Читать книгу Blind Man's Year - Warwick Deeping - Страница 11

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She remembered thinking while she and Jane were producing a new order out of chaos, how strange it was that this young Icarus should have crashed on the particular hillside of a temperamental person who hated the thundering lorries of the air. Strange! Was anything strange in life? You created an artifice and when some circumstance pushed your decorative scheme into disorder, it was no more surprising than all the precious Queen Anne furniture which she and Jane had huddled into corners. She came downstairs clasping a mattress, to be confronted by Heberden in his shirtsleeves.

“I had better see to him out there. Rather a messy business. And not more than is absolutely necessary.”

She understood him.

“Hot bottles in the bed?”

“Yes, that’s the idea. And not dangerously hot.”

“You’ll want hot water.”

“Please. Could you let me have Jane? She’s a capable body.” Jane and old Will were putting up a single bed in that room which was so intimately hers. Would Jane go and help Dr. Heberden? Jane would. So, Miss Gerard helped Will with the bed, and was surprised to find that her gardener knew more about the making of beds than she did, and that those crumpled hands of his could smooth and tuck in sheets and blankets. Well, he had been a widower for many years, and had had to do for himself and a child, before Mary had arrived at a relative maturity. Miss Gerard left Will to complete that bed, and went into the kitchen to see that the water was hot. She found Mary there, sitting like a cataleptic in a chair, with the dog lying on the hearthrug, watching her.

“Has Jane taken the hot water?”

“I don’t know, miss. I’ve come over funny.”

Miss Gerard found that the big kettle had been refilled. Thank heaven, old Jane did not come over funny! She filled two smaller kettles and found room for one of them on the stove. And where did Jane keep the hot bottles? Mary, appealed to, waggled her head on its meagre stalk of a neck. “Reely, I don’t know, miss.” Miss Gerard discovered them hanging behind the pantry door, and removing the covers laid them on the kitchen table ready for filling. She saw her own tea-tray on the table, bread and butter cut, one of Jane’s plum cakes on a dish. Tea? These little punctuation marks remained in the letterpress of life, though death was at the door. She would make the tea, but not yet. No doubt Dr. Heberden would be glad of tea when he had finished with the perfunctory patching of that poor body.

She sat down on a Windsor chair. Mary appeared glued to the one arm-chair, and the dog, strangely quiescent, lay and watched the two women. Why all this emotion and disorder in this usually serene and rhythmic house? Miss Gerard heard sounds of movement, a shuffling of feet. They were carrying the thing in to put it in the bed. She realized that she had been expecting Heberden to come to her in the kitchen and say: “No use. I’m afraid he’s gone.”

She rose from her chair and proceeded to fill the two bottles. Had she asked Mary to do it the girl would have scalded her fingers.

“Get me a towel, Mary.”

“Yes, miss.”

She dried the bottles, slipped on the covers and carried them down the passage. Old Will was coming out of the room as she reached the door.

“Thank you for helping, Will.”

He gave her a characteristic blue stare. Why thank a man for doing what was natural and obvious?

“I’ve got my frames to water, miss.”

“Yes, Will, go and water the frames.”

She saw Dr. Heberden standing by the bed, with his fingers on the unconscious airman’s pulse. The disfigured face and the fair hair had disappeared behind swathing bandages. The broken arm lay in a supporting cradle of cushions, cushions from her sofa, but she was not conscious of any inward protest. Miss Gerard stood at the foot of the bed, while Jane slipped away and back to her kitchen.

Heberden took the hot bottles from Miss Gerard, held one against his cheek, and then tucked them into the bed.

“I’ve done as much as I dare. We shall have to leave it at that.”

“Do you think he will live?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“He may never recover consciousness?”

“No.”

“So, it is just a question—?”

“Fractured skull, I expect, as well as the other things. I’ll come along again later.”

She said: “Jane has tea ready. You will have some before you go.”

He followed her across the passage into the dining-room.

“I ought to try and get you a nurse.”

“Is it necessary? I mean, if it is so inevitable, can’t we manage?”

“You could, of course.”

She stood by the window looking out at the fog.

“I’m just thinking that there must be people who ought to know, people to whom he must matter. And we know nothing, not even his name.”