Читать книгу In Loving Memory - Emma Page - Страница 8

CHAPTER 4

‘I HAVE TIME for a quick cup of coffee,’ Richard Knight said, smiling at Gina. He would never do more than smile at her in front of the maid who had answered his ring at the door and who was still hovering in the hall, giving the secretary an enquiring glance. The servants at Whitegates were by now all quite certain that romance was brewing between Miss Thorson and Dr Burnett’s young partner. They viewed the developing situation without envy, with interest and pleasure. A pleasant young woman, Gina Thorson, one who had seen hard times somewhere, not a girl to give herself airs with the domestic staff – not like Mr David’s wife up at Tall Trees, who fancied herself more than somewhat in spite of the fact that she had apparently sprung from nowhere at exactly the right moment to catch Mr David and marry him.

‘Could we have some coffee, please?’ Gina smiled at the maid, making an ally of her, as was her way. ‘Dr Knight hasn’t much time.’

‘Certainly, Miss Right away.’ The girl disappeared in the direction of the kitchen quarters.

‘I’m just off on my rounds,’ Richard said. He slid an arm round Gina’s waist and dropped a light kiss on her cheek. She was aware as always of a slight distance between them. Until his ring was actually on her finger he would always treat her with a trace of reserve and formality. ‘How’s the old man?’ he asked, walking up to the great fireplace and looking down at the logs burning in the grate.

Gina followed him. ‘He seems to be doing very well. He’s getting restless, I suppose that’s a good sign.’ Richard gave a little nod. ‘Doctor Burnett was in earlier this morning, Mr Mallinson was pestering him to let him get up.’

Richard raised his head. ‘And is he going to let him?’

‘Yes, for a very short time this afternoon, Mrs Parkes said. Just to sit in a chair in his room. I don’t suppose that will satisfy him for long, though.’

The maid came in with the tray of coffee. Gina began to pour it out. ‘Kenneth Mallinson is here,’ she said. ‘Did you know?’

‘I knew he’d been sent for, I didn’t know whether or not he’d arrived.’

Gina handed him a cup. ‘He got here about ten minutes ago. I didn’t see him, Mrs Parkes told me he was here.’ She inclined her head towards the curving stairs. ‘He’s up there now, with his father. Doctor Burnett said he could have visitors, provided they didn’t stay too long or excite him in any way.’

Richard stirred his coffee thoughtfully. ‘I should have thought seeing his elder son again, after all these years, might be rather distressing. I don’t know that I would have allowed it at such an early stage.’

‘Oh but you see, Mr Mallinson particularly wanted to see him, he asked Doctor Burnett to send for him as soon as he was taken ill. It would have upset him far more if the visit hadn’t been allowed.’

Richard began to drink his coffee. ‘Yes, I suppose so. In any case Burnett knows what he’s doing. He’s a very sound man and of course he knows everyone here for miles around, knows all the family ins and outs, the feuds and alliances. It all helps when you’re trying to do what’s best for a patient.’

‘Has he always practised here?’ Gina asked. ‘I would have imagined a clever doctor like that would have been tempted away to a city, or a big hospital somewhere.’ She knew that Richard himself was only putting in a year or two with Dr Burnett, his sights were set on broader horizons, Rockley would not hold him for ever.

‘He was born here,’ Richard said. ‘He’s a man who sends down deep roots, a man with strong loyalties. But he did leave Rockley, he spent the greater part of his working life up north, in an industrial area of Yorkshire, I thought you knew that.’

Gina laid down her cup and stared at him in surprise. ‘No, I had no idea. I thought he’d always practised here. I had the impression – from the servants, I suppose – that he’d been here for years and years. Mr Mallinson always treats him as if they’ve known each other all their lives.’

