River Lodge by Elizabeth Cadell

After inheriting a big house in the country from an uncle but no accompanying funds, Roger and his wife, Ruth, decided to turn it into an expensive guest house, with help from their cousin Brenda, who had worked there for years as the uncle’s household manager. Now the first guests are arriving as a sort of practice run – Roger’s brother Paul, an unemployed actor; his beautiful ex, Felicity, and Martin, the theatrical producer to whom she is now linked; Felicity’s younger sister, Nan, and her three year-old twins; Roger and Brenda’s aunt, Lady Warne, who warns her family not to trade on their relationship in public; Ruth’s uncle and aunt; and Goosey Horder, who was in Roger’s regiment, and brought an artist friend with him.

Roger is such a curmudgeon that I wondered if Ruth was going to meet someone else but she is very fond of him. Although they are Some of the tension comes from a romantic triangle of Paul, Felicity, and Martin: Felicity does not really possess the necessary talent for a stage career and Paul (with rude accuracy) when they were playing opposite to each other, suggested she quit, take up cooking, and marry him. Felicity was offended (as I think anyone would be, merited or not) and Paul wound up leaving the show, and has had a hard time getting parts since, and is devasted by the growing intimacy between Felicity and Martin. Some humor derives from Felicity’s sister, Nan, who scams onto anyone in sight to take care of her twins so she does not have to. The way she disappears, leaving virtual strangers in charge of them, might result in the children being removed from her care in the 21st century, but in 1948 it’s an amusing gimmick. And we’re shipping Paul and Felicity so we don’t care if Martin gets more and more angry; in fact, it’s a good plot development:

Martin made an attempt to choke down his rage.

“Don’t think me too interfering,” he said with as much politeness as he could get into his voice, “but wouldn’t it be a good idea if you got off that sofa and looked after your own children for a change?”

One rainy day, Ruth and Brenda, accompanied by Felicity to get a break from the twins, and Ruth’s aunt, Mrs. Beddington, go to town to shop and enjoy a nice lunch at a restaurant. They are unexpectedly joined by Roger and Paul, so I wondered who is back at River Lodge preparing lunch for the guests. It is never clear who is doing the cooking but there are certainly no scenes in the kitchen! Brenda says, “We’re lucky to have two good girls living on the place, with a gardener father and an occasional-help mother,” but There is also a man who brings the male guests their morning tea (presumably not the gardener). Roger and Ruth definitely pour drinks for their guests and, at one point, Ruth is asked to organize food for a picnic and Brenda talks about producing a tray of tea, but they certainly aren’t laboring over a hot stove! I’m not sure how the River Lodge is going to break even, let alone support three adults but they don’t seem worried:

The owners of River Lodge passed the rest of the day quietly but busily. It was odd to have the house full one moment and empty the next. To-morrow it would be full again – and so it would go on.

“Do you like the empty feeling?” Ruth asked her husband.

“Yes, replied Roger. “They go, but they leave their money behind.”

“We didn’t have any murders,” commented Brenda in a disappointed tone.

This is a hard-to-find Cadell I found in a large print edition and which her descendants have brought back into print. While I don’t think it has the sparkle of her best books, I do enjoy books with a hotel or B&B setting and liked the varied secondary characters, especially the unappreciated Goosey.

Title: River Lodge
Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: Ulverscroft, hardcover, 1978 (originally published in 1948)
Genre: Fiction
Source: Library