Читать книгу Bloody Good - Georgia Evans - Страница 14

Peter Watson looked out of the window at the passing countryside and wondered what the heck he was doing riding a bus. If he had the sense he was born with he’d be spending his day off packing his few belongings or waiting for the pubs to open, but instead, after demanding the day off, he’d seen the bus waiting at the corner was going to Leatherhead via Brytewood. A roundabout route if ever there was one, and he’d taken it as sign from heaven and jumped on as it was moving off.

Now he had a good twenty minutes to consider the impulse.

He could see about a billet in Brytewood. He didn’t have the billeting officer’s name or phone number but how hard could it be to find out in a village?

While he was there, he might as well ask about work hours and duties. Even if it did entail meeting the scornful eyes of the downright beautiful doctor. Dash it all! Might as well admit he fancied her—snubs, sneering, and all. He had to be bonkers. And why on earth had he practically begged her not to judge him? Did it matter what she thought about him?

For some impossible-to-fathom reason, yes.

He spent the rest of the ride trying to sort that one out.

He got off the bus in the center of the village. Right across from the post office and general store and a few yards from the Pig and Whistle. Now that he was actually here, his impulse seemed stupid. Why meet trouble halfway? Monday would have been quite soon enough. But he was here and might as well look around.

He hadn’t taken more than three steps from the bus stop when the grandmother, the woman from Devon, met his eyes with a broad smile. “You’ve come early. We were expecting you Monday.”

“I had a day off due me and decided to have a look around.”

“Wonderful!” She almost convinced him it was. “Do you have anywhere special to go then?”

“Just thought I’d have a look around and perhaps see the billeting officer.” It struck him her eyes were just like the doctor’s: a deep, clear blue.

“That’s taken care of. You’ll be staying with Sergeant Pendragon. His son’s off in the Army and he’ll be glad of the company.”

That’s what she thought! Blimey, was he getting back into the same situation? “Are you sure?” He hated sounding diffident but the last thing he wanted was an unwilling host. “Is he aware I’m a CO?”

“Of course. I told him.” She patted his hand, and he couldn’t miss how thin and delicate her skin was. She had to be older than she looked. “He understands you’re fighting the war in your own way.”

He’d never had another person put it quite like that. “I hope I’ll be of use here. I’ve only the sketchiest idea of my assignment.”

He wondered if the doctor laughed like her grandmother. “Oh, my love! Just you wait. You’ll be stretched thin and overworked before the week is out.” The prospect obviously delighted her. “You can’t imagine how much we need you. When Alice’s father ran the practice he had an assistant. Alice is now doing the work of two and has the evacuees in addition to the villagers and she’s seeing the workers up at the government installation on the heath. Gloria—that’s the district nurse—does more than her share and desperately needs another pair of hands.” She gave him another pat. On his sleeve this time. “Trust me, you’re going to be welcomed with open arms.”

That he doubted. Open snarl from the good doctor was more likely. Pity that. He fancied she’d look smashing if she smiled.

“…don’t you think?”

He had been off in the outer reaches. “Beg your pardon, I was looking at the church. Interesting. Saxon is it?”

“Yes, or was until the Victorians started their improvements.” She gave him an intent look. “Interested in ecclesiastical architecture?”

Was that a note of amusement or a tinge of sarcasm? “No more than the next person. Just something about a church and a duck pond and a village green reminds me of home.”

“Life’s different here, though,” she replied, almost as if talking to herself. “Maybe it’s the proximity to London. Maybe they are just all so English.” She shook her head and gave a wry smile. “You’ll understand, coming from the West Country.”

She wasn’t potty, that he was certain of. In fact, the way she spoke reminded him of his own grandmother. She’d died a few months before his father but he remembered her tales. “You mean the wild hunt? Pixies?”

She laughed. “The wild hunt is coming straight from Germany and falling from the skies these days. And as for the Good Folk, what does a young man know of them?”

“I know what my grandmother told me.”

“And you believed her?”

“I was seven at the time.” He believed everything back then. Even that grown-ups were invincible and indestructible.

“Don’t tell Dr. Doyle you believe in the Good Folk.” She gave a dry chuckle. “She’ll think you as barmy as her old Gran.”

It was hardly likely he’d end up discussing Devon folklore with the doctor. He’d be lucky to exchange two civil sentences.