‘They have, in a way. They were boys together in Rockley. Poor boys, both of them. Whitegates was owned by a county family then. Henry Mallinson’s father was a groom and Dr Burnett’s father was the gardener here at Whitegates. He was born in that cottage where the Fosters live now. They were bright lads, both of them. Mallinson came up the hard way, using his brains and hands to build up the business, Burnett read books and won scholarships. He came back here to practise after he qualified. Then, when he was about thirty or thirty-five, he went off to Yorkshire and didn’t come back till about ten years ago. I suppose he found he was growing old, thought he’d like to end his days where he was born. Not an uncommon wish.’

‘Did he never marry?’ Gina spoke the words with a trace of hesitation, hoping that Richard wouldn’t think she was sending out a feeler of any kind. Marriage had never been mentioned between them, but she knew that he had considered it, that during their visit to his home he would make up his mind.

Richard shook his head. ‘No, not so far as I know. He certainly never mentions a wife and I’ve never heard that he married. Rather surprising really, when I come to think about it. A wife is very useful to a doctor, most doctors marry. And Burnett, in particular, I would have thought he was the type to fall in love deeply and permanently.’ He laid down his cup. ‘By the way, Gina, I haven’t pressed you, but are you coming with me? Next month, when I go home? I’d like you to meet my parents, I’d like it very much.’ He gave her a level, direct, unsmiling look. ‘It’s important to me.’

She felt her heart give a sharp leap. ‘I’d like to, Richard, I’d be very pleased to. It’s only—’ She broke off and bit her lip.

‘Only what? What silly notion have you got into your head?’

It was utterly impossible for her to open her mouth and mention such a ridiculous trifle as her clothes. A man would never understand, and particularly a man like Richard. He would brush the words aside with impatience. But it does matter, Gina thought, it matters a lot to make the right impression. With the right clothes, I’d feel at ease, adequate, able to hold my own, however grand his parents are.

‘They mightn’t like me,’ she heard herself say, and was instantly depressed at the stupidity, the childishness of the remark. ‘I’m no one,’ she said, plunging even deeper into foolishness. She abandoned all pretence and let the words come out in a rush. ‘I’ve no family, no background. Your parents are well-to-do, they live in a big house, they’d wonder why on earth you bothered to bring home a girl like me.’ It was out, she’d said it. She closed her eyes for an instant in despair.

A moment later she was astounded to hear Richard laugh. A deep amused laugh, echoing round the hall. She jerked her eyes open.

‘You silly child!’ He bent down and put his arms round her, kissed her lightly and firmly on the mouth.

‘You’re someone very special, to me,’ he said, suddenly serious again, looking down into her eyes. ‘Don’t ever let me hear you talk such nonsense again. My parents will love you – as I do.’

‘Oh, Richard—’ Upstairs she heard a door open and close. She pulled back from his arms and glanced nervously towards the stairs.

‘It’s all right,’ he said in a low voice. ‘There’s no need to act like a startled fawn.’ But his manner resumed its customary trace of formality. ‘I take it you’ll be coming with me, then? If your objections are nothing more serious than that?’

She drew a deep breath. ‘All right, I’ll come.’

He patted her hand. ‘Good girl, I knew you’d see sense.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now I really must be off or my patients’ relatives will all be ringing the surgery to find out where I’ve got to.’

She went with him to the door. ‘I’ll phone you,’ he said. ‘This evening or tomorrow, it depends how I’m fixed. We’ll go out and have a meal together as soon as I can manage a couple of hours off.’ He brushed her cheek with his lips and was gone.

Gina closed the door and stood with her back to it, her hands clasped together. I will go, she thought, and I’ll be a credit to him. I’ll get the suède coat and the skirt and the sweater. Shoes, bag and gloves. I’ll get them all. Somehow. I’ll look poised, elegant, suitable. I won’t let Richard down. She unclasped her hands, stood up very straight and looked up at the stairs towards the corridor beyond, towards the room behind whose door old Mr Mallinson lay.

‘Doing very well indeed,’ Kenneth Mallinson said. ‘Still plenty of room for expansion of course.’ He gave a little smile. ‘We’re not in the same class as you, not by a long chalk, but our balance sheet is pretty healthy.’

