could have dared hope. The threat to Doubler’s organic status paled into insignificance in comparison to the threat to his groundbreaking potato research. And the suggestion that officials might be invited to discuss the path of a new train and then accidentally stumble across the potato grower’s business concerns was much more alarming to Doubler, who alone knew the true depths of his underground activity. Were the government to get wind of this other enterprise while routinely investigating resistance to a compulsory purchase order, then who knew what trouble lay ahead.
Doubler looked at his notes, the page divided into three columns representing each distinct threat, and reeled at the sheer enormity of the attack. He had wondered, at the arrival of the third envelope, whether stepping up his security might be a disproportionate response, but now, when the words were distilled into a gradient of menace, he knew that war had indeed been declared. Yes, there was no doubt: he needed Mrs Millwood.
Doubler always looked forward to his housekeeper’s arrival, but with such a clear agenda for their talk ahead, he was more restless than ever before. Ten minutes before she was due, he began pacing up and down by the window, looking constantly at the spot at the end of the drive and raising the binoculars to his eyes at every imagined disturbance.
As it was, he was fetching his notebook at the moment she came through the gate, but to ensure he was consistent with his diligent recordings, he noted the approximate time of her arrival as he watched the car pull forward on the drive. Scarcely able to contain his nervous energy, he wandered through the house awaiting her symphony of entrance, so it was a couple of minutes before he registered something different about the quality of sound of the engine on the drive. Mrs Millwood had a distinctive driving style. She kept the engine revs at a constant speed, taking the bends at a slow and steady pace that seemed to allow her to coast her way to the top. Although he had been absolutely certain that it had been her car he observed a couple of minutes previously, he was now not so sure. The car was revving up on the incline and then slowing to a crawl to navigate each turn, making the car sound strained and hesitant as it made its approach. Doubler stopped and held his breath to hear the small aural nuances of her arrival, listening carefully to the thud of the car door as she eventually reached the yard.
He stood stock-still, his ears trained on the kitchen door. When instead of it opening, the front doorbell rang, its noise echoing thunderously around the house, his heart leapt at the intrusion. There was no reason for Mrs Millwood to arrive at the front door – she never had done so before – so it was with great trepidation that Doubler made his way nervously down the hallway to see what Trojan interloper could possibly have made it as far as his doorstep. He eyed the doormat suspiciously, half expecting another one of the Manila envelopes to slide through the letterbox in front of his eyes, but the doorbell rang again, and unable to ignore it, he carefully undid the chain and turned the stiff key in the lock, his heart beating loudly in his ears.
As he opened the door hesitantly, a woman poked her head into the narrow space he had created. She was wearing a brightly coloured knitted bobble hat pulled down over her ears and some sort of duffle coat over jeans and wellington boots. He narrowed his eyes as he tried to process the threat.
‘Doubler?’
‘I am,’ he tried, though he wasn’t certain of anything at that moment.
‘Hello! I’m Gracie’s daughter.’
‘Gracie,’ he said, feeling even more nervous now she claimed to be somebody’s daughter. He didn’t know any Gracies.
‘Gracie,’ he said again, unsure whether he should yet betray the fact he knew nobody by that name.
‘Yes. Can I come in?’
He didn’t seem to have much say in the matter because she was already pushing on the door to enter his house. Her admission was almost forced, but Doubler was disarmed by her eyes, which were sparkling and bright, and there was a lightness in her look that he recognized and responded to. He stood back as she entered and walked ahead of him as if she knew the house.
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ she asked as she made her way towards the kitchen. Her ease, her certainty became familiar. Gracie. Gracie must be the name of Mrs Millwood and this must certainly be her daughter. He shut the front door and hurried after her.
‘By all means put the kettle on,’ he said, perplexed, but by the time he had caught up with her, she was already filling the kettle at the sink as if she had performed this task a thousand times.
He sat at the kitchen table and allowed events to happen to him. He allowed this woman to feel her way around his kitchen as she assembled cups and saucers, and warmed the teapot, reaching for the tin of tea leaves as if it were second nature. He watched her and marvelled at the million little ways that identified her as her mother’s daughter.
‘Were you expecting me?’
‘Not at all. I was expecting your mother.’
‘Just as I thought. She was supposed to tell you, but she must have chickened out.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Mum’s poorly.’
She made this last announcement just as she sat down opposite him. She pushed a teacup towards him.
‘Drink this.’
He tried to lift the hot drink to his lips but found himself quite unable to grasp the cup with enough force to raise it. He looked at Gracie’s daughter.
‘Poorly. What sort of poorly?’
‘Oh, the worst you can imagine, I’m afraid.’ She reached forward and spooned some sugar into his tea, stirring it, and then she sipped at her own. She smiled a small, sorrowful smile, one that, irrationally in Doubler’s eyes, carried a trace of sadness for him as well as a multitude of sadnesses of her own. ‘She’s had it before, of course, but I’m afraid it’s back again with sharper teeth.’
Doubler found himself unable to swallow, as if the disease’s sharp teeth had sunk themselves into his own fleshy neck.
‘When? When did she have it before?’ he asked, once he had found his voice. This was all news to him. The first toothless episode and then the second, fanged one.
‘A good while back. She was younger then, much more able to deal with it and she’s been well for such a long time now, we really thought she’d beaten it.’
Doubler imagined Mrs Millwood beating a sharp-toothed thing with a stick. Or a mop. Or a broom. Surely it wouldn’t stand a chance. And he remembered, now, her absence. She had taken some time off and he had resented it enormously through a cloud of other resentments, and the combined force of his upset and all the other upsets had somehow obscured the reason for her absence. He had been at the lowest point of his life. He had settled into the routine of life without Marie, but nothing had made much sense to him still. He tried to remember how long Mrs Millwood had been absent for.
‘How long?’ he said. Using two hands, he lifted the cup unsteadily to his lips.
A sharp pain flashed across the face of Gracie’s daughter and Doubler realized what she might think he was asking.
‘Until she’s back here, I mean. Back at work, until she’s not poorly again.’ The word ‘poorly’ stuck in his mouth like fluff, getting tangled there and drying his tongue and lips until he thought they might never work again. It had been the daughter’s language, the daughter’s choice of words. But of course it wasn’t a big enough word to describe this thing with savage teeth.
Gracie reached across the table and took his hand in hers. ‘Mum’s really sick this time. We’re taking it one day at a time. She is going to fight it, and the doctors are going to throw everything at it. But the treatment’s going to be awful, so she’ll feel a lot worse before she feels better. If she feels better at all.’
Doubler was horrified by his own selfish thoughts and yet all he could think of was the absence he would be left with. Not the threat of the ultimate absence (this, he hadn’t even begun to process as a possibility)