got to go back to the house,’ she said, aware that she was treading on eggshells.
‘Oh?’
‘She sent Billy Prior up with a message.’
‘Won’t it keep until morning?’
‘I doubt it,’ Dottie said, risking a little laugh. ‘You know what she’s like. She’ll be in a right state. Josephine’s wedding is the wedding of the year.’
‘I can’t imagine there’s anything left to do,’ said Reg, pulling up his chair to the table. ‘Not with you in charge.’
She wasn’t sure what to make of that remark. Was there a note of pride in his voice, or was it sarcasm? She decided not to ask and went to fetch her own plate.
‘Well, you’d better get over there right away then, hadn’t you?’
‘We’ll eat our dinner first,’ she said, adding her own note of defiance. ‘She’ll send the doctor with the car before long.’
‘How do you know that?’
She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘You’ll see.’
‘I dare say I’ll look for any sign of mildew in the strawberry beds,’ he said, mashing his potato into the gravy and spilling it onto the tablecloth, ‘and then maybe I’ll take myself off to the Jolly Farmer for a pint.’
‘So it’s all right for me to go then?’ she said.
He looked up sharply. ‘Got any brown sauce?’
Just as she’d predicted, Dr Fitzgerald, a small man with a shock of frizzy light brown hair, walked up the path about twenty minutes later. Pushing his thick-rimmed glasses further up his nose, he curled his top lip at the same time, something he always did when he was slightly embarrassed.
Dr Fitzgerald had always admired the simplicity of Dottie’s little cottage. Reg kept the garden looking immaculate. The neat rows of carrots, cabbages, beans and peas kept the two of them well fed and healthy. He knew from the various occasions when he’d been called out when Reg was ill that the inside of the cottage was neat and tidy too.
Some would say he was nosy but the doctor made it his business to know all about his patients. Taking umpteen cups of tea by the fireside had enabled him to discover that, born and raised a gentlewoman in the last century, Elizabeth Thornton, known to everyone as Aunt Bessie and the original owner of Myrtle Cottage, had incurred the wrath of her father by marrying beneath her station. Cut off from the rest of the family, she and her beloved Samuel had amassed a tidy fortune in the twenties and thirties by running a string of small hotels, but sadly they remained childless. The frequency of the doctor’s visits had increased slightly in 1940, when her only living relative, orphaned by the Blitz, had come to live in the village. A terrible thing to happen to a young girl, but he couldn’t be sorry: Dottie had brought a very welcome ray of sunshine back into Bessie’s life.
He found the back door open. In the small scullery, Dottie’s pots and pans gleamed and glinted. He wondered vaguely where she found the time. He was well aware that she was in great demand in the village. On Mondays and Tuesdays, she worked for Janet Cooper, owner and proprietor of the general store in the village, and on Thursdays and Fridays she was at his own house. Dottie wasn’t the usual sort of daily help, all frumpy and with wrinkled stockings – she was attractive too. Damned attractive. Her figure was trim and her breasts soft and round. If she had one fault, it was that she wore her copper-coloured hair too tightly pulled back in a rather severe-looking bun, but now and then a tendril of hair would work itself loose and fall over her small forehead. He wasn’t supposed to, but he noticed things like that. And when she laughed, her clear blue eyes shone and she lit up the whole world. He sighed. Oh to have an un complicated life like hers … to have an uncomplicated wife like her … Mariah’s agitated face swam before his eyes.
Dr Fitzgerald cleared his throat. ‘We sent the Prior boy up, but we weren’t sure if you’d got the message,’ he began apologetically.
Dottie gave no hint one way or another. Oh dear, oh dear. He dared not return without her. ‘Um,’ he went on, ‘my wife … that is … we wondered if you could spare an hour or two tonight, Dottie?’
‘I told Billy to tell you I would be there directly,’ she said in her usual unhurried manner.
‘I see …’
‘I had to take care of my husband first.’ Although her tone was mildly reproachful, the doctor envied Reg Cox – not for the first time. When was the last time Mariah put him first in anything?
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said hastily. ‘Um … I was just wondering …. um … if you are able to come straight away, I could give you a lift.’
‘Well, that’s most kind of you,’ she said in a surprised tone. ‘I’ll just do this and then I’ll get my coat.’ She picked up the bowl and wandered past him to throw the washing-up water onto the garden. ‘And,’ she added as she walked past him a second time, ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t mind dropping Reg off at the Jolly Farmer on your way, would you?’
If the doctor was annoyed by her presumption, he wasn’t about to make a fuss. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that in her quiet way, Dottie controlled all their lives and for the sake of his own sanity and peace of mind, it was important for him to get their in dispensable daily woman back to his wife as soon as possible.
By the time they arrived at the house, Mariah Fitzgerald was in a complete flap. She’d got Keith running in and out of the house and into the marquee (a large ex-army tent set up on the lawn), with the large dinner plates from her best service, as well as some plates she’d found on the larder floor.
‘Don’t drop them, whatever you do,’ she’d screamed at her already nervous son. Keith tripped over the guy ropes and she almost had a fainting fit.
‘You forgot the china, Dottie,’ she said accusingly as Dottie stepped out of her husband’s car. ‘It’s a good job I went into the marquee to check. The tables were bare.’
Dottie said nothing but she was bristling with anger. Dr Fitzgerald disappeared somewhere in the direction of the surgery and she heard a door closing. She hung her coat on the peg on the back of the kitchen door and looked around in dismay. She’d expected interference to some small degree but not on a scale like this. Her beautifully organised kitchen was in total chaos.
Mrs Fitzgerald had been going through everything, even the tins in the pantry. The lid of the tin containing the strawberry shortcake was on the draining board, the tin containing the brandy snaps had the lid from the love-all cake on the top and vice versa. The tin of butterfly cakes had no lid at all. Dottie couldn’t even see it. When she’d left that afternoon, the dinner plates, on hire from Bentalls in Worthing, had been in their boxes under the shelf in the pantry. They had since been pulled out and the shredded paper used as packing was now strewn all over the kitchen worktops and the floor.
With an exaggerated sigh, Dottie set about putting things to rights. The bread bins were open and some of her carefully counted cutlery was missing from the drawer. What was the point of asking someone to do something and then changing it the minute her back was turned? Mrs Fitzgerald usually trusted her implicitly. What on earth had changed, for goodness’ sake?
Keith came in and bent to pick up some more plates.
‘You can leave them,’ Dottie said tartly.
‘But Mother says …’ he began.
‘I’ll deal with your mother,’ she said, her tone a little less edgy. After all, it wasn’t the boy’s fault. He stared at her with wide eyes. She smiled and said softly, ‘You go and have your bath.’
‘I told her you wouldn’t like it,’ Keith muttered as he turned towards the stairs.
Dottie set off in the opposite direction, towards the garden and the marquee.
‘I shouldn’t have to do this, Dottie,’ Mrs Fitzgerald wailed