Henry Mallinson put the tips of his fingers together. ‘No, I don’t suppose you are in the same class as me. Took me fifty years to build the firm up. And things were different then. More opportunity for a young man with vision. Not so many rules and regulations, taxation wasn’t so crippling.’ He looked back into the past for an instant with pleasure, remembering the old days, the struggles, the triumphs, the near-disasters. He gave a little smiling sigh, wishing it was all to do again, that he could turn back the clock and start the whole long battle all over again.

‘There isn’t a thing I’d do differently,’ he said suddenly, following his own train of thought. ‘Not a thing.’ He’d enjoyed every moment of it, the difficulties and conflicts, perhaps those most of all.

‘Nothing?’ Kenneth asked in an altered tone. He wasn’t thinking of the business, he was thinking of his mother, of her spirit bruised and crushed over the long years of marriage to a man whose first and only thought was for the firm he had reared with so much toil and sweat. He was thinking of his own quarrel with his father and the years of silence. ‘Nothing at all?’

Henry Mallinson raised his eyes. ‘Not a thing,’ he said. ‘I’d do it all again exactly as before.’

Kenneth stood up and walked over to the window. He stood looking down at the sweep of lawn, at Foster kneeling by a bed, patting the earth around a plant. One learns nothing from the past, he thought, one learns nothing from one’s mistakes, we are all bounded inexorably by the limitations of our own natures. Myself as well as other men. He felt suddenly and acutely depressed.

‘You’re quite settled up north, then?’ his father’s voice asked. He didn’t add, ‘Not thinking of getting married one of these days?’ It wouldn’t have occurred to him to ask. A confirmed bachelor, his elder son, he would retreat year by year further into his shell, growing more solitary, more self-sufficient. Any grandchildren Henry Mallinson might hope for must be looked for elsewhere. The firm would not be carried on, nurtured and served by any descendants of Kenneth’s. ‘You’ve given up all notion of coming back here?’ He didn’t say, ‘Of coming home.’ Whitegates was no longer home to Kenneth, hadn’t been home to him since the day he’d followed his mother to Rockley churchyard where she lay at last in peace, beyond unhappiness, beyond the possibility of pain.

Kenneth turned from the window. ‘I don’t know,’ he said with an air of lightness. ‘I haven’t totally ceased to consider it.’ His own business concern might go bust in a matter of days. He had to keep the door open, he might be very glad indeed to creep back to Rockley and make a niche for himself in the family business. But what kind of a niche would it be? Would David even contemplate relinquishing command? He gave a fractional shake of his head at the notion. No, David would not contemplate it. He would take very great pleasure in assigning his elder brother to some inferior position, in issuing orders and waiting for them to be carried out.

I couldn’t do it, Kenneth thought. But reality stared back at him implacably. He might have to do it, there might be no other conceivable course.

‘There’s always room for a little more capital in a growing concern,’ he said, smiling at his father. ‘I don’t have to tell you that. Do you fancy a sound investment? I could offer you very good terms.’ He smiled again, a shade less cheerfully. ‘Seeing it’s one of the family.’

His father gave him a long shrewd look. What was it about his elder son that had always irritated him? Why had he been content to turn his affairs over to David, without resentment, without perpetual fault-finding and interference, when he had been totally unable to leave Kenneth alone for one single day to run the firm as he thought best? He didn’t know, and he would never know now, it was by many a long year too late to find out.

‘I wasn’t altogether fair to you in the past,’ he said slowly. He saw Kenneth’s eyes jerk open at such an acknowledgment.

That’s how he sees me, Henry thought, a man who could never admit to a mistake. But we change when death looks us in the face, not by very much perhaps, but we change all the same.

‘There was never enough time,’ Henry said without regret. ‘Never enough time to look at every aspect of living.’ An apology of sorts. As much as he could ever bring himself to utter. It would have to do.