“Don’t you worry too much about Alice,” she went on. Crikey, could she read his mind? “She’s a good girl at heart and as good a doctor as her father was.”

And she couldn’t stand his guts.

Sergeant Pendragon proved as welcoming as Mrs. Burrows claimed. After the woman deposited Peter at the Pendragon front door and skeedadled off as fast as she could, even to the point of refusing a cup of tea, Peter and Howell Pendragon faced each other over the scrubbed kitchen table.

“Care for a bite of lunch?”

“No, thanks. Just tea would be splendid.”

The old man shook his head. “Tell the truth, young man. Yer hungry, right? Never say ‘no’ to a chance to eat. I learned that in the last war.”

Mention of the last war had to be a preamble to talk of the current one. “I hate to put you to the trouble.”

“Think of it as giving me company. It’s good to have a young man across the table and you might as well learn yer way around the kitchen. Bread’s in the bread bin.” He indicated a chipped enamel one by the back door. “And the board and knife over there.” He nodded toward the edge of the draining board. “You cut us some bread. Don’t have any butter left I’m afraid, but I’ve some cheese and pickled onions. I’ll fetch them while the kettle boils.”

They sat down to pint mugs of tea and doorsteps of bread with slices of delicious crumbly, white cheese and homemade pickled onions.

“Thank you,” Peter said as Howell Pendragon refilled his mug. “I think that’s the best meal I’ve had in weeks. Where did you get that cheese?” He hesitated—was that being rudely inquisitive?

“My old aunt back in Anglesey sends me a cheese every so often. She helps my cousins out on their farm. I don’t ask how she has so much spare that the government don’t grab. I just say ‘thank you.’”

Peter couldn’t hold back the smile and the thought of an old lady hiding cheese from the Ministry of Food inspectors. He raised his mug. “Good health and my thanks to your aunt in Anglesey!”

Howell Pendragon nodded and raised his own mug. “I think you’d get on with old Aunt Blod. She’s always been one to face life her own way and damn what people say. And they’ve always said plenty about her. Some even say she’s a witch.”

The last statement contained a loaded question. And demanded a response. “Doesn’t every village claim a witch or two? Where I grew up there was an old lady lived down by the old millpond. Old Mother Hastings was her name. She scared the willies out of us children, but women in the village went to her for herbal remedies and all sorts of things. I can remember even my mother going to her when she had a skin rash that nothing the doctor prescribed could cure.”

Howell Pendragon smiled. “Don’t say things like that within earshot of the doctor—she’d brush it off as superstition.”

“And you don’t?” Peter held little faith in all that superstition himself.

“I’d say go for whatever works. No one knows everything.”

Heavens was that true! “You’re right there.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

In his own kitchen? “Go ahead.”

He spent a few minutes cleaning the dottle out of his pipe, refilling carefully, and puffing on it as he lit the tobacco. All set, he took the pipe out of his mouth and exhaled toward the window. “Nothing like a good pipe after a meal. I think we’ll deal well together, young man. Just one thing I have to know, seeing as how we’re going to be sitting across the table from each other for the next heaven knows how long: What made you stand up as a CO?”

Talk about hitting a man between the metaphorical eyes! Peter stared, stunned for several seconds, then took a breath. He’d faced the question before and evaded the sticky issue of personal details, but Howell Pendragon offered friendship and courtesy and he had a point. If Peter was going to be living in the man’s house, he was entitled to ask. Another deep breath. “Can I have your word this stays between us?”

He nodded, putting the stem on the pipe between his teeth. “You have it. I’m not one to gossip at any time. This is between the two of us and the kitchen table, if that’s what you want.”

Fair enough. Better make it a precise as possible. “My father always promised me that when I turned ten, he’d teach me to shoot. I was a demanding and impatient little bugger and couldn’t wait. I was forbidden to touch his guns. I disobeyed. Went into his gun room one afternoon, took down his Rigby, and ignoring any rules I’d ever had pounded into my thick skull, loaded it, and practiced sighting.

“Dad walked in on me and demanded to know what I was doing. I was so startled, as I turned around, my fingers closed on the trigger. I got him in the chest at about four feet.”

The memory still seared his mind like acid. Peter paused and picked up his mug and drained it, leaves and all.

His head was still buzzing when he set the mug down with a thud.

“Crikey, lad!”

