stirred in her by the idea. When she arrived, it wasn’t the heat and dust, the snakes and the mosquitoes, the relentless sun, the monotonous rains or the constant battle against infections and upset digestions that brought disillusion; it was the knowledge, imparted to her by way of a joke, that she was thought of as just another girl in the hordes of nicely brought up young women who regularly went out to India expressly to catch a husband – the Fishing Fleet, as they were derisively known.
    The Fishing Fleet! She was