Kenneth looked down at his father. It crossed his mind for an instant that he could reach down and touch his father’s hand, pale and oddly fragile-looking, the fingers extended against the coverlet. But he remembered his mother lying there in Rockley churchyard and the impulse passed.

‘I’d like to put a little money into your business,’ his father said. He gave a brief smile. ‘I’d like to diversify my interests. What figure did you have in mind?’

Kenneth drew a deep breath. ‘Twenty-five thousand,’ he said without emotion. Might as well allow a margin. ‘Thirty if you prefer. It can all be gone into.’

‘I’ll speak to my solicitor. He can look into it. How long will you be staying?’

Kenneth took a pace or two about the room. Impossible to stand still now when relief flowed violently through his limbs.

‘As long as you wish. My junior partner is a very sound man, he can carry on till I get back.’ I’ll phone him the moment I get to the pub, he thought. I’ll tell him it’s all right about the loan, he can turn that job down now. With immense difficulty he restrained himself from laughing aloud, so great was his sense of release.

‘A few days then,’ his father said. ‘I know what business is, you can’t stay here for ever.’ He flung him a glance that held a trace of appeal. ‘You’ll be down again, I imagine. Before very long.’

‘Oh yes, I’ll be down again. It isn’t all that long a run in the car.’ Strange to contemplate the notion of being on visiting terms at Whitegates. He’d have to put things on to some kind of acceptable footing with David and his wife. Matters would have to be handled very delicately there.

‘My solicitor can draw up a new will while he’s about it,’ Henry Mallinson said, almost off-hand. ‘The present one cuts you out, I imagine you realized that?’

Kenneth inclined his head. ‘Yes, I realized that.’

‘You’re my elder son,’ his father said. ‘No getting away from that.’ At the end of life the ties of blood assumed immense importance, a significance he hadn’t altogether bargained for. ‘No getting away from that,’ he said again, heavily, and closed his eyes. ‘I’m tired now, I think I’d better rest. I’m old, Kenneth, really old.’ He opened his eyes, wearily. ‘I never thought it would happen to me. The years go by. You know it happens to other people. But you never imagine it will happen to you.’

Even now Kenneth couldn’t bring himself to take his father’s hand. Later perhaps, in a day or two, before he left Rockley. But not just yet. He couldn’t stretch out a hand and destroy the past all in a moment. Not just yet.

‘I’ll go then,’ he said, moving towards the door. ‘Is there anything you want?’

Henry closed his eyes. His face looked peaceful, infinitely weary. ‘Send Mrs Parkes along. I’ll get her to see about the solicitor. Later on today perhaps. Might as well strike while the iron’s hot.’ While there’s still time, he added in his mind, time to put things right, in some measure at least. ‘You’ll be staying here?’ His eyes came open again, slowly. ‘In the house?’

Kenneth shook his head. ‘No, I’ll get a room at the pub. It’ll be less bother for the servants.’

‘Just as you wish.’ So he isn’t ready to forgive yet, Henry thought, not altogether with surprise. The Mallinson blood ran in Kenneth’s veins and no Mallinson forgave easily, at the first sign of an outstretched hand. He heard the door close quietly. He raised a hand to his face and found to his astonishment that his lids were moist with tears.

Kenneth walked slowly towards the stairs with his mind in a tumult of conflicting thoughts and emotions. The wave of relief which had washed over him in the bedroom was subsiding now. It isn’t going to be as simple as it seemed in that first moment, he thought. Father is no fool about money and the solicitor is even less of a fool – if that is possible. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand pounds, that kind of money wasn’t going to be invested without searching enquiries and the most casual enquiry would elicit the fact that Kenneth’s business was standing on the very edge of bankruptcy. Oh yes, with a good lump sum of capital he was absolutely confident that he could set the firm on its feet again, that it would go forward soundly and smoothly. But to convince his father of that – and his father’s solicitor? Another matter altogether.

He put a hand on the banister, staring down at his feet moving one after the other, a single step at a time, reluctant now to carry him towards that phone. Just what was he going to tell his partner?