“He died, there on the floor. Looking back I was lucky not to end up in Borstal or an Approved School, but it was ruled an accident. My mother made me promise, hand on the family Bible, to never touch a gun again and I haven’t. I told the tribunal that. They accepted it. I told them I’d do anything, as long as it didn’t violate that promise. Aside from that, just thinking about picking up a gun turns my stomach into knots. I’ll never forget how Dad’s warm blood felt on my hands and the smell of cordite in the gunroom.”

That Howell had no trouble believing. The lad had gone so pale he looked green. “What were you doing before the war?”

“I was training to be a vet.”

Howell almost managed to stifle the wry laugh. “So they sent you off to patch up people.”

“And now I’m here.”

“You’ll do, lad. You’ll do. Those two women will like as work you to death, like they do themselves.” He stood. “Tell you what, you go fill up the coke”—he nodded at the battered enamel hod by the kitchen stove—“while I clear the table, and then I’ll take you round the village and introduce you to Nurse Prewitt. I’d take you along to the doctor’s, but she’s off talking to the coroner. We had someone die here last night and dunno when she’ll be back.”

The lad seemed almost relieved as he hefted the empty coal hod and went out the door.

Nice boy, Howell decided. A bit nervous, but wasn’t everyone these days? And what a hell of thing to have to live with. He, for one, would never forget the look in the face of the Jerry he’d gutted with his bayonet back at Verdun. It had given him nightmares and that had been a total stranger. But for a kid to kill his da? He shook his head. It wasn’t just wars that ripped lives apart.

Peter scooped the coke into the hod. Some stray nuts fell to the ground, so he bent and picked them up, dropped them back in the hod, and brushed his fingers together. He looked toward the back door and smiled. Had he ended up lucky here! Howell Pendragon was a good man. At least to all appearances so far. If he had harsh judgments, he kept them to himself. Maybe the tart doctor would mellow. Maybe not.

He hefted the now heavy hod with both hands. Whatever happened, he’d cope.

“The wc’s down the hall if you want to wash off the coal dust,” Howell Pendragon said as Peter put the hod down beside the boiler.

“Want me to make the boiler up first?”

“Thanks, lad.”

Boiler topped up, Peter nipped out the door. On the right was a closed door, presumably the parlor kept for high days and holidays, and on the left, under the stairs, was a small and chilly wc. But the water was warm. He washed his face and looked at himself in the narrow mirror. No smuts on his face. Hands clean.

He really should thank the old man and continue his tour of the village. He couldn’t impose on his day much longer.

Howell Pendragon had other ideas.

“Best we nip along and meet Nurse Prewitt before you go. She’ll be wanting to talk to you. You can put money on it that Helen Burrows told her you’re in the village. Now you don’t want her to feel slighted after you’ve spent half the day nattering with me.”

A bit of an exaggeration, but Sergeant Pendragon had a point. “Alright then, but I don’t want to impose.”

The old man smiled and reached for his jacket and cap.

As they walked through the village, Peter began to suspect the doctor’s grandmother and the sergeant had concocted a scheme to introduce him to half the village population. Would have been smashing if he had an earthly chance of remembering their names, but whatever the plans, he had sense enough to be grateful.

The nurse lived in a small flint cottage at the far end of the village. A well used, but very well maintained, Hercules bicycle stood propped by the back door. He’d need to get himself one Peter thought—or perhaps one came as part of the job. He was about to ask when Howell Pendragon announced, “Best we go in,” and opened the gate and made for the back door, which he opened without knocking.

“Nurse Prewitt?” he called and a young, female voice answered, “Come in. I just made some tea.”

He opened the door wide and stepped in. “Brought someone for you to meet: Peter Watson, your new assistant.”

“Wonderful! Come in.” She was medium height and slim with short red hair and dark, intelligent eyes, and she held out her hand in welcome. “I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to have help. Between the evacuees and the workers up at the big hush-hush plant on the heath, we’re up to our necks.” As she smiled her eyes crinkled at the corners. She was a nice-looking woman with an open, honest face and strong, hardworking hands. “It’s wonderful to meet you. Take off your coat and sit down.” She moved aside as they both stepped into the kitchen. “Look who’s here, Alice.”

“We’ve met.”

Dr. Alice Doyle sat at the end of the table, clutching the handle of a pink-flowered china teacup. Her eyes were as blue as ever, but held not one iota of welcome.