There is the new will, some insistent part of his mind said clearly. Drawn up today, signed tomorrow, in all probability. The whole family fortune split down the middle between himself and David. Father looked tired and old, he thought, striving to suppress pity, he looked like a man who could not last many months, many weeks – or even many days.

His fingers gripped the rail tightly. If his father were to die quite soon, inside a week, say, there need be no investigation about a loan. He could either shore up the firm with another loan from the bank till his father’s estate was paid out, or he could simply let the firm go bust, sit back and wait for probate, secure in the knowledge that he need never again lift a finger unless he wanted to. And his father had looked so weary, so ill …

Nonsense! said another part of his mind, loud and distinct, he isn’t very ill at all. He suffered only a mild spasm of some kind, he has an iron constitution, he isn’t all that old as age goes nowadays, he’ll be up and about in a day or two, quite capable of poring over accounts, of recognizing rocky finances when he studies a balance sheet.

Kenneth raised his shoulders in perplexity. I’m really no better off now than when I spoke to my partner this morning, he thought with a stab of hopelessness. He felt all at once acutely angry, obscurely cheated. A way out had seemed to open up before his feet and then to close again, vanishing into the mist. There is no way, he told himself and then paused for a moment, feeling the banister smooth and slippery beneath his hand. There is one way, he thought … if I dared to take it …

Downstairs at the front door, a sudden sharp ring at the bell. Kenneth jerked himself out of his calculations, allowed his face to resume its normal expression and walked quickly down the remaining stairs.

A maid crossed the hall and opened the front door. A few moments later she admitted a man in a dark overcoat, a white-haired man carrying a bag in one hand, his hat in the other.

‘Doctor Burnett! How are you? It’s been a long time.’ Kenneth walked swiftly across the wide spaces of the parquet floor with his hand held out.

‘You got here then,’ Burnett said, giving him a rapid, assessing look. ‘Have you seen your father?’

‘Yes, I’ve just left him. He seems to be coming along very nicely. He’s a little tired at the moment – we had a rather long talk, but he wasn’t distressed in any way. I don’t think he’s expecting you.’

‘No, but I was passing on my way home for lunch. I’ve some new tablets, I’d like him to try them, I think they might be useful.’

They had moved together into the centre of the spacious hall. A chilly room, in spite of the logs burning in the grate. Always a chilly room, Kenneth remembered, even when I was a lad it struck cold into my bones, even in the height of summer. He glanced at Burnett and saw that his eyes were resting on the gilt-framed portrait over the fireplace. Kenneth looked up at his mother, at her calm, sad, disciplined face turned a little to one side, her hands folded together in resignation on the dark blue silk of her skirt.

He had a sudden impulse to speak of her to someone, to this doctor perhaps, standing beside him. He wanted to pluck her back for a moment from that shadowy land in which, impossibly, she could no longer experience sadness or resignation, pain or heartbreak.

‘You never knew her, did you?’ he said in a low voice. Dr Burnett had left Rockley for some teeming grimy city in the north before Henry Mallinson brought home his bride. ‘You came back to Rockley after she …’ He found himself totally unable to utter the bleak finality of that word, died.

‘A beautiful face,’ Burnett said in a voice with overtones that Kenneth couldn’t quite identify. ‘In spite of the unhappiness, a face of great beauty.’

So you see it too, Kenneth thought, it isn’t just to my eyes, the eyes of love and knowledge, that her unhappiness still speaks from the careful oils. It is clear after all these years to a stranger who never knew her, never saw her.

‘You didn’t come to the wedding?’ he asked suddenly, surprisingly. They had been boyhood friends, the doctor and his father, one would have expected him to leave that grimy city and take a train south to stand beside his old friend on that special day.

Burnett shook his head. ‘I couldn’t get away, I was single-handed at the time.’ His voice remembered the driving work of those days, the brief hours of sleep, the endless, appalling fatigue. ‘It was a hard life.’ He gave a little sigh and returned to the present with a movement of his shoulders.

‘You’ll be staying here?’ he asked. ‘For a few days, I imagine?’

‘For a few days at least. But not in the house. I’m going along to the Swan now to get a room. I don’t imagine there’ll be any difficulty.’ Never more than two or three guests at a time in the Swan, for what was there to attract a horde of visitors to a little village like this? ‘I thought I’d spare the servants here the trouble—’

‘I could give you lunch,’ Burnett said. ‘If you’d care to wait till I’ve seen your father. It won’t be anything very fancy but it might be better than the Swan.’ Hardly noted for its fine cuisine, the village pub. He was surprised at Kenneth wanting to stay there. Plenty of servants at Whitegates. What else were they paid for but to look after the family? All those bedrooms, half of them never used from one year’s end to another nowadays.

‘It’s very kind of you, but I think I’ll go along right away and see about booking a room. And I’ve some business matters to attend to.’ Kenneth smiled a little. ‘You know how it is. I’ve left my junior partner in charge, he isn’t quite as experienced as I am. One has to keep in touch.’

Burnett turned towards the stairs. ‘I’ll be seeing you again, of course. We’ll both be in and out of Whitegates. Perhaps we can take a meal together another time.’

‘Father is all right?’ Kenneth asked suddenly. ‘I mean he is going to—’

‘To recover?’ The doctor gave him a shrewd look. ‘I see no reason why not. He isn’t all that old.’ He smiled. ‘That is to say, he’s exactly the same age as I am. I suppose to you that seems a very great age indeed but here in the country—’ he spread the fingers of one hand – ‘it’s no very great age as they reckon things here. I think you can set your mind at rest.’

At rest, Kenneth thought, letting himself out of the front door a few moments later. A strange word to express the present state of his mind. Behind him the door opened and the maid came running out.

‘Oh – Mr Kenneth – aren’t you going to stay for lunch? Cook is expecting you – and your room, it’s all ready for you!’

Kenneth turned. ‘No, I’m not staying in the house. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you thought I was. I’m staying at the Swan.’ The girl looked disappointed. They would welcome a visitor or two, he saw suddenly. It must be dull for the staff in the half-empty house. He gestured towards his car drawn up a few yards away. ‘I’m taking my things along there now. I’ll be back, of course.’ He gave her a cheerful smile. ‘I’ll be popping in and out all the time.’

As he headed the car towards the tall iron gates he saw a girl walking along the little path leading through the shrubbery. She raised a hand to part the overhanging branches and stepped fully into view. He slowed the car for a moment and their eyes met. He inclined his head briefly in acknowledgment and let the car glide forward again.

A pretty girl, an extremely pretty girl, pale shining hair and wide blue eyes. A slender figure, a diffident, vulnerable-looking face. His mind flicked rapidly through a catalogue of the residents and neighbours of Whitegates, striving to place her. A face too delicate and sensitive to belong to a servant, the clothes a little too tailored for a village girl.

As he drove out through the gates he remembered all at once that his father had said something about a secretary. That would be it, his father’s secretary. He considered the notion with a trace of surprise. There had been secretaries before, middle-aged women or older, lean and sinewy women, thickset, comfortable-looking women, but never one like this, never one with graceful limbs and palely-gleaming hair.

The pub came into sight. He put up a hand to his mouth and yawned, all at once extremely tired. It had been a long morning, full of surprises.

‘Very well then,’ Dr Burnett said. ‘Lunch now, a light lunch of course. Light meals only for the present. There must be no strain on the digestion. Then a nap. Afterwards, if you still feel like it, and only if you feel like it, you can sit up for half an hour this afternoon. Put on a dressing-gown and sit in that chair—’ He indicated a large upholstered chair near the window. ‘See that you’re warm, it’s most important to keep warm. Then back to bed again. And no further attempts to get up till I’ve seen you again, seen how you are. If everything goes well, we’ll think about letting you take a walk along the corridor tomorrow.’

‘Get along with you, you old fraud,’ Henry Mallinson said, grinning at him. ‘Who do you think you’re impressing with all this professional mumbo-jumbo? I’m as fit now as I was before this happened, just a little tired, that’s all. I’ll be as right as rain in a few days. I’ll see you into your grave before me. I’ll be the one who buys the wreath, not you, and well you know it.’

‘You can’t brush old age away by refusing to acknowledge it,’ Burnett said, unwilling to return the grin. ‘You’re not one of your own cars, you know, you can’t have a rebore, a new carburettor, a new engine. There’s to be no more driving on the brake and the accelerator for you from now on, you’ve got to get down to a slow steady speed.’

Henry acknowledged temporary defeat. ‘Oh, all right. Have it your own way. I’ll sit in my dressing-gown like a sick child in a nursery. Am I allowed comics? Or would the excitement prove too much for me?’

‘I have some new tablets here,’ Burnett said, ignoring the tedious humour. ‘I’d like you to try them. Some quite promising reports of them.’ He dug into his bag and produced a white cardboard drum. He removed the lid and tilted the drum forward under Henry’s gaze. ‘Tiny, as you see, no difficulty about swallowing them. One with a drink of water three times a day.’

‘What are they?’ Henry asked suspiciously. Didn’t like tablets, didn’t hold with any kind of drugs, pumping alien chemicals into perfectly good blood, unnatural, potentially dangerous.

‘You wouldn’t understand the name if I told you, you wouldn’t even be able to pronounce it. Just do as you’re told for once and take them for a few days. We’ll see how you get on with them, then we’ll think about continuing them or changing over to something else.’

‘I’m not a guinea-pig,’ Henry said without much hope. ‘You can carry out your experiments elsewhere, somewhere where they’ll be appreciated.’

Burnett opened the bedroom door and thrust his head out into the corridor.

‘Mrs Parkes! Could you come here, please?’

The nurse came out at once from her own room next door where she had been awaiting just such a summons. She came briskly into the room in her clean crisp uniform.

‘Yes, Dr Burnett?’ She slid a glance at the old man propped up against the pillows. He looked less tired now, stimulated by his exchange with the doctor.

‘Mr Mallinson may sit up for a short time when he has had an afternoon nap.’ The doctor repeated his instructions about care and warmth, about the dosage of the tablets.

‘And you are to remember particularly, both of you, that the tablets are on no account to be taken with alcohol.’

‘Alcohol?’ Henry frowned. ‘Do you mean I can’t have a glass of whisky?’ One of the few pleasures left to me, his aggrieved tone implied, I am to be robbed of that as well. Is there no limit to these infernal restrictions?

‘I didn’t say that.’ Burnett’s voice grew a trifle impatient. ‘I said the tablets were on no account to be taken with alcohol. If you must have a glass of whisky – ’ and his tone conceded that in all probability Henry must – ‘then you must dispense with the tablet. That is, if you insist, for instance, on a glass of whisky before you go to sleep, then you are on no account to take a tablet later than, say, four o’clock in the afternoon. The effect on the system will have ceased by the time you drink your whisky.’

‘Is he still to take the three tablets a day?’ Mrs Parkes was a little puzzled.

‘Yes.’ Dr Burnett sighed. He strove to make his meaning clear, as if to inattentive children. ‘One tablet on waking in the morning, one at noon, and the last at four o’clock. If by any chance either of you forgets and the last tablet is administered later, say at five or six, then there is to be no whisky on that evening. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly, thank you.’ Mrs Parkes was just the tiniest bit put out, not altogether caring for the doctor’s tone. After all, he had been rather confusing at first. ‘I’ll see Mr Mallinson takes the tablets at the correct time, in the correct dosage, and never with alcohol. I’ll make myself responsible for remembering.’

Nice going, Henry thought, allowing himself to fling a cheerfully defiant grin at old Burnett. Getting to be a bit of a dictator in his old age, ordering patients about as if they were babies, wouldn’t do him any harm at all to be put in his place for once. And by a nurse at that.

Burnett’s old cheeks showed a faint trace of heightened colour. He stooped to close his bag. ‘I’ll be looking in again,’ he said. ‘I can’t say exactly when. I don’t imagine it makes a great deal of difference to you.’

‘No difference at all,’ Henry said airily. ‘I feel a great deal better for your visit, I must admit. By the way,’ he added, slipping in the information with an air of casualness, ‘I’m having my solicitor call in later this afternoon. One or two things to discuss.’ He flicked his eyes upwards at Burnett. ‘A change of will among them.’ Mrs Parkes’s head came sharply round.

‘Is that all right, Doctor Burnett?’ she asked with a touch of anxiety. The first she’d heard of any summons to the solicitor, any change of will.

Dr Burnett considered the matter. ‘I suppose so,’ he said reluctantly. Henry was clearly going to see the solicitor whether it was all right with his doctor or not, not much use in uttering an ineffectual veto. ‘Don’t overdo it, though. Make it as short as possible.’ Of course, the reconciliation with Kenneth – and now a change of will, Kenneth being put back into the will. For how much? The lot? Or half? Mm, might be stirring up a nest of trouble there with his brother David.

‘I rely on you not to let the visit drag on too long,’ Burnett said to Mrs Parkes. But he knew that a sick man would rest more easily after his will was made, when his mind was at peace.

And it was only right that Kenneth should have his share. Cutting him out like that, the elder son, most unjust. Wouldn’t do to take a chance, delay matters, might end up with old Henry dying without the will being changed, Kenneth deprived of his inheritance. A tricky thing, the heart, one could never tell. Mallinson’s heart might be good for another ten years, might flicker out all in an instant. That’s the thing to remember about the heart, Burnett repeated in his mind, no one can ever be sure, no one can ever tell.

Mrs Parkes walked with the doctor to the head of the stairs. ‘You can safely leave Mr Mallinson to me,’ she said with firm confidence. ‘I won’t allow him to do too much.’

She watched Burnett walk away down the stairs and through the hall. She stood where she was for a minute or two. No one about, the hall and corridor deserted. She put a hand into the pocket of her uniform dress and drew out a much-creased envelope, pulled out her son’s letter and glanced at it yet again, not needing to, knowing the contents by heart, but unable to restrain herself.

‘If there was any possibility of getting a farm of our own here …’ She raised her eyes from the letter and stared at the wall. Kenneth Mallinson come home, the will to be changed. What of her own legacy now? Might it be swept away in the general redistribution of the estate? Might her claim on Mr Mallinson’s generosity be forgotten? And she had convinced herself by now that the legacy actually existed, that it was a very good sum indeed. She dropped her eyes to the letter.

‘Once you’ve made up your mind about a thing,’ her son had written, ‘there isn’t much point in hanging about.…’

‘Mrs Parkes!’ The old man’s voice calling from his room.

‘Coming!’ She thrust the letter and the envelope together into her pocket, cleared her face of the traces of emotion and went briskly back to the bedroom.

‘I want my lunch, Mrs Parkes! Have you forgotten my lunch?’

‘No, of course not!’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ll bring it up right away. I was just seeing Dr Burnett off.’

‘And tell Gina to bring up a couple of trays of my coins after lunch.’ He grinned like a mischievous boy. ‘Burnett didn’t say anything about not looking at my coins. The two trays from the first drawer of the left-hand cabinet, tell Gina. Have you got that?’

‘Yes, I’ll tell her.’ She went quietly from the room.

Henry lay back against his pillows with a contented air. He hoped there was something a trifle more substantial for lunch than the miserable couple of spoonfuls he’d been allowed for breakfast. Still, there were the coins to handle afterwards. Quite some time since he’d run his fingers over the carefully-cleaned surfaces. There were one or two little compensations to be enjoyed from illness after all.